Last Quarter: One year of healing

It's Friday, and almost to the day, it's the first anniversary of Salt for the Eclipse. Hello.

When I started this project, I was working off of some exploratory, inexact polls on social media, and while those had driven me to move ahead, I had mixed feelings. On the one hand, I was excited by the small but surprising number of friends who had told me not only that they would subscribe, but that they would subscribe at a paid tier; on the other hand, I knew I wasn't going to earn supplemental income right away, I doubted my abilities to grow the readership to a point where that would happen, and I feared the whole thing might distract from other writing or from my slow but technically real day job. I moved ahead partly because people told me to, and partly because I hadn't conceived of writing here as a get-less-broke-fast scheme anyway — I knew that the things I wanted to write in this context were long overdue and wouldn't work as books to start.

Just like my mixed expectations, the outcome has been a blend of things I assumed and things I didn't assume at all. And on the whole, I am quite grateful I was pushed to do this. The rewards have shown themselves plainly, and compounded the rewards of other journeys I've taken in the last year, and been compounded in turn.

Pragmatics

Unfortunately, yes, I'm still not only failing to generate additional income, but failing to break even on Salt for the Eclipse's operating cost; so by indulging myself any further right now, it's a financial loss for me, though luckily only by a few dollars a month. I've lost the occasional reader (paid or not), and I also haven't developed any sudden self-promotional skills or brilliant insights about how to make people more interested in paying. It remains a challenge for me to interest someone else in anything through any technique beyond making the thing and releasing it. Let it speak to whoever resonates, with no tricks and no no posturing.

However, while there could eventually arise practical circumstances where the lack of revenue makes my continued writing here genuinely ill-advised — by every human[1] standard of judging my own work, the newsletter is doing remarkably well for its first year, especially running on so little fuel. In general, more people are reading than I anticipated; I'd love to have more discussions in comments or on the side, but I'm still having a more direct interpersonal response than from work published under my professional identity; and I've even gained paid subscriptions from unexpected (even completely unfamiliar) sources.

I do plan to change some things in this next year as an experiment, which I'll post news about in a few days. But as I wrote six months ago, I don't feel like I'm writing into a void — a previously familiar woe. Twelve months on, I'm feeling as if I've stumbled outright onto a connective tool, in senses of connective that I never accounted for. The rest of this anniversary post is a stock-taking of those senses, and a recognition of how much scar tissue is knitting cleanly together over so many wounds.

Generative spirals

Writing in this space has, first of all, served as an unburdening. I've acknowledged as much already in saying these are things I've viscerally needed to write; but now I can better describe why that need existed. One part is similar to why I write fiction (and poetry, though far less than I used to): there is something in my mind that must be delivered like a child, at least if I deserve to paraphrase Mary Shelley. And it's easiest for me to deliver through text. The thing comes out, enshrined in letters, and then I can freely move on to having new ideas. Beyond that, however, I've needed to write this particular project because I've grown gravid with years of accumulated witch-thoughts, kink-thoughts, and apocalypse-thoughts, none of which can be separated — and so they've all merited a place without character limits, with a potential readership that's not only following for one of those interlaced categories. I'm now slowly but surely expelling a long-fermented brew that couldn't have flooded all my casual conversations, therapy sessions, or (gradually reduced) social media use.

I knew this going in, even if I didn't express it quite the same way. What I've since discovered without ever expecting it is that besides the unburdening, there's also the regeneration. Writing a multi-thousand word essay — not fiction — every week has aggressively reawakened neural connections that had slumbered since my undergraduate years, and perhaps forged new ones. Of course as a twenty-something and early thirty-something online, I was no stranger to making the occasional massive blog post or e-mail, and I've always been hyperlexic enough that among my peers I even developed a reputation for an exhaustive thoroughness in correspondence[2]. But the sporadic and indeed carefully restricted nature of these writings had the consequence of letting a forest grow wild without any sort of controlled burns. Over the past year, writing so much non-fiction so frequently has forced a lost rigor into my ideas, and it's helped stave off some malaise and madness through the gift of stimulation.

I inadvertently heightened those benefits through a structural choice that I made early on. I always write these posts from a prompt I've given myself some amount of time in advance; I don't give myself the supposed liberty of thinking up a topic on the spot, or of trying to respond to something happening in the world that very week. (Having not checked news outlets or read any links for nine days, aiming for at least a year[3], I'm hoping it will soon become impossible for me to write a hot take.) By confining my scope, I make my thoughts each Friday a lesson to myself. No matter what else might also deserve my attention, it's time to confront this thing, this part of rite, this part of land, this part of legend, this part of crisis. By the end of each week, I find myself seeing previously unexamined links between countless nodes that I previously took for granted.

I think I've grown more connected in a neuro-cognitive manner, and also in an intellectual manner. O lord, but my past self as a philosophy major is reveling in it. But the third sort of connection I've found is not about me, not about my inner life. It is about others.

As I said above, I'm in rather infrequent dialogue with the friends, acquaintances, and strangers reading what I put here, but dialogues do happen more than I'm used to. This has a connective effect beyond simply knowing that people are really reading and not just courtesy-subscribed. Our discussions help me understand both what other people are interested in hearing about and what I ought to be thinking about more often. Although I have a subscription tier where specific post topics can be requested outright for relatively rapid publication, there's also plenty of value for me in these generative talks. The thoughts in Salt for the Eclipse are my own and yet I am not only-me; I am another node, another junction in the web, another process in the wider system. I will not only write better with others' feedback, but think better, and I hope this in turn brings greater abundance to the people I'm writing for. Let the helix climb up and up.

More than the writing

And it is a double helix. Twinned with the feedback loops from my writing — my output there — I have also been transforming, healing, and growing hardier through a series of inputs.

I give thanks first and foremost to my owner, for his love. I've had that love for much longer than the last year. But ever since moving to our current home in 2021, I feel as if we've been first accidentally and then intentionally mending some injuries from covert strife that had arisen from various sources, external and internal, over the past few years beforehand. Most recently, in the twelve months since I emerged from my very deepest grief for my dead familiar, I think our mending has been able to happen much faster, and has rounded a corner into outright regrowth. I won't say it's all his doing, but I do know he's been staggeringly patient with my particular shortcomings. And as our dyadic bond has supported me so much during even our harder times, now its power has become almost miraculous.

I give thanks next to my therapist, who of course she doesn't read this. I've been seeing her for something like four years, so her influence also isn't new, but I would be remiss to ignore her help over these twelve months. During this specific time, she has challenged me more than before, and although our relationship remains professional I now often feel as if, given her age, she speaks to me like a wise crone, even if it's not the same as having a grandmother again. I think this bond is the closest that therapy can approximate mentorship by an elder or through an extended kin network, which is why therapy done well is one of the best healing resources that's still available through a colonial civilization.

I give thanks next to my growing social sphere of fellow witches and ritualists, including members of the local kinky ritualist discussion group that I've been facilitating since 2020, and also friends I've made on Mastodon from as far back as 2018. Despite those multiple years of influence, I feel as if the number and quality of connections has exploded throughout 2023. Even as my rites remain solidly what my owner and I make of them, and even as many aspects remain occult/occluded, they are being enriched by knowledge and advice from peers. It's worth noting I wouldn't have taken the plunge into fiber arts last year without a couple of these people's influence. Likewise, I've found new psychological support for my personal fertility goals through talks with friends in this sphere with their own children, or with shared intentions.

I give thanks next to the books I read this year. I've already mentioned some of them here, but not all.

• The Triumph of the Moon: Not my first Ronald Hutton experience, but a particularly important one that's inspired me to embark on some much deeper research into the esoteric side of things after my current phase of animist immersion.
• The Dawn of Everything: Also not my first David Graeber, but a breathtaking affirmation of seasonal lifestyles, de-imperializing agriculture, and (though probably not by design) the function that I think kink really ought to serve in our communities, which I'm going to write about at length in the next few months.
• Welsh Witchcraft: My first Mhara Starling, lighter than I would necessarily want but kind, invigorating, and a meaningful introduction to the Traditional Witchcraft movement through a Cymric lens, necessary for my focus on ancestral reclamation.
• Sand Talk: As I've said before, Tyson Yunkaporta's work here did at least five years of decolonial deprogramming in five days of reading. I've been following his spoken work closely ever since, and I can't wait to get a copy of his next book as well. Seeing the world through fresh eyes for a few months, I feel even more out of step with extractive modernity, but more certain that I have some hope of ever becoming a worthy custodian of the land, as my ancestors used to do for tens of thousands of years. As all humans evolved to do.
• Braiding Sweetgrass: Though Robin Wall Kimmerer's instant classic is older than Sand Talk and might have had a similar effect if I read it first, I actually only finished it within this moon cycle. But it is still beautiful, and in a way I'm glad I read it second, so that I could shift from the universal foundations I found in Yunkaporta's words to what Kimmerer has to offer. Her words could also be universal foundations, but to me they offer wisdom specifically as a resident of what she calls Maple Nation. I don't live on Anishinaabe land as she does, but Maple Nation encompasses the whole swath of lands I've lived on; the ecology spoken of in this book is, by and large, heartachingly familiar, and wonderful to learn more about.

I give thanks next to the land & sky log that I began at the autumn equinox. This was inspired somewhat by Yunkaporta and by conversations in my witch circles, but I've had no clear map or instructions for what I'm doing, only intuition. Here's how I've described the log before:

... at the beginning of my new ritual year, I began logging observations of the world. Not the way I do here, but instead it's a daily record of things I notice in the land, water, and sky, concentrated especially on the exact plot where I live, but also making some wider considerations for this town and those neighboring it. I'm trying to notice and track the appearances and disappearances of plants, animals, fungi, as well as their behaviors and phases. The same for rainfall, river and stream flows, temperature ranges, and wind direction. I want to see how my local ecosystem's rhythms work not only species by species but also relation by relation: what's blooming when these birds fly up for spring? what's ripe to harvest when the cicadas start whining? There are thousands of things to learn. ... What can I expect to happen when certain stars return to the night sky for the year, and when other stars vanish, or make their midnight culmination, or other behaviors?

After less than two months, and without previous years to compare to, the conclusions I can draw have been limited, but I have already learned more since I started, and I feel joined to certain things as a result. I've discovered with my own observations the heliacal setting of Antares, and how this seems to overlap with the first frosts. I'm developing a theory about blue jays and under which morning conditions they like to emerge and forage on the forest's edge: after a previous day's rainfall or dampness, as a high pressure system with drier air has just moved in. Some other birds don't seem to be as picky, but I'm sensing this draws the jays out of the trees more than other times.

If I'm right, then I will need to find or make a story about the blue jay, to remember this rhythm.

And last, most recently, I must give thanks to pharmaceutical medicine, despite my conceptual misgivings about it. A couple of days before Calan Gaeaf, I began a low, experimental dose of buspirone.

It should take a few more weeks before I truly notice an anxiolytic effect, though I might already be experiencing mild (tolerable) side effects. I waited so long to try a daily psychiatric treatment because all the ones I originally knew about would very likely do things to me that I couldn't tolerate at all. By the time I wrote my six month check-in for this newsletter, I at least knew what buspirone was and that the side effects I feared would actually not apply. I did still hold out another six months before taking the plunge. I was angry about the reasons why I felt like I needed a drug of this kind: most of the things that make me anxious would not be relevant if I lived in an animist, land-connected, equitable society where the Earth wasn't sick, abundance was shared, nobody was supposed to live alone, caring for one's health cost nothing, and there was no reason to risk one's life or limb just to not go into debt. Even in that setting, I couldn't rule out still being an anxious person, but I think it would be managed handily through ritual, habitual, and mild herbal means. I doubt I would need more intense intervention.

I've started the buspirone, however, because at least for the time being I've determined that my emotional baseline needs some form of chemical assistance in order for all the other healing methods I've pursued to have the effect that they should. Everything I've named in this post has mattered, but it's frustratingly not mattered enough. Without medicine, I can process and move on from generational and personal trauma, confront ecological grief, and other grandiose things, but the little things cut like a thousand knives. My household needs more money so badly. To fund attempts at pregnancy, to fix up two cars, to pay anticipated income taxes, to either paint the house or redo its siding completely, to redo our driveway, to put up solar panels and do other things to live more sustainably, to pay off outstanding debts, to take an actual fucking multi-week vacation for the first time in years. And my owner has health issues, and so do I. Right now I'm mired in a slow-motion fiasco over a collection of mystery symptoms that probably aren't cancer but that I am, at minimum, going to have to suffer for several more weeks before they can be treated; and I can't rule out invasive or otherwise stressful treatments even if the cause is benign.

With how this world works, I can't confront all of these things at once without becoming unpleasantly crazy. If it's this world that's turned neutral tendencies of mine into mental illness, that doesn't change the fact that I am ill. A drug to break a fever doesn't cure the underlying infection, but it's foolish not to fight the fever itself. I still think that it's important for me not to take drugs that will turn me into a husk, but buspirone seems safe. I offer it my thanks because so far, even if it hasn't had a chance to do much, I want it to succeed. I also take it with a small ritual every morning and night: I mark the alchemical sign for water on my left palm, urging myself to learn mutability, and then I place the pill within the imagined glyph before I toss it onto my tongue and let real water join it.

One more tiny, powdery piece of input to help me.

Planning another year of salt

So, that's the newsletter-year that's behind me. I'm now thinking about the year ahead. Besides my planned changes for revenue purposes, I'm hoping to make a couple of major adjustments to my posts' focuses, if at all possible. Despite all the rewards I've found in writing this, I do think Salt for the Eclipse itself has fallen short of what some readers may have expected.

For one thing, I have written a great deal of mourning, critique, or information dumping, and I feel as if I haven't shared much of my actual healing, nor framed very much from a healing perspective. The tagline of this newsletter remains "using witchcraft and kink to make space for ecstatic mystery, ancient wisdom, fertile arts, and trauma healing in an apocalyptic era." I think I should therefore be balancing tone a little better to support that last component.

For another thing, the tagline mentions witchcraft and kink, whereas between the two I've leaned far more heavily on witchcraft, not much kink at all — even though I think at least half of my readership comes from the kink scene. I would definitely like to correct that, now that I have so many "first principles" posts out of the way; it's time to integrate the kink much deeper into this work. And in many respects I believe that will go hand in hand with the increased attention to healing.

I suppose that in its first year, Salt for the Eclipse was about forecasting and describing the eclipse. Going forward, here is the salt.

November frosts

I'm going to close here with a meditation on the land around me in this season. There is no purpose to it other than itself.

There was a frost this morning. A light one, following a few others. A hard one came about a week ago. Some plants had already started going to sleep or giving up their precious annual lives, but the outliers have now heard the cell. Today is the last warning: now the daylight will not last long enough for any new green to grow for at least three whole months. The frost crystals these mornings coat less and less green, and instead brown, grey, black.

Mist is common, and when the rains come, thin grim drizzle. I am used to November as a wet time. Always raining. This year, though, it seems much more dry, sunny, and strangely pleasant though still cold. It's weather that belongs more to the month before. So many things are becoming delayed or absent or off-kilter. Of course I'll take it over the flooding rains of the past summer. We don't need rain at all right now.

I have been watching birds. The old standbys, seen almost any day in every season — cardinals, chickadees, sparrows. Sometimes the conditions are right for blue jays. Birds that scavenge more fiercely in this time are making themselves known; I've seen many ink-black crows gracing the grass and the empty tree branches. I'm waiting for more turkeys. Most of the migrations have finished; the juncos are back. Birds that came near human settlements by summer have retreated, like the goldfinches. But some things that should be gone aren't. I've still seen bluebirds. I also can no longer remember what it was like for the Canadian geese to go back to Canada. They're always here.

I keep noticing the changes to the right patterns, and fearing them, knowing what they portend. But I looked south to the Sun today, and he was where he should be. By night, before going to bed I can now look out and see the Hunter striding in his glittering beauty. I am always under their protection. Even the Sun's. It isn't the Sun that's sick.

In this season, the hours for it are so few, but I don't need to lift my head for him to kiss my closed eyelids with gold. And there are still frosts. There is still time.

I associate the yew tree with this month. Now I want to find a yew and pay my respects.

It carries death within it, but it is still a tree, and birds eat of its berries.

[1] That is: relational and communal, not transactional.

[2] To the point of me sometimes humorously but sincerely warning people not to ask me about a particular topic at the moment, not only to spare their own eyes but to spare me the sudden time investment in giving them my full perspective. Autism, mon amour.

[3] As I vowed this Calan Gaeaf, I'm aiming to purge all news that doesn't come by word of mouth within my interpersonal network, or that I can't look up through alternative sources such as Ballotpedia for election results. Exceptions for highly local, meteorological, and/or ecological news, although even with these I'm attempting to prune any sources that would only offer paralytic despair.

More than usual: thank you for your reading and, if applicable, your direct monetary support of this project.

As hinted near the top, there's going to be an announcement on Monday about some minor restructuring of paid posts. After that, there will be one such post about the Dionysian Mysteries, in much greater depth than the past; the week after, I'll get back to free material with an ode to leather work.