Plying my Protection Craft

I had this nagging worry that the boundary cards I had been pulling from my oracle decks over the past few weeks were a bad omen for the election. “You best get your protection up,” the cards kept reminding me almost nightly. In the back of my mind, I sorta knew that it was about the election. However, when you have OCD, you try your best to set your worries down until they really manifest themselves, lest you find yourself fighting the great monsters your own imagination can conjure rather than the real ones at your door. I still took action to up my protection magic, but I didn’t spiral into the worry and fear that grips me when my tiny lizard brain latches onto something for obsession and compulsion. Heck, I even allowed myself to be deluded into thinking the democratic party ticket would win in a landslide, despite them not offering any tangible economic policies that would help working people’s lives. and what happened? People stayed home. Remember when we were voting for politicians on platforms that included universal healthcare? Aside this illusory optimism, I prepared for political winter with my boundary magic. You know, I got the tendency baked into from growing up in the oft-neglected rust belt and the edge of Appalachia to hope for the best while preparing for the worst.

So, preparing for the worst is what I did! I have been working on two boundary weavings that now are hung atop my front and back doors for weeks. I dutifully plied the magic in my hands to incorporate two new boundary sigils into the fiber spells. First, I finally translated the boundary sigil that Leah Sommers designed and tattoo’d on me into a symbol for my weaving. The fence is a new symbol that I have not only incorporated into this weaving, but I have also brought into my own daily protection magic to restrict who has access to me and my family to kin and those who wish us well. Naturally, I wove that fence with my own shetland handspun that I dyed with nettle leaf, one of my most trusted allies for protection. Secondly, I created a thicket of thorny bramble out of raffia that I got from Flax and Twine, a weaving shop around the corner from my house. This thicket honors the recurring thorny, blackberry bramble oracle cards that I was pulling from my own decks this past month and gives that symbol an exalted place to slow any progress toward anyone trying accessing me or my family with nefarious intent.

As is typical of most magic workings, a bit of synchronicity helped me to make my weavings an even more potent work of boundary magic. Upon pulling the Blackberry bramble card from Tonja Reichley’s Way of the Wild Oracle deck multiple times and receiving guidance from my friend Hannah to up my protection during their weekly and monthly divinations, I searched out ways to bring blackberry branches and thorns into my daily protection magic. I purchased branches and thorns and sourced a little leather pouch to hold the thorns to wear them around my neck. In an interesting turn of events, the pouch was lost in the mail. So, after having sprayed my branches and thorns with my everyday protection spray on my altar for two weeks in the lead up to using them, I was left without a way to use the thorns in the way that I had initially planned. I could have panicked, losing myself in some quixotic play-acting of consumerism gone terrible wrong. Instead, I considered the USPS as another messenger, providing me guidance on how I should carry forward. Since I was already going to incorporate the branches into my plans for placing little protection amulets above my windows, I thought, “well, why not incorporate those thorns into the weavings.” As I completed the knotting and tucking that marks the end of any weaving, I slide six thorns into the weaving at the key buttress points of my fence sigil, so that the thorns faced out toward those that approached the door. Yes, in this season of dis-ease, we will not shy with displaying the sharpness of our bramble thorns in our protection workings..

I finished these weavings in the nights leading up to the election and hung them the day I learned the results. I felt an immediate sense of relief when I completed the hanging. I felt like my immediate kin and hearth were now protected. The hanging completed the circle for the protection work I had done for all portals into my home. The weekend prior to the election I had placed amulets of rue and angelic and my blackberry branches above all the windows of my home. It was work that I involved my daughter in as well. She accompanied me to the “witch shop” on our weekly treasure hunt, what we do on Saturday mornings now that the farmers market season is over, to consult with Hannah on how best to craft those herbal amulets. I suggested the rue and Hannah suggested angelica for our protection amulet recipe. So, as per usual, this protection magic is one that is bound with the work of many hands all working to surround our kin within a community’s embrace.

Now, I could leave this work as self-explanatory. I could use my explanation as an exemplar of how a cis-gendered, heterosexual, white man of too much education responded with their two hands to the spectre of all my kin losing control over their own bodies and many of those people I consider my kin losing access to vital resources. But, and there is always a but in these matters with me, dear reader. You know I have a tremendously hard time letting the tea leaves rest. No, I must draw moisture from the rock and tell you the significance of these actions. Alas, I am nothing if not a theorist at heart and am always thinking of how my practical actions in pursuit of my values reflect back on my broader theoretical understanding of how social change is advanced or thwarted through my efforts. Yes, dear reader, I am constantly meditating on my praxis. I am enthralled in the maelstrom of carrying on the work of making sense of how my actions are situated within the broader tapestry of this next chapter in America’s story of folx fighting b’twixt the poles of becoming and unraveling. Yes, for me, magic is of tremendous social importance in our never-ending quest toward building the sort of anti-racist, anti-fascist, egalitarian, peaceful, democratic nation that I believe is possible. So, forgive me, as I let my rather verbose proclivities have their time on the page, explaining several of what I believe are the significant features of this protection magic.

First, these fiber protection spells acknowledge what Risa Dickens and Amy Torok taught us last week in our discussion of the New Moon in Taurus chapter in their book New Moon Magic that, “Witches Listen,” for the omens, portents, and messages that are shared with them. I listened to the messages that my friend Hannah channeled through their weekly divination, who for months has also been pulling cards related to this being the season of protection and my own boundary and protection messages I was receiving through my cards. Interestingly, on the recommendation of Hannah’s October monthly reading, I had restarted regular oracle card pulls this past month after a long break from the practice. Not surprisingly, those card pulls only strengthened my resolve to act on the messages I was receiving. These weavings represent that as a magical practitioner I honor the messages I receive and take action based on what I hear.

Secondly, this work underscores the importance of embedding yourself in community. Last Sunday, I rejoined my Missing Witches coven for the first time since I crashed my bike back in May (Background). One might say that I have reached the point in my recovery where I have found myself back in the familiar rhythms that I had left to the side to ride my bike really far. The new moon gatherings of late for the coven have tracked the astrological placement of each new moon. Last Sunday’s gathering was centered around the theme for the New Moon in Scorpio from Amy and Risa’s New Moon Magic Book: Circles. Having not read that chapter yet because I was moving through the book one chapter a week in chronological order, I just allowed myself to be part of creating the collective meaning with the other witches of what a circle meant to us. When it came to my turn to share, I talked about how important circles were to my weaving, having been so embroiled in the work of protecting myself and my family with my fiber spells of late. The reason that I spin, dye, and weave is so that I can weave in a continual circle. My aim has been and always be to be able to spiral round and round with this ancient craft, just picking up bits of skill and wisdom from my hands moving along toward some aim. Now, as my skill and knowledge has advanced, I have been able to draw a circle of “protection and safety” around my kin with my fiber spells, which is one of the oldest forms of circle magic that we have.1

Given that we entered the New Moon in Scorpio two days before the meeting, I decide to alter my devotional reading of the Risa and Amy’s New Moon Magic book to read the chapter that we discussed during our meeting: the New Moon in Scorpio. I must have saved eight to ten sections from this draft to share with y’all. The truth was just jumping off the page at me in this chapter. This shouldn’t come as a surprise given that the moon is in that exact placement right now. One section that was particularly germane regarding what I shared regarding weaving in circles during the new moon gathering:

I weave in a circle, so I may spiral round the craft and never end. I won’t ever be a master, a guru, or a star, nor do I want to be. As I shared in the New Moon Gathering, weaving gave me the toolkit to put down the toolkit of toxic masculinity that was forced on me as a kid who had to be the star of the show academically and athletically to get attention from my dad and make it out of Toledo. I am forever indebted to this ancient, cyclical craft for giving me a place among the circle of magic weavers. The craft allowed me to put down the albatross of always “keeping score” and enabled me to unlock my compassion from the deep part of myself that I had to turn away from in order to succeed in competition.

Being witnessed in that truth by a circle of my fellow magic practitioners was incredibly special. As Amy and Risa wrote, “telling the truth is a spell.”3 It certainly was in that context for me, because speaking my truth about my own struggles with masculinity and how the circle of weaving set me free primed me to enter this exact moment clear on my intention of using my visibility and privilege as a White American man of privilege to denounce any person’s right to control any persons body, especially tiny men who have the audacity to say they control a woman’s body. The enchantment that must have been at play in the great web to bring me to that circle, to have me reflect on masculinity, and to tell my own truth about the non-hierarchal nature of circles is so profound that its impossible for me to deny the strength of the magic right now. The great web always will bring us to these exact moments where we can be of service to our community via story and action. That meeting certainly kept me laser focused on what I could contribute to in my voting last week.

Yes, I act on these beliefs as well. I am not just all talk. I voted based on these beliefs as well. Y’all would have been prolly more nervous that I would not vote, given my beliefs. But, one of my many multitudes is a pragmatic civil servant who dutifully shows up for every election and votes for the bureaucracy that a candidate will appoint and empower. I voted for Harris specifically for the National Labor Relations Board, Department of Justice, and Environmental Protection Agency that she would empower to do the work in labor, criminal justice, and environmental policy reform. Here in Colorado, I also got to vote to ensure the right to abortion and remove the ban on gay marriage from the Colorado state constitution; both of which easily passed. I got to vote a new tax to fund public health care at Denver Health and to allow City and County of Denver employees to collective bargain for the first time. Yes, for me, its important as ever to carve out space for a non-hierarchal masculinity of tending, reparation, and creation that is devoted to emancipating all people from bondage, repairing the harms people that look like me have caused, and co-creating a different future that we can all live into. I wouldn’t be in this headspace had I not made the time in my day to go to my Missing Witches New Moon in Scorpio gathering last Sunday. This is what I will be fighting for from now on.

Thus, its not shocking that I am in total agreement with Amy and Risa when they noted in the New Moon in Scorpio chapter, this ability to show up for each other in circle as a community might be our most important power:

Yes, Yes, a million emphatic Yeses! It is to our community circles we return. I know that has been the resounding chorus I have seen online as people have recovered from the election results. I know for my part I want to return to hunger relief and mutual aid work in the vein of Dorothy Day, one of the only catholics [Aside from the Berrigan brothers] that I still consider kin from my catholic upbringing, where she gave up a life of radical politics to serve the poor. Yes, I was to halve the problems of the people in my community and double their damn dreams! I want to be in circle with others who are doing this work of serving our community. I want to be in community with my Fiber Club and make myself less accessible on the internet. I want to be a whisp of energy caught in the endless whipping of an ouroboros in my community, only known as that ole grandpa jimblers guy that is very encouraging and equally as helpful. I want to be able to ask myself every glob darn day what sort of mystery I am going to discover in and with my community. That sounds like the recipe for the non-hierarchal, egalitarian world I want to dream into existence with the people in my circles.

Ugh, I love Risa and Amy’s book so much. This is exactly why you devote yourself to a devotional reading of your friends’ books. You will easily be repaid for your time and attention in just getting to marvel at their genius. Read my essay from last week, Give me Stories, to learn more about what I mean by devotional reading. Great Gelatinous Glob and your infinitely wise great spaghetti monster, may you watch over, protect, and help Amy and Risa continue to put out these books that are ABSOLUTE fire, with harm to none. Hey, if Alan Moore can worship a snake god that he created, I can worship a sentient gelatinous glob if I want to, OKAY? hehehehe

Give Me Stories

Through working with my mom over the Samhain/her birthday season, I was transported back to a simpler, albeit more materially-difficult time, when it was just her, Alexa (my sister), and me. Yeah, we lived child support payment to child support payment, taking advantage of whatever Aldi was providing on deep discount, but we had library cards and paid f…

A Quiet PracticeJames Gardner Davis

UGH, I love writing this dispatch so much, because it really doesn’t matter. There are no stakes in these essays. Like, I just get to show up early Saturday morning and write until my daughter and I go on our adventure. Then we return from our treasure hunt and I keep writing. Then I schedule the finished post and some of you CLICK ON IT AND READ IT! What is this life I am living? It’s gotta be a dream come true. I know that is all I ever cared about growing up in Toledo, reading stud Terkle and Kurt Vonnegut until I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore. I just wanted to write and have people care enough to read. I have that now and it still trips me out to this day. Now, I just need to write that book I have been talking about for years. hehehe

Until next time, dear reader. All my best to you and yours in these harrowing times. May you and your kin be protected and safe near your heaths with harm to none.

James