Beltane

‘A Beltane Day, the air quick with may…’
Well, ok it’s not Beltane technically but it felt like it in Chloe’s ritual. Everything was alive and it was spring. The world is full of energy and it dances together in pulsing shimmering colour. Well, I felt better anyway.

It was good at the Walpurgisnacht celebrations on Friday at my favourite Uncle’s house too. I got naked, it felt really good, like the Goddess was shooting up through my toes and out of my eyes and nipples and fingers. It was quite scary actually because I felt totally tripped out but I wasn’t on anything or anything. I felt ecstatic and I was seeing colours dancing all through the air.

Also had this big long conversation with my Manly Viking who I haven’t see in forever. It was wierd because he wants to go to Japan too. I really, really want to go, I hope I get there. He’s very big on the whole, ‘Western esotericism has taught me everything it can and I must got to the East to see the real thing’. I don’t feel that way, I’m not so good at the occult stuff as he is and I’m satisfied with my little charms and spells, that doesn’t mean I’m not interested in Eastern mystical traditions, on the contrary, I’d love to see whats happening out there and find out because it is so different. But I don’t think I’ve ever found anything thats taught me enough or maybe I’m just not capable of going deeply enough into something that I’ve hit bottom.

Just recently it seems a lot of people are dis-illusioned with Wicca, I mean people who I first met as Wiccans. I guess it depends what you turn to religion for, if you turn to Wicca because you see it as a system of magic or as your only outlet for magical action then fairly obviously I guess you’ll become disappointed because though its a religion that admits the existence, necessity and practicality of magic, nevertheless it is primarily a religion. The Gods and Goddesses are dancing for us, but if we’re only looking for one definate thing then maybe we don’t get to see them. I guess that some people turned to magic and found Wicca and thought they might be the same, but then people find religion for different reasons. Like in Buffy when Willow asks the leader of the Wiccan group if they shouldn’t be doing spells and gets told ‘Some stereotypes are not empowering’. I wonder if it was Starhawk and the like that strangled Wicca for some people.

Hmmm. As I’ve said, I’m not disillusioned. Religion was explained to me once by a very sensible old fashioned Church of England lady; The word of God filtered by human mouths. As far as Wicca goes the filtering is damn obvious, Eight Festivals in the Wheel of the Year because Gardner read a farmers almanac wrong and all the rest of it. I like being able to see the filtration and I like dancing. Sometimes it feels like I’m dancing in soft, starry sand and everything is going to be ok.

8 thoughts on “Beltane

  1. I suppose you’re right about why some people get dissillusioned with Wicca (even people who can actually spell ‘dissillusioned’ unlike me) To me it just comes down to the fact that no matter which way you look at it, it’s a hierarchical religion. That may mean just you then the gods, or a structure within a group, but it’s still hierarchy. Looking at yourself as below anything is not a good viewpoint for personal improvement. If you say to yourself that you cannot be like the gods, or even be a god, you’ll never get there. That’s what Wicca (and indeed all religions, apart from Buddhism which as far as ‘religion’ goes is on tricky semantic ground) is saying to me.

    Maybe just my interpretation, but we all know everyone’s opinion is perfectly valid.

  2. Your notions of below and above are interesting and I will not dispute your argument that Wicca is hierchical since I think that by your lights it is. By mine it isn’t because there is no priest intercepting for me and I have a direct line as it were.

    A misremembered quote from Starhawk:

    Life and the world are not separate from Godhead; they are immanent divinity.

  3. I was going to say that I never felt (as a Wiccan) that my religion was too hierarchical, but then again I practice as a solitary Wiccan rather than a member of a coven/group, which may account for something…

  4. Well, I’ve always felt, even when working within a coven structure, which I have (although decided fairly speedily that it wasn’t for me) that it was more working with people. But it depens on how strict you’re being with the word hierarchy I guess

  5. Well I’m not sure about lowerarchy, but network, yeah I think network describes how I see everything’s relationship in Wicca. But then does that imply I’m being disrespectful of the Gods? I don’t think so, we’re all the immanence of the Godhead. So long as we don’t go on to use what I think of as the mobile phone salesman’s verb ‘networking’.

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