Archive for February, 2012

I was fishing for ideas for the second letter-D post when my partner suggested the concept of Deity as the subject. “What are your thoughts on the godhood of the gods?” he asked.

Good damn question. It’s taken me two weeks to answer.

I don’t know if there’s a god or many gods or no gods. I don’t know if gods are psychological archetypes that we use as windows into the mysteries–or to try to make sense of a nonsensical universe. I don’t know if gods are very real, totally separate individuals who exist whether or not we humans do, let alone whether or not we humans worship them, or if our love and attention feed and fuel them. I don’t know if gods and humans are symbiotic and one cannot survive without the other. I don’t know if humans created gods or if gods created humans or if we evolved together.

Since I don’t know, and I’m pretty sure I can’t know, I’m free to believe whatever makes the most sense to me. I can choose the belief, the framework of Divinity, that jives with me and supports the experiences I’ve had in my life. Ironically, it was Sekhmet, the most individual of all the gods I’d known at that point, Who insisted I drop my attempts at being polytheistic and revert to what felt natural and right to me – which, as I discovered years later, is called monolatry.

I’ve experienced gods as essences, collections of feelings and stories and energies, personal but not people. I’ve experienced gods as individuals, with Their own personalities and agendas. And I experience gods now as both individuals and parts of a greater whole; the Kemetic terms for this are Netjeru, the gods, and Netjer, the whole. Before I knew the word ‘monolatry’ existed and that it was a concept that extended beyond my own patchworked paradigm, I talked to the Universe and hailed it as the spark of divinity that animated and united all living, incarnate things. The Tao is a close approximation of how I feel about the Universe; it is flow, it is the way, it is a state of rightness and harmony. The Kemetic concept of ma’at is similar to the Tao, with a little less “flow” and a little more “rightness.”

I’m not sure what makes the gods godly, but I really do feel that the same spark that animates them animates us as well. To me, the Universal Soul is the force of life, and it’s part of everything that’s alive, whether it’s physical or not. So maybe I’m saying that the godhood of the gods is also the humanity of humans and the catness of cats and the fishness of fish. Same spark, different lamp shade.

Yeah. I think I’m happy with that answer.

This post brought to you as part of the Pagan Blog Project.

The desert compels me, and I can’t really say why.

I grew up in lushly forested rolling mountains. Piles of snow in the winter, thunderstorms in the summer, trees everywhere, and brambles and brush so thick between them that straying off the beaten path simply wasn’t plausible. The soil was rich and dark, the plants abundant, and wildlife common and healthy.

When I was a teenager, exploring the new world wide web, I started a message-board role-playing game set on a desert world called Terole. At one point, it had over 500 characters playing around in the tiny strip of habitable land on that planet, with dozens of species and cultures – all user-created. Terole was a harsh, dry, dusty, hot environment. It was nothing like the home I loved.

A few years ago, I fell in love with another desert planet – Ryarna. A far cry from sci-fi Terole, Ryarna featured technomagic, a singular native alien race, and bestial machines powered by animal souls from across the universe. It was, again, dry and dusty and hot, and the metal beasts had replaced much of the native “fleshie” life, eroding the ecosystems even more. I’ve written several short stories and three novels in that setting. It captivates me.

Shortly after that, I moved to Nevada, a high-altitude desert. Despite not planning to stay for very long, I wound up being there for almost two years. I bonded with the land in unexpected, unplanned ways. It’s a far cry from my ideal environment in which to live, but I do miss it. There is an emptiness to the air and a texture to the land that is unmistakable.

Last year, I wanted to retell the myths of the Destruction of Mankin and the Distant Goddess in fictional form, so I created a parallel to ancient Egypt, populated by animal-people tribes instead of humans for my novella. Despite the richness of the Nile-equivalent area in the setting, the entire story takes place in the red-sanded desert outside the river valley.

And of course, there’s my study of Egypt itself and my love of its gods and Their theophanies (animal symbols), like the deathstalker scorpion, which has invaded my dreams half a dozen times. I have gone into the desert in the day and in the night, both physically and spiritually. It is the stark opposite of my home environment, my favorite environment, but there is, nonetheless, something inexorably compelling about the desert that holds my fascination through fiction and myth.

Perhaps it’s the same complementary attraction that draws the Water-child to the flame, but this Appalachian native can’t seem to stop staring, transfixed, towards the empty dunes and burning winds.

This post brought to you as part of the Pagan Blog Project.

Disclaimer #1: Where I say “God”, substitute your preferred term. God, Goddess, the Divine, the Great Spirit, Netjer, an individual deity’s name, etc. This is shorthand, not exclusion. :)

Disclaimer #2: This post will make me sound pretty crazy. That’s okay. Creation is a weird, intense thing.

If you’ve seen this blog’s past entries at all, you know I like to create things. I’ve made paintings for my four primary Egyptian gods (and one more is planned for the Red Lady), a sculpey pendant for one of those four (and planning another as a gift, plus a sculpey-ture), and several songs or mini-songs for all of the above. I’ve also been writing a re-imagined Egyptian fairytale, combining the myth of the Destruction of Mankind with the myth of the Distant Goddess.

And, since I keep inundating this journal will the results of such creativity, I figured now is not a bad time to talk about the process of creation, especially when there’s one or more gods involved.

When I write “regular” fiction, my characters drive the story. I may have the vaguest seed of an idea or a well-planned plot and setting, but once I start writing, the characters take the wheel, and I wind up being a side-seat driver or, at best, a navigator. “No, no, turn left up here, trust me.” It’s an incredibly enjoyable process, but it’s not exactly an exercise of logic and intellect for me. I’m just along for the ride, taking notes as I go.

Working on a project for or with God is even weirder more out of my hands. I’m not imagining the end result and working towards it; I’m stating my intention to create X for/with Y and then listening. It’s a full-body listen, like my mind cracks open and stretches out, no longer a self-contained sphere. I’m receptive and open and subconsciously, intuitively aware.

Writing a song, I’m not analyzing the words or carefully structuring a rhyming pattern. (I’m bad at rhymes, anyways.) I’m relaying a story that’s slowly coalescing in my head. I’m asking the song what chords or notes it wants, what tempo, what texture of voice. I’m asking God, “is this okay? is this part right?” and I can always feel, quite strongly, if it’s right or not. There may be a point in the song where any of three chords will work musically, but there’s always one right chord and two wrong ones. I have editorial license – I can rearrange verses or choose synonyms or use a capo sometimes – but the core always comes from outside of me when I’m making spiritual music.

Same with paintings. I’ll have a vague idea of the overall layout of objects/figures in the painting, but God picks the colors. I have argued, on two different paintings, about the colors God has chosen, but I used the preferred colors, and God was proven right both times. (I have since stopped arguing, although I still express my incredulousness sometimes.) By the time the painting is done, I may be exhausted and not very impressed with my limited skills, but by gum, the painting feels right. The god I’ve made it for likes it, because that god had a hand in the whole creation process.

In the end, when I’m creating something for God, it’s always co-creation. I always have the god in question leaning in, a presence in the space around me, giving me wordless nudges towards this color or this chord. And that’s magic, right there. That’s my interactive prayer. The times when I am co-creating with my gods are when I am the closest I get to Them, and as challenging as it can be, I love it and appreciate it immensely.

This post brought to you as part of the Pagan Blog Project.

I have a couple of chaos magic books, highly recommended to me by some of my energy-working friends. I got them and, as many of my books do, they incubated on my bookshelf for a little while before I picked up Condensed Chaos: An Introduction to Chaos Magic by Phil Hine. I read the first third or so of the book before I needed to sleep for the night, and in reading that chunk of text, I realized something.

I’ve been a chaos magician for years without ever knowing it had a name.

It was an approach I’d developed from my own observations and experiences, my own theories and studies into various paths. If I had to name it, before I knew other people had already named it and also practiced it, I probably would have referenced the archetype of Shapeshifter in some way. Chaos magic is all about shapeshifting – being fluid and changing your skin to suit your needs, your preferences, and your situation. But, instead of just changing your behavioral patterns and strength/weakness attributes, which is more of a personal self-shifting practice, and instead of a long-term paradigm-shift, where you uproot and revamp how you view the world and its people and your own self, chaos magic is action-shifting.

In other words, chaos magic lets you grab any tool from any toolbox. It doesn’t matter if this tool is “real” when viewed through the lens of your usual paradigm; it matters if the tool is useful. Does it work? Does it bring about the desired effect for you, in your wonderfully subjective experience?

Because everything is subjective. Psychology backs me up on this; if you ever want to realize how amazingly fluid and flexible our brains are, read A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives by Cordelia Fine. Even our “factual” memories get edited and adjusted over time. We do have objective truths in our present world – gravity works, yes – but our experiences are so very subjective that our personal realities become far more subjective than objective. And so, if, as chaos magic maintains, “nothing is true – everything is permitted,” well, then. We have no need to limit ourselves.

If nothing is true, then anything can be true. You can put on any set of glasses through which to see the world. You can move through different magical traditions as you need. You can use different spiritual techniques as you need. You can interact with any Unseen entity (that’s willing to interact with you). You can even engage with fiction if it works for you! (And it does for many of us. What is fiction but newly-created mythologies in the modern day?) There’s nothing holding you back but how far your mind can expand to hold these varying paradigms within it. Chaos magic is all about personal experience and gnosis, not dogma.

“Rather than trying to recover and maintain a tradition that links back to the past (and former glory), Chaos Magick is an approach that enables the individual to use anything that s/he thinks is suitable as a temporary belief or symbol system. What matters is the results you get, not the ‘authenticity’ of the system used.” – Phil Hine, author of the aforementioned Condensed Chaos: An Introduction to Chaos Magic.

Important Note: Chaos magic is not an excuse for mistreating your Unseen contacts or for cultural appropriation – all the usual guidelines of working magic responsibly still do apply. Do your research into this method/those entities so that you can be smart and courteous and effective in your work. In fact, chaos magic puts a strong emphasis on practice and putting in the work to any given magical endeavor that you want to fully learn or that you want to succeed. Chaos magic means that you have many roads that you can choose to walk – not that you get a flying car!

Interestingly, I tie chaos magic into compassion, especially in the zen sense. If I practice chaos magic, if I can set foot in the Celtic deep-soil-and-old-bones tradition and also set foot in the hot-sands-and-dry-winds of Kemetic Orthodoxy, then can I not understand how easy it is to change paradigms? Can I not understand how it is that another person lives a different paradigm than I – and can I not extend to them my ability to listen and learn about that paradigm in the same way that I learn other magical paradigms? If I can understand them, even if I may not like all aspects of their paradigm, can I not offer them my compassion and my fellowship as another living creature of this world? If I can shift my shape, can I not imagine how the shape of another person would feel to wear?

Chaos magic is about tools. But not all tools are magical – plenty are perfectly mundane, the ones we use in constructing and deconstructing our interpersonal relationships. And chaos magic can apply there, too, like it can just about everywhere. It’s flexible like that.

This post brought to you as part of the Pagan Blog Project.

In the past little while, I have accumulated a startling number of offerings for my gods, to the point of having one for each of Them. Tonight, I felt the urge to sit in shrine and give Them Their gifts, since I found myself physically and mentally pure enough to do so in good spirits.

I put on background music – my own personal mix CD of god-songs and spirit-songs – and washed my hands. Lit incense, lit candle, knelt down. Poured a libation of green tea in four cups – I only have four, but I was offering to five gods, so I gave Sekhmet the candle for Her own. (She didn’t seem to mind.)

To Sekhmet, I offered a statue of Her, gold and standing tall, a gift from a good friend.

To Nebt-het, I offered the painting I’d done, and I rededicated to Her the rosary that J had converted to a necklace for me.

To Hethert-Nut, I offered the pendant I’d crafted and the accompanying necklace that J had made, an effort of love from both of us.

To Ma’ahes, I offered a lion plaque that I’d had for years that seemed to suit Him, as well as an ornately decorated Kemetic dagger, another gift from the aforementioned good friend.

To Serqet, I offered a small gold statue of Her in Her form of a woman, a gift from my sister.

I sat with Them and talked for a while, comfortable in front of my beautiful shrine and the objects that represented my spiritual family. I also shut up for a while and listened, counted my breath in time with the song that was playing, relaxed. I thought of more things I want to do for Them – Sekhmet’s painting, a full-length song for Nebt-het, Hethert-Nut’s other painting, a sculpey-ture for Ma’ahes, and the song I’m working on for Serqet.

I was happy. I told Them goodnight, reverted the green tea libations, thanked the candle and blew it out, and found the little Serqet statue something to stand on so She could stay in Her preferred corner, in the shadow of my akhu shelf-shrine.

I am happy. Dua Netjer!

Cernunnos is the name usually used to describe the Horned God of Celtic traditions. In terms of artifacts, very little is attested to that name specifically, and even the etymology isn’t entire sussed out. In terms of modern-day pagan worship, Cernunnos is seen as a god of the Wild Hunt, a god of fertility and sexuality, a god of nature and wild animals, and much more.

To me, Cernunnos is

the darkness beneath the trees
hoofprints left in loamy soil
an endless trail to follow
a god so far ahead he’s never seen
signals left on the path
blood pumping through veins
cool air, warm skin
muscles flexing and contracting
sweat
sex
night-time wind
the smell of damp earth and greens
shadows under leaves
stars in the sky
the forerunner of the path I’m on
not a person, only a presence
not a person, only a concept
not a person, only a feeling

April 21, 2010, personal journal:

I hadn’t realized the bedroom window was open. After I took my hot shower, I came back into the bedroom with Vas’s Unbecome playing… and just stopped.

The smell. Cool warmth. Enough moisture in the air to turn shadows into dark, waxy green leaves. The sound of passing cars intimate and grittily real, underlaid with haunting music. The touch of the wind on my warm, bare skin and how it slipped into my lungs like pure oxygen, a prayer of flesh.

I thought of the Horned God; it was His smell, His taste, His touch, His dark forest overlaying my pedestrian reality.

This post brought to you as part of the Pagan Blog Project.

Cripes I wrote a war song.

So, I’m still pretty new to this whole song-writing business, right, and since I’m participating in FAWM, with the challenge to write 14.5 brand new songs in the month of February, I’m a little intimidated. It feels like it did before my first NaNoWriMo – exhilarating and terrifying. I think the month will give me a heap of experience in songwriting, music-playing, and being creative consistently and frequently, but that makes it no less daunting to leap in head-first!

I was listening to the FAWM Jukebox all day at work yesterday. I was getting really excited and impatient to get home and start trying to make music. And when I got home, I had dinner, then started brainstorming. Too many ideas, none of them rooted enough to start playing with. I picked up my classical guitar, then traded her for a scandalous affair with J’s electric guitar (and got lost for a little bit in the fun of amp effects). I got a simplistic chord progression and a crappy first verse for… something that just wasn’t clicking. I put the electric back.

I hit that unfortunate-yet-common spot in the creative cycle where my brain says ALL I DO SUCKS AAAGH and got sad. I kept trying, wanting to push through; I hit that low point when I was doing Nebt-het’s painting, too, but that came out alright! I can do this! …but eventually, tired and whiny, I stopped.

See, I did not realize that Ma’ahes wanted a song.

My sister clued me in when we briefly chatted and I begged her for musical help. I started writing a couple lines for Him, got distracted by other things, and it fell by the wayside. After I got tired enough to quit, my stubborn side reared its bulldog-like head and sent me into the (quiet, distraction-free) bedroom to write down the lines and see if I could, at least, make a little more progress on them. Anything to make this evening not be a musical wasteland. Some better note (pun intended) to end on, before I slept.

Some short time later, I had a song for Ma’ahes. It did not merely flow as I wrote it down; it poured out like water over a broken dam. And it is not like anything I’ve done or attempted to do before. It’s rough, of course, but that’s the idea of FAWM: to create, not to spend endless hours polishing and perfecting. And I think I really do like it.

If you’d like, you can listen to it and read the lyrics right here.

Dua Ma’ahes!

From The Virtual Abbey:

Our celebrations, always full of spontaneity, are grounded in our own liturgical traditions. On Brigid’s day, we culminate with this song adapted from “The Blessing of Brigid” in Carmina Gadelica:

One group sings over and over:

I am under the shielding of Brigid each day,
I am under the shielding of Brigid each night.

While others sing in counterpart:

Brigid is my comrade-woman,
Brigid is my maker of song,
Brigid is my helping-woman,
my choicest of women,
my guide.

This is incredibly heartfelt and gorgeous.

O Hethert-Nut,
Lady of Stars and Sistra!

Mistress of the Night,
Whisperer of Lullabies,
Beautiful One in the Sky,
Inspirer of All Music,
Celestial Cow Who Uplifts The Sun,
She For Whom Songs Are Sung,
Divine Heavens Who Hold The Blessed Dead,
Goddess of Voice, String, and Drum!

I humbly pray that You bless me
with Your endless grace and glory
so that You may be my Muse
in this, the wintry month of fire,
newly-become the month of music
that I create in Your name
and out of love for You.

O Hethert-Nut,
All-Encompassing Mother,
Joyous and Infinite!
May Your radiance shine through my work
like the spirits of the akhu through Your skin;
may I honor You with my earnest efforts
and make You smile with my newborn songs.

Dua Hethert-Nut!

[In other words, I’m trying FAWM for the first time and need all the help I can get!]

PS~ When I was proofreading this, my eyes skimmed a little too fast and briefly read the second line as “Lady of Sitars and Sistra,” which is fabulous. XD