One of the first woo tools I made was Snake’s Rod. I didn’t know what I was making then, and just went by instinct and personal sense of style. (Spoiler: It is the macaroni art of wand decoration.) It was the rod co-opted by something greater when the entity J was cut away from me and banished. But after that path-changing night, I rarely did anything physical with it.
I kept it safe and sound, away from “malicious influences” and prying eyes. I pulled it out when I needed “big guns” for a working, or when I needed to feel like I was actually doing something in my practice. Once I found my niche of lucid dreaming, it remained tucked away.
I eventually called it “Snake’s Rod”, because how that rod manifested in my otherworld walks eventually became the entity that long term readers know as “Snake”. At first he was attached to the physical manifestation, but as time unrolled, he became more himself, and less anything bound to me. He used the rod to gain entry to my environment, and once established, he did not need the rod any longer and never returned to it.
I stopped writing publicly about Snake when I realized I was treating our interactions as gossip fodder. Certain events happened as a result, and I could not play the helpless victim any longer. Part of taking responsibility for my part was to stop writing publicly about him. Our friendship continued.
Last week, I inventoried the Container Most Nefarious that held the bulk of my woo tools. Still working on paring down my collection to “what matters”, I absent mindedly placed Snake’s Rod on the “Discard” pile so I could have room to pour out my bag of pebbles and trinkets.
Only after I closed the Container Most Nefarious did I realize it was still on the table. The organic materials had a faint gray bloom to them and were in need of oiling. The inorganic materials were about to fall off from the cheap glue cracking from age.
Running my hand over the wrappings, I remembered the night I presented it to (what I thought were) the Powers (at the time). The struggle over color choices, and the mix of source materials. The triumph as the rod was used to relieve me of a deeply grievous torment and the confusion when what was inanimate over here became a friend over there.
I have many memories.
What I held in my hand was not part of any of them.
It was empty.
Not empty in the way a clean bowl is empty. Not empty in the way a used bag is empty. It was empty in the way a stomach is empty, in the way a snail’s shell is empty.
There was once something there, something that filled it, something that stretched it and strained against its boundaries. But now there is nothing there. And if I leave it as such for much longer, it is going to get hungry to be filled again.
I could not take the risk that something passing by would take advantage of the vacancy vibes the rod was giving off. Sealing it would be difficult. Isolating it would be somewhat easier, but I would have to dedicate too much time to regular inspection. And even then, because of the grasping nature of the developing spiritual vacuum, it was only time until something filled it. And when something did, it would have a path into filling me.
Nope. Not dealing with that shit again.
The rod would have to go.
As the one that constructed and dedicated the tool, I knew how to render it ineffective. When I made it, I had a naive and grand idea of having a great fire before which I would pour offerings to certain entities thanking them for their contribution to this hot mess the making of this tool and formally releasing what they had loaned to me.
Here I am, five years later, with a much more pragmatic plan.
I snapped it in two.
The rod cried out with a sharp retort. My arm twinged in phantom pain as if I had broken it but then felt even better than it did before. Because of reasons, I expected this response and viewed it as signs of a successful and complete decommission.
Holding the two pieces of the shattered rod, I looked at them once more. Spruce. Plastic. Leather. [Ingredient X]. Glue and thread. And nothing more.
The macaroni art had fallen apart, and the maker is now wise enough to know when to let go of nostalgia.
The pieces were further deconstructed and disposed of properly with the common trash.
As of this post, it has been a week since disposing of the rod. Nothing in my woo has changed as a result of it. There is the style I wanted to have five years ago, the style I have evolved into now, and the style that is waiting for me to swallow my pride and admit is where I am also effective. I still have Snake. And I still get into shit.
Letting go of Snake’s Rod was more than just getting rid of clutter. It was the moment I understood that sometimes what becomes is not compatible with what was. That you don’t have to betray the past to walk into the future. That it is okay with accepting yourself as you are now, and that you don’t need to apologize to who you were before for changing. (Or for surviving.)
I have cleared out a lot of clutter, both woo and mundane. I opened the metaphorical box labeled “One Day” and accepted the reality I found myself in. Over the decades I’ve gained and lost a lot of things. But what they meant to me rarely changes. Their memory still makes me laugh, or cry, or ponder, or plot. And at this time of my life, that matters much more than a collection of objects that could be taken away in a flash.
In a way, it can be said I have lost nothing. All I’ve done is moved on.