I have been hunting, off and on, for a rocking chair for more than a year. Not just a rocking chair, but my rocking chair. I was confident that I’d know it when I saw it, though I didn’t know quite what it would look like yet. I was fairly sure it would be wooden, and other than that, not sure.
Speaking playfully, acquiring a rocking chair is simply yet another step on my journey to becoming a childless grandmother, but more seriously, the thought originated with my own grandmother. I talk about my grandmother a lot here because I think of her as my first ancestor: the first family member I was close to to die. There are many forms of ancestor work, but when I feel called deeply to the close and the familial, I think of her first: Her coffee in her cup, her worn playing cards, her brand of cigarettes. One of these thoughts is the rocking chair. Hers was a huge indoor affair in pea-green leather upholstery with brass buttonhead tacks (it really couldn’t be more different from mine).
My mind fixed on the idea of this rocking chair very quickly. I always feel very odd about sharing this, but the majority of my practice comes from the spirits, and the spirits very quickly put me onto the task of using the rocking chair for vision work and spirit flight.
Cursory research into folklore will put you onto this, especially among granny witches1, though this was shown to me as analogous to seidr–as described by Jan Fries, specifically a technique of sorcerous seething2. Put very simply, seething is a technique to use physical movement to achieve an altered state of mind. Because of my medication regimen, I must be very cautious with the use of entheogens, and so alternative techniques have become very valuable to me.
Unfortunately, the same body limitations sometimes inhibit my ability to seethe wildly. Shaking and swaying and falling and moving wildly outdoors are difficult for me as well, these days. This, I think, is where the spirits began to guide me to the rocking chair.
Rocking back and forth is already a self-soothing behavior, something I do naturally, almost the opposite of seething wildly. Add the gentle support of the chair, the back and arms, and it is intriguing to understand the breadth of how moving our bodies can affect our minds and spirits. If the effect of seething is to throw my spirit out of my body, moving and dancing apart but in alignment, then the effect of the rocking chair is almost to still my body and my mind so gently and so thoroughly that my spirit slips out without my noticing. In moments of deep calm and fixation, I have noticed recently that my fetch slips right out and does its own work around the house.
After more than a year of looking for rocking chairs at vintage and secondhand shops, not even sure exactly what I wanted, what work with it would look like, or if I’d be able to pay the price tag if I found it, I took my partner with me to an estate sale on a complete whim. We don’t go to estate sales, really, though we have friends who do. I was having a bad body day as well. I have no idea what possessed me, but there, overlooked among the picked-over rooms and hysterically marked down in price, was my rocking chair.
The underside dates it 1971, making it 55 years old at time of writing. It’s lightweight, lovely, and in excellent condition for its age, with only a few easy scuffs. I’m a little embarrassed to say that I didn’t even sit in it before purchasing it. I just knew.
What is it about thrifting that I really dislike? I think I began to understand how offensive thrifting can be to the (for lack of a better term) psychic senses when a mentor put me onto developing my sensory skills by going through secondhand shops and feeling into the items there. If you’re listening for it, putting your hands on everything in a secondhand shop is like inviting sensory overwhelm. I thought that I simply found these places overwhelming to be in, but the cleanest, calmest, most well-organized and curated shop still typically has this effect on me after a little while. The estate sale was very different: It was very clearly someone’s house, everything used to being and working together. In that setting, I could feel the character of the chair very clearly. It has such a warming, open will, a desire to be sit in and moved; it very distinctly does not feel like a decorative piece; it wants to hold and know you and spend time with you.
Being such a strong character, I had barely set it down in its space before introducing it to the house spirit, but I don’t think I need to have worried. It sits now in my office workspace, across from the window and under the warm lamp, with an old blanket laid over the back. I thought to sit in it while I did my embroidery or my reading, but so far I’ve only sit in it to do nothing but move and let my mind fall open, sometimes with my coffee early in the morning when the light is still low.
In a fun moment of synchronicity, fellow Appalachian folk magician Leah Middleton wrote only two days ago about her own experiences with the rocking chair3. This has happened several times in the past year or so, where something that has come to me–or come back to me, through ancestral spirits or teachings–has seemed to rise up in other folk magicians’ lives as well. I wonder if these practices are carried on tides to us, forward and back, even when the memories are lost.
- The common guidance is to avoid rocking an empty rocking chair, especially at night, lest a spirit find itself seated there. I have no one citation for this because this is simply country folklore. I’d like to experiment with doing this as a deliberate invocation, but this goes outside the prescription of the lore. ↩︎
- Fries, J. (2010). Seidways: Shaking, swaying and Serpent mysteries. Mandrake.
↩︎ - “Rocking Chairs as a Folk Witch’s Broomstick.” ↩︎
Featured image is Edvard Munch’s Karen Bjølstad in the Rocking Chair.