We charged the space with a memorial service....with all of his friends and family. We never had a wedding ceremony, so I planned the memorial like I had always wanted our wedding to be. A big white tent, in the field next to our cabin, nestled in the hills and mountains of our little holler in Tennessee. All of our friends and neighbors brought their most beautiful flowers from their garden. The tent was absolutely beautiful, with tons of photos at the front, and our dear friends choir singing a song that was written in our home. We were finally having the wedding I had always wanted.

Once the field was charged with all of the love and intentions, my neighbor plowed a strip down the middle of it measuring close to 200’ long and 10’ wide. I had ordered bulk annual, wildflower seeds from a company that sold their seeds according to color. I planted them so that they would fade in a gradient of red flowers in the East, to blue flowers in the west. Following the suns trajectory; bright crimson red in the east to a cool blue in the west. Our dear friend Matilda came over with me on the day of the planting. We had a ceremony, mixed his ashes with the seeds, stripped down to our bare essentials, and proceeded to plant these wildflower seeds mixed with my baby’s remains. It was hot, and we were crying, and we held him in our hands and in our hearts the entire time. Telling stories, and sharing memories, and kissing him with every seed that we planted.

It was beautiful to watch it grow. I would go out there almost every day to look for little bits of green popping up out of the dirt. Wondering what was a weed and what was a wildflower. Then green foliage started to grow and fill in, and then suddenly there was a flower! Red at first. Then a blue flower at the other end. Then came a huge flush of blooms almost overnight. It was such a sight to behold.....this glorious, fiery red strip fading to a blue whisper set against the emerald green mountains of Tennessee.

I would go out there to talk to him all of the time. I loved going out at night under the full moon. When it was so surreal and bright; like a dim, blue daylight. I would take some Milwaukee’s Best (his favorite), some weed and smokes and get wasted with him. Just he and I and the moon.

I went out on the night of October, 23, 2014 to photograph it. It was to be the night of the killing frost, which is when the temperature gets cold enough to kill off all but the hardiest of the vegetation. It was also beneath the new moon in Scorpio. We had just entered into Scorpio, which was Sterling’s sign. I talked to him, like I usually do. I told him how magnificent he looked in flower form, and that I was there to take his picture. He hated having his picture taken, despite how ridiculously handsome he was. The flowers were especially beautiful that night. Deep in color and bursting with blooms. In less than 8 hours they would all be dead from the freeze. The photograph was taken at their peak, but also right when nature had decided that it was time. I only photographed the red flowers, the part that represented his time on earth. I didn’t think it was my right to try and make any definitive statements about his new form or existence.

I also harvested blooms from the marigolds that night to make wine. Marigolds are used in Indian wedding ceremonies, and also during Dia De Los Muertos to attract the spirits of the dead back home. I thought that both of these uses made it the perfect flower to make wine from. Sterling loved to drink, and he used to love when I would make wine. I think he would have loved this incarnation, and this spell wasn’t finished yet.

I harvested them at night under the new moon in Scorpio, and the next day I processed the flowers during the solar eclipse. Seeing the new moon in Scorpio pass in front of the sun during sunset, while I was sitting on the back of Sterling’s truck, crying hysterically was so powerful and hallucinogenic. Tears mixing with the flower petals in the most beautiful, surreal setting sun I’d ever seen. Sunsets are a magical moment of transition anyway. This one was especially charged.

I made the wine on October 31st. Samhain is the day between the autumn equinox and the Winter Solstice. The day of the year when the veil is thinnest between the worlds. It’s the day when the deceased are most available, and Sterling was very vocal in our conversation that night. I was asking him so many questions, and I was updating him on the local gossip and what the cats had been up to. For every question I had I received a very physical and loud answer. The wind was his laughter and the owls and coyotes where his thoughts. It was nice. I hadn’t had that much response from him in a while. “Who cooks for you? Who?” he asked me.

When you rack wine, it’s the process of transferring it from one glass container to another. In the process you leave the sediment that has settled in the bottom of the initial container, so that the final wine is more pure and has a better flavor. I racked the wine on November 8th, his birthday. We also had a small dinner party for him that night, where we all told some our favorite stories and got way to drunk in his honor.

It was spring of 2015. I had been in Tennessee for 7 years now. I had just bought our cabin a few months prior to this, and I loved that our little cabin that we shared was going to be our forever home. I had been wondering what I was doing career-wise. There isn’t much opportunity to be had in the mountains of Tennessee. I had been thinking that I should be living in Los Angeles part time. I had lived in LA before moving to Tennessee, and I’m always surround by beautiful friends when I’m out there. That winter I’d had a conversation with Sterling about it, seeking his advice and knowledge.

Then one day in the late spring, I looked out, and saw some little dots of crimson red growing in the field where I had planted the flowers. The flowers that I bought were a mix of annuals, and nothing was supposed to be growing out there. Especially considering that we’d had a really brutal, cold winter. I couldn’t believe it. I went out there to discover that there were California poppies coming up all over the place, just starting to wake up. I get it baby. I love you too. And I’ll see you when I get back from LA.

*And when the season died, a new season took its place. Not quickly or abruptly, but slowly and carefully as if to help with the pain of change.

**This is a story, about how the science of magick works. How a spell, conducted, is a bridge of energy connecting all of the unseen.