Sitting in my weedy lair, thinking over creative ambition, doors between worlds, and the way witchcraft works wonders – staring out at blackbirds, hooded crows (and a wren!) flitting between drifting spells of rain – I finally finished two poems.
The first, paradoxically, took over a month.
If fantasies are fractals, then Death is periwinkle.
The second was a classic case of how most of my poems emerge… “No-facing” them up from the gut and barfing them all over the page like so much ectoplasm.
The winter weather continues but I’m not sad about it. On Imbolc, I went for a river-side walk for several hours. Starting in the morning mist and ending in the midday sun through fields and several different woods, my partner and I saw two grey herons fly overhead with sticks in their beaks. The Cailleach gathers firewood! Six more weeks of winter. As it happened, we also saw their nesting place: five full grown grey herons perched in the tree tops overhanging the edge of the river… uncanny in their beauty.
~ Saoirse.
(Decks shown: “Trionfi della Luna (Paradoxical)” – 3 of Coins, Knight of Wands, 2 of Coins – and “Oracle médiéval et merveilleux” – “Colère” – in inverted blacklight)
PS. A personal reminder, “Eviscerate” by Faetooth playing as I post this <3
For the weekend that’s in it (Imbolc), I actually do want to reflect on how the time since Midwinter has progressed. It is not my intention, in general, to force posts that are relevant to each of the quarter and cross-quarter days – or to reflect on quintessentially comtemporary “witchy” themes at those times. If the genuine desire is there and the aims for the post are authentic I will do so, of course, but not otherwise.
Turn of the century fruit relish/ketchupHomemade bread, sauteed kale, & medieval pork loin in spiced wine with brown ale to drink.Gingersnaps and nog with rum and cinnamon, all homemade.Prep, set table, and spiked after-drinks of our Midwinter meal.
The last six weeks can be defined as internally chaotic. Everyone I talk to at the moment seems to be having a similar experience – it’s emotionally intense, it leads to and feeds off of dysregulated behaviours and coping mechanisms. In my case, I am struggling to regulate my time online. For example, I’ve gone down a whole rabbit hole recently by obsessively following commentary on developments in the pop music industry and the ongoing fallout from 2024 (::cough cough:: a-certain-Canadian-rapper-who-I’ve-never-liked’s lawsuits ::cough cough::). It’s not uncharacteristic for me to do this – sudden hyperfixations aren’t new – but it’s leading to far too much screen time, to the detriment of my other passions and pursuits, and I can tell what I’m really doing is running from myself… spending time ‘anywhere but here’.
I AM slowly getting a handle on it. Patience and self-directed kindness are key. These days, being overly punishing or strict in my self-talk feels incredibly puritanical in origin and style. I want to make adjustments because I *want* to, not because I’ve self-flagellated with *false* moralisations** about productivity, worth, and depth.
For the time being, I am not posting on youtube or making any videos. I don’t know when I will come back but I KNOW I need time away… long enough to detox. I’ve always enjoyed making videos but hated the process of having them published. Posting them publicly has always felt like an exercise in waiting for my cookie while talking myself around the possibility that no cookie will be forthcoming, that I don’t even need the cookie, wondering why I’m even seeking a cookie, am I seeking a cookie?, I don’t even like cookies!!!*** … It’s time for a break until I can think more clearly about that.
Instead, I have redesigned this blog to be more in line with the direction I’ve wanted to pursue. I have taken the various gallery pages and poetry pages down because they felt too static. I’m less inspired by presenting my portfolio at the moment and more inspired by working through my personal artistic/conceptual processes in an informal setting. I would like things to emerge more organically and dynamically here… I would like to post when I wish to without having to worry quite so much about polished presentation.
A sketch of a dream/nightmare, August 2024 & my 2024 copy of Benebell Wen’s Metaphysician’s Day Planner. Of COURSE my cover customisation is always extra.
My creative endeavours have been geared towards world building for a long time, obviously, but in the last… hm, more than six months… I have felt the need to buckle down and start sketching, drafting, practicing and looking up techniques, and fleshing out what I mean when I refer to visiting the Otherworld or going into The Labyrinth. My The Labyrinth. I want to practice drawing some of it’s architecture… I want it’s music to be audible, even in paintings or drawings or the clothes I ‘bring back’. I want to develop a stronger more identifiable visual vocabulary to help give form to the way I experience and move through the world(s).
Left to right: Almost finished drawing for Major Arcanum Key 18 (few tweaks left); reproduction printed chintz for next sewing project; a quick journal doodle; two homemade perfume oils; this year’s Metaphysician’s Day Planner 😀
I have rearranged my altar and made (subtle?) adjustments to the visual symbolism around me. My magical practice is shifting (especially in the absence of witchtube and tarottube…which I haven’t followed for some time.) Everything is more organic, more me-ish now. Nothing remarkable or more meritorious than others, just more specific and suited to me than is relevant to most online ‘communities’ or ‘search & discovery’ algorithms.
Recent books have been Jorge Luis Borges’ “Labyrinths”, Terri Windling’s “The Wood Wife”, Peter S Beagle’s “The Last Unicorn” and “In Calabria”, Patricia A. McKillip’s “The Tower at Stonywood”, Ray Bradbury’s “Something Wicked This Way Comes”, all of Le Guin’s “Earthsea” materials, Lao Tzu’s “Tao Te Ching” (the Penguin classics translation by D. C. Lau), articles about Alan Garner’s Alderly Edge loose trilogy (I’ve read Weirdstone a few times… not keen on the rest really), more articles on medieval magic, and a bunch of books I’m forgetting at the moment. (Oh, I read all of the Terri Pratchett “Witch” books and several of the “Death” books for the first time.)
Most of the above books are re-reads specifically selected for the post Christmas/New Year ‘season’ but I don’t think it’s insignificant that I finally regained the ability to read last year after ca. 10 years. I’m back to building sensory worlds. I’m back to perceiving and walking through my imagination. I’m back to being able to retain imaginative detail in a way that I haven’t in a long time. At last, my fingers are itching like they used to bring that into creative fruition.
Left to right: Lao Tzu & Borges; a sketch of a childhood nightmare (“Golden Slumbers”) playing around with two point perspective; a raglan jumper I’m knitting for my partner (I found Irish sourced DK wool! … can’t get Shetland wool anymore due to GPSR).
…So to return to this idea of chaos, running from myself, fixating on ‘anywhere but here, in MY life’, I understand it. I can’t speak for everyone but I was raised and socialised to flinch from my self-expression. I am capable of and even prone to terrible potency and it can be scary and destructive. But now I’ve officially**** been a witch for almost 8 years (and I’m 37, not 17). Not a whole lot scares me for long and, of paramount importance, I have learned to turn around and walk straight towards the source of my shadow and fear. Like Sparrowhawk.
In all the heightened emotions, chaos, internal dynamics, and even external gnostic perceptions of the past six weeks, it really does feel like I’m pushing against the inertia of top soil after a long dormant period. Imbolc is the start of Spring here in Ireland and what I love about that is that Spring starts before you can outwardly see it. Change begins before the first translucent shoots appear. Seasons are so liminal and full of process and development. That’s why today’s blog post is to honour and acknowledge the arrival of Imbolc, and the beginning of Spring.
~ Saoirse.
** By which I mean that the knee-jerk assumptions of the social demographic I grew up in are assumptions I disagree with but that are intrusive and persistent in my head regarding ‘how I spend my time’.
*** i.e. The joy of making and wishing to publish videos is a different/separate phenomenon than the experience of ‘being on youtube’. Youtube the platform is increasingly difficult to navigate in a steady manner. It sucks up so much time and energy (to post AND to sift/watch) that is better spent actually sketching or sewing or…literally anything else.
**** By which I mean both that I explicitly converted to a Pagan paradigm and that I adopted the term “witch” (entailing daily acts of witchcraft) just before Lughnasadh of 2017. I had written college papers on the Morrígan, comparative myth, medieval and early modern mysticism, religious commentary, and crafted my life away with art and clothes and fairy wings for YEARS at that point. But in 2017 I stopped running from ‘the label’.
Perhaps it is the time of year – verging on the vernal equinox and a hushed but stirring feeling in the air. On Imbolc, some say that fine weather means six more weeks of winter: the Cailleach has cleared the clouds so that she may gather dryer firewood for more cold weather. If you see a bird fly by with sticks in its beak, on the day, that’s her! The birds have indeed been gathering with a frenzy of late, the weather gusts cold and wet, and everywhere are light burgeoning shades of green and delicate hints of mauve.
This one felt stuck until this morning…go figure. Note ~ “rota” (wheel…) or “rondellus” is the medieval term for a round. “Andante con fuoco”, also in music, means “at walking pace, with fire”.
I’ve been feeling restless – even anxious – and keenly aware that my priorities need a rearrange. It’s been weeks since I’ve been able to sit at my altar without knocking something over or dropping cinders on the floor – that’s strange. I like to spend most of my time alone and yet the world seems very loud and backlit with blue flickering light – that’s telling. I’ve been losing sense of what I love, what projects I want to work on, feeling anxious to meet deadlines that don’t exist – time to slow down. After all, this year’s motto is: NO RUSH.
Gorse… beautiful and so very sharp. I like it for protection/warding work.
It may not seem like much, but I’m leaving Instagram. I feel I am responsible for my own use of time, my own sense of honesty or personal connection with others (and with the collective!), and my own health. Instagram makes it seem that those who live with flare and authenticity have no trouble documenting that on their platform…but I have not found this to be the case in my life. Instagram also makes it seem as though there is no such thing as agency or artists or social awareness or anything at all without their dicey validation.
When catkins look like corpses… “I’ll cut you in half, while you’re smiling ear to ear/And the freedom that you sought/is drifting like a ghost amongst the trees…” (Magic by Bruce Springsteen)
But there ARE other ways to show process, to document inspiration, and to allow others to partake in the kind of slow quiet beauty I wish to cultivate. Hence, this blog post features some examples of the few moments of quiet that I have recently pursued and remembered to value… none of which were posted on Instagram but that I’m happy to highlight here as a signpost for the future.
Variations on a theme…Current corset progress…Modded Somnia Tarot.
A thread of red in the labyrinth of life.
Quietly yours,
Sorsha.
*First line of the Morrígan’s prophecy to the Donn Cúailgne, as translated by Thomas Kinsella.
