Spirits of Place

Spirits of Place exist in any natural geologic feature but, those I have always found it easiest to relate to personally have been those connected to bodies of fresh Water and the Land surrounding them.  

My ancient ancestors in South Wales would have perceived the rivers closest to them to be deity.  My parents grew up on the banks of the Susquehannah River (in the North-Eastern part of Pennsylvania) as did many generations before them.  

I grew up near the Delaware River and I now live on the banks of the Schyulkill River. The Leni-Lenape who lived here before us called the River “Turtle Creek”.  The name has the added meaning of “Hidden” or “Refuge”.  

When I first moved here seven months ago, I sought to form a relationship, a connection to the Spirit of this Place and that meant the River and the Land surrounding it. 

I began visiting the banks of the River and found a Sycamore Tree (one of the species of Trees for which I bare a strong affection and affinity).  I made offerings and expressed a desire to build relationship with the River and the Tree and the Land.

At the suggestion of one of my wise and valued teachers, I carved Othala into the soft Earth beneath the Sycamore, then scraped the Earth and the Rune into a bowl.  I collected Water from the River into a jar and brought the Earth and the Water home.

In my bedroom I created an Altar to the Spirit of this Place where I now live.  I placed the Earth and the Water into silver dishes and scribed Othala into them and I placed a small Turtle fetish carved from green stone between them.  Every day that I am home, I light a candle and sing at this Altar, and every day that I can, I visit the Tree and the Riverbank and  I sing there as well.

The Spirit of this Place supports me and I give thanks for this new Friend.  Spirits of Place have been my allies since I was a small child and I give thanks for each one of them.  

Altars and the Structure of Daily Practice

I love altars.  I have many of them throughout my home.  When I moved from the Tree-house to the Keep, figuring out where the altars belonged, and how they should be dressed, was an essential part of the process of settling in.  It took a while, but my altars provide an important structure for my daily practice.

My altars are physical reminders, as well as sacred spaces.  I visit them to make offerings, and prayers to the Spirits that support me in my life and my work.  I light candles and incense and I tend to them each week, cleaning and pouring water or wine.  I sing and offer thanks for the blessings I have been given.

In the Christian faith the “Stations of the Cross” serve a similar purpose.  As the seeker walks from one station to another, they contemplate the divine truth represented there and recite certain prayers of devotion.  This structure and style of practice is helpful to me and supports my daily practice.

Daily practice is vital to my spiritual well being.  It is something that I need in order to thrive, to re-enchant my daily life.  Without it, I become faded and tired and my magick suffers.  Without daily practice I slowly starve. 

Daily practice is an essential structure in my life.  It supports my well being and my magick.  I am a believer in the power of daily practice.  I also believe that it is important to have structures in place to support that practice. 

I have come to see that the moment when a Witch crosses the threshold to Power, to living a truly magickal life, is often the moment when they begin to establish a daily practice to support that life and that work.  Whatever the form or structure, or lack thereof, however that practice is manifested by the seeker, it is the practice or absence of practice that makes the difference between struggling to live a life of magick and, living a magickal life.

Personal Ritual...

I love Ritual.  It appeals to both the orderly parts of me and to the parts of me that love magick, that need inspiration in order to live and be happy.

I have participated in some truly great rituals, I have written and facilitated some very good rituals, and I am a student of rituals and how they work.

My daily practice involves many small rituals. 

Rituals of Air…and breathing.

Rituals of Water…and cleansing.

Rituals of Earth…eating and grounding, and touching the Earth.

Rituals of Fire…lighting candles and insence.

Rituals of Spirit…listening to the winds and the trees, to water and to stones, to the Sun and the Moon and the Stars, and writing and creating.

Rituals of Gratitude...making offerings and prayers, singing. 

Rituals of Healing...and listening to self.

Rituals of Love and Life…cuddling with Pwca, and touching with Lovers, and sharing community with Beloveds.

Rituals give my life order and structure…and magick and inspiration.

Life is ritual…

Developing Relationships with Deity...and anyone else...

Relationship is the mutual understanding and exchange between two individuals.  The nature of that understanding and exchange is determined by the nature of the individuals involved.  If they are both persons of honor, the exchange is positive.  This is the type of relationship I seek.  Not every individual is honorable, honest, ethical or worthy of respect and trust.  These people, no matter if they are human or other, are best avoided.  That being said, how do I know that the person with whom I am engaging is indeed someone I can trust?

Meeting someone new is always a challenge for me.  I have a default setting of “do not trust”.  That has not changed throughout my life but, I have learned to trust myself and my own intuition and judgment.   Not every person, human or other, is worthy of trust, but many are and if I choose to never trust anyone, I rob myself of a great deal of joy, growth and love. 

That being the case I take a long time to get to know people.  I learn everything I can about them from as many sources as I can. I seek out the worst that anyone has to say about them and the best. I evaluate the motives and veracity of those sources and try to find as many unbiased opinions as I can. I observe their behavior as much as possible when they are most likely to be uncensored.  Then I begin to test the waters to see how they will relate to me.  I test everything they say against my logical and skeptical mind and with my heart and my inner ear and my “gut”.  When I have finally decided to trust someone, I know that this person is worthy of my trust and perhaps of my devotion and loyalty.

 

I believe that the process works for any person, human or other, with whom I may choose to build a relationship.  Most people can be trusted to act according to their nature and if I understand what that is, I can trust that.  I do not expect the Dark Mother to be full of light, I do trust that she will destroy that which does not serve my greater good and so long as I do not fight her work in my life, she will dance with me as gently as possible and as brutally as necessary.  If you invoke a Deity into your life, there is a point at which you must realize that they do not answer to you.  I do not surrender my own free will or my responsibility for my choices.  Just because Deity asks me to do something does not release me of responsibility for it, I still have to choose.

Once I have decided that this is a person of honor and worthy of trust and respect and that I desire to build a relationship, how do I proceed?  I begin by learning everything I can about their nature.  I learn their stories, their history and about their culture and family of origin.  I look at images that they have inspired.  I meditate on them and have a conversation.  I ask them if they will work with me.  I find out what they want from me in return and what they think I can learn from them.  I tell them what I am hoping for.  I am respectful and honest.  They may tell me that they will not work with me at this time, or that what I am asking is not appropriate.  That is not the rejection that it sounds like.  If they are worthy of my desire to build a relationship, then they are worthy of trusting when they tell me no.  

If the happy result is that the Deity I wish to work with indeed accepts my petition, then I continue to learn about them and share my stories with them.  They may very well know a great deal about me but, the act of sharing my truth with them can be an important part of the process.  Sometimes as I hear my own words speak my own truth I can come to a greater understanding of that truth or discover inaccuracies in my beliefs about my life and myself. 

I like to create alters to Deity in my home.  I enjoy using them as a focus for my meditations with that Deity and as a place of devotion to them.  It is my way of telling them and reminding myself that they are welcome in my home and in my life, that my relationship with them is important to me.  And sometimes simply as a visual reminder to my own mind and heart that I am not alone and that I need to spend time in communion with my Gods. 

I spend time there talking with my Gods, sharing my heart, discussing my thoughts and ideas, asking for their guidance and thanking them for their gifts.  I make offerings and honor vows made to them.  I do divinations as a way of receiving their guidance.  I sing invocations or recite poetry that they have inspired in me.  I make offerings to them and create gifts for them.   I sit quietly and listen. 

When learning about the Gods I read as much of the original lore as I can get my hands on and as much academic and historic scholarship as I can find. I read inspirational material as well.  I read it all and give appropriate value to those works written by true scholars.  Personal gnosis is wonderful but it is just that, personal.  Every relationship is unique to the individuals involved.  One witch’s experience of a God is not going to be identical to mine. I also take into consideration that often the lore was written by human beings with limited understanding and perhaps personal bias and conflicting agendas, and I try to focus on the actual stories and not on the narrative commentary in which they may be cloaked.

This is the beginning of my process in developing relationship with my Gods, Ancestors or Allies, be they Deity, Human, Fae or Other.  It is a practice that I consider to be fundamental to my faith and my work.  Relationship is an essential part of my path.  I give thanks for the relationships with which I have been blessed.  Blessed Be.

The Journey...

The foundation of my personal spiritual practice is not something that I do every day (except for a week or two for very specific reasons).  It is something that I did not begin practicing until I was 28 years old, when I read my first book about the path I am now walking.

The Celtic Shaman by John Mathews was a book that I found in a “normal” bookstore in town while attending a very conservative Christian University.  I had moved to South Carolina and was living in a camper off campus in an attempt to complete my degree at the University my parents had sent me to when I left the College in Indiana.  It was a very intense four months of self-discovery and a very painful time of darkness.  In that book I first read the names of my Gods.  I first learned that there were stories and poems about the Gods of my Ancestors.  And through that book I experienced my first Journey into the Otherworlds.  That book changed my life forever.  That Journey and every Journey since saved my life.

For years I had no other practice but journey and building relationships, I did not even write for almost 14 years except for a rare poem or two.  And those Journeys eventually led me to my beloved Coven and Community.  My Patroness has led me through the Journey and I have met many who guide and strengthen me.  

If I lost all else, I would still have my relationships with my Gods, my Ancestors and my Allies, I would still have joy in my heart and the sustaining practice of the journey.
I give thanks for all of those with Whom I have relationship and for the new Allies I meet as I continue my journey on this path.  Blessed am I on this path.  

An open letter to my Tradition

To the Assembly of the Sacred Wheel...

When I first found you, you inspired me

to overcome my fear of…

Everything...

I look back now on the person I was…

on the life I had then…

and it feels like someone else’s life,

another person’s memory.

You inspired me to See...

magick in our world,

magick on our land

magick in each one of you

and to risk believing

that there was magick in me…

I sat in dark corners and listened and watched

silent and still and small

but I Saw

I saw people who had magick

people with honor

people who loved and lived with integrity

people who served our Earth

and the Gods

and our world

and one another

And I learned to trust

first you and then myself

Your love has taught me

how to trust

how to serve

how to heal

how to love

how to live my life out loud

without fear or shame or the need to pretend

that I am anything other than ALL that I am

And when I finally tested that

when I risked everything

and jumped off the cliff

I discovered that you had taught me to fly

and I found you were smiling

and laughing and dancing and flying

right there beside me

We looked into the future together

with joy

and magick

and love.

and what I saw has filled me with purpose and hope.

 

I will spend the rest of my life

Teaching you to see

your beauty, and strength, and magick

the way you have taught me

to see my own,

And Re-Enchanting our World…

Together…

Propitiation and Petition

My strongest Magick is not operative but, rather relational, so that is how I work.

When something compels me to act, engages my will to actually use power, I go to my Gods and to my Ancestors and to my Allies.  I go to Those with Whom I have relationship. 

I make offerings to my Gods and to my Ancestors and to my Allies as a part of my daily practice, as a part of building and maintaining relationships.  Speaking to Them and listening to Them and spending time with Them is also part of that.  I rarely ask Them for specific gifts or blessings or “intervention”. 

They are not generally disposed to interfering in the world in that way, and it would be insulting to ask Them for what I should be doing through my own hard work.  But when I am moved (and there must always be a strong emotional compulsion for me to engage my will), I will commit Rites of Petition and Propitiation for Their intervention in my world and in the lives of those that are mine own, or in the life of one whose story has moved me so.  I do not ask Them to act in a situation but rather, for an individual.   

I believe that propitiation works, I believe that petition, made on the behalf of another, works.  And if my warrior’s heart is engaged (because that is what it takes for me to use power) if my will is compelled to act, I believe that They will hear me and will answer.

My offerings might be of my own food supply, spirits (alcohol) that I know They will enjoy, an act of service to my community, or perhaps my own blood.  Whatever is of value to them and to me (for if I do not value that which I give, They will never be moved to grant my petition) .  

My petitions will be for the highest purpose I can articulate.  I make an impassioned argument for the rightness of my request.  I argue for the need and for the benefit to the family or  to the community, and to Them and the work They wish to be done.  I get downright demanding, and when They make demands in return, I make the vows that They require, and then I live up to those vows.  

I have even been questioned during a Rite, about whether or not I would still want that which I was asking for, if it meant making a sacrifice (of something I desire, not something that would cause harm) .  I answered yes, and yet that vow was never required.  Sometimes they just want to test your commitment, your conviction., or to teach you.

Understand that Rites such as these are not to be undertaken lightly.  Intercession has a price.  If one is going to begin to make petition, one must be willing to pay the price requested.  I have never been denied, however propitiation is never only that which I have offered.  There is always a cost that is determined by Them.  

That being said, the price has always resulted in more understanding and growth for me and deepening of my relationship with Them.  They never stop teaching me.  And I give thanks.

Hail Odin!

Hail Odin, the All-Father!

Hail the wise Father of the Mighty!

Hail the noble Father of the Brave!

He whose eye was sacrificed to Mimir’s well!

He who hung upon the Tree,

For nine days and nights did He hang there,

To bring forth magick and wisdom did He sacrifice Himself,

Hail Odin who sees the truth and raises up the honorable warrior!

Hail the wise Father of the Mighty!

Hail the noble Father of the Brave!

All hail Odin the All-Father!

All hail His Bright and Noble Sons!

This is the third fulfillment of vows that I have made to Tyr, Thor and Odin.  I give thanks to Them and praise Them for their Wisdom, Honor, Strength, and Nobility.  They have vindicated Their son and delivered him from peril and will continue to raise him up victorious.  So Mote It Be.  Hail Tyr!  Hail Thor!  Hail Odin!

Devotion

Devotion is a form of love.  It is an expression of love and commitment, of dedication and loyalty, of admiration and respect.  It says something about the one who is devoted but, it says more about the object of that devotion.

Those who inspire my devotion are Human and other, they are Gods and other.  I am devoted to my Gods and my Beloveds for very similar reasons.  Devotion for me is an expression of faith.

It is an expression of my belief in the nobility and honor of those for whom I feel devotion.  That those persons (whether human or deity or other) can be trusted, can be counted on, that they are worthy of my faith, my trust and my loyalty. 

That is not to say that those individuals are perfect (neither deity nor human nor other) but that they have proven to be honorable.  Nor is my devotion given easily or quickly.

It takes a long time for me to learn faith.  As a rule it takes years of skeptical and close observation.   My devotion, my loyalty, my trust are earned over time.  But when that devotion is inspired, it is fervent and devout.

I am grateful for those beloveds who have inspired me to devotion.  I am grateful to have individuals in my life who are deserving of my devotion and who inspire me to be honorable and noble as they are, to be deserving of their presence in my life.

In Devotion, I give thanks for them.