Karina BlackHeart talks Feri Tradition Witchcraft. 
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It  must have happened early this morning: the little grey flycatcher died and landed in my backyard.  I don’t know if it fell or just died of old age, but I didn’t find any signs of it having been attacked.  When I found it laying there, blank eyes staring into Ana’s own, I stopped as though dead myself.  “An offering,” I thought.

I am in the process of creating beautiful jewelry art made with bones to sell at witchcamp next month.  I am using some turkey vertebrae which were gifted to me by a friend; some moose teeth, given by the same friend; some chicken bones scavenged from my own dinner.  I want to make beautiful things, and I want to make money.

So when I saw the little bird laying on the grass this morning, wingtips outstretched towards me, I froze.  Here was a gift, straight from Ana Herself.  But did I dare accept it?  I couldn’t face that possibility yet, but neither could I accept the possibility of leaving the tiny body there on the grass, or kicking it into the trees and forgetting about it, or even leaving it reverently on the little flat stone in my garden.

So I eased myself closer to the possibilities posed by Ana.  I went inside and got my rubber kitchen gloves.  I put them on and picked up the bird– it was so light!  And still so warm!  I instantly feared that it was still alive, so I stared at it for several minutes, searching for movement in its chest.  I found none.  I brought it up and put it on the porch.  I went upstairs and got my “Birds of the Northeast” book so I could try to identify it, and went out and sat with it while I looked for a picture that looked like what I had, and eventually identified it as an “Eastern Phoebe,” a type of Flycatcher.

That done, Talker couldn’t find anything else to hold on to that might keep me from my task of taking the tiny bird apart the way I had learned to at Old Sturbridge Village when I used to butcher its larger barnyard cousins.  Fetch was buzzing in an excited, near-panicked state.  Could I really do this?  Could I butcher a tiny bird?  Isn’t that wrong??

Whoa.

I reached for a glass and poured the sacred water.  I filled it with every complex I could reach inside myself that led back to the idea that death is bad, wrong, and a punishment.  I took a few breaths and remembered my alignment.  I opened to my Godsoul and Ana came right to me and showed me this: that just as she is the bringer of Death, she is in the same breath the bringer of Life.  When she releases a spirit from its body, its lifeforce rains out into the Universe, and inspires abundance.  When I harvest plants for my supper, I separate them from their source of life; I kill them to allow them to feed me.  This is the great dance of Life and Death.  Life depends on both Life and Death.  I allow myself to take the life of an onion and a potato so I may eat.  It was now up to me whether I would disassemble the body of the already-dead bird so that I can make art with its wings and its bones, so that I might sell that art, so that I may eat.  Money is a manifestation of the life force that we are all made of.  I can grab that life force, mold it into the life I desire.  Or I can let it rot in the backyard, kicked under the trees and forgotten about because it was too gross or too scary to work with.

Taking this all in, I felt tears come to my eyes as a powerful surge of gratitude filled me.  How wonderful, how indescribable, it is to live in such a Universe, where life and abundance is free for the taking if only we know how to look for it!  I poured my gratitude into the kala cup, and I drank deep.  I felt my eyes shift from the inside: I was seeing with Ana’s eyes.  It was a loaned Sight, I knew, and not knowing how long it would last I put a pot of water on to boil and took up my knife.  I brought the water and the knife out into the backyard and said a prayer of gratitude over the tiny body.  Then I cut off the head and breathed in the surging life force.  I cut off its wings and laid them aside.  I plunged the body into the hot water and felt it stiffen as the meat cooked and the pores loosened.  I removed it and plucked the downy feathers from the skin.  I pulled the feet off.  Now I am about to clean the carcass and set the bones out to bleach in the sun, while I leave the meat and the organs as an offering to Ana.

What a powerful lesson.  What a blessing this Life is!

Thank you, little bird.  Thank you, Great Ana.  You are one in the same thing!

With greatest Love,
Aspen.

The magic created by people and plants working together has been part of the human experience since the Paleolithic.   The magic of the plants themselves is older than human culture or human memory.
Science tells us that we stem from the same ancestors as plants.   The hemoglobin in our blood is a modification of chlorophyl — the atom of magnesium at the center of each chlorophyl molecule replaced with an atom of iron at the center of hemoglobin.  The magnesium and iron forged in the cores of ancient stars from particles that were present at the birth of the universe.   When we work magic with plants, something stirs in us that reminds us of those origins.   Connects us with the powers of creation which are also the powers of destruction, the power to bless which is also the power to curse, the power of medicine which is also the power of poison, the power of birth which is also the power of death.

  

According to the  mythos of our dominant culture, to remember that heritage is to connect with a starry heaven from which we are separated in a fall from grace.   Cast out of paradise because we tasted the fruit of a tree that gave us the mind of the gods.   Punished again when we partook of the knowledge of starry messengers who reminded us how to work with the plants in ways that reconnected us with our divinity.    And so plant magic is consigned to the realm of forbidden knowledge, and we are told not to taste wild, growing things because they might be poison.

Daniel Schulke writes:

“The status of plant magic as a forbidden art directly relates to the spiritous resonance of plants as angelic avatars, fallen into the realm of matter, for by their power may we fight disease, aid in childbirth, protect the home, behold visions, deaden pain, strengthen the body, curse an enemy, call up the dead, and animate a fetish . . . powers once the preserve of the gods. By wielding these potencies in good measure, the temporal laws of the Mortal Veil are transgressed and the abodes of the divine embraced.”

But the truth is that those powers are our birthright.

Every part of us was present for the birth of the universe as energy that became hydrogen that became all the matter there is.   Imprinted in us and in All Things is the trace of the memory of God Hirself falling in love with Hirself in All Hir Parts and exploding in ecstasy with the force we now call Love or Will.

What is the preserve of the gods is our preserve because we are gods.  And we are God Hirself, Hir divinity expressed in forms that are also wild and also human.

The realm of matter is not a profane realm into which we have fallen, it is Hir body.   And so are our bodies.  And the bodies of the plants.

There is no mind outside of the world of matter judging us and finding us wanting.   Stories of our fall from grace through sin are expressions of ego fractured off from the rest of us, and from that place of disconnection and separation passing judgement on the rest of us.    Generating guilt and shame and doubt that shroud our divinity from us.   And that gets amplified and reinforced by a culture defined in many ways by those same delusions.

The magic we work with plants can help to cut through those veils that separate us from who we are.

Victor said that “God is self, and self is god, and god is a person like myself“ and spoke of our learning to stand side by side with the gods as equals.

Like people and like gods, plants have consciousness and memory and self knowledge — a truth being revealed in amazing ways by the new field of plant neurobiology.

When we look for the oldest sources of knowledge about plants in most cultures, we come across stories of plants speaking directly to people, often through the heart. This remains the basis of many living traditions. As Stephen Buhner beautifully describes ins The Secret Teachings of Plants, biology is beginning to offer evidence in support of this understanding. In a nutshell, the heart is extremely sensitive to the electromagnetic fluctuations that occur when it comes into contact with another electromagnetic field — such as the kind generated by another living being. It sends information about these fluctuations to the brain which treats them as sensory information, mining them for meaning. And because the fields of both beings are altered by the encounter, this becomes a conversation .

Like us, plants inhabit physical bodies, and experience a world of earth and air and water and fire.   They too are fully wild and fully divine.  But they are not human.

Our wild selves speak the same language as the plants.   The chemical and electromagnetic signals that govern their biology are similar to our own.   And so when we allow our own wild selves to come into alignment with a plant by experiencing it through our senses, we take in information about other ways of being in the world, and we experience physical and emotional changes.   Aligning ourselves with Ghost Pipe, whose tiny body taps into the vast mychorrhizal networks beneath the forest floor, we remember how to stay grounded in our own bodies while connecting to immense webs of consciousness.   Aligning ourselves with the Skunk Cabbage that melts through the ice of New England swamps before anything else is stirring, we remember how to move the stagnant waters of grief that pool in our lungs.    Aligning ourselves with the blossom and thorn of Rose, we remember how to be simultaneously open and protected.

We bring our human powers of discernment and intention to the process, directing the power raised in the act of connection.   That power passes through the sense impressions created by our encounter with the plants, and is infused with them.

The magic created is an act of co-creation, unabashedly erotic in its nature.

That erotic charge connecting us with the original magic of creation, the place where magic begins.

 

 

Sean Donahue studies with Karina in the BlackHeart Feri line.  You can read more about and connect with him here.

Here, the veil between the worlds is thin.
Dark Magic/Bright Promise draw you in.
The Gates of  Love and Power open
Though the Mysteries still can’t be spoken.

We’ve been busy cooking up some amazing magic in our metaphysical kitchen.  We’ve set the table with plate and cup, knife and candle.  The bell rings, calling you to your place.  Come.  Sit down.  Listen deeply.  Join the conversation. Drink, laugh, eat and be merry.  But, observe your hosts and the rules of conduct:  Make no mistake.  Our Ways are old.  Patience, practice, sincerity and fortitude will take you far for we are fey, fierce, feral, fervent. ’Not civilized, but kinder.’  At our table a banquet is laid containing the fruits of our labor and Craft:
Poetry, spells, lore, lecture, love and liturgy are served up alongside science, cosmology, prayer, laughter, art, good manners, strong ethics, dark sex and glistening pride.  Strong incense lies heavy in the air. Candle flames cast shadows in bright mirrors. The juice in the cup is blood red.  There’s a buzzing, buzzing, buzzing in your head. Open the book.  Turn the pages.  The wisdom you seek lies hidden in plain sight.  Voices rise in a cacophony and fall to near silent whisper. There’s magic here:  Herbs and unguents, glamour and enchantment, spirits and song, invocation and blessing, fair warning and the mysteries of star light, vision, truth and blood.

Welcome to the Black Heart of Feri Tradition.

Come back often.  The menu changes on a whim or a moon or a season.