Back At It

Okey Doke, fellow weirdos, the retrograde has ended and I am actually writing again. I have done rather a lot of staring and, well, staring at the work to be done over the last weeks, but now I have actually finished the ritual content for the Eighth Moon of the system, as well as finally (I do believe) and effectively reorganizing the outline Ninth Moon is begun, and soonish done.

You can expect to see stuff coming up here much more regularly, as I finish the several essays I have cooking. I won't be posting much detail from the final two months of rites from the Nine Moons, but there will be plenty of other stuff.

Thanks for your patience, and here's a tid-bit:

The Charm of the Worlds

In the work of trance and contemplation that I call the Nineteen Working, the student is led through a series of visualizations meant to progressively create the Pagan cosmos model in and around the meditating Druid. Inside that vision the Druid then expands awareness and experiences a glimpse (or more) of a sense of oneness with all manifest existence.
This practice has several goals. First it opens and harmonizes the individual mind, providing a sense of scale concerning the individual and the cosmos. Second it allows the human magician to experience a bit of the awareness with which the Gods see the worlds – the non-local oceanic experience of existence. In practical work with spirits, my opinion is that being able to produce this state, and drawing the spirits into it, creates a sense of awe and authority for the magician. When the magician can produce in herself the sort of Unity that defines the awareness of the Gods, she gains status and power among the spirits.
If you have been working the Nineteen Working regularly, you will be growing more and more adept at producing this expanded awareness. As with most spiritual practices, that which has been learned in a ‘long form’ can then be worked in a shorter form, in which the entire work is recapitulated in a convenient, focused exercise.
The target state could be described in a trance such that below. I don’t know whether I’d recite the description aloud – it’s rather redundant with the charm. I prefer to simply establish the state through memory and trance, and then affirm/confirm it with the charm. Here’s the set:

I am seated in the Center of Worlds, and my Da Fein is enshrined in my heart. I am like the World Tree, with my roots in the Underworld and my branches in the Heavens. The Waters and the Light flow through me and shine in me. Around me are arrayed the Three Realms – Land, Sea and Sky, and these, and the heavens and the deeps, and even my own Da Fein are all made of the Nine Elements, the flesh of the Mother of All. Into this all-pattern, I extend my awareness. As I am aware of my face, I am aware of the lights of the sky. As I am aware of my flesh and bone, of the beating of my blood, I am aware of the stone and soil and sea. As I am aware of my breath, I am aware of the wind. My mind stops paying attention to my little shape of flesh, as my spirit opens into the greater Worlds of which I am merely a small part. As my awareness expands, my attention leaves my body, and I say:

The Worlds are in me, and I am in the Worlds
The Spirit in me is the Spirit in the worlds.
I am One with the World Tree, in the Sacred Center.
With the Two Powers in me
With the Three Realms surrounding me,
And the Cauldron of Wonder within me.
I reach into the Four Airts in wisdom and magic, strength and life
And my substance is the very substance of the worlds,
Nine things in one, and one thing in many.
The Worlds are in me, and I am in the Worlds
The Spirit in me is the Spirit in the worlds.

Altars and Shrines. A New Start

Jason Miller has been blogging about his ongoing process with his home shrines and altars. Now Jason’s a diligent practitioner, including to doing teaching and magic-for hire, so he does need some gear and some space. However his recent post is about his choice to pare down his permanent home-shrines in favor of doing as-needed work. I must suspect it’s all about real life, Jason’s new twins (wit and strength to them) being a major influence on his choice.

I suppose it’s all about phase of life. Me, I’m eagerly awaiting the departure of our adult daughter from the house. She’s been a fine room-mate but I do covet a corner where I can establish a larger working shrine, and pull a chair into open space to practice. We’ve gotten by with out nice bedroom shrine for the last couple years. In fact we’ve done some pretty cool work there, including ADF’s clergy practice. If we needed more work-top space, a handy tray-table could be purified and worked.

I want more space for specific small God and Spirit shrines, and a way to sit comfortably, not on a bed, before the shrine. I think I’ll take a corner of the room, and run shelves up the walls, with a big surface at the bottom. This should lead to improved opportunity for trancework and theurgy, as will having the place to ourselves. All stage of life… if there’s any advantage to getting older, it should be more access to resources and more freedom to use one’s time and effort as one pleases.

Keep an eye out for pics of the new library/temple as it shapes up this winter. Also, expect at least another post even later today. Damned if I’ll have a month with just one or two posts ; )

Catching Up on Meditation Instruction

Ya know, I've rewritten instructions for a basic course in meditation, mental discipline and trance so many times, but I seem to have missed a basic element that I actually use personally all the time. Students complain regularly about the effort of 'silent' meditation, focusing on no particular thing but just letting the mind flow and become calm. Many such students can benefit from this form, in which a specific focus is chosen. The focus can have actual idea content to 'meditate on' during the work.

I know some teachers hold that only one sort of method - the silent sort - is 'really' meditation. That's all too doctrinal for me, and contemplation meditation of this sort may be a fine way for students to get used to sitting silently doing only mental activity.

In any case, this is catch-up, and will end up in the new month 1 of the Nine Moons. I *am* getting back to work... expect more stuff soon...

Contemplation Meditation
In Contemplation Meditation you choose a specific pattern or symbol as the focus of your attention. In many cases the symbol – such as the Hallows, or the image of a God – may be physically present. It is also common to contemplate a mental construct image. You visualize, imagine or conceive the symbol in your mind, and observe it as if it were in front of you.
In this exercise the goal is similar to Open Meditation. You intend to keep the symbol always the entire focus of your attention. You may find your mind ‘thinking about’ the symbol – your task is to return attention directly to the object of Contemplation, without attachment to the flow of consideration about it. In this way we hope to allow the reality of the symbol to enter our awareness directly, and deeply. There is always time to think about these matters – meditation is a time set aside for other mental goals.
The technique of Contemplation is core to most of the higher-end of ritual and magical trance. As you work your way through ritual the ability to address each action with a whole and focused mind, to experience each thing for its unique power, is key to effective results. You learn to be in the presence of the Gods themselves, while maintaining the Peace and Power of your own Center.

Three Primary Contemplations
1: The Two Powers. You will develop the ability to easily bring the Two into your awareness, and you can then use their flow and circulation as the object of Contemplation. Set the circulation to turning in yourself, and allow your breath to keep the flow as you turn the focus of your attention to the feel and experience of the Two. Without attached consideration, allow yourself to observe the flow and shine, at peace. Each time you find yourself following a ‘train of thought’, simply return your attention to the continuing flow of the Two. Finish with balance and a blessing.
2: The Hallows. In this you will meditate with open eyes, focusing your attention on your fully operative Hallows of ritual. You will sit before your shrine or ritual arrangement, with the Fire lit, the Well blessed and the tree and all cleansed with Fire and Water. You allow your gaze to fall on the whole pattern of your ritual tools and symbols, experiencing their form and meaning without attachment to any flow of thought. Finish with balance and a blessing.
3: Nature Contemplation. This practice is described in the Dedicant’s work, but it should certainly be part of your regular practice. Find a place where you can observe a bit of nature, preferably with no visible thing obviously made by humans. You might choose a specific great tree, or a stream or other water, or any natural spot, but it is good to practice this also in more ordinary natural settings. You find a seat and with your Peace and Power on you allow the reality of the place to be the object of your contemplation, without attachment to idea or emotion, to beauty or ill. Finish with balance and a blessing.

The Practice
The Shrine is set with an object for contemplation – a symbolic card or image, a deity, flame, or the Three Hallows themselves. This technique can be applied to music as well, though music may be more inductive to reverie than to concentration. Contemplation can also be fixed on a phrase or an envisioned image, but to begin it is best to contemplate a material object.
1: Basic Trance: The Blood, Breath and Bone Exercise
• Stand or be seated firmly, spine erect, arms able to relax.
• Take three Complete Breaths and continue to breathe.
• Become aware of your body, where you are supported on the ground by your firm bones. Be aware of your bones, holding you upright as you feel your flesh relax.
• Continue to breathe fully, and focus attention on the sound of the breath. Concentrate inward, listening only to the sound of your breath.
• Turn your attention inward, and hear and feel the beating of blood in your veins. Feel the subtle pulse, as your breath flows and your bones uphold you.
• Continue this pattern as you open your eyes. Allow yourself to remain relaxed, focusing only on your Blood, Breath and Bone.
• Recite this charm:
Bone uphold me
Breath inspire me
Blood sustain me
In this holy work.

• Return to silent breathing and listening within.

From this state there are two basic kinds of meditation with which to begin your work. Ritual actions can also be performed, while maintaining Basic Trance state. In this case we continue to:

2: Meditation
• Continue your basic trance, settling peacefully into blood, breath and bone.
• Open your eyes, and bring your gaze gently upon the object of your contemplation.
• Allow your gaze to focus on the object of contemplation, and only on that object, concentrating your attention to that single object or symbol. Just as in Open Meditation you focused on your breath, allowing all thought to flow by ungrasped, so in Contemplation Meditation you focus your attention on a powerful symbol, and allow only considerations and perceptions of that symbol to fill your mind.
• First always return to the material form of the object, its real presence. From there you may carefully open to ideas concerning the object. This will inevitably lead to associated thought. Whenever that happens, simply return your awareness to the visible (or audible) form of the object.
• The goal is to extend the periods in which your awareness is wholly occupied by a single object, especially one with spiritual or symbolic meaning.
• When the time is sufficient, close your eyes and return to basic trance, then close.

3: Closing
• Always end the session of meditation formally, with the recitation of a closing charm and/or other formal gesture.
The blessings of the Holy Ones be on me and mine
My blessings on all beings, with peace on thee and thine
The Fire, the Well, the Sacred Tree
Flow and Flame and Grow in me
Thus do I remember the work of the Wise.

Monism and Monotheism

I don’t feel like talking a lot about this, but I want to respond to RO in the comments. This also addresses the notion of ‘basic framework' he talks about in another post. I may actually try to do one - it would surely be instructive
• Monism is the notion that, at root, all things are One. This is most fully expounded in the Vedic notion of the Brahman – the all-mind that contains and reconciles all things in itself. Let me quote myself, from my ‘Toward a Pagan Mysticism’ monograph:

The idea that at the deepest level all things are united in a single thing/process/existence is a recurring presence in what we know of ancient spiritual philosophy. The Vedic Brahman, the Hellenic Anima Mundi, Norse Wyrd and Orlog all point to the idea of a ‘soul of all’ or ‘mind-material of all’ or ‘underlying unity’ that is within, and shared by, all things. If nature is One Nature, then in the same way the divine might be One Divine (though not One Person…). Monism is more prominent in the eastern systems, but occurs in various forms in western Pagan experience as well. … Monism has, in a few sects, sometimes rejected more folkloric polytheism, and many Pagans are skeptical of its value in our contexts, but it remains a menu-item in the list of IE models of mystical experience.

• Monotheism is the notion that only one being can truly be called ‘divine’, that one consciousness is the owner-operator of reality. This is always a specific being with likes, dislikes desires and intentions. There are only a few examples of monotheism in the religious world, almost all Abrahamic. Some sorts of Saivite Vedanta may come close, though they have too much of the brahman to imagine Shiva as caring about ‘what happens’…
• Monism does not hold that the all-mind is any specific person. It cannot love rather than hate, cannot be just rather than unjust, or express any other moral or conditional quality above another. Especially it cannot have a Providential Will that manages the cosmos.
• Monotheism denies the deity of ‘lesser’ spirits, positing a difference of kind between ‘God’ and the ranks of other spirits. Polytheism tends to see only a difference of degree between Gods, Dead and other Wights – Homer referred even to the gods as daemons.
• Monism holds that all manifest things are expressions of or constituent parts of the One. Thus ‘the divine’ can be multiple and also participate in the One, without making that One, itself, a god.
• I’ll admit that I don’t really know what a ‘monad’ is. Neoplatonism is really too late for my theological focus, and renaissance hermetic theology is right out at this point. (I tend to center around Homer and Parmenides, since we don’t have any Pagan Gaelic theology to read.) I assume there was/is a First Cause, but consider that far in the cosmic past, and not in any way equivalent to an owner-operator. I don’t find infinite regress unlikely – “it’s turtles all the way down…”

The Tale of the Blind Men

Monotheism is like tying together a python, a bear and an ostrich in a room, then telling three blind men that there’s only one animal there. They will feel about in perplexity, each devising some imagined chimera, and begin to argue between them about whose perceptions might be right. Thus in monotheism the effort to imagine a single god who contains justice and mercy, love and wrath, cunning and honesty, who manages the whirling cosmos and knocks the sparrow off its branch is as unlikely and confused as some hairy, feathery, serpentine beast.
The divine is multiple, and it cannot be understood if the perceiver insists otherwise.

Starwood 2010- A New Beginning

In the southeastern corner of Ohio, along the wide Ohio River, the hills rise wild above low dells, stream-cut gorges and round-worn glacial boulders. If you leave the modern highway at the antique colonial river settlement of Marietta a web of switch-back roads takes you into country filled with the remnants of faded coal labor, farms carved from stony hillsides and tiny mercantile settlements. Only the university town of Athens offers big-box stores and intellectual culture, yet there is another thing that the college has given to the surrounding counties.

Hippies, falling in love with the green hills, have moved in. The live-and-let-live ethos of the impoverished hills has accepted the long-haired incomers readily, and small homesteads and farms dot the region. Deep in the dells lays a large spread, called by those who keep it Wisteria. Wisteria was created by young people from the northern end of the state, seeking the magical spirits to be found in those old dells. Find them they did, and the place has become a haven of comfort and enchantment for those who find it.

Into this peaceful valley rode the traveling circus called the Starwood festival. Created 30 years before, the multi-ringed show of music, Pagan teaching and ritual, arts and ideas and soul-lighting revelry flowed down the hill and into the valley. Almost immediately, the two seemed to fall into sync.

Wisteria is set in a long, narrow plain, with a ridge to the south and a deep valley of forest to the north. A horseshoe road runs through the center, and almost all the workshop and festival sites are conveniently placed along the road. This made the set-up job of the event (my own task this year…) pretty painless. Years of careful and loving development has built lovely clearings in the deep forest good for workshop spaces, well-cared-for paths and shaded camping.

Shade was valuable, as the southern Ohio sun beat hard that week, and those in the flat camping in the meadow had to make their own shadow. Some might complain about the heat. To me, it reminded me of Starwoods past, in the 1980s, before we moved to the cold, damp north. Hot days give way to cool, easy nights that can be enjoyed in a skirt and shirt, or less. Promoting clothing-optional living at night is a big plus to the Starwood atmosphere. Perhaps we might ask the spirits for 10 degrees less, but I hesitate to question the heat…

Starwood officially begins with our traditional Opening Circle, but first we must register our guests. Thanks largely to an astounding reduction in redundant and annoying paperwork, the pre-registered guests were able to pass through their registration in five minutes, with a little longer for walk-ins. In the many delighted comments from guests this year, one of the most common was “Five Minute Registration!”

L. and I worked our Opening Circle in the usual way, in which we cast a spell to protect and focus our event. The land seemed to welcome the energies, and it felt like throwing a switch. The Starwood light is lit!

And it seemed that it was, as concerts and rituals filled the night from the very first. The music was diverse and powerful. I was especially pleased by the Celtic rock of Coyote Run, the hard but melodic sound of Electric Junkyard Gamelon, and the folk multi-instrumentalism of Emerald Frequency, but every act was skilled, original and entertaining. Wisteria offers multiple stages, at the Café and at their Green Man Tavern, providing lunchtime concerts with actual audiences. I predict more music and more diversity than ever at Starwood.

The concert facilities were excellent, as long as it didn’t rain, but blanket-seating under the stars turned out to be delightful. The Starwood crew dressed the stage beautifully. Light, color and sound made the main stage an environment to remember.
Starwood is a menu-driven event. If you want an arts and music event you can make pottery, learn classical table rhythms or belly dance, see bands and participate in jams. If you want an alternative culture event you can learn about modern progressive politics, environmental activism, green living and alternative healing. If you want an occult and Pagan event you can discuss traditional witchcraft, participate in a formal sweat-lodge, attend a druidic fire-sacrifice or learn shamanic vision. Of course the organizers also promote a mix-and-match approach – guests will seldom get a chance to sample a wider variety of ideas and methods.

Starwood has always been a fire-and-drum show, and this turned out to be easy in our new space. Many of the folk of Wisteria are in fact Starwood alumni, and the spirit of the drum is already honored there. While the event offered a nightly fire on the plain, the local culture has built its own circle in a wooded glen. Down in the Paw Paw Patch the fire was hot and so was the drumming and dancing. New drummers mixed with local talent, and every night produced a first-rate fire party.

You may have heard of the Starwood Bonfire. It’s big. Sometimes it’s been really big. The thing is, we realized a few years ago that if we kept making the Fire 10% bigger every year, we’d eventually outgrow any meadow. So we’ve been looking for the right size to be Damned Cool while being actually useful as a party fire. I think we got it right this year. A good crew of Woodbusters came from their customary grounds up north and built us a gorgeous Fire with an amount of wood not so embarrassing to environmentalists… We are very grateful to the Woodbusters. In whatever alien DNA swap spawned them, Starwood is surely one of the parents, and we appreciate those who came to help the old girl (or whatever) out.

L. and I did Closing Circle, balancing and ending the work of the Opening. I’m not usually the spontaneous vision sort, but in the eyes-closed portions of the closing rite I plainly saw a shining pentagram. Now, I haven’t used or worn the pentagram in decades, and this was no after-image. In my occult opinion this was the presence of the Starwood Light, making itself plain. To me this means a successful working, a transplant that will grow, and blossom, and bear.

If you missed it this year, do consider coming next year. It’s a whole new ball game.
Genuine Starwood; accept no substitutes.