Invoking lost luggage

Tomorrow is the new moon, and Rosh Hashanah begins. In the giving up of monotheism, I’ve found myself open to working and being worked by a variety of other different tradition’s holy days. As newbie witch, way back in the late 1970’s, I pushed away from what I was raised with, and looked down my nose at any religion that centered around one male deity. I was pretty darn monotheistic in my polytheism! Now I invoke the wisdom of twelve step programs in regard to other religions; I take what I need, and leave the rest.

I was raised as a Episcopalian, but it’s the Jewish holidays that have been drawing me over the past year. Passover lent me it’s spirit of liberation in the spring, and these High Holy Days look like they will be generous to me as well. They are working on me, making me review old resentments, and what I’m ready to let go of. I’m looking at too, what I have to atone to and for. At Beltane, we have the moment of jumping over the cauldron, where we are symbolically purifying ourselves of what we don’t want to take into the next turn of the wheel. How much more powerful this moment would be if there was an actual lead up to it, if we all spent a week or so really looking at what baggage we needed to let go of, and taking some action around this - even if totally internally, that lead to the moment of cauldron jumping really having some breadth and power.

Beltane is at the height of the earth’s mating dance, it’s a frenzied and intoxicating swirl of life force energy. Maybe it’s just not the time for the kind of work that letting go of old baggage entails. Letting go of old resentments at Beltane is kind of like having a few drinks at party and spontaneously hugging someone you usually have conflict with. Who can really be in touch with resentments when such a great and wild party is going on all around? Those moments of ecstatic dancing with the Fey usually are just that, moments. There’s usually a hangover, and sometimes even the kind of remorse that comes from a drunken binge.

This time period right after Equinox, when the veil begins it’s thinning, this seems to be a great time to think about what we don’t want to take into the dark. This is a perfect time to review what I want to descend into the dark with, knowing that basement space can already be cluttered. How much better to go down those stairs free of old baggage, with the ancestors are all around, whispering their stories and tales, ready to assist in lightening the load.

Reya’s been busy writing the letters she wishes she’d received (goldpoppy.blogspot.com), and in doing this, she is healing old hurt and dropping baggage by the pound. She’s shared some of the letters with me, and as I have practically a matching set to some of her baggage, those letters have been healing for me as well. Tomorrow I will be writing down my new moon wishes, and one of those wishes will be sure to be a lightening of my load as I descend into the dark.