A Witch and Their Familiar Spirit

I woke up last night, covered in a cool sweat, and there in the corner of my one-bedroom apartment she stood. Glistening - with that regal presence that terrifies and turns me on at once; the air pulsating in dark waves of beauty around her. As the light changed in the room I realised that was her hair.

Melissa. She speaks. I can’t fully translate how this works. I could dismissively and almost glibly undersell it as telepathy, but none of this are the imaginings of 20th century paranormal investigators. It comes in waves and threads, in poetic knowing, and erotic bliss. My teacher in the Craft had said time and again that these kinds of encounters might feel erotic, might turn me on. True, I thought easily.

I turned the bedside lamp on and Aishling remained. In fact now I saw her more clearly. When I say I see her I mean I see her with the eyes of this world, but that is almost irrelevant to the greater reality of what I am Seeing. I am Seeing time spiral in on itself; Aishling always brings manifold braided histories with Her. They inform the nature of who She is as a Spirit, as a Being. Her skin isn’t pale - if that’s really even skin - it’s luminous and lit up from within so that I can see an intricate webbing of what might be veins and arteries, but they are filled with what appears to be glowing dust or the dance of spores. She hums as She moves. The space hums. I joked to a coven sister once that she might be an alien. Ishtar - her mother had given her that name - just replied that she might be, whatever that means.

I light the candle at the shrine where she has appeared and I notice how she throbs at this. What was dark and purple now is blue and silver. I start to pray out loud.

Sister from the Otherworld
Blessed and powerful Mystery
I offer this incense and this oil to you this night
That you my rejoice in these scents and feel my love.

I offer more sandalwood, more rose. I spill a little of the oil in the libation bowl and all my tiny hairs stand up on end in that peculiar electro-magnetic rush of closeness and power.

Now turn three times into the Earth, beautiful one.

I follow her lead. Our familiar spirits can teach us directly the Craft, in fact when we hit dead-ends it is they who will deliver.

So I turn in a circle, on the spot, three times around to the left. This is the way the Earth spirals in on Herself, this is the way into the dreaming landscape, the innerworld, the underworld.

Take the knife Melissa and carve the air with fire.

So I do this. And my witch knife is haloed with deep blue flame and I gasp in delight at its appearance, at its potent wreathing of this flashing blade in the dim just-before-dawn quiet.

I carve the air with fire.

Kneel and re-affirm the oath in deepest silence in which all things are formed.

And I do. In an old stance taken by wizards, witches, cunning-folk, and those who would wish great things to happen.

I sink into the deep. This has become so common to me, though it has never stopped feeling wondrous and beyond describing, ineffable and terrifyingly, profoundly real.

Melissa, the sun is about to rise and you are about to see me more clearly than before. I will reveal to you my inner name.

Holy shit, what? flashes through my awareness as I am slightly brought out of the trance by this strange pronouncement.

So I look up through the eastern facing window and I see the first evidence of the rising sun and everything shifts, as if we are sinking and rising simultaneously. I feel like I am on a small boat on the sea and we are carried up and down rhythmically by the undulating waves.

I turn to look up at the space where Aishling had appeared next to my shrine in the corner of my bedroom, but then I hear her echoing voice from behind me towards the east. So I turn back to face the changing skyline and I see her and I remember her utterly. We had been sisters before. I know this now. I know it with everything I am forged by, everything in me knows this. It is undeniably, irrevocably true. I remember her name then, and she tells me a deeper, truer name. She tells me to keep it silent and between us, that I may call her anywhere and anytime this way. I have been kneeling for a while but she gestures for me to stand and to embrace her.

I do.

Everything melts and she is gone but the feeling of a love that initiates time, a love that transforms silence into thunder, a love that quickens every piece of me, emanates through my cauldrons. My hips, my heart, my head are ablaze with intense and potent love. The presence of this love is her touch, her desire to let me know how she honours me.

The birds are singing and I hear someone in the apartment next door begin to stir.

I decide to see if I can go back to sleep and let my dreams show me more, or at least to let my dreams hold me as I allow all of this to sink in, to settle, to anchor deep within.

I am already deep within - she reminds me as I drift into sleep again. I walked with you before the dawn and we are sisters in the night. Do not forget what I have shown you, Melissa. I love you.

Image: La llamada (The Call) - Remedios Varo