Initiation -- Part One: Fairies Hide My Knife

Enough time has passed, and I finally have enough personal space and time here at home, to enable me to post a bit about my initiation. I'm sure no one here will be surprised that I can't talk about all of it, but there are some things I can share.

The overall experience can be summed up in the Two of Swords card, and I was set up for it even before I left home.


I was about to embark on a 400+ mile drive, and while I wasn't actively worried about trouble on the road, I did want to have something with me in the car to back up any emphatic "no" that might be necessary. My chosen "companion" was a heavy-duty hunting knife given to me some fifteen years ago by a friend who deeply loved knives. It served as my athame for a while -- always to the dismay of any nice ladies who happened to be sharing the circle with me (it was "mean" and "scary") -- but I retired it after my ordination as a Grail Priestess, when I consecrated a double-sided dagger as my "glaive".

Despite my lists, packing turned out to be more complicated than I'd expected, and the morning of my departure was frustratingly disorganized. I was at the gas station a block from my house when I suddenly realized that the hunting knife was not on the seat beside me, as I had planned. I searched my purse, the floor, the back seat -- and even opened the trunk and went through my suitcase and tote -- but it wasn't there. I was already running late, but felt an extremely strong need to go back and find the knife.

Back to the house I went. I looked around the living room where I'd been doing my packing: on the desk, on the couch, under the couch, under the miscellaneous stuff on the floor. No knife. I went upstairs, checked my bedroom, my bed, under my bed, on my altars (even though I knew I had carried it downstairs). No hunting knife. However I did see my glaive. Must have knife 'said' the compulsion in my head.

Hmmmm. . . Was I brought back to the house to get this knife? If so, did any of my other tools need to come along as well? I looked at each in turn. All were quiet. No inner urging called me to pick them up. Okay.

I went back downstairs.

There was the hunting knife, sitting in plain view on the back of my couch.

I sighed.

Both knives.
Got it.

I put the dagger in the tote with my robe, cord, and blindfold, put the hunting knife in the front with me, and set off again with my iPod playing Fairies Stole My Keys.


(Lyrics can be found here: http://www.emeraldrose.com/consuite/fairiesstolemykeys.htm )

Initiation -- Part Two: The Drive, Settling In & The Deer

I feel very lucky that I was able to travel a significant distance as part of the overall initiation process. Getting physically away from my daily life, traveling well past the usual boundaries of my personal world, had a subtle but real impact on my state of mind. It helped that my teacher lives in a small town in the mountains, and the journey took me outside of cities, through agricultural land, and over a mountain pass. I kept wishing I could move out into this beautiful country.

After ten hours or so on the road -- including a stop to have lunch with sannion and erl_queen (meeting face to face for the first time), I pulled into town, found my hotel, and called my teacher. She walked the mile or so from her house and we went out for a nice dinner at a restaurant just across the street from where I was staying. We had a great time talking, and then I drove her home.

The next day was Fourth of July, and she had warned me that there would not be parking near their house, so I walked the pleasant stretch between the hotel and her place. It was around 8am, and there were few people on the street and very few cars.

Suddenly I saw a doe emerging from the landscaped bushes across the four-lane street from me. She calmly crossed the sidewalk, walked into the street, and made her way to the landscaped median -- seeming to be coming directly toward me. I stood still and watched her, feeling blessed.

She stood in the median for a long time, shying when a car went past, but not moving forward. I suddenly realized that she probably wasn't comfortable having me so close to her intended path, so I continued slowly on my way, watching her out of the corner of my eye. As soon as I started moving, she too continued on her way, passing behind me and then starting to trot gracefully past the 7-11 and down the residential street.

I don't see deer very often, and certainly not within city limits. But the last time something like this happened, it was at the intersection of a busy edge-of-town street in the day or two before I went on a wilderness retreat a few years ago. At that time, two deer emerged from cover, crossed the street toward me, and then went on their way. I saw deer several times during that trip and shortly after.

Initiation -- Part Three: The Ritual -- Two of Swords

It's very difficult to describe how I was feeling in those last few days before the initiation itself. I wasn't worried or scared -- but I was acutely aware that something momentous was about to happen, and that it was probably going to be very challenging. My teacher was allowed to tell me very little about what to expect. I was told there would be a descent, and that I would have to face myself. I was told to bring a black robe, a six-foot long cord which I would be bound with, and a blindfold. I knew that Ereshkigal would be participating.

The descent was what monopolized my imagination. What would I be asked to sacrifice -- even temporarily? How low -- or deep -- would I be asked to go? How hard would it be, and would I have sufficient courage to meet the challenges? I took comfort in my memories of past descent experiences (formal and informal) and memories of intense, spiritual bdsm scenes with LM and Michael. I didn't know if this descent would be anything like the latter, but it was good to remember that when in the right headspace I could go very deep endure a great deal. Then I tried to let go of all expectation because I really had no idea what was going to happen.

The morning of the ritual itself, I made sure that I had everything I needed in my carry-on bag: robe, cord, blindfold, dagger, and chain necklace -- then drove over to my teacher's house.

After all the anticipation of the two or more months leading up to the event, the final preparations went very quickly -- although not without a surprise or two. First we made sure that everything that needed to go upstairs to her temple room was in the carry-on. It was a good thing she went through it with me, because I hadn't realized that the hunting knife was supposed to go up as well as the dagger. At first I thought I was going to have to drive back to the hotel and get it, but then I realized that at some point during the past day or so I had put it in my very large purse -- not something I usually do -- and then forgotten about it. Then I almost left the cord and the blindfold in the bag when both were supposed to be on me.

I put my robe on, knotted the cord as a belt, and then my teacher blindfolded me. She led me to the foot of the stairs, and I sat there while she went up to open the temple.

( A Binding Choice )