During the last days of Winter, I usually look forward to Imbolc and Ostara like milestones. I look so forward to Winter but by New Year’s, I’m ready for Spring. I like every season except for High Summer.
One such Imbolc brought me to Salem, to stand with the coven of my mentor. I’d held a seat on their outer circle for a while, and I was excited to visit Salem with them. It was my first time there, and it was NOT what I thought it’d be. As you know, Imbolc is February 1st and Salem is only really busy during the month of October. So it isn’t really a stretch to say that we had the town pretty much to ourselves, almost worthy of the title “Ghost Town”.
I want to say this is somewhere around the year 2004-2006. We were going to stand at the lighthouse and do a ritual observing Yemaya, the Goddess of the Sea. I remember we all carried a melon to toss into the water as a gift.
It was so cold, and we were dressed up in our witchy gear. We were required to wear sea colors for this particular occasion. I wore a dress I had worked on the night before, and warm clothes under that, so I looked like a puffy blueberry. Regardless, the energy of that place and our magick combined was incredible. The wind was merciless, and yet the few people that were out for a walk stopped and watched us. I was afraid that they were angry but they were genuinely in awe of us.
We paid our homage to Yemaya and moved on, taking the circle with us. We also stopped at the graveyard, where all of the poor souls of the trials were buried. Witch or no, we paid our respects, slowly. A male witch tapped his staff at each grave once the name was spoken aloud.
After all this, we stopped for a bite to eat, all of us sitting at the biggest table at the Beerworks. Our energy was high after all that walking outside and food in our bellies. As silly as I might sound, I felt really and truly grateful for this group of witches, for this experience I might never have had if I wasn’t open to it. ❤ maebyt
Wiccan Winds 