So here is the story of my Box of Shadows.
In the past years I have many times started collecting, writing my own Book of Shadows, but the pages always left blank. I love writing, but I didn't find the words to describe the divine feeling in my heart. I stopped trying, stopped pushing myself into something that wasn't made for me.
This box is a result of coincidences after coincidences, then I refused to believe in coincidences. The box was sold in a thrift store. I wasn't sure about it, but my high school mates were like "it looks like you, you can't leave it here!" and "you can put your school books there!" Well I never put there my school books, I graduated, moved away, box stayed with me empty, but it was beautiful, I couldn't throw it away.
"Mysteeri on se mikä jää kun kaikki salaisuudet on revitty auki."
"The mystery is to stay when all the secrets have been teared open"
This might sound funny, but I ordered an ouija board from ebay.com after meeting face to face one at my friend's place. Hers was big, wooden, beautiful, it attracted me, it magnetized me. Mine was probably made in China, made of chipboard, ...though the light material was way better when thinking of shipping costs from somewhere there to Europe, and the same way it attracted me and same way the power also scared me. But I had the empty box. I put it in to the box.
While suffering from bulimia, I forgot myself, all of who I was, my heart was full of hunger, there was only memory traces left of divinity. That would be a long story of slow progress that'll be never finished, so I tell only the essential. I tried to kill myself by overdoses. I was close to the edge of the rest, but I only visited there, I think The Life didn't want me there yet and then I had nothing to lose so I was able to open the box without fear. There was pure glow. Magnetizing feeling. Burning yearning to the edge I don't belong yet.
For me the ouija board is now a gate between different levels of realities. Originally my board was basic rectangle shaped one, there was the shining sun and the moon and some horoscope symbols that meant nothing to me so I took strong scissors and cut them away. Nothing to fear. Nowadays I decide myself what is holy to me.
This was the situation when I opened the box today to take these pictures. The box was full of tarot cards, at right side up my oldest and dearest cat tarot desk wrapped in lace. The lace wrapping was important because the rest of the box was a chaos: I had left The Winged Spirit desk shuffled under The Definitife Tarot book. Also some cards from Aya Takano's and Crowley's Toth desks among them somewhere. I didn't want the harmony of cat desk be drowned. Under the lavender and rose and green tea leaves were pages of two very different books: firstly two pages from an old story book. In the story of a lion and a mouse the lion saves the life of the mouse by not eating him/her. Then comes the night when the lion falls to a hunter's trap. The mouse hears his roars, remembers how he saved his/hers life and the so he/she comes and bites the strings saving the lion.
"Thank you, my dear mouse.
Now I understand how important is to be kind.
I will remember this lesson you gave me."
(P.S. Finnish has genderneutral third personal pronoun so I have no idea how to say if the mouse is he or she or is it just the mouse or it or what, I always feel so ridiculous when trying to translate things like these, so please I would be pleased if someone could show me how should it be done?)
Under the lavender and rose and tea leaves there are five pages from The Book of Mormon. I coincidentally found the book at railway station, I heard they leave these books randomly to be taken randomly. So why not plus the book had - and still has - that holy glow, I sense how it is blessed with love and care. It doesn't matter that their god is not mine, in the end we are all the same, I sense the same flavours divinity, just in different shade. So of course I took the book, it stands in my book shelf equal to my books about buddishm, wicca, tarot, it stands side by side with The Bible and with The Satanic Bible. Last night I just felt unexplanable urge to cut these five pages off and add them there. I made it by sense, I was tired, I was falling asleep and didn't have energy to read text. The meaning will be clear some day or then not.
There were also gemstones and other things in the beautiful chaos of my box. Randon coin from an unknown country, light pink button, 1g Panadol, piece of heart jewerly that originally belonged to my little sister, two border pieces of the ouija board.
The ouija board itself wasn't in the box this time, because I had been sleeping with it under the pillow. It is typical for me. I wrap it in laces to shut the communication part away, then I sleep in the empowering rest it gives me. My crystal ball is selenite. My hands were once shaking, it fell in two pieces. Mystery stayed anyway.
There's something ridiculous in this picture, really: two pieces of selenite and a bracelet hanging on the bed, I'm reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire using lace-wrapped ouija board as a bookmark.
