I’ve entered into that ongoing relationship some of us have with deity, when that deity will oversee a week of our lives at Witchcamp. In this case, three deities – the Wyrd sisters, the Norns, the Fates. My own experience, so far, is that they probably have so many names because they are so elusive. When I spend time with a deity, I connect. But not with the Wyrd. So far, when I reach down, they turn away and sink a little further, and they’re always ahead of me.
In a way, that dismissiveness is a response I recognize. Spirit guides, shining ones, deities – often when I connect with them they express, in some way, that they are astounded I’m so clueless. But those other deities have been willing to talk to me, challenge me – the Wyrd just slip away from me. Sometimes I find myself behind another root of the tree, far from where I was just a moment ago. Sometimes I can’t get through the curtains of woven thread to find them or their looms.
I aspected Skuld once – it was the strangest and least satisfying aspect I’ve ever done. The priestess anchoring the ritual told me Skuld wasn’t even aware of the people around her, and I was not to connect with or respond to them in any way. I think that priestess’s instinct was right, in some ways – those attending the ritual seemed to have a pretty powerful response to Skuld that night. But like others who aspect have said, the aspect brings out in me a fierce feeling of love – in my aspecting, that’s the connection between the deity and the group, that love. I don’t think the love is always clear to others, if it’s Hecate or Baba Yaga I’m aspecting. But as the one aspecting, I feel it. It needs connection – both with the deity, and the group. I didn’t feel either the love, or the connection, with Skuld that night.
I’ve read more about Her since then, and it’s odd – I’m finding my connection to her isn’t through love, or even a willingness on Her part to connect with me. Instead, I’m finding kinship with Her through my work in hospice. Skuld, it’s said, weaves our transitions – birth, maturity, parenthood, aging, death. As such, She is all about the transitions themselves and not so much about us.
I feel that dedication to the transition itself when I do hospice work. As with a lot of the priestessing I do, the people I’m with – the family, the one dying – think I’m there for them. I’m not – I’m there because I’m dedicated to death work. Through that dedication I do often become there for them, in a way that connects them to what’s happening. I think that there are times when my comfort with death and the sacred space that death invokes gives others permission to be more comfortable with it, too. It does serve them, I think – but serving them isn’t my primary goal.
So with Skuld. The Leo I am finds it hard when someone just isn’t interested in me, at all (yeah, that Leo ego at work). It feels like this work is pulling me into another level of relationship with deity – one less tied to time, one more karmic, a relationship more about the work than the love. For me, the Goddess was always a mother figure – my only chance at having a loving mother. It seems the Wyrd feel I am ready for the next phase of my work with the sacred, one that sets such personal need aside. Or rather – they don’t feel that, because I’m not their concern. It’s not me they’re interested in, but my fate.
It’s February. Camp is in October. I’m curious to see where this goes, as I try to find my way between the roots, deeper and deeper, between now and then. How do we work with mystery? I’m reminded of a favorite quote, from Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, speaking of 9/11. He said something like: Don’t ask me where God was on that day. If you step into the mystery, don’t expect it to become less mysterious. Expect it to become more.
Tejas Witchcamp this year will seek the mysteries of the Wyrd sisters. Camp is held at a location between Austin and San Antonio, in the Texas Hill Country, from October 17-24. See http://tejasweb.org/wp/2019-witchcamp/ in the months to come for more information.
