WITCH SPEAK: SEPTEMBER 2017
ART BY CATERINA KOUNINIOTI
All year long I look forward to fall. The air, the light, changing trees, spectacular beauty. My guides told me once that you can’t see, that which is not inside you. I said, “So the spectacular beauty I’m witnessing lives inside me?” The guides said, “Yes.” I then asked, “What about the ugly? I see so much ugly and there are days it hurts so bad I can barely breathe.” This is the paraphrased response.
Every human being carries “ugly,” inside them. The micro (you) reflects the macro (culture). Beauty is not dead; beauty is alive. Nothing is more beautiful than a butterfly on the wing. Yet butterflies are often killed, pinned to velvet, and hung on walls as objects of beauty. To contain beauty, make it manageable, is to kill it. Beauty is wild; untamable. It is beauty that is self, that is soul that is all you are. It is the cellular awareness of beauty and unconditional love of beauty that shouts, “No!” when it sees wrong, feels violation. It is not hate that triggers sane resistance; it the working partnership of love and beauty. Hate is little more than a response to the ugliness of deep oppression; a closed circuit, it keeps you small and on your knees.
If you would know true beauty and true love, become friends with your anger. Anger is an appropriate response to a boundary violation. To be invalidated, treated with disrespect, with contempt, over and over, leads to anger. I don’t think its sane to deny or rise above your anger; though if I’m in the midst of something that needs my focus, or I am working with all might to practice restraint of pen and tongue, I will cage and put it on the shelf to take down later. I am against denying one’s anger because it turns inward; festers, and becomes the soil of rage. Rage and hate walk hand in hand just like beauty and love. What I am suggesting is you respect your anger and know there is good reason for it. Carry your anger with dignity, and try not to beat anyone over the head with it, including yourself. Think about, what is right action for this anger? How can I use this anger in a way that is of benefit? What can I do to transform this into pure gold?
Whatever action you choose, intrinsic to right use of action is some kind of inner change. Maybe you need to get away from the kids for a while, and call a friend or relative to come take care of them. Maybe this is a huge deal because you’re used to doing everything yourself, and relying on others is not part of your make-up. Maybe than you realize that you don’t like to rely on people because the idea that they might let you down is so painful, it’s not worth it. If this is true, then clearly there was some kind of emotional abandonment as a child that was so painful, every time someone let’s you down, you relive those feelings all over. Gee, and you thought all you needed was a walk! But, by taking that walk you are claiming, not abandoning, yourself, because you’re paying attention, you’re honoring, that part of you that needed a break, This is how we transform. Trust me, if you can’t release something it’s because it needs to be transformed.
When I got really serious about the study of metaphysics back in the late 70’s every teacher I ever had was big on, “let it go.” If something was bothering me, “let it go.” My problem was I couldn’t; I’d try and I’d try but I just couldn’t let things go. “You’re resisting,” I was told. I believed them hook, line, and sinker, until one day I just couldn’t anymore. I wandered aimlessly for awhile and ultimately found the olde religion — witch craft. What I immediately loved about the craft was the concept of transformation. Nature transforms from one season to the next, and like nature we transform.
StarHawk has a wonderful exercise in her book The Spiral Dance. Before I do this exercise, I unplug everything so I won’t be disturbed. Then I fill a bowl with sea salt and spring water and carry it into my room. I light incense and the candles on my altar, take a deep breath and stand over the bowl. Then I let all the yucky drain out from between your legs into the salt water. My yucky tends to be specific. It’s money, it’s love, it’s destructive behavior, it’s being pulled into someone else’s drama and I don’t want any part of it. I have also done this exercise for a general cleanse, meaning I’m-not-sure-what’s-bothering-me-but something-is-and-this-will-help.
When the yuck’s out of my body, I take a seat in front of your altar. Lift the bowl to my lips, take a sip, and say, “I transform.” I do this three times. The first time I did this exercise I felt like a Bene Gesserit witch, transforming the poison of the spice! P.S. Though I loved the Dune books, I had more than a few issues with the Bene Gesserit witches. P.S.S. If you don’t know the Dune books, or the Bene Gesserit witches, don’t worry about it!
When I was a single mom, there were times I didn’t have a moment to make a ritual of transformation. I remember standing in my kitchen, the playgroup was at my house, children and mothers everywhere and I was so mad at one of those mothers my fillings hurt. I filled a coffee cup with water and salt, slipped into the bathroom and did the ritual in a matter of minutes. No candles, nothing, and it was one of the most powerful things I ever did. I didn’t engage with the woman’s drama and after that day I opted out of playgroups where I knew she would be present. You don’t need ideal circumstances to make magick. You just need the willingness and a point blank refusal to accept the scripts that others are projecting onto you. Scripts that are meant to keep you small and manageable. May you know right use of anger to throw off that, which would diminish your beauty and your love.
Wishing you grand transformations!
Live loud, love fierce, and suffer no fools. Kat