from the pen of icarus blake

Many occult signs are simply a matter of training your brain to notice certain things in your surroundings.  Your eyes linger on the hawk circling above you (longer than usual, in my case), you notice the way the coyote’s eyes flash while it crosses the road in front of your car, you’ll spot graffiti you haven’t noticed before.  In this way, you get your answer.

Personally, I use turkey vultures as my main guide.  If they’re flying in the same direction as me, I’m going the right way.  If that sounds inane, it is, but it originates on a dirt back road in Utah where a turkey vulture soared right beside my car, the both of us eye-to-eye as I tried to avoid running my car off the road for how excited I was.

I digress.

I’ve been taken by a being I call the Black Dog.  It’s made an appearance here before.  I have never seen it personally, but I know folks who have — one in the English sense of the dog on the road.  A large black dog coming down a hill, massive and shadowy as a warning on a strange summer night.  Another alone on a hike, suddenly accompanied by a dog that appeared from the woods and simply walked beside them.

Maybe I have seen it personally?  On a late night walk, at a distance, meeting eyes with a big black german shepherd dog.  I doubt my own sighting — everyone has dogs in Colorado, and folks aren’t always as fastidious as they ought to be about closing their gates.  No coyotes in that area, though.  I know that much, it was the domain of foxes instead.

Either way, the dog keeps popping up.  I’m stumbling upon in it podcasts and books, in breakroom stories.  Part of me wants to start taking midnight walks.  Unfortunate it’s so cold.