Today was a wonderful day because it was the end of my luteal phase. I got my period and now it finally all makes sense again. I have the space to remember to be gentle once more.1 There’s time to be able to sit with how I feel, before I was just in survival mode. (Before as in a mix of before this menstruation period, before unemployment, before realising something wasn’t right etc). I’m slowly unravelling all the unconsciously learnt ‘should-s’ and realising I don’t have to do anything right now. I am getting to know myself. A re-orientation.
As part of this I am trying to get back into the practice of ritual and magic. I say back into as I think it’s something that as a child you’re more easily a part of. The metaphysical is so much more tangible when you haven’t become as obsessed with having to explain yourself.
The beauty of a free-flowing spirituality is that anything can become ritual. There’s the ritual of stretching, the ritual of cleaning your room, the ritual of a sweet treat to close up a task. On the way home from a night out recently I held some flowers in my hand the whole walk as a protective talisman.
One of my favourite rituals this year has been swimming. The ocean makes me feel cleansed and invigorated, especially when it’s cold. Swimming in flat seas I feel held — you can literally take the weight off, just float and stretch, breathe and cloud-gaze. If the seas are rougher then there’s outlet for wild emotion — the dance of over and under, meeting a wave just as it breaks to prove you’re in tune with the natural rhythms.
I got baptised at Long Bay Beach in my last year of high school. I was having what I call a ‘religious phase’. It was winter, I think I wore a wetsuit. Recently I have been trying to look on that ‘phase’ with more kindness than I have given myself in the past. There’s the want to distance oneself from the problematic parts of Christianity, but there were reasons why it appealed and some of the practices were valuable whether their ultimate ideology suited me or not. Phases are important in life and morality again proves itself nebulous.
Earlier this week I messaged a friend asking for advice on places to start researching cleansing and protection rituals. There are a lot of timelines existing at once inside my room and some of them need to hold less power. Earlier this week I also decided I would focus on the song Lily, a song which I hadn’t paid immense attention to before KB month began, but which I am very much jamming now.
The song is named after and features, (in song and music video), a friend and healer of Kate Bush’s Lily Cornford. It opens with Lily reciting a translation of the Hindu Gayatri Mantra:
“Oh thou, who givest sustenance to the universe
From whom all things proceed
To whom all things return
Unveil to us the face of the true spiritual sun
Hidden by a disc of golden light
That we may know the truth
And do our whole duty
As we journey to thy sacred feet”
One of the instruments used for the track are singing bowls, courtesy of Paddy Bush. Meditative and healing energy already writing itself into the bones of the song. In Kate Bush: Song By Song John Van der Kiste describes the beat as “almost hip-hop”. This description confirmed the way this song translates itself through my body — it’s something slightly more grounded and groovier than what I am typically used to from KB.
Lily references the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram.2 This ritual involves drawing pentagrams with spiritual fire and calling upon angels, who symbolise the four elements, in order to flank/protect oneself. In the music video — part of The Line, the Cross and the Curve movie — these four angels pivot around Kate Bush’s character and together they move over billowing blue fabric. A theatrical walking on water.3
I performed the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram today. It’s meant to be good for clearing spaces of negative energies. It has an exorcism kind of quality to it. I lit four candles in the East, South, West, and North. I faced the East. I moved to each corner of the room. I drew my pentagrams. I connected it all, tracing my walls. I called upon my angels, remembering (bringing forth) the four elements.
I did the ritual listening to Kate Bush and I danced through a lot of it.
I won’t really go into much detail on here re: my experiences, though I think some energy has definitely shifted because I’m typing the last part of this sitting in the other (scary) side of my bed. Today I have cleaned my room and eaten three proper meals.
It’s interesting that Lily swaps what seems to be the predominant positionings of Raphael and Gabriel around as if imagining the ritual facing West. Perhaps it has something to do with the need to face towards the water.
On a final note I recommend checking out the Before the Dawn version of this song. Lily is the opening number for Act I. Isn’t it lovely to open something with a protection spell.
I’m really hoping to start properly tracking and mapping my personal cycles from this point — I say this like I haven’t abandoned my journal for the last nine days or so —but as I said, “luteal phase” which means most of my mental space was occupied by a mix of melancholy and desperately clinging to sanity.
Info on this ritual I grabbed from the following sources: A video containing some (symbolic) background; some outlines/instructions for the ritual 1 and 2; and finally a wikihow page I found which is just hilarious to me — wikihow really providing a little something for everyone as per.
I am having the urge to listen to worship music for the first time in ages, see Oceans by Hillsong? I think. I would look it up but it’s very late and this isn’t my main focus right now but is worth a footnote because of its tie ins with certain themes and the fact that worship music as a concept is fascinating.