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D EVOTIONAL DANCE FOR SELF
The movement for self seems simple, yet is difficult, just like tapping into
who you truly are.
Begin with your feet beneath you, knees bent slightly. Feel the red Iron earth energy enter you. Feel it glowing in your lift hand, the self point. Place your right hand on your heart and your lift hand on your belly. Breathe. Call yourself to you. Now, looking over your
right shoulder, move your right hand out, flowing into the world. Then look lift, moving
your lift hand out. Then move the lift back in, resting on your heart, and move the right back
in, resting on your belly. Cather yourself back to yourself Then move again, out into the
world. Out and out. In and in. Twisting gently, turning, gathering yourself in and offering your gifts to the world. Breathe. Call self in. Fill with yourself Who are you? Breathe it in.
QuESTIONING You R SENSE o F SELF
The questioning attitude is a good one to bring to magic, because as long
as we can ask questions, the unexpected has room to appear.
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Devotional Dance for self
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What is your sense 1 self? When you think 1 who you are, what do you think 1?
What is truly your essential self and what has been heaped upon you by years 1 expectations or lack 1 encouragement? What stories do you tell yourself about who you are? Drop into one 1 these stories . . . how true does it feel to you?
Ask yourself who you could be if you allowed it. What would you be doing in your life
if you weren't riddled with fear or misplaced ambition, anger, or complacency? And who
are you now, beneath your job, your family, your schooling? Are your dreams for yourself
so outlandish they can never happen, thereby keeping you in your place? Or do you expend all 1 your energy dreaming them so you never have the power to be? Conversely, do you tell yourself your dreams are unrealistic when perhaps they are attainable? lj you
were to write a mythic tale about yourself, with you as the hero, what would that tale be?
What exploits have you engaged in? What is the story 1 your birth and growing? What
monsters have you battled, living to tell the tale? Do you face demons at work every day?
Who wins?
CuTTING TO THE CoRE
For this exercise you will need three candles and your athame, your knife
consecrated to magical, spiritual work. This tool represents the fire and
strength of your will. If you don't yet have such a tool, use your favorite
kitchen knife, or for gardeners, your favorite pruning sheers. Just know
that for now, it represents both your will and your ability to cut a boundary around what is yours and what is not yours.
Take a deep breath. Light the candles to lend strength to your work. I
recommend warm colors: red for your connection to home and the earth's
power, orange for your connection to the life force, and yellow to represent
your will and lend you confidence. There are three of them to remind you
that there is not one source of help and strength, but many. If the work
grows difficult, you can gaze on one of the colors, breathe in, and then
continue into the next phase.
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Take a deep breath. Breathe up some of the blue fire energy to charge your blade for this
working. Breathe across your blade and down the tip. Center yourself. You will use your
athame to demark the boundary between where 'you" begins to intersect with that which is
"not you." The "not you" can take the form of roles or identities that have been put upon you, or the ways in which you have mutated yourself in order to fit in. All of these suck away
your sense of self.
Begin to peel down to your essence, your core. Let all the selves, the masks that have been
put upon you or that you put upon yourself, drop onto a pile by your side. Keep looking,
feeling, cutting away. "Is this I?" "Is this not I?" Parent, lover, child, teacher, failure, success, worker, dancer, priestess, the graciful one, the clumsy one: let all of those names and identities fall away, dropping to the floor around you. When you think you are done, try to
go down one more layer, pay attention to your face, your heart, your back, the soles of your
feet. Sometimes there are masks on my face that are hard to see because I've held them so close.
Is there any place you've forgotten that may hold another name,Jace, posture, or beliif about
yourself? Cut it away.
Feel what it is like to be down to the core of you. What is there? Are you a color, a scent,
a band of light, a pure tone? Glory in this sense of yourself. Breathe it in. Bow to it in
honor. Stand within it. What is a posture you can take that will remind you of this state?
Anchor this feeling to that posture, knowing that even if you forget who you are, it is there
in your body. Every time you stand this way, you will be brought back to your true nature.
Now, turn to your pile of masks and stray energy. If there are any identities that you
choose to keep, take them from the pile and put them back on, like clothing. How does that
feel? Feel the core of yourself beneath them. Know that this is work that you can do again.
Right now, imagine the remaining masks turning to neutral energy and sinking into the
earth, becoming compost to feed new growth.
The more years you practice this, the less disparity there will be between
your masks and essence. You will become truer and truer to who you are.
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powef
Feel the fiery Iron energy flowing through the pentacle, connecting self
with power. What is power? I feel it when we sing together, or when I sit
still and feel strong in my stillness. Power is the ability to keep silent, gathering energy. Power is the ability to speak, to shout, to scatter. It is mutable, not static-power must change in order to remain powerfUl, otherwise it becomes brittle. Power is in my lungs and heart, muscles and bones.
Power is the sun, giving life to plants and people and power is the dark potential of the buried seed.
I used to fear my power, for I didn't understand what power could be.
During my childhood, power meant an out of control temper and a slide
into irrationality, violence, and betrayal. I have grown to see that power
does not have to work this way. I now have ample evidence that when I
work with others who feel powerful, our work sparks and takes on life in
interesting ways. Power shared is power magnified. When I am full of my
power I am more secure. The more secure I am, the more generous I am
able to be.
Insecurity breeds a mentality of scarcity. It becomes easy to feel there
is not enough love, food, money, attention, or work to go around. Therefore, I feel I must scramble for it, using power over others to get what I want. Conversely, I might fear that I'll get used and abused because I don't
step forward enough in the competition for power. These are lies perpetuated by systems of dominance. Unfortunately, they work on us in insidious ways. We can feel squashed in such a system or feel like we must claw our way to the top.
There is no top, for there is no ladder. We strive instead to stand in circular forms, passing our power hand to hand. We are not the same, for I have skills you don't have, and you have ones I don't, but we can work together and learn. In Feri Tradition, we strive to bring each other into
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shared power, not by assuming instant equality of skill, but by passing on
what we know to one another. By bringing one another into the circle of
shared life, our power grows. We can listen to those who have walked the
spiral paths ahead of us, and we can practice, becoming strong.
DEVOTIONAL DANCE FOR PowER
Feel the red Iron earth energy fill you. Breathe it in. Feel it glowing in your right hand.
Spread your feet just wider than shoulder height and dip almost into plif, letting your center of gravity lower itself, connecting to the earth. Let your arms hang naturally. Now bring your forearms to rest, one on top of the other, right hand facing upward, gently holding your
arm just below your elbow, left hand facing down, also holding your arm just below the elbow. Now, begin to rockfrom side to side, letting your torso move above your thighs. As you do this, move your arms out in arcs rising and dropping, then moving to the sides, until they
describe a circle with each other. The legs and torso rock, and the arms wheel out,Jorming a
circle and come to rest again, in the opposite positions they started in. Left now faces up and
right down, both hands gently grasping the arms above and below them. Continue rocking
side to side, wheeling your arms out. Feel power flowing into you. Feel how it shifts and
changes, meeting and balancing and moving out again. It is grand above and deep below,
gathering energy and forming themselves in concert. The arms work together. Feel the energy
flowing in a sphere between them, opening out and compacting again. Power shifts. Power
moves. Your legs are strong beneath you and your arms dance like the wheeling arms of a
Hindu God, or like the interlacing of yin and yang. Breathe. You are powerful. You are
strong. Let it fill you. Move with it. Power.
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Devotional nnnce for power
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CIRCLES o F PowER
• •
I
2
3
4
Some of us may have a lot of power in the world and others of us may
have too little. Look at that now: What is your definition of power and
how do you use it? I firmly believe that the greater our capacity to hold
power is, the greater our capacity is to use it wisely, compassionately, and
in a balanced fashion. This exercise will help us to expand our capacity for
power, life force, and energy in general.
For this exercise, remember how the fiery energy from the molten outer
core of earth flowed from sex, into pride and self, and now into power. We
will move backward and forward in circles of increasing and decreasing degrees of power.
Take a deep breath. Connect with your grounding cord. Imagine that you are standing
in a circle that fits your body comfortably (Circle ?). Let the circumference surround you
approximately three inches wider than shoulder width. Close your eyes for a moment and
sense yourself your feet, your skin, your breathing, your heartbeat. Take another breath and
feel power flowing around you, in the circle where you are standing. This is the amount of
power you live in, walk in, work in. This is the circle you are most comfortable standing in.
Stay here for a little while, taking this in. When you are ready, take a step backward (- 1).
You are stepping into a circle of diminished power and diminished capacity. What does this
circle fee/ like to you? What happens to your posture here? Breathe.
Now take two big steps forward, moving through the circle you started in and landing
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in the one in front of that (Circle 2), a circle of greater power. Feel power tingling around
you. What does your body feel like here? How is your posture? Breathe this in. Feel it. When
you are ready, take a step back into the circle you started in (Circle l). Stay there until you
are ready to move again.
Now take two steps forward, moving through the circle in front of you and into Circle
3. This circle holds still more energy and power. How does this feel to you? Is it better or
worse? Does your posture change? Breathe this in. Stay in this circle for a moment, really
feeling the energy swirling around and through your body. Take another breath, and step forward once again. Ahhh. Circle 4. Feel it surround you. Feel your body. What happens to it?
Breathe. Let yourself stand here for as long as you can.
Work your way back to your first, beginning circle. Rest there for a moment. Now step
into whatever circle you choose to work with. Step into a circle of power. It may be one step
ahead, or three. Or you may decide to remain where you are for right now. Breathe in that
circle of power. Claim it for yourself. It is now your territory. Expand in health, balance,
and wisdom. Enjoy. Blessed be.
The circles may feel incredibly intense, or the intensity may just drop
away. The last time I did this exercise, I discovered a trick I was playing on
mysel£ I had the capacity for a far greater amount of power than I was letting on. When I stepped one step behind me, I caved in. When I stepped into Circle 2, I felt good, but had to really concentrate to take the power
in. It altered my body a lot. When I moved into Circles 3 and 4, however,
the intensity dropped away and I felt simply great. I ended up claiming the
fourth circle of power, even though when I began, I thought I would only
be able to claim Circle 2. Play around. See what happens. Perhaps you will
surprise yoursel£
When I lead this exercise in groups, I have found that when we all
stepped into Circle 4, we were standing side by side in a large circle of
shared power. That is the magic of working together: when I step into my
own power, I make room for others to share power alongside me.
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PoRTRAITS oF PowER
The next exercise takes us to look at "portraits of power" in galleries and
museums. I love looking at art in this way: Gustave Caillebotte's The Floor
Scrapers shows people working together, sharing the power of sheer muscle
and common work. Georgia O'Keeffe's shells and flowers show the power
of color, form, nature, and sex. Mary Cassatt shows the power of mothers
and children.
The most potent portraits of power I have ever seen were by Wolfgang
Leib. At the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., I was suddenly confronted by
a thrumming, throbbing, pulsing, glowing, powerful piece of art. It was a
square of about five feet, flat on the ground, bursting yellow, goldenrod.
There was movement flowing across it yet it was absolutely still. It was pure
life force: the power of sex and of all living things, captured in this white
room. What was it? A square of pollen, held to the floor only by the heat
from the lamps above. It was wildness held captive and potency held waiting.
At Chicago's Art Institute I saw a piece by Glenn Ligon that was simultaneously an expression of power and a critique of systems of powerover. The artist used coal dust to map out a page of James Baldwin's writing in relief on a canvas. The blackness, the artist's intention, the intensity of
the coal, and Baldwin's words all had their own power. Many of the words
had been obscured, blurred by the coal, by the very blackness that gave
them subs
tance. This was the critique of the power-over of racism and a
culture that sees blackness as a cause and source of erasure and subordination. Yet through all of that, the sheer power and beauty of the blackness itself shone on that canvas.
Take a trip to an art gallery or museum. Look for images that you associate with power.
Look first for what you think the dominant culture associates with power: military pictures,
.statues o/ generals or statesmen, photographs o/ ships, the rich and famous. Look around.
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What do you see? How do these images make you feel? Is there much variety in the portrayals of power? Breathe this in.
Next, begin to focus on other forms of power. Are there photos or paintings of the ocean?
OJ old trees? Strong animals? Dancers? Are there portraits of people working together? Are
there any images-even abstract ones-that just speak power to you? Breathe that in.
Next, turn to images you might not usually associate with power: flowers, small animals, children, or Madonnas. What is the power of a japanese brushstroke? What power is held in a piece of wood, smoothed and polished to reflective brilliance?
What do all of these visions of power say to you? What do you want
to cultivate, to draw out of yourself and others?
pUSSIOll
The molten, red Iron energy traces its way through you, mapping a line
from power to passion, the last point on the Iron Pentacle before the energy completes the circuit with sex. What is the source of your passion?
What drives you? What do you desire more than anything? Speak it, feel
it, sense it. Do you fear it?
What would you risk for your passion? I sometimes need to risk fear
and comfort. For example, with my writing, I can come up with a million
emotional blocks to doing it that are so subtle and strong, I don't even notice them. I am all of a sudden too busy to write, or am going to take a short break and end up taking a two-hour nap or I just decide, in the middle of the first page, that it isn't going to be very good anyway. So I stop. I thwart my passion. This again ties back to my pride point, to feeling powerless and to losing my sense of sel£ It also links directly to sex, to whether or not I am full of life force and whether or not I am willing to channel