Katrina's Joy - Share, Grow, Embrace & Discover

Why Talk About Myths?

katrina — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 22:21:04 -0500

“With the world going to hell in a hand-basket, why on earth are you wasting time talking about myths and fairytales?”

This is the unspoken question I face nowadays as I promote my upcoming myth series, Loss of Innocence. It is an excellent question, I must admit. There seems to be no end to the list of atrocities, scandals, political shenanigans, massacres and environmental outrages. It seems as if we either need to storm the battlements for life, liberty and justice or collectively bury our heads in the sand.

At a time like this, why would anyone want to spend her time studying those old tales of endangered children, mean middle aged women and absent fathers? Why indeed?

As I mentioned way back in one of my very first blogs, the old gods do not just fade away when their temples are destroyed. They remain in this realm by inhabiting or overshadowing those elements of nature that most resemble them in power, attitude and focus. So the gods of war haunt the battlefields and the gods of love leer suggestively in the red light districts. The gods of healing cycle through the hospital air system and the gods of knowledge sink into the libraries and lecture halls.

The same is true for the old tales.

When these old stories, like the old gods, are no longer spoken about around the glowing embers, when the dark is no longer propitiated with song and dance, and the bloodied teeth of the night terrors are no longer allowed to move freely through the words and gestures of the griot ... they take on lives of their own.

And these old tales and these old gods come alive without the mediation of culture, elders and the soul of humanity. So instead of us offering the first fruits of the harvest to the agricultural deities, we instead place monsanto derivatives into their soil of their bodies. Instead of offerings for the sweet waters of our rivers, we let industrial and superfarm waste spread diseases to all that lives down river. (And face it, we all live down river.) So the stories and the gods become distorted caricatures of their real nature. So the tortured land taints our food. And the dark tales enters the blood of the willing and terror is let loose upon the land .... and upon our very children.

So I seek answers within the words of our ancestors. Maybe we can identify why the wolf waited for Red Riding Hood instead of devouring her as soon as he found her in the woods. Or we can learn the skills of the dwarfs and rescue the lost children. Or maybe, we can strengthen our hearts, brains, homes and courage for the work that is already in our hands. And then maybe, just maybe ... we can reconcile these beasts of our own makings.

Surely it is worth a try. Join me for the first seminar on February 27th at 8 pm eastern. You can either dial in on our toll free number or join via the internet. This first session is free. Register online at www.reflectionsmyst.org

See you then.

STFU Already!

katrina — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 13:52:10 -0400

Okay, this has to be said outloud or I am going to burst.

If you are a man, and you find yourself discussing rape ...

UNLESS you ...

...have been a rape victim,

... have held a screaming, bloody woman in your arms all night so she could find some kind of peace,

.... have held a screaming bloody child for the same reason,

.... are activiely working to stop men from raping, or

... have put your body on the line to help take the night back for women,

SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT RAPE!

You have no fucking idea what you are talking about,

SO SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT RAPE!

And if you are a woman ( or a man) who cares about woman having the freedom to continue to be part of the well spring of change that it so needed in this world.

TELL THESE FUCKERS TO SHUT THE FUCK UP AND VOTE THEM THE HELL OUT!

that is all ...@#$%^...

Unpacking a Community Crisis - Part 2

katrina — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 13:34:24 -0400

The Open Hearth Foundation has had as it primary charter the founding of a pagan community center here in the Washington DC metro area. I had been an early critic and skeptic, because as a native Washingtonian, I have longed been irritated when things are named after my city but actually reside in Maryland or Virginia.

So in January of last year when I was invited to a local leadership summit held by OHF, I was surprised when we reached general consensus that the center actually be located in DC. At the time, I was also greatly impressed with the leadership of Iris Firemoon and Maria Aquila. They listened to our feedback, frustrations and hope.

So when the center opened this year, I was so proud of OHF but most especially damn proud of the two of them. They kept their promise and they manifested our dreams. Iris, a charismatic, hard working and seasoned leader, lead the board of OHF into its greatest success.

But OHF failed Iris in many ways.

As a community, we have a responsibility to support and protect our up and coming leaders. In my years of running groups as small as a coven to statewide organizations like Maryland NOW with close to 10,000 members, the one thing that came up over and over again was how do we grow and nurture our leaders.

One of the ways we can harm our leaders is to treat them as if they are not human or have human foibles. We do this by not building in feedback loops, open and transparent processes, and escalation procedures. These procedures not only protect the organization, they also protect our leaders from themselves.

And we failed Iris when she fell in love. We failed to protect her from herself. There should have been an automatic process that clicked in to insure that Sean was removed from a leadership position. The other concerned and alarmed board members should have known who to contact to voice their concerns. Members of the community, including myself, should have known who to contact to express our concerns.

OHF has taken steps to correct these issues, but it is way too late to help Iris. And folks like myself, who continually voiced concerns informally, waited too late to make them public. As a result we, all of us, failed Iris.

And so here we are with Iris in great pain having suffered emotional and mental abuse, feeling forced out of leadership just as she achieved her greatest success, and feeling as if her only option was to publicly air her grievances against her husband and the board of the organization she once ran.

You will notice that I never faulted Iris for blogging her pain. As a feminist, I will never seek to silence a woman. I will hold people accountable when they overstep the boundaries of fair play, or when they manipulate processes or people toward the achievement of personal goals. But I will never seek to silence a woman who speaks her truth.

This is also why I can hold compassion for Iris as a woman while critiquing her actions as a leader.

And this is a key point.

Many folks acted as if this crisis was simply about either being for Iris or against her. This is the same polarization we hear from the Tea Party, the Religious Right and the current leadership of the Republican Party.

But we as pagans can ill afford that kind of politics inside our communities. We should be able to be more nuanced. Our paths, though differing all honor the earth, the seasons, the masculine and the feminine, and the light and the dark. We literally stand at the crossroads and find ways to dance and make magick together.

And so we need to be very careful when we find ourselves being pulled for or against anything. We need to find ways to be not simply for-or-against but more broadly both/and.

I both admire and respect Iris, and believe that things went too far in the subsequent attacks on Sean. Sean may be a lot of things, both admirable and deadly. But he is also a human being. And with the attacks on him and OHF, it opened up a negative spiral that led many folks who otherwise hold to standards of acceptable behavior in public to begin making lewd, nasty and horrible statements about Iris, Sean, OHF and Firefly.

And it was because of those statements that I felt I had to step in to protect all of them in my original post. My early posts were spells to stop folks from filling the airwaves with so much toxic energy that serious debate and discussion of the core issues was extremely difficult. People were un-friending long time colleagues within social media at the drop of the hat without listening to each other or respecting legitimate differences of opinion or perspectives.

It is a sad day when members of a community cannot respectfully disagree with one another. And what hurts most of all is that we could have avoided the entire episode if we had treated Iris and her leadership as the precious natural resource it was.

And so let me be the first to apologize to Iris for not having her back when she needed us the most. I am sorry I did not sit down with you and express my concerns. I am sorry I felt compelled to just offer words of support whenever I saw you without providing real support when I knew you needed it.

I know you are angry with me right now, but that is fine and in many ways quite healthy. Be as angry as you need to be, I can take it. But also know that I will also be your biggest supporter when and if you are ready to step back in the sphere of local leadership. We at the Order are praying for your continued healing, an easy delivery of a healthy baby, and that your spiritual community continues to hold and protect you.

You have my respect and love.

Sincerely,
Katrina Messenger

Unpacking a Community Crisis

katrina — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 16:53:12 -0400

Last week, I had very different goals when I entered the fray concerning Firefly House and OHF. Last week, my colleague Eridanus and I were simply trying with various degrees of success to calm down the vitriol and testeria(1) that was rampant in the various social media channels.

But this week is a different week. And with folks on either side either licking their wounds or patting themselves on their collective backs, it is now time to unpack what actually happened. If we as a community are to truly heal, we must extract from this painful episode any lessons that would help us in the future should a similar crisis occur, and we need to collectively hold accountable the guilty parties.

There is a lot of ground to cover so I am going to take my time in this effort since *I* am under no pressure to hurry my efforts.

So I am beginning with the Pagan Newswire collective and its Washington, DC branch, Capital Witch. Let us start with the recent statement from PNC in regards to the Capital Witch article that ignited the firestorm.

I am old school in many ways, and as an activist for over forty years, I have a long history of discerning what is hidden in plain sight. So my rule has always been if a group refuses to be specific and makes grandiose statements, something is hidden in the details. And vice versa, if a group provides way too many details, something is lurking in the larger picture.

PNC produced a statement that groups what happened here in DC with something unrelated that happened in a bureau in the Bay Area of northern California. The message here is that the PNC is diligent in policing their bureaus. “We are on the job!” This is the purpose of the Corrections portion of most daily newspapers as well. “We will hunt down all inaccuracies no matter how minor!”

But just like the correction section of the Post for example will never feature an admission of “I failed to do my job as a reporter and just parroted a press release only later to find out that a government agency is *actually* capable of lying!” Publishing a correction is not the same as having a culture of transparency, journalistic excellence, objective investigation, and attention to detail.

So now let’s take our time and look at what is published by the PNC as part of their reflective process. Three things jump out at me immediately.

1. If the DC bureau staff person, Jen Moore, was the one with the most objective stance, why wasn’t she the one to at least review the article?

What is missing here is that the bureau chief, David Salisbury, not only made the decision to not wait for Jen Moore to write the article, but he also made the decision to bypass the entire internal mechanism of the DC bureau in reviewing the article. Most of the other staff in the local bureau have substantial journalistic credentials. So the question becomes, why were these people in particular omitted from the process?

One possible theory is that the local folks would have recognized that all the sources were Firefly members or supporters. They also would have caught that Literata was being quoted out of context. They might even have taken the time to get quotes from other parties relevant to the article. They could have definitely corrected the biased tone by adding actual facts about OHF funding and fiscal health. At the very least someone could have checked whether Iris actually complain to the OHF before launching her public article(And the answer is ... no).

2. So the PNC Managing Editor was receiving calls and emails asking for the issue to be covered. Why would any local disinterested party contact the national bureau to ask that a local issue be covered?

What is missing here is the identities of the folks calling for coverage. I highly suspect that they were all Firefly people. Why? Because who else but the creators of a press release would ask that someone in a perceived position of power to pay attention to it.

This is a tactic straight out of both grassroots organizing and the music business. Write a press release then call the editors of the newspaper asking them to cover the issue. Or sending a demo tape to a producer then call radio stations asking them to play the record.

And really, how come this did not occur to the Managing Editor that it could have been a possible ruse to get publicity? Do they not ask for organizational affiliations from their sources?

3. “The article was presented to the Executive Editor as a group-written piece ...” and “This was not written by three or more journalists. “ Okay, this is painful say but when something is presented as being written by a group and it is discovered that it was written by an individual, there is a word for that. It is called a LIE! And calling it unacceptable is ... basically ... unacceptable.

But more to the point, why was it called a group piece when it clearly was written by an individual, one David Salisbury? This is another question that the PNC failed to ask.

Initially I thought that the only reason I could see for pretending the article was a group effort was to hide behind Capital Witch instead of taking the heat personally. But I now think that something else was amiss in this process. But before I go into that with more detail, let’s keep unpacking this issue.

So now we see that there is a legitimate set of questions that it appears that the PNC failed to ask or worse probably did not even realized was needed to be asked.

But we are left with these questions and what they could possibly mean in the context of this article? Well let’s restate the questions as statements.

The Washington, DC bureau chief bypassed all local processes to send a controversial article to the national bureau for review. He also lied about the process that produced the article (or to be generous, he failed to correct a misunderstanding). At the same time, members of the religious/spiritual community who authored the press release and of which the DC bureau chief is a High Priest are sending emails and calling this same national bureau asking that this issue be covered.

So let’s step back and ask ourselves what this looks like to the average person?

I tell you what it looks like to me, and that is a concerted campaign by Firefly House to get the PNC in general and Capital Witch in particular to join in their libelous campaign against Sean Bennett.

It was bad enough that Firefly jumped all the way to Def Con level 1 by withdrawing their funds from OHF without seeking internal measures of solving any problems or concerns. But to endanger an entire community center because Iris Firemoon was angry at her husband and so manipulated national and community resources to get back at him is contemptible on a good day.

People in this community worked hard to get this center. Iris was a part of a long history of individuals and groups pulling together to make it possible. And to literally treat the center and the people who run it as fodder for her intra-marital battles is beneath contempt.

Iris Firemoon, David Salisbury, and the entire Firefly community owes the rest of us, and OHF in particular, a huge apology.

Sincerely,
Katrina Messenger

1: Hysteria has at its roots a belief that women are highly susceptible to fits of exaggerated or uncontrollable emotion. Some old school feminists sometimes uses the term Testeria as fair play

Two Elders Respond to OHF Issues

katrina — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 10:30:00 -0400

Notes from a few elders

It has come to our attention recently that the ending of Iris Firemoon’s marriage to Sean Bennett has ignited a firestorm that has engulfed our new Pagan Community Center and the OHF. It is unfortunate of course, but we humans tend to have loves, loss and lives beyond even our most esteemed values and dreams.

We send our love and prayers of comfort to Iris. She obviously is in great pain. She deserves support and understanding, and her spiritual community should surround her with love and compassion.

We send love also to Sean Bennett, because he too must be suffering from the airing of the personal and intimate details of his private life. May he find comfort and support as well.

Being older yet mindful of our youthful transgressions, we are well aware that often relationships that begin with a fiery passion must surely end as well in a fiery rage. It is the way things work, but it still is painful for all concerned.

And for this we offer our love, compassion, understanding and support to all affected by the end of this relationship.

And having been in leadership positions in more than a few organizations over the decades, we also understand how interpersonal issues can obfuscate the mission, goals and activities of groups as diverse as political parties, unions, churches, nonprofits, advocacy/social justice organizations, and businesses.

We are human, and we bring out humanity into everything we do in the world, it is inevitable.

And so we offer two suggestions to the OHF in the interest of learning from this painful episode.

1. We suggest a bylaws change to the effect that board members cannot be involved with other board members in an intimate relationships, as business owners, work for the same boss, have supervisory relationships or be related by marriage or blood. If two or more board members find their soulmate on the board, all but one needs to resign.

2. And although many would feel otherwise, we feel that Sean’s membership on the board is currently a liability that OHF can ill afford. Regardless of how you come down on the dissolution of their marriage, the board and by extension our community center cannot operate effectively while this scandal is alive.

There was a time, that Katrina Messenger faced a similar issue with her membership on the board of a nationally recognized organization. Despite being innocent of any wrongdoing, a whisper campaign against her was making it difficult for the board to operate. So she resigned in the interest of the organization's health and well being.

We do not think Sean is guilty of anything except being human and fallible just like the rest of us. So this is not a condemnation of him in any way. We just think the fallout from his marriage’s dissolution is harming the community center. And we as a community could be better served by his stepping down from the board to become maybe a volunteer of some sort if he so desires.

Now we know that our opinions are just one among many, many opinions. But we hope that our input can be heard at the very least by those whose hearts, like our own, are in great pain because of all that has transpired as of late.

And to put our money where our mouth is, so to speak, we freely offer our spiritual counseling services to all parties involved in this issue. And further, we are willing to act as mediators for all the offended parties.

We just love our interlacing, overlapping, beautifully diverse communities of pagans. And so we pray for the best possible outcome with the least harm to all concerned.

In service and blessings
Katrina Messenger
Eridanus Kummerow

SBF ISO SM for Love

katrina — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 18:26:35 -0400

You would think that in today’s cultural/social climate that no one would have to come out of the closet ... as straight. But you would be wrong.

For almost twenty years now, I have publicly stated my bisexual orientation as a form of truth telling. I call it truth telling because during my years as a NOW activist, my referring to myself as straight seemed like a lie. Not that I was dating women, or sleeping with women or even lusting after women in general. It felt like a lie because I knew that I had deep feeling for a handful of women that I had not acted upon because of my fear of rejection. Granted, there were hundreds of men I had not approached for the same reason, but calling myself straight felt like a convenient lie.

So in the early nineties, I came out as bisexual.

Then something went awry.

Suddenly, I wasn’t a straight woman owning up to bisexual tendencies, I became in the eyes of others a lesbian being .... magnanimous?!?!?

But now I was in a quandary.

Do I make a statement like, “I am not now nor have I ever been ... a lesbian.” Or keep silent to strengthen our solidarity? I identify as queer for reasons other than my sexual orientation, but when *is* it appropriate to, “draw lines of demarcation” as we Marxists use to say?

It is all coming to a head in a hurry because I am explicitly pursuing a quest for love. I am letting all my friends know I am available. But it occurred to me, that for them to “help a sister out”, they have to know *what* I am looking for in terms of a mate.

And so after publicly requesting a love spell during Michael Smith’s recent Runes class, I felt it was time for me to come out of the closet ... as straight .... or rather as a het-identified bisexual cis woman.

Thanks for listening.

The Father World

katrina — Thu, 03 May 2012 14:19:08 -0400

There is a lot of misunderstanding and misconceptions when it comes to the field of psychology. These issues often are compounded by misleading terminology that reflect the utter lack of self-awareness plus frankly a good deal of misogyny amongst the early psychologists.

This is especially true when psychologists refer to the psychological concepts of Mother and Father. Early feminists were correct to be suspicious if not all out hostile to the “blame the mother” brand of psychotherapy. Especially since those views were politically used to literally push women back into the domestic sphere.

But what was missing from the public discourse was the specific meanings early psychologists attached to the terms, Mother and Father. And although the early definitions were gender based, the deeper meanings were not intended to refer to one’s actual mother and father.

If we were defining these terms today, we would probably use terms like inner and outer, or domestic and cultural when referring to the differing spheres of influence.

The Mother world referred to the domestic realm, which included one’s family, along with possibly your close friends and neighbors. The Father world was the realm outside of the domestic realm, including your job if it was not a family business. Most institutions exist in the Father world, i.e. government and business. And depending on your cultural affiliations, your church, health care providers and entertainment could exist in either world. For example, if your primary form of entertainment was singing around the dinner table, it was Mother world. If you went to nightclubs, concerts and theaters, it was Father world. The doctor which cared for your entire family and made regular house calls was more Mother world. If the doctors at the local hospital knew all of your children names ... it was borderline.

Each of the worlds require a certain orientation, a way of handling oneself in relation to the requirements of each world. We learn these approaches from one’s parents or parental figures as a child. And this is where the confusion sets in. Either parent or parental figure can teach you about both worlds. But early psychologists assumed that mothers teach the Mother world portion and fathers teach the Father world portion exclusively -- and thus the problems with the nomenclature is revealed.

Mother world orientation provides lessons of intimacy, boundaries, how to care for oneself. Concrete skills include how to make your bed, brush your teeth, eat at a table, use a bathroom ... all the way up to how relate to others in ways that are loving and respectful. An astute reader will recognize the association with the lower four chakras. We can also see how and why this orientational training is so easily associated with our actual mothers. However we learn the Mother world skills from everyone involved in our upbringing which can include fathers, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings, babysitters and early teachers.

And depending on your cultural heritage, almost anyone in a parental role can be the source of Father world orientation. So what are concrete Father world skills?

Father world skills include things like how to create a budget, pay bills, dress for an interview, how to talk to potential employers, how to behave in a restaurant, knowing when you are not safe, knowing who to trust or distrust ... all the way up to how to show up to work on time and how to stand up for yourself. And here you will notice the alignment with the solar plexus up to the third eye.

I am simplifying the list of skills, but if you think about it for awhile almost anyone can come up with lists of what one should learn from each world.

I noticed that the differences between the Mother and Father worlds has been coming up in my spiritual counseling sessions a lot lately. And this is worth noting for a variety of reasons.

Most of us are acutely aware of the repercussions of a faulty Mother world orientation. We see people who cannot take care of themselves; hell many of us need remedial lessons in self care like getting adequate sleep, nutrition and playtime.

But the inadequacy of Father world orientation can come as a surprise to most of us. Almost everywhere I look, I see people who are missing key components of the Father world orientation. Culturally we can see whole portions of the national debate missing a basic understanding of simple maxims like, “give from your surplus”, “invest in your future”, “you don’t get something for nothing”, or “judge folks by their actions, not their words.”

Often Mother world maxims like “you will attract more with honey than with vinegar” are inappropriately applied to the Father world where the the maxim is closer to “treat a person with respect and you can gain a customer.” I cannot tell how many times I have walked out of a store because a salesperson refused to just listen to me, and instead put on a fake smile and tried to oversell.

Mother world orientational training is where you learn how to care for yourself and your family. Father world orientational training is where you learn how to be a responsible member of society. We have culturally been blaming women and mothers for over a century. I think it is high time we admit that the problem may actually be a neglectful and missing Father.

A History of Violence

katrina — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 16:04:15 -0400

I had a discussion this morning about the history of violence within my family. But that is not exactly the truth. We were discussing the history of violence within my urban community ... no .. within African-American culture ... within American culture ... within human ... within life.

The violence is unmistakeable. The smashing of horns, the slashing of teeth and claw, the blood and gore ... the cries of fear, pain and anguish ... after a while, it all starts to blend together.

But we humans take even the violence inherent in life and dare I say ... improve upon it. We add guns, machetes, bombs, drones, Molotov cocktails and napalm. We kill teenagers in the street, mothers in their beds, and children ... everywhere we kill children.

I have just finished reading The Hunger Games, where children are reaped to fight to the death to atone for the “sins” of their ancestors.

But what are the sins of the massacred Afghani families? What sin did those women commit in todays school massacre? Or in tonights beating of a woman somewhere, anywhere ... all around the world?

- - -

But that is not what we were discussing either. We were discussing the serpent that lays coiled deep down inside of me. The serpent that even now is poised, ready at a moment’s notice. This is not the kundalini, it is something else entirely.

This serpent is my penchant to react with violence.

It never sleeps. it never relaxes. It is armed to the teeth. And the only thing keeping it from rising and blotting out the sun ... is my training.

But this serpent is a product of violence. Just like the violence we are inculcating in the minds, bodies and souls of children all around this planet. We are ripping through their flesh and blood and bone and forcibly implanting them all with this serpent.

You who watched your mother being beaten and raped, you who curl deep into your father’s arms as the bombs explode, you who even in the womb can taste the blood of anguish ... all of our serpents like ticking time bombs waiting for the least provocation, injustice or insult.

And what does the world hand us? Hunger, fear, war and death.

As if the serpent is not already enough.

- -

And this serpent inside of me lays in wait. Waiting for the day when my training will not be enough, when my will falters, and my heart breaks open ... screaming ... Enough!

Who am I, Now?

katrina — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 19:24:27 -0400

I have been struggling with my identity for over a year. Each time I come up against my usual habit of proclaiming my battlefields, i.e. “I am a bisexual Wiccan warrior woman of color, hear me roar!”

But today my mentor asked me a question. “What battle are you fighting now?”

And the answer was revelatory. “I am not on any battle field”

“So why are you still fighting?”

Good question ...

Our latest discussion concerns my calling myself a priestess. First off, it is not about me being a priestess, but my inclusion of that title in my self description, as in “Poet, Priestess, Warrior & Witch.” Skipping over the obvious battlefield references inherent in the “Warrior & Witch” parts, what is the purpose of declaring myself to be a priestess?

To me it is a title that best describes what I do day in and day out. It signifies my leadership role in the realm of spiritual community. And to me it is no different than the collar on a Catholic priest or the “Rev” on a minister’s calling card.

So my mentor asked me why I didn’t just call myself a teacher. Well I am a teacher, but I felt like the teaching part was inherent in the title of priestess. And this is where we hit the snag in our conversation. Because according to Dr Conforti, clergy and teachers occupy very different archetypal fields.

Teachers are inherently within the realm of elders, storytellers and the learning process. Clergy are within the realm of institutional and societal power. The explanations of Joseph Campbell figure highly here.

“In ancient times, that was the business of the [priest]. He was to give you the clues to a spiritual life. That is what the priest was for. Also, that was what ritual was for. A ritual can be defined as an enactment of a myth. By participating in ritual, you are actually experiencing a mythological life. And it’s out of that participation that one can learn to live spiritually.”

“A priest is a functionary of a social sort. The society worships certain deities in a certain way, and the priest becomes ordained as a functionary to carry out that ritual. The deity to whom he is devoted is a deity that was there before he came along. But the shaman’s powers are symbolized in his own familiars, deities of his own experience. His authority comes out of a psychological experience, not a social ordination.”

And the birthplace of religion is to be found within how “... the shaman ... translate[s] some of his visions into ritual performances for his people.”

But as soon as the hunter gatherers settled down and begin building institutions, the shaman was slowly replaced by priests who focused on the forms and structures and left out the “troublesome” mystical sources of the shaman.

And this speaks to the core of my internal conflict. I am both a shaman working with deities of my own experience and enacting my visions in ritual, and a priestess who is ordained to carry out societal functions. And further, my role as priestess flies in the face of the majority culture’s Abrahamic orientation, i.e. Christian, Jewish and Islamic.

So calling myself a priestess is both charging into another battlefield, and entering an archetypal realm ripe with issues like power differentials, spiritual inflation and clerical abuse. No wonder this is so hard.

Conversely as a teacher it seems simpler and more straightforward. A teacher guides, illustrates, and points out the path, the thread, or the essence. As my teacher David Rottman declares, “We can learn some things on our own, but for the rest we need teachers.” The ancient source of teachers is less conflicted and the mythological source is still close at hand. So the archetypal realm of the teacher may hold some negative aspects, but it is not as corrupted as the field of clergy is for both shaman and priests.

I actually feel less conflicted, less defensive even, when I call myself a teacher. And this difference is key here. Publicly declaring myself a priestess pulls up all my defensiveness, I feel like I am picking up the dropped flag and charging into battle. And quite frankly, I am tired of being constantly on the battlefield.

This questioning has been helpful for me in so many ways. It has helped me to clarify my internal conflict and its archetypal source. And since I am unwilling to fight battles I do not need or want, I can accept that I am both a priestess and a shaman without having to declare it for the world. And most importantly, I feel much more willing to declare my identity to the world in a new way. A way that reflects the ease I feel within me and within my work.

Katrina Messenger, teacher and writer ... hmmm ...

Hail to Inanna, Queen of Heaven

katrina — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 16:45:13 -0400

On October 30th, 2011, a group of pagans gathered in Lafayette Square in front of the White House to honor the feminine divine and support religious freedom. We were motivated partially by the malefic prayers of NAR, but mostly out of our love for the goddesses of our various traditions. Here is my speech, my invocation and my prayer from the ceremony.

_ _ _

In September of 2001, many of us felt overwhelmed and filled with emotions from fear to rage, from shock to grief, and from numbness to action.

For those of us who study mythology, we too felt all those same feeling, but we felt something else at work beneath the surface. And here I must quote the late Dr Maggie Macary in her inaugural blog of November of 2001.

“I felt paralyzed along with the rest of the world, wondering how to move forward in life in the face of so much death and destruction. In the days that followed, further news of terrorist acts and death confounded me, leaving me at a loss for words. I have felt locked in a liminal, in-between state since September, betwixt and between what once was and what will soon be. Now, during the darkest days between the Autumn Equinox and the Winter Solstice, I feel lost in the Underworld, trying to remember: how does life go on in the face of death?

As always, I return to my solace: the myths of life, death and rebirth, those timeless stories of darkness and light, despair and hope. ... In studying these stories of death and descent, I am reminded what the ancients knew so wisely: that all transformation, all initiatory experiences, must first begin with a death. The ancients understood this instinctively, basing their rituals, the same rituals that appear disguised over and over again in our own modern lives, on a cosmogonic cycle in which a retreat to Chaos is required before a new world can be created. This Chaos is the end of a “mode of being,” a death to the old life in preparation for the new. In our modern lives, we forget that death is the beginning of renewal, a time to dismantle the old in preparation for the new.

It is this forgetting of the old patterns, the loss of our retelling the old tales, the forgotten reenactments of initiatory and cosmogonic rituals, that causes us to feel despair at so much death and destruction. In these tales and rituals humans have found a spiritual comfort that transcends the literal tragic events of life. These tales and rituals allowed people to experience the rebirth that comes from the darkest places of death. Without the retelling, life begins to lose its sense of spiritual meaning and the unconscious steps forward to create its own destructive patterns. ...

It is conscious re-mythologizing of the old tales that becomes important for healing to occur.

... We are not the authors of the stories, we are the re-tellers, the ones who once more take up the ancient myths and through our imaginations, make these stories our own. In the process, we will find a healing that revitalizes our lives.

...Let us rekindle the hearth fires and gather around to re-tell the old stories. Let us hold tight to one another through the long dark nights ahead, and remember that, as always, the light will soon return.”

I savor her precious wisdom, but unlike Dr Macary, I am not only a mythologist, I am also a pagan priestess. So I do not just retell the old stories, I honor the gods within these precious remnants of our ancient human heritage.

And for me, the stories of descent not only lead me toward healing and transformation, they bring me into the presence of many of the old gods. And it is important to honor them all, but today we are here to honor especially Inanna, the Queen of Heaven.

And it is during times of darkness, despair and confusion, that many shrink from the transformative work, clinging instead to forms and structures that are falling apart, creating orthodoxy from past nostalgias and even resisting the turning of the great wheel.

It is at times like these that folks clinging to the status quo demonize the old gods. It seems far easier to denigrate the Queen of Heaven than to follow in her footsteps.

And so the New Apostolic Reformationist have deliberately focused on demonizing the Queen of Heaven. Even today as we gather to hold up Columbia, herself a very American goddess, they seek to dislodge her from her perch because in their eyes, she is an aspect of the Queen of Heaven.

But I am here to say that if our American Goddess, Columbia is an aspect of Inanna, then we will hold them both up for devotion, honor and worship. Because that means that Columbia, like Inanna has the power to transform, the power to heal and the power to guide us towards the new world that is coming into being all around us.

And so today, we honor Inanna, Columbia, and a host other goddesses with prayers and songs.

And in the words of Doctor Macary ...

“Let us rekindle the hearth fires and gather around to re-tell the old stories. Let us hold tight to one another through the long dark nights ahead, and remember that, as always, the light will soon return.”

So mode it Be!

_ _ _

Invocation

*Our Lady of the Morning is Radiant
She looks down upon us from Heaven

We sing your praises, Holy Inanna
Radiant on the horizon (2x)