The Twelve Wild Swans

by Starhawk

  LOUD TALKING: Sometimes we just need to be heard. Vocal work and practice can help you be loud without simply shouting at people. Breathe deep from your belly, open your throat, and visualize your voice reaching the farthest point of the circle.

  POETIC CHANT: Something between trance voice and a bad imitation of Allen Ginsberg reading Howl. Rhythmic; often useful for the parts of a trance that are repeated.

  CALL AND RESPONSE/REVIVAL: Southern Baptist preachers are the masters at this kind of energy-raising, rhythmic speech.

  SONG: Not just chants and songs, but invocations and parts of meditations, can be sung.

  There are also voices we like to avoid in ritual: the Voice of Authority, the Nursery School Teacher, Whining, Mumbling, and so forth.

  Voice Practice

  1. Volunteers invoke the directions, each choosing a different voice.

  2. Choose a text: “The Charge of the Goddess,” “The Reclaiming Principles of Unity,” or something from this book. As the leader calls out different voices, each person reads two or three lines in that voice.

  3. Repeat the exercise above, but this time each person reads four or five lines, first matching the tone of the person before and gradually shifting into a new voice.

  Leading Trance/Trance Induction

  The image of the river is a helpful one to hold in our minds when we lead a meditation, a guided visualization, or a trance. In some sense, these terms are nearly interchangeable: a trance is simply an intensified guided visualization, a more clearly directed meditation.

  While we include scripts for trances in this book, we don’t recommend that you read them aloud, rather that you use them as a loose structure around which to improvise your own journey, so that the work stays alive. When guiding a trance, let your voice flow, soft and rhythmic. Begin with an induction, an image that moves people into a deep, internal state and shifts their focus away from the external world. One very simple one I might use is:

  Take a deep breath now, and let your breath flow in and out of your lungs. And as you breathe, you become aware of your body, aware of that place between breaths where your breath begins and ends. And you feel yourself sinking down there, as you breathe, down and down, into a deep place, an inner place of power where you can be in touch with the deepest parts of yourself. And your breath is carrying you, down and down. Let’s take three deep breaths together, in and out, linking our breath, flowing down, in and out, deeper and deeper, in and out, until you reach that deep place within which is the beginning of breath.

  And you feel what lies beneath your feet in this place, what you stand on. Breathe in and smell the air of this place. Hear what sounds surround you. Open your inner eyes, and turn to the east, and notice what you see and hear and feel and sense.

  [Pause.]

  And you turn to the south, and notice what you see and hear and feel and sense.

  [Pause.]

  And you turn to the west, and notice what you see and hear and feel and sense.

  [Pause.]

  And you turn to the north, and notice what you see and hear and feel and sense.

  [Pause.]

  And you turn to the center, and notice what you see and hear and feel and sense.

  [Pause.]

  And now you’ve arrived, in your own inner place of power.

  In the induction above, we use many linking words such as and to connect our sentences. We use rhythm and repetition to help move us into trance. Many of our directions are phrased as statements rather than commands: “And you turn…” rather than “Turn…”

  Part of the art of trance is to create just enough structure—but not too much—to guide participants through a landscape, leaving them free to experience it as it appears to them. So we may ask them to turn to the four directions, but not describe in detail what they might see. We might suggest that their feet will find a path and ask them how that path feels underfoot, but not tell them that it is smooth, rocky, or slippery unless that is an important element of the work. Remember, the trance belongs to the person experiencing it, not to the guide.

  We should also avoid the temptation to interpret the images or stories for people as we guide them or to tell people what meaning they should take from the symbols we offer. “And as you flow downstream, you become aware of a block, and you feel what that is for you”; not “You become aware of all your childhood pain blocking your flow.” William Carlos Williams said poetry should contain “no ideas, but in things.” The same holds true for a trance: embody your intention in concrete images, lead people through the landscape of those images, but leave them free to draw their own interpretations.

  Beware of inflation and deflation when guiding trance. A deflated monotone becomes simply boring. Trance voice spoken in a state of inflation becomes the Thunderous Voice of the Authority Echoing in the Cathedral. Use your anchor to your core worth.

  In the body of the trance, an experienced leader may shift voices, dropping into normal speech for intimacy, rising into poetic chant, raising energy with call and response, letting speech flow into song. Just as a river may sometimes meander and sometimes rush headlong over rapids, a trance flows best when we vary pace and tone but keep a strong, underlying rhythmic pulse.

  When we are done with trance, we reverse the induction:

  Now take a deep breath, and look around in your place of power. As you say good-bye, notice if there’s an image you can remember to help you come back here again. And remember you can return here whenever you need to or want to.

  And you turn to the center, and notice what you hear and sense and see and feel, and you notice if anything has changed. And you say good-bye.

  [Pause.]

  And you turn to the north, and notice what you hear and sense and see and feel, and you notice if anything has changed. And you say good-bye.

  [Pause.]

  And you turn to the west, and notice what you hear and sense and see and feel, and you notice if anything has changed. And you say good-bye.

  [Pause.]

  And you turn to the south, and notice what you hear and sense and see and feel, and you notice if anything has changed. And you say good-bye.

  [Pause.]

  And you turn to the east, and notice what you hear and sense and see and feel, and you notice if anything has changed. And you say good-bye.

  [Pause.]

  And now we’re going to take three deep breaths together, breathing in and out, coming back slowly, up and up, in and out, and remembering what you’ve learned on this journey, in and out, and returning to this circle, this place and time. And now open your eyes, and pat the edges of your body. Clap your hands three times, and say your own name out loud. And that’s the end of the story.

  Spontaneous Ritual: Following the River

  After completing the energy exercises and the other work of this chapter, again clarify an intention and perform a ritual in your anchored, core state and in dropped and open attention. This time, commit yourselves to be conscious both of initiating actions and of supporting the ideas of others. Be aware of which voices you use, and how they affect the energy. Follow each energy impulse to its end. Notice what changes.

  We have wandered in the wilderness and followed the river to its end. There, if we are lucky, we will hear the beat of wings in the air, just at sunset, and meet our brothers on the shore.

  THREE

  The Wicked Vow

  Comments on the Story

  Rose reaches the river’s mouth, and there she finds her brothers. They are swans by day, but at night reassume the form of men. When the brothers realize who she is, they weep and wail, because they have made a vow to kill the first young girl they meet as a revenge for their misfortune. But the Old Woman appears again, to say, “Break that wicked vow, which you never should have made!” Relieved and happy, the brothers agree.

  The brothers are undergoing their own initiatory journey. Swans by day and men by night, they live on the boundary between the human and the wild. T
hey are shamans, who mediate between the human and nonhuman realms.

  In one sense, the brothers are entrapped in a divine possession. The Bird Goddess is one of the most ancient forms of the Goddess. Birds fly between earth and sky, linking vision to grounding. Water birds such as swans also link the life-giving waters to sky and land. Their long necks remind us of snakes, another ancient symbol of the Goddess of rebirth and regeneration. The brothers have become incarnations of the Bird Goddess’s transformative power. But they are stuck halfway, neither divine nor mortal. The knowledge and power they acquire as swans is not yet useful to them. Until they regain their true form and return to the human community, they cannot integrate the wisdom of the wild.

  Their vow is “wicked,” a word that comes from the Anglo-Saxon root wic or weg-, related to Witch. Wic- means to bend or twist. Willow branches are pliable and can be twisted into “wicker” baskets. Just as we can bend and change reality to create healing, so we can, through ignorance or fear, twist fate in the other direction, away from healing and balance.

  As swans, the brothers have attempted to redress the imbalance and injustice of their transformation. Since it was for the sake of a girl that they were transformed, they will kill the first girl they meet. A brutal sort of fairness is at work here, and when they do meet Rose, they feel deep remorse. Their commitment to revenge will cause them not only to murder their beloved sister, but to destroy the one being that can potentially restore their humanity.

  Revenge is not true power. To become empowered, we must acknowledge and relinquish that part of each of us that wants to get even. We cannot truly restore balance by equalizing the pain; we must undertake the longer and more difficult journey of healing.

  Rose must simply stand her ground. She has persevered; she has succeeded in the first stage of her task by finding her brothers. Now she must withstand their rage at the fact that her life was chosen over theirs.

  In general in our society, men are preferred over women. In this story that pattern is reversed. Rose, the daughter, is preferred over her brothers. She is the most loved and privileged one. Her task is what women ask of men, what all oppressed groups from time to time demand of those who have been their oppressors: to hear the rage and the pain, to witness without personalizing or defending, without needing to affirm that men have been oppressed too, or that rich people also have their problems. She is not asked to let herself be killed, but simply to hear that her brothers long to kill her.

  At this moment, the old woman appears. In a triumph of common sense she tells the brothers to simply break their vow. We’re not caught here in a Greek tragedy, where vows and prophecies work their destruction in spite of human will and intention. We’re in a different realm, where freedom is a possibility, where the power we’ve already gathered on our magical journey allows us, if we choose, to break the negative patterns of the past.

  The old woman holds the authority to release the brothers’ vow, presumably because they have made it to her, the Old One, the Crone. Blood sacrifice is not what the Goddess wants. She is presiding over an initiation, not a slaughter. The brothers cannot be redeemed by Rose’s death or martyrdom, only by her life and willing assumption of the task of healing.

  The work of this section of the story is to learn to handle fire, to understand energy in its intense forms, to withstand and transform anger and rage, relirquish revenge, and hold our ground.

  The Elements Path

  Rose has learned to live in the wild and to find and follow guidance. Now the stream leads her to her brothers. She vowed to find and free them, little thinking that they would have their own reaction to the injustice of their plight. They’ve vowed, in revenge, to kill the first young girl they meet. In order to let themselves be helped, the swan brothers will have to give up their vow of revenge. The Elements Path work for this section of the story requires us to look into our own spiritual pasts for any resentment and bitterness we may feel. Where we find anger, we will have an opportunity to express it, release it, and channel it into creativity. Then we will be introduced to the element fire and the magical tools that correspond with fire.

  Women and men who choose to explore the path of the Goddess make a conscious choice to step away from mainstream culture and many of its values. Each of us has her reasons for making this challenging choice. Like Rose’s brothers, we may have suffered because our gender, our ancestry, our class position may not have been the preferred one. Many of us may be appalled by a culture that sacrifices the delicate webs of nature and of human community again and again in favor of profit for a few. Many of us may be deeply disturbed by a culture that allows, assumes, and creates imprisonment, addiction, poverty, madness, and violence at the rates our society does. We long for a culture that values each and every member; we long for justice; we long for a nurturing guardianship of nature and for one another. We long for art, for love, for devotion, for play, for community, for healing. We long to create a culture where these are the most highly valued.

  Like Rose’s brothers, we may be angry. In fact, we may be very angry at previous spiritual teachings we have received or values we may have been exposed to. In order to step onto the path of the Goddess tradition, we must take a good look at ourselves. Because if we want to truly embrace a spiritual practice where the only law is love and respect for all life and all natural processes, we must find a way to take our anger and channel it away from revenge, bitterness, and hopelessness, and toward creativity. If our anger ties us to the past and stands in the way of a fresh, effective, loving engagement with our world, we, like the swan brothers, have to find a way to break our wicked vows.

  Honoring Our Anger

  Anger is like a forest fire that scours the landscape clean of the old and creates the hot temperatures needed to crack open seeds and pinecones. The ashes of the old, unhealthy forest create intense fertility to bring a whole new ecosystem to life. But before new growth can begin, the soil must be cooled and moistened by the rain and must lie resting under the snow. Spring and the wild and luxuriant growth that follows can come only with time.

  The heat of anger and resistance are nature’s way of raising energy for needed change, and so they are blessed and welcome. But they are only part of the foundation for a spiritual way of life that will help us through a whole life time, with the subtle and complex changes of all our seasons. We will have times when anger powers us to struggle and create change, but we will also have our times of recovering from illness and injury, our times of absorbed creativity and fun, and our times of barely keeping up with rapid and demanding transition. We will have our times of grief and our times of reflection.

  The aged, overgrown forest, the wildness of the fire, and the springing of the new green all depend on the mountain, and the mountain is unmoved. So in order to cleanse and open our deepest selves to a Goddess who will give us a strong foundation for a whole life, it is best to cleanse ourselves of anger and bitterness, which may only bind us to past injustices. For health, we need to base our spiritual practice on all the moods and faces of our emotional lives, not only on our anger, no matter how justified it may be. Here is a ritual that will allow our anger to speak and that will allow us to reshape its energy, if we choose to do so.

  Anger Ritual

  When honestly facing our feelings about our past experiences with spirituality, we have to start by allowing the feelings themselves to arise. We may be angry over injustices we have experienced, or ways we’ve been misunderstood, or things we’ve been told or taught that we believe are wrong. If we’ve been angry, we’ve often had to numb ourselves to those feelings of anger in order to survive in a culture hostile or indifferent to our soul-lives.

  This ritual raises and releases feelings of anger and the hurt and grief that may underlie them. It is intended to be done in a group, but it can be adapted for solitary work. This ritual works best outdoors, around a fire. Before the ritual begins, go over the plan so that everyone understands what is going to happen and
why. Then ask the question, What feelings do you need to release about your own spiritual past? Give each participant time to wander in the area and find a stick to represent what she or he wants to release.

  Gather; create sacred space. Take time to focus on the stick, breathing in the pain, the rage, or the hurt you want to release. Gradually let your breath become a sound, and build a base of energy from the chorus of sounds that arise. Some people may want to use words. Let the energy move you into a dance, counterclockwise around the fire. The sounds may coalesce into a chant or remain wordless. One by one, as you are ready, throw your sticks into the fire. You might scream or shout out what you want to release.

  When everyone has had a chance to toss their sticks, allow the sounds to peak. Visualize the fire transforming rage into creative energy. When the energy quiets, allow a time of silence, to gaze into the fire and reflect on the passion and creativity that can arise when rage is transformed. Breathe in that power from the flames. Each of you may speak of something you want to bring into your life, moving clockwise around the circle.

  When each person has spoken, food and drink may be blessed and passed around. Allow some time for informal visiting, and when everyone is ready, open the circle.

  Ritual: Breaking the Wicked Vow, Affirming the Wonderful Ones

  Here is another ritual we can use to release whatever burdens from the past we do not wish to keep carrying. Again, this purification is not meant to sugar coat, or excuse, or allow, or even forget past injustices, but rather to free us from any bitterness or hopelessness we may feel because of them. Like Rose’s brothers, we must break the wicked vow that binds us to our past. We are step ping out onto the path of a new spiritual practice, and we need to make peace with our past spiritual experiences.

  Take your time, and think back on your own spiritual background. Were you raised in a mainstream religion? How about the values in your home, in your schools, and in the media? What were your experiences and feelings? Try to remember both the disturbing and the comforting parts, if you experienced both. Were you taught, directly or indirectly, ideas that valued some people over others? That valued people over nature? If you were raised outside main stream religions, what values were you taught directly or indirectly? What was disturbing, what affirming? As an adult, what experiences and feelings have you had about religions and spiritual practices? How have you developed your values? Why have you chosen to explore the Goddess traditions?