Petting the Raven

In response to the chimes, I opened the front door and saw myself, illuminated by the porch light. It was the me of fifty years ago: a slim, petite girl in her twenties, with masses of dark, wavy hair and brown eyes impossibly big for the translucent white face that held them.

 “Come in,” I told her. “Heather, is it?”

“Yes, ma’am.” With shining eyes and rapid, nervous movements, she set her bags on the floor and hung her wool coat and scarf on the coat tree in the hall. Leaving her purse, she picked up the blue tote blazoned with an IKEA logo and told me, “I’ve brought the things you asked for.”

“Good.” Just then, the kettle whistled. “Let’s have a cup of tea before we begin. Valerian root will calm your nerves.”

She was too well brought up, or perhaps too timid, to tell me no. Besides, it wasn’t optional. She needed to be calm and receptive for my work to be effective.

I seldom take supplicants anymore. The older I get, the less I wish to poke the unseen world and beseech its intervention. But as a favor to Selina, her mother, who was once my acolyte, I would treat with the daughter.

We sat at my kitchen table and chatted. We talked of her job, her mother, her pets, and mostly of the young man, Reginald, who was her heart’s desire. He was a stranger to me. Like the girl, he was from another generation. But his mother had a reputation. She was rumored to lean toward the dark, and no circle I knew of welcomed her.

When Heather began to display the calming effects of the tea, I led her to my meditation room. It was hard to banish all artificial light from a modern house, but in my back bedroom nothing electronic was allowed. We would use candles for illumination. Candles and, tonight, the full moon whose pale beams streamed through the window and washed the small table before it.

“Have a seat, dear, and lay out the things you brought.”

“Yes, Miss Hazel.” She pulled the items from her bag one by one, naming them as she placed them on the table. “Two beeswax candles with unburnt wicks. Two brass candleholders. A box of sulfur-tipped matches. White sand, collected in the dark of the moon and buried in a glass jar under an evergreen for seven days.”

She gave me a concerned look. “I didn’t know where to find white sand, so I bought some at the aquarium store. I put it behind the garage and then went back to collect it early in the new moon. Do you think it will work?”

“It should be fine.” In truth, most of the accoutrements could be altered or omitted. It was the amateurs who were afraid to change anything because they didn’t know what was important. Besides, without a certain amount of ritual, most people will not believe. “And what of the rest?”

“Hair clippings from Reggie. I wiped them out of the sink with a Kleenex after he shaved,” she said, presenting a zip-locked sandwich bag with a folded tissue inside. She pulled out a second plastic bag with a few strands of longer hair and said, “From his mother. I asked to use her upstairs bathroom when Reggie was in the other one. Her hair brush was spotless, but I found a few long hairs that had fallen to the floor and been captured in a cobweb in the corner.”

How appropriate, I thought. “Very good. We may not need the last two things, but we’ll see.”

Setting the two candles in their holders and lighting one of the sulfur -tipped matches, I called on the moon while transferring the flame from match to wicks.

Mistress of the stars

Reveal the hidden bars

Closest to the heart

And bend them to our art.

Heather’s wide eyes followed the flame in the darkness, until I held the match before her.

“Blow it out, my dear.” That wasn’t part of the official ritual, but it had the benefit of encouraging her to breathe. The faint scent of burning wax was pierced by the more acrid smell of the extinguished match as it exhaled a small spiral of smoke in the shaft of moonlight.

Next, I brought out a plate with a complex scene painted on the bottom and symbols around the rim. Setting it between the lit candles in front of my guest, I said, “This is my revealing dish. Take as much sand as your right hand will hold without spilling and scatter it over the plate.”

Her hand shook as she let the fine white sand drain through her fingers to the dish below. Before she pulled back, I had to grasp her wrist and brush the remaining grains of sand from her damp palm.

“Now, with the ring finger of your left hand, stir it three times in a clockwise direction.”

As she complied, I beseeched the moon again:

Mistress of the night

By your pale light

Show us how he sways

Beneath your silver rays.

In the dim light, it was difficult to see what the swirls revealed, but that was as it should be. It echoed the difficulty of seeing reality through the smoky veil of ordinary life. After some study, I was ready to speak.

“You have your work cut out for you, my dear.Do you see how the swirls have uncovered this area at the bottom of the tray, where the roots of the tree are shown?”

After some time, she nodded, releasing her breath in a small puff too gentle to move any of the fine grains of sand.

“The way to his heart is through his mother, the root of his existence. You will need to make her your friend and more than that, your advocate, because his bonds with her are very strong. He will never leave her for you. You must welcome her into your home if you want to win him.”

“I would do anything to make him love me.” She stared at me with an earnest desperation that nearly sucked me in to the passionate maelstrom that was her heart. A little shocked, I studied the revealing dish again, and saw more loops and coils, subtle reflections of the reality she faced.

“Heather, we cannot make him love you. We can discern the way of his heart and encourage it. Attempting to force another’s love is a very dangerous thing.” If she had been listening, she might have questioned how something could be both ineffectual and dangerous at the same time.

“But I want him. I want him so much I will die without him,” she whimpered, like a puppy locked in the basement. Then she flashed me the knife-edge of her anger. “My mother said you were the best. Why won’t you help me?”

Her statement only added confirmation for what I had seen in the revealing dish. This was more than youthful hyperbole. It was a binding spell, and a strong one. That’s the trouble with being an adept. Along with a talent for sensing and interacting with the invisible world comes a vulnerability to its charms and powers.

The soft hiss of the burning candles rose against the silence that followed her outburst, and a last fall cricket chirped somewhere in the grass outside.

“I will help you, but your case is complicated. How far has your mother trained you?”

“I’m sorry,” she said, shimmering once again into the timid, pale supplicant I had seen at the front door. “I don’t know what happens. When I think of losing him, nothing else matters.”

“I know, my dear. Tell me about your training so far.”

“I can read cards, and palms. I can make ointments and blessing candles. I’ve done small charms, like for finding a lost object.”

“That’s good. You are receptive to the invisible world. You can listen when it speaks to you, and you can make your wishes and desires known to it and ask for help. For some, that’s as far as the training will ever go. Or ever should go.”

“My mother thinks I should train with someone else if I want to go farther.”

“Your mother is wise. The next level requires you to influence and change the unseen forces. Often they don’t like to be interfered with. You must be able to trust your teacher, even when she tells you unpleasant or frightening things. You can’t get emotional or mixed up by remembering all the spats and misunderstandings that are part of growing up. It’s too dangerous.”

“But you know how to do these things.” She was beginning to swing again, to give herself over to the certainty of her delusion. She shot me a cunning look. “You know how to make Reggie love me.”

Suddenly I felt the full weight of my seventy-five years. I wanted nothing more than to blow out the candles, see Heather to the door, and make myself another cup of tea. But with age and knowledge, there is always responsibility. Still, I wished her mother had not asked this favor of me.

“I could possibly make him act as if he loved you. I might be able to make him think he loves you. But it wouldn’t be real.” I might as well begin to arm her. “Have you ever heard the phrase petting the raven?”

“It’s about casting advanced spells, isn’t it?” It was clear she was only guessing.

“It comes from the saying: If you’re going to pet a raven, it’s best to stroke the way the feathers grow.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that it’s difficult and disruptive to cast a spell that makes someone do what they would not, or that tries to bend the invisible world and its spirits to our will if they will it not themselves. In other words, your chances of success are much better if you request what would be given anyway.”

Her eyes got even bigger, if that were possible, and she bit her lower lip before struggling with the words, “Are you saying that Reggie doesn’t want to love me?”

“Not at all. I don’t know. But what I do know is that he loves his mother too much. I believe someone has placed a binding spell on him, tying him unnaturally close to his mother. First, we must break that spell. Then, we will see what can be done to remove the obstacles to your happiness.”

“Can we do it now? Oh, please, Miss Hazel, could we break the spell now?”

“We shall break them all, my dear.” What I didn’t tell her was that I thought there were two binding spells involved. Reggie’s mother, known to me by reputation only, was said to be ill and worried for her future. She was a cautionary tale, illustrating As above so below, as within so without. She had reached into the dark arts and they had poisoned her mind and body. She was desperate for someone to care for her in her frail old age.

And so she bound her son to her. And if I was right, she bound this girl to the son, attempting to make a daughter-in-law that would put up with her. She had distorted her son’s natural affection to bind him to her, and she had perverted the natural attraction of two young people to create the second tier of her defense, a besotted wife who would do anything for the son.

I excused myself for a minute and returned to the kitchen, where I swabbed the dregs in Heather’s teacup with a cotton ball. I would be working with small amounts representing all three principles, but it should be enough.

I gathered other supplies from the cupboard and returned to my eager supplicant. Then I told her exactly what to do and say during the ritual. Such advanced work is never written down, except in a grimoire. Let it only be said that we worked until past midnight, and I believe that we were equally exhausted when the work was done.

I knew almost immediately that she was freed of the spell. When she left the house, after thanking me, there was a lightness of spirit about her that had been lacking before. I knew that it would take counseling and work to help her understand what had happened, but if she continued her studies, she would be a better practitioner for it. There may have been a bit of lightness in my own spirit. Even an old woman can still do good sometimes.

It wasn’t until the next morning that I found out about Reggie. His mother called me, and her angry screeching forced the phone from my ear almost of its own accord.

“Interfering bitch!” She said. “How dare you counteract my spells? What right do you have to destroy my careful plans?”

“That’s bitch with a ‘w’,” I told her. “And you know by what right. You twisted and bent the natural order of things, and I set it straight. I had no choice.”

“Now my son tells me he is going to get his own apartment. After all I’ve done for him, all the years I spent grooming him. You’ll be sorry for your meddling! You’re not the only one who can cast spells, you know!”

“I don’t cast spells,” I told her. “I am a diagnostician, and your spells were like tumors. I simply cut them out. You would be wise not to test my power.”

She sputtered a bit more, and finally hung up. I didn’t expect any more trouble from her, in spite of the threats. When you have spent as many years as I have learning the invisible world, and when you are as close to moving there as I am, there is little to fear.

The phone’s receiver was barely in its cradle before it rang again. This time it was Heather’s mother. It was my day for speaking to mothers, apparently.

“Hazel, I called to thank you for saving my daughter. I told her you could do it if anyone could.”

“I’m glad I could help her, Selina. But you know she needs training. She’s too sensitive. Something like this could happen again if she’s not prepared.”

“I know, Hazel. That’s why I was wondering...”

“I don’t want another acolyte, Selina. I’m old. I’m tired.”

“A youngster would keep you young, Hazel. Besides, don’t you have a responsibility to teach what you know to the next generation?”

“I did. That was you, Selina.”

“But my daughter is probably more gifted that I was, and I can’t teach her myself. Are you sure you didn’t see just a bit of yourself in her?”

I had to laugh. She had always been my best pupil. “You almost have me convinced, Selina.”

“I’m not trying to convince you. I’m just suggesting that this is something you really already want to do.”

“So, you’re just ‘petting the raven’?”

“I learned from the best,” she said.