Silver Maple

I woke up early and put the final touches on the presentation and then nearly twice forgot to bring the script.  I wasn't on first, so I did a sitting meditation session ahead of my slot that was exactly the right thing to do - settle in,  do alignments and pray (a lot).  I have never taught this type of course before so I wasn't sure how it would go.

The flow was pretty much as I previously described.  The energy ball went well and folks got into the fun of it.  My wife reminded me again that I should let someone else do anything related to rhythm (referring to the counts for the breathing meditation) I won't go into how the class worked since there are privacy issues.  I will say that when we did the personal bubble check, my wife noticed that mine had about doubled in size which was confirmed by someone experienced in energy work.  So, I suspect that I was getting a little help here and there as we got smoothly to the finish we almost no rough spots.

It was a good experience and I definitely want to try it out again.  Everyone can relate to trees so there are no barriers (like having to believe in 9 auric shells ruled by archangels or something).

Our church is having a "Quiet Day."  It was instituted under the leadership of our former MRE Ellen Jennings who moved on to become a parish minister at a UCC church in DC.  The idea is to have a number of chill activities for folks to participate in and leave more centered and relaxed. 

In a fit of madness, I offered to do a beginning energy work workshop culminating with a tree meditation.  I am scheduled to do this 3 times of 50 minutes each. What this means is that I'll likely have small groups for each time, so we can work more informally.

So, here is my idea for an outline:

1. Do an intro about what we're going to be doing and then explain why I'm not going to define energy. 
2. Do a warm up exercise with the invisible ball.  Find the ball's size throw it up and catch it not letting it hit the ground.  Concept is to show that something really intangible can be treated tangibly.
3. Breathe -  Brief intro along the lines of breath is the blood of spirit. Simple breathing - in 4, hold 4, out four, rest four repeat.
4. Warm-up - finding energy field near the skin.  Run hand over arms about an inch away from the skin.
5. Warm-up -  Finding personal bubble.  Not going into explanation auric shells, but just providing an understanding of our personal energy field.  Work in pairs.  Do a check in first for anyone who might feel uncomfortable with this. 
6. If not raining walk outside and do a circumambulation around a tree, using the skills from steps 4 and 5.  Maybe pick up some mugwort.
7. Breathe - Learn how to breathe into a spot. Breath into center on the 4 count. 
8. Breathe - Move towards the tree meditation with some bits stolen and modified.  Imagine the tree. Breathe into the physical body.  Breathe into the roots.  Breathe into the trunk.  Breathe into the leaves.
9. Finish Part 1 - Breathe into roots. It is Spring and the sap rises with your breath, through the trunk into the leaves reaching toward the Sun of Summer.  It is Fall, Leaves fall, blessing the Earth.  Sap flows down through the trunk and into the roots.  Repeat a few times.
10. Finish Part 2 with arm movements - Same breath and visualizations but this time arms trace hour energy space reaching up to the sun and falling with the Fall.
11. Wrap up.

Obviously I'll need to work on the wordings (and I dearly wish I had Ellen as a sounding board), but this is where I am now.

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Driving in Sunday morning with my wife, I was remembering an incident that Thorn Coyle recounted and then said "As written in the Parables of Thorn" and we both laughed.  She does have that effect on me, but it got me thinking about all the other teachers I've had, some whose names are lost who have made a tremendous impact on my life.  So apropos of nothing, I'm going to list them:

-Mrs. Hart, 2nd grade who figured out that I did not belong with the turtles but moved me up to the bluebirds.
-Mrs. Craig, 3rd grade who was genuinely kind and caring.
<long gap>
-Candidai Tirumalai - English lit - who gave me a template for brilliance - always lecturing without notes, his ideas - perfectly formed, fresh and golden.
-Ralph Slotten - a religion professor who cared about religions and wanted to experience them all with his students:-)
-Charley Donaghy - co-worker who showed me that reality was plastic but also that the important thing was to play your own game.
-<Lost Name> NLP teacher - my first instructor in magic even though everyone pretended it was science
-Paul Carter, student of Milton Erickson - a single crystalline moment of such force that it took me 6 month to recover from hearing "Depression is not feeling up or down, depression is not feeling"
-Ali S. - Who taught me the power of the story and the power of the teller
-Emma Restall Orr - her words filled me with hot desire to learn and experience - I think of myself as a druid because of her druidry.  Alas I never met her.
-R. J. Stewart - cranky, unreadable, brilliant - I read one of his books, say to myself WTF, and then months later what it means dawns on me.
-Thorn Coyle - the real deal and I rarely say that about anyone. Her teaching is stretching me in every direction.

There are others who provided small magics, but these are the ones who supported the life changes that I was ready for.

Introductions around the room this Saturday and we actually had 3 druids - ADF, OBOD and Keltrian/BDO. 6% is probably a new indoor record for any gathering I've been to yet that wasn't specifically OBOD.  This time my wife came along, a bit apprehensive about high woo, but having had previous experience with Thorn and wanting to share this with me instead of hearing second hand.  What happened in the next day and a half, except for some moments, is a blur, but a good blur.

Thorn's teaching style is very spartan.  There is enough background to get concepts across but no bogging down in correspondences or planes or auric shells.  The work is soul alignment and with diligence and grace, soul alignment leads to self-possession. 

One person asked the question of why self-possession mattered.  It was a good question, since there are years of work ahead and no guarantees of success.  The answer is going to be different for everyone because each of us is coming from a different space.  Perhaps we desire to be invulnerable or paradoxically more vulnerable.  Perhaps we have a warrior's heart or want to live work and act from the heart of compassion.   Each true individual mission has its own importance, but the method is the same - to align our animal, human and divine souls together with the blessing of the divine to implement our true will.

What this workshop did in a day and a half was to provide a taste of that space for a moment or longer to act as a template - so that when we experienced this space, we would know what it was.  Lots of preparation, chanting, drawing, using pendulums, talking - rinse and repeat.  Last night we did ritual to pull it together. 

What can I say about last  night's ritual? How we got from zero to lightspeed is part of the mystery.  I can say that Thorn is a master teacher, centered in her pathmaking - working is too weak a term.  I can say that there was a level of willingness and honesty in the room that fueled the engine of the ritual.  But for each of us there was this final struggle of essentially drawing down ourselves and we could only finally do that by ourselves.

Early on, I realized that I was not aligned.  My diagnostic- do I feel judgmental?  (yes) can I see that everyone is doing the best they can? (no) was coming up with all the wrong answers.  I asked one god what I needed and it was to plant a seed (echoed by drawing Ur the next day).  I asked another and it was to have my flesh ripped apart.  I took something that Thorn said as I faced the Peacock Angel and held in my left hand  my absolute failure (that I was near realizing) and in my right hand I held divinity that I could barely believe in and stayed in that space.  As I did, the space of judgment faded and everyone, including me, was doing the best that they could.  From that point, I could reach up and draw down myself.

Sunday reinforced Saturday.  We danced, we sang, we pendulumed, we talked. I was clearly in altered space and recommitted to practice and sleep (which will happen shortly).  Thorn mentioned erynn999's excellent translation of the Cauldron of Poesy.  Hugs and goodbyes.  The goodbye with Thorn had few words but the energy exchange was intense, a seal and blessing.

Last weekend went wandering around the countryside with a friend of similar inclinations.  She had much the same conclusions, that mugwort seems to create its own field.  I can characterize it better now.  Instead of looking at things, I see everything in sort of a Pan-panorama.
More on Thorn class later - it's still in process.

My wife and I are both going to the Thorn Coyle workshop this week in DC.  Looks like there will be a good sized group with some folks that I know and some that I don't.  Same deal with 12 hours (with lunch and dinner breaks) on Saturday and a half day Sunday.  Really looking forward to this as working with her is always intensive.

Stopped in the park on my way home for a sprig of Mr. Mugwort for ritual tonight.  Did I get up too fast out of the car or were there visual shifts as I approached the site beside the daffodils?  This time I placed the sprig on the car seat next to me instead of inserting it into a buttonhole.  Better safe than sorry, wort.

Linda Rago's deep herbalism class had this nice little interlude with mugwort. Mugwort can help journeying in dreams or otherwise. So for the pathworking to fae plant land, we each took a sprig of mugwort and held it in our hands. Out for my walk yesterday, I stopped and took a sprig and tucked it into a buttonhole for later experimentation. Mr. Mugwort had a different idea. As I walked back, things began to get very, very slow which I first ascribed to being out of shape. But then everything started getting brighter. The sky was bluer. The sunshine was more golden. Dead beech leaves looked really, really attractive against that blue sky. I started to get what was going on and just went with it. Lasted about a half a mile. I felt sleepy and sort of hung over the rest of the day.
Linda says that the hillbilly tradition, of which she is a part (along with Reclaiming) holds that you should know a plant a year and a day before you attempt to use it. She also says that any plant can heal any condition. Since I've been paying attention to Mr. Mugwort for two years now I think we will try some meditations and see where they go.

I seemed to have specialized in Ivo Dominguez, Jr. this year attending 3 of his classes.  Overall, over half of the classes I took were from the Assembly of the Sacred Wheel (ASW) , a ceremonial magic twinged wicca.  They were universally good.  Having access to deep resources would be a real plus, but I have no commitment at all to wicca, so it could be tough to join up.  I'm putting that on the backburner for awhile and see where it goes.

Ivo's classes are strong on both theory and practice.  He is very cognizant of the fact that many of the students are leaders in their respective organizations, so there are quite a number of leader pragmatics thrown in too.  What I find with his courses is that they percolate along in my subconscious and then I find a connection that is useful. 

I've gone in depth on the bindstar and Morrigan ritual. The other highlight was  Linda Rago's spiritual plant workshop.   Of all the folks who presented, I was most in tune with her approach.  For Linda, plant spirits are fae that want to help.  Her visualizations were precise, gentle and effective.  I only wished that I could have stayed longer in one of them as I was having quite a good time.

There were two real issues with this years conference that have been getting worse with each successive year.  As much as I truly like the ASW folks, we have lost significant diversity since 2008.  There was almost no classes that were not part of the Western Magical Tradition.  No vodun, no Santeria, no Norse, no celtic reconstructionist (I am specifically not counting the ogham class), no strange Christian classes.  Even worse was the move toward sit and soak. For me the ritual work is the most important part of the experience. If you were not into vodun trance possession the number of ritual experiences was tiny.

But, it is the only large game in town and it is great to reconnect with people I rarely see otherwise.  It is not without dividends, but it could be so much more.