Back from the Isle of Winds

Ibiza again; and the magic and majesty of the island refreshed and amazed me anew. I have posted pictures which might tell you all you need to know about this amazing place.

Ten days in the sun and breezes, walking in the campo, looking at the flora and fauna, smelling the juniper scrub and the pines, listening to the sea and the trees, eating the generous, hearty food so customary on the island. Feeling the weight of the history, the invaders who came, were seduced by the softness and the welcome of the red land and stayed. Imagining the unbelievable relief of making land on the Isle of Pines; salt-struck and half-blind from the sun, to find a place where water runs, fruit trees bloom and the ground bears crops unstintingly.

And over all, Tanit, goddess of the Moon and of the flesh. Beating Her path over Tagomago to the inland waters and the shore.

It’s Time

… for the altar to be set up once more!

I’ve had all my pieces and items in a box since the move, waiting to have the right space in which to use them. I now do so – a large pine trunk set up facing North in my sitting room, empty so all the pieces can be stored away, and perfectly placed for the garden, so I can open the doors and sit behind the altar looking out.

I aim to work tonight, rededicating all my items in the service of the Goddess, and beginning my devotions afresh. Since Beltane, I feel as though I’ve landed; I’m home. Now it’s time to start working again.

Beltane – New Dreams

As I sit here, listening to the rain pattering on the roof of the unit where I work, I cast my mind back across the last twelve months. Rocky roads, rocky times; not time to think or to feel. Things left undone. But here in the burgeoning Spring of 2009, there’s suddenly light and room to move and to breathe.

I have thought I was fighting my way clear of the ties in previous months, but had the wit to realise it’s like climbing a mountain – numerous false horizons and that the key is never to give up hope. Conserve your energy. Keep plugging away. Take breathers. Don’t forget to breathe!

I’ve been out meeting new people, exploring new interests, and simply enjoying my home and my garden. Balancing solitude and the comfort of relaxation and downtime with going out and enjoying myself in company. I’ve been travelling more, seeing new places. Taking small risks, small excitements and relishing them. Working on my physical fitness, and my mental fitness. In essence, echoing the process of fettling and greening that I see going on around me every day.

So here we are at Beltane, beginning of our Summer; the Goddess and the God meet in the birthtime of the buds; so it couldn’t be a more auspicious time for me to reconnect with my path once more. Beltane this year  is also at the time of the First Quarter of the moon, which is perfect for the work I wish to do; building, strengthening, affirming work, consolidating the distance I’ve come so far.

I find the witchcraft path is like this – we allow ourselves to  become distracted by quotidian vicissitudes, separated from our source and the spring of our power; perhaps one day I’ll learn the trick of keeping my hand on the unicorn’s rein! Till then, I come home again, happy in the knowledge that I can rededicate, resubmit, revitalise my work, look at it once more with a new eye, keep the good and prune the no-so-good and shake the dust from the raiment.

I am taking Beltane Day off work, for an extended meditation, reorganisation and prayer session. I am taking time, precious time, to do what is necessary, what is right for me here and now. I like this. It feels like being able to spread my wings for the first time in an age; I will spread them wide.

New Boundaries

I’m beginning to realise what a total blessing it is to have decided to move on from my old life, and to have redrawn the boundaries much more firmly.

There’s a new clarity to my thought process. Before, when someone I cared about said or promised something, I would extemporise; I’d hear what they said, and immediately bolster it or pad it out with all the things I’d wished they’d say. I made the half promise, the lukewarm thanks,  the semi-devoted utterance do, because I thought I would get no better.

Well, that’s one way to live, and many do it every day; stretching threadbare, perfunctory regard from their other to try to cover widening cracks in their own self-esteem and mental health. I’ve done it. I hated it – and resolved with the Goddess’s strength never to do it again.

Nobody is worth that sort of abasement. Nobody loves you, if they love you so little that you’re at the bottom of the pile when their time is being apportioned.

One of the most valuable things we can give our friends and our lovers is our time. Unstintingly, generously, without running the clock. I needed help last night. My friends were there for me. I texted my friend, and immediately got a call. Another friend left messages for me overnight to ask if I was all right. This is what I do for my friends; this is what my true friends do for me.

So if people tell me they love me now, I listen precisely to what they say, and to nothing else. I measure their worth by their actions and I do not indulge myself in wishful thinking. Everyone has the responsibility to be excellent to their friends, to make the message of love they carry for them easily read and unmistakably strong. There is no room in this scenario for ‘perhaps….’. It should be a yes. A YES!

Airing the Wound, Healing the Hurt

When I was young, the best cure I was offered for cuts and abrasions was to wash the wound, let it dry and expose it to the air and sunshine. In our climate, this method works wonders. It allows the cut to dry, to cut itself off from the lifeblood and to cover itself in armour, ready to grow new skin and protection underneath the congealed blood.

This weekend, I’ve been offered the chance of the equivalent, writ large; my sister and I are starting again in our relationship and our friendship, and it feels good.

We met for the first time 10 years ago. At the time we liked each other, I think. Various untoward happenings meant that we didn’t and couldn’t remain friends. Not to say we’ve ever been at loggerheads openly – we just haven’t ever kept up with each other. Her children have grown up as strangers to me. I’ve missed her talents and her humour and her strength. I think she may have missed mine equally. This weekend, we offered each other the chance to build the bridge anew.

The wound has healed – best of all, it seems we’ve forgotten why we were not friends, or if not, it has ceased to matter. We hugged and kissed each other and were perfectly at ease all weekend, and our children adored each other at first sight and became fast friends.

More room to manoeuvre, more opportunity for compromise, more space for friendship, more depth for love and respect. Good. This is what I want in my life – making, not breaking.

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Do visit my sister’s site, Mackface. She’s an incredibly talented artist and bodypainter, and is available for festivals, and commissions are taken – in fact, she’s doing one for me at the moment!!

Green Witch Chariot Race

At the risk of coming over all Ben-Hur this morning I’m going to talk a little bit about calls to action, and what they make us do and feel. Well, what they make me do and feel, actually; I speak for no-one but myself on this topic!

What constitutes a call to action? To me, it’s an irresistable urge to do something in the face of a larger problem. When the need to act, to move, to make a difference outweighs the need to sit, to be still, to be silent, I have to act, I feel compelled to.

This doesn’t necessarily come down to one felt emotion, one strand of reasoning either. It could be guilt. It could be the feeling of a job left undone. It could be anger, pity, empathy. It could be the realisation of a major injustice. It could be as petty as minor irritation. And in the end, it could be the fact that for me at least, action is always preferable to inaction, no matter if inaction would have proved the safer or more prudent route.

There’s nothing more draining or disempowering than chosing to do nothing in a situation of adversity. None of us think the close-the-eyes approach to problem solving makes situations any better; Churchill said that all that is needed for evil to flourish is that good men do nothing. How right he was.

I’ve a number of situations on hand just now that require action; they require me to be brave and take a stand and make executive decisions without the benefit of foresight. How I wish at times for a clear eye to the future! When I was young I used to play Fighting Fantasy rolegames; particularly the ones in book form where you read the sections and govern your choices though judgement and rolls of the dice. I always used to cheat, mildly; looking ahead to outcomes but preserving the ability to backtrack to the last safe point and select another route if things didn’t go so well. Clearly, this ability would benefit me greatly now; bitter, actually, to look around at some witches of my acquaintence who blithely claim the ability to see forward; can they? Would it benefit me to be able to do so? Who knows. I have a sneaking feeling not, actually.

David Beth

Seshat has recently written a long post to which I wish to draw your attention; it is the summary from Seshat’s point of view of David Beth’s latest podcast.

David spoke at the 12th Thelemic Symposium which I covered in this post. Since the symposium, Seshat has made a study of his work with La Couleuvre Noire and Voudon Gnosis. This podcast draws together many of the disparate themes of the subject matter, and Seshat’s summary presents it in an accessible style and I recommend it to any interested parties. David has approved the work; meaning you may rely on its accuracy!

Garbled Thinking

An interesting short conversation with a Christian in my family today highlighted to me the some of the facts regarding worship in Britain today. I quote:

Her: You’ll have to start going to church again if you want to get R into that school!

Me: I wouldn’t do that; it’s hypocritical and unneccessary. And anyway, I’m not sacrificing my beliefs to tick a box to gain an education for my child.

Her: Well, you don’t have to do you? You worship God, after all!

Me: Well, yes. In a way. But the Christian church worships Jesus. The clue’s in the question. I don’t believe in Jesus as a saviour or as the son of God.

Her: But all Gods are the same in the end!

Me: (thinks) Have you thought about that before you said it? It implies your One True Saviour… isn’t.

The idea that I would voluntarily retard my spiritual life and actively renege on everything I’ve worked for and earned in order to get my son into a particular school seems ludicrous to me, and will, I suspect, to many of my readers. But what is even more alarming to me is the thought that you can have any sort of moral excellence within such a system. One of the strictest proponents of Christianity I know, actively encouraging me to be mendacious and underhanded in order to achieve something worldly. Interesting.

It seems easy for Christians to be clear about what they believe and what they worship – they’ve got a book, a plan and a couple of thousand years of well-documented history. This all seems to go out of the window in situations like the above. Either you have a One True God or you don’t….

One of the things I get continually from those who ask me about my path is an accusation that I can’t be fully candid and straightforward about the doctrine I follow. The fact that I don’t have one with which to form a path seems to escape my interlocutor, nine times out of ten. We don’t get a book, a road, a threat of hell and a promise of heaven like the world’s heaviest-handed carrot-and-stick  approach. We don’t proselytise; we don’t advocate the worship of any particular goddess or god – we wouldn’t presume to intervene between the gods and the people they choose as their followers.

We get a braided channel, a map with no names on it, our wits and the clothes we stand up in. Who wouldn’t learn more this way?

A Pagan In Somerset

Andy’s back with us!! Hooray!!

All Shall Be Made New

Here I am again, myself and yet not myself; grown different and stronger and freer all at once!

Some background seems sensible, or I’ll be talking gibberish; the upheaval and changes in my personal life, while traumatic, have been enormously fruitful and continue to be so. I feel reborn. It isn’t so much a shucking off of old associations and ties but a reassessment of what it is that I want out of my life, the only one I have.

When you bump along without demanding control of your life and you allow the winds and tides to drive you, you are relinquishing the better part of the thing that makes you human; the ability to determine your path and form it in the image you create. This is a form of alchemy, small ‘a’; you imagine the result and then, eyes closed, you mould the method and release it to do its work. We do this every day, all day; managing and planning and making things happen.

I’ve been silent, recently, because I’ve been listening; listening as though my life depended upon it, which I sincerely believe it might actually do. The life I want, at any rate. I’ve been learning the tune and committing the words to memory. I do not want to simply live; I want to live forever. Ambitious, no? I’m not talking about immortality, in the spiritual sense; I’m talking about the superlative life, the life filled with sparkle and dash and vivid memory, not one moment wasted henceforth. And the beauty of it is that the raw materials are free and all that is required from me is will and a sound plan.

Between me listening to me, I’ve been listening to others; particuarly my lovely Seshat and her new joint venture, The Adversarial Path. Seshat has found a new and compelling direction for her life, and again she and I echo each other in this; what I’m enjoying is the difference between our processes and the diversity of the results. She has made herself new, as have I. She has a new path, full of danger and wonders; I have reaffirmed my commitment to the old path, with a will to go back to first principles once again and work hard on my spiritual and religious life. In this we support each other, reveling in our difference, discussing, disputing but always respecting. I’ll be visiting her and Alexander there at the AP, to read and learn and understand, the better to discuss and question and grow. 

For me this is the essence of the Pagan way; joy in difference, in understanding, in growth despite pain. I often find that turmoil in my life causes me to think afresh and with renewed clarity about my spirituality and my beliefs. It makes you meet your gods again, as if for the first time. It reminds you of the first time you met them. 

Yule is upon us; the start of the celebrations of the year in my particular calendar. It is also the anniversary of Seshat and I beginning our year and a day… and look at where we’ve come to.