Honoring Aphrodite, and Beltane, and Ourselves

Beltane-tide Prayer 2009

I dedicate this prayer and post

To You oh Illustrious Lady,

Golden, Sea-Born, Cyprian,

Night and Laughter Loving Queen,

As we wind our way towards Beltane,

Open the peoples eyes and inform their minds,

To dangers both known and unseen

~Pax

I have yet to make it to a festival myself, I don’t have anyone I know real well to share camp with and now that issues of time and money are waning  I am hesitant to throw myself into this aspect of the Pagan community without finding a festival buddy first.  Silly, I know, but its how I feel.

As we wind our way towards Beltane I am reminded, by stories from one of my dearest Pagan friends of just how festive some of the festivals out there can be!

Especially this time of year.  Beltane, or May Day, is the time of year when many of us modern Pagans celebrate fertility and passion and joy and love and lust.  In theory it’s all about the fertility of the land and a time when many Witches and Pagans celebrate the sexual union of their Goddess and God  bringing life back into the world.  In practice there are event’s and festivals that feature that symbolism and often a dancing of the May Pole, and a lot of flirting games and sometimes a lot more than just flirting as folks very actively celebrate fertility.

For me, as a Witch who is also a budding Hellenic Polytheist, Beltane seems like the natural time to honor Aphrodite.

Aphrodite is the Goddess of Love and Beauty, of Procreation and Fornication, of Desire and Flirtation: She is Fairest of the Gods of Marriage, She whose wrath can strike men impotent, She who bestows Beauty and Grace, Lady of Pleasure and Merriment; She Who with Erato and Apollon presides over Love Poetry and Song, Lady of the Morning Star, Protectoress of the Homeland, and Goddess of Peace.

I’ve written a few things about Her before,  prayers of my own, and the Orphic Hymn to Aphrodite, and a little post wherein I suggested we modern Pagans should celebrate and honor Her in our Circles and at Beltane.

Now I could wait and hold a solitary ritual with an altar of images of Aphrodite, and with flowers and sweet candies for Her.  I could, and possibly shall, read the Orphic Hymn to Her and some more prayers of my own to Her, and pour  libations of wine and water and honey.

In the last day or so, however, I feel compelled to say some things about sex and sexuality how we Pagans honor Beltane.

Now, sex is wonderful and beautiful and sacred, as is wine, and music.  So too is Love, in all it’s forms from friendship to blazing passion to deathless romance, so too is Trust; and so too are every atom and cell of our bodies.  At least that last part is a part of the party line for a lot of Pagans out there; some of the stories I hear from friends about the festival circuit are beginign to make me wonder though.

If every atom and cell of our bodies partake of the Divines, then don’t we owe it to Them and to ourselves to be a little careful with our cells and atoms?  If our community is so fabulously free of psychological hang ups, so open, so sex-positive; if sex is sacred how come you never see an HIV testing tent at a community Beltaine event?

Since personal responsibility is such an integral part of being Pagan, why don’t we talk more at this time of year about reproductive health and about birth control and about family planning?  Why don’t we see Beltane (or even Imbolc) health fares in our Pagan communities?

I find myself wondering how many people in our community realize that one of the big reasons that a lot of open rituals will pass out dixie cups for sharing or wine or mead at the appropriate time in the ritual is because sharing a drinking vessel can spread oral herpes?

How many of you knew that oral herpes is present in 50 to 80 percent of the U.S. population?

When I read that roughly 1 million people in the U.S. have HIV; and 1 out of every 5 of them has no idea that they are infected!  When I hear that someone in the United States is infected with HIV every 9 minutes and 30 seconds…

I cannot help but wonder what Aphrodite, what any of the Goddesses of Love and Beauty, must think of these sad simple facts?  Are we truly celebrating fertility and honoring the full spirit of the season if we don’t think about our actions?

Nor is HIV the only potentially lethal STD that you need to worry about.  To paraphrase Henny Youngman

Take my Hepatitis B.  Please!

I have no idea where or when I got Hepatitis B, I learned about it long after that fact when I was taking a routine HIV test.

Luckily enough (if you can say that about a life-changing illness) my body fought off the infection.  This means that while Hep-B is present in my blood, I am not actively contagious and cannot transmit it to my Partner through casual contact or even sexual activity.  It is still in my blood though, and I am at risk for liver problems later in life.

I find myself wondering how many in the Pagan community may face a medical time bomb and not even know it?

We are responsible for our actions and choices. The gods have granted us this gift of intellect and will, and Will, so use it wisely!  Honor the Goddesses and Gods of your path, especially those of Love and Beauty and even Lust; but seek to do so in wisdom and honor.  Inform and educate yourself and make choices grounded in your head and heart, not your hormones, this Beltane season!


~~~A Few (unconventional) Beltane Resources~~~

CDC information on STD’s

CDC general STD information and curriculum tools

An STD information page from the University of Maryland

Coalition for Positive Sexuality ~ A free-online Sex education resource, including information on STD’s and Birth Control.

A Safer Sex information website from William’s College

National HIV and STD Testing Resources (US)

“What Now?” ~ Pagan Community Builders

So Darkly Fey, from Live from the Red Leather Couch and I had some fabulous back and forth conversations recently via e-mail about Paganism and Pagan community.  We decided to share with the Pagan Community Builder’s Yahoo.  This stirred up a little bit of discussion, and some really cool questions…  This encouraged me to engage in some of the following ranting about Pagan community…

I don’t know if movement’s neccesarilly mature into institutions, but I would definitely agree with the idea that they can mature into communities.  As I have said here and elsewhere that is where I think Paganism is right now…

Paganism is a spiritual, religious, and cultural movement made up of different interwoven and overlapping religious and regional communities.

It is my hope that Paganism as a movement will move and grow and develop into a family of interwoven and overlapping religious communities.  I just don’t think we are quite there yet.  (in my ever so humble and correct opinion!) ~ 😉

Moving on, if I may quote you…

“What would a mature Pagan community look like? More importantly, what would it do?”

I think that we as individual faiths and communities are in a process of hammering that question out… I also think it is related to another of your questions…

“But Pagans– do we have a goal? Is it individual enlightenment, collective enlightenment, improving the world with the idea that with an immanent divine, one serves the gods by serving others?”

I would say that the goal of a Pagan depends on the particular religion or philosophy of the individual Pagan.  ( I know, obviously, but I am moving towards a point here so please bear with me…)

I would observe that for the different Pagan faiths and paths there seems to be an overall theme of development into being a better person (personal growth and perhaps enlightenment, although it is not neccesarilly phrased as such) by practicing certain rites, and developing our relationships with the Divine (or the All That Is) and with the Spirits of the World Around Us (Elements and Land Spirits), and living certain  (intertwining and overlapping) virtues and values, and by building our relationships with others in our groups and faiths and societies through those virtues and values and practices…

I think that his theme of growth and development leads us quite naturally into engagement with other branches of Paganism, and from there into engagement with the rest of Society.  I also think that fear of discrimination, and a lack of outside pressure in the form of legal or social restrictions on religious practice, has helped to hamper that process of engagement.  Of course the fact that Paganism, with its Pantheism and Polytheism (among other Theisms present under the Pagan umbrella) whose essential concept of “our way AND your way” is having to re-emerge culturally from an immersion in Monotheism’s predominantly “Our way or the highway” mindset has also hampered our development as a community…

I think that both of your above questions are being hammered out by different Faith and Regional communities within the Pagan movement.

My instinct is (or, admittedly, perhaps it is merely my deep hope) that we as a movement are reaching a threshold point of in-group and inter-group communication and networking and growth and expansion that we are ready to go towards the next stage in our development from a movement into being a community.

Of course, I have been accused of being somewhat of an optimist and idealist…

“In my thoughts, I’d figured finding other Pagans would be the hard part. After all that navel-gazing and contemplation, the theological musings and soul-searching, we’ve figured out what we believe. We’ve found each other!….

…what now?”

I, SO, hear you! I share some of your frustration and experiences at local Pagan groups and rituals.  Socializing, in and of itself, is not enough.  Rituals on the Moons and/or on the Seasonal Holy Days are not enough!

That is part of why I created this discussion group.  To start and encourage discussions of “what now?”

“What now?” is why I have written Invoking the Power of the Pagan Dollar 2.0

Because I believe we need to start supporting our own community members (by supporting them as business people, and not just the occult tsotchke shoppes either!)  and institutions (religious, community, and charitable).

“What now?” is why I support the Pagan Pride Project and Pagan Pride events of all sorts… despite my occasional misgivings about some of the modes of dress and behavior!

We need, as religious and regional communities within the Pagan movement, to start engaging and reaching out to our wider local, regional, and national communities; not to proselytize, but to show clearly and honestly who and what we really are and are about!

We need to start looking at celebrating open and public rituals and observances at CIVIC holidays, not only to show our lager communities who and what Pagans are and are about; but to also deepen and expand ourselves as Pagans and our relationships with the spirits of our ancestors and of our Nations, and of the World around us; and to further build and strengthen our communities!

That, at the very least, is “what now?”!

Beyond that, well let’s keep talking!

Peace,

Pax

PS- if you are interested in taking part in this discussion, or ones like it, you can post here, or even better yet sign up for the Pagan Community Builder’s Yahoogroup !!!

Imbolc draws near…so Blog about Craft and Hearth and Poetry!

Well,

The first of the new years Sabbats is coming.  Some of you may be familiar with the Imbolc Poetry Blogging phenomenon that has taken the Pagan Internet over the last few years…

For me, Imbolc and it’s patron Goddess Bride relate to Smithcraft, Healing, and Poetry or more appropriately to my modern life … Craft (Arts and Handicrafts), Hearth, And Poetry…

While I realize that not all Pagans celebrate Imbolc… it seems to me that we modern Pagans do celebrate, to differing degree’s and in differing times, Craft and Hearth and Poetry.  So I am not only going to be blogging about these three fires of Bride, I am going to encourage my Pagan friends of all paths to blog about them…

Peace,

Pax

ESFP?

Your Personality is Somewhat Rare (ESFP)
Your personality type is playful, charming, open minded, and energetic.

Only about 7% of all people have your personality, including 9% of all women and 5% of all men
You are Extroverted, Sensing, Feeling, and Perceiving.


So as he was dinking around with e-mail and Facebook this morning, our hero came across this personality test from Blogthings.   I think it’s Meyers-Briggs… although at 10 questions I wonder how accurate the sample is… but some of the folks on Facebook are saying that they always score the same way according to this… I would think that depending on the questions if you went into the test with an agenda you could skew the results…

There has been some interesting discussion on one of the lists relating to Traditional Witchcraft and Meyers-Briggs personality types.  The idea is that certain personality types are attracted to certain Trads of The Craft.  In the broadest sense I think it would make sense, although for me personally I also wonder how much role the calling of the Gods to service plays in things… of course, I also wonder if different Trads have different Meyer’s-Brigs profiles…

Peace,

Pax

Thoughts on the Horned God

So through the agency of a promo on Fey’s Podcast, I ended up listening to the 4th episode of the Druidcast podcast, featuring a fabulous talk given to the OBOD by Ronald Hutton about the History of the Pagan Horned God.

This is a fascinating talk and in my humble opinion not only has some fascinating and valuable information about the evolution of the Horned God in the 19th and early 20th Century, but also contains the best performance by a heterosexual academic of the fabulously homoerotic Hymn to Pan, EVER!

Dr. Hutton’s talk has me contemplating the God I serve.  In his talk Dr. Hutton discusses the history of the idea of the Horned God as it was in the ancient world and as it re-emerged to the historical and literary record in the 19th century.

He then discusses how the image of the Horned God is, for many, primarily sex and grunt and groan and stuff of the locker room and armpits… c’mon you know that you’ve got a little bit of that image of Old Horny!!  He also discusses how he is viewed by many modern Pagans as consort to the Goddess and an idealized lover and spirit of Life, and that there is sometimes not much development of his role beyond that in the thought or writings of modern Pagans.

To a degree this would seem to be true to this Witch.
As a solitary Witch of nearly 20 years now, I look back on my early years of Witchcraft and it just seems to me that a lot of the material out there went on and on about the Goddess and then was like…

“oh, yeah, there’s a god too… he’s her consort… but now back to the Goddess and Magic… did we mention magic theres spells and stuff….”

I felt this lack of ballance rather keenly when I read Witches Goddess and Witches God by the Farrar’s.  It seemed to me, at the time, that the book about the Goddess was much more about allowing the witches involved to experience and commune with the Goddess, and that the material about the God was somehow less… something than the material about the Goddess.

At least that’s how it seemed that way to me at the time… so I started drifting away from Books and looking for a relationship with Him.  I’ve already written of how He sent me an image/meditation/message, once upon a time…

One day though I was sitting before a makeshift altar and centering and grounding and an image leaped into my fore brain, a bolt from the blue….

The image was of myself sitting cross-legged, Indian-style as they still used to say when I started school, with an image of Cernunos super-imposed/interwoven with my own.  His/my hooves extending some roots into the soil… the base of His spine also extending roots into the ground that intertwined with the roots of the great tree He/I leaned against.  One hand turned downward, cupped over His/my knee, the other held open and relaxed facing up.  Our Antlers weaving between the branches of the tree, rattling amongst them slightly as We moved Our head.

Then it was gone…

In regards to that gift, I’ve also mentioned that it felt almost like being taught how to properly meditate and ground and center… from an intensely personal perspective..

“Not quite, more like this…

There have been two other times that HE has decided to share his Wisdom in a rather direct fashion with me….

One was a moment of poetic and Divine inspiration wherein He gave me the first half of this poem…

Charge of the God

By Geoffrey Stewart / Pax (C) 1997

“Hear now the Words of the Great Father who of old amongst mortals was known by many names; Tammuz, Brahma, Osiris, Dionysus, Wottan, Apollo, Cernunos, Janicot, The August Personage of Jade, and by many other names.”

“I who am the Wise Youth and the Wild Man, The Horned Hunter and the Dark Wanderer, the Fury of the Storm and the Gentle Whisper of the Leafs in the Trees, I call upon your minds and bodies to arise and join me in this now sacred place.

Learn and remember!  I welcomed you into this world and promised you a life of both Pleasure and Pain, Joy and Wonder, Fear and Fury; for all of these are a part of my Mysteries, the Lessons that must be learned, cherished, and remembered lifetime after lifetime.

Know then that whatever tests and trials you face in this life, I have faced before.  For I am the Guardian of the Gates of Life and Death, and whatever steps you take and wherever you are within the Spiral Dance, of Birth and Life and Death and Rebirth, I have led the Way.  For I am the Lord of the Dance, and to know my Mysteries you must learn to be at one with the Rhythm, the Tao, The heartbeat of the universe, that confluence of outer and inner forces that moves and works upon us all.

From all things you encounter, all people whose lives you touch, Learn and Give something of yourself in return.

All learning and wisdom is sacred to me; all quests for knowledge and understanding, all acts of effort, and thought, and willing sacrifice; all of these are my rituals.

Know now that sometimes I lead, and sometimes I follow; but as you wind your way through the Spiral Dance, I am always with you.”

The second half of this Charge came to me a few years later, rather quietly and calmly without the sense of singing inspiration that accompanied the first part.

The other time that He has decided to speak in a direct fashion to me was actually through me.  I was discussing and demonstrating for a couple of guys I knew, whom I felt could use some good guidance and metaphysical self-help techniques, how to cast Circle… as a part of this I decided … on the spur of the moment, to demonstrate Invoking the divine… SO I invoked the Horned God.

He!  Decided!  To!  Show!  Up!

By which I mean that after 3 or 4 years of calling upon and invoking the God and Goddess, He decided to show up and speak and work through me directly.

I experienced a brief yet, I assure you internally spectacular, moment of panic as I felt something from outside myself roll over me like the tide, and into me.   It was as if everything in my mind that was ME was pushed up and back into the rear of the crown of my skull and He started to speak through me.  After a moment of panic, and then truly realizing why in the religions of the African Diaspora those divinely posessed are said to be ridden or to be as a horse to the Spirits, I realized two things.

He wasn’t going to harm me, and He was speaking… so I started to pay attention to what He was saying to my friends.   After a short time, He left, and I resumed control of both the vertical and horizontal and made some small talk and polite goodbyes to my friends and went home to quietly freak out in peace.

It took a while before I invoked, rather than invited Their presence, at my own Circles.

~~~~~~~~~

He is so much more that the stuff of the locker room.  He is poetry and music and theater.  He is the caress of the wind on a warm summer’s day and both the blinding flash of lightning and the rumbling roll of the thunder.  He is so much more than we can put into words and so worthy of our love and so ready to love us in heart and mind as well as in body.

Great Green Eyed Horned God,

With the Sun Upon your Brow,

Wise Youth and Wild Man

Darkness and Richness of the Earth

And the Blade of the Plow

Skilled of Mind, Skilled in Speech, Skilled of Hands,

And how,

Guide and Guard us your Children

As we seek along the Path to Wisdom.

Blessed Be!

Invoking the Power of the Pagan Dollar 2.0

I am, admittedly partially repeating myself here, but this idea feels important on a deep intuitive level… and it keeps coming back to my thoughts, the ideas circling like sharks ready to devour my complacency whole… so here it is…


We need to build the economic self-sufficiency of our local, regional, and national Pagan communities!

We are facing some of the worst economic times, certainly in my lifetime, and it just seems to me as if we, as a community, haven’t really been talking about this.  I say this as someone who is a self-confessed blog-a-holic, a member of multiple yahoo-groups, and an avid surfer of the Internet, and who is not all that hard to track down either in his local community or by friends nationwide.  I’ve seen some small mention of individual challenges and responses to the hard times we are in, but nowhere have I seen discussions of how we as a community can face and deal with these troubled times.  I think it’s about time we started talking about this folks, because the tough times are not going to go away overnight!

I first started thinking about Pagan community economic self-sufficiency in the months after Ellwood “Bunky” Bartlett won the lottery, and there were a lot of discussions and posts about his windfall and opinions of all sorts were floated about how a Pagan with a lot of it should spend his money.  Then, too, there are the many discussions I’ve heard, or read, about various Pagan owned businesses that shut down for a lack of support.  I’ve also been thinking a lot about how various other sub-cultural communities have focused their economic power inward and reaped no small rewards, including any number of ethnic and religious and other sub-cultural communities.

All of these influences have had me thinking a lot lately about how we in the Pagan community could build a stronger community through economic empowerment.  For me, economic empowerment means that we, as a community, are focusing our economic decisions on those choices that strengthen our community locally, regionally, and nationally.  To strengthen our Pagan community, in this case, means spending our money within our community as much as is possible and practical.

Time after time in the history of my beloved United States we have seen how the ethnic, sub-cultural,  and religious communities that form up the patchwork quilt of the United States have been able to strengthen the their communities and build their social ties, and their economic, and political power by concentrating money into community owned businesses and interests.  These decisions include supporting Pagan-owned and Pagan friendly businesses, as well as supporting local and national Pagan community organizations, and Pagan charities.

Pagan Owned and Pagan Friendly Businesses

The first thing that I would like to say is that a Pagan business is not necessarily a metaphysical or occult shop.  I know, I know, some of you out there are going…

“Well, DUH!  Pax!”

But it was both interesting and instructive for me to notice that many, many times, on many separate occasions, when I tried to communicate with others about the idea of supporting our Pagan businesses that the idea of a Pagan business often seemed to be all but consumed by the idea of a metaphysical book and paraphernalia shop.  When I look at many Pagan stores or periodicals, most of the adverts are for fortunetellers, workshops, or various metaphysical shops.

Where are our doctors and realtors and other professionals?  Where are the Pagan owned home repair businesses, yard services, and plumbers?  They are out there, I know because I have run into many of them on the Web and in book stores and at open Circles and community socials.  Sadly, a lot of our Pagan business owners and Pagan professionals who may be active in the Pagan community are to one degree or another closeted for fear of the very real economic effects of discrimination and prejudice.  Even with full protection under the law you can still be fired, or have your business ruined by a word of mouth campaign or boycott, if you are Pagan.

These fears are real, and serious.  Being out as a Pagan can be hazardous to one’s livelihood.  What can we do about this?

Within my own experience in the GLBT community, in local newsletters and in local Gay venues such as bars and community centers you will often see ads for various GLBT owned businesses.  Realtors, lawyers, doctors, books & gift shops, florists, mechanics, the local Metropolitan Community Church (a GLBT friendly Christian denomination), massage therapists, psychotherapists… all of these and more will have advertisements in their local GLBT newsletters and posted in Queer friendly businesses, as well as in GLBT community directories… jokingly often called “the pink pages” after the “yellow pages” of U.S. phone directories.  These community directories are often free booklets that are paid for with advertising fees and donation.

Do you think that GLBT lawyers, doctors, and realtors, are nervous about the possibility of being out could affect their livelihood?  Yet still many are willing to advertise in GLBT community directories and publications.  Why?

Two reasons…

One, those of us in the GLBT community have for nearly 30 years subscribed in a broad sense to the philosophy of supporting our own.  If there is a Gay owned or Gay friendly business in my area I am darn well going to use them first… keep the money in the GLBT family!  Because of this those who advertise in “pink pages” and in GLBT publications know that they are reaching out to their own community, or to a community they are friendly towards, and one that will actively spend it’s money in house first!

Reason number two, is that for the most part the people most likely to actively discriminate against GLBT owned and friendly businesses are the people least likely to willingly pick up, much less read, a GLBT publication where they would be advertised.  As for the “pink pages”, well those are usually only available in Gay bars, GLBT owned businesses, and GLBT Community Centers; none of which are on the bigots top ten list of places to go into or be seen!

To be fair I have seen some ads for paralegals and therapists in some Pagan bookstores, and that is a start.  In searching the Internet, I was only able to find one comprehensive listing for a Pagan community business directory; a similar search for a Gay business directory yielded ~ many ~ interesting ~ results.

Once we start identifying our locally owned Pagan and Pagan friendly businesses we must commit to supporting them!  When we keep our money in the community, the community will become stronger.  By supporting our Pagan businesses we also strengthen their ability to support themselves and in turn our community.

Pagan Community Organizations and Charities

A lot of you are probably thinking of groups like the Asatru Folk Assembly or Covenant of the Goddess, and yes I would certainly encourage Pagans to support some of our national spiritual/religious organizations.   I would also never hesitate to encourage you to support your local Pagan Community groups.  Is a local Pagan group holding a fund-raising dinner for a campground or community center or local charity?  Then go eat a few plates… even on a work or school night already!

Just as there are more types of Pagan business than the occult supply shop, there are other types of Pagan community organizations that we could come together to support through either our membership or charitable donations.

Cherry Hill Seminary is a graduate level Pagan Seminary with counseling and public ministry programs that is currently working at creating a Masters of Divinity Program.

Then there are programs like the annual National Pagan Leadership Skills Conference, now in its 5th year, fostering workshops on issues of Finance, Pastoral Care, and Group Facilitation.

Pagan professional organizations have come and gone, yet some remain.  The best current example is, of course, The Officers of Avalon.  This international benevolent organization for Pagan Law Enforcement Officer’s and Emergency Services Personnel has also established an active non-profit charitable wing Avalon Cares, which has done some fundraising and participated in several aid and relief efforts!  Avalon Cares is one of a number of Pagan organizations doing charitable work, and worthy of Pagan community investment.  Circle Sanctuary maintains a list of Pagan groups doing charitable work, for more examples.

Organizations like these, and supporting them as a community, are, I believe, the next step in our evolution as a community.  Think about it… having a fully accredited Pagan Seminary… is the idea of a Pagan University, a real academic 4-year degree University that happens to be run by, and offering some programs specifically of interest to, Pagans all that radical or far off a notion?

Imagine the impact, for example, if each of us focused our charitable donations to Avalon Cares for one year?  Imagine if every Pagan group in the United States focusing it’s food drives towards a specific food bank or hunger fighting organization like Feeding America (formerly Second Harvest), and then specifically donating in the name of the U.S. Pagan community.  Imagine if each of us donated even 3 dollars to Cherry Hill Seminary.  Imagine, not only, the positive impact we could make in the world, but the positive impact that would have in our community?

We all want a world where our spiritual path, our faith or belief system, is simply a part of who we are; not something that has the potential to get us fired or harassed.  We want a world where the leaders of our cities, regions, and nations address issues of concern to our community; rather than writing us off as nuts or “not a religion”.  We want a world where the press will jump all over a public official making ignorant of bigoted remarks about Pagans, rather than just letting it pass or chuckling.

Empowering ourselves economically is the pathway to that world.

Invoking the power of the Pagan Dollar

Don’t panic!  This is NOT going to be an article about prosperity spells and you drum I chant “money, money, money, gimme, gimme, gimme” type of invokation.  This little article is my own thoughts on how we in the Pagan community can respond to the current economic hard times, and at the same time, strengthen our own ties of community.

I am inspired to write on this topic, in part, by an article at The Wild Hunt on how one Pagan in Iceland has been responding to that country’s economic collapse with civil protest and increasingly strident calls to action.

In part  it also just seems to me as if we, as a community, haven’t really been talking about this.  I say this as someone who is a self-confessed blog-a-holic, a member of multiple yahoo-groups, and an avid surfer of the Internet, and who is not all that hard to track down either in his local community or by friends nationwide.  I’ve seen some small mention of individual challenges and responses to the hard times we are in, but nowhere have I seen discussions of how we as a community can face and deal with these troubled times.  I think it’s about time we started talking about this folks, cause the tough times are not going to go away overnight!

We need to build the economic self-sufficiency of our local, regional, and national Pagan communities! Time after time in the history of my beloved United States we have seen how the ethnic, sub-cultural,  and religious communities that form up the patchwork quilt of our great nation have been able to strengthen the their communities and build their social ties, and their economic, and political power by concentrating money into community owned businesses.

I have seen this work within the Gay community.

In order to do this, we need to get better about communicating with one another.  What do I mean?  Well… how many Pagan businesses can you track down?  Now before you start listing off every metaphysical book, candle, and tsotchke (sp?) shop within a hundred miles… can you name a local Pagan Doctor, Lawyer, Realtor, or Plumber, (non occult store) Business owner, or Yardwork company in your area?  Why Not?

Now as a Gay man, I know I can go into most Gay community centers, or local gay bars and find some version of the local community directory.  They are often jokingly called the “pink pages’ after the U.S. phone directories “yellow pages”.  (do they have “yellow pages” in other contries?!)

Armed with this handy information I can find gay owned restaurants, bars, realtors (my people are all over the real estate and home remodeling market, go figure!), Gay or Gay-friendly doctors and therapists, Lawers, Yard work companies and GLBT owned or friendly establishments of every kind.  I have never seen or heard of such a thing in the Pagan community!  Why not?

Now before some of the naysayers strike, don’t be afraid to spread the word within the community if Joe the Pagan Plumber does shoddy work or rips you off; but also do not hesitate to hire him if he does good work!

Another thing some of the naysayers out there may be muttering even as you read this is, ‘well doesn’t this just open us up to fundamentalist attack or religious discrimination?’  Well, in my experience most of the bigots are not going to go into a Gay bar to pick up the ‘pink pages’, and I have never heard of a business being targeted by a church or hate group for their advertising to the GLBT community; so I have a hard time imagining that the Pagan community would have any more trouble than the GLBT folks.

So now that we are starting to find one another, how can we build economic self sufficiency?  Let us start reaching out to one another, let us share what great or little good fortune we may have with others in our community.

Need a lawn mowed but just don’t have the time?  Find a Pagan Lawn Service, or local Pagan in need, to do it!

Do you go out to eat anymore?  Find out which Pagans in your community are Servers and frequent their restaurants and ask to sit in their section!

Are any of the Pagans in your area business owners?  If theirs is a type of business you might frequent, then do so!

What about knowing that there are employers friendly to Pagans as employees or customers?  Shop there!  Maybe during Pagan Pride Month you could go and drop off a note thanking the business for their progressive policies and attitudes and letting them know that because of them you make a point of spending your Pagan dollar with them!

Then there is the question of our Pagan dollar’s power for good.  How often have you, or your Grove or Circle or Community Group given money to charity in the name of the Pagan community?  Or donated food?  Next time maybe you can look for specifically Pagan run Charities or Food Banks or Scholarships.

Maybe you could even look into starting one.

The more we in the Pagan community can support our own, the more success our Pagan business people and Pagan Professionals have, the more we improve the economic and educational opportunities of our fellow Pagans, the stronger and more self-sustaining our community will be.

The Heart of an Invocation

The Heart of an Invocation

“I Open my heart, my mind, and my hands,

Work through me and upon me,

Speak to me and speak through me,

Let me be a vessel, through which

Your love is poured forth across the lands.”

(c) Pax / Geoffrey Stewart 2008

I am a little proud of this one, I was trying to write a prayer, or something for the Solstice, and this was was happened… not so Solsticey, but a delightful little prayer none the less!

I like the flexibility of it, you can address it to the Goddess or God or the both of them, and you can change the focus of it a little by changing the word “love” out for something like “wisdom” if, for example you were invoking the Lord alone…

Not that Love or Wisdom belongs exclusively to the Lady or Lord, respectively, but I like the flexibility of the formula…

Now to contemplate the Solstice… and perhaps get a little sleep…

Stream of Consciousness on Offerings and Prayer

Shouldn’t it be magic enough that we come together in religious fellowship seeking, and achieving, in ritual a moment of gnosis through united prayer and offerings and communion?

As you know, if you’ve been reading and poking around this blog and its pages, I pray on a daily basis, and I make offerings of insence on a regular basis.

I was also, sort of, challenged recently to put more of myself and my experience into this blog.  I wrote the above quote just a little earlier today and find my mind returning to it.

I also have prayer and offerings on the brain lately… maybe I should work on the relevant pages… but I think I will just write some things out and see where they lead…

~~~

My offerings of incense…

I ready the incense cone or stick in my special dish of salt.  I have a lighter ready.

First, I breathe.  In through my nose, and out through my mouth.  A moment spent concentrating on my breath, on the rythm of it, focusing inward.  Centering myself as best I can.  Starting to tell myself, and the universe, that I am doing something special.   If I think about it, I also Ground, but for the purpose of offering I find it isn’t as necessary as it is for other things.

I stand, raising  my arms so that the upper arm is roughly paralel to the ground and my forearms are upright, my hands are open and palms upward – roughly paralel to my upper arms and the ground.  When I stand in this ancient posture or prayer, known as the orens position, there is a part of me that thrills to the knowledge that I am trying to speak with and honor my Deities in the same way that They were honored in the ancient world.

On the mental level, I know that repeating this position will help signal to the Universe and the Gods, my intention.  On the physical level I can almost feel the atoms and cells of my body tingle; the subtle parts of me that are also part of the Divine recognizing that I am trying to reach out and up and within to Them.

If I cannot stand, I will at least raise my arms.

When that subtle shift in …something… lets me know that I have gotten Their attention, I speak.

“I make an offering of incense to the Gods,

and the Guardian Spirits, of this Home.

Blessed Be, So Mote It Be.”

Then I bring my hands down and together, to my face, where I kiss them at the point where my thumbs meet my palms; sort of a physical ‘blessed be’ and a small gesture of my love for the Divinities, and our Guardian Spirits.   Then I bring them to touch my chest above my heart; this is sort of a physical ‘so mote it be’ and ‘thank you’, and a physical reminder that They are a part of me.  Then I lower my hands, pick up the lighter, and light the incense.

I will usually take a moment to stand there soaking in a small moment of peacefulness and Presence.  Then I will go about my day.

~~~

You can read about my daily prayer on the Daily Practice page.  I usually will be saying this when I am driving to work.  This necessitates a lack of prayer gestures… and a slight change of wording…

“Mother Celestial and Father Divine,

Let me walk and drive in…”

For most situations of prayer durring my day I don’t do much in the way of gesturing if I am at work.

~~~
I am minded of the commonly discussed definition of prayer as ‘asking Deity for something’.  That is so, so sad.

Prayer is speaking to, communicating with the Divine or Divinities of your choosing.  Prayer, and Offerings, and Ritual, should be about our relationship with the Gods and not about getting something from them!   The benefits of prayer and offerings are secondary to the truly important work of building and improving the relationship one has with the Divine.

That relationship nurtures our spirits everyday and nourishes our souls through times of trouble.  Those delightful fleeting moments of knowing are why the ancient monuments were built and why the sacred songs were sung.

A plea for less spellwork…

Hello folks,

So I went to that open moon circle sponsored by WRCF that I mentioned a couple of days ago.  It was a lovely night.  A good Circle, if small in attendance, and I got the chance to heal a misunderstanding with someone in my local community; so I can truly say that I was blessed that night.  Lord Luminhawke did an excellent job Priesting the Circle and I had a really nice time.

It’s just,… well, I have this pet peeve….

There was a spell working as part of the Circle.  I have nothing agianst spell working, necesarilly.   It’s just that my take on Circles is that Personal Magic or Spell work in the Esbat Circle is that it should be for need, not a required part of the service, as it seems to be so often when I attend an Open Moon Circle or Sabbat wherever I go.

Shouldn’t it be magic enough that we come together in religious fellowship seeking, and achieving, in ritual a moment of gnosis through united prayer and offerings and communion? Must we always have spell-work at open ebats and sabbats?

Of course, maybe this is just me.  I’m sure it doesn’t help my attitude that it seems like the ‘write things you want, or want to get rid of, and we will burn it’ spell form is the required spell for open Esbats and Sabbats.

As I said, this is a pet peeve of mine.  Lord Luminhawke did a great job with the Circle and also did something that impressed the heck out of me…

See, Luminhawke is one of the folks who has vollunteered to host the Open Moon Circles for WRCF.   He mentioned to those attending that he would be willing to help them consecrate any tools that they may feel the need for help with, anytime he is priesting the Open Moon Circle.  That just seemed especially classy and decent to me!

Anyway, Peace,

Pax

Sedentary, yet undeniably invigorated and alive!

So as I am working on this site, today, I am also thinking about my daily spiritual practices and my relationship with the Lady and Lord of Witchcraft, as well as with Hecate, and Dionysus, and the rest of the Universe…

I started this blog as a spiritual journal, with the hope that it might also be of use to other Pagans in their own spiritual journeys.   It is the only such spiritual journal I have been able to keep up, for whatever reason.  This is no small blessing as I can honestly say that I have learned a lot about myself and my relationship with the Gods by keeping this little blog of mine…

Thanks, oh Powers and Principalities!!

I am feeling very centered and wonderful as I write a piece about different ways of relating to the Gods and of the Gifts of Giving, that strange paradox where by making even a simple sacrifice of incense or pouring a libation of water or wine, you are touched by the presence or remembrance of the Divine…

So many strange little Mysteries on the Pagan path.  So many things that our community lets sepparate us when there are so many wonderful things that unify us, so many minor mysteries that we share on our journeys.

Revel in the sharing my dear Pagans, enjoy yourselves and the simple pleasures and have a beautiful Yuletide!

Peace,

Pax

Chop Wood, Carry Water…

“Before Enlightenment, Chop Wood, Carry Water,

After Enlightenment, Chop Wood, Carry Water.”

~Chinese Proverb

The Big Guy and I are going to be visiting some of his family for the next week for Thanksgiving.  Part of this involved getting the cargo/topper for the back of his truck out of the back yard.  We have this Bougainvillea that grew in the corner of the front yard in front of the gate to the side-yard.  We figured we’d cut a few branches and get it out…

FOUR HOURS OF YARD WORK LATER…

~sigh~  The plant had grown in on itself and there were brambles and tangles and thorns like some nearly impenetrable wall of purple flower bearing thorn filled doom.  But, we did it!  I am tired and sweaty and dirty and yet, paradoxically, I feel cleaner and (on some levels) more energized that I have in weeks.

There was something deeply powerful about taking that tangled thorny bush, whose beautiful and placid outer layer hid a mass of dead and dieing thorny branches, and taking it apart and hauling it away; and behind it was the gate.  Not just a sense of accomplishment but a living metaphor for getting things done and dealling with obstacles and painful problems.  Some useful triggers for my visualizations in the future!  I also found a couple of potential wands, but I need to do some research on Bougainvilia to see if I can really use these wands for my regular work or if they will be a special ocasion item… or the ingredient for some new charm or spell.

I have a feeling that the sense of power and metaphor and magic I felt during this unexpected bit of hard labor both culminated something I needed, and will serve as a useful tool and experience in the relatively near future.  I will have to do some work with the Tarot and some meditation this week…

Peace, and a Happy Thanksgiving!

Pax

PS- Please go to the upper right-hand corner of this page and click on the Links! link, I am trying to build my resource pages and am inviting any and all to post some suggestions for more links and more categories!  (It’s very much a work in progress right now, sorry for the mess!)

One Witches Journey… into activism and optimism

So…

I am blogging a lot more on my other site.  Or at least I am working on the site, and adding links and adding to the blog roll and learning a lot about my LGBT community.  I am also learning a lot about myself.  I am learning about my ideals, and my hopes and dreams.  I am also seeing, once more, the parallels between my two communities… the GLBT (or LGBT if you prefer) and the Pagan.  I find myself trying to figure out how to balance my new found passion for standing up for the Highest Ideals, with the practicality of working an exceptionally part time job and looking for work in one of the worst economies in the last 100 years.  Yet I feel more alive, more truly myself, when I am working on my GLBT civil rights blog, and when I am contemplating similar projects within the Pagan community.

In re-reading this post and contemplating publishing it I looked again at that last sentence…

Yet I feel more alive, more truly myself, when I am working on my GLBT civil rights blog, and when I am contemplating similar projects within the Pagan community.

Hmm… I am reminded of my ideas about Beauty, and my thought that when we are striving to live our Virtues as Witches, and to live out our Highest Ideals is when we are most Beautiful.  I also find myself remembering some of the times where I have invoked the Lord and Lady, and how at those times too I have felt most truly alive (if not necessarily myself).

I know that the weeks and months to come will require me to keep a balance between feeding my pocket book and feeding my soul.  In the past keeping a balance between my professional (or job) life and my spiritual and personal life has been a difficult zig-zagging between priorities.  I would like to believe that I am at a point in my life where I can actually do this, seemingly simple, balancing act.  So many other folks make this sort of thing look so blessed effortless!

I know that in these times feeding oneself, ones family, and ones pocketbook, is becoming increasingly difficult.  I know that there are a lot of tough decisions and times ahead.  In the end though, I am not afraid.

I know that the Lady and Lord are with me.

I know that if I continue to tread the path they have laid out for me, if I continue to speak and live in accordance with Truth, and Beauty, and the Highest of Ideals, if I strive to find within myself Love for All Beings, including myself, if I honor Them, and remember to honor the Gods and Godesses of my heart and the Heroes of my Nation; if I do these things I will find a way through the troubled times and I will be able to keep my ballance and do right by my Gods, my family, and myself.