blessings

It rained almost nonstop for the entire span of Pantheacon. Pretty much every conversation contained expressions of gratitude, as most Pagans were cognizant of the serious threat of drought hanging over California. The rain fell as a blessing on the land and as a blessing on this year’s conference.

This year was a significant one for me. It marked the anniversary of my diagnosis of Type II Diabetes. I’ve kept my blood sugar within normal levels for a full turn of the wheel by making big changes in my diet and by keeping moving. I am healthy, and that has been a major magical working. Shifting consciousness by going into trance and working between the worlds is a breeze for many of us Pagans. Shifting consciousness to brussel sprouts and a brisk walk, not M&M’s and a good novel, being what the body wants, is a heck of a lot harder.

But, I’ve done it, and I kept it up at Pantheacon, where the easiest food to obtain is chocolate chip cookies and pizza and the exercise room is one of the few rooms in the hotel not teeming with Pagans. Working out is a great way to get some solitude, and the hotel is hospitable enough to provide a lot of comfortable seating areas where you can spread out picnics you’ve brought in. Judy wouldn’t eat in the area where she’d witnessed a woman holding court with her five snakes, including a massive white constrictor big enough to eat one of us. My guess is that even next year she’ll give that area a wide clearance, she’s that snake phobic.

I’m a lover of panels, of watching a variety of folks discuss a topic and then taking questions. This year was no different, and going to the panel with the wonky title of ”The Non-Dual, Polytheism, and Magic” led me to become enamored of Lon Milo DuQuette. It true synchronistic fashion, he turned out to be the author of the only book my non-Pagan partner bought. Who can’t resist a book called “The Chicken Qabalah of Rabbi Lamed Ben Clifford”? The title grabbed her (being a lover of all things chicken) and then he impressed her mightily by answering the very question she was thinking when he signed her book. He drew a little picture of himself with the caption “No, Judy”, he wrote, “I am not the Rabbi Lamed Ben Clifford”, thus making her sure that he is, indeed, a mighty magician. I’m for any mind-reading magician who says “I can change only one thing with magic – myself”.

There were well over 2,000 Pagans at Pantheacon, with a breadth of workshops ranging from Tibetan Buddhism to a Jim Morrison ritual. One of my friends almost lost her 20 years of recovery at the Morrison ritual, and another is all geared up to start studying Tibetan Buddhism in earnest.

There are lots of stories to tell, and perhaps I will be telling them here now and then. But, at the moment there is a break in the blessed rain. Gratefully, I know exactly what to do with it. Time for a walk! It’s such a darn fine thing to be healthy.

a step into the unknown

 

 

I’m sitting in one of those hotels for people who are on business trips of over a week – you know, the ones with small kitchens, that are more like truncated apartments?  I’m here because the hotel that hosts the Pagan conference Pantheacon sold out months ago.

 

Both hotels are in San Jose, located amidst several office parks. Most of the offices have emptied since we were here last year, with almost every one sporting a “for lease” sign.   Things are so desperate that the lonely Denny's is offering a big discount for customers with a Pantheacon badge.  It has the feel of a place that has just become a ghost town, with no hope of coming back to life for quite a spell.

 

But there is life at these hotels, both full of all manner of folks interested in places between worlds, comfortable with working with spirits and all that is not visible to the naked eye.

 

It’s always been a very kooky thing, this conference of Pagans in a corporate hotel, but this year, amidst this rainy ghost town of corporate businesses, it feels like we truly are in dreamtime.

 

Last night, the group of us who put on the restorative retreat The Fool’s Journey did a ritual to help conference goers drop their expectations and step into the shoes of the Wise Fool.

 

It felt right, this piece of magic about stepping into a future we cannot see, going forward with an open mind, open heart and outstretched arms. What I loved about the ritual was the breadth of age in the circle. There was a pregnant woman, a new baby, kids of all ages, and my guess is just about every decade of humanity was represented. All of us together did a spiral dance (the baby was strapped to a parent, the very old in the middle in their scooters) and good humor filled the room.

 

When I am done with my coffee I’ll go back to the conference. Who knows what will happen? We step into a future that we cannot see. Best to do it with a bunch of wild earth loving visionaries.

Jupiter aligns with Mars

 

Today is my birthday.   As far as I am concerned, February 9^th  is a great day to have a birthday. The plum trees are in bloom, plump red hearts are in the store windows, and the hills of California are green.  Last night it rained, and now the sun is shining on the damp earth. Yes, a great day to celebrate the miracle of this one specific life!!

 

Next weekend I go to Pantheacon, the annual Pagan conference in San Jose.  The last couple of years I’ve done a lot of reflecting on what it has meant to follow my particular spiritual path, and something about being at Pantheacon makes me acutely aware of the trials and tribulations of being a modern Pagan.  Recently I realized that I’m in my Saturn return of being a Witch, as is the particular tradition I’ve taken part in creating.

 

A Saturn return is an astrological event that happens 27 to 30 years after we were born.  This is the amount of years it takes    Saturn to move through its orbit and return to the exact point that it was at our birth. A Saturn return signals the time when we grow up astrologically. It is the time to release structures that no longer serve us, and a time to mature into our new adult selves. My first Saturn return has long past, my second one looms ahead, but I, along with a lot of other Pagan folks, are actively being challenged in a Saturn-like way to examine ways in which we and our spiritual tradition need to mature and come of age. Many modern Pagan "traditions" were born about thirty years ago, so despite all the claims of being "the old religion", this is our first go around with Saturn.

 

A friend wrote me today that besides some whopping cosmic eclipse, today is a day that Jupiter aligns with Mars.  I’m not sure what that means, but it makes me happy. It feels almost as great as the birthday that fell on the day that The Beatles played for the first time on Ed Sullivan. I know almost every lyric to the entire soundtrack of the musical Hair. Today, I've been singing that song about the moon being in the seventh house and Jupiter aligning with Mars all day long. You know, the one that starts with "This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius...".

I’m thinking today about my spiritual Saturn return and loving this dawning of the Age of Aquarius. I'm pretty darn sure it is officially here. And something about the Saturn return of being a Pagan and this new age  intersect. The grandiosity is fading away, and more and more I feel comfort in being a miniscule part of a much bigger whole. And that's what the tradition I use to believe would change the world actually is - just another small little group among many groups, all of us putting our shoulders and prayers to the wheel, trying to move things in the direction of peace guiding the planets and love steering the stars.  The world is changing, you can feel it in the air. But, that is the nature of things, and no person or small group of folks was or is the linchpin of change, or maybe we all are. Every one of us. Yes, I like that idea much more. It's so Aquarian!!!

Can I tell you again just how much  I love the plum trees in bloom?  It is a damn fine day to have a birthday!! 

a perfect day

Yesterday was a good day. I got drunk on poetry, all the plum trees on my street burst into bloom, as if on Brigid's cue, and the day ended with hearing my all-time favorite bad poem.

Yes, my favorite bad poem.

Years back, a friend had a birthday party where all the guests read a bad poem they had written or did some bad performance art. It was fantastic! There's something completely liberating about creating Bad Art. It's also not quite as easy as it sounds. Try it! There's lots of words that are crying out to be included. Reading poetry all day yesterday, I learned from a lover of Tennyson that we can now adopt abandoned and neglected ones as our own at Savethewords.org. Your poem need not be full of tortiloquy, it just needs to be bad.

My favorite poem at that reading years back was one that my friend's partner, Bill Simpich read. It has stayed with me for over 15 years. This year, I went to their house for a small Brigid ritual which included poetry (mostly good) being read. Bill contributed his bad poem...substituting the line about 12-steppers with something more of the times. You will know that line when you read it. And, please read it. What would the light be without the dark? And what would this ocean of good poetry be without some bad poetry? It was a perfect way to end a perfect day.

Yesterday I posted Walt Whitman's beautiful poem. Today, I am giving you:


BILL SIMPICH'S REALLY GOOD BAD POEM

I am suffering.

I am offering my suffering

To you.

For your enjoyment

And your education

And your edification

And the inevitable reification

Of my suffering


I am suffering

Because our planet is dying

My family is fucked

The facebookers ae everywhere

And the man is at the door


I am suffering

Because our lives are without meaning

But for those values we impose upon them

In these fleeting moments of existence

Dominated by the slavery of a living wage that is nonpareil,

The glossy slickness of advertisements of an utterly vacuous ghostlike form

Of electronically opiated and mediated and emaciated and masticated

Entertainment


I am suffering

Because I cannot see the sun

My eyes are red and hurting

I can only stare at the moon

I adore you, Dark Mother

But now you are dead

Before I join you over there

Won't you join us over here?

Deep in the core, is your heart still beating?

Wasn't your Sea of Tranquillity once teeming with salmon?

Were your meadows filled wtih apples?

Did your inhabitants bask in the earthglow?

Did they suffer from earthburn?


And I am suffering

Because it would be, if nothing else, insufferable

To grow old and die

Without being there

At the creation

And in bringing

To a close

Completely and totally

Once and final

Caving and breaking

That leads to the inevitable

Crashing and burning

That concludes

In the demise

And the fall

Of the American

Empire

Poem for the Fourth Annual Brigid Poetry Reading

In honor of Brigid, Goddess of Poetry and Healing, this year my contribution is a poem written in 1860 by one of my favorite American mystics, Walt Whitman.

Follow the links in the comments section of this post and the original invitation to the great web of poetry that is being spun today.


States!

by Walt Whitman

STATES!
Were you looking to be held together by the lawyers?
By an agreement on a paper? Or by arms?

Away!
I arrive, bringing these, beyond all the forces of courts and arms,
These! to hold you together as firmly as the earth itself is held together.

The old breath of life, ever new,
Here! I pass it by contact to you, America.

O mother! have you done much for me?
Behold, there shall from me be much done for you.

There shall from me be a new friendship—It shall be called after my name,
It shall circulate through The States, indifferent of place,
It shall twist and intertwist them through and around each other—
Compact shall they be, showing new signs,
Affection shall solve every one of the problems of freedom,
Those who love each other shall be invincible,
They shall finally make America completely victorious, in my name.

One from Massachusetts shall be comrade to a Missourian,
One from Maine or Vermont, and a Carolinian and an Oregonese, shall be friends triune, more precious to each other than all the riches of the earth.

To Michigan shall be wafted perfume from Florida,
To the Mannahatta from Cuba or Mexico,
Not the perfume of flowers, but sweeter, and wafted beyond death.

No danger shall balk Columbia’s lovers,
If need be, a thousand shall sternly immolate themselves for one,
The Kanuck shall be willing to lay down his life for the Kansian, and the Kansian for the Kanuck, on due need.

It shall be customary in all directions, in the houses and streets, to see manly affection,
The departing brother or friend shall salute the remaining brother or friend with a kiss.

There shall be innovations,
There shall be countless linked hands—namely, the Northeasterner’s, and the Northwesterner’s, and the Southwesterner’s, and those of the interior, and all their brood,
These shall be masters of the world under a new power,
They shall laugh to scorn the attacks of all the remainder of the world.

The most dauntless and rude shall touch face to face lightly,
The dependence of Liberty shall be lovers,
The continuance of Equality shall be comrades.

These shall tie and band stronger than hoops of iron,
I, extatic, O partners! O lands! henceforth with the love of lovers tie you.