This article will be slightly different, as my wife and I will be writing it together. My comments will be in white, and hers will be inblue.
On Wednesday December 21st, 2022, the Winter Solstice, my wife wanted to perform an intense and very personal magickal operation which involved being at the ocean. It was a cold day of course, with the temperature in the low 50s, but not cold enough that being outside was terribly unpleasant. So, we packed a few items into the car and headed out for what became one of the strangest and most magically saturated single days I have ever experienced.
As we began our drive we came across a woman standing on the side of the road shaking a gas can in the air. Deciding we’d like to help, I swung the car around at the first safe opportunity and drove back to where the woman was standing only to find that she was gone. The road she was standing next to was empty.
I said, “We have to go back and help her.” The laws of fairy tales and chivalric quests are clear: if you encounter a stranger in need along your path (especially at the outset), helping them or not is the difference between failure and success. I was thrilled and flattered to have such a classic experience; it felt like confirmation that I was on the right path.
We drove past, and again pulled a U-turn at the first opportunity to do so. When we again arrived at where she had previously been she was back! Strange, as if she was only visible from one direction, but not overtly weird. Maybe she had just stepped away for a moment.
If we had encountered her on the way back, she would have been on the driver’s side, and I wouldn’t have been the one to speak to her.
We pulled the car over and offered to fill the can for her.
She said, “You’re a blessing,” and that she was trying to help a friend. She’d knocked on doors and even tried flagging down a sheriff’s car, with no luck.
Ten minutes later we were back with a full can of gas and wished her a “Merry Christmas” before continuing on our way.
She offered to pay for the gas, but I felt certain that it would be incorrect to accept payment. Besides, the gas cost less than four dollars, and it was almost Christmas.
As the drive continued it became clear that the GPS was taking us on an unfamiliar route. A number of times we missed turns due to conversations we were having, but perhaps even more times the GPS took us one direction only to have us turn around and go back the way we came. There was a strange feeling as though something was conspiring to get us to our destination at a specific time, or perhaps was trying to prevent us from arriving at all.
I felt guided, rather than opposed, during this part of the journey. Our detour caused us to take a u-turn at a street called Indigo. My planned ceremony involved woad, and indigo is the proper dyer’s term for the pigment extracted from that plant.
Or maybe a bit of both.
We arrived and found a place to park in a public lot behind a restaurant called “Café Heavenly”.
For some unexplained reason, the parking lot was full of roosters. We stood talking to them for a few moments, and my wife asked them to guard the car for us until we returned.
I felt that the roosters were some kind of threshold guardians. I knelt down, and two of them approached, thoroughly inspected my shoes, then moved on. I took this as approval, largely because – in my experience – an unhappy rooster is not a subtle phenomenon.
We took a short time to walk around. We wandered up the road looking at all the local shops, and stopped in a rock and gem store for a bit. We continued up the street all the way to the beach. The tide was high and the wind was heavy. The water looked incredibly cold and the waves were rough.
At the rock shop, I asked about star garnets. The shopkeeper commented that they’re also called star rubies, even though garnets and rubies have different mineral compositions.
We had to wait until it was dark to perform the intended magick, so we went looking for somewhere to eat.
My wife wanted a pair of flipflops to walk on the sand and in the water, so we stopped at a store called “Sun Magic” where she found a pair of silver ones and bought them.
On the evening of the Winter Solstice, I met the shopkeeper of Sun Magic. He was an extremely old man, so slow to move and speak that I felt guilty for bothering him. He had large skin lesions on his face and hand, and held on his lap a dog named Xena. “She’s the sweetest thing in the world,” he said, “but when she meets another dog, watch out.”
The sun set while we were having dinner, and we sat on the front porch of the restaurant for a short time discussing our plans. We drew some tarot cards as it began to rain slightly, and decided that we were in the wrong place. We instead wanted to be at another beach about an hour further away.
I drank sangria, which in Spanish means “bleeding,” referring to the red color.
Heading back to the car, we found the roosters now asleep all around it. We thanked them for taking care of it and continued on our journey.
As we were driving away, we were again plagued by problems, like something was trying to stop us. A large box fell off a vehicle and landed dead center of the road in front of us, forcing quick action to avoid a collision. More GPS issues and strange routes further extended the trip.
We stopped at a gas station to use the restrooms. In the men’s room, it looked like an animal had coughed up a hairball made entirely of sequins. There was a bizarre pile of them stuck together with some goopy substance. The women’s restroom was out of toilet paper, and right before I was able to get some from the men’s for my wife someone rushed in front of me to use it, causing us to wait even longer to get back on the road.
Here, I did feel a sense of friction or opposition. As I waited, trapped in the bathroom, it felt like being in a waiting room.
Finally, we reached our destination. By this time it was dark and the rain and wind had dramatically increased. We sat in the car for a short time preparing. My wife applied woad to herself, tied cloth in specific patterns to her hands and wrists, changed clothes, and we stepped into the night heading for the ocean.
Keeping our heads down as we walked through the storm, we reached the point where it was time to separate. She handed me a few things to hold for safe keeping and strode alone down to the water.
I watched from a distance, just doing my best to make sure she was safe in the darkness. The first thing I noticed is that the ocean seemed unwilling, or unable, to touch me. As she walked along I followed a bit behind, and though the surf was washing up to me it always stopped an inch or two from my feet, no matter where I stood.
A few weeks previous, I had a dreamlike vision of a dragon. It was long and white, in the style of quite a few Asian dragons I have seen drawings of. It lacked any sort of wings, but was flying through the sky. It had a long mustache and white furry hair along its head and back. Its “scales” were actually short pearlescent feathers. In the vision I was able to touch it, and it was one of the softest things I had ever felt.
While standing in the wind and rain on the beach, watching my wife wade into the water, I had an impulse to call out to this dragon. I simply asked aloud “are you here?”.
The wind and rain stopped. I’m not sure for how long, but it took me a few seconds to realize what had happened. Recognizing the silence I picked my head up and turned to face the direction it had been blowing from, and before I could say the words “what the fu…” the weather blasted me in the face at full force.
It was as if it stopped for a total period of only five seconds, and only on me.
My wife began calling out and pointing at the sky. There was a strange black line in the clouds. It was already dark, especially over the water, but the town behind us lit up the sky from its street lights. There was a wedge of blackness coming from above the ocean and stretching out across the beach, reaching for the buildings. Like some invisible giant was blocking the lights, casting its shadow onto the clouds.
I said, “The line in the sky! Do you see it?”
As she finished her ritual I handed her items back to her, and we began trudging through the storm back to the car. I held my phone-flashlight high to light our way, but we noticed there was a strange blue line of distant lights which started on the beach and stretched out over the water. We were walking towards it as we made our way to the stairs which led away from the sand.
One of our very early Estes sessions referred to following a blue string.
As did a previous blog article I wrote.
We returned to the car and dried off. We both noticed a distinct feeling of completion now that the ritual was finished. We talked for a short time and then began driving home right as the rain let up.
The ceremony wasn’t from a book or tradition (that I’m aware of). At its bones, it had only one step, and these are the magic words:
I know everything I need to know.
From there, I stepped out of my way and allowed the next right step to become apparent in its turn.
Our GPS again chose a very strange route.
This time it avoided all major highways we would normally take, instead taking us on lonely roads that lacked streetlights. It was quite a foggy night, with radio towers appearing only as ghostly flashing red lights in the low clouds.
The whole time between the second beach and home felt unreal, like traveling through an underworld. With the exception of a few large crossroads, we were in a strange, beautiful, eerie land of fog and wild, enclosing forest.
The line leading us where we are heading on the GPS is bright blue, and the entire ride back we kept seeing lines of Christmas lights on peoples houses. Blue ones specifically. They were parallel to our route home. There were other lights of course, but they weren’t pointing the way like the blue ones were. This happened from when we left the beach all the way until we made it back to our house.
A few weeks ago I saw a few UFOs distantly from the upper windows of my house. This night continued the High Strangeness.
As we were driving along these dark roads I made a joke that “This is the part in the horror movie where the boyfriend turns off the headlights a few times, and when he turns them on there is a ghost in the road and they crash their car”.
I, of course, did not do this because I am not crazy. However, other approaching cars did cause me to turn my high-beams off and then back on a few times. One time, right after I had done this, I yell to my wife “Did you see that!?”. She had not.
Standing next to the road I saw what I can only describe as a large, hairy man-like creature. Judging by the size of the street signs, it was a good 8 feet tall or more. My headlights only fully illuminated its lower half.
It was walking away from the road and into the woods on our right side, and was mid-stride with its upper body turned to face us. Its head was low on the shoulders as if it had either no, or a very short, neck. The hair on it was a ruddy brown, and hung long off its arms and body.
I did a quick sketch of what I saw when we returned home.
I didn’t get to see bigfoot, damnit!
The way that the GPS was taking us led us to the intersection of Highway 11 and Highway 40. I had just happened to glance down at the car dashboard, checking that we didn’t need to stop for gas while we waited at a red light here, and I noticed that the car mileage read: 111443.9.
As we crossed the very center of the intersection, it rolled over to 111444.
The road we had been driving on before Highway 11 was Highway 1. The road after that was Highway 44.
111
444
On the way out to the beach, the numbers 11 and 3 kept appearing. 33 is relevant to me and to the specific work I was going out to do, so the shift to 4, 44, and 11, felt like an indication that I had progressed to a new, next stage.
As we continued the journey home, I realized that the route the GPS took us actually was driving us past our wedding venue. We got married this past January, and we were now driving home on the same path that we took heading home from there.
The word “wedding” is not inappropriate to describe one aspect of the magic I set out to do.
A friend sent a message to me, asking for help because they were having trouble viewing a video I had uploaded for them. This temporarily interrupted the GPS as my wife used my phone to try to answer and help her. Consequently, we missed a turn.
Pulling into a small parking lot and turning the car around, we continued back the way we came only to see a mass of flashing lights. There was a large number of police cars and ambulances pulled up just beyond the intersection that we missed, seemingly having arrived out of nowhere, since we didn’t see them when we passed that way just moments before.
By missing that turn we both missed whatever caused them to show up, and were shown them appearing in dramatic fashion.
When my friend tried to view the video a second time she was able to do so successfully with no issues, and no clear reason as to why it might have been a problem at all the first time.
We arrived home, blue lines still guiding us, to our waiting pets and let the happenings of the day wash over us.
If you’d like to discuss this post, you’re welcome to join the discord for this blog. If you would like to support me, please consider joining our Patreon to get access to private discord channels, Q/A sessions, and livestreams where we talk about magick and perform group rituals!