Cord magic part 2: B

For today’s selection from Cord Magic, we continue onto the later three chapters of Part 2, the first being, Fiber.
This section talked about the direct making of the yarn itself. Naturally, I was intrigued. As an advanced spinner, this section was a lot of things I already knew deeply. I really appreciated the space to create your own meanings associated with the fiber types. The author, Brandy Williams writes that perhaps, if sheep have a special connection to you, use sheep. Taking it one further, maybe if red has a meaning for your purpose, use red fibre.
Immediately purpose is brought up. Williams writes about the purpose of the cord, but to me, spinning is such a visceral act, that to me, a lot of the magic in thread, string, and yarn, is IN the SPINNING. A lot of this book is about example, visualization, and idea sparking. The purpose section really brought that home for me. Williams starts with intention, and I don’t know, sometimes I hear these things like “set your intentions” but after nearly 25 years, after reading this section, I feel like I’ve been doing it all wrong, and now I finally realize how to make it work for me. This section, I think, may be an invaluable explanation of the idea of a “mindset”.
Williams explains something I didn’t think was that important, negative bias. The idea that we are drawn to catastrophize. By avoiding all negative visions, we are envisioning positive outcomes. Williams gives the example “this car is protected”—foresee goodness, or as some people like to frame it, manifest goodness. Manifesting isn’t about a Magic Proper, it can also just be about focusing. If you focus on the good, you’re not going to INVITE negative. The simplicity in this seems too easy. But truly! It makes sense. Plus, what amount of worry is actually useful? Unuseful worry is only a negative, draining force in our life, and perhaps we could just let go of that. It’s hard, but I have faith that one day, when I’m ready, I can allow this “letting go” to happen FOR me. The universe, god, or myself can be the ones to make it happen, but I have to be the one who is open to letting go of unuseful worry in order to think positive in my own life.
Williams includes so many easy-to-understand (and actually appealingly inspiring) examples of these intentions. Intentions to process life events and circumstances universal to the human experience. This section was so useful to me. She wrote at the beginning of this chapter, you’re gonna be inspired to create several of these different projects, and I was. I could easily see how creating a cord for each of the intentions I feel like could be useful to me, would be a great way to process them. Not only that, making a cord is understandably a visual and kinetic prayer, “please let this be good”. It can be specific or general. It is personalize able. Not only that, you can add things like knots, and beads, to add extra meaning. I had immediate ideas, especially with the bead idea.
Knot magic, the last chapter for today’s selection, built upon the intention cordage projects. I thought it was just going to be simple. This is what a knot means. These are different types of knots. I knew that knitting is technically different types of knots, but I didn’t think it would be included in this magic. But Williams concurred, knitting is a part of magic. Ohhhhhh I feel like a proper witch today! Heck, this gave me inspiration for a knitline, some type of magical knitting patterns. When Williams put in the sample project sheet, it all came together. Each of these explanations of magic—from number to fiber to purpose (intention) and knot style—come together to create a piece of magic, a project, a prayer, a spell.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I got magic to work…