Some beautiful words from my eternal lover...

My path is forever just beginning, and my feet are always soft and sensitive to
the earth's new caress, this Moon is always my first cycle, and this sunrise always
my first communion. Speak to me, and you speak not to my flesh, but to my spirit,
whom I have set at the feet [of] a great soul, a god of friendship and epiphanies, a
parlay with Myth itself and one who peeks in Destiny's mirror, and sees not himself,
but his brothers and sisters.

 
I dream for who we are, and I dream for who we are not, for in between is truly
what we shall become.
/crazy

-- from one of my husband's many journals

Hekatesia

8/12-8/13

I began my observance of the Hekatesia a day early.  Was slow waking up, getting around, with little to do in the early part of the day except to get ready for the night.  Felt distracted.  Even the weather was restless, with a storm kicking up.  It intensified into a frenzy for just minutes, but long enough; the wind seemed so brutal that I went out to check on my plants, only to find this…



It is hard to explain the significance of this in a few words. My dearest san pedro.  A gift, a teacher, who has become a symbol of my deepest love, my deepest grief, even my current struggle with meaning, and my journey of the last 4 years.  She will be all right.  In a slightly different form, perhaps, not unlike me.  But I still cried for her.  (Again. But our history is a whole other story…)

I went dancing, alone.  I remember feeling like my dancing was taking on new purpose. Certainly it’s changed it’s tone.  (Are my ballroom days over? I’m still working that out.)  But it was more like I was making doorways for the dead and the spirits.  Stomping ethereal ghost tunnels into the dance floor.  (Oops?)  Let it be said, wise or no, I did it with gusto.

I was drawn into being social with strangers.  The conversation quickly turned to entheogens.  Not my doing, though no doubt I encouraged it.

More dancing. Waltz of the light fish.

When that was over and I was home again, I packed up some offerings and took a walk (umbrella in hand for the drizzle of rain), keeping an eye out for whatever crossroads looked best.  I found one and knelt down at a tree. Lit a candle, a stick of incense.  Left a plum, a fig, wine, sweets.  Called upon Hekate.  In my spontaneity, in my tired and tipsiness, I didn’t quite know what I was going to say, so my words were clumsy.  “My fear is… nothingness. My fear is… meaningless.”  Hearing my own words I chuckled.  “Well, that’s true. Everything has a double meaning, doesn’t it?  Or a triple one.”

Not looking back was difficult, but I did not.

The next day I had to work, but I didn’t feel quite finished.  I went to my pithos, finally.  For I had done an elaborate ritual to bless it long ago but for some reason had held myself back in using it. Other fears, here, perhaps?  So now, I said a prayer to Hekate and drew a devotional activity.  “Take a meditational walk and look for omens.”  Yes, I could do this.

On my break, I went walking around the outside grounds of my work at night.  I’d never quite explored it, but turns out it’s pretty damn spooky and full of little crossroads.  I saw at least 10 lizards, and heard others I couldn’t see.  And each time I reached a crossroads I’d watch the lizards’ movement and go the direction it indicated.  If I was unsure there was often another to reinforce it.  The uneasiness I felt in some of the darker areas came as a surprise to me, because I didn’t think there was much left in me that was afraid of the dark, or the unknown.  On one of my last passes before I had to head back, I passed a streetlight which suddenly went out as soon as I walked up to it.  I turned towards the now darkened streetlight and my breath caught as a realized I could see not one, but 3 shadows of myself before me.  I pondered these and turned around to see that I had stopped (without realizing) at the top of a T of another crossroads.

Once I continued, another streetlight went out.  I acknowledged, with an odd sort of appreciation, that I have more fears that I have still to uncover, though I may not be able to name them yet.  I saw a stone that almost looked like a toad.  I picked it up and left it at the the point where I started, before going back inside.

[Cross-posted at the Boukoleon.]

Feast of the Dionysian Kings

Late start to the evening, but went out dancing.  My old club, where I’d always felt most comfortable, most ecstatic, had since closed and re-opened and changed format.  So I dress, not goth per-se, but more or less to blend.  Say some prayers before going in, to dedicate my dancing to Dionysos and the Dionysian Kings.  

The fact that it’s a gay club on most nights means little to me since I’m only there to dance.  The music, however, fluctuates from some pretty hideous pop to some nearly decent stuff.  I nearly regret my impetuous promise to dance for the spirits and god, given the environment.

Yet I do.  And I don’t trance out so much, as I think about the idea of feeling like an outsider in a space that I had previously claimed.  

And I think, is this part of the lesson of the Kings? Always outsider in their own territory, always alone while surrounded?  Or am I reading too much into this?  And yet, what madness and what bravery to rule with a lonely heart, knowing that even the greatest empires are bound to crumble.

I think, too, about previous ecstatic experiences here.  And about whether the promises that the gods make to us are out of time.  In retrospect, what Dionysos has given me, what he has promised me, seems suddenly disproportionate.  I didn’t understand the gravity of it.  No doubt the gravity is just barely tumbling down the full significance like so many stones.  Yet the gods are not linear.  Do we negotiate with the gods, pray to the gods, in our limited perspective while the gods themselves laugh and say, “Yes, my love. You can have this now, because I know you will earn it later…”  So in a way, I may always be catching up with my past.

I had made the mistake of going back and reading my old blog posts the night before, and the dissonance of the me-of-years-past with the me-now seriously disturbed me.  I’m not sure why.  My blog is only four years old.  

That’s part of what makes me break down into tears as I drive home. The madness I keep close, crashing in.  The full reality of life, that it may truly be all as connected as I hope and fear, every single detail and moment like a grand spiderweb.  Seeing the connections but not the meaning.  So many synchronicities lately.  The life and the inevitability of death.  Like I’m a piece of ocean put into a tea kettle.  It’s all heat and stress and steam, and my primal source and fate and the why’s of it all are distance concepts I can only try to grasp while I bubble over.

At home, I set out a colorful feast of fresh fruits and cheese and wine.  Dragonfruit, figs, grapes, apricots.  Ginger preserves and graham crackers.  Dance a bit more.  Songs on shuffle.  Those are always telling.

There will be more.  I think this is a good month for the dead.

Where the Edge of the World Meets the Stars

Go forth, find and fix your gaze upon the Corona Borealis in the summer sky.  Think on what it means that Dionysos placed it there for Ariadne. Not as a story, but as truth. And then, speak aloud these words into the starry heavens: “I am going to die.”

I journeyed to my sacred forests and cliffs for the weekend to celebrate a festival for Ariadne as Lady of the Labyrinth.  Within and surrounding the festival, I also intended to experiment with some potential trance postures and dances whose depictions I’d been studying in the Minoan epiphany scenes.  Here I must again credit Bruce Rimell, whose essay and collection of images turned me onto this idea. Unfortunately, I still haven’t been able to track down the article he references about the visionary potential of these particular postures, but I’m familiar with the concept within the work of Felicitas Goodman, a different anthropologist (although Goodman never experimented with Minoan postures that I know of).  On the bright side, I didn’t have too many preconceived notions.

Although it wasn’t the first site I was shooting for, I ended up in the exact same place where my husband and I had privately exchanged vows nearly 3 years ago, and where last year in the worst throes of my grief I experienced one of the most profound omens of my life. The funny thing is that all three times I’ve gotten here it has been sort-of-by-accident, one way or another, which probably says something about the otherness of it.  If this place was a target, I’ve had to shoot sideways to hit it!  And I was grateful I did, especially by the end of this trip,  when I could feel all my accumulated experiences there like so many personal ley-lines, creating a particular affinity with the place and spirits.  It’s hard to put into words, and I don’t think I’ve ever felt a place-relationship so profoundly.  Just thinking about it makes me want to get up and drive back and leave more offerings.  When I was resting there it came to mind what I knew, had already known, but was interesting to think about while I was THERE — that if I have my way, this is where my ashes will end up when I die.  It was a peaceful thought.





The first night I just focused on setting up camp (in the dark, as usual–the pictures were taken later in the trip) and making myself a rustic dinner on the campfire. Some food and wine offered up to the fire with thanks to the gods and spirits.  Some past visitor had even hung prayer flags high above the fire pit.



The following morning had me feeling a little lonely, emotional and restless.   I’ll elaborate briefly since it’s relevant for what occurred in the ritual later. I felt a temptation to distract myself with something innocuous, and underlying that, I sensed a bubbling up of something terrifying. I had to sit with it and journal to get to something even close to describing it… a fear of meaninglessness, and a subsequent despair.  This fear is multifaceted–affecting the past and future (could all I’ve been through be for nothing? does what comes next in life matter?), and especially to the present, where I no longer have my soul-mate here to give me purpose and reality. That last bit might sound strange, but the loss of the comforting validation offered by such deep companionship sometimes makes me feel like I’m dissolving, or that my actions don’t echo, whether they are menial or ambitious.  Fears are not logical. I didn’t sit with this for too long — I named the fear and then left it for later, because anything else at the moment would have turned into some serious wallowing.

I did some hiking, and found a ton of wild black raspberry bushes.  They seem to adore fallen trees, sloped ground, and plenty of sun.  Once, my husband and I had discovered some maybe a couple miles away from this spot, with the whimsical delight of explorers discovering something entirely novel and new, and we named them “rimberries” and made a pie out of them when we got home.  Every other subsequent time we’d gone camping in the area we had been either too early or too late for them, so this was a neat find, even considering that over 80% of them were not ripe.  So it was, with my husband and ancestors especially in mind, that I spent a good couple hours getting up close and personal with the very thorny, berry-laden whips.  Luckily, I had gloves, though the thorns would still sometimes bite through the leather and constantly snagged my clothes.  I’m nothing if not stubborn.  (I did make a pie with these berries after going back home, and even made my first homemade pie crust to do them justice. I never considered that making something from scratch actually meant the scratches you get from wild-harvesting the ingredients! Hardest I’ve ever worked for a pie, ever.)




Along with the rimberry bushes, there were mullein plants everywhere, and even a sprig or two of blossoming yarrow poking out unobtrusively here and there. There were multiple varieties of pine, of course, and some oak as well. There was a small prickly weed with purple blossoms that caught my attention, maybe because it had a fuzzy bumblebee on it.  I had no idea what it was, but felt compelled to take a picture to see if I could find out later.  

I tried a couple of the postures during the day — the first one in the afternoon and second one at sunset. The first one, described as a “Tense Salute”, involved standing straight with the chest pushed out to create a forward arch to the back, the right hand in a fist or circle with the thumb/index finger side of the fist held up to the forehead, and right elbow pointed out to the right.  The left arm is held down stiffly straight down with the hand next to the thigh, held so the palm curls upward as if holding a ball. The feet stand just a few inches apart, and the head is straight forward.  (Usual method employed with trance postures — grounding and meditation, then invitation & offerings to the spirits, followed by the posture itself for 15 minutes while listening to a recording of drumming or rattling.)  There were some vague impressions to this one, but all in all I feel like I’m missing some context for it, yet I feel pretty certain it’s not a divinatory posture.  More experimentation needed.  More strenuous than expected.  




The second one was the baetyl posture.  To be honest, I wasn’t even sure if this one could be considered a trance posture, because there is some movement implied and the inclusion of the stone makes it quite unlike any others I have seen.  But what made me try it anyway was the similarities across different epiphany images.  One leg is slightly forward from the other, the person is always kneeling with one elbow or forearm anchored to the top of the stone, and usually the toes are down on the ground while the heels are pointed up.  Most images show the the person turned to something behind them with the other arm not grounded on the baetyl held out in a “beholding” or beckoning manner, with the palm flat and the forearm at a 45 degree angle (a significant angle in trance postures, for some reason.)  There was also an image with the person still facing and holding onto the baetyl with both hands, which is where the implied movement comes in.  Presumably one begins with both arms on the baetyl and the head  bowed towards it, then moving to look behind and stretching out one arm.  That’s how I tried it.  


I moved back and forth a couple times, switching sides as well.  There were less visuals than sensation (but then again I’m not particularly visual), and I will say that I think the first position of bowing at the baetyl should be the bulk of the posture until one feels moved to stretch behind.  I’ll say that this one was pretty compelling, but I’m not going to go too much into it now, because I want to experiment further. I should add that I blessed the baetyl stone first, with water and floral water, which only seemed right.  Obviously these stones had a religious significance we can only guess at and can’t completely duplicate (especially by picking a stone at random.)  But from what I’ve read and experienced with ecstatic postures, they are like keys or bridges to the spirit world, whether that key is inherent in the body-position itself or the tapping into the cumulative experience of the ancestors who might have used them. So while the full context of the postures and their significance to the ancient cultures who used them may not be recoverable, there’s still plenty of wisdom to be gained from them.

*                              *                              *

As the stars began to come out, I began an ecstatic ritual for Ariadne.

I changed into a skirt, anointed myself with a perfume I only use for Dionysian rituals… I had drawn a 7-circuit labyrinth on a flat stone to use as an altar. I burned honey-rose kyphi… I called upon Ariadne and Dionysos… Used my rattle and my bull horn…  poured out the mead and offered up honey.

The starry crown was directly overhead.  It was my anchor.

I might have wished for a whole crowd of worshippers with me, with some to play music for the dance.  But at least this lone worshipper had headphones.

I don’t ever want to forget that feeling as I began to dance on the edge of the world, bare-breasted under the stars, with the endless sky all around me.  I raised my arms to mimic the Minoan dances, arms staggered up with palms out, as if I was mediating the heavens and earth.  What is stationary and puzzling in art translated itself into movement with surprising effortlessness.  And in that moment, the questions which plagued me before, the questions of meaninglessness, were not provided any grand answers — instead, the questions were simply dissolved.  

I thought, “Absurdity is just truth looking for context.”

The wind and the bats flew around me.  The darker the earth got the brighter the sky became, so the pine trees turned into negative space, while the whole sky exploded into a glittering kaleidoscope.

More mead.  More dance.  Where swinging my head around meant turning the stars on their axis.  Where I somehow never tripped in spite of the darkness, in spite of the rocks and uneven ground.  (“The gods will always catch me, the gods are greater than gravity.”)  I remember screaming once, a strangled sound I doubt I’ve ever made before. Then howling.

Things get a bit fuzzy.  I barely remember tree-pulling, that was fun.  I broke from the dance a couple times then returned to it.  I started a fire to have a feast.  At some point I laid down on the ground so I could better see the milky way and stars in their entirety.  Occasionally I came back to the altar and traced the labyrinth with my finger. I honestly don’t even remember deciding to go to bed whenever I finally did.

I do remember that the challenge I put at the beginning was one I felt I was supposed to share, as I experienced it:

Go forth, find and fix your gaze upon the Corona Borealis in the summer sky.  Think on what it means that Dionysos placed it there for Ariadne. Not as a story, but as truth. And then, speak aloud these words into the starry heavens: “I am going to die.”

And then dance…

P.S. Remember that mysterious little thorny plant I mentioned?  It was a bull-thistle.  With a bee.

Herbfolk Gathering

I figured I'd throw it out there that I plan to attend the HerbFolk Gathering in my home state in September.  I attended last year's event and enjoyed it immensely, and this year's looks to be shaping up to be even better, with longer classes and two nights of dancing and music.  Obviously the focus is on herbalism, but it has a pagan- and animist-friendly feel to it, so if anyone else reading this plans to attend, drop me a line! 

A Song to Walk Through

I had the pleasure of seeing "Only Lovers Left Alive" at my favorite bar slash movie theater, and I found it incredibly moving, not the least reason being the music.  This one particular song has been taking me elsewhere.  I love when music becomes doorways, even if it's to something uncomfortable.  I can see pretty much the whole soundtrack finding a place for itself in my devotional playlists.

A Storm for Prophets

The Feast of the Dionysian Prophets last Thursday coincided with a surprise blessing - the first monsoon of the season!

I live in the southwest in Arizona, where monsoon season begins sometime after the summer solstice. This is when we get the bulk of our rainfall, although even that has been very little the last few years, as we are in the midst of a drought like other parts of the country.  These storms can come with almost no warning.  And sometimes they have a unpredictable frenzy to them -  coming in bursts that can tear off doors or roofs, knock down light or traffic poles, kick up dust and throw down lightning.  Yeah, unpredictable!

I love it!

I was working graveyard shift that night, and we were only a couple hours in when it started to hit.  My coworkers know SOME measure of my eccentricities, so they were forgiving (if still a bit surprised) when I dropped everything I was doing and ran out into the rain.  I was surrounded by the smell of heat and wet and chaparral and dust as I raised my face to the pelting rain and breathed it all in.  The pure energy of it is indescribable.

My lunch break was fairly early and by that time the rain had stopped but the lightning had not.  I walked further out to get a full view of the sky.  I thought, fuck the fireworks - this is so much better.  And it was!  The lightning was coming from every direction - close, far, sideways and longways.  I don’t think I’ve ever been in the midst of a lightning storm so beautiful and prolific. I was so moved and exhilarated that my prayers were clumsy repetitions.  I poured out the only libation I had, kombucha tea I had made at home.  To Dionysos, to the nymphs, to the heroes.

The energy stayed with me, so after the sun came up and I started for home, I bought a bottle of honey whiskey for offerings and did a short round of The Oracle of the Doors (as created by Sannion) whilst listening to The Doors on shuffle.  (Lyrics that jumped out at me included “whiskey” and “king snake”.)  These were my questions and answers, which seem quite powerful, and I am still pondering.  Comments/interpretations welcome.

What does Dionysos wish me to know?

466 Life goes on absorbing war

341 A wrong gesture. Too long and curious a glance.

442 Your ballroom days are over.

What do my ancestors wish me to know?

543 But can you still recall the time we cried

643 Break on through to the other side

365 Hordes crawl and seep inside

Where do I go next?

555 “Alive!” she cried

343 Blood is the rose of mysterious union

252 river flow, on and on it goes

[To learn more about the Dionysian Prophets honored by The Thiasos of the Starry Bull, of which Jim Morrison is only one, visit The Boukoleon. The thiasos chat on 7/3 on this topic was really good!]