of it.
As an initial way to begin to explore your relationship and familiarity
6These pentacles come through Reclaiming, my own work, and through Fcri priest St<'V<' I l<·w,·ll
(who formulated the Gilded, though he named it Lead). The Rust points vary amon� 1-'rri
practitioners.
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impotence
greed
RUST PENTACLE
GILDED PENTACLE
with these pentacles, we will try to feel them in our bodies. It is helpful to
notice if any of the points feel like familiar patterns in our lives or are connected to stories we tell ourselves.
Start this exercise by running the Iron Pentacle through your body. Let it charge you up,
feeling bow the points respond to each other, building the energy. Then begin to let the points
shift. Feel sex leaving you, leading you into impotence and then greed. Feel pride move away,
into shame and then arrogance. What happens when self is gone and only deprecation or egotism remain? When your power is given over or taken from you, what do powerlessness or force feel /ike? When your passion leaves you,jeel the wake lift behind and the apathy or obsession that rise up to take its place.
Once you have felt all rj the points rj Rust and Gilt in yourself, clear them out by running the Iron Pentacle through your body again several times. Sex, pride, self, power, passion, sex. If you still feel you need to release the Rust and Gilded points, take a Self-I.ovr Cleansing shower or align your Triple Soul.
powecs Below: Licshtincs the oudmess
243
The points on these pentacles often insinuate themselves into our lives
and end up wielding a great deal of control over our emotions and perceptions. These next exercises are ways to look at the Rust and Gilded pentacles in depth. I am not providing exercises for every point, but rather a few ideas to help you work with the points that are particularly absent or
present in your life.?
REACHING O ur oF BouNDS
This exercise, done with a partner, is designed to help you tangibly feel
what it is like when you are always doing things for someone else and doing what someone else is pulling you to do. This happens when you lack confidence and a strong sense of who you are and what you need. It causes
you to always be slightly off balance within, falling this way and that,
reaching for approval, reaching to help another, reaching out beyond the
boundaries set by who you really are. This state is indicative of many of
the points on the Rust Pentacle.
Face your partner. Balance on one foot, reaching way out, as Jar out as possible, using
your free leg as ballast. Reach toward something not quite attainable. Reach for approval.
Reach to fill someone else's needs or wishes in spite c!f what you may need. Reach. Feel what
that is like. Is this a familiar feeling? Is there any emotional recognition brought up by this
pose? Your partner will pull on you. Try to recover your stance. Reach. Your partner will
push at you. Try to recover again. Reach. Stretch. Notice where your head is. Notice how low
you have to hold yourself in order to achieve any semblance c!f balance. Your partner knocks
into you, blindsidingyou. How long does it take you to recover? Breathe. Shake this pose and
71 worked on some of these techniques (If Brittle, I Will Break and Rebalancing Passion) with Rrdaiming priest Todd Herriott.
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Bvolutionurv witchcraft
energy cff of your body. Switch roles. You be the world, coming at your partner. You become
the worries and duties that push and pull. What does that feel like? Breathe. Shake hands
with your partner in thanks for the work.
AuTOMATIC WRITING
This exercise is written to explore the absence of pride, but you can also
experiment with using it to gain more information about any of the Iron
points that feel weak, inactive, or absent in your life. You can call upon the
Peacock God for help with this. Then set a timer for five minutes and don't
let the pen leave the page.
Begin writing out that which makes you feel ashamed, things you have held secret for
years because they were too pairiful to share with another and you felt they made you look bad.
Write about all the times you didn't speak up for yourself or another. Then write about those
feelings of aggrandizement that make you feel arrogant, better than others. Now take the
paper and burn it. As it burns,jeel yourself without those things and start naming things you
I walked to work instead of driving. I am proud that I finished that poem. I am proud to be who
I am. I am proud that I am trying."
REBALANCING PASSION
This exercise encompasses both the Rust and Gilded Pentacles. When we
lack passion, we replace it with apathy or obsession. This exercise will help
you feel when your passion seems unattainable. It will help you look at the
times when passion becomes obsession and it is all that you can see. Then
it will bring you into a feeling of balance with your passion. You can substitute any of the Iron Pentacle points for passion.
powers Below: Licshtincs the ourkness
245
Take a deep breath. Drop into yourself, into your body. Relax. Breathe. Float down into
yourself. Let your shoulders relax, face relax, legs relax. On each breath you relax 111orr
and more, drifting down, down into yourself. You are traveling in time. You are traveling
through space. You are breathing. You are going to a time when passion felt very Jar jro111 you.
Passion was beyond your reach. Breathe. What do you longjor? Where is it? What is it?
Reach for it. It is just beyond you, drifting past your fingertips. Reach some more. You can 't
quite grasp it. Are you berift? Or do you feel relieved? Passion is so Jar from you. Do you
even care? Is apathy setting in? Are you still reaching toward passion, or would you just /ikr
to lie down for a while? Breathe. How do you feel?
Take a deep breath. Let time and space swirl around you once again. Let your longing
settle. Breathe. Breathe in passion. You are traveling to a time when passion completely filled
you. It was all you could see,jeel, taste, touch. Your desire was as close as your nose, so close
it almost smothered you. Obsession. Breathe. Feel it all around you. Are you exhilarated?
Or do you feel lost, disconnected? Breathe. What you thought was passion is so close, you are
obsessed with it. Nothing else seems to matter. What is this longing? So consuming.
Take another breath. Let obsession recede. Let time and space swirl around you once
again. Breathe. Relax. Breathe in passion. Draw it up. Draw up your desire. What do you
desire right now? Breathe it in. Name it. Taste it. How does it make you feel? Let your passion rise within you. Do not judge it. Open to it. Begin to move with it. It is near you, but not smothering. You can hold it, but it does not grip you too tightly. It is yours. And the Star
Goddess sings to you, "Dance in the beat 1 your heart's desire . . . Open the gate, the key is
within, to the temple 1 the heart."8 Breathe, swim, dance, play. Passion. And you answer
the Goddess: "I dance in the heat 1 my heart's desire, dance in the heat 1 my heart's desire."
Dance with your passion. Dance your desire. Name it. Sing it. Claim it. You can have what
you desire. Passion can fuel your work in the world. Your
passion can heal you. You art
whirling in it. You are centered. You are beloved.
Breathe. Let yourself rise to the surface 1 yourself. Begin to bring yourself back into ordinary space and time. Breathing. Let your body form around you, solid. Passion is still 8This chant, writt<'n by mr, is n·rord<·d by Amw Hill on Cirrlt Rouwl a11d Sillxf Availahlr thmu�h www.srrprntilll'l11llsir.c<llll.
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Bvolutionucv witchccuft
with you. Breathing. Open to the world in front of you. Open your eyes. Speak your passion out loud. Write it in your journal. Begin to walk it, to live it, to love and work within it. It fuels you but does not consume you. It is your birthright. Blessed be.
If Brittle, I will Bfeuk
This exercise allows you to experience what happens when you stand, stubborn and bullish, digging in your heels, unwilling to listen, to move, to talk it out. This is a posture of "I know that I am right, and no one will dissuade me:' It seems like a strong pose, but it is actually very weak. It is the brittle bough that breaks rather than bending. This position is also out of
balance and takes a long time to recover from when you get knocked off
center. You are not really centered, actually, you are digging your heels into
precarious ground. This state is indicative of the Gilded Pentacle. You will
need a friend to help you with this exercise.
Spread your feet about shoulder width, exactly parallel to each other. Dig in your heels.
Straighten your legs. P11ff out your chest. Ball your hands into fists. Put your chin up, defiant, arrogant, immobile. You are right. You know what is best and no one can tell you differently. Does this feel familiar? Do you recognize this pose? Your partner pulls on you. Try to recover. Get back in your pose. Your partner will push you, prod you, blindside you. Each
time, recover your stance. Dig in your heels some more. P11ff yourself up. Your partner
knocks you cff again. How long does it take you to recover? How does the stance start to
feel to you tifter being thrown out of it over and over again? Breathe. Shake this stance and
its energy cff of your body. Switch roles. Become the world coming up against your partner.
Become resistance. subversion, which wants to knock the king cff of his throne. What does
that feel like? Breathe. Shake hands with your partner in thanks for the work.
powefs Below: Li�htin� the nudmess
HI
step pin<s Fofth
Once you have fully explored the Powers Below, the realms of yolll'�rll I 11.11
are often obscured or hidden in shadow, you will be ready to strp iuto t hr
center of the sphere, the center of yoursel£ Open the gates to yom �nul.
9
•
center: open1n�
the <jutes
Open the gates! All the worlds stand before you now. You are stepping
into primal time and space that bends to your passing. Meet yourself
with a welcoming kiss. Here you give and here you can receive. The
flower responds to your touch. You are becoming more alive. The tool
here is the Black Heart of Innocence: the power of wildness, of sexual
innocence, and truth without shame .
I. n Feri Tra
shining dition,
edge I the
have Center
spoken is also
of
the
that
Circumf
becomes erence
the
of
central All. It
point, is that
flipping
our vision and expanding it in unusual ways. That which is central to our
spirits is often not central to the culture outside us, but as we change ourselves, that which surrounds us changes. The paradox continues to unfold within us and without.
We stand now in the middle of the sacred sphere, surrounded by the
Guardians of the Six Directions, encased in the mist of blue fire. Our
hearts beat here; we arc human and alive. In this space, we can become as
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Evolutionary witchcraft
large as the Guardians themselves, strong in spirit and love, forces of human nature, part divine. Here we can be certain that we are emanations from the Quakoralina, her children and lovers. We are large here, and
small, connected to the tiniest particle and to the galaxies that wave out
their births and deaths beyond our own.
The tool here is the Black Heart of Innocence. Of all the tools of Feri,
this is the most internal. It is not a polished piece of jet or smoky glass sitting upon an altar, though some Feri practitioners may have these, too; rather, it is a living, breathing, beating state. It is your wild nature, sexual,
honest, juicy, supple, and strong. Without the work that has come before,
we would have small chance of accessing this state. It requires clarity, presence, divinity, and full access to life force.
In Feri Tradition, spirit is placed in the Center-within the heart, and
the rush of sex, love, and life force. Spirit resides here, as it does in the
Powers Above and Below: these three form a swirling axis, our DNA, and
the spiraling of stars. The center is mystery and magic, the confluence of
core, depth, and height. Spirit combines all of the Elements of Life and
the wild Feri heart is as spacious as the sphere of Feri, and God Hersel£
In this chapter, we will feel the beating of our hearts, and learn to tell
the truth that resides inside. We will dance with our shadows, opening to
love and forgiveness, unbinding our life force and standing, clean, fresh,
honest, innocent, and wise.
center: openin'5 the gntes
25 1
Awo.kenin<s You.r Blo.ck Heo..rt
How beautiful is the black, lascivious purity of small children and wild animals.
-VICTOR ANDERSON
. . . to holding on, to knowing again that moment of rapture, of recognition
where we can face one another as we really are, stripped of artifice and pretense,
naked and not ashamed. -BELL HOOKS!
The Black Heart of Innocence is both a metaphysical concept and state of
being. It exists within us in some form or another, yet a balanced, healthy
relationship with it needs to be cultivated. Once realized, the Black Heart
is the unfettered connection with everything. I am in the state of innocence when fUlly connected with the life force. When I am centered, connected to the earth and running energy fUlly through my body, I am accessing this state without thinking about it. Connected, we are honest,
for there is no need to lie when we can simply be. This tool, this state, this
energy, is held in the shape of the heart because the heart is the pump for
the life force. The heart feeds all the parts of my body, as the life force
feeds all of creation.
Some people mistakenly take this concept of honesty to mean that
when they have something hard to say to someone, they need to blurt it
out in a "Black Heart" moment. If I am thinking about it, chances are, I
am not in a state of innocence. The energy may be trying to emerge, for it
is always with me, but if I am trying to use it, rather than letting it flow
through me, it will come through twisted and distorted, not innocent at
all, but manipulative and out of balance. When we begin layering suppositions or excuses over the original impulse, we render it harmful through its disconnection.
1From bell hooks, all about /ow (HarpcrPcrrnnial. 200 1 )
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Bvolutiono.ry witchuo.ft
If I am running life force easily and in tun
e with my body, breath, and
my energy fields, I can be sitting with someone, truly listening, with my
energy field connected with theirs in a state of true compassion. I can say
many things from this state, letting them come from my heart, which, were
I not connected to life force and to the person's Shining Body, would probably generate a "mind your own business" from them. But in this state, I can say hard things and they can be received because it is understood on a
cellular level that they are coming from love, from my God Soul. This is
the Black Heart of Innocence.
In the public sector, rather than one-on-one, the same "rules" apply, yet
my ability to communicate is more dependent upon those listening, because it is harder to be linked fully aura to aura, with each person in a group of ten to one thousand. One tool to help with this is Deep, Expansive Attention, which I explained in Chapter 3.
Another innocent state is the joyous abundance of sexual energy released in sexual expression. This is not based on posturing, or acting, or trying to figure out what acrobatic thing would most impress my partner.
I am not saying those things can't be fun, they can! All I am saying is, that
in the state of the Black Heart of Innocence there is again that honest
state where I am in communication with the earth and/ or another human
being through all my auric, psychic, emotional, and physical senses. We
meet long before our skin touches. We excite each other and pleasure each
other in total innocence. Or I walk along, totally in love with every tree,
feeling them as I pass. That too, is the Black Heart state.
Using all of the Feri tools, especially aligning our Triple Soul every day,
is how we achieve mastery of the Black Heart of Innocence. The following
are exercises to help us get in touch with the life force pumping through
our bodies, telling us we are alive and connecting us to all that lives around
us. This is a jump-start. In order to cultivate it though, align your Triple
Soul, run the energy of the Iron and Pearl Pentacles, clean your aura, and
. ground and center. Cora Anderson often tells me that the Craft is about
center: openin<s the gutes
253
living day to day. In becoming dedicated spiritual practitioners we can free
our energy and hum with the life force of a clean, honest, sexual charge.