Friday, the 13th

Today I was released from a role in a story that’s been being played out for well over a decade. Why I’ve played this role, how it came about, why this particular story was invoked and who had a part in the invocation, this remains a mystery. Perhaps more will be revealed, but right now I’m reveling in the sense of freedom, the liberation from the trappings and duties of a role I never auditioned for. Writing this tonight, with the full moon glimmering in the sky, I attempt to draw back and look at this story with a new distance, and explore my own spin. Everything feels different.

For many years I was a favored cohort of the famous witch Starhawk, the one who wrote what so many of us have called the bible of modern (is there any other?) witchcraft. I was there thru the early years when the Craft was growing by leaps and bounds. Close to two decades later, the “community” which gave birth to the now international “tradition” has become energetically codified into ceding one person the last word. Tragically, this is not what any of us wanted, including Starhawk. Being the first generation to break away from monotheism, with an overculture organized around celebrity, with a bright Star in our midst, it’s probably not surprising that we would inadvertently act out the myths and stories of monotheistic gods and their challengers. These were the stories we were raised on. At this point, Reclaiming has spilled far past it’s original container of the Bay Area, and beyond the container, things may look very different. Here in the Bay Area, a story has been working thru the community in much the same way a story is worked at a week-long witchcamp, with priestesses aspecting the roles and every cranny of the story being explored. Who could have guessed that the story we'd be working for a decade would be the story of God and his angel, Lucifer?

In two covens with Star, I had deep affection and love for her, sharing with her not only our long history, but a similar sense of humor and reverence for the irreverent. She was a good friend. Our covens were testing grounds for the tools that soon would be wielded and taught at the spreading witchcamps, and the tales of our exploits combining magic and activism would spice several of the books Starhawk would write.

During those years, my friend Reya referred to Starhawk and Rose’s home as “Studio 54”, the club in the 1980’s that only the most famous and beautiful were admitted to. It was heaven, and I was at home there. Then, something happened. Actually, many things happened, almost simultaneously, resulting in my free fall from grace and the taking on of the role that’s plagued me for years. My coven bought land together, I asked for Feri initiation, the Reclaiming collective dissolved, Starhawk hired a community member to be her personal assistant and lobbied for her personal assistant to produce our communities two big events, The Spiral Dance and California witchcamp. This personal assistant had just taken on the magical name of the protaginst in Star's novels, and has played out the role in the Bay Area community that novelist's protaginists usually do, being a kind of mini-me or shadow/mirror of the author.

During this time, I was in a study group on Feri, made up of six of us who were working towards initiation. Within a year, I was no longer in coven with Starhawk, and my study group had turned into Reclaiming’s first Feri coven, the Triskets. The Triskets were light bringers, clamoring to make things more transparent, demanding that shadows be named and brought into the light. I shudder now thinking of our intensity. We brought into the spotlight the Feri origins of Reclaiming, giving those roots a glamour and power that are still bearing strange fruit. Mistakes were made.

What was it about that year or so that invoked the Lucifer story with such force? Is this a story that has to be worked thru in the first generation of a “tradition” that breaks away from judeo-christian monotheism, or is it a story so archetypal that it will always resonate? Being first generation witches, those who are still in someway operating in reaction to the monotheism in which we are raised, did we unconsciously invoke it? Or is it indeed an intrinsic part of Feri?

Last year I watched as my dear coven sister Thorn devoted herself to the current of Lucifer, the bringer of light. This threw my other Trisket coven sisters and I into revisiting our connections to Feri. It prompted me to take another good look at the story of Lucifer and examine how a bringer of light could be so fully transformed into being percieved as the embodiment of evil. I remember the moment that with a blinding flash of bright insight I realized that if anyone was playing the role of Lucifer in local Reclaiming, it was me. I was for years a favored cohort of our famous witch. Challenging her power, questioning how we were structuring ourselves, I fell from her grace. The energy body of local Reclaiming polarized itself between the two of us. Anyone who shared similar views with me was seen in my sway, I was credited with more power than a normal mortal should have. Some idealized me, some saw me as the root of all troubles in the community. Before I realized what story was being played out, I was perpetually confounded by what was going on, and was trying constantly to clear my name. In the Lucifer story, the more you try to clear your name, the more bedeviled you become.

Today, it shifted. I can feel it. I’m free of the role. The part of Lucifer in Bay Area Reclaiming will no longer be played by Deborah aka Oak. Whew! I’m relieved. Thank you, full moon. Thank you Friday, the 13th. I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille. This time, I'd really like a romantic comedy. Alright?