The Twelve Wild Swans
A Journey to the Realm of Magic, Healing, and Action
Rituals, Exercises, and Magical Training in the Reclaiming Tradition
Starhawk and Hilary Valentine
To the teachers, students, and organizers of Reclaiming, and to our loving and supportive partners, Michael and David
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Exercises
Introduction
THE TWELVE WILD SWANS
CHAPTER ONE: LEAVING THE CASTLE
The Elements Path: Air
The Inner Path: Questioning, and a Doorway out of the Castle
The Outer Path: Core Worth and Heritage
CHAPTER TWO: WANDERING IN THE WILDERNESS
The Elements Path: Evolving
The Inner Path: Generosity and Guidance
The Outer Path: Spontaneity and Balance
CHAPTER THREE: THE WICKED VOW
The Elements Path: Fire
The Inner Path: Anger and Clearing
The Outer Path: Injustice and Revenge
CHAPTER FOUR: CARRIED AWAY
The Elements Path: Water
The Inner Path: Weaving the Basket, Ecstasy
The Outer Path: Ritual Structure and Forms
CHAPTER FIVE: THE CHALLENGE
The Elements Path: Earth
The Inner Path: Nettles
The Outer Path: The Uses of Silence
CHAPTER SIX: HOLDING CENTER
The Elements Path: Spirit
The Inner Path: Core and Boundaries
The Outer Path: Modes of Awareness
CHAPTER SEVEN: THE TRANSFORMATION
The Elements Path: Transformation
The Inner Path: Facing Death
The Outer Path: Fear and Vision
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Praise
Other Works
Resources
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Exercises
CHAPTER ONE
Elements
Tree of Life Grounding
Saltwater Purification
Preparing to Cast a Circle
Casting Your First Circle
Invoking the Elements of Life
Devoking
Air:
Basic Breath Meditation
Many Different Breaths
Visualization
Inner
A Mysterious or Disturbing Dream
Using Divination
Physical Sensation, Gesture, or Symptom
Asking the Old Nurse
Walking Away from the Old Castle
Outer
Anchoring to Core Worth
Inflated/Deflated Self
Naming Our Ancestors
Ancestor Altar
Telling Ancestor Stories
Heritage Ritual
Center Invocation and Exercise
CHAPTER TWO
Elements
A Witch’s Walk
A Special Outdoors Spot
Finding the Old Woman
Creating a Home Altar
Invoking Deity
Inner
A Rose
In-drinking
Self-Blessing
Asymmetry
A Valentine
Sensation and Self-Comforting
A Mirror
Recognizing the Teacher in the Beggar Woman
A Food Offering
Asking the Old Woman
Outer
Wide Vision
Dropped and Open Attention
Spontaneous Ritual Sequence: Spontaneous Ritual 1
Identifying/Clarifying Ritual Intention
Spontaneous Ritual 2
Guidance Meditation
Offering Guidance/Anchor Exercise
Telling Our Money Stories
Money/Breath Exercise
Moving with Energy
Symphony of Sounds: Building an Energy Base
Following an Energy
Finding the Song of the Moment
Sacred Voice
Voice Practice
Leading Trance/Trance Induction
CHAPTER THREE
Elements
Anger Ritual
Breaking the Wicked Vow, Affirming the Wonderful Ones
Fire:
The Candle
The Hairbrush
Seeing Auras
The Brushdown
Aura Car Wash
Healing
Healing with a Partner
Shielding
Inner
Trance to the Salt Shore
Chakra Cleansing
An Anger Observatory
Breaking the Wicked Vow
Creating a Personal Anger Ritual
Outer
Remembering Our Allies
Love Bathing
Revenge and Impact Meditation
Subtle Forms of Revenge
Meeting Your Shadow Self
Meditation on Opposites
Shadow Beliefs
“I” Statements
Four Steps in Fighting Oppression
She Who Listens
Diversity Walk
Creating a Welcoming Space
Rage Ritual
Working with Gender Issues
Council with Witnesses and/or Questions
Many Genders
Don’t Panic
CHAPTER FOUR
Elements
Rainbow Induction
Trance to a Place of Personal Power
Trance to the Well of Healing
Trance into a Mysterious Dream
Inner
The Round
A Masked Tea Party
The Mystery
She Who Listens
Listening Exercise
Weaving the Basket
The Weave
Group Chanting
Adding Movement
Moving Through
Trance into a Tarot Card
Trance into a Natural Process
Trance into a Fairy Story
Outer
Basic Ritual Structure
Ritual Creation
The Tofu of Ritual
Making Sacred Space
Drumming and Dancing in the Directions
Energy Observation
Energy Tending
Moving Energy
Drum Trance
Quest/Pilgrimage/Treasure Hunt
Portals
Ritual Drama
Mummer’s Plays
The Perfect Act
Praising and Invoking
Weaving the Basket: Safety in Ritual
Support Roles:
Tenders
Deep Witnesses
Wranglers
Graces
Dragons
Crows
CHAPTER FIVE
Elements
Meeting an Herbal Ally
Practicing Magical Ethics
Spellcasting
Choosing Your Own Herbal Ally
Earth Meditation
Inner
Pomegranate’s Life-Purpose Exercise
Trance to the Fata Morgana to Receive a Challenge
Answering a Challenge
Nettle Magic: Nourishment
Nettle Magic: Strong Fiber of Soul
Cynthia’s Sewing Meditation
A Nettle Doll
Choosing Silence
Practicing Silence
Outer
The Sacred Task
The Feeling of
Doom
Warning Signals
The Person with the Pickup Truck
Finding a Source of Strength
Resting in the Goddess
Checking for Numbness
A Walk Through Town
Privilege Inventory
Power and Differential Exercise
Power and Speech Exercise
Shadow-Self Role-Plays
Stepping into Authority
CHAPTER SIX
Elements
Center: The Great Wheel
Center: The Cone of Power
Center: The Cauldron of Changes
Gwydion’s Opening to Deity Exercise
Calling Deity of Many Ancestries
Inner
Companion-Self Trance
Anchoring
Core Worth: Through Physical Sensation
Core Worth Spell: An Apple
Trance: The Crone’s Three Gifts
Outer
Mirror
Five Modes of Awareness
I Notice/I Imagine
A Walk in the Physical World
Creating a Shield
Shielding Practice
Anchoring Practice
Tunnel of Torture
Constructive Critique
Critique Practice
Wand Meditation
Passion/Compassion Meditation
Boundary Exercise
Precious Object Exchange
Jealousy Ritual
Gratitude Meditation
Creating a Glamour
Character Play
Aspecting
Pass-the-Cloak Aspecting
Bringing Someone Back
CHAPTER SEVEN
Elements
Creating Your Own Ritual
Once in a Month
The Waxing Year
The Waning Year
The Thresholds
Asking Your Fear Its Name
The Glass Half Full
Inner
Death Meditation: The Seamstress
Death Meditation: The Candle
Death Meditation: The Allies
Drum Trance: In the Orchard of Immortality
Outer
Overcoming Fear
Fear Ritual for Groups
Fire Meditation
Weaving in the Dungeon
Shared Intent Meditation
Vision Meditation
The Healing Ritual
Victory Ritual
The One-Winged Brother
Introduction
Embarking
Once upon a time, there was an island, a misty, secluded spot only half in this world, where priestesses, heroes, heras, and mages would go to be trained in magic. Called Avalon, Mona, the Isle of Women, its hidden groves would shelter the wise as they learned the language of birds and the speech of nature, the arts of sensing and shaping unseen energies, of moving at will through the spectrum of consciousness, of bending reality and shifting fate. The teachings of this place would be conveyed not through courses and tests but through transformative personal journeys that would change initiates as they faced challenges and grew in spiritual depth, integrity, and strength.
Avalon no longer exists in today’s world. The teachings of Witches and mages were for centuries condemned as heresy or ridiculed as superstition. Ancient knowledge was lost, forgotten, or superseded by the teachings of science and technology. Deep forests that were gateways to the Otherworld have been clear-cut; oracular caves have been replaced by Internet search engines.
Yet magic has reawakened in today’s high-tech world. The last half of the twentieth century saw a renewal of the ancient spiritual traditions of the Great Goddess. Women and men who sought new models of spiritual empowerment and craved an earth-honoring spirituality respectful of nature created new constellations of religious movements. Earth-based spirituality, feminist spirituality, Paganism, Gaia theory, Wicca, Witchcraft—hundreds of new/old traditions have arisen that reflect a diversity of approaches to the same basic understanding: that this earth—indeed, this cosmos—is a living being and that the interwoven web of life is sacred.
All magic arises from this basic understanding that everything is interconnected and interdependent. Magic has been defined by Western occultist Dion Fortune as “the art of changing consciousness at will.” Ritual, meditation, trance, prayer—indeed, all the techniques outlined in this book—are the tools of that art.
Over the last decades, those of us involved in the Goddess movement have learned much about magic through the process of creating and exploring ritual. And we have created our own Avalons: places and structures for teaching and training others, drawing on our experiments and the wisdom of our life experiences.
This book is an invitation to the isle of magic. In it we have attempted to document some of the exercises, processes, and training materials that our community has developed over the past twenty years and to put them in a form that can lead learners through a transformational journey. While many resources exist that give an introduction to magic, this book moves beyond beginning work to include advanced techniques for both individuals and groups.
The community we speak of is called Reclaiming. We are part of the larger movement, called feminist spirituality, that critiques the patterns of domination embedded in patriarchal religions and reenvisions a spirituality that can liberate women and men. For us, that new vision is rooted in the Goddess, the earth being who embodies the cycles of birth, growth, death, decay, and renewal in nature and in our human lives.
We are Pagans: we practice an earth-based spirituality rooted in respect for nature. We are Witches: our roots are in the initiatory Goddess traditions that arose in Europe and the Middle East, although our practice is strongly shaped by the multicultural traditions of this land. We make a powerful, personal commitment to the Goddess as we understand her, and we are willing to identify with the victims of the Witch persecutions and to work to counter the negative stereotypes associated with the word Witch. We are feminists: we believe that neither women nor men can be truly free until the unequal power relations between genders are broken down. Our analysis of power extends to the relations between races, classes, between humans and the earth; we see all forms of domination as interconnected and destructive.
Feminist spirituality, Goddess religion, Paganism, earth-based spirituality, and Witchcraft are like circles that overlap in many areas and retain some distinct differences. There are Pagans who don’t define themselves as Witches, and Witches who don’t define themselves as feminists. There are feminists in Christian, Jewish, and Buddhist traditions who don’t identify with the Goddess. Our self-definition affects our practice and teaching of magic. We teach and work in a nonhierarchical structure, and we use our awakened abilities within an ethical framework that acknowledges the interconnectedness of all beings.
At the core of the Reclaiming tradition is the insight that spiritual practice, personal healing, and political activism are the three legs of the cauldron in which wisdom and magic are brewed. If we truly experience all life as interconnected, then we must be concerned with what happens to the rain forests of Brazil and the topsoil of Iowa, to the child suffering in a sweatshop in Asia as well as the homeless child on our city streets. And that concern needs to be expressed not just through prayer and meditation, as powerful as they might be, but through concrete action in the world.
To act effectively, whether that means offering service in our communities or working for political change, we need the personal strength that comes when we have learned to know ourselves. Healing ourselves is part of healing the earth.
Activism and service are sustained by our deep connection to the greater cycles and powers around us. Magic and ritual help us create communities of support and find inspiration and strength when we most need it. In November 1999, I, Starhawk, was in jail for five days for protesting the meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle. Most of the strong, beautiful, and empowered women in my ce
ll block were under twenty-five. In one of our discussions, Lucy, a trainer and organizer who at thirty-one was an “old lady” in the group, remarked that the average “life span” of an activist was three years before burnout. So why was I there, at forty-eight, a little fat and creaky from sitting on concrete floors and mixing it up with the cops? Because for the more than thirty years that I’ve been active politically, I’ve had rituals to sustain me, close friends to support me and participate with me, and a deep, personal connection to the great powers of love and freedom that inspire us to work for change.
The Reclaiming tradition was born out of the convergence of magic and activism. Twenty years ago, when my first book, The Spiral Dance, was published, a group of us who had connected around the bridging of politics and spirituality created a ritual to celebrate Halloween that incorporated art, music, and dance on a scale new to us. We went on to help organize an antinuclear march that brought ritual, street theater, art, and music to a political protest. My women’s coven began teaching classes together, and because we felt we had worked through a number of power issues successfully, we co-taught to model a shared flow of power. A small nucleus of community developed from those classes, and in 1981 many of us participated in the blockade at the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, built on an earthquake fault in central California. When we returned home, we formed the Reclaiming Collective.
The blockade left an indelible imprint on the development of our community. We learned a decentralized model of power, in which small, covenlike groups called affinity groups made decisions by consensus. Larger strategies and major decisions were coordinated by spokescouncils made up of representatives from the smaller groups. Real care was taken to listen to each person’s voice and hear each person’s concerns. Most of all, we learned that power does not have to be vested in one charismatic leader, that it can truly be spread throughout the larger group.
Our understanding of power and our approach to teaching are expressed in the Reclaiming Principles of Unity:
Reclaiming Principles of Unity
“My law is love unto all beings…”
The Charge of the Goddess
The values of the Reclaiming tradition stem from our understanding that the earth is alive and all of life is sacred and interconnected. We see the Goddess as immanent in the earth’s cycles of birth, growth, death, decay, and regeneration. Our practice arises from a deep spiritual commitment to the earth, to healing, and to the linking of magic with political action.
Each of us embodies the divine. Our ultimate spiritual authority is within, and we need no other person to interpret the sacred to us. We foster the questioning attitude and honor intellectual, spiritual, and creative freedom.