faith of a pagan
I felt I should write more in this, though I briefly mentioned it in a recent entry. I kind of want to get all of my thoughts of it down on paper before it is gone.

I'd hesitant to write about it because I'm afraid of being persecuted. Not so much by others, but by my own doubt. By writing something like this, I take it out of the realm of the mind and make it real by integrating it with the world. It's like disempowering the dream but it affects me in a negative way.

To take a fantasy, an intangible (nightmare or blessing) and give it form is to try to craft it into life. Sometimes, when I do this, I find that the crafting makes the subject seem trite, unreal, doubtful. So I'm scared of writing my magikal experiences for fear that externalizing them will weaken them.

I've kept them almost all inside until now. But this one give me hope. It is, somehow, not as fragile.

As I said, Justin was sick until recently. But on Halloween... I think I made (helped, rather) him get better.

I was doing a small ritual and prayer at the altar and couldn't take the sad, coarse, sound of his groaning and coughing any more. I thought about it and felt that if I tried, I could push this black, unnatural, lingering sickness out of him.

So I gathered my essence, reached into the mirror, pulled out the silver, brightest healing light and raised it into myself. I took the incense from the burner and moved it below the open mouth of the Dragon effigy above the altar, making the mouth Justin's mouth. The incense flowed into the dragon like with the intake of breath. I focused the energy. I spoke the words, though I don't remember what they were. I waited.

After a few minutes, I heard his groaning grow softer. After a few more minutes, I felt the energy waning.

I thanked the deities, released the elements, grounded myself and closed the circle. But I kept a bit of the silver light within me to give directly to him. When I blew out the candles and got into bed, he was still groaning softly and I could hear the congestion rising in him. I crawled under the covers and he turned in his sleep, his back spooned to me.

I put my hands on him below his shoulders, and pushed the light into him, through his lungs and out his mouth. I felt it flow out of me, imagined I saw it, let it all go. And when I finished he was quiet. He had slept the whole time I was at the altar and through my touches. I was glad he hadn't woken up. I wondered what he would have thought...

Drained, I immediately fell asleep. I didn't hear a thing till morning.

When we awoke, he told me that he'd slept terribly. He'd woken up after I fell asleep and coughed so long and so hard he had a bloody nose. I thought nothing of it, except that what I'd tried hadn't worked. It's not that I expected it to fail. In fact, I'd done the whole ritual with calm, complacent belief. But I wasn't surprised that I might not have been successful.

That night, we went to Portland and he told his mom, a nurse practitioner, that he'd been having horrible night coughs. She listened to his chest, humming and hawing. He waited for the cough to start in full, as it usually did around 10PM. We went to bed that night expecting the same as nights before. It had been two weeks with no improvement. He thought he might have pnemonia.

Justin laid awake waiting for the cough, afraid that every intake of breath would lead to a spasm. But it didn't. Not once.

The next day, nothing except a few dry day coughs.

Since that night, he's been healthy.

Did somethingwork? Did I believe enough to help him? I'm thankful for whatever it was, even if it was just that he simply "got better" after weeks of stasis. But I'd like to believe that I brought the black mass within him to the surface and gave him the strength to push it out.

I'd like to think that I can truly believe in magik.

I'm skeptical, giddy, afraid and pleased at the same time.

Thank you, goddess.