More Thoughts on Priest/ess & Witch

OH!  These things so much!

priest/ess 5: priest/ess at large by Yeshe Rabbit
Premonitions of Melissa on the Wild Hunt by Alley Valkyrie

To be honest, I would have put those things in category witch, for myself, but if others perceive these things as priest/ess 'at large' or other priest/ess work, I can certainly roll with that.

Perhaps it is that 'witch' is what I practice, priest/ess is in the how I express that practice.  It's definitely an 'at large' situation, and most people don't recognize it as it's happening.  When The Rainbow Lady was still alive, she approached my husband, me, and a very young M1 in the co-op my husband would soon run and told us we had a very special child and asked to bless her right there in the store.  Of course she could!  The Rainbow Lady, after all!  I suppose that's her acting as priest/ess for us.  Many people talk to me about the things they can't tell their families -- the grocery store cashier who tells me about the dolphin tattoo she wants because of the deep spiritual resonance she feels with them, but her family is super evangelical Christian and she could never do it and she doesn't know why she just shared that with me.  The people who sense the librarian, 'ready reference' source of knowledge who ask me where things are, how to get places, etc.  Librarians joke that it's a librarian thing, but we're all sort of priest/esses of access to knowledge -- people know we either know the answer or can find the answer, and as a service role, that we are near compelled to provide assistance by our nature.

The birds either tell me things, or bring me the intuition I need to interpret things, often via crow, raven, robin, or hummingbird.  The plentiful finches & jays, sparrows & swallows tend not to for whatever reason.  The last thing the crows brought me was impending news that N would not survive.  One flew up close and landed on a nearby perch while I was out in the hammock, looked at me, croaked, nodded, and I knew.  Sometimes the bees share as well, but mostly they bring me calm.

I suppose I should tell P at some point that his bff's father (and P's cousin) stopped by a day or two after he crossed over, in the middle of the night, to see where P ended up living.  I was putting the old lady cat food away, stepped into the dark kitchen and could see him out in the street, smoking a cigarette.  The silhouette was unmistakable, the logger boots, & everything.  Just standing, smoking, looking at the house, I could sense the wry, quiet grin he had when he was content that things were right.  I suppose it could have been someone else, but...  I suppose I haven't told this story because I don't really do 'ghosts', but in the moment, it was so clear.

I have helped a lot of kids learn to respect nettles (and thistles too, but this is the nettle story) -- "THEY HURT ME!" (thwacking away at the nettles with a stick). "You must be gentle with nettles, they are asking you to respect them, they are very good for you! -- look, I can pet them and they don't hurt me!"  "How!?"  "Gently, across the leaf with your finger tips, like you're petting a cat ever so softly!  Try it!"  "Noooo!  O-okay... oh!"  "They'll still demand your respect, but if you recognize them and treat them with respect, you'll get stung much less!"  I'm rarely stung by nettles now, even when I accidentally brush against them.

Many other examples, but these sorts of things are part and parcel of the way I explore and experience existence.  How I interact within the world.  So many things to revisit, restore, reclaim, remember.

Intention v. Motivation

Have been thinking a lot about the two lately, as gyro teacher updates on Orcas draws near, and as yet another year has passed and I have done no classes since last year, and not gone to Florida to get my certification taken care of.

As I was on my way to class yesterday -- to take, not teach, obviously -- it dawned on me that often I have plenty of motivation to do things, but I don't always have a clear intention that guides that motivation.  I know my motivation behind doing the teacher training:  I like learning, and  I like moving at a deep level, and I like sharing learning, and hearing what other folks who are learning and moving deep are learning/experiencing.  I have great motivation!  Curiosity!  But what I am doing, what I want to do, what I am going to do with all that once the motivation has carried me for a while, what my intention is in getting teacher training is... not clear.  I don't have the kind of space I would need in my head to take on teaching classes, much less realistically in my schedule.  So... curiosity is driving, and I guess my intention is simply the exploration and sharing of that curiosity.

I have been thinking of doing a 40 day yoga practice (might go longer, might not), and I've been procrastinating starting it.  Too tired or too many potential interruptions or am/can I mix in gyro & PT (yes, of course I can!) or lazy don't wannas or can't find something I want to do/or plan out a little ahead... Silliness.  But there it is.  In this case, I have intention, but not motivation.  Well, I even have motivation, it's just not yet sufficiently compelling, apparently.

Things will eventually sort themselves out. Or not.

Various Thoughts on Homework Questions

1.) Coven size -- benefits of a large coven is that the likelihood that you'll have enough people to make for a nice sized gathering for any particular even is better.  Also, folks can break into smaller 'affinity' groups for the smaller group experience (men/women, folks interested in specific areas, etc).  In my experience, a certain number of people are required to get and maintain a certain level of community momentum as well.  Drawbacks can be that it's more difficult to get to know everyone (sometimes even find conflicts with some).  With really huge groups, there is the possibility of getting lost in the crowd as well.

2.)  Jaina Bee and I have been friends since we were 16 and I'd been following along with her process here and elsewhere.  For a long time, this aspect of my life had slipped under.  We moved into new space and it's... there's a lot going on here, and I started feeling like it was time to dig out.  I was sort of mucking through a reintroduction, having lots of thoughts and questions, and when Jaina said, "hey, we're going to give distance aspirant a try", it seemed like the perfect thing to give the digging out a sense of focus and process.  Honestly, the distance  piece was a big piece of the draw for me.  Between kids and work, I haven't got a lot of social energy or going out and doing things space, but I'm a night owl and tend to find that when I have space for thinking and through stuff is after most reasonable people are asleep.  Also, initial forays into not nearly as well established attempts similarly made me think perhaps I would like to keep the 'safety net' of interaction online, at least initially.  Now I sort of wish y'all lived a lot nearer, but I like feeling connected to people all over the place too, so it's all good.  :)

3.)  I schedule my time commitments as soon as have confirmation, and often significantly ahead of that if I think something might be coming up.  Two kids with school events and swim team makes this imperative.  I am pretty rigid about keeping scheduled events -- I flex my weekly gyrokinesis class  once or more a month in part because I have teacher training and can (and should more regularly) do it on my own, and in order to fit CAYA in, that's the only way it was going to happen.  In the absence of pretty compelling reason, I will be where I say I'm going to be, if it makes it on to my calendar though.

4.)  Ritual -- Chrystal mentioned as part of ritual a potlatch that we both experienced at different times.  Potlatch in the big house was SUCH a formative experience for me. And listening to Bill and Carla and Karen's stories around the campfire, and the big canoes. I miss them all so much. Jaina and I bonded at sixteen on the Indian canoe trip, the canoe that was taken out by the ancient madrona branch a few years ago. I still sing a mangled version of either a canoeing song or it might be a lullaby that Karen taught us. Such a tremendous honor that Bill was given these dances to share with us all. Such an amazing experience.   I watched on the sidelines from 10-16, then participated in a couple when I was older.  Cedar burning still triggers really strong, good memories for me.  Deep soul food.  And the art of the coastal tribes too.  But ritual.  That was a huge summer ritual, between the dances, the canoes, the salmon baked traditionally staked up around pits of cedar bark.  There was the Sunday ritual of going to church (Lutheran) with my parents where I learned some sense of structured religious ritual, both in complex ritual, as well as how simple and stripped down the ritual could be and still be fairly profoundly meaningful.  Now I have my daily practice, parts done in the morning as soon as I'm coherent enough to remember where I am in the recitation and parts done in the evening as part of my getting ready for bed, cleaning off the day, sending love, best wishes and gratitude out, and checking in/grounding.  I do the Mothers of the New Time at full moon.  I clean and sweep with intent at new, and burn down the remains of candles that are too far gone for their candle holders in a big ceramic plant dish.  Sometimes I plan rituals, sometimes they happen spontaneously.  Sometimes daily acts (cooking, cleaning, etc) are ritual acts, and sometimes they're just getting stuff done...  Ritual is such a state of mind thing -- it sometimes seems anything in the right mind set can be ritual.

Even More About the Ocean

I had the sort of sudden revelation as I stood up to go fix my lunch, that I had said Poseidon was cheeky.  He is.  But along with remembering that I had called an Olympian cheeky (which he is), I realized that I have been conflating Poseidon with Primordial Water itself. Water certainly amplifies my ability to sense Poseidon, but... different things.

So... things to think about, but that happened.

On Priest/ess & Witch

There have been various discussions that have crossed my radar lately on what  it means to be Priest/ess.  I am engaging with a coven as an aspirant, for the first time in a 25-ish year solitary practice and... thinking...  I identify as 'witch'.  It's sort of but not quite really the same.  As others have pointed out, priest/ess is a bit of all sorts of things, from ritualist, to counselor, to spiritual mentor, to minister, etc.

I figure part of engaging as part of a group is that I revisit reading All The Things from many perspectives, find what is resonating with me, what isn't, and while I've been doing that all along, the context of 'aspirant', traveling a specific (even if still significantly self-defined) path, changes things for me somewhat.  Being part of something bigger means I am part of a shared trajectory.

What I am leading to, and puzzling over right now is this -- in so far as witch and priest/ess have significant parallels, and in so far as I identify as witch, but not particularly priest/ess (or even necessarily called to identify that way) -- is it just a semantic difference in pursuing the shared deeper knowledge that I seek, without necessarily taking on the particular word of priest/ess?

John Beckett notes that for the role of clergy there are "three main things priests do: serve the Gods, act as mediators for the Gods, and serve their communities." I have a personal practice. I've sort of joked that I've taken Lutheranism to its extreme in one sense in that I don't require a mediator for my experience of the divine, though as I grow older, the idea of having others who can sometimes drive so I can simply participate as part of the chorus, or not have to have dual consciousness about what I am doing now, what comes next seems like a lovely thing, but that is more of a field trip coordinator than a mediation of the experience? Is that too granular of a distinction to be relevant for most (something I am often guilty of)? I am on the fence about defining what I do as "service" for a "God/dess" -- "belief" and "God/dess" is terribly complicated, and I have practices, but it seems a stretch to call that "service" especially given "belief".

This is getting into that lost territory, so dialing it back in again... both of these are granular and semantic in a way, and so grey and fuzzy in terms of definition for me. The third, to serve the community, seems most concrete to me -- this resonates, this I can do, one way or another or many ways. This is not grey and fuzzy for me, it just requires consensus between me and my community that the service I can/want to provide aligns with what is needed.

In a lot of ways my puzzle about disparity between witch and priest/ess is in parallel with my disparity of feeling about teacher training for gyrokinesis (all but certified) and yoga (eventually I may pursue, but...) -- I want the knowledge, I want the practice, I even want to be able to share my knowledge and sometimes my practice, but... I don't identify as "teacher". I don't want to teach classes... but I want to be deeply immersed and talk and practice with people who are extremely deeply immersed in theory and practice -- often that means my cohort is, for yoga and gyrokinesis, those who teach. And for spirituality, it seems often those people are priest/esses.

Which brings me to another puzzle of the moment -- how far can I follow my trajectory as witch practitioner, wanting to explore and know and experience all the way up to, and possibly well into the territory often marked as priest/ess territory while not taking on clergy, lay or otherwise, aspects.
I may be over thinking this, and I so often find in discussing this with others that my perspective is broadened by exposure to the creativity and both complexity and simplicity of others interpretations that I have so many other options that are open to me.
 
Yeshe Rabbit elucidates further on the roles of priest/ess as she identifies them according to her practice. Many, but not all resonate with my own practices (naturally, as she identifies as priest/ess and I do not and even in the eventuality that perhaps I do, my expression may/will likely find varying outlets because we are different people with different experiences).

Perhaps another question I have coming out of this is concurrently to discussing what clergy and priest/ess are, what are we defining against this as what non-clergy/priest/ess are? Part of defining what one is is also defining what one is not. In terms of functions of roles within an organization, even loosely defined, there is a relational aspect between roles. For paid clergy, money clarifies things somewhat for me, in that clergy is supported by the community for the spiritual services provided, whether directly (paid for services or readings, etc) or indirectly (tithing and the like where the individual services are not charged for but covered by dues, of sorts). Money, for better or worse, sort of formalizes the roles and expectations of the exchange happening.

In contrast, my analog (and maybe a more appropriate parallel) for priest/ess in my life is my professional role as a senior manager. I've managed teams as small as two, and up to four teams at a time, with 20 people reporting directly to me. I'm responsible for projects, production work, team and individual development, mentoring, coordinating in support of my organizations defined and supporting goals and objectives. I have lateral peers that I also collaborate with. I have industry groups that I participate in beyond my own organization. I know what kind of work it takes and the obligation to the various parties involved which leads me to being wary of extending additional sense of obligation as a leader within community/ies... and yet still, the draw to the deeply immersive experience lands me... somewhere, I'm not entirely sure where yet.

Dunno. It's all a long way of saying I see a parallel here with my yoga/gyrokinesis practice where I want to be so deeply immersed that my peer group is called something that I don't entirely identify with but to be not as deeply immersed is counter to my desire for such deep immersion.  But perhaps I see a parallel with my professional role, except with that money clarifies my role and expectation for responsible of that specific community and I don't have that clarity within spiritual practice?  So complicate!

I am deeply respectful of those who pursue the path that identifies as clergy and priest/ess, grateful for their shared knowledge and mentorship, sorting out my own trajectory within relationality of community is different from solitary practice.  As Alice discovered in Through The Looking Glass, and as I have come to understand as a manager, communicating and aligning language is an important piece of community defining.

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'

'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'

'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master -- that's all.'   

This is largely me just trying to navigate language (and the various granularities that appear as I think through implications), community, and how/where I might fit.  As an aspirant, it may be way too early for me to consider my future with any specific group, but I also know that there are some areas where I will continue to pursue learning until logical conclusion (lol -- learning is forever! There is no end!).

In the end, I suspect I will find a way that both the semantics and actions align for my practice.  I just don't know quite what that means yet.

Apologies to all the other authors and their articles that informed my questions that I don't reference directly here. I don't want to backtrack all through my feeds to find all the articles.

-------
Upon going back and reading the (new to me) comments from Sunsmith and Molly on Yeshe Rabbit's post, I am given additional thought about how broadly and simply (and complexly) we can define language, semantics, and practice.  This is one of the things I love about having a community I am nominally a part of.  It is the collaborative sharing of experience that allows one to break out of the unnecessary boxes one's mind and re/create, re/craft, re/vise the world into a better place.

July 13 Calendar

On Silence

http://theheadlesshashasheen.tumblr.com/post/90883336652/what-do-you-feel-about-the-four-tools-of-a-magician-to

This was really helpful as a point of understanding for me.  It makes ever so much more sense than endless references solely to the burning times, but also for those of us who have a tendency to want to try to process using language, as I do here, and given lost and maybe not lost posts, often fail at.

In particular:

Quite simply, talking about shit ruins the magic. The numinous doesn’t survive contact with language very well. Oftimes trying to articulate events occurring in a magical space, or any experience of Gnosis, or numinous experience into conventional language just renders away so much of the power of the experience. (zerosociety)

and:

Some experiences cannot be pinned down verbally; they must be dealt with internally, muddled over, considered, in the beauty of silence. (theheadlesshashasheen)

There are things that are experiential in nature that cannot be communicated or processed in any other way, which is why doing and experiencing is a critical component of so many things, learning included.  Is the synthesis of knowledge, and all of the senses that creates understanding.

Trying to find the balance between those things that can be articulated as part of processing and synthesizing and those that can't is a challenge.  And while I've let this aspect of my world lie fallow for many years, I feel I have a lot of catch up to do, and yet so much is familiar.  Integrating and deepening understanding and experience, practice, practice, and practice.

Have had some thoughts about systems theory as a direction I need to do some exploration around, as well as other things.  All The Things!  But marathon, not sprint. And as I'm drifting how, time to drift along...

Edited to add, and of course theheadlesshashasheen has additional elucidating insights...