There are certain animals that run as common motifs throughout my life.
Many of them because they simply exist in the same areas I live in, often in cohabitation with me.
Spiders. Earwigs. Little Mice. Bugs and crawly things.
I am also convinced that some of them are ancestral motifs.
And since I don’t talk to the living sides of my family much anymore. And had to cut off a large chunk of the more judgmental spiritual ones as well. I am left with mostly old ancestral animals to connect with my physical ancestry. Hares, and Rabbits, and Toads, and Bats. Motifs of good fortune in Chinese Culture for sure.
But sometimes I wonder how people in our family don’t remember us as occult minded people, especially with my Great Grandfather and his Feng Shui and Palm Reading being the most recent in our line of workers. And all these night sided animals showing up everywhere in our ancestral symbols and decor.
How I Met My Toad Frog Person.
So as I was going about my day during my first year in Downtown, walking and exploring through China Town; hoping to have some sort of mystical experiences like Sarah Lawless did in Vancouver … I found something.
A toad frog carving. Made out of wood. With a thick wooden dowel through its middle that was removable. If you took the dowel and ran it along the ridgy spine nubs of the carved toad-frog, you hear a pleasant sound that imitates eerily froggy toad like singing.
China had quiet a few of those frog toad animals, especially during the moist hot summers near the ponds we had in our community gardens once they got pollution somewhat under control.
My insides had a magnetic shift. There was a spirit there.
After a while, you tend to know these things. Despite what some self entitled “elders” from other traditions may say, if you work to being honest with yourself, when you know these things you know these things.
Though they are right in saying not every spirit who comes knocking may have your best interest at heart. So you should do well in learning how to unfuck things of a spiritual nature and cover your own behind.
But not all of us have “elders” who are good for us, and we still feel the call, so we do what we can and must to heed it.
So I took the carving home, and held it in a circle by a candle. Gave it some water and smoke, and it gave me a vision and a name.
And then it was there in my life, and for the longest time, it sat on the bottom shelf of my book case next to some other ritual accouterments. And from time to time, when I felt stuck in life, I would take up its little dowel stick, and run it against its spine, and hear it sing.
Then things will somehow move on.
How I Met Their Bodies.
I at the time also had an African Dwarf Frog.
It was my little baby in my aquarium. Like the toad frog statue, it jumped out to me. Something said, get this frog, you’ll need it. And my feet remained numbed in the store until I made the decision to bring it home with me.
This frog stayed with me for two whole years, after god knows how many it spent in the pet store.
Then one day I found it burrowed in one of its little hide outs in the large 5 gallon tank, still and unmoving, like it fell asleep next to the tank heater.
I felt numb. I felt numb a lot during that time period in my life two years ago.
I wondered what to do in my numbness.
And The Bones Danced.
Dry it, was my impulse. Bury it in that pot of Anthurium flowers you are giving to the spirit you call “Lilith”. She’ll do something important with it.
…
My spirits tend to teach things backwards. That has been a consistent theme in my work.
My work in my own practice started with the trying ordeal of escaping abuse and finding my independence, and that involved some work that got a little darker than just casting a circle and drinking grape juice to the full moon once a month.
…
So I buried my lovely in that clay pot next to the window, watching its little body sink deep into the roots of my Anthurium.
Maybe it was the trick of the light, or that they turned on the heaters in the building finally. Or maybe it was my toad frog person. But the flowers of my Anthurium grew red, like blood spilled into its veins like water, as the body decomposed, the plant grew crimson and rich.
And for a full month after my tiny funeral, I gave incense offerings and prayed for direction.
…
Take the bones they said, and clean them under water.
So I did.
One will float, the rest will fall. Take the one that floats.
So I did.
Burn the rest in a charmed fire, then take what is left, and take the bone that floated, and put it in a glass bottle.
Fill it with dream time herbs.
Hang it on your cord around your neck.
Let it sit for 7 days and 7 nights against your own heart.
Go on a pilgrimage during this time.
To a Crossroads. A Horse Field. A Church.
You’ll see things.
You’ll learn things.
You’ll find things.
…
So I did.
The Nitty Gritty Details.
They say when you do rituals with bones and toad-frogs and midnight waters with things floating on them, you get tested. You get tried.
I was bracing myself for some melodramatic supernatural struggle.
On the first night, it was things being run through me, like a witches foot, and toads rumbling walking singing into my head with things I didn’t understand and didn’t want to know. Visions as usual really.
But on the second, all I saw was fog. Lots and lots of fog. As I sat there in Queens Park next to a Horseman’s stature, it was like fog overwhelmed my eyes, and feet, and filled inside my body. Through the fog was a shadow of a man with horns, some steps away, shadows cast by some strategically placed trees perhaps. He stared at me. And I stared back at him through the fog until I felt like it was time to go.
Then on the third night, wind. Lots and lots of wind. Blowing leaves into my hair as I numbly walked three times counter clockwise around that Anglican church on University Avenue.
I waited, I meditated, I frustratedly ground my teeth, angry at something, some resistance, some force. Like all the anger buried from the past just came pouring out of me.
Where was the GODDAMN Devil?! I was ready for a good fight?! COME ON?! FIGHT ME?!
I thought the Devil never came. Thought my bone too weak, too insignificant. It’s owner had no golden back side, and traveled here from a place quiet divorced from Britain.
But a nagging voice outside my head that windy third night kept saying over and over again “drop the bone, nothing will happen, drop the bone, nothing will happen, drop the bone, nothing will happen”. Until that seem liked it was all I was hearing and fighting against, that those words were like the summation of my existence. Singing over and over again in my head, pounding against my own angry psyche.
“Drop the bone, nothing is going to happen”.
I stubbornly held on to my little glass bottle of secrets, remembering that @rootandrock wrote here that no matter what “don’t give up that bone”.
So I clutched it to my chest, felt the tiny bone hearts beating in sync with mine. I was angry. I wanted to fight, fight the Devil, fight my parents, fight all the bull shit that was hurting me.
Because my parents were suppose to love me and protect me. And the Devil wasn’t suppose to be real.
And I was suppose to be a good boy.
Instead, here I was, in a Church yard, selling my soul with a piece of bone that the Devil doesn’t even seem interested in.
I smoked a cigarette numbly, sniffled against the cold winter air, flipped off a few of the passersby giving me weird glances at the person with the long hair they had trouble gendering sitting on a church steeple crying.
Then I went home in a daze, all the while muttering in my head “drop the bone nothing will happen” while my hands held on tight, and wondered why nothing had happened. And where was the Devil when I was fucking ready to give him everything for a little freedom of my own.
Aftermath.
That night, I dreamed of something slipping in bed with me. Warm, soft, slippery. He took my hand in his moist, sticky palms, and walked with me to somewhere far away.
We sang together in some far off pond with stars in my head and the water sitting cool around my body, kissing my aches tenderly like some lover of mine I don’t remember. Starting from that night, I didn’t feel so alone anymore, and stopped hurting as much. I was undergoing my new metamorphosis. Little by little, skin by skin, grinding teeth by grinding teeth.
To this day, I still wonder whether what I did counts as the Toad Bone Rite or not. I was crazy enough at the time, unbalanced enough, hurt enough from all the fresh wounds of abuse, that the things I saw those nights didn’t really faze me that much or even register as anything strange or otherwordly.
When you have your own father whip you over and over again with a belt when you were 12 because you swept the floor differently than he did, your perceptions of what is normal sometimes shifts in really unhealthy ways.
But I do know I have a friend inside of me now, sharing space with my own animal.
And sometimes, on cool, moist nights, we dress up like toad frogs, and go singing in some far off pond in my head where there are stars everywhere.
And the water sitting coolly around us as we croak and ribbit on our lily pads,
lapping away the scars on our bodies.
A Body For My Toad Familiar
Published
The Carving Witch 