The rising of Alycone led to a lot of realizations for me, deepening my practice more as I continued onward. I've been interested in the stars for a while now. It first started with reading Agrippa's 3 Books of Occult Philosophy, which included the sigils and information about what is known as the Behenian Fixed Stars. These are 15 stars that are well known for their use in magic and sorcery, though there are countless more that add to readings, natal, and star work.
Fifteen stars that have worn through the sky in different patterns that allow you to channel and use their magic. Drawn from the medieval astrological tradition (European, and Arabic in particular) they are considered especially useful for magical application: crafting talismans, enchanting jewelry, and aligning ritual implements to their causes.
Alcyone means "kingfisher" — a bird that nests on the water, that calms the waves during the winter solstice. In my own practice, she is represented by the Canadian Goose, who rests in the willows near my home, and who often stay year round with their young, preferring these waters as their own. The "halcyon days" are the period of calm weather around the winter solstice when the kingfisher was said to brood her eggs on the nest floating on the sea. Alcyone is the brightest star in the Pleiades, and in the Behenian tradition she is the indicator star of the whole Sisterhood.
It began on the 26th of May when I decided that the vessel I had created some weeks before was going to be the spirit house for the Seven Sisters. I had carefully carved the sigil into the clay, let it dry, and then begun the laborious process of burnishing it until it shined mirror smooth. (The bowl part later broke, but the main plate remains intact).
I decided that I would fill the vessel with a materia bundle, filled with various herbs, as well as a heartstone to power it — a pale, peach moonstone that felt very appropriate for the Pleiades. The bundle was tied off with another moonstone, and it was given offerings of gin before being ensouled with their light. This bundle will serve as an altar fetch while doing workings with her, and I may begin to carry it on my person when the timing is right.
This materia is going to be blessed monthly while the moon is in mansion 3: Al Thurayya. The Seven Sisters were pacted with on the night of May 29th under the guidance of my Lady, the Court, the Ancestors, and the Spirits that guide me, after learning that my Part of Fortune is home to all seven sisters within a 29°.
Also completed within this time frame was an Oil that is meant to call upon the Seven Sisters for their guidance during workings, to be poured as offering, and to be anointed with when doing stellar workings. The materia was gathered, including fennel, frankincense, vervain, and honeysuckle, and prayed over while petitioning the Pleiades for their blessing.
Now, in the weeks following I have been very busy with personal projects of my own including a newly constructed grimoire of my own, crafted from recycled materials and paper.
a selection of grimoire work
During the Dark Moon (When I am writing this, I light candles to Our Lady Beneath. She is a huge part of my magical and religious tradition, which is based around the concept of the threshold. It is something that I have been cultivating for almost 16 years now and I can feel the change in the air as the wind blows - more formal in its nature.
This year has been magically powerful for my work - I've been refining my tradition and honing my craft. Part of that comes with an almost obsessive need to journal, and record my thoughts. It is part of the process to collage, and I have a ritual dedicated especially to collaging magically that I partake in when I do grimoire work.
Through this work, I have come to develop, inadvertently; a relationship with the Gentle Folk over the years - not in the traditional sense but once you apply their framework you can really see clearly through the fog. It is through this process that I’ve come to learn the name of the Lady who Guides me through the Greenwood, the Thorn Maiden. She is the drowned rose of the Good Folk, and she fulfils the role of Ophelia in the Court.
Running through the creek beds she found me, wandering the threshold; this was long before I knew her name but I knew, and Ophelia sang to me her violet song and through this I learned the spirit of the flowers, the plants and herbs that heal and harm. The Greenwood does not distinguish between love and pain - they often are a gift from the same source; that is the lesson of the Thorn Maiden, who rose through the water with a crown of thorns.
Echoed through Chiron in Scorpio with Alphecca ascending the Northern Crown. What broke her is what made her royalty. And that path is one of decent, crowing, and return. It is the cycle of life-death-rebirth that guides the Mistress of Mushrooms in her ways. I have been burning a lot of Kiishig lately, drawn to Grandmother Cedar (true cedar, Thuja occidentalis) in the crowning phase of my own - coming into myself during my Saturn return has been a difficult journey but it has meant prioritizing myself and the people who show up for me daily.
Also one of my favourites is Sweet Gale, my spirit plant. Bog Myrtle grows in marshlands on the soil where I grew up and has remained an important part of my practice since I first learned the green arte (my other spirit plant is rosemary, beloved). She is aligned with Venus and the Moon, and guides me through my dreams. She is the soil of where I have walked, and the heart of the bog.
On the threshold of land and water she grows, in bogs, marshes, and slow moving northern rivers. Her roots are in water, her leaves above in the air. She lives between and belongs to the sweet Boreal Atlantic, and the East Coast of Canada. She is a threshold guardian for travelers, and will meet you where you are - at dusk, at dawn, or in the dreaming deep.
Her smoke is sharp and sweet, peppery, and cleansing without the heaviness of some herbs. Her leaves and catkins are used in teas. Her leaves can be burned with Cedar for purification, and rites of spirit flight. Let the bog wash over you in rites of bath magic, for her waters are good for the skin.
The part of me that holds this is the part of me that wanders, and always will. It’s always been a part of me and it’s how I navigate the world. There is a lot of things I have been learning lately and part of that is being able to trust my own judgement - this is where my work with Saint Joan comes into play for she is also a Faery Saint.
Briar of the Greene Chapel goes on about this extensively, but in my practice she is a Knight of the Court. This is because I fundamentally view Joan as being Queer in nature. She themself is a threshold, holding the relic of her Unburnt Heart - the trials of walking through the flame and coming out the other end. She was not asked to renounce her voices, she was burned for dressing in mens clothing. The Faerie tradition has always been one to break down the rules and stereotypes of gender, and Joan became The Maid when she donned her armour, not as a man, but as a Knight.
This plays into gender being a performance for my own practice, and how intrinsically queer it is. Part of the tradition of the Threshold is the ability to flow between gender and sexuality and find that liminal space where they blur together. Faeries are neither one thing nor the other, and that is an important distinction, for they are all.
It is said that Joan of Arc first heard her voices under a tree known as The Ladies' Tree - a sacred Oak that she and her friends would hang garlands of flowers on. Oak is considered a holy tree to many, and represents a vertical axis of the threshold - the leaves and branches reaching high up to the sky, while the roots dig deep below. A Latin prophecy states that "From the Oak wood a Maiden shall come forth to bring healing" This also ties into the holy well nearby, known as The Good Spring of the Faeries of Our Lord. The Faerie Faith was very much alive during this period.
I recently finished Ensouling a working oil to Ophelia, which contains a blend of locally foraged and found plants and flowers, aligned with Venusian, Lunar, and Water spirits, her patron tree is the Willow, for it is the healer and source of salicin - a sacred medicine. Anointing myself with it is a reminder to flow with the current and not against it; to allow the passage of time to wear holes through stone.
The Ophelian rhythm is a cycle of three movements, for she is not the helpless maiden of paintings long past - but rather, the one who sits on the riverbank waiting for the current to take her where she needs to go. Even in her grief she finds beauty, and finds it growing along the waters edge.
Three Movements:
Surrender - Let the current take what no longer serves you. Grief, blockage, creative block, place it in the water and watch it flow away.
Be Held - Rest in the knowledge that the river does not judge what it carries. The oil is the sensation of being witnessed without being fixed.
Return - Rise from the water changed, but whole. Not because the grief is gone, but because you have remembered how to flow with it.
I dream of the flames burning me up, but they do not harm me, they transform - burning away all the pain, anger, and despair I have long felt. It's a new chapter in my life and I am learning to embrace the wild and Wyrd in my life. There's a yearning there to go back to where I was, but I know this path to be true.
I had known this spirit for a while, but I never had a name for it until now. I have been doing this work for a while now, and I still feel like a perpetual student of the Wyrd. Lately, I had been reading through Matthew Venus's Ensouling the Effigy, and it's been fantastic for upping my spirit vessel creation. I had been experimenting with polymer clay due to my lack of access to ceramics, and I have been on a roll with creating various doodads, oils, and other creations.
The Good Folk lead me to where I am going, and I follow - something I never thought I would end up doing, flying headfirst into something unknown. I don't know where this work will take me, but I've been practicing for long enough now that I think I am ready to accept the challenge. They smile upon me and I entre into this new pact aware and ready. It comes with it's challenges and no pact is without a cost, but my hair is already contained within the Vessel, among the Green it is able to transform and grow.
The Vessel of the Greenwood sits among the grass. It has been ensouled over a couple of nights, as guided by the spirit held within. The spirit of the Greenwood revealed itself to me through the sigil you see inscribed upon the vessel. Her name is The Maiden of Thorns, and she is here to teach me in my adventures. The Good Folk braid my hair at night, hoping I notice them, I give them gifts of unsalted butter, milk, and small faerie cakes made especially for them, I give them offerings of incense, supplicating myself before them as I do my workings. The candle burns atop the vessel, and the power within enshrined.
I walked with it to the crossroads, with it's Twin Vessel - made for my beautiful partner Mel - enshrined to Mercury through the running of the Hare Lord. It has been a constant process of bouncing off of each other and he continues to be a huge part of my personal practice - we are always learning and growing and teaching each other and I am forever grateful for that. The matching hagstone hangs on a cord around his neck, a promise to always keep - the Hagstones are akin to wedding rings in our tradition, and my matching on rests at the heart of my rosary. I never take it off.
The Threshold waits. There is an Inn there, tended to by someone very important to me. We both adventure and travel and find our ways across the threshold in various forms, but we always come home to each other in the end. That inn is where my heartstone rests, always wanting and always seeking to do better, to grow, and to change with the flow of things - we are always molding to each other, growing upward into the heavens waiting for the next big adventure.
Rose. Hawthorn. Elderflower. The Faery Vessel grows and adapts to the world and workings around it, and I find myself tending to it daily. The daily work of tending to spirits is one that I feel very comfortable in, having done so for years at this point. Coming into my craft and honing it is a constant process, and I am always a wise fool in how I approach things. This curiosity keep my mind happy, knowing that there is still so much out there for me to explore.
