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You know how several posts ago I told a story about how I saw my first fox shortly after my birthday, and how it felt Significant? Well, today I preformed my first real funeral. Sadly, painfully, I think you can guess what animal it was for.

Mom told me there was a dead animal on the side of the road Tuesday afternoon. It is a very busy road too, leading from the outskirts down past the center of town; from it, you can reach two of the major elementary schools. I wasn’t surprised that an animal had been killed there at all. I asked her many questions about where, exactly, the animal was but it was hard to describe. I have school on Tuesday from 3:30 PM to 7:40 PM, with a half-hour commute home. I kicked myself all the way to school, knowing I would get home after sunset. I wanted to do something for the poor thing, but standing on the side of a very busy street at night where there are no streetlights? No thank you. On the way home, Mom drove past the site. It was a small canine, of a silver-gray hue. “I hope it’s not a fox,” Mom remarked before quickly insisting it was someone’s dog. I felt terrible. The road was splattered with blood; it was a quick, but violent, death.

It rained that night. I worried and fretted before falling asleep. If it rained all day today, I’d never get a chance to go over there and do something. What if I did something “wrong”? What if the city had picked up and removed the body by then? Falling asleep was hard, and I woke up today feeling drained. Once I arrived at school, I wound up being in a significant amount of pain that made focusing difficult. I turned to divination to ask what I should do, even though I was in no state of mind to really interpret my cards, and saw at a glace there was no get-out-of-Work-due-to-pain pass. After struggling to get through school, relief came in the form of my mother picking me up and having some Excedrin in her purse. As the pain receded during the car ride home, I knew what I had to do. It had stopped raining.

I gathered the materials I felt I needed in a plastic bag: salt, some cat food and goldfish crackers as an offering, incense, and matches. I anointed myself with ash from burnt incense, after purifying myself. I didn’t have a clear plan for what I was going to do, but I knew that sitting around my house going, “oh woe is me,” while the poor thing’s body rotted on the side of the road was unacceptable. In the realm of magick, good intentions alone are meaningless. It is words and actions that have weight. As I grabbed my umbrella on the way out the door, my mom handed me her cellphone and told me to call her when I was done. This wound up being critical.

I sang, quietly, as I walked the several blocks. I needed to put myself in the right frame of mind for what I was about to do. As I sang I prayed: for me to safely cross the street, for no one to flip out over the lady praying over the dead animal and call the police, for the body to still be there, for my success. As I walked, the streets were totally empty and the sky was overcast and gray. The scent of wet earth and pavement hung in the air like a cloying perfume. There was a melancholy silence to my procession, the only sounds being my soft singing and my feet hitting the pavement. Not even the small birds that lined the telephone wires made a sound.

As I was more than halfway there, I realized the sidewalk had ended. I kept a sharp lookout for cars as I skirted the side of the road. Quickly I reached the eucalyptus-lined horse stable. The scent of the wet bark and the damp earth was soothing. As I approached I noticed a city truck parked on the side of the road and panicked. I know that in my state, it is totally illegal for anyone to take roadkill and I was scared they would misinterpret what I was doing. However, as I slowed my pace and took in the sights of the beautiful trees, the worker appeared and drove off. As I milled about the horses at the stable neighed, whinnied, and snorted in my direction. I was enchanted; I have always gotten glances of this place as we’ve driven by, but I’ve never slowly walked by before.

The puddles increased as I reached the intersection. An empty school bus drove by, so loud it was deafening. But I could see my quarry on the other side of the street. Traffic cleared and I ran across as fast as I could, to discover that it was no dog I was to be working with. It was a grey fox.

The skull was crushed, its teeth sticking out jaggedly from its bent lower jaw. One of its hind legs was clearly broken, for it was twisted behind its body. The sudden cold days must have prevented the flies from finding it; its body had no visible maggots. Its belly had split open on impact and some of its organs were visible.

I was heartbroken. I also realized it was WAY too close to the road and I had no way to move it. Cars whizzed by far above the speed limit, missing re-hitting its broken body by inches. I had to light my incense several feet from the body, to prevent myself from sharing the same fate. I called out to every chthonic deity and spirit I knew, to help gently guide this little fox to the other side and away from this terrible place. I left some of the cat food and crackers near the incense, and during a break in the traffic I left the rest near its body. I also sprinkled salt on the body and the area around it, in an attempt to purify the place.

The body lay near a telephone pole, and at the foot of that pole was some flowering Angel’s Trumpet. I asked it for permission and apologized as I picked a single blossom to drape over the dead fox. It was then, as I found myself asking the spirit of the dead fox to please not hate all humans over the crime committed against it, that I started to cry. I cried as I asked for the driver who hit the fox to be forgiven. I cried as I apologized for not being able to touch the fox’s body, since it was too close to the road. I cried because I had no means to move the body from the side of the road, and I cried because I was feeling pretty useless at that point. I poured that sorrow into my prayers and my attempt to help it pass on, and after I got as much of a hold on myself as I could, called my mother and asked if she could bring a shovel with her.

Let me stop for a moment to say that my mom is an awesome person. She understands what it is that I’m trying to do, since no many of the things I am trying to actively cultivate are things she’s been doing semi-consciously her whole life. She came with the shovel, crossed the street, and helped me move the fox. She didn’t move the body as far as I wanted (I wanted to place it next to the rock I left the incense on), but now it wasn’t in danger of being ran over again. Against her protests, I knelt next to the body and stroked its forehead, as I told it that it was safe for it to cross over now, and that I loved it and was sorry. It was then that the sky opened up and started to rain.

As we waited in the rain for a break in the traffic, the air felt different. I hadn’t noticed it before, but it seemed lighter now, like a weight had been removed from the area. The moment we got into the car and finished closing the doors, the sky shifted from raining to pouring. The thick heavy drops felt reassuring, like it was washing all the negativity and fear away. The downpour only broke long enough for us to get inside, and then it continued to pour, briefly hailed, and finished with the roar of thunder echoing through the house.

(Yes, I washed my hands thoroughly when I got home. More than once. And I poured peroxide underneath my fingernails, just to be safe.)

I lit more incense and a candle, along with making an offering, on my altar and thanked every spirit and deity I called on for their help. Although I wasn’t sure what to do, I was certain that I knew spirits who did. I think I actually made a difference, that I actually accomplished something. That rain felt like tears and relief, a feeling I’ve never gotten from rain before. I think I did the right thing.

Now, I got a chance to look over my cards, I think I followed their instructions as closely as I could have. I feel good about this experience. With time, I will improve and someday I might not need much/any help to guide a spirit over to the other side. But, I don’t know, it feels like I passed a test today. Instead of pulling the covers over my head grumbling about the weather and my lack of experience, I went out there and tried something. (The rattle currently making its way to me has a fox skull and tail on it; I couldn’t imagine trying to use such a tool if I had turned my back on that poor dead fox! In fact, I wonder if I would have even worked with me at all…) I think with more experience and time, I can actually do this Work.