Silver Maple

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.

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.

My copy of Jung's Red Book arrived today.  It is massive at over 18 by 12 by 2.4.  It is entirely in calligraphy with paintings that are individually interesting and collectively gripping.  I've paged through one page at a time with my wife and we were both awestruck.  As for the painstaking 10+ year translation - I'm going to sip that a little at a time, but I can already see that the section titles are nearly as evocative as the paintings.  

For me, reading Jung as a teenager was the first glimmer that I wasn't alone in the world, that it was possible to be truly whole by accepting dark and light together.   Looking through the Red Book, the forge from which Jung's later writings were drawn, I can see more.  There is the obvious tarot-like drawings.  But oddly, what comes across in the paintings is this perfect balance.  For me, it  echoes what Christopher Alexander was getting at in the Nature of Order. 

That's all I have for now, but more will come over time. 

Chili for 135 came off pretty well on Saturday. I had a good prep crew and the results drew positive reviews all the way around. It was a good weekend for hanging out and having long talks about consequential and inconsequential things.  Two new INTP friends and long talks with sa_hall were added bonuses.  And then, there is just the sheer beauty of the mountains at the cusp of leaf change.  We finally had clear skies on Sunday and it was glorious.

I have started attending a 6 session comtemplative prayer class and one of our assignments has been to read one book from a list of books.  I chose Teresa of Avilla's Interior Castle mainly because another book on the list was a Jungian analysis of the same.  A very tough read what with references to women as a poor weak vessel  along with the glorification of self-torment in alignment with Jesus' suffering on the cross.  One wonders what this book would look like if there were no external constraints.  Part of it opens up to me in spite of the language.  Things that I know and many others know that approaching the Other with anything else but humility is fail.  And, that work is important and nothing lasting happens without work, but that there is a response that comes of its own volition.

Reading Teresa has made me look at the state of my own practice and where it has fallen off to.  Certainly not to model it on her personal Inquisition, but to get regular, go back to the basics and to diligently ask for the heart of compassion - the thing I miss most.

For the fifth year, I'm managing lunch at our UU church's reteat in the Md. mountains.  Looks like chili, cornbread and salad for  135 with a meat and a vegetarian black bean chili.  This retreat is always really mellow with no program and lots of hanging out time with people that I rarely spend time with.  Be back Sunday afternoon.

David

I read Hermann Hesse's Demian 40 years ago or so.  Not much stuck with me except the extremely odd statement from Sinclair's mentor Pistorius relating the ability to not lose oneself in what might be called astral projection due to a regulating organ like a fish's swimming bladder.  So, thinking about the imminent publication of Jung's Red Book, I offer this small bit of analysis.

The holy wikipedia defines the vesica pisces as

"The Vesica piscis is a shape which is the intersection of two circles with the same radius, intersecting in such a way that the center of each circle lies on the circumference of the other. The name literally means the "bladder of a fish" in Latin. "

Well Pistorius did say it, and a fishier sounding name would be hard to find. And, the obvious Christian interpretation is that the Venn diagram forms an ichthys an early symbol of the Christian community.  There is also the esoteric meaning, that it is the intersection of heaven and Earth, forming a Divine Child.  From Thorn Coyle's Kissing the Limitless, it may be God and Goddess or Spirit and Matter.  My own thought is that it may be our personal soul and Deity.  But whatever the actual spin, the result is an integration of wholeness that simultaneously stabilizes and frees. 

My bet, is that the intersection is also the third road of Thomas the Rhymer and the weft of eternal beauty from Fiona Macleod's Orchil.

David

I signed up put on a service for our UU church and its my first solo effort in a long time.  Part of the impetus for this was that our church has signed on to the Green Sanctuary process.  Worship is an essential element of the Green Sanctuary and this service will help fulfill the church's commitment.  But, it will not be Compact Fluorescent Communion.  Instead, I'm going to merge the theme of green renewal with the third road theme of Thomas the Rhymer and (hopefully) present a positive alternative for the congregation to explore.

My basic premise is this.  We are constantly presented with black and white choices both of which are inherently flawed.  These are like the path of righteousness filled with thorns that few travel and the broad path of wickedness that some call the road to heaven.  Without a spiritual (in this case green) underpinning, we are constantly locked in this conflict, thoroughly trapped by our media manipulated emotions.

Traveling the green road separates us from this conflict, but does not separate us from the world.  The renewal of the world is physically apparent as the snowdrops and early irises send up their shoots.  But the green renewal of the world can occur at any time of year in any place because we are co-creators.

That's what I have so far.  I have a few readings in mind.  Certainly the gaelic incantation of the snake that rises through even 3 feet of snow on Bride's day.  Certainly the three roads section of Thomas the Rhymer.  Possibly the Orchil prose poem.  For music, I want to use the UU hymn "Rising Green" which exactly fits the message and for end music, I'm thinking about Unbroken Chain (Bobby Petersen,Phil Lesh) if I can find someone with the right sensibilities to play it.  It ends with the exquisite:

Lilac rain, unbroken chain,
Song of the saw-whet owl.
Out on the mountain,
it'll drive you insane,
Listening to the winds howl

Unbroken chain of sorrow and pearls,
Unbroken chain of sky and sea.
Unbroken chain of the western wind,
Unbroken chain of you and me.

It all began when I read Emma Restall Orr's Living Druidry and Robert Holdstock's Lavondyss back-to-back when I was on vacation some years ago. It became obvious that both works stemmed from a common root and both of them, in their own ways, were instruction manuals.

Now some of this is the workings of the INTP mind that 
Given, for example, A manuscript of the Illiad, and a Hopi pot (c. 1860) the INTP will deduce the effects of the industrial revolution on cubist painting. Given slightly less information, say, a shard from the same pot and chapters 3 through 7 of The Confessions of St. Augustine, he will be able to deduce the entire history of western civilization.

But over time, the pieces have continued to fall into place to the point that there seems to be a not too obvoius skein of connection among mystics and writers that somehow form the British Magical Tradition.  I've written about this before in a fairly ad hoc sort of way. But, now I want to come up with a complete reading list - or as complete as I can manage.

Fiction
Robert Holdstock
Terri Windling (if only for The Wood Wife)
Neil Gaiman
Doris Lessing
Brian Bates
PL Travers (yes, read the real Mary Poppins books sometime for an eyeopener)
Terry Pratchett (yes Terry, take a look at his description of Library Space (L Space) from Guards!, Guards! and then read RJ Stewart's description in the library meditation).
(perhaps) Diane Duane - yes its YA, but she seems very likely a Christian druid
(perhaps) Roger Zelazny - could a non-practitioner have written the creation of Corwin's Pattern in Courts of Chaos?
(perhaps) Emma Bull - heavy use of Thomas the Rhymer and Fae motif in War of the Oaks (1987)
 E. Nesbit - Golden Dawn with Yeats:-)
Kenneth Grahame

Spiritual Writers
William Sharp
AE- George Russell
Yeats
RJ Stewart
John Matthews
Caitlin Matthews
Philip Carr-Gomm
Emma Restall Orr
PL Travers (take a look at "What the Bee Knows", its a Rosetta Stone)
Marian Green
Dion Fortune
Gareth Knight
RD Laing

So there's my start.  I'd love to hear from anyone with additional thoughts, particularlycaersidi  and yewtree .

So I was in Second Story's secondhand bookstore warehouse and I spied the cookbook "From a Breton Garden".  Turning the pages, I was immediately struck by the weirdness of combinations of things I didn't think combined.  Its full of really old style Breton recipes and then Parisian and San Francisco updates.  The chef, the late Josephine Araldo, performs strange alchemy.  Last night, with the current glut of cherries, I made green beans and cherries with tarragon, parsley and garlic.   Unbelievably tasty and totally unexpected.  Tonight, new potatoes boiled with a sprig of lavender and mint in butter.  I have high hopes:-)

This morning  after hearing the news, I signed the three strokes for lus, light.  For Kevin.  But my fingers, of their own accord, went across and down.  Gort, the garden, I signed instead.  May it be true.

I trace lus, light,
Three quick strokes.
I trace three quick strokes
Across my heart
 
For Kevin,
No child of Yours
Has loved You more.

Let Light find Light.
When breath fails,
Guide his Spirit home.

My grandfather grew to age 14 in Croatia, but back then it was the Ottoman empire, 60 miles south of the Austrian border.  His father was the sheriff.  Even so, they were dirt poor - he shared a pair of shoes with his brother. 

My grandfather had a powerful temper.  One day, the teacher yelled at him and he threw an ink well covering the guy's white shirt.  When the teacher came at him with the whalebone cane, he threatened to put the guy's house in flames that night if he touched him and so escaped punishment.  My father suggested that the town had taken up a collection to send him to America.

That same madness came out in positive ways.  My grandfather worked at a pipe mill and one day, the great big American flag at the top of the very tall pipe flagpole was stuck.  He climbed up the pole with it swaying back and forth, terrifying my mother and freed the blockage.

On another occasion, a man caught fire in the mill and my grandfather put out the fire with his bare hands suffering horrific burns in the process.  Some time later, he went to buy some eggs from the guy he saved and was charged full price.  As my grandfather put it, "I guess his life wasn't  worth a dozen eggs."

In his late 70's, infuriated at motorcyclists using his part of a private road, he walked out and threw his cane at one of them, blessedly missing.

My mother was her father's daughter.  I only found out in the last few years how brave she was.  At a carpenter's picnic, some guys had a few too many beers when one went for a tire iron and the other, not fooling around with half measures, went to his car for a gun.  She got in between them when everyone else was paralyzed and told them that there were children around and to knock it off.  And amazingly, they did.

In her early eighties, she became increasingly annoyed at a lumber truck running down that same private road of my grandfather's.  She was also annoyed that some large trees were being cut down.  And so, she took her lawn chair out and placed it dead center in the middle of the road, sat down and waited.  The guy came barreling down and then stopped and yelled at her to move and she told  him to back up and leave.  And then the rest of the neighbors came out and started yelling at the guy in the lumber truck.  There was another way out, but it was very steep with an immediate hard right or left turn that this truck could not negotiate.

And so the standoff continued.  Until finally, after moving from yelling to begging, my mother let him pass, never to be seen again.

Mostly the madness has skipped me by.  Just once it really put my life in danger.  I was in my 30's when I got off my bicycle, grabbed a ten pound rock, put it on top of my handlebars and started pedaling toward a car filled with 5 drunken yahoos who had pulled off the road ahead of me after yelling a fusillade of insults.  Amazingly they saw me coming and pulled away before I got to them.  I had no real idea what I was going to do, but I was so furious that I really didn't care. This my only touch with battle fury.

But I know that it's in my genes and I hope that the fury skips my son, but not the righteous indignation and the will to follow through against what's wrong in the world.

My ex-office mate's wife has probably terminal stage III cancer.  They have eight children from about 2 to 15 years in age, so this is a truly terrible thing.  M. is a superCatholic.  He would come in groggy eyed some days from adoring the Host on its monstrance from midnight to 3 in the morning.  On other nights his wife would take that shift. 

I loved arguing with M.  We would argue about religion and revealed Truth and the Garden and anything else.  He knew the classics and he knew Catholic theology and we would both go hammer and tongs on this point or the other point.  He was also a fairly predictable right wing Republican except for the death penalty which was against Catholic dogma.

M.'s wife's care page has requests to pray, not only to Jesus, but also to some folks that are on the way towards beatification.  I know how this works.  Any cures are then investigated for miraculous content which pushes the case for sainthood.  And, there is this idea  that the new guys in Heaven have more time on their hands and will petition Jesus and God and Mary and anyone Else who will listen with extra vigor.

And while I truly love M. I was blocked from prayer.  The conditions seemed wrong, to pray a particular way in a tradition that I have no connection to.   So, there was Tinne,  for the skill of the physician.  And Muin for their love, may it sustain them.  And Dur for strength.  And Pin, sweet Pin, for the memory of the sweetness of life.  But nGetal could not be found, because a request for healing directly would not connect..

 If I actually told M. what I was doing, he would undoubtedly tell me to stop immediately.  And since my connection to his wife was through him, the link would break destroying any possibility of doing good.  And Brighid was silent, although She has undoubtedly heard many more Catholic prayers than pagan prayers.  It was the God thing with all of its divisiveness.

And then there was this break.  M.'s wife physician turned out to be Dr. Grace.  A gift for me then, because as soon as I read the name, I knew that I could say the word God and it would mean what it meant to me and mean what it meant to them.  And nGetal was again available to me.  

There are divisions between religions and I am sure that the Deities are different.  But there is no division in Grace.

As a backdrop to Cat's phenomenal Reiki post, is an article from the end of May, 2009 where the US Catholic bishops denounced Reiki.

"The Japanese practice differs from Christian faith healing because "the healing power is at human disposal," the bishops said. In contrast, "for Christians the access to divine healing is by prayer to Christ as Lord and Savior."

Moreover, practicing Reiki puts Catholics' spiritual health in danger, the bishops said, by corrupting worship of God and turning religious devotion "in a false direction." "

The core of this criticism is that any spiritual energy that does not flow down from a single point source, specifically the Christian God is false.  As witches, druids, troth, pagans, vodun practitioners, Shintoists, some Quakers and all fellow travelers, we know that this does not match our experience.  And it is that experience, that cannot be denied, that the Catholic bishops are most afraid of.  And it is not just Catholic bishops or Reiki - the fundamental argument goes back to when the Christian Church took a right turn away from the direct experience of Spirit in exchange for once-and-done revealed truth.

But, it is that experience that we, as a disjoint community, cannot share either.  Their are small, short miracles like the Sacred Space Conference  but for the most part our groups do not talk to each other in a meaningful way.  Often, we do not even talk to ourselves - Terry Pratchett's "the natural size of a coven is one" is fully operational.  Even as we refine our personal or small group beliefs we fail to make the most obvious connections.

On the opposite extreme is spiritual mush - fluffy bunny and New Age.  We Are All One etc.  And so Reconstructionist and druid groups split to be more Celtic or more particularly Celtic and the same process plays out in all of our traditions.  Because, we do not want spiritual mush.  Because we care so much about the honoring the truth of Spirit in our lives. 

There is strength in purity of message too.  Writers like RJ Stewart insist that it is essential to work exclusively in one tradition before branching out - that the commitment to tradition of blood or Land has the energy and numinous quality to allow us to make individual progress.

And, this purity and separation works fine if we want to stay as covens of one, or groves of two.  But it does not let us organize the types of caring instutitions - clinics, schools, hospices - that the religious over-culture can manage as a by-product of message control and consistency.  Nor does it ultimately build community.  The story of the Tower of Babel is about us.

There is, however, a way forward and it involves language and intent.  The language part is to recognize this commonality - that our various paths all involve the active participation of our Spirit.  Whether that is with deities, nature spirits, archangels, all sentient beings, the fae etc. does not matter.  Our Spirit is important and necessary to making change in the world(s) or change in ourselves.  Further, connection to Spirit, while it probably always has an element of Grace also has an element of work.  This translates as we are important, we are not helpless,  we have a responsibility for our own spiritual growth  and power and we are responsible for what we do with it.

The language part may be easier than the intent part.  At last February's Sacred Space Conference, Thorn Coyle gave a short workshop on "Engaging the Warrior's Heart."  One of the exercises was to transform a direct overhand strike at someone into a joint strike forward while saying, "I support your Truth."  And the dance step to get there was tricky, but it did work and it was powerful.  We can support each other's Truth in meaninful ways even as we may disagree because of that common core.  Ultimately, we do it because we trust that relating with Spirit will work its way to the same point.  Ultimately, we stop doubting each other.

So here it is, the Spirit Creed version .01  -


Its a start.

Cat has produced a truly wonderful post on healing with Reiki in the context of her own understanding of touching Spirit.  It is truly remarkable in that it manages to connect across lots of spiritual boundaries and personally touched me greatly.  Well worth reading

I have previously posted on the likelihood that the wych elm is the tree associated with emancoll (the last ogam letter),  "Witch hazel" being a concept that means a tree with pliable branches.  I was reading a paper that Robert Graves grandfather, Charles Graves , wrote on ogam which led me to this  quote.

The practice of striking with an Ogam-marked rod is mentioned in a medical MS of the date 1509, in the Library of the Royal Irish Academy. As a cure for a man rendered impotent by charms, it is there recommended to write the man’s name in Ogam on an elm wand, and to strike the man with it.

This shows ogam being actively used for what might be called spell work long after the last monumental uses of ogam.   Always a possibility that this is complete hocum, but, there had to be some reason why the alphabet was preserved for centuries after it ceased to reflect the underlying language.  Second, along with interpretations of beith, it opens up the possibility that the healing uses for plants were not limited to ingesting and inhaling.  Third, this use was particularly against "charms" which then opens up the question of why, particularly, elm was used against a "charm."

So some ideas to pursue, likely to lead to blind alleys, but then again you never know.