Our makings
begin with our intentions. To try out new skills, different colours,
materials, patterns, and this is all great. A gathering of practices and
techniques. However, we can add a layer to our workings by consciously choosing
to enhance the sacred in them. With prayers, blessings, timings of making to
lunar cycles, choices of materials for their totemic symbolism, the use of
natural objects and materials. Correspondances one can go into as deeply, or into
tangents with, as drawn to. Wise folk and healers down the ages have indeed done so.....
For me
blessings n good vibes is my motto in this. Sometimes it’s partially what I do
alongside crafting that centers the energy whilst doing it, eg) when braiding threads, I invoke the elements of water,
fire, earth, air and spirit, as well as prayers for calling in whatever feels
apt. Especially if I know the receiver and their needs or focus.
Many folks choose a craft for it’s meditation and calming aspect. Repeated stitches, rhythmic almost trance like processes. Like a string o mala beads held, stitching can be an
opportunity to focus the mind, and perhaps voice. Words spoken aloud whilst sewing can carry
their messages loud and clear to great spirit, or your personal understanding
of the forces that flow through all.
An act as simple
as lighting a candle as you prepare your work / play space, can shift the
energy. The placement of your tools on a special table or area. Smudging,
lighting incense or burning essential oils. Drinking a type of herbal tea
you’ve selected for it’s properties, medicinal or magical. These practices
alone open a vast portal, it’s up to you how far you travel with it….
The traditional tale of
‘The Twelve Wild Swans’ is a beautiful example of intentional making. In this
story Rose, a girl child, wished for by her Mother, at the expense of her 12 brothers being
turned into Swans. She discovers she must weave them each a shirt of Nettles, in
silence, to break this curse. Neither allowing speaking, laughing or crying, despite what
may, and of course does, happen. Serious focus required folks, but even she has
unfinished objects (or UFO’s) and one brothers arm thus remains a wing…
I have
another tale of intentional making, and indeed it’s potency at times. It’s not
pretty, but alas true. When we were teenagers, my brother Dylan, had an off road
motorbike he rode. One day he asked me to decorate it, requesting my usual
motifs of the time. I obliged, flaming skulls up the sides, demon on the front,
and the words ‘Death bike’ emblazoned upon its front. No more than 2 days later
my brother was in a serious accident on said bike, and my Dad and I had to pick it up
from the scene, as he was hospitalised. We was in a state of shock. That was my
aha moment on the power of symbols. I changed the ones I used.
I do realize in
some cultural traditions seemingly fearsome figures are used to protect a space
or person, and I’m all for Baba Yaga type wisdom, but best we call in such beings
with awareness and consciousness, in my humble opinion. If you’re working with
your personal shadow stuff, naming it or depicting it can support processing, but
again it's about intention, and how we give our attention ripples out. Crafting can be an
opportunity for an alchemy o transformation for some of these challenges. If I’d ALSO
included symbology of rebirth, and the cyclical nature of things on that bike,
who knows how different it's vibe?
Let’s
compare the motorbike tale, to another....
At a time when I was hearing things other folks were not, and it was generally pretty nasty and abusive. A friend of mine, Elsie, sewed for me a
small Unicorn. Made from soft flannel with a rainbow tail, she is soothing to
hold in ones hand. I popped her on my bedside table, and shortly thereafter had a potent
dream where I was gifted a mantra of protection, much needed at the time. The
mantra went “In the name of my Spirit kin and healed ancestors, I call upon a
cloak of invisibility to wrap itself around me, so that I may be unseen EXCEPT
by those who hold my highest good at heart.” (just incase you feel the need to give said mantra a go 😉) When I awoke and recited the mantra, for the first time in months,
you could have heard a pin drop. I walked around the block in a sheer state of
amazement, listening to the everyday sounds of ordinary reality. Birdsong,
conversations, passing traffic. It didn’t last forever, but did give me a taste
which ignited my thirst to experience the type of silence many take for
granted.
A 'plant echo' example, is my 'Blissoire'. Your what? The tradition of a witch having a book of her tangents and workings is an ancient one, often called a 'Book of Shadows' or 'Grimoire'. When I was speaking to my dear medicine sister Vicki of this, that I was going to begin crafting one from scratch. She spoke up, suggesting 'Blissoire' was mayhap a fine reframe for rather gloomy wordage, and I agreed! So I gathered the finest watercolour paper I could afford at the time, stitched and bound the book. Covering it in ecodyed linen, which to my heart represents my connection to nature so present in my earth witchery. The leaves came from the farm where my Mum spends most of her time, with her partners in crime. Thus it also evokes my matrilineal line. Binding the book is a band of wool plant echo to which is stitched a Seal bone I was gifted as part of this clasp. Its medicine is that of the tale 'Sealskin Soulskin'. The Selkie, or Seal woman who having had it stolen, reconnects with her skin and can thus return to her Source of the ocean. Seals being innately magical travellers betwixt land and sea realms. These links and associations are crucial to my intentional craftings, and I hold them dear...
I believe in creativity and it's potency as a magical tool. If you do aswell, mayhaps you'd like to experiment with these ways, or already are! Injoy!
