Re-Post - "Stone-Cold Crazy"

Re-post from my Super Duper Social Worker Blog, January 2013

"The older one grows, the more one likes indecency." ~Virginia Woolf 

(shared by Ms. Pulstar)

Baubo in Anatolia

How cool is Baubo? In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter it is recounted that Demeter is wandering the earth in anguish over the loss of her daughter. She eventually starts loitering outside of Eleusis, where she will eventually inspire life-altering mysteries that will change the face of the ancient (and our modern!) world. But in the meantime, she’s just kind of being sad and angry and very helpless, until Baubo/Iambe makes her laugh and then she kind of perks up a little. 

"Unsmiling, tasting neither food nor drink, she sat wasting with desire for her deep-girt daughter, until knowing Iambe jested with her and mocking with many a joke moved the holy goddess to smile and laugh and keep a gracious heart - Iambe, who later pleased her moods as well."  

~ The Homeric Hymn to Demeter

I’ve read accounts of Baubo being nothing more than a walking vagina. Or maybe she’s a nursemaid who lifts her skirts. Either way, it’s the act of raunchy old lady humor that finally wakes Demeter up from her slump (kind of. She’s still sad even after she gets a good laugh at Baubo’s vagina humor.)

Which I think is important. So many people like to pretend that men are just big dorks who laugh at dick and fart jokes, but to be honest, a good number of my lady friends are farting, burping, “that’s what she said” machines, too. This notion that women aren’t raunchy, sexual creatures is just silly. It’s never been true. Women have always been dirty, sexual beings. Even the ancient Greeks knew this to be true.

Women’s vagina humor is important, too. As much as I’m all for gender equality, I think it’s important for men to be with men sometimes, and women to be with women sometimes. There’s something about going out to a girl’s lunch, or drinking cocktails with the ladies, that is very therapeutic. (We’ve even talked about this a bit in social work school, too.)

I’m a pretty raunchy person in real life and rarely withhold my liberal views on sexuality, but when I started social work school I was still adjusting when to hold back and when to give in, and the result is that I spent a few months where I was incredibly stifled. But we had a girl’s night and I drank a bottle of white wine (which shows how desperate I was, I usually go for red) and we talked about butt sex and our periods and bondage and Fifty Shades of Grey and how everyone thinks I have wild crazy sex all the time and how important it is to masturbate. All of these things are actually very important discussion to share about sexual health, but they aren’t easy conversations to have. But in a room full of women we swore like sailors and blushed like virgins and howled with Baubo’s laughter. And yeah, I'm still anxious about class, and one friend is still struggling with communication with her partner, and another still doesn’t know how she feels about anal sex, and another isn’t even sure if she likes sex, but the night and the jokes and the wine were still healing, therapeutic, and fun. It was most importantly fun.

As my husband said, “she loosens up a tense situation by showing her goodies to everyone and it’s really funny because she’s old? Actually, I don’t really get it but whatever; it made them laugh, right?”

And that’s the gift of Baubo. Sure, Demeter still misses her daughter and humans are probably going to starve to death and the gods are probably going to die from neglect, but there’s nothing that’s not funny about a vagina walking around on two legs. And there’s nothing wrong with women (AND MEN!) of any age to have a nice long laugh about sex, because let’s be honest, sex is pretty weird, and we really need a reason, any reason, to laugh.

Repost - "Now I'm Here"

repost from my Super Duper Social Worker Blog, April 2013

My house is falling down.

We're renting, thank goodness. But since we moved into this place over five years ago there have been serious foundation problems: backed up plumbing, cracks in the wall and ceiling, damp spots on the floor, dirt in the bathroom...

I've had a strange relationship with this house. At first I was indifferent and uncomfortable. Haven moved from a really great place in Texas, North Carolina was weird and foreign. A friend visited with us a few months later and he said "oh, you have such a cute little witchy house!"

Hmm… maybe.

The indifference continued until a few years ago when I decided I hated this place. I was tired of it and all of its quirks. I wanted to leave, to rent or possibly by a new place. So, we shopped around for houses, looking at prices and financing. It was just not possible. Moving to another rental was also not really a good idea, either.

I'm not sure what happened first. Was it cocktails with my girlfriend, or my at-the-time Coven's ritual devoted to Hestia? But something changed in both my perception and relationship with my house. Slowly, but surely, it became my home.

As a group we devoted a ritual to Hestia/Vesta. I did a lot of studying on her before the ritual, and included a little lesson for the ritual itself. Though the ritual was focused around creating foci (in this case, a tool of devotional focus), looking back now I realize something else happened, at least for me. I finally bonded with my home. Most of all, I realized my physical space was not the source of my dissatisfaction, but I was depressed about more meaningful areas of my life. Changing my house wouldn't make me happy. I would have the same old problems but in a different box.

I needed to change the focus of my life.

In the center of my crappy little home is a huge fireplace, and while the Coven did rituals together in my living room, the fireplace was a natural center staging area, with the mantle and hearth serving as the perfect altar tables. I had always decorated the mantle with flowers and kitschy holiday decorations. But I found that over the years the mantle was less of a mundane seasonal piece of home decorating, but had become a seasonal shrine. And at some point I had begun using it as an altar, charging items or creating little charms. Over the years, my Pagan tools and paraphernalia weren't just hidden and tucked away, but were slowly migrating into the house and into my mundane life.

It wasn't just this refocus on my hearth that shifted my perception of my home, but the ritual itself and learning about Hestia. One of the ladies in the group was going through transitions in her own life and had suggested we do a ritual and lesson regarding reconnecting to our habitats, and Hestia was a natural choice for this.

Hestia’s domain is within the home. But she’s not just about cooking and cleaning, but about protection and nurturing energy. She’s about keeping our focus, and she’s about making sure our domestic energy translates easily into our public lives, and vice versa. The Vestal Virgins in Rome were priestesses who guarded the hearth and flame (may it burn forever!). Their energy in both a literal and a magical sense were devoted to the protection of Rome as both a micro and macrocosm, and this devotion and attention is a useful reminder to anyone who might be feeling a little scattered, a little discontented, a little out of sorts. In my experience, Hestia’s energy is useful for anyone who is looking for something with which to devote themselves.

After spending some time to Hestia, a shift happened in my life. I began to reconnect with and love my home. There was magic there now, in ways I hadn't realized. (Though to be fair, it's not like magic came out of nowhere. The magic had always been there. I just hadn’t really noticed it yet.) And an added and serendipitous bonus of working with Hestia was starting communication with Hermes, who is Hestia's total bff forever.

Most of all, this moment was a catalyst for meaningful change in my life. I got a promotion at work. I was given a car. I applied for graduate schools and was eventually accepted. I have a room now devoted to my Pagan tools and altar. Now I might even love my little house, even though the molding is coming down and my bathroom wall is rotting out.

Working with Hestia totally and literally change my focus, and that's powerful magic

The Pagan Experience - March Deity and the Divine

https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7188/6911152252_b1744b3562_z.jpg

Wk 3 - Mar. 16 - Deity and the Divine - "This will be the third week’s topic every month and an opportunity for you to share with everyone those who guide, inspire and inform you."

Muse, tell me about Pan, the dear son of Hermes, 

with his goat's feet and two horns -- a lover of merry noise.

I was a bit stumped for this topic.  I’ve written about Gods and Goddesses before, but for some reason when I sat down for this post I had a bad case of writer’s block.  I went over to twitter and a friend happily chimed in with her suggestion.  “Pan!”

“Really?” I thought, “him?”  But the more the day went on, the more confident I got.  Yes, him.  I realized this was a good opportunity for me to do a little research, and to think outside of my box, too.  So, even though in many ways he's foreign to me, I decided to write about Pan.

Through wooded glades he wanders with dancing nymphs who foot it on some sheer cliff's edge, calling upon Pan, the shepherd-god, long-haired, unkempt.

I have never worked directly with Pan, though I know many who do.  My good friend and Sister-Witch has written about him extensively over the years, so you should go over and check her stuff out.  He is one of her patrons, and the joy in her eyes when she speaks of him is infectious.  She loves him so much, and from the joy she has in her life because of Pan, one can easily understand his appeal.

He has every snowy crest and the mountain peaks and rocky crests for his domain; hither and thither he goes through the close thickets, now lured by soft streams, and now he presses on amongst towering crags and climbs up to the highest peak that overlooks the flocks.

Pan is the son of Hermes.  He was abandoned by his nursemaid who was so frightened by his appearance.  Have you ever felt so ugly that even your nurse didn’t want you?  Pan may be conventionally ugly, but he gets enough attention from the lads and ladies that it’s almost like his horns and hair don’t matter.  (Or maybe it’s because of his horns and hair... tee hee!)

Often he courses through the glistening high mountains, 

and often on the shouldered hills he speeds along slaying wild beasts, this keen-eyed god.

http://www.theoi.com/Gallery/S22.2.html

Hermes found his baby boy, though, and was such a proud Papa that he brought him up to Olympus for the other gods to admire.  They all loved him so much, especially Dionysus.  Dionysus and Pan seem to be extra special friends, and I like to imagine that they are drinking and party buddies.  Like Dionysus, Pan delights in wild, sexy, musical, scary things (though their realms are a bit different.) 

Then all the immortals were glad in heart and Bacchic Dionysus in especial; 

and they called the boy Pan because he delighted all their hearts.

My friend was talking about Pan the last time we had rune study group, and she talked about him as a luminal god.  I’d never thought of Pan in this way before, and her words really stuck with me. 

Only at evening, as he returns from the chase, he sounds his note, playing sweet and low on his pipes of reed: not even she could excel him in melody -- that bird who in flower-laden spring pouring forth her lament utters honey-voiced song amid the leaves.

Pan is a poet, a philosopher, and a musician.  All of these things require extra skills and higher brain functioning.  They entail a certain sense of civilization.  But Pan is also a god of wild spaces, of the untamed, of the hidden nooks and crannies of nature.  He is half man and half animal, half civilized and half wild.  He can’t fit in either place completely, so he completely fits in neither. 

 

At that hour the clear-voiced nymphs are with him and move with nimble feet, singing by some spring of dark water, while Echo wails about the mountain-top, and the god on this side or on that of the choirs, or at times sidling into the midst, plies it nimbly with his feet.

My friend explained that sometimes Pan gets sad and lonely.  It’s hard to not fit in, to be abandoned, to be the butt of jokes, to be ugly and hairy (things none of us can relate to, right?).  So sometimes it gets him down.  He writes a sad tune, pens a melancholy poem… but then perks right back up again when a lovely nymph happens to wander by.  He is able to distract himself a bit, but the blues always returns… (nothing any of us can relate to… right?)

Villa of the Papyri, Herculaneum.

On his back he wears a spotted lynx-pelt, and he delights in high-pitched songs in a soft meadow where crocuses and sweet-smelling hyacinths bloom at random in the grass.

The Victorian romantics were obsessed with Pan.  Being post-transcendentalists, they had rejected the age of reason and enlightenment, returned to nature, and idealized a classical, more civilized age.  They had been separate from the natural world for so long, that Pan, a figure who can walk both worlds (with varying success) became an ideal.  He represented nature in all of its wild, lusty, (intellectual?) perfection.  They composed poems and love songs to Pan, as if composing love songs to a forgotten age of their ancestors.

Ronald Hutton talks about Pan and the romantics to a great extent in his book The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft.  In his chapter “finding a God” he quotes a 1910 poem:

The odour of thy hair

They feet, thy hands shall bring

Again the Pagan spring,

And from our bodies’ union men shall know

To cast the veil from the sad face of woe…

But Pan!  Pan!  Pan!  And all the world shall be

Mingled in one wild burning ecstasy.

 

So while Pan may not be my primary deity (I’m pretty comfortable in my life as an urban Pagan and while tromping around the mountains sounds like fun it’s not the life for me), I have a deep appreciation for him.  I enjoy his stories and his imagery, and I especially love the Victorian poetry written about him.  Most of all, I love what Pan has done for so many, what he does for so many, throughout the ages.  He’s a sad, happy, lusty, hideously beautiful god, and I love him for that.

And so hail to you, lord! I seek your favour with a song. 

And now I will remember you and another song also.

Here are some previous articles I've written about Deity and the Divine:

Athena

Crom Dubh

Cybele

Hestia

Ishtar

Lilith

Lugh

Rhiannon

Zagreus