I realize I never wrote up about the last two nights of my three night vigil.
Night Two (Friday night, August 17) was a quick and somewhat impromptu meditation quite late (it may have even been technically Saturday morning by the time I got to it, after hanging out with Leah reading Pratchett and watching a couple episodes of the IT Crowd). I didn't do a full formal ritual circle as I'd done the night before, but simply lit Sorta*'s candle and spent some time in silent meditation before drawing a card from the Oracle deck and then spending a bit longer meditating on its meaning.
The card I drew was the Hunter of Gifts — and my half-sober meditations seemed to revolve mostly around the subtle paradox of being a "hunter" of gifts, how this phrase seems to capture the paradox of our relationship with the gods, the delicate blending and balance of work and grace (to put it in more Catholic theological terms), or action and receptivity, effort and acceptance. I have never gone hunting in a literal sense, but I've heard stories about the long hours spent waiting quietly in the woods, moving gently through the trees trying to be unobtrusive as possible, how our ancestors sometimes had to stalk prey for days.... And the sudden appearance of the animal, when it finally arrived, could seem like a gift. A gift is a gift precisely because it is not earned or deserved or exchanged tit-for-tat... it is simply given, freely.
I found this particularly poignant because on this night, I had another object on the altar besides the Oracle deck, the candle and the water (which I drank, as before, to honor and bring into myself the energies of the divination and meditation).... a pendant that is an abstract depiction of a bow and arrow. It seemed a powerful omen that I would draw a card depicting a hunter on this night. (The night before, when I'd drawn the Shaman of Courage card, I'd had a piece of ritual wear that I plan to consecrate to Sorta* for shamanic/journey work on the altar, one that has ties to the deer/stag, which I always invite into the circle with an invocation of its strength and courage.)
Night Three (Saturday, August 18), once again I did a full clearing and blessing of the space while burning incense, lighting the candle with a prayer to Sorta* after some time in meditation. This time, along with the deck, candle, water and incense on the altar, I had another pendant, this one of a bear's paw print, along with Jeff's bear fetish that he allowed me to use. The card I drew during divination was the Shaman of Stars. Using the recorded drumming, I did some journeywork on the meaning of this energy (again, a good synchronicity that on the night I work with the bear's energy, which I've often invoked as "great starry bear" associated with the constellations of Ursa Major and Minor in the northern sky, I would draw a shaman card of the stars)...
Again, I entered into the hollowed cedar and found myself following a spiraling stairwell deep down into the earth. The stairwell itself had close, cool walls of bluish stone studded with "stars" that shone white and gold in the dark and which, on closer look, were various gems and diamonds. At the bottom of the spiral stairwell was a rounded, wooden door on which the image of the Shaman of Stars appeared. I reached out to touch the image, and at my touch the door swung open, giving way to a night scene of green, rolling hills under a star-studded and moonlit sky. I recognized this place as the same hillside I'd seen in meditation more than a year ago when seeking insight from Brigid about her role in my life and my role in hers. The image I'd received then was of me dancing beneath the moon and starlight off alone in ecstasy, while others gathered around a bonfire off in the distance sharing stories and laughing together. I remember feeling a protest in me about how this personal worship, away from the eyes of others, did not seem to me to be what being a "priestess" to the gods was about (I thought instead it was about serving the community and being in the public eye) and how I was chided for that attitude, reminded that tapping into my own deep relationship with the gods was the source of any "priestessing" I would be doing and that I needed to let go of my worry about others' expectations and opinions when it came to that work. This time, there was no one else on the hilltop beneath the starlight.... at least at first. Then I saw a movement, almost like a disturbance in the air, and there was the Shaman of Stars on the hillside, reaching up to pick stars out of the sky like fruit and bringing them down to the earth. He was tall, huge really, and his head seemed to be of an animal nature, with a snout, and he seemed to have antlers, though they were invisible, in which the net of stars would sometimes snag and shiver with the movement of his head so that the stars themselves glimmered. I approached him hesitantly, watching him awhile as he plucked the stars. Then he handed me one — it was cool and light, not heavy, though it was about the size of my fist, with many gleaming facets. I wasn't sure what to do with it, but had the impulse to eat it, so I put it to my mouth. Some rational part of my mind must have objected to eating something hard as a diamond, for I found that I had to crunch it with my teeth, and it shattered into a million tiny shards, like glitter, that I swallowed down with some degree of trepidation and even horror. But as I swallowed, I could feel the shards embedding themselves within me all along my throat and in my chest, sinking into my flesh, passing into my bloodstream and being passed throughout my body until I was shining and glistening on the inside. The heat of my body seemed to melt them somewhat, so that they were wet and almost like liquid. At the drumming call back, I thanked the Shaman of Stars and turned to return through the door and back up the spiral stairwell.
Of all the nights' meditations, this is the one I'm least sure of — the journey work on courage seemed to have some clear and obvious symbolism, the red-mud paint and the dancing naked by the bonfire.... This seemed to be the counterbalance to that night's work, all darkness and starlight and a kind of being anointed on the inside, by eating the star, rather than on the outside with bodypaint like blood. There are also obvious ties back to my work with Brigid, so that I feel that this is also about bringing the gifts of my past relationship with her into this new work that I'm doing. (The Libra-ascendant in me is all ready to be giddy: oooh! a sun goddess and a moon goddess! how balanced! ::headdesk::)
I had intended to complete these vigils with a ritual of integration on the new moon night (Sunday), but decided it wasn't quite the right time. Jeff and I did go out again to Tiger Mountain, where I spent some time in meditation in a small cave among the Talus Rocks, surrounded by rock and root, soil and sky. Obviously, since then, I've had a couple of rough days with inexplicable crankiness — today, though, I'm feeling more enthusiastic and energetic. I'm thinking perhaps that I'll do some work tomorrow night, on the sixth night of the moon, which is also a day of importance to this goddess.
Random discovery yesterday while surfing online: the western (or Pacific) red cedar is not a true cedar, but is actually a member of the cypress family. This is also pretty intriguing, since I've had an intuitive sense of connection with the western red cedar ever since arriving here in Seattle, and it turns out that the cypress is a tree considered sacred to the goddess I am calling Sorta*. Interesting....
Showing posts with label priesthood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label priesthood. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Dark Moon Vigil: Nights 2 and 3
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Diary - Dream
Sun: pisces (water/mutable), 7:07am - 6:01pm
Moon: waning gibbous, libra (air/cardinal)
Earth: early in the morning, still, but the weather forecast is calling for a chill, gray day with chances of a rain-snow mix later this evening
Last night, I had several intense dreams about the ocean, one after another as I woke and then fell back into sleep again. The first were more mundane — images of being at the beach, waves rolling, strolling along the sands, sun shining down — I suspect because high winds recently have sounded very much like waves during the night, and we're also reading a book at the moment that takes place by the ocean, though it's a rocky coast in Cornwall. A bit later, the dreams became more erotic in nature, with Jeff and I racing along the sands, chasing one another, catching one another up in passionate embraces and rolling, tumbling along in our lovemaking. (You can tell these were dreams, because the sand wasn't a bit irritating!) During this dream, there was at least one scene that took place in a kind of hotel room or small apartment furnished with lush décor and rich colors. Out one window, a scene stretched away far below (as though I was looking from the tenth story of a building) of rolling dunes and hills tumbling up over themselves into mountains — yet, facing the other direction, the room opened up onto the beach itself, right at sea level, the walls and floor slowly fading, giving way to sand and horizon, the ceiling stretching out and out like an awning that eventually became a drape of cloth that could be pulled away. The apartment had a sense of being cozy and enclosed within, and yet there was no discernible break between inside and outside where it met the waters running up the shore.
After waking up from this dream in very early morning, about two hours before sunrise, I fell back asleep to have another dream about the ocean, even more intense than the last. In this, the ocean's size seemed magnified, the waves huge and deep, harboring enormous sea creatures like whales incredibly close to shore, their slick, dark backs arching up out of the blue waters as they leapt and splashed. Above the ocean on the horizon, it seemed there was a god — the god of the sea himself — who would pull away and withdraw like an outgoing tide, and when he did, there seemed to be this great, overwhelming noise of... gathering, gathering in, not a sucking exactly, but a rumbling, gathering cacophony among the clouds, and in the sky there appeared a kind of expanding sphere of inward-collapsing cloud and light that pinched in, almost the way an hour glass might, or a funnel, as sand slowly drains from the top — the faster it falls away, the larger the sinking hole around it becomes. This sphere of pinched, withdrawing sky seemed to undergo a color shift, along with the terrible, tremendous noise, that shaded it the colors of sunset — reds and oranges and rose into deeper blushed-purples.
I witnessed this happening twice, standing within the lushly-furnished room from the dream before, and after the second time, once the sphere collapsed and the great noise was replaced by sudden silence, it seemed the sky turned into paper confetti, bits of cloud shredded up and falling, drifting down in bits of white curls of thin paper, and other pieces of sky in huge, flat papery circles that were on one side the colors of sunset and on the other side the bright blues of a sunny day, these circles that drifted and fluttered down past the windows, some of them five or six feet across. Of course, the sky itself was still there, it wasn't as though the paper confetti was the sky itself — only, bits of the sky that fluttered down after the noise and change in the sky had ended.
After this second time, the sea god returned to the room, which seemed to be his room or temple in some way, and he was in human form, or at least, that was the impression I had, or that he left. I had been with someone else, an older woman, in the room, but she was gone now and there was only me. I remember the vague sense of intrigue and accident, as though I were not supposed to be there and it seemed the sea god mistook me for someone else in how he greeted me with familiarity and intimacy (though at another level, it seemed to me that he must know who I really was and that there was no mistake, for he was a god, after all, and had to know these things). I was wearing garments of shimmering, sheer, sparkling blue and green in the flowing robes of a priestess, and he came to me as his priestess and drew me down beneath him and we began with an embrace, touching and caressing each other, our mouths searching each others' out. His body felt as heavy and wide as the ocean.
Through this intimacy, I could feel a sense of mystery flooding me, overwhelming me, the mysteries of the ocean that were only known and kept by his true priestesses. And because I was not a true priestess of his, I felt that rush of power and revelation and eager excitement, but also a kind of growing, intense fear as though I might drown. He could sense it, too, and seemed suddenly to realize that I was not his priestess (though, again, it seemed he had known this in some way all along) — and he pulled away, and we parted. He disappeared, went off again somewhere I did not know, and I was alone for a while in the room, thinking on the experience and the mysteries I had barely glimpsed. Watching out over the sea from the room where I sat, I could see the deep waters roiling, the winds above them pacing back and forth and churning up whitecaps — the sea seemed restless and an expression of his restlessness and reckless energy stirred up by our embrace. There was about the whole scene a kind of uncertainty about how to proceed, and a sense that I had "gone too deep" already to turn back now, and that once having glimpsed the mysteries I had to commit myself to pushing forward, moving on to become a priestess myself. As though a seed of mystery had been planted in me that I would have to honor and nurture, or it would one day rise up suddenly to drown me nonetheless.
I forget exactly how the dream ended, but I think he came to me one last time. I had walked out of the room and onto the open beach beneath the sun, bare feet teasing along the edges of the waves lapping up the shore. There he returned, found me again, and walked with me for a while. I don't remember what we spoke of, or if we spoke. The dream just faded away, with no real ending or conclusion, only a strong sense of his presence there by the ocean, and an intense longing almost more powerful than I could bare to touch him again, to be with him — a longing I felt echoed and returned from him.
Honestly, I'm not sure what to make of this dream. I have always had intense dreams about the sea, and maybe that's all this is: a combination of memories of the ocean stirred up by the book we're reading, and some sexual desire, and some other emotional tides. On the other hand, I have also felt drawn to the Celtic sea god Manannan (or, in Welsh, Manawyddan) for quite a time, now, and that draw has always held a sense of the erotic in it in some way, as he has seemed to me in meditations not as an old man, but as younger, wilder, both more playful and more dangerous. I wonder if this dream is a call from him to take seriously the invitation to become his priestess.
Yet at the same time, I find myself resisting that call, if that's what it is. I am so far away from the ocean here, it seems impossible to be a priestess of a sea god landlocked surrounded by hills and mountains! Not to mention, I'm not sure how I would handle that relationship and my relationship with Brigid Star Fire — after years of practice being monotheistic, I feel at most comfortable with the idea of henotheism: belief in many gods, but devotion to just one. I'm not sure how I could possible be a priestess of two gods, when both could make such a claim on me. I feel as though, to go deeply into the mysteries, I would have to be devoted primarily, if not exclusively, to one alone. How would I handle my daily devotional work to balance a relationship with more than one god? How would I work with each in ritual — would they work together in a single ritual, is there any basis in the lore for such a thing, would they be compatible, would they expect rituals devoted solely to them for each of the holy days, or more?
In my astrology, Neptune is opposite my sun, and forms a great triangle along with Saturn and Pluto conjunct. The watery connection of the moon, too, plays a part, and I had already been talking to Jeff about setting up a schedule of regular meditation and journaling in preparation for my upcoming Saturn Return. I was even planning on doing another journal entry today or tomorrow to explain the details of this work, since my first meditation is scheduled for tomorrow (and then approximately once a month when the moon is conjunct Saturn both in the sky and in my natal chart). Perhaps I am meant to work with Manannan as a guide to my Saturn Return in some way. He is considered by some to be a kind of psychopomp figure, a guider of souls back and forth between the mists of the world, across the sea into the west and the Otherworld.
As my first Saturn meditation is scheduled for tomorrow, I'll look into it then, I think. For now, I wanted to record this dream, since it was so very strange and intense.
Moon: waning gibbous, libra (air/cardinal)
Earth: early in the morning, still, but the weather forecast is calling for a chill, gray day with chances of a rain-snow mix later this evening
Last night, I had several intense dreams about the ocean, one after another as I woke and then fell back into sleep again. The first were more mundane — images of being at the beach, waves rolling, strolling along the sands, sun shining down — I suspect because high winds recently have sounded very much like waves during the night, and we're also reading a book at the moment that takes place by the ocean, though it's a rocky coast in Cornwall. A bit later, the dreams became more erotic in nature, with Jeff and I racing along the sands, chasing one another, catching one another up in passionate embraces and rolling, tumbling along in our lovemaking. (You can tell these were dreams, because the sand wasn't a bit irritating!) During this dream, there was at least one scene that took place in a kind of hotel room or small apartment furnished with lush décor and rich colors. Out one window, a scene stretched away far below (as though I was looking from the tenth story of a building) of rolling dunes and hills tumbling up over themselves into mountains — yet, facing the other direction, the room opened up onto the beach itself, right at sea level, the walls and floor slowly fading, giving way to sand and horizon, the ceiling stretching out and out like an awning that eventually became a drape of cloth that could be pulled away. The apartment had a sense of being cozy and enclosed within, and yet there was no discernible break between inside and outside where it met the waters running up the shore.
After waking up from this dream in very early morning, about two hours before sunrise, I fell back asleep to have another dream about the ocean, even more intense than the last. In this, the ocean's size seemed magnified, the waves huge and deep, harboring enormous sea creatures like whales incredibly close to shore, their slick, dark backs arching up out of the blue waters as they leapt and splashed. Above the ocean on the horizon, it seemed there was a god — the god of the sea himself — who would pull away and withdraw like an outgoing tide, and when he did, there seemed to be this great, overwhelming noise of... gathering, gathering in, not a sucking exactly, but a rumbling, gathering cacophony among the clouds, and in the sky there appeared a kind of expanding sphere of inward-collapsing cloud and light that pinched in, almost the way an hour glass might, or a funnel, as sand slowly drains from the top — the faster it falls away, the larger the sinking hole around it becomes. This sphere of pinched, withdrawing sky seemed to undergo a color shift, along with the terrible, tremendous noise, that shaded it the colors of sunset — reds and oranges and rose into deeper blushed-purples.
I witnessed this happening twice, standing within the lushly-furnished room from the dream before, and after the second time, once the sphere collapsed and the great noise was replaced by sudden silence, it seemed the sky turned into paper confetti, bits of cloud shredded up and falling, drifting down in bits of white curls of thin paper, and other pieces of sky in huge, flat papery circles that were on one side the colors of sunset and on the other side the bright blues of a sunny day, these circles that drifted and fluttered down past the windows, some of them five or six feet across. Of course, the sky itself was still there, it wasn't as though the paper confetti was the sky itself — only, bits of the sky that fluttered down after the noise and change in the sky had ended.
After this second time, the sea god returned to the room, which seemed to be his room or temple in some way, and he was in human form, or at least, that was the impression I had, or that he left. I had been with someone else, an older woman, in the room, but she was gone now and there was only me. I remember the vague sense of intrigue and accident, as though I were not supposed to be there and it seemed the sea god mistook me for someone else in how he greeted me with familiarity and intimacy (though at another level, it seemed to me that he must know who I really was and that there was no mistake, for he was a god, after all, and had to know these things). I was wearing garments of shimmering, sheer, sparkling blue and green in the flowing robes of a priestess, and he came to me as his priestess and drew me down beneath him and we began with an embrace, touching and caressing each other, our mouths searching each others' out. His body felt as heavy and wide as the ocean.
Through this intimacy, I could feel a sense of mystery flooding me, overwhelming me, the mysteries of the ocean that were only known and kept by his true priestesses. And because I was not a true priestess of his, I felt that rush of power and revelation and eager excitement, but also a kind of growing, intense fear as though I might drown. He could sense it, too, and seemed suddenly to realize that I was not his priestess (though, again, it seemed he had known this in some way all along) — and he pulled away, and we parted. He disappeared, went off again somewhere I did not know, and I was alone for a while in the room, thinking on the experience and the mysteries I had barely glimpsed. Watching out over the sea from the room where I sat, I could see the deep waters roiling, the winds above them pacing back and forth and churning up whitecaps — the sea seemed restless and an expression of his restlessness and reckless energy stirred up by our embrace. There was about the whole scene a kind of uncertainty about how to proceed, and a sense that I had "gone too deep" already to turn back now, and that once having glimpsed the mysteries I had to commit myself to pushing forward, moving on to become a priestess myself. As though a seed of mystery had been planted in me that I would have to honor and nurture, or it would one day rise up suddenly to drown me nonetheless.
I forget exactly how the dream ended, but I think he came to me one last time. I had walked out of the room and onto the open beach beneath the sun, bare feet teasing along the edges of the waves lapping up the shore. There he returned, found me again, and walked with me for a while. I don't remember what we spoke of, or if we spoke. The dream just faded away, with no real ending or conclusion, only a strong sense of his presence there by the ocean, and an intense longing almost more powerful than I could bare to touch him again, to be with him — a longing I felt echoed and returned from him.
Honestly, I'm not sure what to make of this dream. I have always had intense dreams about the sea, and maybe that's all this is: a combination of memories of the ocean stirred up by the book we're reading, and some sexual desire, and some other emotional tides. On the other hand, I have also felt drawn to the Celtic sea god Manannan (or, in Welsh, Manawyddan) for quite a time, now, and that draw has always held a sense of the erotic in it in some way, as he has seemed to me in meditations not as an old man, but as younger, wilder, both more playful and more dangerous. I wonder if this dream is a call from him to take seriously the invitation to become his priestess.
Yet at the same time, I find myself resisting that call, if that's what it is. I am so far away from the ocean here, it seems impossible to be a priestess of a sea god landlocked surrounded by hills and mountains! Not to mention, I'm not sure how I would handle that relationship and my relationship with Brigid Star Fire — after years of practice being monotheistic, I feel at most comfortable with the idea of henotheism: belief in many gods, but devotion to just one. I'm not sure how I could possible be a priestess of two gods, when both could make such a claim on me. I feel as though, to go deeply into the mysteries, I would have to be devoted primarily, if not exclusively, to one alone. How would I handle my daily devotional work to balance a relationship with more than one god? How would I work with each in ritual — would they work together in a single ritual, is there any basis in the lore for such a thing, would they be compatible, would they expect rituals devoted solely to them for each of the holy days, or more?
In my astrology, Neptune is opposite my sun, and forms a great triangle along with Saturn and Pluto conjunct. The watery connection of the moon, too, plays a part, and I had already been talking to Jeff about setting up a schedule of regular meditation and journaling in preparation for my upcoming Saturn Return. I was even planning on doing another journal entry today or tomorrow to explain the details of this work, since my first meditation is scheduled for tomorrow (and then approximately once a month when the moon is conjunct Saturn both in the sky and in my natal chart). Perhaps I am meant to work with Manannan as a guide to my Saturn Return in some way. He is considered by some to be a kind of psychopomp figure, a guider of souls back and forth between the mists of the world, across the sea into the west and the Otherworld.
As my first Saturn meditation is scheduled for tomorrow, I'll look into it then, I think. For now, I wanted to record this dream, since it was so very strange and intense.
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