Make Sure You're Protected
Newsletter 14: A New Season
Hi readers!
I had an experience a few months ago which has become even more significant as we hunker down to avoid the next pandemic variant. This is a strange time we are all ill-equipped to handle. We want to cry or scream or simply get away, but it seems like there’s nowhere to go. Especially in the Northeastern US with temperatures as low as 4ºF (-16ºC), the isolation is magnified.
It helps to hold onto a little something...
I peered into the tiny shop and was delighted by their commitment to seasonal decor with little cauldrons, moon bath bombs, and blessing soaps for mid November. I had to hand it to the owners. They excelled. Then my eyes fixed on the striking cobalt of an evil eye. It was for protection. I thought of all the slings and passive aggressive arrows I’d dodged that week. There would surely be more and I needed ammo.
I picked up some epsom salt and a sample of their evil eye body butter, nodding along with the printed mantra on the lid.
“Will that be all?”
“Yes. I need this to protect me from some people at work…”
I took the sample to work and placed it on my desk. Somehow I was more at ease. I knew that in fact essential oils and shea butter would not protect me from professional slights, but in my imagination, there was a force field around me.
“I am safe. I am loved. I am protected.” I repeated the mantra quietly to myself as I flexed my fingers and clicked the X on my browser. I would not reply to that email.
I am very in touch with what is real. I’ve seen people’s tumors and any organ you can imagine. What I know to be true is concrete. Yet lately I find myself leaning on talismans and good luck charms for comfort.
What is this about?
This is a unique time of seemingly perpetual vigilance. We are suffering individual and collective trauma that we brush off as boredom or listlessness. But we’re disconnected and many of us aren’t handling it well. I find myself easily triggered and prone to losing focus. Isolation is not only mandated, but in my case, self-imposed as I volley between feeling a part of this world and altogether separated from it.
I work in healthcare and have not stayed home. There has been no pause to the workload since June 2020. I benefit from reduced traffic, but the hospital doors are still open and the patients come and need to. So I get up, most days not even stopping to drink water, much less have breakfast, throw my clothes on, and head out.
My perception of my own strength has changed. Before therapy, I didn’t know I was reacting and not responding. I was highly emotional and filled with negativity. I moved passed a lot of my own shortcomings but feel unprepared to continue fighting. I have spent too long in an excited state I can’t sustain it. I’m exhausted.
That’s when, in the middle of a tiny shop filled with incense and magic, I fixated on the evil eye.
In essence, the curse of the evil eye is not a complicated concept; it stems from the belief that someone who achieves great success or recognition also attracts the envy of those around them. That envy in turn manifests itself as a curse that will undo their good fortune.
Quinn Hargitai, “The Strange Power of the Evil Eye”, BBC Culture
The evil eye dates back thousands of years to the BCE era and its concepts are represented in different forms across religions and cultures worldwide. The evil eye itself is the jealous stare or malicious intent. The eye talisman wards off that evil. Beautiful cerulean shades adorn other talismans like the hamsa, popular in northwest Africa and the Middle East, and the Eye of Horus, a related symbol from Ancient Egypt. The Egyptian mythologies are lengthy and varied with tales of conflict, but also triumph over destruction.
The imagery and the symbology of these talismans are interconnected, with reference to vision or clarity, moon phases, but most importantly… cycles. I bought my talisman on the eves of not only the last full moon of the year, but the Winter Solstice. There was a converging terminus to the season: the year, the moon, and the dark days. From that point on though, a new season would begin which offered some degree of hope as I sought protection from not only external forces, but the swelling anxiety inside me.
I am getting in touch with the waxing and waning of seasons to find some measure of healing my circumstance won’t provide. There’s no way to medicate oneself out of a situation. You can reframe and refocus until it’s all a blur but at the end, there must be some silence and tapping into a grounding peace. The solstices remind me that the longest, most fruitful day or the shortest, darkest day is part of a season. No matter how the pandemic ebbs and flows, from the times we feel most free to when we’re most cautious, this is a season. I keep that cobalt evil eye as a reminder.
There won’t be an “after” in the way we’d like it. There is only now and this winter of isolation, that we must weather the best we can, with whatever tools we can muster to resist its bite.
There’s so much to see with The Sample, which delivers a variety of newsletters catered to your interests. Everyday is something new!
Connect with me on Twitter because I’m hilarious on there.
Did you catch the song reference in this newsletter? Email your answer to theflare@substack.com for a mention in the next newsletter.
Th reference must've flown over my head, but now my curiosity's piqued! Gonna give it another closer read.