The Wild Hunt (https://wildhunt.org/author/luke/page/7)
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.
The folks I know who work with Odin, after a certain age, have remarkably similar medical histories. Eye trauma features heavily: cataracts, glaucoma, the sorts of illness that require long periods with eye patches or new, glass eyes to fill out empty sockets. The day my partner looked at me and held up their hand, covering one eye and nodding as if something made more sense, sits with me still on some nights.
There is nothing strange and unapproachable, to me, about the fear of stepping outside my own door. There is nothing more sacred than the relief of coming back. There is nothing more sacred, to me, than the relief of stepping outside my own door. There is nothing strange or unapproachable about the fear of coming back.
“I have wondered for a long time what makes a tarot deck “click” for someone. My first deck, a pocket-sized Rider-Waite-Smith that my partner took exactly one look at before it fell to me, was entirely opaque when I first picked it up. I didn’t know the symbols they featured or how they were used, and only the small folded paper included in the box offered any insight. I worried over it, put it down, came back to scour the nine-word summaries of each card and try again. I attempted a Celtic cross based on the inch-high diagram, a feat which has meant that my standard spread is just slightly misaligned from everyone else’s I’ve ever met. “
“Am I hurting you?” he asks, tapping the base of his glass against the bar for emphasis. “Have I ever been a part of anything that wasn’t good for you, in the long run?” He waits, watching the answer on my face, and nods. “Then what’s the problem?”
“When I got some energy back, I sat down to tend my altars. The small chores of cleaning, sorting, and reorganizing took all of my attention. As I worked, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the tattoo had changed something, had somehow shown that I was serious enough to have some credit.” Luke Babb writes on the lessons and absences that made up their December holidays in 2021.