The Devils Cloak - The Resurrection - 3/3

It begins when I wake. I know what I must do. That familiar conscious call to the breath that sustains us. But it is the night before. I step out of a ritual with a beloved, the stars are visible as we walk to seek food, something nasty but kind - the food I mean. The kind of food you know isn’t the most healthy choice, but it’s kind enough in what it is, to remain both honest and not assault your entire body with grease. The savory will ground me I think to myself. It is funny, I knew this ritual separate to - but always linked to the work of these candles was coming up this week, and of course, it would start on a Dark moon in Pisces. We are chatting, and decompressing as we trudge off to a local Middle Eastern modern fusion take-out place not far from the ritual site.

I can feel the lingering fear I often swim in when it comes to this kind of thing, you know the trial-by-fire kind of daring that one can evoke in a loving request to a Goddess you hold with such blazing love, knowing it may cut you. I write this and feel obliged to recall the old folk custom of cleansing a curse by the drawing of the blood of the believed to be afflicted, as made by the sharp needle-like thorns of bramble (if you were next to me you’d hear an audible sigh and a whisper “there has to be easier cleansing than thorns babe - there is…. yeah but….”).

He speaks of the blessing of initiation, this beloved friend I am walking with. How we are blessed to in this lifetime find ourselves in this witnessing way that witches do. I agree, but I can also feel the apprehension, the knowing that it comes with some necessary pain. Beautiful but pain nonetheless. And then this Goddess smiles, she knows the Devil well. The kind of smile you can feel at your back not the one you see with your eyes. How can you find pleasure in this part of the work, I ask myself as I notice a pep to my roommate’s step, the cool night air, an alluring respite after the fire of a Godd wells and licks at your insides. Oh how easy it is to find it, that joy, when I am mid-ritual covered in smeared fruits and sticky honey, so why not in this too? And then I sit in truth, and I ask her in my witch’s eye, can this be joyful, this part of the work - the cutting of dead leaves?

Earnest questions are often answered with the kind of love that spills from flowers as they take their first full bloom all to drink of sunlight. Is that not what we do? Is that not the point of everything? Because love? I sing to myself as I recall drawing the Death card thrice in the rituals divination portion regarding my journey into March.

The Devil… I can feel watching as I make these sentiments, as I laugh and hide the child within, woven and weft into jovial laughter between deeper conversations. If truth is a blade how is it honed? This question comes up as I ponder him in this scenario. This Godd who in some stories willingly sort death that he may rise anew, empowered and strengthened by wisdom. Not all initiations are from the outside in, a gargoyle at the gates of a juicy secret and a series of riddles. True initiation is to leap into holy risk. There is the promise of glorious sweetness but the possibility of harrowing wild barbs to cleanse you of deceit, whether that’s from within yourself or from the sly malicious kind
of intruder.

The Devil, in this work of the seven days of blessings, has birthed a great deal of strength within me, but now if it wasn’t clear before, do you see what I was mentioning in the first of this series about how no potent spell is woven without the witch or aside them? We like the devil climb our own thorn ladders so that we may witness the rose, and we do all this whilst we wield lightning and star fire. This is what it is to dance
the worlds. Continued …

Artwork: Incantation
John Dixon after John Hamilton Mortimer 1773

To infuse protective blessing into this candle for the wild-hearted, I also had to willingly dance in the very fire I call to for aid in this warding work, you cannot wield a power you do not intimately know even if you have done it a thousand times, there is always more when it comes to the Devil. What is it to die alive and be renewed? I have died it feels on their altars so many times. I have seen injustices and seen justice. Is that not wisdom? The sword is only as mighty as the wisdom that is its sharpest edge, honed by relationship, forged in the fires of truth. To acknowledge that one edge is always pointing back at the one who wields it. Incantations do not wither like the green herb as the old psalm would say, they are bridges between the witch and the Godd, a mutual birthing. To form this bridge you must be willing to walk it and meet them in the middle. To me this forms the hilt of an incantation, the merging of will forms the blade, and the witnessing of the edge is to see it working not only the target but all things as is the relationship of the Godd and the Witch. I do not just mean this poetically but rather literally.

This is what it means to walk the circle, it’s the gaining of wisdom, as the magick touches you also. If you are protecting where may you harm, if you are harming what are you protecting? These are not about seeking justifications they are about honesty. The Devil doesn’t care about strung-together, gap-filled notions of ethics, he cares about integrity and the truth. He knows that if you are actioning greed or unsanctioned dishonest malice, you will inevitably see your own blade at your own throat. Why? Because love is everything, and in its holy fire you will be unmade and remade lest the blade you carry is blunt.

This work was enlightening in so many ways. I have done this magick before so many times yet this was special, I think its because I am doing it for someone else, I am doing it for you. For whomever is in need of this mighty catalyst of protection. And I am doing this for the child within every wisened witch, human, beast or other-kin who may be at the end of a one sided blade, one sided because the one who wields it is blind to the edge on which they tread. I am making it it because as I set forth in the previous post of this series, that we may better protect love with the ferocity of the Godds, namely the Devil.

Peace Praise and Power to the Witches Devil, the Fallen inlove Angel. May my work bring you pride in your garden of everblooms. And as Briarmoths ethos decrees:

Where there is beauty, a witch is born to cultivate it to its blossoming,
Where there is corruption a witch is brought to ensure its crumbelling.
Because Love.

Xo,
A.

Artwork: Mephistopheles in the Air 1828
Artwork by Eugene Delecroix