Chapter 14
Dragon’s Natal Saturn Conjunct Lauren’s Natal Mercury in Synastry
What no one ever told me though was that any type of surgery, illness, or injury to one of the chakras can have profound effects. The womb chakra—orange, if I associate a color with it—is also considered being symbolic of emotions. The precancerous cells, a biopsy, and two separate surgeries not only affected me physically, but emotionally. I’ve felt myself to be more… restrained… when it comes to emotion.
But maybe that’s for the best. If I let myself fully feel what I normally would in regard to losing Jesse, I’m not sure I could keep my sanity. I know in my head that his behavior since early February has more to do with his own internal struggle to deal with past grief and insecurity than with me, but in my heart, I’m still punishing myself for not being able to love him enough to prevent his implosion.
Tonight will be a releasing ritual, one I’ve done many, many times over the years. My ritual is based on the ho’oponopono ritual from Hawaiian shamanism, which has been described to me in different ways, depending on whether the person trying to teach it to me was a shaman, a neopagan witch, or some social media celebrity. It’s never been shared with me, however, by anyone who has practiced it in their own culture, which I didn’t know when I first learned of it and began practicing a form of it as my own. I’ve altered the ritual somewhat to suit my own needs, and I customize it for each person I choose to release. An extremely powerful ritual, it’s never the same twice.
I’ve more recently researched the ritual’s origins and constantly worry about cultural appropriation of a custom that’s not mine to claim and won’t have the correct correspondences for me. However, I’m not sure that there’s anything culturally appropriate in my own ancestry that accomplishes what I need or how I could have understood the need for such a ritual without knowing how it was used among those who’ve practiced it as part of their own heritage.
The more secular but New Age-y version of the ho’oponopono spiritual practice is that it’s used for forgiveness. This, I find, matches more closely with my own culture that demands we “forgive and forget” and rarely scratches the core of the transgression or responsibility for it. I’m not a fan of forgiving people because I “ought to,” but only when I’m ready. I had enough of that with Quent, who kept insisting that I forgive his transgressions and forget about them so that he could transgress anew. The way a shaman explained the ho’oponopono ritual to me long ago is that it does encompass forgiveness as well as responsibility, but its primary purpose is to release the bond between two people and heal the holes that are left. It’s a way of letting go and severing ties, even if the other person replaces those cut ties with new ones and the ritual has to be performed multiple times before they are truly gone.
That’s not to say that a new, healthier bond can’t be formed after ties are severed, perhaps after some time has passed. So far, though, I’ve not known any severances to be reconnected positively, with the exception of Jan after our big fight. I’ve performed it to end casual relationships and legal ones, to end my attachments to Quent, and as a personal and private funeral service for friends and acquaintances long since gone. One day soon, I will do it for my parents as I watch their health fail more every time I visit them on their farm in Georgia. And one day I will do it for Jesse, maybe, but not this day, not this night.
The purpose of tonight’s releasing ritual is to sweep away all energetic connections with Lady Dragon, if any remain. I’ve done this ritual to sever our connection before. Twice, as a matter of fact. Sometimes when you release a person, they don’t want to be released, and so they reattach, and Dragon didn’t want to let me go, neither on the earthly plane nor on the astral plane. If Dragon has anything to do with that dark messenger at the corner of my property, I’ll know it through this ritual.
Performing this ritual is not without risk. Maybe because it’s not culturally mine or maybe because I’ve altered it too much, performing the ho’oponopono ritual always results in some form of blowback for me. I’ve done this often enough to know that the repercussions can be anything from a feeling of euphoria, a sense of unease, or the world crashing down around me.
Squinting at the coals in the fire pit, I set aside Jan’s lighter. The coals are still hot enough that I won’t need my bestie’s lighter tonight. I drop an armload of small scraps of wood and twigs onto the coals.
Next, I toss two four-inch white candles from the pack marked with the words emergency candles from my kitchen. As a practicing witch, I never worry about being in the dark when the electricity goes out, given that I have literally hundreds upon hundreds of candles of every imaginable color in my home. In my mind, an emergency candle is the kind you throw onto a fire because you need wax to keep the fire going. These plain white candles from the grocery store do the trick.
The white wax melts quickly atop the wood scraps and seeps down into the bright orange coals. Only seconds later, they flame wildly as the wood begins to burn steadily.
My hands tingle with energy. Another surge of energy rises up from my feet to my face, like a hot flash but not a hot flash. It’s the energy again. Not a “summer moment,” as Jan used to call her hot flashes, but a wave of divine energy rolling through me. Perspiration stings my forehead, and I wipe it away with the back of my arm. Like the warding of my property, this ritual also does not require that I call the quarters or establish a circle. Not all workings need an energetically contained space.
Especially for Lady Dragon, I’ve chosen several small branches of eucalyptus that I keep in a vase near my bedroom altar. One of the special features of eucalyptus is that it can purify or, in this case, clear the air. The branches wither and burst into flame almost immediately, but the fragrance of eucalyptus drifts across my circle.
Just as with the ritual to ward my property, my releasing ritual does not require that I call in the quarters or the Watchtowers, or that I stir the elements or spirits or invoke my Gods and Goddesses. It’s simply a matter of protected, sacred space, and my personal fire circle behind my house has been sacred space for the last decade or more.
In a movement as fluid as any belly dancer’s arms, I raise the circle above me and around me in a sphere of energy. I’ve raised circles within circles before, and even pyramids within circles, and the temperature of each space is always different. It’s warm in my outer circle, enough that between the little bonfire and the energy surge, my forehead is damp. Sweat is already forming under my not-quite-as-perky-as-they-used-to-be boobs. In the smaller, more intimate circle, the air is chilled, and the warmth of the fire feels good as I hold my palms above it.
With a sudden shiver, I reach for the next layer of tools on top of my blanket: the rosemary branches soaked in hemlock and wormwood oil. I use a couple of twigs from the ground to lift the dressed rosemary. Should I accidentally rub my eyes, those oils are not the kind of thing I want on my fingers. I drop the rosemary into the fire and watch it smolder for a few seconds before it bursts into flames. The smell is even stronger than that of the eucalyptus.
One last thing to add to my preparations!
I inhale deeply, then let it out slowly. Nestled in the folds of the blanket is the last layer of tools, or in this case, attachments. I carefully lift a small wooden box and open it to peer inside. Other than my lineage as a witch, the contents of the box are the only physical thing I have left connecting me with Lady Dragon: my cords.
At my Initiation into the Grand Coven, my measure was taken, and taken twice. A simple string measured various lengths and circumferences of my body. At the time, I was told that should I ever need to be buried and there be nothing of me left, they would know how big to build a coffin or at least have something of me to bury. Maybe that’s a holdover from the Burning Times or maybe just a not-so-subtle threat from the leader of the Grand Coven.
Lady Dragon had handed me one set and told me to keep it safe and then had given me a second set that I could leave with someone I trusted for safekeeping. Donna, one of the Elders, had chosen to be my High Priestess within the coven; therefore, as many new Initiates did, I had pressed the second set of cords into my High Priestess’ hands to keep safe for me. In hindsight—or if I had known then what I know now—handing over my cords and the power they represented might have been a mistake.
But this set of cords, Dragon placed in this small wooden box from a dollar store, and I have not touched them since they were marked with my own blood from my Initiation. The last person to touch them was Dragon, and that’s what I’m counting on.
I make myself comfortable on the folded blanket. Closing my eyes, I breathe deeply but quickly decide that I’m so tired, and it’s far too easy to fall asleep here in front of the fire. I need to stay awake and take care of business.
Dragon business.
I stare into the fire and smoke. The way the gray haze moves across the flame, obscuring it and then making it clear again, reminds me of Lady Zephyr and her fingertips over the scrying mirror, drawing back veils of smoke so that I could see… something. Once this memory bubbles to the top of my consciousness, I can catch not only glimpses of other memories but also the emotions, the smells, the distant noises, things happening in the periphery of my vision, sometimes even the taste in my mouth. It’s all there in one snapshot of a moment.
I take a deep breath. “Soul of Lady Dragon, I call you forth to commune.”
Suddenly, she’s in front of me. Lady Dragon steps out of the smoke. Not her physically, but a shadow of her. It’s surreal, like looking through a window at something outside—the fire—or the window holding a reflection of something behind me. It’s like that, this overlay, like a heads-up display a salesman demonstrated at the clinic as part of an augmented reality study for physicians. I can look through Dragon with my distance vision and then adjust my eyes to focus on her directly in front of me. I have no doubt that I could wave my hand through her form and touch nothing. I also have no doubt that this is the real Dragon or some form of her. She is likely asleep a thousand miles away and dreaming.
It’s not my intent to perform this ritual without her being aware of it. This is an act of timing, not cowardice. I’m positive there will be blowback with her as a result of what I’m doing this night.
I scramble to my feet. Too fast. Hot blood trails down my thigh and over my bare foot. Dragon looks down at my feet and smirks.
Sooner or later, the past catches up with us all. I hear her voice in my head.
Standing almost nose to nose with her, I yearn to take a step backward, to put some space between us, but I will not give up the power of the stone where I stand. I kick the blanket out of my way and settle both bare soles onto the hard rock.
I squeeze my eyes shut again, but I can still see Dragon sneering in the dark space between my eyelids and brain. There’s no shutting her out, and I’m the one who called her. Or her higher self, that is. Higher self, soul, essence. Dragon herself may or may not be aware of my summoning.
I suck in a focused breath as smoothly and surely as a mother in labor, then exhale on the count of one, two, three, four. Boxed breathing. Inhale to a count of four, hold to a count of four, release to a count of four, wait to a count of four. Rinse, repeat. My heart rate variability adjusts to the pattern of oxygen in my lungs.
Slowly, I open my eyes and fling the box of cords into the flames, right through the reflection of Lady Dragon. No longer do I possess anything that belonged to her or that she has physically touched and stained with her life force. The air around me seems abruptly lighter.
Her shadow still looms in front of me, her nose inches from mine. She sniffs, and though I can’t see her features in her silhouette, I know she’s mocking me.
It’s not that easy, I hear in my head. I trained the people who trained you. You can’t get rid of me without getting rid of your own powers. You cannot use my own magick against me.
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