even more life force without shutting down.
Passion flows from emotions and emotions can also be used to block
1 42
Bvolutionan; witchcraft
our passion. When I'm stuck, it is helpful for me to remember that passion
can come from compassion-passion with. If I have compassion for my
needs and desires and my blocks and failings, it creates a sense of ease in
my life. With ease, energy can flow. If I can unclench fear or judgment, my
passion can grow something strong and lovely.
It is also helpful to notice when I do avoid what I am passionate about.
Once I've acknowledged this, it becomes easier to notice those times when
it is happening. At first, this may come an hour or even a few days later,
when I realize, "Oh, I sat down to do that . . . what happened?" or "I went
to make that phone call but got distracted, didn't I?" Over time, I get better at noticing the urge to quit or delay while it is happening. Then I can notice, "Hmm, there seems to be some fear here, and some sadness around
that . . :'
This practice lets those nonrational, often emotional, parts of myself
know they are being seen and gives them less ability to control the situation. I can have my fears and still do my work. It makes it much more likely that, rather than walking away from my passion, I might go make a cup of
tea, or take a brief walk, or even just draw a deep breath. Then I can go
right back to writing, sending out applications for a new job, going to that
planning meeting, or making love with that person I've desired for a long
time. I can take a breath, allowing ease to enter and passion to flow once
a gam.
Of course, the converse of this situation can also be true. You may be
the sort of person (as I sometimes am) who dives headlong into a cause,
project, or relationship. You may then surface a few days, weeks, or months
later and think, "What did I ever see in that?" This may leave you and others feeling bewildered and hurt. I still do this, but with one eye open upon myself and my tendencies. I have learned to devote more time to my longterm, abiding passions, even when they are feeling a little tepid. These passions sustain me. The sudden passions might excite me in the moment, and
south: En'5u'5in'5 the Flume
1 43
can feed some really good creativity, but I don't want to devote all of my
energy to them any longer. If I do, they end up drowning my other voices,
leaving nothing for my sustained work, the work that waters my garden for
the long haul. Sustained work leads to true mastery.
D EVOTIONAL DANCE FOR PASSION
Breathe up red Iron earth energy. Feel it glowing in your left foot, the point if passion.
Move that foot slightly forward. It will be your fulcrum. Slide your right foot slightly back.
Now move your hands into the shape if a cradle or an upturned crescent moon near your
genitals, middle and index fingers extended with the rest if your fingers tucked against your
thumbs. Let your center fingers touch gently. Now begin to move your extended fingers up
and to the right. You are forming a spiral staircase up and up and up. Exhale, hands moving up and up Jour times, until they part above your head, pointing to the universe. Look up at them. Now the universe answers back and your hands begin to spiral back down as you
inhale, until they form that crescent near your bowl if creativity. Your feet rock back and
forth. When your hands are at your genitals, your left foot lifts slightly, then steps down
again to provide the base for the ascent if the energy if passion. What is the cup if your passion? Breathe into it. Send that passion out into the universe. Feel the universe answer you, feeding your passion. You are full, vital, vibrant. Passion.
SAYING YEs TO PAsSION
I have developed two exercises for cultivating balanced passion. Both have
to do with ingesting something. I need to literally take my passions in so
that they can work within me, before I offer the fruits of my passion to the
world. This is also a way of making the source of my passions more tangible and of the physical rather than strictly metaphoric realms.
1 44
Bvolutionury witchccuft
FEEDING YouR PAssiON
Take some time to look at how you stop yourself from fUlly feeling your
passion. Make a list of different ways in which you feel thwarted in your
attempts to have the sort of life, work, and love that you desire. Now make
a commitment to feed your passion.
Take a deep breath. Every day for a full turn of the moon, you will commit to feeding
your passion. Gather twenty-eight seeds or nuts or something similar that you can eat over
the course of twenty-eight days. It should be something significant to you but not require an
elaborate effort. You want to reiriforce for yourself that feeding your passions can be simple
and easy. Perhaps each week you will want to gather the most luscious fruit you can find
and eat a piece every day. What do you desire? What will feed you in taste, color, and nutrition? The crunch and slight resistance of the protein-rich almond? The luster and sweetness of a peach? Listen to your desire for passion and follow its lead. This is a way in which Sticky One can help you. She knows what she desires!
Hold the food you have chosen--your sacred sacrifice to passion-in your hand. Feel
the life force in it, gathered from sun, water, earth, and air. Ground and center yourself. Say,
"I commit to feeding my passion. I am open to the energy of passion in my body, my soul,
and my life." Breathe into your food, filling it with your intention. Take another breath.
Now eat,Jeeling the power of all the elements gathered in that food as it enters you. Let yourself begin to fill with passion. Give thanks. Blessed be.
Each week, as you have done this exercise of eating, begin to meditate
on what positive actions you can take to cultivate your passion: start a
journal, take a dance class, initiate sex more often, do one thing you've always wanted to do.
south: Bn�a�in� the Flame
145
Devotional nonce for passion
1 4 6
Bvolutionury witchcraft
D RINKING IN PASSION
This exercise acknowledges your power to free your passion and to make
your desires manifest in the world. It uses the life force held in your breath,
the spiritual power that grows inside your being the more work you do on
yourself For this exercise, all you need is imagination, breath, and your
chalice, the cup of compassion.
Fill your chalice with clear water. Take a deep breath. Begin breathing in life force. On
each breath, drop more deeply into your center. Dive into your belly like you would dive into
the ocean or a still pond. Dive down. Reach for your passion. Feel your passion bubbling up
from within you. What is it? Name it. See it; smell it; taste it. Does it move across your
skin or burn in your toes? What do you desire? What have you so longed for yet been frightened to name? Do not be ashamed. No one is here to judge you. This is between you and the Gods. What is your passion? Allow it to form within you, growing in substance and
strength. Breathe. Dive deep. You are swimming in your passion. It caresses and feeds you.
It is your heart� desire. It is what you truly want, have always wanted.
Let yourself fill with your passion. Let your heart's desire take you over, just for this
moment. Fill with it. Passion. Now, charged by your passion, by the inv
itation if God
Herself, witnessed by the Gods, open your eyes. Hold your cup in your beautiful hands.
Gaze into your cup. See the surface if the water as it moves. This is a reflection if the ocean,
if the deep pool within you. Take a deep breath. Feel the life force fill you. Feel your passion
rising within you. Exhale into the chalice, charging the water with your life force. Gaze upon
the water. You have the power to manifest your dreams and desires in the world. Open yourself to passion. Drink it down. Drain that cup. Drink your passion. Be full. Know that you can attain your desire. Drink in your wisdom. Blessed be.
south: Bncsucsincs the Flume
1 4 7
The Fire of pructice
Continue to revisit the points of the Iron Pentacle, and notice how they
play out in your life. Running the Iron Pentacle through your body on a
regular basis is a quick way to see which points are strong, weak, or overbalanced. Let the molten energy that flows around the earth's core fill you, revitalizing your will to practice. With feet planted on the ground and
arms outstretched to hold the world, breathe the fire and ignite your life.
Sex, pride, self, power, passion. You are a star, child of earth and sky.
You are now ready to face the quenching pool and slake the thirst
brought on by your inner work.
5
•
•
•
west: DIVIn� Into
•
compassion
Cup your hands. Fill them with clear, cool water. Let it trickle over your
skin, running down your arms. Raise your hands to your face, feel the
water cascade across your cheekbones, bathing your eyes, your nose, your
mouth. Breathe deeply. Feel water filling you. Flowing. You are clear, cool
water. You are clean. Our tool here is the chalice. You are the cup, the vessel of wisdom and bringer of compassion. Drink.
ri' he building of the sacred sphere continues as we turn our attention
.
toward the West. In Craft traditions, this place is traditionally seen
as the place of water, the repository of dreams and deeper visions, of the
flow of emotions and the pull of the moon on our own physical tides. 1
Here, the time of day is twilight, the gloaming, in between day and night,
opposite of East, where the in-between time is dawn. The tool of water is
1 People who live in places where there is no water in the West often alter the directional association,
but tht· watt·r associations tend to be consistent.
1 50
Evolutionary witchuuft
the chalice. Water spills, pours, and flows, and in watching and experiencing water, we can begin to notice these same patterns in ourselves.
In this chapter, we will explore the tools of water, both physical and
metaphysical. We will hold the cup of compassion and drink. We will
breathe into our hearts and live. We will become the oyster, seeing the pearl
wrought from our own pain.
The chulice
The womb. The Holy Grail. The cup of healing. The chalice represents
the sacred wells that were gateways to other realms-to dreams and the
Underworld-the wells where the salmon of wisdom swims, the wells
over which grew the sacred trees from which people hung wish cloths and
prayers. The cup is also the ocean, life giving and life taking.
There are many cups in the world: big drinking bowls made of white
porcelain to hold cafe au lait, delicate crystal goblets for champagne,
sturdy water glasses, tinged with green. What sort of cup are you? How do
you see yourself? What do you hold for the world? Another question is,
What sort of cup attracts you most?
I have a beautiful chalice of mosaic glass made by a friend. It has mirrors at its base and the front of the cup has a lovely picture of Krishna's foot, his face rising like the moon inside as I drink. It is my Peacock God
chalice. I have a cobalt Feri chalice and a brown Demeter drinking bowl
with a green-brushed flower inside. All of them serve me in different ways.
I keep the Peacock and Feri chalices filled with water and I also have an
Irish teacup that I fill with offerings of whiskey or cream for the Fey.
Cups represent my ability to hold things. I like to be able to hold many
different things, many emotions, situations, and types of energy. By using
my cups, I expand my capacity to drink in healing, love, calm, peace,
west: nivin<s into compassion
1 5 1
courage, life force, and compassion. What do you want to hold in your
cup? What do you need to drink into your life?
If I could drink the world, I would drink sunlight and roses and all the
varied hues of faces that I pass in the street. I would drink the moon, and
love, smoky whiskey and sweet cider, black tea with honey, and the clearest water I could find. I would drink in the ability to continue, to greet each day with a breath, to speak, to love, to dance, to work. I would also
drink in the ability to pour. To pour out compassion and wisdom and a
soothing balm upon an aching body. I would pour my heart, for my heart
would be full from all this drinking, with plenty to share. I would pour
abundance.
You can read the following through once, and then imagine yourself as
a chalice being filled. If you like, you may tape it and play the meditation
Take a deep breath. Imagine yourself as a cup, a vessel. What is your shape and color?
Are you sturdy or delicate, bright, dark, or clear? Send a breath through your heart, opening
yourself to receive. Imagine the Star Goddess above you,jull of infinite love. In her hands
she holds a pitcher, pouring liquid stars, pouring love and compassion. See the pitcher tilt, and
feel the liquid cascading down. Let this water of life and love fill you. Take another breath,
and as you exhale, imagine that you push the boundaries of your cup still wider. And still
the Star Goddess pours, and you are filled once again, deeper and wider. You have a great
capacity to hold love, life, and compassion.
And still she pours. Let yourself fill to the top, liquid spilling out from the top of your
cup. Imagine that you stand on top of the globe of earth. Let love, life, and compassion spill
from you, cascading over the earth, bathing all it touches.
Open your eyes. Try to hold the sense of yourself as a cup, filling up and sharing your
gifts with the world. Send a breath through the soles of your feet and the crown of your head.
As you are blessed, so do you bless the world.
1 52
Bvolutionun; witchcraft
.
.
Tempefincs Youf Emotions
Emotions are the metaphysical base of water, just as will was for fire, or intellect for air. Tempering our emotions is an interior process akin to physical forging. Tempering brings opposites together to make something true.
In forging metal, fire and water come together, along with the air of the
bellows and the earth of the anvil. The following exercise helps us to blend
seeming opposites, represented by two cups of water. I encourage you to
bring this concept to your sitting practice. Sitting with conflicting ideas,
emotions, or desires increases our strength and openness.
This exercise shows how things can move out of balance internally. We
can use these insights to bring externals in balance, too,
slowly working
our way out: we first look at ourselves, then at our internal responses to the
external world, then at the external world itsel£
This exercise requires two cups filled to the top with water.2 I recommend doing this exercise outside, or in a place you don't mind spilling.
Some things must be allowed to release in order to come into greater balance. We cannot expect to hold on to everything, we cannot expect to blend opposites and not spill any water.
Read the exercise and then pick up your cups and begin.
Fill your two cups until the water almost reaches the rim. Take a deep breath. Think
about what you most hate about yourself. Let that be the water in one cup. Think about what
you most love in yourself. Let that be in the other cup. This is meant to stretch you. m sometimes censor words like love and hate but pushing below the surface can bring up our deeper, more primal emotions. Really let yourself feel what you love and what you hate in
2A variation on this was first taught by priestess Hilary Valentine.
west: nivin<s into compassion
1 53
those two cups. Feel the weight of them in your hands. Feel what it is to hold them, with your
heart as the balance point in the middle.
Begin to pour what you love and what you hate back and forth. Feel that dance as you rock,
back andjorth, back and forth. Listen to the sound of the water pouring. What does this do to your
heart? When the water spills, know that you are making space for a new possibility. Keep pouring until you feel you have a mixture of love and hate, until they have become one substance. When you really feel this, take a big breath and come to stillness, letting all of the water settle in one of
the cups. Look at that water. Hold it in front of your heart. What had to drop awtry to create this
new mixture? Inhale, filling yourself with life force, ready to receive this magic substance.
You can also do this exercise with your feelings about world situations:
hope and despair, anger and effectiveness. You can place feelings about
your friends or heroes in the cups, putting them in opposition with people
you may vilifY, especially politicians. Could I allow that mixture of hero
and villain to come to a place of balance and a transformation closer to
the truth? Could I bring temperance to bear against my prejudices? Could