Phew! Hello dear friends, trusted colleagues, and the whole of the anonymous internet!
I write to you as I am catching my breath. I’ve just spent two days moving house. The new location suits me better, seated as it is at the mouth of a three-way crossroad.
Things are still in boxes but I already feel lighter in this space. It’s amazing what power place has. Physical travel and new surroundings can really be refreshing.
Let me first take a moment to acknowledge what many of you have already noticed - I am writing under a new name. I have decided to leave the “Ribbon” brand behind and simply use my own name.
Across all platforms I’ve been changing my imprint to “Phoebe Hildegard”. It feels good. This change was motivated by the advice of a trusted mentor, one of the select people I pay to do divination on my behalf.
It really is so valuable to have competent outside eyes on my magical practice. Keeps me on my toes. Keeps me from buying my own bullshit too much.
I had a lovely time vending my magical wares this past weekend at a market hosted by the Philly Maker’s Syndicate. It happened in the beautiful old First Unitarian Church and I was amused seeing the punks and metalheads come out and fill the pews.
People loved to make jokes about how odd they felt in the space, or how they felt that the largely queer, electronic or metal influenced music was so subversive there. I chuckled, having long processed my own christophobia and gotten down with the devil too.
I was thinking about “dual observance”, about heretical sects like the Bogomils or the Cathars, gnostics, dualists, the lot. I’m reminded of that old proverb that passed around the Balkan region (an ancestral place for me)
“If you light one candle for God, you must light two for the Devil.”
I like to just say, “Use what works!”
Really this is what people on the ground have always done, just to use and honor and venerate what works for them. If one god doesn’t answer, they try another.
They make cults to angels even though the church says not to, the priests take their exorcism training and use it to summon demons in their off-hours, and no one ever really stops talking to the dead or to the nature beings, although some people forget how to listen.
When the punks take over the church to praise Satan, they’re not really breaking new ground, just repeating an old, old pattern.
Besides god and the devil and their respective legions there’s plenty of spirits out there who aren’t so cut and dry. Despite what some medieval grimoires say, the world of spirits is not a bureaucracy, it’s a constantly shifting ecosystem. It’s the jungle. It’s like Ursula K Le Guin said, “The Word for World is Forest.”
I’m sleepy after moving my things, but I’m thinking a lot about House Spirits, for obvious reasons.
So let’s have some links for further exploration around that theme.
-Claude Lecouteux wrote a lovely book exploring the subject in depth, focusing primarily on European traditions
-the On Sacred Ground podcast has a two part series on Land and House spirits, here is part 1
-I really loved seeing these photos of Lao spirit houses.
Coming to Philly from New York, the bulk of my punk show experiences have been at The First Unitarian Church, oddly enough! I have many fond memories of that place--and Tattooed Mom's in the aftermath (although the first time I ever went to TM's, I had my heart broken, but that's neither here nor there)... ☺