Now’s probably a good time to remind everyone to check/refresh the wards on your home or wherever you do this work. Be sure that you’re rested, grounded, and in a comfortable position. Maybe wrap up in a blanket or cloak or grasp a stone or talisman that matters to you. Grow your roots, send them deep into the soil, let them intertwine and grow small hairs to attach to the mycelia in your own landbase.
Breathe.
Anchor yourself firmly to your landbase. Notice a small detail that will call you back when this working is finished.
Ground and center. Cast a circle.
Breathe.
As you move to our American plain on the astral plane, you can see again the safe hillock where you do your work. You can see the five giant banners, shining in the sky: Walden Pond, the Underground Railroad, the Cowboy, the Salmon, and Lady Liberty. Do they seem more defined since we began our work? Do they have anything special to tell you this week?
For a few moments, just sit on your hillock and allow yourself to become comfortable. This place should be feeling very real to you by now; we’ve been working together to create it for months and months. As you look to the SouthEast, you see the banner of the Underground Railroad. It grows larger and larger until it fills the entire sky. As you watch, everything within the banner becomes three-dimensional and you can easily stand and walk into that world.
You are standing outside a plantation manor. The daughter of the house wanders into the kitchen and finds a bundle that the cook, an old slave, left for her. She slips out in the late afternoon when her father and brothers are napping away the heat. She leaves the bundle of food tucked inside the barn door and darts back to her embroidery.
It is a dark, moonless night. A free black woman has left the relative safety of the North and returned to the plantation where she was a slave. If caught, she will be whipped and killed. She calls like a barn owl and four dark shapes run from the shadow of the manor to the edge of the barn. An enslaved man lifts the bundle of food and all five people hurry away into the woods.
Near dawn, they come to a small cabin near the edge of the woods. Dried cornstalks stand in the small field and a middle-aged white woman gathers eggs from the chicken coop. A log-cabin-patterned quilt hangs on the fence, drying, it seems, from a recent wash. When the woman hears the sound of a barn owl, she listens and stares into the woods. She hoots back and opens the door to her barn. She leaves her basket of eggs inside and goes back into her house. At noon, her husband goes into the barn to get a tool. He sees nothing and leaves, unaware of the bodies hidden beneath the hay in the hay loft.
Three nights later, in Washington, D.C. a free black man wakes to a pebble thrown at his window. He starts in his bed and then hears the sound of an owl. Cautiously, he goes to his back door and looks out. When he opens the door, five shapes slip across the alley and into his kitchen. He hides them inside a pantry, locks his doors and windows, and goes to visit his friend who works at the Georgetown port.
His friend, a white ship captain with a family in Boston, listens to his story, swallows his rum, and nods. That night, a wagon pulls up next to his ship and both men unload bags and crates into the hold of the ship. A few days later, by the light of the half moon, the ship docks in Boston and five free people walk onto dry land. The members of small black church on the edge of the city take the newcomers in.
The Underground Railroad was made of both black people — free and enslaved black people — and the white people who helped them, who were, in today’s parlance, allies. All were willing to take risks to save even a few people from slavery. As you watch this adventure, you may feel drawn to take part. What would you have done to help the travelers, the conductor, the people who provided supplies and safe haven along the way? Can you send some energy back through time to help them on this night of the waxing crescent moon?
Return to your hillock on the astral plane and observe race relations in current-day America. As you watch, you chant a chant that spreads over the whole country: “Our hands will work for peace and justice. Our hands will work to heal the land. Gather round the harvest table. Let us feast and bless the land.” As the sound waves carry across the country, envision more and more black and white people working together to end the racism that still plagues America and that has made our country weak, ripe for foreign interference, unable to move forward on important problems. Envision a future in which diversity is seen by all as a strength, a future where racism is unavailable as a tool to be used by leaders looking to distract and divide us.
So mote it be.
Take a minute to catch your breath. As you sit and rest, know that you are not working alone. The Resistance — both magical and in all of its mundane (phone banking, check writing, representative calling, letter writing, canvassing, voting, volunteering, tutoring, restoring wetlands, growing plants for bees) manifestations — is huge. Know that you are a powerful worker of magic, rooted in your very own landbase, working with the strong archetypes of this land, assisted by countless unseen others who labor in league with you. You are brave and growing braver. Your magic and your practical workings can make the difference.
Breathe.
Return to your own body, your own landbase. Open your eyes. Rub your face, move your arms and legs. Notice the detail you selected to call you back from the astral. Open your circle. Drink something, maybe cold apple cider or hot green tea. If you like, have something to eat, maybe a pumpkin muffin or a juicy pear.
During the course of this week, you may want to visit the bannered prairie several times in order to strengthen its presence on the astral. You may want to repeat this working. You may want to place something on your altar to help you to remember the courage of all who participated in the Underground Railroad. You may want to journal about it. Are you inspired to make any art? Can you sit beside a warm fire, or light incense, or stare into a candle? What actions are you inspired to take for the Resistance? If you’re willing, please share in comments what happened and how this working went.
Picture found here.
