I’m back from my magical retreat with a lot to think about.
A retreat is not a vacation—particularly not a retreat you’re putting on. I need to remember that.
We go to a location I love, out in the forest among cedar trees, doing ritual by herb and flower gardens. The grounds host a pond, a hot tub, and a house with a wraparound porch.
But it’s not a bed-and-breakfast visit, rather an opportunity to do spiritual work.
The backbone of our small magical retreat is dreams.
I learned dream incubation long ago, and I’ve been influenced by the work of Robert Moss. My own work is a cobble of all I’ve learned over time.
My usual practice is this: If you want to problem-solve, address an issue, or remember something or someone in a dream:
We plan to bring everyone’s dreams together and create ritual from the mix.
I’m going to a big witch retreat today! (Also with polytheists, pagans, and magicians. All the magical folks.) I’m helping put it on. We’ll be dreaming and working and imagining big magic, hoping to move toward the healed world.
It’ll be a build-your-own-spell ritual, and one altar will hold tools and symbols for altar and shrine building. I’m collecting a bunch of symbolic objects for folks to choose from.
Apparently one of those is a cat.
Tonight is the night of the new moon, time of Hekate’s deipnon.
Saturn is central to my astrological chart—ruler of duty, constraint, control. Saturn conjuncts my moon, which books will tell you makes me melancholy and my emotions hard to express. Saturn also sits highest in my chart, nearest the zenith, making it the ruler of my career.
Despite Saturn’s reputation for constriction, he also rules the Saturnalia, when everyone trades places, servants become rulers, and we exchange gifts amid revelry. Saturn is king of the Golden Age, when no one needs to work and fruit falls from the trees.
Hekate was said to have saved Byzantium from Philip of Macedon by showing the Byzantines a great light in the sky, so they erected a statue of Hekate Lampadephoros, Hekate Light-Bringer.
It’s a blustery first of November. All morning, the cats have watched out the window as leaves fly by, wondering if the leaves are birds.
Hekate has been calling me back for reconnection. The mother of witches, she’s been with me since I was a young teen.
I didn’t know it then. I drew and painted then as often as I wrote, and one of my first big projects for my seventh-grade art class was a woodblock print. I made a traditional witch’s workroom—skulls, books, candles, cauldron. Out the window was a waning moon. In those days, any time I drew a moon freehand without thinking, it was waning.
Today is Samhain, the witches’ new year. Like any new year, it’s a time to notice change, and a time perhaps for resolutions.
My parents are dead. They were pretty fucked-up people, a drunk and a codependent. My dad wasn’t a high-functioning drunk, either—he never conquered alcoholism.
This is Potato, my witch-cat. She’s not a familiar, not the receptacle for a helper spirit. She is a fully participating member of our coven, though she hasn’t taken the coven class yet.
Potato came to Samhain. She noshed with us beforehand as we noshed. She sat by the scrying mirrors as we scried. She took part in the divination.
This Samhain, we had a visitor who brought with her a pendulum and divination cloth that said, yes, no, maybe, and don’t want to answer.