|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
The destruction in New York, Washington DC, & Somerset County PA, has stunned, shocked, and saddened our community. Our community is also saddened by the prejudice and hatred engendered in some people as a reaction to the destruction. We present the following resources both magical and otherwise to aid in building a world of peace, joy and love; beauty, balance, and delight.
|
As we are a community of diverse individuals, you will find viewpoints on this page which reflect that diversity. Within our magical community, we are always working to 'agree to disagree' while continuing to support each other as human beings. As the Reclaiming Principles of Unity state, "Each of us embodies the divine. Our ultimate spiritual authority is within, and we need no other person to interpret the sacred to us. We foster the questioning attitude, and honor intellectual, spiritual and creative freedom." We encourage you to read what calls to you. Allow yourself to examine your own predispositions and thoughts. Keep the beliefs that work for you, refine and modify those that do not. This is how we learn. Our goal is always respect--for ourselves and others. |
|
on this page: |
on page 2: |
To Offer Healing to All the Realms, A Call to Action
Dear Friends,
In deep sorrow we have searched for the magical answers to this horror.
We recognize that we all hold creative and destructive force within us, this is our divine nature.
Honoring our divine nature in all its complexity, how can we come into balance?
What we know is: we have come together over many years,
trained and built relationships with each other and the sacred earth.
For the first time in history, we have built a network of witches that spans the continents.
We have the training and power to focus our wills and spirit.
We have the help of many, many spirit realms and we have the communication network
to take effective action as has never been done before.
All of the psychics and sensitives have known we would be called upon someday to use this network.
Let us now each take a stand for love, peace, beauty, justice and freedom.
Let us now each take our wisdom to make a spell like there has never been before.
Let us now each take magical action to heal the worlds, all the worlds, now.
Therefore:
From our divine nature, our authentic selves,
let us cast a great and mighty web around the worlds that opens to the potential
for love, peace, beauty, justice and freedom.
Let the intention be to offer healing to all the realms for this and past atrocities.
Draw symbols at your doorstep so that you may be an anchor point for the web,
so that you may be both a receiver for and a transmitter of love, peace, beauty, justice and freedom.
Use spirals, infinity symbols, runes, hearts or whatever symbols call to you.
As you cast the web notice the open permeable pattern it creates,
with space for all and room for transformation.
Let this web, this matrix, this mandala offer healing
to all the wounds of hate, war, ugliness, injustice and imprisonment.
Let us cast a great and mighty web around the worlds opening to the potential
to love, peace, beauty, justice and freedom around the world.
If you are called to this work, then join us.
Please send this out to everyone you want to around the world and sign your name if you feel called.
In hope,
Pomegranate Doyle, Donald Engstom, Sage Goode, Starhawk, Aurora, Katrina
Messenger,
Blaedfyr, Bridgid McGowan, Ruby Perry, Paul Eaves, Patti Martin,
Rose MayDance, and Akasha.
Dumuzi Speaks to me in a Dream
Hello there, Welcome! I am Dumuzi, the Shepherd, the King-Priest, mortal husband of Inanna, and I've come to set the record straight about myself and my Lady.
You all think you know me. It's so easy to pigeon hole me. I'm the archetype of the proud, overly hormonal, power-hungry male, right? I've heard it in the way you talk about me. And I won't tell you it's not sometimes true, but there's more, so much more, that you need to understand. Especially now.
First off, I was a mortal, born of a royal line, sure, but born none the less. You all know the story of my birth, though it's been shifted and transformed through five thousand years of re-telling. My mother was a sacred priestess, a mortal queen. She joined with the Land / the Divine king-priest, and thus I was born...in the dark of the year...at Winter solstice...in a sheepfold...laying in a manger...under the brightest star in the heavens. The greatest astronomer clerics of our day foretold of my birth, and gathered to honor, and give gifts, and celebrate their new Lord. Is any of this sounding familiar to you yet?
Don't get me wrong now, these were not lowly surroundings that Mom was forced into because the Motel 6 was full. Back in our day, the Ziggurat, the Temple, was also the storehouse, the sheepfold, the stronghold, and the womb of the Great Mother. The sacred and the mundane weren't so neatly divided into separate boxes back then. A city needed great fortress temples, to protect its most valuable resources: the people, the grain and seed, the livestock. The farmer and the shepherd were not simply job titles, for without us both, all would starve.
I was raised to be a good king, a good shepherd to my people. To listen to them and watch over them, to intercede on their behalf with the Gods, to lead them and assure their safety in times of trouble, to make and enforce the law. You know me. I am the Emperor. I am the Hierophant. Back then, we didn't separate the two. We were Priest-Kings. Never the less, when I came of age, and the time came to marry the Land, to joint with the sacred Great One, the Beloved, the awesome, ecstatic, terrifying glory of Inanna overwhelmed me. I wondered, am I worthy? I doubted, am I the one? Perhaps this honor, this responsibility, this sacred duty should be passed to another? But no, I was literally born and bred for this moment of union. So I got on my best duds, and I went to court her. But She didn't even want to see me. I had been raised from birth to join with Her, since my conception, the intent of my life was to join with the Goddess and thus assure the prosperity and safety of my people...and She didn't want me. I was mortal, I smelled like the sheep of Her flock, She would rather stick with what She knew, Her divine brother, Utu, the Farmer. I had to fight, to cajole, to seduce, to shower her with gifts, to get Her to notice me, and then to want me. But you know what? She was worth it! I couldn't walk right for a week if you get my drift! And the land, the people were rejoicing, prosperous, bountiful, green, and full of life. And I thought, all right! I've fulfilled my destiny! My people will be well fed, well cared, now and forever! Being mortal, you make these kinds of errors in judgement. Seems you just can't help it.
Everything was perfect as far as I was concerned. I saw no earthly reason to change. But Inanna became restless. She needed more. She needed something, something I couldn't provide. She got moody. She got angry. She said it was a female deity thing and I wouldn't understand. "Fine!", I said. "You go and do your "thing", and I'll stay here. Someone has to lead the people, and make the laws, and settle the disputes, and feed the poor, and till the fields, and tend the sheep!" I was angry and hurt, you understand. It was like She didn't care about us, Her people, anymore. But I was stubborn and proud too, and I took Her for granted. Never take a woman for granted-and if She's a Goddess-watch out!
You've got to understand this. She didn't tell me She was going to do something so dangerous. Maybe if I'd tried harder to listen and understand, I might have seen it coming. But She was The Goddess, The Queen of Heaven and Earth! Who knew that even She could die. So I went on, telling myself I was taking care of important matters, and I forgot to notice that She was gone, until it was too late.
You know the rest, Her decent into the Underworld, Her imprisonment and death. Her faithful maid servant wailing at the gates of Heaven until the great God interceded to save her. And Her righteous anger at me, for being clueless. I was busy being "Mr. Business as Usual" during all of this. So I fled. I ran and tried to hide. Of course I ran! You are mortal. When the unspeakable beasts of the Underworld start chasing your ass down, believe me, you run! But, of course, it did no good. You see, sacrifice is also the destiny of the King. I realized it, but I couldn't help but wish it weren't so. I begged in the garden that this duty, this bitter cup to swallow, be taken from me. I wept and tore my hair in fear. What was to become of me? What was to become of my people, my flock? How was I to aid, to tend, to justly rule from beyond the veil? All seemed lost to me.
It was my sister who saved me, at least as well as she could. She takes my place in the Underworld for half of each year. And to this day, we dance the cycle of death and rebirth, joy and sorrow, the waxing and waning of the seasons together.
But here's the thing you must understand to understand me. I was wrong about the Underworld. I am still the Good Shepherd here. I serve my people as well in death as I do in life. You know my prayer, even now, 5000 years after it was first spoken. Much of the rest of my story and been distorted, but my prayer remains whole and unchanged. You can read it in Cuneiform and Sanskrit, on clay tablets from my temples. Translated from Sumarian to Aramaic, Aramaic to Hebrew, Hebrew to Latin, Latin to English, and every other modern language of the world. And so now, you know me. So be comforted, my people, and pray.
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.
He leadeth me beside the Still waters
He restoreth my soul.
And though I walk through the valley of the shadow of Death
I shall fear no evil.
Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table in my presence
Thou annointest my head with oil.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my
life,
And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
Blessed be. Dare to live in beauty, balance, and delight. And when you are done, don't be afraid to come home. You are my people and I have great love for you. Dumuzi
(Who came to Claudia Manifest in a dream 2 years ago at Spiral Heart Witchcamp, and gave me this piece as a whole. It took me 20 minutes to write it all down, exactly as is except for spelling and punctuation, in my journal at 5:15 AM on that Tuesday at camp. I shared it that week at the Talent Show, and I've been told it's time for me to share it again. **BB** Claudia)
I walk through these days as a priestess.
In the middle of sadness or anger,
I can use my tools and call upon compassion and speak clearly.
What a gift we have!
We must stand with integrity and for peace right now, in all situations.
We can speak for evolution, rather than retaliation -
evolution, becoming more human,
is part of what our tools and practices are about.
Humans have tried war for thousands of years and it has gotten us nowhere.
To think it is still the answer is naive.
We can attempt change.
Times of great fear and awe can bring us through to change.
We can use the energy of those emotions to
bolster our strength and expand our humanity.
And in this time I offer you something I've been thinking and talking about
for a long time:
Thou Art Goddess.
Thou Art God.
Not only does that mean I have the Divine within myself
to call on in times that seem greater than I can bear,
it means
I RECOGNIZE DIVINITY WITHIN YOU, TOO.
And that means also in our politicians, rescue workers, police,
Muslims, Christians, Jews, Pagans,
activists, peacemakers and those who want war.
This helps me to open to compassion instead of being eaten by disgust.
I can be angry, but I can act out of love.
Hatred paralyzes me, and feeling I am better than those others who make me angry
only causes me to act in the same warlike ways,
or to curl up inside myself, unable to act at all.
May we act, may we make love,
may we bring peace and the ability to think clearly into all situations.
As Dorothy Day said
"The only solution is Love, and Love comes with community."
with you in community-
T. Thorn Coyle
At SpiralHeart camp this year we worked with the intention "It is a time of change, The energies have gathered. the time of ACTION is upon us. It is our intention to be our deep, authentic selves in all of our DIVERSITY. This will take courage. Rooted in LOVE, with IMMANENCE as our power, we embody the magic of our birthright to change the world-all the worlds-NOW."
In retrospect I believe were being trained by the mysterious ones to handle the work of this moment. What I understand from my job as a psychic is that we were being trained to work from a place that will have the up most effect. We found our authentic selves and focused our will from that place and our strength was unstoppable. We were asked not to channel from our grief, anger or pain but to channel our immanence. This was HIGH MAGIC. Now, when we are not all together we can remember what that felt like and know that in fact WE ARE all still together. That we can and should work magically together, just as we did at camp and in the same manner, to "release our Deep Authentic Selves in their combined and formidable power" From the reports I am getting this experience was true at many of the other camps as well.
I believe that we can keep working from that place, that every individual authentic magical act will have the power of 125 witches coming from core power. I also believe that the magic that happened at camp averted a very much worse out come from the bombing, things are much better now because of our magic. Right now it would be easy for me to simply get wrapped up in reacting to the bombing, the media, who I believe is behind the bombing, racism and war but I have to ask myself, from my authentic self what am I called to do and what power shall I channel into that action? Yes, I am in deep grief, yes I am angry, yes I believe war is never an option, that is all true but what action shall I take and from which part of me shall I act? My answer is to be as I was in those moments at camp when I was guided by divinity, centered in my core self and doing my part in bringing about the evolution of Project Earth. From there I can act and in the long run that act will be more powerful than any bombing or racism or war can be.
The interesting thing about what is happening now in a billion different ways (and this is what I think the big change we are all feeling) is that we are being reminded to be our Authentic Selves. It is not hard to be authentic, it is just hard to REMEMBER to be authentic. So what is it to be Authentic? I believe it is to be just as you are in your very core self, no excuses, no explanations, no apologies; you are divinity, you are immanence, you are the creative and destructive forces blended together. So does this mean we get to act any way we want to at any time? Our authentic self is the beautiful balance of the creative and destructive forces, when we come into that balance we are like the infinity symbol or the yin yang, our actions will naturally be "the right action at the right time" I think they call this, the zone, you can call it any number of things including enlightenment.
If we are not acting from our authentic self, we will either be acting more from our destructive nature or more from our creative nature. Either one alone is not good. To be mostly destroying is not good; this can be seen in many ways, the bombing, the huge species die off, clear cutting of forests etc. To be mostly creative is also not good, that is why we are over populating the planet and inventing thousands of plastic thingys that have only 2 days of usefulness before they spend 50 thousand years in a landfill. Our tendency when we see someone out of balance towards the destructive is to call them evil, often times the pendulum will swing way over to the other side so as to balance out things. Unfortunately this is reactive and does not work because it only causes imbalance in the other direction, which then is balanced by swinging the other way and a cycle of perpetual imbalance is created. Our government is being extremely creative in thinking of all the ways it can make us safe by curtailing our civil liberties. No, the only answer is not to react to the forces of destruction and creation but to seek a fluid balance of them. At our core selves they are naturally in balance, what we have to do in times like these is not swing way over to the creative side to balance out the destructive side or respond with more destruction, but to embody both in a fluid balance, if we can REMEMBER to be our authentic selves then we will take the right action at the right time. Add to this the power of the witch and we each will be a powerful reminder to everyone else, through our actions, through our magic and simply through being authentic. If we each were to anchor a pentacle of healing at our doorstep, if we each were to anchor the web of hope from our authentic self, just imagine the transformation the earth would go through. This magic is much bigger than we can know and it consequences will be felt for a long long time.
The pentacle of healing is, starting from your head and going around to your left, LOVE, PEACE, BEAUTY, JUSTICE, FREEDOM
Pomegranate Doyle
September 17th 2001
|
|
|