January 3, 2012

I haven't been blogging.

I haven't been sleeping.

I haven't been eating.

This post is not going to be related to witchcraft, so feel free to stop reading now. I also won't be going into detail because the crux of the issue involves one of my children, and I won't put their private life on public display, even on a tiny blog like this.

2011 ended on a very bad note for my family--a very real, life-and-death type of bad note. For now, everyone is fine, with all their appendages in their proper places. I hope that is where it will end, but we're all feeling scared and lost and unsure of what the future holds. Don't worry, help is soon to come (I hope).

This situation has the potential to bind us all closer together or blow our entire family apart. Because it is one of my children that hangs in the balance, I'm feeling particularly vulnerable and, well, a bit like the worst mother in the world. There is a permanent lump in my throat and the weight of a cannonball resting firmly in the pit of my stomach, but I'll be damned if we're going to go down without a fight. I will not be the parent who doesn't see it coming. I won't be the parent who ignores warning signs or pushes it all under the rug because I'm too afraid to face the worst case scenario. It's balls to the wall here, folks.

All that said, do you think it's a bad omen that my own dog bit me on New Year's Eve (my fault, of course)? On New Year's Day I woke up to dog vomit. I went to the grocery store and was halfway through checking out when I realized that I hadn't brought any money. The clerk was very gracious about the whole thing and held my order while I drove home and back. As I was loading the groceries into the trunk, the wind blew the trunk lid shut... on my head. Because of the delay with the groceries and my bleeding head, I ended up driving through an ice storm that stopped the moment I reached my house.

I'm chalking it up to a preoccupied mind. Barring that, I'm hoping that I'm getting all the damnable bad luck out of the way early in 2012. In light of the trouble we face, even my particularly shitty New Year is laughable.

Pray for us, readers. Pray very hard.

House Gone Haywire

The oven timer of our '80's era range has been going off at random times for about a week. This happened for several weeks when we first moved in, but eventually it just... stopped. Until now.

Tonight yet another pipe corroded through beneath our kitchen sink. This comes after I broke my plumbing cherry last year replacing nearly half of the pipes in this very area.

Considering that we live in a bungalow built in 1927, I know that things will come up. STILL.

There will be smudging and raucous banging of pots and pans and the tossing of salt and offerings to the spirit of the house because this has GOT to stop.

I Stayed

There are days when it is so difficult to stay in this body. I don’t know what this “disorder” is that I have, or even if it is a disorder at all. (Ancestors say: What you lookin’ for a cure for? It’s a damn gift, girl. It’s a damn gift. Doctors shrug.) I know too that some would literally kill to be able to leave their physical being with the ease (ha!) with which I do so. Still, I have four children to care for and can’t just go AWOL whenever. I NEED to be present for them. You’d think, after all these years, that I’d be a little more adept at keeping myself from slip sliding into the Otherworlds at random moments, but if there’s been progress in that area, it’s slight. That frustrates the hell out of me.

It was only a matter of weeks for me to be able to trigger the OOBE’s on my own, but getting back? Staying here when the pull comes at an inopportune time? That’s been one hell of a different, far more complex story.

I stayed today though. I fought the pull tooth and fucking nail, and I stayed.

The Crystal Controversy

I'm a four planet Virgo, so one of the first things I was drawn to as a new pagan all those many years ago (is it really nearing 20 years!? Holy hell.) was crystals and gemstones. Herbs was first-- again, Virgo-- but crystals were not far behind. As taboo as this subject is in the more hardcore witch circles, I've never been ashamed to admit that I am drawn to pretty, shiny, chthonic things. I spent years carrying each stone with me, one at a time, and meticulously recording the results. I wore them, put them on my body, placed them under my pillow at night, meditated in circles of them, placed them in complicated grids, met them in dreams and trances... everything. Eventually, I did some not for profit crystal healing for others. I was still a teen and seriously considered doing this work for the rest of my life, but frustrations and concerns set in and I left crystal healing behind for good. I thought.

The subject has recently come back onto my radar, and I find my reasons for ignoring crystal healing falling on deaf ears. But I have this space, so I thought I'd type out my feelings on the subject as a sort of cathartic exercise for myself, even if no one is reading it. ;)

The first thing that made me reconsider my position as a crystal healer was the ethics of where and how the various crystals are collected, and we're not even talking about the obvious ivory, pearl, and coral here, which are probably harvested illegally. The subject of blood diamonds has gotten some attention recently, but these are by no means the only crystals which are harvested at the expense of other humans, animals, or ecosystems. Anytime there is a phenomenon that grows as rapidly as crystal healing has, there will be people who want so deperately to profit from it that they push the ethics envelope, and I want NO part of that. Sure, I can do my best to ensure that I only buy crystals from ethihcal, fair trade suppliers, but the overall problem left a bad taste in my mouth.

Then there is the misconception that crystal healing can do no harm. Go ahead and google it. See if you can't come up with at least a dozen sites proclaiming how "safe" crystal healing is. Oh look, I found one in about 2 seconds: "There aren't any bad side effects...". This illustrates perfectly a complete lack of understanding about healing in general. Let me give you an example.

At the point at which I was considering leaving crystal healing behind, I was approached by a woman in her 50's who had been treating herself with crystals. She'd been using hematite to relieve back pain from an old injury because she'd read or heard somewhere that hematite was useful for realigning the verterbrae, but the back pain was still getting progressively worse. What was she doing wrong? Well, she'd misunderstood the problem first and foremost. Back pain from an old wound is probably not caused by vertebral misalignment. It's more likely inflammation at the site and/or nerve pain. So this woman was treating the wrong thing. Second, she was using the wrong stone. In my experience, hematite aggravates inflammation, so the stone she was using was actually making her worse rather than making her better.

With herbalism, people are usually distinctly aware that some plants are poisonous, so they have a healthy dose of trepidation about treating themselves without doing at least a little bit of research. But with crystal healing, people will pick up any old stone and expect it to be all happy goodness and rainbows, no side effects at all (except for the good ones, of course). There are some safe crystals, just as there are safe, nourishing herbs, but you gotta do the damn research. Healing is healing. This means that you have to a.) understand a fair amount of human (or animal, if they're who you're treating) anatomy and physiology, b.) understand the characteristics of the healing medium you are working with and c.) be aware of the constitution and particular peculiarities of the specific patient you are working with.

Are you going to die from making a mistake with crystal healing? No, probably not, but that doesn't mean it's harmless. I don't mean for this to discourage anyone from seeking crystal therapy with an experienced, qualified healer, nor do I mean to disparage those who practice crystal therapy. I just wish that more people were willing to recognize that there are risks that come with ANY form of healing.