unsure

After returning from my uncle’s funeral, I cleared pictures of the dead off the altar and removed all traces of the festival of Samhain. With every day, the dark of winter encroaches. All last week we had beautiful weather here in San Francisco, warm and bright. On Thanksgiving, a cold front moved in. Winter is here. Putting away the remains of Samhain, I found myself hesitant to bring out the Solstice decorations. I’m going more slowly into this season, and I’m not quite sure why. Usually at this time, the house is full of a variety of craft projects, which started a week or so after Samhain and fill the house by the time Solstice comes. Instead, yesterday after clearing the altars, I finished up the last (for the time being) of the spirit bottles, and still am not sure what gifts I want to make.

I’m settling into this time of unsureness. I’m unsure of my spiritual affiliations, unsure of what craft projects to embark on, unsure of whether to work on some relationships or let them go, and unsure of whether I want to be dating or not. This is new territory for me, and I’m finding it curious and almost enjoyable. For the most part, I’ve been a woman of primary and strong colors, knowing my own mind, having clear opinions, and decisive in my actions. Fern says Neptune is strong in my chart right now, so perhaps this unsureness, this sense of the ground shifting and changing beneath me, has something to do with the pull of Neptune on my senses.

Today Janet and Katite took me to brunch at the home of two friends who recently had a baby. One of them is from New York City, and she eschewed life in a house on Bernal Hill and insisted on an elegant condo downtown next to the ballpark. The brunch was a set-up; they’d all decided that a mutual friend and I might have chemistry. I was dubious, given that she’s a captain in the police force, and I’m an anarchist witch. The brunch was lovely, good conversation, easy rapport, and best of all, lots of laughter and good humor. But was there chemistry? I’m just unsure.

I came home and puttered around my house, doing those small preparations you do, like putting on flannel sheets, when winter settles in. Now I wonder, what should I have for dinner? Perhaps when the light returns, I will be once again regain my sense of sureness.

Who knows? At the moment, I'm just not sure.

spiritual/non-affiliated

One of the life themes running thru this past year or so has been the reviewing of my spiritual affiliations. This theme rears its head again and again, and hit me full force this last couple of weeks, and from a variety of directions. My son is in eighth grade, and is in the process of applying to San Francisco high schools. He’s decided he really wants to go to Catholic school. He can play football there, and being raised fully pagan, he’s interested in learning about Catholism. Going to Catholic school will perfectly suit him. He can pull my chain by threatening to convert, and I’m sure he’ll be asking questions at school such as “do we really think monotheism is such a good idea?”

So, as I fill out the applications to the several Catholic schools in the city, I’ve found myself checking off the box for “Spiritual/Non-Affiliated”. There’s no box for Witch, Wiccan , or Pagan. As I’ve checked the boxes, I’ve wondered at the truth in it. I am spriritual, and my strong affiliation with both Reclaiming and Feri are falling away.. Like clothes that are not the right size, I can’t get comfortable in either. Am I truly moving into a period of Spiritual/Non-Affiliated?

I’m teaching at a Reclaiming witchcamp this summer, and I continue to question the meaning of this. The less I have to do with Reclaiming, the better teacher of magic I become. The last three years I’ve enjoyed being of service on the teams I’ve been on, and have been proud of the work we’ve done, some of it clean-up work. I seem to be particularly skilled at mopping up after camps have gone thru some years of working with divas and those who take the camp on magical binges, running off to Fairy or madly opening portals to the unknown. My style of teaching is rooted in transmitting Reclaiming’s principles of unity and staying clear on our magical/practical intent, and I strive to keep the magic practical.

Paradoxically, it’s my love of those principles that’s made it become more and more untenable to affiliate with local Reclaiming. I think the thin thread connecting me to it was severed last week. I employed the questioning attitude in regards to the precedent being set by Rose and Starhawk in taking community money to buy a new rug for their ritual room. There wasn't money to send a spokes to the international spokescouncil, but apparently enough money to buy their household a rug. I was polite about it, pointing out there really hadn’t been community consensus process on the decision to fund the rug, but I can still feel the steam rolling out in my direction. I know that plenty of other people agreed with me and even appreciate my questioning this rug being a financial priority of Reclaiming, but of course the agreement is kept private. It was a personal slip of sorts for me to be the one to voice concern, , but it reminded me that this is my position/role in Reclaiming, a role and position I no longer want to be affiliated with.

Meanwhile, on the Feri intiates e-mail list, there’s been an incredibly lively discussion regarding several topics. I’ve so far refrained from jumping in, but following the discussions, I feel a curious alienation. Several have written about Feri amorality, and of course there’s been countless references to the black heart. With Reya’s break from Feri, and Thorn’s bringing to light my problems and differences with Anderson Feri Tradition, I’m questioning what I still want to affiliate with in Feri.

In the midst of this, my uncle died. He had a long life, and was, for the most part, a very unhappy man. Today I drove down to Morgan Hill, and entered the Episcopal church of my childhood, Saint John the Divine. It was here that I went to Sunday School, and it was here that I was confirmed. Close to thirty years ago it was here that the services were held for my father’s and cousin’s funereal. Those deaths served to open me spiritually to witchcraft, and propelled me far from this church of my childhood.

It was a small turnout for my uncle, but many of the faces I recognized. There was Mr. White my six grade teacher and Jean Patterson, the organist and mother of a high school friend. I found my memory stretched to put names to the faces that were both familiar and disconcertingly aged. The service was short and simple, and I strained to find some comfort or spiritual succor in the words said and hymns sung. I kept thinking of Reya, who is immersing herself in Judaism and finding treasures. Would this church hold out anything for me? I spotted the names on small plaques of my father and cousin in the small dining room we retired to after the service. The plaques were under decorated plates dedicated to the dead of the congregation. Again, many of the names I recognized.

I wanted to feel the connection of history, to feel in some way like I’d come home. I wanted the service to make emotional sense to me, to feel waves of love and the breathtaking sense of mystery that connection to the divine brings. I felt love for my aunt, and certain nostalgia for the building, but I could not find the divine at Saint John. My affiliation with the Episcopalians is long gone, and can’t be dredged back up. Reclaiming and Feri I continue to wriggle with, struggling with the discomfort of the fit. Would trying on Spiritual/Non-Affiliated, be just as discomforting? I wish I’d felt at home at Saint John the Divine. Wouldn’t that have been something?

step away from the voodoo

Before Samhain, I felt called to make a spirit bottle for Marie Laveau, the legendary New Orleans voodoo priestess from the 1800’s. One of the highlights of my last visit to New Orleans was seeking out her tomb. Power radiated from it, perhaps because of the vast array of offerings that had been left, making it a breathtaking altar. As I worked on the bottle, I felt I needed to know more about her, so ordered what books I could find online, all of them used and at a good price.

When I opened the first one that came, Voodoo Dreams, my mouth fell open and a shiver ran up my spine. Written inside the front cover, in the handwriting I know so well, was my mother’s name. Having trouble believing my own eyes, I called my mother and asked her if she had ever read a book on Marie Laveau. She answered immediately; “The Voodoo queen? Oh yes, I’ve always been interested in Voodoo!” This was news to me. She proceeded to tell me about a business trip she had taken years ago to New Orleans and how someone at the conference took her around the city and she met all sorts of people into Voodoo. My mother’s stories are always fantastical and embellished. When my son and I saw Big Fish, my son recognized his grandmother in the character of the father with the impossibly tall tales. Nevertheless, this all was confirmation that this book was indeed, once my mother’s.

What to make of all of this? The refrain that continues to go thru my head is “Step Away from the Voodoo”. In another lifetime, another setting, I may have taken this as evidence I needed to immerse myself in Voodoo, that this meant I needed to become a full-fledged practitioner. The fact or the fancy is, in another lifetime I was a full-fledged practitioner. I know it well, it comes easily to my imagination and resonates in my bones.

The first piece of magic I consciously did in this lifetime connects back to my past. In adolescence my sister and I were being bullied by a girl every day on the bus. We took out every book on magic and Voodoo we could get from the library. We culled what information we could get, and did our first spell. We made a poppet, and feeling it was too violent to put in pins, we simply buried it in the garbage on the day the trash was to be taken away. The next day, Cathy Oakly was not on the bus. We eventually heard she’d run away from home, a home, that no doubt, given her behavior towards us, had made her feel like garbage. She was gone, and we never saw her again. This was so disturbing to me that I completely blocked it out of my memory, using my incredible power of disassociation, a power that was much utilized in my childhood. The memory only resurfaced after my Reclaiming initiation, where I received the name Oak. In the aftermath, my sister reminded me of Cathy, and the lightening shock of this memory returned.

Voodoo has beauty and breadth as a tradition. In so many ways, it has more substance than this odd strand of magic and practice I’ve been initiated into called Feri. Feri is a strange hodge-podge of magical traditions, including Voodoo. In both Voodoo and Anderson Feri, there is no prohibition against hexing, of using magic to thwart or hurt those who are seen as enemies. How and why I ended up being initiated into this, I’m still trying to make sense of. As I make this bottle for Marie, I honor the power of magic and mull on what seems to be part of this lifetime’s work, stepping away from the power to hurt, and staying strongly and mightily in the power to heal. I know I need to step away from the Voodoo, and I'm distancing myself from what Thorn's called "the Luciferian aspects of Feri".

That spell in high school showed me the power of hexing, a power I know I've used in other times with horrific percision. This lifetime, I've sworn off vengeance magic, something my clairvoyent bodyworker applauds. She continues to counsel me that I have to trust my ability not to strike, but to not give up the practice of hissing. Honing my ability to hiss, while laying down the striking, is a challenge I'm up for. The spirit bottle is almost done. Many thanks to Marie Laveau, who through the veils shines brightly, illuminating for me my work as a priestess.

awesome

Today I had the strange experience of viewing my own heart. It was awesome. I don’t mean that in the surfer dude sort of way. Seeing my own heart filled me with awe, the simple beauty of the steady beat, the contraction and expansion, the emptying and then filling. The ultrasound technician noticed my tears welling up and smiled broadly. “It’s incredible, isn’t it?”, he said. Yes, incredible. Seeing it, I remembered so clearly the first time in pregnancy I saw my son’s heartbeat, looking like a little light blinking on and off in the kidney bean of his body.

After my recent illness, I took leap and scheduled a doctor’s visit, something I haven’t done in five years. I have something close to a phobia regarding doctors. I don’t do an annual pap, and have never had a mammogram. My mistrust of western medicine is high. I generally regard it as something to use as a last resort, or in case of disaster, like broken bones and non-stop bleeding. The paper gowns and long periods of waiting give me the jitters, set my teeth on edge and make me sweat metallically. It feels like the antithesis of engaging in a healthy activity.

In the last month or so, all signs have pointed to a check-up. Western medicine, like a good automotive center, can render good diagnostic tests. I turned fifty this year and the persistent little cough I suppose warrants a good check-up, although my gut instinct is that it’s asthma. The physician I went to quickly grasped that my visit was an aberration, and she had to make the most of it. She jumped while the fire was hot and ordered up a full range of testing. By January, I will have had a multitude of tests done, including the dreaded mammogram. I’m choosing to look at this all as a piece of magic, believing that ruling things out will bring peace of mind, and if there’s something wrong, I can than take charge of the next step. Something else in me says cancel all tests, and stay the hell away from the doctors, it will only bring sickness and bad news.

The technician was able to show me my heart, but only from one angle. He brought in the doctor and they confered on how to proceed. They assured me that nothing was wrong, but they want me to come back and they will get what they need by injecting something which goes thru the heart and allows them to photograph it. I’m mulling on the wisdom of taking such a test. My strong sense is that this is neither necessary nor healthy for what I saw so elegantly pumping on the screen a few hours ago.

Seeing my own heart today I felt such gratitude for the life force coursing through me, the miraculous gift of the steady beat in my chest. What to do in the service of this gift, this can be truly confusing. Is taking all these tests really what I should be doing? Maybe this is really about taking a good look at my heart, outside of tests and monitors. Have I really mended my heartbreak? Like Reya, should I be letting go of the Feri current, or at the very least, letting go of any image or idea of my heart being black? If something is wrong, won't they just tell me to have a better diet and do more swimming and walking, so why not cancel the test and treat my heart better? I have lots to think about and a decision to make on this particular test. One thing is for certain, I know I have a beautiful heart. Truly awesome

to be continued....

What a Samhain season! The days have been jam packed for weeks. After my illness,I had a burst of creative energy, feeling compelled to make more and more spirit bottles with all my old Mardi Gras beads, which then brought into focus my old connection to Voodoo. With that percolating in me, I flew with my son to Minneapolis to be part of the weekend long wedding party for Reclaiming priestess Donald Engstrom and his beloved Mark. We stayed at what my son called the Haunted Mansion and alternatively, the Hostile Hostel. Then back to San Francisco just in time to put on a big party in honor of the Day of the Dead. At the same time, Anne-Marie arrived from England to join Georgia, who’d also traveled with us to Minneapolis, in preparing for their Reclaiming Feri initiation. I initiated them last Saturday, and they left on Monday. I have several blogs in me about all of the above, and hopefully in the coming days, I will have time to write them. So mote it be!