Chapter 24
Donna’s Natal Saturn Conjunct Lauren’s Ninth House of Knowledge and Spirituality
Carefully, I build my fire, then situate my aching body on the blanket as I wait. I do feel better after a seven-hour nap, but what I need is seven hours of deep, regenerative sleep. At least I’m wide awake now and don’t run the risk of singeing myself.
Eventually, as I prepare sacred space for this ritual, my fire transforms into a few flames over glowing coals. With a smooth flick of my wrist, I toss a handful of ground-up cedar onto the coals and watch the flames lick at the pulp. Then I lob a handful of chopped juniper berries from my garden onto the coals. Lastly, I pitch in a double handful of elderberries. These are all for cleansing, purifying, and banishing. It’s a concoction to cut ties that were either never fully severed in past rituals or have grown back.
I pry the taped edges from the lid and open the souvenir box. I haven’t looked inside in almost five years. I don’t remember exactly what I put inside, not until I see it.
On top is a purple scarf decorated with silver-threaded crescent moons and full moons. I smile to myself, but sadly. It’s fairly common that real magickal power is passed from teacher to student without an exchange of funds. The knowledge isn’t paid for, though the books and printing costs of lessons may be subsidized. At least that’s how it was in the Dragon Hart Grand Coven and Elders’ Coven. Gifts were bestowed at special occasions, however—Initiations, Elevations, belly blessings, handfastings, croning ceremonies. When I was Initiated into the Grand Coven, I gifted a purple scarf identical to this one to my High Priestess, Donna, and small boxes of dragon’s blood incense, sandalwood, patchouli, and jasmine to the other priests and priestesses who were part of my Initiation ceremony. In turn, my High Priestess gave me a Tarot cloth for any divinations with my favorite deck of cards—exactly the same as the one I’d given her.
We’d laughed about it for days. Later, in hindsight, I wondered if the duplication in gifts truly was a coincidence or if someone looked into the future to see what gift I would choose and copied it to cement our bond. The Elders’ Coven was full of that kind of behavior. Manipulation, but more covert than Dragon’s brand of control, was as common with my new coven as with my old one. When I caught them red-handed several times and called them out on it, they simply called me paranoid or in deeper need of their control than they’d thought.
Someday I’ll join another coven or lead one, but this witch has been burned by her own kind and I’m willing to wait for a healthier situation. That’s one of the reasons I haven’t rushed to form a coven with Lisa.
I take a deep breath and ball the scarf in my fist. I hold it for a moment. Donna has often said that twins of anything could create a link between us, and the Tarot cloths were only one example.
I fling it into the red coals. It blazes for only a second or two, and that link is broken. Whether Donna still has her gift or not, the two are no longer connected.
Just as when I was initiated into Dragon’s coven, two sets of cords were created—knotted at specific intervals to represent things like the circumference of the head, the circumference of the waist, the length of the body. Then the Initiate’s finger was pricked and, as they swore an oath, their blood was used to dot both sets of cords. One set went home with the new Initiate, but the other was given to someone who could keep it safe. I bowed to pressure and asked Donna to hold onto mine.
She kept my cords of measure for the first few years and then, as a divorce present, she mailed them to me. It made sense at the time because I’d temporarily misplaced the cords that Dragon had given me. I’d hidden them where Quent wouldn’t find them and managed to hide them from myself. I found them later in a wild sprint of decluttering. In a few minutes, both sets of cords have been burned in a releasing ritual within a day’s passing.
I reach into the box and pull out a handful of handwritten letters, each in a pastel envelope. Immediately, I recognize Donna’s handwriting—its fine script and curlicues. Donna was always old school about her magick. She believed that things done by hand had greater power, and if she wanted to influence a situation, she put it in writing. She literally wrote her magick into every heart she put on a lower case i and every loop on a capital letter.
She had been a wonderful teacher and a supportive friend up until the time my divorce was final, and then, like so many other long-term friends of mine, she shifted into the role of controller. They all fought so hard for me to wrest control of my own life away from Quent and were so proud of me for coming into my own, but once I had control and confidence in myself, they weren’t so happy that I could make choices without their help.
Jesse had been one of those choices.
Not only was Jan constantly telling me that he would one day bring me heartache, but Donna and the Elders dug in and tried to influence my decisions even on the most mundane things in my life. During my magickal training, Donna and the Elders were open-minded about experimenting with the supernatural and how deep our powers went. I also had a vision of a network of healing centers across the States. It was a big part of the reason that Donna and almost all the Elders abandoned the Grand Coven to start their own Elders’ Coven, even though Dragon kicked some of them out of the Grand Coven and took away their status as Elders when she had an inkling they planned to leave.
The problem was, as soon as I was Elevated to the status of Third-Degree High Priestess and started making suggestions about experiments we could try, all I heard from the Elders’ Coven was “You shouldn’t jump the gun.” I should “slow down,” they said. Donna especially was quick to tell me that their old ways of using magick were tried and true and that I shouldn’t rush to explore any further. After a few months, they didn’t even talk about slowing down, but put a stop to my ideas entirely. I suggested a network for health insurance for witches in our healing center network and the previous head nods turned to cold shoulders. I was part of their group, I was part of their coven, and therefore, I should abide by their rules, they said. It felt like a bait and switch, and that didn’t sit well with me.
Isn’t that the way it so often is? Just human nature. To see something different from how you are and go after it, only to turn it into something ordinary or to try to control it. Absorb it. Overpower it. Turn the exquisite into an extension of self.
It’s true of so many relationships, not just romantic but also spiritual ones. Nature truly does abhor a vacuum. As soon as Quent was no longer in a position of control over me—even a position I had allowed him to be in but couldn’t acknowledge it for a couple of decades—then everyone who had hated seeing me being manipulated or controlled started jockeying for the vacancy he had left behind. Even though I tried immediately to fill that hole by making free, independent decisions that brought my heart joy, my foul-weather friends who had been with me through the worst of Quent didn’t know how to simply let me be me and learn to be happy on my own. My past poor relationships had convinced them that they knew what I needed better than I did.
I thumb the lid off the tiny box that holds my second set of cords. I don’t even touch them even though I can feel the energy pulsating off the string. Instead, I hurl the cords, box and all, into the fire pit. Poof! In seconds, they are no more than ash.
I open each pastel envelope and extract Donna’s handwritten letters.
Hmm, strange.
None of these were written during my three years of training. I check the postmarks on all of them. All after my Elevation to Third-Degree High Priestess. Most of them after my divorce from Quent was final. All of them before I married Jesse and cut off all contact with the Elders’ Coven.
I skim the contents of each envelope, reliving phone conversations with Donna that she then magickally captured in spells disguised as heartfelt letters. I haven’t looked at this correspondence in years, and I’m surprised now to view it through the lens of time. The words feel like jealousy over my being free and happy at last, or maybe jealousy of my budding romance with Jesse. The conversations come flooding back.
You don’t need to be dating anyone. You just need to be by yourself for a while. Or with us.
You don’t need to be dating Jesse. You should be dating around and meeting lots of new people. The more the merrier. Don’t say no to anyone who asks.
You said you were going to take some money out of savings to add on a room so Jesse will have his own home office when he moves in with you. I don’t care how good of a deal you can get with closing in your back porch to turn it into a study. That’s not a good way to spend your money.
You don’t need to be starting the healing center yet. Especially not with Jesse. Wait a few years.
You should move here to be closer to the Elders’ Coven so we can all meet in person with you instead of a few times a year. Kids are resilient—they’ll make new friends. If you still want a boyfriend, there are plenty of men here.
Will you please stop exploring new ways to use your magick? You’re here to learn from us, not to teach us something new.
Other snippets of Donna’s letters were crueler, taunting.
We all live close enough to spend the weekends together, and you’re down in Florida mooning over your dishy doctor. When the Elders’ Coven meets without you, you’re all we talk about. How silly and youthful you are to want to try all these new things.
You act like you never had fun as a teen. You’re reliving your high school days with your new boyfriend. You don’t really love him. It’s your hormones talking. You’re hitting menopause now, and your body is desperate to reproduce one last time.
I ask you how you’re doing, and all you can ever answer is to talk about your new life and being in love. You sound like a stupid teenager.
Toward the end of our relationship as High Priestess and student and then as equals, I stopped talking about Jesse and freedom and my new life unless Donna specifically asked. For at least six months, I made sure not to talk about myself more than five minutes in any one-hour conversation. That felt awful. I had gone from being able to tell my teacher and friend almost anything and everything to carefully hiding my everyday happiness to avoid criticism. That’s when I realized that I hadn’t gotten rid of all the controllers in my life and started to see that I’d have to be vigilant of imbalances in any relationship.
The last straw came during a meditation in which I discovered I had an entirely new power I had never heard of before in the Grand Coven or the Elders’ Coven. I was sitting in front of my fire pit on a cool night after a rain, my mind blank, my spirit roaming freely around the backyard. I was floating, euphoric, excited about my upcoming nuptials with Jesse.
In those days, I wore my “priestess cords” in my rituals—three cords tied at particular lengths and braided together to represent my First Degree, Second Degree, and finally my Third Degree. Somehow, they were still connected energetically to the Grand Coven and to the Elders. They made me feel safe, like I was part of not only the covens’ teachings but connected to the Old Gods as well. If I was having trouble calming my thoughts, I wore them in my meditations, and I did so that night.
That’s when I heard voices. Donna. Beverly. Barbara. Mariah. DeeDee. Jenna. A conversation among the Elders. They were talking about how to ensure that Jesse and I broke up so I’d move to Maryland, which was the hub of their coven. At first, I thought I had fallen asleep and was dreaming, but one of the Elders had said something to Donna, an off-color but obscure joke about the nature of Scorpios. The next time I spoke with Donna on the phone, I retold the joke and she beat me to the punch line.
“That’s the same joke Beverly told us at our coven meeting Saturday night!”
It was the last time we talked.
I’m not sure which was harder: the rift between Jan and me or the rift between Donna and me. Unfortunately, they both happened about the same time and for similar reasons. I knew they weren’t working together to keep me from Jesse. Their rationales were entirely different. Still, both Jan and Donna hurt me deeply by stepping in and trying to steer my life and my future. Not even my own mom, who to this day adores Jesse, tried to take over my life like that. Whereas Jan was crushed over our rift, Donna and the Elders were angry.
The last conversation we had wasn’t so different from the last messages I received from Dragon: in the old days, witches who betrayed their covens suffered the wrath of those whom they had betrayed. They suffered life alone, and sometimes, they suffered death alone.
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