image lover-and-the-wild
The thorns of memory rested upon my bruised wrist, flexing at their newfound freedom. The chains had clattered to the ground and the echo was a rallying cry. I took the hawthorn and pressed its sharp edges into my skin, so that it become a oneness with my heart. I sank my toes into new ground, where my feet had steadied after running for far too long. The bruises remain, though not to the naked eye, soul bruises that sometimes ache with the deep inhale of breath. The wild welcomed me on returning, wondering what took so long. I had been caged in misery and showed up on the doorstep of the woods with cracked feet and a heavy heart. The trees embraced me. They held my tears and I swayed in time with their whispers. I was remade. And as I claw back every inch of myself, every victory reverberates along the webs laced through the spiritual ecosystem. The crows amongst the branches laugh back at the irony now, knowing, as they always did, that triumph was in my bones. The Witch returns and her power is steeped in old world crow speak.
The Hawthorn stand in their collective, heavy laden with red fruit and their sharp spears, watchful guardians of the hedgerow, key masters to the liminal. They honour every sacrifice of blood, each finger pressed with holy reverence to pierce the skin to pierce the veil; a holy exchange, an ancient sacrament. Webs shiver between the boughs, secrets whispering between the threads, the life memory of magick through the ages. Hawthorn knows the blood mysteries, of returning bloodied and bruised, and laying back into fertile ground to be undone. It is in the unmaking that we find ourselves renewed, as we shed the threads that bound around us, twisted and misused, that fall and tatter and rip. The energy wriggles free and returns to the arms of the Great Earth Goddess, and are embraced back into the ecosystem; nothing is ever wasted, no lesson unworthy. I sigh and breathe out the chains that I carried, the echoes of a saddened heart, and dig my fingertips into the earth. I sink into the space between labyrinths, fold in on myself, and I am remade.