During this past week, I've done my best to avoid a lot of the identity-angst in the online Pagan community, mostly by writing here instead of replying to blog posts and social media comment threads where I might become food for trolls. But there has also been a strong current of energy going on that has led me to write a number of in-depth blog posts for Meadowsweet & Myrrh, which will be going up over the next few weeks.
I'm not even sure what prompted it, but today I wandered over to TC to check in and see how things were going (in part because it's my flamekeeping shift)... and I found that this had been going on. Another amazing riot of UGP and SPG centering on the Lady of the Stars/Brighid. It is so awesome to see such a vibrant and open conversation going on about the nature of the gods.
Part of me wants to chime in, but part of me feels like I've been away too long and I don't know if I could really get a foothold anyway. I've never really felt like I "fit in" with the TC folks, and I kinda feel like the reason the LotS group fell apart before was partly my fault (though maybe that's just ego-centric guilt talking). I know that Finn and Aster (and I think Tana) have continued to work together on exploring Brighid/LotS, and when we first got out here to Seattle, I did briefly mention it to Finn, but her response was one that seemed to suggest that it was something they were working on — like, it was "their thing" — and I would be welcome to learn about it when they were ready to share, but they weren't interested in me being involved in that work. I didn't want to intrude, so I just let it go. But part of me did feel a little sad, because I did so very much want to be able to practice with others. Sometimes I worry that I come across as too... keen, and it makes other people feel like I'm shutting them down or they just don't want to share because I'm in the middle of my swirling knife dance and they don't want to stick a limb out and get nicked. ("Keen" like the new young cop on the beat whose overly eager and going to get himself into trouble, so nobody wants to hang around him and the old-timers just shake their heads and brace against the eager energy and wait for the new guy to get some smarts knocked into him. But in the meantime, there's a lot of patient eye-rolling that goes on behind his back.)
Anyway, as a result, I think I struggled a lot with my relationship with Brighid over the past couple years because I didn't really have a community who was willing to support me and work with me in my relationship with her, and so like a lot of other things that I try to do on my own, I start to get really hard on myself and things kind of fall apart and collapse into a pile of frustration and guilt over it. Bless his heart, Jeff is pretty awful when it comes to shared practice and worship, because his gods are very much his personal posse and he always seems to talk about them like they're primarily concerned with him and his life, and there's not really much room in his approach to them that calls for group or community worship. I've really enjoyed our solstice rituals in part because it's my only real chance to have some kind of group practice, and I don't think it's a coincidence that for the past two years, these solstice rituals have mostly focused on stars and such. For last year's ritual, we specifically invoked Brighid in her aspect as Lady of the Stars, the guiding star on the darkest night though also closely related to the rebirth of the new sun. This year, we focused on the bear and her associations with the winter and the darkness of the cave as a place of rest and rebirth.
It's going on half a year since I suddenly stumbled upon a relationship with Artemis, and though she is very much the maiden hunter and moon goddess to me, she is also connected with the fresh wellsprings of cleansing waters, the wild forested mountains, and the bear. In fact, during this time of the year, her bear aspect seems especially pronounced and she even seems to have a bit of a "motherly" aspect to her -- though maybe it's more the midwife vibe, since she is definitely not the "mama bear" personality that is so readily evoked by people like, say, Sarah Palin (ugh). Anyway, the point is, I have this sense of her as a bear goddess, deeply connected both with the fresh waters of springs and rivers (and with the salmon of wisdom, to do a little cross-cultural myth mixing), and also with the stars, since the bear as a sacred animal has always for me been connected with the Great Bear constellation and the starry night sky (in fact, I've often called on the bear in ritual as the "starry bear of midnight").
So this thread over on TC about the Lady of the Stars seems interesting to me, especially since it began with some opening comments about Sulis and other "water related" goddesses. Artemis is, for me, very strongly connected with water, more than Brighid ever was for me, really. And she is very strongly connected with the stars as well.
Yet Brighid, who is still lingering and hasn't gone away, also has a strong connection to the stars. In both cases, there is a wildness there, a primordial feeling... but whereas with Artemis the wildness is quiet, rippling and dark (sometimes sleek like a deer or wolf, sometimes much more bear-like and somewhat lumbering, but swiftly), with Brighid the wildness is roaring like a furnace, dark but fiery like the heart of an intense flame, hot and active. I think of Artemis like the sweat of ecstatic dance or the wild chase of the hunt; whereas Brighid is the sweat of labor, the sweat of the forge and creation. Artemis sings like a bowstring, Brighid sings like a hammer on an anvil.
After writing the post on the bear that will be going up on Meadowsweet this coming Friday, I asked Jeff to read it. I wonder if maybe part of the reason I'm feeling more connected to Artemis, especially in her bear aspect, is because in some ways the bear is a totem for our family. Jeff has always felt very strongly connected to the bear, and his UPG connected it with Apollo but also somewhat with Odin. I have never really had any spark of connection with either Apollo or Odin, and there wasn't much of one with the bear, either, at least not for a long time. But now, it seems like the bear is becoming a powerful presence in our household.
Of course, when I asked Jeff to read my post, his response was that he liked it but that wasn't really what he associated with the bear.
So... still by myself in my worship, I guess. I read about other people getting together to talk about the gods and maybe practice together, even if only informally, and I wonder why I'm always on the wrong side of the UPG/SPG. Like in that meditative journeywork I did a while back, always having to linger just outside the bonfire's circle of light, listening to other people sharing stories but always having to dance to my gods on my own.
Showing posts with label flamekeeping. Show all posts
Showing posts with label flamekeeping. Show all posts
Monday, January 14, 2013
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Flamekeeping Shift: Intense Dreams
My flamekeeping shift started at sunset last night.
I've been having intense dreams for the past several nights, though most of them have been of a mundane nature. Last night I had two intense dreams.
The first, there was fire and a presence in the heavens, a great god whose laughter mingled with the long rumbling of thunder. Everyone was terrified. The sky was bright, too bright — the white, rolling clouds parted here and there to reveal impossible liquid-fire light beyond them, golden tongues licking the mist-curled sides of each billow of cloud. Lightning dropped like rain, jagged liquid fire, thick and slow, not the usual quick and thin streak of electricity but something else. Some people said it was Jesus. The mighty presence laughed. I recognized some Pagans among the panicked crowds, making offerings and kneeling in supplication to Zeus or Thor. The god laughed again, turning his attention to fall on them like liquid lightning. Squealing, they dodged out of the way as the fire fell, impacting the earth with a huge roar and a blaze springing up where they had stood. Terror ran through me, a fear welling almost to an ecstasy. The god drew spiraling lines in the earth, trailing fingers of lightning along the ground until the rocks trembled and buckled, scorched scars raised in long lines almost as though some burrowing animal were tunneling just beneath the topsoil, pushing up its trail. The liquid-fire lightning dragged along, raising spiraling welts on the earth as people dodged out of the path. The lightning turned and danced, and I found myself caught between converging lines with nowhere to go. I stood rooted in place, willing every part of me — from bone, blood and breath to soul itself — into complete stillness, waiting for the moment of convergence. Then there in front of me was a man, wild grin shining and a noise like thunder. It was — gods forgive me — the Tenth Doctor. (Not actually him, in the dream, but his look — my mind probably seeking for some visual representation of the mingled terror and adoration I was feeling.) I trembled, saying, "But... I know you." And the implication of recognizing this god with a kind of terrifying intimacy bordering on triumph. Somehow, I communicated to him, "You're scaring people, you have to go." He offered me the body of a serpent, bloody and skinned, its scaled hide sparkling with a myriad diamond jewels in the impossible light and the length of its body cut into chunks of wet, red flesh with the white, round center of its spine peeking through the mess. I breathed, and said, "No, I don't eat meat," to the horror of those around me, who were bowed down to the ground and weeping in fear, unable to imagine refusing the god anything. The god laughed again, uproariously, and then he was gone just as suddenly, the whole scene settling like dust into a quiet stillness. And I looked down to see that I was holding a plastic bag full of wet, juicy honeydew melon chunks (one carved in the shape of the serpent's head).
I woke up at this point in a lot of pain, with my legs twitching terribly, and it took a long while to fall back asleep again. Once I did, I had a second dream.
Not as detailed as the first. I was in a cart, somewhat like a cross between a roller coaster car and an open-topped railway train car, with rows of bench seats across it with seat belts. There were carts in front and behind mine, too, in a long chain and the train seemed to be underground in a long, dark tunnel with rough, earthy or rocky sides. The dream is only vague impressions for a while — there were many people in all these carts, loading and unloading as the train went back and forth along the line making stops, and many of the people seemed somewhat young, though not exactly children. I remained on the train the whole time, never getting off, and almost always sitting alone on the bench seat as people shuffled around me. Then, at one point, a man sat down next to me — I could best describe him as a stereotypical redneck hick — his hair was blond and short, cropped in a kind of bowl cut with bangs hanging down across his forehead, and he had large teeth and an overbite, barely a chin to speak of, and when he spoke he had an obnoxious stereotypically southern accent that seemed at once idiotic and overly cheerful. But his eyes seemed sharp and intelligent. He sat down next to me, and again there was a sense among everyone around me that this was somehow an honor bestowed on me. Everyone around treated him with a great deal of respect, almost reverence, and deferred to him as a kind of leader. I found, mingling with my distaste for him, a vague sense of familiarity, as though this were some kind of disguise that he was wearing. Again, the dream was only vague for a time, with the sense that we were about the embark on a much longer journey, not the same shuffling back and forth between the same few stops, and that this man next to me was somehow in charge of the journey or leading it. I noticed he wore a blue coat with a few metal pins and sewn-on patches and stripes here and then, almost like a military uniform though I didn't recognize it at all. It seemed too big for him, sticking out at the shoulders, so that he seemed like a child wearing his father's clothes, but there was still that intelligent look in his eye and a sense of authority that he carried about him. We were moving along on the journey now, people settled into their seats, and the tunnel beneath the earth seemed to stretch on in front of us forever with no light in sight except for the torch lights mounted every once in a while that passed us as we moved. The man acted towards me as though we knew each other and were good friends, and I had that vague sense of familiarity (though I was out of the dream enough that I couldn't place why I felt I recognized him). As we moved, the train sped up, faster and faster, and suddenly there was a great lurch as though we'd been struck from behind. The man next to me stood up in his seat, gazing back into the darkness past all the other carts, and his face changed briefly, the expression of soft, cheerful idiocy replaced by a hard, intelligent, penetrating look as though the disguise for an instant had fallen away and the full power of his presence came through. I felt, then, that we were good friends, that I did know him (though I still couldn't say how or from where) and that I trusted him completely. He dropped back down into his seat next to me and whispered that a great serpent was following us, quickly catching up to the train. If people realized what was happening, they would start to panic. He was able to call up or get in touch with the person at the very front of the train and instruct them to veer off the track as we passed an opening in the tunnel — because of his inexplicable authority, nobody argued with him. We veered and suddenly the train was plunged into an icy underground river, the carts now floating like boats or rafts all chained together in a long line. The wheels churning the water beneath the carts sped us onwards, faster and faster, taking twisting turns and bends in the rocky tunnel, now without any light but a kind of eerie very dim blue light that seemed to infuse the air and come from everywhere and nowhere. Behind us, the huge serpent was gaining on us and people were beginning to panic. Its eyes glinted like sharp blades in the darkness, its forked tongue flicking, its massive body writhing in the waters behind us.
I feel as though something happened then in the dream, just before I woke up, but it's gone now, I can't remember it. I don't remember waking up frightened at all, though there was a lot of energy coursing through me. I wish I knew who the man was, or what happened at the end of that second dream. It's no coincidence, I think, that both dreams involved a serpent, as well as other people who were in danger and frightened. But I'm not sure I know what either of the dreams mean.
I've been having intense dreams for the past several nights, though most of them have been of a mundane nature. Last night I had two intense dreams.
The first, there was fire and a presence in the heavens, a great god whose laughter mingled with the long rumbling of thunder. Everyone was terrified. The sky was bright, too bright — the white, rolling clouds parted here and there to reveal impossible liquid-fire light beyond them, golden tongues licking the mist-curled sides of each billow of cloud. Lightning dropped like rain, jagged liquid fire, thick and slow, not the usual quick and thin streak of electricity but something else. Some people said it was Jesus. The mighty presence laughed. I recognized some Pagans among the panicked crowds, making offerings and kneeling in supplication to Zeus or Thor. The god laughed again, turning his attention to fall on them like liquid lightning. Squealing, they dodged out of the way as the fire fell, impacting the earth with a huge roar and a blaze springing up where they had stood. Terror ran through me, a fear welling almost to an ecstasy. The god drew spiraling lines in the earth, trailing fingers of lightning along the ground until the rocks trembled and buckled, scorched scars raised in long lines almost as though some burrowing animal were tunneling just beneath the topsoil, pushing up its trail. The liquid-fire lightning dragged along, raising spiraling welts on the earth as people dodged out of the path. The lightning turned and danced, and I found myself caught between converging lines with nowhere to go. I stood rooted in place, willing every part of me — from bone, blood and breath to soul itself — into complete stillness, waiting for the moment of convergence. Then there in front of me was a man, wild grin shining and a noise like thunder. It was — gods forgive me — the Tenth Doctor. (Not actually him, in the dream, but his look — my mind probably seeking for some visual representation of the mingled terror and adoration I was feeling.) I trembled, saying, "But... I know you." And the implication of recognizing this god with a kind of terrifying intimacy bordering on triumph. Somehow, I communicated to him, "You're scaring people, you have to go." He offered me the body of a serpent, bloody and skinned, its scaled hide sparkling with a myriad diamond jewels in the impossible light and the length of its body cut into chunks of wet, red flesh with the white, round center of its spine peeking through the mess. I breathed, and said, "No, I don't eat meat," to the horror of those around me, who were bowed down to the ground and weeping in fear, unable to imagine refusing the god anything. The god laughed again, uproariously, and then he was gone just as suddenly, the whole scene settling like dust into a quiet stillness. And I looked down to see that I was holding a plastic bag full of wet, juicy honeydew melon chunks (one carved in the shape of the serpent's head).
I woke up at this point in a lot of pain, with my legs twitching terribly, and it took a long while to fall back asleep again. Once I did, I had a second dream.
Not as detailed as the first. I was in a cart, somewhat like a cross between a roller coaster car and an open-topped railway train car, with rows of bench seats across it with seat belts. There were carts in front and behind mine, too, in a long chain and the train seemed to be underground in a long, dark tunnel with rough, earthy or rocky sides. The dream is only vague impressions for a while — there were many people in all these carts, loading and unloading as the train went back and forth along the line making stops, and many of the people seemed somewhat young, though not exactly children. I remained on the train the whole time, never getting off, and almost always sitting alone on the bench seat as people shuffled around me. Then, at one point, a man sat down next to me — I could best describe him as a stereotypical redneck hick — his hair was blond and short, cropped in a kind of bowl cut with bangs hanging down across his forehead, and he had large teeth and an overbite, barely a chin to speak of, and when he spoke he had an obnoxious stereotypically southern accent that seemed at once idiotic and overly cheerful. But his eyes seemed sharp and intelligent. He sat down next to me, and again there was a sense among everyone around me that this was somehow an honor bestowed on me. Everyone around treated him with a great deal of respect, almost reverence, and deferred to him as a kind of leader. I found, mingling with my distaste for him, a vague sense of familiarity, as though this were some kind of disguise that he was wearing. Again, the dream was only vague for a time, with the sense that we were about the embark on a much longer journey, not the same shuffling back and forth between the same few stops, and that this man next to me was somehow in charge of the journey or leading it. I noticed he wore a blue coat with a few metal pins and sewn-on patches and stripes here and then, almost like a military uniform though I didn't recognize it at all. It seemed too big for him, sticking out at the shoulders, so that he seemed like a child wearing his father's clothes, but there was still that intelligent look in his eye and a sense of authority that he carried about him. We were moving along on the journey now, people settled into their seats, and the tunnel beneath the earth seemed to stretch on in front of us forever with no light in sight except for the torch lights mounted every once in a while that passed us as we moved. The man acted towards me as though we knew each other and were good friends, and I had that vague sense of familiarity (though I was out of the dream enough that I couldn't place why I felt I recognized him). As we moved, the train sped up, faster and faster, and suddenly there was a great lurch as though we'd been struck from behind. The man next to me stood up in his seat, gazing back into the darkness past all the other carts, and his face changed briefly, the expression of soft, cheerful idiocy replaced by a hard, intelligent, penetrating look as though the disguise for an instant had fallen away and the full power of his presence came through. I felt, then, that we were good friends, that I did know him (though I still couldn't say how or from where) and that I trusted him completely. He dropped back down into his seat next to me and whispered that a great serpent was following us, quickly catching up to the train. If people realized what was happening, they would start to panic. He was able to call up or get in touch with the person at the very front of the train and instruct them to veer off the track as we passed an opening in the tunnel — because of his inexplicable authority, nobody argued with him. We veered and suddenly the train was plunged into an icy underground river, the carts now floating like boats or rafts all chained together in a long line. The wheels churning the water beneath the carts sped us onwards, faster and faster, taking twisting turns and bends in the rocky tunnel, now without any light but a kind of eerie very dim blue light that seemed to infuse the air and come from everywhere and nowhere. Behind us, the huge serpent was gaining on us and people were beginning to panic. Its eyes glinted like sharp blades in the darkness, its forked tongue flicking, its massive body writhing in the waters behind us.
I feel as though something happened then in the dream, just before I woke up, but it's gone now, I can't remember it. I don't remember waking up frightened at all, though there was a lot of energy coursing through me. I wish I knew who the man was, or what happened at the end of that second dream. It's no coincidence, I think, that both dreams involved a serpent, as well as other people who were in danger and frightened. But I'm not sure I know what either of the dreams mean.
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Diary - Flamekeeping
Inspired by my post about steampunk shamanism, Jeff decided he wanted to do another one of his multi-day spiritual projects that involve regular meditation and divination over a predefined length of time, focusing on different issues and problems that need to be worked on. I thought I'd join him, and we just happen to be starting tonight, which is the Sunday after the first full moon after the equinox (also known as Easter) and my Flamekeeping shift.
The project is a twelve-day process this time - a day of prep work, ten days of doing a daily reading along the "story" spread inspired by Joseph Campbell's hero's journey, and then a final day of wrap-up and a ritual to integrate and manifest the results. Jeff is going to be using his new steampunk tarot deck and concentrating on different issues that he wants to be able to move forward on, such as his work, his health, the obstacles involving the child custody, etc. I don't have as much structure to mine, so I'll kind of be meandering along on this journey and letting it lead me where it will.
So this morning, I drew a card to represent guidance for the day. The card I drew was the Eight of Wands, which in the Shadowscape deck I'm using is a lovely image of a woman releasing eight seed tufts to the wind, which will carry them to new ground where they will be able to put down roots. My understanding of this card is that it is full of action and energy, but not necessarily very directed energy. In fact, trying to direct the energy might end up working against you and lead to frustration - this card indicates a time to trust to the greater forces that surround you, the winds of chance that move through the universe, to carry your efforts beyond even what you can imagine. To release your activities and efforts to the larger world to work out their effects in whatever way they will. But it is also a card that suggests that such trust and trusting efforts will be fruitful in the end - mighty trees will grow from those scattered seeds - with a powerful balance of the active energy of the suit of wands with the stabilizing influence and fruition of the number eight, which is both stable and embodies a dynamic polarity (4 X 2) which sends the world singing.
This evening, when I started my Flamekeeping shift (using the oil lamp that I discovered when packing up our old apartment - the thing might need a new wick, but otherwise it seems to be working splendidly), I drew three more cards specifically seeking guidance about the coming work of the next twelve days. The cards I drew were, from left to right, the Two of Swords, the Queen of Cups, and the Sun (XIX). The energy of this three-card spread seems to expand out from the center card - the Queen walks forward, her arms outstretched to either side - but her face is turned towards the right (her left) and she seems to be gazing directly into the face of the young man haloed by golden light and riding the King of Birds in the Sun card, who gazes back at her. The figure in the Two of Swords card, on the other hand, faces away from the center card, a dark hood draped over her head, her swords crossed barring the path and the energy flowing in from the left. I take this spread to be somewhat a past-present-future spread, with the Two of Swords representing the blockage and frustration that I have felt in the past. These days, I am feeling balanced and deeply in touch with the underlying current of change in my life - my emotions seem to be less volatile or, when they are intense, I feel better able to ride them and harness that energy. I'm also feeling very enthusiastic and confident about my future endeavors, with my face firmly turned towards a bright future. The spread seems to bear this out to some extent, with the Sun card in the final position not only being a wonderful card in its own right, but the figure facing the center Queen and returning her gaze in a way that seems to indicate a receptivity and eagerness in its own right. As though this sunny future is just as eagerly waiting for my arrival as I am. The echoes of royalty in the Queen of Cups and the Sun card (which, in this deck, does not show a child, but a young man riding on a crowned kingly bird as his mount) seem to emphasize the sovereignty and potential power of this work as I move into the future. All in all, I take this to be a very positive reading - keeping in mind that the Queen of Cups, though she looks towards the future, does not entirely turn her back on the past but keeps one arm outstretched towards it as well, as though anchoring her in memory that gives her stability and poise as she moves forward. A good thing to keep in mind - not to get too swept away - the Two of Swords is, like all two's, a card of balance and polarity, and it may be important to remember the helpful role that frustrations and blockages can play in shaping and refining the work we undertake.
All in all, I'm looking forward to this project - we have a lot going on during this next week and a half (including our end-of-semester test for the Volunteer Naturalist spring training), so hopefully this meditative work will help me stay balanced and energized moving forward. I'm feeling very enthusiastic and excited about what's to come.
The project is a twelve-day process this time - a day of prep work, ten days of doing a daily reading along the "story" spread inspired by Joseph Campbell's hero's journey, and then a final day of wrap-up and a ritual to integrate and manifest the results. Jeff is going to be using his new steampunk tarot deck and concentrating on different issues that he wants to be able to move forward on, such as his work, his health, the obstacles involving the child custody, etc. I don't have as much structure to mine, so I'll kind of be meandering along on this journey and letting it lead me where it will.
So this morning, I drew a card to represent guidance for the day. The card I drew was the Eight of Wands, which in the Shadowscape deck I'm using is a lovely image of a woman releasing eight seed tufts to the wind, which will carry them to new ground where they will be able to put down roots. My understanding of this card is that it is full of action and energy, but not necessarily very directed energy. In fact, trying to direct the energy might end up working against you and lead to frustration - this card indicates a time to trust to the greater forces that surround you, the winds of chance that move through the universe, to carry your efforts beyond even what you can imagine. To release your activities and efforts to the larger world to work out their effects in whatever way they will. But it is also a card that suggests that such trust and trusting efforts will be fruitful in the end - mighty trees will grow from those scattered seeds - with a powerful balance of the active energy of the suit of wands with the stabilizing influence and fruition of the number eight, which is both stable and embodies a dynamic polarity (4 X 2) which sends the world singing.
This evening, when I started my Flamekeeping shift (using the oil lamp that I discovered when packing up our old apartment - the thing might need a new wick, but otherwise it seems to be working splendidly), I drew three more cards specifically seeking guidance about the coming work of the next twelve days. The cards I drew were, from left to right, the Two of Swords, the Queen of Cups, and the Sun (XIX). The energy of this three-card spread seems to expand out from the center card - the Queen walks forward, her arms outstretched to either side - but her face is turned towards the right (her left) and she seems to be gazing directly into the face of the young man haloed by golden light and riding the King of Birds in the Sun card, who gazes back at her. The figure in the Two of Swords card, on the other hand, faces away from the center card, a dark hood draped over her head, her swords crossed barring the path and the energy flowing in from the left. I take this spread to be somewhat a past-present-future spread, with the Two of Swords representing the blockage and frustration that I have felt in the past. These days, I am feeling balanced and deeply in touch with the underlying current of change in my life - my emotions seem to be less volatile or, when they are intense, I feel better able to ride them and harness that energy. I'm also feeling very enthusiastic and confident about my future endeavors, with my face firmly turned towards a bright future. The spread seems to bear this out to some extent, with the Sun card in the final position not only being a wonderful card in its own right, but the figure facing the center Queen and returning her gaze in a way that seems to indicate a receptivity and eagerness in its own right. As though this sunny future is just as eagerly waiting for my arrival as I am. The echoes of royalty in the Queen of Cups and the Sun card (which, in this deck, does not show a child, but a young man riding on a crowned kingly bird as his mount) seem to emphasize the sovereignty and potential power of this work as I move into the future. All in all, I take this to be a very positive reading - keeping in mind that the Queen of Cups, though she looks towards the future, does not entirely turn her back on the past but keeps one arm outstretched towards it as well, as though anchoring her in memory that gives her stability and poise as she moves forward. A good thing to keep in mind - not to get too swept away - the Two of Swords is, like all two's, a card of balance and polarity, and it may be important to remember the helpful role that frustrations and blockages can play in shaping and refining the work we undertake.
All in all, I'm looking forward to this project - we have a lot going on during this next week and a half (including our end-of-semester test for the Volunteer Naturalist spring training), so hopefully this meditative work will help me stay balanced and energized moving forward. I'm feeling very enthusiastic and excited about what's to come.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Diary - Flamekeeping
Days of Note: Flamekeeping starts at sundown, Full Claim Song Moon
Sun: leo (fixed fire), 6:28 AM - 8:22 PM
Moon: *full moon, aquarius (fixed air)
Earth: perfect day of nearly cloudless clear skies and gentle sunlight, a relief from the heat and humidity of recent weeks, almost a hint of the autumn weather to come next month and later
At around 4:30 PM this afternoon, Jeff ended work early to go for an extended walk through the woods. The last couple days have been blissfully gorgeous weather, the sunlight golden and the air gentle and cool, lightened from the heat and humidity that have been weighing it down so much in recent weeks. Unfortunately, pain in my legs due to stress (and possibly low vitamins) have kept me sleepless for about three or four nights running now, and this morning I was overwhelmed with worries about the wedding next month and was awake at 5 AM sobbing and angry, so the day began roughly and I was still feeling utterly drained and unfocused even by the afternoon.
Our walk seemed to help that a great deal. We went for a very long walk through Frick Park, down the Upper Riverview Trail, then the Falls Ravine Trail, then left up what I think is called Biddle Trail that passes underneath Forbes and comes out at the far northern end of the park. We went all this way, then turned and followed the wide road that wound down again into the cemetery. Just as we were entering the cemetery - towards the back end, where huge fields of military graves marked with small, sun- and rain-faded flags and sometimes flowers meet up with the edge of the woods - we were stopped in our tracks by four, and then five young bucks moving cautiously out of the underbrush of the wood and into the open fields among the graves to graze in the shade of a large oak tree. They were only twenty or thirty yards from us, and we approached cautiously and sat down in the grass by the side of the road to watch. We must have sat there for a good half-hour as they grazed, every once in a while looking up at us with curiosity, sometimes one or two of them even approaching a bit closer, as though they were trying to figure us out. Jeff and I sat there quietly watching them, trying not to move too much. I thought of how the people in those graves, their bodies were decomposing and going back into the soil, and that soil nourished the grasses that now these deer were feeding on - and the deer so young, five young bucks moving together, there antlers still growing and soft with the sensitive velvet full of blood vessels and nerve endings that make them too fragile and delicate the spar with just yet. There must be something poetic in that.... but it was enough to sit there and watch, and to feel myself making eye contact with those graceful golden animals in the later afternoon sun as they gazed back at me.
Eventually, one of them came close enough that he must have gotten a whiff of our human smell, because suddenly he snorted and stalked back away a bit. The others perked up their ears and all gazed directly at us for a few minutes. Then the same buck snorted again, and then a third time, and haphazardly all five danced off together farther back away from the path and towards the woods again. Not in a rush, but just moving on. One turned back and came towards us several yards again in evident curiosity, but the buck who'd snorted came up behind him as though to watch or warn, and after both of them gazing at us for a minute longer to see if we would follow, both turned back and bounded after the others.
After that, we stood up again and walked on through the rest of the huge cemetery, where it felt so peaceful and empty and quiet. I guess not many people come through there - it's not like it's a park or anything, really, though it backs up to the park. I always imagined cemeteries to be gloomy and sad, but this one was peaceful and lovely, all the graves tended to, families grouped together and occasionally some large monument or beautiful statue or column among the scattered trees. We headed to dinner, then home again, at which point I started my Flamekeeping shift right around sundown.
Though I was still feeling tired (or maybe because I was feeling tired), I decided to do a full circle casting to open and close my ritual tonight. I declared peace to the four directions, then wove the circle with the three elements, then afterwards invited in the energies of the four elements and directions. I spoke the Bond of Druids or Gorsedd prayer, and then did a Three Realms working to connect to the energies of sea, sky and land. By this time, I felt deeply grounded and awake to the current running through me, and I directed that energy into my small pitcher of water, which I charged and then poured as a libation into the blue star fire bowl with the small gold floating candle in it (already lit), marking the center of the rite and opening the gateway. When I parted my hands during the last verse of the prayer to open the gateway, I could feel them buzzing with energy, and from then on during the ritual I felt this deep-pitched ringing or humming in my ears and a profound sense of presence that I haven't often felt in ritual recently. After opening the gateway, I sang my Lady of Star Fire chant as an invitation to Brighid, then hummed the other traditional folk song to her that I know (though I forget the name and can't pronounce the words in Irish Gaelic) while lighting the main Flamekeeping candle and charging up my Brighid's Cross pendant to wear.
After that, I sat in silent prayer for a while, thanking Brighid for her presence in my life and simply sitting with my gratitude. I let her know that I was stressed about the wedding, but so utterly grateful to her for her role in bringing Jeff and I together. I thanked her for all the blessings she's bestowed on me and promised to heed her lessons and do my best to work in her service, even during times when I felt cut off from her. This whole time while in prayer, I felt so close to her, as though surrounded by her embrace or protected all around by her mantle. Finally, I ended my prayers and used my Shadowscape Tarot deck to draw three cards in response to the question, "What lessons do you have for me that I might serve you better?" The cards I drew were, from left to right: Four of Cups, Six of Pentacles, Ace of Swords. (I have some initial impressions on what they might mean, but I want to ponder them more and write a bit about them tomorrow.) To end my ritual, I performed my peace meditation using the Druid Prayer for Peace, and then thanked the four directions and elements, un-wove the circle and ended the rite.
Tomorrow I plan to do some wedding related work along with Jeff - mostly, finishing writing the ceremony, weaving the handfasting cord and then blessing the cord and rings. I'll probably want to do a full ritual with cast circle for that process. I'm hoping I'll get a sounder sleep tonight, especially after such a long walk today. But right now it's getting late, so I'll wrap this up.
Sun: leo (fixed fire), 6:28 AM - 8:22 PM
Moon: *full moon, aquarius (fixed air)
Earth: perfect day of nearly cloudless clear skies and gentle sunlight, a relief from the heat and humidity of recent weeks, almost a hint of the autumn weather to come next month and later
At around 4:30 PM this afternoon, Jeff ended work early to go for an extended walk through the woods. The last couple days have been blissfully gorgeous weather, the sunlight golden and the air gentle and cool, lightened from the heat and humidity that have been weighing it down so much in recent weeks. Unfortunately, pain in my legs due to stress (and possibly low vitamins) have kept me sleepless for about three or four nights running now, and this morning I was overwhelmed with worries about the wedding next month and was awake at 5 AM sobbing and angry, so the day began roughly and I was still feeling utterly drained and unfocused even by the afternoon.
Our walk seemed to help that a great deal. We went for a very long walk through Frick Park, down the Upper Riverview Trail, then the Falls Ravine Trail, then left up what I think is called Biddle Trail that passes underneath Forbes and comes out at the far northern end of the park. We went all this way, then turned and followed the wide road that wound down again into the cemetery. Just as we were entering the cemetery - towards the back end, where huge fields of military graves marked with small, sun- and rain-faded flags and sometimes flowers meet up with the edge of the woods - we were stopped in our tracks by four, and then five young bucks moving cautiously out of the underbrush of the wood and into the open fields among the graves to graze in the shade of a large oak tree. They were only twenty or thirty yards from us, and we approached cautiously and sat down in the grass by the side of the road to watch. We must have sat there for a good half-hour as they grazed, every once in a while looking up at us with curiosity, sometimes one or two of them even approaching a bit closer, as though they were trying to figure us out. Jeff and I sat there quietly watching them, trying not to move too much. I thought of how the people in those graves, their bodies were decomposing and going back into the soil, and that soil nourished the grasses that now these deer were feeding on - and the deer so young, five young bucks moving together, there antlers still growing and soft with the sensitive velvet full of blood vessels and nerve endings that make them too fragile and delicate the spar with just yet. There must be something poetic in that.... but it was enough to sit there and watch, and to feel myself making eye contact with those graceful golden animals in the later afternoon sun as they gazed back at me.
Eventually, one of them came close enough that he must have gotten a whiff of our human smell, because suddenly he snorted and stalked back away a bit. The others perked up their ears and all gazed directly at us for a few minutes. Then the same buck snorted again, and then a third time, and haphazardly all five danced off together farther back away from the path and towards the woods again. Not in a rush, but just moving on. One turned back and came towards us several yards again in evident curiosity, but the buck who'd snorted came up behind him as though to watch or warn, and after both of them gazing at us for a minute longer to see if we would follow, both turned back and bounded after the others.
After that, we stood up again and walked on through the rest of the huge cemetery, where it felt so peaceful and empty and quiet. I guess not many people come through there - it's not like it's a park or anything, really, though it backs up to the park. I always imagined cemeteries to be gloomy and sad, but this one was peaceful and lovely, all the graves tended to, families grouped together and occasionally some large monument or beautiful statue or column among the scattered trees. We headed to dinner, then home again, at which point I started my Flamekeeping shift right around sundown.
Though I was still feeling tired (or maybe because I was feeling tired), I decided to do a full circle casting to open and close my ritual tonight. I declared peace to the four directions, then wove the circle with the three elements, then afterwards invited in the energies of the four elements and directions. I spoke the Bond of Druids or Gorsedd prayer, and then did a Three Realms working to connect to the energies of sea, sky and land. By this time, I felt deeply grounded and awake to the current running through me, and I directed that energy into my small pitcher of water, which I charged and then poured as a libation into the blue star fire bowl with the small gold floating candle in it (already lit), marking the center of the rite and opening the gateway. When I parted my hands during the last verse of the prayer to open the gateway, I could feel them buzzing with energy, and from then on during the ritual I felt this deep-pitched ringing or humming in my ears and a profound sense of presence that I haven't often felt in ritual recently. After opening the gateway, I sang my Lady of Star Fire chant as an invitation to Brighid, then hummed the other traditional folk song to her that I know (though I forget the name and can't pronounce the words in Irish Gaelic) while lighting the main Flamekeeping candle and charging up my Brighid's Cross pendant to wear.
After that, I sat in silent prayer for a while, thanking Brighid for her presence in my life and simply sitting with my gratitude. I let her know that I was stressed about the wedding, but so utterly grateful to her for her role in bringing Jeff and I together. I thanked her for all the blessings she's bestowed on me and promised to heed her lessons and do my best to work in her service, even during times when I felt cut off from her. This whole time while in prayer, I felt so close to her, as though surrounded by her embrace or protected all around by her mantle. Finally, I ended my prayers and used my Shadowscape Tarot deck to draw three cards in response to the question, "What lessons do you have for me that I might serve you better?" The cards I drew were, from left to right: Four of Cups, Six of Pentacles, Ace of Swords. (I have some initial impressions on what they might mean, but I want to ponder them more and write a bit about them tomorrow.) To end my ritual, I performed my peace meditation using the Druid Prayer for Peace, and then thanked the four directions and elements, un-wove the circle and ended the rite.
Tomorrow I plan to do some wedding related work along with Jeff - mostly, finishing writing the ceremony, weaving the handfasting cord and then blessing the cord and rings. I'll probably want to do a full ritual with cast circle for that process. I'm hoping I'll get a sounder sleep tonight, especially after such a long walk today. But right now it's getting late, so I'll wrap this up.
Monday, July 4, 2011
Diary - Flamekeeping
Days of Note: Flamekeeping, Fourth of July/"Independence Day"
Sun: cancer (cardinal water), 5:55 AM - 8:54 PM
Moon: waxing crescent, virgo (mutable earth)
Earth: hot and muggy most of the day, occasional shower, then about an hour before sunset, a huge storm with thunder, lightning and hail - now, after dark, fireworks
My flamekeeping shift is soon coming to an end. I've spent most of today working on my response post (first of three parts) to my experiences and observations at the Wild Goose Festival back at the end of June - and trying very hard to ignore what day it is. But how could I think She would let me ignore it.
A storm blew through about an hour ago, with thunder and massive rain that gave way to the pounding of hail (and for the first time, I had the strange experience of fearing for my garden, as though I could imagine myself responsible for the plump little lives that sprung from hard-shelled seeds I did barely more than drop into the soil and encourage with hopeful glances and some occasional weeding). Now the sky to the west is suffused with rose and gold as the storm blows east to lap against the mountains. Jeff had been wishing for a storm all day, in hopes the rain would wash out and ruin the planned Fourth of July fireworks displays. It seems we often have thunder storms during my flamekeeping shifts.
I don't celebrate days like today. I am not a member of the civil religion of this country (though I happened to be born an American citizen, I do not subscribe to Americanism or, as most would call it, patriotism). And because I believe that rituals have power - even when we don't mean them to or believe them to - I do not participate in community rituals that glorify war and violence, that celebrate death and destruction, that serve only to reinforce the boundaries between a righteous Us and an untrustworthy Them.
But because the civil religion is a religion (whether its followers believe it to be or not), I also try as much as I can not to spend my time actively berating those who do participate. It's hard. Very, very hard.
What's harder is seeing Pagans promoting concepts like "Pagan-American" and hailing the invented piece of propaganda known as "Columbia" (named for a man who committed atrocities gleefully against the indigenous peoples of this land and who was denounced even by people in his own time for doing so) as though she were a goddess. Columbia is no more a goddess than Coca-Cola is a god - and I mean that in all its is/isn't tension and complexity.
I can't feel that it's anything but reprehensible and cruel to celebrate a "goddess of the land of America" under the name of a man who tortured and killed so many of those who once lived here. On a day when we supposedly celebrate and honor those brave men (mostly men) who fought for our independence from Britain, do we give any thought to who else they fought - do we remember how Washington earned his promotions through his campaigns against the natives? do we remember that it was not only freedom from colonial rule, but the freedom to rule over an occupied, colonized land that was won? And to turn around and hail the name Columbia! I would retch if I weren't so close to tears.
And Brigid is a goddess of justice, a goddess of peace... but she is also Mother to Sorrow, who saw her son cut down in battle and keened her grief unchecked by shame, a sorrow so all-encompassing it could only be a testament to love. Of course, she would bring me back to thoughts of the Fourth of July when I would rather have ignored it, let it go unmarked and unremarked. Do I have her courage, to wail in public grief, to allow my sorrow and anger to be a testament and song to the greatness of love and hope?
I don't want to. I don't think I have the courage, not this year. I'm tired of being the punching-bag token pacifist. I have no friends or family who made it home from war, I have no claim to respect that would keep the ridicule in check. I can protest until I'm blue in the face - say that though I hate war, I do not hate soldiers, say that though I work for peace, I am not an ideologue or even an idealist - but no one listens.
Except Brigid. Maybe she listens. And this was what brought me to her service, I remember now. I'd read so many descriptions of her, none of which had really rung true. Then I read Lady Gregory writing about her face, how half of it was beautiful and full of light, and half of it was dark and deformed and terrible. And I thought, yes, this I recognize, this is my goddess. Brigid of the Ruined Eye. Brigid, Mother to Sorrow, Lover to Darkness - and yet, Lady of Light, Guardian of Peace. Praise to you.
As polytheists, do we not have the freedom to choose, to worship what gods we will? I will worship the Lady of Star Fire, the holy triple flame who burns ashless, who works in the darkness. I will worship her in her fullness, not only what is beautiful and poetic, but what is wretched and awful and ugly with grief and sadness. I will honor her for her courage, her willingness to be vulnerable before the world. How could I have forgotten this about you, Brigid? Help me to remember. Help me to work in that same service - not only poetry and beauty, but the hard work of justice, the dirty old work of weakness and transformation.
Sun: cancer (cardinal water), 5:55 AM - 8:54 PM
Moon: waxing crescent, virgo (mutable earth)
Earth: hot and muggy most of the day, occasional shower, then about an hour before sunset, a huge storm with thunder, lightning and hail - now, after dark, fireworks
My flamekeeping shift is soon coming to an end. I've spent most of today working on my response post (first of three parts) to my experiences and observations at the Wild Goose Festival back at the end of June - and trying very hard to ignore what day it is. But how could I think She would let me ignore it.
A storm blew through about an hour ago, with thunder and massive rain that gave way to the pounding of hail (and for the first time, I had the strange experience of fearing for my garden, as though I could imagine myself responsible for the plump little lives that sprung from hard-shelled seeds I did barely more than drop into the soil and encourage with hopeful glances and some occasional weeding). Now the sky to the west is suffused with rose and gold as the storm blows east to lap against the mountains. Jeff had been wishing for a storm all day, in hopes the rain would wash out and ruin the planned Fourth of July fireworks displays. It seems we often have thunder storms during my flamekeeping shifts.
I don't celebrate days like today. I am not a member of the civil religion of this country (though I happened to be born an American citizen, I do not subscribe to Americanism or, as most would call it, patriotism). And because I believe that rituals have power - even when we don't mean them to or believe them to - I do not participate in community rituals that glorify war and violence, that celebrate death and destruction, that serve only to reinforce the boundaries between a righteous Us and an untrustworthy Them.
But because the civil religion is a religion (whether its followers believe it to be or not), I also try as much as I can not to spend my time actively berating those who do participate. It's hard. Very, very hard.
What's harder is seeing Pagans promoting concepts like "Pagan-American" and hailing the invented piece of propaganda known as "Columbia" (named for a man who committed atrocities gleefully against the indigenous peoples of this land and who was denounced even by people in his own time for doing so) as though she were a goddess. Columbia is no more a goddess than Coca-Cola is a god - and I mean that in all its is/isn't tension and complexity.
I can't feel that it's anything but reprehensible and cruel to celebrate a "goddess of the land of America" under the name of a man who tortured and killed so many of those who once lived here. On a day when we supposedly celebrate and honor those brave men (mostly men) who fought for our independence from Britain, do we give any thought to who else they fought - do we remember how Washington earned his promotions through his campaigns against the natives? do we remember that it was not only freedom from colonial rule, but the freedom to rule over an occupied, colonized land that was won? And to turn around and hail the name Columbia! I would retch if I weren't so close to tears.
And Brigid is a goddess of justice, a goddess of peace... but she is also Mother to Sorrow, who saw her son cut down in battle and keened her grief unchecked by shame, a sorrow so all-encompassing it could only be a testament to love. Of course, she would bring me back to thoughts of the Fourth of July when I would rather have ignored it, let it go unmarked and unremarked. Do I have her courage, to wail in public grief, to allow my sorrow and anger to be a testament and song to the greatness of love and hope?
I don't want to. I don't think I have the courage, not this year. I'm tired of being the punching-bag token pacifist. I have no friends or family who made it home from war, I have no claim to respect that would keep the ridicule in check. I can protest until I'm blue in the face - say that though I hate war, I do not hate soldiers, say that though I work for peace, I am not an ideologue or even an idealist - but no one listens.
Except Brigid. Maybe she listens. And this was what brought me to her service, I remember now. I'd read so many descriptions of her, none of which had really rung true. Then I read Lady Gregory writing about her face, how half of it was beautiful and full of light, and half of it was dark and deformed and terrible. And I thought, yes, this I recognize, this is my goddess. Brigid of the Ruined Eye. Brigid, Mother to Sorrow, Lover to Darkness - and yet, Lady of Light, Guardian of Peace. Praise to you.
As polytheists, do we not have the freedom to choose, to worship what gods we will? I will worship the Lady of Star Fire, the holy triple flame who burns ashless, who works in the darkness. I will worship her in her fullness, not only what is beautiful and poetic, but what is wretched and awful and ugly with grief and sadness. I will honor her for her courage, her willingness to be vulnerable before the world. How could I have forgotten this about you, Brigid? Help me to remember. Help me to work in that same service - not only poetry and beauty, but the hard work of justice, the dirty old work of weakness and transformation.
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Diary - Flamekeeping
Days of Note: Flamekeeping begins at sundown
Sun: cancer (cardinal water), 5:54 AM - 8:54 PM
Moon: waxing crescent, leo (fixed fire), VoC
Earth: hot and sunny much of the day, with winds this evening blowing in billowing clouds, for a brief shower before moving on again
I began my shift with some simple awen breathing, during which it seemed almost as though I could hear Brigid whispering to me. Thoughts kept arising as I tried to quiet my mind, some of which seemed too clear and articulate to really be "my own" thoughts exactly - most of them concerning my neglect of my Flamekeeping and my dourness about the responsibility of doing it tonight (when I was feeling tired and overwhelmed and my back is sore and distracting from the tattoo, which is still healing). The simplicity of the candles flickering and the other ritual objects on the altar reminded me that ritual is meant to be beautiful and moving, not a chore or a burden, and that lately it seems I've been grumbling overly much (not out loud, but kind of subconsciously) about my Flamekeeping shifts, giving Brigid grief instead of my joy and gratitude and praise. So there seemed to be some chastisement there, and a suggestion also that I've been focused too much on expecting Brigid to "prove herself" to me by flooding me with warm-fuzzy feel-goods and inspiration... but not enough focus on my part on what I can offer back to her and to the world in her honor.
After this period of quiet reflection and awen-breath, I said my simple opening-shift prayer while "charging" the Brigid's Cross and hanging it around my neck. Then I followed up with one of my rosary prayers to her, and the Lady of the Star Fire chant that I wrote back in November. (I said these prayers out loud, because I felt I needed to more fully embody them tonight, instead of just "thinking" them silently to myself.) After this, I blessed the small pitcher of water on the altar and offered to Brigid the water, the incense, the light of the flames and my gratitude and honor to her. I offered a few flicks of water to each of the triple flames, and then took a sip to honor the Spirit Within which needs nourishing and care as well.
Following this, I asked Brigid to help guide me and began my divination, using my Shadowscapes tarot deck, asking the question, "What gifts can I offer in honor and service to you, O Brigid?"
The cards I drew were, in this order from left to right:
Eight of Cups | Four of Pentacles | High Priestess
Before I write up an interpretation of the cards, though, I want to finish recording the rest of the ritual. After drawing these cards, I went into a light trance (which was a bit difficult because I had a Jonathan Coulton song stuck in my head and had no drum music, or even a rattle to help me "source" - but I did my best and it seemed to work, in fact better than last time).
This time, I began by seeking the Angel Oak Tree as my beginning place, since it was to a very similar tree that Badger seemed to lead me last time. Stepping within the bright, airy, earthy, crystalline nemeton of the great Live Oak, sure enough there was Badger trundling forward to meet me. I knelt down and we embraced, glad to see each other. I began to ask Badger for help interpreting the cards, to seek an answer to what gifts I can offer in Brigid's honor, but Badger was already on it, digging down into the earth near the roots of the Tree. After only a few inches, Badger had scraped away a hole that seemed to open up into a great, vast deep-blue ocean beneath the earth. Badger dove in and began swimming down down down - I tried to follow, but found myself panicking and rushing back up towards the surface. Badger came back up and inquired what was wrong, and I tried to explain how I was afraid of "drowning" - or of not being strong enough or good enough to survive the plunge. Badger reassured me that not only was I up to the challenge, but that it was absolutely necessary and that this anxiety and clinging to the surface world of things was what the Four of Pentacles was indicating. Badger offered to "light my way," and once again there was that association or connection there with a Solar Badger or Sun Badger (I'm not sure if this is because the badger and bear are somewhat related animals symbolically - and like the bear, the badger hibernates and enters the earth, and so may have solar associations - or also like the groundhog, which may have some association with Brigid - or even just the B-D-G sounds in both names). Now shining with a kind of golden light, Badger swam down into the dark blue depths, and I followed, until it seemed we were no longer swimming, but climbing down a steep damp grassy hill at night towards a light in the distance. As we got closer, the light resolved into a campfire lit at the base of the hill, around which a group of people were gathered, laughing and sharing stories and songs with each other. Badger suggested (though not exactly in words) that I had forgotten that my sense of inspiration came from this kind of congenial sharing among equals, an intimate group joined together by joy and kinship and a sense of sacredness - and that this was very different from the insecurities that were leading me to always try to outdo and prove myself through my writing and other work these days. Next I asked, well, what about the other card, the High Priestess - at which point Badger indicated the moon flooding the hillside and fields and woods surrounding with silvery moonlight. I felt the moonlight suffuse my body, and that sense of looming power from up within myself, as though I'd grown taller than I actually was and was radiating or "expanding" out beyond myself. I protested that I didn't know how to be a High Priestess, but Badger seemed to insist that I have always had the potential to be a great priestess of the gods and to some extent I have been afraid of that calling, even though it's always been there. There was also the sense that serving as a priestess had little to nothing to do with being able to attract a large congregation or group of followers - that was not my job to worry about, it was enough that I serve however I could. I expressed how all of my study recently and all the things I want to learn are so that I can become a better priestess to my gods - but Badger seemed to scoff (affectionately) at that, and suddenly I was half-out of trance and aware of my body again, and Badger was pointing out to me that this was all already within me, deep within - it was not something I had to acquire from an external source through learning, but something I had to learn how to access and trust. After this, I sort of dropped back into the trance-place again and I asked Badger if we could return, so together we walked back up the hill until we were swimming back through the dark waters and breaking surface at the roots of the Great Tree.
After coming out of trance, I thanked Badger for the guidance and support, and in gratitude I danced Badger a bit (this time the dance was more like "swimming" - swinging my arms in waving motions out at my sides and above my head, fingers splayed, while my lower body kind of bounced a bit almost as though I were kicking my back legs as you do when you doggy-paddle).
After this, I ended the ritual by extinguishing two of the three candles, leaving the LED candle lit.
I would like to ponder the meaning of the card reading and maybe write more about it tomorrow (especially because my wrist is beginning to hurt, having to keep it up so the tattoo doesn't rub against the keyboard of the laptop). So more on that later.
Sun: cancer (cardinal water), 5:54 AM - 8:54 PM
Moon: waxing crescent, leo (fixed fire), VoC
Earth: hot and sunny much of the day, with winds this evening blowing in billowing clouds, for a brief shower before moving on again
Flamekeeping Ritual
A few minutes before sunset I sat down to my altar, with incense burning and three candles lit in honor of Brigid. Unfortunately, my white pillar candle overspilled its wax last time it was lit, trapping my flamekeeping pendant beneath it - but I have since begun wearing an acorn pendant instead of my Brigid's Cross as a daily symbol of my Druidry, so I decided tonight to begin using my Brigid's Cross necklace itself as my Flamekeeping symbol. I will also be leaving the LED candle lit until sunset tomorrow, though it wouldn't be safe or practical to leave a real-flame candle burning.I began my shift with some simple awen breathing, during which it seemed almost as though I could hear Brigid whispering to me. Thoughts kept arising as I tried to quiet my mind, some of which seemed too clear and articulate to really be "my own" thoughts exactly - most of them concerning my neglect of my Flamekeeping and my dourness about the responsibility of doing it tonight (when I was feeling tired and overwhelmed and my back is sore and distracting from the tattoo, which is still healing). The simplicity of the candles flickering and the other ritual objects on the altar reminded me that ritual is meant to be beautiful and moving, not a chore or a burden, and that lately it seems I've been grumbling overly much (not out loud, but kind of subconsciously) about my Flamekeeping shifts, giving Brigid grief instead of my joy and gratitude and praise. So there seemed to be some chastisement there, and a suggestion also that I've been focused too much on expecting Brigid to "prove herself" to me by flooding me with warm-fuzzy feel-goods and inspiration... but not enough focus on my part on what I can offer back to her and to the world in her honor.
After this period of quiet reflection and awen-breath, I said my simple opening-shift prayer while "charging" the Brigid's Cross and hanging it around my neck. Then I followed up with one of my rosary prayers to her, and the Lady of the Star Fire chant that I wrote back in November. (I said these prayers out loud, because I felt I needed to more fully embody them tonight, instead of just "thinking" them silently to myself.) After this, I blessed the small pitcher of water on the altar and offered to Brigid the water, the incense, the light of the flames and my gratitude and honor to her. I offered a few flicks of water to each of the triple flames, and then took a sip to honor the Spirit Within which needs nourishing and care as well.
Following this, I asked Brigid to help guide me and began my divination, using my Shadowscapes tarot deck, asking the question, "What gifts can I offer in honor and service to you, O Brigid?"
The cards I drew were, in this order from left to right:
Before I write up an interpretation of the cards, though, I want to finish recording the rest of the ritual. After drawing these cards, I went into a light trance (which was a bit difficult because I had a Jonathan Coulton song stuck in my head and had no drum music, or even a rattle to help me "source" - but I did my best and it seemed to work, in fact better than last time).
This time, I began by seeking the Angel Oak Tree as my beginning place, since it was to a very similar tree that Badger seemed to lead me last time. Stepping within the bright, airy, earthy, crystalline nemeton of the great Live Oak, sure enough there was Badger trundling forward to meet me. I knelt down and we embraced, glad to see each other. I began to ask Badger for help interpreting the cards, to seek an answer to what gifts I can offer in Brigid's honor, but Badger was already on it, digging down into the earth near the roots of the Tree. After only a few inches, Badger had scraped away a hole that seemed to open up into a great, vast deep-blue ocean beneath the earth. Badger dove in and began swimming down down down - I tried to follow, but found myself panicking and rushing back up towards the surface. Badger came back up and inquired what was wrong, and I tried to explain how I was afraid of "drowning" - or of not being strong enough or good enough to survive the plunge. Badger reassured me that not only was I up to the challenge, but that it was absolutely necessary and that this anxiety and clinging to the surface world of things was what the Four of Pentacles was indicating. Badger offered to "light my way," and once again there was that association or connection there with a Solar Badger or Sun Badger (I'm not sure if this is because the badger and bear are somewhat related animals symbolically - and like the bear, the badger hibernates and enters the earth, and so may have solar associations - or also like the groundhog, which may have some association with Brigid - or even just the B-D-G sounds in both names). Now shining with a kind of golden light, Badger swam down into the dark blue depths, and I followed, until it seemed we were no longer swimming, but climbing down a steep damp grassy hill at night towards a light in the distance. As we got closer, the light resolved into a campfire lit at the base of the hill, around which a group of people were gathered, laughing and sharing stories and songs with each other. Badger suggested (though not exactly in words) that I had forgotten that my sense of inspiration came from this kind of congenial sharing among equals, an intimate group joined together by joy and kinship and a sense of sacredness - and that this was very different from the insecurities that were leading me to always try to outdo and prove myself through my writing and other work these days. Next I asked, well, what about the other card, the High Priestess - at which point Badger indicated the moon flooding the hillside and fields and woods surrounding with silvery moonlight. I felt the moonlight suffuse my body, and that sense of looming power from up within myself, as though I'd grown taller than I actually was and was radiating or "expanding" out beyond myself. I protested that I didn't know how to be a High Priestess, but Badger seemed to insist that I have always had the potential to be a great priestess of the gods and to some extent I have been afraid of that calling, even though it's always been there. There was also the sense that serving as a priestess had little to nothing to do with being able to attract a large congregation or group of followers - that was not my job to worry about, it was enough that I serve however I could. I expressed how all of my study recently and all the things I want to learn are so that I can become a better priestess to my gods - but Badger seemed to scoff (affectionately) at that, and suddenly I was half-out of trance and aware of my body again, and Badger was pointing out to me that this was all already within me, deep within - it was not something I had to acquire from an external source through learning, but something I had to learn how to access and trust. After this, I sort of dropped back into the trance-place again and I asked Badger if we could return, so together we walked back up the hill until we were swimming back through the dark waters and breaking surface at the roots of the Great Tree.
After coming out of trance, I thanked Badger for the guidance and support, and in gratitude I danced Badger a bit (this time the dance was more like "swimming" - swinging my arms in waving motions out at my sides and above my head, fingers splayed, while my lower body kind of bounced a bit almost as though I were kicking my back legs as you do when you doggy-paddle).
After this, I ended the ritual by extinguishing two of the three candles, leaving the LED candle lit.
I would like to ponder the meaning of the card reading and maybe write more about it tomorrow (especially because my wrist is beginning to hurt, having to keep it up so the tattoo doesn't rub against the keyboard of the laptop). So more on that later.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Diary - Pilgrimage
Days of Note: Flamekeeping, Pilgrimage to the Angel Oak
Sun: gemini (mutable air), 6:15am - 8:19pm (Summerville, SC)
Moon: waning crescent, pisces (mutable water), VOC (through tomorrow evening)
Earth: another hot, sunny day down in South Carolina, with the air thick and muggy and a possible thunderstorm this afternoon (we can only hope); even when the sun is high, the sunlight is not the clear, bright sunlight of farther north, but a damper, heavier, somehow darker kind of light through which everything seems hazy - or perhaps it's only that even in the shade the heat dominates, so that nowhere is safe from the sunlight
Brigid always has a trick up her sleeve for me, it seems. I now have a Brigid's Cross burned between my breasts… or to be more precise, a pale uneven-cross of skin surrounded by the red-pink of sunburn. Last night at sundown when I began my Flamekeeping shift, I asked her to accept the gold Brigid's Cross pendant I always wear as a symbol of her flame because I could not keep a physical flame for her during this shift (even lighting a candle at all in our B&B room was technically not allowed, though I risked it for half an hour for my opening rite). The handmade flame pendant I usually wear is back home, embedded in wax where my usual Flamekeeping candle spilled over into the offering dish without my noticing. I'm not sure if I'll be able to get it out again without ruining it, since it didn't have any kind of protective finish on it, but in any case it was too late to try to salvage it just then when I was packing. I'm not sure if the sunburn is a sign of acceptance or a light slap on the wrist for not being better prepared to travel-while-Keeping. In any case, it wasn't entirely unexpected, considering we were out on the beach without sunscreen during the most intense part of the day….
I'm feeling slightly scatter-brained at the moment, which I expect is mostly from the heat and general late-afternoon fatigue. Both mornings we've been here now, we've been up at dawn to do some yoga and then gone running in the surrounding neighborhood, coming back to the B&B to shower and have a delicious breakfast downstairs. We're the only people in the house right now, though there's a man in the cottage apartment out in the backyard (we haven't seen him yet, but we've seen his car in the drive). We basically have this entire gorgeous French-style southern mansion to ourselves, and it's absolutely lovely. Getting out early in the morning to go running while it's still relatively cool (in the 70s) has me feeling so completely energized and fantastic, I'm hoping I can hold on to that habit when we get back home. Yesterday morning after a shower and breakfast, I spent some time in the lush, steamy garden in the back of the house while Jeff got some work done on the computer inside. I spent time in meditation sitting on a stone bench by one of the small fountains (guarded by a small moss-covered frog and a statue of the Amitabha Buddha).
This morning, though I was technically on Flamekeeping shift, I held off on my morning meditation because right after breakfast we made the hour-long drive to John's Island to see the Angel Oak tree. Last year we visited the tree on Earth Day in April, in the early evening just as the sun was in its golden hour (and the trip also happened to be during a Flamekeeping shift!). This year, we made it to the oak by mid-morning and again the sunlight was all golden and soft through the branches. There was hardly anyone around, and so Jeff and I split up and found spots to sit near the tree to do some meditation. The same feeling I had last year — of immensity and power and life-force emanating from the tree enough to make my heart quicken — was there again this morning. I noticed that the other tourists who wandered up to see the tree during our time there all had a tendency to lower their voices to a whisper, as if out of respect, and there was a natural hush about the place. Even though it's a tourist attraction now, it's hard for me to believe that it's not also a sacred place of power in spite of that. Even the way people arrived, a couple at a time but in a steady stream so that there was almost always at least one person around, a new person arriving just as the other was leaving, though you couldn't ever say the place was busy, and always it had that same hush and quiet and presence to it…. it almost seemed as though the tree were drawing people to it, few by few, like pilgrims attending to it, murmuring appreciative prayers of awe and praise. To sit under the tree for any length of time and watch this process was amazing, and just as it did last year, it left me with this strange sense that the tree was a sacred center or power or axis mundi around which the rest of the world turned, with us little humans coming to stand tiny at its feet and arrange our lives like love-worn dolls….
When we first arrived, a couple with a young toddler were just leaving and for a time we had the place all to ourselves. I sat at the base of the tree while Jeff wandered off somewhere else, and I sat in meditation for twenty minutes or so. First just breathing my awens and allowing myself to relax into the energy and presence of the place, then reaching out to perform (my version of) the DOTR Three Realms workings. The Tree as center and bridge between the watery depths of soul and the celestial heights of spirit was especially effective when I could feel the vast trunk of the Angel Oak behind me, lending support to my spine. During this meditation, my sense of grounding was so powerful, I felt as though I could sit there forever, still and unmoving, so solidly was I rooted in the earth. It's one of the most effective grounding experiences I've had in recent memory. I also experimented with Erynn Rowan Laurie's take on the Three Cauldrons meditation - though I used different hand gestures adapted from the "peace sign" meditation I'd been working on (with both hands placed on the ground to either side, then raised to the center in a namaste/prayer position, then raised up again — in this way, the gestures not only mimic a transformation of the peace sign from despair to rejoicing, but they also echo the Awen symbol in both invoking and evoking form).
A side note: part of me feels bad that I feel such an urge to adapt and change the practices I learn from others. Often the people teaching these techniques will say that they can be adapted or changed to suit personal approaches… but I often feel like this is more an attempt to be tolerant of diversity, and not really a whole-hearted encouragement to actually go about changing things. I do want to trust that certain ritual techniques have stood the test of time and have something to teach me… but it was easier to trust this way in Catholic rituals which really were hundreds, even thousands of years old. Druidry (and Paganism generally) is still so new, and there's a lot of variation in technique. I see similarities between different types of meditations and energy work that I can't overlook, and so these end up blending together in my practice to create rites and gestures that make sense to me. The way I perform a Three Realm Working is derived in part from Orion Foxwood's exercising in connecting to the local land (I forget its name at the moment), in which the "streams" from below and above are joined in the heart. It seems the Three Realms working is also similar to the ADF Two Powers meditation…. except in the Three Realms (both in the DOTR version and my adaptation) there is a blending of the two energies to create or express a third. I never quite understood why a tradition like ADF, with such emphasis on the three realms, the three hallows and other triads, would have a fundamentally dualistic meditative practice as a core technique…. connecting Earth and Sky, but where is Sea in this? This is the same trouble I had with the three Druidic elements in their relation to the four classical elements. If you can arbitrarily drop or add an aspect to a system, then it wasn't a stable or complete system to begin with. In the Three Realms, Land, Sea and Sky seem all to be of equal importance and significance…. and simply dropping Sea and connecting only to the other two doesn't make much sense to me. Similarly, dropping (or combining) Fire and Air from the four classical elements to get the three Druidic elements — as though they were nearly interchangeable otherwise — is deeply dissatisfying to me. So I have to figure out a way to make that change.
On the other hand, Erynn Rowan Laurie's Three Cauldron's meditation makes a lot of sense to me, with the Cauldron of Warming (being associated with the realm of land/earth and the Druidic element/principle of calas) the lowest of the three, the Cauldron of Motion (sea/gwyar) near the heart, and the Cauldron of Wisdom (sky/nwyfre) near the head/crown/third eye. This makes intuitive sense to me, and aligns pretty well with both T. Thorn Coyle's "three souls" meditation and with my Peace of the Three Realms meditation that I developed a few years ago (in which each of the… let's call them "cauldrons," though I originally called them simply "centers," are infused specifically with energies from the Three Realms in a kind of rippling out/up of energy). I don't have any struggle in figuring out why, during the Three Realms working, gwyar/sea is "below" and calas/land/tree in the center, while in the Three Cauldrons working this is reversed. It just… makes sense to me that way. Perhaps because the Three Realms working is a kind of orientation, connecting us with the Tree as axis mundi and bridge of soul and spirit… while the Three Cauldrons/Peace of the Realms practices are more about activating our own ("internal") energy centers. With this inner work, we naturally start from a "base line" of calas, the realm of land that we're so used to and probably most immediately connected to through our physical senses. From there, we kind of "drop" into the gwyar/emotional center of movement and exchange — that is, our experience of form and limit naturally gives rise to an urge to connect, and this is a kind of deepening at the same time that it's a rising up…. almost as though our heart calls our attention to it precisely at that moment when it is spilling over — we are called inward at the same time that we feel the ache of going outward. The final center of nwyfre/wisdom is an ascent to pure force and initiative, as well as breath. Both boundaries and the interweaving or connection of those boundaries are overcome or swept up in the unity of "oneness," to some extent.
I'm not at all convinced this makes much sense… I'll have to keep playing with these ideas. In any case, I'd like to find a way to integrate the Peace Prayer practice with the Three Realms working (and the Three Cauldrons practice as well, perhaps) in a way that leads naturally from one into the other without having to drastically altar the energies I'm working with for each one. ADF describes the Two Powers practice as like to "grounding and centering." I'm not sure which one people traditionally do first among other Wiccan/Pagan groups… but I always understood that centering was the first step (a kind of inward turning and cultivation of stillness and attention that was the prerequisite for any meditative work) and grounding was the second step, a moving outward again from that established center to "ground" that center in the living earth, as though planting a seed, or the moment when that seed germinates and sends out roots. In any case, it always seemed to me an inward/outward movement of focus, rather than an up/down focus the way the Earth/Sky approach suggests. In my own practice, I've gotten so used to centering and grounding that I hardly notice it as an initial step before my other meditation work. I center through some meditative breathing, cultivating a stillness between breaths (which the awen breath can be particularly helpful for), and then reach out to ground myself in the earth and further open myself to the living presences around me. In this sense, then, centering/grounding is a first step, and the natural next step after grounding (reaching out to the earth surrounding me — for we do not only live "on" the earth, but more precisely we live in it, surrounded by its landscapes and climates) is to begin (my version of) the DOTR Three Realms working. When we ground, like a tree putting down roots and sending up shoots, we are not seeking merely earth beneath us… we are seeking the water and the exchange of nutrients below, and the sunlight and air that fuels us from above. These we transform into the living matter of our bodies. So the Three Realms working is a natural follow-up to the centering/grounding opening work.
In that case, then, the Peace of the Realms and the Three Cauldrons meditations are not so much about who we are or where we locate/orient ourselves in the currents of the world… but more about what we do in the world, how we approach our activity. Once we center and ground ourselves in our enspirited-bodies, then what is it we do with those bodies? Finding our foundation, cultivating our work and releasing our love-guided efforts into the world (or warming, motion and wisdom) are the three processes or activities we undertake. They may have affinities with the Three Realms… but they are not merely equivalent. Which is why the Peace of the Three Realms actually "activates" each of the three realms or their currents/elements/principles in each of the three activity centers. So if this is the case.. then a natural order to the practices would be: starting with centering and grounding, then the Three Realms working to orient and establish our selves within the three realms of the world, then the Three Cauldrons meditation to "activate" or energize the three "centers" or cauldrons within the self, then the Peace of the Three Realms prayer to articulate and express the purpose towards which those three center of activity might be directed.
I'll have to experiment with this order to see how it works in practice as well as in theory… but I'm actually quite pleased with this approach. It makes some gut-level sense to me, and incorporates at least some sources of legitimate ancient Celtic culture. I would want to read more about the Cauldron of Poesy text that Erynn Rowan Laurie mentions, if only to seek out some confirmation of this approach.
It seems to be almost 8 PM now and I've been writing for at least two hours…. I had more to talk about, but my shift is coming to an end, so I should probably wrap things up. I'm feeling especially tired and I should probably be sure to drink some more water and apply some more aloe gel to my burn so I'm not regretting my silliness in the morning.
It occurs to me that I forget to explain how I got the sunburn! After staying by the Angel Oak for an hour or two, we thought we would try to find the nearest public beach access, which ended up being Folly Beach. We spent about an hour strolling along the shore, feet in the warmest ocean water lapping up around our calves. Before finally returning to the car, I waded out deeper until I was standing in waters mid-thigh and waves were getting the hem of my sundress damp. By that point, though, I'd already been out long enough to get a burn on my shoulders and chest. We're thinking of going back to the beach tomorrow, after spending a morning in Charleston looking at all the ancient homes built right up on the shoreline by slave labor (Jeff's love of this beautiful human tragedy reminds me of that Doctor Who episode, Blink: "Sad is like happy for deep people.")
We'll see. Tomorrow we're taking a day off from running, though we're hoping to still do some sun salutations to great the new day. It's Jeff's birthday, so we'll have an official day off to do whatever we want before heading back to Pittsburgh on Friday. I may or may not have a chance to write again before we get back home. We'll see.
Sun: gemini (mutable air), 6:15am - 8:19pm (Summerville, SC)
Moon: waning crescent, pisces (mutable water), VOC (through tomorrow evening)
Earth: another hot, sunny day down in South Carolina, with the air thick and muggy and a possible thunderstorm this afternoon (we can only hope); even when the sun is high, the sunlight is not the clear, bright sunlight of farther north, but a damper, heavier, somehow darker kind of light through which everything seems hazy - or perhaps it's only that even in the shade the heat dominates, so that nowhere is safe from the sunlight
Brigid always has a trick up her sleeve for me, it seems. I now have a Brigid's Cross burned between my breasts… or to be more precise, a pale uneven-cross of skin surrounded by the red-pink of sunburn. Last night at sundown when I began my Flamekeeping shift, I asked her to accept the gold Brigid's Cross pendant I always wear as a symbol of her flame because I could not keep a physical flame for her during this shift (even lighting a candle at all in our B&B room was technically not allowed, though I risked it for half an hour for my opening rite). The handmade flame pendant I usually wear is back home, embedded in wax where my usual Flamekeeping candle spilled over into the offering dish without my noticing. I'm not sure if I'll be able to get it out again without ruining it, since it didn't have any kind of protective finish on it, but in any case it was too late to try to salvage it just then when I was packing. I'm not sure if the sunburn is a sign of acceptance or a light slap on the wrist for not being better prepared to travel-while-Keeping. In any case, it wasn't entirely unexpected, considering we were out on the beach without sunscreen during the most intense part of the day….
I'm feeling slightly scatter-brained at the moment, which I expect is mostly from the heat and general late-afternoon fatigue. Both mornings we've been here now, we've been up at dawn to do some yoga and then gone running in the surrounding neighborhood, coming back to the B&B to shower and have a delicious breakfast downstairs. We're the only people in the house right now, though there's a man in the cottage apartment out in the backyard (we haven't seen him yet, but we've seen his car in the drive). We basically have this entire gorgeous French-style southern mansion to ourselves, and it's absolutely lovely. Getting out early in the morning to go running while it's still relatively cool (in the 70s) has me feeling so completely energized and fantastic, I'm hoping I can hold on to that habit when we get back home. Yesterday morning after a shower and breakfast, I spent some time in the lush, steamy garden in the back of the house while Jeff got some work done on the computer inside. I spent time in meditation sitting on a stone bench by one of the small fountains (guarded by a small moss-covered frog and a statue of the Amitabha Buddha).
This morning, though I was technically on Flamekeeping shift, I held off on my morning meditation because right after breakfast we made the hour-long drive to John's Island to see the Angel Oak tree. Last year we visited the tree on Earth Day in April, in the early evening just as the sun was in its golden hour (and the trip also happened to be during a Flamekeeping shift!). This year, we made it to the oak by mid-morning and again the sunlight was all golden and soft through the branches. There was hardly anyone around, and so Jeff and I split up and found spots to sit near the tree to do some meditation. The same feeling I had last year — of immensity and power and life-force emanating from the tree enough to make my heart quicken — was there again this morning. I noticed that the other tourists who wandered up to see the tree during our time there all had a tendency to lower their voices to a whisper, as if out of respect, and there was a natural hush about the place. Even though it's a tourist attraction now, it's hard for me to believe that it's not also a sacred place of power in spite of that. Even the way people arrived, a couple at a time but in a steady stream so that there was almost always at least one person around, a new person arriving just as the other was leaving, though you couldn't ever say the place was busy, and always it had that same hush and quiet and presence to it…. it almost seemed as though the tree were drawing people to it, few by few, like pilgrims attending to it, murmuring appreciative prayers of awe and praise. To sit under the tree for any length of time and watch this process was amazing, and just as it did last year, it left me with this strange sense that the tree was a sacred center or power or axis mundi around which the rest of the world turned, with us little humans coming to stand tiny at its feet and arrange our lives like love-worn dolls….
When we first arrived, a couple with a young toddler were just leaving and for a time we had the place all to ourselves. I sat at the base of the tree while Jeff wandered off somewhere else, and I sat in meditation for twenty minutes or so. First just breathing my awens and allowing myself to relax into the energy and presence of the place, then reaching out to perform (my version of) the DOTR Three Realms workings. The Tree as center and bridge between the watery depths of soul and the celestial heights of spirit was especially effective when I could feel the vast trunk of the Angel Oak behind me, lending support to my spine. During this meditation, my sense of grounding was so powerful, I felt as though I could sit there forever, still and unmoving, so solidly was I rooted in the earth. It's one of the most effective grounding experiences I've had in recent memory. I also experimented with Erynn Rowan Laurie's take on the Three Cauldrons meditation - though I used different hand gestures adapted from the "peace sign" meditation I'd been working on (with both hands placed on the ground to either side, then raised to the center in a namaste/prayer position, then raised up again — in this way, the gestures not only mimic a transformation of the peace sign from despair to rejoicing, but they also echo the Awen symbol in both invoking and evoking form).
A side note: part of me feels bad that I feel such an urge to adapt and change the practices I learn from others. Often the people teaching these techniques will say that they can be adapted or changed to suit personal approaches… but I often feel like this is more an attempt to be tolerant of diversity, and not really a whole-hearted encouragement to actually go about changing things. I do want to trust that certain ritual techniques have stood the test of time and have something to teach me… but it was easier to trust this way in Catholic rituals which really were hundreds, even thousands of years old. Druidry (and Paganism generally) is still so new, and there's a lot of variation in technique. I see similarities between different types of meditations and energy work that I can't overlook, and so these end up blending together in my practice to create rites and gestures that make sense to me. The way I perform a Three Realm Working is derived in part from Orion Foxwood's exercising in connecting to the local land (I forget its name at the moment), in which the "streams" from below and above are joined in the heart. It seems the Three Realms working is also similar to the ADF Two Powers meditation…. except in the Three Realms (both in the DOTR version and my adaptation) there is a blending of the two energies to create or express a third. I never quite understood why a tradition like ADF, with such emphasis on the three realms, the three hallows and other triads, would have a fundamentally dualistic meditative practice as a core technique…. connecting Earth and Sky, but where is Sea in this? This is the same trouble I had with the three Druidic elements in their relation to the four classical elements. If you can arbitrarily drop or add an aspect to a system, then it wasn't a stable or complete system to begin with. In the Three Realms, Land, Sea and Sky seem all to be of equal importance and significance…. and simply dropping Sea and connecting only to the other two doesn't make much sense to me. Similarly, dropping (or combining) Fire and Air from the four classical elements to get the three Druidic elements — as though they were nearly interchangeable otherwise — is deeply dissatisfying to me. So I have to figure out a way to make that change.
On the other hand, Erynn Rowan Laurie's Three Cauldron's meditation makes a lot of sense to me, with the Cauldron of Warming (being associated with the realm of land/earth and the Druidic element/principle of calas) the lowest of the three, the Cauldron of Motion (sea/gwyar) near the heart, and the Cauldron of Wisdom (sky/nwyfre) near the head/crown/third eye. This makes intuitive sense to me, and aligns pretty well with both T. Thorn Coyle's "three souls" meditation and with my Peace of the Three Realms meditation that I developed a few years ago (in which each of the… let's call them "cauldrons," though I originally called them simply "centers," are infused specifically with energies from the Three Realms in a kind of rippling out/up of energy). I don't have any struggle in figuring out why, during the Three Realms working, gwyar/sea is "below" and calas/land/tree in the center, while in the Three Cauldrons working this is reversed. It just… makes sense to me that way. Perhaps because the Three Realms working is a kind of orientation, connecting us with the Tree as axis mundi and bridge of soul and spirit… while the Three Cauldrons/Peace of the Realms practices are more about activating our own ("internal") energy centers. With this inner work, we naturally start from a "base line" of calas, the realm of land that we're so used to and probably most immediately connected to through our physical senses. From there, we kind of "drop" into the gwyar/emotional center of movement and exchange — that is, our experience of form and limit naturally gives rise to an urge to connect, and this is a kind of deepening at the same time that it's a rising up…. almost as though our heart calls our attention to it precisely at that moment when it is spilling over — we are called inward at the same time that we feel the ache of going outward. The final center of nwyfre/wisdom is an ascent to pure force and initiative, as well as breath. Both boundaries and the interweaving or connection of those boundaries are overcome or swept up in the unity of "oneness," to some extent.
I'm not at all convinced this makes much sense… I'll have to keep playing with these ideas. In any case, I'd like to find a way to integrate the Peace Prayer practice with the Three Realms working (and the Three Cauldrons practice as well, perhaps) in a way that leads naturally from one into the other without having to drastically altar the energies I'm working with for each one. ADF describes the Two Powers practice as like to "grounding and centering." I'm not sure which one people traditionally do first among other Wiccan/Pagan groups… but I always understood that centering was the first step (a kind of inward turning and cultivation of stillness and attention that was the prerequisite for any meditative work) and grounding was the second step, a moving outward again from that established center to "ground" that center in the living earth, as though planting a seed, or the moment when that seed germinates and sends out roots. In any case, it always seemed to me an inward/outward movement of focus, rather than an up/down focus the way the Earth/Sky approach suggests. In my own practice, I've gotten so used to centering and grounding that I hardly notice it as an initial step before my other meditation work. I center through some meditative breathing, cultivating a stillness between breaths (which the awen breath can be particularly helpful for), and then reach out to ground myself in the earth and further open myself to the living presences around me. In this sense, then, centering/grounding is a first step, and the natural next step after grounding (reaching out to the earth surrounding me — for we do not only live "on" the earth, but more precisely we live in it, surrounded by its landscapes and climates) is to begin (my version of) the DOTR Three Realms working. When we ground, like a tree putting down roots and sending up shoots, we are not seeking merely earth beneath us… we are seeking the water and the exchange of nutrients below, and the sunlight and air that fuels us from above. These we transform into the living matter of our bodies. So the Three Realms working is a natural follow-up to the centering/grounding opening work.
In that case, then, the Peace of the Realms and the Three Cauldrons meditations are not so much about who we are or where we locate/orient ourselves in the currents of the world… but more about what we do in the world, how we approach our activity. Once we center and ground ourselves in our enspirited-bodies, then what is it we do with those bodies? Finding our foundation, cultivating our work and releasing our love-guided efforts into the world (or warming, motion and wisdom) are the three processes or activities we undertake. They may have affinities with the Three Realms… but they are not merely equivalent. Which is why the Peace of the Three Realms actually "activates" each of the three realms or their currents/elements/principles in each of the three activity centers. So if this is the case.. then a natural order to the practices would be: starting with centering and grounding, then the Three Realms working to orient and establish our selves within the three realms of the world, then the Three Cauldrons meditation to "activate" or energize the three "centers" or cauldrons within the self, then the Peace of the Three Realms prayer to articulate and express the purpose towards which those three center of activity might be directed.
I'll have to experiment with this order to see how it works in practice as well as in theory… but I'm actually quite pleased with this approach. It makes some gut-level sense to me, and incorporates at least some sources of legitimate ancient Celtic culture. I would want to read more about the Cauldron of Poesy text that Erynn Rowan Laurie mentions, if only to seek out some confirmation of this approach.
It seems to be almost 8 PM now and I've been writing for at least two hours…. I had more to talk about, but my shift is coming to an end, so I should probably wrap things up. I'm feeling especially tired and I should probably be sure to drink some more water and apply some more aloe gel to my burn so I'm not regretting my silliness in the morning.
It occurs to me that I forget to explain how I got the sunburn! After staying by the Angel Oak for an hour or two, we thought we would try to find the nearest public beach access, which ended up being Folly Beach. We spent about an hour strolling along the shore, feet in the warmest ocean water lapping up around our calves. Before finally returning to the car, I waded out deeper until I was standing in waters mid-thigh and waves were getting the hem of my sundress damp. By that point, though, I'd already been out long enough to get a burn on my shoulders and chest. We're thinking of going back to the beach tomorrow, after spending a morning in Charleston looking at all the ancient homes built right up on the shoreline by slave labor (Jeff's love of this beautiful human tragedy reminds me of that Doctor Who episode, Blink: "Sad is like happy for deep people.")
We'll see. Tomorrow we're taking a day off from running, though we're hoping to still do some sun salutations to great the new day. It's Jeff's birthday, so we'll have an official day off to do whatever we want before heading back to Pittsburgh on Friday. I may or may not have a chance to write again before we get back home. We'll see.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Astrology of Me: Natal Chart Analysis (Part 2)
Days of Note: Flamekeeping (begins at sundown), pilgrimage to the Angel Oak
Sun: gemini (mutable air), 6:16am - 8:18pm
Moon: last quarter, pisces (mutable water)
Earth: hot and sunny, we're down in Summerville, South Carolina (near Charleston) staying in a lovely French B&B to visit the old Angel Oak; everything here lush and green and muggy
II. The Main Components of the Chart Structure
§A Patterns Using the Astrological Alphabet
Using the 12-letter "Astrological Alphabet" (p.176) to examine the signs and houses of each of the planets as well as the important aspects (5º orb) among the planets, three themes emerge as having particular emphasis.
The first is a triple emphasis on the relationship between Letter 1 and Letter 8 — Mars in the 8th house trine Pluto in the 1st house. Here Mars (1) is in close aspect with Pluto (8), with Mars (1) in the 8th house (8) and Pluto (8) in the 1st house (1). I'm not exactly sure what this theme means, but it's actually the example he uses in the book, where he explains that "the expression of Mars energy will be powerfully characterized by Plutonian qualities." Mars is characterized generally as desire, will-power or will to action, initiative and physical energy, and describes what kinds of energy we use to assert ourselves and what will drive us and give us energy. Pluto is characterized by transformation, transmutation, rebirth and intense focus. Both planets have strong associations with courage, desire and the way we exert our will. The "toning" of Mars with Plutonian energy suggests that I seek to assert myself and my will by turning my focus inward to bring about personal transformation (rather than directing it outwards against others, perhaps?) and that I also feel energized physically by intense, transformative experiences (maybe this relates to my approach to physical exercise as well?).
Tompkins describes the Mars-Pluto aspect as being about a "fight for survival" that can express itself as an intense (but sometimes hidden) competitive nature, either directed outwards in competition with others or turned inwards in competition with the self. There is also some suggestion of associations with both buried rage and buried sexuality (Pluto having a "burying" effect on the aggressive and/or sexual energies of Mars), which can express itself either in repressed anger or passion sublimated as passive aggressiveness or manipulation, or a focus on the "darker" aspects of self and society that others would rather be buried and denied. Tompkins focuses mostly on hard/challenging aspects between the two; the fact that Mars trines Pluto in my chart may indicate that I have an easier time facing the "dark side" of passion and aggression, that I am better able to accept and acknowledge the violence, competitiveness and sexuality in my nature than someone with a challenging aspect. (On the other hand, this might mean that I will tend to take for granted that aggression or sexuality will be "buried" — which might explain why, to some extent, I am prudishly uncomfortable with public flaunting of sexuality or socially condoned forms of violence, expecting them to be reined in or restrained even while acknowledging those forces as inherent aspects of ourselves. A trine might suggest that I take for granted this kind of "burying" or sublimating of aggressive/sexual passions because it comes fairly easily to me.)(N.B. On this last parenthetical bit: Jeff doesn't think so. Maybe he will leave a comment explaining his take in detail… hint hint.)
There is also a double emphasis on the relationship between Letter 1 and Letter 10 (Saturn in the 1st house trine Mars), which is no real surprise since Saturn and Pluto are in such close conjunction in my chart that they tend to act almost as a single influence. In this case, Saturn (10) is in close trine aspect with Mars (1), and Saturn (10) is also in the 1st house (1). In this case, then, the Mars energies of desire, will-power, activity and physical energy will be toned or influenced by the Saturnian characteristics of effort, integrity, authority, (self-)discipline, responsibilities and patience. Both planets have connections to how we assert ourselves and our will — Mars through passion and initiative, Saturn through concentrated effort and diligence over time. This theme may suggest that I seek to assert myself through disciplined effort and that I connect this effort with my sense of personal integrity, taking on responsibilities and expecting my work to earn me a certain amount of authority. In turn, it may suggest that I feel energized and spurred to action when I am put into situations that demand patience, diligence and the shouldering of responsibilities.
Tompkins, as usual, says so much about the Mars-Saturn aspect that it's hard to distill and clarify the main thrust of the relationship. There are some influences echoing those of Mars-Pluto (likely to be especially important considering Saturn's close conjunction with Pluto in my chart), in particular a certain ambivalent attitude towards both violence/rage and passion/sexuality — in this case, these energies are not "buried" as with Pluto, so much as brought under tighter control. (Arroyo suggests that Saturn can cause blocks precisely because these areas are of particular importance or weight to a person, like trying to force too much water through too tight an opening.) The Mars-Saturn relationship also suggests conflicts concerned with or about authority, either fighting on behalf of authority or struggling against authority. As with Pluto, however, the Mars-Saturn aspect can indicate the ability to bring great passion, energy and courage and direct them towards a particular aim — rather than the transformation of Pluto, in this case Saturn's urges towards integrity, responsibility and discipline — and in doing so, accomplish great things. Again, because the Mars-Saturn aspect is a trine in my chart, there's an indication that this kind of concerted effort and discipline may come naturally to me, that I am able to deftly handle the balance between impulse and discipline, assertiveness and control, fear and courage. (This may also reflect my tendency to "go overboard" when I set myself a particular task, channeling a great deal of energy and activity into the chosen are of hard work — for instance, I'm starting to think I may be overdoing it a bit with this chart analysis!) Interestingly, Tompkins connects the Mars-Saturn aspect with tasks that require a lot of discipline and control along with physical strength and effort — among these, she mentions blacksmithing, one of the three skills ruled over by Brigid. The connection between smithcraft and transmutation/transformation found in Her nature may reflect to some extent Mars trine Saturn-Pluto in my chart. (I want to come back later to this issue of what insights astrology might be able to give us into our gods.)
The last theme is a double emphasis on the relationship between Letter 9 and Letter 11 — Uranus in Sagittarius conjunct Jupiter. Here, Jupiter (9) is in close aspect with Uranus (11), while Uranus (11) is in Sagittarius (9). This suggests that Jupiter will be influenced by the energies of Uranus, while Uranus is also tempered and toned by the energies of Jupiter (ruler of Sagittarius). Jupiter is characterized by grace, expansion/expansiveness, trust and faith in a larger order or meaning, and its influence describes how we strive to grow, improve ourselves and where we seek confidence and our sense of grace. Uranus is characterized by freedom, independence, experimentation, originality and creativity, and describes how we differentiate ourselves from others and establish our uniqueness and individuality. The Jupiter-Uranus relationship suggests that my faith and experience of grace will be charged with a sense of freedom and affirmation of my individuality, and I may express this faith in unconventional or experimental ways. There is also a sense that the urge towards originality and creativity will be expansive and pervasive in my life.
Tompkins suggests that the Jupiter-Uranus aspect is defined largely by its tendency towards radical, fringe or unorthodox religious and/or political traditions and beliefs. This results from the relationship between faith, associated with Jupiter, and Uranus's association with truth. In this aspect, there is an urge to bring faith and the search for meaning into closer alignment or attunement with truth (as opposed to allowing the need for faith to overrule truth, as in fundamentalism, or the search for truth to undermine faith, as in nihilism/cynicism, I guess?). This aspect also reflects the importance of seeking faith in "personal truths" and often involved resisting or leaving a mainstream or orthodox religious or political tradition. There's not much more to elaborate on here, since this pretty much nails it. My choice to leave Catholicism (with its emphasis on tradition and the authority of the Church) and my involvement in Paganism (with its emphasis on plurality, diversity, freedom and creativity, especially creative ritual) reflect this theme strongly.
Further notes: What's especially interesting to me is that among these three themes emphasized in my chart, the last and arguably least emphasized is the one that is easiest for me to recognize and identify in my own life. This may have something to do with the fact that the aspect is a conjunction that falls within the sign ruled by one of the planets — and that this entire configuration is in the most important, exact and powerful opposition in my entire chart (with Mercury)… perhaps setting up a situation in which these energies are strong and obvious to me as something I have had to grapple with and articulate. The themes expressed in Saturn's and Pluto's trines with Mars are more difficult to pin down, their expressions in my life not so obvious… and this might have to do with the nature of the trine aspect as "soft" or easy, something that does not present a particular challenge and so can be to some extent taken for granted. Since these involve Saturn, however, I do want to examine these themes in more depth, especially as I approach my Saturn Return.
§B Dominant Aspects and Major Configurations
Much of this I already covered in the first part of my analysis, looking at the overall pattern of the chart as a whole. I noted the emphasis on the Gemini-Sagittarius opposition (strengthened by both Mercury and Jupiter falling within their ruling signs, as well as Mercury's exact opposition Uranus and the Sun's near-exact opposition Neptune). There is also a less powerful emphasis on the trine relationship between Gemini and Libra.
I do not have any dominant aspects (such as Grand Trines or T-Squares) in my chart, but I do have three different "groupings" of planets that could arguably be stelliums (depending on the orb). The first and probably most powerful falls within Gemini and involves the conjunction of my Sun and Mars with Mercury close by within the same sign. The second involves the conjunction of Saturn and Pluto with my Ascendent (with the Moon nearby in the same sign) in Libra. The third is Jupiter conjunct Uranus with Neptune nearby in the sign of Sagittarius. The Gemini stellium falls (very) roughly in my 8th house, while the Sagittarius stellium falls (again, very) roughly in my 2nd house; the stellium involving my Ascendent falls primarily within my 1st house but seems to kind of rope in my Moon in the 12th house.
Jeff described the 8th house to me once as the house of "sex, death and initiation" — all things that deal with power and transformation. Arroyo describes this house (a water house) as one of yearning and seeking after security for the soul, possibly through discovering the deepest laws of life (sex and death being two of the most powerful and most essential) as a stable foundation upon which to build a sense of inner peace. Occult studies are also considered to be related tot his house for similar reasons. A stellium in my 8th house (especially one that involves my Sun, though it's right on the cusp and technically in my 9th house) suggests a deep involvement in grappling with issues of power, passion and transformation, coming to terms with and finding peace through right relationship (or release from) desires and compulsions.
The 2nd house (an earth house) is one of material stability and security and might be characterized by a drive for an abundance of resources. This influence can expression itself through financial or material wealth, but is just as likely to involve an essential and deeply meaningful attunement with and appreciation of the natural world as a source of abundance, sustenance and support. A stellium involving a Jupiter-Uranus conjunction in my 2nd house goes even further to clarify my draw towards earth-centered spirituality, as my urge for stability and peace in the physical world is tied up with my sense of grace and trust in a deeper spiritual reality (as well as the desire for individuality and freedom).
I've already spent some time in-depth exploring the implications of Saturn and Pluto influenced by the Martian energies of the 1st house, and later in the analysis will be a particular focus on the Ascendent and any planets in close conjunction, so I'll forgo that analysis for now.
Sun: gemini (mutable air), 6:16am - 8:18pm
Moon: last quarter, pisces (mutable water)
Earth: hot and sunny, we're down in Summerville, South Carolina (near Charleston) staying in a lovely French B&B to visit the old Angel Oak; everything here lush and green and muggy
Based on Stephen Arroyo's Outline of Chart Interpretation
II. The Main Components of the Chart Structure
§A Patterns Using the Astrological Alphabet
Using the 12-letter "Astrological Alphabet" (p.176) to examine the signs and houses of each of the planets as well as the important aspects (5º orb) among the planets, three themes emerge as having particular emphasis.
The first is a triple emphasis on the relationship between Letter 1 and Letter 8 — Mars in the 8th house trine Pluto in the 1st house. Here Mars (1) is in close aspect with Pluto (8), with Mars (1) in the 8th house (8) and Pluto (8) in the 1st house (1). I'm not exactly sure what this theme means, but it's actually the example he uses in the book, where he explains that "the expression of Mars energy will be powerfully characterized by Plutonian qualities." Mars is characterized generally as desire, will-power or will to action, initiative and physical energy, and describes what kinds of energy we use to assert ourselves and what will drive us and give us energy. Pluto is characterized by transformation, transmutation, rebirth and intense focus. Both planets have strong associations with courage, desire and the way we exert our will. The "toning" of Mars with Plutonian energy suggests that I seek to assert myself and my will by turning my focus inward to bring about personal transformation (rather than directing it outwards against others, perhaps?) and that I also feel energized physically by intense, transformative experiences (maybe this relates to my approach to physical exercise as well?).
Tompkins describes the Mars-Pluto aspect as being about a "fight for survival" that can express itself as an intense (but sometimes hidden) competitive nature, either directed outwards in competition with others or turned inwards in competition with the self. There is also some suggestion of associations with both buried rage and buried sexuality (Pluto having a "burying" effect on the aggressive and/or sexual energies of Mars), which can express itself either in repressed anger or passion sublimated as passive aggressiveness or manipulation, or a focus on the "darker" aspects of self and society that others would rather be buried and denied. Tompkins focuses mostly on hard/challenging aspects between the two; the fact that Mars trines Pluto in my chart may indicate that I have an easier time facing the "dark side" of passion and aggression, that I am better able to accept and acknowledge the violence, competitiveness and sexuality in my nature than someone with a challenging aspect. (On the other hand, this might mean that I will tend to take for granted that aggression or sexuality will be "buried" — which might explain why, to some extent, I am prudishly uncomfortable with public flaunting of sexuality or socially condoned forms of violence, expecting them to be reined in or restrained even while acknowledging those forces as inherent aspects of ourselves. A trine might suggest that I take for granted this kind of "burying" or sublimating of aggressive/sexual passions because it comes fairly easily to me.)(N.B. On this last parenthetical bit: Jeff doesn't think so. Maybe he will leave a comment explaining his take in detail… hint hint.)
There is also a double emphasis on the relationship between Letter 1 and Letter 10 (Saturn in the 1st house trine Mars), which is no real surprise since Saturn and Pluto are in such close conjunction in my chart that they tend to act almost as a single influence. In this case, Saturn (10) is in close trine aspect with Mars (1), and Saturn (10) is also in the 1st house (1). In this case, then, the Mars energies of desire, will-power, activity and physical energy will be toned or influenced by the Saturnian characteristics of effort, integrity, authority, (self-)discipline, responsibilities and patience. Both planets have connections to how we assert ourselves and our will — Mars through passion and initiative, Saturn through concentrated effort and diligence over time. This theme may suggest that I seek to assert myself through disciplined effort and that I connect this effort with my sense of personal integrity, taking on responsibilities and expecting my work to earn me a certain amount of authority. In turn, it may suggest that I feel energized and spurred to action when I am put into situations that demand patience, diligence and the shouldering of responsibilities.
Tompkins, as usual, says so much about the Mars-Saturn aspect that it's hard to distill and clarify the main thrust of the relationship. There are some influences echoing those of Mars-Pluto (likely to be especially important considering Saturn's close conjunction with Pluto in my chart), in particular a certain ambivalent attitude towards both violence/rage and passion/sexuality — in this case, these energies are not "buried" as with Pluto, so much as brought under tighter control. (Arroyo suggests that Saturn can cause blocks precisely because these areas are of particular importance or weight to a person, like trying to force too much water through too tight an opening.) The Mars-Saturn relationship also suggests conflicts concerned with or about authority, either fighting on behalf of authority or struggling against authority. As with Pluto, however, the Mars-Saturn aspect can indicate the ability to bring great passion, energy and courage and direct them towards a particular aim — rather than the transformation of Pluto, in this case Saturn's urges towards integrity, responsibility and discipline — and in doing so, accomplish great things. Again, because the Mars-Saturn aspect is a trine in my chart, there's an indication that this kind of concerted effort and discipline may come naturally to me, that I am able to deftly handle the balance between impulse and discipline, assertiveness and control, fear and courage. (This may also reflect my tendency to "go overboard" when I set myself a particular task, channeling a great deal of energy and activity into the chosen are of hard work — for instance, I'm starting to think I may be overdoing it a bit with this chart analysis!) Interestingly, Tompkins connects the Mars-Saturn aspect with tasks that require a lot of discipline and control along with physical strength and effort — among these, she mentions blacksmithing, one of the three skills ruled over by Brigid. The connection between smithcraft and transmutation/transformation found in Her nature may reflect to some extent Mars trine Saturn-Pluto in my chart. (I want to come back later to this issue of what insights astrology might be able to give us into our gods.)
The last theme is a double emphasis on the relationship between Letter 9 and Letter 11 — Uranus in Sagittarius conjunct Jupiter. Here, Jupiter (9) is in close aspect with Uranus (11), while Uranus (11) is in Sagittarius (9). This suggests that Jupiter will be influenced by the energies of Uranus, while Uranus is also tempered and toned by the energies of Jupiter (ruler of Sagittarius). Jupiter is characterized by grace, expansion/expansiveness, trust and faith in a larger order or meaning, and its influence describes how we strive to grow, improve ourselves and where we seek confidence and our sense of grace. Uranus is characterized by freedom, independence, experimentation, originality and creativity, and describes how we differentiate ourselves from others and establish our uniqueness and individuality. The Jupiter-Uranus relationship suggests that my faith and experience of grace will be charged with a sense of freedom and affirmation of my individuality, and I may express this faith in unconventional or experimental ways. There is also a sense that the urge towards originality and creativity will be expansive and pervasive in my life.
Tompkins suggests that the Jupiter-Uranus aspect is defined largely by its tendency towards radical, fringe or unorthodox religious and/or political traditions and beliefs. This results from the relationship between faith, associated with Jupiter, and Uranus's association with truth. In this aspect, there is an urge to bring faith and the search for meaning into closer alignment or attunement with truth (as opposed to allowing the need for faith to overrule truth, as in fundamentalism, or the search for truth to undermine faith, as in nihilism/cynicism, I guess?). This aspect also reflects the importance of seeking faith in "personal truths" and often involved resisting or leaving a mainstream or orthodox religious or political tradition. There's not much more to elaborate on here, since this pretty much nails it. My choice to leave Catholicism (with its emphasis on tradition and the authority of the Church) and my involvement in Paganism (with its emphasis on plurality, diversity, freedom and creativity, especially creative ritual) reflect this theme strongly.
Further notes: What's especially interesting to me is that among these three themes emphasized in my chart, the last and arguably least emphasized is the one that is easiest for me to recognize and identify in my own life. This may have something to do with the fact that the aspect is a conjunction that falls within the sign ruled by one of the planets — and that this entire configuration is in the most important, exact and powerful opposition in my entire chart (with Mercury)… perhaps setting up a situation in which these energies are strong and obvious to me as something I have had to grapple with and articulate. The themes expressed in Saturn's and Pluto's trines with Mars are more difficult to pin down, their expressions in my life not so obvious… and this might have to do with the nature of the trine aspect as "soft" or easy, something that does not present a particular challenge and so can be to some extent taken for granted. Since these involve Saturn, however, I do want to examine these themes in more depth, especially as I approach my Saturn Return.
§B Dominant Aspects and Major Configurations
Much of this I already covered in the first part of my analysis, looking at the overall pattern of the chart as a whole. I noted the emphasis on the Gemini-Sagittarius opposition (strengthened by both Mercury and Jupiter falling within their ruling signs, as well as Mercury's exact opposition Uranus and the Sun's near-exact opposition Neptune). There is also a less powerful emphasis on the trine relationship between Gemini and Libra.
I do not have any dominant aspects (such as Grand Trines or T-Squares) in my chart, but I do have three different "groupings" of planets that could arguably be stelliums (depending on the orb). The first and probably most powerful falls within Gemini and involves the conjunction of my Sun and Mars with Mercury close by within the same sign. The second involves the conjunction of Saturn and Pluto with my Ascendent (with the Moon nearby in the same sign) in Libra. The third is Jupiter conjunct Uranus with Neptune nearby in the sign of Sagittarius. The Gemini stellium falls (very) roughly in my 8th house, while the Sagittarius stellium falls (again, very) roughly in my 2nd house; the stellium involving my Ascendent falls primarily within my 1st house but seems to kind of rope in my Moon in the 12th house.
Jeff described the 8th house to me once as the house of "sex, death and initiation" — all things that deal with power and transformation. Arroyo describes this house (a water house) as one of yearning and seeking after security for the soul, possibly through discovering the deepest laws of life (sex and death being two of the most powerful and most essential) as a stable foundation upon which to build a sense of inner peace. Occult studies are also considered to be related tot his house for similar reasons. A stellium in my 8th house (especially one that involves my Sun, though it's right on the cusp and technically in my 9th house) suggests a deep involvement in grappling with issues of power, passion and transformation, coming to terms with and finding peace through right relationship (or release from) desires and compulsions.
The 2nd house (an earth house) is one of material stability and security and might be characterized by a drive for an abundance of resources. This influence can expression itself through financial or material wealth, but is just as likely to involve an essential and deeply meaningful attunement with and appreciation of the natural world as a source of abundance, sustenance and support. A stellium involving a Jupiter-Uranus conjunction in my 2nd house goes even further to clarify my draw towards earth-centered spirituality, as my urge for stability and peace in the physical world is tied up with my sense of grace and trust in a deeper spiritual reality (as well as the desire for individuality and freedom).
I've already spent some time in-depth exploring the implications of Saturn and Pluto influenced by the Martian energies of the 1st house, and later in the analysis will be a particular focus on the Ascendent and any planets in close conjunction, so I'll forgo that analysis for now.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Diary - Dream & Manannan
Sun: taurus (fixed earth), 6:03am - 8:30pm
Moon: *full moon, scorpio (fixed water)
Earth: gray, drizzly, rainy and cool all day
I woke up this morning (around 5 AM) from a very intense dream once again involving a sea god or man deeply connected with the sea, who I'm almost sure is Manannan.
This dream started out as similar to a dream I had a few weeks ago focused on anxiety about the upcoming wedding. In this dream, like the first wedding dream, I was stressed out about the wedding happening "too soon" and thus our wedding guests not taking it seriously — but "too soon" in the dream meant not our set wedding date in September, but right now, this instant. In the dream, I was not engaged to Jeff but to some other man. I don't think I ever saw him in the dream, but I had an impression of him being shorter and stockier than Jeff, darker in hair and complexion and rather rough and harsh. I was set to marry him "in May" (in other words, within the next few weeks), and I was somewhere resembling something like a beach house with my parents and a number of other people, some of whom were my family members and some not.
While there, I met a man and fell passionately in love with him, in the kind of deep-longing-to-be-together-but-never-really-consummating kind of way. The magnetism or connection between us was palpable, as it was in my previous dream about being mistaken for a priestess of the sea god. I felt like my heart was breaking open, but not exactly in sadness. We spent time together on the beach, and during the course of our conversations it became clear that if I tried to enter into some kind of friendship or relationship with him — even if it could not be a romantic one — this would fundamentally change my relationship with my fiancé. I wanted desperately to delay the wedding until the appropriate time (in September) so that I could spend the next months exploring my connection with this man of the sea, and I knew that if I did that, then the man I eventually married would be changed — I would not marry the dark, short, stocky man that I might marry "in May," but would instead end up marrying Jeff as I actually know him — but this was not because the person I was marrying would literally change and I would marry someone else… it was as though the darker man would somehow transform into Jeff through my relationship with the sea god.
This was all very confusing, but I knew that I wanted to explore the relationship with the mysterious man that I felt such a connection to. Still, I couldn't bring myself to let my family know or tell anyone, so I just tried to think of reasons to delay the wedding. I would meet him covertly, among other friends, as though he just happened to be a mutual acquaintance. Once, when out swimming in the ocean, he caught up to me in the deep waters where we could be alone. He said he had a gift for me, then dove down into the depths, not resurfacing for a long time. When he did finally resurface, he was pulling up from beneath the waters a huge ship, its wood creaking and spilling water from it. Friends from shore saw the boat and came out to see, so that soon everyone was clambering on board to explore (while I still stayed treading water next to him in the ocean). On one part of the deck of the ship was a hole in the boards which was covered over and seemed almost to be surrounded by dirt mounded up with bits of grass growing around it. It looked very much like a well of some kind, like you might find on land. Someone asked about it, and the sea-god-man warned them not to open it — they thought it was just a hatch down below deck, but he said (or made me to understand, at least) that it wasn't. Actually, it was a well, a kind of portal that dropped straight down into the depths of the ocean/underworld. He made me to understand that I could stay and live with him on the ship out on the ocean, but even there, I couldn't always be with him. Everyone once in a while, he would have to open the cover of the well and drop down into the very depths, where I could not follow him, and we would be parted. The notion of being parted from him was painful, but in a way that seemed like a noble sacrifice that was well worth it.
Soon after understanding the purpose of the well on the ship, I woke up.
So a great deal to mull over and contemplate in this latest dream (including the question of why I seem to be able to connect with Manannan so much better in dreams than during my ritual times with hi — or, I guess, why he chooses to show up at one time instead of another).
Part of what fed into this dream, I think, was my emotional state last night, spurred on by (yes, I'm a nerd) finally watching the Doctor Who specials from the year between the end of the fourth season and the beginning of the fifth with the 11th Doctor (that obnoxious actor guy who isn't David Tennant). David Tennant as the Doctor saw me through some pretty brutal, lonely times during those years of solitude and poverty — as well as the first few months of my budding romance with Jeff when we finally met in person for the first time (we spent several nights curled up on the futon watching Doctor Who, and then lapsing into make-out sessions while the TARDIS churned on the DVD menu screen ;). For the two or so years since then, I couldn't bring myself to watch the final episodes of Season Four (when the Doctor definitively loses both Rose and Donna, his best friend) for a second time… until just a few weeks ago when Jeff and I decided to go ahead and do it because we were going to start watching them over again with a friend of ours during a weekly "Night of Doctor Who" get together. Just last night, we watched the Special when the 10th Doctor dies. I cried like a baby. Like, we're talking sobs.
Several hours later, when we were settling into bed, I started crying again in a kind of odd mixture of sobs and laughter…. I can't describe exactly why I was crying, but it wasn't just about some silly TV show. I was remembering who I was during those years of deep, wrenching loneliness, and in some ways, I felt like I was mourning that Alison who had to live through those years. I rarely think about that time of my life these days, and my life now seems full of lots of little stresses and anxieties… and yet, now I am so amazingly happy and grateful that it's almost like I can't really allow myself to fully feel that joy, or I'd just be wandering around like a grinning idiot all the time. So there was this weird, sublime tension between my deep grief for that Alison of memory who is, in some ways, always going to be there, in that past, alone and weeping… and at the same time realizing how utterly ridiculous I was for not opening more fully to the joy of my present life. The only way I coped with those years of heartache was to embrace that loneliness and learn to grieve openly and cleanly, so that grieving became a process of healing and an affirmation of life. Now, I have so much to be grateful and joyful about… and yet I'm busy pushing myself, always striving, and beating myself up for not accomplishing more, not moving my career forward as quickly as I want to, not being as good a stepmom as I want to be, etc. All these stresses that, really, aren't that big a deal. Last night, it was as if I was again that sorrowing Alison of memory, only now I was looking forward at my life today… and laughing at how silly I can be, never cutting myself any slack or letting myself enjoy a rest. The whole metaphor of "regeneration" in the Doctor Who series, and this idea that the new Doctor is not really the same even if he has all the same memories… that's kind of what I felt like. Except, I don't want to forget the sadness and grief and loneliness of who I was before. I want to honor the lessons that sorrow and solitude taught me, and be more present to the very real joy in my life right now.
So before going to bed, I had resolved to develop some meditative/ritual practice to help me cultivate my joy and offer it as a gift, as I once did with my loneliness, to my gods and to Spirit and the Song of the World. I didn't know exactly what kind of practice this would be, but I wanted to pursue it. So it's not that much of a surprise to me that this kind of intense emotional turmoil and catharsis last night brought on dreams once again of Manannan. He always seems connected, for me, to that liminal state between sorrow and joy, grief and gratitude. The longing to be with him — and the wrenching awareness that I can't ever be, not really, not permanently — is a theme in so many relationships in my life (and one reason I think I found the Doctor so resonant and moving as a character). That I'm in a good, happy, stable relationship now doesn't really change that. In some ways, Manannan is reminding me, I think, that even with those we love, there are dark places we cannot touch and depths to which we cannot follow, and that as close as I feel to Jeff, I cannot take our relationship for granted. If I do, then the person I am marrying won't really be Jeff, but some shallower version of him more prone to my projections, more of a stranger than the man I love. But if I work to cultivate my joy and my gratitude and my love, especially in the depths where all becomes liminal and the autumn mists rise, then in the coming months my relationship with Jeff will deepen and blossom even more, and our marriage will truly be one of souls in love. I remember in the dream, understanding that it was important to wait until September, and spend time with this Man of the Sea, so that when the time came for me to marry, my marriage would blessed by the cool mists of autumn.
~
Ellen on the LotS SIG asked what I do during a "Seakeeping" shift with Manannan, so I thought I would share my response to her here.
Moon: *full moon, scorpio (fixed water)
Earth: gray, drizzly, rainy and cool all day
I woke up this morning (around 5 AM) from a very intense dream once again involving a sea god or man deeply connected with the sea, who I'm almost sure is Manannan.
This dream started out as similar to a dream I had a few weeks ago focused on anxiety about the upcoming wedding. In this dream, like the first wedding dream, I was stressed out about the wedding happening "too soon" and thus our wedding guests not taking it seriously — but "too soon" in the dream meant not our set wedding date in September, but right now, this instant. In the dream, I was not engaged to Jeff but to some other man. I don't think I ever saw him in the dream, but I had an impression of him being shorter and stockier than Jeff, darker in hair and complexion and rather rough and harsh. I was set to marry him "in May" (in other words, within the next few weeks), and I was somewhere resembling something like a beach house with my parents and a number of other people, some of whom were my family members and some not.
While there, I met a man and fell passionately in love with him, in the kind of deep-longing-to-be-together-but-never-really-consummating kind of way. The magnetism or connection between us was palpable, as it was in my previous dream about being mistaken for a priestess of the sea god. I felt like my heart was breaking open, but not exactly in sadness. We spent time together on the beach, and during the course of our conversations it became clear that if I tried to enter into some kind of friendship or relationship with him — even if it could not be a romantic one — this would fundamentally change my relationship with my fiancé. I wanted desperately to delay the wedding until the appropriate time (in September) so that I could spend the next months exploring my connection with this man of the sea, and I knew that if I did that, then the man I eventually married would be changed — I would not marry the dark, short, stocky man that I might marry "in May," but would instead end up marrying Jeff as I actually know him — but this was not because the person I was marrying would literally change and I would marry someone else… it was as though the darker man would somehow transform into Jeff through my relationship with the sea god.
This was all very confusing, but I knew that I wanted to explore the relationship with the mysterious man that I felt such a connection to. Still, I couldn't bring myself to let my family know or tell anyone, so I just tried to think of reasons to delay the wedding. I would meet him covertly, among other friends, as though he just happened to be a mutual acquaintance. Once, when out swimming in the ocean, he caught up to me in the deep waters where we could be alone. He said he had a gift for me, then dove down into the depths, not resurfacing for a long time. When he did finally resurface, he was pulling up from beneath the waters a huge ship, its wood creaking and spilling water from it. Friends from shore saw the boat and came out to see, so that soon everyone was clambering on board to explore (while I still stayed treading water next to him in the ocean). On one part of the deck of the ship was a hole in the boards which was covered over and seemed almost to be surrounded by dirt mounded up with bits of grass growing around it. It looked very much like a well of some kind, like you might find on land. Someone asked about it, and the sea-god-man warned them not to open it — they thought it was just a hatch down below deck, but he said (or made me to understand, at least) that it wasn't. Actually, it was a well, a kind of portal that dropped straight down into the depths of the ocean/underworld. He made me to understand that I could stay and live with him on the ship out on the ocean, but even there, I couldn't always be with him. Everyone once in a while, he would have to open the cover of the well and drop down into the very depths, where I could not follow him, and we would be parted. The notion of being parted from him was painful, but in a way that seemed like a noble sacrifice that was well worth it.
Soon after understanding the purpose of the well on the ship, I woke up.
So a great deal to mull over and contemplate in this latest dream (including the question of why I seem to be able to connect with Manannan so much better in dreams than during my ritual times with hi — or, I guess, why he chooses to show up at one time instead of another).
Part of what fed into this dream, I think, was my emotional state last night, spurred on by (yes, I'm a nerd) finally watching the Doctor Who specials from the year between the end of the fourth season and the beginning of the fifth with the 11th Doctor (that obnoxious actor guy who isn't David Tennant). David Tennant as the Doctor saw me through some pretty brutal, lonely times during those years of solitude and poverty — as well as the first few months of my budding romance with Jeff when we finally met in person for the first time (we spent several nights curled up on the futon watching Doctor Who, and then lapsing into make-out sessions while the TARDIS churned on the DVD menu screen ;). For the two or so years since then, I couldn't bring myself to watch the final episodes of Season Four (when the Doctor definitively loses both Rose and Donna, his best friend) for a second time… until just a few weeks ago when Jeff and I decided to go ahead and do it because we were going to start watching them over again with a friend of ours during a weekly "Night of Doctor Who" get together. Just last night, we watched the Special when the 10th Doctor dies. I cried like a baby. Like, we're talking sobs.
Several hours later, when we were settling into bed, I started crying again in a kind of odd mixture of sobs and laughter…. I can't describe exactly why I was crying, but it wasn't just about some silly TV show. I was remembering who I was during those years of deep, wrenching loneliness, and in some ways, I felt like I was mourning that Alison who had to live through those years. I rarely think about that time of my life these days, and my life now seems full of lots of little stresses and anxieties… and yet, now I am so amazingly happy and grateful that it's almost like I can't really allow myself to fully feel that joy, or I'd just be wandering around like a grinning idiot all the time. So there was this weird, sublime tension between my deep grief for that Alison of memory who is, in some ways, always going to be there, in that past, alone and weeping… and at the same time realizing how utterly ridiculous I was for not opening more fully to the joy of my present life. The only way I coped with those years of heartache was to embrace that loneliness and learn to grieve openly and cleanly, so that grieving became a process of healing and an affirmation of life. Now, I have so much to be grateful and joyful about… and yet I'm busy pushing myself, always striving, and beating myself up for not accomplishing more, not moving my career forward as quickly as I want to, not being as good a stepmom as I want to be, etc. All these stresses that, really, aren't that big a deal. Last night, it was as if I was again that sorrowing Alison of memory, only now I was looking forward at my life today… and laughing at how silly I can be, never cutting myself any slack or letting myself enjoy a rest. The whole metaphor of "regeneration" in the Doctor Who series, and this idea that the new Doctor is not really the same even if he has all the same memories… that's kind of what I felt like. Except, I don't want to forget the sadness and grief and loneliness of who I was before. I want to honor the lessons that sorrow and solitude taught me, and be more present to the very real joy in my life right now.
So before going to bed, I had resolved to develop some meditative/ritual practice to help me cultivate my joy and offer it as a gift, as I once did with my loneliness, to my gods and to Spirit and the Song of the World. I didn't know exactly what kind of practice this would be, but I wanted to pursue it. So it's not that much of a surprise to me that this kind of intense emotional turmoil and catharsis last night brought on dreams once again of Manannan. He always seems connected, for me, to that liminal state between sorrow and joy, grief and gratitude. The longing to be with him — and the wrenching awareness that I can't ever be, not really, not permanently — is a theme in so many relationships in my life (and one reason I think I found the Doctor so resonant and moving as a character). That I'm in a good, happy, stable relationship now doesn't really change that. In some ways, Manannan is reminding me, I think, that even with those we love, there are dark places we cannot touch and depths to which we cannot follow, and that as close as I feel to Jeff, I cannot take our relationship for granted. If I do, then the person I am marrying won't really be Jeff, but some shallower version of him more prone to my projections, more of a stranger than the man I love. But if I work to cultivate my joy and my gratitude and my love, especially in the depths where all becomes liminal and the autumn mists rise, then in the coming months my relationship with Jeff will deepen and blossom even more, and our marriage will truly be one of souls in love. I remember in the dream, understanding that it was important to wait until September, and spend time with this Man of the Sea, so that when the time came for me to marry, my marriage would blessed by the cool mists of autumn.
Ellen on the LotS SIG asked what I do during a "Seakeeping" shift with Manannan, so I thought I would share my response to her here.
Honestly, at this point, my practice with Manannan is still in its infancy, taking many stumbling baby-steps. My basic pattern for ritual work is the same I use for Brigid during my Cauldron Cill Flamekeeping shift. I begin my shift at sundown of the appropriate day, opening with a small, simple ritual of welcome.
For Brigid, I have prayers that I use to more fully invite her presence into my life and to charge/consecrate anew the flame pendant that I wear during my Flamekeeping shift. I light a physical candle during this ritual, even if I'll only be able to keep an LED one "burning" during the shift itself, and I pass the pendant above the flames while chanting, "Fire and Water in the Earth of my body, I keep your Sacred Flame." I don't really have a similar thing to do for Manannan, though I've been thinking for a while of finding either a shell pendant to wear, or a ring made of shell (like those hokey ones you can get at beach tourist gift shops). Instead of lighting a candle, I have a blue pitcher that I fill with water which I'll hold between my hands to charge, then pouring libation into my offering bowl (and taking a sip to honor the Spirit/god within). I do have a large whelk shell that was a gift from the sea when I was down at the beach last fall that I also bless. Afterwards, for both Flamekeeping and Seakeeping, I spend some time in meditation and prayer, maybe doing some trance work if I have the stamina for it, and usually concluding the ritual with a divination. During the next 24ish hours, I keep/carry/wear the symbol of my shift with me (and for Brigid, keep either a real or LED flame burning) as a reminder and object of focus for my shift. The next night at sundown, I do a closing ritual where I thank the god/dess for the gifts they've brought into my life, and basically do a kind of "unwinding" (for Brigid, this kind of takes the form of a metaphorical "smooring the fire" for safekeeping until my next shift).
This works very well for Brigid… but I'm finding that for Manannan, it's not jiving as well. For one thing, the metaphor of the flame or fire as something that requires tending (and then can be "smoored") means that the activity of the Flamekeeping shift is actually, well, active, even if only in a metaphorical sense. I feel like I'm actually doing something during my Flamekeeping shift, and usually my creativity feels a bit heightened. During my Seakeeping shifts, though, I've more often felt at a loss for what I was supposed to be doing… There was kind of a sense of the ocean not really being something that needs tending or "keeping," and lighting a candle just feels more active then filling a bowl with water (which will slowly evaporate over the next month, whether I pay attention to it or not). I think this may be one area where I need to rethink the Seakeeping shift and how I approach it. I'm exploring the idea of incorporating some ritual practice that's more about opening myself up to receptivity and relaxing into the presence of Manannan, and not so much about the active engagement and honoring that I do with Brigid during my Flamekeeping… if that makes sense. Some kind of ritual bath would probably be good in this case, but not always possible depending on where I am and what my schedule is.
Like I mentioned already, what I'd really like is to be able to develop some unique rituals for each of the Flamekeeping and Seakeeping shifts, particular to the energies of those deities, but then have one or two practices that I do during both that kind of connect or help to integrate them in some way. (I'm thinking, for instance, of the "Running the Iron/Pearl Pentagrams" in Feri, though I know very little about that other than their names, or the Turning the Three Cauldrons meditation that I've heard about here and there.) So that's where I'm at right now. Trying to find some kind of ritual that is simple enough and practical enough that I can actually commit to doing it regularly… but is also effective and ritually/symbolically meaningful and fitting…. So, lots to think about and experiment with.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Flamekeeping Meditation and Divination
Days of Note: Flamekeeping (begins at sundown), New Wind Tossed Moon
Sun: pisces (water/mutable), 6:48am - 6:16pm
Moon: new moon, pisces (water/mutable)
Earth: warmer and raining all day, with some winds rustling the trees
For a while, I sat quietly in darkness, eyes closed, waiting. For a while, nothing came. I felt my body relax as deeper trance took me and, after wandering in obscurity for a time, I found myself back on the cliffs of my inner landscape, looking east out over the long, silent waters of blue ocean. To my left, along the cliffs edge, the rocks raised to a peak where the huge, ancient Shrine of the Ashless Flame burns, stone bowl carved of the rock of the land, covered with lichen, filled with dew and rain water, over which the ashless flame flickers, a mirror to the sun, a fiery arrow pointing ever upwards.
This was where I first met Brigid in my meditations, here on the edge of the forest that led into my grove, on the highest point, a pinnacle over the sea and woods, reaching towards the sky. I laid offerings and poured libations and sat before the impersonal, eternal flame as it danced in the wind. It was months before I made the connection to Brigid as a goddess — she was, first and always, a primal force, surging upwards from the earth, rising like wellspring and steam and the scent of stone and soil as it rises with the midday sun's heat as the twilight settles in.
All at once, I was hearing her voice again, unprompted, speaking in low, steady, vibrating tones. She spoke of that power, that I have forgotten perhaps too often recently in imagining her as a goddess with body and human shape, a human face. She is, above all, the exaltation, the rising energy and force. She is not a human, but a Person of glory and light and brightness, and also of underground water and sacred sources of healing working in the dark and the mystery.
I felt a resistance to my left, the west, where the edge of the forest seemed to loom dark and thick in my peripheral vision. I turned towards the woods, saw the shadows lurking beneath the tangled branches despite the bright sun overhead. That was the place I must turn to and enter, what had been dwelling on my mind — she seemed to say, and yet, the forest was thick and dark with growth, that green sprawling and spreading and climbing over itself to reach the light that poured out upon them, each leaf finding its place. The darkness was not apart from the light, but an aspect of it, a response to it; the shadows of the forest existed because of it, not in spite of it. It was not Brigid who gifted me the Sword of Light, though she may have had a hand in forging it, nor was it in the light of day that the Sword of Light is used, but in the darkness and the night, in the mysteries and the depths. I know now whose gift the Sword of Light is to give, she told me, and turning I saw again the ocean stretching wide beneath me. Though the sun was intimate and close in its self-giving, impersonal in its distance and brilliance and illumination, the oceans wrap the earth in a surrounding embrace, so very close, dark and deep and intimate and passionate.
What, then, should I do about these flamekeeping shifts? I thought I was meant to know her more personally, but it seemed that she would always be, to some extent, the great fiery arrow, the blaze and glory, the guide and inspiration but also the drive and power — not tame, not ever so intimate or quiet as I had hoped. Should I turn my attention and energy, then, to cultivating that personal relationship with Manannan? Should I stop my flamekeeping shifts and leave the Cill? No, for the perspective and illumination of these moments of seeking her to honor her in her power and impersonal wholeness are also important. Hold these flamekeeping shifts still, but do not expect too much of them. Hold them because you honor that Light, that Flame, not because you expect personal attention or intimacy in return. It is important to remember that not all gods are tame.
What does Brigid ask of me for this Flamekeeping shift?
© Stephanie Pui-Mun Law, The Shadowscape Tarot
(a) Page of Cups - She holds the golden chalice up to gaze within at the stray sunbeams and lost treasures that have sunk into the deep, shining even deep beneath these waters with the warmth and radiance from a far off sun. She is the true romantic, the dreamer of dreams, listening to her intuition and her depth of feeling with all the enraptured attention of a child. Here, there is peace and simplicity, and dreams of sunlight kissing the rocking surface of the waves.
(b) Page of Pentacles - Perched high upon the molded stone, above the curling, sleeping figure of the dragon green and verdant, powers of the earth, its lush fecundity — she holds in her hand the glimmer of invitation and initiative, of opportunities for prosperity and, more importantly, for growth. It is her gift, with her practical nature and her concerns for earthly, earthy matters lightened by her joy in the physical bounty around her. Diligence and rootedness, giving rise to the blossom, the fruit and the seed.
(c) King of Cups - Calm, patient, guardian of the deeps, strength of the sea in both its storm and the slow erosion of its caress, breaking open the rocky shores, opening and smoothing, gently claiming them over eons of murmuring and the dance of the tides. He is a protector and guide, and the quiet strength of mystery and compassion well up from within him like the waters of the ocean from the unimaginable depths, yet as close and intimate as the blood, that private sea, we carry within our own bodies and hearts.
The Story: Each card of Cups faces in towards the center, the Page of Pentacles, which gazes ahead, reaching out her gift before her in offering. This is the Central Destination story, and suggest the ways in which these energies, patterns or people may converge and meet, and what that meeting might lead to. It seems, perhaps, that I am represented by the Page of Cups, who holds a sacred chalice close, gazing deeply into the shining golden light within. I seek to know that sunlight and that warmth — and, as with the Page of Cups, perhaps this gazing and dreaming is an aspect of a romantic longing, a listening to the lessons of my intuition and subconscious. Yet, the Page faces towards the King of Cups, who faces her in return. He, too, holds a chalice, though it seems to be made of silver and does not glow with golden light — it is as if he is offering up the very essence of himself, the depths that are the seas and their dark waters. In some ways, then, it seems this story is one of mutual offering and exchange between myself and the God of the Sea, Manannan, a marriage of patience and strength of ancient seas with the liveliness and voyage-dreams of sun-gilded surface of waves. As a result of this meeting or relationship, the Page of Pentacles offers a gift of initiative and opportunity for growth, a place in which both practicality and levity have their place, or perhaps a chance to bring these gifts to manifestation beyond the realm of emotion and intuition and into the physical world as part of the earth's fertility and creativity.
It seems, then, that Brigid's advice is clear: to give myself over to this relationship with Manannan, to embrace that new meeting, and to carry my own light into that relationship, a light I have received from and learned from her. Doing this will lead not only to a relationship of mutual exchange, but fruitful, concrete results of productivity and initiative as well.
Sun: pisces (water/mutable), 6:48am - 6:16pm
Moon: new moon, pisces (water/mutable)
Earth: warmer and raining all day, with some winds rustling the trees
Meditation
For a while, I sat quietly in darkness, eyes closed, waiting. For a while, nothing came. I felt my body relax as deeper trance took me and, after wandering in obscurity for a time, I found myself back on the cliffs of my inner landscape, looking east out over the long, silent waters of blue ocean. To my left, along the cliffs edge, the rocks raised to a peak where the huge, ancient Shrine of the Ashless Flame burns, stone bowl carved of the rock of the land, covered with lichen, filled with dew and rain water, over which the ashless flame flickers, a mirror to the sun, a fiery arrow pointing ever upwards.
This was where I first met Brigid in my meditations, here on the edge of the forest that led into my grove, on the highest point, a pinnacle over the sea and woods, reaching towards the sky. I laid offerings and poured libations and sat before the impersonal, eternal flame as it danced in the wind. It was months before I made the connection to Brigid as a goddess — she was, first and always, a primal force, surging upwards from the earth, rising like wellspring and steam and the scent of stone and soil as it rises with the midday sun's heat as the twilight settles in.
All at once, I was hearing her voice again, unprompted, speaking in low, steady, vibrating tones. She spoke of that power, that I have forgotten perhaps too often recently in imagining her as a goddess with body and human shape, a human face. She is, above all, the exaltation, the rising energy and force. She is not a human, but a Person of glory and light and brightness, and also of underground water and sacred sources of healing working in the dark and the mystery.
I felt a resistance to my left, the west, where the edge of the forest seemed to loom dark and thick in my peripheral vision. I turned towards the woods, saw the shadows lurking beneath the tangled branches despite the bright sun overhead. That was the place I must turn to and enter, what had been dwelling on my mind — she seemed to say, and yet, the forest was thick and dark with growth, that green sprawling and spreading and climbing over itself to reach the light that poured out upon them, each leaf finding its place. The darkness was not apart from the light, but an aspect of it, a response to it; the shadows of the forest existed because of it, not in spite of it. It was not Brigid who gifted me the Sword of Light, though she may have had a hand in forging it, nor was it in the light of day that the Sword of Light is used, but in the darkness and the night, in the mysteries and the depths. I know now whose gift the Sword of Light is to give, she told me, and turning I saw again the ocean stretching wide beneath me. Though the sun was intimate and close in its self-giving, impersonal in its distance and brilliance and illumination, the oceans wrap the earth in a surrounding embrace, so very close, dark and deep and intimate and passionate.
What, then, should I do about these flamekeeping shifts? I thought I was meant to know her more personally, but it seemed that she would always be, to some extent, the great fiery arrow, the blaze and glory, the guide and inspiration but also the drive and power — not tame, not ever so intimate or quiet as I had hoped. Should I turn my attention and energy, then, to cultivating that personal relationship with Manannan? Should I stop my flamekeeping shifts and leave the Cill? No, for the perspective and illumination of these moments of seeking her to honor her in her power and impersonal wholeness are also important. Hold these flamekeeping shifts still, but do not expect too much of them. Hold them because you honor that Light, that Flame, not because you expect personal attention or intimacy in return. It is important to remember that not all gods are tame.
Flamekeeping Divination
What does Brigid ask of me for this Flamekeeping shift?
© Stephanie Pui-Mun Law, The Shadowscape Tarot
(a) Page of Cups - She holds the golden chalice up to gaze within at the stray sunbeams and lost treasures that have sunk into the deep, shining even deep beneath these waters with the warmth and radiance from a far off sun. She is the true romantic, the dreamer of dreams, listening to her intuition and her depth of feeling with all the enraptured attention of a child. Here, there is peace and simplicity, and dreams of sunlight kissing the rocking surface of the waves.
(b) Page of Pentacles - Perched high upon the molded stone, above the curling, sleeping figure of the dragon green and verdant, powers of the earth, its lush fecundity — she holds in her hand the glimmer of invitation and initiative, of opportunities for prosperity and, more importantly, for growth. It is her gift, with her practical nature and her concerns for earthly, earthy matters lightened by her joy in the physical bounty around her. Diligence and rootedness, giving rise to the blossom, the fruit and the seed.
(c) King of Cups - Calm, patient, guardian of the deeps, strength of the sea in both its storm and the slow erosion of its caress, breaking open the rocky shores, opening and smoothing, gently claiming them over eons of murmuring and the dance of the tides. He is a protector and guide, and the quiet strength of mystery and compassion well up from within him like the waters of the ocean from the unimaginable depths, yet as close and intimate as the blood, that private sea, we carry within our own bodies and hearts.
The Story: Each card of Cups faces in towards the center, the Page of Pentacles, which gazes ahead, reaching out her gift before her in offering. This is the Central Destination story, and suggest the ways in which these energies, patterns or people may converge and meet, and what that meeting might lead to. It seems, perhaps, that I am represented by the Page of Cups, who holds a sacred chalice close, gazing deeply into the shining golden light within. I seek to know that sunlight and that warmth — and, as with the Page of Cups, perhaps this gazing and dreaming is an aspect of a romantic longing, a listening to the lessons of my intuition and subconscious. Yet, the Page faces towards the King of Cups, who faces her in return. He, too, holds a chalice, though it seems to be made of silver and does not glow with golden light — it is as if he is offering up the very essence of himself, the depths that are the seas and their dark waters. In some ways, then, it seems this story is one of mutual offering and exchange between myself and the God of the Sea, Manannan, a marriage of patience and strength of ancient seas with the liveliness and voyage-dreams of sun-gilded surface of waves. As a result of this meeting or relationship, the Page of Pentacles offers a gift of initiative and opportunity for growth, a place in which both practicality and levity have their place, or perhaps a chance to bring these gifts to manifestation beyond the realm of emotion and intuition and into the physical world as part of the earth's fertility and creativity.
It seems, then, that Brigid's advice is clear: to give myself over to this relationship with Manannan, to embrace that new meeting, and to carry my own light into that relationship, a light I have received from and learned from her. Doing this will lead not only to a relationship of mutual exchange, but fruitful, concrete results of productivity and initiative as well.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Brigid Star Fire, An Imbolc Meditation
I began in a field, a green expanse full of flowers and bright sunlight unrolling on all sides. A figure danced in green and gold rippling, barely distinguishable at first from the wind shifting and dancing through the long grasses — yet as she moved closer, I was able to make her out. Eyes that flashed black and full of stars, a glimpse here and there in her turning and spiraling of a darkness, glinting cold and dark, then slipping, spinning back into green and gold. The mantle she wore spun out around her as she turned and danced, the colors of its threads flung out like sparks from a fire, leaping, or like flower petals of purple crocuses and myriad colored wildflowers — some falling to the ground to spring up as blossoms from scattered seeds, while others fluttered, took flight as a thousand butterflies flirting with the warm breeze.
So unlikely a scene, in the midst of this cold and bitterly long winter, that it took me a moment to adjust, to sink more deeply into the sense of place and allow myself to enter, to engage, the awakened land. The candle on my altar — the golden fire-in-the-water afloat among golden flecks of glitter in the blue bowl, the flame of transformation and forge fire that marked the opened center way — hissed and sparked as it consumed the offering of butter. On either side, the red candle of fire, poetry and inspiration and the blue candle of water, healing and integration burned steadily in their holders. But my eyes were closed, as I sunk deeper into trance. The green, gold meadow grew more intense in my mind's eye as I slipped down into my true center.
What is this dancing? I asked her, running to keep up as she laughed and twirled. What do you have to teach me, Brigid? Is spring here already? It seems so cold still. She seemed to ignore my half-frantic questions, challenging me with her movements to stay on my toes. Suddenly, she flopped down in the grass like a small girl, giggling, laying on her stomach propped up on her elbows, running her fingers through the grasses and flower blossoms. Her gold-flamed auburn hair fell around her face in braids, and the soles of her bare feet were slightly darkened with the dirt of the earth. I looked more closely at where her fingers were playing and dancing through the rich flora of the meadow. She plucked a white-fuzzed sphere of a dandelion and sat up, cross-legged, and held it up between us for me to examine. "Funny," she mused, "How the same flower that can be so golden and bright as the sun — turns to white, soft fluff carried on the wind when it goes to seed...." She took a deep breath and blew, closing her eyes for a moment as if making a wish. The we both watched as the seeds one by one let loose and drifted like snow across the wide field — some snagging in the nearby grasses and trembling there, others carried far and high until they were lost to our sight against the bright sky. "How much they look like tiny stars!" Brigid exclaimed, and she was on her feet again, running and dancing among the flowers. The field seemed suddenly full of dandelions, most of them golden yellow and bristling with sunshine. When Brigid found one ready to seed, a crystal fuzz-ball of intricate webbing in white, she'd flick it with her toe as she danced past, sending the seeds scattering to the wind.
But, I called out, what about my work? What work should I be doing? I have been so tired, it's so hard for me to work up the energy to stick to a discipline. You are the Goddess of the Forge, of the steady and unglamorous work of transformation! Don't you have any advice for me? She laughed with that laugh that always seems to mean, "You just don't get it, darling!" She continued dancing through the green, sun-bathed fields, calling out behind her, "The dandelion is not always sunny. Sometimes it must go to seed to survive, sometimes it must put down deep roots! Not every season is the season of discipline and work! Things change! I am not just a goddess of transformation — I am also the goddess of inspiration!" As if in response to these words, on my altar the red candle sparked and hissed, and its flame danced in its holder. "Now it's time for you to indulge in some joy, my darling!" Brigid announced, catching me up with her hands and swinging me around trying to urge me to dance. "Now is a time for the joy of inspiration — do what brings you joy, find again the playfulness in yourself. Now is not a time for work — I am sick of work — now is the time to play! As the spring comes and the days warm, play and be joyful! These are your duties now, to dance the spring in, to welcome it as it deserves!"
Her words kept coming, urging me to seek again the source of my joy, to sing my soul-song in playful notes, and set aside my worries about obligation and progress. Moved by her words, I joined her dancing, and together we spiraled and swirled and skipped through the grasses, singing and laughing beneath a high, bright sky. After a time, I asked her, Should I — I mean, you are my goddess. Should I take an oath to you, a formal vow? She scoffed kindly at my question. But others in our group have done so — and I have no doubt in my heart that I am devoted to you... Her dance slowed beside me so that she could gaze more deeply into my eyes. "For others," she said, "An oath is like the spiderweb that connects and weaves them together in my service — and it is on those strands that the jewels of transformation, devotion and inspiration collect like dew. But you — you are already too full of duties and responsibilities, shouldering too much of the world as an obligation. No, you do not need to make any more promises to me that you have not already made. What you need to learn.... is a little bit of joy and freedom!" And with that, we were spinning again, dancing. The red candle on the altar sparked and danced along.
And as the trance deepened, as I slipped in and out of the rhythm of the spiraling dance across the meadow, it seemed that suddenly she caught me up in an embrace full of passion and joy, kissing me deep on the mouth — her breath becoming my breath, sweet and warm with the scent of flowers and greenery in springtime. I opened my arms to embrace her, and found I was embracing nothing but breeze and sunlight, as my body shivered, transfused with a sudden warmth tingling in every cell. She had entered into my body, or merged, or blended — I found myself to now be wearing the lush green robe and mantle hemmed with golden knotwork ribbon weaving its patterns along each edge, and as I spun, it rippled out around me in long undulating waves that seemed the very expression of joy and creativity rooted deep within the earth. The dandelion seeds drifted white around me, and soon the field was full of them, wafting as thick as snow but warm and soft. I found the meadow had grown dark and the seeds drifted upwards to mingle with the stars against the darkness of the night sky. I seemed to hear her voice from within — yet from a great distance — "What you need to learn, child, is how to plant the seeds of joy in your heart and nurture them as they crave. What grows of these — leave that to me...."
Then slipping quickly back, the trance came to an end and I was sitting before my altar again, watching the three flames burning steady and silent in the still air. Dipping my finger in the butter again, I consecrated a fourth candle, a large white pillar in a red-and-orange stained glass hurricane jar. This was to be my flamekeeping candle for the coming year, lit and tended every twenty days during my shift. What promises you have from me are already enough, Brigid? I pray this is so, and that I may keep them dear....
So unlikely a scene, in the midst of this cold and bitterly long winter, that it took me a moment to adjust, to sink more deeply into the sense of place and allow myself to enter, to engage, the awakened land. The candle on my altar — the golden fire-in-the-water afloat among golden flecks of glitter in the blue bowl, the flame of transformation and forge fire that marked the opened center way — hissed and sparked as it consumed the offering of butter. On either side, the red candle of fire, poetry and inspiration and the blue candle of water, healing and integration burned steadily in their holders. But my eyes were closed, as I sunk deeper into trance. The green, gold meadow grew more intense in my mind's eye as I slipped down into my true center.
What is this dancing? I asked her, running to keep up as she laughed and twirled. What do you have to teach me, Brigid? Is spring here already? It seems so cold still. She seemed to ignore my half-frantic questions, challenging me with her movements to stay on my toes. Suddenly, she flopped down in the grass like a small girl, giggling, laying on her stomach propped up on her elbows, running her fingers through the grasses and flower blossoms. Her gold-flamed auburn hair fell around her face in braids, and the soles of her bare feet were slightly darkened with the dirt of the earth. I looked more closely at where her fingers were playing and dancing through the rich flora of the meadow. She plucked a white-fuzzed sphere of a dandelion and sat up, cross-legged, and held it up between us for me to examine. "Funny," she mused, "How the same flower that can be so golden and bright as the sun — turns to white, soft fluff carried on the wind when it goes to seed...." She took a deep breath and blew, closing her eyes for a moment as if making a wish. The we both watched as the seeds one by one let loose and drifted like snow across the wide field — some snagging in the nearby grasses and trembling there, others carried far and high until they were lost to our sight against the bright sky. "How much they look like tiny stars!" Brigid exclaimed, and she was on her feet again, running and dancing among the flowers. The field seemed suddenly full of dandelions, most of them golden yellow and bristling with sunshine. When Brigid found one ready to seed, a crystal fuzz-ball of intricate webbing in white, she'd flick it with her toe as she danced past, sending the seeds scattering to the wind.
But, I called out, what about my work? What work should I be doing? I have been so tired, it's so hard for me to work up the energy to stick to a discipline. You are the Goddess of the Forge, of the steady and unglamorous work of transformation! Don't you have any advice for me? She laughed with that laugh that always seems to mean, "You just don't get it, darling!" She continued dancing through the green, sun-bathed fields, calling out behind her, "The dandelion is not always sunny. Sometimes it must go to seed to survive, sometimes it must put down deep roots! Not every season is the season of discipline and work! Things change! I am not just a goddess of transformation — I am also the goddess of inspiration!" As if in response to these words, on my altar the red candle sparked and hissed, and its flame danced in its holder. "Now it's time for you to indulge in some joy, my darling!" Brigid announced, catching me up with her hands and swinging me around trying to urge me to dance. "Now is a time for the joy of inspiration — do what brings you joy, find again the playfulness in yourself. Now is not a time for work — I am sick of work — now is the time to play! As the spring comes and the days warm, play and be joyful! These are your duties now, to dance the spring in, to welcome it as it deserves!"
Her words kept coming, urging me to seek again the source of my joy, to sing my soul-song in playful notes, and set aside my worries about obligation and progress. Moved by her words, I joined her dancing, and together we spiraled and swirled and skipped through the grasses, singing and laughing beneath a high, bright sky. After a time, I asked her, Should I — I mean, you are my goddess. Should I take an oath to you, a formal vow? She scoffed kindly at my question. But others in our group have done so — and I have no doubt in my heart that I am devoted to you... Her dance slowed beside me so that she could gaze more deeply into my eyes. "For others," she said, "An oath is like the spiderweb that connects and weaves them together in my service — and it is on those strands that the jewels of transformation, devotion and inspiration collect like dew. But you — you are already too full of duties and responsibilities, shouldering too much of the world as an obligation. No, you do not need to make any more promises to me that you have not already made. What you need to learn.... is a little bit of joy and freedom!" And with that, we were spinning again, dancing. The red candle on the altar sparked and danced along.
And as the trance deepened, as I slipped in and out of the rhythm of the spiraling dance across the meadow, it seemed that suddenly she caught me up in an embrace full of passion and joy, kissing me deep on the mouth — her breath becoming my breath, sweet and warm with the scent of flowers and greenery in springtime. I opened my arms to embrace her, and found I was embracing nothing but breeze and sunlight, as my body shivered, transfused with a sudden warmth tingling in every cell. She had entered into my body, or merged, or blended — I found myself to now be wearing the lush green robe and mantle hemmed with golden knotwork ribbon weaving its patterns along each edge, and as I spun, it rippled out around me in long undulating waves that seemed the very expression of joy and creativity rooted deep within the earth. The dandelion seeds drifted white around me, and soon the field was full of them, wafting as thick as snow but warm and soft. I found the meadow had grown dark and the seeds drifted upwards to mingle with the stars against the darkness of the night sky. I seemed to hear her voice from within — yet from a great distance — "What you need to learn, child, is how to plant the seeds of joy in your heart and nurture them as they crave. What grows of these — leave that to me...."
Then slipping quickly back, the trance came to an end and I was sitting before my altar again, watching the three flames burning steady and silent in the still air. Dipping my finger in the butter again, I consecrated a fourth candle, a large white pillar in a red-and-orange stained glass hurricane jar. This was to be my flamekeeping candle for the coming year, lit and tended every twenty days during my shift. What promises you have from me are already enough, Brigid? I pray this is so, and that I may keep them dear....
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