Long before I fancied myself a witch, I went to college in Boston — a perfect place for a budding witchling. Rich with intricate history, romantic cobblestone alleyways lined with bookstores and pubs, packed with intellectuals and spirits and lots and lots of witches. I fell in love before ever visiting and even more in love when I arrived. The school itself comprised 6 buildings situated on the Boston common, and with that the whole city became our campus.
Directly across from our dorm was the Central Burying Ground from the 1800’s, where we could often be found nestled among the graves, smoking cigarettes and pondering the universe.
Directly next to our dorm was an antique shop owned by a woman who attended Emerson herself in the 40’s, full of wares from all over the world.
The first time I walked in there, a hush fell over the scene. The kind of hush where destiny entered the room with you, or perhaps was discovered upon entering. I was pulled to the back of the store, to a piece that would become the object of my fascination for the next four years.
An amethyst amulet on a thick silver chain, it’s 4 points fashioned into a cross, each one encircled in a silver snake. In the center, a brass and silver yin yang. At the time, I couldn’t name Amethyst let alone its properties, but my connection to this necklace with visceral and immediate.
I expressed my interest to the woman and she told the price — I honestly don’t remember the number, only that it was an absolutely unfathomable amount to a broke college freshman. Sensing my devastation, she told me I could put $20 down to hold it, and come by to put money down on it whenever I had some.
So I did. Twenty here, ten there, forty on a rich month. Sober and away from my abusive household, I thrived in college. I wrote more than I ever have before or since and made meaningful, lasting friendships. I went to school for writing, with a project in mind. I needed to write my story, and utilized every workshop (fiction or not) to produce hundreds of pages of a memoir.
My junior year, I was pulled in and under by a story that felt like it crawled out of the depths to be written by me.
It was about a young girl whose religious-based schizophrenic father violently abused her in the field between their wooden house and the town church. He says there is a beautiful woman who comes to him commanding this blood sacrifice. Eventually she slits his throat and buries him in the field, and proceeds to take her romantic prospects there to bang. One day at work, she witnesses a horrific car accident and in its wake, a flash of a beautiful woman disappearing into the woods. In the field with her lover, she slits his throat at the order of the woman.
For three days I sat in my bedroom burning candles and vetiver and furiously writing this story that I could so clearly see. Flabbergasted to have created something so different than anything I’ve written before or since, I thought little of it after. The class liked it. A friend adapted it into a screenplay. I moved on.
At graduation, my friends presented me with the amulet. There was about $100 left on it, and they chipped in to pay off the remainder for me. At some point they’d all heard about it, or came with me to visit it. I was moved to tears and to this day it remains one of my most cherished items.
Shortly after my spiritual awakening in my early 20’s, I was doing a past life regression I found online. The year was 2014, I knew nothing about what was to come and no one who could guide me, and the amethyst amulet was one of three crystals I owned.
I was holding it in my hands when I found myself in 1632 Danvers, Massachusetts. The true site of the Salem Witch Trials, 60 years prior to the event. I was a young girl, standing a field between a wood house and the town church. My father was dead, my mother was ill and I worked in the town. On the way home one night, I was drawn into the woods by a beautiful woman. She took me to her hut and showed me magic of the blood and mud and dust and bone and stone and fire. On her neck, an amethyst amulet.
Later in this life my mother died and I burned down the house where we lived and returned to the beautiful witch in the woods. I could not find her or her hut, only traces. A bit of bone, the smell of herbs, a purple stone on a heavy silver chain on the forest floor.
I built a simple home in the same spot and endeavored to deepen my understanding of the magical arts introduced to me by the witch. One day, a young native girl wandered into my clearing. While our languages weren’t the same, her body told the story of long-term abuse. I took her in as something of a daughter, and over time discerned it was her father, the chief of a local tribe, who tormented her. I went to their village and slit his throat in the cover of night.
When we were discovered, they bound us together and burned us alive.
If my house were on fire today, the amethyst amulet would be one of my first grabs after my dog and my snake. I don’t fully know why, only that high vibrational objects always carry within them the story of human connection. Of the witch in the woods who initiated me in a past life, of a love affair with crystals that would bloom into so much more, of my sweet friends who loved me and came together to get me something I love, of the stories we need to tell and why we need to tell them.
It all means so much more than we could ever begin to imagine. It’s so fun to uncover the inter-dimensional plot.
What I’m saying is love leaves traces.
Love you,
Bakara
Directly across from our dorm was the Central Burying Ground from the 1800’s, where we could often be found nestled among the graves, smoking cigarettes and pondering the universe.
Directly next to our dorm was an antique shop owned by a woman who attended Emerson herself in the 40’s, full of wares from all over the world.
The first time I walked in there, a hush fell over the scene. The kind of hush where destiny entered the room with you, or perhaps was discovered upon entering. I was pulled to the back of the store, to a piece that would become the object of my fascination for the next four years.
An amethyst amulet on a thick silver chain, it’s 4 points fashioned into a cross, each one encircled in a silver snake. In the center, a brass and silver yin yang. At the time, I couldn’t name Amethyst let alone its properties, but my connection to this necklace with visceral and immediate.
I expressed my interest to the woman and she told the price — I honestly don’t remember the number, only that it was an absolutely unfathomable amount to a broke college freshman. Sensing my devastation, she told me I could put $20 down to hold it, and come by to put money down on it whenever I had some.
So I did. Twenty here, ten there, forty on a rich month. Sober and away from my abusive household, I thrived in college. I wrote more than I ever have before or since and made meaningful, lasting friendships. I went to school for writing, with a project in mind. I needed to write my story, and utilized every workshop (fiction or not) to produce hundreds of pages of a memoir.
My junior year, I was pulled in and under by a story that felt like it crawled out of the depths to be written by me.
It was about a young girl whose religious-based schizophrenic father violently abused her in the field between their wooden house and the town church. He says there is a beautiful woman who comes to him commanding this blood sacrifice. Eventually she slits his throat and buries him in the field, and proceeds to take her romantic prospects there to bang. One day at work, she witnesses a horrific car accident and in its wake, a flash of a beautiful woman disappearing into the woods. In the field with her lover, she slits his throat at the order of the woman.
For three days I sat in my bedroom burning candles and vetiver and furiously writing this story that I could so clearly see. Flabbergasted to have created something so different than anything I’ve written before or since, I thought little of it after. The class liked it. A friend adapted it into a screenplay. I moved on.
At graduation, my friends presented me with the amulet. There was about $100 left on it, and they chipped in to pay off the remainder for me. At some point they’d all heard about it, or came with me to visit it. I was moved to tears and to this day it remains one of my most cherished items.
Shortly after my spiritual awakening in my early 20’s, I was doing a past life regression I found online. The year was 2014, I knew nothing about what was to come and no one who could guide me, and the amethyst amulet was one of three crystals I owned.
I was holding it in my hands when I found myself in 1632 Danvers, Massachusetts. The true site of the Salem Witch Trials, 60 years prior to the event. I was a young girl, standing a field between a wood house and the town church. My father was dead, my mother was ill and I worked in the town. On the way home one night, I was drawn into the woods by a beautiful woman. She took me to her hut and showed me magic of the blood and mud and dust and bone and stone and fire. On her neck, an amethyst amulet.
Later in this life my mother died and I burned down the house where we lived and returned to the beautiful witch in the woods. I could not find her or her hut, only traces. A bit of bone, the smell of herbs, a purple stone on a heavy silver chain on the forest floor.
I built a simple home in the same spot and endeavored to deepen my understanding of the magical arts introduced to me by the witch. One day, a young native girl wandered into my clearing. While our languages weren’t the same, her body told the story of long-term abuse. I took her in as something of a daughter, and over time discerned it was her father, the chief of a local tribe, who tormented her. I went to their village and slit his throat in the cover of night.
When we were discovered, they bound us together and burned us alive.
If my house were on fire today, the amethyst amulet would be one of my first grabs after my dog and my snake. I don’t fully know why, only that high vibrational objects always carry within them the story of human connection. Of the witch in the woods who initiated me in a past life, of a love affair with crystals that would bloom into so much more, of my sweet friends who loved me and came together to get me something I love, of the stories we need to tell and why we need to tell them.
It all means so much more than we could ever begin to imagine. It’s so fun to uncover the inter-dimensional plot.
What I’m saying is love leaves traces.
Love you,
Bakara
ash
What a powerful story and message…I found meaning and layers within what you wrote. Thank you for sharing this