The Tao of Imbolc: Dance and Flow

Lately I've been minding the Tao, that beautiful, ancient Eastern observance of ebb and flow, Yin and Yang, resistance and yielding, sinking and rising. I've been minding it by reading about it via Alan Watt's The Watercourse Way; by  incorporating the vinyasa of movement-with-breath in my Yoga practice, and by adding some simple Qi Gong to my weekly practices.

When you look at the world through a different window, you still see the same world, but you certainly see a different view, and that's the value of looking out different windows. Alan Watts posits that Western language (unlike many others) predisposes our brains toward pinning things down concretely, labeling them, and establishing their IS-ness. So, we get concepts such as "Imbolc is here." "Spring is here." "This is a sacred day." These standing waves of fixedness. We can then build a chart and describe what Imbolc is: the meaning of name - probably "ewe's milk." Historical references: the ewes begin to give birth to baby lambs. The days are longer. In some places, there's a little bit of ice melt. Associated Deities: Brigit. Candles, fire, flame, etc.

We can go on is'ing until we think we know the thing, until, like the naturalists of the 19th century who killed in order to explore life, we've pinned down the wings of this particular butterfly and have analyzed its patterns of color and migration and eating and cocooning and mating and breeding habits. And when we've figured out how it fits in with all our other is-nesses, the other butterflies and moths and winged creatures of the Air. 

And we end up with a lot of facts and a dead butterfly.

This morning I contemplated Imbolc by thinking the days are longer. And then I wondered: what  does that mean, really? And I saw our Earth-Lady from space, all green and blue and white and brown,dancing gracefully around the Sun, Her partner. Our seasons results from the flow of this long dance. The holiday-tide and the lengthening light arre simply moments when we notice one step flowing into the next. 

The astrological glyph associated with Imbolc is the double-wave of Aquarius, the Water-Bearer whose jar flows forth water, electricity, milk, semen, inspiration, any flow, any wave. 

Today I recast my practice to honor the flow and the dance, by moving my whole body into invoking pentagrams, by honoring and invoking the Elements with the tides of my breath, the buzz of my nerve endings, the pulse of my blood and lymph, the mass of my flesh and bones. The pentagrams transformed from stars into flowers and then back to stars, and the space around me transformed from a gentle chaos of the Elements unorganized into a gentle cosmos of the Elements organized .... and then, upon release, back into the background of un-Being, like a butterfly briefly alighting onto my hand, and then floating away. In a dance.

Shit They Don't Tell You In Books, Part 2: Traditions, Egregore, and Magickal Current

My colleague, Spanish Moss, posted an excellent blog recently about "Traditions" - magicko-religious affiliation groups in the "Pagan" vein. Everyone should go read it now. Seriously, you should, because it will help you understand this blog better.

Everything Spanish Moss said is factual and true, but more can be said. In reality, not all "Traditions" are equal, and I don't mean characteristics of practice such as circle-casting techniques or pantheon relationships. No, I mean the internal, unseen, energetic underpinning of a Tradition along with its deeper relationships to Deity and Mythos, all of which go into making that powerful and mysterious concept we call egregore.

The Gardnerian Tradition has been around for at least sixty years and perhaps more, depending on if you believe Gardner made it all up or found/added to/adapted some pre-existing practices. The Alexandrian Tradition has been around for nearly fifty. They've had thousands of initiates and hundreds, perhaps 1000+ of solid practitioners who are working the same core material for decades.  They also have a simple Deity structure that is stable. That's a lot of man-hours of practice. That's a lot of people tied to their respective egregores -- which, it might be said, is conceivably part of a larger egregore called "British Traditional Wicca." That's a lot of Third Degrees and Second Degrees. All that solid practice and all those Third and Second Degrees act like pillars and archways and flying buttresses that hold up the structure of those Traditions.

The Eternal Harvest Tradition, on the other hand, is 22 years old. It was created as a single coven by two First Degrees (Doug and his then-wife Morgana) and two other people who came from a non-BTW teaching group who taught a very different brand of "wicca," the Frosts. It was augmented by Doug's studies with various outer-court-American Wicca, Druidic, and ceremonial groups, often involving people such as the late Lord Ravenwind, who came in and brought their teachings and initiations. 

Eternal Harvest was quite volatile in the 1990s, quickly attracting dozens of students and a good number of initiates, who quickly hived off, and then just as quickly left. When I joined 12 years ago, I made it my ambition to rebuild. We attracted some very solid people, most of whom the readers of this blog will know from local gatherings. We did some good work in the local area. I know we have made a real, measurable, and profound change for the better in several peoples' lives.

But the Eternal Harvest egregore is nowhere near as mature, robust, or stable as an Alexandrian or Gardnerian group, and the same is true for many other trads here in the United States.  Part of that is because we're still relatively young. Part of it is because we have not had the hundreds/1000+ people practicing with us. There are a lot of other factors, too, but these are two of the big ones.

As some of us matured in our practice, both EH and with other groups, the Power inherent in this Cauldron we call "egregore" has increased rapidly, even exponentially. The unseen ties that bind our initiates together have grown stronger. This is great in some ways, not so great in others. What's great is that when person A has a magickal breakthrough as an individual, the rest of us kind of automatically get a backwash of benefit. On the other hand, when one of us undergoes a tectonic shift, such as I have, it creates an earthquake and subsequent tidal wave of destruction and instability. If we had 500 people in EH, it probably would not matter as much. Or, maybe it would: certainly the Feri's and Reclaiming have been rockin' and rollin' on shifting ground for years.

An interested party, seeing these shifts, asked me what was going on. My reply: I don't know. I really don't know. I know that last summer, I invoked Air, and via Air everything changed. I know that at the last lunation, I invoked Fire -- in a much gentler way, but enough to open a fissure within me until I erupted like Mount Kilauea and spewed a fountain of hot lava out. 

Those of you lucky enough to have been to the Big Island in the past 20 years will remember the explosions that take place when hot lava meets the sea. It's terribly destructive. It's also exhilarating and visceral. Ultimately it builds new land, but woe unto the trees and huts that get in its way.

I don't understand the relationship between my actions and thoughts and the egregore of my group. People like Annwyn being pissed off at me, sure, I get that. I said some shitty things. I'd be pissed at, and offended by me, too. But -- and I am in no way trying to deflect responsibility -- clearly there is more going on, because if our egregore is being this rocked by people getting pissed off at me, then how stable was it to begin with? And if it wasn't, why wasn't it? And what can be done about it?

I have never seen a detailed discussion of egregore. It's mysterious territory. If the BTWs know stuff about it, they ain't telling. I personally never dreamed it would be this powerful. As someone who loves analyzing energy, I'm hell of curious and fascinated. As someone who, at the end of the day, is a bit of a loner with strong selfish tendencies, I'm kind of horrified by how tied together we all are.

I would love to be able to give advice to people on how to assess an egregore in your choice of magickal groups, but I can't. This is one of the things the magickal community embedded within Contemporary "Paganism" ought to be talking about but unfortunately we're all too busy sticking our heads up our asses pursuing other lines of conversation. *Le sigh.*

I DID tell my enquirer the following: Magick is Hot. It's a Hot current. It's like electricity. It amps everything up. It accelerates. It frequently de-stabilizes. If you look at the history of Contemporary "Paganism," you will see that most magickal groups blossom and fade like daylilies. Stable, long-term groups are the exception and not the rule. And except for the BTWs, the very stable and long-term groups are often dependent upon one or two leaders who are the keystone of that group. When those people die or retire, the group breaks apart. You also see this with non-"Pagan" groups that run energy, such as some Pentecostal Christian groups. 

Outside of "Paganism," long-term religious groups rely on tribalism and and shared secular culture, or financial stability, or political agendas, to hold the flock together. We don't have that in "Paganism," and the Hot Magick Current makes it hard to develop. 

Again, I don't have an answer, but these are things that need to be said.

!!!TRADITION!!!

Shit They Don't Teach You In Books, Part I: The Magickal Persona...

...And My Experiences Therewith.

By now most people in the greater "Pagan"* realm have heard of the "Pagan Name Generator." There are actually a variety of "Pagan Name Generators" out there,  all of which jokingly purport to help the "noobie" find a Cool Pagan Name that sounds great in circle and around bonfires. Cool names like Lady NippleRing HeatherHawk or Lord Phloppy Antler. You know. 

We take on these names within our "Pagan" subculture usually because its fun to ditch our real identities; because they are part of the "brand" we want to identify with; or because we don't want our mundane associates to know what we're up to. Or, all of the above. Which is fine; it's part of the fun.  Occasionally we'll take on a magickal name because the group we're working with asks us to, and because we want to recognize and/or cultivate particular qualities within our magickal life.

Such was the case with me when, 12 years ago, I swore into Eternal Harvest and began my journey with them. Eternal Harvest asks its dedicants to take two "Pagan" names, one for use only in circle, and one for use around the bonfire, etc. Thus was GreenFlame born, the Inner Circle name I carried for years. When my inner circle name changed, I took on GreenFlame as my generic "Pagan" name and became known as such through Eastern North Carolina.

Now, I am not one of these people who are content with doing something sacred simply because it's custom. No, I have to find the Deeper Meaning of it all. If it doesn't have five layers of symbolism woven together like Celtic knotwork, I am not happy; I don't get the point of doing something in a sacred context unless there's something that at least purports to be meaningful behind it. So I discovered that GreenFlame was not just a name. It was a path. It defined a way that I ought to be; green healing energy. The same way with the initiatory title "Lady." If "Lady" did not mean something other than "you are now a Third Degree" (whatever that meant), then otherwise the title "Lady" was just pseudo-Ren Faire bullshit. And my Craft meant more to me than that.

Thus was "Lady GreenFlame" born. And I decided that if "Lady" meant Third Degree, then Third Degree must mean more than "been a Second Degree for a year and a day," which is basically how EH defined it before I got hold of it. Somewhere between my ponderings and readings and conversations with others, I decided that a Third Degree must be someone who has grown enough spiritually in the Craft to have some sort of regular contact with THE Lady (the Goddess) and The Lord, and that it was contact with one's Higher/Divine Self that triggered or manifested that initiatory level, and that's why it was appropriate to use the term "Lady" (or Lord for guys). In other words, like Martin Luther King, Jr., you've seen the Mountaintop.

So that's how "Lady GreenFlame" was born. A Being of Divine-Goddess-High Self Green Healing Energy. Since my first name, Anna, means "Grace," stick that concept into the mix as well. Lady Anna GreenFlame = Divine-Goddess-High Self Green Grace Healing Power.

Therefore, since I was the senior priestess of a Wiccan Tradition, I had to mediate Divine-Goddess-High Self Green Grace Healing Power. Whenever that name was used. Whenever I was teaching. Or counseling. Or doing healing work. Or representing Eternal Harvest, which means every time I was on Facebook, or at the Sojourner's, or Truely Unique, or Compass Rose. Whenever I was in public space with other "Pagans."

Add all that time together, and the only time I was NOT Lady GreenFlame was when I was alone or with Doug. I expected him and other members of my tradition to do the same.

********************

Here's the shit-they-don't-teach-you part (you thought I forgot, didn't you?). Whatever you bring into Sacred Space gets empowered and magnified. *You* get empowered and magnified. Your personality (good, bad, whatever) gets empowered and magnified and so do all the cords and attachments and shit you have floating around in your aura, your "sphere of sensation" as some schools call it. That's why you are supposed to meditate and journal and do chakra work and the LBRP and what-not as a student -- 'cause you want to rid your sphere of bad crap like your shitty marriage or unstable financials or fear of abandonment because that will get magnified. 

That magickal name you pick for yourself gets magnified, too. It takes on Power. This is largely a good thing; you *want* that Power, that's why you're becoming a Witch and not a Presbyterian.

So, to quote Elmer Fudd, you want to be VEWWY VEWWY CAREFUL what name you take into circle. It WILL take on a life of its own. So if you call yourself LaserBeam Shitstorm, be VEWWY VEWWY prepared for shit to hit your life in focused, precise upheavals someday.

*********************

Also, you want to be VEWWY VEWWY CAREFUL how you *use* your magickal persona. If you stay in magickal persona too much, everyone will think that's who you really are, all the time, 24/7. They'll think it's YOU. Hell -- YOU'LL think it's You, and that's one of the reasons we've had so many problems with ego in the "Pagan community." 

If you have been a Witch for a while and you've done your share of coven or public work, your persona is real. It is a valid thoughtform, a valid entity in its own right. It's a lovely, beautiful thing composed of the best that you have to offer; the magickal energy you've put into it deliberately and through circle-use; the love and attention it's received from others; and, yes, cords or energetic links to your Higher Self and even the Divine. But make no mistake: it's a TOOL (albeit a living one). You put it on like your cord, cloak, crown, and athame. A seer can see this. If you're experienced, you can feel it. I know the precise moment I stop being Anna H. and start being Lady GreenFlame. Orion Foxwood saw that transition take place before ritual at the last ShadowHarvest; we talked about it.

Yes, it's an energetic tool, the purpose of which is to step-down Divine energy into this realm more efficiently. It's yet another way the Gods can send energy our way. 

You don't need a "Pagan" name to have the magickal persona. You can be Jane Smith but if you are a public Witch/healer/teacher/leader, you've got a magickal persona. It has the same name YOU do, which surely makes it even harder to wield.

The same thing happens to celebrities, to doctors, to healers, to public school teachers. Think about your first grade teacher. Now think about her dressed in some hot BDSM leather, bent over a stool getting spanked. EEEEWWWWWWWWW! YUCK! You see? For all you know, Miss Smith might've gone to a dungeon and done the dirty every Saturday night. But *you* still see her as the Miss Smith. You still identify her by her persona, not who she really is. 

These personae get created and empowered all the time just by having ordinary people pay extraordinary attention to someone else. Ours, however, get juiced up with Magick.

There is a lot that could be said at this point about projection, and "dual relationships" and transference and  counter-transference and all kinds of valid psychological concepts. I am not taking the time. Google it, or maybe I'll blog about that stuff later. 

Lady Anna GreenFlame is an *AWESOME* tool. I can close my eyes and see Her and damn, I'm really impressed. She's beautiful. She's wonderful. I can see why folks love Her. But She is not me. Part of me lives in Her - the best part of me -- but there are other parts of me, too - Rage. Pain. Sloth. Indifference. Narcissism. Hypocrisy. Unreliability. There are some really murky and ugly parts to Anna H. I'm not being hard on myself -- because I love myself unconditionally, regardless of whether I am being a shit or being awesome. No, I'm being honest. Most of us have these parts. Our Shadow work is to come to terms with them and purify them, or redeem them, so that they become tools themselves, and not liabilities. That's hard work and it. never. ends and when you've worked on one beast to the point where you think you've tamed it, another thing flares up. But our faults are often masks themselves for strengths. And there's a Mystery for you, if you'd like.

When you wear your magickal persona 24/7, you become its slave. It binds you. You have to maintain others' expectations of you all the time. You swallow what you really want to say and invoke that magickal persona to Do The Right Thing, Say The Right Thing. You defer activities you might find amusing or rewarding out of duty. You lose your right to self-determination. 

I have actually considered buiding an effigy of Lady Greenflame and burning Her, but it's not her fault. It's nobody's fault. This is something I had to learn on my own, because again, it's Shit They Don't Teach You in Books.

So, word to the Wise, or would-be Wise: (a) choose any magickal moniker carefully. (b) Set limits as to how you use it. (c) cultivate the ability to monitor how your magickal persona may be growing and taking on power, and how much of your life it is taking over. It's a tool, not a lifestyle. (c) Your teachers, your leader, your authors, anyone you look up to, all have these personae. It's okay. Enjoy the goodness of the Persona. But do NOT make the mistake of thinking that's all there is to that person. The persona is not the person. Hell, that needs saying again: The Persona is not the Person.

*The term "Pagan" is in quotation marks throughout because no one knows anymore what the fuck "Pagan" means, so I'm treating it as if it were theoretical or hypothetical. Yes, there will be several blog posts on that coming up.

*** The sticker images in this post were invented by my friend, Srini Kumar, and formerly published by his company Unamerican Activities. Now they are sold by http://www.stickergiant.com/truth-hurts_bu_pg1  . Srini is now working with a great app for your phone called TinyVox -  http://tinyvox.com/

My Name Is Legion

It's crowded in my office today.

A passer-by, looking in, would see only me sitting here, apparently alone. No crowd at all. Yet right here, at hand, are several visitors. We are not strangers. Several are unwelcome. I've ordered a couple of them Out! -- which usually works; but this time, they ain't leaving, which tells me that I must engage them somehow before they'll leave me in peace.

Standing right in front of me is Rage.Rage is hugging me close, so close that it's hard to see beyond Rage. Rage colors the world with Rage colors, the clotted purple of throbbing veins, the flushed red of inflammation. Rage is in-my-face and stinks like pus and burning blood. Rage is obscuring my vision; I look for my friends, for the faces of the people I love, and I cannot see them clearly, only distorted and ugly through that awful red-purple miasm.

Somewhere beyond Rage is Fear. As usual, Fear is hiding behind Rage, but Rage is so close and so hot that she illuminates Fear, so I can't help but glimpse Fear, too. Fear is an ugly shade of yellowish-green, with an oily iridescence which causes it to shift and mutate. Fear has a cloyingly sweet smell that is at once attracting and repelling.

I don't like it when these two come to visit. I don't like the way they make my body feel. I don't like their intimacies, the way they won't leave me alone, the dangers they pose.

Over in the corner, observing all, is Lady GreenFlame. "Wait a minute," I hear you say. "I thought YOU were GreenFlame." Well ... yes. And no. Lady GreenFlame is a persona. She is a servant of my Holy Guardian Angel. She is the ritual garb that my High Holy Self wears; but more than that, she is an athame of Goddess and a wand of  God. But she is not the totality of Me; she is my evolving Self.

I want her to banish Rage and Fear, but she's strangely still, which mollifies Rage, who was vocally against Lady GreenFlame's presence to begin with. She says: "You must hear them. You must listen to them. They have valuable things to say. It's how they say it that is harmful. Listen, and then purify it. And only then pass it on."

Rage and Fear are grumbling at this; Rage in particular doesn't want anything to do with purifying her words, but they agree to the compromise. Here is what Rage had to say, once GreenFlame got hold of it and purified it:

"Controlling assault weapons is not the same as banning all guns. The idea that there is a "slippery slope" and once you control one kind of very lethal gun, the government will not only ban all guns but will come into your house and rip away your children and ban your religion is beyond far-fetched; it just IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. The good people who believe such things have drunk the NRA's Kool-Aid and are deceived and deluded by their own Rage and Fear.The people to really fear are the ones who run the NRA. The right wing are not pro-freedom. They are pro-fear, and pro-rage, and pro-violence, and much more pro-control than the government.

"Besides which, the government is US. You and Me. We The People. The Government is not going to do anything unless the representatives we send to them okay it. This fear of the government is a phobia.

"You can preach gun safety and responsibility all you want, but the undisputable fact is that we are not a responsible people. We are a fallible people and we will continue to be so, as always. For us to even approach gun safety infallibility would require us to live in a constant state of vigilance. Humans cannot be trusted to live in a constant state of vigilance. It is contrary to the way we are wired. And when we *do* live like that, it is very toxic, very detrimental to us. Good, vigilant people are all prone to weak moments and it just takes one weak moment for a nutcase to get hold of an assault weapon that is momentarily available, and to go create a horror like Sandy Hook or Aurora.Therefore, even the smartest and best-meaning people cannot be trusted to live in a constant state of vigilance about the guns in our house.

"Carefulness is not going to work. Arming every last human in the US creates an air of increased violence and vigilance that will truly, literally create PTSD in every single one of us. This is a psychologically unrealistic and highly unhealthy response to this problem. I shudder to think of a culture of children raised in schools with every adult packin'. RAGE is especially outRAGEd that you all can't understand this critical point.

"The Second Amendment is very ambiguously worded. Many of us interpret the Second Amendment to speak to the rights of forming a militia for national defense, not to individual gun ownership. Don't assume your interpretation is correct. Also, don't assume every one of our Founding Fathers would have thought that citizens owning weapons of mass destruction was a good idea. They lived in a world that was very far removed from our technology.

"Having assault weapons legal to own over the past few years has not made our society safer. Show me objective statistics that demonstrate how general assault weapon ownership has made us safer. Objective meaning, not funded by either the right wing or the left wing.

"Also (Rage demands to say), it is horrible especially that my FEMALE FRIENDS are devoting all this attention to forwarding NRA-sponsored pix of assault weapons while in the state of Texas, a judge has upheld the "right" of Texas to refuse all federal funds for Planned Parenthood. These are not funds that would have gone toward a single abortion. They are funds for low-income women to get pap smears and mammograms and basic gynecological care. Now these women have no place else to go. The problem, as Texas sees it, is that *some* Planned Parenthoods in other places accept private money to perform abortions. Therefore, all Planned Parenthood services and funds are tainted.

"The upshot is that this will not prevent a SINGLE abortion, not a single one, but it is guaranteed that WOMEN WILL DIE. There will be WOMEN WHO DIE from breast cancer, uterine cancer, cervical cancer, and ovarian cancer BECAUSE THEY COULD NOT GO GET THESE SIMPLE TESTS from Planned Parenthood. CHILDREN WILL LOSE THEIR MOTHERS. Husbands will lose their wives. As women, we know what it feels like when we find a lump or have abnormal spotting or pain. Imagine what it feels like to have these symptoms and not to have access to affordable care for them.

"But none of my young women friends, my priestess friends have said a damn word about this. They are too busy drinking that NRA Kool-Aid. And I am very, very, VERY disappointed in them."

RAGE steps aside. GreenFlame and I look toward Pain. What does Pain have to say?

Pain says, "Rage's last few words carried my voice. I grieve for the next group of innocents who will be slaughtered by an assault weapon. I grieve for the women who will suffer and die with so few fellow women advocating for them. I grieve that our culture is eagerly and rapidly growing more violent and more irrational. I do not have to imagine what the women in Texas are going to feel; I already feel for them. My Pain is sorrow, and I grow every day."

I sat back and looked at Lady GreenFlame. I asked, "What counsel do you have, Wise Lady?"

She said:

"There is an old ritual called the Abramelin ritual. In it, the would-be Mage secludes himself for six months and undertakes a progressively rigid series of fasts, devotions, meditations, and invocations, all designed to lead to the "Knowledge and Conversation of" his "Holy Guardian Angel" -- his High Self, his Divine Self.

"The first act the new Mage does after achieving this Sublime Vision is to evoke and bind all the Princes of Hell: Satan, Belial, Leviathan, and others. Why go from the state of Grace to evoking its very opposite? To remove their influence from his life. Because if he doesn't, the Power and Grace that his vision has given him will also strengthen those demons in his life. Never forget: where there is a lot of Light, there is a lot of Shadow. Anna, this is the key: you can't suppress, deny, or ignore your demons. As you grow in me, and as I grow in you, you have to evoke and bind them, and then they become your servants, and not vice versa."

And now it's night, and Rage and Pain have stepped away -- we are all going to have to get used to this new relationship we have. Greenflame slumbers, and so must I.