A walk and some thoughts
I don't know what it was about last night, but there was something special about it.
I left my office after I finished my homework, thinking about sacred space, revalorization, and the mythic drama of Quetzalcoatl. The Plumed Serpent, it seems, is not Quetzalcoatl, but rather a shared deity of Mesoamerica who appears to have eventually become interlocked with the myth of Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl by the Aztecs and possibly the earlier Toltecs. But his most famous sactuaries, Teotihuacan and Xochicalco, don't seem to actually represent Quetzalcoatl at all.
This makes me seriously re-think a lot of things regarding my project. Who is this plumed serpent?
But surprisingly to me, that was not the central line of my thoughts, even though it's what I began thinking about.
Instead, I found myself thinking more and more about myself. Religion, Charles H. Long informs us, is about orientation. It is how you relate to the world around you, how you interact with your cosmology in order to find your way. I have always liked this definition, and usually find it more useful than a lot of other definitions.
And last night was really about my own orientation, I think.
After a long IM conversation with druidkirk that ranged around between my trip out to the Desert Magic Festival, last weekend's trip to Atlanta (no one, btw, told me that the video link was broken in that entry, but it's been fixed, and I also added a link to erienc's review of the weekend), and my idealized wedding plans (gay men officiating, crossdressers, female groomsmen, a druidic ceremony, and I'll have to find a way to work in having a couple of cats as "best beasts" or something; my parents wouldn't know what hit 'em), something got to me.
And I ended up at the Chadwick Arboretum again, at the labyrinth, walking through the darkness, feeling the wind at midnight.
It might have been the conversation, or something I read. It might have been the fact that I hadn't really eaten yesterday, or might have been the fact that my trenchcoat puts me in a bit of a ritual mindset because of the way it falls across my shoulders. It might have been the fact that a lot of things have been in hiding for a long time, or it might have been the key thing that erienc said to me last weekend finally sunk in completely.
Whatever it was, I was thinking about ADF and where I was going with it. I had a long conversation, talking out loud to my favourite red oak tree, walking in and out of the labyrinth, and discussing thing with the standing stones. Also topics of conversation were my family, clergy status, my Grove, my friends, and what I'm doing here, anyway.
I should have taken my tape recorder, because I don't exactly remember how I arrived at my conlucsions, but to my tired brain, they sounded like really good statements with purpose and full of truth.
The end result was a scribled note in my journal:
Become who I amI will not be changed
I will outwardly recognize myself
As Jimmy sang, so I felt last night, and so I feel today:There's somethin' in the wind tonight
Some kinda change in the weather. . .
Somewhere some devil's mixin'
Fire and ice together. . .
I left my office after I finished my homework, thinking about sacred space, revalorization, and the mythic drama of Quetzalcoatl. The Plumed Serpent, it seems, is not Quetzalcoatl, but rather a shared deity of Mesoamerica who appears to have eventually become interlocked with the myth of Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl by the Aztecs and possibly the earlier Toltecs. But his most famous sactuaries, Teotihuacan and Xochicalco, don't seem to actually represent Quetzalcoatl at all.
This makes me seriously re-think a lot of things regarding my project. Who is this plumed serpent?
But surprisingly to me, that was not the central line of my thoughts, even though it's what I began thinking about.
Instead, I found myself thinking more and more about myself. Religion, Charles H. Long informs us, is about orientation. It is how you relate to the world around you, how you interact with your cosmology in order to find your way. I have always liked this definition, and usually find it more useful than a lot of other definitions.
And last night was really about my own orientation, I think.
After a long IM conversation with druidkirk that ranged around between my trip out to the Desert Magic Festival, last weekend's trip to Atlanta (no one, btw, told me that the video link was broken in that entry, but it's been fixed, and I also added a link to erienc's review of the weekend), and my idealized wedding plans (gay men officiating, crossdressers, female groomsmen, a druidic ceremony, and I'll have to find a way to work in having a couple of cats as "best beasts" or something; my parents wouldn't know what hit 'em), something got to me.
And I ended up at the Chadwick Arboretum again, at the labyrinth, walking through the darkness, feeling the wind at midnight.
It might have been the conversation, or something I read. It might have been the fact that I hadn't really eaten yesterday, or might have been the fact that my trenchcoat puts me in a bit of a ritual mindset because of the way it falls across my shoulders. It might have been the fact that a lot of things have been in hiding for a long time, or it might have been the key thing that erienc said to me last weekend finally sunk in completely.
Whatever it was, I was thinking about ADF and where I was going with it. I had a long conversation, talking out loud to my favourite red oak tree, walking in and out of the labyrinth, and discussing thing with the standing stones. Also topics of conversation were my family, clergy status, my Grove, my friends, and what I'm doing here, anyway.
I should have taken my tape recorder, because I don't exactly remember how I arrived at my conlucsions, but to my tired brain, they sounded like really good statements with purpose and full of truth.
The end result was a scribled note in my journal:
Become who I amI will not be changed
I will outwardly recognize myself
As Jimmy sang, so I felt last night, and so I feel today:There's somethin' in the wind tonight
Some kinda change in the weather. . .
Somewhere some devil's mixin'
Fire and ice together. . .