spine, how you are sitting or standing. Feel the words build within you, gathering power.
When you feel that they must be spoken, open your mouth.
Listening to myself in this way has helped me to speak more clearly, to
engage in malicious gossip less and less, and to speak with more intention
and authority. You may notice that when you speak with more intention, your
voice becomes slightly deeper than usual and is less peppered with verbal
garbage such as "umm" or "you know:' People may begin to respond to
you in surprising ways. If you begin to listen to yourself, people may actually listen to you.
The following exercise is another way to move toward integrity and
grace.
Bifore speaking, take a deep breath and imagine a wand, a branch shining in your hand.
Holding this magical tool in your mind's eye will help you speak as a person of deep breath
and sound intention,jor it will remind you that your words are magical tools. What words
do you want to grow from your wand? Speak those words.
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THE PowER TO NAME
I am your dwar£
I am the enemy within.
I am the boss of your dreams.
-ANNE SExToN, "RuMPELSTILTSKIN" 1 1
Naming is another power of speech, a power of air. In fairy tales and old
myths, we often read that once a sorcerer or magical creature found your
true name, it had control over your soul. These stories give us an important clue that names establish relationship. As children, we learn that to name something is a step toward having greater knowledge of its nature.
"Dog" is different from "grass" or "sky:'
Conversely, once a thing is named, its power over us ceases to hold sway,
as in the tale of Rumpelstiltskin, when the revelation of the magic man's
name enabled the miller's daughter to keep her child. This power of naming can establish relationship with our blind spots, habits, and the emotional screens that keep parts of ourselves hidden. By using our sitting exercises and keys for remembrance, we can catch quick glimpses of our
states. By becoming aware of barely conscious activities-like a phrase we
repeat to ourselves-we can begin to see into our psyches. Once we begin
to get these glimpses, we can begin to track them, layering this impression
today with another from last week until a picture slowly begins to form.
Then we can attempt to name our blind spots, habits, or screens.
Once we name our tendencies, they no longer have such control over us,
for they are not working solely in the shadows. We gain some measure of
control over them and can observe them, remark on them, and perhaps not
always act according to their wishes. For example, once I realized that I was
, 1 1 From Annr Srxton, Tratlifontlations (Marinrr, 2001 ).
Bust: openin� the senses
95
extremely impatient, and even saw that one part of my brain seemed to be
wired in this way, wanting to jump from square one to square four, I could
begin to exercise greater and greater amounts of patience in my life. My
impatience is still present, but it no longer has such a large amount of control over my behavior. Rumpelstiltskin cannot run away with the fruits of my labor.
Use the awareness exercises we've already begun to practice and start to watch for those
parts of you that are as of yet unnamed. It might help you to begin to keep a journal to chart
your internal work. Naming something by writing it down is powerful. It will also help
you, three months or a year from now, to look back on your work and see how you have
progressed and what you may have missed.
CouNTING You R BREATH
This is an aid to your sitting practice that can develop greater opportunity
for God Soul listening. This exercise will help quiet your brain and increase your ability to remain present. However, it is important to not get caught up in the counting. Therefore, I've designed it to only take you
partway through your sitting. Then you let this technique go, and sit, letting Sacred Dove deepen and rise, watching and listening.
Hold the image of the blue flame in your mind's eye. Let it float just in front of you,
out from the space of your third eye. Now, begin to notice your breath. Try to make your inhalation match your exhalation. Begin to count your exhalation. Inhale. Exhale. One. Inhale. Exhale. Two. Attempt to do this up to the count of thirty exhalations, keeping the flame in your mind's eye all the while. Half thoughts may bubble up, like the need to adjust your
posture,Jor example. 1j you get stuck on a thought and notice all of a sudden that you are
at nine but the last number you remember counting is five, start your count over. Inhale.
Exhale. One. Inhale. Exhale. Two. Start this over as many times as is necessary, until you
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Evolutiona.ry witchua.ft
reach the count 1 thirty. Once you have done so, let the counting and the visual 1 the blue
flame go. Sit in silence with yourself
I like this practice because it shows me just how quickly thoughts can
enter and I can get caught up in them. All it takes is the space between one
inhalation and exhalation. Thoughts are quick and if they are keyed into
emotions, they are much more tenacious. I sat down yesterday in some
emotional upheaval. My thoughts kept catching on these emotions, plunging me into detailed, though phantom, conversation in my mind. I had to reorient myself several times with the counting and visualization. It was
very helpful and my emotions finally quieted down enough for me to sit
calmly. Some days I do not need this practice, but when I do, I am happy
for it. It enables my still observer to deepen even in the midst of tumult.
Some people have related that they become frustrated at not being able
to get through their count. They continuously have to start over. I point
out that this is great information about themselves that they did not have
before! Everything can inform me. If I can say, "Oh, I get frustrated if I
cannot do something perfectly," then I have remembered a piece of mysel£
I can then look at this part more deeply and thoroughly, beginning to map
its connections to other parts, forming a more holistic sense of sel£
C LEANSING THE SENSES
. . . the loss of any one of the senses entails the loss of a corresponding portion
of knowledge. -ARISTOTLEIZ
I place this exercise in the chapter on East because our senses initiate our
relationship with everything outside of ourselves. Our senses connect us
12Postrrior Analytics, 1: 1 8, 8 1 a J6. Srr Thr Basic J%rks �f Aristotlt, edited by Richard McKeon (Random HoiiS<', 1 94 1 ).
Bast: openincs the senses
9 7
to the rest of the world-seeing, tasting, touching-and are found within
the elements of life. For example, spirit connects with sight because we
have different layers of sight-both physical and what I call the ryes of
the spirit, the psychic or intuitive. Air brings sound waves to our ears and
fire carries the smells of fruit ripening in the sun or bread baking in a hot
oven. The water in our mouths spreads taste across our tongues, carried on
saliva. Our bodies, bone and flesh, solid as earth, are the houses of touch,
and our skin is alive just like the bark of a tree. Touch the earth, for of
earth we are.
Sight, smell, sound, touch, taste. Take a d
eep breath. Feel it fill you. Now imagine that
you are breathing through your eyes, clearing your sight. Breathe through them again, asking
for new vision, for a new, fey way to see the world. Let your eyes open to the magic in the
world, to a secret landscape full of hidden beauty. Send a big, clearing breath through your
nose. Now breathe again, askingfor a more subtle sense of smell, a way to catch the scents
of life and death, of animals and plants, of peifumed breezes. Your ears are also connected
to your throat and air passages. Send your breath out through your ears, feeling them open.
Ask that your ears be more attuned to sound, to music, sighing wind, rustling branches, truly
spoken words. Send your breath out along your skin. Blow into your hands, across your fingertips. Prcry for a sensitive touch, for depth of communication through your bocry. Breathe across your taste buds, feeling your breath float on the top of your tongue, clearing out old tastes
and drawing in cleanness. Ask now for an expanded sense of taste, so keen you can almost
taste the smells drawn in by your nose. Taste the wonder of the world, open to every bite.
As your facility for full awareness increases, the world itself will open
up to you, showing itself to you in all of its sacredness. Some of what you
sense with your newly awakened faculties might be discomfiting, startling,
or even frightening because you are not used to seeing the world this way.
Take a breath, connect with Sacred Dove, and know that you are powerful
and alive. When your senses become more heightened, try to engage them,
rather than going back to your ordinary ways.
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Evolutionary witchcraft
Cook yourself a meal, or go out to your favorite restaurant or aifi. Smell the fragrance
o/ things that are fresh, live. Let your eyes really watch every movement you make. Touch the
vegetables as you cut them. Listen to the sounds o/ the steam rattling the pot lid. Don't let
lifting a fork to your mouth become automatic. Feel the hift o/ it. Feel the temperature change
against your lips as the food draws toward your mouth. Then let taste open upon your
tongue. lf you are eating with others, take them in with your senses, too. Take a breath, engage in conversation, and be aware o/ the feel o/ your napkin and the taste o/ the food on your tongue. Life is good.
FEELING THE WoRLD INsiDE You
You are connected to the world. The cycles of life move, flow, and continue, daily and monthly, with projects, relationships, and changes throughout your lifetime. In this way, you are like the seasons, like day moving into evening, birds pecking at the jellyfish washed up on shore, and like the
ocean itself, tide flowing in and out, filling up and emptying beaches,
basins, and pools.
The Feri Tradition is an ecstatic, rather than fertility, tradition of
Witchcraft. This means that we, as humans, have direct connection to the
elements of life, to Nature, and to the Gods. We may develop liturgy, and
there are beautiful poems, castings, and rituals within Feri, but the important thing is that, through the use of our tools, we can become more open to a direct connection to life and can create new rituals and invoke spontaneously.
Fertility traditions in Witchcraft tend to look for sexual polarity outside of the individual person, developing ways to work with sex and gender by seeing men and women as representatives of specific qualities that are masculine or feminine. Feri does not do this, feeling that each person
can balance sex qualities within themselves, both energetically and physi-
c
All Gods and humans, whether male or female in form, hold the en
,
ally.
-
Bust: openin� the senses
99
ergy of God Hersel£ the energy of creation, lust, love, and a connection
to beginnings. All women hold the male within them and all men hold the
female, along with the myriad ways of being that are beyond and between
genders. Not one thing or another, we are human in all its forms.
Notice how "male" or 'Jemale"you feel in any given moment. What qualities make you
feel this way? Does this sense change according to different situations in which you find
yourself? Or do you always feel very much one way or another? How does this sense of
gender energies and qualities within you form your identity?
connectin<s to the gods
In the previous chapter, we considered immanence and our own divinity.
Within this connection, there exists multiplicity. In the midst of the dance
of immanence, specifics stand out, forming around ideas, emotions, natural forces or places, and specific cultures. These are the Gods, and we can experience them in our everyday lives, at any moment. Because of the
freshness of attitude required to encounter Deity in this way, I place the
following exercises in this chapter on the East.
Our perception of the Gods begins in the half-light between night and
morning, as the Gods live in the place of poetry and shadow, as well as in
the glints of sunlight so bright human eyes cannot quite see. They inhabit
the areas in between space, time, and consciousness. Our links to the Gods
can be tenuous, mostly emotional, sometimes physical-a tingling in the
back of the skull, a feeling in one's chest, a finger's touch on the forehead.
This is why altered states of consciousness brought on by chanting or
casting the sphere are helpful for contacting the Gods. This contact is not
part of ordinary consciousness for most of us, but requires training, a getting used to. Talismans help us as focusing tools: Thor's hammer or Brigid's cross, a budding branch, an antler found on the forest floor, a peacock
Bvolutionufv witchuuft
feather, or a statue. All of these objects can help focus our consciousness
by giving us a symbol system as a way to enter into relationship with the
Gods.
Open your windows and let some fresh air blow through your rooms,
filling your lungs and opening your eyes. Prepare yourself to set aside your
preconceptions and open yourself to experience. In Feri gender is fluid, as
changing and varied as the Gods, though I will sometimes use gendered
words to describe Deity energies because our culture doesn't have words to
encompass the totality of experience of genders, sexualities, and Gods.
Feri has specific Gods, whom we will meet later. For now, we will try to
sense the divine in nature, in its different guises.
Part One
Go to a place in nature where you can see,Jeel, touch, or taste one or more rj the elements.
As you move through space, feel the air on your skin: Is it hot, is it cold? Feel the earth be�
neath you. Begin to breathe deeply, bringing yourself further into a state rj nonordinary con�
sciousness. As you breathe, slow your motion down. Your attention should be all around you,
three hundred and sixty degrees. Let yourself sense what is behind you, above and below
you. Now allow your attention to fall on something smaller: a flower, a tree, a bird, some
water. Breathe. Open to that small something. Ask to be made more aware. Ask for divin�
ity to come to you. Feel the divinity that flows through Nature. Try to sense the Spirit rj the
Place as well as the larger immanent presence. Feel how your own divine nature responds
to this.
Part Two
Sit at your altar in front rj an object that represen
ts a Deity. This object can be human�
made or come from Nature. Using the same method you used outdoors, begin to slow your
breathing and move into a nonordinary state rj consciousness. Let the object grow larger. Ask
for the presence rj the deity. Let the presence grow around you as you breathe. Let yoursrlf
feel. Open to hearing or seeing something nonordinary.
Spmd some time in this divine presence, then open to the still space that resides in your
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1 0 1
belly and send a breath there to center you. Thank the Deity and let the energy recede. Bless
yourself and your own God Soul.
CoNNECTING To THE Goos o F FERI
These Gods are being introduced in this chapter on East because they are
Gods that begin the cycles of life and newness. They emerge from the first
impulses of creation and are tied to the new moon and burgeoning spring.
Nimue
She laughs in my heart, the wisdom of youth and spring. She is profound innocence and
encompasses the wildness of the first stirrings of lust and bo4Y and connection to Nature.
Nimue is freshness and the power to entice you into the sun and woods. She can also attract
you, if you are not cariful, into spaces that turn dangerous if your eyes are not open. She can
blind you with delight, entice you into intoxication, and seal you in a tree. She is innocent, and
therifore not moral in the ways adult humans are. Nimue is both playful and dangerous.
Open yourself to her for the danger held in true joy. You have nothing to lose but your dour
life. She is all of spring, pumping into your fresh bo4Y, salving your heart with hope.
Dian y Glas
The Blue God, the blue-green of the ocean and the undersides of new leaves. He, too, is the
sexual bliss of youth. He is closest to your own divine soul. Think of Krishna in his fluteplaying guise. Everyone loves him. In his mature form, he is the peacock, beautiful and terrible. 13
But as Dian y Glas, the Blue God is the playful sprite, the tumbling brook. He is innocent sexuality, polymorphous, alive with the earth. You are in touch with him when all of your senses are alive, when the wind or sun on your skin fills you with pleasure. When you align your Triple