Silver Maple

A friend of mine who has produced some very powerful pieces in a private website has now gone public.  White Cat Grove is just beginning, but strong material is appearing already.  Watch this site!

Perhaps including the old Brighid's day incantation concerning the snake that would rise through 3 feet of snow just brought on the elements and church and my sermon are off for this Sunday.  No helping it, as I'll be  lucky to be out of my subdivision by Monday much less Sunday.  Rescheduling is not good and may take till the end of March which is getting out of range for an Imbolg oriented sermon.  At this point, I'm wondering whether to just let it go till next year.  I learned a lot from this effort, so the time was not wasted, but I had really wanted to share it during the right season.

Working through content for the Feb 7 sermon.  I dimly remembered hearing about this and then looked it up.  Its obvious to me that Quinn died a druid.

http://archives.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0004/18/lkl.00.html
>>>>>
ANTHONY QUINN: No, no, I never -- I can't afford to retire in the first place. But I never think of retiring. And you know, life is -- I've never answered for myself the question that life also -- I mean, what are you here for? And recently, I found out. I have fallen madly in love with a tree just outside of our breakfast place. It's a wonderful oak tree, and I love just staring at.

KING: You're playing a tree now.

(LAUGHTER)

ANTHONY QUINN: No, no, I really feel about that tree, I love that tree, and we put some place for the birds to come and the squirrels to play around the tree, and the tree has all the answers in the world for me, I swear, I swear, Larry. Well, I don't know whether I should tell you this, but...

KING: Go ahead.

ANTHONY QUINN: I had once put in my will to be buried in Chihuahua up on top of a mountain, Indian style, but I have now -- I wish I could move mountains, because I want to be buried under that tree, and I'm not afraid of death, I'm not. But I want to be buried under that tree, because it's the most wonderful, symbolic thing about what life is about, and you sit there, and you take it, and the wind cuts off a limb, and you say, and you keep on, and it's all scarred up. It's all scarred up. Time has done frightening things to it, but still coming to bloom now, my God, still loves the spring is coming.
>>>>>>>>>>>

I had been having a great deal of trouble completing the sermon I'm writing for Feb 7.  I had 2/3 in good condition but where to take it was problematic.  If it were a purely pagan audience I could go a lot of different ways.  But, with a mixed audience, including atheists, Christians and so on, there was no clear path. 

This morning I meant to get up early and write.  I woke up at 10:30.  I knew I should begin by doing ritual and dawdled.  But things often  work out as they should and so I began ritual at noon by reading the first chapter of the second interior book of Jung's Red Book.  It is a dialog with the devil cast in medieval times where the devil accuses Jung (as the guard on a watchtower) of being overly serious and ponderous.  There is a discussion of dancing.  In Jung's wrapup are these words:

The devil is convinced that dancing is neither lust nor madness, but an expression of joy, which is something proper to neither one nor the other.  In this I agree with the devil.  Therefore he humanizes himself before my eyes.  But I turn green like a tree in spring.

I know how to finish now.

As my practice evolves, I have been thinking about one particular constant - which is touch.  When I first started the OBOD program, it came to me that I needed to find the edge of my working circle by feel.  So I'd walk from center until I "felt" resistance and then I'd lay out the rest, which sometimes had me running into trees and definitely led to some egg shaped circles or worse:-)  

Another tactile sense was with silver maple herself.  Real tree and real bark, I would touch head to trunk and trace bark with my fingertips.  Once, this led to a feeling of complete dissolution, turning to water and flowing in.

In my own circle work, I often feel where energy comes from and face and acknowledge it, sometimes with surprising results.  Often, I can feel something that I can't see.  Does seeing equal believing?  For me, touch is equally valid.

And then there was the touch that changed everything, feeling Brighid's touch in my hair in the midst of a large ritual.  A very soft hammer, but a hammer none the less.

My current healing work really stems from another touching moment.  A year or so ago, I was in a group ritual with a number of very experienced folks.  In the middle of this work, specifically to provide rest and healing to the fae injured by a power transformer yard, the Tree itself came into being in front of me.  Eight feet or so in diameter, it was real enough to be leaned on  - at least for me.  And when my hands traced bark, there was this almost endless power surge, from Earth through body and out hands.  I left that Tree where it was, as a place of refuge but sometimes wonder if folks run headlong into it from time to time.

My current healing work is based on that model, as while it was a gift from me, it was also a gift returned - Brighid works in this way.  In my current working, I set up my working space and then work through a very formal centering process.  First, acknowledging the Kindred under the Earth and wishing them a one time gift of energy (as I have learned that an open ended gift can be draining).  I acknowledge Brighid and God Herself (as the feri term seems to make the most sense to me).  I then work through an RJ Stewart energy raising exercise of allowing Green energy to rise through my feet and up my spine.  If things are working exceptionally well, there is an even flow and my arms float upward of their own volition.  If there are blockages at various parts of my spine, I work on them.  If nothing flows, or if arm raising becomes an effort, I quit. 

If there is flow, with my arms fully raised, I ask God Herself to accept my love and the love of the Kindred and let the flow continue.  As the flow is spent, I lower my arms and let the flow return to the Earth, following Stewart's general instructions.  I add the following, to finish this phase touching palms to ground, asking that I only keep what I need and send the rest to the Kindred.  At this point I center and wait.  Sometimes, my arms and hands start moving of their own and I take this as the direction of my Soul. (soul is a topic for another day, trust me on this one).  And then, usually contact is made, as real as the edge of my circle or the Tree itself.

Usually I have an idea of what I've touched, but at least once, I did not know.  Whether I understand or not, I feel the energy flow.  For someone's cancer, it was almost like a trickle charge which was also true for the one I did not understand.  Sometimes it is just a strong powerful flow.  Usually it is both hands, but sometimes it is just my right.

This is what I conceive that is happening, following generally from Stewart, but with my own additions.  Humans and perhaps other animals and plants can be nodes of connection between different worlds.  We may not even be able to go to those worlds, but we can be open conduits that reweave lost connection.  In this place of connection, if our Soul's desire and the desire of the Others - Brighid, the Kindred (particularly the small trouping folk) is in alignment, healing power is released into this world.  So the initial alignment connects the worlds and the subsequent flow is a mutual desire fulfilled.  The work asks for nothing and is done selflessly and yet gifts of personal wholeness are received.

I was working on my Feb 7 sermon and out the window, what should I see, but a robin.  This has never happened in my memory on New Years day in the DC area.  Considering my sermon topic, it seems like a sign.

Update:  There were 8 robins in my front yard all happily digging in the earth. 

I connected with the musicians for the UU service I'm doing for Feb 7.  Bruce Krohmer, who is just a monster sax and clarinet player, is going to work with me on the music.  This is going to be a collaboration instead of random see-what-music-shows-up and I'm really looking forward to it.  Among other things, the dialog will sharpen my focus during the actual sermon writing. 

There is nothing that boils my blood as much as a custody battle when a parent's pagan religion  becomes part of the issue.  In this particular case being a transgender parent for 10 years now suddenly  also seems to be an issue.  This is particularly egregious in that Rik Fire, a teacher in the local Ecumenicon Fellowship,  has been the custodial parent for this child for 14 years and the boy seems to be doing well just where he is.

Charles has set up a funding address through this account  http://tinyurl.com/Rik-Fire-Fund 

Full Text of Rik Fire's request for help:

We are engaged in a custody battle. I have had primary legal
custody of our 14 year-old Markus since his birth. Now, his other parent has
petitioned the court for primary custody to relocate Markus from Pennsylvania to
Massachusetts .
The basis of the petition is religion stating that Markus is being raised in a
Wiccan & Pagan household, which does not even accurately describe our faith
traditions.  Also in court, the other party and counsel have raised the issue of
me being transgender ( I transitioned 10 years ago) as additional grounds for
me losing custody. Markus started high school in September. He is a straight-A
student in all honors classes and has been in the district's mentally
gifted program since Kindergarten. This is his 4th year playing
saxophone in the school band and he recently made the swim team and loves it.
We are a happy family of 4, including our dog.

The custody court hearing was on December 18, 2009. The
other party requested a court-ordered evaluation and the judge ordered it. Last
Friday we were told our portion would be $5,000. Today we found out it will be
$7,000. If I do not comply with the court order, I will be jailed. We need 70
people to donate $100 each to our cause. (We will accept smaller and larger
donations as well). Last week, some Ecumenicon friends already started
donating. We have raised $1050 thus far. We were feeling pretty hopeful until
today when we found out we need even $2,000 more than we originally thought.

With Ecumenicon Fellowship members we have been able to raise a little over
$1050, but we are all pressed at this time of need.


Sincerely,
Rik Fire, LCSW

Loss of a child through lack of money just seems impossibly wrong, so I have donated.  I don't know Rik, but I know Charles and trust him in this matter.

I had put away my collection of the Robin of Sherwood series for some years. The last episode with Michael Praed really seemed like an ending even though it continued for a year with Jason Connery.  But tonight, with son-unit out with friends, we pushed in the first two episodes of the Jason year. And once again, the series worked its magic.
When I first saw Robin of Sherwood, it was well before I had anything like a pagan identity. My wife was heading in that direction with spiritual feminisim but I was really nowhere religiously. It would not be till 1988 that my first experience with magic slipped up on me.  But somehow, the whole corny mixture of downtrodden peasants, evil Normans, and Herne worshipping, freedom fighting outlaws just entranced me.  And then there was Maid Marion (Judi Trott) as HPS. 
I avoid most movies because I hate to feel manipulated and one thing this series does is pull out all the stops on manipulation.  And yet instead of feeling like I had just consumed an entire banana split of fake emotion I come away feeling uplifted.  Peasants chanting "Herne protect us!" somehow works for me.  Not that downtrodden peasants ever prayed to Herne en masse  but that it should have happened, if not here, then in some alternative universe.
And then I was struck at the very red haired Judi Trott as Marion.  And I thought about Mythago Wood and alternate universes and how this Maid Marion was  like Gwyneth in Mythago Wood - from the holy wikipedia:

Guiwenneth of the Green (also Gwyneth) 

This female mythago (usually evoked as an older teenager) is from the Bronze Age and appears in various incarnations throughout time, including protomyth, a girl from Roman Britain, a manifestation of the Earth goddess, young Celtic warrior princess and Guinevere.^[8] Each of Gwyneth's incarnations has a varied personality, some dangerous and others alluring . .

The wikipedia does not mention that the Mythago Wood protomythic celtic warrior princess/Guinevere has flaming red hair.  Perhaps the protomyth is just so powerful that it can even self launch its own TV series?
And speaking  of the passing of the author of Mythago Wood,  Robert Holdstock, I read a very brief note note on his funeral.  It was held at Rosslyn Hill Unitarian Chapel and the casket was made of wicker and entwined with holly - two things that touch my heart in different ways.

15 to 20 inches are expected. Wind gusts up to 40mph are also about to arrive shortly. Meets criteria for a blizzard. I'm not budging from the house today and blessedly, the power still seems to be on. My son came back from Portland last night and we'll probably cook something together. No Christmas shopping has yet been accomplished.

A blog thing from Matt Stone, via Yvonne (my fellow INTP) at the Stroppy Rabbit, who tagged me.

What religions do you find most interesting apart from your own? Would you pick one of the major world religions? Say Islam, or Buddhism, or Hinduism or Judaism? Or would you pick something more obscure, like Wicca or Taosim or Rastafarianism or Gnosticism? Would you pick irreligion, say Atheism or Agnosticism? Or if you're not Christian, would you say Christianity?

My religion is Unitarian-Universalism, which means largely that I have an open ended religion with guidelines instead of dogma. Among friends, I say that my religion is UU and my spirituality is druidic. For me the spirituality is the important part and the religion is about human organizations with all of their flaws and some strengths.

OBOD druidry is a good fit for my spiritual practice. It is totally undogmatic and really about the technology of spirituality. Almost as if Philip Carr-Gomm was saying "Do this work diligently. It is grounded generically in the Celtic and the Britiish Magical traditions. Things will happen that you will then explain with your own words. Please write and tell us what you discover. Thank you and good luck!" OBOD druidry did suggest that I learn the ogam, practice seeing and practice healing. But, OBOD never gave me a lick of instruction on seeing or healing for which I am very, very grateful. Almost like Marian Green (A Witch Alone) suggests that:

• Robert Holdstock, Mythago Wood (Fiction)
• Naomi Humphrey, Meditation: The Inner Way (Aquarian)
• Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters (Corgi) (Fiction)
• J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Bloomsbury) (Fiction)
• R.J. Stewart, Magical Tales (Aquarian)

are instructional for getting into Otherworld journeying. I can vouch for Mythago Wood, Magical Tales and Wyrd Sisters:-)

So what then attracts me that I'm currently not doing. Well, listening to erynn999 talk about Shinto makes me want to experience it firsthand. There seems a certain purity in honoring the spirits of place and the Japanese just do things more beautifully than the rest of us. Or maybe spending a summer at An Charraig in the Aran Isles to see if there is any place for Jesus in my spiritual life. Any place that has two Trinity's one of which is Maiden, Mother, Crone has some potential.

And then there is the soul issue. I could make the case that OBOD practice is very soul oriented since it gets you to particular doors and you can make your own conclusions. But there are yet to be specifics. And most paganisms seem to be systemically weak on understanding the place of the soul. Perhaps this is in opposition to the overculture religions which damn non-compliant souls as a major component of their business models. Whatever the reason, much of paganism ignores the existence of souls which I find to be a true lacking. So, it may be that the other religion that I should be seeking is Jungian. Jung's understanding of and relationship to the soul seems natural as well as complex and confusing. Unfortunately, it's one religion with a huge start up cost, so I just may have to pass it by.

In the way of things, I should tag five of you unsuspecting folks. So erynn999 , Anne Johnson,nettle, Stephanie, and copperstewart you are it. There are two others who I would love to hear from, but you're behind filters and I respect your privacy.

I had never read a book five times before Robert Holdstock's Lavondyss. And five times is not enough. Just one, two-page story within it -The Bone Forest- will probably never give up all of its secrets. He was that rarest of things, a fine writer who creates a fantasy genre that was totally new - Mythago Wood and the whole Ryhope series. My intuition tells me that he was a practitioner of the British Magical Tradition - there were too many references and coincidences to be more than plot borrowing. Like the weaving in of most of the ogam kennings into the first few pages of Merlin's Wood or something even more subtle, like the bag reference before Merlin starts out on the great circuit of the world (in the later Merlin Codex beginning with Celtika, which, alas, will not be completed). He was a dark and bright light and he will be missed.

And so we came, a relatively small group since most of the teenagers whose life Kevin had touched had moved on or away . But all of what remains of our church-based circle was there, including someone who had not even known him, but who wanted to be there because the rest of us felt so passionately about him.
And Kevin, aka Midian, did not disappoint from the grave. Years ago, he had written his entire memorial service down to the flyer with pictures and artwork. All the readings plus guidance as to who should read what. As in life, he left nothing to chance, those of us who knew him smiled to ourselves because it was just so Kevin.
The Kevin who spent 2 hours meticulously creating a pentacle mosaic of squash seeds and beans, so, as sa_hall noted, the rest of us would not have to suffer with his perfectionism before a ritual. Or, the time he set up a Bananas Foster station after an Imbolc ritual complete with flaming liqueur. Or how the younger sister of one of his high school RE students, in tears, spoke of how he always talked with her as an equal even when she was a middle-schooler. Or over and over again how he was entirely and completely one-hundred percent reliable and when he gave his word, he kept it.
Not in the script, our ritual group worked through the prayer beads from a Pagan Book of Living and Dying with Kevin's extensions for husband John, long dead, and his mentor. In looking for a particular web page of his, now lost, I noticed that perhaps america_divine had learned the prayer beads from Kevin?
At the time for remembrance, I brought up the first time I met Kevin. It was two ministers ago, ten years plus. We were doing one of those services where everyone reads a part, the topic being the evolution of religion. And so, by happenstance and with no knowledge aforehand, our minister gave Kevin the first reading on the Great Goddess. As I listened, I heard deep reverence and was 100% sure that he was pagan. When I spoke to him afterwards, he affirmed as much, but then said that he hadn't meant to bring it up, so as to let people get to know him without prejudice. But hiding that spiritual light was not really possible, since it permeated his existence and lay under his actions.
Later, in circle, he would tell us he was gay and living with HIV. He saved the most challenging announcement for the whole congregation during one of his sermons. "I've told you that I'm a gay, Wiccan man, living with AIDS and now I'm going to tell you the hardest thing I'll ever tell you. I'm a Republican." And we shook our heads, but loved him all the more for saying so.
It was good to see some folks that I had not seen for some time. Kevin had touched people very deeply and even after 5 years of absence, we still missed him. As someone pointed out, the greater loss is to Unitarian-Universalism. He was in seminary and would have made a phenomenal minister.

To begin, two, pin and ceirt an odd mixture for sure. At the end I asked the dark-wing'd one how many to pull and it was four in a crow's foot. Which reminded me of Thomas the Rhymer. So I pulled the road I came from and it was tinne, the technology of arts, including the magical arts. And for the broad road I pulled pin, a sweet life. For the narrow road, uileand, which in my own system is like the plan and rebirth. For the ferny road to elfland, it was straif transformation. Madness and sweetness along the way.

I knew last night before I drew that it would be either uath or ceirt. There was this insistence before the start of ritual, when I was asked to draw one and only one - the message were meant to be unmuddied. And it was Uath that fell to my hand in the silk bag. I read erynn999 's book and a vision of what I needed to do became clearer. I knew someone with lung cancer who was about to have an operation. And I also keenly felt the risk of this particular letter. I reached into the bag and my hand went unerringly back to uath which I took as a sign. So, surrounding it with pin, lus, coll and fearn I wished accuracy for the surgeon's hand - to miss nothing with the sharp point. And I wished containment, a hedge of thorns, around any cancer cells while tracing the two strokes in the air. And the bundle of twigs felt warm and determined.
The next morning, my electric alarm clock did not go off, but a different alarm went off instead in my head. "Get up. This is no time to sleep. "(and then the muslim) "Prayer is better than sleep." Nothing at all like sweet Brighid. Water drawn, candle lit, spirits acknowledged, She was not Brighid. "Do you think there is no price for uath/" And, I knew there was and felt dread. But it was a dread not without love either for this warrior goddess, who perhaps left a crow's wing for me to find one afternoon. And so the price was not terror, but work, solid work with both a physical and a mental component.

I've just reread RJ Stewart's diatribe against Carl Jung in The Underworld Initiation.  Stewart's contention (p 32) is that Jung and his followers do not fundamentally believe that there are other worlds and so see the light from those worlds as reflections of their own psyche.  In another book (lost memory number 1847) he says that both psychology and the esoteric tradition are valid, but the belief going in produces different results.

I'm also reading Jung's Red Book, sipping it slowly.  Jung's going in belief (from raw notes from the period before WWI) was that he was going mad, being exposed to multi-hour wide awake visions of total destruction on the scale of the Biblical Flood.    It was only when those visions proved prophetic (as in the Flood of blood lapping up to the borders of Switzerland) that he accepted that what he saw was grounded in the collective unconscious.  With this, he began his period of experimentation, willfully bringing on psychic breaks for an hour or two and writing down the results.

A few chapters in, it reads like the Bible, but with different deities.  "My God is a small child" he says and part of him recoils at this and part of him is drawn to it like a moth to a flame.  Or like Moby Dick, approaching the profundity of the Spirit of the Depths with fear and awe and willing desire.

It sounds like us, fellow travelers.  Maybe with different language, but the same love and dread of both dark and light and the same wild risk taking out of the same heart felt longing and desire.  Maybe there are different results, but the path seems the same to me.

This electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language (eDIL) is a digital edition of the complete contents of the Royal Irish Academy’s Dictionary of the Irish Language based mainly on Old and Middle Irish materials.

An amazing resource that cross connects definitions to the auricept or the Book of Ballymote or whatever.  So, for example, if you put in "brigit" you not only get the entry for the term brigit but you also get all the words in Irish whose description, in Irish, includes the term brigit.  Live links are included for the sources that include references from antiquity as well as scholarly references.  The whole work is based on a 1930's effort but is in the proces of being updated and otherwise improved. 

In my intuiteve sort of web searching, I came upon a very odd work:

Dion Fortune and her Inner Plane Contacts:
Intermediaries in the Western Esoteric Tradition,
Submitted by John Selby
to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy in Theology
June 2008

I don't know anything about John Selby.  He seems to have produced quite a number of self-help and esoteric titles and has some sort of corporate practice.  What he was doing with a degree in theology from Exeter I have no idea.  As for the thesis, it is 500 plus pages in length with appendices and looks like something that any student of Fortune would want to read.  He does seem to have had some amount of access, as he includes several unpublished writings of Gareth Knight on inner plane contacts with Dion Fortune.
I'm not even going to pretend to say anything about this on a substantive basis.  There is however, Fortune's annotated bibliography  (written between 1929-1930) of works that should be read by students of the esoteric.  One entry under the psychology section reads:
"Carl G. Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious [1915] 1916 occultism on a sound scientific basis"  Quite interesting from one of the founding mothers of all that  we have today.

Update:  An outer contact from the UK pointed out that the the John Selby associated with this dissertation is not the same John Selby author of self-help and esoteric titles.

For 2 weeks, I lost myself.  Or, I should say I lost connection to nearly every part of my spiritual life.  Perhaps it was the recurring addiction to a particular video game (its got to go faster now that computers are faster, so it really will not take 5000 hours to complete) that I hadn't touched in 7 years ( now re-deleted from computer).  Or a change of weather.  Or, my son being away.  Or a gradually rise in workplace nastiness. Whatever the cause, I was flat and so seemed everyone else.  Subjects became objects and I began to loathe my own perceptions.

I prayed.  I prayed fervently to Brighid for the heart of compassion, that outside of family, nothing else really mattered as much.  And nothing happened for days.  I began to feel completely abandoned and probably deserving of it.  And then the atmosphere began to clear slowly.   I began to  "see"  every person's personal flame.  First those that I knew best and then others.  And seeing that flame was the heart of compassion.  And with that insight, the rest of my life came back.  Lus to lus, like my heart seeks Brighid's presence.

I suspect that either  erynn999 or dulcimergoddess has this at their fingertips, but I'll throw it out to the universe.  Does anyone know the exact source of the story of Brighid represented with dark blond hair, half ugly and half beautiful?  I would like to have it for my " not black, not white but green"  UU sermon next February.  Lots of good secondary sources reference it, but I can't find the exact source.

Three things come to mind two by way of erynn999 .  First, is the half destruction of Boann by the Well of Segais.  Second, is the magical, if not cursing, posture of standing on one foot, with one eye closed and one arm behind the back.  The third is the Loathly Lady, Dame Ragnell from the Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell.  Perhaps all related.  Any help appreciated.