I have been thinking a lot lately about polarity. If you’re a regular reader, you know I’ve said that at Silver Branch we work more with relationship than polarity. That’s true. I’ve had the opportunity lately, to see polarity in a different light and I am intrigued.

I have always held within me that polarities are opposites, and therefor in opposition to one another. It is dark or it is light and dark is the opposite of light. Somehow this felt incomplete to me.  And more, it felt locked in conflict. I held within me the idea that polarities are always moving farther from one another, going on being more and more opposite. I was never comfortable with that. Nor was I comfortable then trying to work magically with polarity when, at best there was tension between the poles, at worst, opposition.

In studying acupuncture I’ve come to look at polarity differently. We are taught that at its greatest extreme, yin turns to seek yang and vice verse. They are not opposites moving ever farther apart. They don’t live on a line, but instead in circle. You can only go so far toward one pole before it leads you back toward the other.

This is, obviously, not a new idea. And I have no idea how it was that polarity, to me lived on a never ending straight line when nature doesn’t work that way. But suddenly, I have started to see polarity more like all the old tales of lovers who change shape so that one is human by day and the other by night. They are always together, but only at the moments of dawn and dusk do they touch in their true forms. What happens when we look at polarities as lovers seeking to connect to one another instead of polarities as enemies, seeking to either destroy one another or to move as far apart as possible? What a different perspective: polarities in relationship instead of polarities in denial. This is a model I can work with – a model that feels both true and helpful.

It’s gray and rainy and cold. The sun rises later and sets earlier. Nature calls us to move slowly, to rest, to settle in. The world, on the other hand, calls us to participate, to celebrate, and to produce. Now, between preparing for holidays and keeping up with email, now, for just a moment, stop. Breathe. Let stillness surround you. Connect with the land, with the sky, turn inward. Let your breathing and your awareness of the natural world fill the stillness.

As you go about this holiday week, hold this stillness within you. Carry it where you go. Let the peace of it be a calm, still place in your heart. Give thanks.

In the past I have worked well with the idea of ancestors, but come up short when I tried to approach my own ancestors. Like many of us, my ancestors fall into 2 categories: those I know nothing about, and those of whom I am none too fond. The second group is naturally much smaller than the first, but because I know something of them, they ring louder in my thoughts of my ancestors. To get around this, I worked instead with the idea of the long dead ancestors. I can’t have anything against them – I have no idea who they even were. This is a cop out.

In the recent weeks, through work with my guides, I came to understand some really critical things about ancestors. Without ancestors, we do not exist. Yes, this is true in a genetic “who begat who” way, but also in a deeper energetic way. We stand as intersections in streams of ancestry. Without those streams, no intersection exists. From a spiritual perspective, we are those intersections. This brings up a harder (for some of us) truth. We carry our ancestors within us both through genetics/biology and as spiritual connections within the stream of ancestry, therefore, to hate our ancestors is to hate ourselves. No, we are not the sum of our ancestry. But, self-hatred in any form, against any part of self, is inherently dangerous, not only to ourselves, but to the world.

Today, I embrace my ancestors, those I do not know, and those I do not like. Today, I will to honor my ancestors and see them with compassion. Those whose deeds were cruel I will try to see within a bigger story. They did not become what they were with no context. Whatever occurred in the life of any single ancestor occurred within the stream of ancestry. Today I will accept that like anything else, my ancestral streams hold moments of absolute grace and moments of human frailty, that they hold love and kindness in at least equal measure with cruelty and hopelessness. Today I honor my ancestors, for whatever else they did or did not do, they intersected to bring me into being and for that, I thank them.

I have noticed lately that we, as magic workers tend to distance ourselves from power by adding complexity. We take directly powerful things and turn them into concepts sidestepping their innate power. And I wonder if this is because we’ve forgotten how to directly interact with things. I wonder if it is a side effect of the culture we live in.

In working with our gods and guides lately we have been redirected back to what is – away from what it means and back into direct engagement with the forces of nature as they exist. Water is not an idea, not a set of characteristics applied to things without anchor in the physical. Water is a THING. Water is WATER. It makes up some 75% (give or take) of the planet. Without it you will die. Water can soften the earth, all living things need water. Water can cut through stone over time. We can touch flowing water. Flowing water can carry us along or drown us depending on the force with which it moves. Water is not “west, emotions, ancestors” though it speaks to them and of them. Water is not a concept. Water is a powerful elemental force and being.

When we do magic we can work with the idea of the concepts of the characteristics of water, or we can work with Water. Doing our magic in the physical, using the forces of nature is simple, direct and powerful. It is not for the faint of heart. What would it mean to your magic to engage in it directly, anchoring it in the physical? Astral work is helpful and often powerful, but when it is not balanced with the physical, we lost touch with the powers that surround us. More and more nature shows us her power. Are you willing to touch that power in your magical work?

And more, I wonder, what would happen – how would the forces of nature react if we began to engage with her again in wonder at her power as we do our nature? Will you find out with me?

For many years in my youth I trained as a dancer – primarily ballet with a good dose of modern dance and a splash of everything else.  One thing that teachers and choreographers start to talk about when you’re a more experienced dancer is quality of movement. Not just what is the shape, what direction does it move, how do you do it, but once you are proficient at it, how do you change the quality of movement. Is it slow, smooth, light, airy, abrupt? The list goes on and on.

Stillness, much like movement, has qualities. There is the stillness of grasping things that are moving and holding them still which is constraint. There is the stillness of things that should flow being made unable to move, which is stagnation. And then there is the kind of stillness I mean when I write about sitting in silence and stillness.

When I talk about stillness, I mean a quieting of self, an opening up to allow natural flow without focusing on it. I mean the quietness of slow, even breathing – not unmoving  as lungs expand and contract and air flows in and out, but still nonetheless. I mean allowing thoughts to move aside for something deeper than thinking. I mean dwelling, for a little while in peacefulness; Chosen quieting, intentional settling into silence, both internal and external. Typing this I see that there are qualities of silence, too. Silence can a chosen lack of language, a silence that denies all sound, a tense silence, an angry silence, a peaceful silence.

It’s easy to throw language around, but these words mean something specific. Sitting still, fuming mad with my eyes clamped closed and my lips firmly shut is, technically stillness and silence. And yet, it bears no resemblance to the stillness and silence that feeds us and opens us to being able to engage with the more deeply world around us.

I haven’t posted in a while. Not because the priesthood of the SBT is withering, but because I have been busy going through changes in my life to bring the way I make my living more in line with my mandate as a priestess. It’s an exciting time. This year I’ve also been going through a transformation of self due to the work of the priesthood – transformation that has brought my bodies, both physical and subtle into a different way of working and being that supports this work. These changes in particular support my work as the founding priestess of the SBT intent on building the priesthood into the vision I have been shown.

Being at the center of this much change has required me to holder tighter to those moments of silence and stillness. When everything is making dramatic shifts these are the only places of true rest. Now in my new incarnation as a graduate student (studying acupuncture – a career that allows me to work as priestess and healer in the way I make my living), I’ve had the luxury to start to build a day that has space for silence, stillness and peace within it – beyond the silence in my daily meditation. This is indeed a luxury.

For years I have worked hard to create a schedule that let me have a strong daily practice of meditation, prayer, exercise, mediation and writing. I made it all fit. What I sacrificed was rest and ease within the day. Now I am bringing rest back into the picture. I have ease in the schedule most days of the week. I have silence and stillness at hand. I am relearning to rest and to listen in a deeper way not just within the allotted hour. It’s a move toward spending more time being rather than just doing. It’s a practice of deliberate action rather than just need and momentum.

And in that deliberate space I am coming back to regular blogging and to doing the writing that will build the training program for the priesthood and indeed the foundation of the work we do. And in time, just as I carry the lessons I have learned in these years of starting the SBT, I will also carry the lessons of stillness, silence, deep listening and deliberate action within the core of my being. May they serve me well.