I saw an acquaintance repost a meme from a popular figure in the world of relationship self-help, Keishorne Scott. It included such sentiments as “Anything toxic gotta go!”, “Closure is a scam! Let it go!”, and “Sometimes it doesn’t work because it’s not suppose to”. They were the ones that caught my eye. While looking over his pages I am sure he says wonderful things and memes always boil down complex ideas into simple graphics, it gave rise to reflection for me as a Witch who has worked with people magickally on healing relationships with self and others for overt twenty years.

I think the self-help and the occult worlds have such a cross over because people who come to them expect quick, easy miracles. One, two, three …poof! You are happy. And sometimes happiness is a decision. We can choose to be happy. But healing is a process. We can choose to fully and consciously initiate that process and that is part of the choice to be happy, but like everything in nature there are cycles and seasons. While magick, like alchemy, can quicken, we still work within the bounds of nature.

Those points of advice are to the detriment of those following a magickal path. They are enticing and maybe they can work for some people but it’s like the old saying “It’s about the journey, not the destination.” You learn and grow in the journey and some people want to hold a vision of the perfect relation and skip right to the end. Our romance comedy movies end with the first step of relationship and rarely do a part two of the ups and downs of life and love. So we have conditioned ourselves to think once we find the perfect person, it’s all easy. It’s all perfect. It’s not.

“Sometimes it doesn’t work because it’s not suppose to” is because it’s a learning, but even when we find “the one” it’s still all learning. Sometimes it doesn’t work because we have rushed past the personal growth and reflection and aren’t mature enough to match a potential partner. It would work if we took greater time and energy to develop ourselves and our relationship skills. Magickal fate is not fatalistic, but Wyrd, the momentum of the past with our current decisions. Change your actions and change what is “suppose” to be. You might have an overall fate pattern and Divine Will but there are many forms of expression and many people willing to participate in the co-creation of our lives. Notice how many people lose one “soul mate” or “twin flame” and a week, month or year later another one comes along? That’s why I never use the terms anymore, preferring lover, partner, mate, and life-mate. There is not just one who is meant to be.

I think back to the many magick spells prior to finding by husband Steve. I got a very clear message in meditation one night, a year before meeting him. “Your life mate will be at this club on this day.” So I went and didn’t meet him or anybody. The next meditation, “We didn’t say you’d meet, just that he was there.” What?!? But once we were dating I found out that club was a favorite hang out and he probably was there that Saturday! If I met him then I would not have been ready for him, nor he for me. Rushing to end goal without being present to what is actually happening is more of a problem then most people think. But it’s hard and messy and we like easy and clean. Likewise meeting our partner Adam. If we didn’t have t he experiences we did before meeting him, the people we met and new ways of thinking we were exposed to, we wouldn’t have recognized the tremendous blessing and opportunity for love by being open to polyamory.

To the Witch, toxicity is transformed to medicine, granting both vision and healing. Poison is in the dose but never being exposed to poison leaves us unprepared. Dismissing it outright prevents us from understanding why it showed up in the first place. We know when an animal or plant keeps showing up in the wild attracting our notice, there is resonance, sympathy, dare I say a potential message and opportunity for healing and empowerment. Banishment and binding of the toxic is all well and good but transformation is better. One who knows how to change the energy is no longer effected rather than constantly be on guard. Toxic people and situations mirror the toxic within us on some level and we need to engage it in our process of removing it, not dismiss it. Digitalis is a poison in large doses but a heart medicine in smaller doses. Aconite, deadly nightshade, and datura are all medicines homeopathically. Many invasive plants are the medicines for what is coming into society. They correspond. Japanese knotweed aids in the treatment of Lyme Disease. Garlic mustard invaded the northeast of the United States as Covid-19 rages and is a medicine for respiratory issues, antimicrobial, and filled with immune enhancing nutrients. The flower essence of purple loosestrife helps us deal with chaos as is grows more prolific in eastern U.S. waterways.

Closure is not a scam so much as a process. It doesn’t always require the participation of the other person but requires putting an end to a cycle. I understand that some unhealthy individuals use it as a form of emotional blackmail and abuse against those seeking closure, but when something ends closure can be found in your own heart and mind, regardless of the other person’s potentially abusive behavior.

The Ladies of Fate teach us all things have a beginning, middle, and end and if we want to make a new start, a clean and clear end can help us. Without it, we are keeping a door open, often with unconscious feelings thinking we simply “let it go” and return to it again and again. We slip back into the past. It’s easy to say “let it go” but letting go is the process of closure. As a magickal consultant, that is one of the biggest issues, the attempt to let it go without a true sense of ending. Today social media makes it even harder if our in in the same media circles. The magick of stinging nettles can help us truly let go of harmful people and situations but setting appropriate boundaries and understanding our own self.

The magick of healing allows us to recognize, process, and transmute unhealthy situations, but we must at least engage with ourselves, rather than cut and run before looking deeply. Nature can be our ally. Time certainly can be, but we must work in rhythms and our own seasons rather then just skip to the end. Otherwise we will experience a lot of beginnings and endings and not much in between and what is in-between is where life happens.

Next Part 2: Realization and Responsibility