Mu hu memories....like the corners of my mind...
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This copper chalice is one of my more prized possessions. It was purchased the summer of 1995 from a little shop called Second Hand Rose Antiques. This shop was in a greenish building on the corner of Central and Cooper in Memphis. I had been instructed to go there by my first teacher who was with me this particular afternoon because she 'had some errands to run' and I was her transportation because she didn't drive.
We entered this little shop and she went straight up to the counter and told the man standing there "Hello". Then she joined me as we walked around the shop looking at things there. I fell in love with a hand blown glass pitcher. It was a perfect replacement for a pitcher that I was currently using, but wanted to replace because I was afraid it would get broken. The stoneware pitcher I was currently using had been my great grandmothers. According to my grandmother, it was left by the midwife at the house she was born in the night of her birth. I have no idea why a midwife would bring such a thing to a house to deliver a baby, but it was left there and my great grandmother gave it to my grandmother when she married and my grandmother did the same to my mother. I actually didn't get it until I'd gotten divorced for the third time. She gave me her dining room suite and this pitcher was in the china cabinet, along with a several other things. I had been using it ever since, but each time I was afraid that something would happen. Strange things occur in a household with cats.
Anyway, I was looking for a replacement and this beautiful blown glass pitcher, itself possibly an antique offered a suitable replacement. I decided to purchase it. I also found, apparently just unpacked from a shippment that arrived that morning, several copper items, one of which was this chalice. I also snagged a very small copper pitcher, which I have also used on my altars from time to time, as well as four smelting pots...these being little pots with swing type handles. These I made into incense burners with a bit of sand and charcoal. and into votive holders. I love copper, the metal of Earth and the metal of my ruling planet Venus. I am doubly ruled by Venus as it rules both my Sun and Ascendant, Taurus and Libra. I have always loved copper, even as a child my greatest delight was collecting uncirculated pennies because they were so shiny. I still love the color of bright copper.
I brought the pitcher and the copper pieces up to the counter. I was surprised at the price on the pitcher, nearly $70!!! I wasn't going to be able to get the copper pieces and said as much. The man behind the counter had been looking at my teacher ...not saying a word, but I was aware of some sort of tension between them. He asked me what I was going to use the pitcher for, so I told him, outright, that I wanted it for my altar. He wrapped it carefully and then reached for the copper pieces. I told him that I would not be purchasing them as the pitcher had tapped me out. He continued to wrap them also, putting them in the bag with the pitcher. At my puzzled look, he said, they hadn't been priced yet, that they had just come from Germany - their buyer was German and traveled to buy things a few times a year for the shop. He shrugged and said, "These are on me." At my continued confused look, he said, "You didn't argue on the price, hon.. You should never argue on the price of your tools, and you didn't." I stared at him, drop jawed, while he finished wrapping up the pieces and collected my money. My teacher was already headed for the door. As we left, she said, "Well, you passed THAT test with flying colors." Something told me not to ask further questions. But my head was whirling with the implications of what had just happened. Then she said we had to hurry, "There are people to see you at 2 o'clock at the Peabody."
We drove through town, in silence while I wondered just what in blue blazes was going on. When we got to the Peabody, we walked around the lobby, the entire length and width of it. Then we went to Cafe Expresso for White Chocolate Charlotte and coffee. I looked at my watch as we sat down and said, "It's 2:30! What about the people we were supposed to see?" She said, "I didn't say you were supposed to see them, I said they were supposed to see you. And they did." To this day, I don't know who 'saw me' or exactly why. I know there were people she was involved with that never came out in public - that had too much to lose to ever be seen. I don't know if some of those people were watching that day or not..just that she said I had been seen, with her, and that was enough. I think, of all the things I learned from this woman, what I learned that day about perception, about awareness, was one of the most important things she taught me.
Later, she would teach me much about what NOT to do, about taking things too seriously and acting out of paranoia and hurting people by pushing them away for no other reason than imagined slights attached to innocent questions and actions. There was plenty wrong with how we parted, and it hurt me deeply. It wasn't the last time that was to occur, but this was the first cut you might say, and what people say about it, that the first cut is the deepest...it's true. I can still worry that scar and it will open up, and memories, like blood, come pouring out. I have a much thicker pad to blot that wound with these days. But it remains as a lesson about the price of total trust, and what happens when, for whatever reason, that trust is misplaced both by you and in you.
Even though I received those beautiful copper pieces at no charge, they were not free. In fact, they turned out to be more costly than both the pitchers together. The glass pitcher is no longer, much like that life is no longer, it suffered exactly the same fate that I imagined the stoneware pitcher might have, had I continued to use it. Funny...or perhaps ironic, as that is...it had its own lesson.
Remember I said that I am a Taurus, ruled by the planet Venus? Well, we Bulls like our 'stuff' - our 'shinys'. But it is never wise to attach too much worth or significance to objects. When I use the chalice now, it's not just filled with the wine of sacrament in ritual. When I drink from it, I drink of the memories it holds, and remember the price it extracted and to remember to separate emotion from what is practical. If you get attached to objects, you can also get attached to people, like I was attached to my teacher. That kind of attachment clouds your judgement and can and often will make you make mistakes. Learning to separate love from that which does not serve has been an ongoing lesson.