Queen of Swords

This is sovereignty: You decide, then you act.

- LM



Note: These are not the final words on either of these topics this morning. They are for me to meditate on and consider.

For the past couple of years I've been contemplating changing my last name, the name I inherited from my father, to LM's last name. The more I progress along this path, the more that name reflects who I am and who I am becoming.

It's a little bit ironic, because all my life I've been someone who did not intend to take a husband's name -- and indeed did not take my husband's name when I was married. But my initiation as a priestess was catalyzed by LM's death, and my ongoing union with him is something that defines me and continues to distance me from the restrictions of my childhood socialization and expectations.

But as my long-time friends know, I continue to have a strong connection to my parents, especially my father. I don't change my last name in large part because I don't want to hurt him. (There are also not insignificant issues of keeping my kinky-Pagan identity at least somewhat distinct from my mundane life and day job, but that's an entirely different set of issues than what I'm focusing on right now.)

At some point yesterday I started silently repeating a new form of my name to myself: my first name, my father's last name, and LM's last name. For the first time, it seemed appropriate to have my family name as part of my into-the-future name. So much of who I am, of how I interact with the world, so many of my strengths, are symbolically reprsented by that name.

And that's when I suddenly saw my name on the Tree of Life: LM's last name on the pillar of Force, my father's last name on the pillar of Form, and my first name on the Middle Pillar, integrating and balancing those energies.

It felt very, very right. It felt balanced and whole, honoring the very different but very potent family/union energies which have gone in to making me who I am today.


(And, it occurs to me, it might appeal to a particular ancestor as well. . .)

I will be cleaning up my "temple room" (which, unfortunately, is not a totally dedicated space) and refreshing my altars.

I will overcome my inertia and introversion and attend an afternoon workshop on looking and feeling sexy.

I will be buying new cloths and candles for my altars.
(And maybe something sexy for myself -- if I can find the right item.)

I will be spending time in ritual with LM and Freyja.

I will be inviting back into my heart and soul pieces of myself that I dishonored and sundered years ago.

What I've been realizing over the past week or so is that it's not enough to intellectually say "I want to take [this] back." It has to go far deeper. My recovery of a part of myself last weekend was enabled by a new intellectual and emotional understanding that cleared away the inner resistance to the reclaiming. Something similar happened last night. It's not enough to want; I have to be truly ready to welcome and cherish these parts of myself on an emotional and soul level.

I rely so much on thinking and reasoning -- and yes, my mind is a powerful and important tool. But sometimes I forget to go beyond my brain.

Blessed and joyous Beltane to all!

I am always grateful when I read the posts of godspouses.

LM is not a god, but the fact that he is disincarnate makes many of my challenges and joys similar to the ones experienced by godspouses.

Reading their accounts gives me perspective, inspires me, and comforts me.

I deeply appreciate their generosity in sharing.

I was on the phone with my teacher and Scotty for more than two hours last night, and it was transformative.

The thing about initiations is that once they are underway, you can't stop in the middle of them. (I'm not talking about a ritual you can walk out of, but the deeper processes.) Trying to get back to what you were only traps you in a death state. To thrive, you must move forward into the unknown, newly-birthing new self.

Now that my grieving is over, I've been trying to get back to "normal" -- but defining it in terms of who I used to be, even as I paid lip service to having been through an intense initiation. But I'd only defined that initiation in terms of my spiritual path, not understanding that my entire being has been impacted.

I am not who I was. I don't know yet who I have become, who I am becoming. There is continuity, of course, but so much disjunct in my internal patterns that I am often at a loss, numb. I've been saying "I need to find new ways to be happy" and etc., but part of me has still been clinging to my old self, my style of life. For those of you who know "Once More with Feeling," I've been singing along far too often with "Going Through the Motions" and the first few lines of "Walk Through the Fire." (Why can't I feel? My skin should crack and peel. I want the fire back.)

First I had to grieve the loss of LM and accept the hole in my life where he used to stand.
Then I had to accept and grieve the loss of the future with him which I had been looking forward to.
Now I have to not just accept that I'm becoming someone very different than I was, I have to let go of that old self-image before the new one is fully in place.

There is a sadly ironic element as well. There have been days when I've hated Michael for changing so much after LM's death, but I've been blind and resistant to my own transformation.

When my allies and I started the conversation last night, I had been afraid because of the numbness I've been feeling for the past several months. I had been starting to think about going to a psychiatrist, perhaps asking for anti-depressants. Now I feel hope and an openness to life I haven't felt for quite a while. It's not a finished process. I suspect I will still go through cycles of resistance, grayness, and forward motion, but I feel like this is the key to what I've been suffering for the past few months since the end of my grieving.

This was confirmed by my dreams last night especially the one where LM and I encountered each other as completely different people, but we recognized each other and he kissed me the way he first kissed me in this life: as if he owned me and would never, ever let me go. I woke up with that kiss and its energy still with me like a blessing.

I never dreamed how difficult it would be to get the Ereshkigal devotional done, but I can feel it finally coming together. About a month ago I was contacted by two experienced priestesses who asked if I was still accepting submissions. They had alternated as Ereshkigal and Inanna in a series of four Descent rituals, and wanted to share their stories. I told them I would love to have their accounts, and asked if I could have them by mid-May. They said yes, and I just received the first one a couple of days ago. It's amazing: vivid and well-written and deeply revelatory of Herself. I feel as if I have been waiting for these two women to come forward and share their stories.

On May 31 I will observe the third anniversary of LM's death. Fittingly enough, it will occur on Memorial Day.

It's been a very long road of grief, one which is not fully over (as my last couple of days have made very clear to me), but which has finally resulted in me feeling normal again most of the time. Last spring I lost my job, and last week was my first full-time employment since then. I'm no longer worrying about whether I should move in with my parents or my ex-husband when my savings account was exhausted and I could no longer pay rent. It's been hard to focus creatively and editorially under those circumstances.

It's never easy to know what to do to observe the day of LM's passing. I've usually tried to go to our most sacred place, and I will do so again this year, but that's not a long journey. I've decided that I want to honor his memory -- and the growth in my own life that's occurred since his death -- by dedicating that weekend to finalizing the content of the devotional and sending out the release forms.

I feel very bad that my wonderful contributors have been kept hanging for so long -- and that Herself has been kept waiting as well. I have other projects brewing in the back of my mind, but I've known that I can't start anything else until I finish this one. It's been bad enough that at times I've thought about abandoning the whole thing, but I've known that's not an option. And I didn't truly want it to be an option, I was just so tired of struggling every damn day and wanted to throw off everything that I could.

I still need to finish my own Descent story, and will be focusing on that today.

This afternoon I watched the movie "Cinderella Man" for the first time.

The story takes place during the Great Depression, and the family has not been able to pay their bills, including the power bill, because not only has Jim been dropped from fighting, his right hand is broken so it's difficult for him to get manual day jobs. His wife, unable to cope any longer with the sight of their three young children suffering in the cold of winter, takes them to stay with more affluent family members. When Jim comes home and discovers this, he gets angry. He's promised their son that they will never be sent away, no matter how tough things get.

To try to keep his family together, he takes the ferry from New Jersey to New York, to Madison Square Garden, where he once was a championship fighter. He goes upstairs to a club room, where men in suits are smoking cigars. He stands there, ragged, bruised, a cast on his right hand, and explains to these men that he needs twenty-four dollars to pay off the electric bill so his family can have heat and be together. He is literally standing there hat-in-hand, begging for money.

As I was watching this, I suddenly flashed on the statue of Tiwaz I posted about a few days ago and heard LM speaking quietly to me. For Jim Braddock, standing there with his hat in his hand, utterly without pride, was the equivalent of Tiwaz putting his hand in the wolf's mouth. He didn't count the price to himself, only the consequences for those whom he loved and for whom he felt responsible.

It was amazing how clear it was. . .

A couple of days ago, anax_anarkhos said something to me about my emergence from my grieving making me seem like "Persephone kissing the springtime." That image took my breath away -- and it was all the more startling because I've never identified with Persephone. Inanna emerging from the underworld, yes -- but never Persephone.

Except that Inanna hasn't 'been there' for me recently. I think she's waiting for me to grow back into her. She's so passionate. I think she's waiting for me to rediscover my passions before we start to working closely again. It's part of my need to be new. Persephone is definitely 'new' to me. . . In ways I never expected.

A couple of years ago, all adrift, I went into meditation to get a sense of where I was. I found myself in a wild wood, at night. I found a clearing, then set out a ring of small stones and sat down within it. I had a cauldron and a blade. I knew that I had to sit there until I found my answers.

Now when I go within I am standing naked on the top of a grassy hill. A pleasant breeze is blowing and I'm facing the early morning light -- about as classically "East" as one can get. Eventually I need to walk down the hill, to rejoin the living world, but for the moment I'm still in the borderland. The sun is shining, the sky is blue, but my skin still feels the heat of the underworld. It would be so easy to step back into the welcoming shadows. . . into the welcoming arms. . .

This is what I wrote during my afternoon break at work:

I've been thinking of Persephone a lot from my hilltop. . . Behind me, my passionate husband, bound to his place in the underworld. My heart is with him, but I can not live there all the time.

Not even if Zeus had not decreed it.
[A new thought there, and a radical one. . . What if Zeus's decree had been not to appease his siblings but because it truly was in the best interests of the girl?]

Before me, somewhere beyond the hills, is my mother. . . I've blamed her for trying to keep me a child -- but did I project my own fear onto her? It's easy to grow into a new person when you're in a new place, but harder to carry that newness back into the familiar places.
[Adria knew that, with the very air of her high school trying to press her back into her previous shape, her familiar roles. . .]

Blame Hades, blame Zeus, blame my mother. . . It leaves me the perpetual victim, always at the mercy of the will of others.

Hekate chuckles from her place under the apple tree. I hadn't seen her until this moment, but of course she is here at this crossroads.

"The rest of them are bound to their places," she tells me. "Only you are free to move. Only you have the full freedom of the crossroads. You are my heir-in-spirit, my god daughter."
[A gray, cloaked figure on the side of the bed in a little girl's dream. I am your mother she told me, and I cried back No, you're a witch!. I had the dream twice before I was five years old, vivid and terrifying. Never to be forgotten.]

Hekate gives me a key. "You control your own going out and coming in."

Inanna was stripped of her carefully-selected finery when she descended to the underworld, and we have no account of her picking any of it back up. I am naked on my hilltop. I must choose, choose deliberately and with full ownership of the consequences, what I will "put on" before I re-engage with society. What garb, what regalia, what roles and honors and secrets and silences will I wrap around me and use to adorn myself, to announce myself to the world and to others?

The choice is mine.

I have (almost) always seen Persephone as a victim.

Today, I experienced Persephone claiming her personal sovereignty.

Today I was affirmed as an initiate of the mystery of the sacred crossroads.

I met my first boyfriend when we were in the 8th grade, although we did not begin dating until the spring of our sophomore year of high school. Our relationship was rather tempestuous, with several rounds of being together and breaking up that continued into our college years. What was special about him, however, was that we managed to remain best friends even during most of the times we were not together romantically, and he was one of the people who helped me escape from the emotionally abusive relationship I was in just after I graduated from college. We became estranged shortly after Wolfling was born, but reconciled last year. He has always been an important figure in my life.

I do not experience any romantic or sexual chemistry with him anymore, but a few times during the past couple of years I've dreamed about the two of us being intimate again. We talked on the phone yesterday evening, and last night I had one of those dreams -- and it felt more self-conscious than usual.

( Cut for those who don't care about other peoples' dreams )

Beyond that exchange, it was another night of dreams involving moving -- often in ways that violated normal traffic rules -- and searching, surrounded by figures from my life. So far, I've never found whatever it was in the dream I was looking for.