I woke up feeling magic all around me today. It’s as if my body opened up to take in all of the mystical energy I know is buzzing around me every minute, but that I can’t always feel. Maybe a better imagery is that of my body dissolving and melding into the magic until there is no physical boundary—I am the magic. I love when this happens.

Usually when this sense strikes I am out and about in nature, walking through the woods, wading in a stream or looking up into a black sky studded with stars that dance round Luna in her many phases.

Waking to the magic of nature, indoors, with no preparation or intent was a surprise. Perhaps it was the particular angle of the sunlight peeking into my room, the gust of wind that brought a rain of swirling, autumn leaves past my window, and the utter stillness of the house.

I padded outside to the deck in my robe and slippers. All but the last of the leaves have fallen, laying a carpet of red and gold over the land; they are quickly turning brown. The southwest wind blew across my skin. Warm for November, it is pushing winter’s chilling bite further north than my borderland realm.

I wanted to stay outside. It was warm enough, tucked up into a corner of the deck with the direct rays of the sun beating against the siding, but the magic was calling me back to the house. I returned inside, started my morning coffee to brew, and went to the box where I keep my tarot cards while I waited.

It’s been a while since I’ve used my deck so I wasn’t expecting much. I decided to just shuffle the cards, recharging them with the energy of the movement. I didn’t plan to do a reading, I was sitting in my easy chair with only my lap for a surface.

I’ll turn just one card, I thought, or maybe a simple three-card spread.

The cards practically turned themselves and in seconds I had a full ten-card reading, squished together and overlapping. The guidance from the cards was almost immediately clear to me—again a sensation of the cards and myself being one and the same. I knew, without question the meaning of the magic I’d felt, why I awoke with a sense that something was different, something big was happening. I’d gone to sleep and the world, my world at least, changed overnight.

I had to think what the date was. I’ve been a bit busy and wondered if I’d missed Hecate’s night, but no, I have eight more moon rises—a time that will mark the transition from waning to waxing with the dark moon right in the center. It was beginning to make sense.

Hecate is the Goddess of the crossroads, giver of life and death, protectress of everything newly born, seer into the past, present and future. Hecate reminds us that change is constant. She helps us to release the past, and with her torch she lights the way into the dark unknown of new beginnings.

I have too long nursed resentment and wished for the fates to dispense justice, but my justice is in my own hands. It’s time to stop letting others reopen my wound, believing that they will feel the depth of the cut and have pity or take up my cause. It’s time for me to stop mourning the life that was taken from me and start living the life I’ve been given. It’s time to stop carrying the burden of regret, time to bury my victimhood.

I am where I am supposed to be in this life, how I got here is secondary to what I will do from this point forward. This is my beginning.