Ha ha ha ha. I had a dream. It was clearly a message and made me feel like I was getting shaken. Sometimes dreams just stay with me all day, and this particular Guardian will talk to me in dreams a fair amount.
I was sitting at a desk in an empty room. Suddenly, Roger Daltry is sitting in front of me wearing an angel costume. Not even a good angel costume, one of those cheap ones you can get at the party story with a tinsel halo and wire and paper wings. I laughed. He said, in his British accent, “Enough of that, it is time to get down to business. You need to write the book.”
Now, a few months ago, I had been at a pagan conference and some friends of mine had said that I need to write a book on cursing. So, first, I am not an expert at cursing. What I’m good at doing is knowing if a god is tapping me for doing some kind of task in the world. So yes, that is most of what I know. I do know how I think or feel about the issue, especially when I continually must answer for writing a curse that made its way around the internet about 20 years ago. I really did not want to write a book, and yet I just kept getting told that was what I was supposed to do.
Now I’m sitting across from Roger Daltry and his bad fashion judgement call hearing the same thing. I said, “I don’t know what to write about.”
He hissed, “It doesn’t matter, just write the book. You can write about anything at all.”
I was about to make some other excuse, and he banged his fist on the table. He pulled out this big black book that I had purchased some time ago with the idea that I would write a book of shadows. My book of shadows. He tsked at me as he opened the book and held it out to me. On the page was a glyph. It was my name. Not my given name, not my taken name, not my nickname. It was the name that called me from the void the first time I emerged into the world. A name that I have never told to another living soul. My true name. As I was about to object, he slammed the book shut with a snap in front of my face. He looked very kind in that moment. He said, “No one looks at the sun. It will burn their eyes. They look at the moon. Only the moon looks at the sun. You are the moon, the moon to my sun. Write. The. Damn. Book.”
In the days after that, it became clear that East wanted me to write, as a reflection of what they had to say. One of the things I was instructed to write was my book of shadows. So, a book of shadows is supposed to be the collected knowledge of a witch. In many cases, in traditional witchcraft, the book of shadows of the founder of a tradition is used in a somewhat canonical way. As far as traditions go, mine is not very canonical about anything. Serpent and Star is an oral tradition. There is no Book of Shadows. There are collections of different initiates’ books of shadows, so that you can see what things we have in common, which isn’t a lot. The thing that binds us is less a group of coherent ideas or practices and something more energetic. We call it the Current. Basically, it is a ropy kind of energy that feels like love and smells like ozone a bit. It is the hallmark of every Serpent and Star witch. We can smell it on people who want to study and become part of the tradition. If they smell right, and we feel called, we can help them through the path.
I used to say that my students were my book of shadows. They were the living embodiment of what I was hoping to teach them. But that isn’t fair. They are their book of shadows, not mine. And as I spend more time with East, he reminds me that this is my way of loving them. Writing this book is my love for them, the thing I leave them when Sewa no longer walks the earth with them. That it contains keys to call me back to them as an ancestor. That it contains keys to call the Guardians, my beloveds, who are the living breath of this tradition and welcome this dearest of souls into it. It contains spells and stories and invocations for gods and ancestors. East sometimes guides my hands on the keys, so I can say what is in my heart, so I can tell them how I do my magic. They will do their own magic their way, but this is reference material. This is what they can come back to.
I’m feeling overwhelmed a bit by this task. I understand this request to be an offering, something I do in honor and in celebration of East and what we are doing together. If I am going to be the moon to his sun, then I must shine for him. I have always thought about making my book, but I get lazy and busy and distracted. In the end, I just admit that I’m not going to do it. The difference is that this time I have someone to do it for, my students. Soon to be initiates. And their initiates. One morning East said that this is my love letter to my downline. That the way I do this work is different than others in the Tradition. I weave the basket, and that can only be done by someone like me. My voice needs to be heard, especially because of being an indigenous witch. My lens lets me see magic in different ways. Creation happens when there is someone to create for.
Besides, I’m at home on disability. When am I going to ever have this chance again?
Seyewailo 