Mystical Puppet Master

I’d had inklings of it my entire life- foreshadowing moments, I should say. I would feel things so profoundly, that they preternaturally seemed to manifest into my life.

I’m not talking about pulling a rabbit from a hat or holding a secret card up my sleeve- not in the literal sense, anyway.

I mean it in a way that I intuitively knew things that I had no prior knowledge of, and sometimes, no business in knowing whatsoever.

For instance, my mother had a striking scarlet pillar candle lit at a house we were renting when I was six years old. There was a baby gate propped between me and the hypnotizing tool flickering with life, with power, for the sole purpose of keeping me and my three year old little brother safe from the flame.

Somehow, this made the scene even more ancient and alluring to me.

I crept up to the bars as the flame splashed the hallway in dim, scintilliant light and proceeded to become captivated by the way the flame danced.

I knelt down in what I would later learn to describe as a child’s pose, pressing my forehead to the ground, arms extended forward, and began to let my adolescent dreams unfurl. Images of myself and a small cat with swirling patterns of gray in her fur spiraled through my mind in a dreamlike glow. My eyes remained closed, but my mouth curled up into a satisfied smile. I added my brother to the picturesque vision and along came a cat for him as well. He was my best friend, after all. I wanted to share this moment with him.

I had no motive behind this unbeknownst ritual, and even less of a reason for the immense guilt and embarrassment that tore through my trance like a tsunami upon my mother approaching me with a gasp and a chastising “Persephone, get up!”

Why did it feel wrong to be unconventional? Why did I instinctively roll over and pretend I was not doing anything unearthly, even though being heinous and mischievous were far from what I had intended?

I couldn’t make myself understand, but I was a child, so I didn’t dwell on it.

Indeed, the unperceived rite had escaped my mind completely until years after we’d moved into our permanent house. I was eight and my brother was five… and a kitten with swirling gray patterns appeared at the back porch.

The very next night, another kitten could be heard crying from the bushes of my mother’s garden, inevitably becoming my brother’s favorite pet.

As a child with the attention span of a butterfly, I never pondered too hard on all these seemingly ethereal coincidences (and oh, did they happen often), so my real initiation did not solidify until I was twenty four years old.

The year prior had been like a prologue, a mere stepping stone into what truly brewed within me.

At a dinner I didn’t particularly want to join but felt obligated to attend, I was surrounded by passive-aggressive, extremely vain family members who made it a point to make me feel like a scapegoat. I retreated to the bathroom and looked in the mirror through a blur of tears as I soothed myself by breathing in tranquil, purifying white light, exhaling out their putrid black static.

Upon leaving, it was announced that their credit card had been declined.

Or perhaps my friend’s bachelorette trip when I pointedly ignored how everyone ran the sister-in-law to be down, claiming that she was the biggest shrew they’d ever met. It wasn’t in me to spread hate, even when she whinged at me personally. I just let the salt water wash over me in a cleansing sense, smiling serenely as I respired my cares away with each passing wave and heard her scream as jellyfish made her their target.

Maybe even the time I stepped into a steaming shower, lit only by candlelight, and felt the warmth wash down my body, along with a pink rose quartz infused soap. I had love woven deeply into my mind and though I had thought about Haden a million times in my dimly lit showers, this time, the water seemed to sparkle in reverence. I spontaneously decided to visualize a golden string pulsing with radiant electricity stretching from my chest to his. The metaphysical lightning cracked so hard, I felt it rattle my bones. I let out a light giggle at my own panache laced imagination, but the flightiness quickly came to a screeching halt when I opened my eyes and saw my phone light up with a message from Haden, whom I had not heard from in over a year.

It became uncanny. I had undeniably been gifted a divine ability to tug on the strings of life itself and call forth the inner machinations of my mind.

That’s certainly not to say that I never encounter hardships. In fact, they oftentimes are found gnawing at my heels just as I am about to lift off the ground.

However, upon delving into the true essence of this scrying mirror into society I found myself holding, I found my sovereignty expanding deeper and deeper with each passing moment of each and every day. I felt more keen to see curiosity where I once saw fear, beauty where I once saw bitterness, and growth where I once saw decay. These challenges were nothing more than tools put in front of me for the sole purpose of aiding in my ascension and polishing my light. My supernatural largesse was transmutation.

The family members from the aforementioned dinner came back around with tails tucked, humility dripping from their hands, congratulating me instead of expressing distaste exposed for intimidation of free thinking.

The sister-in-law bowed respects and expressed admiration at my friend’s baby shower to everyone she had met with hostility on that initial trip, especially to me.

The on and off whirlwind romance between me and Haden finally ceased as one sacred hike through the Grand Canyon led to him dropping to one knee as tears blurred my vision. The ring he presented me with was entwined with genuine rose quartz crystals.

And these instances were just tips of the mysterious, methodical iceberg.

I wasn’t given a top secret book- didn’t encounter some confidential hacking code. I simply surrendered to the mystery. I utilized the elements around me and let love and esoteric faith lead the way, making them a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. I learned to alchemize pain into power.

I dream of this world as a better place flowing with waterfalls of creativity and shining with rays of open-mindedness. And if I can harness the power of the universe, then surely you can too.