We have reached the one-year anniversary of the UK (and indeed, most of the world) being plunged into lockdown when it became clear the Covid-19 virus was raging across the globe. I am taking this moment to reflect on the year of the pandemic and how it has affected me as a person and as a Priestess.
We have all changed. Whether we recognise it, we are all different now. Covid-19 has changed us all. As of today, 2.7 million people worldwide have died from this virus and this death toll is still climbing. It is a global catastrophe.
One year ago we felt as though we had woken up into a nightmare; all of those dystopian movies about pandemics and plagues were suddenly real. We were living it. I was raging at our government, their lack of action, their delay in closing schools. One year later I am still raging at them (if you don’t like politics then I can assure you that this isn’t the blog for you). However, this blog is not about my fury and frustration (I’ll save that for another entry). I want to reflect on my own journey and the way that once the world shut down, I started to focus on things other than my seething rage.
I began to see that there was something beautiful in this locked-down world. The sky was empty – not one aircraft marred the blue dome above our heads. The streets were utterly quiet. The internet filled up with videos of nature reclaiming towns and cities (my favourite clip was a herd of goats who wandered in and took over the streets of a town in Wales). There was nowhere to go because everywhere was shut and we had been instructed by our government to stay indoors. The pressure to go out, have fun, dress up, socialise, be busy, be productive had disappeared. Previously I lived a very sociable and adventurous life – heading to Comic Con with my friends all dressed as Star Wars characters. Organising London Underground themed pub crawls. Eurovision parties. But now all that was gone. We had to stay indoors. And I found a new peace in the stillness and a place where my quiet mind could connect more freely with Goddess and with the divine.
The worry about the virus never dissipated and my anger at so many people’s lack of empathy and care for other humans certainly never evaporated; however I discovered a serenity in this new slowed-down life and I realised I was not in a huge hurry to get back to the rat-race.
The old life was gone (albeit temporarily) and so we created a new one. Every morning (English weather permitting) I I started taking our little sausage dog to Greenwich Park. It has stunning views across London, some gorgeous old trees… and a large population of crows. It was these crows who befriended me and ended up being one of the greatest gifts of the pandemic. As soon as I saw them filling the trees I fell in love and I began to feed them every day. Now we know each other very well. As soon as I appear, they swarm towards me through the skies, cawing, welcoming me (and demanding their breakfast).
Crows are incredible. They are fiercely intelligent, they recognise individuals and they even hold grudges. This may be one reason why I feed them every day – I don’t want to wake up to find one hundred black beady eyes staring down at me. My relationship with these crows has been beautiful. I talk to them, they talk back and they have led me into an even deeper relationship with nature and with the divine. Crows are unjustly maligned but they are sacred to Goddesses such as Morgan Le Fay and the Morrigan and I have found that I am now much more drawn to these Celtic Goddesses. If you ever get the chance to strike up a friendship with a crow or even a murder of these magical birds then you will find your life immeasurably enriched.
It was not only my new crow crew that deepened my Priestess Path. I started training with the Mount Shasta Goddess Temple in January and I had struggled to keep up with the studies when I was working full-time as a teacher. But once the world locked down I found I had a lot of time on my hands – time I could devote to meditation, to my Priestess course, to carefully creating new altars, to researching new Goddesses, to learning to read Tarot, to working with the new sacred tools that were part of the training, to sit and stare at the sky and just breathe.
I can honestly say that the combination of lockdown and this Priestess training has been transformative. My career as a teacher is a joy to me and also a burden. It requires me to be all-in, all the time. Make no mistake, I love it (even when I am yelling at an essay, “WHEN WILL YOU USE AN APOSTROPHE?!”) but it leaves little time for me. Teacher guilt is real. Every moment you aren’t planning or marking is tinged with guilt. But during lockdown I could carefully burn sage and smudge my flat, pore over fascinating articles about Korean folk culture and sit at my altar without a smidgeon of guilt. I have discovered the art of the magical bath or shower. Candles, rose oil, some cheesy music involving pan pipes (don’t judge me), delicious exfoliation and the washing away of all my cares. I used to leap in and out of the shower due to the relentless call of piles of unmarked essays and the reminder that the alarm goes off at 6:30 am. Now I luxuriate in the waters and I call on Aphrodite, Yemaya and Coventina. Take an hour and give yourself the gift of a magical bath. I can strongly recommend it.
It took a planet-wide pandemic for me to discover 'me time' and I am very unwilling to relinquish it.
So now here we are – one year. What have we all learned? How have we changed? What will we leave behind? Covid-19 is far from over and we cannot hastily jump back in the old ways. And we must ask ourselves one question – do we want to? I have discovered a love of quietness, a deep joy in being indoors and just reading for three hours, sleeping for ten hours, researching Shamanic rattles just because I can. Are we in a great hurry to rush back to the rat-race with our noses to the grindstone, working overtime, zero-hour contracts, prioritising the economy over human lives and sacrificing so much on the altar of capitalism?
I know this is not an easy question as we have families to support and we all need to put food on the table. I do not have the answers. All I am asking is – when we say that we want to ‘get back to normal’ – could we not instead manifest a new normal that is better for us and better for the planet.
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