Welcome to A Forest Door

This blog is on indefinite hiatus.

I have left a selection of my old posts active, but turned the comments off. If you’d like to read more of my work, check out my many books shown on the sidebar, especially Dwelling on the Threshold and Between the Worlds, which are both collections of essays originating here. I also have a list on the sidebar of links to my other projects, and pretty much everything I do can be found all together at Bird Spirit Land.

I will continue to make monthly posts here with my cartomancy schedule (sessions are generally every Wednesday with some exceptions). More information on cartomancy services can be found here.

I will also make occasional posts related to new books and other projects as they occur. So please feel free to subscribe if you’d like to keep track of what I’m doing.

It’s been wonderful writing here for the past 8 years or so, but it’s time for me to withdraw a little further from the world of people and spend more time with the spirits at the edge of the wilds.

You can contact me at dver at birdspiritland dot com, although I may be slow to respond.

To Dionysos, on Lenaia

I have always been a mainad.

I have always sought ekstasis.

As a child I would spin and spin and then drop to the floor on my belly, riding the madly tilting earth until equilibrium returned, always disappointed when it did.

I have always sought intoxication.

As a child I would spend hours drawing elaborate geometrical mandalas, entranced by the patterns and high from the fumes of permanent markers and white-out.

I have always been possessed.

As a child I would succumb to fits of hysterical laughter that went on and on, I could not stop myself even when the teacher got angry with me, even when everyone stared. Something just took hold of me – a feeling I would recognize again later, when You arrived.

Bakkhios, You are the leader of the mad ones. And I have always been Yours, since before I knew any of Your names.

Hail the Loosener.

I’ve joined Numen Arts

While I have generally pulled back from online participation other than on my own blogs, I have recently made an exception to join a truly worthwhile project, Numen Arts. It is an organization for polytheist artists who view their art as intrinsically linked to their spiritual lives. As all of my art is made either as devotional offerings and representations for/of my gods, or in order to do specific magical work with my spirits, I feel very connected to the concept. You can visit my profile, with some images of my work and a few paragraphs describing the intersection of my artistic and religious practice. And I also recommend checking out the other polytheist artists featured, each with their own unique way of expressing the experience of the numinous through the medium of tangible art and artifacts.

Personae

Five years ago today we lost the Star Man, the master of personae. The man is dead but the masks live on.

How we drove the dark away

Cartomancy dates for January 2021

First off, I have revised the description on my Cartomancy page, and also adjusted my rates for the first time since beginning to offer this style of divination. Readings are now $25 per question. However, if you are struggling financially, I am willing to offer a reduced rate on a case-by-case basis, just contact me and explain your situation and what you are able to afford. I do want to keep this available to everyone while also being compensated for my time, energy, and experience. (This year actually marks the 30th anniversary of my introduction to divination, via the Aquarian Tarot!)

Also note that I now ask that you get your questions and payment to me by midnight on Tuesdays to be included in the sessions on Wednesdays.

Cartomancy dates for this month are:

January 6
January 20
January 27

Wild Bells

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

^{(poem by Tennyson)}

The spirits in your neighborhood

We here in Oregon, like much of the country and the world, are on a short leash nowadays. It is even more true for those of us, like me, who do not have cars. As public transit has been severely reduced and is still a danger zone for coming too close to other people, I am now in the position of only being able to visit those places I can walk to.

And so I am very glad that I have spent these past years here building up solid and meaningful relationships with the spirits of place in my local environment. In fact, as some of you may remember, I have often spoke of being called to explore the super-local, starting with my own backyard, and expanding only as far as I can walk in, say, 30 minutes. Fortunately, I am well located in this small city, and that radius includes an old cemetery, a wooded hillside park with many numinous spots, a protected meadow that is home to a stunning twisted willow tree, an oak grove, and most importantly, the ash wood and creek just down the street from me.

The latter area, though small (the wood is maybe 12 acres total, and the section of paths I use regularly is only about a mile long loop), has been the site of countless offerings, rituals, and explorations over the years… I have left elaborate glamourbombs in the trees, crawled into large cement pipes to meet chthonic gods, sacrificed poppets to the waters… I found the entire skeleton of a deer there once, and made a fetish from its skull to connect me back to the place; in fact I have made several art/ritual objects in response to the spirits there… I have led mumming processions down its paths… I have honored almost all of my gods there at one time or another, and met several distinct spirits within its boundaries…. it is a sacred place to me on so many levels.

So now, although I cannot go far, I am still able to visit places of intense power for me, places with layers of memory of past experiences overlaid upon them. Even if I am just out for a “normal” walk, just to get some exercise to replace my previous daily walk to work, I am doing so in a landscape rich with meaning, full of spirits who recognize me, who have been fed by me. I usually bring at least some small offering even on those walks, a coin for the creek or some hazelnuts for the wights in the wood. And I’ve been spending more focused time there, too, more than I did before all this happened – as well as time in many of the other aforementioned areas.

It’s very much brought home for me in a new way how crucial these local, even super-local spiritual relationships are. We can communicate globally, but when the shit hits the fan, we must focus our attention locally. I might have to distance myself physically from other people (not really that hard for an antisocial introvert like me), but I can touch the trees and the dirt and the water all I want. They are what will sustain me through this.

I’m also glad that I had come to a knowledge of my house’s spirit recently, something I had not been able to connect with most of my adult life as I went from apartment to apartment, though I tried. Finally a couple years ago it clicked for me, perhaps partly because I had stayed in one place long enough, and partly because I stopped looking for the brownie or nisse type figure that I was expecting and realized I was beginning to tune in to the spirit of the house itself, right down to the foundation and the earth it is set in. Considering how much time I must now spend inside these walls, I am grateful to have that relationship and sense of presence as well, and for its care and shelter of me.

These are the kinds of animistic experiences we must fall back on when the world beyond becomes unsafe or off limits. These are the spiritual relationships we must not only maintain but deepen during these times of confinement and uncertainty.

The thirty-first of August

In the liminal wood,
as the gloaming becomes true night,
I assemble a circular feast
atop dry grass and sticks,
its centerpiece a heap of cold, raw lamb.
Ribbons the color of lapis lazuli
– the color of the deepening sky –
are strung between the ash trees
in this grove within a grove.
A nest of glittering gifts is nestled
amidst lichen covered branches
at a height designed to catch a bird’s quick eye.
With the wind crackling through the leaves
and tugging gently at the feathers in my crown,
I raise the wooden mouthpiece to my lips
and call the crows,
call them to their feast.
The rough notes leave behind an eerie silence
in the wood. From far off, a premonition
of black wings and sharp beaks.

Disorientation for ASC

The Poet makes himself a seer by a long, gigantic and rational derangement of all the senses. (Rimbaud)

There are many paths to altered states of consciousness. Rhythm, movement, fasting, entheogens, breath control, sensory deprivation and the opposite, sensory overload. But one I have not seen discussed much, but which is pretty fundamental to my personal practice, is disorientation. And I don’t mean in the sense of spinning around until you are dizzy, although that can work too of course. I am talking about practices which serve to change your sense of everyday reality in slow and sometimes subtle ways. I find these types of activities, while not always a direct or immediate entry into deep trance on their own, serve to thin the veil between the worlds and prime the mind for unusual experiences. When combined with other ASC methods this can lead into more focused ritual work in any specific instance, but also over time they can serve to loosen the mind in a broad and long-lasting way, making it easier to slip into that headspace on an ongoing basis. (The reason this might not be widely discussed, I realize, is that even most spirit-workers might not actually desire to experience this sort of constant alteration, but it is part of my path, so it seems likely there would be others out there, too.)

Some examples. If anyone else does anything like this, I’d love to hear some more.

• sleeping in an unusual way – in a different room, at the foot of the bed, at odd hours, etc.
• conversely, doing things (especially spiritual activities) in the middle of the night, between sessions of sleep
• thinking in another language you aren’t fluent in (slows your mind down)
• wearing a mask while doing everyday activities around the house
• different lighting – colored lights, having only candlelight in a room usually lit with flourescents, blocking out all light in the middle of the day, etc.
• lying down looking up at the ceiling and visually exploring the house in your mind as if the ceiling were the floor
• watching a movie or observing people in reverse through a mirror
• staying silent through an otherwise typical day, or speaking only in a whisper
• when outside, taking a new route to a familiar location – especially through liminal spaces like alleys – until nearly lost (like this)
• going through an entire day and night without looking at any clocks, erasing your usual sense of time passing
• wearing a blindfold during normal (but safe) activities such as having a conversation with someone