The Goddess' Athames

A few years back, a Pagan man wrote an essay and published it on Witchvox in which he called him "the Goddess' athame." The point of this striking metaphor was that he considered himself to be an instrument of the Goddess' Will in all the ways that an athame works the Will of a Witch.

Last week, I got to experience the marvelous effects of several dozen "athames of the Goddess" all pointed at me in Love and Grace, and today, I sing that Love and Grace.

Since my initiation into an American Craft tradition in 2002, Lord Death has visited me and mine all too often. Now, I understand Lord Death's role in the greater scheme of things; life without death is cancerous, toxic, and miserable. For several Samhains I have enacted the Mystery of the Descent of the Goddess  into the realm of Death, the sacrifice of the Sacred King, and sung "Hoof and Horn / All That Dies Shall Be Reborn" with gusto.

Nevertheless, the deaths and the endings and the mournings and the letting-go-of-things have piled up and especially in the past two years, it's been relentless. Not only with the passing of people and beings I love, but the death of relationships I cherished; the death of my priestess role within my community, and my place in the community; and of the hopes and ambitions I had for my tradition. All gone. All failed. All faded away. 

It's been a lot of Winter. 

And so when Freya, my beloved and most special cat, my L'il, the Tiny Baby Kitty I helped feed unto life as a kitten, when she sickened, it was too much. Too much. All the grief of the past two years recapitulated into this one big grief. I reached out to the Goddess in confusion, asking, what should I do about Freya, what decisions should I make? And I felt nothing whatsoever except a blank and terrifying silence. My Goddess, why has thou forsaken me?

I was wrong. I was not forsaken at all.

Going public with my despair, I was astonished at how many people, dozens of people, took time out of their busy lives to read my posts and offer their words of  sympathy, consolation, and heartfelt advice. It was easy to see that every one of their messages was sincere. Some of these people I have never met face-to-face. Others I have not seen in over 20 years. 

It was an astonishing outpouring of Love and Grace, and through it I found great healing, and through it I found and felt once again the Goddess. 

I realized several things:

1. There comes a point where sadness morphs into depression, and the biological markers of depression often include a deficit of that marvelous spirit of connection that is the neurotransmitter "serotonin." Without adequate levels of serotonin, it is very hard to perceive, to feel viscerally, any kind of connection. That is one the reasons I had a hard time feeling the Goddess directly.
2. The Goddess, however, does not have to manifest directly into neural networks that may be misfiring at the time, but She can and does work through other people, who are not really Others at all, because we are all cells linked in the body of Her greatness, and love given is love shared.
3. That in this case, the Goddess very much implemented Her Will through these dozens of people who took the time to say a kind word, or many kinds words, to me. Every one was an athame of the Goddess, pointing a stream of glowing Love at me, and at Freya.

I have not felt the Goddess' love this tangibly in many years. It reminded me so powerfully that nurturing and cherishing the web of connection we have with one another is the highest form of service one can give the Goddess. Every single thing else pales in comparison, falls utterly away into insignificance. Status, "witchiness," tradition, form, praxis, all of them are meaningless unless they are subsumed into the service of Her Love. Without this Love, all these forms and items we Pagans cherish are like those decorative athames you hang on a wall: pretty and interesting, but ultimately useless. I know that is going to be a lesson I'll be unpacking for some time to come, and in that realization will come Spring, and the healing of my heart.

It may seem irreverent to quote a pop band at this point, but once again I marvel at the Awen of the Beatles - perhaps not surprising since they were, after all, Celts: "And in the end / the love you take / is equal to the love you make."