sisalfierce@gmail.com – Page 2 – The Sustainable Witch

Sustainable Death

On Samhain eve, I dreamed I was in circle at Tejas Witchcamp. I was just home from camp, and missing it deeply – I hadn’t realized being on the teaching team would make re-entry more challenging for me.

In the dream, it was night and dark, and we were beginning the devocations at the end of a ritual. We were seated on the ground, around a fire in the center, 60 people or so. Someone in the center devoked / bid goodbye to the ancestors, and then the ritual stopped. There was this deep silence. The person in the center looked gently and meaningfully at me. And I realized I was there because I’d been invited in at the beginning of the ritual, and now I was being told “goodbye.” I was an ancestor – it was time for me to get up and leave the circle of the living again.

In the dream, I felt much as I did when I woke up. A little silly, a little grateful, a little sad to be leaving, a little excited to see where I went next.

It puts you out of step to be OK with your own death, and recognize every day that you’re drawing closer to it. Yes, everyone is drawing closer to death every day. But I recently had an experience in which an exercise put me and five others in free fall. “What do you do?” the facilitator kept asking as we fell, “You’re still falling. What do you do?” At some point I said, “I get ready to die.” Two others there said, “Yes,” but three said “No!” Then someone pointed out that the three of us who said “Yes” were in our fifties and sixties, and the three who said “No!” were younger. Those who said “Yes” had been making their peace with death, walking with it much more closely for a while. It makes a difference.

So I woke up from the dream and began to consider sustainable death. Sustainable, in that the last thing I’m a part of on this earth, I don’t want to be about poisoning my body and, eventually, the earth. And I need to plan around that now. I’ll be asking Yana and PonyMoon to agree to manage what I can’t plan for. I’ll make some arrangements and get them a plan, and ask them to take it from there.

I was blessed to participate in the green burial of Fern Mary, an elder in the Central Texas women’s community who died some years ago. It was quite an eye opener, the things we’ve forgotten about how to honor and bury the dead. The site was so lonely and peaceful and beautiful – I remember the hole was dug at least 9 feet deep. So deep … everyone attending was earth-based, and there was laughter and wailing, all going on at the same time, everyone safe to express their grief as it was. The woman whose land it was and who oversaw the burial said it was the healthiest funeral she’d ever seen, and I believe it.

A sustainable death, that sustains life. Kind of amused that I have some research to do (the search engine is my friend …). Thinking about what songs I’d like sung. Feeling the distance widening, between those who aren’t at a place to say “Yes” to my dying, while I am nearing that place of “Yes” a little more each day. Do I still have a lot to do, a lot I want to do? Yes, very much so. Since camp, I have a whole new relationship with the spirits of the land to explore.

I’ll get as far as I get with that in this living body, and then I’ll explore that relationship from the other side. And I can’t help hoping that from that place, I hear those I love call me into circle, as an ancestor or spirit, and that I’m able to join you again, for just a little while. Watch for me. I’ll be listening for you.

Setting Fire to the Mountain: Hekate Dreams

Last night I dreamed of Hekate and She said, “Do it. Set fire to it all.” I’ll be teaching at Tejas camp in October. Hekate is the goddess of the camp, so – our team discussions, and my own work, are opening to Her more and more. I always have a sense of Her physically when I work with Her, but She hasn’t had anything to say to me for a long time. Generally, She just stands still and silent at the crossroads, giving me choices, waiting and watching.

I’d been listening to the song “I See Fire” last night. The song has a different effect on me – it sounds like the beauty of fire, to me. A whole mountain on fire, from the inside – that is something that would be worth seeing, I always think when I hear the song. And then I have my usual doubts that come up with fire – yes, but it’s destructive, yes, but it gets out of control, it kills, it burns. It burns. If you love fire, as I do, you understand the concept of a two-edged sword.

The other elements get out of control and kill, too. But it’s fire most people seem to think of when they think of “danger” and “element”. But a witch, now – for a witch (for this witch, anyway), that’s just what it is to have power. We have power, we’re dangerous, we could use it badly. And – when power is needed, well, we can use it then, too. The same risks I’m willing to take with fire, I’m willing to take to use power. I do try to use both well.

The mythic feel of the dream is lingering, and I’m wondering what Hekate was telling me. As always, when She speaks to me, it’s brief, to the point. I don’t know what She was telling me, specifically. But I saw the mountain in my dream, when She said “Set fire to it all.” I think She is saying that something big needs to be transformed, and it will be such a change that I might hesitate. And She’s saying: “Don’t hesitate.” A dangerous guideline when you’re messing with fire in a big way. But if the Goddess is going to talk to me, in my experience, it isn’t usually about small things.

So I am on the lookout for what I should set fire to. Reminding myself of the way fire sustains – sustaining us with warmth when we need warmth, sustaining my spirit when my spirit needs warming, or ecstasy. Sustaining my community when transformation is called for. Sustaining sometimes by destruction that leaves room for something new to grow.

And mostly, I’m remembering how clear Her voice was in my dream. How in the dream, I loved that She was there with me. Her time is different – I may find out what she meant soon, or later, or in the next lifetime. But I feel blessed that She’s talking. I want to carry Her spirit into camp with me in October, and Her presence in my dreams tells me She’s good with that.

Blessings of fire to us all, at this, the time of the solstice.

Sacred Calling in Unhealthy Communities

My friend Shauna Aura has been blogging about her experiences in unhealthy communities – specifically, pagan communities that fall into the patterns that evolve as a result of narcissistic leadership. From the response her posts are getting, the dynamic strikes a chord, and a number of people weigh in with painful stories of their own, as well as weighing in with fierce defense of communities they remain committed to.

Some comments express the opinion that those who were caught up in such communities enabled the abuse they experienced. That they needed approval, they needed love (it bothers me that some of the comments are so dismissive of the power of that basic human need). The comments note that neediness makes possible “narcissistic love-bombing”, and there’s discussion about the repercussions of choosing to give away your power and faith to those who are human, and fallible.

I’ve been interested to see that none of the comments have addressed the dynamic that snared me in such communities in the past. I don’t give up my power to humans, and I catch on to narcissistic manipulation pretty quickly. In the past, though, I did give up my power to the sacred. Give me work that changes lives, and I have been inclined to do whatever was required of me so I could do that work – whether the community had healthy leadership or not.

That approach – to make things work no matter what it took – would leave me with tough choices. Often, communities that were less than healthy had leaders who were more insightful than any I’d worked with before, or thought I might ever get to work with again. It was a joy to work with them, and learn from them. That joy was coupled with the stress and sadness of seeing them caught up in the same unhealthy dynamic I was, and seeing the toll it took on them.

Then there were the amazingly positive things happening to those not in leadership. Many newcomers to the communities experienced transformation and epiphanies, and, with communal support, risked opening to vulnerability and love again. I saw what a difference the community made in their lives – for me, working for that kind of change is good work.

So whatever the work asked of me, my heart urged me to push on, which I did until, inevitably, the manipulative dynamics overcame me. In one community where scapegoating was rampant, I came to a point that I tried telling myself the Hanged One/Scapegoat was an archetype, so there must be a sacred component there, if I could only find it. The deeper I explored the sacred aspect of the scapegoat, the more I realized how dangerously unhealthy the community dynamic, and my role in it, had become.

So at some point, despite my best efforts, I had to push my heart aside, and accept that the price I was paying wasn’t worth it. Sustainable body – I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder, and I have no way of knowing if the years of stress and overwork in my communities contributed, but I suspect they did. Sustainable spirit – my partner was threatening to leave me if I didn’t separate from this work, because he saw my spirit fading, and he was so frustrated. Sustainable community – in the end, the joy I found in people’s initial epiphanies darkened, as I watched them travel the arc most people follow in such communities: enchantment and transformation, to shaming and abuse, to despair and separation. I began to see that I was playing a role in that initial enchantment that set them up for the despair, later. I felt that despair, too – when I finally left, my heart and my bones physically ached for months and years after the separation.

This seems to be a lesson I keep having to learn in a number of different ways: I have to balance what I believe the sacred is asking of me, with what it’s possible for human me to do. My friend, Reclaiming Walker O’Rourke, once suggested to me that I tell the sacred “no”. I had never even considered that. Acting on his suggestion was my first step in taking the approach I take today, which is: sacred, you are the authority beyond the veil, and I grant you much authority on this side of the veil. But I have authority over my own body, and what’s doable for me and what isn’t. I am in service to you, but first I’m in service to my own sustainability.

That sustainability means that now, I only give my heart to communities with healthy leadership (thank you, Ella Andrews). If I choose to work in less healthy communities, I carefully manage how I commit to and do work there – I set boundaries with the sacred. I never dreamed such boundaries would be needed – but as it turns out, for me to be sustainable, they are, and I’m grateful to finally know it.

Beltane blessings to those of us who hear the call and find ways to answer it, and to thrive.

Sacred body – because, face it, you have one

A good friend of mine believes many healers, shamans, witches, were something other than human in most of their other lifetimes. She believes we chose to be in a human body, on this earth, now, because the earth so badly needs us. I was skeptical at first – but that concept would explain so much about why being in a body is sometimes a challenge for me.

I’m an Enneagram 7 – I flee from pain, and part of what I’m fleeing from is physical pain I experienced when I was very young. In my early years in earth-based religion, my joy was to sink into trance and leave my body behind. I thought of my body – my humanness – as something that got in the way of my connection to the sacred. I sought to transcend being human, being of matter.

Then, some years ago, Mooncrone, a sister in one of my spiritual groups, offered a Hecate retreat on the sacredness of being human. When she told me the theme of the retreat – that it’s sacred to be human – I didn’t really understand what she meant. But over the retreat, Hecate gently led me to the understanding that being human wasn’t something to transcend, as I’d been trying to do. It was key – part and parcel – of being effective as a spiritual being and a spiritual leader. Sustainable body – the willingness to accept my body, in every way. Sustainable spirit – the uses and joys of my body as a pathway to ecstasy and connection, with the sacred and with other sacred human beings.

I worked with Andrea Barrett on my MFA thesis, and one thing she told me over and over was “Learn your own individual process, and learn to love your process, because you’re stuck with it. It’s all you’ve got. Learn to make the most of it.” As a daughter of the Goddess and a priestess, I am human. That’s my process. I have worked to do more than learn to live with that process – I am beginning to fully understand that, far from being something that stands in my way, my humanness and my body are the essence of sacred. Pretty basic for a pagan girl, I know – another basic insight that I somehow missed along the way, and am so grateful to be exploring now.

The blessings of Hecate on us all, spiritual beings having an earthly experience.

The Power of Saying “I Can’t”

I can generally see to the heart of a tangled myth, but I miss simple things that are right in front of my face. Things that are very obvious to others. It’s like some kind of insight dissonance.

This week I realized the power of saying “I can’t” – something others probably figured out long ago. “I can’t” is different from saying “no”. Saying “I can’t” is recognizing when I have no choice, and surrendering to that. Just accepting my own limitations, instead of fighting (again) what I won’t defeat (again).

This week’s “I can’t” was in the realm of sustainable spirit and sustainable body. It acknowledges that I can’t sustain a relationship that consistently wakes me up at 3 a.m.

It’s my way to wake at 3 a.m., unable to sleep, when a relationship or other issue is bothering me. During those early hours, I am generally sitting at the kitchen table, trying to decide whether to make coffee or not, and going over all the ubiquitous guidelines: you can’t change others, you can only change yourself. And let go of the past – it’s just information.

And underneath my inability to go back to sleep is the feeling that gee, I’ve done an awful lot of work to still be someone who struggles with things at 3 a.m. Do I really have to wait until my next lifetime to get this? To be the wise woman who deals with every challenge with equanimity?

No, I don’t have to wait to get it. I can claim equanimity, if I acknowledge “I can’t.”

This week’s 3 a.m. “I can’t” realization – I need more distance in a relationship in my life. A relationship that brings drama, and is lacking in personal responsibility. But it’s important to say – this isn’t about what the other person is doing wrong. If they were solid, had healthy relationship processes, were impeccable – but being in relationship with them still kept me from sleeping – I’d need to say I can’t be in relationship with them, either. It’s not about others being wrong; it’s about acknowledging my own nature and limitations, not as they should be, but just as they are.

I do believe what’s put before me is for my growth, and a gift – whatever form it takes. Saying “I can’t” doesn’t relieve me of responsibility for my actions or choices. But it lets me deal with my life from a place of at least having gotten enough sleep. It’s admitting I’m human, and in admitting that I’m human, setting myself free of expectations that I’m not.

So this week, yes, there’s a relationship moving out of my life. I hope I can navigate that without undue pain to someone else, or to me. But it’s moving out, because I accept that I can’t do this (my life) any other way. I’m finally acknowledging “I can’t” because hours awake in the wee hours of the morning have taught me – it’s the only sustainable thing for me to do.

Blessings of this Pisces eclipse, to those who seek the balance between accountability and sustainability.

Blessed Imbolc

It is Imbolc, here in the Northern hemisphere – festival of hearth and home, divination, candles and firelight. A time for cleaning house –

Cleaning house. Like many of those I know on this path, as our country continues to grow more chaotic, I am turning to hearth and home for some sense of grounding and comfort. One friend noted he was baking bread. Another is selling things she no longer needs or wants. I am sorting and organizing my shelves. I wish I could sort and organize on a much, much greater scale – a national scale – but while I can do what I can do, I don’t have an impact that’s as far-reaching as I’d like.

I’m not just sorting and organizing things, but also thoughts. I am always interested in the ways I am conflicted as a witch and a woman. There’s a lot of insight into what we feel conflicted about, I think, and even more insight into what form that conflictedness takes.

I have been conflicted about trusting myself again, after the crash and burn of the election. I never saw it coming (a common lament that I share with most of my friends). What does a witch do, when Her power is so needed, but she feels disempowered?

For myself – the last weeks have taught me to let myself flow intuitively and feel whatever is up – anger, helplessness and disbelief, some days. And today, at this celebration of light and home, and the simple things that make life worthwhile, I’m allowing myself to feel joy in simple things. Right now, connecting to joy, when I can, is the key to sustainable spirit, for me.

My Imbolc corn dolly is one of those things – made a decade ago, braided crown, gold thread, a shell to mark her powers to create and rejuvenate. Today, I take joy in Her, and in the simple and not-so-simple things she means to me. Women have been crafting these dolls in various ways for centuries – we endure. In the simple act of braiding and shaping the wet, softened husks, I remember the connection I felt to the Goddess. No one can take that away from me.

Blessed Imbolc to you. May whatever you feel conflicted about inform you. May the growing light show you what it is you need to sustain you.

Marketing. Blech.

Marketing. It has been much on my mind. I’ll start by acknowledging that I’ve worked in Marketing much of my life. I have only worked to market products or services I believed in – not just to be authentic to my values, but because I market effectively by loving something and presenting it in such a way that it appeals to others, too. If I don’t believe in it – I’m just not very effective at promoting it.

But I find myself really repulsed by marketing, these days. I feel like I have a kind of PTSD around it. That image from the Trump press conference, of all the manila folders, supposedly full of plans to turn his business over – and, apparently, all blank pages. It’s all about image, and nothing about substance.

And Oprah’s big push for WeightWatchers right now. In the commercials, she’s so energized. So gleeful. As though she hasn’t led women to spend millions on her other “this is the final solution” weight loss plans. It’s all about image, and nothing about value.

It’s all about how you spin it. And nothing about honesty. I know the idea that marketing is vile is not a new concept. I just haven’t ever been as repulsed by it as I am right now.

Which brings me to sustainability, and sustainable spirit – my own. I am in the midst of finding my way into being self-employed. This process is proving to be thrilling and laden with anxiety. I need the work, I need the income, and I’m determined not to do anything that falls outside my values (or why not just go work for someone else?).

After a few weeks of trying different things, here’s what I know. Marketing myself is, for the most part, not sustainable for me. There’s something about it that decreases my effectiveness doing my work. Meaning – when my focus is on marketing myself, my effectiveness with my clients is, I believe, lessened.

I don’t entirely understand this. I don’t in any way cast aspersions on the healers, energy workers and spiritual workers I know who do market themselves, and do it well. I get to keep in touch with them and their work, in part, through the marketing they do. I have every faith in their authenticity.

But I believe “marketing” played a big role in where my nation and our culture seem, to me, to be today. So though it sounds crazy to say it – for now, if people want to work with me as a coach, and for healing, they will just have to find me. I have a web page, and I’m keeping it. I’m posting what I hope are helpful posts on my Facebook page.

But I’m not spending ten hours figuring out how to run an effective Facebook ad. Instead, I’m staying in touch with the change agent within me, and the energetic desire my clients have to change, and working with them to build a bridge between what is, and what can be. I’m better at that work. And just hoping that’s enough, on its own.

many thanks to Gardenwitch Whitewing, for reminding me it was time to get back to the blog …

Keeping the faith

An inspiring post from TerrieLynn Bach on my Facebook feed this week read: The world isn’t falling apart, the veil of the world-wide corruption is lifting.

I do believe the veil of corruption is lifting. And in the process, the going is getting rough. This post looks at what it means to be committed to keeping the faith, while the spirit is getting hammered by current events, email and social media feed.

Keeping the faith: for me, that means being open to what is happening and doing magic around what’s happening to feed the change, either the change taking place, or the change I envision.

This past week, though, I reached the end of my spiritual rope, at least as far as keeping the faith and keeping open to what is. This past week, I opened emails and FB posts that just took me down. And before I could breathe my way back up, another took me down further.

I think I hit my rock bottom when a gentle, kind, shining soul whom I admire very much posted an image that just felt like it opened me up and left me open. I have tools – breath, movement, visualization. I used them. It still took me the better part of an hour to stop feeling the impact of that image.

I could step away from all the content coming at me. But as others have noted, there are stories the overculture would keep secret if they could, if social media and sharing didn’t put them out there, and keep them alive. We are our own news organization, and, like others, I see great value in that. It lets me know about things that are wrong and that need to be fought. It also affirms, by letting me see change happening in areas where I and fellow witches have done magic.

So I have to ask myself how to find the balance, between knowing what is, and my own sustainability?

Here is what balance looks like for me right now: I am not stepping away from reading what comes at me. And I am not unfriending anyone. Almost everyone on my FB or who emails me is a witch with whom I share community. I believe in their ethics and their instincts. If they choose to put the energy of a post out there, I trust there’s a reason. That approach leaves me open to the energy of what they choose to share.

To bring balance, it’s my intention that, for the month of September, I’ll breathe in and transform the news and posts that are hard to see. The practice of Tonglen is one of the places the Buddhist and the witch in me meet. In that practice, I can choose to breathe in pain, density. Breathe out healing, space, possibility. There’s comfort in that practice, of taking it all into the body, and then releasing it from the body.

And regarding the energy and images I send out to others, it’s my intention to not post or email anything this month that would be hard for others to see or know. Why am I doing this? Because I need to know some posters are safe in the way I need them to be safe right now, and since I can’t get that, I’m going to be that.

Sustainable spirit. Honoring my human needs. Breathing in and breathing out; and being the change I need.

Giving the body its due

Before I knew I was a witch, I read a book by Karen and Poul Anderson, The King of Ys. In it are nine priestess witches, and I was in love with the thought of being any and all of them –

At one point in the story, the King desecrates the sacred river. The nine priestess witches know the Goddess will punish the city for the King’s transgression. They send the strangest of the nine of them into deep trance, where she communes with the Goddess, placates Her, begs for forgiveness. When the priestess witch comes out of the trance, she’s a shell – the other eight put her to bed for days, nurse her, nourish her, heal her as she slowly comes back to this side of the veil, and regains her strength.

For those of you who invite the sacred to inhabit your body in aspect, I invite you to compare this process, to yours. My process is: I aspect easily, and enjoy the challenge of being of two minds (the “Goddess” mind / and the “I am the one with a body and looking out for the group” mind). I find it a seductive and captivating experience in which I always learn much that is useful. I believe it serves the group and is sacred work. While in aspect I don’t feel my usual physical challenges. And when I come out – I very much do.

I come out of aspect quickly and easily. When I come out, I feel the physical repercussions of the Goddess’s free and dancing movements. I feel a sort of backlash from being so vibrantly in tune with Her, and beyond the veil, for so long. From channeling. When I say I come out quickly and easily, I mean I look fine, can interact with the group as myself, and can drive home if I need to. But the truth is, my mind and consciousness linger on the bridge between the worlds for a day or so. I am not fully ready to be in the mundane world.

When I wake the next morning, it’s like a psychic hangover. Then I remember that priestess witch of Ys, and I long for those other eight priestess witches to care for me and support me. And – if I’m in sacred community, at witch camp or on retreat, I have that care and support. The between-the-worlds functioning I’m still caught up with is understood, accepted, even useful. So are the repercussions to my body.

And if I’m not in sacred community? In the past, I often went into the office the next day. I looked at maps, I led teams of strategists. My poor head did its best to fully inhabit the world on this side of the veil again, with varying success.

Then I found myself remembering the priestess witch of Ys, and I realized – ok, the overculture doesn’t value or honor the work of aspecting, and doesn’t support that process. But I do value and honor it – and to be sustainable, I must support its process.

Now, if I won’t have the support of sacred community the day after aspecting, I’ve made the commitment to give myself the day after to honor this sacred process, and myself. Sacred body. My human body and mind, I remind myself, are sacred too. If I’m not going to be in sacred community after aspecting, I’ve made the commitment to stay home the day after and just be gentle with myself.

I’m not lucky enough to be a priestess witch of Ys. But that’s part of what it means to be a witch doing this work, in these troubled times. It means I walk between the worlds in a number of ways, every day. The overculture doesn’t believe that’s of value – but I do. Giving myself the time I need to fully honor the process of aspecting is a way I honor and sustain the mundane, human mind and body that support me in this work. “My body is the body of the Goddess,” as the chant says; in aspecting I’ve accepted that having Her in my body is glorious, and exacts a payment I’m willing to acknowledge and pay.

If you’d like to know more about aspecting, here is a link to an excellent article by Pomegranate Doyle that was published in Reclaiming Quarterly

http://reclaimingquarterly.org/86/rq-86-invitingdivine.html

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White privilege – vulnerability, no guilt

“As an activist, I run into a lot of white people who feel guilty or ashamed of their privilege. I have yet to see it do any good. Generally, it leads to paralysis and hesitation… if a person is buried deep into guilt and shame they are not much good in the battle.”
– Noreen Patience Deweese, Member, Black Lives Matter Solidarity Task Force

“Good in the battle” – I had a little internal thrill of “yes” when I read what Noreen wrote above, in a post on Facebook. That’s what I want – to know what to battle for, and then battle well.

I am in the midst of sloshing through the mire of my own privilege, and the ways I’ve been and continue to be unable to recognize it. I have some experience with that dynamic – with realizing there’s a whole landscape of perception and approach in my life that I want to change. It was the same dynamic when I began working with the concept of “I referencing” – there was a painful period of NOT I referencing, and (cringing) hearing myself just after the words had come out of my mouth.

Same thing lately, when the scales fall and I see what I couldn’t see before, for privilege. It happened to me recently when I went to an organizing meeting at the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center. The meeting was on how to save San Antonio neighborhoods from our development-crazed city government. To my surprise – we started back 150 years, and looked at all the diverse San Antonio neighborhoods that had disappeared each decade, fallen to development, to “progress”. Privilege had let me blithely believe my neighborhood was the first to be threatened – that this oppression was something new.

It would be easy – in those moments when I speak or see out of a place of privilege, and then recognize it for what it is – for me to feel guilt and shame. I don’t, or if I do, I stop going down that road as soon as I recognize what I’m doing. Sustainable spirit – I want to be good in the battle. I don’t have the energy for guilt and shame. I don’t believe they accomplish anything.

So in addition to actively seeking where white privilege influences my perception, I’m working to be willingly vulnerable without guilt. Willingly open to change without shame. Willingly able to hear what I just said that I wish I could take back. I’m willing to do that, and willing also to be kind to myself. Because this is not a one-day battle. I believe those engaged in it are in it for the long haul. I am, too.

I’m issuing a gentle invitation to myself, and to you too if you like. Instead of putting energy into guilt and shame, I’m putting my energy into a continued willingness to be open, and vulnerable. I’m taking the words of Leonard Cohen to heart: “Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

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