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!

Pearl Pentacle – Knowledge through to Liberty

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Travelling from Knowledge through to Liberty on the Pearl Pentacle is the same journey as Self through to Power, in the Iron Pentacle. It’s from left hand to right hand, across the body and (inevitably) through the heart. This has often proved to be a difficult journey – not just for me, but for others I’ve witnessed working with the Iron Pentacle. It’s all very well cultivating a strong inner self – but to carry that through to power requires projecting that self into the world, carrying the (newly revised, fuller) self out into a place where all its vulnerbilities may appear. As the energy reaches the heart, on its journey from left to right hand, there sometimes appears a piercing understanding of this.

I’ve spent most of a day working on this transition, from Knowledge to Liberty (inbetween doing other things), conscious of potential breakdowns around the heart, especially since I haven’t been feeling very close to my heart lately. The little mantra that’s been speaking itself to me (quite quietly) is that knowledge brings freedom; if you know something truly you are free. The truth will set you free… This actually seemed to be more of a release than that testing of Self into Power, and when I stood outside on the verandah and saw the full moon, hazy through cloud, I cupped my left hand up to it and let it sit there, then I angled my arm so a beam of moonlight travelled along my arm and I let it pierce through my body and angle through to the other hand… It felt sweet and clean and true. I felt the heat in my right hand, as if it were holding it now, cupping the energy.

Liberty – I think I like it – it reminds me (fondly) of the French Revolution; Liberte (I don’t know how to get an a French accent in here). Freedom from the old, from old forms and restrictions and perversions of power. Release – as if all that concentrated Knowledge, and all those perfectly correct forms of Law must now disapate, be let go of, be dispersed and softened and flow into new patterns once again…

 

Pearl Pentacle – Knowledge

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I just spent a month in the point of Knowledge, on the Pearl Pentacle (in the Iron Pentacle, this point is Self). I found it much harder to relate to than Law, though from about halfway through Isis (who I was also working with this month) came to my rescue. Isis was the keeper of magical knowledge (well, that’s how I think of her) and I could really feel from that angle the knowledge I was holding in my hand, so to speak. And it’s my left hand, so it’s not necessarily obvious, or out-there knowledge – it’s esoteric knowledge, sometimes hidden knowledge. And my relationship to that is that I try to teach what part I have of that knowledge – to make it available, or create doorways where other people can discover it for themselves (their own knowledge).

I appreciate Knowledge for its clarity, its lack of emotion – but I think it can be hard to get to that point. I spent quite a lot of the month wondering what I actually did know, after all. I was probably thinking too grandly – once I got down to really simple stuff I did better. I like the question, What do I actually know about this situation? (as opposed to, how do I feel about it, or why am I upset about it). Thinking of Isis reminded me that I am a seeker of the mysteries, and that knowledge is won (sometimes) – in pieces – that way. But I felt I had a mainly intellectual grasp of Knowledge (the position on the Pearl Pentacle), not an intimate one.

Of course Knowledge marries really well with Self and it’s hard not to immediately associate it withSelf Knowledge, though I don’t think that’s what this point is about. Still, Know thyself as a fundamental requirement to understanding anything at all, and as a starting point for learning about the outside world resonated with me very strongly. And from this hard-won self knowledge, it’s true – that’s where I do stand and look out to the world, and try to understand it, try to understand other people.

Pearl Pentacle – Law

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A group of five of us have been working the Iron Pentacle together – each holding one position for a moon, before transiting through on the full moon to the next point. When we completed Iron, we moved through into Pearl (in spite of many cries of not having really finsihed with Iron!) – but we pressed on, understanding that Pearl is building on Iron, not replacing it. Because I finished the Iron sequence in Sex, when we moved into Pearl I slid down to Law in the right foot…

I like it! To me it has the same resonances as Gevurah, on the Tree of Life, one of my favourite positions… It’s the order of things – not the order that we will, or seek to impose, but the actual order, that exists – like the order of the universe. Gevurah I saw as a mathamatically perfect honeycomb – 6 sided cells that matched perfectly to one another, I have been experiencing Law as inviolate lines of light by which the universe is arranged; life, death, possibilities… It makes sense to me, I feel at home there. I think there is a relief at not having to work it all out, to be able to know small parts of this Law and be carried within it; it has an immutable quality I feel I can trust.

Law in the Pearl Pentacle builds on Pride, from the Iron Pentacle – I see how Pride is knowing oneself, trusting oneself, being true… and how on this Pearl level Law is like the recognition of the divine. It’s not about choice, but about what must be, what is – and the beauty of that. It’s the place where the deeper you go, the less choices there are, because it becomes obvious, and I really trust this. The answers can be surprising – not what one would expect, but because they resonate deeply, with everything we already know, they strike true. Law is a hard one for me to act on, because there’s no room to be hidden. But maybe I like it because personality is not a big player.

Summer Solstice Mandala Ritual

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We had asked everyone to bring a double handful of flower petals with them, and we began our ritual by scattering them in a circle. Then we stepped into a circle made of dandelions, hydrangas, a few frangipanis and various other flowers. We shared what the season meant to us – the longest day, the coming of warmth, summer, holidays and reflection on the past year. After we’d learnt a song together, we moved into a reflection on the themes of the Summer Solstice – fullness, generosity and passion. Dwelling on them one by one, we moved about the circle, like a walking meditation. Then we stopped and shared – with whoever happened to be nearest to us – what each one of those things had meant to us in the past year.

For me the fullness had been the nature of the year – filled with lots of work (that I really love), creating rituals and running workshops, completing Journey to the Dark Goddess and starting a new book. When I reflected on generosity, I felt how generous the three of us had been in our move to the city, to the suburbs, to the relative confines of a two-bedroom flat with no garden, compared with the vast, castle-like house and grounds we inhabited before. I felt all of us had been generous to the others in the move, and in living in a smaller place. Passion – I was pleased to have passion highlighted, as was the woman I was sharing with. My passion for engagement in the world seems strong, but my private passions are reclusive. Both of us resolved to pay a little more attention to passion.

Then we came together as a circle again, and created our Summer Mandala, laying out the framework with a kind of frilly fettuccine and then each person filling it in with whatever they had brought – red lentils, green split peas, penne pasta, dried beans… When it was all done we each added a gift – a beautiful black and white feather, a twig of gumtree, a seedpod, a beautiful flower. Standing back and admiring it, we sang our song and raised some energy. Once we’d left the circle for our picnic, it looked incredibly wonderful – the  mandala enclosed in a circuit of flower….

Summer Solstice Labyrinth Ritual

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We got up very early (like, before 4am) and drove deep into a beautiful National Park. There we collected from various cars and walked into the ritual site – crossing a stunning looking beach (it had cliffs extending into the sea on both sides, like protective wings, and behind it was a pool with a waterfall splashing down into it). The sun was just coming up and I would have liked to stay to see it, but we pressed on to a more sheltered area, to construct and walk our Solstice labyrinth.

We built the labyrinth on the spot, using found materials of sticks and branches, dried reeds and whatever else we could find – I had picked up part of a birds’ wing on the way in (a very large bird, the feathers were about 18 inches long) and I added that in. Other feathers, and some shells were added and it’s surprising how quickly a labyrinth can come together with nine women working on it. After honouring the land and the traditional guardians, we cast a circle and then went for our ritual bathe. Returning, we walked the labyrinth one by one, to a slow drum beat.

I find labyrinths wonderful in focusing my attention. I noticed, for instance, that because I walk fairly fast, even in a meditative state, my progression through the labyrinth was made in bursts and stops, whereas many others had a much more steady (but slow) progression. And I take this to be indicative of my general progression through life – I leap ahead, rush on, am brought up short, wait – and leap forward again. The cockatoos flew over while I was walking, I took that as an indication of encouragement. I love the passing of other bodies – each one intent on their own path, but still engaged in the same overall task, I find it very moving and even companionable. After I’d been in the centre a short while, I had to move back out on the return journey, but I very strongly felt that I take the centre with me, wherever I go; that each of us is the centre and we travel with it.

I came back out and finished near the same clump of reeds I’d been standing next to before I went in; they were familiar to me as a type of reed I’d planted many clumps of so I felt I knew them a little. They were doing very well in this wet summer, but I remembered that if they don’t have enough water around them, they dry out, even to the point of looking like they’ve died. But they haven’t actually died (usually) – once it rains again they come back to life. I took that as encouragement, also, to remember to keep watering myself with ritual and nature and time spent in the luminious realms.

Ogre Resister

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It all started as I was walking down a busy city street, in lunch hour. I was walking along the edge of the curb when I noticed ahead of me, lying in the gutter (a relatively clean, and completely dry gutter) a Magic card – a type of card I am very familiar with, since my son owns thousands of them, collects them and has been an avid Magic player for many years. I even keep some in my wallet, as a little spell, a Priveledged Position, a Utopia Sprawl (which is a special foil card, all glittery and apparently more valuable), a Wall of Roots and a couple of lands, just in case; a Forest and a Swamp. You never can tell when they’ll be useful.

So it would have been hard to pass this one by, though I considered it, for not wanting to be seen picking something up from the gutter. I hesitated, but got over it and picked it up – it was an Ogre Resister, which I’d never seen before but really that doesn’t mean much because there are literally thousands of these cards. At first glance I thought its name meant that it resisted Ogres, which I thought could be useful, but later, when I had a chance to read it, I realised that it was an Ogre which resisted other things – not quite so appealing, but still could be useful. I held it clutched in my hand for several blocks and through a couple of shops – then I went to pay for something and was worried I would end up losing it, so I dropped it in my bag. I did have this thought flicker through my brain, If you put it in there, you’ll never see it again, and I thought, how ridiculous.

Sure enough, when I got home, it had vanished. Maybe it died, resisting an Ogre, BUT spookily, when I went to post a blog about it, the whole blog had vanished, been taken down by a virus. If only I had my Ogre Resister with me this would never have happened!

Remembering Ritual

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I’m working on a new book about the Wheel of the Year, and have been remembering some of the great rituals we did over the years.

Like that Samhain when we climbed into bed with Death. Or the one when we entered the Labyrinth and encountered the Minotaur. The Beltaine when the children re-enacted a Wild Hunt down a rocky hillside, or the Lammas ritual after the Boxing Day Tsunami, where we symbolically killed off half the people attending the ritual. I remember making Lammas dollys taller than the children, Summer Mandalas almost too beautiful to leave for the birds and pademelons to eat, magical Winter Solstice candles, painting Spring Equinox eggs, making masks for Samhain and all those other things we’ve done year after year, weaving our way through the Wheel.

And the point of this is not just the celebration of the seasons, coming together as community and entering sacred space together and making magic and ceremony; part of the point is becoming the Wheel. Because after a while of these rituals, a year or two or three, they become not like individual things, pieces of a jigsaw puzzle; but the great whole, and the most amazing thing is experiencing the Wheel as turning through me. That it becomes not so much me, treading my way round the edges of the Wheel, from Festival to Festival, but this enormous sense of the wheel – the whole wheel of the cosmos, the stars, the universe and the patterns of life – turning literally through me, through my body and through my life. I’m carrying it, as much as it’s carrying me.

Sometimes they’ve been tiny rituals – three of us on the beach at dawn. Sometimes they’ve been thirty people all dressed in black with masks venturing through the veils. Often they’ve been eight, or ten, or fifteen of us gathered together, inside or outside, working ritual together that marks the season and – at some stage, most times – springs extrordinarily into vivid life, absolute and entire.