21 December 2000 ~ Solstice, and efficiency...

It's been a long time since I got anything done. Either I'm too busy worrying about something, or too busy being lazy to bother being ambitious.

So today, I went to the post office, which is a wonderful place to be efficient. I mailed a package, bought some stamps, mailed half my Christmas cards -- the rest are waiting for one insert or another -- and bought some of those tape-mailer thingies so that I can make everybody I know a mix-tape and send it to them.

Then I bought myself a drink at a coffeeshop I don't work in, pasted stamps on stuff, and threw out about fifteen pounds of crap from the pockets of my jacket. (In ten-degree weather, it is preferable to have a heavy jacket, but dude, that's NOT what I meant...)

Feeling accomplished, I skipped off to work. On the way, I realized I hadn't bought my brothers anything for Christmas. A few years ago, this wouldn't have made any difference, but I swear, my sweet little brothers save ALL of their money, maybe all year, to buy their sister cool stuff for Christmas and birthdays and stuff. Last year, Joseph bought me crystal champagne glasses, and John got me candlesticks and a set of wine goblets. (I think they think I'm a lush. I'm not going to tell them otherwise -- I like stemware, even if I'm only drinking Snapple out of it...)

Anyway, I stopped into a little shop on Main Street on my way to work (thus making myself late for work; so much for efficiency), called E&R Gifts. Pretty inoffensive name. Inside, however, this is no Hallmark Gift Shop. Everywhere you look are candles, candleholders, statues of the Goddess, greeting cards with fairies on them, books about rituals, sweet little stones, jewelry with moons on it, etc...

Well, okay, fine. My brother Joseph really kind of likes that sort of thing. I don't know if he puts any of his interests into practice, but I do know that he draws pentacles and runes all over his notebooks and stuff. And John once drew me a picture of a pentacle in five different colors of magic marker, and wrote a ten-year-old's version of a protection spell on it, underneath, "To Carolyn, the best sister in the world." (AW!)

So, I started rummaging through the stuff at E&R. Most of it just didn't seem quite right. All of the little fairy stuff seemed too effeminate for my brothers, and also kind of cheesy. What do you get for an almost-15-year-old and an 18-year-old? At fifteen, all I wanted was a boyfriend, and at eighteen, all I wanted was to get RID of my boyfriend, and socks, little fairies on strings, and enormous statues of the Goddess would have done nothing for me. Besides, they're GUYS. Not that I make a lot of gender distinctions, and feel perfectly comfortable choosing jewelry and clothing and knick-knacks for my male friends, but when you're in high school, and when you're a guy, you get beat up for having fairies on strings. Trust me.

I finally selected two candleholders and matching votives. One for each. Each candleholder is blue, and one has a pentacle painted on; the other has a metallic pentacle glued on. They're actually pretty cool.

But I didn't really want to go to work, and I didn't really want to go back out in the cold, so I browsed a few minutes longer.

Until stuff really started to bother me.

What, Helena, PRAY TELL US, is so bothersome about Goddesses and fairies and those creepy little elephant dudes with all the arms?

I'm not sure...

For quite some time, I devoted much time and energy to the study of Wicca and other "new-age" or pagan ideas and practices. I didn't use it the way I should have, I suspect. I do not regret learning what I learned, but I regret having many of the beliefs I did.

My interest in nature-based religion was part of a greater interest in the occult. I was hanging out with kids who thought they were vampires. They said they were Wiccan vampires, that they believed in the Goddess. So I set out to learn exactly what the Goddess thought about vampires. Apparently, the Goddess, and Wicca, have nothing to do with vampires, but this didn't quite satisfy me.

I believed in the Goddess in the same way I believe in Ferris Bueller. I liked the idea, she seemed like one righteous character, but hey, so did Ferris...

I had a few friends who studied with me. One of them believed he had some kind of divine psychic power to see our past lives, and in fact, to RELIVE them. Now, this certainly sounds like something out of a horse's ass, but when you're talking about different blends of coffee, and your friend suddenly drops to the ground -- in public -- in what appears to be a seizure, minus the spasms, and says he lived as a peasant in the 1350's in England, and begins speaking in a bizarre accent and talking about the forest and the magic well and calling you Anastasia, dude, you'd better believe it makes an impression. Particularly when you're 17.

So I was Anastasia. And he was Gregor. We had another friend, who was Miergé. I decided that it couldn't ALL be bull. These friends of mine came to my house once, and we built a circle, complete with an altar, Tarot cards, candles, incense, you name it. We built it out in the woods, far away from any spying eyes. It began to snow, heavily: the beginning of a pretty good storm, which eventually turned into a blizzard. But Greg (or Gregor, or whatever the fuck you want to call him), and Miergé, and I, linked hands, bowed our heads, and prayed, or concentrated, or SOMETHING, willing the snowstorm to stop, or praying for it to stop, or whatever. Within about thirty seconds, the snow had stopped completely. As soon as the three of us were back inside my house that evening -- an hour or two later, the snow resumed, and piled on a mighty five or six inches.

I was pretty sure we'd stopped that storm. Maybe we'd had some kind of divine help, although I couldn't imagine what it could be. And if we had stopped the storm, why was it so implausible that we were reincarnated spirits: Ana, Gregor, and Miegé. And if THAT could be true, why were vampires so implausible. And if VAMPIRES could exist, why weren't the writings of Nostradamus possible? And the ability to cast spells? And the ability to reach psychic planes, to communicate telepathically?

And so, my interest in Wicca became an interest in the supernatural, in the occult.

(It should be noted -- and I urge you not to think I'm a total fucking freak -- that I smoked pot with Greg, twice, apparently far too much pot for a beginner. The second time, I blacked out completely for about three or four minutes. During that time, I had some sort of hallucination, or vision, that I was wearing pre-Renaissance clothing and dancing around an old stone well with a man. In the distance were vast plains; to the left was a small forest of what looked like tiny aspens. And to the right was a large black castle. Of course, I attributed this to the pot -- I was superstitious, but not stupid -- but also had a pretty good feeling that I'd somehow contacted my past life... I still don't know what to make of that experience. Except that I haven't touched marijuana since.)

On Hallowe'en -- Samhain -- I had pretty much convinced myself that something dreadful was going to happen. For some reason, Samhain provided a very powerful time to anybody who knew how to take this power into their own hands. My beliefs -- or, more rightly, my suspicions -- had stopped being a religion of peace and love, and had turned my entire life into fear. If people could get power from trees, if people could heal other people with their minds and their hands, then why couldn't they use that same power to harm. I became obsessed with the idea of some kind of psychic conspiracy. To prepare for the worst, I plucked eleven stones from a river. I painted an obscure rune-looking thing on each one, and said some kind of self-made protection spell over each one. I carried one. I planted one in my father's desk and one in each of my brothers' rooms. I gave one each to a couple of close friends, and took the remaining three downtown, where I hid one at both entrances to Java Joe's, and one behind a loose brick next to the door to David's apartment. (David, who was quite used to freaky kids at this point, and who answered "non-practicing" at the police station when he was arrested on behalf of some of those freaky kids, found the stone, thought it was cool, and carried it around until Peter found it and gave it back to me...)

Of course, nothing happened on Samhain. I became convinced that the Apocalypse was going to happen on Winter Solstice: the darkest day of the year, the day when, according to Wiccan beliefs, the God dies. Winter Solstice is supposed to be a celebration; you're supposed to celebrate the death of the God because when he dies, he is able to be reborn. Much along the same lines as Jesus, I think, the pagan God paves the way for continuance, for another shot at life and renewal. Solstice is the celebration of the cycle of death and life. But it's the darkest day of the year, and a powerful and magical day for practitioners of paganism. I was sure the world was going to end. After school, I ran outside and hid in the woods for awhile, crying, certain that other self-proclaimed Wiccans I knew (most of whom were also self-proclaimed vampires) were somehow trying to channel a lot of evil and destroy the world, or at very least, all of the things I loved.

...And of course, nothing happened.

Shortly before or after Solstice, I saw something that I cannot, to this day, explain. I was taking a walk with my brother and Greg, when I noticed a light flashing in some nearby trees. I watched for a moment, sure it was a trick of my eyes, which have never been very good at dusk. But I didn't see the light again, and turned away for a few minutes. Then, what to my wandering eyes should appear, but a HUGE animal. It had grown darker by this point, but I was vaguely certain the animal was on all fours and had antlers of some type. But then, gradually, without looking our direction, the animal changed... shifted somehow... and was walking on two legs and wearing a long, dark-colored cape-type-thing. It looked like a DAMN good special effect from a DAMN good horror film. And as a matter of fact, my brother and Greg both saw this thing as well, and the three of us stared at each other in terror before we ran.

I don't know what that thing was. I don't know what the hell kind of hallucination I had while I was stoned with Greg. I don't know whether human beings can stop a snowstorm just by closing their eyes and thinking really hard. I don't know a lot of things.

But a lot of things scared me then, and apparently, a lot of those things still bother me now, as evidenced by my anxiety at touching things with pentacles on them, things that promised to be healing and powerful and to invoke certain energies...

I have seen ouija boards work. I don't know HOW, but I've seen them work. I've felt extremely weird sensations when a quirky yoga teacher was demonstrating psychic healing on me. I've seen a LOT of things I don't understand. Somehow, I have trouble resolving the idea of power and healing with my own small paranoias of the world at large.

I do not think I believe in vampires. Note that cannot prove they don't exist. I do not believe in large, beautiful deities in human forms watching me, although I can't really prove gods and goddesses don't exist as such. I do not think I believe the world is going to end as a result of somebody's psychic abilities, and I do not think I believe that mere kids from Binghamton, New York, can cause extreme havoc through spells and curses. But I'm not sure. My spiritual beliefs are extremely fucked up.

It's 3.32 AM, December 21st. Three hours into the Winter Solstice. I'm going to pretend it's any other day. It IS any other day. I'm going to wrap my holiday gifts, and take a bath, and go to bed. In the morning, I'm going to wake up, go to work, go home, and do about five hundred loads of laundry. And make some mix-tapes.

Next time I feel like being efficient, I think I'll just stay at the post office a little longer. Next year, I'll get my brothers stemware for Christmas.

Love,
~Helena*

"...Don't trust any of them any further than the Four Winds could carry their lifeless cremated ashes... Or something like that... And wear turtlenecks..." --Helena, email, November 1997