Moon in Sagittarius

Celia takes folks as we are. It wouldn’t make any sense to her to try to change us. We are going to be who we are. Ultimately practical, she works with what is.

Marie was more of an idealist, highly critical if you were below her standards. She treated me like a princess, as did Danny. Celia treated me, treats me, like another human being, one she deeply loves and is aware of as independently aware.

She knows how to pass, naturally falling into appropriate chit-chat, even mannerisms. She has long been practiced at blending in, almost part of the background. There must have been so much ugly tension in her childhood home, first with her dad’s parents and sisters in the mix piling up against Celia as a package with her Mom. Then, when they had their own home, there was all that tension between her parents, Tony and Angie, who shared no genuine love or respect for each other. She learned to stay out of the way, a neutral bystander, ever pleasant and courteous, never a target for ire.

Danny is a charmer, of everyone on whom he focuses that expansive smile. He can be loud and out of place in a lot of places even so. I tend to get carried away with my emotions and sense of self-important drama. Celia made us normal. In public people would see her as that nice lady. A nice lady with an eccentric family, but they must be alright because she is just like us. It was not her way to be judgmental, to demand that others fit a preconceived idea of what she thought they should be.

Tonight she was genuinely solemnly joyous with me in the Samhain ceremony I improvised for us. Celia is well steeped in literature of ancient lore, philosophies, rituals, psycho-social manipulations before the advent of science as we know it now. We put together an altar of candles, safely separated from the dried leaves we had fortuitously gathered before the snow. We arranged bowls with leaves, smoldering herbs, salted water for the sea and tears, and sang incantations I had written earlier in the day. I had also found appropriate music on an internet radio station so we could fall under the spell of song, dance, smoky herbal aromas breathed in deeply, coalescing into potent personal ritual. We held hands moving slowly around the altar, gracefully flickering shadows of the candle flames. Moving closer together, we whirled hugging each to the other. I could feel her waning energy. Eventually we sat looking into the candlelight, silent, mutually aware, entranced in the subtleties of the moment.

Celia needed to sleep. She sleeps still in short naps, but ever more frequently. I have time to think and feel uncomfortably, letting those uncomfortable thoughts and feelings do as they will, not imposing my will to turn them away. They say the veil is thin tonight between the worlds of consensual reality and spirit. If I let myself be off-guard, perhaps wise or lonely spirits will share tales or visions with me. It’s not insanity if I label it a dream.

Is it insanity, though, that is to be feared, or the bureaucracy seeming to be in the business of making life harder for those who have become overwhelmed by their own circumstances? Insanity might be fine, might be some entranceway into a more profound knowledge and way of being human if we labeled it in that direction. One person’s or people’s insanity might well be another’s religious experience.

I’m not realistically nonjudgmental like Celia. I expect people to be sane enough to make room for the spiritual insanity each of us may privately experience, to make room outside of that practical consensual reality for the spirit world to infuse through, expanding our definitions of normal human behaviors and relationships. “And ye harm none, do what ye will.” So mote it be.

I blow out the candles, look deeply into the darkness.