Living liminal

At my place of employment there are these slanted Mirrors which run along the length of the building allowing you to monitor customers as they shop. It's intended to discourage and deter nare-do-wells from shoplifting. But one day last week the humidity and my erratic energy patterns(caffeine problems) came to a head on one of our typical Tennessee stormy summer nights, and so when I looked into the mirror for a split second hoping to catch my breath, it seemed as though I was looking into the reflection of an entirely different place. There were no magical kingdoms or unicorns in that reflection, nothing to simply justify my description of this "liminal experience". It simply it seemed as though the "real world" that the mirror was portraying was simply a gauze over a flickering light which illuminated our motions at a flame's whimsy. It was like watching moth wings beat inside of a lamp hood. Our movements seemed ephemeral and fragile and I felt that if I could reach out and touch that world inside the mirror, then I could pull of the skin of that world, like wings off a moth, and find the real body, my body, falling straighten into the gravity of that world. 

These sort of moments are common in my magical workings, but it was strange, and yet exhilarating to find this sort of calm and uncanny mixture of the "between" and the mundane nestled right where I perform the most menial, uninteresting of tasks in my day to day life. Here, on the grounds where I simply rinse and repeat in the great washing machine that is my retail working retinue, I found that our own bodies are still fluttering, still beating with that riotous chaos which gives us life, even though the patina of commercialism and consumer driven desire usually snuffs it out to a dim ember, so that all I usually feel and see are the down cast eyes of the man who just wants a pack of cigarettes and little else, not even a smile and a greeting which, when offered, he barely even acknowledges. Yet in the mirror, he was glowing, effervescent, a wisp of a light which, when snuffed out, gets swallowed by the larger light of the looming atmosphere.  

In the office it's not uncommon to hear the pipes banging against the lockers, which creates the illusion that someone is opening and slamming a locker door.  Once or twice it set me off guard, but after it's regular occurrence I realized it was the result of document-able and explainable phenomenon.  But just the other evening, I saw movement out of the corner of my eyes, and as usual, I shrugged it off as one of my coworker's heading back to their locker. When I went to grab some lotion out of my own just a few seconds later, no one was there.  My heart skipped a beat, my breath grew heavy, and I could only whisper, "I see ya'll are following me." 

I've traversed through these paragraphs to come full circle to the idea of the liminal and what walking the path of the witch really means outside of the mystery and mysticism of the circle. Our lives are not cleanly cut, the circle is always within other circles, touching and intersecting like ripples across the sea during the rain. My own path of fae hedge crossing work proves time and time again that you cannot simply take off the "hat" so to speak and expect only magical and transformative events to occur within our demarcations of "magic time."  Time and time again, it seems as though our magical systems and beliefs fall apart when we end up falling just a little too far over the line into the world of fae. 

I suppose that that is what grounding is for. Too often I find my spirit and energies easily uprooted by the call of the those across the hedge, so please take warning. Effective magical work needs be done with a foot firmly planted in this world and the next, but it's rather refreshing to be proven wrong about a closely held belief. Like the time when I called to the fae for the first time, expecting Lady of the Lake like women to meet me in trance, when what I get is an old drunken man asking if I've seen his moon shine bottle and if I could leave out some milk and honey for his twin daughters who have gone off again.  Or the time when that summer queen showed up all dressed in peacock feathers, convincing me that she was Hera, only to open up her mouth and show off her set of bloody pointed teeth.

If you go in with expectations, which is only natural, be prepared to have them smashed. In my history of walking the path of the hedgewich, I have found that just when you think that all you are doing is making an offering out of rue water, you consequentially end up offering a spell of protection over some baby entities who have come into your life out of the blue.  

Liminal in one sense means having a dual existence, but it can also prove to show that all of our actions have the two faces of a coin as well. Intention and will are all fine and good, and without them we wouldn't be witches, now would we? But once the fae step in, they often take what we offer and pour out and configure it in new ways. It's as though our moments across the hedge are not just about linear actions, but about stitches in an unravelling tapestry that is quickly and eternally being rewoven into the present. 

The essence of faery is the essence of change. Part of this relationship I have built with my magic and the hedge has shown me that in order to participate in such changes is to stand still, let it catch you up in it, and go along for the ride. I suppose that is contradiction, we must be still to move into the change that sweeps us up into the destructive, yet  re-birthing power of the worlds between worlds.  Yet also you cannot rest at anyone time on one perception of the universe. It's as though you have drawn a card. The first time you glance down at it, it's a spade. But the second time, it's suddenly an ace. It is the exact same card but you have drawn it in a multiplicity of instances resembling this exact moment, and yet it is never the same. Just like when you walk into the same valley in trance, the exact same one you found to be the home of a river sprite, and yet now, you meet a tree named Gall and he has no idea who you are talking about and has never met her. They both exist, but the time and ripples have  washed over each other, changing the landscape, without erasing your own experience. 

And so today, when I go into work later on, I might look into that very same mirror and see only the bland faces of singleminded shoppers who either look to get lost in our treasure trove of cosmetics and candy or hope to find the holy grail of a deal they think they are getting with that misread coupon. But that gauze of light, that rippling sinew of energy that resides is still there, thrumming, waiting to be touched. I just haven't stepped on the right patch of grass over the hedge to see it. Maybe the sky is too dark, or my muscles to tired, or my mood to sour. But it is there all the same.  

Close your eyes. Inhale, cross the hedge, exhale. What you find is anyone's guess, but it will never be the same card once. 

Faery Dreams - on trance work while dealing with mental illness

Night comes draping around me like a familiar blanket, one that often life has withheld from me during my periods of deep depression. Then, sleep was merely an escape, a total black out from consciousness, a temporary freedom from the hell of my own body and it's errant and self deprecating reality. It was like crawling into bed was falling into a noose that I hoped would never let off of it's grip.

But finally, with the help of my psychiatrist and some good old fashioned caffeine, and video game therapy which allows me to displace some of my gender dysphoria (until a time to deal with it when I mentally have enough strength to process and filter it properly), I seem to have found the alchemical compound that transfigures the nightmare of  the human world into a bearable case of ennui and so sleep comes as a sweet lover kissing my eyelids rather than as a despairing mother drowning their child in the hopes of sparing him the terribleness of it all.

It's taken a few months but with the chemical cocktail now in my system  as well as my latent fears  subsiding for the time being, I can look at my bed and no longer sees a coffin. Instead Hypnos reaches out too me, whispering to me of lands beyond the sandman's dunes.  Images began to take hold and for once they do not appear as the the terror filled miasma my mind often experiences during sleep, which decimates conscious fears into subconscious brambles, forever tripping me as I fall into slumber only to find myself surrounded by the imaginings of my own doubt.

Now I fall like a feather and for the first time in a long time I'm having dreams that echo my vision work, that seem to go hand in hand with my waking spiritual experiences. Instead of the jungle of randomness that my dreams usually consist of, I found myself wondering through a realm of story, one in which the edges seemed soft as a feather yet they still cut like knife. It reeked of faerie, reminiscent of something in a Gustav Klimt painting. All of the architecture appeared fraught with the luxuries of gothic architecture and the decadence of  the Renaissance. Through the main halls within a cathedral I walked, wearing a swirling print top of red and black and a skirt  of a fine lace with a belt of blue bells. Continuously I was pushed and shoved about my women wearing Puritan cuts of white and they shoved me towards a man carrying a book which he stored in a ornate wooden box on a stand. When he left I rummaged through it convinced he was hiding something from me. 

But soon he returned and began ordering the women about to make ready as he took the book from my hands. Soon I began to feel contractions and suddenly my belly pushed out an infant lined in silver afterbirth. Overjoyed I took the babe in my arms but the women began to scold me. It wasn't over yet. Three more babes followed nearly falling out of me like stones. And without further elaboration I woke up. 

Initially I brushed it off as nothing more than a dream but as the day went on I found myself haunted by the image of the man with the book, wondering what it was all about. They was a livid quality to this dream that was uncanny in its articulation of detail.

Strange as it may seem I happen to have much of my vision work come to me in the shower. I don't know if it's the liminal property of water that induces such states or the fact I tend to run it as hot as it  is humanly possible to endure without getting burns that triggers the trance but either way, my spirit often just jumps out of me without warning while I'm bathing.

And just so, it happened yesterday. I closed my eyes to find myself standing in a lonely meadow with overcast skies and before me stood a cloaked man. He remained speechless for several minutes until I called out to him and he tossed aside his cloak revealing that he held between his hands the same illuminated book I saw in my dream as he let it fall open between his fingers. It began to blow away into pieces, flailing about into the wind, breaking down into nothing more than crumbling ash. He himself bowed his head as though in gratitude. When he lifted it again, his hood fell back from his face, showing a circlet above his brow which began to sparkle and shine. 

He whispered a thanks and then began to disintegrate  into sand, falling like granules in an hourglass. Fiercely the wind tossed his remains about the meadow and I realized yet again that I was not alone. Four entities emerged from the vignette edges of the scene as though they had just materialized from the artist's hand. Four figures, four infants. The dream continued into my waking hours. 

It's difficult to describe what came next, but slowly their separate identities began to coalesce around them, as they they were taking form and weaving personality even while I watched. But what was clear by the end of the trance was this: they were the disambiguations of a king obsessed with the world in wrote and an enby witch who is distilling all of the harmful toxic things we teach ourselves about what it is to BE out of their blood. It was as though this fae king,with his tome filled with edicts, slowly crumbled into what the universe knows as true change, and from the ashes and my own bleeding heart arose these four spectres beyond my wildest imagining.  

Kou - fae of the earth, boyish yet femme around the edges, bares his sword and hammer in honor and protection of Gaea

Filis - blind harpist whose long draping skirts and bare chest tickled by waist length hair  whirls around him as he sings to the wind and conjures spells out of its notes.

Sejic - genderless (pronouns they), wears the flames about them like a shawl and veil. Eternally conjuring the sacred fires. 

Vyrnig - Water nymph whose body extends as long tentacles which love to pry open the earth's legs in endless copulation. Hair is the unending flow of the river. 

Yeah, I'm not quite sure how that happened exactly, but while dreaming I seem to have birthed in the astral half fae kids who are the highest hopes of a withering fairy king who hopes to return himself to chaos (the true primordial souup) and me, the ever dysphoric, ever shifting, unstable witch of the fucked up earthen plane.

I know it sounds crazy - in fact, I'm not that far above from declaring it's probably just the wishful thinking of a new-age blunderhole who just wants to feel  special. But I have taken this time to talk about my depression and this strange and unusual journey work to discuss something that doesn't receive a lot of coverage in mainstream witch circles : dealing with mental illness while walking the path of Witch. When I am more than likely experiencing night terrors from adjusting to  a new medicine - does that make it anymore exempt from my valid spiritual experiences than say, a child's simple nightmare? When the depression hits and it seems to lead me to the netherworld places while entering the trance state, have my experiences suddenly become invalid because of how my mental state tinges that sort of spiritual journeying? When, in the everyday world, people would just call me paranoid or overreacting, would such reactions be acceptable in the context of your magical life? 

Well, the fact of the matter is, most people think we are already crazy and that it's all "in our head" anyway (whatever the hell that means, perception is literally ALWAYS in your head). But I think we would be discounting the whole wealth of experiences and wisdom that comes from lessons learned while crossing the hedge and simultaneously combating out own mental demons. If Inanna chooses to take me on a ride to the underworld as I find myself mentally on the dark side of the moon - then perhaps that is exactly what this witch boi needs and the journey is no less important just because I'm not emotionally "right." I think there are a lot of attitudes in the writings on magick that are out there that imply to not engage in magical procedures unless you are "fine," "in the right state of mind," or out of the dumps, as though it's dangerous to be a witch if you're anything less than a neurotypical average Georgina. Well, fuck that. Conjure your wards, weave your protection spells, but baby, if you wait till you're "all right" you might be waiting till your dead. If the great primordial bath is chaos herself, then we the mentally skewed gotta a reservation at the Hotel Shook. 

But this is how I am - me, the enby, AD/HD, mood disordered witch - and these fae kids are just as wild, varied, and irreconcilable as I know I am. They literally were born out of the ashes of the old hegemony - the fae king and his edicts fell apart to form them. They no longer form monarchies and dualities of king's and queens. They are working to make something far more wicked - astral creation writhing into dreams and streams.  Don't let anyone tell you that because you're differently abled or neuro atypical that your craft is less than others - that fucking mothergoddess witch we see everywhere doesn't exist. There is no witch that is just a hag, or just a rutting stag of man. We are  chaos made flesh and the void fills us all  - but maybe we, the left of center, have one foot in each world, and our home truly is everywhere and nowhere. And if that isn't the way of the Witch, then I don't know what is.

*paintings by Gustav Klimt in order of appearance: Judith and the Head of Holofernes, Danae, Adele Bloch-Bauer I, Judith II

New Moon

Recently the visions of the moon as the bones of our ancient ancestor planet ripped asunder from us have really taken dominance in my hedge crossing trances. Now I know this isn't just something conjured up by my witch crazy head - there is a scientific theory based on geological evidence found from both Gaea's and Luna's surface that this was once part of our objective reality. (click here to read more.) During the Solstice rites I performed in my home a few days ago, I made offerings to the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth, tying them together in a sacred triangle of divine form on the tentative metaphorical and energetic strings that binds them: the sun as the breath, the earth as the blood and dermis, and the moon as the skeleton of our small segment of the cosmos.

This formation of the three celestial bodies has superseded lately in my magical workings the more common thread I have held onto for years concerning the moon and the sun as spheres of occult influence which views the sun as the gateway for physical manifestation and the moon as the mirror through which we may pass in spirit and come out the other side in the world of the Fae/planes/astral/what-ya-call it. I'm not picky when it comes to semantics. Yes, Yes, words have meaning, they definitely need to refer to specific things, but when it comes to subjects concerning the "beyond," I mean, how definitive and certain can one ever truly be? If my work with the fae and the celestial has taught me anything, it's that as soon as you think you have an understanding or a mechanic of their world pin down, it shifts into something else, like some occult version of the Heisenberg principle.

 But when this new paradigm of our the three heavenly bodies which conduct our immediate physical reality came to me, it's like segment of the cosmic wall paper has been ripped down and I've found a message hidden from the previous owners scrawled on the dry wall. Now just like with any graffiti, that message could either be profound or about as deep as a twelve grader's scrawl on a bathroom stall reading as deez nuts. I mean, with the spirits and the gods, their language may be all around us, but they are not in any way obligated to infuse reality with some great religious revelation on our behalf. I've walked in on a local land spirit standing in front of a fallen horse. I remember thinking "what does this mean? Is this a symbol or incarnation of my own shadows?" when all he said as he turned to me was "lets put her down." A faery really just wanted some help putting down his fallen steed, not some grandiose demonstration of spiritual prowess. Once I met a little girl fae who seemed to be joy incarnate, but when her bubble burst (literally) what she wanted was for someone to summon her sister Crow.  I mean, to be honest, probably most of the situations I've encountered in faery/astral/what have you had very little to do with "spiritual enlightenment" and more to do with the actual everyday happenings of the world within our world.  And just like sometimes you want a grape soda, it's not surprising that Bubble Girl wants rosemary tonic. 

 Sometimes during the energetic swinging of moon, sun, and earth it's absolutely without a doubt a sign of the opening  and closing paths of the inter-dimensional and some times it's just Luna sneaking up on us to play a magical game of titty twister. So during this new moon I' like to take the time to remember that what's out there doesn't need to offer some big sense of enlightenment to validate it's own existence. The sooner you accept your magical path is hardly just the result of your own effort and will the sooner you realize the fun that being had by fae and spirit alike at your own expense.  I mean, it's probably not at all untrue that they love stringing us along when we think we are on some houttie toittie mystical adventure. Doesn't have to be one way.  But here's the kicker - you gotta learn to let go.  

It's funny -  so much of our ceremonial traditions in western witchcraft seem so concerned with every last detail as though a certain brandishing of silver inlaid swords is what makes the mistress of the ways open her skirts for us. Honey, our ancestors did that to her kin the fae  on mother Ireland and I promise you that is not why the portals to the other world open for you during a ritual.  They don't see this expensive reach of steel. All they see his your viscous yet piercing darkness, the immortal soul in you which reaches and sings eternally just to be let in for the shortest of seconds. And like the graffiti on the bathroom stall, sometimes what sees you in the dark wants to weave a wonder around you , and sometimes it merely wants to play. Crossing the hedge teaches you to make no promises about accomplishments. If you seek to ride the trance, it will usually just throw you off entirely, like a bear who some one attempts to tame past cub years.

And if this dark moon  speaks of anything it's of the emptiness it inhabits. It speaks on the destiny of bones buried beneath the soil of Nyx.  It's an emptiness which at times haunt me, echoing the most nihilistic styles of my depression fueled scripts, but now with my surrender to meaning's bed in nothingness' house, I see more. Luna in shadow burying her dead so the the crops of stars might grow. Luna turning away so she might makeout with her bff the night. Or Luna hooded and remote, casting bones in to the dark, waiting for us to move out of her light so that she might read what they prophesy. Perhaps Luna's bones are  fragments of us and so we scuttle during this time of the month hoping to fall into the shapes of our better selves.

New moon precedes new skin for old bones.

Posted a Spell Earlier this Week on Tumblr: Inanna Initiation Ritual

Inanna Ritual for Self Affirmation

I published this one on my tumblr for ease of access for my coven mates and the internet at large. Click on the link to see more. :)

The Tetrad , or The Gods are Trans

It's really not that far away from the point in time currently we currently occupy (well, for those of who have a linear frame of mind, but enough of that wibbly wobbley stuff here) . When I close my eyes I can still remember those first few months when I was learning about the craft and paganism in general. All of those memories of blundering attempts at invoking the god and the goddess based on half baked descriptions of them in water down mass market paper back distillations of Wicca hit me like a truck filled with lead barreling down the highway with brakes that were null.  

More than likely, if you come to know of the craft through mainstream sources, you probably know exactly what I am talking about. Opening up Scott Cunninham and Marion Zimmer Bradley to read about the big booby goddess of the womb and the earth opening her doughty self to some rutting stag of a hairy hunter - all of which tittilates the sense when you are twelve, but when you look between your legs and find something more jarring than the allegedly divine pussy all "females" are suppose to own, it's hard to take such images seriously. 

"The goddess is within you," mainstream feminine centered paganism whispers in you ear like a sweet spell, but wearing your own skin is like wearing that of a many layered beast, and not a single one of them is motherhood incarnate. When you put on lipstick, you look in the mirror and see boy god winking back at you hand in hand with his dike sister the moon. 

In the end, as I've grown into my body, the so called temple which houses the soul, I've realized that if we are in the likeness of the gods, then fertility goddess Fertile Myrtle and phallus sword wielding sky daddy are definitely not the end of Deity, but rather, a single granule of the many gods' presence. 

So fuck that hetero, nuclear nonsense. Give me the Gaea whose fertility brings monsters instead of spring, giants with hundreds of heads who each speak of their own crystalline being summoned from the grave of the earth. Show us the Inanna who bears the sword just as well as the thong and bends over for joy but also knocks the green god on his ass just for looking at her throne the wrong way. Give me the Artemis who aides the birth of babies and enbies like myself without hesitation. Even the monsters of her great granny are helpless in the beginning. Call on the Horned God whose vagina is perfect for bearing the cum of the summer's yearning, but whose real phallus exists as the index finger and middle finger pointing heaven word's up the lady's heavenly cunt. 

The truth is, if you take a real long and hard look, you see the fae are not really interested in missionary either. And shape shifter is not just a term applied to phasing into beast alone. 

Even the gods are in drag (see my boy Dionysus and all the rest) and I'm sorry, I'm not believing for a second that the goddess is at all concerned with just being one of the girls for forever and a day just because some human adult kids need a mother to remain gentle in their mind's eye.

Yeah, that's right. I'm calling your image of the gentle mother goddess simplistic and sexist. Women are not your receptacle of dreams. And neither are the gods in respect to their gender. 

Enter that Tetrad, a group of gods who were first honored by P. Sufenas Virius Lupus and eir's comrades in paganism.  Meeting them through Sufenas' blog and book was like a orgiastic homecoming party in which you walk in a wreck and leave with a new, bad ass crew. 

The Tetrad:  these are my UPG's mixed with descriptions from All-Soul, All-Body, All-Love, All-Power: A TransMythology

Panpsyche - 

Trans,  lunar goddess of  the word, Her name means "all soul" and she is a fierce defender of transkids and will turn the night sky black over those who step on and defile her children. 

Panhyle - trans, earth god of the body. His presence is in the emphasis of touch, of the material reality of the body, it's needs, and it's wants. He is the hunter, the lover who has little to say, but so much to give with just his embrace. His name means "all body" His godhood is concerned with the comfort of the transbody with theirself.. 

Paneros

 - metagender god who does fit within the binary and oversees the love of the transperson for themselves as themselves and not as other people percieve and read them. Eir's name means "all love"

Pancrates 

- Pangender god, savior of the cosmos from the destruction of Aphopis so in my view they are the keepers of the sacred ways of the universe and help maintain the wheels of creation. They are often seen bearing a sword and wearing armor.  Their name means "all power." The y are concerned with the empowerment of transpeople over the architecture of their own lives. 

Panprosdexia

 - agender god whose name means all acceptance. They are not in the original book in which the Tetrad made their debut to the pagan literary world so often when talk of the Tetrad includes them it is listed as the Tetrad +.  Sufenas has taken down their blog within the past year and I cannot recall everything I read about Panprosdexia, but if I recall correctly they are a psychopomp figure concerned with the self- acceptance of a trans person's identity. 

Please, if you are interested, think about buying Sufenas' book here. If you are trans/gender queer pagan looking for some divine love that honors your sphere of existence I promise it is well worth the twenty bucks you'll pay for it. 

All of this exposition on the Tetrad + has this goal in mind: us queers need our own gods. And I promise they are out there, by a million unspoken names, just waiting for us to meet them. I got a Summer Fae Queen just around the bend who had a green leafy pinecone the size of a car and when she runs her fingers along the tips her children fall out as spores on the wind.  Gone are the images of the singular big belly Ge with only her own progenation in mind - creation is identity itself in motion. And what is gender but the expression of creation trying on the infinite ways of the finite and mortal. 

 It wasn't until  Pancrates started barreling down my astral door, with their joint in hand, running their fingers through their buzz cut hair wondering if I was ready to start opening myself up to the idea that probably none of the gods are as they seem, that I realized what I had been missing. Without any hesitation, after I called their name, Pancrates was there, their sword sheathed at their hip and their shark tee billowing in the wind, asking me if I was ready to win the battle for my own soul. The only other gods outside of the Tetrad + who have touched me so deeply have been Inanna, Artemis, and Dionysus, all three of whom I consider protectors and agents of the queer. 

Queer is the natural state of the universe. Flux is the holy denominator of both mortal and immortal. 

And who are we to ague with god?

Sorry, loves, for the hiatus and all

If anyone has been reading this, I have been undergoing a bit of a health crisis so blogging has had to be on hiatus for now. But I haven't stopped writing, and I hope to publish some of those insights before fall ends.

During this time, though recovery has been difficult, I have learned a great deal about what I want out of my practice, and find myself returning to the basics of witchcraft yet again with an emphasis on hedgecraft's journeying techniques and largely meditative work in general, with tinges of kitchen witchery sprinkled in between. These changes will probably be reflected in my blurbs and the overall intent of the blog in general.

It's funny, but I have finally realized that my interests swing quite wildly within the span of the year as I dive into multiple fields of interest within the craft and pagan theology in general. And yet, it seems, the more lavish I get with my practice, the stronger the urge comes to simplify. So I think I need to sort of reset, and hone what I find the most enjoyable out of my personal spiritual frame work.

Recently, I think I have come to an understanding that full on recon devotional work may not be the best fit. This conclusion has come from the fact that what I love about worship and honoring those deities and forces that pervade the universe is communion, not servitude, so I suppose it would be a great injustice to those of the recon devotee community to claim I am one when I make no great effort to observe any single one holiday or rites pertaining to those gods whom my path has brought me to. Deiphon, Noumenia, & Agaithos Daimon is still one monthly tradition from my hellenic studies that I want to keep with me (I also plan to continue the communal rituals posted on Elaion's facebook page as work and life permits), as my bond with the Theoi still infuses me with a great love for the ancient traditions which honored them. It's also a great set of monthly spiritual "reset" rituals as well as displays of gratitude for the health and success of the home.

So yeah, I am definitely falling back in stride with crystals, astral journeying, and even a bit of space witchery (I have been reading phaesphore's & cosmic-witch's writings on the subject, which are great sources, let me tell you :) ). So far what is great about this corner of the craft is emphasis of learning the science and discoveries we have made about the cosmos just as much as it is connecting to it spiritually. Science plus witchcraft definitely equals my cup of tea.

Plus, visiting the Parthenon replica in Nashville has yet again deepened the chords of yearning for communion with the gods in me, and I hope to be doing a tea party for the gods so to speak in the next week or so. That's alot of offering bowls, but after standing before the replica of the statue of Athena and feeling those echoes of power and divinity that flowed through her image, I definitely want to tap into that more, without losing myself in all the pomp and circumstance that tends to occur for me personally when I dive into devotional work. I accept that I am a hard, devotional polytheist with non-recon slants( i.e. honor the gods, love the gods, engage in ritual of reciprocity, but don't beat yourself up for not adhering to every little holiday on a calendar set around a much more worship oriented culture than the one you live in now). And I am learning to be okay with that.

Thank you for reading,
Ecco

The Queer Friendly Gods: Inanna and Ereshkigal

*UPG (unverified personal gnosis) heavy, will try to label it as it comes up*

My journey with Inanna began about six months ago when I had a dream in which a figure radiating a spectrum of colors around them came to me. The colors reminded me of a rainbow reflected in a pool, appearing in patterns resembling the leaves of a lotus flower.  In between that lucid state between passed-the-frell-out and semi-conscious, I asked "Who are you?"

She answered, "Inanna."

During the next month I researched when I could in between the endless cycle of sleep and work what ever I could get my hands on about this ancient sumerian goddess. And what I found completely took me a a back. 

(the following descriptions of her myth cycle come from The Descent of Ishtar: both the Sumerian and Akkadian Versions and it's translations of the original sources, as well as the retelling of the myths in Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Hymns and Stories from Sumer. I highly recommend both, especially source #2 since the folklorist Diane Wolkstein is one of the writers.)

Inanna is a goddess of the sky and a war goddess who empowers her own seat of worship and civilization by stealing the magical codes of civilization called the Mes from Enki. Her character is basically summed up in so many words: "The kingdom of heaven and earth is mine for the taking."

So she establishes her city and has everything a goddess could want, A virile husband,   two sons (I'm convinced in my own UPG she has way more children than this), and six other cities devoted to her in time. The glimmering evening star really is queen in every sense of the word. She is brash and vengeful to anyone who harms and challenges her. Once, she utterly RUINED a man who raped her. (it was so good to see no rape apologies in this sex goddess' mythos). 

After reading this interpretation of the myth of Huppulu tree from matrifocus.com (the domain has expired on it, otherwise I would link to it), I realized that it maybe her ascent to power came at a great cost.

(in the orignal myth of the tree, please note it's recorded that Inanna wanted it to grow so she could make her throne out of it, so the following is very UPG centered)

She cut down her beloved tree to turn it into her throne (an icon of fertility that is fitting, i.e. the queen of heaven sitting on a fine piece of wood representing the earth - oops, accidental sexual innuendo). This resonated with the message of The Giving Tree, and it was an angle and question I continued to ask through out my studies of her (still on going): What price does one pay to be queen?

I found in this myth the undertones of a woman who  abandoned much of what she might have valued about herself as a child to attain a bit of her own freedom and power among the retinue of the sumerian gods. In the Hupullu tree myth, Littu, Anzu, and a serpent plagued the tree and she could not harvest it until Gilgamesh drove them out. Anzu is a mythical monster bird that causes quite a bit of trouble for the Annunaki later on. Littu is a female demon of sorts that scholars speculate later became pre-Genesis Lilith and the serpent far as I know is just a serpent who is said "would not be charmed" (the satan serpent of Genesis, maybe?).

It was hard not to picture a young girl who had to sacrifice so much of who she was as a woman wandering on the banks of the Euphrates: a wild nature, a child like sense of freedom who perhaps naively assumed that power is the only end goal. This nature could be symbolized by the concept of the serpent as a little kid's animal friend and Littu perhaps as what the other Annunaki would have viewed as a "lesser" self and wouldn't have tolerated once she ascended the throne.

So I couldn't help but wonder, what happened to Littu and the serpent after they were cast out of her tree? Littu fled to "wild places" and the serpent was struck (struck dead? the poem's wording is uncertain). If you think of serpents as emblems of rebirth, you know that this serpent's fate is far from meeting it's end. To me, it seems as though these were pieces of her divine nature she bargained off and cast to the Underworld in order to become queen. 

Her iconography prior to her descent myth cycle is one of an incomplete, unrealized self. She cuts down the huppulu tree and sits on her throne in Erech, so in that moment, she is queen of heaven and earth.

But what about hell (hell in the dark, ghost ridden, drafting, mud logged underworld sense)? 

Here comes the part (UPG heavy) I resonate with wholly as a non-binary pagan searching for a way to reclaim their queer body: When Inanna goes to the underworld to console her sister Ereshkigal  after her husband's death, she is forced to appear before her naked, is subsequently killed, and hung on a hook, left to rot in the dark of hell.  Seems extreme, eh? The result of a jealous, broken sister's hate for her sibling who gets all the earth's love in the light of day? Yes, the dichotomy of unloved, underworld deity vs. beloved over world god is rather obvious, but what I took away from this is that a transformation took place. Dare I say it, a transition of sort was about to unfold,in order to make Inanna whole again from where she severed herself from the girl she used to be when her huppulu tree fell to make her throne.

In the underworld and spiritual journeys therein, one is at times taken apart, sometimes violently, and put back together again. It is usually a painful psychological process and I would not recommend it to someone who has any reservations/hesitations about it. Often we need this sort of trans-formative healing when we are broken, but I would feel irresponsible if I advised it as the only mode of healing, or one that should be taken lightly, when there are other methods for healing that are less emotionally risky or draining.

Inanna is left in the underworld to rot for a few days on her hook before her devoted servant enlists the help of Enki  to bring her body back to life. Ereshkigal ends up getting something she wants in the bargain and so Inannna returns, fully realized as queen of Heaven, Earth, and the Underworld - a trifecta of sorts I think was necessary in her role as fertility goddess. And none of that sweet mother goddess stuff here - she would spit you out and kill your mom just as soon as you cursed her name.

Long story short, she banishes her husband for claiming the throne in her brief absence (without searching for her) for a portion of the year. It is the most dysfunctional hieros gamos I have ever come across and it is the wonderful boot in the gut for Inanna to deliver to the world - a way of saying, yeah, I'm the mother frelling QUEEN.

So what does all this mean for a queer friendly space with Inanna and Ereshkigal?

- Ereshkigal is an annunaki of violent transformations, and for me, transitioning has been an earth shattering, painful experience (I know who I am, but stressing that to others and the human world around me has been a living hell). Ereshkigal has held the hook by which I have actually willingly let myself be strung on in order to let the old me die so a new, resilient body can rise. She is often a goddess who can help you initiate what you are unable to do for yourself alone.

It's my UPG that Ereshkigal knew  death was necessary for the cycles of heaven and the underworld to align.  The foundation for spiritual rebirth is possible through the sky herself dying and quickening again.

Inanna's aspects (the serpent and Littu) of the Huppulu tree were banished by a young woman not even fully aware of the struggle that ensues in descending into hell to reclaim the pieces of oneself -those things you leave behind for the sake of orbiting in "civilized"circles.

Praise be to Innanna, Queen of Heaven, Earth, and the Underworld
Praise be to Ereshkigal, primary Queen of the Underworld

May my transitive spirit be reborn beneath your sky and within your glorious, dark earth.