Time Cast a Spell On You, That You Won’t Forget Me.

aka
Connecticutinued.

Part 3 - Astrology

So here we stand, part three of my promised Connecticut quatrology (a word? What is the four- part trilogy called?). I think today we’ll take a look at the mystical, the occult, the all-things-Stevie world crystals, visions, dreams and velvet. Enter Christiana, a high school soulmate and someone I hadn’t seen in 25 years.

It’s amazing the internet’s ability to reconnect people you’d thought were relegated to the ages. It can also be disturbing when you cannot find any information on someone.

Has a dear friend come and gone? Cancer, accident, homelessness—they all come to mind. It’s very disconcerting when the information superhighway culminates in a dead end.

In regards to my Comet experience, I was forwarded an email from AIDS/LifeCycle that someone was looking for me, that they thought I might have passed.

Stephen Cadby, the Associate Director for ALC, responded, “Not only is he alive & well, he’s participating in our event this year!” I felt very much like a fly on the wall of my own funeral.
Enter Christiana, “her black robes trailing, she was a sister of the moon…”

Chris was one of my closest friends at The Master’s School, a kindred spirit in the post-hippie bag of misfits that Master’s was. We loved a lot of the same stuff—Stevie, music, arts, the metaphysical realm, getting drunk on Riunite Lambrusco and whiskey sours and white Russians—usually in the same sitting.

She was an authentic soul, a free spirit born 10 years too late. She was Haight Ashbury, Grace Slick, Janis Joplin, and a pinch of Mary Magdalene thrown in for good measure. She spoke of tantra and made sex sound fun and fluid and appropriate. Odd to meet such a one at a school that was quickly throwing itself on the wagon of Christianity hurtling toward a born again, less inclusive, more judgmental mindset.

Sitting at Betty Crocker Pie Shop as my friend’s parents stood, yes I said STOOD, held hand overhead and “Thank You, Jesus”ed for our pie, I thought, Wow. Weird. Jesus thought about which pie to provide us. Couldn’t he mabye focus on the nuclear crisis we’re facing with Russia and Three Mile Island? I can provide my own Apple Pie…”

Dear Jesus, please save me from your followers…

Well, college came and went, and I lost touch with every person I went to high school with. It wasn’t intentional, it just happened. I was in Massachusetts, Los Angeles, Hartford, & London. I could barely keep track of me, how could they?

About a year ago, I got an email from Chris asking if I was me. She’d googled me and wasn’t sure if I was the guy at Virgin, the India traveler, the Africa traveler, the AIDS ride guy, the Breast Cancer guy, the actor. Yes. All of the above. Gemini.

We chatted. We caught up via email and phone. We were the same, older, wiser, still silly and seeking. She graciously offered to do a free tarot reading for me—seems she’d become a nationally renowned reader and intuitive in the 25 year interim. Wouldn’t our alma mater be delighted, the witch doing her voodoo for the AIDS-y homo. Hey, we hadn’t lost our ability to push buttons. I loved her referring to being “newly out of the broom closet.”

When I got to Connecticut, it just so happened (I’ve had a lifetime of ‘just-so-happenings’) that Chris was going to be reading at her favorite Beltane festival, Connecticut’s largest pagan gathering. Wer have a long history with witches in New England. In fact, my great-great-great blah blah blah grandfather was Increase Mather, a name intimately familiar to a few Salem gals who did the Strange Fruit ballet back in the 1600’s.

I saw Chris doing a reading for a guy as I walked up. I didn’t want to disturb her, so I stood near a bend in the river and took in the environment. A twisted maypole, people walking around in velvet, with capes, celtic tattoos, with names like Groundsquirrel Velvetknickers and Merriwinkle Puffmuffin. Ah, the cynic rears his ugly head.

Chris’s familiar room filling bawdy laugh shook the trees and washed over me. It was great.

We hugged and sat down to do a reading. Her insistence was to do it before we caught up, so that she wouldn’t be tempted to color her reading with what she knew of me.

The reading was uncanny. I won’t bore with the details, but I will share two metaphors which were particularly apt. The first was that my life has very much been like that of Tarzan, swinging from one brilliant adventure to another, always letting go of the vine before I’m really sure whether or not another vine will appear. I am a swinger.

The second was that my words had the ability to provide a profound, insightful experience for those who encountered them, that they could provide epiphanies of sorts.

I had to laugh, as I was telling Chris that many times I thought I was presented situations and people, and I would see very clearly the course of action they should take. Were these people being presented to me so that in relating to them, I hear these same words myself?

I said I felt like someone looking through a window at a great party, wanting to know what all the hubbub was about, but not being invited. I would love to have found that ecstatic experience in Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, paganism, chemical exploration, but I saw the truth in all of them. I also the unique way each culture had for fucking up the pure message and trying to make a buck.

“Always the vessel, and nothing to drink. Hey, I just made that up for you!” Earthshaking belly laugh. I drew a final card, the Nine of Pentacles. She told me to keep it. We finished the reading and hugged. I helped her pack up her booth and we went out to eat sushi, which makes perfect sense in rural Connecticut. Of course the California Uni is fresh!

In a follow up email, I quote Christiana:

“What a singularly unique path you have.
Although there are many named Hermes, you , yourself, are meant to really carry the name. (as evidenced by the astrology as well)

In Wicca we speak of "drawing down" the deities into ourselves. There is a process for that in Santeria, and in many other polytheistic religions as well. You may have, either intentionally or unintentionally, drawn the Hermes energy into yourself. This could be one of the reasons for your good health as well. Hermes would be a healer of the blood, specifically. Hmmmmmm......”

If you’re interested in getting a reading, I HIGHLY recommend Christiana. She’s the real deal. www.tarotbychristiana.com. Tell her Hermes sent you.