Nephthys – at CloudCatcher

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I held the Nephthys mask for two rituals at the recent CloudCatcher WitchCamp and felt like a flood of information entered my brain. Nephthys is the least obvious of the four Egyptian God/desses we were working with; she is the one who sews the edges of things together, who dwells between one place and the next, on the boarders of the civilised and fertile lands, knitting desert to delta, and brother to sister… In their myths she is a loyal sister to Isis, a secret lover to Osiris and the consort of Set. Having worked with her through the month of February, I already had some relationship to her; seeing her not just as the quiet, inconspicuous one but also the one carrying the energy and presence of their mother, Nut, the night-sky Goddess.

We made beautiful masks – and beautiful altars – for all four of them, and on the first night of ritual invoked their presences into the masks. Inbetween rituals, the masks rested on their altars; Isis in the East, Set in the heat of the North, Nephthys in the West and Osiris in the South. The Nephthys mask is blue and silver, and just covers the upper face. It has wide eyes, lots of fluttery feather bits and references to both bird-face and butterfly-shape in its design. Holding it I felt her non-humanness very strongly. She seemed to me to have almost a clinical curiosity in the actions of others, an observant but uninvolved perspective.

The curious thing was how much her ‘being on the edges of things’ seemed to affect things; during the whole first ritual I held her (which was actually the second ritual) she was completely ignored by her brother and sister, Osiris and Isis; though she hung around, adoring them and following their every word and movement and focused only on them, they never noticed her. I also noticed our (the humans) tendancy to take pieces away from her – on our plans she led Osiris’s funeral procession, began the keening for him and on the third day, led the song. In fact by the time of the actual rituals, she did none of these things.

During my second ritual holding her mask (actually our third ritual) I came into a deep, deep place with her. Once again, she – and I! – felt totally ignored by Isis, who upstaged Nephthys completely during what was supposed to be a shared blessing, and I began to feel an unrest, a stirring which I thought could explain WHY Nephthys had colluded with Set in the destruction of Osiris; not maliciously, exactly, but because she wanted to stir things up a bit, tip the balance. She was really sick of that status quo, and that combined with her lack of attachment to outcomes meant she might have done it almost as an experiment, a diversion. In the final ritual I got a shot of deep, surprised satisfaction when my son, who was invoking Nephthys that night, lept in front of Isis (in the wrong order, Isis should have gone first) and rushed with her mask around and around the circle of people, demanding attention for her beauty and mystery!

I felt like Nephthys had so much to offer – she has a whole story there, that mostly we don’t even notice. I also felt a deep affinity with her, edge walker by preference and yet, still wanting some recognition, still needing involvement. I felt her sadness at Isis’ heedless demanding of all possible attention, though I still loved Isis deeply (and Nephthys does too, I am sure). I felt how it is interesting out on the edges, but lonely, and how a little recognition; like when Set made a deep formal bow to her in the second ritual, or when she lept in front of Isis that one time, feeds her so profoundly. Of all the four, she is the one whose voice cried out to me through this WitchCamp.

King Jesus by Robert Graves

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This is a novel, and it is extrordinary. First published in 1946, what Graves is saying about the life and message of Jesus I have heard nowhere else, and it would be considered extremely contentious and radical still today. Filled with details of exhaustive scholarship and often managing to sound biblical in style, it is still a fascinating re-weaving of this story… Jesus as an extremist figure passionately dedicated to wiping out the power and sacredness of the feminine.

The least of the surprises in this book is that the central character of Jesus comes across as unlikable; driven, ferocious, arrogant and uncompromising. I have never previously read a portrayal of him as this kind of man, but it is fairly convincing. The stronger surprises lie in Graves’ interpretation of history, biblical stories and sources to acuse Jesus Christ of deliberately seeking to destroy the institutions of sacred marriage, ancient feminine oracular tradition and the line/s of sacred kings into which he was born. He does this in each case by taking it upon himself to enter into and receive those powers – and then destroying their form – so that they can never afterwards exist. His own final destruction on the cross comes as an end-note to this.

This is a dense book, with a lot of back story, but remains fascinating. The more a reader knew of biblical study, the more interesting the first half, at least, would be; but many well-known biblical stories are also dealt with and explained simply, in their historical context. One example is the stoning of the prostitute which Jesus halts – according to Graves, that practise had been outlawed more than 100 years earlier, and would not have actually taken place, regardless of what words anyone spoke at the time. There are many such explanations in this book, as well as some literary ones; for example the turning-water-into-wine-at-the-wedding scene; Graves’ Jesus does not drink alchol so he is drinking water anyway. When the wine runs out, he toasts the host with his water glass, praising the vintage – and has the guests’ cups filled with water as well.

This is a ferociously ambitious, impressive and unique book. Anyone with the slightest interest in the creation of myth, the history of Christianity or the life and character of Jesus would find it challenging, rewarding and startling. The reviews on the back cover use the words shocking, controversial, bold; it is all that and yet even with Graves’ ruthless examination of Jesus, it is not cold. Even in his great pilgramage to destroy the power of the feminine I felt sorry for him, and as Graves hints throughout, one can only be successful in such a quest until death, at which point we are all again claimed by women and the earth.

Walden; or, Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau

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I read this book a little while ago and was amazed by it. First published in 1854, it is incredibly readable, fresh and contemporary both in content and style. His writing is beautiful, elegiac – when speaking of the nature of one of the ponds he’s observed, or the life of the train track. He develops elaborate, lovely fantasies; such as the time he challenges anyone to race him to another town, twelve hours walk away but only a few hours by train. His theory runs that he will begin walking at dawn, while the other person will have to go to work that day, to earn money to buy the train ticket… and not only will he arrive first, he will have spent a day of beauty in nature, walking through the woods, wheras the other person has spent the day in a factory.

This reads as something that could have been written last year – except one is aware, reading it, all the time of encroaching civilisation, and an older style of living, where the landowners were happy for him to construct a small building and live there for a few years; where he buys a load of recycled timber for $8 and a kind of Renaissance thinking, where he devotes himself to philosophy, science, observation and self-sufficiency. He conducts scientific investigations into the depths of the pond, arrives at theories on the water flow in and out of it (and through an entire pond system) in between musing on the best purposes a human life can be put to, and developing a poetic and detailed observation of nature around him over two years.

It was noticable to me that he does not mention women. His friends are men, he does not refer once, over two years, to any romantic, sexual or love relationship or feeling or desire. He holds that he is content with his hut, his books and his simple life. I know other writers have since questioned this (whether he truly was so devoted to this simple life) but for me it does not detract from his written record of his experiment, which has so much thought rendered so invitingly; and whose poetry and praises of nature read so vividly. It is one of the greatest sustained poetic outpourings of the love and engagement with nature I have ever read.

Working with Set

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I spent all of January working with Set, the Egyptian God of the wild desert… I didn’t know what to expect though maybe I was ready to meet a thwarted or even tortured being – but I didn’t find that. He was, exactly, like a ferocious sandstorm that passes through, whirling everything into the air and afterwards the landscape was completely altered – but I didn’t mind. It didn’t hurt. I was within it – even like at the eye of the storm – and I watched great destruction, change and revelation happening all around me.

I felt Set’s energy as ruthless, clean, cutting-through – and for me it was a revisioning of what matters to me, a release from old patterns of behaviour I was stuck in and a re-writing of some of my understandings of what was happening around me – it was simple, a reduction of complexity. Stripping back to the bones, as things do in the desert, none of this luxurious decaying, slow rot back into the earth – stark and unappologetic and with immediate, obvious results.

In the story of Set, he’s responsible for killing off his brother, Osiris; the God of the fertile Nile, of lush vegetation; an act that’s usually interpreted in the most sinister way possible. But without that action, Osiris could never have become the Lord of the Underworld, Keeper of the Mysteries and Guide to the Hidden Ways – so I’ve understood it more as initiation, an initatory death that allowed the mysteries through. Now I see it even more as integration – without Set’s contribution, the whole process is incomplete – after all, vegetation does not endlessly sprout and fruit; there is a dying-back time, as well; and the Nile is not always in flood, but once-yearly. Set is not just a trigger for Osiris, he is actually half of the same process – and it’s the half that names, clarifies and acts for complete change.

Working with Isis

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I am divided, for the chance of union….

This line (which is from a song) keeps singing its way through my head. I think this is them, the four-as-one; Isis, Osiris, Nephthys and Set…. Divided – for the chance of union. Like the Star Goddess. Like those stories about humans being originally 2-headed, 4-limbed… searching for their other halves. Like human yearning for the divine, for the gods…

I worked with Isis for a month as part of my preparation for teaching at the upcoming 2012 CloudCatcher WitchCamp. I felt her as a kind of wrap-around presence – like an energetic shawl; when I called or reached for her, she was there (already there) – but she wasn’t very demanding. I made a little altar for her, right above my computer, on the windowsill, which I really loved doing and felt connected to; with lots of gold, silver and vibrant blues.

This month co-incided with my working/holding of the Knowledge point of the Pearl Pentacle – and I know Isis is acknowledged as the keeper of mysteries and holder of occult knowledge. I also felt/saw her standing in the centre of that Pearl Pentacle, as a column of shifting, sparking, constantly zapping white light – very powerful, energetic and immense… when I searched for the others I sensed a narrow inner core, dark – maybe earthen, or metallic – within that white pillar, which I took to be Osiris… and when I widened my gaze I felt/saw two tides lapping at the pillar, a molten fire on one side – Set – and a sea on the other side, Nephyus. 

Even though – of the four of them – she is the one who’s been remembered, elevated, lauded whilst the others kind of suffered neglect/negative imaging – I felt this was due to our (human) limitations, rather than her taking over – the most profound thing I felt, again and again is summed up by that line; i am divided, for the chance of union – her willingness – purpose – towards union with the four, her encompassing, embracing utterly of that concept, that is an essence of her being….

Pearl Pentacle – Liberty

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I’ve just spent a month in the Pearl Pentacle position of Liberty (twinned with Power in the Iron Pentacle) and I loved it! It was my third month in the Pearl Pentacle, and the first time it really clicked in for me – retrospectively, as well, making much more sense of both Law and Knowledge. (The reason I didn’t start at the top, with Love is that we are working this with 5 people, each of us holds one of the points and we move through to the next one each full moon. So I began in Law.)

I experienced Liberty (or I still like it as the French, Liberte) as very flowing – an energy flowing out of the fingertips of my right hand, held outstretched to my right. It was like all the Law (understandings of how things are/how things must be) and the Knowledge – components of understanding, pieces of content within those lines of Law – created very definite boundaries, or settings – within which Liberty expounded. Liberty was not freedom from Law and Knowledge, but freedom within them – experienced precisely due to them, only able to exist because of them.

It was powerful, and it was freeing. I let my habits of mind, of behaviour melt away; understanding that neither Law nor Knowledge supported them and that Liberty granted me an immediacy of choosing responses, choosing behaviour, choosing to be unbounded by myself. I feel like I found myself again, within it. I was also working with a particularly powerful God, the Egyptian Set, for most of the month, and his scouring ferocity probably flavoured it. But I have come out with very good feelings towards Liberty, and am much more in tune with the Pearl Pentacle as a whole.

Because the Pearl Pentacle is facing outwards, so to speak (and the Iron Pentacle inwards, to the self) I also tried to direct this Liberte outwards; to allow others the freedoms of their behaviours and choices and not get caught up in them. But also – which is unusual to me – not to react to them, or predict them, or try to placate them. Moving on, down into Wisdom….

 

Kabbalah Secrets

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The Universal Meaning of the Kabbalah, by Leo Schaya is one of those books so dense I had to lower my expectations of myself, and be content with managing 25 pages a day, instead of my usual 50 for a non-fiction book. But it was worth it! I discovered some profound things – I probably missed many more, and I’m sure it’s the kind of book that every time you read it, it’s as if you never read it before.

But I discovered – that according the the Kabbalists (well, this branch of them anyway), the original sin – this is from eating from the Tree of Knowledge, back in the Garden of Eden – was dualism. That prior to that, there had been no separation (between God and humans, for example) – that knowledge created dualism. Our whole dualistic mindset, that many of us agonise over, that causes us to believe we are separate from the earth, for example, theoretically, or symbolically originated here.

Another idea – amazing and beautiful – that I really received, reading this book, was that the ten sephoriah are not just, as I had previously thought, ten rays or aspects of one whole – but literally that they are all the one whole, just viewed from different angles, so to speak. So it’s not that add them all together and you get the whole, but each is utterly complete, entirely the whole already, on its own and all ten are truely one, not ever split.

There were some other pretty nice things as well, a lovely exposition on the different representations of the Tree, and how to read those; with terms like Divine Radiation and Divine Concentration bandied about … I really don’t think I can explain it briefly but, for the moderately serious student of Kabbalah (probably not a complete beginner, anyway) I can recommend this book for some gritty depth and occult opinions.

 

CloudCatcher WitchCamp Theme

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This is a bit about the magic that goes into creating a WitchCamp, and in particular this CloudCatcher WitchCamp of ours, coming up in a couple of months.
Every Camp has a theme, or intention; each year the Camp would have a different one although they may be related, year to year. This is ours:

We dance the elemental serpent paths over the edges of the ordinary into the cauldron of CloudCatcher.
Birthed from the fiery core into the starry heavens, this living earth is formed.
We come to learn from you.

What does that mean? This is an intention dreamed up by the organisers – Glenn Keir, Amica Sanday, Gede Parma, John Dolman and myself. Every single word in there is as deliberate as if it were a poem, or a spell. When the teachers gather together, a few days before Camp, to put together the amazing evening rituals that WitchCamps are famous for, we’ll use those words as a leaping off place, a guide and instructional manual. They – along with our story – will shape the Arc of the Week – the unfolding magical work that develops over the length of the Camp, and that we are left to take home with us. If you’re at Camp, you’ll probably hear those words several times, and hopefully come to form your own relationship with them.

This is some of what it means to me:
We dance – we come celebrating, we come in motion, we come in collective, energetic spirit; the elemental serpent paths – we are following the paths of the elements, fire of volcano and living earth, rock and tree of mountain, water of mists and waterfalls, air of cloud and thought and dream and breath; as serpents move on the land, snaking their paths into the land so our approach is weaving in and out, is coiled, is serpentine… and we remember and acknowledge the great Rainbow Serpent who laid down all these paths on the land… over the edges of the ordinary – we leave behind our ordinary lives, who we are in the world – all those restrictions and limitations and knowings – and offer ourselves into magic, into change and becoming; we step between the veils (of magic, spirit and mist) to see who we will become; into the cauldron of CloudCatcher – we spill onto this land from all directions, arriving on sacred ground, the cauldron of the caldera, we acknowledge this sacred ancient volcano, which has carved out this rich and fertile land and we also offer ourselves into the cauldron, to be cooked, transformed, remade – both individually and as community; we also offer this international format known as WitchCamp to our local cauldron of CloudCatcher, to discover what will become of it.

Birthed from the fiery core – remembering this was a volcano, thinking of how change occurs within our lives, we come forth new from the furnaces of the earth, of energy, of essential elemental magic; into the starry heavens – following the trajectory of rocks and fire fountained up from the heart of the mountain into the sky, connecting our earth-bodies with our sky-spirits, reaching for the stars; this living earth is formed – earth is alive, earth is sacred, this volcano process is part of the ancient creation of this earth, this particular piece of earth which we bring our magic to, this is the process of creation.

We come to learn from you – we come to learn from CloudCatcher, from the land, from each other, from WitchCamp itself; our offering is that everyone – organisers, teachers, campers – comes to learn from each other and the land, it is an open hand reaching out.

If you’d like to read a little bit about the process we used to come up with this theme, there’s more about it at: http://janemeredith.com/blog/?p=683

Perhaps you can already see, reading that, how our three Paths are connected to the theme; the Elemental one, the Serpent one and Empower Awaken Ignite!

CloudCatcher Story

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Most WitchCamps work with a story – a myth or sometimes a fairytale – as a way of deepening our ritual journey together during the Camp. This is one of my favourite parts of Camp – I LOVE unfolding a myth and stepping (delicately) within the mythos… watching it come to life all around me and experiencing aspects of it completely freshly. It always seems – whatever the story is – to offer something to me, personally, as well as to provide transitions for moving more deeply into the magical and community work that is a part of a WitchCamp. Afterwards, I feel a deep connection with that story – as if I had spent a week or so hanging out with those characters, maybe staying in their house and sharing their lives!

The first WitchCamp I ever went to (California) worked with Scheherezarde and her thousand and one stories. I remember the achingly beautiful mask-and-dance story-telling, her strength and bravery and learning to borrow some of that to step more fearlessly into the world. The next one (Lorely, in France) had the story of Sleeping Beauty – a story I’d never liked but I came to understand it completely differently, as a story of deep feminine initiation which has stayed with me ever since and helped inform my theories on the Dark Goddess.
Then I was at California again, but on the teaching team, this time working with Avalon – and we created a gorgeous Wild Hunt, totally-chaotic-ritual and allied with the fae at a beautiful fairy ball. Invoking Avalon in the Californian woods, when I had spent so much time actually on the hills and in the landscape of Glastonbury taught me how open myth is to travelling, to being received and related to wherever you are. Then I went to BC WitchCamp (Canada) and unbelievably, they had also chosen Avalon as a story – and this time we focused on the grail, on Arthur and on the deep mysteries of the healing waters. The first Australian WitchCamp (Healesville) kept with a simple story of the land, which was equally resonant and rich and I felt combined the primal energies of this land with our relating to it.
Now we’ve chosen an Egyptian myth, and we’ve chosen it because of the four-who-are-one: Isis, Osiris, Nepthys and Set. Our story is about unity, completion, different aspects of the whole. These four Egyptian deities weave a complex story between them, filled with love, betrayal, death, magic, birth and rebirth – and yet the essence seems to be they are each a part of the whole. Without any one of them, the story could not exist, they are each essential to the role of the others.

The Teaching Team – Paul, Madrone, Gede, Karin, Fiona and I – have taken it upon ourselves to spend a month working with each one of these God/desses. We spent December with Isis. Now in January we are inviting Set in. In this way, by the time it comes to create our evening rituals for Camp, we’ll have a complex (6-aspected) and personal relationship with each of them.
I wanted to invite you, also, to come to know this story a little, in your own way, before you get to Camp (or even if you’re not coming to Camp, you still might like to do this).

There’s no right or wrong way to do this – anything counts, everything counts. I’m going to give you some suggestions you can pick and choose amongst – but anything you think of, that I haven’t mentioned, is probably even more valid!
If you like, you can post what you’re discovering on our Facebook Page for the Camp: http://www.facebook.com/events/165634890179412/?ref=ts – I’ll post a few pieces of our Isis workings up there…

Some suggestions:
~ Read about Egyptian mythology generally (books, internet)
~ Study the myth of Isis and Osiris (so-called, actually they are all in there). Look at different versions.
~ Create an Altar for one – or for all 4 – of these deities
~ Spend some time with each of them, a week or a fortnight each in the lead-up to Camp; (or a day each for 4 days)
~ Invoke one of them into a ritual, or work on a poem/artwork/song around their themes, story or an aspect of one of them.
~ Sit with one of them/each in turn in meditation
~ Ask yourself which one of these 4 you relate to, and what parts of your life is represented in this myth, or by each of the 4
~ You might want to start a jounal now, that can be the same one you bring with you to Camp
~ Keep in touch with us! – we’d love to know what you’re thinking, and how you’re experiencing the beginnings of this story…

Seasons of the Goddess: Perspectives from the Southern Hemisphere, by Dr Tricia Szirom.

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Having just trawled through several badly written books on the Wheel of the Year I was delighted to read Tricia Szirom’s offering, Seasons of the Goddess: Perspectives from the Southern Hemisphere. Her introduction clearly and comprehensively sets out what she intends to do in this book – to make a start on discussing what might matter, locally (in her case, south-eastern Australia) as regards seasonal celebrations.

The first half of the book covers her research and understandings towards seasonal rituals for her own location, with frequent reference to other Australian locations and some reference internationally. It is fresh, comprehensive, interesting and well-presented. Of course I was especially intrigued, since she’s discussing issues I’ve spent lots of time considering, and in realms I experiment with, but I also think it’s more than just a local reference for those living in the Southern Hemisphere, it throws up important questions and considerations for anyone practising nature-based rituals and spirituality, wherever they are.

The second half of the book details simple rituals to undertake on the eight Wheel of the Year Festivals, with a strong emphasis on guided inner journeying. I felt this could easily be expanded upon (by the reader) into more active rituals, and extended towards actual explorations of the land, on those Festival dates. They could be worked solo or in a group, or just be the inspirational basis for a larger ritual.

The book is beautifully laid-out and illustrated and easily fulfils both its aim of an initial exploration into the topic and a wider function of questioning ‘traditional’, Pagan or Wiccan Northern-Hemisphere and agriculturally based understandings of the seasons. A lovely book, to look at and to read and essential for the reference shelf!