“It’s sovereignty. You won’t be sovereign until you aren’t fixated on someone else’s demise.”
I frowned. Every other friend was saying the opposite of what this one was, but this one is the one whose counsel I value most.
Instead of fanning the flames of my justifiable fury, this one chunked a bucked of ice water in my face that left sputtering and squirming like some bratty child bent on revenge via text and voicemail.
I didn’t understand what my friend was saying, but I wanted to. I want sovereignty, true sovereignty. To be no longer the victim. No longer in the pattern of abusive and toxic behaviors. Blathering all my reasons why I could keep doing what I was doing did not make it right. I was being unkind. Ungracious. Not upholding my personal honor code. My friend knew that, even though it was going to take me many more hours to figure all of that out.
It took more than 10 hours actually to settle myself down enough to do more that skim-the-surface kind of thinking. To actually sit with myself with naked honesty and earnestly try to understand what my friend was equally earnestly trying to tell me. A course correct was obviously needed, but was it just the vengeance part? The blood lust for revenge? I suspected it went deeper than that. I was going to have to go all the way down however deep that was and seek it out, facing whatever monsters showed up along the way.
So I did.
I lit a candle and asked my guides and allies to help me gain insight. Called them by name. Then taking out my tarot cards, I did a three card pull. The very standard “past”, “present” “future” spread. Past for the behaviors/patterns up till this moment, present is this moment and the direction forward, future for the results of “what will happen” if I follow the “present” card.
Now y’all know by now that I think the divine, the cosmos, god/dess will use any tool that we work with as a way to communicate with us if we will but use the tools and listen and treat the messages with respect… and heed them. I have found in my limited experience that interpreting the cards gets easier with use and allowing oneself the time and quiet space needed to be allowed to ponder and contemplate versus just trying to get a mag rag answer off the cuff. This query needed far more than a quickie solution. It required the depth to honor the seriousness of it as it related to all three aspects of my life: past, present, and future.
It was a crossroads moment.
A “Harken unto me and hear my words” momentous kind of moment.
I laid out the cards trusting them that they too understood the seriousness of the query:
Give me insight to know the meaning of “I won’t be sovereign until I am not fixated on someone else’s demise.”
They answered:
- Past: The Wheel (X) reversed
- Present: The Ace of Swords
- Future: The Devil (XV) reversed
Well, shit.
I joke and tease that I am a gal who needs to be spoken to plainly. Folks that’s about as bald-assed plain as cards can get! Pointing at them: why, honeys, there is even a golden crown with a sword right there in purple crayon on the card representing “present”. What says “sovereign” more clearly that! Laughing, the cards apparently wanted to really make sure that they conveyed that they certainly understood the query…and now I could too.
I dove into the deep water of understanding, writing page after page of insight both on myself and also on the symbols, nuances, and the very personal touches the cards had laid out like the Griffin (my friend) standing over the full moon on the Wheel card pointing to the present card and then the Devil’s sashaying dance. Plunging myself deeper and deeper I wrote and wrote. Paused and parsed. Chewed on the end of my pen while I reflected and stared off into the corners of my mind and memories. When I surfaced hours later, I understood what my friend was saying. Above all, I was refreshed and profoundly grateful.
Grateful, for I had gained clarity and a refocus on the long goal which was not just a sovereign present, but also a sovereign future.
It was after 1 am.
I slept and dreamed the strangest, most vivid dream. I woke and knew intuitively what I needed to do to complete the shift from past to present.
So I did.
Starting with apologizing to everyone that I had sent the earlier text and voicemail to.
Then making effigies of my past abusers: my father, my first husband turned wife, and my second, current husband. I put items that had been gifts from those abusers into their specific effigy. Colored symbolic glitter, stones, mud, shells, sticks… I breathed and hallowed them and breathed the breath of life in them… I sculpted the chains they had made for me and broke them and gave them back to them. I spoke words to them as I formed them, placing a watermelon seed inside from the melon that had sprung up last August so they would literally have mybtruth in their mouths and… I released them…
…took them out of the cages of my mind and heart where I had bound them for all the wrongs they had done me… deservedly bound and caged… except I was also bound and caged with them. They still had power they could draw from me from these cages. Control they could exert upon my emotions and actions… and I could not, would not be able to know true freedom, true sovereignty, or true peace until I had emptied and destroyed their cages so that they could never come back and take roost again.
I knew now that releasing did not equal forgiving.
Releasing did not equal forgetting. It meant letting them truly go… fly over the horizon of my mind and heart scapes… no longer holding my fixed attention. So simple.
Not.
But the fullness of time had come.
A turning of the wheel.
Now, in the dark and secret place, I was ready to walk into my present truth and step fully out of my past.
The second intuition was to take my son and myself to a Rage Room in town where we could put all those feelings of wrath and rage and destruction out of our hearts and minds theough physical action. Action mixed song and loud music that we had chosen. Music that didn’t sound like rage. Music that rather sounded like healing. For that is who I am. Who my son is also. Healers. Nurturers. Creators of good in the world. Our songs included those undercurrents to support us as we wrecked havoc inside that safe container of chaos and violence.
For me it included also dance.
The calling of energy before and after the destruction.
An experience which also Involved singing my truth in the midst of everything around me being a shattered disaster… my life like a careening, frantic, out-of-control bus turned into a graceful figure skating creature that glided across life’s floor with grace and elegance and beauty (part of the dream).
Later, after a hearty dinner of potato soup, I took the tray of effigies and in the fading twilight and walked through the arboretum behind my former home to the dock that overlooks the swamp. The bullfrogs were cranking up their bellows and the last songs of the birds were quieting down as they nestled down for their evening rest. I took out the three large magnolia leaves that looked like elegant green boats and did my last little bit of witch bottle magick to them… then carefully placed each effigy on its little barque. Held each one up without malice and spoke “I release you” as I let each one take sail. I turned and walked back.
A random piece of moss with tiny ferns growing out of it was resting on the newly constructed handrail. How it got there, I know not. I put it on the small silver tray that was filmed with mud remnants. Gathered fallen azaleas from the trail. Once home, I added a small piece of broken blue glass from my son’s rage session, a segment of video tape and a keyboard “Q” from mine and set the tray gently on my main altar to rest a few days as a visual reminder of what had been done.
Focus on what matters, Beloved.
Examine what you are fixated on and what is required to find freedom.
Because it turns out that sovereignty can only be found when one is truly free.
Erica Sittler is a Witch practicing her craft in Mississippi where she is an active member of the Temple of Witchcraft. Her magick is in the mundane and in bringing honor and attention to those small things that build a sustainable and adventurous life. She is a Temple Mystery School student under the instruction of High Priestess Sellena Dear.