Saying goodbye to the land

Excuse my absence for the past month. But it’s for good reasons! In August I was finally able to move out of a toxic home. I spent all my energy and focus on renovations and working on my new home, which is why I have been mia. Now that I have settled ever so slightly and the anxiety has passed, I want to shift back my focus to my blog. Today I’d like to talk about saying goodbye to a Genius Loci, or spirit of the land. This blogpost also partially acts as an ode to the land spirit, supported by pictures I have taken of the land. 

Although I still reside within the same city, there was this small park near where I used to live that meant everything to me. This small patch of land turned the tide for my practice and really shaped it. Before I had started building a connection with it, my practice focused on what I was seeing online. Working with herbs I didn’t know much about. Doing spells and rituals mainly inside, because I felt uncomfortable doing workings outside.

However, during this period I was consuming books like The Crooked Path by Kelden, and Treading the Mill by Nigel G. Pearson. Ever so envious about how they talked about building a connection with the land. As a witch who lives in a big city, I had a hard time feeling a deep connection to nature. And so, I copied what I saw online or read in books, rather than shaping my practice and building a relationship with the land I lived on.

In April 2025 all of this had changed. I am an avid gym goer, which meant that 5-6x a week I would bike past this small but foresty looking park. I couldn’t really see into it because of all the trees. All I saw was that it had a hedge with a wooden slanted gate. I had passed this park for years, but only in April 2025 had it caught my attention. This was due to a strong garlic smell I smelled that month passing by the park. I was ever so curious as to why I smelled garlic, and I decided to visit the park one day.

As I wore my most cottagecore looking outfit, I pushed the wooden gate and walked down the stone stairs into the most beautiful looking park I’ve ever seen. It was as if I had entered a fairytale forest. Crossroads upon crossroads, as yew and hawthorn greeted me. Despite the vandalism and bad reputation this park had, I felt at home during a time of my life where I couldn’t find peace. The rest of the day I spent roaming around the park and feeling it’s energy. I made a promise to myself to visit every week. And so a Saturday morning ritual had started and I started to form a relationship with the land spirit.

Something peculiar about this park, is that it had a pond with still water in which you could scry in the middle of it. However, you could also walk around this pond in a circle. And that’s not all, it had 4 paths that lead to this pond and were connected by the circle. It was the ultimate liminal space and perfect for laying a compass. It was ideal for connecting with the spirit of the land.

The land was fairly young, the land spirit was merely 64 years old at the time. Which is very young for spirits. The spirit of the land was jittery and excited, but also comforting. It cared for those who cared for it. It had seen and felt all my sorrows, opened paths for me to communicate with my deities and let me cry my heart out in my deepest moments. It was on this land that I was able to form a deep connection with Hawthorn, Yew and Comfrey. Plant allies that helped form my practice.

One of my favourite things to do, was to observe how the land was shifting with the seasons and over the course of a day. Visiting the park weekly meant watching the plants on the land start as saplings and flourish into their final form after which they make way for other plants to grow. How even during the depths of winter, with a thick layer of snow, the land still felt alive. The liminality of Samhain as I revelled and cried to Everybody Scream with the spirit.

After 1,5 years of connecting with the land, it was suddenly time to say goodbye. In my last week with the land, I spent nearly everyday with the spirit. I walked every path there was to take, making sure I had seen everything the park had to offer. I said goodbye to the first Hawthorn tree I had ever connected with, to the Yew tree under which I buried animals from the park that had passed on. Tears fell down with every word I uttered to say my farewells. Within witchcraft there is a strong focus on building a connection with the land and its spirits. No one really talks about saying goodbye and either side stepping away from the relationship. I can assure you that if you have a strong bond with a spirit, deity or simply the land, leaving that relationship will be hard. 

Although I still live in the same city, it feels like I am starting over and having to find a new patch of land to connect with. Saying goodbye left an emptiness in me. Where at first I always had somewhere to go when I couldn’t figure it out anymore, I now feel like a piece of me is missing. That being said, there are patches of land semi nearby that I could visit to find a connection again.

I am eternally grateful for the impact the Genius loci had on my practice, but also on my mental health. I am thankful for how open it was to me and how communicative it was.

Thank you.