musings, Uncategorized

A fallen leaf

I took time out from my Thanksgiving preparations to go on what I call fairy time. When I had gone outside to attend to one of my turkey day preparations the wind felt like it was calling me. Tugging at my senses and making me feel a call to the wild. In response I went about gathering what I would need for some fairy time. I put my trusty bottle of corn meal for offerings. Corn meal is a good offering to the land and with the wind it puffs from my hand spreading the blessing of it. I pulled my hunter orange hat that I use for hiking during hunting season and went off to the local town forest.

The night before I started Silver Ravenwolf’s new book The Witching HourShe goes over what she calls a “spirit walk” where you go out to connect to nature and the spirits to gain knowledge and some of the special gifts of nature. I call this faery time. I learned about faery time from my Friend Matooka. Faery time is when someone who is fey in essential nature goes out into nature to rebalance themselves after having too much busy human time. It is a time to reconnect and let go of the mundane.

I started my faery time like I usually do with an offering of corn meal at the beginning of the trail to the spirits of the land and fey of this place. I asked that in return they give me there guidance and protection on my journey. Moving through the woods with the November winds rattling the trees and shaking the leaves instantly calmed me. As I walked I mused about my year reading with Matooka Moonbear last night. How my focus was on connecting to the innocent childlike way I connect to the world. As I walked I tried to catch a leaf falling from a tree. Since I was little I knew that if you could catch one in the fall you would enjoy a illness free winter. Whether this is empirically true I have never investigated fully but it has always been something I try to do in the fall. I leaped and reached but the three times I tried I caught no leaf.

Disappointed I turned my eyes to the beauty of nature around me. I picked up a fallen pine bough bringing it to my nose to smell it’s scent. This brought me to think about Silver’s book since one of the things you would get from a spirit walk was things you could add to your herbal formularies and powders. Thinking of the book I asked spirit what it had to teach me right now. I reached again to smell the pine bough and a small oak leaf fell and stuck to my jacket. I laughed picking it off my jacket and knowing this was my message from spirit. The leaf meant to me that you don’t have to try so hard or push yourself so much, sometimes it is just about connecting, asking and letting yourself receive.

Blessing Cord

Generosity

The thirty-sixth bead of the blessing cord is the blessing of Generosity. This is the earth of Tipereth. Tipereth has an energy that brings forth our True Will or our Great Work, what we came here to this world to complete, and how we choose to answer that calling. You can see the hallmarks of True Will by looking for how it serves not only the person but also the web of life. It takes a generosity of spirit to be able to do this Great Work as a gift to the divine that is within us all. This generosity shows our nobility of spirit and our inner sovereignty.

Generosity comes from the Latin word generōsus, meaning “of noble birth”. A good noble took care of their community by allocating resources, planing, implementing, and educating. They did so because without the community they would not be in the exalted position they were in. To take that into our spiritual realms, a good noble or sovereign is sufficiently in control of their own lives that they can give of their time, energy, resources, and wisdom to help those were less fortunate or in their charge. We each have this sovereignty within us, no matter our wealth, class, time, schedule, or energy level. We can adopt the noble path of generosity and give in the name of the gods. They love when we make these types of offerings and help to refill us so we can give again.

The community you aid with your generosity or your Great Work may take many forms, and not all of them are on a grand global scale. It could be once a year giving a homeless person an old jacket or a tent. It could be helping with the school bake sale for your kids’ marching band. You may feel called to go to an impoverished community or disaster area and offer your help and expertise. Generosity doesn’t have to be a grand gesture. You can generously give a smile or a complement. You can buy a friend a coffee or tea because they are having a tough time. Give a friend a book you enjoyed and think they will also.

 

The blessing of generosity teaches us how to give and share our gifts with community. Many  cultures and religions have tithes that they give to their religious institutions or charities. A tithe is a percentage of your income that you give back to the community with no expectation of return. Even if they didn’t expect return they still might get it in form of the rituals of the temple or from the gods themselves. You may also want to give a tithe of time in service to your community, if you do not have physical wealth to offer.

Generosity can feel like a sacrifice of time, energy or resources that could be used for yourself and your goals. We turn to the solar gods of Tipereth for our model. Most of the solar gods have a cycle where they sacrifice themselves to the land or its people. Many of the pagan solar gods sacrifice themselves so that we may take in their blessings by consuming a part of them. The young Oak King is sacrificed by the older Holy King at the summer solstice to bring his energy into the land so the fields will ripen. This also brings about the turning of the “wheel of the year” as the darker time of less daylight begins. The change of wheat from green to gold symbolizes the god’s energy in the land. From his sacrifice the wheat and all the plants ripen. This is an archetypal example of the generosity of the gods. We pagans are not alone in this, the Christian faith’s Christ sacrificed himself to take on the world’s sin. The rite of transubstantiation is to make the wine and host into the blood and body of Christ. People take some of the energy of his holiness, his sacrifice, into themselves with the sacrement. We pagans have the Great Rite in token, where we drink in the blessings of the gods after an athame is used to gather energy and it is brought into the wine as a symbolic ritual of the male giving up his seed and energy to the womb of life.

These divinities show their generosity by giving freely of what they have to help their people, just as the Sun, the symbol of Tiphereth, gives freely of its light and warm. We are only seeds of gods and don’t have the same expectations because we are human. Our sacrifice to generosity doesn’t have to be big or even something that we need or use any more.

This generosity has great benefits to it as well. Generosity has been scientifically proven to make people happier. I have never met an unhappy generous person. It improves your self-esteem and feelings of self-worth. It can connect you deeply to what your Great Work is in this world, something beyond just your vocation or career.

In this meditation we move into the energies of Tipereth and ask: “How can I offer up a service in generosity?” Our answer comes from our own Holy Guardian Angel, the Watcher-self, the god seed within us. Your answer may come in the meditation or be an encounter with a need you can fulfill in the days after the meditation. Take this chance to be an answered prayer for someone else.

Meditation of Generosity

Hold the thirty-sixth bead, the bead of the blessing of Generosity, the blessing of earth in Tiphereth.

Count yourself down into a meditative state.

Allow the screen of your mind to expand into a sphere around you. Feel a rising sensation as your sphere begins to fill with radiant golden yellow light. Vibrate the God name of Tipereth: Yod-heh-vauv-heh el-oh-ah Vah-dah-ath.

The golden light surrounding you call out to your Holy Guardian Angel. You may see it as a golden ball above you or coming toward you. They may look like any appearance that they wish.  Thank your Holy Guardian Angel for being with you in this time.

Ask them “How can I offer up a service in generosity?”

They may give you a feeling, a word or phrase, some sage advice, or a image of someone. They may also say nothing at all.

Ask what you can give to your Holy Guardian Angel in thanks for its help and communion. You may be surprised at the answer. It may ask you to do a generous service for yourself or someone else.

Ask any other questions you might have about becoming a more generous person. Know that your Holy Guardian Angel has heard you and is willing to guide you after this meditation to a situation where your generosity is needed.

Thank your Holy Guardian Angel again. The golden light begins to fill your screen of the mind around you, obscuring your Holy Guardian Angel from view. The golden light begins to fade and the screen of your mind returns to its normal size.

Count yourself up to waking consciousness and ground and center yourself.

Contemplation

What can you give back to your community? What types of need call out to you? Do you look at what you want to do and what the need is in the world and make a compromise of the two? How can you be a more generous person?

shamanic temple

Seasonal Journeying

Journeying to meet with the spirits of a sacred time or season makes us more attuned to the energies of time. My journeying was a little late in the cycle of classes and I went to work on the journey not in spring, but summer. I tried doing a combined journey to the spirits of midsummer and then to the spirit of summer. In retrospect, I feel like having more then one intention for the meditation through me off a bit.

The part to journey to the spirits of midsummer brought me to the eternal fire circle. That is my way of saying the eternal sabbat or where one might see the Hidden Company. In many of my sabbat meditations it seems like the journey really isn’t about me and is more about the energy of the sacred time. The lesson of the journey is usually so universal it seems beyond my “little pond”.  This one echoed one of my journeys in the past, where it starts as the bonfire and expands to be the solar system and then the galaxy,  all circulating around a central focus. The lesson for me is “as above, so below”. We find so much comfort in dancing around the central fire because it attunes us to the great cosmic dance around its central point. The turning of the wheel.

The summer season part of my journey took me to the beach. There on the surf with the gulls calling in the background, I began to feel a presence all around me. The heat became too strong and the sand burned my feet. It is hard to explain, but the whole environment of this summer beach scene began to speak with me. I would have to say it was telepathic, but more from every direction instead of having one point of origin. The spirit of summer seemed to be this place and I was inside it.

The spirit of summer showed me images of my past summers. Showing me how at peace I was with the sumer season when I was younger. How I would go out on bike rides, go to the beach, go camping, or just play outside. The images as I got older seemed more out of balance with summer. The boys joke that I am “not a hot house flower” meaning I wilt and get cranky when I have had too much heat.

Summer advised me to find a way to become at peace with the energies of the season. Others seem to love summer where I think of it more as a bother: It is hot and my day job pays less, making any fun we have a financial trial. The spirit didn’t really give me a clue on how to make peace with summer. Perhaps my future journeys will enlighten me further.