Lilith and the Meadow: Week 1-3

I feel I must establish myself as an authority as the owner of a site dedicated to magic and having practiced for such a short amount of time.

I am one-week shy of the anniversary of when I bought my first set of Tarot cards. It was my first admission to myself, my husband, and the bookstore that I was a witch. It felt significant, meaningful, a moment out of time. I remember seeing them and breathing easier finding them accessible and entertaining. My tarot journey is a story for another time, this is one for the story of Lilith and the Meadow.

Consider Lilith and the Meadow a series that explains my entrance (homonym pun intended) into the ethereal. On February 18, 2020 - my husband, Finnegan (our dachshund+), and AnDRAMAduh (our mystical little Maine coon) moved away from the epicenter of Vermont's activity (Burlington and it's surrounding area) and into a peaceful meadow 45 minutes from a Starbucks and a Target and an hour and a half from a Taco Bell. The 2010 census boasted a total of 677 citizens in our land of more livestock than "living".

We moved out here to be closer to Drew's (my partner/husband/lover - jk, that's gross) job as a butcher of a coop. Of course, in Vermont, closer means that his commute is now 30 minutes rather than more than an hour. I needed no consideration in the location, to be honest. I had quit my job. I was... a wreck. I was a shaking mess of human who lived in a world shame, doubt, and hopelessness. I felt darkness was encompassing me and there was little light to help me find a way out. But after a single night in the meadow, darkness was something different entirely.

As I'm typing this Brandi Carlile asks, "Have you ever stared into a starry sky?" I hate to say that the stars brought new meaning to darkness but it is partially true. Insomnia from mood stabilizers is a common thing and I have had it since starting Welbutrin about 7-8 years ago. I have cried myself to sleep many a night because the knowledge of the coming loneliness aches inside me. That moment, whatever the time, when I would wake up in darkness and feel utterly alone. It no longer mattered that good sleep care was to avoid looking at anything but my phone became my only refuge in those nights. But in the meadow, the windows of our studio loft seem to attract what little light remains in the darkness. Slowly my moments in the darkness, held a moment of wholeness that only the Universe's expanse can truly give you.

But the guide, the leader, the mother who held me and told me throughout those moments of darkness that she would always be there, shining if I could see her or not; The Moon. I don't know when I started talking to the moon and feeling as though she heard me. It must have been in those initial weeks. There was something so different about the Moon. She had gone from an object in the sky that comes and goes to one who is perpetually in someone's sky and aren't you blessed to have her tonight? That was all I needed. I was a witch right then and there. I realized the length of time I had mocked magic in the hopes of fitting in when I know that I was a child of the willows and the meadow. I called to the animals and I walked barefoot in the streams and rock beds that lay just beyond some human barrier. I would find that place and I would make it my own. Years of emotional and mental abuse, manipulation, and neglect had built the person that I had become. This person that forgot what it felt like to creep through the need-to-be-mowed grass on Wildwood Drive. Each crunch of grass like a shot to the heart as I attempted to watch the great Nicki in her natural habitat. Her brown tail swishing always a warning that she knew that I was watching, that I was had. And then like the cat she was, she bounded away and I began anew or lay in the shade of the weeping willows and listen to the wind in leaves. Did I know their language? Did I speak back to the wind? Were they talking about me? A hope, not a fear. Had they noticed me as the cat did and as those around me did not?

It is no wonder that the moment I entered the meadow which holds the beginnings of willows I lay under all of those years ago, that I felt that part of me in a new way. As if the trees are making up for the youth that I lacked when I lay beneath their older cousins.

These were the first three weeks of awakening something deep within me. I often question if a certain visit on a certain holiday may have influenced my awakening. Almost 6 months to the day before we moved to the meadow, I visited the crypt of what could have been my possible ancestors of Etruscan Rome with a life-long witch as the veil of the world began to drawn open with the approach of Halloween only 2 weeks away. Perhaps it was the black cat that crossed my path the night before. or the one that lay about the crypts awaiting Ellen's abduction. Could it be the first female space walk on the ISS that occurred that night? Or was it here, in the meadow that it started.

We moved in during a waning crescent in Capricorn (my sun sign). My first days and nights settling into the place. The one week mark from our first night in the Meadow, was the night of the New Moon. The shift began as I started to feel at home, that moon. The same moon that we are in now, was the Moon that I first met and knew. Perhaps the meadow is the key.

Lyrics that played making me stop while I was writing this piece:

"Let it bend before it breaks," from 'Before it Breaks' by Brandi Carlile (The goshawk that lives on the property soared full belly showing past the window to my left (NW).

"The heart will break all the plans you make," from 'My Love (The Storm)' by Amanda Shires (This played as a raven flew behind me - windows facing due south, my back to them - and into view of the window at my left (NW) making their presence known by two short, guttural trills.)

"Take me into your darkest hour," from 'Stand by You' by The Pretenders (This one just hit me differently than it ever had before.)

Debating making the playlist I listened to while writing available... thoughts?