Ritual Thoughts
Friends,
For two weeks I've been covered with a fine grey ash. It started settling upon me like dust as on TV I watched the Twin Towers burn, horribly burn, and then fall. With each inexhaustible repetition of the awful video clips of the planes striking and exploding, of people leaping to their deaths from flaming windows, with each scene of people (the lucky ones) running in frantic panic just moments ahead of the immense churning clouds of dust and ash, with each poignant picture of the multitude of victims and their grieving families, with the mind-numbing statistics—millions of tons, thousands of lives, hundreds of police and firemen dead--and with each discussion of revenge, retribution, vengeance, the ash has settled on me, thicker and thicker. For two weeks I've been stumbling through the world covered in this ash, my subtle senses choking, clogged, covered and smothered, just as the physical ash and mud covers those heroic relief workers still clearing out the charnel house of lower Manhattan, one chunk of concrete, one smoldering piece of rubble or tattered scrap of paper at a time.
When you study the tarot, you learn that in the broken aftermath of the fall of the Tower (its burning top, falling pieces and plummeting figures so horribly, horribly apropos), sitting in the ruins, you are also surrounded by the abundant raw materials you need to build again. But nobody ever told me what to do with the ash.
Now I know.
Last night as I drifted off to sleep, my bedroom was filled with people. Many, many people, grey, ashen people, standing silently, wordlessly, looking at me with deep eyes of unfathomable expressions. I did not know what they were asking, or what, if anything, they were trying to tell me. Unnerved, I asked them for information: "do you need help to cross, is there a message, is there something I can do?" So many questions, but I realize now that my words were questions of the living, of no use at all to the dead. No answer came, and eventually, as a practical matter of the living, sleep came.
All day today, I had the constant sense of anxious, impatient energy, of needing to get up and move, to do something, to go somewhere, of something left undone, some act I must take. My skin felt alternately too loose and too tight, I was agitated, unsettled, restless. This is a sense I'd had slowly growing in me for days, but it finally peaked this evening.
So tonight, after putting my son to bed, well after dark I went out for a walk in the woods behind our house, in the middle of a heavy rainstorm...and the torrents from the heavens soaked me to my skin and washed all of that psychic ash from my body in rivulets, cleaned my pores and my eyes and my ears. And now I know.
The terrorists who directed their terrible human bombs created the largest single blood sacrifice in recent years. With focused intent, they sacrificed themselves, and thousands of unwilling people, to the god they worship (who is not the god of Islam, any more than the god of Jim Jones and David Koresh is the god of Christians). The terrorists on September 11th created a burnt offering, of a scale and a horrible magnificence such that the most bloodthirsty desert God of fear and revenge could not help but be pleased, and engorged.
Blood magic is very powerful—our ancestors knew this. The Emperor Ch'in had countless scores of people killed and mixed into the foundation for the Great Wall of China, and it stands to this day. I would set my intention that the walls built by the terrorists on September 11, 2001 do not stand even one ten-thousandth so long.
As horrible as it has been, the physical damage done was, compared to other events, other acts of war and major natural disasters, minor. Rwanda, Dresden, Hiroshima, Mexico City—many thousands of times more destructive, with hundreds or thousands of times more dead and wounded. At least 150,000 people die in the world on any normal day, and September 11 was hardly a blip on the chart, which is cold comfort if you have family or friends who lost their lives in New York, Washington or Pennsylvania. What has changed, more than anything else, is our collective perception of the world, and that is significant enough. But, in addition, by their intentional, focused act of violence and hatred, I believe the terrorists opened a rift, a portal, a rent in the fabric of our reality on many levels. Whether you believe in the magic of Blatavsky, or of economics or psychology or cultural anthropology, the truth is the same. There is a wound which needs healing.
In the long term, the only way to create a lasting peace is to address the underlying issues of third-world poverty, hunger, ignorance, repression, and the cycles of violence which feed and nourish the likes of Bin Laden and the bitter god he serves. We must seek true justice, not vengeance, and return hope for hatred. Every act taken in the world comes with consequence, and no nation, particularly the United States, can act (or choose not to act) in isolation. But many have spoken these words far better than I— there is another, short-term, action which I hope you will take, in addition to whatever long-term course you choose.
Alone or in groups, seek out the rift created by the September 11 attacks, and do what you can to close it. It is not hard to find. Each may see it in their own way--I see it as a pulsing, gaping maw, an awful throat for the god the terrorists serve. Create the equal and opposite force, heal and close it in whatever way you feel called and inspired. The blood magic done by a few score of fanatics, using 7000 innocent lives, though powerful, can be undone by the focused intent of enough skilled people of will and dedication. The outpouring of sympathy, the love and compassion shown around the world--these have already smoothed some of the raw edges of the wound. But the continuing bigotry and hatred, the attacks on innocents because of their race or religion, the fear and calls for blanket bombing and destruction upon yet more innocent civilians— these deepen the wound, and open it further. And if we go ahead and in our righteous rage, kill more innocents in Afghanistan and elsewhere, we ourselves feed the very same creature the terrorists serve—the maw will open still wider, and Bin Laden's god will smile. I cannot imagine how terrible that smile will be. I do not want to see it, and I do not want my child to have to gaze upon it.
This past weekend, as part of a group Equinox ritual involving some deep inner work, I and a Sister called upon the Ancient Ones, the Mysterious Ones, those of many names, and those of no names whatsoever. On devoking, I asked them to walk with us if they would, and they have (as if they ever do not). I suggest that in whatever way we are called, that we gather their wisdom to us, and that we act to close the ragged rift, doing what we can to heal, transform, and close the wound, the awful portal opened by the intentional acts of September 11. The terrorists were not madmen. They planned carefully, with intention, and I believe that they knew what they were doing, and why they were doing it. They hope to create a world where their god walks openly, and feasts upon a world filled with hatred, and an endless cycle of vengeance and bloodshed. Let us not see their intentions made manifest. Please. The choice, as always, is ours. Wash the ash from your eyes, your ears, your hearts. Sing, dance, laugh, play, and remember. Do what you can to heal the wound, and create a world in which such acts are not fed by our actions and inactions, whether as individuals, or as nations. Live, love, and build again.
I remember now, with eyes washed clean, that ash is an essential part of healthy fertile soil. In this soil, the seeds of a new world may be planted.
Let their sacrifice not be in vain.
In balance, joy and hope,
--Chelidon
"Whoever killed one innocent human being, it is as if he had killed all mankind. And whoever saved one human life it is as if he saved all of mankind" — Quran
"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. For when you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you." —Nietzsche