Our Face Before We Were Born: The Song of Ancestors

Today is Hallows Eve, and most of Contemporary Paganism here is the West, this day, tomorrow, and the following week is saturated with Ancestor Work. I wanted to a take a moment and share with you a quick train of thought about this time that came to me last night right after meditation. My hope is that it will provide you with substance of contemplation in this tide.

Exhale. Focus sharply upon it. Keep extending the breath out until you can't anymore and allow the awareness of that movement to shift to the space just beyond the outbreath. You will find that beyond the outbreath is both neither something and simultaneously a thing.

This is the song of the ancestors. It is your eternal face from before you were born. Think about that. 

What did your face look like before you were born?

Distinct features should not come to mind; it is not a thing. Yet, there is the vague feeling of something there; it is a thing. This same face permeates down through the ages every day from this day forth. This is one of the reasons for celebration during Hallows-tide. In this way, we are the total sum of all of our ancestors. As such, today we celebrate the shared eternal hearth of our ancestors enacted in the manifestation of the present experience of our life.

The praxis associated with this time of year is our ritualization of this experience. Dressing in costumes, Dumb Suppers, rites associated with a particular Tradition, whatever, are all myth and symbolism expressed in the experiential.

Just as you found at the end of your breath, when you exhaled, a thinning of the veil, this is the time of year when the cycle of the year exhales and the veil thins. Take the time to gaze upon the reflection of the ancestors that comes through. Call them and feed them. Redden their bones so that they may dance the night away within the sphere of your life and hearth once more.

Now inhale.

Boidh Se,

-SM

"Lost in a thicket, bare-foot upon a thorn path."

Witchcraft in the Face of Suffering

The world is a place saturated with hardships, with suffering, and it has always been this way throughout history. Regardless of what myths of a Golden Age may get touted, there wasn’t one. Not in the least. The same can be said about today. Take a peek at your local, national, and world news and it will become instantly apparent, this is of course assuming that you aren’t already well aware.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot in light of the ongoing and continuous onslaught of political upheavals and social tragedies across the world. For example, the recent mass murder/shooting in Los Vegas by Stephen Paddock. This is one example of many. Like most, I don’t have an answer that will solve the world’s problems.

There is a famous line from the rites of the Wicca that has encroached upon the greater Contemporary Pagandom. I blame the early authors. It goes, “art thou willing to suffer to learn?”

The line instantly reminds me of the passage from Charles G. Leland’s Aradia: Or the Gospel of the Witches that would inspire much of the Charge of the Goddess ole great* auntie Doreen wrote. In this section, Aradia the Daughter of the Queen of Witches, Diana, has come to the mortal plane to teach sorcery and witchcraft to the oppressed, and all those whom suffer, at Her mother’s direction and this is what She say’s to Her pupils:

“When I shall have departed from this world,

Whenever ye have need of anything,

Once in the month, and when the moon is full,

Ye shall assemble in some desert place,

Or in a forest all together join

To adore the potent spirit of your queen,

My mother, great Diana. She who fain

Would learn all sorcery yet has not won

Its deepest secrets, then my mother will

Teach her, in truth all things as yet unknown.

And ye shall all be freed from slavery,

And so ye shall be free in everything;

And as the sign that ye are truly free,

Ye shall be naked in your rites, both men

And women also: this shall last until

The last of your oppressors shall be dead;

And ye shall make the game of Benevento

Extinguishing the lights, and after that

Shall hold your supper thus:”

If you take a quick look over a few sections of the Charge of the Goddess and you will see the immediate influence:

“Whenever ye have need of anything, once in a month, and better it be

when the Moon be full, then ye shall assemble in some secret place and

adore the spirit of me, who am Queen of all Witcheries.

There shall ye assemble, ye who are fain to learn all sorcery, yet have not

yet won its deepest secrets: to these will I teach things that are yet

unknown.

And ye shall be free from slavery; and as a sign that ye are really free, ye

shall be naked in your rites; and ye shall dance, sing, feast, make music

and love, all in my praise.

For mine is the ecstasy of the spirit and mine also is joy on earth; for my

Law is Love unto all Beings.”

As Witches we exist upon the fringed liminal spaces of society. For many, they were pushed there by suffering. Perhaps society rejected them for their gender, orientation, economic class, race, etc. Or by some other means they have found their place at the edges that is the threshold between the wild and the tamed. As I don’t know each Witches’ story, I can’t say what called them to the Sabbath.

The Craft teaches us to strip free that which the world of suffering has wrapped us in and lay ourselves bare to learn in the process—to be free. Yet in this, we are empowered by which we find when we are naked in our rites of life. 

Depending upon the context, the line “willing to suffer to learn” can mean many different things. Lately though, for me, it has taken up the meaning of being willing to participate in the world, to engage our own suffering and that of those around us. Specifically, to “actively” engage. At the end of it all, everything but our actions can be taken from us. So ensure that your actions are of measured worth.

Boidh Se,

-SM

“Lost in a thicket, bare-foot upon a thorn path.”