Yesterday I had to leave town. I had to get out because I
had lost a part of myself and had to get it back. I was out of courage, out of
imagination, out of some vital witch spirit.
I know that it’s a chic habit to seek the witch spirit in the dark
forests in the middle of the night, but I had to find my spirit in the bright
sun, on white gold sand and by big water on the beach.
The seeking of the witch spirit came
at the end of a powerful working, the fact that the working had turned out might
make you think I was full of my own power, full of courage for anything that
followed, but no, not so. And so I headed to the water and the sand. I did it
like a pilgrim, even a little joylessly, certainly desperately, ready to crawl
the fuck out of my miserable skin. The trip was not easy, and I was going
through a place I’d never been—but finally I was there, and the Great Goat was
there to greet me.
What?
Coming onto the beach I was greeted
by, of all things, hovering above me, on a great pole, a giant red ram with curved
and shining horns. I reached up and stroked the fiberglass wonder, patting the
ram’s nose. I came just short of kissing him because, well, I’m on a public
beach. But as I left him, wading onto the white gold sand, I thought, “I had
forgotten to make the Devil apart of my life, That’s the problem.”
As we depart from whatever
conventional and popular witch teachings there are, and even as we evolve from
what schools we are deeply called to, we add our own revelations. Truths
specific to us arrive ar our door. New gods, old friends revisiting. It is well
known that the Solstice is regarded as the birth of John the Baptist, but the
truth is, in Christian tradition, John the Baptist means very little. He
baptizes Jesus. He is later arrested by king Herod Antipas and beheaded. His
territory is the desert, the sand which is reminding me again of the ram on the
sand before the beach. It is John, whom when Jesus is preaching, sends a
message to Jesus, ‘Are you the one promised, or should we seek another?” This is
a message of challenge, and John challenges King Herod. He is the model of the
prophet Elijah who also challenged or opposed the kings of ancient Israel
In the Egyptian creation story, though Set is called the
Dark God and we might associate him with evil, for he certainly brings disorder
and challenges the perceived natural order, when he opposes the god Horus, who by
conventional morality ought be to considered the hero, Amun and Thoth, the gods
who judge between the two of them as they judge all things, cannot see a definite difference between the
two until, by a technicality, Set loses. Set, the husband of Nephthys is also
an Egyptian devil, but a great power, and his territory is… yes, sand, heat: desert.
The
association of the Summer Solstice with the birth of a young green (and beneficent)
god who will be slain at winter or some such, is an invention of Robert Graves
and an article of faith for Wicca. I am not the first to say that we must again
return to the witch’s devil, even as in the last six months I have returned to some
type of witch’s Christ. The Old One has many and powerful faces, and while it is
fine and good to show some reverence for the corn deity and Forest Lord, to
remember the hot force of the of the one who is Prometheus, Coyote, Loki, the
Prophet, the disruption, Pan, the Tempter, and the Crooked One, is also
important. This summer let’s spend a little time in his burning and mesmerizing
heat. There had been so much of sacrifice, let the indulgence begin.
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