Dear Sin,
I’m sitting on the same train where I saw a witch dying because he wouldn’t invoke Pan.
He was loudly a witch, with a tattoo of a crescent moon at the top of his forehead, the points facing up to the sky like horns. He wore metaphysical jewelry, a pentagram necklace, and an amber ring with hebrew sigils. His face was gaunt, with a puffy goatee on his pointed chin. The moment I saw him, I knew Pan was trying to come through him, wildly, and failing.
I boarded the train with my bicycle, transitioning into the second of the three chapters of my commute; bike for a couple miles through the city, ride a train across the city, and then bike upriver for a few miles -> that’s my daily routine. I’ve only started cycling seriously this year, and in order to keep my core and upper body toned, I have an app on my phone called ‘Commit’ that asks me every day at 4 pm, “Are you going to do 25 pullups today?”
It went off as I boarded the train. I stowed my bike and gear, and moved to the nearly empty handicapped section of the train, the place where I generally do my pullups and stretches while I commute.
The sickly man sat across the aisle, a large purple suitcase next to him. “Do you mind if I do some pullups here?” I asked, grasping the bar above my head.
“Not at all,” he said in a southern drawl. He shrugged and looked out the window.
I went through my pullups in three sets, listening to my intuition. I could tell there was an important meeting in play. Limber, relaxed, and fully in my body, I sat down across the aisle from him and opened myself up, so that my angels could do their work through me.
“Now I get to hit the big green button,” I said, pulling out my phone. I showed him the app, with it’s question, “Are you going to do 25 pullups today?” and the big green button that I pressed with satisfaction. “This app keeps me in the habit of being a better person,” I said.
The man, young and frail in body but wise and old in his eyes, shrugged again. “I’m a lazy witch, so I don’t try too hard to be a better person.”
We rode in silence for a while. Then I ventured, in accordance with my inner promptings, “That’s an interesting phrase, you used. A ‘lazy witch.'”
I let this sit for a while, to see which way he would take it.
“I find that when I am in motion,” I said, “activity gives me greater clarity when I want to access deeper levels.”
He took this as a general spiritual observation, and not a specific insight relevant to his own path. I do not wear my esoteric leanings on my sleeve; I have no tattoos, I wear plain clothing, and the only jewelry I wear is my wedding ring. This enables me to disappear into a crowd, or wear a modest glamour as the need arises, but it does not advertise my participation in our fraternity. Some witches, like this young and sickly man, take it to mean that I am an outsider, and so lose access to a communion with someone who successfully invokes the very same energy that they are seeking.
This was part of his test, the test I was bidden to perform as his proctor by my inner guides. He did not recognize me as a witch, and so I let him play the eccentric, a role that he was accustomed to taking on, a role he took pride in, and a role that prevented him from gleaning the wisdom that I had waiting for him.
He deflected my conversation about habits and strength by reverting to his favorite default discussion, his cancer.
He had been diagnosed at 13, and was ready to go home to New Orleans and die. He said all of this very resigned, with finality, and talked about the benefit of dying at home with family instead of in a hospital across the country. His suitcase was packed, and he was on the train to the airport, leaving Portland for good.
“Do you want to survive your cancer?” I asked, genuinely.
He looked up, his pointed chin augmented by his bushy goatee, coming to a point that was complemented by the horns tattooed into his forehead. “No,” he said, and I could see the Pan in him withering. “I’m tired of fighting.”
He talked about his hospital ordeals, and the tumors on his spine, and how during the surgeries, “they put poison in my body. Poison, that’s what it is, it’s poison.” With a perspective like this, it is no wonder that the treatments were poisoning him.
I realize now, he assumed surviving cancer meant a lifetime of the same treatment. He did not know that I have access to a shaman in Costa Rica who has cured multiple people of cancer, with stringent diets and medicine from tropical plants. He did not know that the cure to his cancer lay in the wild, and all he had to do was say, “Yes, I want to survive,” and I would have given him the key to his cure, on his trip to the airport, diverting him from his journey back home to die, and letting the trapped Pan within him out to roam free in the wild.
In accordance with my inner guides, I did not offer the solution, because he did not ask for it. I let him ramble poetically about the wisdom of death, and the perspective granted to those who know they are dying shortly, because I knew it gave him solace.
Living this journey to death had become his identity. His body was weary, and his will was weak, and I dare not fault him for choosing to move along with his momentum. This flesh is strong. A decade of pain in hospitals took its toll on this witch, and I saw how the energy of the wild was so sapped within him that Pan himself had begun to take on the features of his flesh, in an attempt to push him back into the wilds, where his cure lay.
I fancy that in the bayou of his native land, Pan will take hold of him there, and lure him into the wild for one last pain-free dance in the flesh. Pan was so suppressed in this young man’s body, and so very necessary, that I wanted to share the story with you, digital priest of the horned god.