In which I Dance with Stars

I sat on this post for a week or so before posting it,  but I think that this should have some kind of permanent record. Things are moving rather strangely for me, and I want to be able to make sense of this part of the story when I look back on it later in life. So, here goes:

My life has been rather crazy lately. I've been learning and doing and growing at every turn, and mostly when I am not looking. I'm learning to sit back into the momentum and ride the wave so that I can enjoy it, rather than pushing it and burning out quickly. I want this forward momentum to last for a while.

I've been learning ancient Greek! The Attic dialect, specifically. It's quite an adventure, but I think that it will ultimately help me out. I know that Latin really changed the way that I think about a lot of things, specifically language, and I think that Greek is already having a similar effect. While Latin gave me grace, I think that Greek is going to give me some much-needed poetry in my language. In fact, I already feel myself being more inclined to poetry and poetic forms of expression, feelings that only increase as I switch into a more Greek state of mind. Which brings me to my next topic, and the meat of this entry.

I think my main problem with getting farther into witchcraft is a lack of ability to think metaphorically and symbolically, which is really the language of witchcraft. I've always tried to be direct and literal in my thinking, but I am slowly realizing how that should change. As a Feri would say, I had been ignoring my Younger Self. So, I have been exercising my Younger Self. And it has been a doozy.

I've been trying to identify a god that has been calling me. I have no idea who this god is, though I do know that discovering Him will ultimately be a process of self-discovery. I did a reading for it, though, and this is what I came up with. One of my first instinctual names for this god was Apollo, but it never seemed quite right. So, I thought of Lugh, but once again this did not fit exactly. Notable among the other contenders were Hermes and Dionysus, mainly for trickster associations, but there are of course other pertinent associations involved there. So, naturally I went to tarot for the answer.

One thing that popped up in the cards that really confused me was a reference to water birds, namely cranes. So, I let the reading cook in the back of my head for a bit and went about my business. Then, quite by accident, as I was reading The Gods of the Celts by Miranda Green and I came across a strange bit of archaeological data: it turns out that the Celtic sun cult associated its god(s) with water birds. Later in the chapter, I came across something that explained another of the cards. The sun cult was intimately connected with the underworld and the processes of death and rebirth. So, I will soon be jumping off of that information and into upg-land to try to find some definition to this issue.

Then, a few nights ago under the waning quarter, I attended my first Sabbat-experience in the Otherworld. I met a very helpful witch in grey who pulled me into a dance and taught me a song that I already knew by heart. We danced and danced, spinning around until I looked up and was surrounded by new people wearing beautiful, flowing clothes: robes and layers and everywhere was a flutter of colors amongst Grecian columns (Corinthian, if I remember correctly). And all of the people had names embroidered on their chests. I talked to Aquarius (or was it Aries?) who was tending to her baby. It was the cutest little androgynous baby that I have ever seen, with long, flowing curls and the words 'Dog Star' embroidered on its chest. S/he was crying worse than I have ever heard a baby cry until s/he saw me. I picked the baby up and started talking to it, carrying it around while mingling with the other brightly colored stars in this party in the heavens. The scene changed again, right before I woke up, and I found myself talking to a warrior woman, taller than me and deeply shadowed. She asked me, "What is a warrior?" My answer was "A defender." She shared a secretive smile with me and I woke up with her face burned into my memory.

Presences

As an effect of my student-hood for my tradition, I have become more aware of the presence of spiritual forces around me in my everyday life. Nothing that I have experienced thus far has been anywhere close to the intensity with which I feel this presence at times. It's like a surge of caffeine/adrenaline that pumps through my limbs, making me feel like with just a little effort I could step into the sky. Unlike caffeine and adrenaline, however, I don't crash afterward. I find myself completely aware of every contraction of every muscle as I am walking around campus doing my job, and instead of feeling tired after lugging my load of books around, I feel exhilarated and energized, excited and maybe a little crazed about the thought of doing it again. I have also been having weirdly aggressive/protective thoughts lately. Like, I want to protect my family from physical harm, and when it comes down to it, my first instinctual reaction is more often fight instead of flight.

These are another reason that I find myself exercising more than before. The feeling of exertion and the sheer physicality of it is amazing, and I find myself having to force myself to quit to avoid injury toward the end of the workout.

I can only think that this is the influence of some divine masculine force. The call of the male archetype has never been very strong for me, though it was less foreign than the female archetype. As I progress into my young adulthood, I find myself more and more often identifying with warriors in the stories that I read, because deep down I know that I share that same drive, that same sense of protective duty.

I have tentatively identified this source as the God of the sun, a force that I have worked with before but not one that I have actively identified with. I was much more of a Nature/Storm God person myself, though that may have something to do with a father-archetype protector-of-my-person thing than actual identity. The reason that I have made the connection with the sun is that the feelings are at their strongest when I am out under the sun. I can feel it over the course of the first moments whenever I walk out into the sun; the power and sense of excitement pervade my every fiber, and there are times that I even feel my perceptions shifting subtly. My eyesight gets sharper, feelings intensify, my sense of smell even gets better. These sensations, I feel, are the senses of the divine warrior, tuning my sense to a more advantageous level.

Because of these feelings and my new found energy, I have decided that exercising is going to be a devotional time to this new feeling, exploring it and my relationship to the god that brings it. Maybe I will look more into Lugh. He fits the pantheon I feel drawn to, is the sun, a great warrior, and is commonly identified with the Gaulic Lugus, whose iconography included ravens, among other things. Yes, this is a stretch, but maybe this is a sign that I need to expand my pantheon. Lots of questions to answer. Lots of soul searching to do. Lots of miles to run. Until next time, guys.