Submission from Jessica
Where to begin in the summary of such an experience? When in hindsight so much is clear simply because you can fit the puzzle pieces together once you have most of them, and can see the picture more visibly. The first natural response is to question everything, and then as time progresses things slowly become more second-nature and eventually established as a working reality, which is perhaps even contrary to the collective one, but you can’t help but notice that it still functions quite well despite that.
I remember as a child I always liked fairy tales and myths, “fantasy” as it is called. I always looked more into things than perhaps they were, feeling that something was missing. When I was about ten I discovered Anne Rice and devoured her books whole. What she wrote about struck a familiar chord, the idea of a “hidden” or “shadowed” aspect of reality present in the modern age and shortly thereafter I became what I later would learn is called an “armchair occultist.” I took whatever books I could find out of the library of the subjects of ghosts, magic, witchcraft, vampires, anything of the like. It entranced and captivated me, and propelled me to move beyond the acceptance of the “mundane” and question what was, I would come to understand, because of “ethereal” nudges.
With such associations of course doors were eventually unlocked and boundaries pushed. Through a long series of events I slowly began to see beyond the definition of “reality” into something much more complicated, and challenging to take in.
Memories surfaced, my senses were sharpened, and I began to perceive things which did not seem foreign and scary but rather quite familiar. I was not learning something new, but rather recalling what I had done before in many lives. I was remembering , and with that realization came many other experiences that challenged my accepted definition of “reality.” I was simply drawing upon a well I had made deeper and deeper with each existence, and drinking of its memories and resources.
I began to understand why I hung on every word that I could hear of my ancestors from family members, and why when I finally was able to visit my family’s old motherland over seas I felt as if I was not seeing it for the first time, but rather as if I had never left and was back on a much needed and long over due visit.
Psychic visions, paranormal experiences, and energy work, however, can only take one so far and are only a small taste of the proverbial pie. Approximately ten years after beginning my “strange journey” I attended a pagan pride festival and was invited to participate in an open circle. What I felt within that circle went far beyond anything I had ever experienced in its depth and clarity. In what almost seemed like an impossible way, the energies and presences there took everything I had experienced before hand to a totally new level and infused not only mystery but rapture—something which simultaneously broke and healed my heart, in essence claiming it as its own.
By my exploration of paganism I have gained a far better understanding of in between than I ever had singularly by studying the occult. Simply because in paganism I did not study it, but I began to practice it, and with such practice comes deeper understanding and eventual closer mastery of Self.
My daily life of living in between has given me not only a great understanding of my own origins, but also a deeper richness to my life and a sense of why I am who I am. My deep draw to my previous pasts and my family’s past stems not only from blood ties, but to spiritual ones as well. Blood is not thicker than water in an emotional sense, but it is more cohesive and enduring in the sense that it is a progressive, solid, physical and more easily accessible trailing thread back to an existence of something much more ethereal and magically flowing than the state that the world is in now—and also is more easy for those to access who are still living in a veiled consciousness than those who choose to exist in between.
Paganism draws upon these physical threads—with people often being drawn to pantheons and traditions which either their present soul’s ancestors associated with, or their previous incarnations did. Every study of which who's mysteries draw upon links to things even farther back than the furthest memories we can yet recall.
Despite the great joys that I have been granted—doubtless there have been times of great difficulties and darkness. Subjects of which are perhaps best not talked about, but rather are only dreamed out in our “nightmares,” hearkening back to much simpler explanations:
Night•mare
n.
A dream arousing feelings of intense fear, horror, and distress
An event or experience that is intensely distressing influences
A demon or spirit once thought to plague sleeping people
[Middle English, a female demon that afflicts sleeping people : night, night; see night + mare, goblin (from Old English. See mer- in Indo-European Roots).]
The things which our distant ancestors believed in "myth" and "legend" have not escaped us...rather they have only come to exist in new forms and definitions in our vastly different perceptions of them, but still in essence contain their original meaning in our experience of them, such as nightmare. It is simply the literal definition which society accepts ultimately has which has changed, not the experience of it. Currently in present day "night goblins" are not "real" beyond a children's fairy book, but in the past our ancestors possessed sight to a depth of reality that most in this day have abandoned, and ever fewer seek to remember. Is it any coincidence that "nightmares" are originally believed to come from female demons? Have you ever perhaps had a "dream" where you woke up feeling that your slumbering experience was more real than this one? More vivid? More substantial? Consciously we may not understand the reality of such things, but that doesn't mean that our subconscious doesn't, and neither does our heart. We dream for a reason, we fantasize for a reason, nothing is wanted without reason. It is simply a call back to something which is shrouded now, but was not ever truly gone.
Today we have science and great medical miracles, the likes in which we never would have thought about three hundred years ago, in exchange for which, however, we also had to give up something to move forward to such discoveries.
Those "things" which we gave up now have many, including myself, search desperately to regather and recall what was once our home, but it is now veiled. The true state of reality never changed--simply the point of view from where we viewed it from did.
Those of the Craft and then likewise experience the in between that our ancestors are not really any different than anyone else, they simply choose to live and invoke an aspect of site that most have forgotten.
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