Sometimes a wild god comes to the table …
The winding paths that lead a witch to her work –
Ten years ago I made the choice to end a relationship, knowing if I did it would break my heart and if I didn’t I’d lose my sanity. I chose sanity. For years afterward, I dreamed about that relationship. In the first year after I ended it there were times I had to pull my car over to the side of the road because I was hurting too much to drive.
A few months after that ending I was invited to teach a weekend course at a metaphysical bookstore in Chicago. The work I was teaching was related to the work I’d done in the relationship, in partnership, and teaching it on my own for the first time was both painful and freeing. On breaks from the class a handmade rattle on a shelf kept calling to me. There was no reason for me to buy it. It was expensive, and it had nothing to do with my own spiritual path. But something about the rattle reaching out to me said “turn the corner now,” so I bought it, and, not knowing what to do with it, left it to linger on a shelf in my office.
fast forward nine years
… to me moving into a house that had a front gate opening from the waking world and a back gate into the other world, and a cobbled path between the two gates that let the energies flow right through. I felt those energies when I first stepped up to the house, and it, too, called me right away as a place where I could easily pass between, daily.
Some months later in a trance in a Reclaiming ritual, it came to me that the energies moving through those gates weren’t just my energies; other energies seeking movement from one side to the other were moving out and through. I realized I felt called to priestex that movement, and help keep the portal open for whoever and whatever needed passage. A few days after that, I noticed the rattle on my shelf and realized my purchase in the metaphysical store ten years before had been about opening the way. It had been about this time, this portal, this work. It had been waiting, as I had.
It is one of the gifts of being a witch that all my peculiar passions do, in time, click into place with each other and I get it. I finally get what the spirits have been trying to show me.
So now, when I go to the gates and open them, sing to them and shake the bones – when I call to those who need portal and passage, and call on those who will help me hold the portal open – when I feel spirits stepping in to move things across the veil and back again, for reasons I don’t even know – I remember what led me here. That relationship, for example. Had I stayed in it, I’d never have gotten to this place, and I like this place very much. I remember buying that rattle in Chicago, and the feeling that something wished me well and wished me comfort, and would reveal its own plans in time, as it has. I remember walking into this house and thinking it was a passage for me from one side of the veil to the other. I remember realizing in that Reclaiming trance that this portal wasn’t just for me.
balance, trust, and love
And I know, finally, that I was right in choosing sanity over love, and right to say: yes, I have expectations around my relationships. They have to be balanced, and grounded in trust and love. If, for you, those expectations are too high, that’s a reliable indication that this relationship won’t bring either of us happiness. Balance, trust, and love – those requirements are still true of the few close relationships I engage with on this side of the veil, and the many I engage with on the other.
Sometimes a wild god comes to the table …. And he brings a relationship I never knew I wanted or needed. A way to do my work in the world. An offer, late in my life, for a new mentor and guide. And a gentleness that I did not expect at all. Hail and welcome, wild god. The wildness in you calls to the wildness in me, and both are welcome.
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Many thanks to Yarrow for the trance. Information about Reclaiming can be found at https://reclaimingcollective.wordpress.com/.
Acknowledgement to Tom Hirons, author of the poem “Sometimes a Wild God”
Sometimes a wild god comes to the table.
He is awkward and does not know the ways
Of porcelain, of fork and mustard and silver.
His voice makes vinegar from wine.
When the wild god arrives at the door,
You will probably fear him.
He reminds you of something dark
That you might have dreamt,
Or the secret you do not wish to be shared.
He will not ring the doorbell;
Instead he scrapes with his fingers
Leaving blood on the paintwork,
Though primroses grow
In circles round his feet.
You do not want to let him in.
You are very busy.
It is late, or early, and besides…
You cannot look at him straight
Because he makes you want to cry.
The dog barks.
The wild god smiles,
Holds out his hand.
The dog licks his wounds
And leads him inside.
The wild god stands in your kitchen.
Ivy is taking over your sideboard;
Mistletoe has moved into the lampshades
And wrens have begun to sing
An old song in the mouth of your kettle.
‘I haven’t much,’ you say
And give him the worst of your food.
He sits at the table, bleeding.
He coughs up foxes.
There are otters in his eyes.
When your wife calls down,
You close the door and
Tell her it’s fine.
You will not let her see
The strange guest at your table.
The wild god asks for whiskey
And you pour a glass for him,
Then a glass for yourself.
Three snakes are beginning to nest
In your voicebox. You cough.
Oh, limitless space.
Oh, eternal mystery.
Oh, endless cycles of death and birth.
Oh, miracle of life.
Oh, the wondrous dance of it all.
You cough again,
Expectorate the snakes and
Water down the whiskey,
Wondering how you got so old
And where your passion went.
The wild god reaches into a bag
Made of moles and nightingale-skin.
He pulls out a two-reeded pipe,
Raises an eyebrow
And all the birds begin to sing.
The fox leaps into your eyes.
Otters rush from the darkness.
The snakes pour through your body.
Your dog howls and upstairs
Your wife both exults and weeps at once.
The wild god dances with your dog.
You dance with the sparrows.
A white stag pulls up a stool
And bellows hymns to enchantments.
A pelican leaps from chair to chair.
In the distance, warriors pour from their tombs.
Ancient gold grows like grass in the fields.
Everyone dreams the words to long-forgotten songs.
The hills echo and the grey stones ring
With laughter and madness and pain.
In the middle of the dance,
The house takes off from the ground.
Clouds climb through the windows;
Lightning pounds its fists on the table.
The moon leans in through the window.
The wild god points to your side.
You are bleeding heavily.
You have been bleeding for a long time,
Possibly since you were born.
There is a bear in the wound.
‘Why did you leave me to die?’
Asks the wild god and you say:
‘I was busy surviving.
The shops were all closed;
I didn’t know how. I’m sorry.’
Listen to them:
The fox in your neck and
The snakes in your arms and
The wren and the sparrow and the deer…
The great un-nameable beasts
In your liver and your kidneys and your heart…
There is a symphony of howling.
A cacophony of dissent.
The wild god nods his head and
You wake on the floor holding a knife,
A bottle and a handful of black fur.
Your dog is asleep on the table.
Your wife is stirring, far above.
Your cheeks are wet with tears;
Your mouth aches from laughter or shouting.
A black bear is sitting by the fire.
Sometimes a wild god comes to the table.
He is awkward and does not know the ways
Of porcelain, of fork and mustard and silver.
His voice makes vinegar from wine
And brings the dead to life.
Tom’s book, Sometimes a Wild God, which contains this and many other examples of his work, is available at http://shop.hedgespoken.org/products/sometimes-a-wild-god