Starting work with Taliesin
(Was [Trance_Class][Teacher])
Tonight's trance class included the exercise of journeying out to someplace to meet the beings we'll be inviting to ride us for the Graduation ritual.
I had asked hilarypoet if she would please guide the journey, because farmount's graduation assignment as Warder is to ward the Graduation Ritual without the benefit of my guidance - I'm going to join the students in trancework. I'm also doing this to make sure at least one of the instructors is actually going through the same kind of stuff the students are going through, and because I genuinely appreciate the opportunity to work in this open context, and because I've been thwapped upside the head with the clue-by-four that this is what I'm supposed to DO.
Sirs Yes Ma'ams!
For all that HilaryPoet's gentle, melodic voice is what carried me out, I didn't follow - and in fact barely heard - anything she actually said.
--------------------
I found myself standing on a bit of a plateau up a fairly tall mountain. Nothing even as big as my Dad's old yard, though maybe as big as just the back lawn. But not grass, relatively smooth grey stone. I could hear the wind blowing a bit, but it wasn't too bad up there. Just a bit lonely. I called out and heard my voice echoing back at me.
Then I realized Rabbit was with me - He grumbled that He'd been there for a while already, but I only just noticed Him. And He suggested I look behind me.
I couldn't turn around, but I could sort of look over my shoulder, and I realized that behind me there was a cave into the mountain, and in front of that, a small campfire being tended by Oxossi. I believe He wore leather, and I know His hair was long and braided, but aside from that and the stick He was using to poke at the fire, I didn't have much of a good look, because I could only use peripheral vision and a general sense of presence to "see" Him.
He suggested with few words and a great deal of meaning, that I was up a mountain to do some trance work, and should probably get to journeying, eh? This was a little confusing - story within a story within a story? - but at the same time it made sense, so I went with it.
There's a bit of a jumble here - this journey felt more like a dream than usual. I remember sort of floating out...
The next clear memory is of standing in the middle of a fairly wide open area, with Rabbit by my side, and a circle of deities surrounding me. Only the radius of the circle from me to any given deity was many yards. I didn't try to count or identify the beings present immediately. It was clear They came from many cultures, and I was sort of daunted just being there. Besides, it was just hazy enough that I couldn't see much landscape beyond the circle, and the beings defining the circle were a little bit indistinct.
But three beings were quite clear, and started a lecture to me while the others started a sort of circle dance that spun the circle round, and then pulled it in from each of the 4 directions, and back out again.
Oxossi stood behind me and to the right - a different path than the Oxossi I percieved up the mountain... which actually makes me wonder all of the sudden if the fellow up that mountain was Oxossi at all, actually... Huh... But it was clearly Oxossi behind me and to the right.
Oya stood behind me to the left.
A shining being that I knew must be Taliesin was before me, but I couldn't look at Him yet.
Oxossi explained that I had been doing good work. Taliesin explained that I already knew I was a messenger. Oya asserted that I am strong. They talked about how I have been doing a very good job of working towards making myself capable and worthy of my calling... to the point of avoiding the work of the calling itself, perhaps.
Oya said I'm afraid of what the work means for me. She said I was worried that Serving meant being Subservient, that in doing the work I know I'm meant to do, I'm giving myself up, letting myself be taken over - in short, doing for the gods exactly what I've been raised to never do for a man. I'm supposed to be a strong, independant woman who makes her own decisions and holds her own. How can I call myself that AND call myself a servant?
Oya asked, rhetorically, what exactly I think the word QUEEN means? A Queen serves her people. She loves them, and knows them, and serves them. It's not just what she DOES, it's who she IS. And yet who would call a queen subservient? Is Oya, the epitome of a Queen, subservient? Is She not a good Queen? Does She not know Her people well?
A Queen does for her subjects what a Priestess does for her congregants - She bridges the gap between the people, and something greater. A Queen brings the world to all her many people. A Priestess brings the Universe to rather fewer people.
Then Oya and Oxossi asserted that while all three of Them had things to teach me about what it means for me to be a Messenger of the Gods, both Oya and Oxossi have access to me through AMUH, so, as I suspected, I'm to work with Taliesin for the Trance Class.
And then Taliesin came forward. He was before me, and then, as I tried to look at Him, as He began to speak, He was behind me, placing a Celtic Lap Harp in my lap - at which point I realized I had been sitting cross-legged for I don't know how long.
This stuff is harder to take - in some ways it's too close to my wishes and dreams to feel real, and at the same time, it's that much more powerful for how deep those wishes run.
He said I've spent the last several lifetimes giving up what I want doing what I want to DO in order to be what I must BE, and I have played the same pattern out in my own life repeatedly, whenever the opportunity to tell myself this story again presented itself.
I keep giving up the Bard to be the Priestess. I keep telling myself I can't do both, that the music is just a hobby, that the messages are a sepparate issue, that I will never be accepted as a performer, that I don't have the time, effort, and heart to dedicate to my arts because I need to focus on serving my people and the divine.
He said that other cultures may not see that a Bard IS a Priest, but He knows - He is both. Not sepparately, but as one calling. He will teach me the keys I have been searching for, how to be a Bardic Priestess, but if He gives me this, I may not keep it to myself as a hobby. What He will teach me IS service to the Divine, and I will have to step outside my fears that my art is not good enough to serve.
I started crying, because as He was telling me this story, and showing me the pieces where I had indeed played this game with myself in this life over and over and over, and am doing it again now, it hurt so bad.
And at the same time, I can't quite bear to hope that something will actually come of this.
I know that part of where this is coming from is my learning that DOing is the exernalization of BEing, and so I cannot keep them sepparate.
I'm bemused, though, that it took me so long to realize that there was a pun in what was first said to me years and years ago: The "Keys" I have needed to unlock these Mysteries? They're musical keys.
[Edited to add]
I forgot to mention: Afterwards, I had the idea that I should have a necklace with a Celtic-style Harp pendant. farmount offerred me such an object. It took me a bit to realize she wasn't offerring me a pendant, but an actual Celtic Lap Harp! *boggles*
Sir yes sir!
I was just digging through my journal and realized my first touches of Taliesin were all the way back in March of 2003!
--Ember--
Tonight's trance class included the exercise of journeying out to someplace to meet the beings we'll be inviting to ride us for the Graduation ritual.
I had asked hilarypoet if she would please guide the journey, because farmount's graduation assignment as Warder is to ward the Graduation Ritual without the benefit of my guidance - I'm going to join the students in trancework. I'm also doing this to make sure at least one of the instructors is actually going through the same kind of stuff the students are going through, and because I genuinely appreciate the opportunity to work in this open context, and because I've been thwapped upside the head with the clue-by-four that this is what I'm supposed to DO.
Sirs Yes Ma'ams!
For all that HilaryPoet's gentle, melodic voice is what carried me out, I didn't follow - and in fact barely heard - anything she actually said.
--------------------
I found myself standing on a bit of a plateau up a fairly tall mountain. Nothing even as big as my Dad's old yard, though maybe as big as just the back lawn. But not grass, relatively smooth grey stone. I could hear the wind blowing a bit, but it wasn't too bad up there. Just a bit lonely. I called out and heard my voice echoing back at me.
Then I realized Rabbit was with me - He grumbled that He'd been there for a while already, but I only just noticed Him. And He suggested I look behind me.
I couldn't turn around, but I could sort of look over my shoulder, and I realized that behind me there was a cave into the mountain, and in front of that, a small campfire being tended by Oxossi. I believe He wore leather, and I know His hair was long and braided, but aside from that and the stick He was using to poke at the fire, I didn't have much of a good look, because I could only use peripheral vision and a general sense of presence to "see" Him.
He suggested with few words and a great deal of meaning, that I was up a mountain to do some trance work, and should probably get to journeying, eh? This was a little confusing - story within a story within a story? - but at the same time it made sense, so I went with it.
There's a bit of a jumble here - this journey felt more like a dream than usual. I remember sort of floating out...
The next clear memory is of standing in the middle of a fairly wide open area, with Rabbit by my side, and a circle of deities surrounding me. Only the radius of the circle from me to any given deity was many yards. I didn't try to count or identify the beings present immediately. It was clear They came from many cultures, and I was sort of daunted just being there. Besides, it was just hazy enough that I couldn't see much landscape beyond the circle, and the beings defining the circle were a little bit indistinct.
But three beings were quite clear, and started a lecture to me while the others started a sort of circle dance that spun the circle round, and then pulled it in from each of the 4 directions, and back out again.
Oxossi stood behind me and to the right - a different path than the Oxossi I percieved up the mountain... which actually makes me wonder all of the sudden if the fellow up that mountain was Oxossi at all, actually... Huh... But it was clearly Oxossi behind me and to the right.
Oya stood behind me to the left.
A shining being that I knew must be Taliesin was before me, but I couldn't look at Him yet.
Oxossi explained that I had been doing good work. Taliesin explained that I already knew I was a messenger. Oya asserted that I am strong. They talked about how I have been doing a very good job of working towards making myself capable and worthy of my calling... to the point of avoiding the work of the calling itself, perhaps.
Oya said I'm afraid of what the work means for me. She said I was worried that Serving meant being Subservient, that in doing the work I know I'm meant to do, I'm giving myself up, letting myself be taken over - in short, doing for the gods exactly what I've been raised to never do for a man. I'm supposed to be a strong, independant woman who makes her own decisions and holds her own. How can I call myself that AND call myself a servant?
Oya asked, rhetorically, what exactly I think the word QUEEN means? A Queen serves her people. She loves them, and knows them, and serves them. It's not just what she DOES, it's who she IS. And yet who would call a queen subservient? Is Oya, the epitome of a Queen, subservient? Is She not a good Queen? Does She not know Her people well?
A Queen does for her subjects what a Priestess does for her congregants - She bridges the gap between the people, and something greater. A Queen brings the world to all her many people. A Priestess brings the Universe to rather fewer people.
Then Oya and Oxossi asserted that while all three of Them had things to teach me about what it means for me to be a Messenger of the Gods, both Oya and Oxossi have access to me through AMUH, so, as I suspected, I'm to work with Taliesin for the Trance Class.
And then Taliesin came forward. He was before me, and then, as I tried to look at Him, as He began to speak, He was behind me, placing a Celtic Lap Harp in my lap - at which point I realized I had been sitting cross-legged for I don't know how long.
This stuff is harder to take - in some ways it's too close to my wishes and dreams to feel real, and at the same time, it's that much more powerful for how deep those wishes run.
He said I've spent the last several lifetimes giving up what I want doing what I want to DO in order to be what I must BE, and I have played the same pattern out in my own life repeatedly, whenever the opportunity to tell myself this story again presented itself.
I keep giving up the Bard to be the Priestess. I keep telling myself I can't do both, that the music is just a hobby, that the messages are a sepparate issue, that I will never be accepted as a performer, that I don't have the time, effort, and heart to dedicate to my arts because I need to focus on serving my people and the divine.
He said that other cultures may not see that a Bard IS a Priest, but He knows - He is both. Not sepparately, but as one calling. He will teach me the keys I have been searching for, how to be a Bardic Priestess, but if He gives me this, I may not keep it to myself as a hobby. What He will teach me IS service to the Divine, and I will have to step outside my fears that my art is not good enough to serve.
I started crying, because as He was telling me this story, and showing me the pieces where I had indeed played this game with myself in this life over and over and over, and am doing it again now, it hurt so bad.
And at the same time, I can't quite bear to hope that something will actually come of this.
I know that part of where this is coming from is my learning that DOing is the exernalization of BEing, and so I cannot keep them sepparate.
I'm bemused, though, that it took me so long to realize that there was a pun in what was first said to me years and years ago: The "Keys" I have needed to unlock these Mysteries? They're musical keys.
[Edited to add]
I forgot to mention: Afterwards, I had the idea that I should have a necklace with a Celtic-style Harp pendant. farmount offerred me such an object. It took me a bit to realize she wasn't offerring me a pendant, but an actual Celtic Lap Harp! *boggles*
Sir yes sir!
I was just digging through my journal and realized my first touches of Taliesin were all the way back in March of 2003!
--Ember--