A few years ago, a wild rose bush on my property grew to enclose a utility pole, like a magical thicket swarming over an intruder. Thorns were up against wiring, requiring I cut a lot of the bush back. The Faerie Queen blessed this undertaking and governed my actions.
In the following years, the bit of rose wood I kept cured beautifully, so this August I was able to make myself a pendant of three pieces of the wood.
When I sawed, and when I used a knife to remove bark, the scent was spectacular. I’d never experienced such a wonderful smell when working with wood. How interesting that this wood, a wood that bears such a wonderfully scented flower, would have a special fragrance of its own.
After I wrote that last sentence, I took a moment to smell the pile of bark I’d shaved off the wood. There’s actually a strong rose scent if you look for it, but also a scent unto itself. The combination is an enchantment.
Next time I saw into a piece, I want to check whether the lovely scent that filled the air came from the bark alone or from the non-bark part of the wood as well.
The wild rose here is invasive. In fact, while working on the pendant, I had to also be pruning the wild rose that’s dangerously swarmed over the utilities pole again. Harvesting new wood to cure while crafting the well-cured wood felt special.
Wood of the wild rose centers me into my Fey qualities, as well as helps me not be diverted from my true self by the Unseelie. (Note: Unseelie is the term for evil Faeries. They’re highly invested in distracting us from our true selves, including our true Feyness, go to great lengths to create such distractions, and are quite skilled at it. Truly mean beings! They’ll lead a person on a wild goose chase for decades, that seeker all the time thinking they’re traveling a rare path to power but instead are on the road to complete self-destruction.) Or, at least, the wood from this particular rosebush works those enchantments on me. Or perhaps only this batch of wood from the bush does so, since the Faerie Queen oversaw the pruning and harvesting.
Later: it seems the wood, not just the bark, is rose-scented, sweet full-bodied rose (unless a lot of dust from sanding the bark mixed in with the regular sawdust). Am not sure everyone would smell it, though. I have a really sharp nose.
… I wonder if the wood is not rose-scented or is scented only a bit, and I accidentally generated a perfume from the other realms. The Goddess has a trick She’s played on me a few times, to remind me I am Her beloved: She fills the air with the fragrance of roses. (I’m not so arrogant to think I alone am Her beloved, the one and only. Each of us is Her beloved, and that does not lessen how precious, unique, and special we each are to Her.)
She once filled a whole, huge bookstore—it was a Books and Borders. If you ever went to one, you know how big they were—with the scent. Everyone was wandering around asking where the scent was coming from. Oops.
I was at the store doing a book signing. My book signings tended to be unusual; I’d usually lead a ritual. I’m convinced the aroma, which started as soon as the ritual ended, occurred because all the ritual participants—not me alone, but everyone who attended—really put their heart into it.
Later still: stripping the bark from another piece of the wild rose wood, I was surprised and delighted to discover a lower layer of bark was dusky pink! It seems the entire plant is physically consistent with the qualities of its bloom. Well, this plant’s blooms are white, but I’m going to check them next year to see if there’s any pink on them. In any case, the deep, rich, dusky pink of the hidden bark is very rose energy. Magic in that hidden layer of bark.
So much magic is hidden, yet easily found when I play and work in nature. If I do my best to be fully engaged, wholeheartedly interacting closely with leaves and breezes and sticks and critters, they have a chance to reveal their gifts. Respectful proximity to Gaia—respectful in the sense of trying to fully engage—also allows shrouded magics to slip through the veil, like incenses wafting from the Gods’ censers.
Magic wants to come out of hiding in cities, too. A ritual done whole-heartedly in a bookstore (or other urban environment) can coax enchantment out into the open because, perhaps without your even noticing it, you’ve tried to fully engage with your own soul, the atoms all around you, and the Gods stealthily walking the store aisles.
An aside: After the ritual, in the seconds before the store became redolent with incense from the Fey, I caught a female and male in the corner of my eyes, walking past me, on my left side. Then I realized They were the Faerie Queen and King.
I was surprised. My otherworldly senses are finally tuned, I rely on them constantly throughout the day, and I’m used to feeling the presence of my Gods in a truly visceral way. But I don’t usually see Them so vividly that I mistakenly think They are humans in the mundane realm. Between the perfumed air and the sighting, my Gods were really trying to prove a point that day. Or, rather, several points.
