Wow...

So it's been a month since my last post.  Where have I been?  Living mainly, revisiting some old demons that seem to keep popping their little heads up.  That can be very demoralizing having those old familiar visitors pop up again and again.  The feeling of "Omg, I thought I dealt with this" is all too common.  Again?  I have to do this again?  Insert angry grumble here.  You know what I am talking about.  For me its depression, but it can be any number of things; anger, overeating, drinking too much, overdrawing the bank account, anxiety, you name it.  It's that "worst" part of you, the part that you think "If I could just be rid of that, everything would be perfect.  This is what holds me back."  It's a theme for your life.  

So what do you do about it?  How do you make it go away?

Great questions, let me know when you figure it out.

Coming out of the shadow of my last bout, I really can't say.  I have had so many points in my life where I thought "This is it, I reached the new level of understanding of myself, and I am going to be great now."  I think its funny at this point really. 

You may be asking yourself, "But aren't you an initiate?  Aren't you supposed to beyond things like depression and other mundane things like that?" 

And I would say "You haven't met many Feri initiates have you?"

But seriously, it's normal for a person to stumble, to trip, to lick your wounds.  If you have a complex, or demon, or theme of your life that just keeps coming back, well...that's okay.  We are all human, no matter how powerful of witches we are.  We all have our shadows.  It took me a long time to learn that, and I still find myself raging against my shadow from time to time.  But there are other times when I am at peace with it; times where I can even have compassion for it, compassion for myself.  And that's the key right there, don't use your shadow as another vehicle to throw your power away.  "Well, I fell off the wagon, so that just validates what a piece of shit I am."  It happens, show yourself some love, and stand back up to start again.  

And what about when you are right in the middle of your shadow's influence?  What if it is just too strong?  You can't pull yourself out?

That's okay too!

Part of knowing yourself and claiming your power is knowing and claiming the support you have from those around you.  Your power extends to the connections you have made.  So you needed your best friend to smack you upside the head, or you needed your spouse to remind you of your tools, or you needed your covenmate to come to your house and MAKE you do ritual.  Accepting help when you need it is NOT a sign of weakness.  

Strength is using all the tools at your disposal. 

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.