The Art of Spell-Casting, Part V

On Interference, the Art of Becoming Electric

I walked toward them on the jungle path as if in a dream, slowly, without haste or pressure, as if my body could pore over the bumps and hollows in the packed earth like a snake, at one with gravity, mated with the ground. No thoughts, only wonder at the whirling iridescence opening up portals in the humid air everywhere I looked. Blue morphos.

Growing up in Connecticut, I never thought I’d see one morpho, let alone dozens of butterflies falling from the sky like iridescent splashes of water. But were they falling? Or were they so delicate, so in tune with the air they were riding currents I, with my limited human sight, would call invisible? I was mesmerized. That happened to me daily when I lived in Mexico.

On that day, I wasn’t thinking about the past or the future. I was in a state of wonder, safe enough to totally relax into the day and what it brought when we reached the laguna, the powerful experience of healing in water I’d begun a few weeks before when I’d picked up the phone and called the name on a flyer I saw on a bulletin board in Tulum, Sol Naciente. Rising Sun.

Sol picked me up in his janky VW van wearing a fedora with a pheasant feather pointing backwards like an arrow. He reminded me of Robin Hood. His dog Rocky, a brindle pit bull mix, sat in the middle of the back seat behind us. He’d been in the front seat when Sol stopped to get to me. When I turned to pet him, Sol said, “better not touch him.” Rocky growled in agreement. We drove out of town, deeper into the Sian Ka’an, whose name meant “the place where the sun is born” in the Mayan language.

Those were the first days of my training as an aquatic bodyworker. In fact, I didn’t even know they’d begun, not in any way most Americans would understand, but after that first session with Sol, the water claimed me. Immersed in the translucent turquoise laguna Ka’an Luum cradled in the water and Sol’s arms, I let go of all my defenses and was reborn. I cried in a hammock for 24 hours after, went back as soon as I could stand again, apprenticed myself to the water and to Sol, moved to Mexico and began to offering this profound healing to others. I became myself.

I began this essay with the story of my enchantment by blue morphos because they are an example of Interference, the 5th principle of Heka. I often hear from readers that reading these essays feels like being spun in water. As one reader wrote to me, “Jen, reading your writing is like floating on and in the ocean, and when I come out, I’m not sure where I’ve been but I know want to go back.”

I told her this was the greatest praise she could give me. I realize some readers may not appreciate my style. These days the internet has shortened our attention spans and the dominance of the masculine/left-brain hemisphere has flattened our ability to comprehend symbol and metaphor. Most of us view writing as a tool for practical communication, not as a vehicle for authentic embodiment of the expressed soul.

I understand. Most of the time I feel under the influence of time’s pressure and have to connect through a strong act of will to what a friend and I call, “the mystical flow,” often failing.

Once upon a time when I lived on Block Island, the mystical flow was my default. Everything changed two years ago when I started working full-time year round, driving a car, searching for parking, paying bills like a “real” adult. I miss Block Island. However, I realize that I’m in a process, and that the current pressure is a tempering. Like a sword, I will become stronger through this, and if I can find flow while feeling like I’m pinned by time like a butterfly under glass, my sword will be engraved with roses. The mystic hasn’t disappeared, nor has my access to it. I have just become authentic enough to be invited to access it under the less accessible conditions of typical American life.

In college, I was a split person. I loved the academic life, had plans to get my Ph.D and be an English professor, and had several mentors in the English Department who singled me out as a star and encouraged me on that path. Junior year I found the Creative Writing Department.

Pretty soon I was shining brightly there, too, winning awards and developing relationships with the poetry faculty who encouraged me to follow in their footsteps and get an MFA in poetry and become a creative writing instructor, the only somewhat assured career track that paid for American poets.

I was fortunate that my academic professors who wanted me to be a scholar allowed me a lot of freedom in the papers I wrote. My honors thesis was a truly creative essay correlating Medieval mystery plays and 18th century drama, that included my ideas (none of which I remember) in the first person, verboten in academia. I chose these subjects because they reflected another tear in my psyche. My two favorite professors were an 18th century specialist and a Medievalist. I wanted their approval so much, I wrote on both their subjects, synthesizing them into something pretty unique, that was still not a reflection of my own interests or who I truly was, though I suppose its uniqueness was a hint. I didn’t actually know who I was, at least not in a way that could be expressed in words, even in the poems I wrote down the hall for the creative writing professors. I recall being crushed when one of these mentors told me I should abandon the poetry track, telling me she thought I “didn’t have what it took” to be a poet.

Meanwhile, my poetry professors in the Creative Writing department quietly encouraged me, telling me I was a “real poet.” One of them wrote in a recommendation I requested for grad school, that of all the students she’d had over the years, I was one of those who would still be writing poetry years from now. She was right.

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What does all this have to do with Interference? Let’s look at some definitions.

According to science, as a principle of light, interference of light is the phenomena of multiple light waves interacting with one another under certain circumstances, causing the combined amplitudes of the waves to either increase or decrease.

Examples are:

Light reflected from an oil spill on water,

The thin film of a soap bubble reflecting the spectrum,

Patches of color on the road where oil has dripped.

The wings of the blue morpho.

According to Heka, interference governs the amplification and voltage of a spell. According to Ke’oni Hanalei, this applies practically as an exhortation to know one’s self, which may first require finding the blockages that keep you from that knowing.

Interference insists on authenticity. If a witch (or a poet) is not authentic, she will be creating from a place of insecurity. Amplification and voltage will be reduced and her spells or poems will be corrupted.

Interference is an invitation to make your poems more authentic by truly knowing who you are and expressing that, whether that be in the poem’s subject matter or its means of expression through stylistic choices. Although I had talent as an undergrad and won awards, my poems were imitative of all the poets I read and mere hints of who I was. (Talent like this is known as natural magic—unconscious competency—in Mū culture.)

Even at the beginning I could riff and whirl in words, but there was little substance in my poems because as a person whose core self-concept was founded on shame, I hid myself. As I’ve evolved, I’ve learned to mate my natural whirling rhythm with the vulnerability and tenderness of my soul. I still have a ways to go. I don’t think most people who know me in real life off the internet would describe me as tender. I expose far more of myself here than I do in the hustle of the working world where I have to keep it together to get through the grind of making a living. Interestingly, these days, living in a new place, it’s my clients who know me the best. I reveal my tenderness on the massage table.

So thank you, readers. Thank you for being here to witness my authenticity, these pages where I allow myself the freedom of my body and soul’s pace and rhythm. There is more to come very soon when my memoir, Piko: A Return to the Dreaming, is released August 15th, three weeks from now! Which, I’ll admit, makes me a little nervous. It’s still difficult for me to expose myself, but I do it for all of us. Will you, too?

There is another element to this that will enable poets to write with the authenticity necessary to amplify their poems with the voltage that transcends the poet’s own experience and reaches out to touch the lives of readers through space and time. To access the power of Interference, we need to inquire who we truly are, search for our insincere poses, and risk being vulnerable. We also need to ask the poems to tell us who they are.

Poetry is not a one-way street, it’s a multidimensional highway of words, themselves complex symbols constructed letter by letter, and letters are symbols themselves. We see this clearly in more ancient alphabets like Hebrew, Sanskrit, or Chinese. Letters are not abstract. They are direct transmissions of things themselves, holy beings with a life of their own. Poems are temples. To enter a temple without prayer and asking permission is sacrilege. Don’t make assumptions. Let your authenticity meet your poems in the middle of the street and ask them who they are, how do they want to come into being, and how you can best serve them. Once upon a time we poets probably didn’t have to go through all that, but in these dark ages, we have to make the extra effort to reclaim our imaginations from the clocks and spreadsheets that have cast their spell on us, making us think they are more important than our beating hearts.

I never thought I’d leave Block Island, that I’d live in Tulum where someone would break my heart, leading me to stand on that street corner waiting for Sol to pick me up and transport me to Laguna Ka’an Luum. I always loved Robin Hood, and eventually Rocky the dog let me pet him. I considered that quite a compliment. He trusted very few of us humans.

I never thought I’d cocoon in a hammock for 24 hours in my apartment with barred windows on a backstreet in Tulum, waking up only to weep myself back to sleep. I had plenty of things to weep for, but I wasn’t crying for any part of my story, I was crying to let it go. And I did. I unlocked the doors to myself, and wrote a book, Breaking Up With the Moon, about the romance that crushed my heart, already pretty battered, that led me to Sol Naciente, and to finally accepting the water’s call. In my own healing, I became a healer.

I’d like to end with something I just read in my notes, something Ke’oni said in a workshop on Heka. “If it’s a burden, you’re imitating.”

Remember that. This doesn't mean writing a poem, or becoming who you truly are won’t be work. It’s not easy, and sometimes the two states of being will be intermingled. This is certainly the case for me as a massage therapist. Sometimes my job feels like an incredible burden, but when I’m in the flow of doing the work it’s not. I know it’s a complete expression of myself and keep on, trusting that the burden of it will be relieved the more authentically I show up for my clients.

And remember why it’s important to know yourself at the highest level. This is not advice just for poets and witches, but for all humans, for we are all creators even if we never pick up a pen or cast a spell. If you don’t know yourself, your spell will be corrupted.

The evidence of this is all around us in burning islands, people more entranced by phones than clouds.

I am not without hope. I came out of the cocoon. Looking back, I see the morphos were a prophecy of who I would become—shining, iridescent, blue.

Kō aloha lā ea

Concentrate on love by way of the light