My, my, but it’s been awhile since I brought myself to post on this blog! So it goes, when life has kicked you down. But here I am! And I bear news of this wizard’s journeys.
I set out recently to tackle one of eight great mysteries common to all humans– which I will discuss another time, in another post. The root of all eight mysteries, and the greatest challenge that a magician may face, is Death. And with the holiday of Samhain recently over, and the Veil cut flapping open like a tattered curtain or the skin of a cadaver, I have had all the opportunity in the world to explore this macabre secret.
In the path of the Chaos Wizard, the magic of Death is represented by the downward-pointing spoke of the Eightfold Star, the black arrow of the Black Art. Try as we might, we share the unfortunate circumstance of an End with all else that lives, and we are truly terrified of it. Death is the greatest change, the hard line, the movement from all creative chaos to a final, destructive order. The Black Art allows us to deconstruct it. Ideally, it places us in conversation with our own death, and the many little deaths that work to keep us alive.
Those who use this art know what it means to take a life, and become motionless, and fulfil a final purpose; and in its course, they meditate, meet their local gods and spirits, and create a tool representing the Harvest, such as a sickle, a knife, or, in my case, a broom. The goal, in the end, is to overcome the fear of death, by learning to think of death as the result of life, not its end.
The little gods of my house, from left to right-- the Lost, who nests in the hatbox, the Old Man, standing on a honeypot to smell his tea, and Mother, seen guiding the dead in a Samhain ritual.
Exploring this Art has been my truest initiation into the magical arts. I have felt the Axis Mundi, celebrated the lives of those who have passed this year (including Tim, Dolly, and Patrick), and woken up my ancestors in a series of little workings– the Lost who guards the door, the Mother who sits on the hearth, the Old Man who rattles about in the kitchen at night. I have come to think of my life as a series of things to do before I die, and not to despair in that fact! Now my bucket list is just my to-do list, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. And it all came to a head with the creation of my first tool:
The broom. It is a witch’s classical travel aid, kitchen companion, and weapon against the wicked; this is no less true for my own. The broom was made from a thing made (a braided cord), a thing found (a rod of discarded bamboo), and a thing gifted (a gigantic bunch of goldenrods and yarrow). It is blessed by my grandmother’s ghost, by the gardener, and by me. It sits drying against the door now, waiting for my first witch-flight. I will go to meet with Death soon, or an envoy of hers (to my understanding, Death is a woman– I do not know why she chooses to appear to me this way, but she does), and I will do so flying upon my broom.
The broom!
What do you think, my friends, my fellow sinners? Do you have wisdom to share about death, and dying, and the dead?
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