there is no end to the circle

I’m exhausted. This has been one tiring turning of the wheel. Here in San Francisco, the door that opens through which the dead pour in usually produces a wave of heat. That door swung open today and the temperature rose. In my office, every session seemed to involve the dead. Those who weren’t actively grieving were mulling and musing on their relationship to the afterlife. I could feel the city get a little denser, a bit more crowded, as the dead began their steady stream over Twin Peaks.

The power of the Spiral Dance, the Samhain ritual that Reclaiming has performed for well over two decades, also made it’s appearance. I’ve responded to two posts of Macha, that mighty priestess of the dead, on a Reclaiming e-mail list, about “community” dynamics and history regarding the Spiral Dance. It’s kind of great to be able to speak my mind, and not have expectation of result. What a difference it makes no longer being invested in things changing, or even being invested in being heard. What a difference it makes to accept the death of things! The heat, the door opening, and the e-mails have me thinking a lot about the Spiral Dance.

There was a time I couldn’t imagine not participating in that ritual. It’s been such a part of my history that it has a sense of timelessness in my memory. My son didn’t grow up clamoring for Raffi, or a Disney soundtrack. From his carseat behind me as I drove, he’d demand for me to play the tape of “let it begin now” just one more time. All the voices were familiar to him, part of his extended family. For years before his birth, I’d ask on the isle of apples to be given a child. I remember dancing it six months pregnant. I remember clearly his name being called after his birth., and when he was four and created his own ritual, The Spiraled Ants, involving all his stuffed animals and a trance led by Pooh. Reya and I once created a cartoon of us above the ritual, marveling at the fact that we now were the mighty dead. Recently we marveled at how it was possible our names might not even be called at the ritual, or even if called, we might be elsewhere. If I don’t feel comfortable attending in life, why the heck would I want to be there in death?

And yet. Yet, I know that anything can happen, and usually will. I think of Raven’s death, and how the years of him being outcast from the “community” faded away when it was time to cross over. Watching Macha take him thru the veils is a memory that still gives me a kundalini shiver. Maybe even though I don't feel welcomed there in life, I'll be happy to dance in dead. The last time I was at the Spiral Dance I had to fight to be there. Not allowed to priestess in any way, I’d been told I could do an altar. Even doing the altar was a struggle, and given how that night turned out, I wish I’d just stayed home.

Unfortunately I know more than I want to about the fights and conflicts of the last few years in the group that now puts on the Spiral Dance over whether to allow me to participate. I would unfailingly have bad dreams about my bones being chewed on after the nights they met, and find out later that there was some truth to those dreams. The usual wierd dynamics of humans trying to work together can get even wierder when those humans are openly psychic. This year, I've been dream free, and given that I've been asked to do an altar, I'm thinking the tide must have turned and my bones are no longer being chewed on. It's all a bit ironic, as the group is now more functional as the Spiral Dance is now truly a collective effort and no longer produced by one person, given the reason I became such a locus of controversy is I publicly stated that I didn't believe it was a great idea to have major community events, like the Spiral Dance, produced by one person. I've heard for the past few years how much better it feels to have it produced collectively, but has of yet not heard one word of acknowledgement for my part in this. My guess is that it's not safe to do so, as what comes next is me being right about the other major community event, California Camp. Many in the Spiral Dance cell teach or want to teach at that event, and so it's not politic to acknowledge me as worthy of any respect or given any credence. Better for me to serve as some kind of Cassandra on the edge of town.

I'm sick of that role, it's not gratifying in the least. I miss what the Spiral Dance once was to me, but am so fearful of attending again and having a repeat of the last time, which all in all felt like the worst kind of magic. When we sang "Let it begin now", all I could see was abuses of power, flagrant narcisssim, selfishness, and petty meaness. A great beginning for the Bush years, as it turned out. The goddess has been kind, giving me compelling magic to attend to each year I haven't gone. This year I’ll be in Minnesota, helping priestess my beloved Donald Engstrom’s wedding. My friend Nancy is doing an altar to New Orleans at the Spiral Dance, and I will be lending her my spirit bottles, which I’ve made with Mardi Gras beads, to sit on that altar. So strangely, I will have a presence this year in the form of my art.

I wonder if I ever will go to another Spiral Dance here in San Francisco. Whether or not I do, the past ones still resonate in me, in all their beauty and excess. If you do something annually for over two decades, it has the tendency to stay alive in memory, whether you participate actively in it or not. Maybe it will take seven years, the seven years it takes all the cells to be replaced in the body, to really let the ritual go as a body memory. Or maybe it goes beyond body memory by now. No wonder I’m so tired.