USL

I gradated Logansport High School in May of 1994, which I talked about in The healing power of music.  Within a few weeks I started working at the McDonald’s in Center, Texas.  My town had little work, and what jobs there were, were taken up by others in our town.  I drove almost 30 miles round trip to work there.  Let’s just say I learned a lot about working, and what was legal and what was not.  It was definitely interesting to say the least. 

One of the managers was having an affair with one of the cooks.  They like to make love on the washing machine, when it was going.  He was 18 or 19, she was married with small children.  At night the managers would make us clock out at midnight, then lock the door, and not let us leave until the place was clean, usually till 2 or 3 in the morning.  If you walked out, you lost your job.  The idea was that they were supposed to be done by midnight and the store was to be clean.  If corporate found out that it wasn’t, my managers would have been in trouble.  I had no idea until later that this practice was illegal.  I worked for McDonald’s until a few weeks before it was time for me to leave for USL.

I had an experience there that has stuck with me as I became Pagan.  My manager told me to trust my gut, that money and all things were replaceable, but we were not, to trust my instincts.  If I ever had a situations where we were afraid, to simply back up and get him.  I had a man come in one day, my guess is it was close to Summer Solstice.  He was dressed in a black robe, I think, and had a huge pentacle around his neck.  My immediate thought was “Satan worshiper!” even though his pentacle was pointed up and not down.  I didn’t know the difference back then.  I backed up, and got my manager.  Who served him beautifully. 

As I have become pagan I have thought of this man.  I have no idea who he was, and in 10 years of being in this community, I have never encountered him again.  But I want to apologize for what I did.  Now I see him as simply a Pagan man, trying to get something to eat.  I see myself as the ignorant and stupid one.  I am ashamed of my actions, and hope where ever he is, he would know how that one act still has an effect on me.

In late August of 1994 I prepared to leave for college.  The day I left, we boarded my little Schnauzer, Sugar, at the vet.  She had been acting weird for a few weeks.  To our surprise while we were gone, she delivered 7 puppies, 2 who lived.  We adopted one out and kept the other.  We named her Sissy, she would be part of my life for more than 10 years.  Six weeks after I went to college by beloved friend and dog Texas died.  He was about 10.  Now the vet said he died of Hepatitis C, which he guessed Texas got from eating something dead.  I still believe he died of a broken heart. 

I planned for weeks on what to bring, trying to decide on which books to bring was almost painful.  I took pictures of my family to hang on my wall when I got there.  One of my grandmothers, I don’t remember which one, bought me new linens for my bed.  One of them gave me a small old refrigerator to take me.  My parents drove me down to Lafayette.  My first dorm room was on the 5^th floor of Bancroft.  I put all my things on one side of the room, waiting for a roommate that never came.  When my parents left, and the door closed I had never felt so alone in my life.  I felt like a stranger in a strange land.  I decorated my room and took pictures.  The sound of the wind was very creepy, as was the sound of people I did not know talking in the rooms next to me, and going up and down the halls all hours of the night.  They had no respect for others.  I was there to work, not party.

We were met at my dorm by Rev. Don Ross who was the Campus Minister at the Wesley Foundation for USL.  Part of their ministry was to assist those moving in.  They brought dollies and strong backs.  Bancroft had elevators, because it was 7 stories tall.  I sure missed that elevator when I moved to NSU.  We had to carry everything by hand up stairs.  Not fun.  My father took me to the campus ministry after we finished unpacking and talked with Don a while.  He asked him to watch over me, and that is where they left me. 

I became very active in the Campus Ministry there, for a time, even running an Interfaith Campus Ministry.  I was just trying to get the Catholics, Methodist, and Assembly of God to work together.  It all fell apart when they built a Mosque just off of campus and the Muslims wanted to join our group.  It worked for a while, and then I resigned.  It didn’t last long after that. 

I stayed in my 5^th floor dorm room for a few weeks.  Then I met Daria.  She was from Parks, but she had family in Butte La Rose.  It took her 2 days to convince me she was not a French national.  She asked me to move down to her room on the first floor.  I had no idea that the first floor even had rooms.  But it did, about 9 of them.  They were designed for the physically handicapped students.  Daria had severe seizures.  She was allergic to the medications they had tried to treat her with.  One time she had 7 seizures in one day.  I had experience and knowledge dealing with seizures.  We decided we were a good fit.  So I moved down to room 109.  I would stay in that room for the next two years, until I left for NSU. 

Ilsa

 

*Bancroft and Denbo were demolished in the last few years to make way for a new student housing complex. 

Marijuana may not be the drug for me

In those 7 years that I did not speak to Paige, Jelly became my child.  She was loved and she was cherished.  She roamed these lands and hunted moles, her favorite thing.  She loved Prince and us.  She lived a happy life here.

I always wondered what happened to Paige.  I looked her up on Facebook one day.  It took me a while to find her, but eventually I did.  By that time, I had forgotten what she had been like, or why I had been so angry with her. 

When Barb suggested that I might be Bipolar I put out the word on Facebook that I would like to talk to others with a similar diagnosis.  Paige chimed in that she had the disease and would love to share her experience with me.  We talked real briefly on the phone one day, near the end of D & K’s stay with us.  She called me not long after they left, and told me she was staying in a motel in Bossier.  I thought I should go out and see her, and so Jelly and I went to visit her.  God’s help me I should have left her right there.  But I took pity on her and thought I’ve got a spare room, and some money.  Why don’t I try to make her life better?

I was still repainting Jay’s man cave, Juno and Kay’s old room.  I told her I need a few weeks to finish it, to buy a new bed, but after that would she like to move in. I felt I just could not leave her there.   By late October 2013 Paige moved in with me.  For 8 months she would turn my life upside down. 

Paige had been in Texas most of the last 7 years.  She had lived in Texarkana, been engaged, lost her house to foreclosure, been robbed, been homeless, been in jail once we think for drugs, and once for “abusing” her mom.  I am fuzzy on the details of her jail stays.  She told us she was diagnosed as Bipolar in jail, and taken to a 30 day treatment place.  By the time she came to us she was no longer on meds, and was convinced she did not need them. 

I let Paige do things in my home and on my property that I am not proud of.  She treated those closest to me like dirt.  She treated Jay like dirt, and one night would even turn me against Jay.  She freely admitted to me, in the end, that she was trying to break Jay and I up.  She came very close.  She told me every day how stupid he was, and I started chiming in with her.  Remember that part about me being malleable.  I often bend my will to others.  She believed Jay was verbally abusive to me, because some of the pet names we call each other.  She gave me commands and I followed them. For 8 months she basically sat on my front porch, smoked cigarettes I bought her, washed clothes, played with her phone, and found guys to fuck. 

We knew Paige loved Marijuana.  It was still illegal in the state of Louisiana at this time, still is as of this writing.  Jay hated this fact.  He was terrified we would get caught, get in trouble, and lose everything we owned.  I am grateful we never did.  We went round and round about this.  He wanted her out because of it, I begged him to let her stay, and because he loves me, he did. She smoked in her room, even after we told her not too.  I am allergic to cigarette smoke.  She would even smoke her weed inside on a rainy, cold or windy day.  She told me because she was paying rent, she should be allowed to do what she wanted in her room.

I told her I had always wanted to try Marijuana, to see what all the fuss was about.  But as I am allergic to smoke I could obviously not smoke it.  So we went to Texarkana and bought some hash from her middleman connection.  On Christmas Eve 2013 we made Marijuana brownies.  I had the first one and waited about an hour, nothing.  So I had another, nothing.  I snuck a third one.  They were after all good brownies.  I got up from the table, to go to the bathroom about the time the first one hit.  I collapsed in the doorway between my room and the bathroom.  I told Paige, “Strawberry.”  After some arguing she went and got Jay.  They both tried for the next 45 minutes to get me in bed, but I was a limp noodle, and you have to remember I’m a big girl so there was no lifting me.  I told them, “I forgot some witches, should not do drugs.”  Some believe since our minds are already open to magical forces, that we should not really tempt fate by putting ourselves in an altered state with drugs. 

I would trip for the next 9 hours.  My last real memory before I passed out for the first time was becoming possessed.  Jay had one arm, Paige had the other.  I was in front of my bedroom window.  I felt the spirit come through the window and into me, all the while I am screaming, “No!”  I was taken against my will.  As I have thought on how to tell you this story, these last few days, I have been reviewing the details.  I wonder now if I did not call for Holda in that state, and she came into me to protect me from what was going on.  I don’t know. 

I am not sure if I passed out at that point or not.  I do remember The Mother coming thru and her wanting to reach up and physically hurt Paige. I had some control at that point, and was able to restrain her.  I know she wanted to yell at Paige.  The only thing I remember her saying was, “I am ready to receive.”  Meaning she was ready to receive questions.  I know at one point she wanted to scream at Paige, “Christian get out of my house!”  I don’t remember anything after that.  At some point the spirits must have left me. 

I blacked in and out for the next few hours.  I cried, I laughed so hard I peed all over myself more than once. I thought I invented ham, and begged others to look at what I had created. I took off all my clothes.  I was paranoid.  I would come too and beg for them to get Tami or Barb.  Beg to be taken to the hospital.  I cried that I was a witch, alone and solitary.  I called Jay all manner of terrible things.  I’m still apologizing for that one.  I started screaming and crying that Jay had left me, when he was right beside me.  At some point I was given milk to make the trip, lessen or stop.  It didn’t help.  I started vomiting.  I climbed in the tub with my socks on.  I thought if I suddenly run outside naked, at least I would have something on my feet.  Tried out my Kung Fu moves when people tried to put clothes on me.  I came to at one point and Paige said, “I haven’t’ had a cigarette in hours.”  I said, “We better take advantage of it while we have it.” And I pushed her 300lb ass from the bathroom to the front door, about 50ft.  I blacked out again when I got to the front door.  Jay finally got tired and went to bed.  I woke up out of my last black out about midnight, sitting naked in my chair, vomiting and holding on to a trash can.  Having no idea what was going on.  Somewhere in here I took one of my panic pills.  I don’t know if that made it better or worse.  I know now that I had basically overdosed on Marijuana.  I didn’t know the effect was more intense when you eat it.  I didn’t know that the brownies take about an hour each to kick in. 

I would try Marijuana one more time while Paige was there.  I had one brownie.  I got hot, horney, hungry and sleepy.  I think now marijuana may just not be the drug for me.  I still think it should be legalized for both medicinal and recreational use.  But if you end up like me, you should not being driving heavy machinery, Okay! 

If you are a witch or other pagan, and do decide to try Marijuana for the first time, you might want there to be other trained witches or pagans around you.  Just in case something paranormal happens to you and you need someone to get you out of that situation.  Just FYI.

Ilsa

A visit from an old friend

Since I started this blog in August, I have had quite a few visitors come to my home.  They have come to sit at my old, round wooden table and share their truths with me.   Yesterday afternoon was no exception. 

When I left the HP coven, I left behind my besom named Hagatha.  Once I was told to never step foot on the property again, I lamented her loss, but there was nothing I could do about.  I put myself in exile, and removed all my former coven members from my Facebook.  I have had no or very little contact with them since that time.  A few months after I left, I was shocked to receive a message from one of the members, Steph.  She had my broom and would love to give it back to me. I was shocked.  This was the same woman I had felt was trying to take over my position in the coven.  I was amazed she would do something nice for me.

Jay and I went to Steph’s house in our truck, as Hagatha is about 6 feet long, made of willow and broom corn.   She’s too big fit in the car.  She’s a gorgeous broom.  We visited with Steph for a while.  I tried to tell her about Melinda and that I had been kicked out.  She kind of didn’t want to hear it, and I understand that it was difficult to hear.  We thanked her and left.  I added her back to my Facebook friends, but we had not talked in depth in many years.  I knew she was still with the HP coven and I knew the HP would not like it, if she knew I was contacting her members.  I did not want to make the HP any more made at me, than she already was. 

I happened to post something on Facebook the other day and Steph commented on it.  We started private messaging.  I asked how the HP was.  Steph told me that she had no idea, as she had left the coven a year before. I was stunned.  We decided perhaps we should meet up and visit.  So Steph came over and visited with me yesterday afternoon.  We talked for hours.  Catching each other up to date, on what had been happening in our lives. 

The stories that poured from both of us were sad and troubling.  I will not tell you of her story, as I feel that is her truth to tell you.  But as we talked last night I realized what a dark place Melinda had taken me too.  I had felt that Holda had moved me out of the HP coven before things got ugly, and it seems she had in fact done so.  I did not understand then, and I am trying to come to an understanding now.  Perhaps I had done what I was supposed to do there.  I don’t know. 

In my heart, in many ways, I am still devoted to the HP.  I have refused to use her name, or to tell you where her coven was located, so as to protect not only her, but others in her group who might still be in the broom closet.  I still respect her, and gods help me, after everything I still love her.  For years I expected the phone to ring, and it be the HP on the other side saying, “Look we love you, we miss you, why don’t you come out and have a glass of wine and let’s talk.”  Finally I came to the realization that what I wanted, would never take place.  I would never go home again, and that is when I finally cut and burned my cords.

Listening to Steph talk last night, I wonder if such devotion is warranted.  I feel very much this morning that I am grieving.  I think the thing that always hurt the most, in all of this is that, I never got to explain how Melinda had snowed us all, and never really understood why I was asked to leave, other than my association with her.  I am still scratching my head as to what I have done.  Steph told me last night, “I don’t have any answers for you, and I don’t know that you will ever know.”  She’s probable right.

I often tend to see the world in black and white.  You are either my friend or my enemy.  You are good to me or bad to me.  You have used me or you haven’t.  It’s real hard for me to often see what people have done or are doing to me.  Gray is often hard for me.  I am trying this morning to decide what category to put the HP in.  I have problems with things I can’t classify.  Her actions with both Steph and me can best be described as erratic and illogical.  They just don’t make any sense.  My devotion to the HP seems unwarranted.  I feel I am grieving my coven, and my relationship with the HP all over again.  I don’t know whether to be really sad, or really, really pissed off.

I think sometimes a person’s totems can say a lot about a person.  A totem, used in the pagan since, is a sprit animal a person uses, or one they identify with the most.  Melinda was a spider, Mike D. was a wolf, and the HP was a snake, all of which bit me or infected me with their poison in the end.  Me, I’m a Polar Bear, a dog and a goat, as if you couldn’t tell already, fierce, loyal, and stubborn.  Even if a person is no good for me, or worse off using me, it takes me a long time to come to that realization.  Then my angry polar bear comes out.  It often takes the person in question being mean to someone I know, before I will react.  One of those you can fuck with me all you like, but you touch my friends or family and it’s on. 

Yesterday’s visit gave me answers, but left me with questions.  Dr. Hailey, one of my Anthropology professors, used to say, “The beautiful answer, that asks the more beautiful question.”  Indeed.

Ilsa

 

Holda's Hands

So when Melinda came into my life she, at first, she offered me that unconditional love I so craved.  She encouraged and empowered me, or so I felt. 

It was never my intention to leave the HP coven.  I felt in many ways we had hived off.  The HP coven had grown so large, that I felt we were just taking the overflow.  I did not spend Yule with the HP coven.  Melinda and I spent it together.  I went to the HP at Imbolc with the express idea of leaving for good.  In a private moment between us, I told her this.  She begged me to stay, and blessed me.  I agreed.  I told her of Holda’s Hands and she said that was a good thing, and encouraged me to keep doing it.  Ostara of 2012 was the last time I would stand in the HP circle.  I left my besom, Hagatha, there as a sign I would return.  That eventually I would come home. I never would.

At Beltane 2012 we officially dedicated Holda’s Hands.  Tired of never getting anywhere with the corded belt system, so common in Wicca, I made belts for all our members who held a position.  It was a way to add distinction our group.  We even sewed charms on them, to show where we had been in our spiritual path.  Melinda and I decided to co-lead, we chose to use the triple goddess aspect in our leadership.  Melinda was initiated as the crone, her daughter Vicky as the maiden, and I as the mother.  Juno was initiated as Bard, a musician and storyteller.  It was a happy day for all of us. 

No story exists in a vacuum. Events in our lives are all inter-layered like a good cake. There was a lot going on with me then. Juno and her wife Kay came into our lives during that spring.  Melinda had met them, at a knitting group off shot, she used to hold at Books-a-Million.  We loved them immediately.  We tucked them into our lives and we all became fast friends. 

Tami had also joined my life about that time.  In the Fall of 2011 I was just swimming in goats milk.  I was getting sick of making cheese.  One night laying in bed, we were watching a “Billy the Exterminator,” marathon.    The show was filmed locally.  Billy would find injured wildlife and take them to the Cypress Black Bayou Zoo.  I asked Jay, “You think they could use some goat’s milk, for all those babies?”  He said yes, and we contacted them soon after. 

Tami was basically running the place.  We came by one day to drop off milk.  They were terrible grateful, but busy as usual.  Saving babies takes a lot of effort.  We were given the tour of the place.  They had 4 beautiful goats.  I commented on how lovely they were and that we had goats.  Tami shocked us by asking if we would like them.  We talked it over and decided to take 2 of them, Muffin and Patches.  We brought them home and would rename them Bridget and Morgan.  Bridget is a fat, little, gray and white pigmy goat.  She is spoiled rotten and still with us.  Morgan would eventually go to live with Melinda, along with her babies Anu and Danu. 

Tami, her hubby, her son, and all there animals were living in at 35’ travel trailer, when I met them.  She and I had hit it off almost immediately.  She was an animal lover and a spiritual seeker.  We began to talk about her moving into Momma Muriel’s house, as it had been vacant since Mike D. had left, but needed repairs.  They moved to the farm in May of 2012, and into the house in August of that year.  Tami’s menagerie included dogs, cats, birds, and a little gray, Vietnamese Pot Belly Pig named Henry.  

After a while we tucked Henry in with the goats.  He is wonderful and gentle with them. He would lay on his side, and the goat babies would just use him as a spring board.  Tami would move from the farm to her own home, a few miles away, in August 2014.  We never could figure out how to move Henry, who was now over 200lb., without traumatizing him, so he stayed with us.  Mr. Henry still lives with Star and Kali in the pen. I am looking at his happy piggy butt right now, out my window, as he is eating some grass, and wagging his happy piggy tail.  I’m not into pigs, but I sure do love this one.  He will even sit for a cookie, Tami taught him that one. 

I had known Melinda about two years at that point.  She often mentioned how messy her house was.  Tami and I told her that we would love to help her clean.  It took some convincing, but Melinda finally let us in her house in the Summer of 2012.  I know why she had trepidations about this.  Melinda had a secret.  She was a hoarder. 

The first night Tami and I went in with shovels.  We shoveled dog shit and trash from her kitchen floor for many hours.  The German Roaches, you know the little ones, were insane.  We came home and Tami did right, she stripped off all her clothes, before she got in her house.  She would later burn them.  I should have done the same thing.  Melinda’s lasting gift to me, for helping her clean, was I got roaches that would not go away. I would fight them on and off for more than a year, before they finally went away.  I should have stripped and burned my clothes too, but I did not.  I had the sensation of bugs crawling all over me for days afterwards. 

I would go back into that house many more times.  To clean out refrigerators that were not working, and one day to wash all her dishes.  JB and I worked hard one morning and got 5 bags of trash cleaned out of the living room and the kitchen.  We were outside taking a break, when she came home from work for lunch.  She flew into a rage when she saw all the bags, screaming at us and tearing them open to see what we had thrown away.  Then yelling at us about what we had thrown away.  Poor little JB, who was only about 13 or 14 at the time, had been so proud of what he had done, just wept.  I had the impression that whatever he did for her, was never enough, was never done the right way.  I would come to see that side of her myself first hand.

JB and I spent one day washing every dish in Melinda’s house.  I would wash, he would dry and we both clean out the cabinets trying to vacuum up dead bugs and fecal matter.  We spent hours doing this.  Melinda was at work.  We knew she would be so pleased, when she came home.  All day long I had been using a sponge with a scrubby side on it.  It was the only thing available.  She came in, and told both of us that we had done it all wrong, that all of the dishes would have to be washed again, because we had used the scrubby side.  And as everyone knows, the scrubby side would cause microscopic scratches, that would let germs grow.  I was deeply, deeply hurt.  It was thank you, but you did it wrong.  I was beginning to see why JB had cried.

Vicky had left some time before, and moved in with her new husband.  She could not take the pressure of Melinda anymore.  JB and I had done a tremendous amount of work.  We had gotten the kitchen, living room, pantry, and some of the hallway cleared.  Every day I came in, we started at square one, picking up trash and dog shit. 

I started on Vicky’s room.  It took me 2 or 3 days to dig it out.  It was buried in about a foot of dirty clothes, trash, and sprinkled with cat shit.  I had to wear a mask.  When I started on that room, which was a good, 15 x 20, I could not get the door open, but about 6 inches.  Slowly it came.  I have no idea how many bags of garbage I pulled out of that room.  But I do know I pulled out 9 laundry bags full of dirty clothes, shoes, belts and purses, but mostly clothes. 

I am very glad I at least did that. Melinda had her room, but I never could figure out where JB slept.  It took me a while, to dig a path, to even get to where his old room was.  Of course you could not get in it.  It was covered in junk and trash.  After we cleaned out Vicky’s room, JB turned it into his room.  He made a pallet on the floor and that is where he slept.  I believe that JB had been sleeping on the couch in the living room for years.  He had no dresser to hold clean clothes, hell most of the time he only had just a little bit of that, he had no place for his books, he had almost nothing to call his own in that house. 

Washing clothes was always hard in that house.  Of to the right of the living room was a hallway that was treacherous and covered in stuff.  That led to a set of stairs.  At the base of the stairs was a very large room maybe 30 x 30, covered in stuff about a foot deep.  I could tell you there were pieces of furniture, but I have no idea what else was in there. I never dared go in that room.  I stopped at the stairs.

To the left of that room, was a washroom.  Only JB was nimble enough to get in there.  We did not know until later, that the water heater was busted, and had been leaking into what was the washroom and other large room, until we saw water pouring out between the house and the foundation one day. It had started to grow black mold.  We had no idea how long this had been going on.  The room adjacent to the washroom was covered in about 6 inches of water and furniture had begun to float.  I have no idea how long it had been like that.  Melinda seemed to suddenly be shocked at the condition of this room and blamed it all on Vicky and how she could not keep house. 

After JB and I had worked all day, she did not come home and help.  Nope she simply went in her room, often times closing the door.  As if we were the peasants, the hired help and she was too good to help.  Even some days complaining how bad her back hurt her.  One day we called a work day at her house, with the rest of the coven.  She sat in her chair the whole day and did not lift a finger.  Melinda was beginning to show her true colors in the way she was treating everyone and I was starting to get really pissed about all this.  I felt I was in a way being conned. That’s when it all started to unravel, like we were frogging a knitting project.

Ilsa

Meet Melinda

I know I am back tracking her just a bit, but in May of 2010 Melinda entered my life.  I had found a knitting and crochet group online that she was part of.  It was called Chicks with Sticks.  At our first meeting Melinda, her daughter Vicky, and I talked about a great many things.  After everyone left the room I closed the door and mouthed the words to her, “are you a witch?”  If her friends did not know, I did not want to out her.  She looked at her daughter and then said, “Yes.”  I will never know if Melinda actually was a witch, or simply saw that as an in to exploit me.  Three years after the end of our relationship I still don’t know, nor do I know if anything she ever told me was true.

Melinda could be brash and arrogant, and both were infectious to me.  She was very bright, carried herself with a certain air, and had loads of love to give.  Melinda filled that gaping void in my life left by my mother and I’s relationship.  With my mother she freely gives loves, but you find out later there are always strings attached.  After my mother robbed me on March 31^st, 2012, (hang on we will get to that part eventually) Melinda became very much my mother.  It was an honor she would ultimately betray. 

By September of 2011 Melinda and I had been hanging out a lot.  We were great buddies and our lives were very much intertwined.  I had brought her out one night to meet the HP, both she and her son JB.  Kind of a meet and greet.  I did not know that Melinda, had at that time, said something inappropriate, and disrespectful to the HP and her wife.   I would not know that for almost a year.  We spent Samhain (Halloween) 2011 at the HP coven.  As the Mother had prophesied, the HP coven continued to grow.  That night there were over 20 pagans in that circle. 

I am all water sign, Pisces, Cancer, Cancer.  I am emotional, I am malleable and in many ways gullible.  I will often bend to the will of those around me, in order to please them.  A high ranking member from long ago had reentered the HP’s coven.  She became again the HP’s right hand woman.  They had been friends for many years. I became jealous, arrogant, cocky and snotty to this woman, who had never done me any harm.  I had been working and studying to be the HP’s right hand woman, or so I felt.  I felt slighted in thinking that this woman could just come in and steal all my glory.  I was the star pupil.  I wanted the HP to love me best and chose me.  I was petty and I was wrong, and I wonder if I was also not a little power hungry. 

We sat one night and confronted each other.  She was nothing, but gracious to me.  The goddess was telling me to take a back seat and I was not listening.  I was fighting with all my will.  I had, since I could remember, wanted to be a “shaman,” my word for a spiritual healer and spiritual leader.  I had been thru several paths, but now believed I was on the right one, and this woman was stopping that progress.  I felt I was being pushed out and ignored. I was so in the wrong.  It should have been about worshiping the Gods and it was not.  I never got to the chance to apologize to the HP about how sorry I was.  I hope she can hear me now.  I apologize to both of them in anything I may have said in thought, word or deed towards them. 

In November 2011, it was finally cool enough that we could have a retreat at the HP house.  A lot of things when wrong that weekend.  I felt slighted, that I, an initiated member, had not been asked to consult on anything related to the retreat.  Don’t feel that way now.  I had not seen Jay, but about 10 hours that week.  He was working 60-80 hours a week, and was out of town two days a week with Unifirst.  I was late getting to the retreat that Friday night.  Jay had been off working. My tent was huge and needed two people to set it up, and I didn’t remember how to do it.  It was hell trying to set up the tent, in the dark, at 10 o’clock at night.  I was also against a deadline.  Melinda, me and the ladies from Chicks with Sticks, were trying to make sure there would be enough blankets, for us to give away at the nursing home that Christmas.  I spent almost every waking moment working on those blankets.  That weekend included. 

I like many others, I consider handwork (crochet, knitting, spinning, weaving, embroidery, etc) to be a form of magic making, a form of spell work.  My HP did not see it that way.  She considered it disrespectful for me to be doing this while she was teaching.  Melinda and a friend, were due to come in later in the day and visit.  Melinda was snotty towards all those there.  She was apparently again disrespectful to the HP’s wife, something that would be kept hidden from me for almost a year. 

There were elements of the retreat I did not like and wondered why we did them.  When the HP asked if I had problems with the retreat I lied, and told her, “NO.”  I did not want to upset or disappoint her, which I kept doing, or so it seemed.  I know she did not like my relationship with some of those I considered elders.  She at one point considered me like a mole.  I would go to the elders and say, “oh how was your ritual.  We had 21 at our Samhain.”  Although I never told them anything else about the rituals or who was there, she felt I betrayed her. 

I was working at the time on trying to create a larger pagan community, that might one day work together.  Trying to get the groups around here to work together, must less acknowledge each other was a mighty task, and one I would eventually give up.  Nobody around here wants to play together, and when there are already so few of us, that is just kind of sad. 

She and I had it out, or so I thought early that December.  I was tormented.  She would dance around the idea of who this “Mole” was, but it was not until I said something on our private Facebook group that she acknowledged it was me.  A few days later I was removed from that group, a group I started.  They never told me they had.  I had to figure that one out for myself. 

Somewhere in here I had asked Maddie to give me a card reading.  To see if she could figure out what had happened to me in August and why it had happened.  Her reading strongly advised me to get into counseling.  And so almost 10 years since I left, I went back into counseling.  My first meeting with Barb was December 22^nd, 2011.  She and I would meet every two weeks until her retirement in July of 2015. 

I felt slighted by all that was going on in my HP coven.  I felt I was being pushed out.  That I was no longer wanted.  I was really kind of upset about the handwork thing.  It was so much a part of my life, part of my dedication to Holda.  Melinda and I had been back and forth about starting our own group.   At that time my nose was so far up Melinda’s ass I don’t know what I was thinking half the time.  We decided we wanted to start a group that had handwork as part of it’s center.  Where we could crochet and knit and worship the Gods and share stories at the same time.  So at Yule (December 21^st, Winter Solstice) 2011 Holda’s Hands was born. 

Ilsa

Wheel of the Year

Okay so by now you may have noticed that I mark time a little different then you do.  Most Pagans follow what is called the Wheel of the Year.  In it we celebrate 8 holy days, spaced about 6 weeks apart.  Some of the days were celebrated by the ancients, and some not.  You can think of it like an 8 spoked wheel, or like the Dharmic wheel.  So I will start with Mabon since that is what has just passed.

Mabon – September 21^st, Fall Equinox

Samhain – October 31^st, Halloween, many feel the beginning of the New Year. 

Winter Solstice- December 21^st, the beginning of Yule, and the start of the Heathen New Year.

Yule – A 13 day celebration and time of rest.  It runs from December 21^st until about January 2^nd or 3^rd, depends on who you talk to.  January 3^rd is also called Epiphany or 12^th night.  In Louisiana it is the traditional start of Marti Gras season.  I often use the word Yule to denote the first day of Yule (Winter Solstice).

Imbolc – February 2^nd, Groundhog’s Day, Candlemas

Ostara – March 21^st, Spring Equinox 

Beltane – May 1^st, May Day, some feel the start to the New Year, nothing to do with communism or Russians

Litha – June 21^st, Summer Solstice

Lughnasa - August 2^nd, harvest festival aka Loafmass

Thank you,

Ilsa

Healing

On Thursday August 25^th, 2011 I had my first major panic attack.  I have covered the day and most if it’s events in a little crazy, just like me.  I had a massive panic attack, that made me regress me to a younger age, in fact I went so far back I ended up thinking I was in one of my past lives.  I have spoke of this day with some breath, but I have not discussed, so far, what happened to me after wards, nor have I discussed the spiritual aspects of this event.

For two weeks after I came home I had the worst headache of my life.  No medication could touch it.  I found it difficult to pray or to journey.  Now I have been journeying for a long time.  To journey, for me, means I put myself in a semi-trance state and go to visit the other side, where my dead and my animals are.  I have been doing this for at least as long as I have defined myself as Pagan, although my techniques have changed over the years.  It is often something I do in times of stress.  It gives me great comfort.

This is totally my UPG.  I tuck myself in bed, because I usually go to sleep at some point during the journey.  It is rare that I come back all the way back across to the land of the living.  The way I journey is, in my mind I stand on my front porch and look down at my outside altar, which is next to a great, big, old, tall Pine tree.  I call for Bifrost, the rainbow bridge, and Heimdall who controls it.  He comes to me on what like a wooden bridge painted a rainbow of colors, on both the walk way and the rails.  He ties up to the porch and I step on.  He is behind a great big, tall, desk with a wooden wheel attached to it, which is always on my left as I step on.  He greats me with a hug and sometimes a kiss and asks where I am going.  I tell him Holda’s Gardens, this is what I have come to call her lands over the years as I have never known the proper name for it.  Heimdall then asks for an offering.  I usually give him what I have had to eat that evening with a glass of sweet tea.  He seems to really like my tea.  It always makes him smile.  He thanks me and he directs the bridge, which acts a bit more like a boat, over the swirling and misty air. 

We soon come to the gate to Holda’s Gardens.  I see it as black wrought iron, filigreed, arch with a half doggie door.  Heimdal ties up the bridge to two statues or columns on either side of the bridge.  I don’t know it’s always kind of misty.  I open the door and go in.  Once I am safely on the other side, he takes off and tells me to call for him when I am ready to leave.  I enter what is essentially Holda’s yard.  Weather it is the front yard or the back I don’t know.  On the other side I find a sandy dirt road, that always feels good under my bare feet.  To the right is Holda’s House, to the left a line of trees that separates the house from the pond.  There is now a bench, in front of the trees, for me.  I often sit under these trees, on the ground with Punka in my lap looking out over the pond.  I do this especially when I’ve had  a bad day.  The sandy road stretches on past Holda’s mill, into the trees, and beyond to the pastures where my goats are.  I usually don’t go down that far.  My guess is this is where the livestock lives.  That area is very green and hilly, like at the base of a mountain or in a valley.

From the spot where I stand I can call any of my deceased animals to me.  It may take them a minute to come to me, as they have to quit what they are doing first.  I often see Precious the first, zoom past me on her wings, chasing the bunny, sometimes it is the other way around.  She informs me the chase is the important thing, not the catching.  So they take turns. 

Holda is almost always the first to greet me, wearing her white dress and her blue apron.  I almost always see her in her grandmotherly form, about age 50 or 60 I would guess.  Then Momma Muriel and Oma come out. Sometimes Father Frey is there as well.  It just all seems to depend on what I need. I can never really see their faces.  I think it is just too much for my human brain to process.  Sometimes we all go into the kitchen and I am fed some type of apple dessert, hot cider or coffee.  I know there is a rule about not eating in the other worlds, but I do not wish to offend her.  When I have refused to eat in the past she gets annoyed with me and says, “EAT!”  I am often surprised she does not slap me in the back of the head when I do this.  It is there I will catch them up on what I am doing and why I have come to visit: occasionally it is to cross a dead animal’s spirit over, sometimes I have a question, sometimes it is to ask for healing for a friend,  or I’ve had a bad day or I just miss them so much. 

Now if all this sounds bizarre or made up to you, I’m sorry.  It is simply how I experience the divine, and it works for me.  All this spiritual healing is about to get a little stranger.

Not long after I had been hospitalized for my first panic attack, Holda came to me in a dream and said, “I don’t want you to journey, work magic, or even pray until after your initiation.”  I was a bit confused, but I agreed to do as I was told.  Every time I tried to do any of this, it just made the headaches worse.  I would do just about anything to make the pain stop.  Holda then took me to a women, in a temple with lots of herbs hanging around her.  I don’t know who she was.  My guess is either Eir or Brigid.   

I asked, “Where we were going.” 

She said, “I am taking you to be healed.”

“Why can’t you heal me?” I asked

She told me she did not do this type of healing, or that I need healing she could not do.  I don’t remember. 

I then asked, “Who is she?”

“She is my sister,” is all she would reply.  I am still a bit befuddled.  As far as we know Holda has no sisters. It is my guess that she used this title to apply to another Goddess.

Within a few days, whenever I closed my eyes, I began to see another Goddess as if she was standing before me.  She had coal black hair, pale skin and red painted on lips.  She would take me to a Greek or Roman style temple.  She asked me to lay down on a stone platform like bed and roll on my right side.  She would then take a large bowl of water and pour it threw my left temple, and into my brain.  I kid you not, from my right temple would pour out snakes.  As she did this technique my headache would lessen, and I would find some relief.  For a long time I thought the snakes were symbols of my illness.  I wonder now if they instruments of her healing.  This went on for several weeks.

Towards the end I asked what her name was.  She told me her name was Danube, and that she was the Goddess of rivers.  I thought, “Oh I will have to look that up.”  She looked at me and said, “you will not find me,” and she was right.  I have yet to identify her.  I have yet to meet anyone who knows who she is. 

I went to two of my elders, in the community, in between being hospitalized and being initiated.  My HP and I were trying to decide if I should still be initiated given my then mental health status.  I believed Holda was telling me yes.  I had hoped a tarot card or rune reading would give me confirmation of that.  I also went to them to ask if they had any idea what had happened to me, and to see if they knew who this mystery goddess was.  They told me they did not know who the Goddess was, but that if she was helping me I should continue to work with her.  I don’t remember what the cards and runes said.  They brought out a Tibetan singing bowl to get a reading on my chakras.  I had a blockage in my 1^st and 2^nd, that I was not terribly surprised at. I am infertile after all.   I was also having a blockage in my crown chakra, something I had never had a problem with.  I wonder now if part of the headaches, was having all that energy stopped.  One of the elders did tell me, that it was not unusual, for pagans to have some type of mental break or psychotic event prior to their first initiation. 

Apparently after I left, one of the elders sent a nasty email to my HP, saying she should never consider initiating someone in my mental state.  Yeh she was not pleased with me about that one.  I did not know, until years later, that she did not like them.  Although we were never sworn to secrecy about anything in the coven, she did not like me talking about such matters with outsiders.  We decided to do the initiation anyways. 

On September 9^th, 2011 I was initiated as a witch into my HP’s coven.  I will only speak to you of one part that occurred during that ritual.  I consider the rest too sacred. At one point I was laid on the ground and covered with a black sheet.  When I arose I felt better than I had in weeks.  My headaches were gone.  There were pictures taken of that night, long since lost to me.  But in the one of me lying on the ground, you can see tons of orbs.  Upon closer inspection you could see a sickle with 13 different points.  The sickle is one of Holda’s holy symbols.   There could be no doubt that the initiation was her wish. 

Even though in a few years time I would be asked to leave the HP’s coven, I have never been sorry I was initiated.  I have never been sorry that I spent my time with them.  I am honored to have learned under the HP. 

Ilsa

Possession

Jay finally found a job with Unifirst in October of 2010.  Unifirst is uniform and janitorial supply company.  It was most defiantly not what we had hoped for, but by that time we were desperate for any work and Jay happily took the job. 

I busied myself with goats and Pagan things as usual.  I had been with the HP’s coven for about a year now, and my student and I continued to do rituals at my house.  After a disagreement with my student I closed my group.  We held our last ritual on Yule of 2010.  After that my student and I basically became absorbed into the HP’s coven.

After some years, Jay and I were finally alone.  We could walk around our property naked if we wanted.  We never had to worry if someone was going to walk in while we were making love.  Mike D. was notorious for not knocking.  I have the memory of sitting with Jay in the hot tub one night, skinny dipping, and just soaking up the silence.  My fear of being alone had turned into something I desperately wanted and cherished. 

In the Spring I put in a large garden.  In April of 2011 I went to conference in south Texas to give a speech on Holda and to visit Father Dave, Mother Mari, and Mother Gloria.  It was wonderful!  While I was away my mother watched the farm.  Holda, my Angora goat, named in honor of the goddess, birthed as baby boy.  My mother, I think just to spite me, named him Jesus!  In those days I could not leave without fear I would have a baby born while I was away. 

At a Beltane (May 1^st) ritual at the HP’s coven I danced the Maypole.  We call the night before Beltane, Walpurgisnacht, it is one of Holda’s most sacred nights.  It is when she comes to the end of the Wild Hunt and returns to her mountain.   It was a great ritual with lots of raised energy, the kind that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up and gives you goose bumps.  The twisting and turning of the Maypole, the magic of the ritual, the sacred time of year, the heat, and my exhaustion put me in an altered state of consciousness. I’m still not sure why or how it happened, I just know that it did. 

I danced the Maypole and got hot and dizzy.  I went back to sit in my chair in the west, under the tree.  My vision soon became fuzzy.  As the HP went to close the ritual, I began to twist and writhe in my chair as the sprits began entered and exited my body.  Mother Gloria refers to it as kind of like a revolving door.  You never know who is going to come thru. The first one to come threw I believe was Pan.  It seemed odd at the time, as I do not worship him, but given my heavy involvement with goats I kind of understand.  I had to fight the debilitating urge to crawl on all fours and rub my horns on things.  He left eventually, but a few more popped in and out.  I was confused.  I had no idea what was going on.  I tried my best to get out of it, to shake it off, but they had me and would not let me go. 

Finally the Mother came thru.  What goddess she was I still don’t know.  She was ancient, perhaps she was simply the divine archetype.  I have no idea.  She would come thru later in another possession and tell me she was called by many names.  It was thru the Mother that I spoke and prophesied.  I was finally able to get control of my body long enough to speak and tell one of the women next to me, “Bring the mother (meaning the HP) to me.”

It took the HP a moment to understand what was going on, and then she kneeled at my feet.  It was not me.  I was being used like a divine tool.  I watched from somewhere inside myself, as I laid hands on my HP, blessed her, spoke to her of how much I loved her, how proud I was of her and that her coven would continue to grow and prosper. 

When she went to hug me I begged her to, “Make them go away.”  She stood up and clapped her hands.  At that point they left my body.  The next thing I remember was looking up at the leaves on the tree.  I came out a bit terrified and confused.  I was so weak I could barely walk.  I had to be helped into the HP’s house.  I still have no idea how long it had lasted.  It took hours to shake off the residual energy and come back to my full self. 

I had an idea of what had just happened.  I had seen it before, in south Texas when Mother Gloria sat High Seat.  I never intended to duplicate what she had done.  Doing this type of work and not being properly grounded and trained can kill a person.  You can come back fine, come back in bits and piece or not come back at all.  Doing this type of work can be very, very dangerous.  I still don’t know why they chose me.  It would be some years, before they tried it again, but it would not be the last time.

In May of 2011, I attended the Pagan Unity Festival (PUF) in Tennessee, again.  Only this time I was there without Mike D. and Velvet so I really got to enjoy it.  I went with Father Dave, Mother Mari, Mother Gloria and a few others.  They swung by to pick me up on their way to Tennessee from south Texas.  I had a most excellent time.  I got to met and hang out with Pagan authors, many of whom I had known on-line for some years.  I learned so much that weekend. 

I asked my Druid buddies from Texas what had happened to me at Beltane.  It was Father Dave’s guess that they were testing me.  Who knows maybe they were trying me out for size.  He cautioned me against this type of work, without skilled people around me, to bring me out if I got stuck.  All three of them explained to me over and over again the danger of this work. 

I came home and went back to the regulars of farm life: growing vegetables and milking goats.  That Summer I told my HP that I wished to officially initiated into the coven.  She questioned my knowledge on all things pagan, told me to put together a Book of Shadows with certain things in it, and that soon the rite would be held.  I did not know between them and there that the bottom would fall out of my life, again. 

Ilsa

The end of Mike D.

Ostara was born April 9^th, 2010.  We hurried home from our Honeymoon to see her.  She was so beautiful!  Jay and I were just enamored with her.  She would be the first of over 20 goats to be born on this property. 

Ostara was not the only new being on our farm that spring.  On March 21^st, Spring Equinox (Ostara) Kat came into our lives.  She was Mike D.’s friend from Pennsylvania.  We had met her at Mike D.’s son’s Wiccaning during PPD.  Kat then when thru a bad break up. Mike D. decided to ask Kat to move in with them.  He consulted with neither his wife nor me until after the fact.  Mike D. promised Kat that he will pay some of her bills, while she looks for work.  Until then he asked her to help out around the house, help watch the kids, and drive his mom around.  Mike D. broke his promise, never paid any of her bills, and basically uses Kat like slave labor. 

Jay lost his job at the dialysis center in June of 2010. He spent the next few months looking for work in his field.  There seems to be a lot of gender discrimination here, in that hospitals and Dr’s offices don’t want to hire men.  They only want women.  Men who are in the medical field and are not Dr’s are often seen as less than.  I wonder if it is because they only see women as nurturers. 

Things with Mike D. continued to deteriorate. I had not been involved in his coven in almost a year.  I was in another coven that was lead by a woman that he basically considered to be the enemy.  I finally reached my breaking point with him after we had a conversation on my front porch one night.  One of his coven members had recently left and began studying with another coven in town.  She had a very bad car wreck and was in a comma for three days.  Mike D. said to me, “you know it is on the tip of my tongue to say that she deserved it for leaving the coven.”  I knew at that moment I wanted him off my property and out of my life. 

The next day I called her coven leader, an elder in the community and my friend.  When he heard what Mike D. had said, he lost his whole mind and started pacing up and down his house screaming, “I didn’t know it was a competition!”  The elder’s husband got on the phone and told me, “In our 10+ years of marriage, I have never seen him so upset.”  To curse her like that was unacceptable.

We began to encourage Mike D., gently, to search for his own house. It took a few months for them to find one.  When he did he told Kat that she could not move with them.  I in my infinite stupidity, gave her a lame and convoluted excuse, and told her she would not stay in the house after he left. 

We helped Mike D. pack.  That packing helped confirm my suspicions on what kind of Pagan he was.  His Pagan book hoard contained two books: Buckland’s big blue book of magic and a book by a pagan author friend that he had had dedicated to his wife.  Now you have to understand that for the majority of Pagans, a huge part of their faith is seeking knowledge.  The seeker must seek.  Any Pagan leader, worth their salt, has a large collection of books that they refer to and / or teach from.  We call this their book hoard.  You’ve got to remember that before the internet were books, and even today a good majority of pagan knowledge is not online.  Hell a lot of is not even in print.  I never heard Mike D. quote from a pagan book, I never heard him say, “you know I just read an article online about,” enlighten anyone around him on anything pagan, or explain why or how he did things as a witch.  Never.  Actives you would expect out of a 3^rd degree high priest. 

His altar was also covered in dust and not one of the first things he packed.  Obviously it was not important to him.  In fact he left many of his magical items in that house.  Now an altar to a pagan is one of the most sacred spaces in the home.  It may contain statues of deities and ritual tools.  It is also usually well tended with drink and /or food, and cleaned on a regular basis.  It is an import place to focus, to do magic, and to worship. It is as sacred to us as churches are to some people.  Taking all of these things into consideration, it confirmed something I had felt for a while.  Mike D. was playing at being Pagan.  He was in it for the power, not the knowledge or for the worship of the Gods. 

Mike D. really showed his true colors after he moved in his new house.  He knew Kat was staying in the old house and that she was going to move in a few weeks.  That bastard turned the water off on the house, while she was still in it.  He did this to a woman he called friend.  Kat lived in that house for two weeks with no water!  She would then drive her car down to my house, fill up buckets of water, put them on the trunk of her car and drive them back up the hill to her house.  She would come to my house to shower and eat.  What dislike and disdain I had for Mike D. grew exponentially everyday as I watched her live like that.  Kat left us on Fall Equinox (Mabon) 2010. 

In the end my good deed did not go unpunished.  I had rescued Mike D. and he had mauled me in thanks.  By the time he left my life he had trashed Momma Muriel’s house, stole from us and owed us money.  We later found out that we were not the first in town he had done this to.  We tried to sue him, but the lawyer we used ended up getting disbarred.  So we never got out stuff or our money back. 

Kat and I remain friends to this day.  She married a man that had been in Velvet’s coven.  They have a beautiful 2 year old and recently came to visit me.  They live in Norfolk, Virginia.

Mike D. and his family would eventually go back up north, to New Jersey, where he had come from. He would reconvert, become Catholic and join the Knights of Columbus.   I feel he was in many ways a carpetbagger: someone from up north, who moves South to take advantage of Southerns, and then goes back to where they came from.  Mike D. is the kind of Yankee that leaves a bad taste in Southerners mouths.

After Mike D. left, Jay and I went back to living our normal, old, boring lives.

Ilsa