I’ve just returned from the magick of DragonRise Witchcamp, held every other year in the UK. It’s a Reclaiming intensive in which a group comes together to make magick and be in community with each other.
For many days, we take classes (we call them paths) in the mornings and do ritual together at night. In this camp, we have a day for rest and play. Not that magick isn’t play, of course.
In these camps, it is intense and we create a sacred space that intensifies. We get to do deep work, build intimacy quickly, and push ourselves into places we can not easily access in the fast paced distractions of the everyday.
But then it’s over.
It doesn’t have to be.
If our bodies can hold onto trauma, this means they can also hold onto ecstasy.
Our bodies can carry the magick home.
Collecting Mystery and Memory
I promise myself every Witchcamp that I’ll write in a journal about my experiences. Sometimes it happens, and sometimes it doesn’t. When I’m teaching, I have the ritual outlines and notes, but when I’m a camper, I have my experiences of how class and ritual impacted me. Writing can help to capture and then to act as a signpost for later reflection and continued magick.
It’s my goal to write down the promises to the godds, the spells that were done, and the intentions of the rituals. That way, I can recall where I went and how it relates to where I am in the present moment.
I often use the tool of anchoring to bring these experiences into my cells and not just into my mind. Life is so heady as it is, why not focus on embodiment in and out of ritual space?
To anchor is to find a place on your body where you can store your magickal experience. You might touch your heart during a ritual moment that held information or knowledge. Or you might touch your hand when you were using your hands during a transformational process.
Sink that experience into that place on your body. Let it soak up in your body where you can find it later. You can touch that spot later and go right back to the place of knowing.
You can do this during an intense ritual. During an interaction with another being, of flesh and not.
A witch I know also ‘catches’ songs from camps to share with others. Singing is the practice I do the most, though I don’t record them for others. I record them and sing them to myself whenever something touches me and reminds me of how I felt and sank into the magick.
At this most recent camp, there was a moment when I was aspecting, so not all me. There was a chant that was repeated during the ritual to call out to the being I was aspecting. With each repetition of the chant, the being became stronger and more alive.
And each time I recall that chant, I’m right back where I was. I remember seeing with her eyes, speaking with her words, and moving in the way that she did/does. While I don’t remember everything she did, I remember the essence. I remember Her. I can pull up the way she informed me and changed me.
I brought the magick home. In my muscles. In my heart.
Like a souvenir. Like a spell. Like a promise. Like a dream that doesn’t fade when you open your eyes.
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