loveandpower

Self-Reflective, Self-Perpetuating, Self-Creating, Self-Sustaining Mother of All, 
 Grant us Wisdom as we gaze upon your countenance
Radical-Fractal-Maddening-Mirroring-Mistress of all that Is Was and is Yet to be,
Be Gentle with us as we recognize your vast Mystery

Go here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgPRuYjkkpU&feature=related

What does this mean for human consciousness? Think about it.  It wasn't that long ago (perhaps several hundred years) that a person could not know what they really looked like.  We didn't have mirrors.  We might get a foggy reflection in water or a shiney surface.  We would have an idea of our own face by looking at the faces of our family and relatives.  What did it do to us when we could see our own faces?  I'm sure if I looked hard enough I could find a paper written by an historical anthropologist or sociologist that would explain.

My parents' generation--the parents of the baby boom--couldn't know themselves beyond their roles in society and family life.  The pursuit of personal awareness was perceived as dangerous, self-indulgent and even insane.  Yet, they conceived and bore a generation of human beings hell-bent on self awareness.  What did it do, and what is it continuing to do  to us to see our own selves? 

Then, a few years after I was born, we were able for the first time ever to see images of our Earth from outside the Earth herself.  Our awareness of our home--the beautiful blue-green marble turning regally in the silence of space has changed the ways we think about and care for her, as well as how we see ourselves.

In my lifetime we have identified DNA.  What does it do to us to know ourselves as microscopically encoded in something our eye cannot perceive?

Now, we can look at our galaxy from outside of it.  In fact, we can view the "local group" of galaxies where we are located from deep space and contemplate the Milky Way with its spiralling arms is one amid bijillions of bijillions of galaxies like our own.

What will these images do to us?  How will we behave knowing our place in the vastness of Her body?We pray each day, ten thousand times, to "know myself in all my parts."   And we see how vast and how small we truly are.   What fruit does this knowledge bear?

I hope it is dark and juicy and sweet.  I hope it is dripping with compasssion and tangy with truth and salted with 4 trillion impossible paradoxes as it feeds the consciousness of humanity which seems to have developed more rapidly in the past 60 years than for eons beforehand.

. . . .and one of the Eves hands the perfectly ripened fruit to one of the Adams and he takes of it and eats. . . .  and we pray to one of the Virgin Mothers saying, "Blessed is the fruit of your womb" . . . . and one of the Christed Ones says the Words, "Here,  take this and eat, for this is my body, the body of God"   . . .. and one of the Beloved Ones speaks mad poetry about drinking wine with the Beloved and falling down drunk with Knowing . . . and one of the Buddhas speaks of the consummation of Silence . . . . and the Vodoun place ripened fruit upon the altars as they dance inside the circle of pounding drums . . . .and the dervishes whirl like the churning galaxies . . . . and the scientists peer through lenses looking far and close to taste her fractile creation . . . . and one of the Fey pull us to them whispering of Islands of apples and silver wheels . . . and one of the Witches turns her body, the body of God and kisses berry red lips of another in the unending Spiral Dance . . .and it is all a feast . . . and ten thousand tables are set in every city . . . . and each table overflows with the fruit of knowledge grown to sate the hunger in the body of a god . . . .and each of us is one of the Bodies . . . . and I pray this night,  let the hunger be sated.  Finally.  And Once.  And for All.
 
 

This week, life is busy, tumultuous, complicated, magical, worriesome, gorgeous, exhausting, demaning, phenomenal, promising, generous, hopeful, deeply influenced by dreams, portentious and full. 

In need of a break, I went to the freezer and opened a new frozen treat.  Treats are important because I have not smoked a cigarette in TWO whole months. My scale does not approve of treats and neither do the jeans that no longer fit.  I intend to address that sometime soon.  

Meanwhile,  if I ever had a doubt in my mind that the Goddess loves us all without complication adulteration or condition, those doubts melted away with the first bite of Reed's Ginger (organic, all natural, no HFCS)  Ice Cream.    I think I actually
 hear angel's singing while I licked the spoon clean.

There is still space available for this intensive online workshop.  You do not need to have participated in the "In the Name of Sex" workshop to participate in this one.  The workshop on Divine Twins is closed.

In the Name of Self

The second in a series of online workshops exploring and empowering the Iron Pentacle. June 16 – July 28, 2009.

”There is very little that cannot be accomplished in the world through working on the self.” -Victor Anderson

This seven week online workshop will take us deep into the threefold nature of Self and its myriad manifestations. Beginning with foundational questions and practices, we will mine our depths for the multi-faceted jewel of Healthy Selfhood. Through reading, discussion, a variety of exercises and ritual magic we will endeavor to eloquently express that jewel in thought, word and deed. Of course, we will also explore how Self connects to the other points on our Iron Pentacle— Passion, Pride, Power and Sex—informing and shaping the whole while also being fed and shaped by them. Iron Pentacle is a dynamic magical tool for the empowerment of the Feri Witch and through us, the world we engage with.

IN THE NAME OF SELF is a celebration and affirmation of the three-fold spirits we are—Human, Wild and Divine. Expect it to be juicy, surprising and personally revelatory. Expect to work hard and to be delighted as we come to know the Nature of Self as it is expressed in lore and through the gods of the Feri Tradition. If “God is self and self is god and god is a person like myself,”* then who does that make you?

For more information or to register for this workshop, please click here
(or go to www.blackheartferi.com  click on calendar and then on workshop title)

This quote was shared with me by Sean, a student of the BlackHeart line of Feri as well as the Green Magics of Wildcraft and Healing.  I share it because of what it says but also for the lush language with which it is said.  Thank you, Sean:

"If we eat the wild, it begins to work inside us, altering us, changing us. Soon, if we eat too much, we will no longer fit the suit that has been made for us. Our hair will begin to grow long and ragged. Our gait and how we hold our body will change. A wild light begins to gleam in our eyes. Our words start to sound strange, nonlinear, emotional. Unpractical. Poetic. Once we have tasted this wildness, we begin to hunger for a food long denied us, and the more we eat the more we will awaken." -- Stephen Harrod Buhner The Secret Teachings of Plants


Sean is an incredible healer and social activist,  To contact him or familiarize yourself with his work, check out
SEAN DONAHUE
Herbalist and Reiki Master Teacher
Sumner, ME - Lawrence, MA - Boston, MA

Green Man Healing Arts
http://www.greenmanhealingarts.org
http://greenmanramblings.blogspot.com/
Eyes of the World Media
http://www.seandonahue.org

I met with my once-upon-a-time Craft Teacher the other day for coffee.  So good to see him again.  Wonderful to catch up on where our lives are going, how our kids are doing and what our magic looks like today as opposed to when we worked together.  He likes to remind me that we both keep changing and that our relationship has changed as well.  I am proud he considers me a peer and yet, so much of who he was then has shaped who I am now.  

Back then, in the days of dinosaurs, when we walked to Training barefoot, uphill, in 3 feet of snow in New England, to meet with the Teacher not knowing what crazy and liberating thing he might say, or do or demand . . . well,  things were different than they are now. (In some places, they are still the same.  I haven't heard of anyone dying from the hierarchy, or from the hurt feelings this kind of training sometimes caused.   But, I sure have seen some mighty strong Witches made this way. But that's a story for another time.)    We'd meet at his house for a while each week.  I was half out of my mind with Makahu most of the time.   He'd show me things.  I'd tell him things.  We'd chat.  But make no mistake, there was no mis-chosen word or meaningless gesture.   I rarely asked anything--out of respect.   It was him who asked the questions.  My answers to those questions have changed over the years, and  will continue to as long as I am alive and working the Craft.

Tonight I am reminded of three of his most persistent demands:

Who are you?


What kind of Witch are you?


 If they can take your power with a word or deed, what good is it?




Imagine, if you will, sitting alone in a room, face to face with the person you respect most in the world.  S/he is intently holding your gaze, looking you in the eye and expecting Truthful answers to these questions.  Not very polite is it?  Not very civilized.  But then, I was also told , "The road to F(a)eri(e) is not civilized, but kinder." 

These questions continue to push me past my comfort zone, past the places where I want to protect (coddle) my own weakness . . . past the realities I have brought into manifestation to satisfy my ego, and into the Truth of Who I Am.  They demand I continue to define and affirm the kind of Witch I am.  Again, and again, and again they require me to claim my own Power:  that which can never be taken from me and for which I will never apologize, for it is Innocent and Fey and Hard Won.

 A Witch is PowerFull. S/he deals in Power.  S/he cannot cringe from naming it, from using the very word, "Power,"  from wielding Power and yes, Being Power.  I didn't come to the Craft to be taught the manners of polite society.  I came to the Craft because the Goddess pulled me to her like a Mother pulls her child out of traffic.  She grabbed me by the arm without warning!  One minute I was there in the road and the car was speeding toward me.  The next I was here on the sidewalk, and my arm hurt and She was yelling at me and clutching me to Her breast and weeping at  the same time.  When Life and Death are colliding, table manners and social niceties don't apply.  And the Craft?  Feri Tradition Witchcraft?  Well, we collide with Life and Death in each moment of every day. 

I'm not saying being of the Craft excuses us from being kind.  Not at all. I'm saying we are uncivilized.   I am saying that if we are Witches,  we cannot afford to be confused about our Power. It is real.  In order to wield it with respect, in order prepare to carry the wieght of responsibilty that comes with Power, we must first claim it as our own.  How can we wield or respect something we refuse to deal with?

Ah, and here is what I started out writing before I got carried away on one of my infamous tangential trains of thought:

I don't want your power. I have my own.   If you have given me your power accidentally or, in your confusion believe I have diminished it, I demand you take it back in a manner that does Justice to the integrity of That which is Highest in us both.

Here is what every true Teacher of any Tradition wants for every Student and Seeker:  Claim your own Power!  

 Then, we can sit together and have coffee without fear the other is carrying a machete.  Then we can help one another do our the Work we are each here to do rather than deprive one another of that Joy.   Then we can move past misunderstanding  and right on through to Truth.  And then? 

Then we can enter the sacred space carrying our Weapons of Power without drawing them upon each other, but rather drawing the Circle around us where we dance in perfect love and perfect trust. 

In Love and Power, Be Blessed.