Sacred sexuality.  Sacred sexuality.  I’m really not sure what to say about this one.  Do I believe sex, passion, pleasure, sensuality, etc. are sacred?  Yes!  Do I believe they put us not only in touch with the Deity without but Deity within?  Yes.  But I’m also uncomfortable talking about sex.

Which reminds me of something my mentor Francesca had us do recently – which was loudly announce to the world that “My name is Eidolon and I’m a sex Goddess!”  And mean it.   Boy, did I blush.  And internally the five year old me giggled that I said ‘sex goddess’.  And then I blushed harder that I said that I was a sex goddess.  Because, really, I’d never tell people that about me.  Ever.

As a point of fact, I’m probably blushing right now.  Our society has so many taboos in regards to sex that its hard not to squirm a little a the thought of having to talk about sex.  In public.  Where people might, Gods forbid, see it.  And here I’m not even discussing graphic sex acts, just about the idea of sex being sacred.  To further muddy the waters (here comes a deep dark secret folks, please don’t judge me to harshly!), a few years back I was very active in fandom and wrote yaoi and slash fanfiction.  Graphic fanfiction.  Dirty, nasty, bad, wrong, dirty fanfiction. (I say this last sentence in jest, not because I believe that what I wrote was naughty or wrong.)  Not copious amounts because I’m never all that prolific with my ‘art’, but i did it and I never had a problem tacking my name onto these stories and I waited with bated breath for comments to roll in about what I had produced.

So, why were graphic stories about sex OK and talking about sacred sexuality something that makes me shy away?  I think part of it is because sacred sexuality is about my beliefs, about how I enjoy sex, and how I might be a sexual creature.  Fanfiction is about those characters being sexy and having sex, nothing to do with me… right?  Somewhere in my brain it doesn’t connect that if I’m writing something that I think is sexy, then perhaps I am a sexual being and that others will be aware that the author likes sex.  Enough to write about it at least.

In point of fact, I used to joke that writing my stories were homage to my Goddess Inari as she is often the patroness of sex workers… and writing what was basically porn was an homage to her.  Or maybe it was just a way to try to legitimize what I was doing.  *laughs*

In reality, I do find sex sacred and divine.  I also think that sex is dirty – not because it’s somehow tainted but because it’s sweaty, fluid-y, magical, sublime, holy, and dirty in a wholesome way.  Did that make any sense?  Sex isn’t meant to be clinical but for the most part we have to treat it that way in society because if we don’t then we’re being perverted.    It doesn’t always make sense to me that we live in a culture that is worried about sex and what kind of sex people are having and ways to limit people from having the ‘wrong’ kind of sex.

Because not only was I recently made to shout that I was a sex goddess, but this is also being written during a time when Chick-fil-A is coming out as being against homosexuals and the resultant bru-ha-ha that surrounds that statement.  I believe in equality, because I think I have more to lose than most if homosexuals are ever relegated as ‘less’ than the general population.  Not because I’m gay, but because I was born with a birth defect that makes me less than the female I appear.  According to the medical community the correct term for me is intersex since I have MRKH (also known as Mullerian agenesis or vaginal agenesis).  If people who have sex other than ‘normal’  man/woman sex aren’t eligible for rights, what about people who have a shaky gender identity?

Perhaps my MRKH also makes me shy away from sexual topics because for most people I know, when you’re a teen you either plan to have sex as in find the time when the parents won’t catch you OR you don’t plan and it ‘just happens in the heat of the moment’.  Not only could I just plain NOT have sex for a while until I had surgery to help ‘fix’ my MRKH, once I had the surgery there was no way to abandon myself to the heat of the moment.  I had large scars that were hard to miss and I had other problems that made having sex something that had to have a Talk with someone before I got intimate with them.  Awkward and bound to ruin the ‘moment’.  So sex has always had a patina of uncomfortable awkwardness attached to it for me.

It was made more awkward by the fact that the society I live in still has the idea that the main goal of a woman is to have children.  I would love to have kids.  I always wanted kids.  However, MRKH assures that I will never be able to have children.  My husband and I don’t make enough money to adopt.  I’m becoming more comfortable with having MRKH, but children are still a sore subject with me.  And sex is the way you make babies.  It isn’t just for fun!  It tears me up that all the dreams I had growing up of having children, of continuing traditions, of having a continuation of my mother line all end with me.  I have dreams sometimes of being pregnant and that ensures that my poor suffering husband has to deal with a bitchy witch of a wife for a few days afterward.

But what does this have to do with sacred sexuality?  Because I tend to repress my feelings about not being able to be a mother, I think I tend to shy away from talks about sacred sexuality.  Modern Wicca is very Goddess oriented, specifically the Mother Goddess.  It’s all about fertility, they’re always very quick to say that this can be creativity or nurturing – it doesn’t have to mean fertility as is giving birth!  But that the first thing that fertility means seems to be pregnancy is a problem for me.  Fertility is something that I’ll never have.  There are feminist groups that deny entrance to their group to women like me because since I was born without a uterus I wasn’t born a ‘real’ woman.

Because of all of that I shied away from Wicca.  The fertility aspect made me feel that gawky, awkward, broken teen who found out at 15 that she’d never be a mother and that in order to have sex I’d have to have several operations that would ensure that the summer between Junior and Senior year of high school was spent entirely in the hospital.   At this point I’d been reading bits and pieces about Wicca and paganism for two years before this and so much of it was focused on women loving themselves, in finding power in your moonblood, in reveling in the fact that when you started your period it marked you as leaving the Maiden phase of your life and coming into your full fertility as the Mother.  At 15, I felt like I had skipped the Mother phase and gone straight to Cronehood.  At 15 I felt like I had missed most of my life.  Now, at 39, I still feel a bit cheated. Add to the fact that the school system was teaching us young adults that this was the time when we girls were going to start bleeding and how dirty it was and how it was a curse that had to be hidden… it was confusing.  Then I turn out to fall on neither side of the divide… female, but not.  Female, but will never have a period.  Will never have PMS.  Will never align my monthly flow with the moon, or my sisters, or anything.  Female, but barren.  Never Mother, never a mother, never anything that paganism or society seems to think I should be.

So, sacred sexuality is still kind of tied into fertility for me.  I try to see it as the fertility of the Earth.  I try to see it as the fertile creativity that flows from Goddess.  But I still see sex as being linked to procreation.  Yet, my birth defect did do something for me that many women don’t ever get – a sense of freedom about sex.  AIDS was just becoming an epidemic that people worried about when I was ready to start thinking about sex as something as less than an abstract.   I might have to worry about STD’s, but never about pregnancy.  We were all given vague warnings about catching diseases but the thing that would end your life before it began was teen pregnancy.  It was a dark, dreadful secret that had to be kept hidden at all costs.  Yet I could enjoy all of the pleasure and never fear that I would have to tell my parents that I caught the most dreaded of all sexually transmitted diseases – pregnancy.  If I could manage to have the Talk about my scars and convince the man that I was, really, sterile… then sex was just good old fashioned fun.  I’ve never met a man who believed me that I couldn’t get pregnant, none of them we willing to believe that that wasn’t a lie to trap them into a relationship that they weren’t sure they wanted.  Even with condoms, we all knew they weren’t 100% effective.  Even with the pill, pregnancy was something that could still happen.  Sex was never just sacred, even with pagan men, it was something with an edge of danger and a dollop of paralyzing of fear.

Because I have kind of an outside view on paganism and fertility, I can see why there aren’t many men who are active in Wicca and paganism.  There is something that feels very limiting and exclusionary to people who don’t bleed, who can’t bear children.  This is made even more so by groups that exclude one sex or the other, especially when they start decided who is or isn’t man or woman enough for them.  It hurts and, especially for me, makes me doubt myself.  Being effectively genderless is a scary thing, it makes you feel like part of who you are has been stripped away, something so constant and obvious that it’s hard to believe that it could ever NOT be a part of you.  So often we rely on the tried and true ‘if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck; it must be a duck!”  Well, I look like a girl, walk like a girl, sound like a girl – yet somehow I’m not.  How limiting it must feel for pagan men being told that they are second, like the God.  Wicca, with it’s emphasis on Goddess creating God and him being relegated to Consort, it must be hard to identify with as being equal but somehow lesser.  I get that, more often than one would think, that because I can’t have children, because of my birth defect I am woman but somehow lesser because I am missing a few parts.  Men are missing those same parts but at least they have other parts to compensate.

Now all of that has come out of me, I’m surprised by some of the things that have come to light.  I still see sex as sacred.  I’m grateful that my birth defect has given me a certain amount of sexual freedom that allowed the younger me to throw myself into sexual situations with sensual abandon.  I was also lucky enough to have a friend (female) who knew and did her best to make sure that the awkwardness that came from the scars from operation were not always something I had to explain away.  She helped me to see them as a badge of courage (for having the operation, which was something that still isn’t generally seen as the norm for my disorder) and as something that meant that I could indulge in pleasure without fear.  She helped me learn that sex and love may be different, but they are intrinsically entwined.  All the things I see as holy and divine about sex, she helped me to see.

Last night at work I kept thinking about what I might possibly write about sacred sexuality.  It came to me that I could just draw something instead of tackling a subject that I felt so adverse to facing head on.  What I came up with is in no way overtly sexual, yet I do feel that it helps to encapsulate how I feel about  sacred sexuality.   I don’t know what all the imagery means, it just spoke to me.

that which gives is never
diminished by the giving
the heart of fire only grows
hotter
higher
holier
when fed
some fear the conflagration
will consume them
while others abandon themselves
to the flames
come! be reborn in the fire
give yourself
give of yourself
give to yourself

Reincarnation – the idea that we are reborn. Do I believe in it? Yes. Will I leave it at that? Probably not.

I was raised with the belief in more than one life, I’m assuming that my mother and grandmother held that belief because of their Shinto/Buddhist backgrounds. To be honest, I’m not sure how rebirth fits into my mom’s spiritual path, but for me it isn’t linked inextricably with karma. I don’t believe that we are rewarded or punished for what we did in a previous life, I do think that our actions from ‘before’ influence us in our current lives but not as directly as some seem to think. I think we have more than one life partially because there are over-arching lessons that we need to learn and because with each life we evolve a little more spiritually and uncovers work to uncover our spark of divinity. In time, through work and spiritual and physical dedication we eventually evolve and move on from this plane.

Part of this belief, I think, came partially from Shinto and from other religions that venerate ancestors. The common hope that if you believe enough and perform the proper ceremonies that the loved one who has died has become a deity is a powerful motivator. It is comforting for us to believe that our parents or friends or partners continue on, better than they were when trapped in human form. I don’t believe that we become gods at the time of our death, but I do think that our time as mortals refines our spirit until it evolves into something more. I think that’s why we have more than mortal beings in myths, beings that are both benign and malignant. Just because we become evolved beings of spirit, that doesn’t ensure that they are ‘purified’ or ‘good’.

I recently read another blog wherein the author talks about death and how words are marked or unmarked. The unmarked word is considered the ‘default’ state, so one only asks about the marked state. Life is considered the default, but this author challenged this supposition and asked their readers to assume the opposite. That death is the norm and life is the aberration. Life is the time that we spend clothed in mortal dust which, in the grand scheme of things, is a lesser amount of time than we spend as pure spirit. I like that this challenged our assumptions and made us think more about how death and life are intertwined and that death doesn’t have to mean something is wrong with the world.

My mother introduced the idea of reincarnation so casually into my world view that I never even questioned it, in fact she used it to comfort me. When I was young we lived in woods near a creek. We (my mother, the dog, and I) were walking along the bank and I was running ahead and exploring like I normally did. All of a sudden I stopped, in the shallow water near the bank was a huge fish. I know it was big, I want to say it was at least a foot long and the muddy brown of most trout. The difference in this fish was that the scales on its sides were painted with a diamond design that I had never seen before or since. I stared at it, entranced. I remember looking away and looking back several times as a way to check if it was ‘real’. Now, as an adult, I have to wonder if many children see fanciful things often enough that they have to worry that they are seeing unreal things. I assume they do, but I did everything I could except touch the fish because I knew if I touched it, it would swim away. And I didn’t want that, I wanted to share this find with my mom.

So, after I was certain the fish was real, I ran back and dragged my mother to where I had left the fish, quietly sunning itself in the shallow water. When we got there – the fish was gone. I was so unhappy, I had triple and quadruple checked that the fish was really there! How could it have disappeared?

My mother’s response? It must have been for me to see, a message from a previous life. The notion stopped me in its tracks. What message would a fish have? My mother smiled gently and explained that not all messages can be understood, we forget everything when we’re born. Sometimes the messages are just that we had done what we were supposed to in our old life.

Because of that, I found resonance with a story that told of an angel who, just before we’re born, presses their finger to our lips and whispers, “hush, don’t tell what you know.” That is why we have an indentation above our lips, a remainder of that finger and that soft admonition. We may not be able to access those memories of lives lived before, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t bleed into this life time to simply remind us that we have done this before. We have a purpose beyond what we think, not only to better our current lives but to evolve our souls.

And a drawing of the fish that started it all, drawn more than 30 years after the fact:

The last time I posted was in April.  I made my last paragraph a throw away about how I was going to work thru Francesca De Grandis’ books.

Before I knew it my Trickster Gods decided that reading wasn’t enough.  Doing was necessary.  See, I’ve been on the FDG’s mailing list for a while.  Probably two years?  Maybe less.  I don’t think it’s been more.  It started when I bought a pair of elf earrings from her in June 2011 and then a book from her in July 2011.  The book took a bit to get shipped for whatever reason (she’s busy, she’s got ms, and she lives in the wyrd of nowhere… she’s got lots of good reasons).  So I wrote to her and asked what was up… she responded kindly and graciously and I felt a real connection with her as a person not just as an amazing writer/teacher/priestess.  When she sent the book she added a little feather and a couple other trinket-y gifts.  I was so touched by her generosity of spirit and awed that a Big Name Pagan would be so thoughtful.

Mind you, I found Francesca’s book Be A Goddess back in 1998.  I devoured it.  It resonated deeply with me and helped me to form my own ideas about Deity and make my own Path a reality.   I waited eagerly for her next book and was not disappointed in the content of that one either.  Even to this day, when people ask me what a good book for starting out on a pagan path is I recommend Francesca’s works.  Then to find her art and creations on etsy… things I could buy and own that she had lovingly crafted… it blew my mind!  Yet I still wasn’t ready to sign up for a class.

I was afraid.  Afraid of being a bad student.  Afraid of not knowing enough.  Afraid that she wouldn’t like me.  Afraid of everything and of nothing and jumping at my own shadow.

Then, my Gods, Tricksters one and all, gave me that final push.  What was it exactly?  I don’t know.  I just had a fire in my belly that said that no matter WHAT I was going to sign up for one of her classes.  And she posted a few on facebook that sounded interesting and were affordable and I still found reasons to not take one.  ‘Oh, I can’t get time off of work.’ (why can’t I have an afternoon once a week off?)  ‘Oh, I don’t know enough to take a class on that.’ (isn’t that why you take classes, so you can learn?) ‘Oh, it would interfere with the Hubby’s schedule!’ (he’s out of work, he has no schedule!)

And then, it happened.  She posted a class called ‘Be A Goddess Master Class’.  I jumped!  I had to do this!  I revisit this book every few years and work through it because I love it so!  This was Fate telling me that this was the time!  AND yet I still dragged my heels.  I came up with all sorts of reasons why I couldn’t.  I talked myself into and out of this class a dozen times.  I swore to myself I’d call her and talk about it.  I swore I’d call her today.  And yet today never seemed the right day to do it.  I waited until it was almost too late to register to sign up.  But I did it.

We just finished the class.  I’ve never worked via telesemenar.  I’ve never been in an oral tradition.  I’ve never worked in an oathbound group.  After the first lesson I was certain that I was going to get nothing out of the class and that it just wasn’t for me.  I felt awkward and ungainly and unknowledgeable that first class.  I wanted to be a stellar student, one the teacher would praise and pat on the head and give me a gold star.  I wanted to have the right answers, I wanted to be that ‘good student’.  And then Francesca turned my world on it’s ear by telling us  not to be the good student.

Suddenly, I was freed!  I was allowed to accept what the class had to offer without filtering it through my ego.  Oathbound wasn’t about secrets, it was about allowing us all to have a truly sacred space where our wyrdness could blossom and not be judged.  Anything we shared was sacred, not secret.  And it just makes sense to keep the sacred in.   Being on the phone, with no visuals, we had to learn patience and respect and how to allow all of us to speak without speaking over anyone.  It was a subtle and delicate balance, one that was handled masterfully by Francesca.

If you can, take one of her classes.  If you think you can’t afford it – call her.  She will work with you.  I know, she worked with me.  She offers scholarships and discounts and payment plans.  She is funny, down to earth, mystical, charming, sweet, fierce, wild, and fae.  She’s human and kind and eminently approachable.  Her classes are safe and sane, they don’t download knowledge on you… they guide you to what you need.  These aren’t classes that have you regurgitate information, they make you discover yourself and suddenly you are just more aware of the mystical and how it all interconnects.  The classes blend the spiritual with the mundane and show us how magic walks through all avenues of our lives; seen and unseen.  As shamans we walk between the worlds and work to integrate those worlds in a way that makes us whole and healthy.

One line of hers has always stuck me with through the years and underpins my Path – “a healthy priestess makes all things sound.”  Francesca embodies that in a way that awes me, so many teachers don’t walk the walk – Francesca does.

I slipped down the rabbit hole and found what I needed most.  Won’t you take the journey too?

To find Francesca, you can go to:

www.outlawbunny.com – info & blogs on her classes on experiential interfaith mysticism and art

stardrenched.com – her spiritual site

www.well.com/user/zthirdrd/WiccanMiscellany.html – her Grimoire

twitter.com/outlawbunny – Francesca on twitter

www.etsy.com/shop/outlawbunny – her etsy shop

www.facebook.com/pages/Francesca-De-Grandis/219151244765770 – her facebook page

I don’t have her email listed, not because I’m a jerk who wants to keep her to myself, but because her disabilities make it hard for her to do email.  Call or twitter or facebook her instead.  She lists her phone number on her site in easy to find and prominent places… I just don’t feel comfortable reposting it here without her express permission.   She doesn’t know I’m writing this because I didn’t intend to write about her… this was supposed to be a general update with a ‘surprise! got to study with FDG!’  My, how that changed.  *laughs*

I don’t just pimp her work because it’s been so influential for me but because she makes her living off her artwork and teaching.  She has to, her disabilities keep her housebound.  We need to support our pagan elders and while I can’t always do so monetarily I can spread the word and hope that others will take her classes, buy her works of art, and help to keep this amazing shaman afloat.  I know it’s hard times for everyone, but every little bit helps.

Again, I return after a long absence.  Things have, as they do, have taken a turn for the worse.  My husband was diagnosed with diabetes in March and then the day after Easter he was let go from his job.   We’re in a bad place financially but I have hope that this means that the rest of 2012 has hidden treasures waiting for us.

What have I learned?  Be true to myself.  My poor husband was bending over backwards to be who his company wanted him to be.  I was doing my best to fit into a group of people where I wasn’t really meant to be but I wanted companionship.  We were both being square pegs in round holes and then the Universe decided to tell us to stop it.  And as usual it was done in a dramatic manner because I don’t always catch the small hints.  Even when I do catch the small hints, I sometimes ignore them because I think I’m right, dammit!

I’m taking this setback as a time to assess what I’ve been doing, to make sure I’m staying true to my ideals and that I’m doing what I want with my path.  I tend to feel lonely at times so I’ll join a group and try to make myself fit in there, even if I don’t have the same beliefs or goals.   I’m not Wiccan even if I did come from a Wiccan background.  It’s silly to try to force myself into that belief system.  And yet I do try.  Why?   Because I don’t want to be alone.  So I’m sitting down and I’m going to write out where I’m at and where I want to be going.  I may or may not put it on here, I am a lazy typist and I don’t like copying what I’ve already written out.  Meh.

Candle magic has been done to help us get assistance financially and for the hubby to get a job that he likes and is in his field.  Or at least one that pays the bills and he doesn’t detest.  We’ve also been working on his resume and finding jobs that he’s qualified for, applied for the unemployment and hoping that his old company doesn’t contest it.  If they do, it’s to be vindictive which is why he’s in this situation to begin with.  It’s a company of finger pointers where no one takes any responsibilities for their own mistakes.  It’s always someone else’s fault.

In order to keep my hand in the spiritual pie, I’m going to be working on ‘Be A Goddess’ by Francesca DeGrandis.  Then moving on to ‘Goddess Initiation’ and ending with ‘Share my Insanity’ (all by the same author).  I love her work, it’s grounded and full of wisdom with a quiet strength.  She’s one my very top favorite pagan authors, her works really resonate with me.  I’ve been lucky enough to have some small interaction with her online and she’s an amazing soul.  I have the highest respect for her.   I’ve been feeling drawn back to her work and am giving into the feeling while I also explore where I think I’m going.  I feel like there is something in Francesca’s work that I have to learn. Or maybe I’m just so bad at my spirituality that I can’t move forward without tripping backward.  Whatever the reason, I feel the pull and I’m going with it before something drastic happens.

It may not be necessary, but I’m going to talk briefly about what cosmology is in case anyone reading doesn’t know.  If you do know, feel free to skip this paragraph. Very briefly, it’s the way a religious tradition explains how the universe and world came to be and usually you’ll find that the process was done either by a deity or a pantheon of deities.  Simple, yes?

So, what is my cosmology?  Well, Lucifer is involved as Creator.  Some traditions call him the Blue God, a title I sometimes ascribe to him.  It also involves Nyx, but most of the work belongs to my darling Lucifer which you don’t normally see in pagan religions.  Usually the Goddess is more active in the creation of the world.   So, without further ado – my creation myth.

First there was Khaos, the nothing-ness, the darkness, the divine Androgyne.  From the darkness came darkness, and the Goddess Nyx emerged to create the Universe and fill it with light.  That light was Lucifer who sprang forth from the egg that Nyx had in the darkness and the first thing he did was fan his wings to dry them.  As his wings moved they made a sound, which echoed and bounced through the darkness of Khaos.  Faster and faster Lucifer flapped his wings, filling the void of Khaos with sound.  The noise woke bright pinpoints in the darkness and set them to dancing.  They whirled around in the darkness, sparkling and shining as they set their courses.

By the light of the new stars, Lucifer could see other things in the darkness.  He reached out and snagged a piece of clay, which was warm and soft, and began to shape it into a ball.  His fingers created a crevices and little mounds that he didn’t fully shape away, these became valleys and mountains.  Nyx wept tears of joy at seeing what Lucifer had created, and he took her tears and wrapped them around the ball, creating the seas to cradle his new Earth.

While Lucifer was busy creating the Earth, Nyx was birthing Hemera, the Day.  Together these goddesses raced around the Earth, giving day and night to the planet.  The sun was so bright, Lucifer couldn’t be seen and he worried that the Earth would forget him.  Pushing aside his fears, Lucifer scooped up more wet clay and created the moon, a silver crescent that was still filled with water from the new seas.  Water dripped from the moon’s horns, creating rain and as the moon waxed and waned the tides began to beat against the earth like a drum.

The earth was lovely to look at in the moonlight and Lucifer leaned down and kissed the Earth, where his lips touched forests grew and spread outward to cover the land.  The new forests reached upward toward Lucifer’s light waiting for the gentle rain of the moon.  So the trees would be able to grow, Lucifer pulled some of the heat of the sun to wrap around the center of the earth to warm them.  The heat was so intense, it burned his fingers and he dipped them in the cool water at the top and bottom of the globe and thought about cold and freezing.  Ice began to grow to soothe his painful fingers, it was a fair balance to the warmth of the equator.

The world was almost complete, but Lucifer knew that more was needed.  He blew across the face of the earth and as his breath swirled between the earth and the water of the moon, clouds were formed.  His breath continued to race around the globe, creating the four winds. Lucifer  named the gentle Western wind Zephyrus,  who rose with the setting of the sun.   From the frozen north came Boreas,  brining with it the chill to turn rain to snow.   The strong East wind was named Eurus, who brought warm rains to nourish new plants.  Finally there was the lush, playful wind from the South.  He was called Notus and brough with him fog and mist.  When all four blew together to the same point on Earth, they would argue over territory so fiercely that Lucifer would use his voice of thunder to quiet them.

Now that the world was complete, Lucifer looked to the sparkling aethers in the sky.  He reached out and several stars danced into the palm of his hand.   As he looked into the dark cavern made by his hand, their dancing and flashing made him think of life.  He breathed over them and they began to change, growing wings and legs, fur and scales, fins and feathers.  Each evolving and continuing to evolve until the land, the seas, and the winds were full of living creatures.  In honor of Lucifer, they all made different sounds and noises to imitate the first music that Lucifer created with his golden wings.

Eventually Lucifer wanted a creation that was more like him and Nyx, people who could enjoy the beauty of heaven and earth that had been created.  He asked the Goddess’ advice on how to create a new race that was different, that was more than birds and beasts.  Nyx, ever wise, asked what he would do with such a race?  Did he expect the to worship Him for what he had done?  Lucifer thought about it and finally answered: no.  He wanted a race made in the image of God and Goddess, to rejoice in the beauty of earth and sky, to dance and sing in honor of their beauty and freedom.  Nyx smiled sadly and warned him that creatures with such absolute  freedom would eventually vilify him for what he had not done, instead of seeing the blessing in what he had.  She warned that to create them, they would need to have a spark of deity within them, so every pain in the heart of mankind would be a pain the heart of God.

Lucifer shrugged, so be it! And they created woman and man.  Just as Nyx predicted, eventually they turned their back on the Gods for what they had not done for man and Lucifer wept as he was relegated to a place in hell.  This is the story of the Fall, not brought about by  sin or evil pride, but by divine love who knew the outcome but loves us anyway.

Now that I’m moved and unpacked and back to work, I can start on this again.  Oh, my!

The other parts of my path are made up of an odd conglomeration of shamanism, zen, alchemy, Shinto, herbalism, dragon magic, and whatever I find that works.  Many of the things I have listed there all sort of cross-bleed into each other which is why they don’t get their own headings, the only one that really sort of sticks out is zen.

Yes, it is usually attached to Buddhism and no, I’m not a Buddhist.  I’m not a master and am still learning through baby steps, but as far as I understand Zen doesn’t have to be attached to any specific religion.  It’s about being fully aware, of being mindful, of taking in everything around you through all your senses and finding the still beauty that is there.  I love the idea of Zen because it says that you don’t have to multi-task to be productive, you just have to be mindful and put your all into your work.  I’m a terrible multi-tasker, so I like anything that tells me that it’s OK if I can’t multi-task.  *laughs*  Zen is also about stilling yourself so you can be aware of yourself.  Going inward to go outward and vice versa.  It’s about taking time to appreciate yourself as a part of this great big, grand Universe.  It teaches me to take time, quality not quantity.  It makes me more aware of why I’m doing things as well as showing me that taking the long way can sometimes be more efficient.

Shinto is a form of shamanism at it’s heart, of being in tune with the natural world in a spiritual way.  Of connecting with and honoring the spirits all around us, whether they are divine, ancestral, or spirits of place or animal.  And for me, shamanism is about the journey; not  just trancing with your spirit guide animal, but also about how we approach and follow our path.  Paganism isn’t just about me-me-me, even if we do work magic to make ‘me’ more comfortable.  Paganism, for me, also connects us with the past as we create for the future.  I don’t believe that time is linear even though that’s how we follow it, I feel that we can connect and work with energy now and in the past and in the future.  All time is ‘now’ for us and there is a magic in that all its own.  Shinto and shamanism remind me that all things are divine, everything is touched by God.

Herbalism is a healing modality and a way to connect with spirits that aren’t animal based.  For me herbalism isn’t just working with plant spirits but with the spirits of earth, stone, and clay.  Without that plants can’t grow.  Sure, they need more than just earth and some don’t even need that, but as a broad generalization – you have to put a plant in soil before it can grow.  I also feel that herbalism connects me with my family more, wise women (and men) who knew how to coax life and health from everyday, often overlooked, items.  Herbalism is also a form of alchemy, transmuting something simple into something life altering.

Alchemy is a side study for me, I can see where a lot of modern paganism and modern Wicca came from in the study of alchemical arts.  To me, alchemy is distilling something down into its purest form, of transforming the simple into the spiritual.  Alchemy is scientific magic, a way of creating a formula that works the same way every time for something that can’t be formulated or controlled.  It is about spirit and soul, of finding and connecting with that purity and remaking ourselves into something better.  In this too, I am a novice but I am drawn in by the way alchemy links past with present, spirit with matter, and the complex symbols that encompass it.  As much as I try to simplify, I still love complexity and mystery.  There is also a patina on alchemy that it makes is both more and less mystical, a question about  it’s validity and how it was used by medieval con men.

Last, but not least, is dragon magic(k).  This is something that I’ve been incorporating into my path for more than a decade and I feel that it has been a rewarding backbone in my path.  There is nothing religious about this path, it’s purely spiritual.  There is no worship, there are no priests, no specific rituals.  In this path there are healers, mystics, and dreamers.  There is a laid back quality to the path since there are no holy days that have to be added to my calendar, there are no new tools that have to be added, and I don’t have to choose between my gods and the dragons.  The hard part with the draconic path is paying attention to my intuition and keeping in mind that the dragons don’t know everything.  They’re not infallible, they may know more than I do about some things or be able to better see what consequences will be, but ultimately I have to be the one to make the judgement calls.  I also find that this path is incredibly rewarding, working with my companion dragons and learning to use and work with their energies is something that is always interesting and engaging.

Everything else kind of wanders in and out of my sphere of influence as needed.

We recently moved and through all the chaos and confusion, Inari had begun to dominate my living room.  Her statue took a prominent place on the ledge between the kitchen and living room.  Her paining is displayed proudly on the wall near the dining room table.  I was very much feeling her energy all around me.

Then, I got a small wall shelf and one of my statues of Lucifer took pride of place on it.  It’s DC comics version of him, but in the move his martini glass was lost.  I stared at him for a few days, and he seemed to be reaching for something.  Holding his hand out, waiting.  I ignored the feeling.  Then that itchy, uncomfortable feeling made me feel like my skin was crawling.  So I found a small sphere of rock quartz that normally sits in a cup on my altar that fit perfectly in the palm of his hand.  And the itchy feeling crawling around in the back of my brain disappeared.

We’re still in the decorating phase and by our tv I found the perfect spot for the framed poster of Lucifer.  In it he stares out insouciantly, swirling his perfect martini and surrounded by snakes.  His golden wings trail behind him, full of light.  I love staring at it and it finally feels like the living room is balanced between my main patrons. It’s comfortable and I’m glad that they’re a little more integrated here than they’ve been in any other place that we’ve lived.

I’ve gotten used to not ‘hearing’ them, my gods. I’ve gotten used to paying attention to my feelings, listening to my intuition, and noticing odd patterns with numbers.  I try to figure out what my dreams are telling me without taking their content as absolute truth.  I understood that the distance was necessary, not only for me but probably for them as well.

And then, as I was dusting Lucifer’s statue, I heard him.  Clear as a bell, just like I used to.  His voice was like silk in my mental ear, soft and full of depth.

“Everyone wants choices, even though they deny them.  Even though they want to pretend that their fate is a coin toss.

What better way to hide your light than to cloak it in plainness.  You shine, especially in the dark.  The problem with darkness is that you can’t see your own light, only the light of others.  The problem with light is that everything shines, everything looks the same.  While you can’t turn brightness into darkness, you can tarnish it. But with work you can always reveal the hidden light.

People believe what they want to believe.  Having light, having knowledge, is more than some can handle.  Holding a candle in the darkness of ignorance can be tiring, especially when people willingly blindfold themselves.  Finding the light isn’t for everyone, but those who do find it and choose to add to the brightness are the ones we look for.  What is your choice?”

For a while, as a child, I tried to hide in the darkness.  To segregate myself, to find quiet hidden places, to be lost from view.  But that turned against me, being alone meant being unseen and when something bad finds you there is no one to help.  So I learned to hide in the light.  To be in everyone’s sight as much as possible so that what was wrong couldn’t get to me under the watchful gaze of so many people.  But that only worked to a degree.

Now it’s time for me to come out of hiding.   I’ve been using the camouflage ability of Fox for so long, I’m not sure I know how to discard it completely.  But I feel like Lucifer’s words are telling me to stop being that scared little girl.  To stop hiding in either darkness or light and embrace myself, my fears and flaws as well as my bright spots.   I may be tarnished, but with a little hard work I can be polished and look like new.

I hope I’m understanding him correctly.  I’m also pleased that he has chosen to speak again and I’m curious if he’ll continue to do so.  This post didn’t quite turn out how I thought it would, I had half-formed ideas that this would be more about him and less about me.   Maybe I’m too self-centered?  Or maybe he is finding new ways to make me look within and with out.

Hail and blessings to you, Lord of Light.

I’m sure you’re scratching your head and looking at me funny thinking ‘wait, isn’t paganism and witchcraft the same thing?’  If this were any ordinary day, I would probably say yes – on most days when talking to most people those two words are fairly interchangeable to me.  What makes today different?  Well, for one I have to write about it.  For two, there are differences.  I think witchcraft is a part of paganism, so when talking to people who don’t understand either I let one be a blanket term for the other.  However, where paganism is about the spiritual path and learning about the self; witchcraft is the mystical part.  It’s where the magic comes in.  Paganism has ritual and worship.  Witchcraft has the spells and the get-your-hands-dirty kind of magic.

Witchcraft doesn’t have to be spiritual.  Paganism does.  In a way, I see paganism as more passive and witchcraft more active.   That doesn’t make one better than the other, it just means that I feel that witchcraft is where I have to engage ‘me’ more.   And by that I mean I have to examine my motives, I need to know why I’m doing the spell I’m doing,  and I need to be willing to accept personal responsibility for what I’m doing.

For me witchcraft is all about weighing your actions, what are you planning on doing magically, are you willing to accept the return energy for what you are sending out?  Are you willing to accept the consequences of your actions?  If I need to do something to protect me or my family, will I do a binding or a hex?  Is that something I’m willing to accept the karma for?  I also need to decide why I’m doing it – do I have a legitimate reason or am I turning to magic as an equalizer because I was butt-hurt?

I will admit,  there are times when I take a while to contemplate these questions.  Aaaaand there are times when I  decide that I don’t care what the consequences are, I’m ok with doing it.  Does that make me a good witch?  Maybe not.  But as long as I’m willing to accept the repercussion then I am working within my path.  Do I do things that are harmful negligently?  No.  But if I feel that is the last route open to me then I ponder it very carefully before going through with it.  I can count the number of times I have felt that it was truly justified on one finger.

My final thoughts, today, on witchcraft is that it is a path where you really have to be willing to know yourself.   It requires not only introspection but understand and acceptance of what you find there.   It isn’t something everyone would be willing to do, but it is ultimately rewarding.

I’m assuming that I’m supposed to talk about what paganism means to me and what I do with it.   I mean, I could go with the usual pagan = not Christian, but I think that route has been already done.   Paganism is a strong thread in my life because my family is Japanese and paganism is still strong and alive there through Shinto.   My heritage has always been important to me and the fact that some branches of paganism work with ancestor worship has always intrigued me. Part of my path is creating a chain of tradition that connects me to my ancestors and that will continue through to my descendants.

For many I think paganism in general is a hard path because there are no hard and fast rules.  Even among the reconstructionists I’ve known, they update their practices to work in the modern world.  Part of that is because you can’t really slaughter an animal in sacrifice in your back yard without freaking out the neighbors, but also because there are just some things that aren’t fully understood… so the blanks are filled in by educated guesses.   Throughout paganism is the idea that you take what you need and discard what you don’t, but there is also (for me) the all important need for responsibility.   I don’t think that self-responsibility is stressed enough in many traditions and I try make sure that I live up to my ideas of it.

For me paganism falls into the realm of  not only someone who worships multiple deities; but also those who work with nature spirits, ancestors, and other energy modalities.  Gods aren’t the end all and be all of a practice and I have known several pagans who simply eschew working with God/dess.   The backbone of my personal faith is balance, so as long as the witch is balanced upon her path, it is correct.  Gods can come or go, Goddess can work her way in as She will or not.

As time has gone on I prefer the label of ‘pagan’  because it is a little more of a blanket term and has less baggage attached to it than ‘Wiccan’.  Also, for me, Wicca means that you can trace your teaching lineage back to Gardner (or even to the Sanders).   I also feel that Wicca has become a little too focused on how harmless they are rather than on actually training their practitioners to know what they’re doing.  That might be my own disillusionment with it, but this blog exists for me to expound on my own opinion… so there it is. *laughs*

I see paganism being a path that will continue into the future and will grow and evolve.  I think that’s what makes it so attractive to me, as a spiritual path it doesn’t allow me to wallow in a rut. It breathes and changes and reminds me to keep moving forward.  I don’t like to remain stationary and paganism allows me to move forward and strengthen my bonds with the world and spirits around me.

While at work today an enormous thunderstorm rolled through. Loud thunder and bolts of lightening tore through the heavens. I’m terrified of thunderstorms and made a facetious tweet that I heard him and the noise could stop. Lo and behold – it did.

Thank you, Lord of Lightening, for listening to me.