Hello magical humans, I am so delighted to share this very first post for paid subscribers. It was a joy to write about this topic. I will continue to share newsletters that will always remain free to everyone! Paid subscribers will receive a second writing each month, as well as an extra treat like recipes and poetry readings. Please choose what is most nourishing for you on your own path. Thank you so much for being here to read what I write, your readership is a precious ingredient in my life.
through dark velveteen mist
they cut, like a quill
signing the name of their beloved,
then vanishing
reminding us we all possess
the ability to disappear into the night,
to wander invisible between worlds,
until we choose to re-emerge
lit with the ancient magic
that brews our shining blood.
(from an ode to the fireflies)
Once upon a dark and misty morning, there was a layer of fog so thick that only the voices of seagulls hinted I was near the sea. The little stone village was eerily empty, with no cars on the road, on that Sunday morning shrouded in a cloak of fog. I was alone, wandering through a strange and suddenly human-less world.
The scent of woodsmoke filled the air, and a looming silence seemed to murmur in a dreamlike, foreign tongue; it was a decidedly non-human dialect, whispered through the swirling tendrils of salty mist. My eyes widened as I realized I was hearing the hushed incantations of the mist herself — she was singing ever so softly, about something only my bones could understand.
Suddenly I knew why all the other humans had stayed inside that morning: I was submerged in a dark cauldron of the otherworldly unknown. This was the same sort of fog notorious in fairytales, the kind that humans have been known to vanish into, never to be seen again. I felt the haunting force of the Others at work all around me, and though it was chilling, I also felt a thrilling, curious kinship. I was right where I had always longed to be, where the two worlds touch.
Sometimes, if you are lucky, in the subtle light of dawn or dusk, you might hear the faint whispers of the twilight language. You might, in that very moment, feel a soft breeze brush across your cheek… a touch that feels strangely like the caress of a grandmother’s hand. We forget that we are the grandchildren of many, many lineages. How many magic spells were uttered in order for you to be here now?
We often speak about this time of year as having a “thin veil” between the realms of form and spirit. But to me the veil is not something that separates worlds, but more of a spiderweb or a mycelial network that links us and all our ecological lineages together. I like to think of Gaia wearing a shimmering shawl that covers all of earth. The veil is woven from threads of energy, and the needle has been passing back and forth between the seen and unseen worlds since the beginning of time. The only distance to reach the other side of the veil is in how long it takes you to remember you are already a thread woven into it. To know the veil is to remember who you really are.
Perhaps one of our greatest heartaches as a species is in our utter certainty that we are purebred, full-blooded humans. What a lonely thing to be so very sure of. The human origin story is a whirling rainbow of interrelatedness, an ecology of storied miracles. When did humans begin to draw such hard lines between ourselves and the Others? Could a lake have her own grandchildren? Can a flower cast a spell? Does a stone have song? The gnomes are chanting from down in the roots and soil: Yes.
The problem with the world
is that we draw our circle of family too small.
(Mother Teresa)
Introducing our magical ancestors: the gnomes & fairies