Yes, I Talk to Things

My first husband once explained that part of the reason he divorced me was that he couldn’t respect me because I “talk about things that aren’t there” and went to my “meetings” wearing a bathrobe.

The bathrobe was my ritual robe. It’s not like I stopped by the Piggly Wiggly on my way home–in my “bathrobe”–to buy milk and oreos.

The things I talked to that weren’t there were considerably more complicated.

I have to admit, though, that he wasn’t entirely wrong about the talking part. In addition to the obvious talking to Gods, Goddesses, angels, elementals, etc, I also talk to things. I talk to candles while I’m working with them. I talk to my Tarot cards. I talk to plants. I talk to my house. I talk to animals, which is considered perfectly normal right up until you start behaving as though they might have an opinion about the conversation. I have spoken encouragingly to stones, sternly to electronics, affectionately to herbs, and in language inappropriate for Green Egg Magazine to printers.

After more than forty years of magical practice, I’ve never found this particularly strange.

Apparently, opinions differ.

*shrug*

Come On, Sweetheart

Most of these conversations are not particularly impressive.

“Come on, sweetheart,” to the candle that won’t light.

“Don’t you start,” to a Tarot deck.

“Thank you,” to a plant.

And considerably less printable things to that printer.

I don’t stop each time to determine precisely what kind of interaction I’m having. I don’t need to decide whether the candle possesses consciousness, whether my Tarot deck has developed a personality (and attitude), or whether the plant understands English. I certainly hope my printer doesn’t understand English because our working relationship would become considerably more awkward.

Some things I believe have spirit. Some are part of relationships I have developed through years of magical practice. Some are connected to Gods, ancestors, spirits, or places. Some may be nothing more than ordinary human anthropomorphism. The categories don’t need to be neatly sorted before I speak.

There is something rather lovely underneath the comedy of all this. Much of my magical life is built around relationship rather than dominion. I don’t simply use herbs; I work with them. I don’t think of the earth as scenery conveniently arranged around the human species. The stones, plants, animals, waters, places, spirits, ancestors, Gods, and other beings with whom I share this world are not all interchangeable resources waiting for me to decide what they’re good for. I live among them. I am them.

Some I know intimately. Some I barely understand. Some I may misunderstand completely.

And, yes, some are appliances.

I am not suggesting that my printer has achieved sentience. If it has, however, it has chosen evil.

There You Are

I suspect one of the reasons talking to things feels so natural to me is that magical practice trains us to notice relationships that aren’t necessarily obvious from the outside.

A candle can be wax, wick, flame, and a physical object manufactured in a factory. It can also be something I have dressed, prepared, prayed over, spoken to, and worked with toward a particular purpose. Those understandings don’t cancel each other. Last week I wrote about exactly that intersection—the physical explanation for what a candle does and the magical meaning I may find in what happens.

The same is true elsewhere. A plant has a botanical name, chemical constituents, preferred growing conditions, and a perfectly respectable existence that has nothing to do with me. It may also be a plant I have grown for years, worked with magically, thanked when I harvest from it, worried over when it looked poorly, and greeted when I walked past.

A stone is a mineral.

We already know how I feel about that argument.

The relationship changes the experience without requiring the physical thing to stop being what it is.

This extends beyond objects. There are places that feel different when I enter them. There are animals I acknowledge when our paths cross. There are people who have died whom I still speak to. There are Gods and spirits I address without requiring them to materialize in the room and provide identification.

From the outside, some of that might look very much like a woman talking to things that aren’t there.

From where I’m standing, the room can be considerably more populated.

The Bathrobe Problem

I think about that old “bathrobe” comment sometimes because it illustrates the difference so perfectly.

He saw a bathrobe.

I knew it was a ritual robe.

We were looking at the same physical garment. Neither of us was hallucinating its existence or failing to understand what clothing was. The difference was in the meaning we understood the garment to carry.

That happens constantly in magical life.

Someone else sees a candle. I see the candle too. I also may see a magical ally, a vehicle for prayer, a representation of a person, or the physical center of a working.

Someone sees a bowl of water. Depending on what I’m doing, I may see something I’ve blessed, something carrying intention, something used for cleansing, or simply something I need to remember not to knock over.

Someone sees a bunch of weeds.

I may see medicine, magic, food, an old friend, an invasive menace I’ve been fighting for six years, or all five at once.

The magical understanding doesn’t require me to stop seeing the physical reality. It gives me another relationship with it.

Perhaps that’s why I don’t find it particularly embarrassing to talk to things. Conversation is one of the ways human beings acknowledge relationship. We greet. We thank. We ask. We complain. We encourage. We apologize. We occasionally say, “If you fall off that shelf one more time, I swear to the Gods…”

Not every relationship requires the other participant to answer in words.

A World With More People in It

There are certainly risks to assigning personality, intention, or messages to everything around us. Sometimes the branch fell because the wind blew. Sometimes the Tarot deck isn’t being stubborn; the cards are sticking together. Sometimes the candle isn’t resisting the spell; the wick is drowning in wax. Sometimes the house didn’t hide your keys.

You put them somewhere safe.

We can understand ordinary causes and still allow ourselves to experience relationship.

For me, that has become one of the quiet differences betw

een simply moving through the world and living a magical life within it. I don’t need every tree to contain a spirit who is personally interested in my affairs. I don’t need every stone to have an opinion. I don’t need the candle to understand the words “Come on, sweetheart” in order for the way I approach it to say something about me.

Relationship changes how we behave.

It is harder to treat the natural world as an inexhaustible supply closet when you approach it relationally. It is harder to regard plants, animals, land, and water purely in terms of what they can provide when your first instinct is to acknowledge them rather than simply claim them. Gratitude begins to make sense. Reciprocity begins to make sense. Asking rather than taking begins to make sense.

Not because someone handed us another list of Pagan rules.

Because that’s what relationships do.

And perhaps that’s part of why I’ve continued talking all these years.

Yes, I’m Still Talking

It has been many years since I was told I couldn’t be respected because I talked about things that weren’t there and went to meetings in a bathrobe. I suppose I could have responded by becoming quieter about the things I experience, more careful about what I acknowledge, and more concerned with whether everything I relate to can first demonstrate that it deserves the relationship.

Instead, I became a priestess.

I’m still talking to things.

I still wear ritual robes.

I say thank you to plants. I encourage candles. I argue with Tarot cards. I greet animals. I acknowledge places. I speak to those I cannot see, and occasionally I swear at office equipment.

I like the world better this way.

It feels less like a collection of things available for me to use and more like a community of beings, presences, mysteries, materials, memories, and possibilities among which I happen to live.

Whether all of them hear me, I couldn’t possibly say.

But it costs me very little to speak kindly.

Except to the printer.

The printer knows what it fucking did.