The Wild Hunt (https://wildhunt.org/author/luke)
Luke Babb is a magical Jack of All Trades and a companion of Robin Goodfellow Their eclectic polytheist practice centers travel, storytelling, and relationship as potent forms of magic. Luke lives in Chicago, where they spend time exploring new neighborhoods and looking for Hermes in unexpected architectural details.
“She pushes me under the water quickly, but there’s no violence to it,” writes Luke Babb in a searing encounter with the spirit world. “Still, I panic. I hold my breath, struggle against her, but this is the sort of thing she is. I am the sort of thing that breathes, and so, despite my body’s stubborn refusal, eventually my lungs pull in and I taste the water in the back of my throat.”
More than Heathenry itself, Loki was the lynchpin of my spirituality, the guiding star and supporting bedrock of my life. When I finally admitted that we were done, it wracked through me in wave after wave of tears. I had, I realized, grown too far from the person I had once been. I looked at my father’s gifts and I could no longer tolerate the cost.
I don’t know the likelihood that a specific tarot card would show up in five readings that I gave myself from different decks. I’d guess that the answer is “slim.” How do I explain it, then, when the same card appears for me in a dozen readings, from a dozen different hands?
But of all the Witchy items I’ve acquired over the years, the go bag is by far the most useful. Like all my favorite tools, it seems frivolous and self-aggrandizing until it is suddenly vital.
I was twenty-one, and that was the first time I had ever seen the ocean. I slept that night as close to the window as I could, straining my ears for the sound of waves. The ocean was a poetic trope, the longing of Tolkien’s elves, a setting for adventure and tragedy. I loved the idea of it, and I wanted to be lulled into sleep like the heroes of my favorite books, but that was all I knew of the water.