Susanoo and Amaterasu

The shining sun Goddess Amaterasu had a brother, Susanoo, lord of storms and of the sea.

Susanoo was an uncontrollable man, often given to violence. When he quarreled with his sister, Susanoo lifted up Amaterasu's beloved pony and threw it at Amaterasu and her priestesses.

Amaterasu was so angry that she hid in the cave called Iwayado, and there was no warmth or light upon the Earth.

The other Kami, or Goddesses and Gods, tried to lure Amaterasu out of her cave, but her anger still burned, and she refused to come out. Ame-no-Uzume, the Kami of joy, knew what to do. She placed a mirror near the entrance of the cave. Then, she did a bawdy dance, which made all of the other Kami roar with laughter. Amaterasu was still angry at her brother, the Kami of the stormy sea, but she wanted to know what made everyone laugh. She crept to the edge of the cave and peeked out at Ame-no-Uzume and, angry as she was, Amaterasu had to laugh. In that moment, a ray of her sunlight escaped from the dark cave and reflected in the mirror. Amaterasu saw her own lovely face and could no longer remain angry. She returned to the world, bringing sunlight and warmth.

Today, in Japan, Susanoo's violence was great and the uncontrollable sea stormed over Amaterasu's land. It must seem to the people of Japan as if the lovely sun Kami has again withdrawn from them. My own heart is heavy with sadness at the loss of lives, homes, family altars, and pets and with fear for the damage done to Japan's nuclear plants. I'm going to go to my altar, light a candle to reflect in my scrying mirror, and dance like Ame-no-Uzume, in the hopes that the people of Japan will soon bask under Amaterasu's warm light, rather than Susanoo's angry seas.

You come too.

Picture found here.

Calling the Elements

I've been thinking a lot lately (well, it's sad; you get old, your mind wanders down strange pathways, but at least I've been thinking about this in between v practical issues for a rather demanding appellate brief; my job does do wonderful things for me) about the role that Calling the Elements really plays in Wiccan ritual. Coming, generally, at the beginning of the ritual, I think that Calling the Elements serves a role greater than the sum of its parts.

By that, I mean that Calling the Elements (Earth, Air, Fire and Water! Come be with me; I'm your daughter. Air, Fire, Water, Earth! To my better self now give birth. Fire, Water, Earth, and Air! Bring me now the power to dare. Water, Earth, Air, and Fire! I call you now with all my desire.) is one of the parts of ritual that speaks most clearly to Younger Child and, as a result, can, when well-done, lead us quickly into that space between the worlds where magic is, indeed, possible. And when done perfunctorily, or as an afterthought, or as an Oh-Shit-I-Volunteered-to-Call-Water-and-then-Forgot-about-It-Well-Let-Me-Start-Babbling-About-Flow-and-Drops-Coming-Together-and-Hope-this-Works (I've been totally guilty of this), it can put a damper on the entire ritual, can make it that much more difficult for the magic to happen.

Younger Child, at least as I conceive of Her, is that part of us that responds to poetic language, to symbol, to things just below the level of language and conscious thought. It's funny (well, funny-strange, not funny-ha-ha, except in the sense that the Universe and I have, for almost 55 years, been having grand jokes on each other and then, of course, it's also funny-ha-ha) that, for many years after reading and understanding (intellectually) the concept of Younger Child, what I said to myself was: "But I'm deficient in this area. I'm too left-brained to have much of a Younger Child. If I see a sigil, I translate it into words and turn that task over to Talking Self, so, really, I don't have much of a Younger Child."

And, then, somehow, I remembered the first time that, as a child, I somehow wound up in a v nice section of a v nice restaurant. My memory is foggy about how this happened: I was the oldest of five kids in a working-class family and we didn't spend much time in any restaurant, much less one that wasn't (a special treat) a McDonald's. But I have this vague sensory impression of being in such a place, of reveling in the way that sounds were muffled there and that empty space provided room for one's being to expand. Once I made the association between that impression and the way that it made me feel as if maybe I could be who I'd always meant to be (this is shallow, I know; so is Younger Child), dozens of similar impressions came flooding back to me.

The way that great architecture has always made me feel. The way that fountains instantly make joy bubble up within me. The way that wearing elegant, well-fitting clothes has always changed the way that I move, the things that I say, the way that I feel towards others. The feelings of both groundedness and airiness that the scent of lilacs can induce in me. Copeland's Fanfare for the Common Man. The way that a man's cologne can make me weak in the knees. Poetry.

So, I'm a slow learner; it took me a long time to get in touch with my own Younger Self; the one who didn't get much validation from my writer-father or my left-brained, Vatican II Catholic education. And, yet, once I did, I quit worrying about whether or not a sigil or rune induced anything within me and began to focus on the many ways that my Younger Self could be induced to feel comfortable, expand, do magic, invoke what I needed.

And, so. Here's Margaret Roach, in A Way to Garden, discussing the element of Air:

Where I live, I’d have to count wind—not cold, despite my Zone 5-ish climate—as the most destructive force in the garden, bringing down or splitting apart woody plants when it roars, and desiccating evergreens in winter. Particularly when it combines with or follows drought, as it is this year, it’s a force to be reckoned with.

For now, all that means is a few stray sycamore leaves (Platanus occidentalis). We’ll see what . . . other tricks it has in mind this winter. Batten down the hatches, won’t you?

Can you invoke Air more powerfully for your next ritual? I'd love to see it in comments.

Picture found here.

Ya Think?

[M]any Christian folk seem to me to be living largely disenchanted lives. Perhaps it's all the dogma, the rather stale services, and the general heaviness of establishment religion that closes so many people to mystery and wonder. Pagans, on the other hand, are radically alert to the magic of life, the planet and everything around them. They use symbol and ritual in such a way that connects powerfully with the human soul and makes sense not just to the mind, but to the heart and imagination, also.

Interesting viewpoint for an xian priest to hold.

Burning Person

Burning Man 2008.

Still ignoring half of the planet.

Even If We're Just Dancing In The Dark

Ecstatic, participatory ritual. Ehrenreich is on to something.

It's Funny What Upsets People In Florida.

Floridian blogger Sinfonian, not AFAIK a Pagan (although Santeria, generally classified as syncretic, seems, to me, as much a xian denomination as a Pagan one), has an interesting post up concerning the latet dust-up between yet-another group of those animal-sacrificing Santerians and the neighbors who love to hate them.

Like so many others, I have mixed feelings about this whole issue (upon which, it's important to note, the Supreme Court has already ruled). I love animals and am repulsed at the idea of killing them. But, I eat meat, fish, birds, plants with whose devas I've communed. I swat mosquitoes. I've put out traps and poison when mice invaded my home. And, I have experienced how much power is released at the moment of any creature's death, so I can certainly understand why it can be useful in a ritual. (Really difficult to channel, but, still useful for a practiced (and there's the rub) practitioner, simply because there's so much of it and it's so instantaneous). Additionally, ritual slaughter of animals goes back at least to the Kurgans and possibly back to the domestication of farm animals. It was certainly practiced by the ancient Greeks, the Hebrews, and likely the Celts. Santeria goes back to the Yorubans of modern-day Nigeria. It beats, by most accounts, sacrificing other humans.

What I find truly interesting is the societal cognitive dissonance on this issue. It's completely ok for Dick Cheney to slaughter birds raised in captivity and released specifically so that he can slaughter them. Killing animals from magestic bucks to squirrels is considered a bonding experience for groups of men, fathers and sons, brothers. Hell, can you imagine how the NRA would react to the suggestion that maybe we should at least even the odds and make hunters use spears or bows and arrows? And, beyond that, conservatives hate the endangered species list. It's absolutely a god-given right of American developers to destroy the environment needed to sustain entire species of animals, to damn up the streams that salmon need to spawn, to cut down the trees where birds and squirrels and insects live. We enslave animals and use them to run races for our amusement, to suffer and die in safety tests for old ladies' eye creams, and to live in our zoos. But, ZOMG!, don't let the Santerians sacrifice a chicken or a goat!

So while I've zero desire to participate in the ritual slaughter of animals, forgive me if I'm not clutching my pearls over Santeria. Get back to me when Dick Cheney gets in trouble for shooting his friends in the face, much less captive birds, shot for mere pleasure.

And, you know, Florida, first you couldn't count chads, and then you elected Katherine Harris, and now, well, now, you're apparently still working hard to convince the rest of us that you are mentally retarded:

"They ordered us out of the house, desecrated a holy space, treated us like criminals," the Santierian priest said. They were doing this inside.

Neighbors said that while they respect Batista's right to practice his faith, they wish he would not be so public about it.

"I just think they should do those things away from neighborhoods, where there are no kids and nobody can see those things," said Ricardo Celiz, a sports anchor for Univisión's Spanish-language broadcast network, TeleFutura. His family, including two small children, lives four houses away.

"And definitely I don't want them to see any dead animals at that house," he said.

OK, Mr. Sports Anchor, here's a suggestion. Don't send your kids four houses down to peep in the windows, ok? Meanwhile, I won't turn on the fucking tv, where my G/Son would be subjected to horses being quirted to run faster in horseraces, fishing shows that display fish getting gutted, show dogs being groomed and trotted around Westminster, or xian ministers blathering on about the sacrifice of the body and blood of jebuz, how would that be?

Doing Magic

The purpose of ritual is to change the mind of the human being. It's a sacred drama in which you are the audience as well as the participant, and the purpose of it is to activate parts of the mind that are not activated by everyday activity. We are talking about the parts of the mind that produce psychokinetic, telekinetic power, whatever you want to call it -- the connection between the eternal power and yourself. As for why ritual, I think that human beings have a need for art and [that] art is ritual [and ritual is art]. . . . It has seemed to me that much of the modern Craft and the Neo-Pagan movement lacks real music and real dance, in comparison to indigeneous Pagan religious movements. . . . I attribute this [lack of authentic experience] to our loss of skill in the use of music, rhythm, dance, and psychogenetic drugs. In the Irish tradition, music was essential to the success of the rites. . . . Another thing that was essential to the rites in ancient times was ritual drunkenness and sex. And I find this also lacking. We have to create those ecstatic states again. We have to offer people an energy source and a theological alternative, and we can only do this by offering real experience. We have to introduce real sacraments. . . . Much of Neo-Paganism lacks the same content [that] I've described before. The raising of power is an accidental occurrence among most of us at the present time. I find that difficult for my own self-esteem. It makes it difficult to work with people. I don't like going through empty ritual with anybody, especially my closest friends. [A]nyone who calls themselves a Witch should have the capability to deal with different ecstatic states.

Sharon Devlin, as quoted in~Drawing Down the Moon by Margot Adler

I had to go pull Adler's book off the shelf and re-read this interview because so much of what I've been reading in Barbara Ehrenreich's new book, Dancing in the Streets, reminds me of points that Devlin makes in this interview. It also hinges on an issue that we work on in my own circle: doing magic, rather than just doing ritual. As Devlin says, the purpose of doing ritual (by which I think she means doing magic) is to change the mind of the human being. That's more commonly expressed in the definition of magic as the ability to change consciousness at will.

It seems to me that one of the largest barriers to the sort of sacrament that Devlin describes is the lack of time set aside for holiday and ecstacy in our modern lives. Ehrenreich makes the point that, prior to the Industrial Revolution, people worked hard, but they also had many more days out of the year set aside for holidays. It would be easier to have truly ecstatic rituals if you had three days, for example, around Samhein. A day to prepare, looking forward and beginning to focus on your ritual intent. A day for the holiday, including the ritual itself, but also time to put aside the concerns of day-to-day life, to relax into a magical state, to spend real time listening to music, dancing, etc. in order to be able to induce ecstatic states. And, a day to recover, clean up, gently pick back up the other threads of your life, although hopefully somewhat transformed.

Recovery from magic is important and I think it's one of the main reasons that we sometimes don't drink as deeply as we'd like from magic's well. Many of the most effective methods for raising ecstasy take a toll on the physical body, at the same time that they can be quite useful for overall health. Staying up all night dancing and drumming to raise real energy means that you need to sleep in the next day. (At least, it does at my age!) But far too often -- far, far, far too often -- the Sabbat or Moon falls on a week night; preparation for it is squeezed into already overbooked lives; the ritual and accompanying meal have to be over in time for people to get up in the morning and head for work, where they need to be able to function at the top of their game. Even weekends don't really provide adequate time; for most of us, they also serve as the only real time that we have to spend time with family, go to the grocery store, do other chores, pursue other interests.

I don't have an answer to this problem. Capitalism, and its demon-child, Corporate Globalization, are the cause of this problem and neither of them is likely going to go away very soon. Being conscious of the issue can help to some degree, as can a spiritual practice that is difficult for many Pagans: learning to say no. By this I mean that making room in your life for serious participation in a Pagan community, for working magic, means that you are probably going to have to say no to other things. You may not be able to do everything else that interests you. You may have to use a chunk of your vacation time for Sabbats and Moons rather than a trip to Aruba. You may have to not go out with friends the night before ritual in order to cabin your energy for the ritual. Somehow, we wouldn't find it odd for someone who was, for example, training for a marathon or working on a second degree to make those kind of sacrifices, but we imagine that we shouldn't have to do so in order to be practice witchcraft. But the lack of time for holiday and ritual in our culture remains the real problem.

How do you address this problem?

Update: Pagan Godspell explains what I'm talking about when I say that we need more time than we have.

Blessed Beltane

Anne Hill is talking about doing magic, and what she's learned about magic from akido:

So, back to the candle. Preparing for a strike and then letting it go is a very good way for me to conceptualize doing any kind of magic. It gives me a kinesthetic sense of the largely mental process of asking the spirits to manifest something. And it has helped me understand that there is a middle ground between worrying and controlling something on the one hand, and ignoring it on the other.

I tend to over-prepare for rituals, well, ok, for everything, not just for rituals. My idea of the perfect ritual involves women showing up to a calm, clean, well-ordered space, where wine is poured, tensions are dropped, flowers release their scent into the ritual air, muscles relax, women remember who they are and from whence they came. I want intent clearly specified, ritual supplies laid out, incense alight, and grounding done right.

Like Anne, I prepare like hell for the strike, and then I let that sword just fall as it will. My Younger Self responds better that way.

But, that's not THE only way to do ritual. I've been reading Barbara Ehrenreich's Dancing In The Streets every day at lunch, four or five pages a day. She talks about how women left their spinning to run into the streets to follow Dionyisis, how ecstacy can overtake even the most repressed, at times. Beltane is all about living in the moment, all about feeling, after a long winter of parsing out the left-over seeds and saving enough back for planting, that it's ok to let go, ok to burn fires on the high hills, ok to have sex in the fields, ok to act without thinking it all through. About finding what Anne calls the "middle ground between worrying and controlling something on the one hand, and ignoring it on the other."

Blessed Beltane.

What I Love About This Religion:

"Does anyone have a squirt gun to be used for calling West?" is a completely understandable question.

The "Hello Kitty" mylar baloons all over the yard were considered completely appropriate decorations for one of the 8 high holy days of the year.

A Giglliana is a valid form of worhip.

Dancing the hokey pokey, G/Son in arms, is part of the worship service.

G/Son grabbing the big yellow cloth tulip wand and toddling around the circle (Deosil! The boy's a genius) seemed as good a way to cast the circle as any.

***********************

Well, what can I say? It was Eostara. We were welcoming the maiden.

Taking Hold Of The Hands Of Strangers And Dancing In The Streets -- Who Would Lose Power If We Did?

Several days ago, in comments, Nora reminded me of Barbara Ehrenreich's new book. Then, just this week, Sara Sutterfield Winn directed me to this amazing article by Ehrenreich. Being able to recognize what Winn calls a clue-by-four when the universe begins to wave one in my general direction, I headed off to read Ehrenreich. Her entire article is so well-reasoned and well-written that you really, really should go read the whole thing. Here's a small taste.

Ehrenreich begins: The enemies of festivity have argued for centuries that festivities and ecstatic rituals are incompatible with civilization. In our own time, the incompatibility of festivity with industrialization, market economies and a complex division of labor is usually simply assumed, in the same way that Freud assumed--or posited--the incompatibility of civilization and unbridled sexual activity. In other words, if you want antibiotics and heated buildings and air travel, you must abstain from taking hold of the hands of strangers and dancing in the streets.

The presumed incompatibility of civilization and collective ecstatic traditions presents a kind of paradox: Civilization is good--right?--and builds on many fine human traits such as intelligence, self-sacrifice and technological craftiness. But ecstatic rituals are also good, and expressive of our artistic temperament and spiritual yearnings as well as our solidarity. So how can civilization be regarded as a form of progress if it precludes something as distinctively human, and deeply satisfying, as the collective joy of festivities and ecstatic rituals?

In a remarkable 1952 essay titled "The Decline of the Choral Dance," Paul Halmos wrote that the ancient and universal tradition of the choral dance--meaning the group dance, as opposed to the relatively recent, European-derived practice of dancing in couples--was an expression of our "group-ward drives" and "biological sociality." Hence its disappearance within complex societies, and especially within industrial civilization, can only represent a "decline of our biosocial life"--a painfully disturbing conclusion.

Perhaps the problem with civilization is simply a matter of scale: Ecstatic rituals and festivities seem to have evolved to bind people in groups of a few hundred at a time--a group size at which it is possible for each participant to hear the same (unamplified) music and see all the other participants at once. Civilizations, however, tend to involve many thousands--or in our time, millions--of people bound by economic interdependencies, military exigency and law. In a large society, ancient or modern, an emotional sense of bonding is usually found in mass spectacles that can be witnessed by thousands--or with television, even billions--of people at a time.

Ours is what the French theorist Guy Debord called the "society of the spectacle," which he described as occurring in "an epoch without festivals." Instead of generating their own collective pleasures, people absorb, or consume, the spectacles of commercial entertainment, nationalist rituals and the consumer culture, with its endless advertisements for the pleasure of individual ownership. Debord bemoaned the passivity engendered by constant spectatorship, announcing that "the spectacle is the nightmare of imprisoned modern society which ultimately expresses nothing more than its desire to sleep."

She continues: The aspect of "civilization" that is most hostile to festivity is not capitalism or industrialism--both of which are fairly recent innovations--but social hierarchy, which is far more ancient. When one class, or ethnic group or gender, rules over a population of subordinates, it comes to fear the empowering rituals of the subordinates as a threat to civil order.

For example, in late medieval Europe, and later the Caribbean, first the elite withdrew from the festivities, whether out of fear or in an effort to maintain its dignity and distance from the hoi polloi. The festivities continued for a while without them and continued to serve their ancient function of building group unity among the participants. But since the participants are now solely, or almost solely, members of the subordinate group or groups, their unity inevitably presented a challenge to the ruling parties, a challenge that may be articulated in carnival rituals that mock the king and Church. In much of the world, it was the conquering elite of European colonizers that imposed itself on native cultures and saw their rituals as "savage" and menacing from the start. This is the real bone of contention between civilization and collective ecstasy: Ecstatic rituals still build group cohesion, but when they build it among subordinates--peasants, slaves, women, colonized people--the elite calls out its troops.

In one way, the musically driven celebrations of subordinates may be more threatening to elites than overt political threats. Even kings and colonizers can feel the invitational power of the music. Why did 19th century European colonizers so often describe the dancing natives as "out of control"? The ritual participants hadn't lost control of their actions and were in fact usually performing carefully rehearsed rituals. The "loss of control" is what the colonizers feared would happen to themselves. In some cases, the temptation might be projected onto others, especially the young. In the fairy tale, the Pied Piper used his pipe to lure away the children from a German town. Rock 'n' roll might have been more acceptable to adults in the '50s if it could have been contained within the black population, instead of percolating out to a generation of young whites.

She points out that: While hierarchy is about exclusion, festivity generates inclusiveness. The music invites everyone to the dance; shared food briefly undermines the privilege of class. As for masks, they may serve symbolic, ritual functions, but, to the extent that they conceal identity, they also dissolve the difference between stranger and neighbor, making the neighbor temporarily strange and the stranger no more foreign than anyone else. No source of human difference or identity is immune to the carnival challenge: cross-dressers defy gender just as those who costume as priests and kings mock power and rank. At the height of the festivity, we step out of our assigned roles and statuses--of gender, ethnicity, tribe and rank--and into a brief utopia defined by egalitarianism, creativity and mutual love. This is how danced rituals and festivities served to bind prehistoric human groups, and this is what still beckons us today.

So civilization, as humans have known it for thousands of years, has this fundamental flaw: It tends to be hierarchical, with some class or group wielding power over the majority, and hierarchy is antagonistic to the festive and ecstatic tradition. (Whether this is an inherent feature of civilization, we do not know, though advocates of genuine democracy can only hope that this is not the case. Contemporary anarchists and socialists differ on this point, with some proposing complex methods of grassroots democratic planning that would presumably abolish hierarchy of all kinds while preserving modern means of production. Michael Albert proposes such a system in his 2003 book Parecon. Others, most notably the anarchist thinker John Zerzan, argue that the problem goes much deeper, and that we cannot achieve true democracy without eliminating industrialization and possibly the entire division of labor.) This leaves hierarchical societies with no means of holding people together except for mass spectacles--and force.

Contemporary civilization, which, for all its democratic pretensions, is egregiously hierarchical along lines of class and race and gender, may unite millions in economic interdependency, but it "unites" them with no strong affective ties. We who inhabit the wealthier parts of the world may be aware of our dependence on Chinese factory workers, Indian tech workers and immigrant janitors, but we do not know these people or, for the most part, have any interest in them. We barely know our neighbors and, all too often, see our fellow workers as competitors. If civilization offers few forms of communal emotional connection other than those provided by the occasional televised war or celebrity funeral, it would seem to be a rather hollow business.

You know the fish who discovered that she'd been swimming in WATER alll this time? The man who was delighted to learn that, all unknowing, he'd been writing PROSE his entire adult life? That's how I feel having a name to give to this, this, this, this THING that I've always known was wrong but couldn't name. I've been living for 51 years in the the "Society of the Spectacle," while longing for communal festivals. I hate the fact that, as Ehrenreich says, we "absorb, or consume, the spectacles of commercial entertainment, nationalist rituals and the consumer culture, with its endless advertisements for the pleasure of individual ownership." As she notes, it leads to an incredible "passivity engendered by constant spectatorship." It also leads to credit card bills with no hope of ever being paid off, no savings, overconsumption of the Earth's resources, and the inability to ever question the power structure for fear that your own financial situation will come crashing down -- and you'll be all alone.

I think one of the joys that I find in Wiccan ritual is the chance to break out of the Society of Spectacle and back into the Society of Communal Festivals. Celebrating the 8 Sabbats and the 13 Moons each year allows me to be active, to be in community, to touch something that my great, great, great, many-times-great grandmothers may have touched, to be an active part of my world. I don't think it's possible to do magic with someone and not care about her, not be connected to her. Maybe it is, but I don't see how.

When We All Come To The Dance

Ah, well, it's becoming more and more clear that we're twins.

Go read what Sara says about dancing.

It's The Noticing Part That Makes You A Magician.

I admit that the essays at Witchvox often don't impress me, but Violet Sound has one up today that I think gets it just right. You should read the whole thing, but here's a taste.

What’s important? The beat, baby. It’s got to make you move. It’s got to make you groove. It has to be repetitive, but it can’t be so boring that you want to sit back down with your drink and wait for something better to come on. Not being musically inclined, I can’t tell you the magic equation that induces trance (although I’ve heard it’s 4.5 beats a second*) – I can only tell you to get out there and shake it until your thoughts fall away and the only thing that is left is The Beat, The Pulse, The Rhythm.

Try it.

Go on, I’ll wait.

Dance as a sacred expression is not a new idea. (Walk like an Egyptian.) There are schools of dance that can trace themselves all the way back to temples, or to a bunch of drunk peasant folk boogying down to make the crops grow. And I am not the first person to feel that when she hits the dance floor she is GOD [sic] in platforms. I’m not the first person to invoke GOD [sic] in platforms, either. I remember dancing in utter exaltation of a certain deity, and then suddenly feeling His touch upon me, gently nudging my ego aside. I moved with Him, and He with me, and I wished it would never end.

“I offer this to you,” I’ve said, “as an expression of love.” And then I speak with my body.

Under the flashing strobe, surrounded by the pulsating mass of your fellow man [sic], you can feel Shiva’s dance of destruction through the floor. You can hear the raised voices of a thousand shamans in the background wail of an electronic track. You only have to open yourself to the idea.

Magic isn’t something you take out of the closet for special occasions. It isn’t present only in dark rooms with pentagrams chalked on the floor and pervy old guys in robes mumbling ‘ancient’ incantations and it isn’t solely in the undefiled glory of Nature; magic is alive and around you no matter where you are and whether you notice it or not. (Hint: it’s the noticing part that makes you a magician.)

So magic is in the disco. It’s in the raves held way out in the cornfields, in that gay club you dragged your conservative cousin to just because you felt like watching a dude dressed as Cher hit on him, in that concert you attended that made you feel like you were dying, in your basement when your stereo is cranked up to max volume and you’ve polished off a bottle of Jaggermeister.

Hell, magic could possibly be in a country and western bar, but I’m not brave enough to try and find it there.

The Wearing Of The Weird

A few weeks ago, in the ongoing blogversation about the need for more and better Pagan thealogy, someone, and I apologize for not remembering who it was (cougholdtimersdiseasecough), turned me on to Druid Priestess: An Intimate Journey Through the Pagan Year by Emma Restall Orr. I'm really enjoying it so far; Orr not only has substantive things to say, she's a good writer.

Recounting an interview that she did with a local radio station preparing for its annual "Gee there are Pagans" Halloween feature, she touches on a second topic that's been floating around Pagan Blogistan:

"But you don't help yourselves. What about these funny clothes?"

Again I'm laughing. "You mean the long white sheets with pointy hoods?"

"It does give a pretty weird impression, a dozen blokes -- OK, and ladies -- dressed up like the Klu Klux Klan!"

I am used enough to these guys now to know that, despite the rolling tape between us, the questions he is asking will be edited out of the conversation, replaced by anything that will fit more suuccinctly with my answer.

"OK, some do wear robes when attending ceremonies. It's an important tool for shifting into a different frame of mind, reminding us, affirming, that we are doing something special. But it's very seldom nowadays that they are pure white. Most wear natural cloth which is undyed and unbleached. Some wear tabards or overrobes which proclaim the grade or tradition that they are working in. These might be red or green or blue, even black, embroidered or simple. And some robes have hoods -- they're another aid for focusing."

"Like blinkers," he says and I laugh.

"Yes, for a specific occasion and purpose. But most critically," I tese him with my emphasis, "the hood keeps out the wind and rain." He smiles. I add, "It isn't there so that we can cover our faces."

"Yeah, OK," he sighs, resigned.

Ritual

I find, as I almost always do, that the coming Sabbat is "really" my favorite Sabbat. (This happens eight times a year, every year.) I'm looking forward to the ritual that my wonderful circle of witches has planned for Friday night to celebrate Imbolc.

One of our newest members -- a beautiful, brilliant, and strong woman for whom the term "still waters run deep" was likely coined -- is leading her first ritual with us. I've been cleaning my house and polishing silver, and meditating on her theme for days. One of her themes is Creativity, a very logical theme for Pagans celebrating the feast of the Goddess Brigid, patron of those who create everything from metalwork to poems. And my meditations have helped me to realize that one of my own forms of creativity is the creation of ritual. I suppose that's a bit like saying that one of your forms of creativity is performance art. Ritual is impermanent, transient, short-lived. You can't really control it, the way that you can a quilt or a poem or a song. And yet, and yet, and yet. Ritual is so necessary.

Pagan Godspell has an incredible post up about ritual. You should go read the whole thing. Here's my favorite bit:

“Dwelling is not primarily inhabiting but taking care of and creating that space within which something comes into its own and flourishes.” It takes both time and ritual for real dwelling."

I love this. My Taurus Moon, my dedication to Hestia, my INTJ self adores the notion of ritualing a dwelling into being, of helping the place where I dwell to "come into its own and flourish." I'm within a few months of having the inside of my cottage -- that I moved into 3+ years ago -- just like I want it. And I'm spending hours dreaming, browsing, preparing to hire a landscaper and redo the garden over the next year and a half. The garden will be my next big creative project and it will be, as of course a garden must be, the place where my spirit and body truly dwell. I'm excited about the idea of ritualing it into being. I can't wait to do ritual in it.

What and how do you create? What makes ritual meaningful to you?