Ghost Girl in Autumn

I recently started honoring and working with the Norse Pantheon, and the Aesir and Vanir have completely stripped away any notions I had of them. Once I saw only a warrior's aesthetic in their lore, but now I find how beautifully their tales are steeped in the knowledge that all are subject to Wyrd - a complicated mixture of fate brewed by the fires of social circumstance, ancestral contributions to the now, and personal action. Frigg, Sif, and Freya have been tremendously comforting to me during this stressful month during our move out our old home.

Odin has been helping my fires of creativity return, and Thor is teaching me how to better protect myself from those "giants" of the psyche that keep trying to knock down my own personal fortress.  I have not abandoned the gods who have brought me this far, but I have been craving new sources for spiritual growth. I do not want to be the sort of pagan who jumps from pantheon to pantheon and tries on new gods as though they were nothing more than clothes to be traded out from season to season,
but I feel it would be foolish to ignore the call of other deities, while remaining just as firm in my relationship with Artemis and Apollo as before.

During my path as a pagan it has always been a personal sign of strong communication between myself and deity when poetry seems to run like an unbroken thread - the words pour out, an act of devotion ensues, and something I hope I can call art results.

I asked Freyr what was the meaning of ghost girls

shrouding us beneath their skirts

The only response I received

was a heart wrapped in vintage ivy

and a thyrsus swollen in the autumn air

Pine cones opened, exultant

harvest has come,

but can the solace of night keep pace?

or are we tossing the leavings out

for ghost girl,

inviting her to smother us

with the humidity of moss?

Make your offerings, the norse god said,

for ghost girl keeps the howling winds at bay,

all in exchange for your witness

to her dance

watch her colors change

watch her roots spin, reach out

and find new ground in the incipient

you, an abbreviation of spring

finding new ground spiritually in uninviting waters along life's beach

I'm not going to lie. As of late, the deities and spirits have seemed distant. I can't hear them the way they seemed to be jumping out at me during the first year and half of my path. Work piled up, strapping me between a prison of concrete and glass doors to where even the sky through our windows appears less of the domain of air, and more of a tainted distortion as the sun's light passes through the corporate junction between consumerism and materialism. My house has become a cave which I run into just to escape from the thought of work, and thus, I hide in it like a bear hibernating.

When my thoughts have turned to spiritual matters - usually ending in reflections on how dried up my spiritual connections seem to be now - despair usually ensues. And as an adult, I have, however mature it may be, learned to hide my emotions in pointless busy tasks even while at home - reading for hours on end, gaming splurges that sometimes last for days (this is not to say that enjoying either of those things is inherently bad, just I indulge in them oftentimes as opportunities to hide from what is really the matter).

So as the months have passed, and each full moon passes by unremarked because I have lacked the time or energy to ritually honor Luna's dance, I found myself wondering if all of my research and spiritual investment in paganism has actually brought any real change in my life. Have I become a more aware, wonder struck child of the moon and sun just to find myself trapped and numbed by the modern world so many of us are forced to live in out of necessity?

And then I remember to walk outside, and stop thinking and fretting for just a minute, and actually listen.  I am fortunate enough to live currently in a place that, though in the middle of a small city, is surrounded by nature.  The cicadas are brewing their primal song, the cricket's call out to one another in a frenzied symphony of life, and the wind whispers the tree's chorus. It all seems to say,
We are here, We have always been here, It is you who have left us

And I realized that all my concern about ritual and rising to celebrate the "right" holidays has been grossly misguided. Instead of worrying about when I can commune with spirits and celebrate the old ones of wild, I just need to step outside and let them do the talking. That is not to say that the pagan holidays should go by unremarked, as they are wonderful points of the year that we as a community can connect and unite in honor of key segments of the seasons, of the spirit's track along the alternations of the earth. But I spent too much time on when, on the spectacle of how it "should be done" rather than just letting the natural lines of communication open up.

Friends of ours graciously took us on a trip with them yesterday, and we went hiking to see a sixty foot waterfall. The moment we began climbing up a back road of the mountains, the visions of the spirits started to hit me again. I saw a laughing, vivacious woman whose laughter caused the hills, rocks, and peaks to jut out, making the ridges around us. The sun was a flower held by the child we call The Real, rays petals reaching down to earth. And the waterfall herself was singing, her water splashing over me, drawing me into her and her fall, her surrender to the earth. Everything spun, everything was held in balance. Sky romances earth, and the Earth's children are weathered away to visages of segmented rock which cradle us, and tell the story of how the gods are just the planet, just the world, and it's forces twirling in the love light of Stars.

We try to serrate the spiritual as though it's knife can only catch in moments like this one, but I had been so emotionally drained from the pattern of life and work that the spirit's knife failed to catch when trying to open up the parts of me that need to hear the cicada song, the bird trills, the wind's dirge of summer into fall.  I'm now finding Artemis roaming in fields of human life I never would have believed she could inhabit before. And Apollo is no longer the distant pre-christ archetype he was for me before, a deity I payed homage to because he held sway in my home realm, that of Story. Now I see him as a man by the fire telling me to Speak, to tell him a Story, with my life and the words it has given me.

Beliefs

I have recently been asked by an old high school comrade of mine if I would like to attend an interfaith meeting at a local pride group. He said the group is interested in trying to make any services they have inclusive of everyone, and would like to hear from people of paths outside of the Christian faith. I feel really excited to have this opportunity to contribute to the community. I identify as queer and pagan, and this is honestly the first time ever I had a chance participate in both communities in any capacity beyond a social call.

But I do want it to be understood that I in no way feel as though I can act as a spokesperson for pagans in general, especially since the term pagan as an umbrella term encompasses such a wide variety of theologies that even a single group could have members ranging from hard polytheists - who believe the gods are distinct and very separate deities-  to monists who believe the divine is one entity that simply utilizes different names and faces to achieve what ever metaphysical goals it has in mind.

For instance, I have even come across on the internet people who identify as Wiccan and believe in the traditional dual divinity of the God and the Goddess, and others who identify as the same and believe  in the same duality but ascribe names to them of other gods who fulfill similar spiritual functions from other religions (i.e. referring to the Goddess as Isis, or the God as Pan, etc).

There is even a wide divide concerning where the gods originate or are "headquartered" in. Many believe the gods are part of the natural world, that they reside in it and are actually identities of ecological, tectonic, or even meteorological forces.  Yet many others also believe that the gods reside on other planes or, similar to many views that Christians have of their God, that they are outside of the world altogether.

So what I say past this particular paragraph should be taken no further than as the spiritual perspective of a solitary practicing pagan whose personal experiences are, to use a term widely used in the pagan community to discuss religious experiences without toting them around as universal fact, unverified personal gnosis, or UPG for short. I have only met a couple of pagans in real life and most of my knowledge about the community at large is from what I read in forums or in the blogosphere.

First and foremost, I have always strongly felt that for me, intuition and the personal journey is the crux on which my whole spirituality stands. My reading list that I have gone through on the subject  has been quite long, but I feel first and foremost that if something a certain religious expert says doesn't rest well, or make sense in your own spiritual world view, then it's probably going to be harmful to your spiritual development. There is a huge field of pagan authors out there who all have their own take on the divine and how it should be approached. I'm not trying to say to keep a closed mind and not listen to wisdom, but if your experience of a particular god has been completely encouraging and positive, and someone comes along and blares at you that what you've seen is not in keeping with their experiences or the mythology, etc, then you are just going to have to let that go while also understanding that your interactions with the gods can be completely different to what others experience.  And that is okay.

Secondly, I would like to say that I personally identify as a pantheistic polytheist. Pantheism is the belief that the divine is in every little thing, or more specifically, that the spirits are everywhere around us.  The qualifier of polytheist means that I believe the gods are distinct and separate deities, i.e. I do not think one can swap Isis and Gaia and claim it is okay because they are both the same Mother Goddess.  I'm not saying that it is not okay to see it that way if that is your UPG. Just for me personally, this what I have come to understand of the divine workings of the gods.

Basically as a pantheist, I recognize that is possible to encounter the spirits and/or gods anywhere. They are in the trees and stones and rivers. They are the mountain, sky, and rain. They are in everything.

As a polytheist, I believe there are probably more deities than there are people living on this planet, and that they are distinct (but I'm not beyond the possibility of accepting that many of them could share spiritual bodies).

Prayer for me does not necessarily need to involve words. For strength I look to the stones and ground and seek to find support from them.  When I need emotional healing I look to water and draw serenityfrom the waves. Often, when I praise the gods, I do so verbally, not just in my head, because I believe that to expend the energy of giving honor is an important part of devotional work. I offer offerings of bread, grapes, incense, and wine when I want to welcome and honor the role that divinity has played in the universe.

Now I understand that magic is frequently tied to paganism due to the popularity of Wicca. For me witchcraft is a practice, a trade, like metal work or car repair, Although it is tied to my spiritual world view as I believe that that spirits are everywhere and they can frequently be worked with while using magic, I do not consider it a significant or necessary part of my spiritual practice. I am primarily interested in, as far as religion is concerned, with communicating the spirits and the gods, and communing with the divine in the natural world. Witchcraft is more than often used as a guide post for me to communicate with them - i.e., by setting up a circle, raising the power, and entering a trance, but it is not the axis around which my religious experience revolves.

I am also willing to admit that I am completely in err about the whole thing and the gods I think I know could be other gods in disguise. I wouldn't be surprised that the deity I worship as Artemis is actually just a local forest god. But in the end, I don't think that sort of knowledge would render my spiritual encounters invalid. Just now they would be viewed with a different lens.

And I think I have worn my keys in quite a lot by this point, but I just wanted to spend some time reflecting on what my personal beliefs are before perhaps being questioned about them in a public setting next month.

Another poem, "The Gospel of The Universe"

Pretty much my communication and honoring of deity lately has been primarily through art, so here is another which tries to express the scope of how nature is everything. We are fools to think are not part of it.

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Here, betwixt the open blue sky and the ever firm altar of earth,

I find myself pressed between these two constants,

whose eternal exchange is the origin of all creation

the sky gave the earth it’s fire

and the earth lets the sky feel the wonder of being held in form,

as it’s light is always being woven

into the the flower, the seed,

the fox, the child,

And it is in this moment I see

the image of all things peel back,

and there are only two waves, two horizons

converging on the point of where I/We merge into all things,

our waves bouncing against each other,

creating new waves,

and new tangles of atomic strands,

as far as one can see - a static frenzy

to which the beginning and the end are irrelevant

everything collides to reform,

to create, to converge back into everything else,

this hourglass turns back, and forth,

and all the grains are in union with stands of violet keeping us close

we are cleansed in the knowledge that nothing ever truly dies

Queen Hiwassee

 Yesterday my parents took me on a hiking trip that extends past an hydro electric plant on the Hiwasee River and there I encountered a community of spirits just as lively as one would expect with such a thriving ecosystem.   Their voices in the wind, the echoing of the forest against the stones, the roaring of current as it flowed among the rapids - it was pure rapture. I couldn't leave such an experience with the divinity of nature unmarked, so here is a poem about that experience.

I watched as my mother and father were seduced by a river

“she is the loveliest,” They swooned, “no others can compare.”

How petty, to think only one river can house the seed of beauty,

when its flower has more than enough

to spread along Appalachia’s curves

But then I came across her banks,

nestled between mountains whose peaks

echoed of topographical Artemis of Ephesus,

breasts of plenty out of which the green forest

by the glittering water spilled across rock and

cliff

And there the river starlet was,

a sinuous nymph whose body

seems to run an endless course

each cresting wave over a jutting rock a finger

motioning, “Come into me and let my water

carry away your tears in the flood”

She becomes the mouth of the Tennessee

when their waters meet,

his hands, his writhing and wild heart,

but here, she is unadulterated by Mississippi’s tryst with the King,

here she is gathering an army of fishermen and hikers as lovers,

so that no king, when they finally reconvene their seelie court

beneath the translucent aqua,

can tarnish her beauty

by doting on another

She clashes with mountains as banks,

she holds parties with pines whose stillness

does not equate with dullard here,

she lures a boatman into her embrace

by tempting him with her scales,

knowing that eventually one will be foolish enough

to ride into her rapid hips where she will keep him forever

For us love is patient and kind,

to her love is serfdom

and everyone who sees her winding down by the foot trail,

her voice, a rushing laughter in the sun echoing down the foot trails,

to everyone who feels her mountain chill,

she is a queen we all wind up promising fealty to

by the repetition of our dance along rock and root mazed shore

A Hymn For The Gods

Last Friday, my wife and I were ran out of our home due to a busted pipe causing water to leak into our apartment and as a result our ceiling collapsed in sections of the living room. The day before this happened, I wrote this poem about the things I am grateful for which the gods have given me. Even after this misfortune, I reflected on the poem and still find all of it to be true.

 Nature is divine, which also means nature is terror. On a certain level, I think the two are definitely inseparable. I think it would be easy for me to just toss all of the beliefs I have cultivated over the past two years (beliefs I derived from my own self directed studies and experiences) and just say "well frell it all to hell, what does it matter any way?" But I accepted a year into my studies that nature is a metaphysical and very physical powerhouse, now it was just time to put that acceptance into action.

Life is Chaos, Nature is Power, and we all are caught up in the whirlwind at some point. Its not a matter of if, but when.

(All of these references in the poem are based on my unverified personal gnosis and are not intended to claim that  these deities appear in these ways are for all people)

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I am a daughter of Nyx given life by Apollo’s flame

a body from love herself, Aphrodite

a fallen petal from her rose

my spirit is the horn of Artemis’ slain prey

my heart, a sentinel on Hecate’s way

Eris knows my turbulence is a fear of everything remaining stuck,

She saw Artemis choose me as a child,

but my tutoring begins in her classroom right

before a cavern into Hade’s subdued earth

Gaea gave me the sight to see how her two lovers,

Day sky and Night veil,

are the architects of her kingdom

and Zeus gave me the hunger pains for life,

one that is best served on a platter next to Lust and Triumph

Hera gave me a seat where everything can for a moment remain still

and at peace next to my wife, my beloved,

who is a gift from the serendipity that heaven

tosses about like salt to bless a house

Persephone granted me wisdom to know

that hell is just an ugly word for change

And all the spirits of my home are revealing to me

the roads that lead to their own hidden abodes

Hail the Theoi! Hail the Spirits of the Land!

and I say to my wandering self,

if she hears this, may she return home.