Seasoned

Initiation Song from the Finders’ Lodge

Please bring strange things.
Please come bringing new things.
Let very old things come into your hands.
Let what you do not know come into your eyes.
Let desert sand harden your feet.
Let the arch of your feet be the mountains.
Let the paths of your fingertips be your maps
and the ways you go be the lines on your palms.
Let there be deep snow in your inbreathing
and your outbreath be the shining of ice.
May your mouth contain the shapes of strange words.
May you smell food cooking you have not eaten.
May the spring of a foreign river be your navel.
May your soul be at home where there are no houses.
Walk carefully, well loved one,
walk mindfully, well loved one,
walk fearlessly, well loved one.
Return with us, return to us,
be always coming home.

---

autumn@mit.edu

Scrub your skin with the dirt from a hollow hill.

Brush your body with raven feathers and the blessings of a million hags gone before who have never given a shit about the what looks “nice” to others.

Take all the pots and pans out of your kitchen, clean them with black salt, and bring them outside with your spoons and knives. Make a racket to wake up the earth and let the neighbors know that their local hag has woken up from winter slumber.

Water your garden with the tears shed by those suffering from fragile masculinity to help them grow towards their heart instead of their fear. 

Stitch up your worn out clothes with the red thread of intersectionality and luck.

Scare the life back into your heart by grinning so loudly in the mirror that you can see every tooth, fang, and monster song gurgling forth from the back of your throat.

Go to a crossroads, turn to the east, and spit three times so that you never forget how to find your way back.

Stain your lips and fingers with the blood of berries.

Braid thorns into your hair and rub rose dust into your eyebrows.

Never say you’re sorry for making it to another spring. Cackle instead and celebrate the ugly bits that have kept you alive.

Lace up your boots with the stories of your ancestors raging against powers they were told were unbreakable but have long turned to dust. 

Greet your witchen kin with right hands grasped, left hand over the heart of the other, foreheads touching. Breath in, breath out. Say, “I fucking love you.”

Remember that hags like you grow like weeds and springtime will never be the same. 

The front and back of oracle cards resting on a collage in my Seasoned journal.

Being the Change

by Alexandra Seddon

Hermit hag

Hagsome

Hagalicious

Hagging

Hagging in there

Haglighting

Haglightning

Hag inspiring

Hagspiration

Haggard

Haggardty

Hag passage

Hag pack

Cackle of hags

Dont get you Haggles up

Hagriculture

Hagitarian

Hagafuffle

Haganomics

Hagadocious

Haggedly

Hag couture

Hagulous

Hagilepsy

Hag cave

Hag hearth