Life Supervenes

As you run along, doing what you can, thinking about things that are sometimes fairly far from home, you can lay yourself open to getting blown up, metaphorically speaking - the most unlikely things can happen without any warning.

Amazingly, this has happened to me this week; utterly affirming the belief I hold that life won’t let you get complacent. Time to think like my life depended on it - watch me up my game!

I’m just glad for the Mercian Gathering coming up - a chance to unwind and centre myself, do my affirmations, dance, pray, sleep, talk with my friends, all in the protection of the circle.

I’d wish this feeling on all I know - pulse racing, heart thumping, adrenaline, brighter vision, the whole nine yards. Blessings!

Revenge

Is the belief in heaven and hell an internalised wish for revenge on those who do us wrong?

I was thinking today about the terrible accounts of survivors of Srebrinice which I watched on the television at the time, and on the dreadful liberties taken by the Russian troops in Georgia, a sovereign state, just this month.

My particular attention was focused on those doing such unspeakable things to innocent people, who had done them personally no harm whatsoever. What made them continue with the attacks on men, women and children past the point of torture?

A man described on British television news how he had been beaten, and his sister raped, in front of their father, who had to sit and watch and do nothing, on pain of death. For what? They were civilian, and children at that. 

Brian at The House of Inanna speaks on this subject with force and clarity today, and I commented; I remembered then that I had begun this post and it was saved in my drafts folder. I want to finish it now, because I believe we need to try and face these things and to talk about them, in every walk of society. Darfur? Is this beleaguered region in the news much? No. And if what’s happening there was happening in London, how different the story would be.

Where do humans get the ability to fundamentally ignore the evil happening a world away? Nowhere’s very far from anywhere now; isn’t that what we’re told? 

I try hard not to make this an issue about violence against women, but really, it is. We are perceived to be weak both on our own account and on the account of our children, and therefore a target for special cruelty. Beatrice, in Much Ado, when faced with the disgrace of her cousin, berates herself, saying, ‘Oh, if I were a man!’. I don’t want to be a man. I think most men might disassociate themselves from men like these.

I want men of violence to stop using their sexuality against women and children in war zones, and against their fellow men by extension. 

So when we consider the Christian embodiment of Hell, is it that we want such perpetrators to burn eternally? Perhaps. I don’t understand the mad corruption that comes over a person to cause them to act so atrociously. They are truly the furthest from grace in such a state. In any case, neo-pagans don’t have a hell to which to condemn the guilty; so what then do we do?

Perhaps we ought to act here, now, in this life. One innocent life saved must be worth it - or am I being unbelievably idealistic?

Of Interest!

You’ll note a new tab on the header bar; I’ve posted a schedule for a lecture series by Ken Rees which will be taking place at educational establishments around London during the Autumn and Winter of 2008-9. Any interested parties should contact Ken directly on the numbers or email address provided!

I have heard Ken speak - he is lucid, informed, entertaining and academically challenging. Recommended.

The Supernatural in the Natural

Marya at A Spell In Wales has been discussing this phenomenon recently, through the medium of Welsh poetry. In her inimitable and evocative style, she brings to life a Wales long gone, but with us in spirit, never far away, liminal and almost tangible, but removed from us physically, never to return. It is a tantalising picture.

When we’re flying around like paper kites, getting in the way of others and having others cross our paths, we feel stultified, despite the extreme speed at which we’re travelling. REM put it well; ‘…so fast, so numb that you can’t even feel’.

Tess over at Anchors and Masts has written a great post exploring the premise that if you don’t believe you will see beauty, then it is forever a closed door to you. You need to know what you see contains beauty, to feel it in your heart, and to seek it out. She writes:

“…you will not see beauty unless you believe in it. If you believe you will see ugliness and despair, then that is what you will see.”

 How right she is.

Even the unluckiest of us has the chance to see green things growing, see ancient architecture, see water, watch the weather. These are the very most basic elements of the divine in the mundane that we can avail ourselves of. And perhaps, they are the elements to which we should turn if we ever forget what it is we’re about. The building blocks, if you like, that form the basis of the bridge between our everyday lives and the realisation that we live in the midst of a miracle.

Look closely at the perfection of the rain on a leaf; think about the ages and the rain and the peoples that have come and gone around the oldest building in your town. Feel the years in the rocks, and at the circles and in the woods. Know you’re part of it; you don’t own any part of it, but rather, it owns you. We do not ride on the back of this world, it carries us because it can.

The worlds that went before, the worlds embodied in other languages and prayers, are there for us to feel if only we can shut up for long enough and allow the impressions to sink in. Fast, numb, and missing out. Such a world out there, all for the stopping and listening!

Bound by Negativity

Several situations are conspiring at the moment, and they seem to be amplifying each other. It appears the Universe is giving me a not-so-subtle poke in the ribs.

If you can manage to step outside your life a little and look back in, you sometimes see the most amazingly unlikely things. When I step out, I see myself lying on the floor, bound and gagged, and utterly unable to move, paralysed by indecision and the agonies of choice.

Negativity surrounds me like a jungle vine, cutting off my air, and the light from the canopy above. If I stay here and allow this to become normal to me, I’ll never get out; worse, I won’t want to after a while.

The details are perhaps unnecessary to relate. The actions that need taking are important and the most important of these is: I need to go get myself a new job.

Typing like a maniac

I’d been talking about good motivation; I seem to have found some energy and application that I’d lost since university days. It hasn’t diminished or got any less vigorous; it’s just been sitting there, in suspended animation, waiting for me to remember it.

An avenue of study has opened up over the last few weeks and I’ve been dipping my toes in the water, no more. It’s warm. And I want to throw myself in and go wallowing around in all the wonderful images, ideas, theories and strategems and then swim off down the little rills that lead from this pool to other pools and to yet other pools… it feels like C S Lewis’s Wood Between the Worlds from The Magician’s Nephew. Actually, that’s a really good and coincidental analogy, come to think of it…

In any case, here I am in this pool of knowledge and I hadn’t looked for it - had never expected it to come my way. I’d been wishing for it without really knowing what I wanted, and now I have it. I am spending my evenings reading, making notes, typing responses, putting together ideas, testing them, reading reading reading. Thinking critically and in an organised fashion, for perhaps the first time in ten years. Frightening, exhilarating, astonishingly beneficient.

Why frightening? Because when my mind takes over it rules me completely, and nothing else gets a look-in. But it’s also frightening to note the difference between my mind now and the excuse for thinking I’ve made do with in the recent past. No comparison. I love to think, and to stretch my mind. I feel like a cat waking up from a long nap.

Birth, rebirth

I remember when I was first called along this path, I felt the most amazing depth of attunement to Them; there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that the path was there for me if only I would take it. Similarly, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that I was taking the right path, the only path for me.

There was a time at the start of the call that I felt exactly like Seshat describes in her post, Hieros Gamos - an unbelievable synergy, a totality of union, a sexual, spiritual and visceral thrill, a psychic alarm and awakening, like ice-water through your bones. There was power, as much power as anyone might ever need; compressed, restrained, separated from me but still there, latent, available at some point soon, promised. Set aside for me alone.

Since that time I have come a great distance; rocky ground, at times. Stopping off along the way to take detours and to see new things; doubting, rechecking, re-reading. Going back and springing forward. Getting lost. Getting profitably lost, which is something altogether different. But at no point have I decided against this path; every day has only reaffirmed the rightness and correctness of the way I’m going.

I don’t have a destination, so the path I take is not relevant. It doesn’t have to be the shortest or most direct route between two points; and if there’s forests, bears, palaces and wonders along the way,the journey is just that much richer.

Commitment grows the further away from port you get. When he reached the New World, Cortez burned his ships, ensuring his men were well-motivated. Mine have been smouldering awhile - now they’re blazing and I’m chucking on oil. Commitment is the force that breaks the barrier between you and Them; which releases the power held in trust to your service. I have realised in the last months that as my commitment and effort increases, so do the rewards. And this is happening now, here; not in some indefinable point in the future, not in the Next Life; my efforts, such as they are, are being rewarded or answered in kind. I feel as though I am actually being reborn.

I want the Hieros Gamos; I had it, misused it and misinterpreted what it meant. I may never get it again - but I had it, and should I ever be so graced again I would recognise it for what it was.

I feel now as I felt then;  like John Duncan’s St Bride. Borne above the water with no fear of falling.

The Tumblers Turn and the Door Opens…

Seshat’s Voice has been speaking about the great need in us all for a mythology. I’ve been thinking quietly about myth-making, mythology and neo-paganism for a while, in a particularly formless way; Some good ideas but no focus. Nothing I could pin down.

Seshat’s post struck home with me even more than it usually does, because she goes on to discuss the results of committing yourself to a course of action with no messing about. You want a mythology? Go find one that appeals to you and work with it. Learn it, immerse yourself in it. Find the universal truths inside it. Where is it different, where the same to what you’ve known before?  Above all, why are you attracted to it?

This can be the most revealing work of all, and some of the most important for any neo-pagan to undertake. Self-discovery cannot possibly come any more directly from the soul than this. So, it’s spriritual and personal growth. Not bad results for making a commitment.

Then she discusses the returns for committing yourself, consciously and subconsciously, to action. Your needs and wants suddenly begin to be fulfilled. Seshat’s were for companions, community and a teacher. I’m no different - I believe these things to be universals, more or less, in the path we follow.

I’ve discussed recently and in the comments thread of this post the difference between teaching and proselytising, so it ought to be clear that I see a distinction between the two states; I feel the need for some guidance. Teachers may provide many things; the raw materials of wisdom are the most important in my view. Not information, pre-digested; not a packaged world view or a mythology or even an opinion, simply ideas, vistas, fresh air.

So, suddenly my vague and uninformed ideas about myth have received some of that fresh air; an incisive and insightful commentary and expertise that I couldn’t find in my reading. Answered.

Enforced Rest

Given that I am immobile, temporarily, after a brief visit to the hospital yesterday (wisdom teeth - there went my extra IQ points!) I thought I’d settle in for a real good rant today. It’ll help take my mind off the aggers and torters.

I may be being highly uncharitable, but there’s a great deal of garbage out there in book form. I spend a good proportion of my yearly disposable income on books, and with noted exceptions I might as well have burned the money. Now, even a bad book can be instructive; even a rehash of some old bull-hockey can tell you something, if only about yourself. However, for personal discovery I have other methods, cheaper methods, than finding myself at 10pm with a book newly purchased and already about to be luzzed across the room bin-wards.

I find myself losing both patience and the will to live.

Don’t get me the wrong way, here; I haven’t seen the world and decided that I can do better. No. This elementary mistake can be someone else’s to make. I could write a book, but really, where’s the inducement, when the book-buying public in witchcraft and associated paths (self included) seems to be so undiscerning?

OK, deep breath. Go take a pill.

I’ve dedicated the rest of the afternoon to attempting to read, for the third and final time, a newly published book, a book which should be supremely important to the readers out there, given its subject matter, which has made only the slightest and least favourable impression on me. If I haven’t got it by the end of this read, then its time is up. I’ll let you know.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

21:31hrs. Straight to the back of the shelf. NEXT!!

Blinking At You from a Pile of New Books

Sometimes you can get out of kilter - you either have nothing to read, and all day to read it in; or you see a hundred new books you want, buy a selection and then they sit there, bindings uncracked, till you have to start dusting them and they become part of the furniture.

I’ve taken with me to the new house a stack of books I haven’t yet got to grips with, and I’m going to read them all. Cover to cover. With notes taken. And then I’m going to bore you all silly with them.

Reading, to me, is the last great unadulterated pleasure. I still have good enough eyesight. It doesn’t cost anything, in practical terms, because when I buy a book it’s an investment and I rarely if ever get rid of them. It’s not illegal, immoral or fattening. It’s quiet, and above all it’s portable. Wherever I go I can slip a book in my bag to make the idle minutes go more quickly. And also, hilariously enough, if you’re reading one of *those* books, people don’t feel the irrestistable urge to plonk themselves down and engage you in conversation - which is a habit in others that drives me wild.

My Amazon wishlist is groaning with stuff as yet unbought; my bookcase smells like a bookshop, all glue and new bindings; I’ve got my avaricious eye on all manner of new titles; but I’m calling a halt and going to plough through what I have methodically -  good, bad or indifferent. I’ve got titles in the pile by Rae Beth, Christopher Penczak, Sorita D’Este and David Rankine, Phillip Cooper, Ronald Hutton and Dion Fortune - and this is only a selection.

If the British weather ever does decide to play by the rules and behave as though it really is August (9 degrees and a sharp wind this morning, *sigh*) then I may even be able to do some reading in the countryside. I used to do this when I lived in Essex, at the end of a tiny lane to nowhere. The little cottage I rented, in the grounds of a large house, had no separation from the fields and woods around; you were in the countryside even when you leaned out of the bedroom window. On days off from my job in the little town nearby, I used to grab a book and a blanket and head out across the meadows and rutted baked-earth trackways, under the bright sun, surrounded by nature, verdure and the dark black-green of English oaks in high summer. I’d find a likely spot, miles from anywhere, set up camp and read till I was drowsy; and like as not, roll over and have a snooze in the sun and fresh air. I remember once waking up surrounded by Muntjac deer - I don’t know who was more startled!

Now, most of my reading is done in the eye-flapping 10-minute margin between awake and asleep at 10pm. Not the best time to wring the juice from a work of scholarship. I need a rethink on this - I’m never going to make any headway if I’m reading three pages at a time, two of them with my eyes shut!