The Twelve Wild Swans

by Starhawk

  And the Crone stirs and stirs her cauldron. Look deep into her eyes. Hear her voice as she speaks to you: “My child, give me your fruits, the fruits of happiness, creativity, joy, the choices you rejoice in. Give them to my cauldron; let them become part of my brew.” And you search through your basket.

  Breathe deeply; find the fruits of your joy. Notice what they feel like, look like, smell like. And give them to the cauldron. Use your breath, use your body, use your voice; let yourself make sounds that carry your joy and pride into her brew.

  She stirs and stirs. Look deep into her eyes; hear her voice. She says, “My child, give me your fruits, the fruits of those choices you still aren’t sure about, the fruits of your uncertainty. Let them, too, become part of my brew.”

  And you search through your basket. Breathe deeply; find the fruits of those decisions that carried no answers, where nothing showed you clearly whether they were right or wrong. Notice what they feel like, look like, smell like. And give them to the cauldron. Use your breath, use your body, use your voice; let yourself make sounds that carry these fruits into her brew.

  The Crone stirs and stirs. Look into her eyes one more time. Hear her voice. She says, “My child, give me your fruits, the fruits of those choices you didn’t have or weren’t allowed, the choices made for you, the choices denied you. Let them, too, become part of my brew.”

  You search through your basket. Breathe deeply; find the fruits of those choices taken from you. Notice what they feel like, look like, smell like. And give them to the cauldron. Use your breath, use your body, use your voice; let yourself begin to feel your anger and rage. Let them swirl and rise within you, mingling within you as they do in her cauldron with your joy and your pain and your uncertainty. Feel her brew them into power, the power we share as women and men, the power of life itself with all its grief and ecstasy. Let that power build within you; let it begin to rise as the fire rises beneath the cauldron, as the brew transforms; let it rise on your voice, to rise through your body, to become a sound, rising with all our love and rage, swirling and dancing around her cauldron; let it rise…

  Breathe deeply; breathe that power in, your power to choose, your power to claim your right to make the choices that shape your life. Take in what power you need, and give what’s left back to the earth.

  Look around you. One last time, look into the eyes of the Crone. Hear what she says to you and you alone. Reach forward, and let her give you a sip of her brew. Taste how rich it is, how fragrant with spices, how all of your pain and joy and uncertainty and rage have given it this flavor. Let it sink into your bones, and warm your body, and give you strength.

  Say good-bye and thanks. And as you look around and lift your eyes from the cauldron, you see the trees of the orchard. And you realize that this orchard is a circle, with the cauldron at its center, and close beside the ancient trees are the youngest of saplings.

  Now it is time to come back. Take three deep breaths, knowing that you can bring back the transformation you’ve made and the memory of all you’ve experienced here. In and out. Breathing deeply, letting the orchard fade. In and out. Coming back into your body, into this circle, this space and time. Pat the edges of your body; make sure you’re all here. Say your name out loud. Clap your hands three times. And that’s the end of the story.

  Stepping into Our Power

  Many women and men who have completed a healing cycle by learning to use the tools of magic wish to take the next step. When we have found liberation and inner power, when the soul energy that has been bound up in inner turmoil and self-doubt is released, the results begin to show quite naturally. For Rose this happens in a single dramatic moment, as she faces death and her allies appear. For most people it is a much more gradual transformation, as plateaus of healing are reached, to be followed by new challenges and breakthroughs. But over time we break into leaf and bloom as artists, healers, activists, home and family makers, responsible community members.

  For some of us this means accepting a calling to healing, teaching, or creative expression. For some it may mean simply taking a new attitude toward a family or health challenge, while for others it means political and social activism and service. For Rose it means becoming the new young queen of her own castle, mother of her own future.

  One person may volunteer as a Girl Scout leader; another may begin a long-deferred dream of going back to school or starting drum lessons. One woman may hang her artwork in a gallery or booth, while another might join with others to take responsibility for a community food bank or the local Sierra Club chapter. One person might step forward as a priestess and join with others to publicly celebrate the Witches’ Sabbats. These could be dreams that have always been there, delayed as we struggled in the dense undergrowth of our personal process, or they could be brand-new dreams we have just now discovered or liberated.

  But whatever progress we make toward stepping out in the world with our new strength and vision, we will always have to deal with other people’s reactions to our changes. We will always face obstacles both inner and outer, and we will continue to be tested. We will need to continue to rely on nature, and the Goddess, and our own deep sources as we go along.

  They Lived Happily Ever After

  We have now walked the Inner Path together. We have chosen to live a Witch’s life, seeking to know and love all of ourselves. We have bound our stories with that of Rose and learned, as she learned, the basic skills of living, intuitive and ecstatic, guided and grounded, wild and human, in harmony. We have gained the tools and the confidence to step up to our life goals, and now we have a whole lot of living to do. Following are three true stories about how Witches used the tools of magic, as Rose did, to create change in their own family lines.

  Three Sisters

  Three heads are bent over the saltwater bowl, blond, red, and black. The circle has been cast. The sisters are spending the last night in the house where they grew up. Tomorrow the keys go to the Realtor. The staircases of this house echo with the ghost footsteps of the little girls they used to be. The screen doors of their summer vacations bang in memory. There’s the smell of long-ago lilacs. Here, too, they lost their father, who died young, and they lost pieces of themselves, trying to grow up with an overwhelmed mother. The sisters’ voices are raised now, wailing, singing, grieving, a quiet story, then laughter. All through the night, they purify and release together, waves of grief, memory, love, and longing.

  In the morning the Realtor comes with the sun, and it’s time to go. But the bond between the sisters has never been stronger; they’ve never had so much family. They’ve helped themselves with the tools of magic and changed the history of their family line.

  Two Cousins

  Two cousins have called together a family meeting. Twelve family members from three generations are gathered together in the living room. They know that the time has come to talk about the family secret. The truth, so long avoided, is that Grampa was a child molester. Many of the women in the room have been deeply and directly affected; all the men and women in the room have been indirectly affected. All have carried this secret; some have never spoken out loud about it, although Grampa has been dead for years.

  The cousins show the group the dry branch of an old beach rose, battered by storm and sea. This will be the talking stick. Each person in the room will have a turn to speak uninterrupted while holding the rose, and there will be no argument, just listening. As the rose wand passes, the power in the room builds. There are tears and anger, painful silences, blame and shame, and also hope and gratitude. Finally the last person has spoken. The cousins hold up the rose. “The silence is broken.” They break the stick into twelve pieces, one for each participant, to take home, save, or burn as they will. They have used the tools of magic to change the history of their family line.

  Mother and Daughter

  A slamming door and the clomping of platform shoes announce the arrival of the teenage daughter. She flops down on the couch next to her m
other: “I’m really depressed. Some things about this family really bother me.”

  The mother is startled and feels her defensiveness rising. But on a single, practiced breath she drops an anchor to the powerful core of herself. With an almost imperceptible movement, she touches the curve of her lower belly and says her secret word, hearth, to herself. Now she can open her attention toward her daughter and meet her confidences fairly.

  “If you want to talk, I want to listen,” she says. And so they do, breaking intergenerational patterns of mother-daughter pain and distance, changing all the worlds, changing the history of their family line with the tools of magic.

  The Pyre Breaks into Leaf and Bloom

  There are millions of stories, just as there are millions of souls seeking the fulfillment of their life purpose. We have reached for the tools of magic and become the main characters in our own fairy stories, the stories of the fair, the brave, the generous, the true. We have brought healing and inner strength into our lives, learning to rely on the spiritual wisdom of the Goddess’s ancient cultures that slept under the outlines of our fairy story. We have teased that wisdom awake in ourselves, and in our circles, by building Rose altars and dancing Rose dances, casting Rose spells and trancing Rose trances.

  Now we are beginning to let our internal changes bloom. And since a healthy priestess makes all things whole, our families and communities will never be the same. The wood of the pyre, wood from the world tree itself, rises up in leaf and bloom. We rise up with it, a new kind of woman and man, an ancient kind. We are powered from within, daring, passionate, joyful, free, and whole. The pyre, built for fear and death, breaks into a million Roses, and the whole world is changed.

  The Outer Path

  Rose’s task nears completion just as the forces that would destroy her also reach their peak. She continues weaving and sewing in the dungeon, in the cart on the way to the stake, when tied upon the pyre itself. Even to save herself, she will not abandon her task and speak. Only by fulfilling her challenge can she be saved, for her task has become her own redemption as well as her brothers’.

  Her focus, her concentration, her courage are an awesome model for those of us on the Outer Path. For when we undertake great works of collective healing, we are also called upon to hold our concentration, to overcome our fears.

  A true healing, a powerful work of transformation, always involves a death and rebirth. To heal from a serious illness, we may have to change the patterns of our lives, dissolve and reconfigure our energies. To return to human form, the brothers must experience the dissolution of their swan bodies. To heal our torn social fabric, to restore justice and balance in the larger world, the patterns and institutions that exist need to change. For a structure or institution to change, it may first need to be torn down. Sometimes an old house can be repaired. But if it has deteriorated too far or is built on a bad foundation, we do better to rip it down and begin anew, or its rot will contaminate the new structure.

  Everything alive resists death, whether it is an insect trapped against a window or an institution struggling to preserve itself. To challenge unjust institutions, to ask them in essence to die so that something new can be born, we must be willing to face resistance, to stay focused on our goal no matter what forces beset us.

  We must also be prepared for what will happen if we succeed. When a structure dissolves, we may be left unsheltered from the rain and wind while something new is being built. After death comes decay, when the body is broken down into simpler and simpler forms until it goes back into its original elements, which then feed something else.

  In times of chaos, weavers are needed who can restore the fabric of life, who can create new shirts, new souls, new values that allow us to live in our fully human selves without losing the freedom of the swans’ flight or forgetting the language of the wild.

  The work of the Outer Path in this chapter is to overcome fear, to learn to hold our vision and weave even in the dungeon, to walk into fire, to die and be reborn, and to heal.

  Overcoming Fear

  To act, to walk toward the fire while continuing to weave, to let go of control and let structures dissolve into chaos, we must overcome fear. We have already developed the tools we need to face and move through our fears: grounding, breathing, anchoring to our core state of being, calling in our allies. These skills and practices are what we need in moments of crisis and fear, whatever their source. Whether we’re afraid of standing up in front of an audience to speak or of sitting down in front of a line of riot cops in a blockade, we can breathe, ground, center, anchor, and invoke help. And the more we practice these most basic magical skills, the better they will serve us in an emergency.

  Sharing our fears can also help us move beyond them. Rose was not allowed to speak, and there was no one in her dungeon to comfort or reassure her. But we can speak and offer support to each other. Just knowing that other people are also afraid is a comfort.

  Part of the discipline of magic is to choose the images in which we invest energy. Fear can make us obsess on all the undesirable outcomes we can imagine. We play them over and over in our minds, working ourselves into an exhausted, nervous state. But magic teaches us to release those images and instead to pour energy into a visualization of the outcome we desire. So, we might imagine, Rose shuts her mind to the horrors of the stake and continues to sew, holding before herself the vision of her brothers restored to human form.

  When a group is preparing for a public event, a large ritual, a new stage in growth, or an action, fear may arise and become manifest in subtle ways. Individuals try to control each other or express great anxiety about things that have never before seemed frightening. Energy may simply seem stuck, and creativity blocked.

  The following ritual may help identify and release the fears that are undermining the group’s trust and joy.

  Fear Ritual for Groups

  In sacred space, each person should have a candle, a pen, and a notebook nearby. Ground, center, and breathe deeply into your belly. Light the candle. Ask yourselves, “What am I afraid of? What are the images in my mind of the worst outcomes? Am I dwelling on them? What is the dialogue that goes with them? Is this fear telling me about something I can do or need to do?” Leave time to consider each of these questions.

  Write down any information your fear is giving you or any tasks that emerge. Then become aware of your fear as pure emotional energy. Gather up your fear as you take a long, slow breath in. Hold your breath until you feel your body fighting for air, beginning to feel the physical panic of breathlessness. Then release your breath; blow out all your fear, and blow out your candle.

  In the dark, renew your grounding, and breathe slowly and deeply. Ask yourselves, “What is the best possible outcome of this situation? What vision can I create of what I truly need and desire? What possibilities of hope and renewal can I entertain in this space I have now emptied?” Again, be sure to leave time to deeply consider the questions.

  When your vision comes clear, light the candle. Breathe in the light and the energy of the fire to strengthen your vision. Anchor that vision into a place in your body you can touch or a specific image or phrase.

  In the group, pass a lighted candle as a talking stick and share your fears and hopes, without interrupting or cross talk. Then discuss the information you’ve received. What is your collective picture of the worst possible outcome? The best? What actions can you take together that can alleviate your fears? How can you support each other?

  Go around the circle one last time. Each person makes a commitment to something she or he will do to transform fear or support the group, and pinches out the candle flame to contain the fire within the wick.

  “I will stop, breathe, and count to ten when I feel panicky,”

  “When the energy is stuck, I’ll remember to ask, ‘What are we afraid of?’”

  “I will listen without judgment when any of you want to talk about your fears, and I’ll give you a back rub.”

&
nbsp; If you wish, you might chant and raise power to keep your commitments. When you are ready, open the circle.

  When you find your fear returning, breathe your anxiety out. Use your anchor to recall your vision, and replace the negative images in your mind with your positive images of what you desire.

  As we develop our psychic abilities, we sometimes receive information about the future in the form of premonitions or visions. Knowing that this is a possibility, we can become afraid of our own anxiety, mistaking it for precognition. True precognition does not come to us with anxiety attached. It arises from a clear, almost emotionless state and carries with it a sense of deep knowing rather than fear. Fear may come later, when we contemplate the message. Anxiety clouds our ability to receive true information, whether from the spirits or from the technical support person on the telephone trying to guide us out of a software crash. Breathing, grounding, and anchoring to our core state of being can help us take in the information we need, whether we’re consulting the spirits through divination or asking for directions on a lonely road in the dark.

  Trust is also a powerful antidote to fear. When we work regularly with our allies, spirit or human, they become figures of trust that we can hold to when we need courage. Trust can literally save our lives. Some years ago, I nearly died when I got caught in a riptide in Hawaii. What allowed me to stay calm enough to float and wait for rescue was my trust in my friend Ceres, who had gone for help; in the magical powers of my friend Teish, whom I was working with on the trip; and in the love and compassion of Yemaya, Mother Ocean. Had I panicked and struggled, I would surely have drowned.

  When activists prepare people to do civil disobedience and risk arrest, we encourage the formation of affinity groups, small groups that can act together, get to know each other, and build trust. In circles, covens, and support groups, we can also find loyalty and comradeship that help us overcome fear.