Return to the Place

This month marks the halfway point of the year (already?!), and this spell continues our list/recipe/instructions for transformative magic in traumatizing times. 

Here’s where we’ve arrived so far: 

From the place where the sky meets the ground
Be kind to this ghostly feeling
Blessing the flames
Resist legibility
Befriend barriers
Return to the place… 

The words from this month’s spell come from the Sefer Yetzirah, a Jewish mystical text whose origin is unknown but may date back to the 2nd century BCE. Like this year’s calendar, this book is a list of magical instructions. There are many ways to read it, but one clear message is that we can collaborate with the divine in the act of creation. To do so requires significant effort, courage, and wisdom—hence all the careful instructions—and, we will mess it up. 

In Jill Hammer’s translation, one line from Sefer Yetzirah reads, “and if your heart runs / return to the Place.” HaMakom, or “the place” is one of the names of the divine. What we love about this spell is that it does not require us to reach and remain in an impossible state of perfection. It recognizes that we will get scared. We will lose our way, lose our courage. Our hearts will run. And when that happens, we return to the place. 

Everywhere we look right now, we see people whose hearts are running. People in terror, in grief, in rage. People who cannot go home. People who cannot locate that place of connection where their hearts can be comforted. Maybe you are among them right now? We most certainly are. This spell is for all of us. May we find a way to return to the place, and meet each other there as citizens of a land that has no militarized borders, no prisons, no war.