Have you ever had it not matter?

I’ll be the first to say that my answer is yes. In the last two years, four people I care about have passed. I have known before it happened each of those four times. And truthfully, I’ve come here to find calmness. I’m not here preaching today, I’m just here to say that sometimes this burden isn’t one I bear with joy.

So today I’ll be sharing these four stories. If you’re new to magick, you’ll learn as you deepen your practice that the future is rarely unforeseeable, and for those of you who understand that magick is life and life is magick, maybe you’ll resonate with what I have to say. Maybe we can help even each other with this.

My Great-Grandmother

Death of a Bird: Death of a Loved One

Channeled

My great grandmother’s name was Mami Luci, at least to me it was. She was an indigenous Peruvian woman who sang Quechua songs with the man she spent most of her life with. In summer of 2020 she passed on.

One day I came across a dead bird, a little sparrow with it’s beak pried open still and coldness hardening it’s dead body. I looked at it and knew; it told of death to come. Not mine, but of another. Not wanting to believe this I sat and typed into google ‘dead bird meaning’ or something similar. Of course it said a close person’s life was coming to an end and of course it said some other flowery things like ‘reconnect with yourself’ and other nonsense about death and cleaning chakras.

But it didn’t matter. Some spirit had whispered to me, “Death of a bird: Death of a loved one.” A phrase that I still remember and cannot let go. I knew when I saw it what was coming. And I denied it. As I would expect most people to. This was the first sign I noticed.

The second was a dream. I won’t share many details but there was a spirit there with me and another young girl with him. I called after but she wouldn’t come back. She had to leave. I called after the spirit too, I yelled his name, calling, “Ronowe,” but he wouldn’t stop leaving. I’d only worked with him once before and when I woke up I was confused about his presence in my dream. But it seems nothing is without reason.

The next morning my mom told me my great-grandmother had passed away over night. Later I researched Ronve (Ronove/Ronwe/Ronowe). I came across a page–though there are quite a few– detailing Ronve’s intersection with the dead. He “harvests” their souls. In an instant I understood. He crosses people from this realm to the next; the dream made sense as my heart sank. I never asked to know when people would die. I never asked for warnings or signs or demons visiting my dreams with departing souls.

In truth, I was a bit spooked but also marveled at my magick. I was sad and mourned and gave thanks for the dream.

& The Love of her Life

Months later I was laying in bed in the dark, talking on the phone when I saw a graveyard setting like a vision. Skeletons seemed to creep out from their tombs, nothing too graphic but I saw it clearly. Bones and skulls and fully-formed skeletons. I was concerned someone might die. The next night, it continued.

My family was told of his illness but not of his passing. It was a week later we found out from an online obituary. The visions lasted three days. He died on one of them.

It was the second time I had seen images of death and had death directly follow. I didn’t know how–other than a bit scared–to feel. I didn’t know what would happen next time, if I would also receive a message of foreboding. I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

My King of Wands died over summer (2021). I was devastated and angry. The cards had told me loudest of all. I feel I should have seen it coming sooner than I did, I blame myself for not telling him something–anything–that could have kept him out of danger.

Because that’s really where a lot of us are headed. Knowing people are going to die and blaming ourselves when they do. I’m not sure I’ve ever been so shaken with anger and sadness; I should have known sooner and then maybe he would still be here talking about taking me out to eat fish at the beach. I wonder if he would talk about all the ways he made his money to get me to squirm, or be silent about it in fear of my judgement. As if I didn’t know what kind of person he was.

The cards showed me a reversed King of Wands long before the day he died, they showed me the Death card, and more. I thought nothing extreme of it. They had first showed me the pictured King of Wands when I began working with him–be wary of your ego that it may beget pain.

But later, he wouldn’t respond. Something was wrong. I pulled cards, again and again in the way we’re not supposed to where you pull one card at a time several (like 10+) times in a row trying to make the cards tell you what you want to hear. And then I did it again, and again. He was sick, hurt, and I couldn’t make it stop.

So I turned to ritual. Buer, Furcalor. Buer the Healing God who has helped cure ails in the past. And Furcalor: God of those Drowned who came forward as a protector and friend of my King of Wands long before. And I was promised healing. And so he healed. But then, after he was made all better…something else came up and he died there in the hospital where they refused him treatment. That night I was working, I pulled the death card. I pulled the Prince of Coins (pictured with a butterfly in that deck). To me, butterflies are representations of death. I pulled cards that mean gone. I pulled the King of Wands reversed.

Hours later, the message came through that they had killed him. And I went home and cried. I hated having known. How could anyone have bragged before about knowing when the time of others came to an end? How could I hand this back and say to the world, “This is no gift. Thank you, but please keep it. It only hurts and I don’t want it.” For months, the only magick I did was to light a candle on the one month mark of his passing.

His Grandfather, My Hierophant

Who shared my heritage and taught our old ways as if they were new and spoke of them with great pride.

If we can know when others will leave this life, then it stands to reason that we may know when we, ourselves, will pass on. Even that we can sway this date. It is a long-standing belief among certain magickal communities that when one has great power, until the date chosen a person’s life cannot be taken.

He called up all his friends and family, all his favorite people and loved ones within a couple days to talk like old friends… and then his breathing stopped. In Latin America, “depresión” is often both something physical and mental. When his grandson who he’d raised from childhood passed, everything changed. Perhaps it was more the heartbreak that led him to death.

They say he knew because that day they began talking and then realized that he had called them all as if he was fine, planning on living a while longer. I only wish we could have talked about the customs of our ancestors in candlelit rooms at the break of dawn, that we could have spoken of tarot as though it were more than cards and a language, that we could have made potions together and laughed at the meaning of herbs in the humid air. I wish too that I had been able to tell him I love him, have him understand.

I will miss you. I hope you come again sometime, if you may.

The week before he passed on, I had another dream of death. It was out of the usual and I woke up wondering who had died. After three deaths I recognized the dream. I got a call, and half asleep I confessed to the phone, pillow, and my mind all at once that I was scared someone’s life was coming to a close.

I dreamt of a home I had never seen, of faces I didn’t recognize. Everything was colored a shade of green as though someone had plastered leaves into old film to get the color to show. Decapitated heads floated in one scene, but this was not the point. Moments later a man laid on a bed; and down from thin air a woman appeared and said to him, “I have come, my love, to take you home.” Though I have never met the woman he created life with, I would believe if not her it was another beloved woman of his past. He took her hand and they departed in this way.

Four days (which isn’t a whole week I know) later, I read cards about the old man. Dead. Dying otherwise. I read them like I’d read his grandson’s. With desperation and fear and anger and frustration. I called Buer and we spoke. He promised me healing but said also, “Those who can be healed must be willing to heal.” He spoke too of “those who hold their pain too close to heart.” I knew overnight that he was passing on, then that he had passed. Buer stayed with me much of that night and I am grateful for it. His chilling cold presence at my back grounded me, reminded me that death is the natural order of life on Earth.

It was when I formally heard the news of his death that I understood. He did not want to live. Not that I could have, but it would have been cruel to bind him here. I’m still grieving. And I never did get to ask him why he practiced the ways of our people, or how he dealt with knowing when death came, where he learned to listen to the wind from. Are these inevitable?

Munay, machu ruku saqra. Munay, achachi.

Knowing Before Death Knocks.

If you’ve ever known and want to share, go ahead and leave a comment. As I said, this was a story post. I’ll make another on the broader idea of Death & Magick later on, hopefully it can help at least someone other than me handle the knowing, the waiting, and the ultimate deaths that come as a result of life.