Letting go of the pain.. dancing with the dark.

The paths through the forest of spiritual development wind and turn. There is no straight path in my experience. While we may cry, rage, and whine against this reality - it doesn't change it. We cannot predict where we will be at any stage of our development, and in the long run this is an essential piece of the process.

Letting go of the pain and frustration is a tough skill to learn. Everyone one of us has a bit of Scorpio in us, that dark part of bitter pain that acts as both a seed for change and a poison that infects some of our work. Scorpio is the sign of death and transformation, this energy is critical to spirtual evolution. Scorpios are known to remember pains or betrayals long after others have forgotten them. Though they aren't all this way, this general perspective represents a truth about humanity in general: we don't learn to dance with the dark very well. The gift of Scorpio energies is just that: they dance with the darkness.

By dancing I mean that Scorpio represents the edge of creation that is directly preceeded by destruction. In short, we die in this moment to become what we are in the next one. Too often this truth is ignored in our rush for enlightenment. We want the process to be one of divine bliss, unfolding in layer upon layer of orgasmic love that heals all wounds and proves to us in no uncertain terms that we are sacred. OK.. gimme a break, will you?

Dancing with the darkness involves letting the pain go, letting it do it's work and then letting it go. It involves going all the way INTO the pain and then letting go and evolving like a butterfly in chrysalis. We cannot be ALL things all the time, no matter how passionately we cling to that desire. The darkness is a part of us, the pain will come again and again. Holding onto the pain only eclipses the joy and the bliss that follows as our new self is born.

I dance with the darkness more and more these days. I embrace the gift of Scorpio and her loving kiss of transformation, even as I see how much more work I have to do. I am sometimes depressed and discouraged because I feel as though I have travelled far, and the road curves ahead so I cannot see how far I have to go.... but in the end it's not the destination - it's the journey that molds us into the blissful beings we hope to become.

The pain has taught me that love runs deeper than any pain can reach.
The pain has taught me that my truth is just as important as anyone else's and it must be heard.
The pain has taught me to protect myself and to value myself as a sacred being.
The pain has taught me that the limits of being human are as much a beautiful thing as the limits of being a sunrise, of being a water fall, or of being a whisp of smoke that rises into the sky.

The release has taught me hope and faith.
The release has taught me the ecstacy of letting go and flowing with the energies.
The release has taught me how loving the Gods and Goddesses can be when we commune with them through the release.

Fear nurses on pain, it lives and thrives on pain. It starves and dies in the moment when we release and are caught in the loving embrace of our own divine existence yet one more time.

Let go, dance with the darkness.. but not dance in the darkness.

Of tradition and adventure, of old and new

"if what you seek you do not find within, you will not find it without."

Nearly every religion has some form of the above phrase in its teachings. Lately I have been challenged to find sunny energy and hope within, because I cannot find it without. I used to rely on traditions as a form of measurement, and adventure was my way of finding new traditions. I would explore new cultures, rituals, and the like to find experiences that made me happy -- and then turn them into traditions.

However, this rainy summer has brought me the realization that traditions for tradition's sake holds no hope. Empty rituals are just that: empty.

How then, does someone who has spent more than a decade learning about rituals and their power create new rituals that have life and hope in them? This is a common challenge that other HPs have faced in their lives.

Life isn't a movie, and those of us who are walking the path of service to the Gods do not always come forth in long, flowing black robes -- eternally mystical and powerful. Sometimes we just don't want to come forth! We too struggle with the challenges of old traditions no longer filling our hearts, and new ones refusing to surface to replace them.

What do we do then, when our fires run low and the thought of writing one more ritual makes us want to curl up and sleep for a month?

It's fairly simple, to be honest, we stop pushing ourselves to create and allow the creation to find us.

Tradition is a good foundation to build upon, but new creations demand to be brought forth. Adventure is a thrilling proposition, but it holds no value without some tie to traditions that are comforting and familiar. The old ways give us guidance and wisdom on how to proceed toward the new.

Thus I seek within the fires of hope and optimism that the sun brings as I work to write a ritual for Litha, and I hope that the spark of the divine finds me to ensure that I am nurtured once again.

Take long strokes, and relish the experience?

Throughout my journey, I have experienced lesson after lesson in how my perceptions of a given person or action are totally different from year to year. Having my moon in my 12th house makes me blind to some of the more simple-linear relationships and leaves me feeling a bit lost in the woods where my emotional ties are concerned.

Now we are nearing the end of a Mercury Retrograde cycle that crossed over my 12th house so I was given vision into the inner machinery of how my perceptions are formed. It has been time well spent, but in the end I'm afraid that knowing how my perceptions are formed does little for actually alleviating the pain of adjustment when I've trusted someone too much for my own good... or allowed someone to run roughshod over my feelings too long.

Though I admit to not being entirely sure of why I allow people to be so uncaring toward me, one thing I am sure of is that I am enraged at a deep level when I realize how long someone will go on doing that without stopping to ask if their rude or selfish behavior is offensive or hurtful to me. Of course, logically I realize that they're probably not seeing what they're doing as rude or offensive... but at some point I must have betrayed my feelings on my face, right? I mean I've been told dozens of times how terrible a liar I am because my emotions are so readily visible in my expressions. So.. if that is the case, then am I to assume that the others who hurt me just don't care enough about me to bother asking?

It is an interesting paradox. Because I tend to do things alone, and I have done so for most of my life. Early on in my life I thought that there was something wrong with me, then later I realized that there are other people who just "do things alone". I am not sure if we all do them alone for the same reasons, but in reviewing the lessons learned during this past Mercury Retrograde I am gathering that I don't care why other people do it... only that they do.

So... alone, with a Gemini moon... isn't a fun place to be. Gemini is the astrological sign of pairing, of sharing and connecting.. through Air signs in general tend to be more shallow in their connections than other signs... connections are still very important to them as a whole.

I carry with me this nagging feeling that the only way I will ever be surrounded by people who are genuinely loving and spiritually satisfying for me is when I die. The living are too frail and fractured to endure that level of commitment to the truth and to loving another person for any extended period of time -- save their children. I hope I'm wrong though, you know?

I hope that I meet someone who I can be friends with at a good, hearty level of emotional clarity. You know? I hope that this friend teaches me that my penchant for doing things alone is just a habit that has gone too far one direction and needs to come back to center more. *laugh*

I've had friends like that in the past...
I have had friends who were emotionally aware and present....
I have had friends that made every stupid activity that we did together more fun just because they were there.

But they tend to leave after about a year.
Not through anything that either of us did consciously, but because life takes them in a different direction (I.E. they move).

Yes... the astrologers out there would clearly state that this is my lot in life considering the stellium of planets that I have in Virgo in my 4th house -- Pluto, Uranus, and Mars. Yes.. I connect deeply, and then the wheel turns and the connections serve to teach me a lesson and I move on (or they do).

Though I'm also told that with this particular recipe of energy I am also gifted with wisdom from the pain of loss... I am told that I understand and respect the pain of deep loss and how it can change a person and make them more slow to commit... *chuckle*

Oh.. what if all of this is just guilty rationalization and I'm just a misanthropic bitch? *laugh*

Cozy, comfortable, and stagnant.....

As a grown up I feel like if I learned my lesson then I should get credit for it. Yet, in practice I find that this isn't how life tends to go. When I work hard for something, I expect to be able to relax and enjoy the feeling of having accomplished a goal... yet that turns out to be the result 1 out of every 4 times that I work hard. The first three times I am learning, and thus I have no reward at the end of my hard work other than knowing that I learned more... that really doesn't give me the cozy feeling. Should it?

I make this note to myself today because I'm doing magick to be more connected with the spirit world and learn more from my ancestors. I want them to help me understand why life isn't filled with more cozy moments of relaxation than it is... specifically MY life. Am I unconsciously choosing scenarios that I'm unprepared for which is creating this 25/75 success to fail ratio? *laugh* That isn't good.

In learning and growing spiritually I have always used the astrological wheel as a guideline to identify the point where comfort *should* be coming. In the first six houses of an astrological wheel, we are learning from the world - evolving. In the second six houses we are taking what we've learned and sharing it with the world. I tend to believe that comfort arrives somewhere between the end of the 9th house and the beginning of the 10th house (hence the 10th house's association with destiny). So in looking at why my life doesn't have more cozy moments, I am wondering: did I judge my distances wrong and set my sights too high in terms of when I should expect to feel comfortable? In short: am I shooting for the Moon and being unrealistic about where I am in relation to that goal?

My mother used to tell me that she was envious of people who were genuinely happy with a simple life. I think the key to this is understanding HOW they were happy.... and defining happiness for myself rather than constantly comparing notes with other people (authors, teachers, gurus, etc). The distance to MY moon is different from everyone else's.

In the end, I think I am happiest when I'm right on the verge of being comfortable. I'm happy in the space between knowing something and mastering it. Yet, oddly I'm only peaceful once I've mastered something. My life's spiritual goal has been very Capricornian in nature: get to the top of my mountain and ensure that I have done much work to assure my place there is secure. Why then do I spend so much time hovering on the edge of mastery? Maybe that is the definition of being a master --> never resting completely, because that would be considered stagnation? Maybe this is what makes a master: the endless flow toward the edge of mastering something but never quite getting there because everything is changing.. the wheel is turning, we are evolving, thus the journey toward mastery is an endless ride of 25/75 success to fail ratios that are eventually ignored because the peace comes in enjoying the journey rather than waiting for the cozy moments of relaxation.

Dreaming of Monkeys....

I had the most amazing dream last night. I was on a spiritual sabbatical in caves in a desert land. There were about a dozen other students in this program with me where we learned everything about magick that was possible: dream guidance, herbalism, healing, spellwork, spirit communication, clairvoyance... it was all there.

I completed the program and as part of the final stage I needed a specific spell that was written in hieroglyphics with a pouch of leaves. I was to use the leaves to chew on (like tobacco) and study the symbols in the spell while the chemicals of the leaves flowed in my bloodstream. This was supposed to teach me my path and what my gift to the Gods and the world would be upon my leaving the program.

Just as the teacher came in with my pouch (they only gave out one at a time to the student who was ready to leave), a tall and pretty girl, who was the typical "popular bitch" from everyone's high school experience, came in and grabbed the pouch out of the teacher's hand and laughed as she said "HA! This is mine now!" I was enraged.

In anger and hurt I ran out of the caves and into the sacred well area where the cave mouths opened out onto a series of cliff edges that spiralled up and down. as I sat at the mouth of a cave looking up at the evening sky I noticed a white baboon sitting about 50 ft above me under a small waterfall. He was smiling and humming to himself as he munched on fruit.

As I watched him my anger dissipated and I smiled as well. He spoke to me without looking at me and asked "Why do you think you need that pouch to be a magician"?
"Because that is the last piece to this training, without it my training is incomplete." I answered.
"What do you think we did before someone created those little pouches with the spell on the inside?" he asked me.
"I don't know," I answered. " What did you do?"
" Well, we measured the leaves ourselves, and the spells were given to us by the Gods and the spirits. What I want to know is why you would choose to rely upon someone else's work when you can create the whole thing yourself?" He said as he smiled up at the pink and purple sky of an evening sunset.
I closed my eyes and sat with his words for a while, and marveled at how narrow minded i had been assuming that without the pouch I was useless. My anger was more at the how little control I felt I had over that horrible woman who stole my pouch, but after he explained it I realized that I had given my power away the second she tried to take it from me.
When I opened my eyes the white baboon was right in front of me, smiling. It would have been a terrifying image to see up close if it wasn't for the deep loving energy that he projected and the wisdom in his eyes.
He chuckled to himself because I jumped a little when I opened my eyes and saw him there. Then he said "If I give you the spell, will you get the herbs yourself and work the magick?"
I nodded.
Then he said " Go and find the herbs, I'll be here when you get back."
So I got up and walked back into the cave. And the master teacher was there, sitting peacefully by a fire. He looked up at me when I walked in and said "I am sorry that you lost your pouch."
I smiled at him and said " It's all right, I don't need it anymore."
When he heard that, he looked shocked for a minute. His expression slowly changed from shock to pleasant understanding.
"You have found a way, haven't you?" He asked. I nodded.
"Yes, we have the leaves, we use them for all kinds of spells." He said. Then he paused and pointed to a wooden shelf along the cave wall, and continued, "There is a big pickle jar full of them over there on the shelf." On hearing that I walked toward the shelf, intent on getting leaves for my spell and going back to the baboon.
Then he warned me, "But you must measure the exact right amount for the final spell."
I took the jar off the wall, and reached inside and pulled out a few fingerfuls of the leaves and looked at them in the palm of my hand. I wondered if I could guess how much of the herb I needed from the size of the pouch that master had brought in hours before. Then I remembered what the baboon asked me:"why would you choose to rely upon someone else's work when you can create the whole thing yourself?". I closed my eyes, felt the leaves between my fingers and rolled them around in my palm. I held my hand over the open mouth of the jar and let some of the leaves fall back into it, and with my eyes still closed felt the weight of the leaves in my hand. It felt right, so I poured the leaves into a small square of paper laying on the shelf, and folded it up.
As I started to walk back out of the cave I noticed that the white baboon had walked into the cave and was sitting on a ledge looking at the rest of the students seated in a circle, discussing lessons. He was smiling at them and seemed happy to see so many people learning together.
One of the students looked up at me, then followed my focus and saw the baboon sitting on the ledge. She shrieked and jumped up, pointing at him. All the other students stood up just as quickly, sending books and papers falling to a jumbled pile on the floor.
A male student picked up a rock and threw it at the baboon. I suddenly realized that they didn't see him the same way that I did and were intent on hurting him. I ran down the small slope toward the ledge where he was sitting and climbed up to put my body between his and the other students.
They shouted at me to move, and threw rocks to scare me off the ledge. I was full of emotions: shock that they would hurt me to get to him, sad because they couldn't see the wisdom in his eyes, worried for his welfare, anxious to get him out of the cave and away from the enraged and frightened students.
From behind me, the baboon said,"What makes you think I'm in danger?"
I turned slightly and looked at him in shock, and then saw him smiling at me.
I realized that again he taught me to stop and examine a situation before I reacted and assumed that my initial perception was the right one.

He jumped down off the ledge, and casually strutted back out onto his ledge at the mouth of the cave. The students shouted behind him and threw rocks, which all fell short of hitting him by feet. I jumped down and followed him out of the cave, dodging rocks as they came in.

Once outside, the night sky was bright blue with millions of stars. In the nights before this one I felt like a small child wrapped in a magick blanket under that sky. Now I felt more like an adventurer whose map was laid out before her in white dots against a blue background. While I stared up at the sky, the baboon asked me "Since you have your leaves, are you ready to learn the spell?"

I pulled my gaze away from the sky that seemed to be calling me to read more and learn more, and looked down into his eyes. He was smiling, still. I was amazed at how peaceful he was, no matter what happened around him he was always smiling. I nodded at him, and sat down in the loose dirt and sand.

He extended a long finger and began to draw swirls and symbols in the dirt. He motioned for me to put the leaves into my mouth and let them dampen with my saliva. He continued to draw, and as he did the herbs started to work on my senses. I began to hear the stars whispering, and the swirls and designs in the dirt moved in front of my eyes. They danced and morphed back and forth between being hard symbols and dancing images of Kokopelli, jackals, and snakes all mocking me and luring me to listen to their trickster words.

I looked up from the symbols in the dirt, and the baboon was gone. He had climbed back up the cliff walls and was now disappearing over the top edge of our mountain. For a moment I was scared without him there to reassure me throughout this journey, then I realized that if I needed him, he'd be there. So I must be ready to make the journey on my own.

I looked back down into the dirt, and the symbols had faded back to the spells original form. And I closed my eyes and saw a setting sun on the ocean, heard a man's voice in my ear singing, and smelled the warm-sweet smell of curried food cooking.

Right before I woke up, I heard the voice say: " There is no single answer, there is only the open heart that takes each step of the journey and allows the moment to unfold before them."

Namaste ~ Let the journey begin with an open heart.

Old woman, old woman, will u do my washing?

The Deaf Woman's Courtship.

Old woman, Old woman will you do my washing?

Speak a little louder sir, I'm very hard of hearing.

Old woman, old woman, will you do my ironing?

Speak a little louder sir, I'm very hard of hearing.

Old woman, old woman, can I come a-courtin'?

Speak a little louder sir, I think I almost heard you.

Old woman, old woman why don't we get married?

Oh my goodness, mercy sakes! Now I really heard you!

These are the lyrics to an old Apalachian folk song. They teach that we hear what we want to hear, and tend to NOT hear what we don't want to hear. It is a gentle, loving reminder that all of us have the tendency to not register things that aren't pleasant or that we want to ignore.

Mercury goes retrograde on the 8th, in Gemini. Mercury is the ruling planet of the sign of Gemini, and they both represent the energies of communication, mundane (daily) tasks, and short distance travel (around town).

With Venus and Mars conjunct in Aries, and square a retrograde Pluto there are also energies that are milling around boundaries, power, and forging ahead... READ: Antsy energies.

I posted the lyrics to the song because there is great power in simple verse that makes people smile while reminding all of us that we are bound by a great equalizer: humanity. So through this equalizer, we learn that we don't always hear what was said, we don't always say what we mean, and as such we must smile and try again.

Who's Dream is This?

In my mind's eye I keep seeing a house with beautiful, hard wood floors that are shiny. They reflect the twinkle lights that adorn the bannister of a long stair case, the red velvet ribbons, and a string of gold and silver beads that are woven into lush green garland. I hear jazz holiday music in the background, and when I look around the corner of a double doorway into a living room there is a huge tree with packages under it that are wrapped in silver and gold wrapping with big bows on them all.

The house smells of baking turkey, and the kitchen is full of people who are each working on part of a big meal. In another room I can hear a chorus of cheers as some sports team scores, followed by laughter.

I stand in the hallway of the first floor of this house, it's warm inside and it's snowing outside. I feel the energy, a bit of tension here and there which is a natural part of life, but also alot of love. Everyone who is here together WANTS to be here. They all love each other to varying degrees. Each of them struggles from time to time to declare their own independence and individuality, but no so much that they'd ever be unwelcome in this place. Everyone knows that everyone else is at a different stage of life, but somehow we're all together and happy no matter what stage we're at.

I hear dog nails on the floor, and a big fluffy dog waddles around the corner from the kitchen where it's been patiently waiting for crumbs to fall. He comes and sits down next to me as I sit down on the bottom of a long staircase. I wonder if anyone else adores this feeling as much as I do. I wonder if anyone else even notices how much the energy changes, thickens, and settles on all of us like a warm blanket of protection when we're together.

I hear a little voice, a little girl's voice asking for something sweet. I realize that no one is really paying attention to JUST her, but instead we are all kind of watching her together. Since I'm not cooking right now, I start to get up and go to her to give her some attention. She gets what she asked for and runs off to play with the other kids in the house. They're older than she is, but they don't mind her being here. She's part of the family and as such can come and play with everyone else.

I hear a car in the driveway, struggling to get up the hill a little, skidding. It stops and then tries again and this time getting up to the top of the driveway and parking. I hear the men in the other room shout as they realize who is in the car, and they all leave the game and run out into the snow to greet the person in the car. He hasn't been home in a few years, and when he comes home like this, he makes everything more fun for the guys. They'll be up in the den all night now, drinking and telling stories. In the morning, the women will come downstairs to start making breakfast for all of these people, and they'll all be snoring away until Noon.

I will be out in town tomorrow, shopping for more supplies because we don't have refridgerator space to stock up for this many people. There is nothing like the feeling of shopping for food for your house when you know it's full of people who will all be sitting down eating together. Tomorrow night's meal will be something special, because my husband ordered a special cut of beef that has been marinating for two days.

I feel whole, alive, and connected. I feel like I am successful but in a way that can't be measured by tangible things, but more through the smiles that I see, the resting faces that I see at the end of a good meal, and the tender gestures and words that each person exchanges with each other when they think that no one is watching.

Is this my future? Or some past that I've inherited from someone else who never got this but wanted it so badly that they passed it on to me? As I pass through a time when my Mercury is opposed by Neptune, I wonder how much of what I'm seeing and feeling is coming through the veils, and how much of it is my connection with my higher self.

Of Frogs and Rabbits..

We hear frogs and it is a sign of spring.
Some say that the song of the frog brings rain, others that frogs are the bearers of healing energies.
We see rabbits and the essence of spring settles over us. Their silent entry into an open field seems like a natural ballet between the fiery energies of survival and growth and the chaos of an open universe making room for an expansive dance to ensue.

I notice the energies of the seasons more and more every year. I am comforted by them as I feel more deeply and recover more slowly from deeply emotional experiences. The turning of the wheel is the metaphor for how a witch sees the progression of time and the earth's changes that ensue. It is also a symbol for how humans are affected by what each of these seasons represents. Spring is a rising of energy, warmth, and hope. Our focus changes and turns to the things inspired by frogs and rabbits. We "sing" for the rains to come and water in our seeds, for the sun to rise earlier every day so we have more natural light to cheer our hearts, and for the quiet of a warm night to embrace us at the end of hard day of work. Like rabbits we creep out into the wide expanse of the universe looking and listening for signs to go ahead, listening for signs that our path ahead is safe and clear.

Of frogs and rabbits, of singers and listeners, of spring and the passing of winter I write and I celebrate. For no one place on the wheel is more sacred than another, but no one place is as hopeful and full of wonder as the time of frogs and rabbits, the time of spring.