T Thorn Coyle Evolutionary Witchcraft (pdf)
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subsuming one's spirit and life force to another. No. This is the deep love
linked to the first act of sex and creation, the act that called on Spirit to infuse all things. This is the respectful caring that underlies all. It is in the breeze on each tree lea£ It is so well connected to the sex of the Iron Pentacle that it can be hard to differentiate. In fact, they exist in harmony with each other. Love is that which uses the life force well, and for the good of all. It is
not about selfishness or ownership. It is a sharing, the underpinning of life
that infuses all. It is vast, encompassing cultures, animals, plants, suns, and
stars. Without respect, there is no love. Without life force-sexual energythere is no love. The Star Goddess loved herself and from that, worlds were 5From his CD, Lovt Politico. See www.dannypeck.com
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born. Love yourself that way, and who knows what will be born? Love yourself that way, and society gains a different foundational force. That is magic.
OPENING TO O RDINARY LovE
Tom Waits's "Downtown Train" is playing in the cafe where I sit writing.
It is a song full of love for ordinary things, for girls with plain faces full of
longing, for the moon rising over the train as he travels downtown. This
song fills me with thankfulness for the world and for our ordinary lives.
This exercise, like this song, is about opening to love. It is about opening
to a love that is more inclusive than we sometimes believe possible. It is
about the wonder of the world as it is: gritty, sweaty, beautiful, and human.
I'm going to ask you to make a list of things that fill you with a sense of
love, of love and gratitude. Whenever I feel love, it is always coupled with
gratitude, for I am thankful at the world that opens in front of me. What
seemed closed just a moment ago unfolds in front of me like a flower. Petal
by petal it reveals itself and my heart is revealed to love. I breathe that in.
Make a list of thirty things that you love: concepts, people, or qualities. Breathe as you
do this. Breathe in love. Breathe love onto that page. Breathe it into the pen as you write. Fill
with love. Now read this list. Pick one that stands out, shining like a jewel on the page. "The
sun slanting across the floor." Or "daisies in a mason jar on the kitchen sill." Or "the feeling in my body tifter a run." Or "the face of the woman who begs on the corner near work."
Write that one thing on a small piece of paper. Set it on your altar. Meditate upon this love
for one week. Burn a candle in front of it. Let yourself drop into this thing that fills you
with love. Love for the universe. Love for life. Let this be your meditation.
The more you meditate on things that fill you with love, the more open
to love you will become. The world will become a thing to love. In the
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midst of bad news and violence on every page of the newspaper, the world
can still rise up and make us gasp in wonder.
PoLISHING THE HEART
I find this to be very soothing and helpful when my heart feels wounded,
bruised, undefended, or caked over with muck. 6 It is simple and effective
and you can do it wherever you are, rain or shine. The first time you try it,
you may want to dim the lights, light some candles, and settle into a private space. But I do it anytime I feel the need: anytime I'm feeling heartsore or dirty, sad or disconnected.
Feel your feet on the ground and feel your breath moving through your sacred body. Let
your shoulders relax, and your center if gravity drop, perhaps bending your knees slightly on
an exhalation. Begin to notice how your breath moves through your body, allowing yourself
to grow more and more relaxed as you breathe, opening your heart a little, as during the
heart breath. Now gently begin to move your hands over your heart, gently down, cycling
them past one another. You can use your fingertips for a light touch or the palms if your
hands for a firmer, yet still gentle, brushing motion. Imagine that your hands are washing
over your heart. They might be water, smoothing rock, sending clarity in where corifusion
reigns. They might be a polishing cloth, gently rubbing away dirt and debris.
Let your hands continue to flow gently over your breastbone as you breathe. Continue
to relax. You may wish to rock gently, back and forth, like a child being cradled. You are
loved. You are forgiven if you need forgiveness. Breathe. Love. Breathe. Love. You are slowly
being made whole again, comforted and held. Bring yourself to stillness, one hand covering
the other, resting on your heart. Feel your heart begin to expand. Breathe into it. Say, "I am
increasing my capacity to love. I am open to love. My heart is big. I have love within my
�I derived this from my years of study with the Mevlevi Sufis.
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heart." Take a big heart breath and say, "I am beloved." Now, cup your hands and imagine
them filled with love, like they would fill with water from a clear stream. Tip your hands
out, spilling the love onto the ground in front of you and say: "May love be poured upon the
earth. Blessed be."
D EVOTIONAL DANCE FOR LovE
U1th feet around shoulder-width apart, bend your knees slightly and begin to move your
torso in a clockwise circle. As you do so, let your arms follow the movement of your body,
hands brushing across your heart and circling out, then passing in front of your eyes like a
mirror. You are looking upon yourself with the eyes of love. Another rotation, and your
hands pass across your heart once more, then drift out and around, moving up again to your
eyes. You are breathing, centered, and relaxed. You are open to love, to the love of the universe, to the love you have within you. Keep breathing. Let yourself fill with love.
LQW
The luminous energy of the Pearl Pentacle runs like water, down from
love, connecting it with law. Law is a distorted concept in our culture. The
law of Pearl, based on true pride, is natural law. When pride is present,
there is a sense of worthiness and belonging to community and the natural
flow. When laws are made in response to unworthiness, they can cause isolation, suspicion, and a divorce from Nature.
This doesn't mean that natural law always seems nice. Earthquakes topple structures without sound foundations. Fire scythes through a forest like a knife, making space for new seeds to grow. Law is about balance and
connection. It is about gravity and the way the stars move. Law is also
about my will and my use of it. Am I in alignment with the natural world
as much as possible for a person in the twenty-first century? Have I done
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my daily practice, sat in prayer o r meditation, run energy, or engaged in a
martial arts practice? Have I sought forgiveness for omissions or things
committed when I was not in alignment? I cannot live according to natural
law if I have caused an imbalance and not sought to rectify it. Right living
engages law: discipline, pride, joy, and revelry.
Thinking of law in this personal way gives us an idea of how law works
on a larger scale, ordering all of Nature through the gentle turning of seasons or through the devastating po
wer of a flash flood. On a human scale, law requires the engagement of individuals, attempting to bring their own
lives into alignment with one another and with natural law. The power of
law, a structure of magnificent scale, is built upon each individual component. It is like one of the triangles supporting Buckminster Fuller's dome.
Law is both the triangle and the dome.
Ask yourself What are the laws that I choose to live by? Which laws have been put upon
me? Which 1 these have I internalized? How do they work in me and through me? Do these
laws control me or strengthen me? Do I use these laws to control or strengthen others? What
oaths do I willingly take? How is my will acting in concert with the world around me?
BELIEVING AND WILLING
Law requires movement. True law must balance belief and action. Our
ideas must be galvanized by our will and our willingness. What do you believe, and what are you willing to do to give life and energy to your beliefs?
If we want change, we must be willing to act. That is the power of law.
Fold a piece 1 paper in ha!J lengthwise. On one side 1 the paper, write "I believe" and
on the other, "I will." As quickly as you can, write down six things in the "I believe" column. Now go back and look at each one. As quickly as you can, write down what you will do to help bring about each beliif. Some 1 these actions may take pondering, but if you have
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a first impulse, even if it seems silly or irrational, write it down. You can always edit it out
later, but getting the impulse out is good. There is energy there.
Here is one example: "I believe Nature is sacred." "I will clean up the beach in my
town."That is law in action. May our laws always reflect our beliifs, and if not, may we
work to change those laws.
DEVOTIONAL DANCE FOR LAW
This movement reflects the shifting balance, the nonstatic qualities of law.
Take a deep breath. Feel the sensation of pride in your body. Return to the pride movement for a moment to get a sense of how it changes you. To enter the movement of law, spread your feet to about shoulder width and begin to rock gently from side to side. Using
your right foot as the fulcrum, swing your balance point from one side to another. Your
hands describe a lemniscate-a figure eight-in front of you as you rock and balance,
hands swinging out and then back again. When your right hand faces down and your lift
up, palms on parallel planes, your body will be in the midst of its right directional sway.
When you reach the edge of this sway, your hands will begin to turn until the right is facing down and the lift up. Then your body will begin its liftward sway. Every time you sway toward the right, your lift foot will raise up ctf the ground. When you reach your lift side
arc, your lift foot will touch down. The right foot remains steadily anchored as you shift
right to lift, balancing and moving. You are graciful in the dance of law.
Like the reflection of moon upon water, the shimmering Pearl wave flows
upward from law and into knowledge. Knowledge is often confused with
purely intellectual intelligence. It is not simply this, though intellect is included. Knowledge is held in our bones, in our blood cells, in muscle tis-
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sue, in emotional memories, as well as in parts of our brain. Information
alone does not constitute knowledge. One must digest information, incorporate it, practice it, and make associations within oneself.
Living in the information age can make it difficult for us to sink deeply
into any area long enough to grow knowledgeable. It is part of the work of
the Pearl Pentacle to bring back an ability to have knowledge: to know
myself, first of all, and then to connect to other sources of knowledge,
becoming student and, in time, becoming teacher. In this way, we can educate each other, and help with evolution instead of aiding the spiral into less-than-human. Knowledge is founded on self. Know yourself, in all
your parts.
CLEARING THE ATTIC
Years ago, I would magically comb my hair because I could literally feel the
energy trapped there. I joked with my friends that I had old Buicks and
bedsprings stuck in my crown chakra, the energy got so snarled up in my
thick, curly hair. For a long while, until I became more adept at using energy, I cut my hair short as a way to allow the energy to flow with fewer impediments. This exercise is an adaptation of that work I used to do. It
uses a comb or brush as a wand to clear the way for clearer or deeper
knowledge. Many thoughts, facts, and opinions can clutter up our brains
making it hard to access our knowledge. This exercise is a way to begin
clearing out the attic of our brains, creating spaciousness and order and
letting the air flow through?
7Some San francisco Reclaiming priestesses derived their own curriculum to teach Pearl Pentacle.
Thry use combs as a way to clear the brain to better access knowledge.
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Prepare a bowl o/ salt water. Set it in front o/ you. Begin to comb your hair out. Imagine that all the old beliif systems that don't serve you are coming out o/ your brain on the teeth o/ the comb. Shake the comb out over the water, letting the salt water absorb these
thoughts. Comb out any thoughts that don't serve your work. Comb out iriformation that
doesn't feel helpful or germane to your life right now. Breathe deeply. Keep combing. It
doesn't matter if you can name these thoughts or not. Just imagine that they are floating out
o/ your brain, onto your hair follicles and onto the comb. Shake them into the salt water. Let
them dissolve and nullify. They are no longer necessary, they no longer have power over you,
they no longer clutter up your brain. As you comb and shake,jeel vitality entering the attic
o/ your brain on each breath. Feel the wind begin to blow, clearing out dust from crannies
and behind old cases and boxes. When you feel you have done enough for the moment, send
one last big breath through your brain. Open a window. Pour the salt water down the drain.
THE KNOWLEDGE GAME
Before entering this game, you may want to do some automatic writing
around knowledge. Write for five minutes on "I know" as a warm-up. The
following is a group exercise.8 You will need a kick ball or a beanbagsomething you can safely throw and catch fairly easily. A small beanbag is easy to make: take a cloth sack and fill it with beans, sewing the edge or tying it tightly with ribbon or string.
Stand in a circle. The person with the ball states something she knows about herself and
throws the ball to someone else in the circle. That person has to immediately say what he
knows about himself and toss the ball to someone else. The ball will popcorn around in this
way, with the catcher having to speak quickly,jrom the belly, rather than pausing to think.
The game can change iifter awhile into what folks know how to do, or facts about the world.
It should begin, however, with self-knowledge.
HJ developed this with Reclaiming and Feri priestesses Gwydion and Patti Martin.
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This game is very revealing. The first time I did it, I was surprised at
what I knew. There were things deep inside that I would not allow myself
to be certai
n of if I stopped to think about them. In speaking quickly, I
bypassed my usual censor and blurted out the most amazing truths about
myself, things close to my core, rather than the usual superficial facts that
I present to the world.
D EVOTIONAL DANCE FOR KNOWLEDGE
This is a movement about digging deep into yourself and then reaching
beyond yourself, into the cosmos that birthed you.
Spread your feet slightly apart. Take a breath. Form your hands and arms into a cradle
at your belly, right hand cupped next to left. Looking down at your hands, swing your cradled arms toward the right, then back to the left. Your head follows the arc of your left arm as it reaches out to the side and up, wrist describing two loops near the top, middle and
pointer finger coming out to touch the sky, to reach for the stars. This is your knowledge,
rooted in your belly, cradled in your bein£ and simultaneously held in something as seemingly unreachable as a star. Breathe. Rock. Cradle and touch. You know.
Libertv
Water flows over the Pearl, carrying a shimmer across your heart on the
stream of energy flowing from knowledge into liberty. Liberty means freedom on the grandest scale. Liberty comes from having the power to be able to do what we want and to discern whether or not our wants serve us.
For many of us, our wants feed addiction or self-destruction. In these
cases, we have no way to differentiate between what helps us to grow in a
healthy way, and what impedes our growth. When we are stuck, dreaming
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of a freedom that will never come, we don't have the power to access what
we really need. We don't have the power to liberate ourselves.
So again, this point of Pearl is founded on mastery of Iron-liberty
based on power. Our personal ability to use the energies of Iron and Pearl
will help others in turn. We can share our liberation and the tools that
brought us there. We can also more readily see the tools of slavery and help