The Wild Hunt (https://wildhunt.org/tag/memory/page/2)
I use models for what is “old enough” to consider seriously in my practice based on instinct and a vague understanding of the world “historiography,” picking up and discarding things from 1000, 1300, or 1800 as either “older than anything else I’ve found” or “too new” – all while the modern Witchcraft movement can be meaningfully traced to the 1940s.
It never surprises me when my dad shows up in memory or visitation when I am thinking about the Adirondacks or wandering in the woods somewhere. Those were his places and my places, and another one of the connections that we shared.
I began to believe that peace goes into the making of the bread as well. By the time I made the first loaf, I knew it with certainty, and I worked that peace and some other magics into the dough as I kneaded it on the counter in the hearth center of my own home.
Everything felt and seemed peaceful and quiet until my monkey-minded self interrupted my focus to wonder what on earth that raven was doing sitting so quietly for so long. Perhaps he wanted to see if I was still as funny as I believed. Who knows the mind of a raven?