Three Gifts and a Lesson—The First of the Great Dreams

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I am a hea­then witch­crafty heretic pagan, and I work with The Mor­ri­g­an, an Irish god­dess of war, death, prophe­cy, and mag­ic. This is my sto­ry of being called by Her (and even­tu­al­ly our work togeth­er).

You can go back to the last part here. 

Or you can go all the way back to where the Jour­ney Begins. 

July 2020 was well under way, and I was active­ly try­ing to explore what mag­ic could do, could not do, and how it was going to fit into my life. I was still a skep­tic try­ing to fit it into a ratio­nal-sound­ing box. But that was becom­ing more and more uncon­vinc­ing.

I was delv­ing deep into “mag­ic” as a func­tion of focused willpow­er and concentration—more a series of brain “hacks” designed to focus the uncon­scious than some­thing “super­nat­ur­al.” I did­n’t need to wor­ry about what was “true” in the claims about why mag­ic worked, because I was putting a lot more ener­gy towards what it could actu­al­ly do. The uncon­scious can make con­nec­tions the con­scious mind does­n’t, see oppor­tu­ni­ties it miss­es, and help guide behav­ior. We are con­stant­ly syn­the­siz­ing a del­uge of com­plex infor­ma­tion and only ever active­ly think­ing about a frac­tion of it, so by “steer­ing” the uncon­scious towards a goal, one could change their mun­dane expe­ri­ence of real­i­ty. I did­n’t care if that was because the uni­verse was sen­tient and we could get its atten­tion, because there was a super­nat­ur­al pow­er could be tapped by peo­ple who owned a lot of can­dles and crys­tals, or if it was the pow­er of our atten­tion and focus used in a con­stel­la­tion of oft-mis­un­der­stood tech­niques that sci­ence already acknowl­edges.

I was begin­ning to come to the con­clu­sion that trap­pings of magic—anything from an altar to spells to crys­tals to wands to candles—served as remem­brancers, foci, and zeit­ge­bers. An essen­tial oil might not itself phys­i­o­log­i­cal­ly help a human relax, but if one made it a point to relax every time they smelled it—and it was a pleas­ant scent all over them—it COULD come to ful­fil that func­tion. A wand might not have any actu­al abil­i­ty over a ran­dom bit of wood, but when infused with sym­bol­ic mean­ing to a person—much like, say, a flag or a uni­form is so much more than mere cloth—it could rep­re­sent much more. As crea­tures of habit, rit­u­al, rou­tine, and rote, we could sur­round our­selves in mean­ing­ful sym­bols, give sig­nif­i­cance to emblems, engage in pur­pose­ful visu­al­iza­tions, and repeat our desires in a way that would help us keep our con­cen­tra­tion. This would steer our uncon­scious minds to adjust some of our “autopi­lot” func­tions towards out­comes we want­ed to see. Peo­ple might try to explain their mag­i­cal tools with pseu­do­sci­en­tif­ic terms like har­mon­ic res­o­nances, ener­gy fields, or what­ev­er, but those basi­cal­ly worked as props and land­scape in deep­en­ing self-hyp­no­sis.

It was all very neat and tidy, and fit clean­ly into my under­stand­ing of sci­ence and human psy­chol­o­gy. I could almost for­get the things I had been going through that weren’t quite so easy to explain away, like my anx­i­ety symp­toms shut­ting off or the fact that I could feel peo­ple before I could see or hear them. 

And life was about to get even more messy.

Of course, there were the dreams. Almost every night I would dream about a black-clad woman (or a trio of them or a quin­tet or some­times more) who would cryp­ti­cal­ly enjoin me to know who she was (who they were) or tell me I was “spilling out every­where” if she (they) said any­thing else at all. I had no idea what any of that meant or who she was or why she was in my dreams night after night.

It was­n’t just my dreams that were going banana­pants. In my wak­ing life, I had begun to feel like some­thing was ineluctably fol­low­ing me. I had the dis­tinct sen­sa­tion of being watched and of a pres­ence in my periph­er­al vision. Always it was just a shad­ow or just a weird tree or bush when I turned and looked, but it was becom­ing more and more fre­quent. And I know what I’m about to describe is a very sub­jec­tive feel­ing, and I’m label­ing it through the lens of two years of revi­sion­ist inter­pre­ta­tion, but it fits. And it fit at the time even though I did­n’t real­ly think about it in these terms.

I felt like I was being hunt­ed.

There was one oth­er thing hap­pen­ing, but unlike the dreams and the weird feel­ings, I did­n’t real­ize the sig­nif­i­cance of it at the time, and maybe I’m remem­ber­ing it inac­cu­rate­ly. It bare­ly pinged my radar, and cer­tain­ly did­n’t do so as some­thing extra­mun­dane. I was see­ing a lot of crows. Every­where I looked there were crows hang­ing around. Small groups. Big groups. A few small mur­ders even though it was­n’t quite the sea­son for it. They seemed par­tic­u­lar­ly bold—waiting until I was very close to fly off, land­ing close by to cock their heads and stare, or scream­ing unre­lent­ing­ly at me from the tele­phone wires on which they perched. I did­n’t think much of it until lat­er when I start­ed real­iz­ing how impor­tant crows were in the iconog­ra­phy of The Mor­ri­g­an.

There was a lot of dis­miss­ing these feel­ings and events because of the pan­dem­ic. I thought maybe I was jump­ing at shad­ows and suf­fer­ing from an over­ac­tive imag­i­na­tion. I had read sto­ries about peo­ple dream­ing intense­ly because of the stress and iso­la­tion. I even thought the crows were just enjoy­ing the fact that there were few­er peo­ple out and they…uh…ruled the roost…so to speak.

In mid-July I had a dream. It was the first of many dreams where the woman/women who had been haunt­ing me spoke in words that were less cryp­tic (though far from straight­for­ward). I was stand­ing on a branch of an enor­mous tree so large and wide that I could have played a game of dou­bles ten­nis on it with­out ever wor­ry­ing that I’d fall off. It was only one woman this time, and she wore a black sheath dress with deep slits on either side and a pat­tern that looked like over­lap­ping feath­ers, com­bat boots, and a black jack­et with the same pat­tern. 

“Open,” she said, and I could feel her ener­gy. It streamed off her like a crack­ling pow­er plant. 

“Closed,” she said, and her ener­gy tamped up. I could still feel it, but it was like a hum­ming pow­er cable wrapped in insu­la­tion. 

“Open,” she said. I could feel her again, pour­ing out ener­gy.

“Closed,” she said. I could bare­ly feel her. 

“Now you,” she said.

“I don’t under­stand,” I said. 

“Close your­self,” she said. 

“Close what?” I asked.

“You’ve been open for weeks, bard,” she said. “You’re attract­ing atten­tion. Your mag­ic is pow­er­ful. Your the­o­ry is sophis­ti­cat­ed. But you’re mak­ing incred­i­bly basic mis­takes. You have to learn to close your ener­gy off and close your­self off from all the ener­gy out­side of you. You’re spilling out and attract­ing atten­tion. And not every­thing out there is…benign.”

“Wait…don’t you usu­al­ly just tell me to know who you are or some­thing?”

“YOU WILL KNOW ME IN TIME!” she snapped, and for just a moment I could see a deep and time­less pow­er behind those intense eyes. “But right now you need to learn to pro­tect your­self because I won’t keep doing it for­ev­er.”

“I don’t under­stand what to do,” I said.

“Imag­ine a wall between you and the world. Visu­al­ize it. Give it your ener­gy and pur­pose and will. Much like your oth­er spells, it will depend on your visu­al­iza­tion, but this one is quick. Easy. Become prac­ticed at it. Make it sec­ond nature. You want to be able to pro­tect your­self at a sec­ond’s notice. Open your­self to be sen­si­tive. Close to go about your mun­dane life or pro­tect your­self. Open. Closed.”

“Okay…” I said.

She took a step towards me. She was fierce and fear­some and ter­ri­fy­ing in ways I’d nev­er expe­ri­enced, but I sensed a tute­lary moti­va­tion behind her eyes.

“I already know you won’t trust your sens­es. You won’t believe what is hap­pen­ing if you can’t read­i­ly explain it. I’ve under­stood your skep­ti­cal nature and accept­ed its…disadvantages. I chose to approach regard­less. But I also know that right now, you do what works. And work­ing with me will WORK, bard. I can assure you of that. So let me give you some­thing that will make this a lot eas­i­er. Let me give you some­thing that works, and then you can trust me even if you don’t under­stand me. Three gifts. Yours no mat­ter what you decide…

“But I think you’ll be back,” she fin­ished.

I nod­ded. Some­how that’s all I had in me. The dream had a sur­re­al crisp­ness to it, and I could bare­ly speak for the sense of grav­i­tas around the inter­ac­tion.

“And stop using your­self as the ener­gy bat­tery for your spells,” she said. “That works in a pinch, but why not avail your­self of bet­ter means if you have the time? You’ll just be exhaust­ed the entire next day. Learn to use oth­er sources.”

“What should I use?” I asked.

“In time,” she said. “All in time.”

And then I woke up.

The next day—and I’m still sen­si­tive to how out­landish this feels…even writ­ing about it two years later…even after all I’ve seen and experienced—I noticed three things as I went about my day. First, I no longer need­ed my read­ing glass­es. At all. I could read with­out them. At the time I was need­ing +2.50 mag­ni­fi­ca­tion to make out any­thing small­er than a title or head­ing. (In the two years since this event, read­ing glass­es of +1.25 mag­ni­fi­ca­tion have gone back to being help­ful with small font.) In ten years my eyes had only ever slow­ly got­ten worse, but then overnight they improved to the point that I could read with­out any cor­rec­tion. 

Sec­ond, I regained full motion of my left leg. My hip had always popped when I raised it side­ways. I could get it up pret­ty high for a front kick, but nev­er had that side­ways range of motion—even back when I did mar­tial arts, I had to let my instruc­tors know that a side­kick off my left side was nev­er going to go high­er than my hip, and one off my right side would be lim­it­ed by how much my left hip had to get involved in the bend. But sud­den­ly I could move it with­out issue. 

Third, an old injury dis­ap­peared. There was a car acci­dent I had been in when I was nine­teen or so. I was dri­ving a mini­van (full of peo­ple, I’m cha­grined to say) and I rear-end­ed anoth­er mini­van (also full of people—it was ter­ri­ble). It was prob­a­bly one of the most mor­ti­fy­ing expe­ri­ences of my life, and it left me with an abdom­i­nal injury. The airbag deployed into my tor­so, and the explo­sive impact caused me inter­nal bleed­ing and a life of low-grade chron­ic pain just below my rib cage, espe­cial­ly after core exer­tion.

That was gone. 

I’ve sat around and won­dered about this a thou­sand times since. Every pos­si­ble ratio­nal expla­na­tion has crossed my mind. I even won­dered if I healed dur­ing the pan­dem­ic and some­how now my uncon­scious sort of “let me know about it,” but in the WEIRDEST pos­si­ble way. Maybe it was the place­bo effect? Covid? I can’t imag­ine what could make three unre­lat­ed things bet­ter, but some­thing did. 

The next day I start­ed to prac­tice open­ing and clos­ing. My “Yoda” friend helped me by telling me that it could involve any kind of pro­tec­tive metaphor that worked for me—energizing a cir­cle, build­ing a wall, putting on a suit of armor—and I quick­ly set­tled on Star Trek shields. My love of Star Trek is for­ma­tive and deep. A quick “shields up,” and I could SEE the bub­ble around me glow with acti­va­tion and fade into trans­paren­cy. Soon I real­ized that when I was “closed”—or when my “shields” were “up”—I could han­dle the world and crowds and go shop­ping and deal with peo­ple again. Open, and I would be sen­si­tive to ener­gies around me and peo­ple’s “vibes” and could kind of be in tune with the ebbs and flows of mag­ic. 

I had the abil­i­ty to live a prag­mat­ic life again, even as I explored fur­ther what­ev­er the hell was hap­pen­ing to me and what new worlds I was find­ing the edges of. She’d taught me how to do the most basic mag­i­cal pro­tec­tion so that I could live life again. 

There would be more dreams. (So many more dreams!) And more expe­ri­ences. And even­tu­al­ly I would learn what was haunt­ing me…and hunt­ing me. But that was to come as sum­mer wound into fall and will be anoth­er post…

Next: First Con­tact

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