For the Tender of a Portal

“May This Pathway Be Protected”

13 in. X 10 in.

Handspun Shetland yarn spun from Shetland fiber procured from Pinon Woods Ranch, located in Norwood, CO. I gathered rose and yarrow flower from nearby neighbors to natural dye my white handspun Shetland yarn that surrounds our pathways in the middle of the piece. I used dried stinging nettle leaf to dye all my handspun Shetland used in the boundaries above and below the portal lines. Rawganique organic hemp twine was used for warp (6-ply twine) and for weft in the portal pathways (10-ply twine).

This weaving is for a trade with Meredith Graves, a fellow magical fiber art (F.A.R.T.) practitioner, to mark the successful completion of her first year of running Witchstarter. Witchstarter is the special celebration of magic, occult, and divination projects in the month of October on Kickstarter. Honestly, as a fledgling magic practitioner, the power I have seen Meredith wield in opening an explicit portal for us weirdos to be publicly supported in ply our crafts is nothing short of awe-inspiring. Think folks, we are talking about building an institutionalized portal for witches, wizards, hedge druids, ET-DUCKING-AL to be publicly seen, supported and funded in a corporation that has hosted over 200,000 successfully funded projects and transferred over 6 billion in dollars to said projects. Yet, in true Virgo fashion, Meredith would deflect saying that she has but provided support for such an endeavor. Yet, I want to argue that her unflagging advocacy, support, and defense of this portal needs to be honored. She is the tender and defender of this portal to the dreamtime, to and through the alchemical birth of a magical offering, to and through the death and rebirth of mystical beings finding their empowerment in the public square. In the best sense, she is the tender of that liminal space where people change their lives. Consequently, I believed she needed a physical manifestation, a weaving, of that portal to carry with her until it slowly decays into moss.

This piece was created in my full ritual process for fiber spells, which I outlined in my three part essay series on enchanting your fiber art process (part 1, part 2, part 3), with the intention to open the portal and ensure its protected from anyone who wishes to harm it.

Pursuant to this intention, I wove boundaries to protect the magic and divination section pathway at the center of the piece. I added a misty labyrinth of grey Shetland handspun and stinging nettle hedges into the bottom and top boundaries that will confuse and disorient any person seeking to approach the boundary for nefarious reasons. The divinatory properties of the stinging nettle are perfect for this misty boundary as they demand a healthy respect from onlookers and offer a mild irritation upon touch. This sort of weapon of the weak/guerrilla magic whereby we delay and pester the one with bad intentions is done so that they realize the cost of pursuing their aim is not worth it or they get delayed enough that other more pressing matters come to their attention. Delaying a person is a very effective form of boundary protection in our day and age, because our information-rich environments and the number of demands to act a person faces in a day make it hard for anyone to solely focus on harming any one pathway.

“We pour our light to ensure that Meredith retains everything won in her fight.”

“We pour our light to ensure that Meredith retains everything won in her fight.”

“We pour our light to ensure that Meredith retains everything won in her fight,”

I said over and over again while weaving the boundaries. I could feel the boundaries literally coming to life beneath my fingers, the hedges rising to insurmountable monoliths and the mist thickening into an all-consuming fog. The mist and hedges raised their earthen and airy scope into the heavens and into the underworld, demanding respect. I could feel the woven 2-D artifice spread out across time and space in all directions. May this portal that Meredith won for us be safe from attack, with harm to none.

With our protection up, we can rest in the comforting embrace of our safe space, our pathway to realizing our own divinity. The pathway portal, which is a common magical symbol used in many of my fiber spells, is found here comprised of countless hemp braids. Each braid is considered another divine being on the pathway to being accepted, seen, and supported in their Witchstarter pathway. Each braid is wrapped around three new warp strings as they expand from the left to ride side of the weaving. With each new braid added to the piece, I intone, “May this divine being be surrounded with courage and healing on this pathway.” With this spell, I activate the divination properties of the yarrow- and rose-dyed yarn that surrounds this pathway. The yarrow, which snuck into the rose dye path on its own accord, lent its properties of the courage to face big battles in being seen in our power. The rose lent its heart-centered healing properties, which are perfect to support the person going through an arduous process of rebirth through creation.

In my mind’s eye, I could see the pathway flowing like a river from its many individual tributaries across time and space to one common community flow. A gentle, earthy-yellow glow permeated the flowing pathways, lending their support for the divine beings traversing the pathway. In its unification, we can see that no matter when or how someone develops, supports, or shares a project within the Witchstarter ecosystem that they are all part one larger magical community that is here to develop and spread an enchanted way of being on the planet. It is in this unification that we have our greatest power. May these divine beings be surrounded in courage and healing while they traverse this pathway, with harm to none.

Meredith, my friend, I hope it serves you well.

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Studio Notes

Most of my own personal shadow work related to setting up boundaries and protection magic with my family and unhealthy coping tools for myself seems to be resonating with folx. When offered the choice between death or protection magic for a potential commission, people resoundingly choose protection magic. Typically, as in the piece above, we just need to protect safe space to help someone continue to walk their creative path. That is one of the resoundingly negative things about living in our capitalist christian patriarchal society, there is typically a dearth of space provided to just let someone be. There are such unhealthy expectations that our society places on individuals to do all and be all. I think one of the most wonderful things about the protection magic I learned from my friend Hannah Hadaddi of Mourning Light Divination is that healthy boundaries with people, practices, and ideas that no longer serve your growth and well-being are a powerful form of magic. Sometimes we need to render visible those boundaries of protection visible like we did in the weaving above to serve as the physical manifestation and energetic boundary we are holding in our life. So, I have been rather happy to build out this practice area and I am excited to make two more protection magic related weavings this next month.

I will be teaching two people to weave for free in the coming weeks and another in 3 months time. This is nothing new for folks who have been around these parts for a while. My participation in a gifting economy has been a well-trodden path to counter the commodification endemic to our late capitalist drive to make everything a known and sellable commodity. Somehow it still brings levity to my heart to know that two people can figure out a suitable alternative either via accepting a gift or via trade if we must work on a scale of equivalences. This is my little drop in the bucket of giving back to the craft that I love so much. I just love seeing people light up with the freedom that is opened in a new warp. The big change for this series of workshops is I got each student a hardwood starter loom from Harvestry by Hand, which mirrors the design of my lovely Hokett Would Work Looms.

As I noted last week and in a instagram post this week, I am just plugging away at this project a little bit each day while keeping guarded time for my family and my own joy. The two big projects that I need to find time for in the next couple weeks are finishing an essay on the magical dimensions of metal and assembling my Enchanting Your Fiber Art Series into a zine. In addition, it is the annual time of the year for the new Call of Duty game and the first without my gaming friend Luna. Consequently, I will be giving more time to my PC gaming nerdom to play with my favorite interplanetary object and other hosses in search of leveling weapons for the upcoming new warzone and extraction mode called “DMZ.” This might mean less substantial sharing next week as I move through that process while still working on my woven commission work, but I will do my best. It will likely be a weaving update for the piece I am creating for Colorado Springs-based tattoo artist Shanna Keyes.

All my best,

James

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