Circle Around like the Moth

The topic of conversation last night moved, as it sometimes does, to a
girl we met at a pagan gathering last year. She was a young, beautiful, probably
early twenties hippie chick, who didn't wash, didn't hold a job and was
self professed "from the stars." Now, I could go on about what I think
about such practices, and I do have opinions, (and not all of them are right!), but really where my brain goes to is the way that people cobble together bits of
traditions and leave out the hard parts of theirs. Traditions, I
believe, are used to create a necessary tension inside to help catapult
us forward. They work, not because they are right (my hope is that if
we are in a tradition at all, it is right for us), but because they are
facilitating a creative tension in us that activates the inner life. It
creates a reminder for us about where we are going and why. This is
what is said when we speak of discipline.

Many traditions have ways of disciplining. Eastern traditions have
archery, yoga, meditation work, silence and mindfulness practices. Some
Christian traditions have rules about alcohol or drug use, swearing,
sexuality or fasting. Our tradition of Wicca and others like us, have
disciplines towards the upkeep of hearth and home, fasting, prayer
work, daily meditations, no drug use/ no heavy alcohol use during
certain stages of training. Other Wiccan trads require you to become
vegetarian, hold vigils at certain times, not practice other traditions
at the same time, and so forth. While the action does limit the
initiate, the point of these is not aimed at the limitation, in truth,
but to act as a reminder and help the initiate develop some sort of
self knowledge and awareness.

As a Wiccan priestess, I am always telling my initiates that it is easy
to be an initiate by yourself. The work starts to get hard when you
move into community. We are all saints alone. It's easy to be fluid
when there are no requirements. Our craft is perfect when no one is
looking or when I can cobble together any practice that makes me feel
comfortable. Craft isn't about being comfortable, its about embracing
our power, being grounded in our truest self, and living fully and in
right relationship with nature, humanity and the Gods. (among other
things) Priestess Miriam of the voodoo tradition in NOLA once told me
that my job as a priestess wasn't to make people comfortable. It was to
make them uncomfortable. Because if they get comfortable, they will
pull up a chair, put their feet up and stay where they were. The job of
the tradition is not to make us comfortable, it's to make us stronger.
It is supposed to push us off the ledge (proverbially speaking). Boot
camp isn't comfortable. University work isn't comfortable. Child
rearing or holding a job isn't comfortable. We get comfortable as we
become stronger.

One of the most common pitfalls today that I see in craft is lack of
discipline. As soon as things get tough, the first thing that gets
chucked is our meditation practice, our spiritual communities and our
regular magical work. We remove the tension to make ourselves
comfortable in order to go back to what we were doing before. There is
a sense that because we were comfortable before and it felt good, it
must have been right, and what we are doing now must not be because we
feel anxious, stressed, angry or hurt. We freak out and remove the
tensions as quickly as possible. I also have noticed that the reason
most often stated of why people come to paganism initially is because
they can do what they want when they want and how they want to do it.
They are "tired of the monotheistic right and wrong system." What this
sounds to me is like a child's perfect world of "I don't want to eat my
veggies, go to sleep ever, or clean my room". What it creates is a high
chair tyrant who has serious problems with authority, who has no
grounding in reality, who has no ability to function in the real world,
and has a entertaining level of self delusion of what their abilities
actually are. People are using their spirituality as a justification
for their lack of discipline and aimlessness.

Any true faith system, magical system or religious system worth its
weight is going to require its initiates to hold to a discipline. It is
going to make its initiates work, act with intention and they are going
to feel limited. Paganism isn't about not being limited, its about
freedom. People get confused about this. They think that freedom means
doing anything that you want. However, this is a misnomer. Freedom as a
state of being is freeing yourself from impulses that whip you around
and run your life. Disciplines remove you from the “fear tradition” and
instill a “tradition of intentional living.”

To go from whim to whim to whim isn't freedom. It's slavery.

In looking up the word plant and I was amused. It said that a plant is something or someone who is secretly introduced into an organization in order to influence the behavior of its members. This implies to me an intentional action, something that was set upon to do for a reason to create some sort of change in a system that perhaps wouldn’t change or move in that direction otherwise. While I am seeking this type of change actively in my life, I thought it was noteworthy to think about the quality of what we put into our daily life and what affect of which that has on our inscape that we are unaware. In this case, the plant is love! The qualities of love are compassion, enthusiasm, mercy, grace and charity. It is also longing and desire. We are asked by Goddess to plant LOVE into our spirit, the longing, desire, the compassion and the grace of the Holy Ones in our spirit.

So who are the Holy Ones? This is not a straight forward answer but a nuanced mesh that leaves many openings for us to explore. My mind moves from “the redeemed brethren” from Rev. Robert Kirk to the ancestors, guides and spirits that live, move and have their being in the divine river of eternal unity, known in Craft as the River of the Goddess. These are our spiritual companions who ever seek the breast of the Sacred Mother as our source and sustenance.

As I wander down the grey paths of the hidden realms, my inner spirit notices two parts to this emerging as active dynamics: One is an active planting of the love agenda or qualities in our spirit, which would then make us more like the holy attributes, and allow it to become that our decisions would be influenced by that inner directive. Like adding a flavor to a soup, we would find our sauce, our veggies and our meat all influenced by this flavor automatically, and ideally made tastier and greater than the soup would be otherwise. A sacred movement of bland to tangy!

The second is those persons who have Love as their trait. This would by extension put us into deliberate presence and relationships with the intention of bringing us into alignment with friends and companions outside us who uphold the very values that we are looking to embrace. This has as the added value of finding ourselves being modeled decisions that follow the inner directive of our spirit, a community in which to ask for wisdom and we could enter into trust with that inner directive because it is brought forward by people whose informants are in league with love as the inner landscape and quest. We also become the community of souls that are available to others to as a medium of mercy and grace to the world.

As I am thinking about this, my mind moves to those who make love into an effete feeling: lacking power or inward strength. Love does not ask us to be door mats and especially does not ask us to uphold actions that are contrary to our spirits. Love asks us to be honest, straight forward, open to the inner hearts of those around us, to be willing to offer ours and those around us the grace to enable change when an incongruity to Love is discovered. Love is the law, not a suggestion. All magical practices, Spiritual practices, inner goals and relationships that we foster should be done through the lens of Love as it’s guide and guardian. Love is not the caboose on the train but instead is the engine that guides the soul on its track towards to the foothills of experience and enlightenment. Love gathers power and builds power, it does not remove it from ourselves or another. It does not mask its needs, it listens intently to its children and feeds them. It does not pretend to know something it does not. It upholds grace and truth as its mantra. We don’t have power, we are power!