BlackHearted Essays
The majority of these essays come directly out of correspondence with students who are training in feri over distance. I offer them here because they are beautiful, astute, and on some level they prove that Feri can be transmitted this way. It's not easy--for the student or the teacher--but it can be done.
I was sitting in my sittingroom, working on the laptop and noticed the sun setting, and remembered something my grandmother (not the one who wanted to look things up, other grandmother - blind grandmother in fact) had said. When she was a little girl, her mother would insist on conducting a ritual with her and her sisters every day. When the light outside began to fade, they would be called into the sittingroom and sit quietly and watch until the light was completely gone. Only then was electric light turned on and conversation permitted. My grandmother who was blind in the dark, hated this daily sit in the darkness, but her mother insisted on carrying out this tradition that she herself had grown up with.
For some reason this story popped into my head - I saw the long lines of mothers and daughters mending clothes in the fading lights of a small room, and then, as the lights began to fade, sit quietly, looking at nothing, letting the day seep out of them, welcoming evening and the dark,and only picking up their mending, or cooking, or knitting when the lights were lit. It is an age-old Danish custom, called "holde mørkning" which means to celebrate darkening (or dusk).
-Ginevra
Once in a while I have deep, intense dreams where I am pretty much God. Everything I think happens. Everything I want to do is done. There are several versions of the dream, but they tend to turn to nightmares in one way or another before I wake up. The last few times I woke up from, it was in a cold sweat with weird Iron Pentacle-type energy running through myself, in a way that won't allow further sleeping. Its got a strange message to it. EVERYTHING you think IS or CAN BE SO and EVERY INTERACTION you have ANYWHERE EVER carries DIVINE MEANING which of course you understand because YOU are GOD.
It makes me feel both big and small after the fact, after the energy has died down. Both helpless and powerful. "I don't understand any of this! I'm just me!" / "Of course, this all makes perfect sense. I am whole and complete!"
There's a balance in dreaming that I can achieve sometimes, something magical that I can plug into if the conditions are right. Once in a while, when I'm dreaming something intense, I'll wake up halfway, just enough that I realize time, place, etc, but a part of me still is existing in dreamland and that reality is still playing in the background. There's a moment in there where I can re-enter the dream completely, but with the knowledge that its a dream. It gives me the ability to occasionally have influence in the outcome of a dream. I've been put at the drivers seat, so to speak. I can steer the wheel.
I tried to steer the God dream the other day. At least at first. I was dreaming that I was in the car, driving, and everything I willed to happen in my mind would happen. The lights turned green for me. The cars got out of the way for me. Something woke me up for a split second - noise outside - I opened my eyes, realized what I was dreaming about, and kinda did an inner WHOA while simultaneously closing my eyes and jumping back into the dream.
And I Went Somewhere. Somewhere Not That Dream.
And Somewhere was a Realm of Thought. I was thinking as I was dreaming-but-not-dreaming, and thinking of magic and potential and the concept of having influence upon a dream in which everything you Will actually happens. What are the boundaries there, what is the potential? What is the weight of throwing out conscious wishes into Dreamland where you have Divine powers? What is the Power of that kind of magic as opposed to wishes on this realm? What would happen if I entered a dream where I was omnipotent? What if I willed an end to war? An end to cockroaches? An end to Republicans? How is this Power different? How is it the same? What is the best way to approach it?
-Alley
Also magic, but of a different sort was last Saturday. Danes celebrate Solstice on the 23th of June with bonfires. Quite a lot of Pagans, Wiccans and feminists in Denmark (not that we have all that many of either category) boycott the bonfires thinking that they represent the fires that consumed so many witches in Europe - and they have a point: for the past 100 years it’s been a costum to fashion a witch out hay and old clothes and send her off to the Brocken (where European witches were said to meet with the Devil for that Sabbats). But the fires go back to pre-Christian times and are a salute to the Sun, and the burning of the Hayman is an ancient Celtic tradition, that in no way signifies he’s being evil. Anyway, I was waiting for Saturday to see if the Solstice energy would be any stronger then than on the day itself, and as I sat in my chair reading in the mid-afternoon, Solstice came roaring. I love thunder, I was born in a thunderstorm but this was more than just thunder. Right over our heads for nearly an hour, the thunderstorm didn’t budge an inch - lightning crashing, rain so intense we could barely see out of the windows - the rain itself was like an extra, thick window pane of grey. I have never been more certain of divine presence in a natural phenomenon: I felt I could see the skies right above our building and in the compact grey, was the Peacock, unfolding his tail, cramping the floors of heaven, demanding, ‘See me! My glory, my beauty, my power, my lust! Desire me! Come to me! Love me!’ Not a polite request, but the passionate cry of a lover, and the tempestuous insistence of a young child. It was a wedding cry. Suddenly the rain was almost orgasmic (I have always wondered about the nature of rain - I have connected with sunshine and fog, but rain has been a mystery to me). I felt very honoured and quite amused at the same time to be witnessing this display of passion - all the more so because it was so local: my parents who live two miles down the road had heard nothing resembling thunder on the day.
-Ginevra
To me, power is less about growth than about core. Power means recognising my innermost being, the part of me that cannot be shaken however strong the storm. Power is where I am at one with the divine, the point where I am everything I was ever intended to be. Power is not force; it is not making another do my will. Power has nothing to do with anyone but myself. Power resides in the self. Power manifests in my standing up for myself, for my beliefs, my needs and dreams and loves. Power manifests when I decide not to indulge a desire or when I decide to do just that: indulge. Power is a reflection of my innermost self. Power is at the centre of everything, it’s the basis for the development of anything. Without that core of power, development cannot be healthy - because true self will be lacking. I see power as cobalt blue - rich, sumptuous, pure, strong. I also see power as a fiery sapling in the darkness of space - roots in one end of cosmos, twigs in the other; stretching across infinity.
Compassion cannot come about without that fiery core. If I rest in that core, in my knowledge of what is me, in the safe knowledge that I will not be shaken from what I know to be true, what I know to be me, then I will not take other people’s foibles as personally. Compassion then is about resting enough in my own skin, in my own core to not feel threatened by others, to not need to push others into the cold. I needn’t feel shaken. I can simply take a step back and merely observe, myself as well as others, and learn from that experience (as in ‘oh, that really gets to me - that’s interesting! Obviously I am not quite as secure on that area as I thought. I’ll need to do some more work there.’’)
In that spirit I can let my sapling of fire grow into a tree - verdant, sturdy, intensely green and alive. And I can, if I choose to, allow others to grow in the shadow of my tree.
The two things that strike me here are ‘acceptance’ - accepting that there is a place for everything in this world, and that I needn’t waste time trying to erase anything - and ‘gratitude’ - to the recognition that everything - good and bad - makes me more than I was just a moment ago.
And that gratitude and acceptance feels a lot to me like the greeting things as the Goddess…
Compassion to me is green, like the tree.
The step from compassion to beauty is tiny - appreciating beauty, opening my heart to it, drinking it in with all my senses… if I accept that all things, however fucking annoying they may be, are the Goddess, how can I not think that I am at a beautiful place? (I don’t mean that as in rolling over and not trying to improve my situation if it is rotten - I have no wish to be a martyr or to put up with a situation I can easily change: the Goddess may be all the annoying things, all the humdrum things, all the painful things, but She is equally all the glorious, pleasurable, fun things - and I’ll choose fun over pain any day!)
Beauty and pleasure to me are one. Beauty is the scent of a well-cooked meal, as well as music, art, poetry, lovemaking, a child’’s delighted giggle, a drizzling rain, the comfort of my home, a hot shower, intimacy and confidence… I do think that beauty - and creating more of it - is a central part of the meaning of life.
And those three concepts - I can’t bring myself to calling them laws; they don’’t feel like universal laws to me - lead me to a single word, I keep hearing. Love. Love as a verb, as an order, a suggestion, a plea… Love! Love it all - it’s glorious! It’s beautiful! Love!
-Ginevra
One thing I find I do want to tell you is about the question I asked you a couple of weeks ago about what the Feris are. Earlier this week I started reading about pre-Christian worship in Denmark. I am not really very interested in the Asa-gods - they were the gods of the aristocracy and were introduced fairly late. I am far more interested in the worship of stones, trees, lakes, streams and bogs, burial mounts and other hills. The Vane-gods Frey, Freya and their father Njord (the sea) predecess the Asa and play a part here alongside Nerthus (Gaia in her Scandinavian apparel).
While reading about the hills I came across a story, I remember hearing when I was a child and which even then inspired and made me happy.
Very briefly the story goes: In the beginning of time, Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden and went to live on Earth. Eve had lots and lots of children, and one day she was sitting on the bank of a small rivulet washing them when God called her. Not wanting God to see the unwashed kids, Eve hid them behind shrubs and bushes. God - as is His way - made a grand entrance and declared that what Eve had hidden from His eyes, would forever be hidden from the eyes of men. Hence the beings of Faery are invisible but remain forever the children of Eve.
I am admit, I am not keen of the Christian varnish here - but I love the idea that ‘vætter’ (The Danish name for the faery kind) and humans have a shared mother, and that faeries are the ones who have not had nature washed from their faces: the ones who still play in the mud, dance in puddles and who hide behind every bush and shrub. And I like the fact that leaving the Garden of Eden was not a punishment, and that God still wants to talk to Eve after she has left His Garden.
At the same time it makes perfect sense to me that our not being able to see faeries is down Yahve and His laws.
-Ginevra
I had a bit of an epiphany a month ago. I was about to go to bed and, being tired, I thought that I would skip my Ha-prayer and just go to sleep... after all it was late (etc. Talker was thinking of all sorts of reasons why going to sleep would be sensible). And I realised that I didn't want to go to sleep without having done my Ha-prayer. However tired I was and however little energy I might be able to muster whn so tired, I still really didn't want to be without it. While the energy is becoming more and more necessary to me (as in, I don't want to cheat myself of my daily fixes of ha-prayer and the like), I also find that I feel less and less of a need to speak to anyone about it. At the moment, certainly, my Feri-path feels incredibly personal and intimate, something more intimate and revealing than my sexual habits and preferences. I am beginning to think of it a bit like my breathing, another thing I can't share, that is mine and only serves anyone if I myself am breathing it - to give it to someone else and ask them to breathe it for me would be futile and impossible: they would not benefit and I'd certainly not be served by it. I am also beginning to see that - whatever else I may do in the course of my life - this is one thing that has already changed me in ways that can't be undone, even if I were to stop the work now, and that stepping unto this path is a lifetime's work. It's a nice thought ... all the more so because this training is so important to me, and I would be extremely unhappy to end it (the thought that there are only two cycles available for distance training doesn't bear thinking about, and for once in my life I have decided to have the good sense just not to think about it!)
-Ginevra
