We release.
We cleanse.
We banish that which does not serve us.

We cannot hold on to magical energy that is burned up.
Cannot ask more of a spell once it is complete.
I have to let go.

It’s easy to wonder what would have been if we had known.
If we had been witches,
had been velhot all along,
passed it down through the line.
Could we have had wondrous old gardens filled with magical herbs from the old world,
and known the perfect combinations for all that troubled our bodies and minds?

Perhaps,
in some world,
but not in this.
It did not come to us, so it was not meant to be.

Had we known then, what we know now, we simply would not be here.
If we had always known, we couldn’t have made the mistakes that brought us our magic today.

Most of my magic is built on mistakes.
Or desires to fix mistakes.
Or both.
Rarely neither.

I started making spells, burning potions.

I looked at the herbs I’d been guided to collect, labeled in their jars.
And then I waited.
I waited for the spells to tell me what the magic did,
to find their meaning in the doing.

A mistake.

I gathered them again.
I learned,
I looked them up, then wrote them down.
Gave myself the guidance I kept waiting to appear.
Fixed my mistake.

Fixed a mistake to make another.

I crafted a spell.
To sleep, perchance to dream.
Asked for peace, slumber, softness,
but also asked for dreams,
for visions,
for sight.

Burned and then bottled mixed up hopes.
Got one but not the other.
I knew to let it go, and yet I kept it bottled.

And again,
and once again,
I burned and bottled spells.

My mixtures got better. My intentions got clearer. My spells had more music.
Through my successes, I could not see my failings.

Like my grandmother in my mother’s dreams,
I was making my potions,
recrafting our legacy.

But like my grandmother in real life, I was keeping too much bottled within.

Energy spent is just that, spent.
Energy burned,
magic offered and used,
doesn’t hold more power after.
Ashes are ashes.

A baby witch, a novice velho, I wanted to keep my magic close.
To use every last drop.
To speak my intentions into the wind, but never release it.

And the tension builds.
The body responds.
The spirit responds.
The world responds.
We all hold on too deep, too long.
We can’t let go.

Holding on to hopes, to expectations, to dreams and beliefs.
Holding on to all that the universe is asking us for.

Those ancestors did the same I think. Held too close to expectations,
to the words they were told,
to what they thought should be,
and didn’t let trust simply be.

We cannot bottle up the past and keep it under our pillow, it’s already been burned up and spent.
We have to look at it in the air, and see what the world gives back from the offerings our past lives gave.

Today I made a spell to cleanse,
to release,
to let go,
to give in.

I burned away my expectations of me
my expectations of you.
I burned away my fears,
and my hopes too.
But most of all I burned control.
I had let it go.
It does not serve me.
It’s something I cannot know.

I can’t control what my ancestors lost, what they did not give me.
But if I give it up and open, what’s lost may just come back.

That which is lost
wants to be found,
but only when it’s ready.

We must let go, breathe, be steady.

What’s meant to be will be
and everything else
isn’t me.