The Changeling, Entry 1

[goatgodschild]

It has been a busy month, with two primary holidays to work on. But now that the Funeral of the Sun King has passed, I have begun to focus my attentions to the arrival of the Changeling next Friday.

The Changeling is a difficult figure for me to access, which is why I have thrown myself into this work, as best I can.
I know she must be greeted with the home in good order, for it is the business of the Changeling to put herself in, to etch on a clean slate. I am preparing to be as feminine as I can, or at least as youthful. In this, I have prepared myself by shaving my face (though not brows) and all my body. I have shaved my shoulders, but not my back, as I cannot reach it fully. The rest of me is quite shaved, and has left a great deal of razor burn. Such is the nature of the work we do. My hair is cut, and soon my nails will be done as well -- painted, even.

For my mind, I am reading a great deal of books with Changeling themes, although so far I have not liked them as much as I would like. But there is time yet.

Comments

[haptalaon]

Looking forward to reading more as you go (and thank you for the reminder that the time is so close, I am so hopeless with calendars no matter how many strategies I devise)

Maybe start by focusing in on what you do connect with, or discovering new parts of it?

It's definitely the one part of the Map where considering gender and sexuality is significant (in contrast to a Craft as a whole which deprioritises those aspects, in contrast to traditional Wicca which is All That All The Time). When I began, I didn't expect to want or need any of that at all, and its re-emergence is unexpected.

If that's not working for you at all, perhaps just consider the image of running away with the fairies and childhood whimsy, separate from gendered dreams of that; a time for any fairycraft and fairy stories and Fairy Queens (rather than just ones i've picked up on as Changelingy ones) and for your own actions of vanishing into the woodlands, using her as a series of patterns and paths rather than a Spirit Icon. Does that make sense?

Even though I picked up on a lot of mythic strands that have a sexuality/gendery to them, I find my own work moves away from that, perhaps because it's uninteresting or the human politics in these texts are too overt. What I experience in the woods is very different to that, a red wind rustling, and urges to dance and play, a sort of Teddy Bears Picnic of the soul, and those are also the actions which take me closer to something real in the woods (that is, less time spent with books imagining, and more time doing ritual work, albeit of an unstructured kind - using the changeling mythos as a kind of Fool's Journey, a set of things to do).

Like, I'm more interested in the Changeling as a sort of Solar-Stellar shaman, who rejects the human world for a more intense engagement with the land and the infinite, rather than as a more Solar-Lunar rebel figure who misbehaves in human codes

It's interesting because I always assumed I'd been influenced by Dver's girls underground concept, which also uses Labyrinth as a jumping off point. But actually now I re-read it, she goes in a very different direction with it, more of a Heroes Journey. You might vibe with that more?