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
