From: ciaran@county.lmt.mn.org (Ciaran Benson)
Subject: Re: triple aspects <long religious rant>
Reply-To: ciaran@county.lmt.mn.org (Ciaran Benson)
Organization: LaserMaster Technologies, Minneapolis, MN
Date: Tue, 11 Aug 92 17:50:27 GMT

What you are about to read (if you choose to continue) are 
some of my religious views.  They are not the entirety of
my religious views, and don't constitute an expression of
my beliefs outside of this particular context.

I do not speak for any other person or any community.  Don't
assume that just because I write it, anyone else will agree
with it.  I sure don't.

If you don't like it, stop reading it (you have the technology).

  <<Religious rant ON>>

As an introduction, I'll quote alison's beautiful post;

>"there a lot more stages than this.  the maiden is a woman, for
>starters, NOT a girl.  the crone is also a woman, not some post
>woman being.and "girl" is a bit more differentiated than that 
>too.

  When I was introduced to the image of Hekate, it took me a long
time to get used to the idea of the ancient and wise combined with
the young and aluring in the same personification.

  When I later noticed that Hekate is also the Crone, who bears
the new year, who is also a virgin, who is young and nubile
and also old and haggardly, who is naive and exploring and also
wise and knowing, I really ran into a connundrum.

  For a long while I tried to make all of this make sense through
various descriptions of the year's cycle, and the meanings of
femininity and masculinity.  I had what I thought were some pretty
good answers.

  Then I discovered some friends who had complete cycles of all
of the aspects of the Goddess or the God embodied in only a 
masculine image or a feminine image.  Some of the cycles were
three and even five years long.  One of my friends has a cycle
which repeats once every 33 years, and he's working for a longer
cycle (yes, he loves Myan and Aztec stuff).

  All of these cycles and individual images were so beautiful,
complex, and empowering, that I gave up trying to find a set which
worked best for me and let them be.  I started looking instead for
the daily manifestations of these, and watching for those which
were the most important for me.

  Since I work in a city, I wanted to be able to find the Goddess
and the God in traffic jams, in crowded elevators, in shopping
malls.  They are there just as much as they are in wooded glens,
just harder to see because of my programming to see things as
"spiritual" or "mundane" -- the imposed dichotomy of science and
religion, church and state, mysticism and fact.

  Something which I often hear Pagans say is that they love their
spiritual lifestyle, but they hate their mundane life.  The two
are held separate in our 'Merican lifestyle, but this seems in
extreme conflict with the idea of an immanent divinity.

  I know, there's whole threads worth of thoughts in just that
one paragraph ... so back to the point.

  I find three-fold Goddess and two-fold God to be very convenient
symbols for public ritual, however, and a lot of focus can be
developed during a ritual if you point out the thinness of the
walls between those symbols.

  One of my ex-covens did a summer solstice ritual where we
invoked the Horned God in his manifestation of Herne.  We used
a 10-foot tall hand puppet to embody Herne, and he wheeled and
danced and paraded around the circle like the proud summer Lord
he is.  Father of the dance and grandfather to us all, he
embrassed the circle and we sang songs in his honour, and everyone
offered Him fine gifts which we had all brought.

  But the focus of the ritual was the sacrifice we share with
the Goddess and God.  We are planting John Barley Corn knowing
full well that we wish Him well so that our harvest will be
fuller.  We wanted to embolden our relationship with the God and
Goddess during this phase of the cycle -- from height of summer
to depths of winter we swore to party with the God in His height,
to tend Him in His old age, and to respect and honour Him in
His passing.

  The Horned One grew lame, and danced less heartily, and leaned
more upon His attendants, and finally, slowly, with the help of
all of us there, laid at last to rest.  The "Official Yiddish
Mourner" came in on cue, and we had several minutes of
unrestrained sobbing (catharsis at its best?)

  The eulogy was sung by us all, and we prepared Herne for His
final sacrifice -- to lay in the Mother and compost.  The Horned
One was laid in the grave which had been prepared, and the
baskets of gifts were laid with him (we'd been careful to make
sure that the gifts would be safe to bury).  We had shills
standing by with shovels to help fill the not inconsiderable hole
as quickly as possible, because we thought that this would be an
awkward moment during the ritual (the hole had taken 12 hours to
dig and conceal).  I steped to the grave, said something which
I really don't remember (isn't that the way with ritual?), and
cast a hand-full of earth into the grave, turned, and walked
to the edge of the circle so the shills could start filling
the hole.

  I never made it.  Neither did the shovel-toting shills.  Four 
hundred-plus people surged toward the grave and threw in
handfuls and then armfuls of dirt into the grave.  Someone,
sobbing, dove into the grave and was pulled free.  People ran to
the shovel bearers and took the shovels and passed them hand
to hand over the mob until a few near the grave started shovelling
in the remaining earth.

  At some point, people stopped crying.  Then a few began to
laugh, then sing and dance.  As the hole filled, people began
dancing on the grave - their grave, all of our graves.  The
drums came up, and we had a good-old-fashioned wake.

  We handed the ritual over to another coven which did a
short ritual of rebirth and reclaimation, and the drums
went on into the night.

  The next day, a little girl, probably 10 or so, asked one
of us why we'd put the God in the ground.  One of my friends,
who was still quite new to Paganism, told her; "He is the King
Seed, and now He's growing.  He's corn growing in New York,
and apple trees in Florida, and wheat growing in Kansas.  He is
a small girl being born this very minute in Africa.  And because
we helped, we're a part of that too."

  Why do I tell this story in a thread about the aspects of
the Goddess?

  Well, because that night we set out to do a fairly straight-
forward ritual about the summer and the harvest of fall.  We
presented well-rehearsed symbols which we thought would do
certain things, and instead we tapped into something quite
unexpected.

  For many there, the ritual became the last rite of passage
for friends and family who had died.  The rituals which were
used, for example, during the burial of my grandfather, did not
complete the passage for me.  He was processed, he was sanitised,
he was cleansed and blessed and placed in a box and put in the
ground, but somehow during all of that none of us had said
good-bye.  It was unfinished.

  Many at the ritual that night had the same experience.  Someone
who they had loved had died and had remained "unburied" ever
since.

  The symbols of the proud and horney Lord of Summer, and the
steaming heap of Dead God in the fall, are not enough by
themselves.  Each exists as an expression of the other, and of
a greater cycle of which we are all a part.  Between these two
aspects, and encompassing both of them, is the true Horned One
who encompasses all of the experiences which life and ritual
can explore.  Focusing on tight definitions of one or the
other confines us and denies the birth or evolution of things
which we need but haven't accepted or expressed.

  The aspects of the Goddess are snapshots of a dynamic and
evolving thing -- something which can not be named, but which
somehow can be conceived.  Breaking Her down into smaller and
smaller pieces gives us something to work with, a way of talking
with each other about Her and ourselves.

  I think that those pieces, though, whether they're aspects
or manifestations or evocations, are only mental tools for
working with a much larger and much more important thing.  When
we focus on a hammer or a saw, and believe that we are carpenters,
then we've ignored the larger part of the art which is
carpentry.

  Athemes, circles, aspects, and invocations are only tools for
experiencing the divine.  Essential tools, but not an end in and
of themselves.  Talking about the edge of an atheme, or the many
expressions of apects is useful and necessary to explore our
understandings of Her.  But it is Her which I think should be
the focus, and not the tools which make up our description and
experience of Her.

  The pentagram describes a circle which surrounds and encompasses
all things in their myriad forms.  But that which is being
expressed by this embodyment of all things can not be surrounded
or encompassed.

  The tools, the artful skills, the traditions, the innovations
are all pieces of looking into this unperceivable thing, and
each dawn brings a new day to explore Her through ourselves.

  Let each day bring new aspects, new tools, new artful skills,
and newly birthed traditions into your relationship with Her and
Him.

  <<Religious rant OFF>>

  Your milage may vary ...

  Blessed be, Ciaran.


Newsgroups: alt.pagan