TW: pain, death.
As someone who wasn’t raised in Hogwarts or magickal lands where you’re taught how to use your gifts from birth, I’ve relied heavily on trial and error in my development as a spiritual practitioner. Every once in a while, though, I have the honor of working with powerful entities to learn things quicker than I might typically as a mere human.
In these instances, these divine beings are kind enough to partner with me to nearly instantly develop a new skill or tap into an ability that I wasn’t previously savvy with.
One of these most recent experiences took place in the astral realm with the Morrigan, the Celtic goddess of death, war, and shape-shifting.
Surrounded by darkness, in what I imagine the inside of a black hole might look like, I found myself standing facing an altar, the Morrigan standing behind my right shoulder. I looked down at my hands, everything obscured from my field of vision except for my arms which looked identical to my human arms. My left arm fully tattooed and my right arm a blank canvas.
In my hands, I held two crows. They were lifeless and stiff. On my left arm, I glanced briefly at a tattoo I have of a crow skull on my forearm. A piece I had integrated into my goddess sleeve as a reminder of my near-death experience with the Morrigan in 2018, five and a half years prior.
I felt tingling in my arm and suddenly saw the Morrigan standing in front of me on the other side of the altar. Her hand stretched toward me and grabbed my wrist. I screamed as I felt a searing pain in my arm. Looking back down at my crow skull tattoo, I realized it was glowing a bright red-orange as though it were being branded into my skin. I continued yelling, unable to endure the pain much longer, as the inked impression was seemingly being activated by the great goddess.
Despite my continued cries of pain, I shifted my gaze back to the palms of my hands and noticed energy buzzing from them and the two lifeless crows seemingly awakening from what should’ve been their eternal slumber.
Mesmerized, I realized that people’s fear of death is merely a fear of the reality of their lives. They fear their human existence before they’ve accomplished, experienced, or embraced a particular aspect of their life—and yet, that very fear, is what prevents them from being present in the moments they want to hold onto forever.
I also realized that death energy is carried in the palms of the hands. But don’t misunderstand what I mean when I speak of death…for death is simply the process of change, transformation, and transmutation as something is changed from one energetic state to another. This also means that you cannot have death without equally having life and rebirth.
The power is the same. Linked together in a cycle of ever-evolving states of energy. The birth of something new occurs at the same point as the end or death of what is left behind.
Truly, everything you touch is forever changed. The question you need to ask yourself, though, is if what you’ve touched is changed for the better.
From another person’s life to an animal in your care to a precious skill or gift you possess—everything you touch is forever changed. And hopefully, dear reader, all the little choices and moments were backed by the intention of changing the world around you for the better.
And if not…It’s not too late to take the death energy you carry in the palms of your hands a little more seriously from this moment on. It just might carry the hope someone needs to fight another day. The gentle touch gives an animal a more peaceful life. Or even a vibrance to bring light to a dark world.