Posted by Amoret on Bone and Briar. Great thoughts!
Don’t be deceived by personal presentation. Some will bite on the front end and you’ll never see the kindness coming. Some will bite on the back end; where you expect sympathy you will suddenly get steel.
That is the way of it. Do not confuse softness with powerlessness, harshness with lack of solace.
Do not coddle your own weakness. Listen deeply, and open. There are teachers are all around you.
Maybe it’s because I was a Spring baby. Maybe it is simply how I love to smell the budding green around me that comes with the Spring rains. Whatever the reasons Spring to me is filled with Joy. It is potential, it is new growth, it is longer sunlight and it is birds in chorus as I reawaken with the trees. Where I live actual Spring is often weeks behind “calendar Spring”, but my soul sings just the same. Trusting a repetitive cycle that marks my years and knowing deeply the seasons that mark my soul is a time for celebration. Blessed Ostara!
Tai Chi is all about about core energy. I am best at pulling energy through my feet because that’s how I learned it. And I move it through all of me, swirl it in my belly, snake it through legs and arms, stir it with my hands, and lift it through my crown. Tai Chi so far has been so much thinking. Every move starts in the feet. Energy push here, exhale there, don’t get tangled and fall. I started with the smallest easiest form. It is also the slowest moving, which for Tai Chi is saying a lot. I thought this would be good for my impatience. I suppose it is, but I battle Get It Done! quickness every time I start. Once I slow down and get in the groove I can stay there, but with all the thinking required at first when learning it is hard to get out of my head and appreciate the energy shifting in my body.
But I’m getting there. The first 6 moves I can get out of my head. The second six still involve much thinking, but I haven’t been practicing as I should so … there’s that. I restart classes next week. I will have the second set of 6 moves by memory by then. Then we’re moving on to moves in Part II in prep for a workshop in the September with Dr. Lam (who is in the video at the link). Next fall we’ll be doing Sun Style 73 forms and the location is different.
I restart classes next Monday (switching from Wednesday’s class so my TC buddy and I can be in the same class) and this session lasts 12 weeks. Because I now am doing less thinking I want to incorporate more specific energy from my religion. I’m going to see what I can do with the Star Goddess and the lemniscate Gods since the SG at my core and the lemniscate Gods around my core fit perfectly with the rounded figure eight shapes native to Tai Chi. This makes sense to me in so many ways. It will put me a back in a my head for awhile, but I want to see what I can do with the energy. I want to play with it and incorporate Tai Chi moves into my religious practice. I have no general qualms with the philosophy associated with TC, but I want my own People there. So this should be fun!
It seems like a good time to mix things up, the Lenten season. One has SUPPORT! Lots of people are doing it! Many not even Christian. So as I contemplated if I even wanted to do anything I piddled around with ideas of “giving up.” It’s only forty days. What harm could come of it? (I generally skip right over this time of year except for getting great prices on fish.) I still am mostly skipping over it, but what do you expect for a Pagan?
I’m giving up the story I’ve been telling myself for a year or two now about what it means to be a woman in this culture, what defines femininity, how aging affects those things, and what all of that means for me.
I’m rewriting that story, folks, because frankly I don’t like the first one I wrote. I was brutal with my red editing pen and the story kinda sucks. I do not want to be the protagonist in a sucky story. And I had forgotten. I had forgotten that I wrote the thing myself.
So, rewrite. I’m trying some things, new plot twists mixed with old plot twists, adding in some shinies, kinder adjectives, and keeping the pretty scenery. New story, completed in 40 days. I can do that.
W00t! Details! Come join us. 🙂
Iron Pentacle:
The Power of Secrets, Consent and Consequences
March 21-23, 2014
Private residence near Pittsburgh, PA
The Iron Pentacle is a tool of self-integration using the points of Sex, Pride, Self, Power and Passion to explore our inner shadows and the cultural shadows that we all deal with on a daily basis. Part of our work is to learn how we hold the qualities of the points in harmony, tension and balance.
Sex: This is a point filled with shadows surrounding sex, sexuality, creativity, fertility, and body image. How do we integrate these shadows to form a healthy relationship with ourselves as sexual beings?
Pride: Is it ok to feel pride in our accomplishments? How does pride relate to self-esteem ? We examine the shadows of being proud and the struggle to become right-sized in our pride.
Self: As we delve into the Three aspects of self from Spiral Dance, we explore all the different masks/selves we wear. What functions do they serve, are they still necessary or are they left-overs from some past experience? Who are you?
Power: As we explore the concepts of different kinds of power including, power-over, power-from-within, and power-with, we examine power dynamics and their effects on our lives. We remember times when we have felt power-less and powerful and when we have felt comfortable with our own personal power.
Passion: What is it that excites you? What nourishes your soul and feeds the fires within? How can we keep these passions in balance while still earning a living or doing other mundane tasks? How can you be nourished by your passions and not burned out by them?
Join us and we explore using the Iron Pentacle for dealing with secrets. We all have them, we all keep them. What does it mean to be bound in this way? Is there a shelf-life to secrets? What do you do when the secret is so old it is now stale, but you are oathed to keeping your silence? What about the secrets vowed to muteness from the world that you keep only with yourself?
The Iron Pentacle is an outstanding and adaptable tool. Discover one more area the points can be experienced in relation to secrets.
Teachers:
Amoret BriarRose: A Feri/Reclaiming initiate working in the traditions since 2000, Amoret partners with Boneweaver in the Bone and Briar line of Reclaiming/Feri in Pittsburgh, PA. Amoret’s passions include community building, co-creation and manifestation, ecstatic ritual, divination and the poetry of life. She is experienced in leadership training, small group facilitation, tarot, trance techniques, and ritual arts. Amoret believes that transformation can be blissful if we surrender to the process. It is her privilege and calling to tempt seekers to their transformations.
Boneweaver: Boneweaver is a Reclaiming initiate and a Feri initiate of the Victor Anderson path through the Starhawk line. She partners with Amoret in the Bone and Briar line of the Reclaiming/Feri tradition in Pittsburgh, PA. Boneweaver has been in a variety of leading and teaching roles within the Pittsburgh Pagan community for about a decade. Once an optician by trade, always an artist by desire. She works the edges between life and death and shadow work calls her (sometimes calling her Silly Names). She values a sense of humour and a sense of purpose and seeks those who are seeking her.
Student Teacher:
Julia: As a nature witch, she brings a love of science and the working of the natural world to her magic. As a healer and avid book lover, she is drawn to the path of the bee. As a quieter participant herself, she understands the challenges of group magic in community and is stepping up to the service anyway!
Time Commitment:
The intensive will begin at 7pm on Friday, March 21st and run through 1pm on Sunday, March 23rd. On Friday evening, we will come together and bond through discussion of the Iron Pentacle and a trance to start our journey. On Saturday, it gets personal. We focus inward to discover and then outward to manifest as we work through the points of the pentacle, breaking as appropriate for restful reflection and informal discussion. On Sunday morning, we will reconvene for ritual, wrap-up and farewell.
Friday: 7pm-10pm
Saturday: 10am-10pm
Sunday: 10am-1pmLocation:
Pittsburgh, PA; traveling participants welcome
Requirements:
– An open heart
– A sense of humour
– Familiarity with the concept of the Iron Pentacle is not a must, but strongly encouraged.
Cost:
A “you decide” sliding scale of $98-$176 includes the weekend of instruction and supplies. You decide where you fall on the scale, no explanation needed.
To Register:
Send an email to Amoret and Boneweaver at witches2brew@gmail.com. A non-refundable deposit of 50% of the workshop fee will be due on registering, and is the only way that we can hold a space for you. Registration and full balance must be received by March 14th. Payment should be made via Money Order. Please contact Boneweaver and Amoret at witches2brew@gmail.com to arrange payment.
Because we wish for The Work to reach all who are called: if the sliding scale is out of your reach but you wish to attend, please contact us privately at witches2brew@gmail.com. Limited partial scholarships available.
Though we do not anticipate this occurring, if for any reason the class would have to be cancelled full refunds of monies paid will be given.
March 21-23, 2014
Private residence near Pittsburgh, PA
The Iron Pentacle is a tool of self-integration using the points of Sex, Pride, Self, Power and Passion to explore our inner shadows and the cultural shadows that we all deal with on a daily basis. Part of our work is to learn how we hold the qualities of the points in harmony, tension and balance.
Sex: This is a point filled with shadows surrounding sex, sexuality, creativity, fertility, and body image. How do we integrate these shadows to form a healthy relationship with ourselves as sexual beings?
Pride: Is it ok to feel pride in our accomplishments? How does pride relate to self-esteem ? We examine the shadows of being proud and the struggle to become right-sized in our pride.
Self: As we delve into the Three aspects of self from Spiral Dance, we explore…
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You can view the event page. Camp is July 15-20, 2014 at 4QF (four quarters farm).
You can register.
You can read about the path offerings.
Here is the listing for the path I and Amoret are facilitating this year:
“The story of Quan Yin inspires the brave soul to move toward compassion, forgiveness, and healing – but what is the path toward a true and whole expression of these concepts in a community?
Diana’s Grove’s Cornerstones of Community offers a framework for individuals working in community that are interested in supporting and sustaining community health.Our path will discuss and do focused work with each of the five Cornerstones (Choice, Thinking Well of Others/the Group, Thinking Well of Self, Stewardship of Self, The Sacred Wound) and the insights gained will be brought to evening ritual at camp along with our other interactions throughout the week. The tools and knowledge gained during Path will enrich our Spiralheart community and can be carried back to our home communities. We will utilize trance, short journaling, discussion, deep listening, and self discovery through word, tone, and/or movement. Though we will be leading the path as facilitators, we will be fully submerged in the work with path participants. We will be asking path participants to embody/model the energy of the specific Cornerstone of the day into the evening’s ritual as an offering to the community as a whole.:
Nuts and bolts from Anne Hill’s blog: It is time once again to pull out your journals, those scraps of paper and backs of envelopes where you have jotted down verse throughout the year—you know you have—and offer it up to the Goddess Brigid, patron saint of Ireland. Brigid loves poetry, excels at smithcraft, is an accomplished healer, and midwife, and in my experience also appreciates a fine whiskey on her Feast Day.
Which is tomorrow. Or as I prefer to think of it, the entire weekend.
This Silent Poetry Festival has been going on since 2006, and has become a wonderful, international event, with people posting poems in honor of Brigid on their blogs, Facebook, Twitters, Tumblrs, and other such devices.
My contribution:
Her Cross
smithwoman, skirts of fire;
poetry maker, filled with desire;
swirling hair, woman of wells;
fierce eyes; the mystery swells.
dip and quench your mighty thirst,
with healing waters of the first
who claimed the many broken one,
‘round them all her magic spun.
Breathing, seething, with the new,
waiting for the Spring’s first dew,
yanked and stretched into long fine cord
your life’s work hung o’er the door.
©Pamela V jones Imbolc 2014
Created and facilitated by Bone and Briar
(working title which may change, but content of workshop will not)
March 21-23, 2014
Private residence near Pittsburgh, PA
Join us and we explore using the Iron Pentacle for dealing with secrets. We all have them, we all keep them. What does it mean to be bound in this way? Is there a shelf-life to secrets? What do you do when the secret is so old it is now stale, but you are oathed to keeping your silence? What about the secrets vowed to muteness from the world that you keep only with yourself?
The Iron Pentacle is an outstanding and adaptable tool. Discover one more area the points can be experienced in relation to secrets. Familiarity with the concept of the Iron Pentacle is not a must, but strongly encouraged.
Mark Your Calendar, Sync Your Phone, and Come to be Transformed!
So many things to do! ALL THE THINGS! And they are wonderful things, but a bit of a stumbling block this week with unexpected other things. BUT! I started a class through Coursera which is a web site where you can take classes from universities all over the world. For free. SO I am taking Modern European Mysticism and Psychological Thought from the University of Israel. Geez I love the Internet!
Planning is continuing for Bone and Briar’s spring intensive weekend titled “The Iron Pentacle & Secrets”. At least that is the working title, it may change. It is slotted for March 21-23 in a private residence near Pittsburgh. The Baltimore peeps are driving up again for the intensive. W00t! Plus others old and new will be there. *so excited* I do so love this stuff.
B&B will be attending an intensive in Illinois where I get to meet Amoret’s people from her early training days and have a great weekend. We will bring our skills/learning from this back home and utilize them in our community. The intensive is:
We (Amoret and I of Bone and Briar) are facilitating a path at this summer’s intensive hosted by Spiralheart in July (7/14-7/20). this path is titled “Cornerstones of Community” and it is based on Diana’s Grove’s work of that same name. We did indeed prior to submitting our proposal seek and receive permission to use their work.
I’m doing the art journal every week with a prompt. I have my page set in my head, but not on paper yet. I haven’t started my ATCs yet, but I do have until Feb 28th to mail. I am trying not to procrastinate too much on that. I am enjoying every day regardless of how it actually unfolds. Enjoying Every. Damn. Day. 😀
LEAN IN TO JOY with BONEWEAVER 