Roots, tiny boxes and my dusty memory shelf

 

The love for the metaphysical began as early as 4 years old. Surrounding me was my favorite aunt, my Tía Susana. She was performing a simple egg cleansing over each if my joints reciting prayer, as if she were in a trance. The south Texas air rushed through the open windows next to my parents bed. I was not completely sure what all was going on. But the next day I found an egg yolk in water and toothpicks. An extra small red velvet curio bag was next to it. I would never really think about this again until I was 11. The fascination, love and learning for the esoteric arts and occult studies officially began in 1996 after walking into the towns sole bookstore in the mall, B. Dalton. I started reading playing cards to myself during spells of boredom by the age of 12. I then discovered and studied Buddhism in College at a Worlds Religions course taught by my sophomore Anthropologist Buddhist teacher. I started diving meditation with a local Buddhist physicists at coffee houses in between. I was 20 then. As a lover of Lynchian film, I heard about his Transcendental Meditation practice and did my best to stay aligned. But then, Life approached me, the illusion of the rat race engulfed me until 2013, then again in 2020. I transitioned through various major life events at this point. I believe the pandemic, the great reset or the great pause, was the true calling for many. I happened to be one of them. When I was finally ready to uncover my eyes, breathe through my fear of meeting my cycles of death, undergoing initiation for my transformation, I was blessed (and scaree out of my mind) over the dreams and or shamanic journeys in meeting La Santa Muerte, I let go by opening myself to her calling after the last powerful dream in which she handed me gold upon waking. Something in me "woke" up after this dream. The feeling upon waking of a groggy deep slumber. For me, magickal practice or intent, the earliest memory I remember as a girl are my multilayered experiences growing up on the Texas-Mexico southwest borderlands. The borderlands experience is an incredibly different lived narrative then the popular media proposes mexican americans and descendants experience(d). Earlier memories involve my paternal extended family and the oral memory of ancestors with different metaphysical abilities. From grandparents writing down what the other is saying as they are speaking in tongues past midnight, to provoking the rain, to idol veneration, to the words in prayers that were taught to "cure" spiritual attacks through the use of an egg spiritual cleansing. The memories are an endless stream of collective trinkets and knick-knacks. This is the stuff you find on a dusty memory shelf at your favorite segunda, "goodwill" or church thrift store. But, I love it dearly, passionately. These are the depths I swim in. 

Although american folk magick has multiple roots, again for me, it was through various curadas, platicas, secesiones with other healers along the way. If you listen in stillness, carefully, we recognize a pattern in the human condition through these motions. So, in return to my journey here, the promise to Santisima Muerte was that I gifted her a nearly 14 year professional career built with blood, sweat, tears and passion in order to transform into our full selves and offer her devotional ritual art through her adoration and practices. I took her hand, with her beautiful face she nodded to me (smiling) and I jumped. I smiled as well.

Death as an archetype impacts all life. The precious meaning through the reminder of her hourglass symbolism. Saturn, keeper of time. As the grains of sand spill, we are reminded of our finite existence, of time as a resource in life. This entire consciousness is continuous, expansive, grey matter. It may have been also the various deaths that have played out both metaphorically as well as in real life in these last couple of years, which has nearly obliterated many, myself included. Whatever it was, for whatever reason the great rising of the Blessed Mother in her Crone energy has chosen us in this energy, I am only grateful as I feel my full, rounded, whole 'Self'. I am grateful for this moment, this breath at this second, this heart beat, healthy. This water I drink. I am so grateful to you water. To my fur baby-girls who gently bark in their dreams, to the sounds of my Blue Jay and Cardinal friends. The air that passes by, I know it is you. The sun ray as it falls on my skin, I FEEL you. The current between the electricity of this laptop and the space around my physical matter, it is you. And I am ever, so thankful, so grateful for You.

 

En el nombre de Dios Omnipotente Todopoderodo, pido permiso para incovar a La Santisima Muerte. In Jesus' (Horus') name we pray, Amen , Amen, Amen. **

 

**Because I was raised Catholic and this instilled my adoration of ritual, discipline and the dramatic (I am a Leo Sun, go figure.)