Winter Solstice Devotional

The following is a bit of verse I wrote for my solstice ritual. It has been edited but the original was handwritten and then ritualistically burned to symbolize a sort of rebirth as the winter solstice is the last of the dark half of the Neo-Pagan wheel of the year. Although I admit this calendrical set up doesn't observe all of my non-wiccan beliefs, the concept of the solstice resonates very strongly for me with Persephone and the Orphic myths of her involving Dionysus.  The book which inspired heavily my honoring of her in this fashion is called Dionysus: Exciter to Frenzy by Vikki Bradshaw.

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May we fly to worlds new and wondrous

May our love flourish like the lusty wild that makes the rain fall and the trees grow

May love forever honor the flesh even as we revel in the mysteries of the Spirit

May touch be as invigorating as the miracle of divine possession

May our hearts always look up to see a whole universe of stars waiting to be known

We have only but to reach out and know their names

Love, Protection - I summon
Fear, Paralysis to change, I banish

with the Night, her longest reign of the Year, I  abandon and commit to Persephone’s descent
the crippling anxiety, the fear that keeps me from embracing the myriad powers of her children in the Green, and her son Zagreus-Dionysus of the vine

with the Sun, Hecate’s Torch, I welcome life renewed
I open my home and heart to the wonders of rebirth
My your power flow freely through the veins of the world of Spirit,
May my walk down the paths you have trod many a time be blessed
as it is an honor to walk in your shadow, and see the beauty of the Hidden World
that you have unlocked, with your Skeleton Key, that not even Gods can deny admittance to.

Life and Madness, Abundance and Pleasure, Lady Persephone sows
I commit to her these ghosts of this years past as fodder for soil,
to be buried to furnish the next year’s King, the return of the Virile Spring,
these I give over to be churned into sustenance
the death of the old gives way to the new

Hail Hecate Mistress of the Mystic Ways, Guardian of the Keys to all the Realms

Hail Persephone, who sits on her Underworld throne, promising death,

release with the proliferation of Night,
but at the end, the Sun rises in Birth.

..so what now? - Paganism as Experience

I spent the better part of a year reading everything I could get my hands on about nature centered paganism, devotional polytheism, and meditative journeying work. Like any new-comer pagan, I wanted to be thorough, and find where I seem to resonate the most on the spiritual spectrum. I.e. I am I a hard or soft polytheist? Do I believe in gods at all? Is it that I believe that there are various manifestations of cosmological and natural forces? I am sure that I am not the only one, that while browsing the pagan blogosphere, felt as though finding answers to these questions was crucial before engaging socially with others concerning their religion.

While I am not saying that knowing the answer to these questions is not important, I did find myself so preoccupied with research and dialectical debates on the matter that I actually didn't allow myself the room to spiritually experience the possibilities of all this theological theorizing. I tried to intellectually analyze all of the "data" - which was really, in the end, accounts of how others experience the spiritual and the occult- and then mentally determine which "fit" was best from my personal bias. Whoa, boy, was I going about it wrong!

When I just let all of the research and book knowledge go, and opened myself to the world around me, I found that it was rife with energy, that genius loci and entities (gods, spirits, fae, whatever you would like to call them) are present, that nature's power is tangible, regardless of how you metaphysically and religiously categorize it. This was how I should have started - from experience and then researched how those experiences might have been codified and transcribed into religious tradition.

Once I encountered a seemingly moon/night based deity in a spiritual journey that, had I based it on my research, I would have tried to stuff in my mind as the role of Nyx or Selene. But as she appeared to me at that time, she was a murky mixture of aspects of both, and even still to this day I am hesitant to ascribe names to her lest that back her into an identity corner that would limit my understanding of the experience of her. After letting go of my assumptions, it was easier to just let her be in my mind as she manifested, not what I tried to limit her to.

When I was learning about the "green man" I also tried to ascribe this role to a genius loci I call the "Old Man" who is a steward of the land, but never once has he presently conveyed to me that he is the virile stud that many pagans experience the green man as being.  I tried so hard to fit him into my paradigm of nature, but his first lesson was of course that he and all of the natural world is unbound by our preconceptions, no matter how ingrained  they may be.

So with this in mind, I believe that research and knowledge is of course vital to a pagan in respectfully engaging with other traditions and faiths, but in the end Spirit is not going to just appear a certain way because you wish it. Be open to possibilities, and I have found with that comes a world of spiritual discovery.

p.s. This is all based on my personal UPG, so please take this post within that context.

My first bit of poetry to share: The Hidden Ones

It's been a difficult meandering of thought to come to this decision, as I have always been extremely self conscious when it comes to sharing my creative work. But since much of my poetry deals with the gods and the spiritual encounters they have shared with me, and as consequence the purpose of writing them down was to creatively honor and devotionally acknowledge the forces, genius loci, and deities that have showed me so much already, it seemed wrong at the end of the day to not share my wonder of the universe with the world. I always thank Apollo for his inspiration, and to not let the result of his willingness to share just a little bit of creativity with me be shared with someone seems in part to not fully recognize and respect his gifts.

So with a leap of faith and a fear of criticism, here goes nothing!

(Shes taking the high give, shes flipping uncontrollably, and the landing is.......a mess)

This first piece I would like to share came about as the result of a meditative journey into the realm of spirit. I am not going to go into the discussion of whether or not it's the spirits playing with the images and notions already present in my mind to create such an experience, or if it's just how I was actually processing the whole shindig, because undoubtedly this piece is a paltry record of how it actually went down. But as poetry and my own words seem to be the only way to convey it, here goes nothing.

(we are not sure if her body will heal back to it's uninjured form after such a hard, unforgivable impact, but she's getting up anyway, hobbling along back to ladder, hoping to do it all over again)

by songofilluvatar

The hidden ones, those who keep the flame burning,

that washes the cosmos in holy light,

the fire of eternal creation, ever unfolding like origami,

with a message from their voices scrawled in the center

crying “Veritas”

they left the winding thread, this spiral path,

to the heart of the realm, and there I found a fool,

parading as king, ruling over a land so fair that turned black

at his Midas touch,

and I saw the labyrinth Madonna behind his throne

pointing, as if to say, here is your assignment

The target which will right the scales when arrow lodges in skull,

and so I aimed and took faith in my shot, and with shaft

Read more

A discussion on the progression of my life and why some parts of it are irreconcilable with my path

Up until about a year ago, when I decided to get serious about pursuing paganism as a spiritual path, with an earnestness life previously made impossible, I began realize that many aspects of my life do not fit in with my new sense of ethics and of self. The gods have shown me that there is more to life than our petty squabbles for success and the cyclic song of nature and it's neverending return have allowed my mind to hone in on its rhythms and realize the message it has been secretly telling us all along, if we only are willing to lend an ear to listen.

"My child, we are all that ever was, and all that may be, yet you try so hard to fight against me. You are, in reality, fighting against yourself. " 

The land and its spirits have entered into my journeys, taking me down roads that show the distance I have placed between myself and the life source that sustains all things. Once, I had a vision that an unruly horse was destroying the Duchess' crops (the Duchess is a regional spirit that I have come to know over the past few months or so). The horse was, in the end, an aspect of myself that refused to get into gear, to start actually walking all of the environmentalist mumbo jumbo that my spiritual revival was leading me to, but I had yet, and still have yet, to fully execute. The horse, this rabid equine, had to be shot by me personally in order for life to go on as destined. At the time, this quest seemed to violate my ties to Artemis, who as a protector of animals, I seemed to think would discourage such death. But soon I came to understand the horse was not a spirit guide, but rather a projection of my current struggle with reality.

Since I began college, I have felt, as I am sure many of us do, this heavy push towards the linear progression of what is assumed by many to be normal and healthy: grow up, go to college, get a career, have babies, die. Of course the dying facet is natural, and should be in essence healthy when it comes out of natural circumstances, but when I found myself face to face with Gaia herself, and Artemis, mother-protectress of all beasts, I realized that success in this world has become synonymous with destruction. If it isn't the natural world we are putting at risk with our mindless industry and consumerism, then it is our own blissful ignorance that makes it possible for us to cry out for the injustice of our nation's minorities while at the same time turning a blind eye to the slave labor that produces our goods in other parts of the world.  Now I know I am currently sitting in the seat of the hypocrite by spewing this righteous anger, for I myself still get up in the morning, fill my gas tank up, drive an inordinate amount to get to school, work, and perform tasks for my extracurricular responsibilities, and all the while consume the same food that has been deemed okay to contain genetically modified ingredients.

 Right now, I know I am anything but an earth warrior. I am just another fat, lazy American that likes to talk big but just returns to the TV where it is safe. But the point is, I am feeling the turn, the churning inside. The part of me that has come to know the gods, know the land, and all her children, feels that the way things currently are is inevitably self defeating. Nature, the universe will go on long after we have killed ourselves and everything we can along with it in the process of our poisoning the earth, but I don't want to live the rest of my life being part of the reason that we may one day, as a species, play a part in our own separation from the life of the divine - which is the very thing that has been right before us all along. It is not in the heavens, nor in another dimension, but it is everywhere.

In other news, my UPG has revealed to me that Zeus and Hera have a very steamy love life, despite what the myths may suggest about their relationship. Their love springs up with the force of two worlds colliding and is an awe-inspiring power to experience.  Hail the Theoi, and my love pours out over them like water over a cliff. Its as though once I became acquainted with them through devotional work, my heart has swelled up twice its size just out of sheer respect and admiration for the powers of nature they wield, and for who they are as personas.



Artemis by glassie on deviantART