If you read this blog on any kind of semi-regular basis, you will have noticed that posts have been less frequent. This year has been one of amazing and often difficult transformation. I’ve made decisions time and again to not force myself to post when other things – things that are critical to the tradition, my family and my wellbeing – were more important. I’ve made the hard decision not to post when I’m in a place where I can’t formulate authentic communication. When my resources have been spent on integrating the transformation and I haven’t had the wherewithal to write anything of value, I have chosen not to waste your time writing and posting only to meet an internal obligation. That was harder than it sounds.

But through it all, this blog – this small gesture of outreach – has remained important to me and feels important to the priesthood of the Silver Branch Tradition. And so it continues, sometimes less regularly than others.  The good news is that much of this particular transformation is complete. In response, the structure of my daily life itself will be changing over the next several months and will allow me to spend a bit more time writing, teaching, and building the tradition.

I’m leaving the job I no longer fit into and taking a wild ride to a new career complete with another advanced degree. From software cubicle worker to acupuncturist – I will be taking on a profession that is more in line with my calling as a priestess… after the 3 years of training of course. It’s a little scary leaping into the unknown, but it’s the right kind of scary. I’m looking forward to having more time and focus and to posting more often this fall. It feels right.

I have a friend who is involved with a group that is well known in Pagan circles. One thing that has come through loud and clear in our conversations is that along the way, many of their 3^rd degree recipients seem to fall apart – somewhat permanently. Now for the most part, this has nothing to do with me, except that everything I see is an object lesson. As I build both the priesthood of the Silver Branch tradition and the training that will support it, I view every group, method of training, tradition, and organization as an example – an opportunity to see, at least from the outside, what works and what doesn’t.

The Silver Branch tradition is not a tradition for the masses. It is a priesthood with a specific job. That job cannot be fulfilled if those working from the greatest depth and highest level of experience aren’t standing on a foundation of sound training and sound character.

One thing that stands out to me, not only among the group my friend is involved with, is that in the Pagan community, we often mistake chaos for power. It’s a commonly heard statement that “oh, I had my xx initiation and then everything went to hell.” This perception is held with pride. It is also viewed from a place of judgment, “just wait until he has his initiation, then he’ll get his.” I think in the wider community we’ve lost our way with this. True Initiation is powerful. Some initiations are meant to jar us into a place of re-evaluating and restructuring our lives. But, the training we’ve had and our commitment (Will) are also meant to be strong enough to allow us to use that experience and flourish rather than fall apart. Don’t get me wrong, big change usually comes with some level of feeling like we’re falling apart. But in a good initiation, its transitory, having to do with getting our bearings, becoming this new thing, and putting our lives into a state that serves us rather than wrecking our lives, jobs, relationships and leaving us permanently unstable or dysfunctional.

The measure of how much someone’s life falls apart is not the measure of the power of an initiation. If it were, then what’s the point? Why initiate? Why progress in your work? I would say instead that the growth that is a result of the initiation (and any temporary upheaval) is the measure of the power of the initiation, the strength of the training, the support of the community of initiates, and the commitment and Will of the initiate. That’s right. It comes back to us. Are we strong in our teaching? Are we strong in our practice? Can an upending of how we thought things worked teach us another level of truth about the Universe, ourselves, Will, and Magic?  Can it teach us about service in a way that has nothing to do with “should”? Can it, by our choice, change what we are in a positive way? Does it make the false “truths” we tell ourselves and the structures that no longer serve us unbearable while giving us the wherewithal to believe we can change them and to follow through? Does it root us in both our own power and the power of the work we do within the tradition? That is the measure of power in an initiation.

Last night when I sat down to write a blog post I had a few false starts. They all came too much from the head and withered before they could really become much. When my time for writing was nearly up, I opened a blank document and wrote the words you see below. Today I was tempted to edit it, craft it, shape it into something more palatable. I will resist that temptation and instead share it as it came to me.

We are adrift when we divorce ourselves, even emotionally, from the land. We are a house of cards when we view ourselves as separate from our bodies. As long as we hate our bodies we will destroy the land and ultimately ourselves. It is time to let go of self loathing. It is not useful. We are incarnate beings, blessed with bodies that are amazing systems of energy, life, form and spirit. This life is about understanding what it means to live bound up in this system. Our bodies, much though we strive to deny it, are linked deeply to the land. If it fails, if we destroy it, we also destroy ourselves, and not only on an individual level, but as a species. Can we truly value ourselves so little? Can we really fail to value the living, breathing, growing land on which we live?

It is time to stop lashing out as broken, frightened creatures, intent on inflicting pain in order to stop our own. It is time to stop dulling our senses and to wake up and see what we are killing. It may not be what you think. Killing does not make living hurt less. It only dulls the joy that is available.

Instead, sit still and breathe. Listen. Can you hear a bird sing? Can you see a tree? Do you feel the life coming into abundance around you?  I know it’s scary. I know we have been taught to believe that anything that cycles is not true. If it were it would not leave us. This lie will cripple you if you let it. The setting of the sun does not negate the bright light of day. It moves in a natural rhythm that you know deep in your bones and your DNA. The sun sets. The moon rises. The moon sets. The sun rises. No one has abandoned you nor left you alone to die. Reject that lie.

Lately, when teaching, I have found myself saying more and more often, “Now I’m going to say something heretical” or “Now I’m going to go against the grain” or “Now I’m going to say something controversial.” And I started to wonder, when did Paganism and magical practices become dogmatic? And when did I become a heretic?! Dogma is an interesting thing to struggle with. When we’re teaching, when we’re learning, we need some level of fixedness to work with or we feel like we are running amok. We also need something against which to judge our own thoughts, revelations and personal gnosis. Without that, we suddenly think that every thought that wanders through our heads is divinely inspired… or that none of them are.

On the other hand, Ivo Dominguez always says “Be careful of the traditions and practices you accidentally set”. He tells a story of several generations of a family cutting off the end of a ham until it becomes almost sacred “Grandma always did this, its important”. Eventually someone asks Grandma why she did it only to learn that the pan she had to cook it in was too short to accommodate the ham.

We need to find our way between rigid dogma and a completely freeform approach. For much of my early life I was trained as a ballerina. While it taught me many things that I later worked for years to unlearn, it also taught me lessons that are still valuable. One of those is that the rules and structures exist for a reason. The reason is not to bind us, but to give us structure in which to learn. Only when we know the rules and are competent within the structures can we also be competent to know when they are no longer needed and when, in fact, they should be broken. The structures also teach us nuance – how do we work within them to do or learn something new or view it in a new way? And just as the structures are important, there are prodigies who come along whose bodies simply know how to dance and how to move both within and beyond the structure without the years of rigorous training. I have come to see these two truths as universal.

Within magical practice, we must learn the structures and “rules” in order to have context with which to judge our own or anyone else’s work. We must gain competence in the forms and practices in which we train in order to venture outside them, or even to see the nuance and complex beauty within them. And sometimes there are people whose talents simply make that unnecessary – though they are rare. And even they benefit from learning the practices.  We also have to keep ourselves from being so rigid that we don’t allow for that natural talent to show up, learn and be trained. And also, maybe more importantly, we need to keep ourselves flexible enough to encourage the questions, curiosity and learning of those students we teach, whether or not they come in order. Likewise, as students, we need to try to see the values in the structures and practices of our teachers so that we can both gain the value of discipline and grow beyond the need for the structures that taught us.

I had an interesting conversation today about learning something with more than your brain and reasoning.  The gentleman I was listening to was talking about learning systems that support the practice of acupuncture. He suggested not trying to correlate one system of understanding with another.  When learning a tradition or system of understanding the world, let it be what it is. Do not try to understand it in the context of what you know.  The reason he gave was that too much is missed when your brain is busy correlating one insight or teaching with something you already know, whether or not, in the end, they lead to the same place. Learning takes place in more than our reasoning, it takes place in our bodies.

This spoke to me because in Paganism, we tend to hear two viewpoints:

• There is only one right way, and it’s ours. Everyone else is either wrong or a fake,
• It all boils down to the same thing, anyway.

 I invite you to consider a third option: all true traditions are expressions of the same thing. This does not make them the same thing – in fact it precludes them from being the same thing. The emphasis will be in different places, the forms will vary, each expression will focus differently and have a different movement to it. And this is as it should be.

This same kind of argument – that there is only one truth - regularly gets applied to social structures. People hotly debate what makes a true family. What is marriage? What is the only true appropriate structure in which to live in love? From the perspective of the Silver Branch tradition, the only true appropriate structure in which to live in love is any structure that is a true expression of love. This doesn’t mean anything goes. It means true love and genuine expression of that has to be at the heart of the structure.  This changes the story. The important thing is no longer the shape of the expression but the impulse behind it and the actions that back it up.

In the Silver Branch tradition, we work with universe in terms of expression all the time. Instead of working with stellar worlds/underworld as a pair in polarity, we work with the Earth as a planetary expression of the universe (i.e. the Stellar world), and humanity as an earthly expression of that same spiritual force.  It moves us out of a place of opposition and into a place of understanding how things fit together in the fabric of all that is. 

Both the root of the expression – the impetus driving it – and the multitude of expressions of it are important.  It is the expression of truth that gives us form and context to begin to approach it. And often, by looking too hard and grasping too tightly we lose the truth because we are unwilling to dwell in the expression.

The job (and career!) that I thought I’d love has become a box I no longer fit into.  For a while I tried to fit. I tried to squash myself up and squeeze in while banging a bit on the box here and there, hoping that we could be made to fit one another. Eventually, it became clear. I don’t fit in this box and the box won’t grow to fit me. And given that, I have no desire to reshape myself into a shape that will fit in that box. I’ve worked too hard to become this new creature.  It doesn’t matter anyway, a butterfly cannot go back to being a caterpillar, no matter how hard she tries.

And so I am letting go of the box; I am letting go of the day-to-day that no longer fits. It’s a scary, perched here outside the box that served me for many years. But it’s right. I know the shape of that box. I know how to navigate it. There is the comfort of familiarity there, sitting alongside of the discomfort of being wedged in where I don’t fit. But, when you don’t fit, you don’t fit. No amount of pretending will make you fit.  Instead, it only does you a disservice. Why on earth should the butterfly try to be a caterpillar? There are more caterpillars there to fill her spot and she has butterfly work to do. The time for looking back is done. I am not a caterpillar anymore.

Are there forms you have outgrown? Are you holding yourself from your work (and from yourself!) by insisting that something you’ve outgrown still fits? By trying to squash yourself to fit it?  Be bold. Step outside that box with me. The air out here is exhilarating.

I have noticed over the years, that although we like to think we learn something and it’s done, that in fact most of our spiritual learning is more of a spiral. We learn something on the level where we are, and then move on, only to find ourselves, later, learning a deeper lesson on the same topic. This used to frustrate me.  It felt like a failure. And sure, sometimes it can be, but also, it’s often a deepening; A growing of wisdom; A chance to learn the other side of a thing. Sometimes that spiral moves slowly coming around again years after the initial learning – and sometimes it seems to hit us again and again in short succession, forcing us to learn quickly because the need is so great.

I’ve come to understand that there are layers to the ways in which we know the things we have learned. In the deepest layer, we know it in our bodies, energetic and physical. We know it in our instinct and, if we’re lucky, in our habit. Knowing at that level is not exciting – it reads like just another part of us. It doesn’t have the same overt sense of discovery as the initial learning and so many people abandon it and move on to the new and shiny – and miss adding depth and truth of a thing what they have learned. It’s easy to fall into a state of acquiring information instead of learning.

Lately I’ve been feeling a huge sense of dissonance in one part of my life – my job. And this dissonance jangles through all the parts of my life that are in harmony. It throws them off unless I compartmentalize myself. And while I can do that, it’s not helpful. It’s agreeing that I will cut myself into small pieces; I will be only a part of myself in order to work this way in this place. I will slice myself up to make this living.  These choices – dissonance throwing off the harmony I’ve worked so hard to create vs. compartmentalizing what I’ve worked so hard to make whole – these are the wrong choices.

Instead I have to look at other choices – can I be wholly myself (and my best self at that) and do this work? Can I do it in this place? If I cannot do it in this place, or at all, what are the factors that make that so? What needs to change in either the way I make my living, or in the way I navigate the situation in order to change the choices? Most likely change is needed in more than one area. Most likely, change is needed in my work situation and in myself, but right now, in this place, the dynamic follows a specific dance. Without change, it will continue to function in this unhealthy way.

Today I choose to reject the idea that there are only two choices. I choose to reject the fear that the unhealthy dynamic seeks to create to keep me toeing the line. Today I choose to look more broadly and more deeply at what can and should change to resolve this dissonance. Why? Because to refuse that choice is to give up what works for what doesn’t.

Last week was a week of bad news. None was personal, but all was heart breaking, one way or another. A child we know was killed, earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan, and all around me I saw petty meanness born out of fear and insecurity. Small horrors propped up unimaginable pain and problems. Within all that, though, was also joy; joy of daily life, of children and their accomplishments, of love, and of spring returning slowly but surely to the land. But the joys got a little lost amid the pain and fear lashing out and taking up space.

And then someone reminded me – you are a priestess, you stand between the pillars mediating what comes. Remember what you are. In the midst of this, remember. In the midst of this, serve in strength, compassion, and love. In the midst of this, remember that priestess is a verb and a way of living. Do not be swept along in the tides of pain and fear. Stand and serve, Priestess.

This weekend I saw a miracle. It’s a miracle that happens every single year. And every year it takes my breath away a little and makes me secretly giddy. This weekend I saw small shoots in a potted plant out on the deck, tiny buds on many of the trees, and grass starting to green. The landscape in its totality still looks like winter, but these small details tell another story. Something is happening. Things are growing mostly where you can’t yet see them.  They’re taking root and pushing through the soil, popping out on the branch. Spring is sneaking up on us and I, for one, am grateful.

We live in a way that for the most part doesn’t depend on the weather to be comfortable. But something in us still moves with the rhythm of the seasons no matter how much we ignore it. It’s a primal response to being creatures of the earth. When the winter has been long and hard, spring matters. It matters in our bones and in our being aside from the philosophical turns we take thinking about growth and new beginnings. It matters because it is life showing itself again after a time when it was hidden. And in this let us all rejoice.