The Mother of Waters

The blog A Trip Down Memory Lane has more on Mami Wata, the Mother of Waters, also called Afrikete, the African Mermaid.
Mami Wata

The Mermaids

These latest posts become more nacreous because now we are talking about the actual thing, or better yet, we are talking from the midst of the thing. The actual Work is not a matter of cauldrons and knives and bows and castles. The actual Work is the Work, lived everyday. The actual fruit of any spiritual practice is an open and loving life. The fruit of any true power is vitality and goodness in this life. This can scarcely be talked about. It is shone poetically, not prosaically, in beautiful pictures dancing through the head like light over water. This is the Castle Beneath the Waves, the enchanted desmaine of the merfolk which lies beneath the sea. And naturally the sea is all deep water, and not only deep physical waters, but the waters of the psyche, the creative waters in especial.

 They tell you that when you stop caring it’s insulation. I used to think that not feeling was the way to prevent all the horrible things that happened when you felt too much. So why did I drive ten minutes past New Union to that distant spot I always see, and walk onto the abandoned gravel beach and then sit on the pier—it was so fucking desolate—no one was there, just lonely sea gulls—and start taking pills and drinking my dad’s vodka until I felt sufficiently fucked up, and then, roll my ass into the water?

     I had the sense to fill by pockets up with rocks—Virginia Woolf style—and for a moment, under the choppy water, there was just this peace. I just felt icy with the water, and when I opened my mouth, the dirty lake water came into it, and after a while my nostrils gave way. For a moment there was panic, the shudder of this happening, and it being entirely too late to do anything about it. I was drowning. The water was too choppy and I was too fucked up to help myself.

     Then the dark water was like the water in movies. I mean, that undersea water that’s blue and green, and full of light. And it was still, and warm, and I thought, well, this is heaven. And then I saw the fish, and I saw the biggest fish I’d ever seen, and then. well, then I saw it was not a fish. It was her. Or one of them. I feel like I can’t ever describe her, or them. Even under the water I felt the tears coming to me. There she was, hair streaming, breast bared, face grave, and she lifted me up and up and then I was gagging on the ground, throwing up water, and I tried to turn over and look for her, but she was gone. It was just ordinary stormy water, and cold fall rain was coming down. I knew I’d be sick, and I was for three weeks, but that evening I just kept crying because I had sure that after everything that had happened to me, and that I had done, grace was gone. And now I knew that I wasn’t beyond it.

from- The Skin of Things, by Chris Lewis Gibson

As a child, in the sands, I pretend to be one of the sea folk. I feel myself connected to the sea folk everytime I make a pilgrimage back to the water and, of course, the water is ultimately where we all come from. She is our home.

The Mermaid is the Angel of the Water. But this is only an approximation, for the Angel cannot escape his watering down both by Christianity and the cute optimism of the New Age. But even Christianity and Judaism have not completely covered up the power of the Divine Water. The tribe of Levi from which the Jewish priesthood came, shares its name with Leviathan, the great Sea Monster God, and the Jewish word Kodesh, meaning holy, was the name for Asherah of the Sea, the Hebrew God the Mother, who in time became the Shekinah. These links survive in the names Mary, Miriam sacred to Jews and Christians, having to do with the salty waters. Indeed, if Miriam may have at one time been linked to the Goddess, the Blessed Virgin becomes her all over again, Maristella, Mary as the Star of the Sea.

      

                                    

The Little Mermaid is the Sea Lady who loses her sense of who she is and is off balance for a time. Melusine is another version of this, but she always remembers herself and returns to the sea when offended. She is always wild. The Scottish Selkies are the same. The Sea Woman is not only one of the oldest symbols of divinity, she is the sign of wild grace. beyond, before and after the grace offered by approved religion. She is love, but she is also lust. She is the siren. 

She is not unnatural, she is as wild and dangerous, as life giving and death dealing as nature itself. Her element is water, from which all things come.

More Poetic Correspondence

When I read what you wrote, I thought I’d make poetry of it, try to be as honest as possible. I just started scribbling down a lot. This work is a lot of lust, as much as it is spiritual, for I believe what we all need is a true religion, and the true religion is WHOLE, it encompasses all of you. There is no shame in it, though there may be horror or even sometimes despair. There is almost always a bit of doubt. Slowly, wherever we are, we find our gods or our not-gods, and figure out what it is we bow down to, and how to do it.

1.

i used to be beautiful

i used to be sure of delighting you with the pleasure of my company,

there was a place where I shone like the morning stars before walls

and doors and bars became my new world

and now I’m sorry to discomfort you with the reality of me,

the anxiety of me, the inconvenience of my lack of freedom,

and you say, well, “you know, metaphorically none of us is free, and you see,

metaphorically we all have bars…”

and these references to the bible disturb me a little bit as I masturbate more and more everyday to the new faces of straight men who harass like high school over again

but if jesus came to make us free, he came to make us sexually free

and if he rose on the third day, then I’ll rise up in my hand and know this stiff pleasure, make of the face of my enemy a mouth to spill inside of.

Isn’t that a miracle?

And you say, I guess it is, metaphorically, and metaphorically,

none of us is free, and I say, fuck your metaphors.

2.

I used to be beautiful, I used to be sure of delighting you with the pleasure of my company, There was a place where I shone like the morning stars before walls and doors and bars became my new world. I set out to be remembered, and there was a time when you adored me and now, like the desolate city, here I am, no longer worthy of your wisdom.

I no longer wish to look in mirrors. And all my days are half dreams

I was thirty five when I realized that what did not kill you could make you weaker,

could bend you and twist you like a car wreck.

One cold night, out of northern darkness, a frozen poet sang to me,   

“No matter how dark it may seem,

the light is always present,

one way or another.”

s u n e l i o

You came, you didn’t even have much personality,

 just a long dick that hardly fit my mouth.

I couldn’t get it all in, no matter how hard I tried.

And you plowed me

I lied and said I could take it,

Then eyes watering made the lie true

While you

Plowed me at 4 o’clock in the morning while

your jealous boyfriend watched until he let his displeasure

be known,

and so you had to go home. And so you went home,

And yet, for three days I sang, walking up and down the street cause

I could still feel you aching in my asshole,

and three years later, your jealous boyfriend frowns,

knowing I feel you still

f i n d   s o m e b o d y

life is so hard and people are faithless

find somebody to fuck you

people are strangers and hearts are cold

you better find somebody to fuck you

the world is to cold to go it alone

and life is to long to feel like a stone

you better find a man who can make you moan

love is beautiful, love is sweet

love is an elusive dream

its never really what it seems

there’s one thing I love best

its when you put my body to the test

you gotta find somebody to fuck you

you gotta find somebody to fuck you

hard

i n   t h e   n i g h t

when you wake in the middle of the night remember me.

I went to bed early, knowing this would happen, and half way

wanting it too,

halfway wanting to come to the land between dreams when

the world is not awake and a moon the size of jesus’s fingernail hangs

in a black judas heaven beside a burning star.

This is the silence of imagination, the habitation of the tiny tips of candles,

Loneliness happens here tonight, the balm of sleep or

the curse of staring at walls

Time like taffy happens here tonight.

Poems happen here tonight,

And inspiration happens here tonight,

death happens if the timing’s right,

orgasms,

two men biting back lust as they run their fingers up and down

each others backs

The water parts here tonight

And by 4 a m leaves no traces.

A New Work

It’s just one of those things that to do one thing well can take far longer than you thought. You just have to commit to maybe only getting three things done by twelve when your modern tick list mentality that would have preferred six or seven says, I can’t believe this is all that’s happened.

            And I’m not really writing an article today. There is not quite the time or the desire for that. I will be posting poems for a while because I remember that one streak of 1734 is that of good works in the world, of the Work being done through simple common sense and action, doing what we can do. And this work is not simply Christian martyrdom or white guilt. The doing of the work makes us grow too. I had stopped writing poems, and then I got a letter from a friend in prison saying he needed them, and so here I am, writing them again, every day, and here are some of them. This is the form the work has taken recently.

b a p t i s m

there you are stretched out nude in Chicago
the city where you became a man
where I found myself after I’d lost myself again
by the water called mishigami
they say the same means “great water”
the water is our home
why
even in the middle of things we are alone
even with all these bodies
we are not home
step into the water
all waters are the water
baptize yourself again
if not the lake
the shower
let what is gone drain
you are not home until
you find your home in what remains
all of are made in God’s image
all of us are loved
and you are what remains

l o n g i n g

the infinite angel all a burning column of fire
appeared to me in my lust and demanded my desire
and it was hot and dry as June, humid and thick as July
a sigh
of fire I said, “If I would have you home,
if we could all be home, if the end we long for could
be right now, and if beginning again was true beginning—
that is my desire

and if you were here, instead of there
I would take you in my arms
and feel every inch of you
and I would take you in my mouth
every inch of you
and suck away your sorrow
and be flooded with your fire



m a k i n g    l o v e   a t   5 a. m.

memory will save your soul
or memory will drive you crazy
don’t be the one who says you’ll never do this
do that
i remember doing you
that morning
5:30
and your slim boyfriend
boys in shades and shyness
riding over Michigan to me
before 6 am

two beautiful bodies on my one bed
from you to him and back again
the warmth of your brown body
the touch of your friendly kiss
the entry of your need, our need
our experiment
fucking
you inside me
black body,
brown body
white body

all of us want to be somebody,
all of us wanted to be loved
all of us are dust and ashes, we all want to be loved
all of are made in God’s image
all of us are loved


m i c h i g a n c i t y

Because I wanted the beach I went to Michigan City
Because I had only passed it on the train,
I went to Michigan City
Because I could not afford Chicago I went to Michigan City

I walked one half hour up a desolate pine street when I got to Michigan City
I reached the shore guarded by a blood red ram
And then lay down in front of the mother water and
she spoke peace to me
I baptized myself in sand and water and rose to leave

It was hot as fuck that day

I cannot get out of my mind, your used up houses
and crumpled cigarette carton ways
that are my ways too,
the shitty city is our city
the shit is our home
this is how gardens are grown

All of us want to be somebody,
all of us wanted to be loved
All of us are dust and ashes, we all want to be loved
All of are made in God’s image
All of us are loved

Sitting in a vacant train station in this desolate city
I was joined by man with nothing to do but a beer and a cigarette,
then
one high on heroin
just out of the pen
then one last friend, sleeping in his family’s yard

Luxury hides what poverty reveals
Every city is Michigan city
In America we leave wounds unhealed
All the world is Michigan city



g o s p e l

i wanted to live in the Gospel
I wanted to live the story of jesus, movies, passion plays, unpeeling the onion thin pages of the bible, all you know, in order to go to something new and rare and there, I looked for the lord jesus, in the spring of the year,
starving I looked for the Gospel. In abbeys, in stain glass,
in tear felt lessons, in the wiping of oil with her hair
But the gospel is here.
I am
I am
I am
And I am not sorry
Not for that.
I have heard the hymns of repentance
Sorry for making you bleed
I’m sorry they tried to make me believe I killed you
Repentance is turning around
Repentance is touching the ground of being
The trial reports say remorse is no sign a crime will not be repeated
But still we beat our breast to a man on a tree
O, it was me who did it
But I didn’t

What must relent
Is the way we repent
The lie of guilt impedes the true return


w i s d o m

You wrote me for words of wisdom
But all I have is this
You wanted something wise, maybe happy
But all I have is poverty
Maybe this is what wisdom is
Stripping of bullshit every day
To get to the grain
To find what remains
What remains is you

You are the house of God
There is no other
You are his habitation
Make of your loss and longing a home
For Him
Keep your fires lit
Kindle his spirit that he might kindle yours

All of us want to be somebody, all of us wanted to be loved
All of us are dust and ashes, we all want to be loved
All of are made in God’s image
All of us are loved

Invoke me

under my Stars!

Love is the Law,

Love under Will. Nor let the fools

mistake Love,

There is the Dove

and there is the Serpent.

Choose Ye Well!

I give unimaginable Joys

 on Earth;

Certainty, not Faith

while in Life,

Upon Death, Peace unutterable,

Rest

Ecstasy.

Nor do I demand aught in sacrifice

Let my worship be in the

Heart that Rejoices

For behold, all acts of love and pleasure

are my Rites.

Therefore let there be

Beauty and Strength,

Power and Compassion,

Honor and Humility, Mirth

and Reverence within You.

For to Love Me is Better than All Things.

Sing the Rapturous Lovesong to Me.

Burn to Me!

The Opposite of a Cult

I have been obsessed with cult and extreme religions,and in the last seventy years they have grown. In fact they have grown up right alongside neopaganism and the Craft. We have seen this before. In the 1800s, a romantic impulse spurred both the magical and mystic strains of Golden Dawn, Freemasonry and other ceremonial traditions while also giving and impetus to more cultic traditions like Mormonism and the Jehovah’s Witnesses. In our day the rise of the Craft has paralleled the rise of the cults and the cultic, from Hare Krishnas to Moonies, to the followers of Jim Jones, David Koresch and L. Ron Hubbard.

            But why is it that Satanism, for all that it might be, is not a cult, or why is it that no varation of witchcraft has even been counted as a cult, though some versions certainly have cultish aspects. I think it is for the very reason that 1734 is so difficult to explain or deconstruct, because the Craft is the opposite of a cult.

            Cults rely on several things, several needs that human beings have and to some extent large swathes of the human population are ripe for one type of cult or another. Indeed it could be argued that every religion and every group is some mild form of cult. Even in mainstream religion, especially those which require deep devotion, there can be pockets where some practitioners establish cults forms of that faith. What is the difference between an Hasidic sect focusing its life around a rebbe they suppose to be the Messiah and a cult? What is the difference between Catholic lay orders who center themselves around certain saints and teachings and a cult? The desire for cult even infiltrates witchcraft, but the actual pursuit of the Craft, or of any truth, cannot be performed in a cult and this is the reason I am so firm on Craftwork being solitary.

            The term cult arose as a slur, and cults are a superheated subset of religion in general, so it can be hard to define them, but not as hard as one might think. There are certain aspects to a cult.

The cult: has a teacher or teachers who are teaching the One Right Way toward salvation and or happiness. To not follow him or them is to face destruction. There is no true life, no true goodness, no true wisdom and no true happiness outside of the cult..

            The cult has the one understanding of how things are. It has dogmas and doctrines. It is not experience first. Your experience must fit inside of these dogma and doctrines.

            A cult finds being part of the group and the group mind more important than the individual mind. The cult says the individual mind is not necessary. The thinking has already been done. Free thought is a danger. Doubt is the enemy.

            The cult is generally patriarchal. Even if it may occasionally be run by a woman or women,  it centers around the teachings and doings and rules of a man and its schisms and divisions often boil down to a struggle between rival men..

The cult has a certain way of doing this and of doing that, and if that way varies, then one is no longer in the cult.

Anyone who grew up in a religion can peruse this list and think of the Catholics, the Mormons, the Evangelicals, the Muslims, the Orthodox Jewish whatever cousins you have who look at the world in this way, but the point is that all participants in the cult must look at the world in this way. To be in the cult, one must look at things this way. A Catholic can have private or very public disagreements with the Church. An Orthodox Jew can and will, eat as many cheeseburgers as she wishes and still be a Jew. In cults, there is real and dangerous punishment for veering.

But much of what we do is cultic, cultish, not an outright cult. The cult in its mild form is simply easier than being alone and doing your own spiritual work. Subscribing to cult mind and the busy activities of cultish life is easier than dealing with your own doubts. The cultish mind is safer than having one’s own spiritual experiences and this is why so many witches are not true witches, but members of little cults, little churches with no experience of Craft. The cult is where someone else gives you your gods and their names and you live off of another’s gas and experience. To some extent, Satanist, Wiccans, Alexandrians and most established Craft systems are cultic. When you are pretending as your own knowledge someone else’s story, and copying out someone else’s Book of Shadows, you are in a cultic experience.

My Lord, Khnum

As we deepen our practice, as our odyssey continues, we will, again and again, meet our gods, that is, the Divine will express Himself* to us as he wills and as we are prepared. As we continue, we will meet our gods and spirits in many places, after long mistaking them for dreams, coincidences, imaginary friends and mere deep attachments to names and places. So it has been the with serpentine river than wraps itself around where I live, and is called now Saint joseph, but has her own secret names. So it has been with the holy inland freshwater sea nearest me, Lake Michigan. So it is with the Mermaids, signs and symbols of something far deeper than tuna cans and Disney cartoons, and so it is with the giant red ram, Khnum.

            I have met Khnum three times. The first time I was not thinking very much and forgot about him. The second time I thought was the first time until my memory was jogged. This second time was after the summer solstice. He was bright red and rising on his platform over the golden sandy beach, hot under the glowing blue sky. I thought him the lord of the desert, the Devil himself, and honored him in this aspect, but did not trouble to ask any questions or spend much time with him. I could not even photograph him. My phone’s camera was no good. But he did not leave my thoughts, for the Goat never leaves the thoughts of a witch for long.

            It was today, when I returned to Michigan City and it was entirely too hot, that I beheld him again and looked up his artist, Sophie Marie, and his name. I had not known that Khnum was the name of the God of waters of the Nile as well as its mud which brought fertility and made the clay, that as God of the clay, he was God of potters creation, and he shaped all things, evne the other gods. I did not know that as he was God of the Nile, he was God of all waters, including great Michigan, and that he was the God of the subterranean rivers and the deep springs, therefore of the waters of the unconscious and the Spirit World. I did not know that staring down into deep blue Lake Michigan from pier, I was looking into the eyes of Khnum, he who stirs and shapes and brings to life.

            What I do know, is that because now the name Khnum means something to me does not mean all the things I learned before are untrue. He is still the Lord of the Burning Desert. He is still Azazel, He is still the Great Pan, and still he is the Bucca, carrying the light between the horns. He is still, and always, the very path we follow, our witch craft, or besom. He is the holy witch’s ride.

*I do not say herself, because in our world that is straining the point. We are used to the Divine being He. And I do not say itself, because it infers something less than human and less than personal. If there were a pronoun for the superpersonal, or the supragendered, then I would use it, but in our language the closest is still the faulty him, and so, I am using it.