serve? Do you say yes to too much? Or do you rifuse the gifts of the universe too often? Are
you doing too much or too little? Are you using your talents and taking care of your physical and emotional health? If you listen deeply and look toward the route that feels most right, it will open in front of you. You will feed and be jed.
ABUNDANT EARTH
Another facet of earth and North is money. I would hazard to guess that
most of us have trouble with money in one way or another. As we may
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have skewed attitudes toward our bodies, our culture also teaches us
skewed attitudes toward money and many of us have reacted to that in
ways that end up not serving us. I have worked at extremes of the economic spectrum, but I have lived most of my life below the poverty leve�.
This partially stems from my working-class background, but is more
deeply rooted in a strong sense that if I had more than I needed, it harmed
another, taking away what they might need. This was coupled with my
growing awareness of social injustice and inequality and a need to right the
wrongs of the world. I hated money because I hated what I saw as a mechanism of control and oppression. Poverty itself became a status symbol to show my friends.
These days, I am attempting to live more in balance, having pushed my
edges and boundaries around money in many different ways, probing the
wound and trying to understand it. I worked full time on the Pacific Stock
Exchange for four years, trying to learn something about our economic
system and to challenge my prejudices and thinking. I worked for four
years as a peep-show dancer to learn more about that way of relating to the
confluence of money, sex, and power. I worked for four years full time in
a soup kitchen, living on room and board and a small stipend, spending
most of my time with the poor and disenfranchised. I learned different
things about myself in each of these places, yet they all showed me a common human response: greed and need are everywhere, no matter who holds the economic advantage.
I have tried to change this response of greed and its siblings, scarcity and
fear, into a response of generosity. I write on my money as a spell: "Share
Wealth"; "Be Kind"; "Generosity Helps Us All:' I want to give back. I
want to smile at passersby and enjoy the sun on my face. I leave huge tips.
There is one cafe where I often eat breakfast on weekends. The staff likes
me and my friends and has taken to reducing our check. We, of course,
have increased their tips. The checks have gotten so low that we are most
often leaving a one hundred percent gratuity. This feels like good magic.
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Get out some paper and pen. Set a timer or clock alarm for six minutes. Begin to write
down everything you think or feel about monry and your relationship to it, how it affects the
world, how it works (or doesn'O in your life. Start with the phrase "Monry is . . .
" and
move into answering the question: "How do I feel about monry?" Probably some things you
already know will arise, but underneath that may be suppositions you were not conscious of.
If you can observe something, you have the opportunity to change it.
OPENING TO GENEROSITY
Just as energy follows breath, abundance and happiness follow generosity.
This is the occult face of the adage "You have to spend money to make
money:' Magically, this phrase is not about investment, but generosity.
Would that multinational corporations could learn this lesson. Whether
they learn it or not, we can. We can try. We can spread a smile, a dollar, and
lend a listening ear.
I like to also remember that multinational corporations, despite being
legally treated as singular entities, are actually full of individual human beings, some of whom are probably reading this now. If I recall all of the people sitting at desks or toiling in factories, I know that change is possible. If I am open to one person touching me and changing my life today, others can be, too. How can I live to create abundance for all? Sometimes
For one month, leave a bigger tip than you are used to at the local cafe. Write spells 1
joy and generosity on your monry. Try smiling at five people a day and see what happens.
Encourage the creative impulse 1 another. Set out a plate 1 food in gratitude for your ancestors. When the thought enters your head, "I don't have enough," or "I can't do that," try to turn that thought around. Just for that moment,jocus on what you do have and what you
can do. Then pass it on. What is true, right now?
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Look at how you use natural resources such as water, time, gasoline,
trees, and electricity. Look especially closely at their subsets-things like
packaging, air conditioning, new paper usage as opposed to high postconsumer waste content, bus or bicycle travel as opposed to car travelmake your own list. Have you already worked on changing your habits around natural resource usage to come in line with a more sustainable,
healthier earth relationship? Let every interaction, with human, animal, or
vegetable, be an interaction that fosters connection. Connection follows
generosity of spirit and action.
EMBRACING DEATH
Another important aspect of the North and the powers of earth is the
strength of death in the cycle of life. Again, this is the juxtaposition of the
stable cube with the moving pentacle: death is final and death is simply
change. As a reminder of this, I wear two silver bracelets, one of small
linked skulls and one of linked infinity symbols-finality and flow, the
paradox of death and life. I am learning to embrace it all.
There are many ways to see these cycles, for life and death are all
around us. You can look at the fly caught in a web; it is dead, but it is also
food for the spider, so it is life. See the bird fallen beneath the tree or the
shriveled leaf on the otherwise green plant. Once the leaf is plucked, the
green parts will grow stronger. The bird will decompose and eventually
feed the tree. Our lives mirror these spirals in microcosm.
Years ago, I decided that since I was not a gardener, and was not going
to have a child, I needed to explore life's cycles in a different way. I began
by doing hospice work, caring for the dying. I learned a lot about the powers of North: about death and the body. There is a lot of strength in death: as the body fights the toxins that consume it, the spark of life strives
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to reach the surface. The body's functions continue in an increasingly erratic fashion, no longer trustworthy, but still quite present. A person calling for help, tangled in sheets, or needing to be cleaned up after a bout of diarrhea often awakened me in the middle of the night.
Through this, I began to see the struggle of aspects within myself that
were dying to change yet still clinging to life. I also saw that when things
are dying, they aren't necessarily graceful or pretty. I resist change, awkwardly fighting and complaining against it, feeling out of my element and exposed, just as if someone was seeing my metaphysical diarrhea. Yet I always end up running toward change, full tilt, near the end. And so new phases in my life are born, and I learn how to walk in my new wo
rld.
What have you learned from your cycles? What is your pattern? Take a breath and ask
yourself, right now, "What needs to give way so that something new can grow? Now reexamine your attitudes. Are you ready to unbind those that do not serve you, and to release the energy they've tied up?
When situations have run their course, they often cause frustration or
inertia. You can choose to use outdated situations as a challenge to aid
your new sense of practice, or you can choose to walk away from them,
truly letting them go. Earth has the power to compost, to rest, and to leave
space and food for something new to grow over time.
Are there people who were once friends, lovers, or colleagues who don't help your life and
practice? Can those relationships change or be culled?
Learning about the importance of death and change doesn't always
have to be about asking the big questions. Some things just fall away and
new things enter in. What in your life can you cull? Are there drawers in
your bureau packed with papers you no longer read or clothes you no
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longer wear? Are there projects that don't excite you but that still sap your
energy because you have not taken leave of them? Is there an attitude you
still carry that does not serve who you have become?
Take a breath. Open those drawers and begin to sort what is usiful and what can be
given away. Clean out your closet. Snip the dying leaves from your plants. Pull some weeds.
What are you willing to let rest, or to cull and let die, to bring in the
possibility of eventual new life? Winter calls. Death calls. No fear, only
the cycle. Feel the skull resting beneath your face. Your bones support
your life.
The Tomb of Bifth
Die before you die. -A SuFI TEACHING
Availability is in the moment, and openness occurs when we let go of the unnecessary. Skill is holding onto the necessary. -RoBERT FRIPP3
Throughout this book we have been asked to look at our stories, at our
bodies, at our sexuality, at our thoughts and perceptions. HopefUlly,
through this work, we have come to recognize the many parts of ourselves
that bump around inside of us. It is these parts, often called our personalities, which the Sufis speak of when they say you must die to yourself in order to live. In this way, the cycles of earth and North exist in our emotional states as well as in our bodies.
When we worked on the self point of the Iron Pentacle, we saw that
there were many masks to strip away, leaving only our core essence behind.
You may have put a few layers back on since then, so as to function better
3www.guitarcraft.com
North: Birthin<s our wholeness
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in your everyday life. Other layers and masks of "self" may have crept
back in over time. Take another look. What part are you identifying with
today? Who do you say you are?
Often, I will find that I am identifying emotions as sel£ I am letting
the emotional drama of a given situation take over as though it directly relates to who I am. We see this often, when friends or associates want to relate the terrible injustice done to them at the hands of the person who
made their latte in the morning or at the long line they had to wait in at
the airport. They have begun to identify with the emotions brought up
by those situations and taken them in, coating their personalities with indignation, and giving innocuous situations that could have been dealt with in ten minutes the weight of their day, and sometimes the weight of
many years.
Can you catch these emotions as they rise, before they harden into a
crust around your soul? I like to practice feeling my impatience or indignation, then take a breath, and remind myself of what the actual situation in front of me is. Is the airport full of people conspiring to ruin my day?
No. Is the delay in service a personal affront designed to make me miss my
appointments? Likely not. I am not the center of the multiverse, rather,
that is only the story I tell mysel£ I can feel my emotions and then put the
stories to rest, to sleep in the tomb of birth. What is born from that tomb?
Many things, including the possibility of being present in the situation
and an abundance of energy not tied up in self-justification. Often greater
patience and compassion are born as added bonuses.
The seed is in the ground, waiting. The bear sleeps in the cave. You sit,
still as a mountain. Something gestates in the darkness.
When you find yourself harboring grievances, give them a cave to sleep in instead. Srr
what happens when you take a breath,Jeel your feet beneath you, and really look at the peoplr
around you. Send a breath through your heart. Engage your belly muscles, reminding yourself that you have a will and are not simply at the mercy if every stray action and mrotio11.
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Let the situations that frustrate you in the moment enter the Tomb of Birth. Feel the cool,
cavelike quality surrounding you. Be still. Be still inside, for just one moment. One long
breath. Remember that you have an essence deep inside that is not this emotion, not this situation. Die to this piece. Let it rest. It may not need to live, but you do. You cannot live fully if all of your life's energy is taken up by random situations and injuries of little consequence. Do you have to be right? No, but you have to be present in order to live.
From the tomb, something new and fine has a chance to be born now. Cultivate that
which is soul strengthening. As those other parts sleep, your essence can awaken.
THE ANCESTORS
The ancestors are those who came before us, those who taught us, who live
in our blood, bones, and intellect. You may wish to begin honoring them
when you cast the sacred sphere. After I call upon the Guardians and
Gods, and honor the Faery beings, I honor the ancestors, calling especially
upon my magical grandfather, Victor, to be welcome at my rite. Set out a
plate of favorite foods or recite a poem. We are the present, yet we honor
and bless the memories that anchor us to the past, and allow us to move
toward the future.
F LOWING AND SPANNING: THE PENTACLES
Carved into the green cube, the pentacle glows, holding the energy of
shifting change. Within the structure of your soul and body, the Iron and
Pearl Pentacles meet, expanding your ability to grow into yourself and
connect out with the world. These pentacles also connect to the elements
swirling in your body. Iron and Pearl sing together within you, just as you
sing, placed between earth and sky. You are child of earth and starry
heaven, whole and complete unto yourself.
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Breathe deeply. Connect once again to the fiery star in the earth, calling it up your
grounding cord, and into your body. Begin to run the Iron Pentacle: sex, pride, self, power,
passion. Sex. Run this over and over, until the energy flows fast and clear, and you begin to
tingle with it. Then draw the circle around yourself: sex, self, passion, pride, power, sex. Feel
yourself glowing in the Pentacle of Iron. Take a deep breath. Let the energy lighten, beginning to vibrate up one octave, until it shifts into the energy of Pearl. Begin to run the Pearl Pentacle through your body: love, law, knowledge, liberty, wisdom, love. Run this over and
over, until the energy sparkles, radiating and luminous. Then draw the circle around yourself. Love, knowledge, wisdom, law, liberty. Love. Feel it. Feel yourself full and glowing. Iron and Pearl. Call the Iron energy into your mind, your body, feel it like a bass note beneath
the Pearl, supporting it, and the Pearl answering back, in harmony. Feel the energies sink
into your body and rise outward. Iron and Pearl. Let them vibrate together.
You can take the meditation below point by point, feeling the interplay
of the octave and the way the Iron energy makes room for Pearl to appear.
You can also use the Devotional Dance movements to feel the energies
more fully and to sense the dance between the points.
Focusing on sex, let yourself fill with sex energy, then let it begin to shift, vibrating with
love. Feel how love and sex interact, supporting one another, life force feeding into the powers of creation. Feel pride. Fill with the energy of pride. Let pride lay the foundation for law.
Feel them working together, vibrating within you, the confidence of pride not coddling weakness, and thus leading to the balance of law based on worth and connection with life� flow.
Fill with self. Feel the "I am" within you, quiet or loud. Listen, let self be answered by
knowledge. All that you know, all you are growing to know, comes from the strength of
knowing yourself. Let self and knowledge dance together within your skin.
Now fill with power. Feel the strength flowing into your body, feel how power shifts
within you, vibrating with liberty. Liberty is only attained through the basis of power, true
power, power within, power with. This brings liberty, and liberty reinforces power. The more
liberation, the truer the power. Now fill with passion. Feel the desire that is keyed to your
creation, what you want to bring into the world, and what draws you. This is the passion
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that flows now into wisdom: the overflowing cup of desire and intuition. Passion is jed by
wisdom and wisdom is cultivated through the exercise of passion. Feel that dance.
Feel yourself, red and silvery white, glowing cool and hot. Combusting yet not burning
away. Feel the power in your hands, in your genitals, flowing through your feet. You are connected to the Star Goddess and the first acts of creation. All things begin with fire, and the pearl is born in the cauldron of the poet� heart. From the grit of your life comes burning