Queen of Swords

The last few weeks have been very eventful.

First, a several-day visit with my teacher involved work to remove blockages and activate energy centers. As usual, it didn't feel like much was happening at the time of the work, but the subsequent days and weeks were. . . eventful.

Michael being home on a leave of absence from his deployment gave me the opportunity to spend some solid time with him, both alone and with others, and gave me the opportunity to do what feels like close to the last bits of processing I've needed to do around fully releasing my romantic attachment to him.

As part of that process, I realized that it was not appropriate for him to accompany me to get my piercing, as we had originally planned. It was not coincidental that he came to the same conclusion (albeit for different reasons) at the same time.

I've been attending the Solider's Heart book group, which has been going very well. It's good to finally be doing something actively constructive around my desire to help veterans.

During the time Michael was in town, I went to a bondage workshop with a friend. It was fun, low-key, and gave me the opportunity to remember that the sex positive community center is a friendly place to be. If I'd had my toybag with me, my friend and I might have remained for the play party that followed, but that didn't happen. I resolved to go to another party asap.

Last Wednesday I got my clitoral hood pierced as an act of devotion to Ereshkigal and LM, with multiple layers of meaning. I still need to write about that here.

Two days after that, I went by myself to a bondage/bdsm party at the center and ended up doing a scene with someone new for the first time since LM's death. (I'd done a few scenes with Michael before our final break-up.) The experience was affirming and cathartic, and I need to write about it more here.

So a lot has been happening in my relationship/erotic-spiritual dimension, and that's good, and I'm certain that it has a lot to do with the work my teacher and I did. At the same time, my practical daily life has been stalled out. I haven't been doing business development for my spiritual direction practice. I haven't been doing more than the minimum on my daily practices. I haven't been meditating. I haven't been exercising since it started raining. Lee Harrington's "Sacred Kink" class has been in progress for two weeks, and I haven't even visited the site.

Having my kid at home for summer vacation doesn't help, but I can't let that become an obstacle.

This morning as I'm typing I'm realizing how stale and close my living space feels right now. We keep the balcony door open all day, so it's not that there hasn't been fresh air, but there hasn't been a lot of other movement in the house. I/we need to do some tidying up, moving around, getting the space and ourselves invigorated again. It feels like it would be all too easy to slip into a semi-comatose state and just dream away the days.

A couple of months ago I created a morning ritual that involved writing on paper, getting a good breakfast, spiritual practice, exercise. . . I need to pull that document out again. When I was doing it, it gave me a gentle but thorough solid start to my day, and set me up to be happily productive.

This is the downside to not having a day job: the lack of externally imposed discipline -- and as I typed that, I could see Ereshkigal's edged, knowing smile. You think this time of unemployment is only about creating new ways to generate income? She asks.

Always more lessons.
Always more growth to achieve.

That's a good thing.

The Robin Wood deck calls the 9 of Swords "Night Terrors." It represents the fears that rise to prey on us when we're vulnerable and tired. Very often they don't represent real threats or issues. They cause needless pain and suffering.

The 9 of Swords is closely related to the 8 of Swords. It represents being limited and confined by one's own thoughts and beliefs rather than the oppression of others.



( Last night, during a conversation with my teacher, I realized that I'd been faced several issues in my life where I was experiencing unnecessary grief and pain due to my thoughts, and was successful in changing them. )

The interesting thing about this kind of work -- for me, at least -- is that overcoming the challenges of Swords cards requires the use of a Sword. The phantoms of the mind, the self-defeating patterns of the mind, are best met and conquered by the use of the mature, rational, perceptive mind.

Yesterday evening I went to a Half Price Books in a neighborhood I usually don't visit. There I found a book called The Passion of Isis and Osiris: A Gateway to Transcendent Love, by Jean Houston. Given the startling way Isis broke into my meditation yesterday, and the issues I've been working with around sexuality and passion -- as well as the larger scope of my priestess work, it seemed less than a coincidence.

I started reading this morning, and while I'm still in the Introduction I'm feeling great satisfaction. Houston calls her work with myth and archetypes "sacred psychology" -- and it's very much in line with the way I interpret and process. I want to know more about it, beyond the scope of this book.

And there was this:

In its Jungian usage, "shadow" refers to the repressed and disavowed aspects of self. When these same shadow qualities are recognized and reconciled, there is often a movement toward greater maturity and depth of personality. Since time immemorial, myth and mythic knowing have served to balance shadow and light in individuals and in cultures, which has helped to prevent the exaltation of certain archetypal themes that, if played out unchecked and unorchestrated, could destroy the world.

Yes.

The bit about possibly destroying the world is a much larger scope than I think about, but certainly that is the ultimate consequence of destructive imbalances in individuals and cultures. This is my work, and on some level it always has been: the interpreting and healing and maturing of the soul through engagement with myth and archetype. This is the work which for me plays out in my relationships with Ereshkigal and Inanna and the energies they represent and help me to channel and balance. This is the process, the dance, that is implied by the name of this journal.

My teacher gave me a strand of prayer beads as an ordination gift: a cycle of rose quartz, bone skulls, and wood, with a special charm on the end.

I just stepped on it and severed the strand.

I was holding it in my hand with the intention of putting it in my jacket pocket and taking it with me to pick up my daughter, but then had to stop and sift through my suitcase to find something else. I never noticed the strand slip from my hand and onto the floor -- just the "crunch" as my heel came down on it.

Strangely enough, none of the beads seem to be broken -- and it broke within the wood beads, which I imagine are more resilient than the quartz or bone. Evidently the edge of a hole severed the cord.

I'm taking this as a sign that I've done more than enough resting and not enough integrating of my weekend -- and that restringing the strand this evening will provide an opportunity to do exactly that. I also think that restringing it will be a way of owning and claiming the energy I received.


Even though none of the individual beads are broken and I feel very strongly that there's a real purpose in it happening, I'm feeling rather awful that I *stepped on* and *broke* my teacher's gift.

Today has been incredibly full. Early this morning I had a powerful realization about my sense of identity that I haven't had the time to fully process and journal about. Readers on two of my journals have been entrusting me with stories of powerful, intimate experiences and invited me to engage with them about them. Watching the Inauguration was a powerful experience in its own way, and triggered a lot of ideas I feel the need to explore. I received an email from Michael telling me briefly that his base was receiving rocket fire (he's okay). I'm also continuing to process the experiences I had Sunday, and the messages sent by my friends on LJ are setting off new insights.

And here I sit at my desk at work, aware that I have responsibilities to meet here, and then I need to go grocery shopping, buy vodka for my Tuesday night ritual with Tiwaz, and that I have my Nia Fitness class tonight. It would be so, so easy to not attend the Nia class, to make quick stops at the stores and then go home, hug my kid, and withdraw into stillness and contemplation. I feel an almost desperate desire to get into that quiet, solitary space and process this flood of thoughts, feelings, and information.

But however important it is that I do take that time, it's also important that I give myself the chance to explore the opportunities that Nia is giving me to process and relax and grow in ways I'm not used to. I need to go, need to challenge my habitual patterns in the hope of finding new and better ones.

What I really want to do is run from the office right now, find a quiet hole somewhere, and alternately pray and write for several hours until my mind and spirit are composed again.

This too, is part of the Work: somehow holding my own needs and my responsibilities to my child, my husband, my employer, my friends, and my patron in dynamic balance.

I was just looking up one of my entries about last summer's initiation because I thought I was going to make a post about my conversation with my knife the other evening.

Instead, as I scanned the entry, I came upon these words:

You have passed the first two tests, but now you face the hardest tests of all. If you go forward, you must be ready to take complete responsibility for yourself. [. . .] You can not depend on others, but must take full sovereignty of your own life. Ereshkigal told me that it was necessary, because if I did not grow in strength and sovereignty, I could be broken by the path. You will not have to do this all at once, but you must commit to taking this responsibility. Are you willing to promise that?

I was, and I did.
And then I forgot that particular detail.

Last night as I settled into contemplation, I was led to think about my financial situation -- and it ended up being a real tough love conversation with Ereshkigal.

All my life I've been able to be fairly careless with my spending because there's always been a safety net. I've only had a couple of jobs that really paid well, but I've always seemed to have a talent for windfall: my parents' investement that they made to support my education coming to its final stages just as I really needed to pay off my student loans, my ex buying me out of my share of our home just before the housing market plummeted, and etc.

But when I was working with my finances this week, I became aware that my own cushion was getting a bit thin -- and I've sworn off being Daddy's girl and looking to him for the help that he always seems to offer just when I really need it. Besides, he and my mom are retired and -- like so many other retirees -- are being significantly impacted by the stock market troubles.

It was a scary conversation. I'm not in immediate danger, and over the past few weeks I've been more deliberate and responsible with my attention to my money and being more conservative in my spending than I've been in quite a while, so I know I can do it. But She asked me to really, really think about what might happen if I lost my job. Or if something else serious happened. I'm surrounded by family who won't let me go onto the streets, no matter what -- but I don't want to even have to think about that.

Of course: "not wanting to think about it" is exactly the attitude that's been preventing me from being a full grown-up about my money for the past several decades.

As my forgotten oath highlights, this is a matter of personal sovereignty: of taking full responsiblity for myself and my 'realm.' In other areas of my life I am very self-aware and responsible. Time to extend both self-awareness and responsibility into this area as well.

Over the past few years I've come to deplore the degree to which some institutionalized religions reduce faith to "afterlife insurance": where there is so much focus on spirituality and morality as a means to achieve a desireable afterlife, it overlooks the positive impact that spirituality can -- and I believe should have on this life.

If a spiritual path doesn't have a life-changing, life-enhancing impact in the here and now, then -- in my not-so-humble opinion -- something is fundamentally wrong.

So what did I realize this morning?

My spiritual life has become far too otherworldly, far too focused on the afterlife, not enough engaged in this life. I've become the image of what I've claimed is radically wrong with the practices of others.

I was warned from the beginning that this is a risk of the underworld path, and the fact that my soulmate is now in the afterlife has significantly increased the risk.

I've spent a long time -- longer than just the past couple of years -- exploring and understanding the Mysteries of Descent. It's time to undergo an initiation of Ascent.

But I find the prospect frightening. Part of me would far rather remain curled up in the underworld.

It may be that part of me has always been there -- which may be one reason why ambition and achievement have been so elusive for me in this lifetime.

I don't know. I have to explore this further.

But this is part of an increasingly urgent sense of the necessity of making changes that has been growing this week.

A few more things need to come together for me to know what to do. Some medical test results and finding a counselor are part of that process. But I expect that this weekend is going to involve another long session of introspection, contemplation and conversations.

All those things I released last night *could* re-attach to me if I let them, if I persist in old habits of thought and action.

A ritual like this doesn't simply erase things. It frees me -- but I will reap the consequences for how I use my freedom, especially if I run back, or slip back, to what limited me before.

I've found something else I need to release to Ereshkigal. . .

( Behind a cut for those who read this in my primary journal. )