Changing Faces

I changed the profile picture I use for myself on Facebook today.  Why does this warrant a post on here?  Well, as Storm so eloquently put it  in a conversation we were having, because it was an act of magic.  

For those who haven't been to my Facebook page or never noticed the picture, it was a picture of Foamy the Squirrel.  Foamy is an internet cartoon character who goes on long rants about things that piss him off.  I find these rants to be rather hilarious, and there was a time in my life that I resonated strongly with that.  I would rant and rage about things that pissed me off, or people who I thought were stupid, or really anything in general.  There would always be a humorous tone to my ranting, because that is just who I am, but it was ranting nonetheless.  As I have gotten older I realized that is not who I want to be anymore.

This is part of knowing yourself.  Knowing the good parts, knowing the bad parts, just knowing.  Part of knowing though, is the ability to change your priorities.  One of the reasons I made this blog was because I wanted to make a new relationship to my craft work.  I feel like I have been growing into my initiation.  I turned it all off for a while after I got initiated, which I have already touched on in other posts, and that was something I needed to do.  Now however, I am back in full force.  I am writing again, and through these words I feel the touch of the Goddess.  I am the Laughing Coyote.  I am the Witch. 

Part of it is also getting a little older, having gone through more, maturing a little.  Where does the craft work start and the experiential maturity end?  Well that is a stupid question.  They are both the same thing; they happened at the same time, so they aren't separate.  But what does this have to do with a stupid profile picture?

To some extent, our Facebook pages have (for good or for ill) become the public face that we put out into the world.  People have more contact with my Facebook profile than they ever have with me in person.  By changing that picture I made an act of magic to change how others see me.  The work of changing who I am has been done.  I am not the angry ranting squirrel, I am the Laughing Coyote.  The Trickster is part of me, that will never change, but how I embody it though, that is a different story.  I am a Witch, I am a writer, I am a poet, and I live my life through laughter.  

This is who I am, and this is how I will have others see me.  

As I will it...So Must It Be.

The Dance

Do you hear the hunter's horn
Inviting you to dance?
Venture you beneath the Mound
If you have the chance
No guarantee of safety
Else your eye they'd have to lance.

Twas mighty Freyr that sounded the call
While sweet Freya drew me in
Inside their mighty hall I knew
Never elsewhere would I be Him
Such as I became through their wild grace

Puck D. Coyote
3/12/11

Burning Woman

You are the well of burning passion,
The great cyclone of flame.
We are alight in you.
Stoke our will.
Feed our power.

You are the source of all reaction,
The great cosmic star.
We are in awe of you.
Feed our Mother.
Give us life.

You are the heat that warms our bones,
The first tribal light.
We survived with you.
Told our stories.
Filled our bellies.

You are the furnace of our bodies,
The heat in our veins.
We are animated by you.
Our hearts beat.
Our muscles move.

You are the exploding pyre of war,
The anger in our soul.
We are enraged by you.
Our call to fight.
Our drive to kill.


You are the engine of causation,
The chaos of life.
We keep in motion with you.
The will to be.
The will to do.


Burning Woman,
We call to you!
Burning Woman,
Be here now!


Puck D. Coyote 
3/7/11

Lady of Water

Flowing
Flowing
Flowing Down
River Draining
She is found.


There she dances
There she sings
Bathing
Playing
Beauty's Spring.


Glamour made 
With summer's strife
Laughing maiden
Of the Night.


With joyous sounds 
She draws you in
Madness waits you 
In her fins.


Water lady
Power's fount
Pouring 
Mourning
Her tears amount
to the
Crashing Tempest
Raging Storm
Undine Lady
Nature's Form


Lady of Water
She knows your fear
Lady of the deeps
Tiamat is here.


Puck D. Coyote
3/5/11

Failures

I find myself, from time to time, looking back on my life.  I know I am not unique in this, its part of what makes us human.  I look back, and have used this as another vehicle to devalue my own self worth.  I used the rough times in my life, my "failures", as evidence that I was just as horrible as I thought I was.  Look, of course I suck!  I was a druggie who dropped out of college.  I was a guy who went through different women like socks.  I had all this potential and I squandered it away.  Blah blah blah.  Not the most constructive way to spend ones energy.  


I don't know if the shift in my thought process is due to my Work, or if it is just additional wisdom associated with age, but my guess is a bit of both.  I have found myself being truly grateful for my supposed "failures" as of late.  It was through these experiences that I was really able to learn the age old question "Who am I?"  Know thyself does not mean just think about the good parts.  The real work comes in identifying those parts of yourself that you don't like and either working to improve them, or come to terms with them.  Sometimes you can't improve on a past failure as they have already happened, but you can learn from them.  And sometimes the lesson you need to learn is compassion for yourself.  My gods!  Of course I didn't succeed with that goal, look at everything else that was going on in my life!  


And if it wasn't for those failures, I wouldn't be who I am now.  It is through the rough points in our life that the real growth happens.  I had a friend who used to talk about life like forging a sword.  He would say that you don't get a blade by putting a chunk of metal on pillows.  You have to throw it in the fire, bash it with a hammer, throw it in the fire again over and over again.  This can not be a pleasant experience, but in the end the transformation has made something beautiful.  


So yes, I am very grateful for my failures, for it is through them that I have become more whole.  I have even found myself grateful for the latest schism within the tradition, and yes, even grateful that people attacked those I care about.  I have learned a lot about myself these last months.  These events threw me far away from my center.  I allowed my rational points to be overshadowed by my rage.  I let myself be goaded, and I sank to a level of pettiness that I thought myself above.  I let myself be consumed by it, to the point that Storm even told me to stop engaging, but I couldn't.  I had to defend my coven, my initiator, my friends.  I had to *make* people see that what was happening was wrong.  I let it shake me to my very core, and it took me to a place that was the very opposite of the goals of my Work.  And I am grateful for the experience.  I have taken a step back.  I have regrouped.  I have found my center, and I am done.  I still read things that other initiates have written that make the anger start to well up, but I just let it move through me.  I breathe, I make kala.  I still find the whole thing very frustrating, but I don't let it overwhelm me.  I remember that I am not my emotions, they are mine.  I am not my thoughts, they are mine.  I have risen to this new challenge, I have been made more whole because of it, so I am grateful.


Yes, I still wish that people would accept our diversity and see that there is room for all walks of Feri within the tradition.   We could all put the anger and hostility away, but I don't expect it to happen anytime soon.  I know that I won't be the vehicle for that change, especially from a place of anger myself.  And that's okay.  Because I know that for me, Feri is about *MY* Work.  I know that no matter what others do or say, I will do my Work.  I will be the Witch *I* need to be.  I will keep growing, keep learning.  I will keep letting my initiation "steep".  I will keep raising myself to the power of divinity, and I will also keep falling.  And that's okay.  I will pick myself up, dust myself off, and learn what was needed to be learned.


The only real failure is to never try.  


Just keep laughing!

Shaking the pillars

Yesterday was a really hard day. That's actually an understatement, yesterday flat out sucked. Going into the day, I knew it was going to be a challenge, but I walked in with my head held high, battle standard flying and ready to face whatever battle was to await. How did the day end? With my tail tucked in between my legs and me running off to lick my wounds. All my bravado was not enough to make the day go smoothly. I felt defeated.

Like I said....the day sucked.

So when I laid my head down on my pillow last night, it was with the knowledge that I had to return to battle again today. It was not a pleasant thought.

What did I do this morning?

I woke up, did kala, aligned my souls, had a brief discussion with Nimue, and prepared myself. I walked through those doors again today with the standard raised and my head held high. Was I afraid? You bet. Was I more afraid than I had been the day before? Of course. Now I had an experience to frame my expectations. But what were my options? To walk in there begrudgingly with my fear showing on my sleeve? I owed those children more than that. I owed MYSELF more than that. So I let that fear temper the bravado, inform my decisions. I learned from the defeat, changed my tactics, and today was much better. A victory? Perhaps. It was still a challenge, I was still drained to my very core, but I had a sense of a job well done.

There is a move in the 8 brocades of qigong called Shaking the Pillars. In a sense, you stand up on your tiptoes, and then fall back on your heels sending a shock wave through your whole body. It's more relaxing than it sounds. The idea is that by shaking the pillar that is your body, you shake off the stagnant chi, which lets your channels open up, increasing overall chi flow. This experience was something very similar. I have been riding this post Pantheacon mana high, feeling like nothing could stand in my way. The incredible challenge that I faced yesterday really shook my to my core. I started to question if I could really do the job set in front of me. Was I in over my head?

But I got over it. I was confronted with the challenge and I overcame it. In a sense it shook away the idea that I nothing stood in my way, the fantasy, and grounded it in reality. Nothing can stand in my way, but that doesn't mean that it will be easy. Being a warrior doesn't mean always winning. It means picking yourself up, dusting yourself off and starting over.

It means the only thing that ever stood in my way was myself. But no longer.

Look out world, this Witch is ready for battle once more.

Morning thoughts

Rose about an hour before the alarm went off again today. My wife commented that she would be concerned if it wasn't for the fact that I have been falling asleep so early every night. I don't understand the sudden shift in my internal clock, but I am grateful for it. I have been truly enjoying my early mornings alone. The chill in the air, watching the sky go from black to all of the beautiful hues of the early morning light, the stillness. I did some great trance work, did some qigong, aligned my souls, made kala. I know I touched on this before, but it is of great importance for me right now, so I will touch on it again. The difference for me this time is that the work is not forced. The flow is right, this is what I will without having to force that will upon myself. It takes the strain off the work, the sense of obligation, it lets the work just simply be what it needs to be.

The Divine Twins seem to be a major focus of my practice right now as I see them everywhere. The polarity yet resonance; the conflict yet harmony; the pull yet push; the paradox of dualism. My work with Freya and Freyr has been helping achieve a better balance of these forces in myself (There are some lines of Feri that view them as another incarnation of the Divine Twins, a view that I personally hold to be true). I have felt very called to work with her for some time, yet when I would approach him he would be cold, so I assumed that meant I was to be her priest alone. He and I find that very amusing now.

I think at that point he sensed that I wasn't ready, that I was so closed off from those parts of myself that are him, that he just let me be. Or maybe I pushed him away for those reasons, I don't know to be honest. But that has changed. Since Con I have felt him strongly, and done some very powerful trance work with him. I have felt the hunter stir within me, and rather than detract from my work with Freya, it has made it stronger. To take it out of the realm of deity, its like I am finally cultivating my yang energy in a positive way, so that the resonance between yin and yang can sing aloud.

But yes, for me they are everywhere. My work with the Iron and Pearl pentacles have become an exercise of the Twins. I run them separately, and feel them pull toward each other in my body like iron to a magnet. When they touch, they join in a flash of peacock blue light into the Copper Decagram which takes seat in my heart. It's a really beautiful experience. When I did kala this morning after that, I sensed the twins in the energy I put in the glass, swimming together like two fish playing, then as a shark chasing a minnow, then back to the two fish playing.

What does it all mean? I have ideas, but they aren't concrete. For now, I am just going with the flow, loving the creative inspiration it has sparked in me, and enjoying the ride.