From: ciaran@county.lmt.mn.org (Ciaran Benson)
Subject: Re: New pagans and reading
Reply-To: ciaran@county.lmt.mn.org (Ciaran Benson)
Organization: LaserMaster Technologies, Minneapolis, MN
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 92 17:13:46 GMT

In article <1992Sep3.010936.11649@csus.edu>, altheimm@nextnet.csus.edu 
(Murray Altheim) writes:
> One of Ciaran's posts of about 
> a month ago talked about a harvest ritual with an attendance of about 400 
> people that sounded like a truly transcendant experience. I envy her and her
> involvement in what appears to be a very healthy pagan community. 

  That actually happened at the Pagan Spirit Gathering that
Circle Santuary puts on each Summer Solstice.  I can't remember
the year, it's been awhile though.

  I would dearly love to return to PSG sometime soon.  I miss
the community.  I miss the ritual.  I miss the drums.

  For all my pissing and moaning, the Pagan community in the
Twin Cities (MPLS/SPL) could be much, MUCH, /MUCH/, /*MUCH*/
/*_MUCH_*/ worse.  There's still enclaives of Pagans who do
love each other and encourage each other's diversities, and
fortunately I'm finally starting to get back into one of these.

  As I reflect on it, I'm really very happy that I stumbled
onto alt.pagan.  For all the flaming, all the bible tracts,
all the disagreements over silly things, you're all really
quite nice -- and some of you are very nice.

  I've spent some time on other boards now, especially
the model railroading, Buddhist, and Anime boards, and I've
skimmed (read: LURKED) on some of the more contentious boards
like _ANY_ of the feminist or womyn's space boards, the
masculinist or men's space boards, and the individual liberty,
censureship, and libertarian boards, and all I can say is;

  You guys are just great.

  Alt.pagan does have a community, after all.  I'd read about
the electronic community and town halls, but this is the first
time I've actually seen it.

> From my personal experience, all I can say is
> 
>      Hanging out of a swaying birch 
>      Twenty feet above the ground in a high wind
>      White linen shirt open and flapping wildly
> 
>      The sound of flute and drum
>      Echoing from off the riverbank 
>      Feeling a wild energy as I rode the breeze
>      The presence of more than just me and a tree.
> 
> (Not much of a poem, but I tried writing it as prose and <nothing> happened)

  Nothing happened?  Not prose?  Hrumph -- you, sir, do not
give yourself due credit.  Don't kid yourself, this is beautiful.

  I've found that these kinds of (what, tone poems? lyrics?)
are VERY effective invocations.  If you point at the Goddess
or God and say; "Look, _THAT'S_ what I'm talking about!", people
stare at your finger.

  Invocations built out of phrases like these, though, spin
a web around the image, and allow people to add their own
threads, their own dreams, their own visions.

  Sure, you end up with everyone in the circle pointing at
something different than everyone ELSE in the circle, but
_EVERYONE_ is pointing, and experiencing, and living the
ritual -- rather than a liturgy of HighThings doing and
saying and showing to an audience.

> Anyway, my first experience of Pan (or at least what I attribute to him) 
> means as much in terms of understanding as anything I ever gained through a
> book. Not necessarily better, but different. In some ways better, as I'm 
> sure not the first to state that experience is the best teacher. It's 
> unfortunate we all can't experience as easily as we can read.

  It was hard to accept, but I finally admitted that the reason
I stopped teaching publicly was that at the end of each teaching
ritual there would be me and my SO by the writing board, and
a room full of eager, empowered, and beautifully anticipating
people _BEGGING_ us to tell them where to go now.

  "Together," I'd say; "Get to gether and build your own rituals,
your own circles, your own covens.  Look at the person next to you
and /talk/ with them about what you want, what you need, ritually,
and let your paths mingle for awhile.  Start your own covens."

  Not enough.  Never enough.  "Where are the established covens
and teachers?  Can we join your coven?  Can we just attend a
ritual?"

  We'd give them local contacts, mostly groups which are
frighteningly burnt out, inbred, or disfunctional, but the
truth is that _THE_STUDENTS_ are best qualified to build
their own experiences, their own rituals, their own path.

  As for doing ritual with them?  I don't know.  I guess I'm
still burnt out from WolfSong; (Dead, dead, dead, WolfSong
is Dead / Feel the Crone's touch on our Head / Passed to the Earth,
Faded from Sky / The Caldron's rebirth we emphatically deny).
So, I and my SO are HARDLY people neophytes would do well to
start with.

  I've tried several times to write something nice here for
people who are starting out, and what I've decided is that
this is NOT the time or the thread.

  Soon, to be sure, but not now.

  I'm drawn, though, to the idea that experience is something people
need to seek.  Curious.  When we are all so intimately and
immediately the Goddess and God themselves, why all this
invoking and summoning and searching?

  A clock ticks on the wall for hours, and yet we're not even
aware that it's there.  But suddenly, without warning, we
are completely conscious of it -- sometimes even frustratingly
so.  We can talk about it, consider it, and learn from the
experience.  But tomorrow, we've forgotten it was there.

  After a lifetime of ignoring immanent divinity, what does
it take to become aware of something which you've lived
with all your life but never noticed?

  To start paying attention to it, living with it, sharing
and relating with it -- everywhere and all of the time.

  Little wonder that I consider "grounding" an evocation of
ignorance of Her -- banishing that immanent presence, exorcising
the intimate touch of infinite awareness.

  How long, I wonder, can we continue to thrust our divinities
into temples and churches and circles?  Hindus greet the divine
within each, we greet the intellectual and physical.

  Ok, so I'm wandering.  What I want to say, to whoever the
dear soul was who started this thread;

  You know a wonder and a passion for learning and for
experiencing which I have lost to years of misunderstanding
and fatigue.  What you ask from us; experience and knowledge,
is something which you yourself have in infinite supply.  You _KNOW_
what your relationship with the Goddess is.  Go to Her in
the way that _YOU_ see best.  Practice what seems right
to you -- and remember that Magic is one side-effect of
doing things right, in the right way, at the right time.

  Do what is right, behaving properly within your own mind
and your heart, and you will be with Her (and Him and Them
and Whatever you Worship), following the path which is yours
alone.

  All you will gain from reading and questing is other people's
expression of what you already know -- something which is
eminently desirable, but which can only add to that core of
experience and knowledge which you already have.

  You are, without question, the purest definition of what
you _need_ to be to become what you _wish_ to become.

  From my experience, immanent divinity is a two-way street,
"As Above, So Below" works in the inverse as well.  We are
all the Goddess wandering through Herself asking, evolving,
relating, expanding.  The answers you find for yourself are
Her's for Herself in you.

  There are, of course, repercussions to that kind of a world-
view, and whenever you decide on a course of action you lose
the courses not chosen.  By the time you realize you've taken
the wrong path, it may be too late to chose another.

  >Whew<  I bet that was all _REAL_HELPFUL_, huh?

> Blessings,
> 
> The Somewhat Less Melancholy Murray (thanks all! :P)

  I'm glad to read you're feeling better, Murray.  I really
am sorry I haven't written -- it was NOT because of anything
which you said, merely things which I have to come to grips
with.

  Blessed be, Ciaran

  $uslinit; include oblig.sig <<
  "...And here, Queen Aphrodite, pour heavenly nectar into gold
   cups, and fill them gracefully with sudden joy."  -- Sappho >>