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others to see them, too. We hold each other; we help each other. In sharing power, our walk toward liberty comes all the sooner, and with greater surety. In our power, we are less prone to manipulation. Free from manipulation, we can work to improve the lot of all people.
FREEDOM FROM WITHIN
This exercise uses the body as a format through which to recognize our
blocked power and all the ways in which we are not free, though we may
long to be.
Find the places in your body that are tense with fear, indecision, sickness, or greed. These
are all places where your power is blocked and where liberty therifore has not been claimed.
Go to a body worker and really notice all those places as you are being worked on. Send deep
breaths through them, helping to begin to ease the blocks and open pathways to liberation
within yourself. It is true that the more relaxed you are in your own power, the freer you
are. The freer you are, the more generous you can be in working toward the liberation of all
beings. Return to your posture work with this in mind. Notice where you have ease and
where you carry tension. Send breaths through these spaces as you walk.
What would it be like to feel your own liberation? How would you carry that? What
would it feel like in your body? Relax into that possibility, the possibility of your own liberation. If you were truly free, how would you move through the world? Begin to practiu.
J.tlth practice, the reality will come. Imagine it and it will become a reality over time.
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For me, when my power is present and activates the liberty point, I find
myself open to being soft and stable, openhearted and strong in my will.
WHAT KEEPS us FROM FREEDOM?
Part One
The more we engage with this practice in body and spirit, the better our
ability to look at what is constricted in our personal lives.
Make a list of all that keeps you from true freedom in your life. Begin to notice the ways
in which you support this sense of being dominated or helpless or trapped. Are you trapped
in your job? Do you feel burdened with too many responsibilities that don't really interest
you? Do you feel burdened by money issues? Are you addicted to drugs, adrenaline, shame,
or television? What do you need to walk toward greater freedom in your life? Recognizing
these things is a step into power and toward liberation.
Ask yourself What three things in me need liberation? What is bound up and locked
away or buried beneath oppression? What would liberation feel like, taste like, sound like,
look like? Take the sense of liberty inside yourself Now, how would that look, taste, or sound
in the culture you are part of? What is your dream of liberty?
Write down one thing you will do to bring about your own liberation.
Part Two
Now that we are looking at issues of power and liberty in our own lives,
we can turn our gaze to our communities.
Where are things stagnant or trapped in your family, spiritual group, local government?
Being actively engaged in these larger community relationships can help move energy. Sometimes the acts can be simple: facilitating a meeting, naming subterranean processes, calling congresspeople, organizingfor worker's rights, cleaning up a local river.
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How do you incorporate your daily practices into actions that help others as well as
yourself?
The single most helpful liberty exercise I have found is using my sitting
practice as the foundation for daily self-observation. The more scrupulous
I am in this practice, the more quickly I can admit to mistakes or see problems, clearing and freeing up energy that would otherwise be spent uselessly in self-justification or worries that undermine my power.
For several months, my friends and I sat in silent meditation outside
our local federal building during the morning rush. Our signs read: "May
we learn to be peaceful;' or "Love, Not Fear" and we just sat, eyes closed,
breathing, spines erect, anchoring down one corner of the edifice. We were
attempting to be peaceful ourselves. We also sit during demonstrations to
balance the energy of others who are engaging in civil disobedience. We
hope to provide a still space for activists and a quiet expanse for the police
to see and not feel so threatened.
We are often thanked, sometimes shouted at, but mostly, we just sit. Is
this a liberating act? It is an act that slowly works toward my personal liberation and I cannot but help feel that over time, it may spark the liberation of another.
DEVOTIONAL DANCE FOR LIBERTY
Form your hands into two loose fists. Cross your wrists, hands facing you, at chest
height. On an explosive exhalation, quickly raise and lower your wrists, us though you were
breaking the chains that bound them. Then, inhaling, swing your right hand and arm out in
an arc to your side,jollowed by the lift hand and arm quickly doing the same. Then bring
your hands crossed in front 1 you again on the count 1 "one," brea,� tte :hains on "two,"
and open your arms out on "three" and 'Jour." All the while, your knees are bending deeply
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Devotional nonce for I,ibertv
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when you break the chains, and you are then rising almost to the balls if your feet as you
open your arms in the gesture if freedom. Breathe. Break the chains. Be free.
wisdom
Compassion is our only hope, wisdom our weapon. -NoAH LEVINE9
Water continues to flow, and the energy of the Pearl Pentacle sketches a luminous line from liberty to wisdom. Wisdom is intuition and integrated knowledge. We are all able to be wise; it is not the purview of spiritual
teachers. Wisdom springs from our deepest passions. When I have passionate energy for something, some form of creation, or seeking of justice, some act of love, then I am responding to this deep knowing, this wisdom.
When I respond to something like the water responds to the pulling of
the moon, I am in touch with wisdom. It is something I have learned to
trust.
Wisdom is deeply rational, stemming from passion, emotion, instinct,
and digested knowledge. Wisdom gets expressed through painting, music,
dance, or any form of communication that draws on more than just our
verbal skills. Though wisdom may be beneath words, with training we can
gain the verbal facility to express it. Wisdom expressed requires a combination of skills. It is activated when Sticky One begins to talk to Sacred Dove.
''From Noah Lt·vinc, Dharma Pullx (HarpcrSanFrancisco, 2003).
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WHISPERING IN WISDOM
Begin to listen to your deeper self, noticing what flows from your passion.
Take a risk with your passions. !f you can cease to fear them you are well on your way
to becoming wise. Wisdom connects to liberty. Find the place in your body where wisdom is,
the place that whispers to you and guides you. Now ask yourself: How am I wise and not
wise? How do I act wisely or not wisely? When am I disconnected from my passions and
floundering? When do I know so deeply, I can pass it on through my skin, my breath, my
words, or touch? Wisdom walks, dances, and flows.
<
br /> DRINKING You R WisDoM
Here is an exercise first given to me by Victor, as a way to drink mana or
awen, the life force that connects all things in divinity. 10 I have adapted the
exercise for this. As we drank in our passion, so we can drink and bless our
wisdom.
Take your favorite cup, or chalice if you have one. Fill it with clean water, filtered or
from a well. Pour a small libation, an offering onto earth, or into a potted plant. Center
yourself, breathe in life force until you are full if it, tingling. As you breathe, gently move
your attention to those deep places in you, those pools, those springs if passion. Ask to be
shown your wisdom. Once you have made this prayer, breathe some if your life force into
the chalice, with the clear intention that this life force, channeled through your passion, will
feed your wisdom. See the chalice glowing in your mind� eye, luminous with life energy and
with the full potential if your wisdom. Dip a finger into your cup, and anoint your crown,
forehead, heart, belly, and sex with the water if your wisdom. Take another deep breath.
HHawaiian and Welsh words, respectively.
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Drink your wisdom in. Drink it in until the cup is dry, and you are full. The luminous
energy that was outside of you now dwells within; feel it shining like the moon. Give thanks.
D EVOTIONAL DANCE FOR WISDOM
This movement draws on the cradle of creation, the cup of passion, and
brings energy up from that space into your head, so you can more easily
communicate your deep wisdom.
Let your hands form a triangle, thumb-tips touching, index fingers touching, with the
rest of the fingers stacked sideways naturally against them. The space between the thumbs and
index fingers forms a triangle. Let that triangle rest against your genital area. Now begin to
rock backward and forward, with your left foot slightly forward. Begin calling wisdom into
you. Inhale. Move your hands up and out, until the triangle riforms,jraming your physical eyes and the third eye on your forehead.
You have now completed the cycle of Pearl. Draw the shining line of
energy back up into love, connecting the circuit. Let the energy flow
through you once more, from love to law to knowledge to liberty to wisdom to love. Then feel the shimmering circle drawn around you, sealing the energies into your body. Blessed be.
connectin� to the gods of Feri
These Gods help me with the work of balancing strength and compassion.
They are mature Gods, at their full sexual power, and they can help us connect with the sexy life force and deep wisdom held in the natural world.
Spend some time with them, light a candle, and ask for them to join you.
They link young with old and mystery with everyday life.
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oeuotionul ounce for wisdom
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Buolutionury witchuuft
Twr
He is the tall tower, shining in the sun. He is the pulsing life of the earth, the erect phallus at the moment of orgasm. He is green growing things and red blood. He is the force that drives them. He is the sun at its zenith. His very name, "tower," tells of his strength. He can
have three faces, the White of Pure Intention, the Green of the Living Land, and, in his form
as Krom, the Red of the Hunter and the Sacrifued Stag. I I
Mari
She is the Mother ocean. She is all fullness: ripe peaches about to burst, noonday passion
and the beat of full sexuality. She is the womb of the tree where Merlin will die and be reborn. She can cross the vast ocean and mountains in two strides. She holds the power of movement and fecundity. She draws you in, takes you under, and thrusts you back up again.
She can have three faces, the White of the Ocean Foam, the Green of the Living Land, and
the Red of the Lover or Protector.
spillincs over
Cleansed, refreshed, and shining with the beauty of the fUll moon, let the
water flow out from your heart-buoyed by all the liquid held in your
body-to water the earth. May your love, your hope, and your wish all
pour abundantly. Soaking in the lessons of water, let us now turn to face
the North.
1 1Thesr names arr Welsh, pronounc�d "roor," "cromr," and "mahree."
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North: Birthin� our
wholeness
North. Still darkness and the strength of black midnight. The burrowing badger and the sleeping bear. Tall mountain and deep cave. The tool here is the cube and pentacle. Feel the hidden wisdom in the depths of
your soul and the beauty of your body, dancing. Claim the power to
keep silent. Be still within. Dive into your power, feel it rippling across
your muscles and settling into your bones. Be green and full of life. Be
quiet and listen, move slowly and with great purpose.
1-'"'he powers of North are held in earth, and traditionally found in the
. physical world and our relationship to it. This relationship includes
the awareness of our own bodies, money, structure, life and death, and our
ancestors. The time of day is midnight, opposite of the high noon of
South. The Feri Tradition tool of the North is the green cube inscribed
with a pentacle. Earth holds stillness, potency, silence, and mystery.
In this chapter we will revisit the sacred landscape we live within. We
will further examine our relationship to the landscape of our bodies. Wl'
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will stand upon the cube of stability and find the flow in the pentacles that
shift chaos and reform our lives. We will listen in silence and walk into
darkness. Our feet will find their way.
The cube and pentacle
In Feri, the tool of North and earth is a green cube with the symbol of the
pentacle carved on its side. The cube represents stability, earth, and the
mystery that can be locked away; the color green denotes a connection to
the growing world. The cube holds the power of four in each of its squares
and six in the number of its sides. These signifY stable balance and the
restoration of harmony and are numbers to build from. The pentacle is
dynamic change, the five of the human body and our senses. We are not
static, but moving. The cube can become stuck in its own square. The
power of five held by the pentacle creates new things out of a chaos that
may seem to be at war with itself, but holds a shining instance when it all
comes together, the points of the star touch, and the form is made clear.
Order and chaos dance hip to hip.
The cube and pentacle working together hold the paradox of earth for
me. My body sometimes longs for secure stillness, but it cannot stay there
for long, as movement is necessary for my health, and the body engages its
head and four limbs again and dances out to do work in the world. Yet
without stable ground to grow from, the human becomes flighty, crazy, or
sick. Cube and pentacle in concert hold the interplay of hibernation and
running in the fields, of sleeping well and working to satisfaction. Solidity
must be balanced by dynamism for us to be fully human, fully ourselves.
Careful attention to both those needs leads to health and soundness.
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PLANES OF STABILITY
The
green cube is formed from the square-the four-chambered heart
that pumps life through the structure that is the body. The strength of
Black Mother, the Guardian of the North, rests upon a cube of stability.
This exercise involves answering some questions and drawing a picture of
your life as it stands today. It also involves pulling some Tarot cardsor Runes if you prefer that system of divination-for further information about how to best pump life force back into the structure that supports you.
The Planes of Stability reading encompasses six categories that are basic to human life:
l) spiritual practice; 2) home/relationships; 3) body/physical health; 4) emotions/mental
health; 5) money/work; 6) nature/earth. What do you build your life upon? What are the
foundations of your practice, your relationships, your home and work? Draw a picture of
a cube and label it. What kind of support do you still need in your life? Do you need more
honest friendships? A more satiifying job? Better health?
Do you not have enough stability in your life, or do things feel so stable that you are
growing stagnant? In the second case, you may need to turn the cube over and look at things
in a different way. You may need to shake things up a bit, and allow the cube to riform itself in a way that better serves you. Running the energy of the Iron and Pearl Pentacles through your body can help you with this work.
Pull one Tarot card for each plane, laying them out in the pattern of an opened out cube.
1j the meaning of a card seems opaque, you can pull two clarifying cards to answer the following questions: What can help me with this? What hinders me?
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I. Practice
2. Home
3. Body
4. Emotions
5. Money
6. Nature
PLANES OF STABILITY READING
BEING PARENT TO CHANGES
Black Mother gives birth from the cave of hibernation, and thus do stillness and darkness bring forth change. The Feri practitioner combines the powers of the Elements with the Iron and Pearl Pentacles. What do you
combine in your life-the practical and physical, the emotional and psychic, or the creative and spiritual? Bringing something to birth requires grounding and risk, patience and effort. If some of your work is stalled