Early in October, I spent a week at a beachfront cottage in a sleepy community on the coast of South Carolina. The physical journey required only a few hours of drive time, but somewhere along the causeway between the mainland and that sweet little island I crossed a threshold that moved me a million light-years away from my river valley home in the southern Appalachian Mountains.
I made the journey partly because I had a need for a different level of peace and quiet. My husband and I share our home with my elderly father-in-law. While he is not exactly a wild, partying retiree, having another person in the house brings a natural increase in the volume of energetic noise. We invited him to travel with us, but with his trademark gentle humor he made it clear that he needed time to himself more than he needed a trip to the beach. I was glad he turned down the offer and chose to stay home.
I was also seeking the absence of the level of easy distraction created by an abundance of sameness and routine heightened by the fatigue of isolation caused by the pandemic. The trip was scheduled months ahead of time, and as the long-anticipated departure day grew closer I became ever more eager for a change of atmosphere, view, and energy.
The sun rising over the beach in South Carolina [S. Barker]
Recently I have undertaken a remedial review of the elements. It has been years since I completed initiate-level formal studies, and as I am on the verge of significant new work it seemed wise to go back to basics to make sure there are no loose stones in my foundations. Sometimes the best way forward is back.
I reviewed my notebooks and work from my days with my former coven and began the process of repeating some of those old exercises. It is interesting to see how my perceptions and awareness have changed over time and with the application of experience and first-hand knowledge. It was equally interesting to acknowledge to myself that the day I believe I have no more to learn is the day I should no longer call myself a Witch.
I am also working my way through Ivo Dominguez Jr.’s The Four Elements of the Wise. Several times I have wished that I had this book back when I was beginning my studies, but as an experienced practitioner, I appreciate the way the author blends fundamental truth and knowledge with insight, experience, and depth. He also presents information in a way that makes me, as a reader, feel like I am participating in a good conversation around a campfire where nobody is in a hurry to leave instead of being lectured to.
In the weeks before my trip, I prepared for the work I intended to do while at the beach by carefully, methodically, and deeply grounding myself with each of the elements. Over the years, I have sometimes been lax about maintaining mindful awareness of the borders where elemental energies meet and sometimes merge. Much of my practice is intuitive and fluid, and I have always been able to work with the flow of energy by letting intuition and instinct carry me where I need to be along and through those borders. That works for me, and it would continue to work for me if I did not want to grow and strengthen my practice and craft.
Restructuring my connections with the elements was, without a doubt, easier to do in home space where I have a deep connection with the land spirits and local elemental energies. Completing the previously mentioned exercises in familiar space with known entities allowed me to work with a safety net of sorts, and familiarity soon led to heightened confidence and deeper understanding.
The view from the author’s office, overlooking the ocean [S. Barker]
By the time I left home to visit the coast, the most important reason for making the journey was to engage as deeply and as intimately as possible with the element of water. By the time the force of a car traveling 45 miles an hour carried my physical body through that magical threshold, my spirit was already flying not just ahead but all around me, dipping its toes and fingers into freshwater rivers and saltwater marshes and racing to get a first peek at the enormous presence of the great mother. By the time I walked through the beach cottage and down the sand to the edge of the surf, that gloriously embodied element of water was ready to embrace my own body and welcome me back.
I spent the entire week in the constant presence of the ocean. Sometimes I was just in the moment, and other times I focused on connecting with the elements. There are fewer opportunities more perfect than sunrise on a beach to feel the full power of earth, air, water, and fire, each by themselves and all of them together. But most of the time, my focus was on water.
I spent hours sitting and walking on the beach, physically and spiritually touching that great body of water. I set up my writing office in the beachfront sunroom of the house and left the door open so that I could hear the entire orchestra of sound the surf made against the shore. In his book, Dominguez mentions emblems as referring to items or objects that represent the elements. In my lifetime, I have collected countless shells and rocks and small mason jars filled with sand, and these souvenirs serve as tangible representations of the ocean or rivers or lakes that I have visited. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that my new study of and work with water would yield a different type of sensory emblem. I was so deeply immersed in the song of the waves that just the hint of those sounds is now a powerful tool for summoning the aspects and element of water.
On the only afternoon that my husband and I ventured off the island, we drove to Charleston Harbor, where we boarded a three-mast tall ship. I was looking forward to moving across the harbor on the schooner Pride with the wind in the sails and the waves making the only significant noise. It was a weekday, and the forecast suggested there might be rain, so there were few souls on board the ship. I anticipated a peaceful sail, hoped to see some dolphins, and fully expected that rain would be part of the adventure.
For an hour, it was a lovely, pleasant trip. The weather was beautiful, and I was seated in a place where there was no need for me to be social with anyone but the elements. I was still in the mode of moving from moment to meditation to moment without effort, but being on the water without being directly in contact with the earth beneath me amplified the connection with the element of water.
The attraction was magnetic and fluid — playful, profound, comforting, healing, and always with an undercurrent of unfathomably great power. At one point, I closed my eyes, not in meditation, but to explore the feelings without the visual distraction of distant shorelines and distant boats or even the lines, sails, and planks of the Pride. A white curtain dropped in my mind, and I felt a spiritual nudge. I opened my eyes to see that a moderate fog surrounded us, and there was no way to see beyond those soft walls made of water. The shoreline was gone; we were alone with the water.
We were in good hands with the captain and crew. I was not worried and had space to be pleased that water had made to show me some of its power and form. At the very moment I laughed out loud, the first drops of rain hit my upturned face. The crew started dropping sails and telling passengers that the captain was inviting us to go below decks if we wanted to get out of the rain. I chose to stay on deck.
Every article of clothing I had on, including my light raincoat and sneakers, was soaked entirely through within two minutes. I may as well have been standing naked in the bow of the ship because clothes or not, water was pouring off me as fast as it was falling from the sky.
The experience was raw and wonderful, and I am sure that water was saying, “You wanted to know me, so here I am, on a good and somewhat gentle day.”
A foggy Atlantic vista [S. Barker]
I laughed more during the last 45 minutes of that sail than I have laughed in a very long time. My husband is a former Coastguardsman who tells many good stories of his adventures on the water. At one point during this rain-soaked fit of delight he turned to look at me, and I saw the gleam of mischief and something else in his eyes. I finally understood that when he talks about the water being in his blood, he does not mean the place or the lifestyle or even the military service. He is talking about the pull of the element moving through his veins and his spirit. I know this because on that day I felt it more than I ever had before.
I came home from that beach trip with enough shells to make a wind-chime and a body clock that has been reset. The last night I was there I spent a couple of hours meditating and listening to the surf, marking the similarities between the swoosh and splash of water on sand and the way my blood sounds when I listen to it flowing through my veins. I can touch that representation of water just as easily as I can pick up the tiny clam shell I keep on my desk.
Magic can be complicated. But sometimes the practical application of even the most complicated working comes down to being willing to accept the simplest things.
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