Like many solitary practitioners, especially those who started seeking before the world wide web was born, my first foray into an education in Witchcraft began with reading Starhawk’s Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess. First published in 1979, I picked it up with the 10th Anniversary reprint and still use it as a resource. I consider it to be an essential text for every beginner.
Through related experience, perspective, examples of rituals, and suggested exercises, Starhawk delivered a comprehensive overview of Goddess religion that provided a solid foundational understanding of practice and theory that gave me the confidence to continue honing my craft with daily practice and intentional studies.
Egret over the Chesser Prairie, Okefenokee Swamp [B. Rhodes, courtesy]
Before reading that book, most of my Craft practice had been based on intuition, with a smattering of creative application sparked by ideas from books, television, and movies. I thought I had learned a lot in the 20 years or so I had been practicing that way, but Spiral Dance opened my eyes to how very much more there was to learn.
It also introduced me to the concept of magical correspondences, something I had previously only had an instinctual awareness of, without knowing the term or the scope of possibilities involved.
For more than two decades since then, I have moved along with my studies and practice, continuing to work with correspondences based on knowledge gleaned from teachers and authors who I respected, from a coven and traditional affiliation, and, as always, from my intuition. With some chagrin, I admit that I accepted a certain level of knowledge without conducting any in-depth exploration of the why behind it. Consider this something akin to spending a lifetime following recipes for baking without trying to understand why it matters to use baking powder instead of baking soda.
There is no empirical data to support this, but I believe that during that time my use of correspondences was sufficient for my magical work because for all that time I practiced within familiar geographical and magical boundaries. That is to say, I spent nearly all my life living and practicing magic in either upstate New York or western North Carolina, specifically in places connected either to the Adirondack or Appalachian mountains. I have also spent considerable time in the coastal regions of North Carolina and South Carolina. My magical practice was confined to these areas where I had history and deep connections that nurtured my intuition and understanding of the flora, fauna, geological bases, waterways, bodies of water, and spirits I encountered and worked with. When I invoked magic and used correspondences, I was working with what I knew.
White water-lily on black water, Okefenokee Swamp [B. Rhodes, courtesy]
In early April of this year, I had the unexpected opportunity to journey to the Okefenokee Swamp in southern Georgia. My partner was doing a photo shoot for a conservation magazine, and I went along for the ride. I had heard of Okefenokee, but knew almost nothing about it. With fewer than two days to make safe travel arrangements, arrange for care and feeding of cats and chickens, and cram-study the important features of the swamp, I was not as prepared as I would have liked to have been. But such is the purpose of adventure, is it not?
I was thrilled by the thought of meeting the swamp and all its inhabitants and their magic, especially after more than a year of deep isolation. Based on my experiences with a few locations in the Adirondack wetlands, and somewhat thanks to Charlie Daniels, Hollywood, and several under-researched novels, my expectations for the Okefenokee were skewed towards darkness, fear, tragedy, and a heavy air of death. So I was somewhat surprised and confused when, approaching the boundaries of the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge via the Folkston end of the park, I felt the first tingles of clean, uplifting energy.
At first, I thought my excitement at being in a new place was skewing my readings. As I drove along the park’s entry route, I reached my senses out to the tall loblolly, longleaf, and slash pines that lined the road. I was hoping to see a warbler or red-cockaded woodpecker. I noticed that even these familiar trees felt somehow different, and decided to set aside all preconceived expectations and just enjoy the adventure.
A short time later I was sitting in the front of a flat-bottomed skiff, embarking on the first of two scheduled guided tours. We traveled over the mirror-like surface of the blackwater swamp along the Suwanee Canal for a sunset tour of the Chesser Prairie. I kept taking deep breaths, filling my lungs with air that was sweet and clean and fresh. As we moved through the tangle of cypress, bay, and pine draped with curtains of Spanish moss, I allowed my senses to drift with the air through the trees and shrubs. As I became more comfortable, the drift moved out across the surface of the water, then down through the shallows to the bottom.
There was magic all around me, but so much of it held the hint of unfamiliarity that I was cautious about engaging with it. Then our tour guide stopped talking about the geography, trees, birds, and alligators, and started talking about the science behind the creation and existence of a blackwater swamp such as the Okefenokee. I think I actually felt my brain and my spirit backpedaling as I listened to the guide talk about slow-moving waters, tannins, the bottom which consisted of peat rather than mud or sand, and how the peat develops over time and is then released to the surface where it perpetuates the cycle of life and growth.
By the time the skiff was motionless on the edge of a sea of water lilies and lily pads, I was feeling immensely grateful for a lesson I had stumbled into. That lesson was in part that I have been rather fortunate that my natural tendencies to caution had, for decades, prevented me inadvertently causing harm to myself or someone else. The lesson was also that in order to fully unlock the potential of any correspondence with which I choose to work I must take the time to research not only the magical aspects of the item but also the scientific and practical aspects as well.
Waiting for the sunset, I cast the net of my senses once more into the air. I allowed it to drift across the air and down across the water, using them as correspondences in a locator spell of sorts that I had used with much success in the past. I tweaked the spell to accommodate my new basic scientific understanding of the elements around me and was delighted to find my senses fine-tuned to the living energy of the Okefenokee.
Just as the sun was sliding down behind an island of trees, called a house, I felt a tug on an energy line and looked to the south in time to see the silhouetted forms of two sandhill cranes as they flew across the sky above the prairie. On the return trip to the dock, I saw more wildlife in the dark than I had seen traveling while the sun was still up.
Spanish moss on trees along the Suwannee Canal, Okefenokee Swamp [B. Rhodes, courtesy]
The next morning we returned for a private tour and spent nearly five hours on the water. Our guide for the second tour was a font of knowledge about every aspect of the Okefenokee, and while he obviously relished the stories he told about swamp adventures and larger than average alligators, he also made it clear that he believes the survival of the Okefenokee Swamp depends on people understanding the ecology and environmental science that makes it such a unique and beautiful place.
I listened to him talk as I wrote notes and sent out energetic feelers like fishing lines. I stored up energy and notes for correspondences all the while taking in the sights and sounds of things I had never seen before and may never see again. Pond and bald cypress, loblolly bays, sweetspire and never-wet, fetterbush and blue-flag. Egrets, sandhill cranes, prothonotary warblers, alligators, turtles, a heron rookery. And I learned that my preconceived notions about alligators as nothing other than prehistoric killing machines could have kept me from adding a fierce community mindful being to my library of correspondences. Those scary growling sounds they make aren’t meant to be threats; most of the time it is just how they check in with each other.
Where I expected to find darkness and dread, I found a never-ending cycle of life and natural death. The energy that I thought would be frightening was, instead, energy filled with hope and renewal. The blackwater of the Okefenokee swamp reflects a living energy that is as clear and healthy as the water itself.
My trip to the Okefenokee was a life-changing adventure from the perspective of environmental awareness. During those travels, I also witnessed the effects that long-term economic crises and poverty can have on entire communities. But on an even more deeply personal level, it shifted my entire magical practice and awareness regarding not only correspondences but also the importance of the interconnectivity between magic and science.
28 years ago, a Pagan activist named Starhawk helped to open doors of understanding in my mind. Those open doors have led me to amazing places and even more amazing people. I am moving into this spring season of growth and renewal with a fresh appreciation for the many ways we contribute to other people’s journeys, often without realizing that we are doing so. The people in a tiny place known as the Folkston end are passionately scientific keepers of one of the most magical places on earth, and I am grateful for the lessons they shared with me.
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