This past weekend a box was found in the back shed at my partner’s parent’s home.  This box, thought long gone, had been missing since a move twenty years ago, and it contained almost all my magical tools and altar supplies at the time.  I would have been homeless at the time if not for my chosen family. What belongings I kept went into the garage, apparently except for this one box, turning it into a personal time capsule of my magical practice at the age of 23.

A Little Context

At the age of 23 I was still very much floundering around trying to figure out who I was underneath all the neglect and CPTSD created by my upbringing, while lacking the perspective to understand exactly how damaged I was or how damaging my family is.  I was still using my birth name, and in close contact with my birth family, trying to find ways to heal and find myself without addressing their roles in everything, especially my older brother’s role.

I thought my older brother was my best friend, and I was in denial about how horrible and manipulative he was (I have written out that saga in detail in the “Best Friends” chapter of Toxic Blood).  He refused to hold down a job, cheated on his wife, failed to pay bills he had agreed to pay, hid the late notices, and finally ransacked the apartment and took everything he wanted while his wife and I were out, regardless of who it belonged to.  Oh, and my parents helped him do it.

We couldn’t afford the rent without him, so we had to pack up what was left that we could keep, and we moved in with her parents.  My parents offered to let me stay with them, but that was where my brother was, and they were all smiles about having helped him steal from us, because they just wanted to help him leave that awful marriage to a horrible beast who expected him to be honest, hold down a job, and not cheat on her! Oh, the horror!

The rampant theft and rushed packing meant that we were not entirely certain of what we still had.  When things didn’t turn up after we had a place of our own, we had to assume my brother, one of his friends, or my parents had stolen it.  My bones bag for divination was one of the things I honestly assumed he took just for spite.

I knew I had successfully packed the dragon and his altar, but I was baffled about where it could have gone.  It wasn’t with our other things when we moved again.  I poked around in the garage looking for it periodically over the next decade or so, but came up empty every time, because it was actually tucked away in the back shed, separated from all our other belongings. I am fairly certain I even checked the shed a couple times on the off change it ended up there, yet somehow missed it every time.

The Dragon

The resin dragon statue was home to an Asian dragon spirit I had befriended in my teens.  An acquaintance told me about this amazing carving of a dragon she had purchased, which sounded like art that had probably been stolen out of Asia instead of ethically sold.  She insisted that there was a real dragon spirit living in it, but instead of feeling honored or reverent for meeting such a being, she was all pride and possession, like the dragon was an object for her private collection through which she could stroke her ego.

I noticed that there was a dragon spirit hanging about her, looking more than a little irritated at her behavior, so I offered that I would buy a new home for him and give him the respect he clearly deserved.  I had very little money, so it wouldn’t be anything as grand as his current home, but I would gift it to him with sincerity, and give him offerings on a regular basis.

I went to China Town in San Francisco that Christmas with the family that later took me in and showed me what real family was.  It was mostly just a fun outing, but I was also on a mission to find something that would be a suitable home for the dragon spirit.

I have never been good at haggling in the Western fashion.  I am not pushy, and trying to haggle causes me tremendous anxiety even when I can manage it.  However, I was good at the local haggling without even meaning to.  When I saw that resin statue, I knew it would work perfect, but when I asked the price I was told $70.  $70 was more than I could afford for a single item for the altar, so I declined, looking anguished because it really would have been perfect, so he quoted me a lower price, and a lower price, and a lower price, until it was at a price I couldn’t decline.  In the end I paid $35 for it, with my chosen family and the dragon all chuckling and congratulatory at my accidental haggle.

On the same trip I purchased a small altar table for the dragon statue to sit upon, and paired Chinese guardian lions (foo dogs) to guard his space.  Other items, like his offering cup and bowl, glass art pieces, and more, I picked up over time.

For several years I maintained and added to his altar, sharing libations and food with him, and giving him other gifts when I saw things that made me think of him.  It was as close to daily practice as I have ever gotten, and even then I didn’t attend to the altar every single day, just most days.  Rigorous daily practice simply isn’t something I am mentally capable of.  I’m not wired that way, and being the kind of ancient being he is, he is more concerned with sincerity and intention than watching a clock.

The dragon spirit is a delightful and slightly mischievous soul, and I found comfort and solidity in our friendship.  He gave me suggestions now and again, but mostly he just observed my life and enjoyed mutual company.

Then he disappeared.  The moment I lost track of that box, his presence was gone from my life.  I worried slightly that I offended him, but I knew that fear came from insecurity.  The more likely scenario was that he had moved on and found himself a new home when I was no longer able to have his altar set up and attended to.  After all, he had come to me because he was not being properly respected where he was.  Mostly I was hurt that I had lost track of his things, and hurt that he did not say goodbye if my inability to keep up the altar meant he would leave.

The reality was quite different, and something that in all these years never crossed my mind.

One of the items in the box was my bones bag that I used for divination.  The reality was, he was hiding that bag from me, and it was a perfect excuse to play a multi-decade game of hide-and-seek.  Everything else in the box was collateral.

A Bag of Bones

Bones are as personal a style of divination as it gets.  No two sets of bones are alike, as each individual item included is chosen by the owner for its personal meaning.  They are called bones because the tradition comes out of using bones, and most practitioners will have at least a couple bones in their set, if not a whole lot of bones.  Other items will usually be small and durable in nature, but vary wildly from set to set.  Divination is usually conducted by shaking a bag containing the set while thinking about your question, and then tossing the set out on a consecrated cloth or skin.  Where the items fall in relation to each other is read by the diviner to answer the question.

My first bag of bones contained mostly stones, a couple crystals, a couple pieces of jewelry, and one of my wisdom teeth.  If I remember right, the bag had a chicken wishbone in it for a time, but that was too fragile to survive being shaken around with the heavier stones, crystals, and bits of metal, so it broke and was removed.

I knew the bag wasn’t complete, but such things rarely are.  Items are removed if they no longer feel right to be in the set, and new items are added over time.  Ideally, this results in an extremely personalized and very meaningful tool for divination.

Unfortunately, I did not know myself, and this made collecting a bones set very difficult, no matter how much this form of divination appealed to me.  In not knowing myself, it was difficult to understand my own symbolic language, because it was buried under coping mechanisms, unhealed imposed perspectives, and religious trauma.

This means I included stones and crystals based on descriptions from New Age books telling me what those stones and crystals meant to someone else.  Most of those items are meaningless to me, not that I realized it at the time.  I attempted to use someone else’s symbolic language, and it did not work very well.  Still, I would have eventually sorted that out, removed the meaningless stones, and replaced them with other items that did have meaning for me.

The dragon hid the bones bag because of two specific items that never should have been in the collection – a heart shaped angel pin, and my baptismal cross from when I was a very small child.  Due to religious trauma, at the time I was trying very hard to find some sort of immutable goodness in Christianity.  I had been raised inundated with Christianity, to the point that my father’s declarations of agnosticism functionally translated to having no idea which denomination was correct, and not caring enough to go with my mother to a different church every month.

I was desperately trying to find a core of goodness in that religion even though I knew I didn’t want to be in it, because my coping mechanisms around honesty drove me to try and find some fundamental truth among all the lies I was raised in.  The one detail every single church had agreed about was insisting that God was good, so I was trying to find that goodness.  Since the only alternative spirituality I had access to as a teen was the new age movement, with its emphasis on angel worship and white savior complexes, I clung to the idea that I might be able to find that goodness, however elusive it was.

So, I had put in my bones set those two artifacts of Christianity, and then attempted to force them to mean things they never did and never will mean to me.  Having them in that set and using them for divination was reinforcing blinding coping mechanisms, and preventing me from making peace with my religious trauma, or even acknowledging that was what I was struggling with.

The dragon saw that, understood that I was not ready to face it yet, and quietly hid himself along with that bag, keeping all the items safe until I was ready to find them again.

Opening the Box

The box did not look good, but I immediately realized what it contained, not in small part because suddenly, after all those years, the dragon was in my ear chuckling at his successful game.  I have nowhere in my current home where I can set up the dragon’s altar, so before pulling out the contents I went to the store and purchased a sturdy plastic bin to move everything into, happy to have him tagging along and talking to me again.

All the papers and hand towels I had wrapped things in had been chewed to pieces and used as nesting material by several generations of mice.  It reeked of mouse pee and there was a ridiculous amount of mouse poop.

I gently started pulling things out and tossing away the packaging.  I expected to find a lot of damage, but instead there was very little.  Most things just need some cleaning, and only the leather items were chewed on directly.

Piece by piece I pulled out old magical tools I had thought long gone, or had forgotten I ever had.  Some of them need small repairs that have everything to do with a floundering, undeveloped practice, and nothing to do with the mice.  Delicate glass art items came out of the box whole, as did some miniature oil lamps I never had the courage to use in my youth.  Even the small qigong tea set was fully intact.  It became clear that the dragon had kept the mice to the top of the box, and protected most of the contents.

Another surprise item I was delighted to find was my wisdom teeth.  Three of them were still safely stowed in the plastic box the dentist gave me, and the fourth was in the remains of the bones bag, having evaded notice from the mice. 

The only significant damage I found was to the bones bag.  Multiple holes were chewed in the body of it, and the entire top had been chewed off, eliminating the drawstring that had held it closed.

There were only a couple items stowed in the box that I felt were past time to let go of entirely, which I did.

I immediately threw away the angel pin and removed the cross from the remains of the bag.  It did not feel right to throw it away, but it did not belong with the bones, so it went inside a small metal vase to deal with later.  I put the other contents of the bones bag into a small box, along with a few other stones and small items that felt right to bring home, and everything else got carefully rewrapped and placed into the new plastic bin for safe keeping.

Recent History

In the past year I have thought about both the dragon and the bones set far more than I had since shortly after they went missing.  I had found myself wondering how he was, and contemplating trying to find the box again, but I had no idea where I could look that I had not already thoroughly combed.

I had also been feeling like I should make a new set of bones, that it was time to metaphysically let the old one go and start over fresh. My practice and my person are both completely different, so a new one would reflect those things.  I even posted about it on social media exactly this time last year.  I still don’t have a new set created, but I have slowly been gathering things I will need for it.  I have leather to make a new bag, and plans for how I want the divining cloth to be, but I need new glasses before I can do hand stitching or embroidery.  I also have some new items collected for the set, some of which have been lovingly gifted by friends.

It was coming time to find the box again, and the old bones.  I just didn’t know it yet, because I didn’t know how to find it.

Looking to the Future

I expect that very few, if any of the items from my old bones set will be included in the new one.  They do not hold personal meaning for me, and I can see that now.  I have some items for a new set, and I am sure it will take time to accumulate enough meaningful items for effective divination, which gives my chronically ill ass a good buffer to make the divination cloth and bag.  I will share on this blog when I make progress with the cloth and bag, and may share a bit about new items as well from time to time.

The dragon is pleased with how everything turned out, and I cannot help but smile with him.  I have a very soft spot for trickster deities and mischievous spirits, and I can see both the wisdom and the humor in how it went.  I am blessed to have such a friend in this life, and I hope to know him again in many more lives.

He is well aware of the predicament created by finding the box, and the fact that I have nowhere to set up his altar.  Seriously, it’s not going to happen right now.  So, I am thinking about purchasing a much smaller resin dragon statue that will fit on any of my current altars, or even in a pocket. He can use as a residence as he wishes, and it will provide me a physical connection to him.  The bright side to this, is that even once I have a dedicated altar set up for him again, I can take that small statuette with me when I go places.

I also hold out hope to maybe be able to get a nice Chinese altar cabinet for him, someday…  It would be nice.