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.

Scaring for Pleasure

Ag. The neighbours were holding what sounded like a full-on cauldron-jumping cackle-a-thon last night. I went to sleep at 9pm on my reading book, only to be woken at 1am by this appalling racket. I grumpily threw on my clothes and stumped round and knocked on the kitchen window, which in retrospect wasn’t the smartest thing to do at that time of the morning, but I was half-asleep and pretty cross to boot. The result was that they both screamed and jumped out of their skins, which I admit was one of the funniest things I’ve seen this year. I broke up laughing, and then they broke up laughing, and I asked them to shut their window and then went back to bed. Whereupon I singularly failed to get back to sleep.

So it’s Friday, I’ve got a deadline and two meetings, and the sum total of *no* energy whatsoever! Interesting equation, let’s see what comes out the other end!

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.

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

Off Away!

Heading West again this weekend to visit with TSW and Shepherdess… superb. This will a pretty interesting visit, as it’s social but also heavily business-focused. Not to titillate your tastebuds too much!

We could certainly do with some time off. I spent all my working week reeling from pillar to post, this week; neither comfortable nor stress-free. And the neighbours at our new little house seem to do everything except sleep at night-time. I counted three separate entries and exits (slammed doors, revving cars, shouting into mobiles) between 2.30am and 4.30am. I’m a really light sleeper - most of the time I’m not technically ‘asleep’ as I still have the ears-on-elastic thing from having a baby. Added to which, new houses are built of matchwood and pencil shavings, so if you cough it sounds like a bomb dropping.

I will be online, try and keep me away.

So we leave the tatty suburban street of the hometown and head out into the golden misty West… cue music! And someone promised us Beef Wellington and Tiramisu, too. Talk about Avalon…

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Well, there’s no real words to describe the excellence and sumptuous wonderfulness of this weekend. We arrived stressed, after hitting the back of the 50-mile tailback from Cribbs Causeway to Cornwall. After a protracted tussle with the map and a cross-country meander, we crossed the line into Somerset. There’s an indescribable peace and contentment that I feel when I enter this county - I’ve never lived here, and have no family connection. It’s green, bucolic, rich and fertile, with deep hollows between the hills that hide the most beautiful villages in England. The pink and gold Hamstone that they use to build with here contrasts with the wisteria, parthenocissus, clematis and greenness of the gardens and glows in the shallow evening light that pours across the fields. It’s a promised land, a dream. I love it to distraction.

We dropped straight into easy banter and gathering around the kitchen table we got on with doing the dinner, lubricating the proceedings with blackcurrant vodka, and cooking up a storm. Afternoon shaded into evening as we ate the fruits of our labours and then kicked back with vats of wine for a gossip and a giggle, and then a dance!

TSW’s brow lightened after a few jars; her back has been giving her untold grief and agony. It was lovely to see the wine doing its work and enabling her to put me royally through my paces as a belly dancer - she looked great, but I looked like a cat on hot bricks although I really got the feel for the music - I’d love to have another shot at this.

We settled to bed fairly late and I was hammered, but pleasantly - no hangover whatsoever in the morning and I slept like a log, as did Mr GW. Awakened slowly by the contented sotto voce cluckings and meanderings of the local chickens. Freshly made and delightful coffee, local fresh-squeezed bramley apple juice, and a heritage breakfast of award winning sausages and bacon, local bread and free-range scrambled eggs followed. This is food the way it’s supposed to be produced. From the area, personally chosen, carefully produced, lovingly cooked and greedily devoured!

TSW took us on a tour of the local villages - cue much drooling from me - and a visit to a cider mill. Wonderful stoneware flagons of local cider and some beeswax candles that smell of honey, somnolent sluggishness and the peace of bees. 

We left, comforted and cheered on our way, like we were stepping out of a magic circle but somehow retaining the virtue of it on our drive north. Such a lot has been decided this weekend, such a lot of issues resolved. I have to thank my friends; they are responsible for all the good things that have been achieved - and they cook a mean Welly to boot!

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!

Deja Vu can be an uncomfortable thing

This discussion about formalising paganism and having some sort of a corporate voice has been making me uncomfortable in a formless sort of a way, until I realised something properly. What we’re actually talking about is hierarchy, membership and inclusiveness. Which, even if you get everyone pulling in the same direction, means you’re going to have those who are excluded. Or who choose not to be members.

I get a little weary with the circular arguments this tends to draw up - and they’ve been coming out in force. It all looks too much like the Church of England and its current trouble and strife. There’s a clear dichotomy in the CofE between political unity, and the threat of schism on spiritual and doctrinal grounds - which to me looks like an opportunity, but to them appears to be an unsurmountable difficulty. I do not believe that Christianity was ever intended to be a corporate body with universal belief - they’ve had it imposed upon them several times through history, to attempt to bring the balloon back into its shed.

While some in the pagan world are trying busily to stick us into the same failing paradigm, I’m staying put. Obdurate and unco-operative to the last, and I won’t be the only one. These attempts at consolidation and unification are, in my view, doomed to failure, or at best to limited regional success. The means of their failure is built into the model - we’re not frightened of hell, so there’s one stick ‘they’ can’t use to beat us, and we’re well aware that there’s no one true way.

From a political point of view, the steps are already being made to manufacture a larger voice - the efforts being put into spiritual and ecumenical consolidation could be put to better use in some other arena. Public relations, perhaps?

Swimming the Current

Wonderful work afoot, and there’s only more of it on the horizon. There’s so much going on. So much I hadn’t ever anticipated, even 6 months ago it would have looked unlikely. I ‘ve been carefully extricating myself from other things and streamlining everything I do to give myself the most operational time possible.

Fellow bloggers have been talking in recent weeks about this; the balance between spiritual and mundane life. Mundane? Not in my case. It’s life, but what an exciting life. I think partly it’s because I’m learning to appreciate even the smallest thing as important. The sum total is extraordinary enjoyment; of my surroundings, the people in my life, and my own company.

Clearly, I can make this whole scenario into a problem if I choose to do so, but I don’t. For once, I’m going with the current instead of fighting it.