Today, our battleground is not just in the present, but the past—and by extension the future. How we talk about our collective history, the narrative children learn that sculpts the scattered facts, plants seeds that sprout into life choices and culture and world views and votes. 

Our history is a vast and gnarled thing, filled with contradictions and tangled, even mangled paths. Like in most cultures, some collective force polished that forest down into small clean shimmering stones, myths, that offer a view of only one very sanitized diorama of our past centered, by and large, on narratives of a select few. 

But Eli Whitney didn’t invent the cotton gin any more than Elvis invented rock n’roll. And the six million Black Americans who migrated from south to north during the Great Migration had as much impact on the current contours and culture of this nation as the mythologized “frontiersmen” and “cowboys” we were taught from infancy to celebrate. 

So we fight, in classrooms and museums, on tenure boards and cable news. Because who controls the story of the past controls the future. That narrative constitutes one of the most powerful weapons on earth. 

On the full Harvest Moon of September 20 and the foothills of the fall equinox, as dark begins to overtake light and kids—some with faces masked, some bare—nationwide settle into class, we will enter the woods. We will talk to the ghosts of America. We will find, and wield, our own story.

THE SPELL

Preparation

Set out your paper and writing or drawing implements, your bowl of water, your candle. Light the candle.

Now, call in the corners, saying out loud:

North, earth, I invite you into this space to offer me roots that nourish, hold me up.

South, fire, I invite you into this space to transform me and all I survey.

East, air, I invite you into this space to carry me, and my story, forward.

West, water, I invite you into this space to wash and reshape the shore.

Step 1: The Woods

If you would like guidance on this step, you can perform the spell along with this audio track:

If you are reading and performing the spell without guidance, continue here:

Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. In and out. In and out. Focus on the sounds around you. Listen. Focus on the smells. Feel your body in your space. Feel your feet on the floor. Now, look inward. Feel your heart, beating, pulsing, see its light. Feel the reverberations. Release any tension in your body.

Picture yourself now, in the abstract, all the groups and identities that are assigned to you in our great collective narrative, identities based on your skin, your family’s origin, your spirituality, your profession, your passions, your gender-identity or sexual orientation, your role in your family, or anything else that shapes how the world defines you. 

Now picture yourself walking barefoot on a beach of small pebbles. At first they look and feel nice. But soon you realize these pebbles in fact have hidden jagged edges. They hurt, even cut, your feet. And you see, feel, these stones are held in place by a rather toxic sludge.

Now, you see a vast gnarled wood, filled with shadows, standing before you. Enter the wood. If at any point you desire, you can exit. Just  open your eyes. You now see the wood is filled with pulsing, buzzing life, with insects, and butterflies, and birds and mammals, small and large, an old growth forest, with moss on trees surrounded by shrubs and fallen logs and fungi, all growing into and onto and through each other, a place of primordial layers and mysteries. Listen carefully. See if you hear any voices. Any whispers on the wind. 

Make your way through the wood to a pond. It’s a small pond, surrounded by dense wood, but somehow still glittering silver in the light of the full moon. You hear the pond sounds, the lapping, a slight haze hovers in woods on the other side of the water. Out of the trees, figures start to emerge. Ghosts, somehow both spectral and solid. Take a minute to focus on them as they glide into view. They are figures from the American past who are indicative of you, your identities, your role in the present day. They are people who you consider allies, ancestors who are not generally the protagonists of the American Tale. 

But they made just as much of an impact on the nation we’ve become, for better and worse, as anyone else. The American story is just as much their story as it is anyone else’s.

Maybe they have a name, maybe they’re a person who made it into our history books, or maybe into your family’s personal history, a great great grandmother or aunt six times removed. Maybe they are a nameless member of a group who shaped us as much as those “frontiersmen” and “cowboys.” Perhaps a suffragist or abolitionist or labor activist in a “Boston marriage” (i.e., 19th century for queer); a member of the Iroquois Confederacy whose Constitution served as a model for our own; a mystic preaching of the equal divinity of each and every human, regardless of race, gender, or creed; a black jazz musician who traveled from South to north in 1918 and took his music with him.  

Tell them hello. Tell them you are grateful they showed up today to offer you wisdom, a glimpse of the vast network constituting your, and our, roots.

Step 2: The Ghost

Crossing the pond to meet you, the face, the body, the demeanor, the dress of your spirit, or spirits, comes into full view. One steps forward. Talk with this spirit. Ask the spirit about his/her/their life, what they fought for, who they loved. Ask them what they have to say to you. Ask them how they would like their story told. 

Picture their spectral form turning into a flame. Picture that flame lodging inside your heart. Feel the heat. See the light.

Tell the spirit, and your heart, thank you for all you did in your life. It couldn’t have been easy. 

Open your eyes. Look at the flame on your candle. 

Step 3: The Story

Take your writing or drawing implements. On the paper you’ve placed before you, make art that represents or tells this person’s story, that boils it down to its essential parts. Make it simple but true, don’t hide the sharp edges, because those hidden edges will come back to cut you, or the recipient of the story, later. The art could be an essay, should you feel moved to write one. Or a Haiku. It could be a stick figure portrait or comic strip. It could be a song.

When you are finished, close your eyes. Take a breath. You are still in the woods, beside the pond. Kneel and dip your hands into the water, cool and clean. Sprinkle it, splash it, rub it, onto your face, your arms, your body. Watch the water and your body shimmer with moon light.

Stand up and exit the wood, guided by the silver light of the moon, your body still shimmering. As you take your first step onto the shore outside the wood, open your eyes. 

Step 4: The Moon

Fold the paper, once, then twice. Place it beneath your water bowl outside or in a windowsill where the light from the full moon best hits it. 

If you can see the moon, look at it and breathe in and out, in and out, three times. If you can’t, look at your candle and do the same. Close your eyes and say:

Take this offering and collect it. Pull its story—gnarled, sharp and true—up and out, pervasive and necessary as the wind. Let it be as it always was. Powerful.

Leave the art there all night.

Step 5: The Road Forward

In the morning, shortly after you wake up, go to the water. Slowly dip your fingers into it. Sprinkle it on your face, your arms, your body. Take a minute and breathe. Absorb the morning, the new light. 

Remove the paper that contains your history. Put it on your altar or carry it with you. Keep it there and in your heart throughout the fall and winter, slowly germinating, while the flame warms you. In spring, your spirit’s story will sprout through you. It will transform the beach of jagged pebbles. It will reshape the past, present, and future, if you call it.

Set a reminder in your phone for 11:32 am EST/8:32 am PST, on March 20, 2022, the exact moment of the spring equinox. The reminder should describe or name your spirit. It should state:

Call me. 

Your spell is complete.

Spell by Lucile Scott