Poetry for the Esbat: Flow Moon, 2016

Dancer Delilah (Flynn) crafting her Art, underwater.

There is a powerful synthesis happening. Strands of my life way, my cosmology, my relationships, my body, which did not seem to connect now find themselves intimately woven in the most sensible ways.

Everything keeps making sense & that is just a bit freakish.

○○○

In the past, when asked about whether I would be willing to "teach," I replied, "I only teach my accident." It was a gentle way to decline. 

But strange things & strange persons happen. And sometimes, they change the rules. Or, perhaps they unveil rules you never knew existed. And in this change or unveiling, I began to teach. Of course, it has not been in the manner to which I originally consented or anticipated, but isn't that just the way of things?

Flow.

One of my True Loves is Sigil Magick. Yet being a critter of much privilege & little for which to want, my practice of the Arte is often lacking impetus. Perhaps this is why I needed to teach the art to others.

Here on this Esbat I find myself working out the last details of a traditional Golden Dawn style talisman for presentation -- but also for myself -- the pieces of which seem to be attempting to tie my worlds together. The focus of this talisman, in brief, is Flow. Hence the card for this Esbat, "Going with the Flow," the Ace of Water from the Osho Zen Tarot -- a deck I discovered while working on this particular project. 

Ace of Water, Osho Zen Tarot.

"The figure in this card is completely relaxed and at ease in the water, letting it take him where it will. He has mastered the art of being passive and receptive without being dull or sleepy. He is just available to the currents of life, with never a thought of saying "I don't like that," or "I prefer to go the other way."

Every moment in life we have a choice whether to enter life's waters and float, or to try to swim upstream. When this card appears in a reading it is an indication that you are able to float now, trusting that life will support you in your relaxation and take you exactly where it wants you to go. Allow this feeling of trust and relaxation to grow more and more; everything is happening exactly as it should." -- OZT

And isn't that just so very apropos for this Lunar occasion?

Concurrently, my studies in dance have been directed at this subject of Flow & somehow (ha!) this brought me to discover the underwater dance images of American belly dancer Delilah:

Her flowing (quite literally) being so illustrative of a condition I seek to realize for myself.

Not only in Dance, but in Life. (And are they not the same thing?)

○○○

This brings me to the poetry for this Esbat. In keeping with all the flowing & synthesizing & surrendering, I present a poem I have been sitting on (in my Poetry Foundation App) for several years now. The reasons for this I do not know, perhaps it was just not time. If I am honest with myself, I actually think I never quite understood it completely -- until now. 

[As if the moon could haul through you], by Neil Fischer

As if the moon could haul through you

Its tremor of light and stone,

Be cleared of sound. Plough

The mind's noise until it's a shine

In the purl of south-bending river that bears

Itself toward a blacker part of the forest.

If you hum, hum through the motes of air,

Perhaps your nerves will find at last

A tone to which they will succumb.

Be still. Be not so heavy-hearted

For a moment. All is not a tomb,

Blind sarcophagus staring dumb, thwarted

Pleasures nailed inside. These fireflies

Sweep their tracings on the evening.

Weep if you must, but board what falls

Away, abdomens flaring—

The brief, nomadic intervals.

Blessings to you this Esbat, my friends.

On Seeing. (Microcosm/Macrocosm. Self/Universe.)

"I’ve never loved myself the way I do now." 

-- Joana Saahirah, The Alchemist's Stone: Gratitude for the Wisdom of a Changing Body.

She said to me (& I paraphrase), 'We need to be in our bodies as they are, right now. Not the way they once were, or the way we imagine them to be in some uncertain future, because that is not what we have to work with as dancers/humans. Our envisioned "ideal" does not exist. We only have our bodies as they are right now -- they will not be the same in a day, a week or even an hour. Work with what you have in this very moment, not a projection of something that does not exist. Know your creative tool as it is -- its strengths & limitations & use them.' 

There was an enormous turning point the first time I actually saw myself dancing. One might say, 'Moma, this is not rocket science...' but the truth of the matter is that it took over two years of study before I was able to see this. Prior to that, I always pictured my teachers or someone else executing my choreography assignments (even as I did them); floating the veil, traveling the steps, rotating the hips, using the propulsive power of the arms... 

Unawares, I always followed the image of another, so when I saw myself for the very first time, it was an overwhelming epiphany. 

But the trick is, we have to keep looking, because we change constantly. Every time I watch the critter that is me, I experience a strange & overwhelming sense of horror & wonder -- in part because I never see the same person. 

As I examine & reexamine myself in this manner (as I now must), I realize how vitally important it is to the entire human spiritual ecosystem. It is not just about dancing & assessing the damage or progress. It is about Everything. 

 "That which is Below corresponds to that which is Above, and that which is Above corresponds to that which is Below, to accomplish the miracle of the One Thing." 

-- Hermes Trismegistus (Dennis W. Hauck, trans.), The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus

For the Files: Summer Solstice 2015 (In poor quality photos, mostly.)

Solstice. 

Right.

There were simple plans which became larger & larger.
And I had my part(s).

Then came the Fire, to simplify everything, I reckon.

And the only thing to do after all the Big Plans were wiped away was to dance.

So dance we did.

And we said to one another, over & over as we built this thing, "We can do this anywhere, anytime we want. This is an Offering, after all."

And that is true, because we danced in a different bioregion, in a different town, with a different set of spectators, at a different time, on a different day, for a different gathering, on a different substrate in a different configuration, 
With a most difficult sound system named Pancho,
And a disappointingly difficult audience,
And without a doubt I was not at my technical best,
And we didn't even remember to get photos,
And some would say that even our thunder was stolen in the end...

But we could do it all again, anywhere, anytime we want.

It is an Offering, after all.

What She Said. (About the betterment of mankind.)

What she said.
What she said.
What she said.

"...I think this age of automation, is a case of man in flight from himself and I feel that if any one art can bring him [mankind] back to himself, it is the dance... because rhythm is what creates the Universe and everything in it... 

In a world gone mad, let those who have listened to the divine, those who have ever moved in the rhythm of inward joy, must dance now.  Let us not wait for the world to be better, let us help to make it better." -- Ruth St. Denis

Her discussion, beginning at 2:15.

"When I am an (not so) old woman I shall wear (a) purple (Faerie costume... in a public park)." Or, don't wait to surrender your ego.

“The key to truly relishing a moment is not to concern one’s Ego with how you may appear to the casual observer…” 

Skeptical Faerie, or something.

Especially if you are dressed like a Sugar Plum Fairy. 

One of my cherished like-mindeds had reminded me that I said that once. Today I would like to add a clarification. 

And don't wait until a new, more comfortable or convenient moment arrives. Do it now.

Dance seems to be my Great Teacher in this.

Dance. Don't Think. Especially about other folks -- human or otherwise -- who may be watching (or not, because it IS a bit narcissistic to assume folks are watching you all the time). 

"A chaotic mind in a body that has been forced into some extreme arrangement is pointless. So though I know I'm never going to be very physically adept at shaping my body into beautiful and graceful asana, I enjoy the mind-body work and seeing its benefits manifesting elsewhere in my life." --AB

When we are preoccupied with trying to be something impressive to the external eye, we are chaotic. When we are busy berating ourselves for our imperfections, obsessing over shortcomings that others may or may not perceive or doubting our likability we are chaotic. When we are fraught with shyness & self-conscious thoughts, we are chaotic. 

There is no doorway to ecstasy, no tapping the spirit world, no Tarab to be found in this ego-driven, self-limiting chaos of the mind. This is not the road to "seeing (your practice's) benefits manifesting elsewhere in (your) life." The key to growth, to freedom lies elsewhere.

I am a chaos-rider. I admit it. But I must emphasize: choose your chaos wisely & make sure you're the rider, not the horse. 

The maenads were expert chaos riders. Do you think that in their ecstasis, even for a single moment, they considered what other folks thought about how they looked?

Dance, my teacher. Maenad as well, perhaps.
A moment of Tarab courtesy Joana Saahirah Facebook page. 

Baladi Moon: Another Homecoming

Moonrise over Nevada. Photo taken on the road home.

Baladi (Arabic: بلدى‎ baladī; relative-adjective "of town", "local", "rural", comparable to English "folk", with a lower-class connotation) -- Wikipedia

Perhaps I neglected to mention yet another migration. Nowadays, our shifting of location is regulated less by the seasons & more by the heartstrings. Thusly, we adapt.

It seems to me that there was no mistake when my dance instructor chose to direct my studies toward Baladi just as we return home -- to my home, the land of my birth & the house I loved at first sight. I am, despite a liberal education & a small degree of worldliness, still a desert rat at the core. 

And don't I know it.

As part of my dance studies, I was given an assignment to document the sounds of my environment. I struggled with this in our Alaskan city's muffled winter... traffic, jets, the humming of the bathroom fan, the sounds of my children sleeping... I felt I couldn't discern much & most of which I did seemed unsatisfying.

And perhaps the truth is that I often don't have the quietude within myself to listen while I am in an urban environment, even one as idiosyncratically wild & magickal as ours. 

But my first day here in this obscure, rural outpost in the high desert I wrote:

"Sounds from my home (the home of my birth, the one from which my blood is made): cattle maaawing at sunrise, wild turkeys cackle like a gang of drunken comedians, the collared doves with their sad-sounding cries, the occasional diesel engine of a truck loaded with hay, or dogs, or children... and SILENCE."

Silence. Silence is the key. Absence of input makes the sensory experience more refined. When the constant drone of the hive is replaced by silence, sounds become staccato -- they are rendered pure. This makes all the difference.


The rest of the family notices these perceptual, perhaps qualitative differences too. Depending on who they are, they mention how the food tastes better, the toys are more engaging or the Sun is brighter & warmer. In this rustic environment, everything moves at a much slower, more relaxed pace & despite the overwhelming amount of work to be done, the sense of pressure is minimal, while the work is somehow more satisfying. 

And the Moon, oh, that Moon! She is always at Her finest. There is nothing, nothing at all like the Moon slung low over the desert, cradled by a Night sky that bears stars that not only can be seen, but are too plentiful to count. 

Baladi Moon. How much more sense it all makes from this side of the journey. All the pieces, they just keep fitting together. Perfectly even. 

Poetry for the Esbat: Baladi Moon (Again, It's Personal)

The Creative Centre & Essence of Baladi Dance
Image passed from dancer to dancer to dancer...
Credit: unknown. (Leave a comment if you know this artist.)

Baladi (Arabic: بلدى‎):

"The word Baladi (you may also see it spelled balady, beledi, beledy, etc.) can mean several things: 

1. My country, of the country or of the people.

2. It can be used a complement as the balad are considered the salt of the earth or a slur when referring to somebody as unrefined, like calling somebody a hick.

3. In dance it refers to the dance of the everyday people, raqs baladi as opposed to raqs sharqi.

4. In dance it can also refer to a particular music and dance construct, also called baladi taksim, or ashra baladi.

5. In American belly dance and in the Levant it also sometimes used to refer to a particular variation of the rhythm masmoudi saghir." 

-- from Egyptian Baladi and the Baladi Taksim, by Shems 

I generally tend towards the outside world & bioregionalism when I share Full Moon poetry, but of course the protracted Alaska winters tend to provoke a turning inward. The end result then, is that inevitably some winter Esbat poetry winds up being more personal. This is one of those times.

Since just after midwinter I have been quite preoccupied by dance studies with a new instructor/mentor (I have mentioned her before). This is an exhilarating, expansive & somewhat terrifying experience. I have completely thrown myself into the fire this time. On purpose.

***

This week we began "Baladi studies" in earnest. 

And this is only some of what she has to say about Baladi:

"...It´s all about the FREEDOM of speech – literally – but not a mental speech made of ideas and stored data in my brain – it´s a HIP speech...HIPS CAN TALK...

After watching, teaching, correcting, stimulating thousands of dancers from different nationalities, it´s obvious that most women are totally disconnected from their hips (and the organs, muscles, creative energy, sexual impulses, LIFE inside it). It´s a problem if you wish to dance a mean, juicy, (im)proper baladi piece but it´s an even bigger problem if you wish to enjoy life and use all your potential as a human being. 

Here´s what I call my hips: “MY BELOVED POWER HOUSE“. They expand with time – literally and metaphorically speaking – and are the source of my power, inspiration, love, passion, drive, ambition, dreams, pleasure and and and and. And then some. My hips are queens, goddesses, mother and father as well as their children; my hips sustain me when everything seems to go down the toilet and are a fountain of endless joy, discoveries, strength and divine pleasures. 

If your hips could talk, what would they say?... 

...Women who are disconnected from their hips (or carry around a hate relationship with them) cannot be fully creative and alive – they just can´t. One thing – love for your hips – leads to the other: the FIERCE willingness to be yourself and move ahead in life outpouring love and pleasure..."

-- Joana Saahirah, Hips don´t lie (we agree, Shakira!) – BALADI DELUXE

But this dance is so much bigger than even all of that -- with cultural context & nuance to grasp, technique to study, vocabulary to build, rules to learn & then break... To add to it, there's a unique musicality to be understood as well.

Gasp.

And in the end, it is about getting down to the essence of your being, feeling & communicating your raw, honest truth through the art of movement we call dance. 

***

Today I was asked to dance an improvisational Baladi for her. She told me to dance with gratitude for something I really love, really enjoy, letting my hips speak for me.

So I did. As I danced, I forgot about being under pressure with her eyes on my every move, every moment, because I was dancing with gratitude for wild mushrooms in cream sauce. My wild mushrooms... mushrooms I picked, cleaned, dried, soaked in wine, sautéed & bathed in butter & heavy cream & maybe some fontina or...

When we reached the end of class, she told me (not aware of my particular gratitudes) that I had indeed just danced my very first Baladi.

And it made me wonder: what could I create if I danced Baladi for the Moon?

Hence, the Poetry for this Esbat. (I do love successful multi-tasking... or is it syncretism?) When I read this poem, I said to myself, "This is about a Baladi. A Baladi for the Moon."


Moon Dancer 
By Spencer Kluesner
(poem inspired by the painting "Moon Dancer" by artist Julia Watkins)

She dances to the drum's rhythmic pulse.
Until we are entranced.
Until we begin to feel as if we were with her
A part of her
Living through her
Anticipating her next move

And she twists
With an instinctual certainty
An aquarian dream
An ancient dance to the female cycles of the moon
Knowing her next move without thinking
Feeling her next step while dreaming

I want to be her
I want to feel the infinite forces of energy
Flowing through my being
I want to let go into that space
As only a women can

And I may
But if my body can't dance
My spirit still can

And I'll connect to the infinite
To the nothingness that is really the everything
The whole of our existence
The energy of all that was
And all that will be.


Blessings to you this Esbat, my friends.

Public Animas Ceremony Part 4c: Trust Your People: The Magus (DJ, that is)

Continued lessons from the Public Animas Ceremony: An Invitation to Passion.

Our DJ/Magus's Avatar.

If The Vision is true, it will find the right people. Trust them.

Trust that The Vision will attract the right people. This is a story about letting preconceptions, personal judgements & ideas go, trusting The Vision & trusting that you have the right people.

More than half a year before the Summer Solstice, we recruited a good friend of ours to orchestrate the music for the ecstatic dance portion of the Animas Ceremony. Before I begin with the story of the DJ(s), I need to make a brief departure to discuss our choices around sound. My sense is that many (neo)pagan types balk at the idea of using recorded music for ceremonial purposes. I believe this must be because it isn't "traditional" or "Ye Olde Fashionedy" enough or something. I need to address this here as I did at the pre-ceremony briefing:

1. Music is culturally relevant. We live in the contemporary Western United States & the music created today speaks the language of our people more clearly than that of any other time. This is not so say that I dismiss the value of other musical forms or genres -- indeed, I do not, for I happen to be a great lover of, say, classical Jazz, but I know that is an inappropriate choice for moving people through & into the spaces we offered in this ceremony. We wanted to offer the people the opportunity to dance & to dance nonstop for hours. The most logical music to accomplish this is the music of today which has developed specifically for the purpose of extended dancing & altered states: the various permutations of electronica, mixed on-site by a seasoned DJ with all his toys out on the tables.
2. This was not an ancestral ceremony. We were not attempting to reconstruct some time period from the past, or recreate the sacred activities of a time gone by. There was no need for a Renaissance flutist or Celtic war drums (although I really do enjoy them). Ancient musics are a wonderful device -- in proper context -- but we were/are working in today.
3. Live drums are timeless. Yes, but... drummers need rest & replenishment, turntables & amplifiers do not. Drummers need to arrive with drums & skills in numbers & the facts? Our community doesn't have the numbers or the skills to fulfill that role. 
4. Like the drums, electronica is immediately adaptable. The DJ, or Magus, is there to know his acoustical inventory, read the audience & atmosphere & adjust the rhythm & sounds accordingly -- just like good drummers. Electronica also has the great asset of including layers of sound, including prerecorded speech & ambient sounds which are undeniably effective in generating a variety of moods & states of consciousness.

Balk away, some may, but it works. (You don't even have to like it for it to work.)

A few remaining, very tired, dancers in a light rain

under the Midnight Sun -- sometime after 1am.

But back to the lesson at hand: letting go of how you think the ceremony needs to happen & trusting that you have the right people & that they know what they need to do. I call this 'going organic.'

Going organic in this context was allowing things to unfold & evolve naturally without micromanaging. Which I/we didn't exactly do, but should have. A couple of months after we asked Gabriel, our primary DJ (who I have mentioned before), to bring his magick to the ceremony, we began to second guess whether he could solo the music for as many hours as we wanted (or thought/assumed we needed). The role of the Magus in an event such as this is so critical, nay, essential that we found ourselves perhaps a wee bit neurotic. So we asked another DJ friend if he might be willing to tag team, giving Gabriel the opening & closing windows of the evening & having the other DJ fill in the middle to allow for rest & replenishment. 

This ultimately turned out to be unnecessary (& a mistake on a variety of levels), but in our desire to make sure everything went just right, we forgot to trust the artist assess his own limits. This is not the way to do it. When you recruit an artist, be clear about the parameters & expectations & then let them do their magick -- don't try to intercede on their behalf part way through the project because you imagine or decide they might need help. 

Small & awkward mistakes aside, the process of working with a musical collage artist is a delight. Gabriel created a variety of sample mixes for us, set to different BPM ranges. It was a bit like getting boxes of auditory chocolates every week or so... a box of truffles, a box of dark chocolates, a box of dipped fruits... 

One of my favourite mixes -- especially beginning about 4:00... Embrace the World.

And the delight in the process was reciprocal -- Gabriel regularly extended his gratitude for being asked to participate in the process. He too gained from creating for a new context, expanding his collection, his repertoire & moving outside his usual range of sound into new places. 

And in the end, small errors in judgement aside, once we let go & allowed the ceremony to unfold naturally, organically, trusting our people, it was absolutely perfect.


Thank you Gabriel. Thank you.

If The Vision is true, it will find the right people. Trust them.

And trust them to know themselves.

Public Animas Ceremony Part 4b: Trust Your People: The Choreographer

Continued lessons from the Public Animas Ceremony: An Invitation to Passion.

"Dub" on the Water. Our choreographer & mentor.
Photo credit: uncertain.

If The Vision is true, it will find the right people. Trust them.

Trust them. This is a story about taking risks, trusting The Vision & trusting others to understand & respect The Vision.

Our troupe, Resh K'eljesh has been studying for over a year with a talented instructor who sometimes we refer to as JW & other times we simply call her Dub. She has been dancing for about a decade now, specializing primarily in Modern Egyptian & Cabaret with some fusion (Gypsy, Orientale, Turkish) influences. Some of us study other styles of belly dance with various instructors, but JW holds our hearts in her hands. She is, in our eyes, the embodiment of juicy, flowing Beauty -- & while she can fool you into believing she is really a swan or an antelope, she can swear like a sailor & will tell you when you're looking like crap & that keeps her real, grounded & approachable.

And we Love her.

But there is a natural hesitation to throw full spotlights on one's unconventional spiritual practices & while I personally had made it clear to JW that at least two of us were dancing for "spiritual" reasons, the bigger picture had never been brought to the table -- that being that one of our goals as a troupe was to provide devotional dances or, dancing-as-offering for our own practices & for the greater community. So when The Vision started to congeal & became certain, song-in-hand (so to speak) we had to give it up to the Dub.

And in a major leap of faith, we showed her the bad sketches & the site layouts & explained the Officiants & the offerings & the fire... & we played her the song...

And she stood in the living room, listening intently to the narration in the beginning of the song,

The Soul,
like the Moon,
is new,
and new again.

And I've seen the ocean, 
continuously creating,
since I scoured my mind,
since I scoured my body.

I too Lalla,
am new,
new again.

My teacher,
told me one thing:
"Live in the Soul."

And when that was so, 
I began to get naked,
and dance.


And when the music rushed in she sprang forth, whirling across the room, prancing & flowing, excitedly talking all the while about the rhythm & the fire & what the music was telling her...

The choreographer: JW.
Photo credit: uncertain.

And we all sat, perhaps a little dumbly, in awe of this phoenix tearing across the carpet. Would she catch something on fire?

If you spend a good amount of time among artists (or scientists -- I've mentioned this before) you probably have witnessed the transformation that occurs when a creative human becomes energized by an idea, overcome by a Muse. It is a personal alchemy in the alembic of their mind, heart, spirit-being. It is the experience of personal epiphany & creative electrification. When people enter this "place" (for lack of a better word) they actually appear different -- this is a full-being transmutation.

Then, at one point I recall her saying something like, "...and the offerings, they are special, precious, they are sacred and they need to be presented to the fire as such, perhaps like this..." as she leaned forward in her sinuous way, to pour invisible libations toward the imaginary fire in the centre of the room.

And wide-eyed, we all exchanged glances.

When she left, we were all still settled on the floor like a herd resting in the heat of midday. We exchanged glances & one of us hissed in an excited whisper, "She GETS IT!" Then, gasps & muffled squeals for the risk of trusting another with The Vision had completely & utterly paid off.

And Dub was & still is the right person, despite the challenge of distance & travel, she gives us tools to figure things out on our own when she cannot be with us & for that, we are perennially grateful, thankful.

Thank you JW. Thank you. 


If The Vision is true, it will find the right people. Trust them.

Really Trust Them.



To listen to our Animas Ceremony track, "Lalla's Ecstasy," in its entirety, use the player below. If you like it, please consider purchasing the track & support great independent artists. Visit the Shaman's Dream Music Collective/World Groove Ensemble Bandcamp Shamans Dream Compilation or the Craig Kohland/Shaman's Dream website.