Our final circle gathering took place on a sun drenched Saturday just before Midsummer’s Day. All around us, nature was bursting with beauty and fullness – completing the long journey from last year’s flower through seed-resting-in-the-darkness and on to new life and steady growth which burgeoned into abundance and sharing.
And for us, there was so much of the same experience. I was struck, as I listened to our shared wisdom, how far some people felt they had travelled over the 2-3 years together and how all of us felt we had changed in some way. Our gatherings had become a regular rhythm in our lives, creating a community and a space where we were able to say whatever needed to be said in a very special physical place (thanks and blessings to Juliette for her beautiful house and garden). And in that space, everything was welcomed: joy, excitement, fear, rage, despair, confusion, contentment, gratitude……… And as we learned to accept that knowledge and wisdom are both dark and bright, we opened up to the alchemy of transformation. In the heart of the storminess and mess, there is gold. And for many, that gold is prayer: praying for the greater good of everyone, not caving in, believing that Someone knows, that there is a greater reality, letting kindness emerge.
I realise that learning to embrace paradox is one of the biggest gifts that I am taking away from my time in Wild Wisdom School. It is a very lovely feeling to be able to say to myself “both…and” instead of “either…or”. Living with the tension of opposites is tough, but I have increasingly found it possible to reach a point of balance and in those moments, something else is born from the holding of the polarities: a feeling of peace, of wholeness and wonder. A glimpse of the Divine. And, together, we have encountered those opposites in many ways and many places. From the start of our travels in paleolithic times we found that those early peoples were not just focused on survival – there is evidence of wonder too. Ritual, community and art alongside hardship and death. We do not know what, if anything, they “worshipped” but as we travelled through time we saw how that sense of wonder evolved into different spiritual traditions, with myth and story interwoven through everything. I have learned so much from the myths and stories that Sam has shared with us over the years, and they have helped me find different ways to hold paradox: the descent into darkness is necessary for the return and transformation, willing sacrifice offers new hope, death allows for the possibility of rebirth, the ugly becomes beautiful when it’s accepted. And listening to my companions in the circle, I have learned too that there are many many ways to experience the stories, not just my way; and those experiences can be diametrically opposed and still both be true.
So, we started our day with a meditation which reminded us of the fourfold way of knowing on which our practice has been based. The body and the natural world, and the wisdom that comes from both; the psyche, listening to the wisdom that emerges from how we feel about things, and from our memories and thoughts; the witness capacity, stepping aside, stepping back, getting out of our own way; and the Divine, the ground of all being, the wisdom that comes when we ask “what would You have me learn in this moment?”. All of our meditations have been beautiful, and this was no exception. As one of our community said afterwards, these have been opportunities over time to organise the purple blobs of the mind into a pattern.
Then we shifted our energy from the internal to the external and turned our thoughts to magick. Sam asked us what the word meant and what images came to mind. Inevitably we had magicians, witches, fairies, Merlin, Hogwarts, stardust and black arts……but when we settled down to listen to some of the history/herstory of magick, it became very clear that it was a deeply respected tradition for many years and was seen as a normal occupation for educated people, that was held within a Christian tradition. Queen Elizabeth had a magical advisor, John Dee, and magick that was in the service of God was seen as perfectly acceptable. When Henry VIII brought in the first Witchcraft Act in England, in 1542, it was specifically against demonic and destructive magick, not all magick. There are many definitions of magick, but let’s settle for: “The art and science of magick causing changes in matter and at a subtle level by altering states of consciousness”.
We all know about the period, about 200 years, of persecution of people accused of practising magick, and in that time some 50,000 people were tortured and executed across Europe, about 80% of them women. Of that number, only about 500 were in the UK, probably because Henry VIII’s Act was very specific about demonic magick. Tempted though I am to dwell on the reasons underpinning the persecution of so many women, that is a subject in itself and not for today.
Magick has never gone away. In Britain, it moved on through Freemasonry (another fascinating subject)and then, like so many esoteric traditions, it moved underground as rational science took centre stage. There were many occult and esoteric schools, most of them fairly secretive to outsiders: the Rosicrucians and Order of the Golden Dawn are two of the better known, and later The Society of the Inner Light (founded by Dion Fortune) and Servants of the Light (founded by WE Butler and Gareth Knight). They drew on alchemy, astrology, Free Masonry, Kabbalah, and often Christianity and their focus was on self-transformation.
In the 20th Century Gerald Gardner started the Wicca movement, bringing an incredible focus on the natural world, and Ross Nichols founded the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids. They created the Eightfold nature of the year, drawing on ancient folklore and Christian traditions, and it is widely used today by many different groups and individuals. I think they would be surprised (as I was) to know just how recent a “truth” this is!
We broke at this stage for our customary bring and share lunch, which was the usual riot of colours and flavours, and for relaxed conversations in and out of the sunshine.
This was followed by our quiet time, a period of digestion at many levels, and a chance for companionable and contemplative silence. When we gathered once again, Sam led us thought a wonderful magick ritual. Not unlike a guided meditation, this was inner work and an invitation to change and growth through imagery and the union of our own conscious and intuitive processes.
And then our final wisdom pot, our last time of sharing as this group in this sacred space. We decided not to have one of our Ramshackle Rituals to end the day as we would be meeting for a final end of year celebration the next day, and would have an opportunity then. Listening to our closing reflections, I am once more struck by the differences held lovingly in our circle, and how everything really is made welcome in this amazing community. We spoke of stillness beneath an ash tree, of contentment, of grief, the certainty of being wrapped up in angel wings and the unknowingness of new beginnings.We asked “What can I harvest as well as emptying myself?”.
And I am straight back to paradox. I know that I need both to harvest the fruits of wisdom from this 3 year journey and empty myself as an invitation to future possibilities; to stand in stillness and to move on; to feel the joy of our circle and the sorrow that it no longer exists in external form. And the lessons from our short exploration of magick? That it is both Christian and pagan…..and that is absolutely ok. The split is within us. The world would be a kinder, safer place if we could heal the split that leads to “we vs. others” and “I’m right therefore you must be wrong”. I am learning every day to be less judgemental, to be aware of conflicts in my own heart and mind, and to hold paradox with a little more ease and grace.
So as I end my last blog, I would like to thank my travelling companions for their company over the 3 years. The work we have done matters. And the work that each of us will take back into our everyday world matters too: every prayer, every meditation, every moment of mindfulness, each loving thought, all our explorations on our different spiritual paths – it is all sacred work, and that work is desperately needed by our world today. I feel very privileged and full of gratitude to Sam, and to us all.
As we gathered on that Saturday, I felt very unsettled – too many bubbles and loud gurgles in the normally quiet, deep well. But then that was the underlying theme of our day. Iconoclasm: splitting and healing, breaking and mending; the disturbance suggested by the subject was already in the room.
In our initial sharing we talked about our sense of the broken-ness of everything, of struggling to be ourselves and knowing how to respond to an increasingly frightening world, of seeing ourselves as the “right” size, neither inflated or deflated. And then the water in the well stilled a little , and we found ourselves thinking again of Wisdom; clever people know many things but not necessarily the best way to use that knowledge – therein is a split. Wisdom is different and opening to Wisdom’s understanding is part of healing the split.
As we talked about our experience of the different aspects of ourselves, we named our feelings of fragmentation. And in witnessing it all, being willing to acknowledge and appreciate the diversity, we discovered the possibility of unity. Once again we had settled into community and were drinking from the deep well.
After a break, and sustained by wonderful cakes and biscuits (Lent was still two weeks away after all) Sam led us through 1,800 years of history in an intense and fascinating tour de force. We learned something of the many splits, schisms and divisions as Christianity grew from a small Jewish cult based on one of several charismatic teachers to a major global religion: institutionalized, political, imperialistic and yet fragmented in spite of all efforts to impose a unified doctrine.
And during this journey we had numerous encounters with women who probably had prominent roles in the early church but have quietly been written out of mainstream history. We know about the Apostles’ apostle, Mary Magdelene, but what about Phoebe, Thecla, Chloe, Prisca and Junia, not to mention the Desert Mothers?
An image of a woman teaching or leading a religious ritual from St. Priscilla’s catacombs in Rome.
And as well as these ministers to the Divine, there is also evidence of the Divine Feminine as expressed in these beautiful words from a Syriac Christian hymn:
On this day let everyone garland
The door of their heart. May the Holy Spirit
Desire to enter in its door to dwell
And sanctify. For behold, She moves about
To all the doors to see where She may dwell.
When we reached the Reformation, we were face to face with another split. There was a clear need for reform and the excesses of the church were manifest in many many dimensions. At the same time, the reforms that took place destroyed much of the visual beauty in our churches as well as some of the richness of the ancient liturgical rituals. The intolerance of images in churches seems to me to miss the point that deep devotion can come from the contemplation of an icon, and that learning can happen in different ways. I cannot help feeling that aspects of the Reformation left the Church a colder, bleaker place and I am more drawn to holy places that allow the celebration of the divine through the imagination and creativity of the human spirit. Through beauty. Our field trip the next day was testament to the love and acceptance that is possible when beauty is allowed in.
It is difficult to do justice to Sam’s whistle stop tour and I am still left with a sense of disturbance and of sadness for what we have lost. And in today’s troubled world we continue to repeat things from the past, creating new splits and schisms, creating “icons” out of superficial and materialistic things and people…….. I know which of these two images I would rather dwell on!
Virgin and Christ Child. Fresco in Chora Church, Istanbul
Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s soup cans, often described as iconic
After a companionable shared lunch we had some quiet time, mostly out of doors as the spring sunshine was irresistible. Then our meditation: a deeply personal invitation to meet with an aspect of ourselves that is broken, something unwelcome or challenging. In it, we were given the opportunity to witness how our inner wisdom responded, and in doing so to find a place of healing the split. A very nourishing way to head towards the closing of our day which ended with another of our joyful Ramshackle Rituals.
Sam left us with a lovely metaphor. There may be many diverse fish and indeed, other beings, in the pond or the sea. They are separate and they all held by the same water. Unity is possible.
In the magical time of the approaching winter solstice and Christmas, we gathered once again to share our experiences, our wisdom and our food, and to listen to Wisdom’s Call. And what a rich day it was!
Sometimes, even when I think I know a bit about a subject, I encounter something that quite simply takes my breath away. Bear with me and I will try and explain.
Our Wild Wisdom journey started in deep time and we have encountered many manifestations of wisdom as we explored the unfolding cosmos. We marveled at the creativity of the Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic ages, wandered through Mesopotamia and met Inana, paused in Egypt with Isis and Osisris, returned to these lands where we stirred Ceridwen’s pot, then touched on the Grail traditions through the Loathly Lady. Travelling eastwards again to the Desert Fathers and Mothers, and the Mary-Jesus mysteries.
Our most recent gathering stayed within the biblical tradition but travelled back in time to around 500BCE where, in the Hebrew bible, we read of Hokmah or Wisdom. “Hokmah” is a feminine noun and so whenever Wisdom was invoked, it would have been heard and experienced as feminine. And She is everywhere in the Wisdom books of the Bible! As the Bible was translated into Greek, Hokmah became Sophia and also the masculine Logos and, in the English translations, the more gender neutral Wisdom.
Sam talked to us about the emergence of Greek philosophy and how that, and language, meant that Wisdom as an expression of the Divine Feminine went underground – taken over by Logos and Spiritus Sanctus – until Sophia was quite literally dug up in 1945 at Nag Hamaddi. Greek Philosophy and the Gnostic tradition are fascinating and huge subjects – too big to explore here.
What I have found astonishing is revisiting Wisdom in the existing forms of the Bible – that have been here all the time. Here I find no erudite, learned, remote figure who represents some sort of unearthly knowledge or understanding. Instead, I experience her as God’s co-worker, a powerful all pervading presence – as fiery and feisty as any goddess I’ve encountered in other wisdom traditions. But perhaps the most breathtaking for me is the glimpse of this Divine Feminine as a hugely active, energetic force with an intense love for humanity. In just one small section of the Book of Wisdom (Ch. 10) I read:
“Wisdom protected the first-formed father of the world / When the earth was flooded …….. wisdom again saved it / Wisdom rescued from troubles those who served her / she guided him on straight paths / she stood by him and made him rich / She protected him from his enemies, and kept him safe from those who lay in wait for him/ wisdom did not desert him, but delivered him from sin. She descended with him into the dungeon, and when he was in prison she did not leave him / she guided them along a marvelous way, and became a shelter to them by day, and a starry flame through the night”
She is busy, interventionist and ferociously compassionate in the stories of Noah, Daniel, Joseph and many others. Like the Shekinah, who travelled with Adam and Eve when they were exiled from Eden, She has never left us. She provides the balance our troubled world needs so very badly today.
And the idea of Wisdom as an active principle infused much of what we did for the rest of our day together. We reflected on transformative alchemical experiences in our lives and what they had taught us about our own wisdom paths; in doing so we talked about how we could actively foster them by understanding what helped and supported and what got in the way. We did a beautiful guided meditation which led us to taste the fruits of wisdom, but also to bring the fruit back into the world. And then we did an exercise based on Roberto Assagioli’s “stages of the act of will” to distil our reflections into one small, achievable action.
It was hard work. But it was powerful and fulfilling and we were, as ever, sustained by a gorgeous lunch of apple harvest soup, salmon and a squash and cranberry salad that fed us with its jewel like colours before we even tasted it! There were also multiple offerings from Ernestina the Urn along with mince pies, a Yule log and various other goodies.
Helen’s beautiful salad
For those of us who wanted to stay active in the quiet afternoon time, we were offered the craft of traditional beeswax candle rolling. It is a process that cannot be rushed – the beeswax sheets insist on being worked slowly and deliberately. It took me an hour to make two small candles, but it was an hour of intense, embodied focus and I felt centered and very calm at the end of it. Yet again I am reminded of the wisdom of the bees.
Sheets of beeswax and wicks
Rolling the candles
Slow, patient……
Finished candles
In our co-created closing ceremony, lovingly renamed by Sam as our Ramshackle Ritual, we remembered absent members of our Wild Wisdom community and we asked for blessings on all the children of the world who are living without love, on refugees especially in Syria and the Yemen, and on all the dispossessed. And we ended with a feisty rendering of The Holly and the Ivy which honours both the pre-Christian and Christian traditions of the season.
I have thought a lot about Wisdom’s Call in the few days since our gathering.
We all shared our sense of impotence in a world where so much seems to be going badly wrong and where we find ever new ways to inflict pain on our beloved planet and on each other. But somehow, I am finding deep comfort in those moments when I can be still and listen for Wisdom and her call, because call She does. And if I can hear Her from time to time, and respond by taking action – one small step at a time – and if you can, and others can…………..
Many blessings at this darkest time of the year, and may the returning light nourish hope and wisdom in us all.
And for us, there was so much of the same experience. I was struck, as I listened to our shared wisdom, how far some people felt they had travelled over the 2-3 years together and how all of us felt we had changed in some way. Our gatherings had become a regular rhythm in our lives, creating a community and a space where we were able to say whatever needed to be said in a very special physical place (thanks and blessings to Juliette for her beautiful house and garden). And in that space, everything was welcomed: joy, excitement, fear, rage, despair, confusion, contentment, gratitude……… And as we learned to accept that knowledge and wisdom are both dark and bright, we opened up to the alchemy of transformation. In the heart of the storminess and mess, there is gold. And for many, that gold is prayer: praying for the greater good of everyone, not caving in, believing that Someone knows, that there is a greater reality, letting kindness emerge.
Wisdom School. It is a very lovely feeling to be able to say to myself “both…and” instead of “either…or”. Living with the tension of opposites is tough, but I have increasingly found it possible to reach a point of balance and in those moments, something else is born from the holding of the polarities: a feeling of peace, of wholeness and wonder. A glimpse of the Divine. And, together, we have encountered those opposites in many ways and many places. From the start of our travels in paleolithic times we found that those early peoples were not just focused on survival – there is evidence of wonder too. Ritual, community and art alongside hardship and death. We do not know what, if anything, they “worshipped” but as we travelled through time we saw how that sense of wonder evolved into different spiritual traditions, with myth and story interwoven through everything. I have learned so much from the myths and stories that Sam has shared with us over the years, and they have helped me find different ways to hold paradox: the descent into darkness is necessary for the return and transformation, willing sacrifice offers new hope, death allows for the possibility of rebirth, the ugly becomes beautiful when it’s accepted. And listening to my companions in the circle, I have learned too that there are many many ways to experience the stories, not just my way; and those experiences can be diametrically opposed and still both be true.
So, we started our day with a meditation which reminded us of the fourfold way of knowing on which our practice has been based. The body and the natural world, and the wisdom that comes from both; the psyche, listening to the wisdom that emerges from how we feel about things, and from our memories and thoughts; the witness capacity, stepping aside, stepping back, getting out of our own way; and the Divine, the ground of all being, the wisdom that comes when we ask “what would You have me learn in this moment?”. All of our meditations have been beautiful, and this was no exception. As one of our community said afterwards, these have been opportunities over time to organise the purple blobs of the mind into a pattern.
