Surrender and the Stand -Bridge on Fire

Does your hand tremble, your heart beat so loud despite your feeble attempt, at stealing breath? All to hide the sonic display of living from the hunter’s glare? What will you take with you? For me, it was seemingly hidden from myself. It’s never the expected aspect, always riddled with deeper foundations. What we often find is the dance of masks we are too afraid to face, these estranged faces of ourselves we have adorned to protect us from despair and vulnerable moments. Yet the witch must face these things willingly. To choose this, we must be like the villager in need, and approach the witch in the cave of our heart, be willing to forgo the fear that binds our step, and traverse the darkness of the woods to face the uncomfortable truth.

Are you comfortable with the mystery of you?

When you confront the thorns of your own sense of disconnection and the obstructive inner demons of capability, we may truly meet our divinity at the hilt of our relationships. We all seek some sense of this as we, at one point or another, become witnesses in real time to that difference, and must choose to embrace it or become the slaughtered lamb. It’s not asked of you. This accountability of self and relationship. Many witches of history did not have the proclivity to tend to their truths. It is a choice. And as with all choices, it will be consequential. It is your responsibility to tend to the fabric of you and step knowingly or unknowingly through the fires that will test you.

True surrender is given when desire - that fire in the blood- has been made an ally of the truth. For the bluest flame has been met with the great force of life. When you acknowledge fate and your will and where they meet, this is the first breaking open of your heart. This isn’t a giving up of power. It is in claim of it. It is passing through the mist of illusion and into direct agency. It is an acknowledgement and deeper acceptance that to love truly, deeply, one must know the truth of all of it, thorns, fangs, talons, claws and hunger. It’s answering when you are prying yourself from the floor post breakdown, remembering the Devil’s promise “tend your flame as my flame, and you shall never burn”.

No one is expecting your hands to cease from trembling, your heart to slow and gather sterility. You will feel these feelings. Doubt, breakdown, grief, and heartbreak. Its your relationship to all of you that is re forged, not the absence of your humanity.

He is not seeking subservience or pairing you down to nimble flax; he is daring us to defy the most destructive lie. The lie that says the soft is weak, the beautiful, tame. You cannot shy from the parts of you that would fall, nor can you deny the promise of your power to become…

And yet…. Yes. Bridges will catch fire. You will hunt yourself. The forest of flames is not damnation; it’s epiphany, its acceptance, its allegiance to the holy and alive spirit of agency in all things, and with such mysteries comes responsibility. They are not burning; they are simply unmasked, always on eternal fire. Reaching to the heavens as you gaze toward their hungry wisps of faery fire that dare lick the bowl of the sky, that drink the rain of prayers answered, they become the bridge of divine and body. As you will see many times in your realisation of your own godd-hood.

Do you see the forest of fire, meeting the forest of life?

Photography by: Benjamin Lehman

The mind is wired to make sense of the incomparable awe, that we meet on the the way to ourselves and at every new face we see mirrored in the forces of which we swear allegiance and that which we swear war, it’s true, that in taking even one step closer we must learn to not other the self but embrace the monsters in the mirror by way of love and forging compassion.

Joshua Schrei of the Emerald Podcast, in reference to the dragon of life and death, once stated “This world is a monster, a dragon” Noticing this serpentine unfolding of transformation and constant shedding as the body of spirit slides against the body of flesh is integral. It's non-negotiable.

No healing comes from the heart filled with iron pins. No healing is found without the sorcerous will to be soft and to wander into the briar. To walk the bridge of blood and memory.

Relationships are as though vines in some sense. Ready to snap, make way or form bridges to higher planes, when the heart floods and the security of need drives the will to the sky. Others become like the root of an oak, absorbent and sturdy, taking on the strength to hold the soil and make a home to the small.

The way we build them stronger is foundation-dependent. We must risk time, mistake-making and the cutting of a few vines in favour for the depth of the oak, and we must learn the power of the soft vine in the face of need and the pouring open. In time, both can hold a different strength if the foundation is honest, earnest in listening and patient with dialogue.

All this to say, that though it is unique to everyone individually in context, method, traditional implication and protocol, the meeting of body to spirit is the work of witches.

The beauty of this is, that which is forged on such a premise shall not break. The pain of such realities is that witchcraft is a tough lover to those who take of its fire. It will break that which does not serve the current of truth. And it is no less painful because of its nature. All said, Witchcraft is not at all about self-help. It just so happens a sound, healthy and wise vessel (the witch) makes for better magick, awareness of distinctions of spirits, ability to fare forth, trance, commune and divine all the more effectively. Really, it is up to the witch to be dragged through the mud by its current or to wander with integrity.

Truly, witch or not, the honest work of self-development is a standard we all owe ourselves and each other. With the rise of witchcraft online paired with spiritual thirst, came a combined river of perception that the witch is pure because we are “healers” kind of mentality. quite apparently, no we are not all healers. It’s not required that we be so. Many people claim the title and spew absolute nonsense as solution to very real and complex issues of health. And further to the self-proclaimed healer that flaunts the idea of only healing, never ill will, although we can absolutely have the skill of a healer, we cannot dishonour the history of our ability to curse and blast, even more to the point, we cannot heal anything we lack a relationship with. If you cannot curse, you absolutely cannot cure.

So we become proficient in our craft. We meet the spirits with respect and courage. We approach with earnest query, thought-through-conspiracy and clear will. We spend time with the breath. The one we breathe that is, in fact, breathing us. We scry through our blood, extend it like limbs of a great tree, we dare the flesh of the body to meet the spirit. It’s a daring act in many ways. It asks us to honour ourselves; it asks us to ensure we are as supported with vital energy as possible, perhaps more than the average person. This doesn’t mean we are barred from witchcraft if we experience illness. It means we must take precautions to build a clear relationship with our bodies, that we may navigate the subtle and real implications of such a relationship.

Amir Sani, Photograph - digital. Image Linked to Artist.

It’s this integrity that becomes the bridge on fire. We ride our witch through life. The spear of our spirit is grasped in our own dynamic and shape-shifting grip. The way forward is perfect love and perfect trust, enfleshed breath and spirit.

Pause for a moment, look out the nearest window or sink your awareness into the air, listen and perceive the movement, the memories encapsulated in objects, the mysteries of magick that pulse between the fabric of bark and tree, that spiral in water, hidden in vapour. Notice the quiet inhalation, the rise of your chest and its fall. This is the nature of divinity, that rise and fall so that the breath can be sustained. Make it a vow, a choice, written into your being - like scales - like a hyde, and wilfully live. Notice the world as one vast and alive force; the dragon is moving.

So we have examined the visceral unveiling of magick within and begun to see it in the world. Next, we see them marry, mix and mingle as divine parents to the new, we wield the bow and arrow.

Next Blog:
“Questions of morality, of what ethical spire I had to be thrown from to find some sense of peace, of justice - it frightened me, of what it meant I was, for letting that arrow fly. I also knew the shackles of niceness were in the way of my kindness, in the way of truth”
- next post - The Bow and Arrow - The Curse, The Cure.

Xo A