Smooching the Devil’s buttock. Now with 90% more neighbor.

Today, in homes all across America, folks who wouldn’t dream  of practicing witchcraft will indulge in an act of sympathetic magic.  The eating of lucky foods on New Year’s Day.

In my over-active imagination, this is how common magical practices of the past migrated into the realm of folklore.  From fear of ridicule or persecution, folks no longer talked about the whys and wherefores of certain magical practices.  They laughed it off as something quaint their grandfolks did.  Something they continued doing for nostalgia’s sake.

Growing up, my mother certainly fit that bill.  She was insistent that we all eat some of each lucky food.  When I asked her why we were doing this, she’d say “you want to have good luck in the New Year, don’t you?”  She’d laugh at the silly superstition, but by God we’d all eat some of each.  And we could do it the easy way.  Or the hard way.

Here in the south, the usual menu is blackeyed peas, cornbread or sweet potatoes, cabbage and pork.  It’s pretty easy to draw a line between blackeyed peas and beads which repel the evil eye.  Cornbread and sweet potatoes are gold, which we’d all like to have more of.  Cabbage is green and patterned, like folding money.  Not sure about the pork, though …

My family will be eating Lionhead meatballs and cabbage in chicken broth, and blackeyed peas and their juice ladeled over our cornbread, like my grandparents, the farmers, fixed it. 

Today, me and mine will gather around the dining table and practice a little witchcraft.  

And from the lack of blackeyed peas on the grocery shelf, looks like my neighbors will be practicing witchcraft, too.

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Tribe of Lights

The other day my son announced  he wants to learn to read tarot cards.  I was – to put it mildly – flabbergasted.

Before now, my son has lumped card reading in with All Things Witchlike (translated: Under No Circumstances To Be Done In Public). But at a recent scout campout he saw another boy using them, so now all bets are off.  Well … at least when it comes to tarot.

You see, my son is every bit as careful as I am to stay closeted. He’s quick to remind me to turn off the pagan music before I open the car door. To confirm my work room is locked before bringing a friend over. And to loudly announce said friend as he ushers him through the front door, so we won’t say anything untoward.

As a matter of fact, the coven now regularly uses the phrase “Montague’s* here” when all talk of Smooching the Devil’s Buttock needs to come to a grinding halt.

Even when Montague is not here.

So you can imagine I was fair suprised to hear of my son’s plans to join the tarot-reading ranks.  He is, however, now the proud owner of a tarot deck of his very own, which he is busy communing with and meditating upon.

I’ve worked out a simple card spread for him to use, based on this witch’s pyramid-inspired one. Actually, I’ve used it myself a few times.  It’s fast and surprisingly helpful:

Tribe of Lights –Show me what’s hidden,
The help to be bidden,
The action to take,
And the habit forsake.

Basking in the glow of my son’s new-found interest, I have it in me to wonder … what on earth is next?

____________

*Not, of course, his real name.