I have the absolute best hairdresser – my fellow witch and coven sister Christie*. First of all, she makes house calls, which is awesome (even though I have to wash my own hair). Second, her process is as follows:
- Create ritual space
- Do a little reiki
- Set the intention and ask that everything that holds me back or limits me be released
- Give a really great haircut
- More reiki
- Anoint with Sphere + Sundry materia
- Pull cards from a witchy oracle deck
* If you are in the PDX area and want a witchy magical haircut, email me and I’ll connect you.
When I got back from my trip home for my mother’s burial my hair was overgrown, but moreover I desperately needed some releasing magic.
Now, when I read for other people, I end the shuffling process by feeling through the deck with my eyes closed for the hot spot. The hot spot is where I need to cut to get a true reading. This time she asked me to cut the cards and when I reached down to take the top off the deck the spot was deathly cold. But I knew it was the right spot.
Sure enough she pulled: Failure. Fear. Deceit.
Great.
And then she pulled two more cards: Guide (a compass) and Time (an hourglass).
I don’t think that most trips home to mourn a family death are marked by these particular emotions, but mine certainly was. Sure, I was being guided in the right direction to heal (my compass was accurate), but it was going to take time. Another friend told me the same thing: Take your time.
Gordon calls this being read to filth. And let me tell you I was absolutely read to filth.
Over the past two nights, before and after the eclipse, I had three dreams about the things that blind me, including haste, fear, and sadness. And since I can be thick, the universe delivered these dreams with the subtlety of being hit with a 2×4 (they were intensely emotional with lots of lost and broken eyeglasses). I guess if you can’t see clearly, you can’t read your compass, which means you might end up going in the wrong direction. So my eclipse dreams also read me to filth.
Early January 2020, Pluto came within three degrees of my North Node and has been grinding back and forth over top of it ever since. It was grinding away during the Saturn return of my first initiatory experience (also involving my North Node – why is it always the NN?). It was grinding away when we suddenly decided to sell our house and move just before lockdown. It was grinding away when I got diagnosed with cancer. It’s made three exact conjunctions so far, one a few days before I ended cancer treatment, one the week after the last time my extended family was all together, and the final one the day after the new moon in Capricorn at the very start of 2022. It’s still grinding away even now and will be within three degrees until March of 2023 when it finally – finally! – moves into Aquarius.
If you look at the way Pluto moves through the signs month by month, you’ll see why it’s associated so strongly with death/rebirth and time. It moves slowly back and forth like a ponderously swinging pendulum, revisiting the same ground over and over as it makes its slow progress. It dismembers and remembers, over and over. And it takes its time doing it (you can’t rush the planets). Pluto has fucking read me to fucking filth.
Now before you worry, I’m actually doing really well. I’ve been discovering the rites and rituals I need to to mourn. I’ve been taking care of myself. I’ve been doing good magic in a relaxed way. I’m having an amazing short vacation that I’ve been looking forward to for a couple of years. I’m trying to see the right direction and take the time I need to get where I need to go.
…Guide. Time.
