Welcome to a special guest post edition of Witching It Up – today our guest is Danielle Dulsky, who will be discussing Scrying within the Soul’s Story: Personal Mythwork in Winter for Witches, Wanderers, and Wildlings
Winter is a time of deep listening, otherworldly communion, and divination. Witches have the long-vision, and the witch in winter is a seer, a hooded pyromancer who seeks the truth in the flames, who has honed their night vision and finds patterns in the old and new stories. When the nights are long, we step back and behold the ancestral tale we are all living. We collect our strange puzzle pieces from nature, from dreams, and messages from our dead to see what we are being oriented toward when this new year dawns.
Available to everyone is the practice of personal mythwork, the cryptic and contemplative dance of reflecting on the previous year lived, on the archetypes that stepped forward and wanted to be seen; this practice allows us to, just maybe, foresee where we are headed in 2023. The simple beginning to this seer’s practice begins with reviewing the past four seasons, considering the larger themes lived, battles fought and won, dreams fulfilled, and those bizarre characters you met along the road. Take some time and consider Winter 2022 to be the beginning of this tale, this personal story that finds resolution in Winter 2023.
In a journal you might dedicate to your personal mythwork, name what feel like the primary themes, dominant archetypes, and otherworldly experiences for Winter, Spring, Summer, and Autumn of 2022. When were the moments, season by season, when you felt you were the most you that you could possibly be? When were the moments of deep grief and wild gratitude? Name these moments. Some seasons might feel more story-rich than others, and this is as it should be. Make lists of the small stories for each of these four seasons then behold the larger story created by all four seasons. If you were an old storyteller sharing this tale around the fire, how would it end? What resolution, just for now, makes sense?
Stay curious with this work. If you are reminded of a myth or fairy tale when doing this work, find as many versions of that old story as you can. Build a small altar to it, then, eventually, freely speak this story out loud. Be witnessed in the telling, if only by your creatures and those unseen others who know you best.
Stories illuminate what wants to be seen. We dream in small stories. In our homes, we are surrounded by the stories our belongings inhabit. Permit a lived-out-loud story to be oracle, and you will uncover hidden secrets and invaluable treasures you may not have otherwise seen. Your personal myth invites you to be a soothsayer, to see the truth evident in the story you are living. Here, in our own tales of heartache and victory, we might find and follow fate’s thread, allowing it to lead us to our next once-upon-a-time.
Danielle Dulsky is the author of The Holy Wild, Sacred Hags Oracle, Seasons of Moon and Flame, Woman Most Wild, and most recently The Holy Wild Grimoire. A heathen visionary, painter, poet, storyteller, and word-witch, she teaches internationally and has facilitated circles, embodiment trainings, communal spell-work, and seasonal rituals since 2007. She is the founder of The Hag School and believes in the emerging power of wild collectives and sudden circles of curious dreamers, cunning witches, and rebellious artists in healing our ailing world. Visit her online at http://www.danielledulsky.com.
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Claim Your Mythic Purpose
This grimoire — a book of magick, spells, ceremonies, journaling exercises, recipes, and incantations — is an invitation to be Witch and bewitch. As you journey through this book, you will reflect and reshape your story, beholding your life’s poetry and wielding a mythic intelligence. Danielle Dulsky guides you to see through the lens of the five elements, earth, water, fire, air, and ether, and to call upon age-old archetypes to heal and liberate your best self. You will become a rebel queen, hooded seer, and wild king. Rising above the ecological disaster, political gridlock, and disease of the overculture, you will become a word-witch, writing your world whole again, howling with power, and singing songs of a new world reborn.
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