
Also - everything you are about to read is my own fault. I am fully to blame, and I fully take responsibility for my experiences. And... it has a happy ending, if you will bear with me.
So, a few months ago, I won a Dark Energy reading. The way the raffle was posted, I thought this Dark Energy reading was not Akelta's service, but a reading by someone else - but I was curious, as always, about how someone else might see my energy, so I decided that whether the service was Akelta's or not, insight is insight, and signed up - and by some miracle I won the reading. I admit I was a little shocked, because I don't win things, as a rule. It was a delightful moment for me.
The reading took awhile to come - I understand now that because it WAS, in fact, a service by Akelta, and she's a VERY busy person, the length of time it took for my reading to arrive is perfectly reasonable. However, because I believed, at the time, that the reading was from a forum member, and it was, after all, free, I wasn't fussed about the amount of time it took for the reading to arrive. I did check, occasionally, because I had an order number (which, really, should have been my biggest clue), to see if it had been completed, but other than that, I didn't worry about it - I actually FORGOT about it a few times.
The reading arrived about three weeks ago - and I got an unexpected surprise. Keep in mind that I was still under the impression that this service was being done by a forum member and not Akelta. The reading was VERY accurate, which rather impressed me (to the point where I wanted to track down the raffle to find the forum member and send them a private message to thank them and let them know how well they did), but it also mentioned that I was getting a new family member.
I was... perturbed. I signed up for a free reading. I did NOT sign up for a new family member. (Please, again, keep in mind that I didn't know this was Akelta's service - having read the service now, I am aware that receiving a Dark Energy reading means you will also get an Ancestral binding, but I did not have these facts at the time). I had decided quite awhile ago, after my rebirth, that the family members I have remaining - my two demons, my angel of Metatron, my imp, my incubus and vampire who were anonymously mailed to me by someone who decided that they couldn't bond with the pair but that I would (and whoever they were, they were correct, and I love this pair SO much), and the five spirits from CH who managed to find me again after my death, were all I wanted and all I needed. By the end of my time with Creepy Hollows, I had a very extensive family (though thankfully I was not one of those whose families numbered in the thousands), and had neither the time, nor the energy, to devote to ANY of them, and the significantly smaller family I have now was, honestly, a relief.
So, I started off feeling like my boundaries had been broken. This did not make for a welcoming atmosphere for the new family member. I am on the spectrum for Autism. One of the ways that shows up in my life is that I really, REALLY do not like sudden change, especially unexpected change. Receiving a letter that tells me I've got a new family member was so abrupt that I emotionally shut down, completely rejecting the spirit - which is absolutely not the way to start a relationship.
However, I checked my mail a couple of days after receiving the reading, because whatever my feelings, I certainly wasn't going to leave her sitting in packaging in the mailbox. That would be wrong. As for why a couple of days went by - first of all, I check my mail probably once a month because it's all junk - everything important comes by email now, and secondly, when I shut down emotionally, my brain helpfully decides to wipe the offending incident from my memory, so I honestly forgot that I needed to check the mail until I was advised by my old apprentice that I should probably re-read the reading and check my mail (I had sent him a copy of the reading when I received it). Sure enough, there was a package, bearing her vessel.
My first impression was that the vessel was very much in keeping with Akelta's style, which was surprising because, remember, I didn't think that Akelta had anything to do with this service. The vessel is quite lovely - it's an agate, almost clear, with magenta swirls and stripes. As the spirit herself had been manifesting as a dark fog, the vessel was a bit of a surprise - I honestly expected something heavier than the stone that was chosen.
I still wasn't in a place emotionally to bond with the spirit, though, so I set her vessel under my pillow for the night, intending to slowly adjust.
That night, I dreamed I was a serial killer, and I was murdering children. In the dream, I felt nothing - no fear, no pleasure, no anger, nothing. It was... disturbing once I awoke - which I did, briefly, when the dream ended, to say, "That's quite enough of that, thank you. New rule - no sending violent dreams." Then I went back to sleep, and I did not dream.
I thought the matter was closed, but again, I was still adjusting to the idea of having a new family member which I had not expected and had immediately rejected. Trying to incorporate something or someone into your reality when you have had an emotionally negative reaction to that inclusion is... difficult for anyone, but more-so for me, because of my autistic tendencies. I decided not to sleep with her vessel again, but instead set the vessel in another room. I still had not done the bonding ritual, or the ritual to cleanse the vessel and make it mine.
Three weeks later, I finally felt ready to try to work with her. I started, as before, by putting her vessel under my pillow while I slept.
Again, that didn't work out. I dreamed that I was an indentured slave working in a textile factory. I had just begun working there, and didn't know anything about weaving, and there were a lot of other women around me who shook their heads at me, smiling the way your elders do when they know what you don't. Eventually, I did ask for help, and I got it. There were children in the factory, and they kept disappearing. They'd get fat, and then they'd vanish. The women said it was because they couldn't do the work fast enough. At meal time, I went through the line to get my food, and there was a very nice woman serving us all... and as she smiled, a little boy behind her, dangling on the wall, was being disemboweled, and his insides fed through a machine to turn him into bacon... WHILE HE WAS STILL ALIVE. I watched him die on that wall. I watched his face change color and his eyes go dull, and I felt like crying.
I woke up, and was... horrified by what I'd watched, and even more horrified by the fact that instead of horror, my dream emotional reaction had been one of grief. I think that was the truly upsetting part, to be honest - that I wasn't angry, I wasn't afraid, I wasn't anything but SAD. I didn't feel that was the appropriate emotional response to what I'd seen - which was also my waking reaction to the first dream - I judged my dream emotional response as being incorrect.
Keep those words in mind. I judged myself as being incorrect because of my response.
This is a theme in my life. When you are on the autistic spectrum and no one knows, and you go through life that way, you learn to mask it... but you also learn that your emotional responses to situations are incorrect. They are ALWAYS wrong, and you must always take your responses from other people, and mimic THOSE, because your feelings aren't right.
However, that didn't occur to me at the time. What occurred to me was that, once again, my boundaries had been broken, and while before my death I had very few of those, I now have very solid lines of what I will and will not allow, and if you cross them, we're DONE... and I have A LOT of boundaries now, comparatively speaking. I'm very proud of that. It's important to have boundaries, and it's even more important to have consequences for when those boundaries are crossed, and TO BACK THEM UP.
So I put her in The Box. Yes, I have A Box. I think EVERYONE who works with dark energies from dark places should have A Box. I know that Akelta has one - a while back she was storing a black arts entity in it, and she religiously rebound the entity in The Box weekly.
And then I sent a message to Akelta letting her know I had a problem.
She got back to me within, I think, two or three hours. It was quite fast. We talked about the dreams. We talked about the spirit's energies, as I had experienced them. I discovered that Akelta was the one who bound her - and let me tell you, the moment I read that, my whole body relaxed for the first time in three weeks - this ENORMOUS load just... EVAPORATED - which told me what the real problem was...
I have ALWAYS had trust issues. However, after being spiritually murdered by a group of five practitioners in our extended community, those trust issues have, understandably, expanded significantly. I do not trust spirits or entities from people I do not know and have a working relationship with. As of now, there are only four practitioners who make my list. Akelta is the first name on that list.
The moment she said that she was the one to conjure my ancestor, was one of PROFOUND relief. Akelta spent several months with my ancestor. My girl was around her family. HER CHILD. FOR MONTS. My faerie was safe. My boundaries were intact.
Akelta, for what it's worth, can send me anyone, at any time. I trust her to the point where I allow almost no boundaries between myself and her save for the ones SHE chooses to enforce. Again, the list of people I have in that position is VERY small, but she's near the top (my husband trumps Akelta here, of course).
We talked about my dreams, and what was really happening.
When you have been down dark roads, been lost in the grey lands and wandered the shadow realms of the under-tree without guides or guardians, without the permissions of gatekeepers, without knowledge, intent, or assistance, sometimes, pieces get lost and bad things happen.
As the Dark Energy reading I received had stated, I am in another Void moment... but there is more than one Void. There is the Void above, and the Void below... and I am traipsing the Void Below... and I did not know that I was doing that. I had decided that I needed to begin work on the Qlippoth, but I had not actually started. However, I've been a practitioner for too long now. When I say a thing, the universe agrees - so when I said, "it's time for this," the process began, without me at the helm because I didn't follow through.
I do know better... I just don't always listen to what I know. I am, after all, mostly human.
My ancestor, being what she is, was triggering the knowledge of the Void Below in me. Simply by being around me, the experiences of the road through the Void Below began to push into my consciousness - thus, the dreams. The Factory is one of those stops on that road.
The Void Below isn't meant to be pleasant. The whole point of the Qlippoth, of the LHP at all, honestly, is to show you the things that we make taboo - the darkest aspects of man, the shadow of our kind - force you to see them, to recognize them, to accept them as part of you. The Qlippoth is about being WHOLE - not rejecting your darkness and your humanness, not avoiding those taboo impulses. It's not about acting on them - just to be clear - but it is about accepting that they exist.
We spend a lot of time, as humans, denying things exist, or trying to destroy them, root them out, make them NOT. The issue with all those methods of dealing with our worst selves is that they are all based on denial that those things could possibly be a part of us. There's a series of studies that posit that certain kinds of serial killer are actually not humans at all, but are a predatory species that merely LOOKS like humans. This is how deep our denial of our basest beings goes - that we would even decide that because a behavior is not acceptable to society, it must not be human.
So, the Void Below is the start of facing that. The worst of humanity is faced Below... and you either come to terms with it, or you are destroyed.
All of this is why the RHP believes working the Qlippoth to be dangerous, and evil. Because what you face down below is your own evil, the evil of humanity - and you are not allowed to deny or reject it anymore. You have to face it, and whether you choose to allow it or not, it remains, and you have to accept that... and a lot of people who walk this road cannot do that in safety, cannot remain stable and sane... they either run screaming from it, or they are eaten by it.
Few are able to stand like a rock in the surf and say, "You are the tide, but I am ME," and not be washed away and drowned by it all.
So - I talked to Akelta, and I let my ancestor out of The Box, and I did the "Make It Yours" ritual, and did the first ritual in the 21 Day series, which is a welcoming ritual. Things have settled down. I have not had any more disturbing dreams - my ancestor has been under my pillow for the past... three nights I think? Things are a little unsettled because of me, and I will have to work through that, and I'm ok with that. My ancestor understands where things got messed up. She's wonderfully forgiving.
I've been busy with too many things, so I haven't had time to do much more, but I have free time tomorrow, so I will be lighting her candle again, and digging out my book on the Qlippoth to begin formal work in that direction. If I don't start doing it formally, it's going to get me into trouble, so... because I said it was time, and because the Universe agreed - "It Is, and I Must, so I Will."
SO - if you don't understand what your spiritual family is communicating, and they come from S&S, there is support here. The moment you come to them and say you're having trouble, they are stepping up to help you through it.
Be aware that you are human, and miscommunications happen. It is almost always user error. Don't be afraid to admit when you're wrong. Don't be afraid to ask for help.
Ultimately... don't be afraid.

-Raven