Choices

I wrote the ritual we did for Samhain this year. And at its heart, it was a decision making ritual. We invoked Hecate, because she's goddess of the crossroads. She's also old, both in history, and in aspect, and she doesn't really mess around.

(She's also associated with dogs, especially the ones you hear barking in the night, so I like to call her goddess of bitches. Pukka thinks that's disrespectful, but I think it's just the truth.)

The idea was that you've come to this crossroads in your life, and Hecate's there. Everyone had two pieces of paper. One had one "half" of a decision on it and the other had the other "half". You were supposed to go down to where Hecate was, and throw the half you were giving up into her flaming cauldron. For example, "I'll go back to school this year" vs. "I won't go back to school this year".

I, in my infinite wisdom, picked my choice ahead of time, since I knew what was coming, having written the ritual. And I was going to use having kids as my choice. Because Tony and I are currently agreed we'd like to have them, but it's probably not going to be a good idea in the next year for practical reasons. So on one piece of paper I wrote "have kids" and on the other I wrote "don't have kids". I figured this way, in a couple of months when I see a baby, and I think, "Oh, I want one of those" then I can tell myself "Not this year -- we already decided, remember?" And then I marked the paper I wanted to throw away, so I could find it easily by the firelight.

In the ritual, I found the paper I'd marked, walked down to Hecate's cauldron, knelt before the goddess of the witches, said "Please take this from me" and threw the paper into the fire.

Fast forward to Thursday night. I'm cleaning the living room because we're having Gaea's Feast on Friday, and I find the bag full of stuff leftover from the ritual. I'm sorting through it, because some of the stuff in it lives in the kitchen, and some of it lives in the back room. And I find the paper I have left from the ritual.

The one that I kept.

The one that should say "don't have kids".

Only it doesn't.

Yeah, so I just wanted you all to know, so that if I get pregnant in the next year, you can be sure to laugh at me.