Meeting Five (Dec 29th) Today on “Sixty ‘Minuets’.”
Read the madness
Ok, so technically speaking, this could properly be titled “Meeting Seven” because I missed what would have been meetings Five and Six. But I decided it would be more prudent to just number the meetings as I attend them, rather than as they occur, honestly just so that I don’t get them confused. But yes, unfortunately, I was still sick for Sanders’ Yule session of which was prophesized, and the Tuesday after that I ended up having to work. I’ve started seeing a new Psych, a Neural-Therapist type person who later intends to stick electrodes to my head for my insomnia/anxiety issues, and she only sees new patients on days containing “M’s”-- one of my usual work days. I was really kind of hoping there wouldn’t be a meeting that day because it was the day after Solstice and so close to Christmas, but nope. So that’s that.
But I’m back on the bus now-the Hippie Bus, naturally, a VW wagon painted from nose to tail with doves and peace signs, the windows shaded with shaggy beads, and the whole of it plastered with bumper stickers about aliens, the evils of Dubya, thinking globally and acting locally, and remembering to “think green”--- as though the sticker’s good intentions automatically counteract the carbon footprint of a car built in 1977.
Driving the Hippie Bus this morning were two people, a married couple I will refer to as “The Professor” and “Maryann.” They’re usually very quiet, but from what I learned of them at this meeting he’s very over prepared, very nervously scheduled, planned, and over-thought, while his wife likes to float around the room on a bubble of her own spaced-out energy that to my inner-eye looks not unlike the giant silver balloon that almost-never carried Falcon and his parents to the land of reality show fame. The Professor had a lot of paper with him-notes, poetry, you name it-and both Father-Bring-Down and I could palpably feel how stressed he was about getting everything right. There was something about forgetting to bring the right CD of background music from home, and some helpful scrambling on FBDs part to find similar music from the pagan shop’s stock of demos. There was a deck of Goddess Tarot that was pulled out and, my spider sense now aroused at the sight, I brought my own cards out, just to shuffle and stroke and cuddle like one does with a small Chihuahua in a handbag. And yes, I do always carry my tarot cards around in my handbag everywhere I go, just FYI. Make fun of me if you must, but consider yourself warned that when cornered I can flick them pretty well. I tried to offer a little indirect help; my shuffling produced a card for him (like, shot across the floor) which I held out, chucking in what I hope was a calming way, “Look, So-and-so. It’s Temperance. Everything will work out as it’s meant to, the music is fine.” I knew even as I said it that it wouldn’t really help, because my brain tends to work rather similarly in times of duress. But aside from setting the chairs out in the circle for them (which I had already done) there wasn’t anything else I could do to help.
Maryann had a psychic prediction that exactly thirteen people would show up today, so I dutifully made a circle of thirteen chairs, but unfortunately she must have underestimated because as more and more people showed up it was immediately obvious that the room simply isn’t big enough to hold everyone in a circle format. It really upset The Professor that some people were sitting in a row of chairs *behind* other people, and that some actually preferred to sit on the floor against the wall rather than on a picnic bench with no back support, making the whole congregating more of a lopsided balloon shape. But finally he got over himself and started.
The theme he wanted to explore was The Goddess-not any specific Goddess, but the simple and more primal Goddess force behind all cultures. Which I was down with. Now, his issues arose, methinks, from being too over-prepared to the point that he couldn’t roll with the punches. And I used that cliché purposefully, by the way, considering the “help” that FBD interjected. But I’ll get to that.
The Goddess deck was passed around and everyone was instructed to draw a card and return it to the deck, the idea being that this was the face or power The Goddess we wanted/needed to experience that day. Now, I know there are a couple of different Goddess decks out there, but to be honest I’ve never felt drawn to buy any of them. I have nothing against them, and god knows I’m a complete card whore and I’d take them if they were offered to me, but I’d never seek them out. I really just prefer my Rider-Waite. I just roll Old School like that.
When the deck came to me I was struck by the impression that these were new cards-which they were not as they were well worn-telling me that they had either been cleaned expertly well in preparation for the Hippie Meeting and then for some reason never re-charged (which seemed unlikely), OR that they had never been properly prepared in the first place but then had never accumulated any energy from any readings (which also seemed unlikely). Despite the prediction that all readers in the room would automatically draw the card of the Goddess they wanted, removing all elements of chance and causing haughty chuckling from a few, the card I drew felt completely random, and as soon as I looked at it and returned it to the deck, I forgot it. This, between you and me, is what you’re supposed to do when you’re reading cards or card-analogs and the item specifically strikes one as inconsequential.
The thing about this deck, I think, that struck me as odd was just how the Goddesses were presented and arranged. While it turned out that some actual goddesses do in fact have cards (Kali, Quan Yin, etc), many of them (including the one I got) had names that were either so esoteric that I’d never heard of them in my life, or, they were names that were made-up out of fragments of dead languages like Latin and Gaelic and such. And then each card has one simple characteristic attached to it-which is fine for make-believe goddesses of intuition, forgiveness, and patience. But to try and boil-down the complex character of a known, real goddess is a little insulting, and to me speaks of incomplete understanding of history, culture, and really magick as a whole. I understand that comes off as harsh, but to see someone like Quan Yin simplified to just “love” and Kali boiled down into “transformation” just misses the point-like, by miles and miles, and that just insults all of my sensibilities. All of the goddesses of the world are not meant to be used together, for one, with each one assigned one simple concept or idea like they had drawn them to enact during their turn at a game of charades. When you do that, you miss so much of what they have to teach, and it becomes obvious why you need to either invent or resurrect never-used goddesses to pick up those unclaimed ideas you need to complete a divination deck--even though most of those goddesses, under different circumstances, have wise things to say on just about every topic. As an aside, it’s becoming so much clearer to me why I’ve never been drawn to such decks. All praise be to Lady Windex.
Anyway, I didn’t have a chance to actually ask, but based both on past associations and on today’s behavior, The Professor and Maryann are members of the group I’ve been referring to as “The Unitarians.” Consequently, during my little Hippie-hiatus, the gods obviously wanted me to learn that this is in fact NOT the correct term to be using, as I was told this by two separate people on the very same freaking day. And I admit it, I had to wiki. The Unitarian Church and Unity Church are two very, very different things, although any embarrassment I had over the issue was assuaged by Wikipedia itself, which very kindly began the page on Unity Church with the cautionary “It is a very common mistake for Unity Church to be confused with Unitarians (click here).” If Wikipedia says it’s ok I then I don’t have to feel stupid and I’m just going to roll with it and get on with life. But it does leave me with the issue of what to call them, as there apparently isn’t a term in use. Manda tells me that members of her old congregation used to call themselves “Uni-tics.” Seeing as this group at the Hippie Meetings has irritated me so much, I proposed the substitute “Uni-tards,” but that was vetoed as too harsh, and will be saved only for specifically hateful future rants. So for reference’s sake, I’ll go with my #2 idea and refer to them from here on as “The Uni-corns.” I think it works; it captures the fluffy-bunny silliness, and it’s more of a little elbow jab in the side rather than a slap across the face.
So, being Unicorns, The Professor and Maryann seemed compelled to ask Father Bring-Down for help. They didn’t actually seem that excited about the notion-and honestly, it felt like they were a little afraid NOT to ask, probably due to social repercussions. But at any rate, FBD had brought a couple of very lovely Tibetan Singing bowls, which he was asked to play during the meditation. Unfortunately, true to his form, FBD had his own ideas as to what the meditation was going to be about and that was that. It’s not quite the scorpion stinging the coyote on the back while being ferried across the river, but it is a little like the scorpion saying, “I’ve just received a message from Quan Yin and she tells me that today everyone is going to receive a message and a vision from her, and anyone who wants to experience the complete forgiveness and love she can offer-if they are truly open to receiving it-will be cleansed by her,” and by saying so, implanting that idea into everyone’s heads so their spiritual experiences don’t match the meditation guide at all. Where is a large boot when I need one, seriously? The Professor was visibly bummed out, but again he seemed held back by something, instead choosing to nod and force himself to thank FBD for his valuable insight.
Manda has mentioned that I really ought to assert myself more in the meetings, and in retrospect this may have been a fine time to say, “You do realize that you’ve just put the intent to manifest Quan Yin into everyone’s minds, don’t you? It’s going to happen not because you’re psychic, but because you’ve suggested the idea, fulfilling your own prophecy. And Quan-Yin is not Chinese-girl-Jesus, just as a side notation.” All I can say is that it’s way too easy for me to forget that I’m not watching television sometimes, and that this game is interactive. I’ll try harder in the future.
So we took deep breaths and grounded, and the substitute b-list CD was played, and The Professor shared with us some poems he’d written. For someone who pays that much attention to detail his poetry was surprisingly sloppy, and I’m being a bitch by saying so, but he’s really no good at it. I respected the intent, and the feelings and messages he communicated. But when he commented that he’s such a slow creative writer that he only manages to get out “one poem every eight years,” well, I was happy. I guess I’m just old school in that respect, suggesting that poetry needs to have *some* structure. It doesn’t have to rhyme, have perfect rhythm and meter, be in iambic pentameter, couplets, quatrains, or stanzas. But I’m sorry, a list of words related to the topic that aren’t even in sentences . . . well, that’s a really difficult way to write a poem and not just a list of words. It can theoretically be done . . . but it was not done today, I’ll put it that way. “Goddess of seas. Blue, green, white. Turtles, sea weed. Shells, crabs, and dolphin friends. Depth, darkness. Splashing waves.” Etc. Etc.
A recitation
Of items is not a poem
But a grocery list
At this point I have to admit that I can’t remember the order of the next series of events. My mind can just be jumbled like that. This all happened “next,” but which came before what I don’t remember. Thankfully, I don’t think it matters too much. The Professor read a meditation from a book describing a scenario in which the practitioner goes down into the sea to the palace of the Goddess, and then the Goddess is born into the world in the same way as Venus (that is, via clam). FBD played the Tibetan Singing bowls (loudly but beautifully) and at one point felt compelled to get up and walk around the circle with his eyes closed, washing-over different people with the bowl-sound and generally being a distraction for The Professor. I didn’t even hear most of Prof’s meditation because somebody *cough* manifested Quan Yin and her presence just kind of demanded full attention. There was also some mantra chanting, geared towards the idea of opening up the self for the love and soul re-structuring of Quan Yin, mantras that they knew (as they said so!) were also meant to invoke two Hindu GODS (that is, Ganesha and Shiva) but this somehow was not seen as inconsistent and counterintuitive to the Goddess theme-at least not to anyone but me, I guess.
FBD has used this mantra at the Hippie Meetings before, and because he likes it I am naturally compelled to hate it. However, in my defense, I also find the idea of nine syllables+Om to be . . . off. I just looked it up and apparently it IS a real Hindu Mantra (I wanted to suspect otherwise, truthfully). But either way it feels awkward to me. “Om. Guam. Ganapati-ay. Namaha.” The way I learned it, the most powerful mantras have five beats +Om. “Om Numah Shivaya,” “Om Mani Padme Hm,” etc. But at any rate, “Ganapati” is another name for Ganesha. So yes, it asks for clarity of mind, but you’re also chanting the name of the god himself. So he showed up. And then we also chanted the other two mantras I mentioned (although the one was written on the white board as “On Numah Shiva” which is not how about half of us learned it, so half chanted one way while the rest enunciated fully “Shivaya”, making some chaos). Why no one seemed to care that “Om Numah Shivaya” has intent to empower and honor Shiva only, I don’t know. But Shiva was now there too.
So comes the part where there’s so much going on that I can’t hear a fucking thing The Professor is saying. I took preemptive action against FBD this time and, first of all, deciding that some of what he brought could be useful (such as the energy of the bowls), I didn’t want to just flat-shield him from everyone. Second of all, I didn’t want to waste my attention on that project. So rather than a block or a void, I created an energy-thing that was more of a “tree” or a “filter” that kind of put a damper on his voice, restoring some semblance of an egalitarian meeting where one could *choose* what one wanted rather than being force-fed it. He seemed a little wiser to me this time, though, and we spent some time playing ring-around-the rosy, with him getting up and walking around the circle to try and disrupt my energy and me following with my mind, insisting that we could dance but that *I* was going to lead, no matter how many times he *tried* to dance us around in triple-time.
Consequently, there was a lot of . . . like. . . stuff going on in that circle. The idea of a bee swarm comes to mind. It was really fun on my end. Like dodge ball. Most of the group called Quan Yin, not just FBD, and consequently I got a taste of her that I believe is more accurate to the “real” goddess because of it. Honestly, she’s never appealed to me so I’ve never bothered to seek her on my own. Nice Gal. Solid handshake. Surprisingly cold breath. However, there was a semblance of the original intent still looming out there, as I did get personally visited by Durga, another deity I’ve just never been inclined to seek --though with that one I don’t know quite why, as we seem two peas riding a wild jungle cat wielding the sharp and the pointy in a pod. I was left to conclude that she was there just for me, my own “Goddess I wanted/needed to see today” who apparently speaks in a language my air-centric brain more readily understands than Quan Yin’s hugs-that is, she speaks in swords. She really has a lot of swords, you have no idea. After some private and un-bloggable interaction and some hacking and cutting of some specific ideas from my head, the world looked far more clear, and seeing as no one was using/speaking to Shiva and Ganesha, I put them away, getting rid of some bees and making the room a little more palatable. Why bother with Windex when you can just break through dirty windows with swords? Durga comments. Point taken. Literally.
Somehow it all ended. I’m afraid I’m even hazier on that part. Everyone send energy to my Ginko Baloba because it isn’t working as advertised. But the circle ended with my homegirl Fabulous Bag Lady doing something seriously stone-cold cool. Displaying her usual wide-eyed curiosity at just about everything, she asked if she could look through the deck of Goddess Cards. While she was doing that, there was some light chit-chat about whether or not everyone was visited by the goddesses on the cards they drew. Where was everyone, seriously? It wasn’t just in my imagination; FBL, Chevrons, and Maryann herself commented that they saw Ganesha and some of the other characters I mentioned. Sanders, apparently serving a need to feel special, felt inclined to tell us that he had drawn the Quan Yin card, foreseeing the fact that she was going to visit. Really, he might have or not, but it ceased to matter with the smarmy tone he used in telling us.
So all the while FBL is looking at the cards, pointing out some of them to me, and then has a look at the “Goddess of Peace” card. Oblivious to the sounds of horror from the group, she proceeds to slide her fingernail between the layers of paper and with a sickening sticky, ripping, and snapping sound, she splits the card in two.
She holds up two cards. “Look,” she says simply. “It must have been a manufacturing defect. There were two stuck together.”
In complete awe, The Professor looks over at the two “Goddess of Peace” cards they now have. “We’ve had this deck for years,” he says. “How could we have not noticed there were two stuck together all this time?” For some reason Maryann was totally unmoved, and she didn’t even seem interested in taking the cards when I tried to pass them to her, hardly even blinking. She must have been on Mars to have not been impressed by that. Either that or so full of herself she didn’t want to admit that she was impressed. For a lack of a more eloquent way of saying so, Fabulous Bag Lady is just the shit. That’s all there is to say.
But anyway, as she is wont to do, FBL likes to tell the group about encounters and dreams she’s had, trying to get opinions and input as to what they “mean.” I say “mean” in quotation marks as I cite my earlier comments about “signs” from the spirits, and the idea that just because something strikes you as odd doesn’t mean it *has* to be a potent and mystic sign or message. Now, as she described this dream she had, one person called out one interpretation, another person confirmed it and added a bit-and yes, this was a Unicorn-centric presentation, including FBD-until they had this entire complex meaning concocted and poor space-case FLB was very confused.
Now, this area of magick is not my sport. I’m not usually the one to just hear something like a dream and automatically know whether or not it’s a premonition or a warning, and if so what that might be. I can do it, but I prefer the help of something like my cards if I want to add any sort of detail beyond a generalized impression. Most of the time I just avoid it altogether, passing it along to someone wearing a bigger amethyst crustal than me, because to put the hard truth of the matter out there plainly I tend to interpret such things with more common-sense than most people want to hear. They want something esoteric and prophetic-sounding, when most of the time the answer is the simple answer they suspected in the first place. I’m sorry, but in the image of children showing up at one’s home asking, “Where can I put my toothbrush?” the tooth brush is expressing the idea of “staying for a while,” as in our culture you only put your toothbrush in someone else’s bathroom if it’s a long term visit. Right? It is not indicative of a “verbal message” just because the toothbrush is used in the mouth. Needless to say, my generalized impression of FBL’s dream was so different than the one presented by the group that I had to stop her after the Meeting dissipated to tell her so. Air empathizes with air, and I know how it can be to get so confused in the details of a thing that you lose your way entirely.
I told her what I thought and felt, and then she asked for a card reading, and that took up quite a bit of time to the point where we were the only ones left in the room. And afterwards, I received one of the best compliments I think I’ve ever gotten for my tarot reading skills, not because it was flowery or filled with doe-eyed awe, but because it came from a more critical standpoint-- and because it was honest. She said, “You know, I’ve had so many people do readings for me, for . . . all kinds of things. And you know,” and her eyebrows went up as she nodded, “that was probably the closest anyone’s ever come to showing me just what’s going on within me.” She didn’t say it was “exactly!” what she had been thinking as so many do, she said it was the closest anyone had ever come-which to me means she not only understands the true process, but she also has her own opinion of what this dream business was all about. It might have gotten lost in the fog for a while, but she found it; she didn’t just trust in the awe-inspiring “powers” of a tarot reader to know more about herself than she did. And that, consequently, also makes her the shit-- in my humble opinion, anyway.
So that's that. :)
Ok, so technically speaking, this could properly be titled “Meeting Seven” because I missed what would have been meetings Five and Six. But I decided it would be more prudent to just number the meetings as I attend them, rather than as they occur, honestly just so that I don’t get them confused. But yes, unfortunately, I was still sick for Sanders’ Yule session of which was prophesized, and the Tuesday after that I ended up having to work. I’ve started seeing a new Psych, a Neural-Therapist type person who later intends to stick electrodes to my head for my insomnia/anxiety issues, and she only sees new patients on days containing “M’s”-- one of my usual work days. I was really kind of hoping there wouldn’t be a meeting that day because it was the day after Solstice and so close to Christmas, but nope. So that’s that.
But I’m back on the bus now-the Hippie Bus, naturally, a VW wagon painted from nose to tail with doves and peace signs, the windows shaded with shaggy beads, and the whole of it plastered with bumper stickers about aliens, the evils of Dubya, thinking globally and acting locally, and remembering to “think green”--- as though the sticker’s good intentions automatically counteract the carbon footprint of a car built in 1977.
Driving the Hippie Bus this morning were two people, a married couple I will refer to as “The Professor” and “Maryann.” They’re usually very quiet, but from what I learned of them at this meeting he’s very over prepared, very nervously scheduled, planned, and over-thought, while his wife likes to float around the room on a bubble of her own spaced-out energy that to my inner-eye looks not unlike the giant silver balloon that almost-never carried Falcon and his parents to the land of reality show fame. The Professor had a lot of paper with him-notes, poetry, you name it-and both Father-Bring-Down and I could palpably feel how stressed he was about getting everything right. There was something about forgetting to bring the right CD of background music from home, and some helpful scrambling on FBDs part to find similar music from the pagan shop’s stock of demos. There was a deck of Goddess Tarot that was pulled out and, my spider sense now aroused at the sight, I brought my own cards out, just to shuffle and stroke and cuddle like one does with a small Chihuahua in a handbag. And yes, I do always carry my tarot cards around in my handbag everywhere I go, just FYI. Make fun of me if you must, but consider yourself warned that when cornered I can flick them pretty well. I tried to offer a little indirect help; my shuffling produced a card for him (like, shot across the floor) which I held out, chucking in what I hope was a calming way, “Look, So-and-so. It’s Temperance. Everything will work out as it’s meant to, the music is fine.” I knew even as I said it that it wouldn’t really help, because my brain tends to work rather similarly in times of duress. But aside from setting the chairs out in the circle for them (which I had already done) there wasn’t anything else I could do to help.
Maryann had a psychic prediction that exactly thirteen people would show up today, so I dutifully made a circle of thirteen chairs, but unfortunately she must have underestimated because as more and more people showed up it was immediately obvious that the room simply isn’t big enough to hold everyone in a circle format. It really upset The Professor that some people were sitting in a row of chairs *behind* other people, and that some actually preferred to sit on the floor against the wall rather than on a picnic bench with no back support, making the whole congregating more of a lopsided balloon shape. But finally he got over himself and started.
The theme he wanted to explore was The Goddess-not any specific Goddess, but the simple and more primal Goddess force behind all cultures. Which I was down with. Now, his issues arose, methinks, from being too over-prepared to the point that he couldn’t roll with the punches. And I used that cliché purposefully, by the way, considering the “help” that FBD interjected. But I’ll get to that.
The Goddess deck was passed around and everyone was instructed to draw a card and return it to the deck, the idea being that this was the face or power The Goddess we wanted/needed to experience that day. Now, I know there are a couple of different Goddess decks out there, but to be honest I’ve never felt drawn to buy any of them. I have nothing against them, and god knows I’m a complete card whore and I’d take them if they were offered to me, but I’d never seek them out. I really just prefer my Rider-Waite. I just roll Old School like that.
When the deck came to me I was struck by the impression that these were new cards-which they were not as they were well worn-telling me that they had either been cleaned expertly well in preparation for the Hippie Meeting and then for some reason never re-charged (which seemed unlikely), OR that they had never been properly prepared in the first place but then had never accumulated any energy from any readings (which also seemed unlikely). Despite the prediction that all readers in the room would automatically draw the card of the Goddess they wanted, removing all elements of chance and causing haughty chuckling from a few, the card I drew felt completely random, and as soon as I looked at it and returned it to the deck, I forgot it. This, between you and me, is what you’re supposed to do when you’re reading cards or card-analogs and the item specifically strikes one as inconsequential.
The thing about this deck, I think, that struck me as odd was just how the Goddesses were presented and arranged. While it turned out that some actual goddesses do in fact have cards (Kali, Quan Yin, etc), many of them (including the one I got) had names that were either so esoteric that I’d never heard of them in my life, or, they were names that were made-up out of fragments of dead languages like Latin and Gaelic and such. And then each card has one simple characteristic attached to it-which is fine for make-believe goddesses of intuition, forgiveness, and patience. But to try and boil-down the complex character of a known, real goddess is a little insulting, and to me speaks of incomplete understanding of history, culture, and really magick as a whole. I understand that comes off as harsh, but to see someone like Quan Yin simplified to just “love” and Kali boiled down into “transformation” just misses the point-like, by miles and miles, and that just insults all of my sensibilities. All of the goddesses of the world are not meant to be used together, for one, with each one assigned one simple concept or idea like they had drawn them to enact during their turn at a game of charades. When you do that, you miss so much of what they have to teach, and it becomes obvious why you need to either invent or resurrect never-used goddesses to pick up those unclaimed ideas you need to complete a divination deck--even though most of those goddesses, under different circumstances, have wise things to say on just about every topic. As an aside, it’s becoming so much clearer to me why I’ve never been drawn to such decks. All praise be to Lady Windex.
Anyway, I didn’t have a chance to actually ask, but based both on past associations and on today’s behavior, The Professor and Maryann are members of the group I’ve been referring to as “The Unitarians.” Consequently, during my little Hippie-hiatus, the gods obviously wanted me to learn that this is in fact NOT the correct term to be using, as I was told this by two separate people on the very same freaking day. And I admit it, I had to wiki. The Unitarian Church and Unity Church are two very, very different things, although any embarrassment I had over the issue was assuaged by Wikipedia itself, which very kindly began the page on Unity Church with the cautionary “It is a very common mistake for Unity Church to be confused with Unitarians (click here).” If Wikipedia says it’s ok I then I don’t have to feel stupid and I’m just going to roll with it and get on with life. But it does leave me with the issue of what to call them, as there apparently isn’t a term in use. Manda tells me that members of her old congregation used to call themselves “Uni-tics.” Seeing as this group at the Hippie Meetings has irritated me so much, I proposed the substitute “Uni-tards,” but that was vetoed as too harsh, and will be saved only for specifically hateful future rants. So for reference’s sake, I’ll go with my #2 idea and refer to them from here on as “The Uni-corns.” I think it works; it captures the fluffy-bunny silliness, and it’s more of a little elbow jab in the side rather than a slap across the face.
So, being Unicorns, The Professor and Maryann seemed compelled to ask Father Bring-Down for help. They didn’t actually seem that excited about the notion-and honestly, it felt like they were a little afraid NOT to ask, probably due to social repercussions. But at any rate, FBD had brought a couple of very lovely Tibetan Singing bowls, which he was asked to play during the meditation. Unfortunately, true to his form, FBD had his own ideas as to what the meditation was going to be about and that was that. It’s not quite the scorpion stinging the coyote on the back while being ferried across the river, but it is a little like the scorpion saying, “I’ve just received a message from Quan Yin and she tells me that today everyone is going to receive a message and a vision from her, and anyone who wants to experience the complete forgiveness and love she can offer-if they are truly open to receiving it-will be cleansed by her,” and by saying so, implanting that idea into everyone’s heads so their spiritual experiences don’t match the meditation guide at all. Where is a large boot when I need one, seriously? The Professor was visibly bummed out, but again he seemed held back by something, instead choosing to nod and force himself to thank FBD for his valuable insight.
Manda has mentioned that I really ought to assert myself more in the meetings, and in retrospect this may have been a fine time to say, “You do realize that you’ve just put the intent to manifest Quan Yin into everyone’s minds, don’t you? It’s going to happen not because you’re psychic, but because you’ve suggested the idea, fulfilling your own prophecy. And Quan-Yin is not Chinese-girl-Jesus, just as a side notation.” All I can say is that it’s way too easy for me to forget that I’m not watching television sometimes, and that this game is interactive. I’ll try harder in the future.
So we took deep breaths and grounded, and the substitute b-list CD was played, and The Professor shared with us some poems he’d written. For someone who pays that much attention to detail his poetry was surprisingly sloppy, and I’m being a bitch by saying so, but he’s really no good at it. I respected the intent, and the feelings and messages he communicated. But when he commented that he’s such a slow creative writer that he only manages to get out “one poem every eight years,” well, I was happy. I guess I’m just old school in that respect, suggesting that poetry needs to have *some* structure. It doesn’t have to rhyme, have perfect rhythm and meter, be in iambic pentameter, couplets, quatrains, or stanzas. But I’m sorry, a list of words related to the topic that aren’t even in sentences . . . well, that’s a really difficult way to write a poem and not just a list of words. It can theoretically be done . . . but it was not done today, I’ll put it that way. “Goddess of seas. Blue, green, white. Turtles, sea weed. Shells, crabs, and dolphin friends. Depth, darkness. Splashing waves.” Etc. Etc.
A recitation
Of items is not a poem
But a grocery list
At this point I have to admit that I can’t remember the order of the next series of events. My mind can just be jumbled like that. This all happened “next,” but which came before what I don’t remember. Thankfully, I don’t think it matters too much. The Professor read a meditation from a book describing a scenario in which the practitioner goes down into the sea to the palace of the Goddess, and then the Goddess is born into the world in the same way as Venus (that is, via clam). FBD played the Tibetan Singing bowls (loudly but beautifully) and at one point felt compelled to get up and walk around the circle with his eyes closed, washing-over different people with the bowl-sound and generally being a distraction for The Professor. I didn’t even hear most of Prof’s meditation because somebody *cough* manifested Quan Yin and her presence just kind of demanded full attention. There was also some mantra chanting, geared towards the idea of opening up the self for the love and soul re-structuring of Quan Yin, mantras that they knew (as they said so!) were also meant to invoke two Hindu GODS (that is, Ganesha and Shiva) but this somehow was not seen as inconsistent and counterintuitive to the Goddess theme-at least not to anyone but me, I guess.
FBD has used this mantra at the Hippie Meetings before, and because he likes it I am naturally compelled to hate it. However, in my defense, I also find the idea of nine syllables+Om to be . . . off. I just looked it up and apparently it IS a real Hindu Mantra (I wanted to suspect otherwise, truthfully). But either way it feels awkward to me. “Om. Guam. Ganapati-ay. Namaha.” The way I learned it, the most powerful mantras have five beats +Om. “Om Numah Shivaya,” “Om Mani Padme Hm,” etc. But at any rate, “Ganapati” is another name for Ganesha. So yes, it asks for clarity of mind, but you’re also chanting the name of the god himself. So he showed up. And then we also chanted the other two mantras I mentioned (although the one was written on the white board as “On Numah Shiva” which is not how about half of us learned it, so half chanted one way while the rest enunciated fully “Shivaya”, making some chaos). Why no one seemed to care that “Om Numah Shivaya” has intent to empower and honor Shiva only, I don’t know. But Shiva was now there too.
So comes the part where there’s so much going on that I can’t hear a fucking thing The Professor is saying. I took preemptive action against FBD this time and, first of all, deciding that some of what he brought could be useful (such as the energy of the bowls), I didn’t want to just flat-shield him from everyone. Second of all, I didn’t want to waste my attention on that project. So rather than a block or a void, I created an energy-thing that was more of a “tree” or a “filter” that kind of put a damper on his voice, restoring some semblance of an egalitarian meeting where one could *choose* what one wanted rather than being force-fed it. He seemed a little wiser to me this time, though, and we spent some time playing ring-around-the rosy, with him getting up and walking around the circle to try and disrupt my energy and me following with my mind, insisting that we could dance but that *I* was going to lead, no matter how many times he *tried* to dance us around in triple-time.
Consequently, there was a lot of . . . like. . . stuff going on in that circle. The idea of a bee swarm comes to mind. It was really fun on my end. Like dodge ball. Most of the group called Quan Yin, not just FBD, and consequently I got a taste of her that I believe is more accurate to the “real” goddess because of it. Honestly, she’s never appealed to me so I’ve never bothered to seek her on my own. Nice Gal. Solid handshake. Surprisingly cold breath. However, there was a semblance of the original intent still looming out there, as I did get personally visited by Durga, another deity I’ve just never been inclined to seek --though with that one I don’t know quite why, as we seem two peas riding a wild jungle cat wielding the sharp and the pointy in a pod. I was left to conclude that she was there just for me, my own “Goddess I wanted/needed to see today” who apparently speaks in a language my air-centric brain more readily understands than Quan Yin’s hugs-that is, she speaks in swords. She really has a lot of swords, you have no idea. After some private and un-bloggable interaction and some hacking and cutting of some specific ideas from my head, the world looked far more clear, and seeing as no one was using/speaking to Shiva and Ganesha, I put them away, getting rid of some bees and making the room a little more palatable. Why bother with Windex when you can just break through dirty windows with swords? Durga comments. Point taken. Literally.
Somehow it all ended. I’m afraid I’m even hazier on that part. Everyone send energy to my Ginko Baloba because it isn’t working as advertised. But the circle ended with my homegirl Fabulous Bag Lady doing something seriously stone-cold cool. Displaying her usual wide-eyed curiosity at just about everything, she asked if she could look through the deck of Goddess Cards. While she was doing that, there was some light chit-chat about whether or not everyone was visited by the goddesses on the cards they drew. Where was everyone, seriously? It wasn’t just in my imagination; FBL, Chevrons, and Maryann herself commented that they saw Ganesha and some of the other characters I mentioned. Sanders, apparently serving a need to feel special, felt inclined to tell us that he had drawn the Quan Yin card, foreseeing the fact that she was going to visit. Really, he might have or not, but it ceased to matter with the smarmy tone he used in telling us.
So all the while FBL is looking at the cards, pointing out some of them to me, and then has a look at the “Goddess of Peace” card. Oblivious to the sounds of horror from the group, she proceeds to slide her fingernail between the layers of paper and with a sickening sticky, ripping, and snapping sound, she splits the card in two.
She holds up two cards. “Look,” she says simply. “It must have been a manufacturing defect. There were two stuck together.”
In complete awe, The Professor looks over at the two “Goddess of Peace” cards they now have. “We’ve had this deck for years,” he says. “How could we have not noticed there were two stuck together all this time?” For some reason Maryann was totally unmoved, and she didn’t even seem interested in taking the cards when I tried to pass them to her, hardly even blinking. She must have been on Mars to have not been impressed by that. Either that or so full of herself she didn’t want to admit that she was impressed. For a lack of a more eloquent way of saying so, Fabulous Bag Lady is just the shit. That’s all there is to say.
But anyway, as she is wont to do, FBL likes to tell the group about encounters and dreams she’s had, trying to get opinions and input as to what they “mean.” I say “mean” in quotation marks as I cite my earlier comments about “signs” from the spirits, and the idea that just because something strikes you as odd doesn’t mean it *has* to be a potent and mystic sign or message. Now, as she described this dream she had, one person called out one interpretation, another person confirmed it and added a bit-and yes, this was a Unicorn-centric presentation, including FBD-until they had this entire complex meaning concocted and poor space-case FLB was very confused.
Now, this area of magick is not my sport. I’m not usually the one to just hear something like a dream and automatically know whether or not it’s a premonition or a warning, and if so what that might be. I can do it, but I prefer the help of something like my cards if I want to add any sort of detail beyond a generalized impression. Most of the time I just avoid it altogether, passing it along to someone wearing a bigger amethyst crustal than me, because to put the hard truth of the matter out there plainly I tend to interpret such things with more common-sense than most people want to hear. They want something esoteric and prophetic-sounding, when most of the time the answer is the simple answer they suspected in the first place. I’m sorry, but in the image of children showing up at one’s home asking, “Where can I put my toothbrush?” the tooth brush is expressing the idea of “staying for a while,” as in our culture you only put your toothbrush in someone else’s bathroom if it’s a long term visit. Right? It is not indicative of a “verbal message” just because the toothbrush is used in the mouth. Needless to say, my generalized impression of FBL’s dream was so different than the one presented by the group that I had to stop her after the Meeting dissipated to tell her so. Air empathizes with air, and I know how it can be to get so confused in the details of a thing that you lose your way entirely.
I told her what I thought and felt, and then she asked for a card reading, and that took up quite a bit of time to the point where we were the only ones left in the room. And afterwards, I received one of the best compliments I think I’ve ever gotten for my tarot reading skills, not because it was flowery or filled with doe-eyed awe, but because it came from a more critical standpoint-- and because it was honest. She said, “You know, I’ve had so many people do readings for me, for . . . all kinds of things. And you know,” and her eyebrows went up as she nodded, “that was probably the closest anyone’s ever come to showing me just what’s going on within me.” She didn’t say it was “exactly!” what she had been thinking as so many do, she said it was the closest anyone had ever come-which to me means she not only understands the true process, but she also has her own opinion of what this dream business was all about. It might have gotten lost in the fog for a while, but she found it; she didn’t just trust in the awe-inspiring “powers” of a tarot reader to know more about herself than she did. And that, consequently, also makes her the shit-- in my humble opinion, anyway.
So that's that. :)