Sacred Well Congregation International Interfaith Celebration 2010 (Part I)
Keep pure your highest ideal
Strive ever towards it
Let naught stop you or turn you aside
How shall I begin to talk of this odd, beloved weekend of mine? At the very beginning , perhaps, a day before it, when I was called and asked if I wouldn’t mind staying a little later than my original time to leave.
Sacred Well’s Convention was opening registration at two in the afternoon on Thursday and, though I prefer to start my religious retreats near as possible to the moment of their opening, Thursday was also Third Thursday for RCG and thus I’d plotted leaving right after it. I agreed that I could pick a person coming in late from the airport around shortly before eleven.
Which turned into his plane getting in forty minutes late. And then he didn’t get through airport and getting his luggage until thirty minutes after that. Which had us leaving the airport around eleven-forty instead, and the city around midnight. The boy, himself, was entertaining at least. A little abrasive but that was far easier to adjust to than the clouds of cigarette smoke that kept being drug into the car.
The drive was relatively easy for the first two hours. Open, empty Texas roads of midnight. Where the stars, the big bright moon, and the sixteen-wheelers hauling their loads are the only things with you. Before we got utterly lost between Lakey and Uvalde. For another hour. Had to flash down the only other car we saw in the whole time. Proceeded to get the lovely amazingly sweet Ruth lost with us.
Before eventually making one of the phones get a call out to the woman who owned the ranch we were staying on, though not a person at the festival. Thus, we all three, in two cars, turned around and drove until we found the security guard truck (hypothetically called by the ranch owners) who drove us to where we were supposed to be.
But - with it being three-thirty, neither he or I knew which cabins we were in, so we had to wake up two cabins before magically landing on the one I was in, with the people who mentioned my name once or twice before falling asleep. Magically, moonlit, we stole the bunk-bed near the door, threw out bedding down on it and fell into a deep sleep.
Friday
I woke up about nine o’clock and got dressed. Hugged everyone good morning and wandered down from my cabin to the pavilion where breakfast was. It was a surprisingly nice spread - bacon, round sausage, a baked egg dish covered in cheese, some bread with butter, orange juice, milk and coffee. I hugged many people and got to relay the insanity of arrival many times.
I stayed up at the pavilion, which was where my first class on the Green Craft Tree of Life was moved. It was a two hour class and I took around six to seven pages of notes. While I have heard of the Cabalistic Tree of Life before and seen the diagrams, I’ve never taken a class or read a book on them or even talked to someone who’d worked with them.
It was intense and quite interesting. We talked about the Lunar, Stellar, and Solar circles, and how they match up to personal and collective consciousness and unconsciousness. How the astrological planets add up into them, how and when the last three planets were added in to the zodiac calendar standings, and why Venus and Mercury are the only two planets with two signs, two sexes and two elements.
We talked about the four elemental paths (within the Findias/Air, Gurias/Fire, Falias/Earth, and Murias/Water kingdoms) and how all our paths are between Heaven (Ouranos or Stellar) and Earth (Gaia or Lunar).
We talked a little about the differences between the Green Craft Tree of Life and The Jewish/Hebrew/Cabbalistic Tree’s of Life. About where the season go, and how all the animals of the zodiac, or Belt of Animals, and the 22 trees and the holidays, and the animals and how the 12 tribes of Juddah & 12 sons of Jacob matched up to the Zodiac Places, and which animals/elements/zodiac went to the Four Gospels of the Bible and so much else went in.
Even at six pages of notes I know there is so much more to know about with just this.
After the class there was a break before lunch, during which I was stolen by the woman who’d given me my scholarship originally and asked to come help do some work on the man who’d just taught my class. While he was presently having problems and being seen my a woman who was a massage therapist, she said she remembered I’d just finished my Reiki Master-y and asked me to do what I could as well.
There’s such a dichotomy in me, in my anamol-ic (?) placement in this group. Not yet initiated, not yet in their Rooty (pre-initiated) course, possibly to be put into a neophyte class and here I am being called on because of my Mastery, to go do work on one of their oldest and dearest of their community. I think we’re all still working out this one.
I’m also still a little...intensely shy about having to say to someone who doesn’t know me that I’m a Reiki Master. (Even if I would get over that by a very large degree over the next day or two while checking in on said person, and making him follow the instructions we all left him with.)
I took a short break before lunch away from the teeming groups of people to start writing up my RCG ritual night (so as not to be so incredibly behind), to balance and write and get into my skin. During lunch there were several announcements as well. And it was when they started figuring out the last needed people for the main ritual on Saturday.
In which I offered to be a Light Bearer, because I left something in me saying ‘go on, help, do something little for them’ when they started talking, and then my job was upgraded to being a Light Bearer and an Element Invoker. And then, before I could even ask, the person in question, said And you’ll do West. I nearly laughed. Of course I will. Am. Do. West. Water. I was a little nervous what with having to memorize suddenly three different sets of ceremonial, formulaic lines.
But I put my mind to it.
Copied them down in my Butterfly-Jasper BOS that I take to my classes, ritual and everything else notes you’ve all gotten to see before, that I make all these posts from the short hand in. And I began working on the first and second of my lines. This was, also, when I was given a charge to keep track of - a young cocky boy in his early twenties, who would be doing Air.
Of course. What element would I be following? Air.
It felt like such an interesting lesson. And he was so very young and air-y.
We had a teeny tiny break between lunch and I wandered before having to return to the class taught my Vivianne and Chris Crowley. You remember how overly in love I was with the Phoenix Rising class, right? This one was on Cauldron, Grail & Sacred Well and it, too, start with an extensive PowerPoint! I made a long list of the different kinds we talked about in our class first
We were told about the Gunderstrup Cauldron, The ‘Prentice Pillar’ (Rosslin Chapel), Chalice Well (Glastonbury), Dan Brown & Marrian Zimmer Bradley’s books, Aberysthwyth (Wales), The Marian Grail; Mary Magdalene’s cup (England), The Merovingian Dynasty (Mary & Jesus’ descendants; France), Merlin’s Tomb & Viviane’s Lake (Brittany), Lucifer’s Fall, The Emerald Tablet & The Emerald Grail, The Tarot Magician & Who the Grail Serves, Rossetti’s Grail Art in the 1850’s; The Woman/Goddess Bearing the Cup, Antioch Chalice (6th Century; America), The Kensington Runestone, and Indiana Jones & The Lost Crusade. The pictures and background were truly amazing.
My favorite piece of writing was this one
In search of the Holy Grail
Keep pure your highest ideal
Strive ever towards it
Let naught stop you or turn you aside
For mine is the secret door
That opens upon the door of Youth
And mine is the wine of the Cup of Life
Which is the cauldron of Cerridwen
And Holy Grail of Immortality.
We also talked a lot about how the myths have changed, when and where, and how the real world has interpreted the words or what/who’s it was. The Grail Quest as it is to everyone and to the seeker. It wasn’t exclusive on the topic, but a quote that was said during it resonated so well with me - the me of this year and coming home and all the changes.
Give yourself the time and space
to find yourself again
There was a small break and then we did a ritual following-up on their class once more. We processed from the class pavilion down the hill to where ritual was already set up, half-walking, half-dancing to the tune of an exquisite piper. And then we sang the chant we learned at the end of their earlier class
Come to, Oh comet to the Chalice of the Goddess
Come to the Cauldron of Triple Cerridwen
Come to, Oh come to the Holy Well of Vision
Come to receive the Wisdom of the Goddess
The circle was cast, Earth & Water, Fire & Air, and all between. Then we summoned three goddess, each by dancing in a circle and chanting their name over and over, before they were venerated by the main priest - Cerridwen, Arna, and Brigid.
They blessed a cauldron in the middle, amid the winding circles of those gathered close around them. And then we were allowed to walk up and ask a question to one of the goddess, to receive her blessing on something. And what I wanted to ask for a next year blessing on was in my head long before it got to be turn. About the fiasco of earlier this month and the attempt for next month, everything of everyone’s tied into that endeavor, for so much time more than two weeks from now.
And before I could even open my mouth once I’d stepped in front of Brigid, she cocked her head with a rather crooked smile, leaned down to pick up my token, and still dripping placed it in my hand as she said, “Nothing of worth is easy.”
I may have stood there rooted to the ground for a few seconds.
Ritual ended up as normal, cake and ale, a healing circle, and much laughter before it closed. As much as I love the laughter of this group, sometimes there are still antics in toward the end of each circle which get to me now and again. I’m an old foggy, old fashioned in so many ways sometimes, especially when I’m admitting to feeling discomfort about something that happens often and is emotionally supported by all the members of said coven(s).
There was a short break before and after dinner and I took full advantage of getting a short nap during that hour and half, too. Before the next class would begin for the evening which was a Mystical Sounds. We started with a beautiful song, that has been sung in a million places by million different political and religious groups. A song so beautiful I’m going to share it here, because it was so beautiful and important (and not new) that I kept the hand out she gave it to us on and wrote it in my Butterfly Book.
Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me
Let there be peace on earth,
The peace that was meant to be,
With God as Creator
Family all are we.
Let us walk with each other
In perfect harmony.
Let peace begin with me
Let this be the moment now.
With every step I take
Let this be my joyous vow:
To take each moment
And live each moment
In peace eternally.
Let there be peace on earth,
And let it begin with me.
The class itself was about music used in ritual and ritual used in music itself. We went over early rock and a little classics, the predictable people one can name without trying when thinking of music witches use. And then the teacher played several pieces for us. A lot of them did nothing for me (though I admit to a little love for the Crosby Stills Nash Guinevere; “Guinevere drew pentagrams, just like you my lady, just like you”).
The predictable ones were in there, too. Dar Williams, Stevie Nicks, Enya, and Loreena. But even though the class said it was going to incorporate Rock it really didn’t in my mind. Not that I ever think I’ll ever have a place for rock music in circle really, but I was open to hearing about it and then a little disappointed that I’d come into the class having been given a promise by the teacher I never saw fulfilled.
The night had hanging out and chanting around the fire and drinking and singing inside the pavilion for the rest of the night. While I still feel a little offset from the wife of the duo that have been talking about being my teachers, who was the one who told me about January, I got told by her husband point blank that he was very sure he saw me as being one of them, and that he basically wanted to start teaching me next week. With the proviso’s of busy life and needing to check in with her first.
It’s a very back and forth thing, this figuring it out process. In my head. And for them, it seems.
We spent a lot of the night sitting groups talking about any number of things. It was a little crazy in the middle of the first night, when I pulled back from the group and realized - no, really, I’m here, in the middle of nowhere Texas, discussing the politics of coronations with a woman who had her coronation with, and hived off directly from, Margaret Adler.
I headed back to the cabin early to finish my write-up for RCG. And then we all stayed up talking. Me, and the two people possibly to teach me, and two more people in their group, a married couple, one who’s just become first level and another who’s one ritual away from being at the same place. We talked about the day and the boy I was assigned to and we all practiced our lines out loud.
A man with beautiful hands played with my hair and attempted to work on the mess that is, and always shall be, my shoulders. The place where I keep everything. But I truly loved the long time spent on my hair and the camaraderie of the last hour or so spent in my cabin on that night. I felt so very warm and welcome and understanding that night.
And best of all? As I was fading fast into sleep, I was finally able to recite to myself all three of my lines for the ritual for the following night’s ritual.
(To be continued/concluded in Part II)