He had been told to seek out the forge. The room that contains the place where he can be reshaped, reforged, made into something new. He knew of course, that this room was not merely physical, but a place of the inner landscapes, one which could give him a strength to alter himself, the privilege of self-responsibility.
And so here he is, laying in the grass near the lake, his shoulders and head illuminated by the moonlight, the rest of him hidden in the shadows of the tree he lays under. There is a motion in the night around him. The breeze is cool and alternates between gusting, stillness, and gentle teasing whispers of breath. His journal is on the ground beside his head. He had been writing in it, but the whispers in his mind taught him that it was not the proper task for the moment.
Drowsy eyes close for a moment as he feels the cool earth embracing his body. He almost purrs into it, letting the sense of nature take him to a place of peace. He realizes that he could rest here. He could easily allow himself to sleep. Sheepishly he has a vision of being awoken by a passerby or law enforcement officer, making sure he wasn’t dead. He smiles at this and lets his mind sink deep inside himself.
The wind picks up and blows hair across his face, fluttering his eyelashes. The moon has created a halo for herself, a ring of silvery light that dominates the eastern sky. The ring, filled with the inky blue of the night sky, and the wispy gray-white of moonlit clouds, hovers above him, whispering of the circle, and telling him that all is well and safe. He listens for a moment to the crickets chirping in the trees, and the night-birds alive. The lake laps against the concrete wall and the huge cubes of concrete dumped into it.
He sees the spiral stair-case in his mind. A stone path, enclosed before him, and he climbs it, reaching the door to the room of doorways. The place inside him that contains paths to each part of himself. He has not charted this room, at least not yet. He has wanted too, meant too, repeatedly begun too; but there is always other business he must attend to.
Fondly he caresses one of the arch-shaped bookcases, letting his fingers trail along the engraving in the keystone of the arch, touching the backs of the books that line the shelves. This arch could be a portal if he willed it. This portal takes him to his inner wilderness. He passes it by.
Laying on the floor he runs his fingers along the warmth of the hardwood there, shining with candlelight and moonlight which streams down through the glass ceiling. He looks around, letting himself find the forge, wherever it may be. The fireplace. Of course. He moves to the end of the room and lets the fire in the fireplace come to life. The new light casts shadows behind him, demons of himself dancing along the shelves and tables, slipping in and out of doors both known and mysterious.
He smiles and steps through the flames of the fireplace, finding himself in a circular room made of stone. The room is closed, and has one door, which is closed as well. There is a coal-pit on a pedestal in the center, and a bellows. There are four anvils spread around the pedestal, and the tools of a blacksmiths trade adorn the walls around him. He gazes around, knowing the purpose of these tools, understanding them, but knowing he does not have the skill to work with them. How can he use this place to remake himself if he does not have the knowledge?
The room is in disrepair, the coals cool, and the tools covered in a thick dust. He begins to clean, removing three of the anvils, for he needs only the one. As he does he is confronted with the challenges that lie ahead of him. The forge-god he honors is present here, he can feel him everywhere, in the walls, in the cold ashes of the coal-pit. The mallets and hammers, the tongs all seem to resonate with his very presence. This is a holy place, a place that is his to understand.
He stops, letting his hands linger upon the anvil. This does not need to be a blacksmiths room, he understands. His fingers trail around the tip of the anvil, curling under it. Were I to create, to forge the world, what would be my tools? He asks himself. The answer is clear. Words.
No sooner has he thought it, then he follows the thought with his knowledge, his will, and the forge is transformed into a studio. The walls part to create windows, windows which will let him see the landscape of his lives, and whatever visions he seeks. The anvil becomes a desk, its shape pressing against one of the walls, with a small cabinet above it. A row of hardbound books of every shape and size set in the cabinet. He knows that these are himself. Carefully, he closes the doors of the cabinet on all the volumes but the one which represents this life, this time.
He will attend to the others in their time, as he needs, as he is able. But this volume, the volume he lives now, is where his attention is drawn. There is a pot of ink upon the desk, a rag, and a pair of simple speedball pens. He smiles and strokes the smooth surface of the desk, knowing there is a chair behind him but not needing it now.
The study/forge bears resemblance to his real desk, the one sitting back in the study of the apartment. It too is laid out as he wishes, everything made ready for him to write, to work his will upon the pages before him. He caresses the book that is himself, and acknowledges that he can not write within it now. To etch words in this volume is to change the very nature of his life, and those words must be hewn with all his skill.
Words are his to guide, to tease and pressure into their structure, to create with, and he knows that they will obey him. But he knows also that their obedience can be cruel, can be cold, and can betray him. As with all power, there is respect that must be given, dues that must be paid, and understanding which must be earned. Before his pen strikes these pages, he must know what it is he shall write there, and for that, he must take time.
He shelves the volume carefully and sends his thanks and prayers to his God. The forge resonates with his presence now, and his hammer becomes his pen. To create, he needs only craft his words with the care the blacksmith hammers his metal. There is only creation, the medium is illusory, and naught but the carrier upon which art and life are brought.
I’m one of those people who makes a lot of plans. And then never follows through on them. Lots of plans. I make plans about when I’m going to make plans, and what methodology I’m going to use to construct said plan.
Recent events have led me to realize something though. Having a plan isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. There are other elements to success. Follow-through. Discipline (See previous post). Character, Emotional strength. But planning is important.
It’s a truism that plans never go the way they were planned. Something always goes wrong. We all know that we should build resiliency — one of the current most annoying catch-phrases of the corporate world — and flexibility into the plans we make, for whatever we’re planning. But what exactly does that mean? Even if you have the gift of prophecy, your visions almost never come to pass as you anticipated they would.
I think the solution is to plan all you want. Plan and execute those plans to the best of your ability, but to realize that the planned portion of your experience is only one piece of the puzzle. New experiences and pieces are going to be entering your sphere all the time, and it’s important to take them as they’re given to you, and work with what you have.
As a result, I realize that it’s not so much about planning for me anymore. I still make plans. I still try to carry them out, and sometimes I succeed. But the plan is not the first step. This is where I think many of us go wrong. We begin to plan with a specific idea of our goal. And it’s usually something pedestrian. Plan to lose weight. Plan to make more money. Plan to buy a house. Don’t get me wrong, these are good goals, they’re things that are part of the plans I make. But these plans are secondary to something more important. What is it you really want? What does losing weight mean? What does buying a house mean? What need in your life does making more money fulfill?
Don’t focus on the quotidian measures that our culture teaches are important. Find a measure of your life that means something to you. Find a mission statement for your life, or for this part of your life. What is it that will make you happy? For me it’s connection. For me it’s service. For me it’s self-actualization. It doesn’t need to be just one thing, but is often several connected things.
As a pagan, I refer to this as my Will. Capital W. It is what I believe I am here to do, or more importantly, what I should be doing now. Having an idea of the deeper values behind my plans lets me plan more realistically. And not just more realistically, but more meaningfully.
One of my current efforts is to lose weight. There are a lot of reasons for it. For one, I think my current weight is not healthy for me. It limits my flexibility and puts undue stress on my skeletal frame. It overtaxes my heart and makes my body inefficient. It makes me feel unattractive. It limits my freedom to express myself. So I have a lot of reasons to lose weight. Understanding many of those reasons gives me incentive. So I plan to lose weight.
How do I construct that plan in a way that gives meaning to my efforts, tangible results, and accomplishes my goal in a reasonable amount of time? By providing multiple methods of succeeding. In order to lose weight, I don’t need to do all of the things I want to do everyday, but if I do some of them I’ll succeed. So what am I doing?
I gave up soda-pop 9 days ago. I crave it every day, because I really enjoy it. I suspect I’ll eventually give in and have it, but as long as I’m strong most of the time I’m succeeding.
I try to do a little more physical exercise than I would normally do every day. I park a little further from home. I walk around the office instead of using Instant Messaging. I take a walk to the beach in the evening. I don’t have to do it every day, but each time I add a little, I’m helping myself.
I’m trying to make healthier choices for my diet. Some days this is very easy. Some days it’s very hard. But I used to eat poorly at almost every meal, so each good choice I make is an overall improvement.
I’m drinking a lot more water. Partially because I need liquid that I’m no longer absorbing from the excessive amounts of soda I was drinking (often 64oz+ a day). Partially because It’s gratifying when my urine is clear ;)
I’m trying to take better care of my body overall. I stretch and sit properly at work when I can. I take longer showers more frequently, and pay honor and diligence to my body. I connect with my body through touch and movement.
Notice that I don’t have a goal such as “lose 80 pounds in 6 months.”That would be awesome, but a goal like that makes it easy to fail. The point of planning is to make it easy to succeed. And so my goal is targeted not at some arbitrary deadline or number, but at the real issue. Why do I want to lose weight? To feel healthier and better about myself. Every time I do one of the things on my plan, I’m achieving that goal, and so I succeed several times each day. Would I like to lose 80 pounds? Of course, but the weight loss is secondary to solving the problems the weight causes.
This way I’m losing weight through improving my health and self-esteem. Not improving my health and self-esteem by losing weight. It may seem a semantic difference, but it is a meaningful one. It means that it will be more difficult, more challenging, to revert to old patterns after having succeeded. And for me, it’s making all the difference.
I’m not the person you’d suspect of sitting down to write about discipline. Well, I might be, if you were talking about corporal punishment. Or the use of pain-inducing implements in the bedroom. But personal discipline? I’ve never had it.
If there’s money in my pocket, I spend it. If it’s something I don’t particularly want to do, I avoid it. I’m a procrastinator. But lately I’ve found that I’m having less trouble making my plans stick. My goals seem to be functional. I’m ‘Getting Things Done,’ to use the catch-phrase of the day.
So I look at the things that have been getting done. I cleaned my room on Monday, and it’s still clean. I mean, still absolutely spotless. The laundry is all hung, and the dirty stuff is in the laundry bag. This may seem very small, but it is not. First of all, I don’t finish things; secondly, I never keep things up more than a day or two. I’m just not like that. Shivian will be shocked as hell when he learns that the room has been clean almost a week. My car too, been clean over a week (well, there’s no trash on the floor anyway).
I’ve been writing. Prolifically. This is my sixth post in four days. And I’ve been writing in my journals too (the really juicy stuff ;). I’ve gotten projects done at work. I gave up soda-pop 8 days ago, and I haven’t given in yet.
I’ve been doing daily meditative and magical practice. I’ve been learning about myself.
So what has changed? Why on earth am I suddenly able to overcome my procrastination in these areas, and why doesn’t it feel like anything has changed? Ok, so it’s clear that something has changed, there is that whole ‘feeling free’ thing that I’ve been figuring out this week. The change isn’t across the board. I don’t find myself suddenly motivated to do some of the more unpleasant or boring tasks that I find on my desk. I procrastinate with them. I procrastinate gloriously. I am the king of procrastinators. I might one day invent a time machine so I can procrastinate more efficiently.
It’s clear that my patterns haven’t really changed. The difference, is that I find I really really really want to do these things. Badly. It’s suddenly important to me that I take the time to blog daily wherever possible. I feel good doing my devotions and magical exercises. I feel fulfilled when I write in my journals.
It’s not that I didn’t feel fulfilled by these behaviors in the past, but it’s as though there was some sort of non-impetus behind them. As though I would turn to them when I needed that feeling of fulfillment. I almost wonder if not doing the things I like to do (And I enjoy all these things immensely) is some sort of weird self-inflicted penance for a perceived failing. It’s as good a theory as any. If that’s so then, why don’t I feel guilty anymore? Is it because I realized that I can be myself and don’t have to let myself be judged? Is it because I recognize how special I am and feel that I deserve to be loved? (Now THAT’S a cheesy statement. WOW.)
Whatever it is, I’m curious about it, and I’ll be trying to figure it out as the days wear on. The moon has begun to wane, and this phase may slide with it. But I don’t think it will. It doesn’t feel like it will. If I keep this up for a whole moon cycle, just think what I can do next cycle!
So I’m reasonably plugged in to the blogosphere. I value it. I pay special attention to pagan stuff. Being Pagan, and something of an idealist, I really try to keep tabs on what’s going on in the pagan world. I read WitchVox, and The Wild Hunt. I also read a lot of pagan trash. I have to ask myself Why? Why on earth is there so much trash out there where people can get to it? And why do the people writing it do so? Don’t some of these writers realize that they’re not helping anyone when they spout inaccurate data and act as though it’s some sort of pagan gospel?
It doesn’t help that sites like Associated Content make it easy for untrained, untalented, and uninformed writers to put their articles out there where they can be digested by the unwitting masses. Some of these articles are practically illiterate, almost all of them are riddled with partial or just plain bad information. Many of them are written by Wiccan newbies who believe that the world is black & white, right & wrong, and that Wicca is all about the glory of the Goddess and her joyous rituals of life.
Sorry to burst the bubble babes, but it just isn’t. The world is a diverse place, filled with more paths than there are people to walk them. This may be snarky, but I’m sick to death of seeing purported ‘news’ articles about college pagan groups whose leaders throw out tirelessly incorrect soundbites that get published. What we need is a centralized FAQ. A source where the pagan community can go to get sensical, encompassing, accurate explanations. Where can send uninformed media when they want information, instead of letting them get their information from teenie-boppers and fluffy bunnies.
As a neo-pagan who is pretty firmly entrenched upon the left hand path, I don’t want to see inaccurate data thrown around as if it were the plain and simple truth. I don’t want my way touted above any other, I just want it given equal acknowledgment.
I may be about to duplicate somebody else’s efforts, but I don’t mind. I’m going to start a pagan FAQ page here, and as I come across questions that are constantly asked, and often answered badly, I’ll put some accurate information up.
So it’s true. I like weather that most people find nasty. The forecast today said it’s supposed to be thunderstorming outside. It’s not. Nothing like. Just some big fluffy white clouds and a pleasantly cool breeze. What the fuck!?
There is something about the darker elemental forces that turns me on, gets my juices going. This fair-sky and gentle wind stuff is lulling, it makes me want to lie down in the grass and eat rainier cherries out of some hot guys lips. It makes me want to be lazy and lulls me into a complacency. It has it’s place, but I’m raring for a good storm.
When the sky begins to turn black from the thick clouds, a part of me begins to jump for joy. The excited child crawls out my eyes and eases the burden on my face. As the rain begins to fall it washes the world away. I can stand in it for hours, watching the lightning cut across the sky and strike the earth. I can listen to the thunder and feel it rattle my bones. It’s like a subsonic explosion that shakes me to my core.
It’s freeing to stand in the rain. To be bare to the elements. It’s as though you are watching the world be unmade, as if the void of potentiality is rising up around you as the world falls away to chaos.
But the forecast lied, and it’s not even close to raining at the moment. So I’ll have to make do with fantasies of rainier cherries.
He sat on the bench looking out over Lake Michigan. The humid air was no weight to him, clad in his pajamas (or what would have been pajamas if he didn’t sleep nude). Layers of clouds moved at various speeds across the sky above him, heading out over the lake. The water, indigo, shone with the streaks of light cast by planes moving towards O’Hare airport. It was an unlikely night to find him out of doors, when he’d normally prefer to be at home, reading, or working on the computer. But the moon was full, and for once, he found himself utterly unable to reject her call.
He clenches his black journal in his lap, holding it tight. The flexible cover was soft beneath his fingers, comforting. The moon peeks out from the clouds time and again, sending pale-white rays of light into his dark hair, piercing the veil of his eyes and pricking something within them.
There are shadows in those eyes, shadows that mirror the shapes of silence that skitter around his ankles, and in the trees behind him. Shadows that look out at him from the eyes of the late-night strolls, that stare at him from the eddies of the lake. Or maybe it is the shadows in his eyes that mirror the demons which lurk about him. He closes his eyes, as if that would seal away the demons, but they are waiting in his mind, their taunts filled with vicious glee.
He opens the journal, and uncaps the pen — a Pilot Varsity, his preferred pen when he can’t use a speedball. Pulling the black ribbon out of the way he lays the flanged tip of the pen to the paper in the upper right corner of a new page and dates it.
His script flows across the page. Not particularly pretty, nor even. There is nothing special about the writing, except perhaps that it is varied in style and weight. He draws his lower-case f’s with a flourish, a long curve and a tiny cross bar. It is one of the few letters he adores the shape of after he has written it. There is an elegance to the style of it. A part of him wishes his hand was fine enough to see that simple elegance in all of his characters, but there is no shame or regret. A steady and elegant hand is not his gift.
He strikes the naming of his demons upon the page, a driven mind using all it’s faculties and force to subdue the myraid beings which seek to conquer him, to return him to the chains of fear. It is a battle. Perhaps the people who walk by sense that something is going on, and they walk a larger arc around the strange man sitting on the bench, muttering to themselves in scorn or fear, but he knows only the battle. At length he recognizes that he is no longer afraid of the beings that circle him. They are no more then a distraction, an avoidance. And seeing their purpose he puts them aside, leaving his signature — a compressed scrawl of looping sigils — at the bottom of the page.
With a feeling of confidence he turns the ribbon down upon the page and closes the journal. He caps the pen, and places them on the bench next to him. He feels worn, drained. He is not certain that he has won anything in these past days, weeks, or years. The strength of him feels diminished, as though he has been lessened by battles that should have made his stride more sure. He lifts his eyes to the sky, and the full moon bursts through the cloud cover, her light pouring down upon the world as though it were meant only for him. He sits transfixed by the sight, and murmurs, not knowing what the words mean, only that they are true. “I am a servant of the moon.”
There is a resonance of sound around him, and the world stands still. The words hang, suspended in the air before him. They turn and circle him, growing in volume as they spin about, dancing in the moonlight and flooding him with their purity and truth. The stillness passes and he is left gasping for breath, and he feels a weight in the core of him, a dirty blackness, and for an instant he considers taking the Gerber pocket-knife out and cutting away the vile sensation.
He knows this feeling though, and he rebels against it. This is not the time, not the place! his mind cries out. He looks around, and there are plenty of people about who might interrupt him, who might disturb him as he tries to expel this horror within him. He stops the panic that rises within him. He can feel the gagging nausea in the back of his throat, trying to expel the darkness already. He takes a deep breath and lifts his eyes to the sky. “I am a servant of the moon.” He tries the words on, letting them slither around his body, raising hairs and shivers, raising a quiet peace about him.
Turning the tip of his tongue to the roof of his mouth he bends over towards the pavement before the bench, leaning his elbows upon his knees. He spits once, expelling the excess saliva that has built up. I can do this gently, he thinks. He breaths in through his nose, letting his tongue find the center of his soft palette. He instantly feels a surge of life, a silver current of vital energy that fills his lungs and body. He exhales through his mouth, slowly, and a dirty gray taints the air, pooling on the cement in front of him. Again, measuring his breath slowly, carefully, using all the skill which he possesses to squeeze the lesser bile out of himself.
Here again, the passers by may look upon him strangely. But they see only a man who appears nauseous. The air on the pavement appears normal to them, though to his eyes it grows darker and darker. His exhalations grow slowly more difficult, as though he were squeezing his esophagus with his diaphragm. The breath which leaves him grows more vile each time, although there is nothing of darkness in that silver light that fills his eyes, pouring now from his very pores. This too goes unseen by those around him, although how they could miss the glow of his already pale skin, he will wonder later.
Finally, he tries to exhale and there is no breath to pass. He inhales more deeply, and again he can not expunge his lungs. It comes, though he had worked to avoid the need, and he begins to choke on the dark matter that rises up his throat, pushed ever so slowly by the air that is trying to escape. He forces his body to calmness and lets the convulsion wrack his torso. He gags and chokes, and his body heaves as though his stomach were turning itself inside out, and finally a tarry mass of air flies from his mouth to puddle with the darkness at his feet. He spits into the morass. Again. His eyes are filled with tears. He inhales slowly, gently, deeply through his nostrils.
The convulsions take him again, worse this time, and still more of the dirty air pours from him, as though he were a fountain. Minutes pass, and still the violence of his exhalation worsens. Until finally he spits and his mouth is dry. He inhales cleanly, and the silver light that permeates him washes through his exhalation, clean moonlight that arcs from his eyes and lips to dispel the accumulated wreck of so many battles. His cheeks are moist with tears, and they wet his lips as he rubs his fingers through them. He breathes deeply and gazes up at the moon, which glows only for him at this moment, a mother, her belly full with a new child, gazing proudly as her son becomes a man.
He smiles and lets his tears trickle down his throat. He frees his hair from it’s band and it falls down around his face, absorbing the moisture there, and then lifting as a cooler gust of air comes out of the city. He places his hand on the journal and pen and picks them up rising. He salutes the moon with a single hand, and with the shimmer of his soul.
There are more battles to be fought, far more he must do in this world. There is more tar that lies hidden within him, and there are new demons which will come to haunt him. He knows that it may never end, but there is no sadness in it now, for he is a servant of the moon.
What an interesting feeling this is. I don’t really know where it’s coming from. It wasn’t really there when I woke up this morning, but it’s been building. It was a seed then, and it has been blossoming through me all day. It’s as though I’ve been infused with some strength or knowledge as I slept, or done the work that needed to be done and awoken to find that I am whole.
I feel as though I am a new person, singular. I feel better, healed. There is a sense that I don’t need the crutches that I’ve used to survive anymore. It feels like the masks no longer fit, like the troubles I’ve had in my life are merely garments, raiments which have served their purpose and must now be cast aside.
I know, Know, this is not so simple as my senses lead me to believe. There is struggle there, there is pain. There is the inevitable force of will I must exert. There is a maintenance cost. There is suffering, and aloneness. There is a long hard travail down the crooked path which lies before and behind me, but Inside, there is me. And I feel overjoyed, happy with the featherless soaring of a balloon or kite. I feel as though it takes but a though to cast aside my shroud and awaken. It is as though a spell has lifted, and I am free to be myself.
Next Page »
