Mystics Needed

Please, ignore the rantings and ravings of the people in your life who tell you that you're too strange or weird or new-agey or freaky. Those without mystical sight tend to see the worst in people who have it. They always have and they always will.

Having mystical sight doesn't mean your eyes work differently; it means that your heart works differently. It means that incomprehensible portions of "you"- portions so strange as to first be encountered as seemingly separate from "you"- work differently. They are active, awake on some level, and they invade your dreams and your waking life. You didn't choose for them to be there; we don't really write these stories we call our lives.

Please, embrace the extraordinary powers, don't fight them. It's not courage to reject them; it's courage to accept them. We human beings are servants of holy powers, of different powers, of extraordinary powers, no matter how much we may have lost sight of this fact. It was always our destiny to be so. I don't mean "servant" in any negative, groveling sense. I mean a person who serves the needs of this sacred whole, and is in turn served by it. There is no "higher" or "lower" or "lesser" or "greater", truly- though I sometimes use those words with poetic intent. Those who are meant to understand will.

I have always had a mystical spin on my writings, and I have drawn the ire of many in the "pagan" world of the modern day- such that it is- on account of it. But my writings have, from the beginning, been job ads, spiritual classified ads, aimed at the few people I knew would read them and understand. Everything I write says "mystics needed"- and you are needed.

The great religions of our world were born in mysticism, even the ones whose births were also accompanied by corruption. The seeds of the "big faiths" are all deeply, intensely personal spiritual experiences that far exceeded the ordinary. Whether it was a cave full of angels or a god-man risen from the dead, or visions of sacred beings in the middle of the wilderness, something occurred that echoed down through the ages.

Whole cultures have been shaped by their power, and by the other powers of human selfishness and greed. And through it all, something vital about us has endured- in art, romance, love, invention, and poetry. We can't be trapped forever.

Our "new" religious movements need mystical seeds planted, if we want to survive into the future. Our gardens were poisoned, but their plants did not die utterly; they turned inward and grew within the unseen, still alive in people's hearts, passed down from generation to generation in some hidden power that silently accompanied people. Finally, when the conditions were right, they came back to bud above ground.

We are buds, seedlings, and sprouts. And now, the rain needs to come. We have some sunlight, we have some darkness, we have good soil, but we need rain, we need water. We need to go into the deep to find a well for the irrigation we need.

So, I need mystics who are willing to sink- to sink to the depths, to the super-essential darkness that unites all things and in which all things have their true roots, and bring back fresh mystical insight and power. We have to reach a place that language can't reach. The darkness is there; it stands still and quiet and potent behind all myths and powers and true religious experiences. The sound of its shuttle and loom creeks through the space between stars and from the bottoms of our dreamy nights.

We're right to feel that something is missing from our lives, that something is concealed, or has been forgotten- but the path to healing starts when we realize that the "missing" is just a perception (albeit a foul one) and what has been concealed or forgotten can be uncovered and remembered. That's where you have to start.

Rilke said "Yet no matter how deeply I go down into myself, my God is dark, and like a webbing made of a hundred roots, that drink in silence."

There's something to this- perhaps the most important thing; the true Underworld regression and initiation; the journey back to the source of things. We are not "new agers" who are bereft of authentic tradition and some supernatural authority to believe as we do; we are not malcontents and spiritually rebellious children; we are humans, and therefore automatically in touch with the most precious, powerful things which underpin all human religions. We have a place, but we have to water it, make it a "green and good land".

The springs of water are below. There is a darkness and silence we have to merge with and integrate before we can celebrate who and what we are in the light of day, and with words and images. If you start too early, you lose interest, because real power isn't there. It's shallow. But the waters of the source run deep. They run back to the body of Fate, whose story we are all a part of.

All of our religious practices and beliefs play a role in the unfolding of things- none of our time or effort is wasted. But we will waste the chance to power and authenticity we could have if we don't sink down to the depths to refresh ourselves and make the "second order change" we have to make to become worthy vessels of a new era of spirituality. What the Pagan religions and spiritualities were in the past is not what they are destined to be again- they can be something greater, through us. Nature is always renewing things, sending them forth to greater and more intense forms of expression. This is no different. We are no different.

This is a call to a real vocation. It's a job posting, an opening that needs to be filled. Please consider coming to the first interview.

Llyn y Fan: The Mysteries and the Merging

"A favorite Celtic motif, and one found in many European faery tales, is the requirement for the hero to perform some impossible task before he can marry the woman of his dreams. Usually the task is assigned by the woman's father and is a variation of the riddle, which at first glance also seems impossible. In the faery tale, the purpose of the impossible task is to keep separated two opposing worlds, or worldviews, symbolized by the young man and his intended bride, just as we are accustomed to keeping ordinary and non-ordinary realities separate in daily life. But mystical insight and enlightenment occur when the veil between the worlds is lifted, the worlds are bridged, the gap closes, and we cross over."

-Tom Cowan, Fire In The Head

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Right Before Your Eyes

Some people spend a considerable amount of time looking for the "mysteries"- "mysteries" here meaning the secrets of the cosmos, the occult secrets or occult knowledges that many believe exist in some objective form, which can transform us from the sorts of people who "don't know" into the sorts of people who "know".

My understanding of "mystery" has become quite different these days. The term "mystery" has had many meanings in the Pagan world- from the runa of the Teutons to the hidden spiritual messages in mystery plays and dramas from the ancient Mediterranean. But for me, as for many of the other primal peoples I've studied, it has come to be known as something far more immediate and intense: the mysteries are everything that I experience.

There are two sides to experience- and I am talking about everything, up to and including you reading this blog right at this moment. There is the actual experience, and then there is the simultaneous and habitual "meaning generating" reaction that your mind and person has as soon as it has experienced, or while it is experiencing.

We use our language and our words to "give meaning" to what we experience. We let feelings inspire words and descriptions; we let intellectualizing shape them; the words come from many places, and are positioned to give meaning to what you experienced- meaning for yourself, and meaning you can try to transmit to others with words.

What few people stop to become consciously aware of is the fact that we don't know what the experiences themselves are, at all. Strange that! Every experience is a mystery, even the most commonly repeated ones that have long ago been explained away and named away with words. When we recount our experiences to another, we never offer the experience- we only offer our memories and impressions of it, with our words. We recount the words and descriptions we applied to it to give it meaning and presence in our memories.

So there are the mysteries- here they are; everywhere you look. Every thing you hear or feel. This brings up one of my favorite subjects: the Gods.

What are Gods? We can experience them in many ways, but what are they? They are as mysterious as any other thing we can experience- but not more mysterious than anything else. To consider it like that would be to lose track of what I'm saying. Everything is mysterious.

We don't actually know what the Gods are; we only know what we've said of them, or what's been said of them. We know what we remember, but we remember in line with the meaning-granting words and labels we applied. In no manner should this suggest that the Gods are not real; they are as real as any other experience that has been draped in the sorcery of words.

Near, Vast and Deep

This brings up the next point of knowing the mysteries in this way- the sheer immensity of the Otherworld. Part of my religious experience is feeling what I describe as the "immensity" of the unseen- for every gnarled oak I stand in front of, or every star I gaze at, for every person I meet, I sense the vastness beyond. When I focus on a "thing", I always try to remember- and oftentimes spontaneously do- the great vastness of what is "not this thing", and beyond that, what is unseen, past what is seen.

We are gazing, every moment, into the immensity. Thinking like this orients a person to the Otherworld's presence, and makes things like poetry, prayer, and invocation take on a new meaning. We drape intention and feeling and yearning in words, and launch those words into the vastness of what we call "the world out there" and "the world unseen"- but even these "things" of ours- intention, feeling, yearning- are mysteries. There is a lot of power moving here- as us, in us, through us, all around us- but we are only being "let in" on the tiniest amount, on the most surface of levels.

How do we "go deeper"? In my view, we go deeper when we remember the mystery of it all, the vastness of it all, and stop trying to imagine that we grasp things perfectly. We disguise things with words, apply meaning to mysteries that may or may not have anything to do with what word-sorcery we use. We are making cosmic guesses and staging cosmic stage plays, with powers that run deeper than we can imagine.

If we accept this and focus on it, we go quiet- we begin to listen more than speak, and feel more than we ever thought we would. We have to become comfortable with uncertainty again. We have to remind ourselves that we have limits, and with a twist of spiritual irony, realize that adjusting ourselves comfortably and respectfully to limits opens up new, greater vistas in us than we could realize. The truths we win may not be things of the head, but things of the heart. Is this not so?

Great Poetess beneath the hills and lakes, Mother of inspiration in the boundless deep, give us our sense of wonder back! Let us know our smallness, and through it, our vastness- for nothing exists which is not a part of all else. Let us know the depths that remain hidden to our eyes; let our hearts be the channels of truth and wisdom.

Crossing Over

How will we cross over? How can we answer the impossible riddle which bridges two seemingly incompatible things: the seen and unseen, the seemingly predictable with the absolutely unpredictable, the worlds of words and opinions with the worlds of mystery?

We will cross over on an impossibly narrow bridge which only reveals itself to those who release themselves from addiction to the notion that "things" must be one way or another- they will shatter the boundary, part the hedge, and find the way. The seemingly impossible things to reconcile are that way because we believe they are. What if their reality was something totally different?

Tom Cowan recounts: "In the Welsh tale of Llyn y Fan, the hero sees a faery woman on a lake who refuses his gift of baked bread. So he resorts to giving her dough. This too, she refuses. Finally, he offers her a loaf that is half-baked- bread that is "both baked and not baked." The she accepts him, and his world of ordinary reality and her realm of enchantment are united."

The "either/or" duality is shattered by the "both/and" complementarity. What is this? It is the ultimate expression of inclusivity and wholeness. I "have" the mysteries through my experiences, but don't have them at all, with my words and memories.

And yet, through words, through the sorcery of words, poetry, and song, something strange comes about- I become oriented to a place that is both here and not here- an open "space" of mind wherein my own experience may occur. I am both alive and not alive; I am both here and not here; I am both foolish and not foolish; I am both human and not human. This poetic door continues: "I am both animate and inanimate... there is nothing of which I am not; there is nothing I have not been."

This is the spirit talking. It's time we began listening and believing.

Solitude Teaches About the Gods

Those people are very smart who can hear the words of poems and songs and make good sense of them, and unlock their hidden layers of meaning.

But they are very wise who can hear the silence, too. The space of silence between each sound is as much a needful part of the song or the poem as the sounds and words. Without silence, no words or poems or songs would be. Silence is, in a sense, the mother of sound. Silence is a corollary to the "space" or the womb of things, which is the mother of everything. Every great truth told with words is a finger pointing to something silent and unreachable with words. Every word, like every tree, or stone, or person, is a child of something greater, more silent and immense, something deep beyond.

Tom Cowan tells of Matsuwa, a Huichol shaman, who teaches of the need for solitude in the wilderness. He says "If you want to learn to see, to learn to hear, you must... go into the wilderness alone. For it is not I who will teach you the ways of the Gods. Such things are learned only in solitude."

Mother of solitude, let us be unafraid.

Poetry Was Once Religion

I dreamed of Orchil, the dim goddess who is under the brown earth, in a vast cavern, where she weaves at two looms. With one hand she weaves life upward through the grass; with the other she weaves death downward through the mould; and the sound of the weaving is Eternity, and the name of it in the green world is Time. And, through all, Orchil weaves the weft of Eternal Beauty, that passeth not, though its soul is Change. This is my comfort, O Beauty that art of Time, who am faint and hopeless in the strong sound of that other weaving, where Orchil, the dim goddess, sits dreaming at her loom under the brown earth.

-Fiona Macleod, Orchil

The "slogan" that I have chosen for this blog-project, as well as for the religious orientation of my own life and hearth is "Poetry was once religion." These four words sum up so much that is (for me) emblematic of both the Old Religion and the quest for an authentic spirituality today. Most people today have grown used to "poetry" being nothing more than another writing exercise taught in English classes, or the content of literary reading assignments; most people don't understand what poetry is (or was) and conflate it with rhyming short sentences that may or may not have some cute point.

I don't think people today begin to comprehend the original sacred character of poetry. From the earliest appearances of what we in the west call "poetry", it had a sacred function- from the Vedas to the Gathas to Homer's Odyssey, words arranged in meter allowed for an easy marriage to human memory, thus allowing precious lore to be preserved from generation to generation- lore about the Gods, heroes, philosophy, history, and rites and rituals of various kinds. Homer and Hesiod- two of the West's first poets, made no secret of the source of their art: the Muses, Goddesses whose inspiration they channeled. Parmenides' great Muse, who inspired his sacred poem, was none other than the Queen of the Underworld herself, chief figure in the oldest Mysteries of Greece.

We know that the Druids of the North and West, as well as the Skalds and Poets of the Teutons, were given the authority of their positions largely through feats of memory- the memorization of kingly lineages, legends, stories, verse, and perhaps ritual requirements for things like sacrifices and the like: they were living vessels of the lore of the past as it trickled down the generations of life.

Those who study Irish and Welsh myths are treated to the finest poetry yet formed through the human mind and body: the inspired and sorcerously ecstatic utterances of Amarghin, the First Druid of Irish lore, and Taliesin, the Arch-Bard of the British tradition. Through their connection to the source of inspiration, they command the elemental forces of reality; they create words of power that win great victories for their people or (in Taliesin's case) his retainers. Their poems are spells of great power; their poems are pure magic, in the most ancient sense of the word.

The mystical poetry of these masters does more than add fire to a good tale; their words demonstrate for us so much about the inner nature of reality- these men/spiritually awakened beings were able to "be" so many different beasts and natural phenomena, able to self-identify with the land, precisely because there is already a connection there, waiting to be uncovered. But to uncover it and experience oneself as a full part of the wholeness of reality and all orders of sentient being is not something that happens upon command or because one intellectually accepts that their true condition must be so: it happens only when poetic inspiration is discovered.

Poetry is a power; it is not just an end product in the form of words and verse, but a "way of being"- it is an outlook, a "far outside of the box" outlook that helps people to see with great intensity and cleverness. It makes everything about perception and feeling "fall into place", and the source of this power is the source of all powers- the cauldron or well of life, contained mythically (and actually) in the Underworld, as well as actually in the hidden layer of the fabric of all realities. It is inside us; it is the grail-heart, the secret heart of human spiritual questing.

The Goddess of Sovereignty is connected to poetic inspiration, because true poetic inspiration cannot come apart from the majestic natural powers of the land, waters and sky, or the intensely complex natural realities of human nature. Whatever powers line up to create a path for poetry, the land, sea, and sky are all of the body of the Sovereign; and human nature is, too. So many sacred forces are able to speak through poetry, and what they say can be surprising to us.

A genuine poet will find him or herself surprised by what they produce; one cannot predict the vast and strange immensities of the Otherworld, nor can one predict the spontaneous nature of inspiration. One can only bask in it, for whatever time it chooses to flow. We hope it will flow forever, and for the greatest, perhaps it does- but we on the ground, still kindling fires in hearths, will wait for the passage of the divine inspiration and make ourselves open to it as we may.

And being open to it is the key; it is always there, at every moment- it is we who close our doors and windows and feel the isolation and despair that eventually accumulates. It takes courage to open ourselves as much as our hearts' deepest inclinations would have us; but eventually we all succumb to the ceaseless donation of sacredness that makes up our truest nature, and become poets ourselves.

There is no "ancient religion of Ireland or Britain" apart from understanding the sacred nature of poetry, just as there is no modern day religion based on the spirit of those old faiths, without understanding it. What we call "poetry" now was once the heart of "religion"- religion here meaning "that which brings together again"- that which the communities and families of old kept close and enacted to bring themselves together with the Gods, ancestors, and each other. All of these disparate forces- religion, sacrifice, community, nature, Sovereignty, awakening, memory, culture, history, and the human beings involved- all these things are bound together by poetry, somehow encapsulated in the great "outpouring" of the sacred that is passed down to us in the few precious words of verse given us in myths and recorded legends.

What poetry was lost? How much? I say much, but I say that it matters little- we have the examples we need, the start of a road that leads us to open the same doors inside that the ancestors opened, and for the same poetry to emerge through us, in forms suited to our present realities. Our present realities include different words and perspectives, but precisely the same spirits that have wandered the world since the dawn of time. The deathless powers are the same: the very essence of the sacred is the same. Nothing is ever truly lost or forgotten!

In my personal religious life, and that of my wife and children, poetry takes the center place at the hearth, next to the flame, and the three gifts of the Mother of the Land: fertility, generosity, and wisdom. I cannot feel the movements of the divine, either the spirit in me or the Gods of my ancestors, without the beauty of poetry being recited, with my outer voice or my inner; when the spirit expresses real poetry, it matters not how. What Fiona Macleod wrote about "Orchil" above is (in my opinion) one of the examples of "pure poetry"- a perfect and full invocation of the Goddess of the Underworld and Life's Fate.

In so few words, so many doors are opened by Fiona Macleod in the mind and heart! The "sacred emotion" roused by the words place a person in spiritual connection to the object of the poem- prayer at its finest. The way that concepts like "time" and "eternity" and this "green world" are situated in relation to Orchil is a "making sacred" of things we normally let slip by us unnoticed; she creates, with the magic of these words, a mandala of the sublime for things. Those of us who believe in the Fate-weaver, the Sovereign Goddess, can understand her through Orchil- even if Orchil is a powerful symbol existing for Fiona alone.

Sorcery too, is poetry-dependent, though many may not see it. Poetry gives us a rush of power from what seems to be a trans-personal source; relatively speaking, it certainly is transpersonal; ultimately speaking, poetry restores us to the wholeness that consumes relative perspectives. That is real power, and it is a power for religion no less than sorcery- and it seems an afterthought now to mention that once, religion and sorcery were not so separate.

I can do no more to explain poetry, and I know that this description has been woefully inadequate, at least for me. I know I cannot capture what I wanted to say- I know that poetry is something that lifts me out of my "ordinary" and into a better comprehension of wholeness and the mystical. In that state, I know why I believe what I believe; I know them and myself better- in conjunction with all things. I feel it; I feel in a way that leaves me at peace. Our religion- or should I say, our "life-way" (the term I prefer) is nothing without poetry, for it was originally poetry and will always be poetry.