Dedication Days

 

Tuesday was the first of the Three Benziten Days, the days dedicated to the Maristella, the Star of the Sea, the High Lady of Wisdom. She is of course, Our Lady of the Sea in a more exalted state, the Mother of Art and Wisdom and prayer. Her other names in the West are Metis or even Mnemosyne, Prudenita, and Minerva, Sophia and Sapientia. In India she is Saraswati, Goddess of Creation and the Secret River. Further east she is called Benziten. In these days before Allantide, one day is not enough for her, and so there are two more Benziten Days.

Tonight is the Dedication of Babalon, the Spirit of Lust, she who shares her nature with Asherah, Astarte, Inanna, Aphrodite. She is the Whore of Blood and Fire, the hot wind from the plain. Among her other faces may be Lillith. Her hot winds stir up and bring to life. It is possible she is Isis or Nephthys. On this night we dedicate to the flesh, to the beauty of lust and the sacredness of sex. There will also be to other dedications to Babalon before Allantide.

Of course, with a great name there must be many faces, the greater the name, the greater the god the more the faces. It seems there are at least two Asherahs, that Our Lady of the Sea is Asherah, but that Babalon is Ashera as well, one hailing from the fiery desert and one coming up from the water, Isis and Nephthys together. At the close of the year, we honor her two faces.

Fourth Sunday After Mabon: Low Sunday

Much like the Sunday after Easter, today is Low Sunday., the Sunday after the Feast of Sukkot and its ending at Smichat Torah. There are other things to come, but not today. It certainly if getting off to a low start. After Narthex all I could do was sleep, and it was a very long progress toward bathing and being able to do the Communion Rire. Having done it, I barely perceived it. Today will be a day of not doing, a day when its okay to understand our weakness and I do have to say that every few moments or hours, I am hit with a cold wind of the perception of my own weakness, my deed to delve back into my practice and find my root. 

 

Today is a special day of dedication to Our Lady of the Waters. Today we are still remembering the joy of being on her shores and how she never forsakes us. Winter is coming, not like when foolish people said it in summer to feel macabre, but in earnest, and all the attendant worries about it are coming as well.

This Sunday we rest, but we ready ourselves for the mystery of the Reflective Feast of Benziten, when we will rejoice in reading and writing as a sacred act, and dedicate written works into the Lady's hands.

Benziten Mistress of Words

New Moon Chesvan

 

As we close our the High Holidays of the Jeshurun Rite, the old moon of Tishrei arrives as the New Moon of Chesvan. Before me and my friend were, mindful of the setting of moons, being careful and gentle with outselves, not allowing ourselves to be overwhelmed by lifr or by projects. As the moon turns new there is the temptation to think, time to leap back into what we are going, time to be tall and high and strong. But wait, the difference between a nearly waned moon, a new moon and a barely waxing moon is very little. As the Chesvan moon begins, let us still treat ourselves with care and bear our weaknesses with mercy. In fact, let's always do that.

But now, in this moon, and in these last days, we pass from the Jeshurun Rite into the heart of all things for a witch, the preparation for Allantide, the memory of ancient promises and deep commitments, the vow to work in power though, so often we feel so powerless. The reminder of the oldest gods who are behind every image of God, the call to remember. 

Our Lady of the Waters

 

Smichat Torah and Shemini Atzeret marked the third week after Mabon. The truth is this is a season that takes a little help. It is the season of gratitude and goodbye and this has been the strangesr of years. I have set a task for myself every year now, that I get to the beach to visit Lake Michigan four time. For me, /lake Michigan is the Lady of the Waters, Lake Michigan is her holy temple, but the journeying has wlays been time consuming. This year has made it more so,. When there were not restrictions on trains, there were closed beaches and when the beaches weren;t closed, then the weather was inclimate. The promised warm autumn had not come and the days grow shorter.  

But Tuesday saw me and a best friend on the water. I had told her that I badly wanted to go and she surprised me with. Here we gathered up the sacred water to take back, watched the sun set and placed our feet in the cold waves. This late in October, this far north, where would be no emersing ourselves in those waters. It was perfect, really. We had come to those waters, but possibly for the last time that year, and at that moment, as day turned to night we were saying goodbyes and remembering that those waters could not be the same waters they had been for us at summers height.

Not that my time with the Lady of the Water's, or at her Temple was long, not that I went as many times as I wished or that every time was a grand one, but now, as the water turns could and we take the water we have gathered and prepar to not see this lake for several months, i think of the hot sand and the teenagers having thier first big summer, the little memories to treasure from the time gone by. 

On Shemini Atzeret we pray for the rain and on Simchat Torah we rejoice in that Word, but now, at this quiet time, re remember, we honor and we revere the one called by many names including Mami Wata and Yemaya, the Mother of Fishes, Misshigami, Our Lady of the Sea. Look upon us in our sadness, our happy moods which sink to naught, our false hopes, our struggles, our sufferings. Be for us a guiding star on the sea of life. Be for us a refreshing spring which makes of us in turn, refreshing springs also.

First Day of the Autumnal Leavetaking

Leavetaking- the number of days after an Ascending Holy Day or Festival that marks the time he would take for people to travel back to their homes after their pilgrimage.

Ascending Festival (Holy Day)- one of the holy days or festivals which once upon a time would have required a pilgrimage to a certain place for. The Fall High Holidays are Ascending Festivals as are Pentecost and Shavuot. Easter is not an Ascending Festival, but is a Seasonal One.

Seasonal Festival- A festival around which an entire season is built, Easter, Yule, and Christmas are Seasonal Festivals. Mabon is not a seasonal festival, but is connected to the Ascending Feasts of Rosh Hoshanah through Shemini Atzeret.

Cyclical or Regular Feasts- Shabbat and Rosh Chodesh and the Esbat which occur once a week and once a month and are sacred for their own sake. The Sabbats occur regularly but each is different from the other and not something for its own sake. 

Low Feasts- Shabbat, Rosh Chodesh and other holy days that do not require an abstention from working or a major liturgy.

Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah

I am exhausted form rejoicing in the Torah. It is pleasant, was pleasant, but the High Holidays have taken a great deal out of me, perhaps out of many of us. They are, after all, an offering, and we offer what we have to enter int othe mystery of rejoicing. For me in the Alchymical Rite, this time has been a passage through the three degrees. Every song, every prayer, every silence was an offering, and an offering will cost something, will change you. The work that was not done so that we could work at prayer. The work that was not done so that we could worship and bind ourselves together. Those things we did not set before ourselves so that we could se this moment before us, all was an offering

I feel hollowed out now, truly tired but in need of writing. I am like a calm sea, but there is stuff going on underneath and writing begins to sort it out. I had all manner of strange dreams and I felt like, coming out of them, it was a necessary thing for me to go back to that country, the dream country had missed me. There are works I would do, but that I am too tired to attempt. Ideas in my head that will not form because I have given myself to something else.

Of old, the prayer for rain was withheld for fifteen days to allow pilgrims in Babylon to get home. Babylon and Jerusalem were the nexus points of ancient Judaism. The ancient Jews work their prayers and their prayers and the rituals like magic, for thye were magic. All this means was they expected things to happen. They prayers to God addressed in the Temple were not idle. So there was no symbolic prayer for rain with the understanding that God might not fulfill it, or he would see past their symbolism and not make it rain. They simply didn ot pray for what they did not desire.

The psalms and the stories are full of blood and vengeance because they were a soul book. They did not bring their best face to God, but the only face they had. I sit here, watching the last half of the Ten Commandments. What a strange God. He wasn't even there most of them time ,and then he finally shows up halfway through full of fear and punishment, blood and fire. Even his deliverance is fearful. There have been so many stories in the last days, the book of Jonah, the beginning of the world, the end of the Torah, the stories I have taken unto myself, Daniel, Moses, a kaleidoscope of stories I thought I didn't care much for anymore. The chanted psalms of deliverance which are better and more heartfelt when I do not understand them, and me dealing with things I had put away long ago, looking again and again at memories I had put away.

We pledge ourselves to finishing the things we started and starting the new life as well. At Simchat Torah we end the Torah and begin it again in a single breath.In doing what I have to do I make as many enemies as friends and help the bad and the would be good. And I read stories of this strange God with blood on his hands. Righteousness seems to be a thing of doing, not what is kind or lovely or light or approved, but doing what one must.

                      

 

What does this link to Torah which we celebrated yesterday, but in one way, throughout all of the high holidays mean? I watched the end of the Ten Commandments, where Moses goes up and God's wobbly finger traces, with fire, ten banal commandments. At the end, Moses hands over a case with the five scroslls of the Penteteuch to Joshua and heads up to the top of Mount Nebo, but this is not what joy in the Torah or the reception of the Torah celebrated at Shavuot is about, or at least, these are only ways of talking about the truth we have a hard time getting to. Who is dancing over ten commandments, or who is celebrating the five scrolls of the law especially when they become awfully, awfully dull midway through Exodus? No, the rabbis understood the Torah was what Buddhist call the damma, the way of life, the way beyond the way, the words pointing to something deeper, the commandments pointing to a bond, the written Torah and the Oral Torah pointing to a heavenly one, and internal one, a dance, yes, even an argument. As the old man says in Karl Freidnman;s The Shovel and the Loom, Judaism is the tension between the skeptical question and the absolute devotion, well that's a bit of a paraphrase. Shemini Atzeret calls us again to the long, long love affair with all of its ups and downs.

Jeshurun Time

Well, I knew when Alchymical Time was ended. It ended at Mabon, but the time between Mabon and Samhain was a little hazy. Holidays weave together. Mabon was a perfectly serviceable name for the Feast, but not for the month and a half that followed, especially since most of the Mabon feasts were linked to the Jewish Harvest festivals and the magic worked is worked through them. And so, from now on, or at least for now, The time between Mabon and Rosh Hoshana will be Mabon to Autumntide, and the time between Rosh Hoshana and Samhain, were we focus on the Jewish mysteries will be Jeshurun Time, for Jeshurun is another name for Jacob and his descendents, Israel.  Jeshurun is the poetic and therefor magical name of Israel, and we here are Israel in her magical state.

Now, there are Christian witches and Jewish witches, Jewitchery and Christopagans. But Young Tradition is Young Tradition. When I work the Christian Rite, I am Christian so a deeply heretical extent, but certainly not Christian in a conventional sense, and it is the same when working the Jewish Rite, though it may be more difficult to remember that. The Rite is Jewish, and while practicing it I feel part of the Secret Jeshurun, but I am not exactly a Jew, anymore than the Alchymical Rite makes me an Egyption, or Old Craft makes me British.

More notes may be forthcoming. This is a time for notetaking.

I wish that I could say that magic was the way you got the things you wanted, but magic is a path and no tru path works that way. You are never the master, always the student and the magic is like a strange dough, a bread that grows in its own time and in its own way. Or it is, as we have known before, the Living Word, the Holy Child being born, that we wait upon. This is the Christian mystery. We await with sleeplessess, with regrets, with sitting on hands and sometiems with anguish in the night and darkness in the day, he fulfilling of the word we have spoken, the seen we have planted.Our longings are wonderful, but sometimes the space between the longing and the possessing is a scourge. We discipline our souls. Because magic is a spiritual practice, or part of one, and not a cheap parlor trick, we join our waiting with the waiting of the whole world and offer our bodies up as a living sacrifice.

Elevate my prayers from the West

And may our worthiness come from the morning

And show us our awakening evening

Elevate my voices from the West

And may our righteousness come from the morning

And show us our redemption in the evening.

Elevate my refuge from the evening

And may their benefit come before in the morning

And show us our repentance until the evening

May our cries be elevated from the evening

And come before you in the morning

And may it look favorably upon us until evening.

יעלה תחנוננו מערב,

ויבוא שוועתנו מבוקר,

ויראה רינוננו עד ערב.

יעלה קולנו מערב,

ויבוא צדקתנו מבוקר,

ויראה פדיוננו עד ערב.

יעלה מנוסנו מערב,

ויבוא למענו מבוקר,

ויראה כפורנו עד ערב.

יעלה אנקתנו מערב,

ויבוא אליך מבוקר,

ויראה אלינו עד ערב.

Sunday in Sukkot, Second Sunday after Mabon

 

We are on the second day of Sukkot. At first I am puzzled by the verse I will only paraphrase where God says, "You will live in booths seven days that in the future you may tell your children I commanded you to live in booths." It has that circular logic which is all over the Bible, or even that non logic. It sounds literary but doesn't seem to mean much. It is much like God's arbitrary commands to weave to types of fabric together--which makes it stronger--or not put a razor to your face, or not eat shellfish, followed by, "For I am holy says the Lord." 

Somewhere along the first or second day I stumble upon the blessing, "May the Lord protect you under the Sukka of his wings," and across the other verse, "That you may tell your children you dwelt in booths... not for seven days, but for forty years. This is called the Festival of Booths, or sometimes the Festival of Tabernacles, because this is how Sukka has been translated, and because God himself lives in a Tabernacle for hundreds of years, but the correct translation should be just what we call it, Sukka, Sukkot, Sukkoth, and Sukkot means Shelter. I am convinced that what the verse should really say is, Tell your children you dwelt under my shelter for forty years." In one sense, I suppose you could say they dwelt in tents, and they did, but the Hebrew word for tent is ohel. Figuratively ohel and sukka are one, and the putting on of the tallit signifies the shelter of God, but what we are celebrating is not only that once upon a time people who now live in houses were nomads, but that these people were under the tender care of God, and we are under that care too. For seven days, the fragile house or whatever we can do to commorate that fragile house reminds us of the fragility of all things and how ,at the heart of everything is the tender mercy and shelter of the Divine One.

The Jewish liturgy is magic. It is a different magic than the Christian one, both serve the Craft is different ways. In some ways the Siddur is more magical, what with the words read and sung and swayed to but nos spoken in a vernacular so that you only understand a little of what you are saying, even when you do understand. You move into emotion and beyond emotion, anc cross over into another realm.  

This cold and rainy, sunless time we are having could be called a Little Winter or maybe a Little Fall. It is the beginning of those seasonal changes where you move from the heat to the cold thinking someone is her for good, though after a week or so, the weather has completely changed. It makes it hard to know what to where, or to believe in the very real phenonenom of the global warming.

The house is decorated with lights. There is no building Sukkah and eating outside in this part of the country. That is a punishment more than a festival. So for the first time, as the weather is gloomy and cold and saps the strength from bones and the will from flesh. We celebrate. We chant the hypnotic, hand clapping, vody swaing Hallal everyday and recount he goodness of God every morning. We eat festival foods and sleep under the fairy lights that represent the stars and perhsps represent the inner light and the constant providence of God.