The Never Times

I tell stories of the Before Times to the young ones, even though my feelings can directly connect to their souls. There are few of us that kept earthly bodies and can weave stories in the Now Times. Now we all simply exist out of bodies connected within our higher selves, the atoms of all souls wound together. I am writing this on Earth and I’m the last. I cannot let go of a corporeal existence. When I slip back and feel my ego, I’m obligated to record the knowledge. This is how I told them the story of us.

I can tell you the moment I knew I had a higher self with the Spirit. It was the After Times we all called the “new normal.” I was at work, when we used to have hospitals, the large healing places. In the Before Times it was a safe place, but in the After Times, the virus made it one of the most dangerous places. Another witch found me through scent. The smell of wet earth clung to me, a mist of light fragrance, imperceptible except to those with intuition. When she smelled my spiritual petrichor, I knew I had invoked Makosh, the Mother Goddess.

Makosh was unearthing to lead us to the Other Place. The pandemic brought different understanding of life. She wasn’t stirring just one, but many souls to awaken together. This is how Makosh works for her heavenly husband. She brings natural forces together pushing us towards an undeniable higher level of consciousness. This is how she births and rebirths us.

The last time Makosh lived among us she melted the glaciers. We followed her waters and wove together many tribes. In 2020, the COVID-19 virus spread faster than the ice had melted. The daughters of Makosh had been weaving their spells into threads, telling the stories of their Goddess, the Other World, and our collective power across the generations and continents. We had learned to spin fibers to protect ourselves as we traveled. Words changed, so the stories were passed down through spells cast through women’s needles. We embroidered our stories with intention onto our clothing as the shields of belief no matter how far we walked from the Spirit. Makosh used many Earthly creatures to guide us. In some tribes she was a Spider, in some a Bee, owl, bear, snake or lion, always stringing together creation and fate. But we lost touch with nature and even forgot our wombs wove the story of our Goddess and our higher selves. Over time, the divinity of the feminine was overrun by the power of men. Women retreated in our power. Some had hushed traditions of goddesses. The mother’s line threaded continuously from mother to daughter in our eggs, in our coiling DNA, through the tapestry of humanity, safe.

The tribes spread across the continents, but Makosh stayed with her matrilineal descendants until it was time. Makosh stopped traveling in Bohemia where she left her last tribe of daughters to settle. She entered the earth and remained. Eventually queens and witches gave way to Kings and many empires. The Spirit became muddled with various definitions of God and Makosh became many other Goddesses, the Holy Spirit, or even the Mother Mary.

There were 12,179 mothers weaving me back to Makosh. Here in the Now Times, there is no need to string the ascended together. Here we are naturally connected with no ego, bodily, tribal, or gender divisions. There is no string of fate, no bad or good, no beginning or end, no birth or death. We need no reminders of our creation, our higher existence, the Spirit. We are in the higher power, it in us.

In Bohemia, all the mothers back to Makosh and down to my great grandmother had stayed in one place living as peasants, tightly tethered to Makosh even as they were Christianized. Only three generations before the pandemic, Mária Alžbeta became restless in poverty and left Markušovce for the United States, crossing through Ellis Island alone at fourteen in 1906. In the New World, Mary and many others lost much of the old traditions. The tiniest scraps were passed discretely down to the granddaughters. I found Makosh only through intuition.

The mother goddess had many names across many cultures. Makosh, or Mokoš, or Gaia. For the Slavic diaspora, she is remembered in hushed spells over needlework with ancient symbols, undulating poppy flowers, and arching wheat shafts. We celebrated Christian holidays with poppyseed rolls to remind us to cherish the soil holding her safe to feed us literally and soulfully. Some found our higher selves because Makosh held us at her side to be spun into threads woven on the immortal weft. Mostly we assimilated into the capitalist patriarchy, oppression unbalancing nature.

In the pandemic with insignificant things stripped away my higher self emerged. I found true purpose. First loving the Spirit, then healing generational trauma to leave a legacy of love and strength with my daughters, and finally growing into a matriarch fit to pass on the divine feminine. One night after a difficult time with my daughter, I went outside to pray. Under the moon of the summer solstice, Makosh arose in an epigenetic memory, reminding me to ground myself at her Earth. I removed my shoes and felt Makosh take the pain down into herself. God gave me guidance that filled me with light. I heard Makosh instruct me, “grow poppy flowers.” I could barely grass alive, but I trusted.

Despite the barriers of law, I ordered a packet of anemone seeds online. When the package came, I didn’t see a seed packet. There was a just a small crimson velvet box. I opened the faded edges to discover a worn but delicately crafted heart shaped locket. I touched the filagree poppy flowers nearly worn away on the buffed gold. Inside on the right was the tiniest embroidery I had ever seen, a cross-stitched folk woman in scarlet. The left side was filled with the tiny, bean shaped, dark seeds under glass secured with a tiny latch. I’ve worn the locket since and whenever I come to Earth, with one last seed.

Most souls killed their egos and have no desire to return. I’ve been able to move between because Makosh allowed my ego to live. My Earthly body is aging. The higher consciousness is fading my ego. The Goddess’ daughters came to the empty wasteland gathering our mementos of civilization. It is just me now and I believe I’m the last.

Coronavirus and starvation killed all people incapable of ascending in the After Times. As the population dwindled, those remaining discovered our common thread. We were witches, empaths, healers, and intuitive, if labeled at all. We came out of the shadows to heal and lead others to ascend. Some would never believe in their higher selves and the Spirit so when they succumbed to death their souls were destroyed. With death, the atoms from the unenlightened were scattered by the Spirit, all soul memories unraveled. Makosh had not woven all of humanity into her tapestry.

Once the bumble bees buzzed around my poppies, but one day they stopped visiting. My vibrant poppies died, a warning from Makosh. I told my husband he could not leave the house. The bee death and virus spread in disquieting virulence. My poppies lost their petals to the first winds. Apiaries, once dripping with honey, filled with corpses.

Unsure of my age, I feel death near in my papery skin, pained joints, struggling heart, and arduous breathing. It is more troubling to accept will lose tangible memories. I am reassured knowing that my soul will persist. I thumb through the photos a last time to cry over the joyful faces of my family. I shake the gray pods to hear the rattle of poppy seeds. I honor the joy of life here.

As death spread, a light emerged. The enlightened grew in power and we began connecting with each other and The Other Place. People began ascending, relinquishing their lives and ego in the wasteland without hesitation. We had some time together thanks to our hoard of food, the well, and solar panels. Our daughters ascended with our blessing. I knew my husband did not have the vulnerability to find his higher power. The trauma of his life and those before him stole that from him. I could not leave him.

Many did not survive long without the practical preparations we made. Those that believed in nothingness died a body and soul death. When my husband passed I buried him myself and relinquished myself to the New Place without him. I accepted ascension, but Makosh never cut the threads to my body. Makosh extended this grace to a few of her daughters. I was in both places, more conscious in one than the other at any given time. When I’m in the Earth dimension I visit my husband’s grave and add to my library. I have not seen another being in what seems decades. Threadbare as I am now, I am time blind.

This house, my library, and this very paper may rot and blow away into the wind as the poppy petals did. But I am still called by Makosh to secure as much as I can on Earth before I unravel with the hope something will survive. For many years I would hand pollinate the new growth, but I can’t even walk that far now. So, I just sit and write of the After Time and Now Time.

To me it was clear Makosh had returned to till the earth. The field lies fallow, being fertilized with rest. She will return many eons into the future to sew new seeds. Our souls in The Now without vessels are still broken by what became of our humanity, ravaged by wandering away from nature and the Spirit in our search for power. Not yet ready to be woven into a new humanity, they still need to heal. Makosh has left me strung between the Now, the Before, the After, and the Never to make sure there is a Future. I am the only soul with a self now.

Peaceful without the armor of egos, knit together, the collective feels and thinks all as one. Within moments any new synapses tug at all of us. Collectively it was decided not to return to bodies or Earth. There can never be another civilization where the ego can delineate ourselves. We used to think of Future Times and returning to Earth. That is verboten. Now we call it The Never Time. The souls that saw the deaths are broken, even with the Spirit. DNA has unwound, threads between every bit of every soul, even the innocent. The thread of Makosh has knotted the collective, bound with no beginning or end. My one soul, a loose loop, mourns over my unheard pleas to claim to our sinews, our beating hearts, ourselves. Earth to them is Never now.

With no self, we have lost humanity. The greatest accomplishment of the Spirit was that delineation, the creation of selves through individuation and free will. The choice to make an action allowed accomplishment yet great pain. Only with darkness could a light illuminate. A chance to heal, the true expression of love, lit the Spirit the brightest.

I know there will never be a Never Time. I will succeed in untangling the knots to so we can heal. We will once again be granted bodies by the Spirit. Makosh will sew our seeds into Earth. The Before Times, the After Times, none of it was or is or will be Hell. With no death there is no life.

I held the gold heart over mine and felt it beat one last time.