Beauty That Must die

"She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips..." In my 51 years of living, I have witnessed an incredible amount of Beauty that died. The Beauty I refer to is Beauty in the natural world. And most of it did not have to die. It died because the species Homo sapiens are, by and large, blind and unfeeling idiots. I have always been an animist by instinct. Weeds, scrub trees, lichens, wild plants, bushes, shrubs of all kinds have always delighted me beyond any reason. The phrase, "my heart leaps in gladness" applies whenever I am wandering down roads or in fields and come across a little bog with some jack-in-the-pulpits or elderberries, or when the first goldenrod blooms every Lughnasadh or when I see something I've never seen before. But this joy and gladness has inevitably been accompanied by aching pain and unassuageable sorrow, because there are very few places in my life that I have loved -- and when I say loved, I do mean love in the same sense I would use for my husband, friends, and family - because someone has inevitably come along and wounded or outright murdered these places in the name of --what: money? Safety? Industry. Development. Progress. I mourn people I have known who left this world too young. I also mourn the slope of swamp behind the house I grew up in that every spring was covered with hundreds of tiny wild irises. It was drained for cheap housing. I mourn the mixed old forest near my house that was logged. I mourn the hundreds-year-old oak tree that was cut down in Bridgeton so the road could be widened - Doug and I went and hugged it and sang to it and asked its spirit to leave the night before it was killed. We have a piece of its wood on our ancestor altar. There is a special place near my house, an old one-lane road, a brick road with a thin veneer of asphalt. It gets very little traffic and only a handful of houses; it's mostly wild forest and farmland. Little Swift Creek runs beside and through it, and there is an old beech forest (rare in eastern NC) and a lot of interesting and secret places. The road has 8 feet of shoulder on either side, then a ditch, and then on one side a strip of trees, and then a railroad. The Gods have visited me on this road. I have had ecstatic experiences while doing walking meditations. Hawks and cranes have visited me with messages. Gentian, Joe-Pye-Weed, boneset, lobelias, irises, skullcap and dozens of other wildflowers grow along the slopes of the ditch, and I have come to know them as old friends by greeting them year after year. My dogs can run wild along this road. Today the State Department of Transportation decided that a few shrubs and branches growing 12 feet from the road, and across a ditch, were too much and so they sent a big ol' tank of Murder out to poison the foliage with 2,4-d and Garlon. These are herbicides, which are surely among the most heinous spawns of human design. That special verge where flowers and shrubs and small trees grow so freely will have their cells mutated to grow uncontrollably (that's what 2,4-d does: induce plant cancer, essentially) while the Garlon comes along and kills it a different way. So this entire, wonderful little ecosystem is going to be shut down in poison that will last for up to a year. I have seen what happens when this kind of murder is imposed. Nature is wonderful in that She always recovers, but there is "scar tissue" -- She will regrow the more vigorous plants, such as poison ivy and invasive non-natives, and those will dominate while the few stands of wildflowers or native plants such as buttonbushes will disappear. It's like flesh: it'll grow back, but it'll be scar tissue, which does not have all the desirable properties of normal muscle, fascia, and skin. I called the Department of Transportation's 'Landscape' Department and asked what kind of science they had upon which they were basing their decision to do this. The nice gentleman had none, of course, although he referred me to his boss. Basically they have a mandate to kill brush back on one-third of the county's highways and secondary roads. Apparently how the roads are chosen are by request of the mowers and/or by random. I don't get the sense that the state is evaluating each road to determine how wide the shoulders are, how much brush is encroaching upon traffic safety or electrical or phone lines. What is really going on here is a mechanical and automatic pattern of department funding and spending and self-perpetuation. Having worked for state government, I know that each department or agency gets a certain amount of money each year. If you don't spend all that money, the following year you get less money. (Nope, no reward for frugality!) So there is an incentive to do work that does not need to be done and spend money that does not need to be spent. I have NO DOUBT WHATSOEVER that the mowing patterns, which cut and scrape away excessive amounts of plant material far from the highways, and these herbicide-spraying programs exist entirely to spend and therefore justify this agency's budget. I have no doubt that this department or agency, like much else in the US and the Western World - hell, the developed world -- is committing this atrocity of needless death and destruction for no good reason whatsoever. We are locked in patterns of harmful absurdity and insanity, and yet those of us who protest are considered insane. Talking to the nice man on the phone, I could tell he thought I was a kook. And according to the anthropocentric, capitalist, dominionist culture I find myself in, he's right. But I think he and most everyone else in this madhouse are insane. I won't visit my road again for months. I will not be able to bear the life-force of Spring arising and seeing the dead and dying plants unable to participate in that dance. I will not feel comfortable for my dogs to wade in Little Swift Creek and drink from the ditchwater. I'll stay home and mourn, or hook them on a lease and go parade around the asphalt of New Bern and call that "good." But I will mourn, and I will grieve, and I will cry because once again, Beauty must die, and Joy has bid adieu.

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.

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.

Miracle of miracles, there might be one thing that most Americans agree on: Christmas has gotten too big. With retailers putting trees out in September and holiday commercials appearing in October, we all bemoan the “Christmas creep,” how the holly-jolly season oozes earlier every year.  From the pulpits of the most fundamentalist church, to the local atheist discussion group, comes a tirade against the overwhelmingness of The Holiday. Proof that it’s big? We can call it “The Holiday” and everyone knows we are talking about Christmas and not, say, Memorial Day.

Yet despite our loathing of this trend, we all continue to buy into it as well as all other oversized, over-the-top  customs that have come to prevail here in the U.S. Who is to blame? The Big Boxes? Greedy Wall Street intent on manipulating us via guilt and the herd mentality? Us, for falling prey to these machinations?

No.

I blame Santa Claus.

Oh, I can hear the choruses of outrage now! “Blame Santa! Why … how – how COULD you?” howl some. “Er, dear – Santa Claus isn’t actually REAL, you know,” snicker others.

Well … my definition of “real” is a little more flexible than most. I’m an occultist. I look at the world through an expanded set of lenses, and when I turn my “occult-eye-for-the-mundane-guy” gaze onto American Christmas customs, I see enough juicy magick to bake ten thousand gingerbread cookies and hang them on a forest of trees.

First, let’s define “real.” If you are a materialist – if you believe that reality is defined solely by that which can be observed, measured, and quantified – this is a good time to stop reading and go check out some LOLCats. You’re welcome to stay, but you might want to prime yourself mentally. I recommend hot mulled wine.

To an occultist, reality is comprised of all the measurable stuff we observe and quantify –and a whole lot more. Beyond the physical and quantifiable exist many realms that most of us cannot see. These realms are manifold and highly diverse, but for the purposes of this article we can link them together and call them the “Otherworld,” and think of the Otherworld as a dimension that is contiguous to the physical world and with which we exchange metaphorical information and power on a constant basis, not unlike cells communicating with each other by sending information and power to each other via selective openings in their cell membranes.

The Otherworld affects us, and we affect the Otherworld. Humans are special: our intense imaginations and ability to conceptualize and visualize actually create things in the Otherworld.  A common occult terms for this is “thoughtform” and it’s basically a blob of cohesive energy that lives in the Otherworld. There are countless of these blobs of cohesive energy, major and minor and everything in between; whenever a human gives enough mental and emotional energy to something, it will take form and live as a “thoughtform” in the Otherworld, some for short periods of time, and some for eons.

There are some occult truisms about thoughtforms: 

·         #1: The more people giving energy to a thoughtform, and the longer they give it energy, the more powerful it will be until it takes on a life of its own.

We give thoughtforms energy by paying attention to them. Whenever we talk about, sing about, imagine, draw, or paint about a thoughtform, we make it stronger.

There are powers, however, beyond those we create. An occultist’s expanded reality also houses strong and distinct Archetypes (influences, “resonances,” and vibrations that we humans have identified and named, but that we believe have independent existence); we did not create them, although our attention adds to their already-mighty strength. Some of the most powerful are the influences/resonances that correspond to the seven planets of antiquity (Mercury through Saturn plus Sun and Moon: the lights visible to the naked eye) and the twelve astrological signs they rule, the good ol’ Sun signs of our daily horoscopes.

This leads to another occult truism:

·         #2: Aligning a human-created thoughtform with an archetype will produce a Being of immense power.

The Otherworld contains a third stream of energy: the souls of people who have died. That’s a complex topic in itself, but suffice it to say that when very special people who are seen as powerful or Godly or gifted or kind die, sometimes the folks they left behind begin to em-power their Otherworldly presence with continued reverence, love, faith, and even with physical offerings. The soul becomes a radiant Being in the Otherworld. We see this with Saints, Deified Ancestors, some of the Loa revered in Voudon, and spirits in conjure  and indigenous folk traditions such as Blackhawk, Marie Laveau, and Dr. Jose Gregorio Hernandez.

This leads to the next occult truism:

·         #3 Aligning a human-created thoughtform with an Empowered Soul will produce a Being of immense power.

You see where this is going. I have made this sound all very mathematical, but of course, all kinds of combinations can and do happen, including:

·         Archetype + Empowered Soul + Thoughtform = Being of Seriously Super Huge Immense Power

Mundane world, meet the occult reality of Santa Claus. Santa Claus, your secret is out!

The basis of “Santa” Claus is, of course, a saint: Saint Nicholas  celebrated on December 6. Nicholas was a 4^th-century bishop: pious, wealthy, and very generous.  When he died, his grave filled with “manna,” a substance believed to be sacred and filled with healing. Over the next 1,600 years, Saint Nicholas has been given much devotion in the form of prayers, candles, Masses, and belief. Many stories are told about his miraculous deeds of benevolence, generosity, and protection, especially concerning children. As Thoughtform-power married with the Soul of this kind, generous Hallowed Ancestor, He grew in the Otherworld and began to take on characteristics that we find familiar: children putting out stockings for his gifts, for example.

But putting out stockings for a few pieces of fruit or toys on a single saint’s feast-day is a far cry from the mega-extravaganza of our Christmas. What else is in the mix?

Hmmm…let’s look at some keywords we can use for an American Christmas, starting with Big. Make that Really Big. Expansive. Spreading Out. Overflowing. Benevolent. Generous. Overbearing. Gluttonous. Involved with Money. Giving. Abundance.  And Santa: Big. Really Big. Expansive! Flies through the Air in a magickal chariot. Generous. Gift-giving. Abundant. Good Cheer. Joy. Kindness. Jovial –

Wait. Yeah. JOVIAL. That’s it!

All these keywords are keywords that apply not just to Santa and to Christmas but to the planet Jupiter as well. If I want to do magick for an overflowing abundance of money, I call Jupiter. If I want to lighten the mood and bring a sense of expansive joy and cheer, I call Jupiter. This is what Francis Barrett’s book “The Magus” says about Jupiter:  “ Jupiter … conduces to gain riches and favour, love, peace, and concord …” Jupiter doesn’t just conduce to gain riches and favour, either. It conduces to make everything bigger, as contemporary astrologers who read for clients well know.

So. We have an Empowered, Revered Soul, or Saint; and we have a powerful planetary Archetype. And those two are linked.

What happens when we add our own thoughtform energy? And, why would Americans do such a thing?

It’s because the United States is a Jupiterian nation.

“But what,” you say. “Like the song says, we were born on the 4^th of July. Doesn’t that make the US a Cancerian nation, ruled by the Moon?”

Yes, the Sun was in Cancer, and yes, that counts, as you’ll see. But the best-accepted natal chart for America’s TIME of birth has the “ascendant” or “rising sign” as Sagittarius.* Sagittarius is a sign ruled by – you guessed it – Jupiter and is itself associated with generosity, optimism, and expansiveness. The U.S. has this overwash of Jupiterian qualities that sets the keynote for how we are.

The US’s sun sign is Cancer. This Moon-ruled sign loves family, food, and Old Times. Cancerian energy is frequently sentimental and always emotional, so we contribute that to our Christmas mix … but wait, there’s more!  Hmm, where was Jupiter in 1776? In the sign of Cancer – a place where it is astrologically regarded as “dignified” or especially well-suited. So Jupiter makes even our Cancerian love of “home for the holidays” (and holiday sweets, and holiday feasting) bigger.

So, to recap:

(1)    The US, its people and its institutions, are predisposed to Jupiterian ideals and images, such as Santa, by two prominent points in its natal chart. So the US collectively generates a whole lot of Jupiterian thoughtform energy by birthright.

(2)    Saint Nicholas, as a Saint, already has a strong presence in the Otherworld and himself carries a lot of Jupiterian energy.

(3)    Jupiter, as a Planetary Archetype, is a major pre-existing Being or stream of Power in the Otherworld.

Plus, consider the following:

The U.S. Thanksgiving holiday began to be observed on the final Thursday in November around 200 years ago. Abraham Lincoln codified this and Franklin Roosevelt changed it to the fourth Thursday in November. Thursday is the day associated with, and ruled by, Jupiter. Thanksgiving itself is a Jupiterian holiday, since it addresses the concepts of abundance and plenty.

The fourth Thursday in November usually falls at the beginning of the month of Sagittarius, which is ruled by Jupiter and conveys Jupiterian themes of expansiveness, optimism, and generosity.

Thanksgiving is regarded as the official beginning of the Christmas season.

So all the pieces were in place for Jupiterian Saint to marry up with US Archetypal Energy and US Thoughtform energy to create a true Christmas Colossus. AND to marry it with the themes of wealth and business, expanding the “Christmas Season” to well over a month.

This begs the question: is Santa “real?” To an honest occultist, the answer must be “yes.” If we recognize the reality and efficacy of obscure angelic names and images created via Qabalistic formula by a handful of magicians over a few hundreds of years; if little-known European Deities that have barely been talked about for a millennium can surge into power consciousness over the past 50 years; then Santa must be as “real” as any Deity, Saint, Angelic Being, Servitor, Loa, Master Soul or what-have-you.

What else could possibly happen when millions of people name Him, draw Him, sing about Him, fantasize about His activities, pray to Him, write to Him, visit Him, assume His Godform on a regular basis, and give Him offerings – yes, milk and cookies count as such – and when millions of those people are children who do so with full and unquestioning faith? Let me put it this way, brothers and sisters: You could take a worn-out flip-flop and give it a name, and if you poured that amount of faith-energy into it, you’d have the Great Lord Sandal come to visit every summer. But with the substrate of Soul and Archetype energy behind Santa – yeah. No doubt.

So Christmas in America is going to keep on spreading because it is in its Jupiterian nature to do so. And Santa is going to become more powerful and more ubiquitous. And you bet your sleigh full of toys I’m putting an image of Him on a Yule altar, along with Frau Holl, and He’s getting milk and cookies and maybe a shot of good whiskey, and a candle and incense, and I’m invoking the heck out of Him with full expectation that He will pour forth his marvelous, happy, wonder-working, abundant magick into my life, at least until Epiphany.  Merry Christmas and  IO DIA HO HO HO.

* This would be the Sibley chart: http://www.stariq.com/Main/Articles/P0004335.HTM