Book Release: Pagan Leadership Anthology

I’m very excited to announce the release of the Pagan Leadership Anthology. Taylor Ellwood invited me to co-edit this anthology with him almost two years ago, and it has finally come to fruition! Helping grow more resources for Pagan leaders is a passion of mine, and this anthology is priceless for all the collected wisdom it offers from many different leaders, many different traditions, and many different perspectives.

As I mention in the introduction of the book, sometimes the advice offered in one essay conflicts with what’s offered in another. The authors don’t always agree with each other, but you’ll still see some common patterns of experiences of what works and what doesn’t. The best part of this anthology, for me, was reading the experiences of the various authors. What they went through, the mistakes they made, and how they grew from them and came to learn better ways of leading.

Most of the authors have offered some version of: “I wish I’d had a resource like this when I was starting out.”

 

The Pagan Leadership Anthology: An Exploration of Leadership and Community in Paganism and Polytheism

Edited by Shauna Aura Knight and Taylor Ellwood

The words “Pagan Leadership” are often met with scorn and tales of failed groups and so-called Witch Wars. And yet, as our communities grow and mature, we find ourselves in dire need of healthy, ethical leaders. Most Pagans have seen what doesn’t work. But what does?  This anthology features over thirty authors, thirty essays, and decades of leadership experience sharing their failures and successes as leaders as well as showing you how you can become a better Pagan leader. Below is just some of what you will learn when you read this book:

• Why personal work will help you become a better leader
• How to become a better communicator
• When to deal with predators in the community
• How to resolve conflicts peacefully
• Why you need bylaws when you build a group
• And much, much more!

Pagan communities are evolving. To be an effective leader you need to know how to take care of your group and yourself. In this anthology you will get tools and techniques that work and help you become a better leader as well as enrich the overlapping Pagan communities.

The Pagan Leadership Anthology is available as an ebook and in print. Ebook: TBA  Print: $18.99 Immanion Press  | Amazon  |  Barnes & Noble

Topics include:

Group dynamics, conflict resolution, mentoring, egotism, creating community, burnout, communication, healthy boundaries, delegation, crisis, power, volunteers, personal work, leadership models, bylaws, sustainability, processes, responsibility, ethics, dual relationships, collaboration, scapegoating, visibility, transparency, fears, resentment, self knowledge, discrimination, ageism, exclusion, empowerment, respect, organizations, sovereignty, growth, vision, uprisings, triangulation, service, expectations, projection, betrayal, healing, restorative justice, longevity, tradition, innovation, dedication, teaching, ministry, pride, developing skills, learning, administration, authority, integrity, compassion, social skills, truth, blame, shame, hypocrisy, gossip, safety, harassment, avoidance, tension, problem solving, relationships, transformation, failure, success, strength, sacrifice, support, mistakes, forgiveness, organizing, event planning, outreach, education, transference, professional, self-care, instability, confidentiality, money, equality, partnership, politics, reflection, investment, controversy, challenge, social justice, values, privilege, unity, skill-building, vulnerability, judgment, attitudes, social norms, silence, assumptions, discomfort, accountability, cliques, punctuality, removing members, pedestals, control, weakness, consent, misconduct, infrastructure, fatigue, thriving, complaints, participation, stewardship, structure, confidence, fundraising, feedback, identity, stubbornness, rejection, discernment, inspiration.

Immanion Press is a small independent press based in the United Kingdom. Founded by author Storm Constantine, it expanded into occult nonfiction in 2004 with the publication of Taylor Ellwood’s Pop Culture Magick. Today, Immanion’s nonfiction line, under the Megalithica Books imprint, has a growing reputation for edgy, experimental texts on primarily intermediate and advanced pagan and occult topics. Find out more at http://www.immanion-press.com.

Filed under: Leadership Tagged: accountability, assumptions, attitudes, authority, avoidance, betrayal, blame, burnout, bylaws, challenge, cliques, collaboration, communication, compassion, complaints, confidence, confidentiality, conflict resolution, consent, controversy, creating community, crisis, delegation, developing skills, discernment, discrimination, dual relationships, egotism, empowerment, equality, ethics, event planning, exclusion, failure, feedback, forgiveness, fundraising, gossip, group dynamics, harassment, healthy boundaries, hypocrisy, infrastructure, inspiration, instability, integrity, judgment, leadership, leadership models, learning, mentoring, ministry, misconduct, mistakes, money, organizations, organizing, Pagan, Pagan Leadership Anthology, partnership, personal work, politics, power, pride, privilege, problem solving, processes, projection, punctuality, reflection, rejection, removing members, resentment, respect, responsibility, restorative justice, sacrifice, safety, scapegoating, self knowledge, self-care, service, shame, skill-building, social justice, social norms, social skills, Sovereignty, stewardship, structure, sustainability, teaching, tension, thriving, tradition, transference, transformation, transparency, triangulation, values, visibility, vision, volunteers

Raising the Sacred Fire: How to Build and Move Energy in Ritual

As I’ll be teaching a number of workshops on ritual facilitation at Pantheacon, ConVocation, and Paganicon, I thought I’d offer up one of my articles on leading rituals that is included in my book, Ritual Facilitation.

I’ve also created a Facebook group with the intention of discussing and teaching techniques for leading more potent rituals. Feel free to join up if you like!

Raising the Sacred Fire:  How to Build and Move Energy in Ritual

Together we are singing, moving, dancing, chanting, and drumming around the fire in the center of the circle. The energy builds and slows then rises up again. I move the drum beat, and the drum beat moves me. We draw closer; I look into the firelit eyes of people around me and we smile as we sing. We drop the chant down to a whisper, then bring it back up again. Our song is a prayer for transformation, a prayer for our individual gifts to be transformed on Brigid’s Forge into their highest potential. I am singing for my gift, and for the gifts of everyone there. Our prayer is singing, movement, rhythm, and our shared intention. The chant moves into a tone that rises and falls like a fire at the bellows until we hold the silence together.

Have you ever worked to build ecstatic energy in rituals?

Raising energy in ritual can be a difficult function to facilitate. Many ritualists get a chant going only to find the group stops singing it as soon as that ritualist pauses to take a breath. Despite the challenges, there are some skills, tools, and processes that you can use to help build potent, transformative energy in rituals.

Facilitating ecstatic energy is the ability to sense energy and the ability to understand the logical energetic flow of any event. Having talent as a singer, drummer, musician, or dancer can help; it’s perhaps more important to have a team of people that is engaged, excited, and willing to model the energy as an example. Excitement is contagious, and if you are invested in the energy, then your participants will be more willing to buy into it and commit their energy as well.

What is energy?

While some ritualists may be gifted with the ability to see auras and energy, I’m not among them. I sense energy more kinesthetically, and I also work with energy less as a metaphysical thing, and more as the life-force cycled from our bodies. Breathing in oxygen, there’s a chemical reaction and we exhale carbon dioxide; chemical reactions release energy. I can also see energy through the physical reality of body language. So sensing energy is largely becoming observant.

Think about the last meeting or class you were at. How were people sitting? Did people look interested or bored and tired? How about the teacher or facilitator, did their voice drone on, or were they excited? Now think about a concert or sports event. How did you know if people were excited? Were people standing up and cheering or dancing? When people applauded, what did you feel inside?

Notice the environment around you and how you can sense the energy level of the group. Energy comes across in our body language, movements, actions, how we are talking, and the look in our eyes. If I’m talking to someone and they’re not looking at me, I don’t feel like they’re really interested in me. But if I go to a friend with a problem and they’re looking deeply into my eyes, I feel like they are really present and connected to me.

Ways to add energy

Here are some ways to add my energy in ritual, broken down by element.

Earth—Body, movement, dancing. Whether I’m a great dancer, or just adding my energy by swaying back and forth to the rhythm of the chant, I’m adding the energy of my body. When I move, my blood moves faster. Calories are consumed, and energy results in my body radiating heat and the energy of my physical life force.

Air—Breath, speech, chanting, singing. In ritual, I add Air when I participate by speaking aloud an intention or wish, when I lend my voice to the chant. When we sing together, we are breathing together, harmonizing our breaths and our pulses. We don’t need to be good singers to still make a sound and add the energy of our voice.

Fire—Rhythm, percussion, drumming. Drummers can add some of the intense sound and rhythm to the ritual. I can also add rhythm by clapping, stamping, snapping my fingers, or through vocal percussion and making rhythmic sounds with my mouth.

Water—Connection, intention, emotion. I can connect to the intention of the ritual within the depth of my heart, and to others in the ritual through deep, sustained eye contact or through touching hands. If I’m emotionally invested in the intention, in the community, if I’m connecting to the divine and to the divine within me, then I am adding my emotional energy to the ritual. Even if I am not physically able to move, if I’m rhythmically challenged, or not comfortable singing, I can add my energy by holding the intention in my heart.

Energy Flow

Any ritual has an energetic flow, and what happens in the first few minutes of the ritual will set the tone for later on. In the rituals I offer, which are in the ecstatic tradition taught through Reclaiming, Diana’s Grove, and other shamanic traditions, I am working to get people engaged in the ritual and inviting participation.

Here is a typical flow of a public ritual in the ecstatic, participatory style. Usually these rituals are facilitated by an ensemble team, so each piece may have more than one person leading it.

• Marketing/promotion: Emails and flyers set the tone for the ritual theme and helps build communal trust in the ritual team.

• Arrivals/Greeting: As people come to the space, the ritual team works to greet the participants. Ideally everything’s already set up so that we can welcome people to the space, since welcoming makes people feel more safe, and thusly, more willing to risk singing and moving later. Having social time of at least a half hour before the ritual helps people transition from interacting with traffic into ritual space.

• Pre-Ritual Talk: This session (15 minutes or less to hold people’s attention) addresses the theme, intention, and any ritual logistics. Give people a chance to speak, even if it’s going around the circle with names, as that sets a tone of participation and helps the group move from strangers into a tribe. It’s a good time to address basic group agreements of what’s ok to do and to teach any chants so that people aren’t stumbling to learn them later. Typically I will also use the elemental model (above) to let people know how they can add their energy.

• Gathering: Instead of beginning with smudging or similar purifications that involve a long line, Diana’s Grove uses an energetic gathering. This is somewhat a purification of sound and rhythm as well as a way to get people from individual mind into group mind. The idea is to begin at the energetic level of where the group is and take them to a more collective place. You can have the group sing a tone, or you can get people clapping and moving and singing to build up some energetic fuel for later in the ritual.

• Grounding: As much as the gathering is energetic and group mind, grounding, in this context, is about connecting more deeply to myself, becoming more present to the divine, and connecting to the theme of the work. A typical tree grounding can work just fine, or any meditation to facilitate participants going internal to get into a sacred mindset.

• Casting a Circle: For the rituals I offer, casting a circle is less about an energetic barrier keeping negative energies out, and more about an energetic boundary acknowledging that we are here together as a tribe. As grounding is internal, circle casting takes us out of ourselves to connect as a tribe. The circle is the edge of our tribe for the ritual, and it’s important to establish connection and safety. This is the cauldron that will hold the soup. In ecstatic participatory ritual, one or two people facilitate the circle casting but the intention is to have participants add their energy to the process. The challenge is to do an inclusive casting, or invocation, in around 2 minutes or less to keep people engaged.

• Invoking the Elements: The elemental invocations, similarly, are an opportunity to invite participants to lend their voice, body, movement, and intention, as well as to deepen the theme. In the rituals I work in, instead of facing the direction, the elemental invoker moves into the center and facilitates a process where the whole group invokes the element. An example: “Will you join me in welcoming Air? Will you take a breath together, will you make the sound that is the wind in the trees that blows the leaves to the ground, will you move as air moves? Air is the breath of life, can you feel how the change in the air heralds the change in the seasons? Welcome Air.”

• Center: I typically work with center as the gravity well that draws the community together. What is the reason that people came? This is another opportunity to connect the group together as a tribe, and to the center that holds us.

• Deities, ancestors, allies: We invite in whichever deities or allies we’ll be working with in as inclusive a way as possible. What each person participates in is more potent than them watching a ritualist do something. Liturgy and poetry can be powerful, but if you want the group to add their energy later on, give them some way to participate in every piece, even if it’s just closing their eyes and imagining the ancestors.

• Storytelling: Often the working part of the ritual begins with storytelling or some piece to add context to what we’re doing in the ritual. This piece can be longer than 2 minutes, provided people are given a chance to get comfortable.

• Trance Journey: Storytelling often transitions into a trance journey which takes the theme of the story and move it from a story about gods and heroes into a story that we personally can interact in. Storyelling, and trance journeys, brings people’s energy internal and will require a transition if I want them to come out of trance and be active.

• Physicalization: As much as possible, it helps to offer experiences for multiple learning styles (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, etc.). If the trance journey took us to a place where we connect with the fire of our personal magic, then the physicalization might be inviting people to choose a stone to represent their magic. Or it might be to have them stand and go to an altar and offer their personal magic to Brigid’s forge to be transformed. A physicalization helps integrate the ritual intention, as well as transitions people from internal to external so they are more ready to participate in the energy.

• Energy Building: A sustained energy piece is the fuel for the magic. Often it helps to start slow and build through layering chanting, movement, harmonies, vocal percussion, drumming, and more. The ritualist team should be fully engaged; if you aren’t willing to stand up and sing, no one else will be. The energy may rise to a peak of sound and rhythm, and after there is usually a moment of silence. A typical time length for energy is 8-10 minutes; 15 minutes may be longer than many people can chant. The energy, and the ritual, should have a defined ending. People can drum and dance more after ritual.

• Benediction: Let people know what the ritual was about, such as, “Brigid, thank you for helping us find our personal magic and transform it in your forge. May we support each other in community.” This seals the deal on the working and leads to devoking the allies and elements. Opening the circle is a last chance for the group to connect as a tribe before opening.

• Dessert/Feast Ecstatic participatory rituals tend to not use cakes and ale within the ceremony because of the energetic lag created by a long wait for food to be passed around. Post-ritual dessert or feasting is an intentional bonding time to grow community.

Layering the energy

To build up a sustained energy, it helps to layer in voice, rhythm, and movement. As each layer builds, gently bring in another layer, as that will feel more natural to the group and they will be more likely to participate. Drummers should follow the group’s energy rather than drive the group; building it too fast and the group may “check out.” If the energy spikes up too fast you can drop the chant down to a whisper and build it back up. You can invite group participation through eye contact, beckoning, or by asking, “Will you join your movement and voice to this ritual?”

Having a team of people willing to sing and dance models what behavior is “ok” to the group and creates safety. Watch a ritual where one person starts to clap; if no one else does, they’ll stop. But if a second or third person does, then others will.

If you have some strong singers, you can use a chant with 2 parts or harmonies to add another layer of energy. A basket of rhythm instruments is another opportunity for people to add a sound.

Working the energy is a balance of letting the group drive how fast the chant builds, and pushing the energy along. The energy will plateau, and rise again when you add a layer. At first it’s hard to sense if the group’s ready to be done, or if it’s just a natural plateau where another layer will build the energy back up.

Noticing Energy

Begin to take more notice of people’s body language. Are these people willing to stand up and sing? The kinds of energy you can build in ritual will depend on your team—do you have drummers and singers? How many attendees—10 or 100? What’s the chant you are using—is it cradling, or an energy-raiser?

Observe the rituals of different groups. What happens to the energy when 40 people smudge themselves or stand in line at an altar? How long do people speak? When is it boring? When are people invigorated, willing to sing or participate? When are glazed over?

While the skillset of building ecstatic energy in ritual takes time and practice, these tools should offer a way to frame ritual in terms of energy and begin to build techniques into your own rituals. With practice, you can raise the sacred fire of ecstatic energy in your rituals.

____

This article was first published in Circle Magazine Issue 105, Sacred Fire and also appears in Stepping Into Ourselves: An Anthology of Priestessing. It is also one of the articles collected in my book Ritual Facilitation.

Ritual Facilitation: Collected Articles on the Art of Leading Rituals

Pagans and practitioners of alternative spiritual path face the challenge of learning to lead compelling rituals with little to no training in techniques of facilitation, public speaking, or event planning. Many learn the theology of their tradition and then get frustrated leading ceremonies through trial and error. If you are called to lead rituals and ceremonies, learn how to create potent, powerful rituals that will inspire your participants.

Each of us can learn to create more magical, memorable rituals. Whether you are an experienced ritualist or brand new to ritual work, this collection of articles and essays will help you learn to facilitate stronger rituals. Techniques include ritual structure, handling logistics, common pitfalls, engaging participation, and helping new leaders to step into speaking roles.

Ritual Facilitation by Shauna Aura Knight
Available as an eBook for $4.99 at Amazon  & $15 for the hardcopy. If you need an eBook format other than Kindle you can buy direct from me, just comment here or email me at ShaunaAura (at) gmail (dot) com.

Filed under: Facilitation, Ritual Tagged: ceremonies, community, Energy raising, event planning, facilitation, leadership, Pagan, Pagan community, ritual, shauna aura knight, transformation

Equinox: Planting Seeds of Rebirth

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I’m taking a break from my ongoing series on Grassroots Leadership to join the Tarot Blog Hop on the theme of the Spring Equinox. Although, the particular magical act that is the rebirth of spring–and planting the seeds for the dreams you wish to bring into fruition–is an important part of a leader’s work.

I don’t know about you, but it’s been a long, hard winter for me. I’ve been in a wrestling match with the depression that tried to take hold after my car accident in December, and I’m so grateful for the longer days and melting snow. The past month has been incredibly reinvigorating for me and I’m really ready for spring planting.

Some people are physically planting seeds at this time of year, but for most of us it’s more of a metaphor. And yet, the seasons still have their pull on the ecosystem of our bodies. I often look at the time November through the silence of winter as the time to release what we really need to let go of. To identify what seeds we need to actively not plant in our garden again.

 

I look at New Year’s Eve and the attendant New Year’s Resolutions, and those months leading up to Imbolc and the Spring Equinox as the inspiration energy, preparing for new growth. Spring Equinox, then, is a fantastic time to make a solid commitment to something we’ve been thinking about or working with.

Spring Equinox is that fresh start, that rebirth, that time to really plant the seeds of something we want to bring into our lives.

Tarot and Rebirth
Often when we pull out the cards, we’re looking for help with a decision or with choosing a direction. I know that nothing is more personally frustrating for me than when I know that I need to make a change in my life, but I feel stuck, unsure of which direction to choose. Or unsure of what’s holding me back.

Tarot can be a great way to help you get at what’s going on beneath the surface.

With Tarot cards–or just on your own–you might begin to consider first what you want. What are some of the goals that you dream of but perhaps haven’t yet put into place? It could be actual farming or gardening, or starting a family, or changing careers, or starting a business, or starting  a new community initiative or perhaps a particular creative pursuit like writing or painting. What are the things that you would like to accomplish?

You might also begin to think about what you’ve let fall away from your life–or what you need to let fall away. Perhaps it was a bad relationship, a toxic friend, a job that didn’t serve you, a mindset about money. I’ve often heard that the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. And yet, so many people (myself included!) have gotten stuck repeating the same old things. I know that I’ve found myself in a few relationships that were abusive–both romantic and professional.

Often what we need to let fall away is more directly related to the pain we’ve suffered in the past. Call them old wounds if you like. These are the things that were done to us in our past, and we develop coping mechanisms to deal with them. And–it keeps us alive, it keeps us sane–but those coping mechanisms ultimately hold us back. In school I was emotionally, verbally, and sometimes physically abused by my peers. I toughened up, decided I didn’t need anyone. I got defensive, I looked at anyone around me as an enemy. And a dozen other small coping strategies.

Literally, it kept me alive. If I hadn’t done all that, the emotionally sensitive younger version of me might very well have tried to commit suicide.

But later, when I wanted to connect to people, develop friendships, nobody wanted to be my friend. I blamed it on so many things…”They don’t like a fat chick. Screw them.” And, that was certainly true for some of them. Yet it was also my attitude that pushed people away. I was looking at everyone I met as if they were the kids from middle school, about to hurt me. I treated people like that.

Figuring out what to let go can be the work of years. Your own meditation or journaling might help with it. Therapy can help, talking to a friend can help. Exploration through Tarot can help you see what’s too close to your own face.

When you begin to release what doesn’t serve you, you can then look again at what you want to bring into your life. This is where popular concepts like the Law of Attraction start to come in, but it’s often oversimplified. Thinking positive is not enough–it’s the way to shine the light of hope, like a lighthouse in the distance. But there’s all the work that it takes to get there, all the work to release what doesn’t serve you and to make room for what will serve you.

What do you want in your life? Love? Friendships? Connection? Creativity? Life Force? Abundance? I want to do what I love and get paid for it, among other things. I want to write and create art and travel and teach, and connect to other people who are doing similar work and share resources with them and build something that lasts. I want to leave the world better than how I came into it.

Ritualizing and Embodying Planting the Seeds
We humans are physical creatures. A lot of spiritual work seems to try to get us out of our bodies, but truly, are bodies are pretty powerful spiritual instruments.

When we sing, dance, and drum together, something changes. Our bodies help us to get into that trance state that can help us take the work deeper. It’s one thing to think about what you need to release, or what you want to bring into your life. It’s another thing entirely to embody that through singing, chanting, dancing and drumming.

Or perhaps even just to embody releasing by cutting a piece of string, or to embody bringing something into your life by burning an intention written on a piece of paper, or focusing that intention into a cup of water and drinking it.

Here is a “sketch” of a ritual that I’ve offered for groups at this time of year, and perhaps the words and the process will offer you some ideas for how you  might physicalize setting an intention for yourself to plant the seeds of hope, of rebirth. Much of the language below is something that I might use when facilitating a ritual or ceremony for a group.

Planting the Seeds of Hope
What is often useful first is some kind of a sound purification. A singing bowl, a gong bath, singing a chant or an om. Any sound with intention can help to center and focus you.

You might also invite in any spirits, allies, or other forms of the divine to assist your work. Elements, ancestors, deities, or just honoring that you are a part of the larger universe and that the work you do to set intention has ripples throughout the fabric of that universe, whether or not you can see them.

It can also be very potent to choose a physical object to work with to represent your seed such as a stone, gem, seed, or any small object.

–

Can you feel and smell the season turning from Winter to Spring? The seeds begin to awaken within the earth, softening with the melting snow and rains and stretching toward the rising light. The winds of change are blowing, and the tide is turning to spring and growth and warmth and life force is rising up in our veins.What seeds do you plant, what are the dreams yet to come? What are the hopes and wishes you pray for?

As you celebrate the return of the light, breathe life into the seeds of your personal dreams. Bless the seeds of hope for healthy communities and earth sustainability. Imagine…inspire, empower, and reach for the seeds of your future.

Will you hold the seeds planted in the rich earth of your heart, and imagine the tree grown strong?

When you name your seeds you bless them. What are your dreams? What are the seeds that you plant? What are your hopes and prayers for this year? What is one big dream, a tree you would like to grow? How will you send blessings and abundance to those seeds, those dreams.

 

The Seed. What is the seed you wish to plant? What seeds do you plant now, or have you planted in the earth before the cold season? What are the seeds that you wish to tend for this year? For the years after?

What is the dream that you wish for? Will you dream big? What are your hopes, your wishes? When you imagine the seed, what is the plant, the tree that it will grow? What fruits will that tree bear?  Standing in the place of now, can you imagine the tree grown strong and full? What is a dream that you hold? What is its scent, its taste, what does it look like or sound like? What is your dream of the future, one dream. Is it a dream of abundance, of prosperity.  A dream of a new job, a dream of something you wish to learn, a new business, a new project.

Perhaps it is a maple tree, swift growing. Perhaps it is an oak tree, long to grow and long to stand. Do you hold a dream for social change, a dream of healing, a dream of a creative project?  A healthy family, a healthy community?

Hold the image, the sound, the feeling. How do you hold your body here in the place where your seed has taken root and grown tall, where you can pluck the fruits of the tree. And coming back to now, when you hold the seed within your hand and your heart. What is the seed you will plant, or have planted already?

Earth

What is the soil that grows your dream? The Dreaming in the Darkness. What rich, loamy earth does your seed require to flourish? What are the nutrients your seed will need? Imagine being under the earth, in the moist darkness in the weeks and months, waiting for the thaw and waiting for the time to be right. Here is the time in the darkness, in the deep, in the waiting. When do you require darkness and silence and rest, when does that fill you and feed you?

What is the soil that will feed your dreamseed? Is it words of encouragement, is it time alone, is it the support of friends, is it financial abundance, is it family or community, what are the resources you need? What does your dream need, your seed need?

(At this time, you might plant the representation of your seed into earth, dirt, sand, or something soft.)

Water

The water that softens the seed.  Can you remember being under the earth, can you remember that darkness going on and on, the winter not letting go? What is it like to be so ready for light and heat and moisture? Have you ever been under the earth for what felt like a thousand years of darkness? And then….the waters came.
Can you remember what it felt like to have the waters touch the edges of the seed, the edges of your skin. The waters soften the seed, prepare it to grow. Can you remember the warm rains flowing down to cleanse you, prepare you?

Have you known joy or known sorrow? Why do you care about this seed? Have you felt the rains falling down on you? Or were they the waters of the stream or the lake or the ocean? How did the waters flow? Do you remember feeling? What brings life to your seed? What do you love?

Did your heart break?  The Sufi say the heart must break to make more room for God to enter. When did your heart break? Where is the love inside of you, are you in love with this seed and this dream? Can you feel the waters of your love softening the edge of the seed, filling the cup of your heart, slaking the thirst of this growing plant as it grows and grows?

How do you feel? What feelings bring life to this dream seed, to this tree that will become?

(You might bathe your hands in water here, or even pour water over yourself.)

Fire

The sunlight, the fire. What is the sunlight that feeds your plant, brings it life force and vitality? What is the will that rises within you?

Fire will be the sun and the light, the Will to make the dream happen, what lights us up. What gets you on fire? What sparks your imagination? What causes the fire in the head and heart, that life force shiver to rise up your spine? What gets you excited, what is your vision of the future? Can you feel it inside you, can you reach for that sunlight that will feed you?

Can you imagine that golden beautiful radiance and as it touches your leaves and your skin and you’re bathed in it, it fuels you and feeds you.

(You might light a fire at this point such as a candle, or even a campfire or bonfire if you are outside. Or you might also reach your hands up toward the sun itself, reaching for that fire.)

Air

The breath of life. What is the name of the divine? I am that I am. What brings life and consciousness to this seed, what gives it its name? Will you name this dream that you are planting, will you name the tree it will become? Will you blow a name into the seed, into the wind, and commit to making this seed a reality?

Will you turn and whisper its name to someone next to you, will you tell its story and bring it to life? Will you risk naming this dream, call it forth?

And will you say aloud one thing you can do, to take a step toward making this dream happen?

Fueling Your Intention
At this point in a group ritual I typically engage people in singing a chant together which builds in intensity. We sing, we dance, we play drums, until the energy of our song and movement reaches a peak. If you’re doing this exercise on your own, I recommend engaging in some kind of energetic activity in order to “fuel” the intention, the seed, that you are planting.

There are lots of ways to raise up life force. You can sing a chant or tone along with a singing bowl or a chant cd, you can go out for a run, you can go dancing at a club or a drum jam, you can rock back and forth, or do an intense workout. Heck, you can go sing a song that fits the work you’re doing at karaoke. Anything that makes a sound and gets your heartrate going is generally going to lay the pattern deeper.

If you sing, sing like it matters. Sound is energy. Life force is energy. Breathing and moving is energy.

Rebirth, Planting Seeds, and Planning
When you’ve done the work to set an intention, the work is not yet done. There’s still the long road from here–where you are right now–to there. Envisioning what “there” looks like can be a powerful motivator, and essentially strikes the “bell” that is the fabric of the universe and says, “Hey, this is my intention, this is what I want to happen.” But there’s all the rest of the work we have to do to get there.

Whenever I’m planning something–particularly something big that’s going to require a lot of work–I make a map. I identify what I want as clearly as I can, and then I pull out all the steps I’ll need to take in order to get there. It’s like a to do list, only a little prettier. I can start to get a sense of what tasks need to get accomplished first so that I can progress closer to the goal. For instance, getting a web site. Finishing a book. Getting more artwork done. Planning more traveling and teaching engagements. Or even cleaning up my art studio so that I can do more painting.

While there are a lot of thankless tasks and busywork on the way from Here to There, connecting them firmly to the big goal is a way to help you visualize and stay on track. And–if you enjoy crossing things off lists as much as I do–as you get those things done, you can see yourself on the map, getting closer to that goal. Some things don’t map out as well as others, but if you have a big complicated goal this can be a good way to break it down.

And it’s another place where Tarot cards can come into play as you’re beginning to make decisions about particular things. Tarot is a great way to look at what’s going on beneath the surface, and short 1-card or 3-card pulls can tell you a lot.

I wish you the very best in reaching for all of your dreams. Happy Spring!

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Filed under: Personal Growth Tagged: Ostara, Personal growth, personal magic, personal transformation, ritual, spellwork, Tarot, transformation

Equinox: Planting Seeds of Rebirth

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I’m taking a break from my ongoing series on Grassroots Leadership to join the Tarot Blog Hop on the theme of the Spring Equinox. Although, the particular magical act that is the rebirth of spring–and planting the seeds for the dreams you wish to bring into fruition–is an important part of a leader’s work.

I don’t know about you, but it’s been a long, hard winter for me. I’ve been in a wrestling match with the depression that tried to take hold after my car accident in December, and I’m so grateful for the longer days and melting snow. The past month has been incredibly reinvigorating for me and I’m really ready for spring planting.

Some people are physically planting seeds at this time of year, but for most of us it’s more of a metaphor. And yet, the seasons still have their pull on the ecosystem of our bodies. I often look at the time November through the silence of winter as the time to release what we really need to let go of. To identify what seeds we need to actively not plant in our garden again.

 

I look at New Year’s Eve and the attendant New Year’s Resolutions, and those months leading up to Imbolc and the Spring Equinox as the inspiration energy, preparing for new growth. Spring Equinox, then, is a fantastic time to make a solid commitment to something we’ve been thinking about or working with.

Spring Equinox is that fresh start, that rebirth, that time to really plant the seeds of something we want to bring into our lives.

Tarot and Rebirth
Often when we pull out the cards, we’re looking for help with a decision or with choosing a direction. I know that nothing is more personally frustrating for me than when I know that I need to make a change in my life, but I feel stuck, unsure of which direction to choose. Or unsure of what’s holding me back.

Tarot can be a great way to help you get at what’s going on beneath the surface.

With Tarot cards–or just on your own–you might begin to consider first what you want. What are some of the goals that you dream of but perhaps haven’t yet put into place? It could be actual farming or gardening, or starting a family, or changing careers, or starting a business, or starting  a new community initiative or perhaps a particular creative pursuit like writing or painting. What are the things that you would like to accomplish?

You might also begin to think about what you’ve let fall away from your life–or what you need to let fall away. Perhaps it was a bad relationship, a toxic friend, a job that didn’t serve you, a mindset about money. I’ve often heard that the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. And yet, so many people (myself included!) have gotten stuck repeating the same old things. I know that I’ve found myself in a few relationships that were abusive–both romantic and professional.

Often what we need to let fall away is more directly related to the pain we’ve suffered in the past. Call them old wounds if you like. These are the things that were done to us in our past, and we develop coping mechanisms to deal with them. And–it keeps us alive, it keeps us sane–but those coping mechanisms ultimately hold us back. In school I was emotionally, verbally, and sometimes physically abused by my peers. I toughened up, decided I didn’t need anyone. I got defensive, I looked at anyone around me as an enemy. And a dozen other small coping strategies.

Literally, it kept me alive. If I hadn’t done all that, the emotionally sensitive younger version of me might very well have tried to commit suicide.

But later, when I wanted to connect to people, develop friendships, nobody wanted to be my friend. I blamed it on so many things…”They don’t like a fat chick. Screw them.” And, that was certainly true for some of them. Yet it was also my attitude that pushed people away. I was looking at everyone I met as if they were the kids from middle school, about to hurt me. I treated people like that.

Figuring out what to let go can be the work of years. Your own meditation or journaling might help with it. Therapy can help, talking to a friend can help. Exploration through Tarot can help you see what’s too close to your own face.

When you begin to release what doesn’t serve you, you can then look again at what you want to bring into your life. This is where popular concepts like the Law of Attraction start to come in, but it’s often oversimplified. Thinking positive is not enough–it’s the way to shine the light of hope, like a lighthouse in the distance. But there’s all the work that it takes to get there, all the work to release what doesn’t serve you and to make room for what will serve you.

What do you want in your life? Love? Friendships? Connection? Creativity? Life Force? Abundance? I want to do what I love and get paid for it, among other things. I want to write and create art and travel and teach, and connect to other people who are doing similar work and share resources with them and build something that lasts. I want to leave the world better than how I came into it.

Ritualizing and Embodying Planting the Seeds
We humans are physical creatures. A lot of spiritual work seems to try to get us out of our bodies, but truly, are bodies are pretty powerful spiritual instruments.

When we sing, dance, and drum together, something changes. Our bodies help us to get into that trance state that can help us take the work deeper. It’s one thing to think about what you need to release, or what you want to bring into your life. It’s another thing entirely to embody that through singing, chanting, dancing and drumming.

Or perhaps even just to embody releasing by cutting a piece of string, or to embody bringing something into your life by burning an intention written on a piece of paper, or focusing that intention into a cup of water and drinking it.

Here is a “sketch” of a ritual that I’ve offered for groups at this time of year, and perhaps the words and the process will offer you some ideas for how you  might physicalize setting an intention for yourself to plant the seeds of hope, of rebirth. Much of the language below is something that I might use when facilitating a ritual or ceremony for a group.

Planting the Seeds of Hope
What is often useful first is some kind of a sound purification. A singing bowl, a gong bath, singing a chant or an om. Any sound with intention can help to center and focus you.

You might also invite in any spirits, allies, or other forms of the divine to assist your work. Elements, ancestors, deities, or just honoring that you are a part of the larger universe and that the work you do to set intention has ripples throughout the fabric of that universe, whether or not you can see them.

It can also be very potent to choose a physical object to work with to represent your seed such as a stone, gem, seed, or any small object.

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Can you feel and smell the season turning from Winter to Spring? The seeds begin to awaken within the earth, softening with the melting snow and rains and stretching toward the rising light. The winds of change are blowing, and the tide is turning to spring and growth and warmth and life force is rising up in our veins.What seeds do you plant, what are the dreams yet to come? What are the hopes and wishes you pray for?

As you celebrate the return of the light, breathe life into the seeds of your personal dreams. Bless the seeds of hope for healthy communities and earth sustainability. Imagine…inspire, empower, and reach for the seeds of your future.

Will you hold the seeds planted in the rich earth of your heart, and imagine the tree grown strong?

When you name your seeds you bless them. What are your dreams? What are the seeds that you plant? What are your hopes and prayers for this year? What is one big dream, a tree you would like to grow? How will you send blessings and abundance to those seeds, those dreams.

 

The Seed. What is the seed you wish to plant? What seeds do you plant now, or have you planted in the earth before the cold season? What are the seeds that you wish to tend for this year? For the years after?

What is the dream that you wish for? Will you dream big? What are your hopes, your wishes? When you imagine the seed, what is the plant, the tree that it will grow? What fruits will that tree bear?  Standing in the place of now, can you imagine the tree grown strong and full? What is a dream that you hold? What is its scent, its taste, what does it look like or sound like? What is your dream of the future, one dream. Is it a dream of abundance, of prosperity.  A dream of a new job, a dream of something you wish to learn, a new business, a new project.

Perhaps it is a maple tree, swift growing. Perhaps it is an oak tree, long to grow and long to stand. Do you hold a dream for social change, a dream of healing, a dream of a creative project?  A healthy family, a healthy community?

Hold the image, the sound, the feeling. How do you hold your body here in the place where your seed has taken root and grown tall, where you can pluck the fruits of the tree. And coming back to now, when you hold the seed within your hand and your heart. What is the seed you will plant, or have planted already?

Earth

What is the soil that grows your dream? The Dreaming in the Darkness. What rich, loamy earth does your seed require to flourish? What are the nutrients your seed will need? Imagine being under the earth, in the moist darkness in the weeks and months, waiting for the thaw and waiting for the time to be right. Here is the time in the darkness, in the deep, in the waiting. When do you require darkness and silence and rest, when does that fill you and feed you?

What is the soil that will feed your dreamseed? Is it words of encouragement, is it time alone, is it the support of friends, is it financial abundance, is it family or community, what are the resources you need? What does your dream need, your seed need?

(At this time, you might plant the representation of your seed into earth, dirt, sand, or something soft.)

Water

The water that softens the seed.  Can you remember being under the earth, can you remember that darkness going on and on, the winter not letting go? What is it like to be so ready for light and heat and moisture? Have you ever been under the earth for what felt like a thousand years of darkness? And then….the waters came.
Can you remember what it felt like to have the waters touch the edges of the seed, the edges of your skin. The waters soften the seed, prepare it to grow. Can you remember the warm rains flowing down to cleanse you, prepare you?

Have you known joy or known sorrow? Why do you care about this seed? Have you felt the rains falling down on you? Or were they the waters of the stream or the lake or the ocean? How did the waters flow? Do you remember feeling? What brings life to your seed? What do you love?

Did your heart break?  The Sufi say the heart must break to make more room for God to enter. When did your heart break? Where is the love inside of you, are you in love with this seed and this dream? Can you feel the waters of your love softening the edge of the seed, filling the cup of your heart, slaking the thirst of this growing plant as it grows and grows?

How do you feel? What feelings bring life to this dream seed, to this tree that will become?

(You might bathe your hands in water here, or even pour water over yourself.)

Fire

The sunlight, the fire. What is the sunlight that feeds your plant, brings it life force and vitality? What is the will that rises within you?

Fire will be the sun and the light, the Will to make the dream happen, what lights us up. What gets you on fire? What sparks your imagination? What causes the fire in the head and heart, that life force shiver to rise up your spine? What gets you excited, what is your vision of the future? Can you feel it inside you, can you reach for that sunlight that will feed you?

Can you imagine that golden beautiful radiance and as it touches your leaves and your skin and you’re bathed in it, it fuels you and feeds you.

(You might light a fire at this point such as a candle, or even a campfire or bonfire if you are outside. Or you might also reach your hands up toward the sun itself, reaching for that fire.)

Air

The breath of life. What is the name of the divine? I am that I am. What brings life and consciousness to this seed, what gives it its name? Will you name this dream that you are planting, will you name the tree it will become? Will you blow a name into the seed, into the wind, and commit to making this seed a reality?

Will you turn and whisper its name to someone next to you, will you tell its story and bring it to life? Will you risk naming this dream, call it forth?

And will you say aloud one thing you can do, to take a step toward making this dream happen?

Fueling Your Intention
At this point in a group ritual I typically engage people in singing a chant together which builds in intensity. We sing, we dance, we play drums, until the energy of our song and movement reaches a peak. If you’re doing this exercise on your own, I recommend engaging in some kind of energetic activity in order to “fuel” the intention, the seed, that you are planting.

There are lots of ways to raise up life force. You can sing a chant or tone along with a singing bowl or a chant cd, you can go out for a run, you can go dancing at a club or a drum jam, you can rock back and forth, or do an intense workout. Heck, you can go sing a song that fits the work you’re doing at karaoke. Anything that makes a sound and gets your heartrate going is generally going to lay the pattern deeper.

If you sing, sing like it matters. Sound is energy. Life force is energy. Breathing and moving is energy.

Rebirth, Planting Seeds, and Planning
When you’ve done the work to set an intention, the work is not yet done. There’s still the long road from here–where you are right now–to there. Envisioning what “there” looks like can be a powerful motivator, and essentially strikes the “bell” that is the fabric of the universe and says, “Hey, this is my intention, this is what I want to happen.” But there’s all the rest of the work we have to do to get there.

Whenever I’m planning something–particularly something big that’s going to require a lot of work–I make a map. I identify what I want as clearly as I can, and then I pull out all the steps I’ll need to take in order to get there. It’s like a to do list, only a little prettier. I can start to get a sense of what tasks need to get accomplished first so that I can progress closer to the goal. For instance, getting a web site. Finishing a book. Getting more artwork done. Planning more traveling and teaching engagements. Or even cleaning up my art studio so that I can do more painting.

While there are a lot of thankless tasks and busywork on the way from Here to There, connecting them firmly to the big goal is a way to help you visualize and stay on track. And–if you enjoy crossing things off lists as much as I do–as you get those things done, you can see yourself on the map, getting closer to that goal. Some things don’t map out as well as others, but if you have a big complicated goal this can be a good way to break it down.

And it’s another place where Tarot cards can come into play as you’re beginning to make decisions about particular things. Tarot is a great way to look at what’s going on beneath the surface, and short 1-card or 3-card pulls can tell you a lot.

I wish you the very best in reaching for all of your dreams. Happy Spring!

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A quick message from me. I need a little help in realizing my dreams for the seeds that I have planted. I’m in the final days of my Indiegogo campaign to raise funds so that I can continue traveling teaching work like this.

I’m offering cool perks from $1 and up, including chants, meditations and trance journeys, artwork, and more. If my writing is useful to you, please consider contributing so I can keep doing this work.  http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/leadership-education-and-writing-for-pagan-community/

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Continue reading more posts on Tarot and Creativity on the Tarot Blog hop:
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Filed under: Personal Growth Tagged: Ostara, Personal growth, personal magic, personal transformation, ritual, spellwork, Tarot, transformation

Pagan Leadership and Witch Wars

It’s not a Witch War. Let’s get that out of the way. In fact, let’s get rid of that term completely, because it aggrandizes conflict and makes it sound magical, powerful, cool. What is a witch war? It’s a fancy-schmancy word for an interpersonal conflict.

Why do we need the cool word for it? Well…put bluntly, and making a lot of assumptions, I’m going to stick my neck out and say that many Pagans out there have poor self esteem. Heck, a lot of people have poor self confidence.

Drama is a coping mechanism to feel better about yourself. Think about this; if you have another Witch who is gunning for you, hexing you, psychically attacking you…that must make you pretty important, huh? 

Drama
Let’s face it. Drama is exciting. Humans like drama and we like story. Otherwise novels would be pretty boring, as would movies. They’d be about a character who makes some toast, and then watches tv, and then goes to sleep without facing any conflict. There’s a reason that movies and books sell well. There’s a reason why people have been telling stories about warriors and battles since language began. We like stories. Drama and conflict are a part of stories.

However, many people gravitate toward drama in their lives. They often stir it up, even though they aren’t consciously aware that they’re doing it.

What I’ve noticed is that the people who seem to stir up the most drama in their lives often have a certain measure of self loathing. They may hate their own lives; unhappy in their relationship, their job, their family…the list could go on. Drama is a pretty exciting distraction from the parts of your life that you’re not happy with. And again, if you have a nemesis, that’s at least a relief from your own life’s worries. It can be pretty exciting.

I’m certainly not writing this from the arm chair. I’ve been that person. Heck, I write fantasy novels, and dramatic conflicts of my past (realistic or imagined) inspired some of my epic fantasy stories.

I’ve worked with a lot of Pagans, enough to see this pattern happen pretty commonly. And being in a “witch war” is way more exciting than saying, “I’m entangled in a no-win situation with a coven leader.”

Competing for Market Share
I hate to say it, but this is a core part of many witch wars. Sometimes it’s fairly obvious; I know a number of cities, like Salem, where there are big public conflagrations between store owners, because the drama brings in business. But more than that, by discrediting the “other guy,” your store and services look better and you make more money.

Usually it’s a bit more altruistic. Or, rather, seems more altruistic, but it’s the same model.

Let’s say you’ve just started up a new group. You aren’t interested in forming a coven, you just want a networking thing at a local coffee house to meet up with other Pagans. There are a few covens in your area, but nothing like that.

Much to your surprise, a bunch of folks show up, and over the course of a few months, you form a group. Things are going well. Until…

Another local coven leader starts grilling you about what you are doing. Over the next months, you discover that they are badmouthing you around town. You go to a local Pagan bookstore to propose a fundraiser there, and they give you a weird look. You finally start to figure out what’s been happening.

Why is this leader doing this?

Many times, it boils down to this; you are stepping on their toes. You are doing something that perhaps they wanted to do. People are going to your group. The other leader worries that your group will be more successful than theirs. This isn’t about money–this is about attention. It’s also about boundaries, vision, and ego.

Ego Annex
I’ve explained this concept in my boundaries articles, but basically, any visionary who starts a group, reaches for a dream…we get attached to that vision, to that dream, to that thing we created. Maybe it’s a group, maybe it’s an annual event. Maybe it’s an art project. We get attached to it like it is a part of ourselves–because it is. And when that thing is threatened, when we fear that something else will take people’s attention away from that thing, we get angry, just as if someone insulted us personally.

So it’s egotism from a somewhat altruistic place.

A leader like this genuinely feels they are protecting their group and the work they are doing. But the truth is, when a leader works to undermine another group in order to protect their baby, their event, their group, their project…it’s usually a red flag for some serious issues with self esteem or with personal boundaries.

Boundaries meaning, there is a separation between you and me. And, the group I run is not actually me. A subset of me, sure, but it’s not actually me. I understand this from the inside; I’ve gotten way defensive about other groups scheduling an event at the same time as mine, for instance. However, I had the skills and tools to take a breath and realize one important thing.

It’s not about me. They aren’t personally attacking me.

They just scheduled their event over mine because they didn’t know. I can’t get mad at them for that, I can be mad at the situation, and work to establish better communication with that other group.

However–getting back to these community disputes that we won’t call witch wars, that’s a tactic that many unstable, egotistical leaders will put into play. To undermine another group, these leaders will badmouth them. They will schedule events at the same time to make the community “choose” which event to attend.

Whether the conflict is about who is bringing in donation money, who has the more popular group, who is stepping on toes, or even an actual interpersonal dispute…what it is not is magical, neat, or cool.

Dating in Groups
Let’s play “it’s a small world.” Person A and Person B are in a coven together and they are dating. Let’s hope that neither one is a coven leader. Person B completely loses it. Maybe they are a really angry person. Maybe they are Bipolar and went off their meds. Whatever the reason, A and B break up and Person B just goes bananas, disrupts coven meetings, the whole thing. The coven leader asks person B to leave the group.

Now–some of you advanced players in this particular dance know one of the next moves. What does Person B do next? Yes! Form their own coven, of course!

As you can imagine, this isn’t going to be a group that is based up on a strong core skill set of leadership, or even a grounding in any particular tradition. Nor is this going to be one of our more stable leaders. However, this person–whether we like it or not–is out there recruiting people for their group.

So, one strategy is telling people around town that she’s unstable and her group will be bad. However, then you get a rep as a gossip monger and for having sour grapes. You can also just ignore them, which works until they start spreading rumors about you and your group.

The other thing that happens perhaps more frequently is that Person B bails on your group and joins another coven in the area, and badmouths you to those people, and they take Person B’s side. Then that coven begins to undermine yours by badmouthing you around town.

Calling it a witch war perhaps  is the balm to ease the frustrating truth. There’s no good way out of that conflict. There’s no clean resolution for it.

What To Do with Bad Leaders?
With the examples above, there isn’t really a way to oust a bad leader. You can try to go and talk to them, but making the assumption that this person is not stable (and I have some forthcoming article on this process via conflict resolution)…let’s make the assumption that no conflict resolution process has worked.

What do you do?

The only thing that most leaders can even do in that instance is shunning, just ignoring the bad leader and not engaging with them.

Most leaders who are acting poorly don’t see it about themselves. And there’s a dozen reasons for that, but I think most of them center around wounds of the ego. Leaders harming their community cannot see their bad behavior, they cannot accept that they are “bad.” Ego doesn’t cope with it well. ”It’s not me, nothing’s wrong with me.”

And if they can’t recognize that their egotism is causing community rifts–or, if they don’t care–what do we do with them? What do we do with those people, other than try to ignore them?

They will still keep leading groups, finding newbies…they will still undermine the other leaders out there…they will continue to cause problems.

Accountability and the Catch-22
When you’re dealing with leaders who are jerks, or unstable, the rub is–in order to speak out against them, you have to cause the drama you were trying so desperately to avoid. Some of the so-called “witch wars” are attempts to hold leaders accountable that created inter-community disputes that leave rifts for years.

Most people I know were raised to be non-confrontational, to be passive aggressive. When someone is more aggressive and blunt, it’s really obvious, and it’s usually (not always) someone who held their tongue before and finally blew up.

A lot of Pagan leaders have learned to sweep the bad stuff under the rug because they are afraid of starting a witch war. In fact, whistle-blowers who call bad leaders on their stuff often get blamed and shamed.

I often tell people is, the truth will almost always eventually out. It did for me. But, don’t speak out against someone like that unless you’re prepared to burn in the court of public opinion. Really ready.

And know that there are going to be conflict avoidant people who are going to beg you, who are going to demand, that you stop tearing down XYZ leader. They are going to talk about how they have trauma from all the community conflict. And they are going to bully you into not speaking out against the abuser.

Most community leaders with any compassion are going to cave, they’re going to back down from calling another local leader on the carpet for behaving badly.

We have no authority over other leaders. All we can do is speak out…except in our conflict-avoidant community, the person who blows the whistle often becomes the “antagonist,” the bad guy. And the unstable leader who caused the original problem and is being spoken out against, gets to play the victim card.

Let me tell you–it’s a mess of spaghetti. It’s really difficult to tell who’s “right” in a conflict like this once it gets tangled.

What Do I Recommend for Leaders Dealing With a Bad Situation?
I want us to have healthy groups, and healthy institutions. I want those institutions to not be institutions that betray our values. And for me, part of that is that we (Pagans) need to figure out better methods of learning how to build institutions and groups, how to be better leaders (and group members, or be leaderful group members), and how to hold each other accountable without it being a “witch war” of he said/she said.

I hate it that sometimes the best advice I can give someone is, “Keep doing what you are doing, accept that you will need to downsize your efforts, and just ignore that unstable leader.” And then, hope they disappear, otherwise, you have to wait for them to retire or die.

But in all likelihood, the really stubborn unstable leaders won’t quit.

Is There a Solution?
I’m an optimist with a broken heart. With the people who step into Pagan leadership, there is no assumption of competence, maturity, and stability. I wish I could lean on spirituality here, and ask for people to be moved by Spirit, or hold faith in the idea of Karma, or that people will eventually be accountable to Spirit.

However, I’ve seen many leaders, Pagan and not, who are absolutely convinced they are doing the “right” thing. I’ve seen Pagan leaders convinced (or at least, doing lip service) to the idea that “God/Goddess/Spirit” told them so.

There’s a saying I’ve heard in a number of fiction writing workshops, that a good villain/antagonist is actually the hero of their own journey, just a hero that made different choices than the protagonist. I use that a lot in the personal growth work that I teach; we’re all the hero of our own journey, and in the course of that journey we sometimes might trample others in the quest for our individuality, our personal sovereignty.

We aren’t necessarily trying to, but it happens. I think the mark of a mature leader is trying to do less of that trampling, but that requires self awareness. That requires self reflection.

Self Transformation
The leaders who cause the most problems are not self aware. They are not stable. These are folks who are not seeing their impact. Some, with personal reflection, will be able to. Many won’t. Maybe they have untreated mental illness. Maybe they are just egomaniacs. What I see over and over is, they aren’t going to change how they act any more than any abuser in a relationship is likely to change.

No. you cannot “fix” them.

And that’s the category of leader that I just don’t know what to do with. You can’t “make” them get help. You can’t “make” them stop leading. If they’re doing something illegal, you can try to get them arrested for it, but that’s not usually the case. Going postal on another leader who steps on their toes (ie, starts a new group in “their” region isn’t illegal, it’s just destructive.

Waiting for these leaders to die and go away is not a solution. Ignoring them and suffering their abuse is not a solution either.

Ending the Wars
However, Paganism has no central gatekeepers. Or at least, gatekeepers are fairly rare. If you went to a UU seminary, one of your teachers might say, “ou really aren’t suited to this work, come back to seminary after 5 years of therapy.” We don’t have that, and won’t.

Yet, we can do better. We must do better. I’m just not sure how.

One strategy is, stop playing the game. Witch Wars is a game. It’s a distraction, and it’s a conceit. And it’s a no-win scenario.

I think the best strategy is to do relentless personal work. To train the stable leaders and community members in leadership skills so they can at least cope with this crap when it crops up.

Harvest a new generation of ethical leaders and teach them how to do it well. And, over the next generation, look at ways that we can actually collectively work together to get past “he said/she said” into true conflict resolution.

The series continues! There will be another Pagan leadership in a few days.

Filed under: Leadership, Pagan Community Tagged: communication, community, group dynamics, Leaders, leadership, Pagan community, Paganism, Personal growth, personal transformation, sustainability, transformation

Leadership for Small Groups and Subcultures

I think about leadership rather a lot, and I have people ask me for leadership advice with some frequency. I’ve been working up a series of posts exploring the deep challenges with leadership in the Pagan community, because I unfortunately get to see a lot of its seedy underbelly.

Though, these aren’t just issues of Pagan communities…those are just the communities I’m most deeply involved in. Other subcultural groups have these same problems through what I’d call “It’s a Small World” syndrome. Any time there are humans, these problems crop up; corporations, politicians, church leaders…any group could have these challenges. They are just exacerbated in grassroots groups without a big overarching structure.

What I see over and over is the problem of people in leadership positions who are absolutely unsuitable to be leaders. What we have are people who are unstable and mentally ill, or egotistical, or jerks…or even people who genuinely mean well but have no training in group leadership.

The question I get asked all the time when I teach leadership is, “So we’re trying to build local community, and we invited local leaders to work together. Except there’s this one leader….” and they pause, they are trying to be polite. They try to be discrete and not name names. But, I keep my ear to the ground, and eventually, I hear about most of the dirt going on in any local community where I travel and teach. I hear about the Seedy Underbelly.

The Profile: Egotistical Leader
That “one leader” is someone who eventually has thrown a total egotistical tantrum.

The trigger: another group is working in “their” area–their turf–and then that leader either verbally abuses the other group leaders and members, or quietly undermines them, spreads rumors about them, tries to keep them out of larger community activities.

Sometimes this is someone who demands the status of “elder,” or who otherwise would fit that status. What I mean is, I see this behavior a lot not in newer, inexperienced leaders, but with people who have been leaders for more than a decade, and who have a host of titles behind their name.

I hear about this problem so commonly, and people ask me, “What can I do about that leader?” What they want to know is, “How can I fix them?” And most of the time, you can’t. But what do you do instead?

Why Are You A Leader?
What I want to know is, how and why do so many people who are unstable, whether that’s untreated bipolar, narcissistic personality disorder,  alcoholism, abusive behavior, or maybe they are just rampant egomaniacs…how and why do these people end up in leadership?

Subcultures are particularly vulnerable to these types of leaders. We don’t have a system of gatekeepers, there’s no hierarchy saying, “Yes, you can be a leader. No, you aren’t suitable.” And there’s a dearth of people who actually are motivated enough to do anything.

Needing to be Seen and Egotism
In our Western culture, the need to be seen and admired is a cultural “sin,” a shadow. It’s not inherently a bad thing to want to be seen, to be valued. It’s human nature. However, when it overpowers good sense, when we ignore that shadow and disown it, that’s usually when it rises up to bite us.

I’ve done my own dance with “Look at me.” I’m not immune to these leadership sins. The times when I was running the most ambitious events were when I desperately wanted to be “seen,” to be valued. In my case, ruthless personal growth work helped me to understand that I didn’t value myself, I had poor self esteem, however, I had always valued what I could “do.” The events I could run, my artwork, etc.

In my head the math worked out to, “If I run this kickass event everyone will think I’m awesome and that’ll give the finger to all the people who abused me in school.”

Of course that isn’t logical, but, the parts of ourselves working on that level aren’t rational. They are the abused kid of our past that is still in the “car” of our self, our personality. We are all the ages we have ever been. We hold our past and our fears within us. And when we’re on autopilot, sometimes it’s a much younger, much more wounded Self driving the car.

Once I realized that I, myself, inherently have value…once I grew my self confidence, I no longer needed to run big showy events to feel “good” about myself. However, it means that I also lost a lot of the drive and motivation I used to have to run events.

And I begin to wonder about that…if there’s some tie between the wounds of our past, and the very few people who step into leadership and event planning, the very few people that actually have the motivation  to actually make that work happen…perhaps many of us who stepped into leadership only had the motivation to do so because of the wounds of our past? Because of our own poor self esteem? I don’t have answers here, only questions.

But what I’ve seen time and again are the people with the most drive, tend to be the most damaged, the most unstable.

I have seen so many leaders who had the drive and the interest–and yeah, there’s so few of us out there with the drive and interest to actually take the time to do this–but how many of us are actually motivated from a really unhealthy place? I’ve tried to come to running events from a more healthy place, but it’s a far slower process. Probably more sustainable in the long term, but it’s still a road I’m new to.

Common Problems: Instability
There are some common leadership problems that cause a nightmare of group dynamics spaghetti in Pagan communities. So often they seem to center on group members and leaders who are unstable and mentally ill, or just egomaniacs. These people cannot handle criticism, cannot handle people “infringing” on their turf, and they will blow up at other group leaders, they will undermine groups and group leaders, they will throw petulant temper tantrums.

These problems are exacerbated by the other group leaders out there who are just trying to do good work, but they have no leadership training. These group leaders may have more stability and maturity, but they make a lot of key mistakes. Honest mistakes, but these mistakes often escalate the problems and can lead to that healthier leader bailing, or to that group imploding. I mean, who wants to keep running a group when someone else is out there trying to undermine you all the time and shooting arrows into your back with gossip? It’s exhausting.

Pagan leadership plagued with group members, and leaders, who are like cranky teenagers wearing grown-up skin suits. I often wonder why I bother teaching leadership, if there’s any hope.

And again, I feel compelled to be transparent. I’m not always a paragon of stability myself. I struggle with depression, I drop the ball on things I’ve agreed to because I say yes to too much, and I’m not a pillar of financial stability. Granted, that last point is because I have donated too much of my time and money to the Pagan community…but if I were perhaps more stable and responsible I wouldn’t have let things get this bad.

I know a lot of my issues and I work on them, but I share some of the core issues of many of the unstable leaders out there.

Institutions and Paganism
I know a lot of Pagans talk about not wanting leaders, not wanting institutions that will take the “wildness” out of Pagans, however, I think that institutions and organizations are the only way we can build a healthy, useful, sustainable infrastructure.

I’m an ecstatic ritualist and mystic who wants institutions. At heart, I’m an anarchist, at least, an optimist, but I’m also a realist. True anarchy means, if I see a pothole, I fix it. I don’t wait for “them” to fix it, there’s no them. There’s only me being radically self-responsible. That’s optimistic…but, people are people. We aren’t there yet. I can’t even convince Pagans that they should make the choice to not use styrofoam at potlucks because it’s being hypocritical, if you say you’re Earth-centered. But I digress.

With Pagan leadership, I wish that Pagans and Pagan leaders were all ethical, self responsible people. I wish that Pagans were as tolerant as they purport to be. But we aren’t. I hear all the time about the deep, dark, stanky underbelly of the ugly crap Pagan leaders have done, particularly because I teach leadership.

So f we’re going to have institutions, then we need to do them well. If we’re going to have leadership and hierarchies, then we need those leaders to be accountable. And even if that leadership is shared–consensus, rotating leadership, voting in officers…whatever it is, we need our leaders to have actual leadership training. To have some method of doing the intense personal work and facing shadows so that we don’t step on ourselves.

Many of the group blow-ups I hear about are leaders who started with positive intent whose own baggage got in their way and they had a massive egotistical kablooey at someone in their group or another leader.

I’m sick of hearing about group leader after group leader who is causing these problems in their own community. Worst case, we’re talking about group leaders seducing minors–which happens. Theft, rape…it happens.

Who Should be a Leader?
I’m not the boss of anyone; we are each our own sovereigns. However, it’s also equally clear to me that there are some people who should simply not ever be in a position of leadership because they are unstable and have untreated mental illness, rampant egotism, or other various problems. I think the key here is unstable–many people with various kinds of mental illness have a regimen of meds and or therapy that they manage very well.

But the folks that don’t, the folks who are unstable, the folks who are completely not self aware, the folks who are completely egotistical…How do these folks end up in leadership?

Often the short answer is, there’s nobody else. There’s nobody else motivated to step in to do the work. It’s often the less stable of us that seem to get the leadership bug. Or maybe it’s that you have to be slightly insane to want to be a leader for a Pagan group, or run events that run the risk of not breaking even.

So many people in my leadership classes admit that they never wanted to be leaders. Here’s my admission–I didn’t want to be one either. I wanted my projects to happen, my dreams to happen. So, I had to become visible, become a leader, to make that happen.

As I’ve pointed out, I’m not always a paragon of sanity and stability myself. And, at times, I’ve stepped back from my role as an event organizer and group leader. I’ve worked on my own issues in order to become a healthier, more stable leader. But so many people I engage with seem to either have no clue how destructive they are in their own community, or, they just don’t care that they are jerks.

What Will Help the Situation?
If we’re going to have leaders, these leaders need training, and they need to be held accountable. But, that takes us back to the larger Pagan Community (or any other subculture). There’s no Pope, no ringmaster, no “this person’s above you” method of accountability.

I think most people I know were raised to be non-confrontational, to be passive aggressive. And a lot of Pagan leaders have learned to sweep the bad stuff under the rug because they are afraid of starting a witch war (which is no such thing, it’s just a personality conflict).

But what do you do?

Leaders who aren’t stable, who are consistently abusive, aren’t going to change. And you can’t make them stop. You can’t “fire” them. You can’t excommunicate them. What I often recommend–and this feels like an impotent, feeble recommendation–is to keep doing the work they are doing, ignore and shun the leader who is being difficult, and hope that you can reduce their relevance and keep up your own good work.

That’s not much of a recommendation.  Ignoring some of them does reduce their relevance to a dull roar…but they are still there. And the regular group leaders out there just trying to do good work get exhausted. Not from any kind of magical psychic attack, but just from dealing with the drama, the gossip, the pot shots, the stress.

Leadership Series
This is actually a series of several blog posts, because it’s a large topic. In a few days I’ll post about some of the problems, and some strategies for dealing with them. I hope you will join me in this mad idealistic crusade on the road to better Pagan leadership.

Filed under: Leadership, Pagan Community Tagged: communication, community, community building, group dynamics, impact, Leaders, leadership, Pagan community, Paganism, Personal growth, personal transformation, shadow work, sustainability, transformation

Excerpt from A Mantle of Stars

A Mantle of Stars: A Devotional for the Queen of Heaven

I’m very excited to announce the publication of an anthology featuring one of my essays. I’ve included a few brief excerpts from my essay, and I’m really excited to read all of the other pieces. The anthology is edited by Jen McConnel and published by Bibliotheca Alexandrina.

About the Book:
Peel back the layers that comprise the Queen of Heaven. She is Mother Mary weeping at the cross, and Hathor dancing in the sky. She is Freyja with her wild eyes, and Frigg with her open arms. She is Yemaya, keeper of the sea; compassionate Kuan Yin; and she is winged Isis. Her starry body stretches across the sky in the guise of Nut, and she is Saraswati’s gentle song. She is Juno, and Hera, and Tanit, and a thousand forgotten names, and she is Inanna, descending to the underworld to be reborn.

The voices in this anthology are as diverse as the different goddesses who have claimed the title Queen of Heaven, but each sparkles like the stars in Our Lady’s mantle.

Excerpt from A Mantle of Stars:
Below are a number of short excerpts taken from my longer essay. Think of them as stones skipping on a pond; little glimpses in a basically linear flow.

My Path to the Lady in the Blue Light
–Shauna Aura Knight

“I didn’t know her name. I started talking to her at night, talking to that huge bright moon, to the glittering stars. I think I was twelve when I started pouring out my sorrows to her. I was young enough that everything was emotionally overwhelming. Old enough to understand that people were cruel, that my classmates were cruel, and that they were never, ever going to stop teasing me. I think it was around that age that I started wondering, every once in a while, if life was worth living if every day meant verbal, emotional, and sometimes physical torture at the hands of my peers.

Somehow, at night when I looked up at the moon, I felt that she was with me. Angel, goddess, I didn’t know….Feeling her close made me feel like I was worth something, like maybe life was worth surviving….”

***

“In my twenties, the dreams changed. The visions were harder to connect to, further and farther between. I began to dream less of the angel/goddess directly, and more of something I first called the Water Chapel, later, the Water Temple. In this Temple of the Goddess of moonlight and water, there were spiral grooves carved into the floor, sometimes carvings of water shapes and grails almost in the way the ramps up to the Forbidden City in China are carved in relief. There was always a fountain in the center, water falling down, or a grail overflowing.”

***

“When I joined the leadership program at Diana’s Grove, my intention was to learn the skills to help serve Pagan community, but also to be a better leader in order to accomplish some of the larger creative projects I had in mind, some of those being projects like building standing stones, temples, or something more mundane like art installations. I knew I had been called to Pagan leadership, and I knew that Diana’s Grove was one of the very few places where I could actually get the training to do it.

But as I began doing that work of learning Pagan leadership and priestess skills, it felt like my Goddess was further and further away from me. Those moments of divine communion seemed a thousand miles out of reach.”

***

“I’ve been reading about sacred geometry, ancient temples, and ancient legends for a while, but it seemed like suddenly the synchronicities were coming faster. Michael and Gabriel, sword and chalice. There also seemed to frequently be a connection between the Grail and the cosmic mountain or Omphalos—world navel—and at times, a connection to the dome of the heavens, the zodiac.”

***

“Archaeoastronomy is still considered fringe science to some, although I personally find the evidence fairly compelling that our ancient ancestors built computers in the form of stone megaliths and temples to track the movement of the stars and the heavens. As a kid I had those dreams about Stonehenge all the time, and for a while I thought about just building stone circles, but it wasn’t until I learned more about the actual solar and stellar alignments of some of the megaliths that it began to make sense why our ancestors might have done that kind of work. And perhaps, why I myself might have become obsessed with the idea without even knowing why.”

***

“I believe that our ancient ancestors understood the sky. And for whatever reason, they knew that it was essential to chart the stars, to record their observations in stone. It’s relatively easy to track the solstices and equinoxes, which would be essential for tracking the seasons. But some of these sites seem to have tracked incredibly complicated stellar phenomena. Eclipses, the 8-year and 40-year cycle of Venus. Even the 25,800 -year cycle of axial precession caused by the slight wobble of the Earth’s rotation on its axis.”

***

“Queen of Heaven, Venus, and Astronomical Megaliths
With a dozen wooden posts and a flat field, our priest-astronomer-megalith builders could have tracked the simple seasonal cycles. One post goes in the center as a sightline. You start at the Equinox, and put a post on one half of the circle for sunrise, one for sunset. Over the next months, you track the sun as it moves north, putting another post in to mark the sightline for the solstice. Solstice means “sun is standing still,” so you mark the northernmost sunrise of the summer solstice, and the northernmost sunset on the other side of your circle. Same thing for the latter half of the year, marking out the sunset. That calendar takes just one year to build and is fairly tolerant of error.”

***

“The truth is, I think a great deal of the “magic” of our ancient ancestors can be found in a modern cell phone: calendars, moon phases, a compass. Imagine the power that the shaman-priests had by being able to tell when the solstices and equinoxes fell. By knowing when the warm rains would come, when the snows would come, when it was time to plant. This knowledge was carried in the language of stone, in the language of myth.”

***

“My search began with the dreams, with visions of an unnamed goddess. Later, dreams of megaliths, dreams of temples filled with water and with images of a Grail, temples filled with spiral grooves, temples where water was always flowing, and where I felt connected to that goddess of the nighttime sky. In those dreams and visions, I felt completely connected to her, transcendent.

And yet, in my quest to follow the path I saw to spiritual leadership, and the path to learn more about labyrinths and temples, I seemed to have lost her….When I began leading public rituals, I thought surely I would find that place of communion, and it eluded me over and over. 

….For years, I felt a bitterness. How unfair was it that I finally understood some of the messages from my dreams, even if they were vague, and I couldn’t actually directly commune with this goddess that had inspired me and kept me from harming myself in my youth?”

***

“In my vision, I felt myself become a part of the entire universe. The universe was an ocean of love; I was laying on a bed that was the waters of the ocean that was the mother that loves us all and that is all of us, that we are not separate from. It was my goddess, but warmer, larger, more encompassing.

I felt the golden honey-light of the heartbreak of the universe breaking open on my skin in that moment, I felt the cradling rocking loving. That I was not separate from the divine. That indeed, I was not separate from anyone, that we were like water in the ocean, that the skin that separates us is an illusion. That it was all bliss and agony and love together—that the separation the universe must endure from us is agony, but only with that grief and loss can we truly recognize how potent it is to come home again….”

Table of Contents and more information at: 
http://neosalexandria.org/bibliotheca-alexandrina/current-titles/a-mantle-of-stars-a-devotional-for-the-queen-of-heaven/

Edited by: Jen McConnel
Published by: Bibliotheca Alexandrina
Price: $14.99
Publication Date: 20 December 2013
ISBN: 978-1494357948 / 1494357941
Pages: 302 pp

Purchase at:
https://www.createspace.com/4553772
http://www.amazon.com/Mantle-Stars-Devotional-Queen-Heaven/dp/1494357941

 

Filed under: Dreamwork, Personal Growth Tagged: A Mantle of Stars, archaeoastronomy, Archangel Gabriel, Arthur, Gabriel, Goddess, king arthur, megaliths, Personal growth, personal transformation, Quest for the Grail, stonehenge, Sword in the Stone, the Grail, trance journey, transformation

Excerpt: Dreamwork for the Initiate’s Path

 My book, Dreamwork for the Initiate’s Path, was just released. Below is an excerpt from the first chapter.

About the book: Dreamwork is a core part of the path of seekers and initiates. Learn basic and in-depth techniques to work with your dreams in a concise, easy-to-understand way. This includes: remembering your dreams, exploring dream symbolism, unraveling nightmares, working with spiritual/personal transformation, better understanding prophetic dreams, and exploring your mythic and deeply internal programming.

 Working with our dreams is a potent way to understand and explore ourselves at a deeper level. Our nightmares show us our fears, other dreams show us our power, a glimpse of the future, or bring messages from the divine.

In our dreams, we face many situations that we never would in the waking world. You might achieve the Grail or find yourself terrified, falling from an airplane into a night-dark sea. Dreams are multilayered and difficult to unravel, but they will tell you more about yourself than you might believe.

BEGINNING DREAMWORK

Dreamwork goes beyond just remembering our dreams, though that is certainly the beginning. This book will begin with foundations in dreamwork moving into deepening your dreamwork practice. I’ll focus on practical ways you can use dreamwork in your personal growth and spiritual practice.

“Dreams make available to us a mine of psychological and spiritual treasures. They provide guidance vital to the journey, and they point to areas of ourselves where we need to work.”

–Wayne Teasdale, The Mystic Heart

Dreaming: One path of the initiate

Dreams are an invaluable tool for transformative personal growth. I can experience entire worlds in my dreams that I could have no access to in the conscious world. In my dreams, I might interact with deities, archetypes, facets of the divine, of mystery. I might pass through a dark night of the soul that transforms me. An abundance of wisdom is available to us through our dreams that we might have no other way of gaining.

Taking on a personal practice of dreamwork is an initiate’s path. It is a discipline. To begin, I must know, “Why would I do this?” I must make the choice to do it. And I must follow it through with a consistent practice.

A Basic Dreamwork Practice :

1. Formalize your intention
2. Prepare to dream
3. Dream
4. Remember your dream
5. Interpret your dream

Formalizing your intention
Much like in any magical, spiritual, or psychological work, possibly the single most critical piece is intention. What do you want? Do you want to get better at remembering your dreams? Do you want to use dreams to get to know yourself better, to transform yourself? Do you want insight into a major life decision? Do you want to deepen a connection with a specific deity or archetype?

Once you have an intention, you can make dreamwork a workable part of your personal practice.

Preparing to Dream
This might be as simple as stating aloud, “I will remember my dreams tonight.” It should involve a physical commitment such as keeping a pen and journal or tape recorder by your bedside. It might involve working with an archetype, such as Morpheus, Greek god of dreams. All these are practices that will help you formalize your intent, and should help you remember your dreams.

Dreaming
This is the easy part. Many people say they do not remember their dreams. Enough research assures me that while almost everyone dreams, not everyone remembers them. The exception is that certain sleep disorders prevent dream sleep, but these conditions are fairly rare. If you want to learn more about sleep disorders such as night terrors or sleepwalking, I recommend doing your own research. And of course, if you have some of the symptoms of a sleep disorder you should check in with your physician.

Remembering Your Dream
I find that writing the dreams down is absolutely the most challenging part of the discipline. The most important moments of dreaming are the first few minutes  after waking, when I really want to tuck back under the covers. I can’t stress enough how important it is to begin writing down your dream as soon as you wake up enough to do so. Particularly if you have challenges remembering your dreams, capturing even just a small essence of the dream will help improve your dream recall a little bit at a time. Dreams slip away very quickly sometimes.

When I’ve woken up enough that I can hold the pen, I write down my dream. Sometimes I make a few notes first to capture bullet points of different “phases” of the dream if it was complicated.

If I am having trouble remembering, I will lie in the position in which I slept, as sometimes this will help the dream return. It might sound strange, but it works. If you had an intense dream and had to get right up and go to work or an appointment and couldn’t write it down, sometimes you can get back into the dream and recall it by lying down in your sleeping position when you get home. I’ve tried this numerous times, and it really does help.

It might take a while to really remember your dreams. For me, the key is to write it down as soon as possible. Sometimes this is a brief snippet on waking; sometimes it’s two pages. The dream might keep until I’m on the bus to work. What I have found is that the closer to the time I awaken that I write down my dream, the more details I remember.

There are times in my life where I have diligently written down my dreams every day, and other times when I have gone months without writing down a dream. And, though I have fairly strong dream recall in general, when I haven’t written down a dream in weeks or months, my recall ability for dreams begins to fade. However, once I start writing them down again, my dream recall improves dramatically.

Again, even if your dreams are short, vague, or hard to remember, write down anything you can remember. Maybe it’s a color, a sense, a movement, or a snippet. Over days and weeks, your dreams will most likely become clearer.

It also helps to schedule your sleeping and waking so that you can awaken naturally. It’s very common to awaken naturally after a dream cycle. In fact, I would hazard a guess that one reason I have really good dream recall is because I tend to awaken numerous times during the night to flip over as my arm falls asleep.

I’m not going to go too much into the science of dreams and REM sleep here. However, oversimplified, we sleep in 90-minute increments. The sleep cycles get slightly longer as the night progresses. Whenever I’m taking a short nap, I try to plan for it to be either a 90-minute nap, or a 3 hour nap, so that I’m waking up more naturally after a full dream cycle. You will feel more rested than if you wake up in the middle of deep sleep. Your dream recall is also far better when you wake up right after a dream.

Interpreting Your Dream
Dreamwork is a difficult but rewarding discipline; not only do I need to write down my dreams, but I have to then unravel the mess of symbolism. And, sometimes it really can be a mess; dreams are notorious for not making logical sense. In addition, our dreams often bring out huge, frightening symbols in order to call attention to something that is going on, and it can be a challenge of my own personal fortitude to deal with uncomfortable imagery and feelings.

“… a dream is quite unlike a story told by the conscious mind. In everyday life one thinks out what one wants to say, selects the most telling way of saying it, and tries to make one’s remarks logically coherent. For instance, an educated person will seek to avoid a mixed metaphor because it may give a muddled impression of his point. But dreams have a different texture. Images that seem contradictory and ridiculous crowd in on the dreamer, the normal sense of time is lost, and commonplace things can assume a fascinating or threatening aspect.”
–Carl Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious

In my personal dream practice, I am constantly exploring these dream symbols that may or may not make sense. Some dream symbols may not make sense to me for many years. Like any initiate’s path, it can take a long time to become proficient at. I look at the first dreams I wrote down and how it took perhaps two years to get any kind of depth and detail to my dream recall to get enough detail to really start interpreting my dreams.

***

Dreamwork for the Initiate’s Path
by Shauna Aura Knight

On sale for $2.79 at Jupiter Gardens Press, available in all major eBook formats.
Also available at:  Amazon  &  Barnes and Noble

You can also view the Interior Illustrations

Filed under: Dreamwork, Personal Growth Tagged: dreams, Dreamwork, initiates, Leaders, leadership, Personal growth, shadow work, transformation, writing