Offering

30th August, 2023

Faced a fear. Where I live, I generally do not regard it as safe, not completely. During the daylight, I feel comfortable enough to walk around in most areas but not during the night hours. I have visited sites that I hold as places in which to communicate and work during the hours before day, but not yet in night’s hold. Not before the night, stated, when Saturn and the Moon shared the sky, visible above the thankfully only subtle glow from the lights of the village. While not as dark as elsewhere in the North, in the wilder and far less populated areas, it was dark enough to at least be able to see what I was searching the stars around the Moon for.

Finding a suitable site within which to do the working took some assessing. Too close to the housing, not enough darkness. Too far into the park, too much darkness. I have night-sight that is on the side of comically poor, so in the moment, the decision was made to utilise the patch of ground that was as close as I could find within sight of the moon as well as to a crossroad. Man-marked but no less the shape that I was open to working within. I have yet to fully plan offerings, rituals, dedications. While I often have a secure idea of what I want to offer, what I want to involve, the precise words I feel for me are better coming from the heart in the moment, for the time being. Not to say that I am adverse to more structure within my dedications but what I am doing in the moment, offered wild and guttural, is the now’s most fitting.

What I did not plan was to answer the tugging insistence down the way. The lodestone’s pull, the beckoning. Overdue. Past the blocks of terraces, past the built-for-pits homes, past the street-lamps. Past the artificial light’s reach. Up to this point, due to the aforementioned poor night sight that I am gradually working out adaptations to, I have yet to take that complete step into the dark. But then, I did. Even before the step was taken, the Sensing was dread-inducing and delighting in one. Arousing and anchoring. Testing. In the past encounter at that boundary point, I used to put up my hood before returning. This time? No. Hood down, head exposed, kept unhidden. The sensation of vulnerability and yielding, surrender and heart-clenching fear entangling in a knot in the chest, like tangled roots beneath the ribcage. Skin surging, pulsing, shifting in sensation. Self-offering.

The first step back, the second, and three more facing the dark. Surrender demonstrated. More visits planned. Exhilarating. Enthralling. Fear-inducing. Ensnaring. Offered. To Offer Again. Offering.

(add.) Something to explore, theurgy and bats, those darling psychopomps. One seen right before the boundary point was reached, as a shadow crossing my own, fluttering. I will not say a guarding presence was felt but, accompanying. Tentative consideration, on which to dwell in workings more.