Egypt had many creation myths. One begins in darkness. Out of darkness comes Atum, who, out of loneliness, creates others to keep him company. In this creation myth, the earth is male: craggy, silent Geb. The sky is female: Nut, the arching, star-strewn vault of heaven.
The Greek myths start with Mist, out of which was born Chaos, envisioned as either a void or a complicated mass of energy. Some begin with chaos. In one Greek myth, out of Chaos came Nyx, the Underworld-dwelling Goddess of night. She was a black-winged, mysterious beauty. Nyx laid a golden egg from which, after eons, Eros emerged, with sparkling golden wings. Eros, God of love, was the bringer of life.
An Australian aboriginal myth begins with the Great Father of All Spirits and the Sun Mother. Another begins with the earth as a vast and empty plane that is changed through the emergence of the Dream Time. In the Dream Time, all the animals are human, and they sing, play, and dance everything else into form.
Other creation myths have other themes for our beginnings. What were you raised to believe?
Journaling Prompts: Creation of Belief
• What creation myth(s) were you taught as a child?
• How do these myths impact your worldview today?
Spell Working: Creating Creation
As we have been learning in the previous chapters, when something doesn’t work for you, fix it! So, here is your opportunity to make a creation myth that works for you. Your myth may be about how the world or the universe was created, or how you, unique and singular you, came to be. It may start with the beginning of all that is, or it may begin with the meeting of your parents.
Re-creating the story of creation is a magickal act that will give you a starting point for creating your world of possibility, from the ground up. By re-creating creation, you are allowing yourself a clean slate, a new beginning, a revolutionized playing field that leaves you with all the advantages you deserve: a sense of purpose in being, a sense of equal opportunity, the right to live a life unapologetic and unfettered.
What You Will Need
• A writing implement.
• Paper.
• Your preferred set of art supplies: pens, collage supplies, paints, clay . . .
• Time and space where you will not be interrupted.
How-To
First, gather all your supplies. Then, sit in silent contemplation for a few minutes. Practice conscious, deep breathing. Allow images of the beginnings to come to you. Perhaps this will unfold as a story in your mind, or maybe it will be flashes of images, seemingly unconnected. Maybe you will hear a voice telling you the story of how you began, or you will feel this same story unfold in your bones, bowel, and blood.
Allow yourself to sit with the experience until it wanes in intensity. Slowly open your eyes, and write down the words, images, feelings, or sounds you encountered. This writing could be single words that you can use to jog your memory, or it could be a full account of what you experienced.
Once you have the words that will hold this experience in place for you written down, allow yourself to create some artifact that exemplifies your creation myth. This will be a talisman that reminds you of where you come from, and it will be an act of sympathetic magick. By creating, you become the Creator.
When you have finished your creation talisman, place it on your altar.
Mentors, Teachers, and Guides
Throughout our lives we find ourselves drawn to a variety of mentors, teachers, and guides. These may be living people, archetypes, saints canonized by our personal respect and admiration, or Gods, Goddesses, or spirit guides who find us in our moments of need or desire. In my experience, each relationship with these beings, in the flesh or extra-fleshorial (yes, I made that term up—do you like it?), is unique.
This revered type of relationship serves us for a moment, or a year, or a decade. And often, if they serve us boldly, intensely, shockingly, fundamentally, extremely, or comprehensively even for only a moment, they affect us for our entire lifetimes in some subtle way. These interfaces leave us imprinted, changed, deeper, wiser, and more willing to seek truth. These special—and often intense—bonds are not always easy, and our connections to those we admire, depend on, desire, and love can be painful and confusing, even while they carve our hearts deeper into our cores and create for us a most intense attachment to our truest manifestations of self.
Sometimes the loving and the hating go hand in hand. But, as an old boyfriend of mine said, “Hate is not the opposite of love. Indifference is.” I don’t know if that was his, or if he found the quote somewhere, but it has stuck with me, lo these many years.
I guess what I’m saying is that sometimes our greatest teachers are those whom we fear the most, love the most madly, want to change or be changed by, want to be, or want to kill, even. And in the wanting, wanting for all this, we find a deeper, truer sense of who we are.
Sometimes our mentors ask the most pertinent questions, causing us to stretch the limits of our own understanding. Sometimes they sit with us and hold our burning pain. Sometimes they become the nexus for our pain, or for our desire, or become a starting point for our Will by making us say, “No! No more. You don’t own me.”
Sometimes, though, our teachers are the shining examples of who we never thought we could be, or who we wanted to be so badly it hurt. Or sometimes it’s our bestest friend . . . you know the one . . . the one who knew when to touch you, and when not to. Knew when to talk, when to listen, and when to let you sit in golden silence, waiting for the sunset to fade to black. The one who would fill your empty cocktails, even if they thought maybe you should give up the drink for a minute. The one who would drive you home after you’d weathered an abortion, and would ask only the easy questions, the right questions, the questions you needed to be asked, like, “Are you okay?’ “Can I help with anything?” Or they asked nothing, and just said, “I love you,” and held your hand as they steered the car.
Sometimes our mentors and guides laugh with our joy, and sometimes they make it possible for us to laugh at our own pain. Sometimes they mold us to their Wills, and sometimes they allow us to locate our own Wills, singing within our souls. Sometimes they stand on us, and sometimes they hold us up. And both are valid. And both cause us to grow. And both sides of this coin are equal.
Our mentors and guides may be male or female, or they may be beyond gender. They may be human, spirit, or animal. They may be old or young. They may be ageless. They may speak to us in words, or have an impact that is beyond words.
Journaling Prompts: My Mentors
Choose three mentors, from the three different times in your life listed below, to write about. Write about how each mentor came into your life, who they were, and why they were important to you.
• When I was a child, one of my mentors was . . .
• In my teens, one of my mentors was . . .
• Now, one of my mentors is . . .
Finding S/heroes
At different times in our lives, our needs will draw new mentors to us. Sometimes we need a mother figure we can rely on, or model ourselves after. Sometimes we need s/heroes who will stand as an example of who, or what, we want to become. Sometimes we need support, and sometimes we need the consternation that allows us to grow. All these mentors have their place in our personal evolutions.
Sometimes these mentors come automatically. Sometimes we need to find the right ones, and create an intentional relationship with them. To that end, I offer you appendix ii: A Compendium of S/heroes. Please create a list of your own personal s/heroes in your journal, if you feel inspired to do so.
It is important for many of us to have male mentors, teachers, heroes, and guides, too. However, you will have to make that list on your own. Here we are focusing on finding our power as women. While that may include finding men we can trust, admire, and love, this compendium is a devotional to our sisters, mothers, g
randmothers, foremothers, Goddesses, guides, and saints who have created more room as women, for women to exist in the ways that fit us best. If you feel so inspired, your personal list may include your male mentors as well as the female ones.
Spell Working: Wisdom of the Web
As an exercise of faith and finding, go to your favorite search engine, type in the search values you seek, and hit return. (If you are looking for a s/hero in the arena of art, you might enter the words “female, artist, groundbreaking.” If you are looking for a woman who was or is unafraid to love, you might enter “love, courage, woman.”) This is a divination. Who knows what you might come up with? If you hit a book, read it. If you find a movie, watch it. If you get a name, research it. If you find a person, delve into her or his life story.
Magickal Act: My S/heroes
Using your personal list of s/heroes, appendix ii: A Compendium of S/heroes, and whatever you found in your web-based divinations, create a list of mentors who would have a positive, deepening, or growth-oriented influence on your life now.
What You Will Need
• Your journal.
• Writing implement.
How-To
Choose up to three categories in which mentoring would improve your current life. (See appendix ii for categories to work from if you can’t narrow them down.) Open your journal to a fresh page, and draw two lines lengthwise down the page, creating three columns. Then, list mentors for each category.
Making an Ally of Doubt
In seeking to build ourselves into more accurate representations of our core values, we may come up against some fear and excitement about who we are, who we are becoming, how we want to be perceived, or what is driving our desire to identify with a mentor or take on a new persona. With a newly open playing field, it is incumbent upon us to entertain a questioning process that allows us to decipher as many of our motivations as possible, uncover our own doubts and convictions, and find comfort with the gray areas.
Anchor: In Neuro-Linguistic Programming, there are two uses of the term anchor. In the usage I am employing in this section of the book, the anchor is a physical space (the pieces of paper on the floor) you will use to ground an experience. The other use of this term refers to a spot or circumstance that is used to contain or trigger an emotional response.
Giving ourselves permission to claim doubt as an ally can be overwhelmingly empowering. We may be drawn to things that scare us, or make us feel ashamed. What draws us? And, where does our fear or shame originate? We may have created rules that we think are right for our parents, and other rules that we feel are right for us (like the whole concept of being unwilling to think of our parents as sexual beings). We may want to speak more strongly, but be afraid of being heard. We may want to become more sexually open, and at the same time fear being hurt by our sexual desires.
Owning the areas where desire and disgust butt heads is a courageous act. Being able to admit to ourselves that we are of two (or more) minds about a given issue, and then presenting those different sides of our thought processes in conversation, allows us to grow through difficult transitions, to try things on and see how—or if—they fit, and to be honest about our occult shadows and our transparent light. It also frees us from the need to be right. We can be unsure, intimidated, and afraid, and do it anyway.
It is important to recognize, and develop gratitude for, the positive aspect of uncertainty. Often the genesis of insecurity is self-protection of some sort. To want to protect ourselves is a healthy thing, and we can all be thankful for the processes that allow us our self-preservation. This only becomes a liability when we are stuck in fear. So, let’s get ourselves to the point where we can feel the fear, and do it anyway.
Spell Working: Angels and Devils;
Allowing Permission for Doubt
So, you know the angel and the devil that pop out on the shoulders of cartoon characters and whisper in their ears? Here we will invoke these dualistic voices of our internal process and give each of them a place to speak from.
What You Will Need
• Writing implements. Two colors would be best.
• Your journal.
• Your mentor list.
• Space.
• A table.
• Two loose pieces of paper for “anchors.”
How-To
This is a physical exercise. First, write in one color, on one piece of paper, the word “Angel.” Then write on the other piece, in another color, “Devil.” Or, if you prefer, you can draw a cute little angel and a cute little devil, instead.
Set the two pieces of paper, or anchors, on the floor about three feet away from each other. About three feet forward, and of equal distance from the two anchors, set up your table. You will have created a triangle, with each side measuring about three feet, with the table at the upper point and the anchors at the two lower points.
Open your journal to two totally fresh pages, and write “Angel” at the top of one and “Devil” at the top of the other. Next, choose one of the mentors who appeals to you, yet brings up mixed feelings. Write her name at the top of the page, somewhere between the words Angel and Devil. Set your journal, open to these pages, on the table.
Allow yourself to center and ground, and get a feel for this mentor, and for all the feelings that your bond with her brings up. Focus on your respect for her, and your lack thereof. Focus on your love and your fear.
When you feel centered in a sense of how this mentor affects you, walk to either the Angel anchor or the Devil anchor, and allow your internal Angel or Devil to voice her feelings. Actually speak the words aloud. Once your angel or devil has had her voice, walk to your journal and write down at least a few of the words. Then walk to the other anchor, and allow your other voice her rebuttal.
Continue this process for as long as you feel moved to. Remember this may be an emotional process. Allow yourself to go with it. Feel the excitement, the anger, the joy, the fear, the righteous indignation, the surrender. Cry if you have tears. Laugh if you feel inspired to do so.
You may do this with one mentor, or more. Once you are done with the active part of this exercise, journal a quick recap of the experience.
Journaling Prompts: Speaking in Tongues
• My devil is . . .
• My angel is . . .
• I claim my doubt as an ally, and in so doing I become free to . . .
Self as Mentor
In allowing ourselves this growth, and in allowing ourselves to claim our processes of self-discovery and self-definition, we sometimes become our own best mentors. So, in the upcoming exercises in this chapter, allow yourself to experience the possibility of envisioning yourself as one of your own mentors.
Spell Working: Communicating with Mentors
What You Will Need
• Writing implement.
• Journal.
• Time. About fifteen to thirty minutes.
How-To
• Choose three mentors from your lists. Remember, one may be you!
• One at a time, envision these mentors standing before you. With each one, allow yourself to ask them questions, and allow them to answer you.
• Write down your questions and their answers in your journal.
Magickal Act: Creating a Mentor Icon
This icon may be placed either on your self-love altar or wherever you feel the need. On your desk by your computer? In your bedroom? Your bathroom? Over your doorway? Put this icon in a place where you will see it when you need it the most.
Start this exercise by choosing one mentor whose influence you would like to have more of in your life right now.
What You Will Need
• An image of your chosen mentor.
• Collage supplies.
• Other art supplies, glue (stick, spray, and/or paste).
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• A picture frame.
• A firm piece of cardstock cut to fit the frame.
How-To
Starting from an image:
• Cut or reduce the image to fit the cardstock.
• Paste the image to the cardstock.
• Paint, color, glitter, bedazzle the image to your heart’s content (and in keeping with your mentor’s temperament).
• Let dry.
• Fit to frame.
• Put on altar or hang. Voilà!
Collage:
• Create collage on cardstock.
• Fancy it up as you wish.
• Let dry.
• Fit to frame.
• Place.
Of course you can feel free to honor as many of your mentors this way as you’d like. What fun! You could do this all day! (I speak from experience here.)
Words of Power
Personal Ecology:
Your system; body, mind, and soul.
Speaking the words that make us whole is a conscious act of magick. Learning these words is a process, the very one you have undertaken in working this book. As your awareness of your needs and desires and the consciousness of choice become pervasive, you are learning your own words of power and creation.
★ Daily Practice: Speaking Words of Truth, Speaking Words of Love
For this whole week, I encourage you to speak well of yourself and others. Speak in the positive. Encourage empowered thinking in yourself and others, and watch as it becomes empowered doing!
Spell Working: Creating an Empowerment Mantra
Out of the interactions you have experienced with your mentors, you have probably found some new wisdoms to explore and own. This is an opportunity to make them yours. If you need a refresher on creating a mantra, please visit appendix i.
What You Will Need
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