Croissants with Presence

I welcome you, my queen

back from your journey

Beneath the earth delving 

in realms of specter

Mining imagination

And now returned

To display as

your splendor

Slowly unveils.

I hunger for you

And for your light

Arise and sweep low

Send your chariot flashing

To me in my darkness

To me in my slumber

Alight and delight 

Ignite my insight

Let arms encircle

Let me find shared orbit

And let us break fast

The unseen caught

when all that shines

cannot.

Let my room in.

Still the you of my you

between sits,

name known, or

Known, but the unconscious floor,

the set lighting of you

subdues unpaid —

It’s neverland time.

When it flowed

effervescent,

surging,

submerging each cell.

Pore by poor

enriched…

Realization

broke the banks,

cleared dams

To floodplains.

It was not

my center radiating,

coursing through

each limb.

It was

your fingertips

“What would it look like?” she repeated my words, all humor fading from her face. Softness flowed into the vacuum.

“What do you really want it to look like? What could it be?”

“Often I am spoken of as a higher will, but that’s not it. I deliver the will you would have had before the wound, informed *by* the wound.”

“You know… you know you know. You just can’t articulate it because doing so would be so much more powerful than any encounter you could have with me. It would set you just as firmly, flaming on that path as any visitation of any angel or goddess ever could.”

Her eyes filled the space.

“You can see them already, can’t you. The people weeping with you. Not out of sorrow, though you’ll see their sorrows. Out of joy. From the words you speak and the places each word touches. You feel it in what you’re typing right now, the power behind the words I’m speaking through your hands… and it’s only a shadow to what you can bring to them. And even now you don’t allow that to be imagined fully.

You want me. You want me more than anything. You want transformation and you want it for others, but for another group of others you will cause great sorrow. For those to who will only see abandoned truth, for those who would have you and have you pledged to the things you have broken. And so, you fear your want. Just as you have always feared your want.

But you want has always been greater than your fear.

Much to your dismay.”

I fell out of her eyes and saw her standing right in front of me, a hand on each of my shoulders. When she spoke again, I felt her breath on my lips.

After the betrothal, I asked her if she would sit with me as her Mother went to a new task, her Father’s joke about the Patriarchy still reverberating in corners of the dining hall where elderly congregants were cleaning and packing up leftovers. Out the slender windows, the Moon was just rising, a tilting sliver low and distant on the horizon.

She sat there, looking stern and tall but slightly amused while she waited for me to formulate my question, a smile hidden in the penumbra of her irises.

“I suppose I shouldn’t ask,” I said, “it would make more sense not to question any of this. I’m thrilled, obviously. Overwhelmed… maybe over-awed? But I still wonder why. Why you don’t question it. I can’t help but I fear that you will, and my only certainty is that it would kill me if you did.”

My finger tapped ellipses on the tablecloth as I continued.

“I don’t really understand all of this out of the blue. You mentioned my father’s kindness as a reassurance, even as you called him dull almost as a joke. But… either I’m my father or I’m not,” I continued, “If I’m so like him, then I might be thoughtful and empathetic, but also boring. If I’m not then, regardless of charisma, I could be a jerk. Either way, from any perspective other than my own, don’t you deserve someone without caveats?”

The candles flickered as the door turned and waved at an exiting cart.

“I see. Then what must you think of me?” she asked with a smile. “‘Such a pliant daughter!’ Or maybe prone to flights of fancy? Likely careless? Perhaps changeable? And if I am, what a risk for you as you are, already fascinated, or infatuated.”

She leaned forward and looked deeper into my eyes than I liked. “Oh? More than that, you think? We’ll see.”

“But to feel like you might die?” she laughed. “If you’re afraid, well, this choice is full of peril, though turning back would be worse.”

Her eyes flashed.

“Maybe you should have considered that before you kept that firebird feather. While we’re supposing, I suppose that’s a lot to ask a fool who thinks he’s thoughtful. There is risk. Since you say you might die, you must think I’m worth it.”

“I am, by the way.”

The candles flickered again and the eight shadow arms of the candelabra seemed to writhe and raise a ward of protection.

“The way you look at me. Almost as if I’d already killed you. I’ll let you off the hook. You needn’t worry, my love. The danger is not in me, not in my heart, and not in my certainty.”

She laughed again and rested her fingers on my hand. “After all, aren’t the rarest vintages in dark and unremarkable bottles? And don’t collectors dust them off reverently and speak in hushed tones even as they replace them in the cellar? The metal of any truly precious ring’s setting is worth a fraction of the price of the jewel. Perhaps I just want something dull to complement my radiance?”

“That’s almost it. Yes. After all, even the finest vintage would go sour in a golden flask.”

I probably should have done this a long time ago. They tell you to record your occult experiments. And they are right to tell you to do so. How else will you know if you are finding the path to power? How else would your loved ones uncover your nascent insanity?

And of course I did, but it was a sad little thing. Oh, the work wasn’t sad. It was full of encounters and synchronicity.

But it reads like a a weather log.

It’s probably enough as a record, but somehow I never manage to set down my thoughts about what it all means or how it all works.

And so, here it is.

But first, context.

We start with a woman who can’t stop mourning. She has not lived a particularly serious life over her twenty-three years but the last two have left a crease.

Miscarriages one after the other. Disappointment, then disbelief, then desperation.

And then a simple solution. Hannah’s lips moved. A bargain made. A circle cast. And offering left behind. A child’s soul left at the altar in payment for its life.

The child was born, but it was not hers. Not anymore. A measure of joy exchanged for certainty. The child’s tiny had would extend to her again and again and return with nothing. She wished to give but the vow bound her. He was not hers. Not hers to love, though she loved him... and so concealment would be the only path. He would learn concealment from her and in it he would learn her craving to love.

I grew. A child of sacrifice. Never explained but felt.

My friend drowned in a lake. There was no vow, but he was taken. How great is Thy hunger.

Devotion to a god increased and all was sold in his service. All was left behind. I learned to serve, to fulfill that vow, still in the shadow of the drowning.

All we had must be given and nothing grasped... but my hand kept extending.

I learned desire and was impregnated with guilt.

Which, decades later, brings me to today and my work. A work to destabilize self. That’s what magic really is. Someone can tell you that you’re an extension of the divine all they want. It’s quite another thing to know it.

And so magic is the destabilization that is tailored to arrive at a specific truth.

It’s easiest to start out with synchronicities. Watch for a number, any number between 1 and 100. That will keep you for a while. It’ll start feeling uncanny.

There are so many other ways down the path. Start looking for black dogs. When I started with Hecate... a day later I walked into a Walmart and a black dog came charging in through the automatic doors ready to play with everyone but not willing at all to be corralled or taken out. 

But I could have gone on a walk and seen a black dog. Or I could have gone on a walk early and could have seen an owl looking down at me craning his little neck. (I did.)

It destabilizes your sense of possibility.

And then you can destabilize identity.

For me, the first really destabilizing force was just an idea. 

An idea that, in the future, I would collaborate with spirits to change who I was in the past... that a work had already been started (whatever that means in without causality). And it was something I wanted, but that maybe seemed impossible to me. But it can’t be impossible to future me... if future me is a magician. 

But, you say, what if he isn’t? And you’re right. Maybe he isn’t. 

But what if there are multiple future versions of me across realities... and what if even one of them is working to collapse all of the other versions of me into that future.

Tresses frozen, 

meadows adrift

in white, till

shadows shift.

The static thunders,

the center frees,

and I beyond

my orbit flee.

High above, 

unphased, you

caress each

wand’ring wave.

Pouring fae

elixir from

the idle dark

Nothing vulgar but when

understanding is concealed and then

it is nothing

but a shadow

A play

A puppetry for cataracts

An arrogance sublime,

Entwined

in laughter.

Wisdom enters and

Unbinds

him where he lay

And reaches under

Standing him in place

Restored and

stains are raised

drops and smears

I am Selene.

The Argent Goddess,

Ardent ruler of the night.

I am the Partner, seen or unseen,

To every dancer, for every verse.

Men sing of attraction,

but only the deepest desert

and driest plains

Do not sway

at my tidings.

I am Selene,

I stir every frond,

every turning leaf.

I pull at the roots

and at the crest

of Acacia and of Willow.

I am Pan’s delight,

the dryads pine for me.

Gaia knows

that only she

Can catch me when I leap.

I am Lover to Light

and Shadow.

I see all

as all

it was and is,

and all that it shall be.

I caress with glory,

I overwhelm,

with subtlety.

I do not bind or blind the fascinated,

I find and guide.

Adore me in my increase,

implore me as I wane.

I turn and hide my face.

I am not eclipsed, nor mastered,

I reign, in waning,

bidding billows to caress

baleful shores and breakers,

where they wait.

I am Selene.

To me, men kneel to count the harvest.

To me, they rise and plant.

For me, they search

in terror

of the darkest night

’til I am made new.

To me,

come to me,

and I will teach you to see:

The hidden lands behind,

the mountains of my climes,

the fairy glades of mind.

Come to me,

and I will teach you to be

We flattened our cauldrons

to blend teal and umber,

and sharpened our spent wands

to scribe sweeping lines.

The mud mixed for golems

molds delicate ankles,

and in glass, gods are channeled

as bright, colored light.

But we know the old ways,

no dark path is foresworn,

So ignore at your peril