Loves, I drew three oracle cards from Hekatean Path for all of us this Sunday, and they tell a story worth sitting with. This is the arc of the crossroads we're standing at together — where we've been, what holds us, and what's calling us forward. 🃏Klytius — Defeat. We start in the hard place, and I won't dress it up. Klytius is the card of loss — the plan that didn't hold, the effort that didn't land. A lot of us have been carrying disappointment lately: grief over something that fell through, a hope that didn't come to pass. Hekate doesn't look away from that. She names it first, because you can't move through what you won't acknowledge. The defeat was real. Let it be real. 🃏Hieros Pyr — Sacred Fire — Unity. But look what she sets beside the defeat: the eternal flame, the spark of the divine that runs through everything and binds us to each other. Unity is her answer to Klytius. You are not carrying the loss alone. The fire that connects us doesn't go out because one plan failed. Belonging — to her, to each other, to something larger — is what carries us through the seasons of defeat. Warm yourself at the collective fire. 🃏Asteria — Dreams. And she ends with the stars. Asteria is the starry night — vision, dreams, and what's still possible beyond the visible. After the defeat and the fire, Hekate points us upward to what we can still imagine. The dream isn't dead. It's resting in the dark, waiting for us to lift our eyes back to it. What we couldn't hold in one form is being reshaped into another. The reading moves from the ground to the fire to the stars — from loss, through belonging, into vision. If you've been sitting in a defeat lately, this is Hekate telling you it's not the end of the story. It's the beginning of the next dream. And the timing matters: We are closing Phase II — The Descent / Phosphoros. Wednesday we step onto the Underworld Floor. So carry this with you down: the loss is real, the fire holds you, and the dream is waiting on the far side.

The women are weeping at the gate again. Come sit with them. Module 2, Lesson 3 of The Descent: Underworld Journeys just went live in the level 4 classroom — The Lament and the Liturgy: Tammuz Across the Ancient World. And the timing is not mine. We are inside the month of Tammuz right now — the fourth Babylonian month, June into July, the height of summer when the green things wither and the beloved goes down. It’s stiflingly hot here in Michigan, and the spell included in the lesson is perfect for right now, for me at least. For over two thousand years, across Sumer, Akkad, Babylon, and Assyria, this was the month the women sang the laments. This lesson drops in the exact season it belongs to. Here's what's inside — and I'll warn you, this one is grief-work, not a happy ending: 🌾 The oldest lament that survives — older than the Psalms, older than Homer — sung by a woman standing at a threshold, facing the open air 🚪 Tammuz becoming Adonis, the river at Byblos running red, the women who couldn't remember anymore which torn god they were weeping for 🌱 The Gardens of Adonis — Athenian women planting seeds on rooftops deliberately to watch them die, then carrying the withered shoots to the sea 🕯️ And the thread through all of it: the mourner as threshold-keeper. Grief as the technology that holds the gate open. Hekate in every woman who ever wept at a door. There's an incense and atmosphere ritual built in — cedar, or myrrh if you have it, the scent of the mourning— and no candles this time. Only natural light. This lesson is about what travels into a room when you leave the door open. Why now, past the timing: we cross into Phase III — The Underworld Floor / Chthonia this Wednesday, July 8. The deepest room of the whole descent. And this lesson is the map for what comes after the floor. Because the torn god does not stay down. The grain that dies in the earth rises. But — and this is the whole teaching — it doesn't rise because death was defeated. It rises because the women wept it back. Without the mourner, no memory. Without memory, no return. Rebirth isn't the opposite of the descent. It's what grief makes possible on the far side of it.

It's the Fourth of July here in the States, and I won't pretend I'm celebrating. Honestly, this holiday has never sat easily with me. And this year, with so many of us looking hard at what justice actually means, the fireworks land differently. Not that my neighborhood agrees. They've been setting off fireworks at all hours. 😬 So instead of celebrating, we work. The moon is waning, which is right for this: strength drawn up, injustice cleared out. This is a simple stovetop spell — a brew you make, hold, and drink. Nothing you don't already have. You'll need: - A cup of water, heating on the stove - A pinch of black pepper (for backbone) and a pinch of salt (for clearing) - A bay leaf if you have one (for victory), or rosemary (for strength) - Your two hands and your voice The working: Set the water to warm. As it heats, drop in the salt, the pepper, and the bay or rosemary. Stir it slowly, three times, deosil — sunwise — and hold your intention clear: the strength to stand, and justice to move. When it's warm enough to drink safely (not scalding), wrap both hands around the cup, feel the heat, and speak the words. The spoken part: Salt to clear and pepper to stand, bay for the victory close at hand. What is crooked, let it break; what is owed, let justice take. Steady my spine and light my way — I drink the strength to face the day. Drink it down slow. Feel it settle. Then pour any dregs at your threshold or a crossroads, and let Hekate carry the rest. Calling on the Furies for righteous justice would be especially appropriate. A word before Phase III: we cross into the Underworld Floor next Wednesday, July 8 . Hekate Chthonia, the deepest room of this whole descent. Strength and justice are exactly what you want in your hands before you go down. Consider this brew a provision for the road. You don't walk the floor empty-handed. 🔦 Torchlight For Today: "Freedom is the source from which all significations and all values spring." — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity

Some of the members of the group asked me to remind them when it was the day of my birth. Today is that day. July 2 1995 a baby girl was born. Forged through fire and brimstone she evolved into one bad bitch 🐦‍🔥 thank you for being you and for well wishes today. I love this community so much and I wish we could all get together and eat cake and share a glass of wine 🍷 🌙 🍰

New book on the altar today: Anatomy of a Witch: A Map to the Magical Body by Laura Tempest Zakroff. I've been circling this one for a while, and it finally arrived. Here's the premise that pulled me in, right from the opening: you are your own most important magical tool. Not the deck, not the herbs, not the candles — the body. Zakroff maps the witch's power through the physical form itself, treating the body as the instrument every working actually runs through. Chapter one sets that table: before you reach for anything on the shelf, you reach for yourself. Which...if you've been floating in water with me, breathing through the Descent, learning where the reactive horse lives in your own chest...you already know in your bones. This just gives it a map. I'll be pulling from it in posts to come. Consider this the first torch lit on a new path. 🗝️ Have you read this one? Or is there a book that changed how you sit inside your own body? Tell me below — I'm building the reading pile. En Erebos, Phos. In darkness, light. Blessings, Tirza 🌿🗝️🌙 #HekateanHealing #AnatomyOfAWitch #MagicalBody 📚 The book: Laura Tempest Zakroff, Anatomy of a Witch: A Map to the Magical Body (Llewellyn, 2021)