The story is taking hold. And it’s so much better to be in this together.
Today I had coffee with one of the women who is working this myth with me. She told me about how her animal ally is showing up in her life. She has a list that she got from the workshop. Of the things that she asked, and the work she is doing.
I was like, “Wait. I don’t have a list.”
I started my work with my animal ally a few nights before the workshop. Actually, I started it last August, at British Columbia Witch Camp, when one of my ancestors – Lucina Cemina Warren (!)—showed up in my ancestor reading as a snowy owl, as the Queen of Swords. That’s when I started this work, though of course I knew it not then...
But the story takes hold slowly, in it’s own time. Like a grassland rising from a flood. Like a tree rooting deeply in a river bank.
Owl started working with me last August, but a few nights before the workshop, I decided to do a trial of the work I was imagining for us to do together.
I dropped into sacred space. I took out my charcoal, brown paper, scissors and tape and made wings, long enough to stretch across my shoulders. I wore them out into the night, into my front yard where I have heard owls answer my drum. I looked with owl’s eyes and tried to listen with her amazing ears and the wind tossed the trees and the stars stared back and owl didn’t come with her body, not with her actual body, but the night was full of death and decision and that was enough to raise the hairs on my neck and I bowed to the night sky and went inside and realized that I hadn’t actually asked if she would be with me. This is a compact, not an assumption. You ask.
So, I did. And I felt the answering presence. (Does this sound strange? But shouldn’t it be more strange to not hear, not touch the rest of the web of life? In older times, in most of our evolutionary history, such deafness would have meant death. What if now, reconnecting to that is how we as women, and we as a culture, can choose life and power and a place again?)
I felt the answering presence.
But I didn’t get a list.
She has a list. I want a list too! Lists are so nice. They give you something to do, and keep track of. I have three planets in Virgo, for fuck’s sake.
My friend did not just ask if her ally would be her ally. She also asked some other qustions, really good questions and she is doing some really cool stuff. Plus, she is working with one of my faves, other than owl, and she is really witchy and I sat there across from the table wishing I had a list and thinking I’d just go ahead and get me one and I might have even said so out loud and then suddenly my vision was blotted out by the white glare of snow and the cold cold air rushing under my wings and the feeling of gliding and flying. Flying.
My friend looked at me. “I just got a vision of you gliding over snow fields,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s what happened. I was thinking I wanted a list and I got flying.”
Which is what life feels like right now. I want a list, full of cool shit to do, and I get flying. Am I going to complain about this? Or just fly?
The story is taking hold. And it’s so much better to be in this together.