Petition your female ancestors, and attract the attention of a chthonic deity.
Of course it all makes sense now.
I never fancied myself a necromancer, nor a -mancer of anything really. But the figurative piano fell out of the sky and landed on my head this morning, walking to work. I was working with the dead* when I was petitioning my various mothers (mom, grandmothers, et al) for assistance awhile back. It never felt like that, mind you. While it is hard losing female relatives with which one has a good relationship, they’re never completely gone, at least that has been my experience. There is that sense of a void, of this gaping hole inside which feels like a deep and cold place within the earth, which waxes and wanes depending on external conditions and whether one is susceptible to depressive episodes. And there is that sense of loneliness. But then one starts living life again.
Mom appeared in my dreams often enough, from when I was 16 to when I was about 30, that I came to feel like she had not actually left me. It was just that I had to sleep to get to see her. What is telling is that in my dreams time was progressing like it did externally in real life. I was growing up, living on my own, working various jobs, and the dreams followed all of those events accordingly. Mom was back at the apartment where we lived, making tea for us, sitting and talking to me, meeting my new friends, giving me advice. She may have visited me at my apartment where I lived for 10 yrs, but it is really hard to remember in detail if that was the case or not. In a nutshell, she was still around, and the void was not so big inside as a result of that.
Still, I feel a mite foolish that I did not put two and two together all this time. Apparently I’ve had such a lack of separation from these women, mentally and emotionally, that it didn’t occur to me I was petitioning spirits of the departed. Sometimes I am just too much of a literalist. Tell me that I’ll keep someone in my heart, and I tend to do that.
Hekate’s part in all this? She guides the dead to and through the Underworld.
*And no, this was not necromancy in the Homeric sense of the concept. No animal’s blood, no fire pit, no burnt offerings. Seven day candles worked quite well with offerings of things the Ladies were fond of when I knew them, goblets of sherry or wine, and fervent prayer. This is something one can reverse-engineer their way towards, or around, or front and back. Just be careful when working with ancestors to keep in mind that you’re calling back their idiosyncrasies, mean streaks, biases, and the like – not just the idealized memories you have of them, so expect some cathartic experiences as a by-product. Or just be really careful about which ancestors you call upon.
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