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/

Ghosts of Christmas Past

One of the Secrets that They don't tell you is this: some of the pain you encounter in life comes not from discord with other people, but discord with your self -- or rather, competing versions of your self/selves.

I was always a romantic Christmas Nut. Most kids are, of course, but I kept right on being a Christmas Nut well into middle adulthood. The magick, the mysticism, the pageantry, the color, the music, the food: I could have been my own Lifetime Christmas movie. I followed my dear Aunt Nita in my love for Christmas, and following me was my niece Tina; all three of us worshipping at the shrine of Christmas, acolytes at the altar of Yule. Proof? Two boxes of ornaments, souvenirs from Germany, Hawaii, California, and various other locations. I hand-toted a bag full of precious blown-glass decorations from Rothenburg, Germany, in 1991, even making it off the last tiny prop plane with them unscathed when the plane caught fire on the runway.

But this week, I finally faced facts. I have become one of those Christmas curmudgeons who can't wait for the damn thing to be over; a Christmas minimalist who, in some years, shamefully doesn't even put up a wreath, much less a tree. I remember as a Baptist youth visiting old men and women in the community, and how sorry I felt for them; most of the time all they had was a small, shabby silver tree with a few threadbare decorations and a box of Queen Anne chocolate-covered cherries underneath. Never would I have foreseen a day when I would contemplate ditching all my decorations and taking a cruise.

There are a lot of life circumstances that have brought me here. Some are sad. My father died on December 23rd and although that's been nearly thirty years ago, my mother never regained her love of the holiday, and the last decade of her life was spent sunk in a miasm of chronic pain and depression; when Aunt Nita passed away, so did any feelings she had left for Christmas.

Other reasons are circumstantial. My husband and I are Pagan. We celebrate the Solstice and while that is fine religiously, opening presents on the 21st has always felt rushed and wrong. My internal rhythms simply will not adjust to having the Big Day be the 21st. He also works in the TSA, and so Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are frenzied workdays for him. Additional frenzy is that he provides most of the presents to his two autistic adult children, and so his focus is, rightly, on getting everything ready and delivered to them.

But even as I walked through all the mundane reasons why Christmas has lost the magick for me, I knew there was something else, some Factor X. Finally, I hit upon it. For a lot of folks, Christmas is when they experience Magick. But I live Magick 24/7. Every day I encounter Mystery. Miracles are not uncommon. I walk into a temple room filled with beauty and light and I call forth the holy Powers using signs and symbols as ancient and reverent as any Gregorian chant. I don't need Christmas magick anymore. What I used to get out of one season is with me now all the time.

I may still be on the Island of Misfit Toys, but .... I kind of like it here, with all the other misfits. This creates an internal friction as the old Me continues to reach out toward Christmas and the new Me shrugs and says, "meh." I do love the Otherworld energies of this time of year, however: so potent, so immediate. What I really wish is that I could go on some spiritual retreat from about the 20th to the 1st, not to escape per se, but to explore -- just strip it all down to the bare bones of who I have become, and encounter what this season really is, instead of the uneasy Ghost of Me At Christmases Past hovering about me. That's hard because the boundaries between Past and Future are so thin as to be vaporous at Yuletide -- one of the reasons why old family "stuff" rears its head now for so many people.

First Whirlings

O my Body! I dare not desert the likes of you... I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of the Soul, (and that they are the Soul...) --Walt Whitman, "I Sing The Body Electric"

Yesterday, 17 July 2012, a profound thing occurred. For the first time since I joined the greater Pagan world in 2000, I witnessed an honest and moving discussion of one of our community's hidden problems: the high levels of serious obesity and the various co-morbid health problems associated with it. 

I say "hidden," but of course, it's really not. Anyone who gets out and mingles with other Pagans at all perceives that we surely exceed the national average in the number of obese people participating in our scene, and which says a lot, given that over one-third of Americans are now obese. We just haven't talked about it much. Why? Well, Pagans are a People who are welcoming -- because in many places, we have been made to feel unwelcome. We are a People who are tolerant of what mainstream culture views as different or eccentric -- because in many situations, our own differences and "eccentricities" have earned us scorn, derision, and persecution. As a People, we hate preaching, and we especially hate being preached to, because too often we've had other people cramming their "should's" and "ought's" down our throats. Many of us have a strong connection to the Great Goddess, Whose beautiful Body comes in all shapes and sizes and colors and qualities, as evidenced by the many different ways She has been depicted.  And there are more subtle reasons I suspect, having to do with wounding, and the nature of energy, and grounding magickal energy, some of which I'll talk about in future blogs.

So we have tended to ignore this Very Large Thing, pun intended, in the center of the room because we really have not figured out how to address it, nor even admitted that it needed to be addressed. This puts up in the very ironic position of loving the Earth as Divine, and cherishing the Earth, all the while ignoring those pieces of Earth most intimate to us: our own bodies. We claim Power and we study how to gather and store and wield Power, all the while depleting ourselves of the most basic form of Power, which is the ability to actually get up and do shit.

This problem -- and yes, I call it and claim it as such -- is personal to me. I have fought a weight problem all my life. Sometimes the problem was that I was too fat. Sometimes the problem was that I thought I was fat when I really wasn't. I was a chubby kid who would rather lay in bed and get a lost in a book. I was not one to go out and play, and in fact, I could not do some things that other kids did with ease; I lacked strength and coordination. I suffered through 40 years of low self-esteem, shame, and self-hatred as a result of my weight issues, real and perceived. Age combined with the love and validation of my husband helped me heal from this. I practiced a lot of self-denial and extreme dieting, although thank Goddess I never became anorexic or bulimic.

And yet, I'm still fat, and at age 51, it's easy to perceive the toll it's taken on me. I'm not exactly morbidly obese, but I'd feel better and be healthier if I took off 40 pounds and kept them off. My husband is also fat in that way. We've both made strides toward greater health by exercising more and limiting sugar and simple carbohydrates, but we both need to do more.

I am a Priestess. That is my calling in life. I did not bear children of my womb; I consider my tradition members and many of the people in the greater eastern NC Pagan community to be my "young'uns." It's very important to me that they be happy, healthy, and effective witches, priests, priestesses, and congregational Pagans. As this kind of "magickal mama," I have always felt it is my duty both to teach and to model behaviors that would help my community members achieve this. Now that both local and national conversations on the subject of Pagan obesity have been initiated, I feel it is important that I share my own thoughts and experiences with members of my community. They can benefit from my experiences and knowledge, and I benefit by having accountability. If I am blogging on Pagan health issues, I'll think twice before ordering that mocha frappe.

Here is what you WILL see on this blog:

• Thoughts about the energetic trappings around obesity and related health issues. I am a Witch. I see something, I think "what are the energetic underpinnings to this phenomenon?" That's how I frame the world, Seen and Unseen. Why? Because I am a Witch. 
• Archetypes/personality traits within our community and how they are wonderful but maybe not so much for vibrant physical health - and how to work on that.
• Musings about the national culture and how it contributes detrimentally to basic health - with suggestions on how to work with it.
• Lots of reinforcement about how absolutely miraculous, beautiful, and breathtakingly wondrous every single body is, without exception. Yes, that means you.
• Information about the body and movement I learned as a massage therapist; or, "Damn, I Wish They'd Taught Me That In High School."
• A focus on nurturing, on partnering with Shadow, and on effectively parenting the Inner Child in order to alter detrimental behaviors, achieve goals, and transform into even healthier and more effective witches, priests, priestesses, and pagans.
• Profanity. I enjoy cussing, and it's my blog, so I'm going to do it when I want to.

Here is what you will NOT see on this blog:

• Advocacy for one type of diet vs. all the others. I myself achieve my best health when I limit sugar and simple carbohydrates, and when I focus on lean meats, vegetables, and healthy fats in my diet. I think that is true for many people. It is certainly not true for all people. So while you'll hear me talk about this, I know that you might need to be a vegan or a vegetarian or someone who eats steak every day, or follow the recommendations for Type A- blood, or whatever. People are different, bodies are different, ethics are different, and our bodies needs often change over time as well. 
• Anything movement-oriented that has the words Insanity or Extreme or Exxxtreme or that is loud or that exhorts me (or you) to MOVE, MOVE, MOVE! I hear that shit and I just quail. Movement is hugely important but it does not have to EXXXTREEME! or insane or loud or nerve-jangly. If that stuff floats your boat, good for you! It sinks mine. (And when you blow out your quadratus lumborum muscle, come see me at my office.)
• NO SHAME. Period. FUCK SHAME. Shame is almost always inappropriate and toxic and leads down the hellish path to the very detrimental behaviors we want to transform.   Shame helped rob me of happiness for the first 40+ years of my life. It has NO PLACE with me now. I took first degree training with a man named Tiny, a man who weighed maybe 500 or more pounds and who'd had a really rough life: cigarettes, drugs, booze, carnivals, prison. His body was just about worn out, and in fact, he died two years later in his mid-40s. But his Soul, his "secret and most innermost self" was Pure, Lovely,  Old, and Wise. You could see it in his Light-filled eyes. You are beautiful. Yes, you. And you are still beautiful even if you buy a gym membership and never go, or start to eat healthy and then snarf down a half gallon of ice cream. Yes, you are still beautiful and wonderful despite all that and more. It's true, you know.
• Tolerance for trolls or inappropriate comments. What is inappropriate? Why, whatever I think is inappropriate. If you are an acquaintance of mine (virtual or real-life), you will not be doing this, of course, but rumor has it that many bloggers, especially female bloggers, sometimes get nasty comments. I will delete them and ignore them. I am Queen of my sandbox and I get to make the rules.

I would love to post daily but that is probably not realistic, so I'm going to aim for a couple of times a week, and perhaps I can exceed that low expectation. In the meantime, friend me on Facebook and scroll down to yesterday (7/17) and look at the discussion that tacked off of Peter Dybing's article, which I reposted.