Now the Discarded Oracle (working title) has been liberated from my bookshelf, I’ve decided to stroll through one by one and see what comes to mind…
Still, I haven’t made my way to retrieve my original notebook from the cupboard all the way yonder over there… At least 3 whole feet away… So if memory serves me well, this was one of the earlier images that I worked on.
It was not an image from my mind but from my travelling companion C’s. She’d said something to me along the lines of “I saw a foetus in a web with 3 figures standing by… Can you draw that?”
“I don’t know… Leave it with me…”
I didn’t know, but we both knew who these 3 figures were, so I figured if they’d shown up once, then they must have had something to say, so I’d ask them to return and describe to me how to bring their image from their world into ours…
The Norns, as I’ve discovered along the way, don’t give away their secrets for free. There is always a task to be completed… The first task they gave me was to put food out in the garden to feed the hedgehogs… Ack! My maths brain just went into slow-mo. I moved into this house in 1992, never seeing a single hog, then 2015 (you do the maths) as instructed, I invite them in… The first one arrives, within days I’m overrun with 6 or maybe 8 frequent foragers. Mr S is very happy as his Buddha boy disposition is adverse to killing any creature and now miraculously his plants being scrompfed by slugs is a problem of the past. The hogs return each year and today was this year’s first sighting.
Hedgehogs fed and then the Norns fed me. In encaustic wax, I drew out the the foetus in the web… I remember that being laborious and finger achingly fiddly… Summoning the Norns into the foreground was a much faster result.
“Close your eyes child, feel for the colours… A colour for each of us… Keep those eyes shut…”
3 colours found…
“Listen child, 3 strokes total, one stroke each… Slide your wax across the flat iron, call our names as you sweep the page”.
I wondered if it was some kind of joke but Norns are very earnest and not to be argued with… Three passes of the iron and they appeared…
They speak to me of many things… Of wyrd and orlog and fate… Of time and cycles… Of interactions and interconnections…
Turns out they appeared exactly as C had seen them. I asked them how that happened… They gave me hints that I’m still piecing together… Today I asked them to describe time…
They showed me this…
Seems I have much more work to do…
The pure and blessed way 
My opinion? “The Discarded Oracle” is a great title. You gave yourself your own serendipity when you found it like a dusty relic/artifact. The Discarded Oracle. Yes, that’s hot.
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Your opinion? Thanks!
My opinion? Yes, it had dawned upon me that in making the throw away comment of the Discarded Oracle, I had just accidentally found the name that never came through in all the hours of what shall I call this?
Not having a name was a big hold up in me pushing it forward. A while back, trying to shove the inertia, I went to a writer’s workshop and came back with 2 resonant remarks.
1. A good story can wait. Don’t be afraid to leave it, if it has life, it will return.
Hearing that felt like a green light to shelve it.
2. Don’t underestimate your reader’s intelligence. Make them work. Leave gaps for them to fill in. Don’t explain everything.
Now you see, that I really like! Smart people read my stuff and then credit me with their genius! 🤣
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Oh, especially that last line is priceless in all kinds of ways.
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As we say in Leicester – innit? 🤣
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