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Celebrating the turnings of the Wheel of the Year encourage us to meditate on the cycles of life. This year celebrating the Winter Solstice has proven is harder for me to enter  wholeheartedly than often in the past. At the Solstice we celebrate light’s return, and with it the rebirth of life from the mystery of death. This year perhaps it is fitting that it falls on the dark of the moon.  Yule honors the return of light while I am living in a society where the lights seem to be going out.

Ultimately my post will be positive, very much so.  But let us not pretend it is easy to see any growing light beyond that of the sun itself. 

They say that He of the Horns looked upon his people and his heart was moved with compassion at their suffering.

For an age and an age, two ages, he wept, and the tears of his weeping filled nine jars.

And when his weeping was ended, he took these nine jars and, with their waters, extinguished the fires of Hell.

Recently, a 14 year old boy shot himself in the head in the boys’ restroom at his central Florida middle school.  His family had moved here all the way from New York to escape bullies. Turns out you can’t end bullying by moving hundreds of miles.  You can’t end bullying by talking to school administrators or teachers.

You can’t end bullying by fighting and punishing bullies because fighting and punishing IS bullying.  Imagine firefighters trying to put out fires with flamethrowers instead of water hoses or buckets of earth.

I had so many things to be angry about.  So many people had wronged me, from my biological father who molested me, to my beloved grandmother who’d bailed him out of jail and brought him home to live with me after he shot my mother in the head, to my mother who taught me that I was worthless and unlovable, to the so-called friends who had used and betrayed me over and over.

They wronged me.  They hurt me.  They deserved to suffer for what they did to me.  How could I possibly forgive them, especially if they were not even pretending to be sorry?

It comes up every few months. It starts small but soon enough blossoms to a full-time preoccupation. I drift through reality, experience heightened by desire, appetite sharpening my senses. I’m unable to resist the enchantment even when I fear the strength of its pull.

Compassion spills and overflows
The oceans of my Soul
Each drop moving through
Rivulets of prismatic depths.

A cadence of virtuosity as
Fingers move in pizzicato
Rhythm across ephemeral strings
The sounds of empathetic release.

Seeker of that which is
Just beyond the grasp
Slips like liquid sand through
The funnel of glass measured time.

And Devotion pools at the base
Of sun-parched throats
That willingly endure the pain
To spare another the distress.

Martyr and miracle
Saint and sacrifice
Each flow in opposition
Until the waters clear And the darkened path
Of return is revealed.

Within the shadowy depths
Of quickening waters
Creation heeds the call
As a newly formed compassion
Fills my thirst-quenched Soul.   

The focus of my personal spiritual practice for many years has been the refining of my emotions and the catalyzing of my creative will. The work I’ve had to do to accomplish this has been directed through the process of enlivening my energetic anatomy with the goal of sustaining those resultant changes in physical and manifest expression. For years, I drew on the knowledge base I have of the Eastern practices of breath work, yoga and the Kundalini serpent in combination with magickal workings. These applications worked well, but there was still a large piece missing that felt like a puzzle that has all of the pieces save the one most important end corner. I offered up the hunger I had for a deeper experience to my guides and was called to the Halls of the Egyptian Deities and the wisdom of their ancient alchemy.

(Hee hee.)

Now that I’ve got your attention, let me tell you about the time someone criticized my student and I nearly lost my friggin’ mind.

I see my Coven the way most people see swans. Graceful and lovely on the surface; pedaling like mad beneath the surface to keep all things going well. Guests may see them as the calm and friendly people who call the Quarters, take the suggested $10 donations, raise the energy, and don’t let anyone open the wine until Fellowship. What they don’t see are the hours driving to NYC (for those who live in CT or Westchester), or the local members shuffling their shoulder bags full of ritual gear onto the subway, setting the space, performing the rite, cleaning up, and then shuffling everything back onto the subway, but usually with additional baggage in tow: canned food, toys, or clothing for various drives. The life of the Urban Witch often demands long journeys on foot, up and down long flights of stairs while jostling staffs, swords, candles, and goods among drunken strangers on and off of subways. It’s work. It’s a task of the Spirit and one I believe we are all glad to give. But what guests also don’t see is how many hours are spent in Circle outside of Sabbat, working on strengthening their Magickal and Energetic prowess as well as working through and with their Personal Shadows as part of becoming better Practitioners.