"Clean the Cobwebs and Be Clear"

“Clean the cobwebs out of the corners and be clear about moving forward,” Hannah of Mourning Light Divination said during our recent ancestral reading, a special form of reading that incorporates Hannah’s skill at mediumship with her intuitive divinatory practice. For me, It was really important to have a trusted friend like Hannah walk through the veil with me to talk to my ancestors to see if I am understanding them clearly. Having a second set of eyes, for lack of a better way to term it, is always useful with any ancestral or divinatory practice. However, it is absolutely essential if you are a solitary hedge druid with no spiritual home to lean on your local witchcraft community for support. The message she shared with me a little over a month ago was precisely right. Did I have the space to make a change overnight? No, but in the weeks after that reading we cleared a lot of cobwebs and erected boundary walls that allowed me to move forward.

The first thing I cleared away was a festering, vague relationship with my father. Ever since Lily and I had Juniper, it has been painfully poignant how much my dad let me down as a parent. Some people soften into a sort of understanding about the imperfection of all parents as they experience their own struggle with parenthood. Taking a 10 week paternity leave that was almost entirely self-funded (no work support save a few coworkers) and being home with my daughter every day for 2 years only made me BURN, BURN, BURN with an anger that started to consume me. I wish I had a father that took an active of an interest in me(there will be more on that in another longer article). Every time he or my step mom would text asking for a picture or a phone call, it left me paralyzed. I wish my Dad had showed that sort of interest in me if it wasn’t related to tennis. So, I cleared it away. I sent a letter defining the relationship moving forward.

Some boundaries don’t stick on first effort. My dad started calling me, against the boundary I established in the letter asking to not be called. He left weird voicemails where there was no talking, just rustling of papers or fabric. This brought me back to the trauma of him harrassing my mom with the same type of calls when she divorced his ass. While watching a Rage Against the Machine concert from their recent tour on youtube, I had enough. I put a freezer spell on him and sent him a text to back the fuck off. Shoot, I wish I could have practiced this form of boundary magic when I was a teen and my Dad was even more of an impediment on my happiness and well-being. Yes, fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me. I must hold forth this boundary created and buttressed by the fires of my sacred anger.

The second thing Lily and I did was enroll Juniper in school. I haven’t been that vocal about our childcare troubles, but we have lost five child care professionals in a year and a few months. Something odd, offensive, or an act of a goddess has happened each time we hired a nanny. This meant that every 3 months Lily and I were scrambling to find someone to help us take care of Juniper, so we could do our jobs. Couple that difficulty with a childcare shortage crisis in Denver where some schools have years long waitlists and you have a perfect storm that makes it nearly impossible to follow through on any of my plans for this project or my fiber death work. Oh, how my sacred anger did BURN, BURN, BURN while my little family was left again and again to fend for ourselves. Somehow, after the loss of our last nanny, we found a spot for Juniper in a school. We now have consistent childcare for the next year. Yet, still my sacred anger burns, burns, burns.

Oh, how inadequate our help is to young parents. Young mothers are forced into the belabored conversations with evangelists on how best to feed and care for their children punctuated with pleading platitudes of, “Hear me, MAMA!,” because learning the name of a young mother is too difficult a task when its the child’s future on the line. Young fathers, haunted by the ghosts of their absent fathers, are treated as mannequins, mere furniture in the parlor, rather than the equal partners they long to be. It makes me sick. How simple it would be to guarantee a year of leave time for both parents to be with their children. How simple it would be wrap around the young parents in a community of support. Yet, we live in a society that craves the labor of the parents more than it cares for the well-being of its people.

Finally, I had to address my own difficulties and clear away some of the coping habits I had adopted to get through this first two years of fatherhood. Just before the pandemic, I lost the ability to play tennis, something I had done my entire life, due to recurring injuries to my legs. Then, when the pandemic started, I lost the ability to safely go out to weaving groups and ride bikes with friends. So, as I entered into the shadow of learning to become a father and facing down the reality of my relationship to my own father, I lost all my ways of unwinding and getting out of my own head. I turned to first-person-shooter video games, like Call of Duty. Yet, the problem with those video games is they can suck you in to the detriment of other pursuits. I got stuck in the same rut I did with tennis, attempting to build a sense of self-worth from winning a game. This achievement, like that found on the tennis court, was hallow and empty, providing no lasting sense of self-worth. Rather, it left me in an endless cycle of attempting to win today to feel good about myself tomorrow. Self-loathing set in for getting hooked by pursing a meaningless pursuit with such fervor. I let my sacred anger burn that way of playing games away. I set a schedule to incorporate the games as a fun hobby, rather than a primary focus of my free time.

Yes, clear away the impediments. Clear away the habits, the people, and the practices that do not serve, that leave me waylaid, paralyzed. Let the fires of my sacred anger burn, burn, burn them all away. Erect boundary walls to protect this fragile growth we see inside just starting to sprout. Yes, hear, hear, bring in the schedules, the rules for engagement with those who mean me harm, the structured time for work and play. Allow them to provide the safe conditions in which the ash left in the wake of our flames can fertilize our rebirth. Yes, let us growth through, not despite, these ashes.

Let our deaths and rebirths be sacred portals, not endless trips down the river styx, and let our burning sacred anger be ever our ally in helping our journey through that all holy transition.

So where are we going from here? Let’s be clear about it. These are the big themes and concrete actions will be focused on the remainder of the year.

Devotional Discipline. This has been a big theme for me this year and for everyone that who is a member of Mourning Light Divination’s Holy Coven. As magic workers, we are being called upon to move within our traditions toward a richer, recurring engagement with our goddesses and divinatory practices. We are called to deepen our engagement with our special gift to share with the world. For me, this means sinking deep into my virgo-ness (my sun is in virgo) and getting myself on a schedule for tapping into the great flow beneath with ritual and setting dates with myself to release the magic that flows from my hands through weaving and tongue via the written word. Shoot, do I like a habituated schedule, y’all. This means showing up on a consistent basis, even when times get tough, and showing that sort of snarled grittiness toward adversity that I used to flaunt in earlier periods of my life. It means not taking the easy way out and dissociating for weeks at a time with video games. It means taking care of myself and my altar space. It means tending to my plants and family while also tending to myself. This means no more marathon gaming sessions when I can enjoy a pleasant three hours and then move on to other matters at hand. This is what is meant by finding joy amidst the creative and spiritual growth struggle.

Breadth and Periodic Depth. Another theme that has been coming up for me a lot this year is having difficulty working on the everyday sort of sharing when working on big essays. One way I want to address that is to focus on writing a column for this substack on a weekly/biweekly basis and have larger essays appear 2-4 times a year as they organically bubble to the surface. I think my largest difficulty with my substack initially was getting caught in really big manifesto-esq writing, as I was hoping to write book chapters for a fiber magic book I have been dreaming up. This was difficult to sustain as the difficulties I outlined above set in. It may make more sense to follow a John O'Donohue-esq book model where I have tiny little sets of essays all grouped around a theme. For example, I could have an entire self-published book on the fiber spells that I use and reflections around approaching fiber art as spell work. If interested in this theme, you may find my recent essays “When Magick Follows Death” or “Thoughts on Word Magick” of interest. For the sake of clarity, I want to try this “weekly column” sort of approach out and see where it takes me. It may prove fruitful to write sections of chapters on a weekly basis, rather than bigger chunks monthly. September will be focused on spells for weaving, simple little incantations and actions to prep looms, warp, weave, and finish woven work with intention while honoring the mystery of the timeless craft.

Payment. I will take a portion of this substack paid after we get a few months into the new format. We are at 110 subscribers now. Thank you for believing in me enough to be here and being patient with me while I continually reboot. I would like to experiment more on how to divide what goes paid and what stays free before making that shift. This will entail a lot of planning, because I have ethics restrictions with my day job that I have to keep in mind. That said, community, guides, and friends, I will be opening up special paid tiers of content in the next 4 months.

Resiliency. Yesterday, I was reflecting on how resilient I have been with my weaving, spinning, and magic practices. Honestly, its a trip to see me blink out for a bit and then just tap back into the flow as if nothing happened. I have been through the wringer. Even if I have gone quiet for a while, I keep coming back to this practice and my dreams of being a helpful member of my witchcraft and fiber communities and sharing more work. I commit to doing the work to ensure that I am a resource for my community for the long haul. I commit to not going anywhere, even if I am quiet for a spell. I commit to being transparent about the difficulties I am facing if there are impediments I feel in my path. I commit to this project as my life’s work.

As per usual, thank you for being here. It’s a real honor to all y’all signed up to read what I write. I hope I can produce work that makes you think and encourages you to act in alignment with your own values.

Until next time,

James

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