Most spiritual practitioners will tell you that there are places that can only be described, for certainty, as not being here; these places are the residences of various kinds of spirits. Hedgewitches will refer to “jumping the hedge” as a term for interacting with these other places; other pagans will refer to these places as being on the other side of “the Veil”. Many spiritual travelers still describe a kind of mist between the realms. What it comes down to is that, whatever you call it, there are barriers between this place where we live and the other places where other beings live. Lately, as other practitioners around the online pagan community have been discussing, these barriers have been seriously thinned or even nonexistent in places. (John Beckett has a great post from back in 2020 discussing the Veil itself and its recent thinning–as this has been seriously noticeable, at least to me, since early 2020.)

Imagine a big club sandwich, stacked with all kinds of ingredients…and then imagine that each ingredient layer is a spiritual realm (including our physical home). Ideally, these ingredients are all nice and crisply stacked in their place. However, let’s say that this sandwich of worlds was left in the rain for a day; some ingredients have held up better than others (maybe your meat’s still pretty alright aside from being wet), some ingredients are just a runny mush that’s now mixing with all the other ingredients (your bread is probably now a soggy mess that’s running into every other layer of the sandwich). This is essentially what we’re working with right now–some realms have held up alright, while others are nearly married with their neighbors.

The consequences of this have occupied much of my time during 2020, thus my blogging hiatus. Many of the spirits taking advantage of the unusual circumstances are opportunists who don’t have much interest in the well-being of humans, or even have a vested interest in harming or feeding off humans. Some of them are looking for new real estate in our world, and this may mean attaching to a tasty-looking human who can serve as their sustenance and anchor here.

I’ve had strange spiritual encounters in our world that don’t make sense, I’ve found many spirited items and lost spirits strewn about, and I’ve been attacked by hedge-hopping spiritual trespassers. I’ve moved much of my energy and practice into focusing on spiritual defense and energetic cleansing, to keep myself as safe, healthy, and sane as possible–and I would also recommend to other practitioners out there to be sure your spiritual defenses are in place and you’re taking care of yourself spiritually as well as mentally and physically.

So, best of luck to everyone in 2021 and best of hopes that we can all keep moving forward! And if you are or have been seeing and experiencing some weird shit, just remember that you’re not alone and you’re not crazy.