by Starhawk
Please be very alert to power dynamics between the two of you. We are handicapped by a culture that gives all the power in a healing interaction to the healer. We need to be alert to our own grandiosity when we are in the role of healer, and our own helplessness when we are in the role of receiver.
If you wish to do healing work on a person who is not present, get her permission and discuss with her the images she is working with for her own healing. Then you can work with a strong visualization of the person, or you can put the energies that she wants to receive into an object and send it to her.
Shielding
Now that we have some sense of our energy bodies and what they can do, we need to look at the skill of protecting or shielding our energy bodies. In our story, Rose must withstand the blame and anger her brothers direct at her until the Old Woman can arrive to save the day. We are no different. Just as we sometimes need to protect our physical body, we sometimes need to protect our energy bodies. The pointing finger of an angry adversary, their dirty looks, their tone of speech can actually hurt even if we haven’t been touched. We deserve protection from this kind of attack.
Each of us feels intuitively that we take up a certain amount of space, a space larger than our physical bodies. With a little exploration, we can feel how big that space is and where its boundaries are. Let’s use the image from biology of a living cell, the smallest unit of life. The structures of the cell are suspended in a living field that is bounded by a cell wall, just as my physical body exists in an energy field that has its own natural boundaries. A cell’s wall can both protect the contents of the cell and also allow nutrients to cross into the cell. In high school biology we were told that this was a “semi-permeable membrane,” which means some things can penetrate it and others can’t.
This is an ideal image for the shielding that I want to be able to create on the boundaries of my energy body. I want to be able to take in, for example, information, inspiration, beauty, and love without taking in hostility, unfair criticism, hopelessness, and so forth. So I might imagine my “cell wall” as made out of a rubbery, resilient material that protects my energy body, with selective, star-shaped openings in it, so that the good things I want and need from my environment can get in quite easily. In an emergency, faced with hot aggression or shredding criticism, I might change my image to one of a mirrored surface that sends incoming energy back where it came from. With someone I love, I might choose a surface similar to a flower petal—soft, receptive, and organic. If images aren’t working that day, I can simply tell my boundaries what I want them to do: “Please filter out any jealous or vengeful energy coming my way today” or “Please alert me if I meet a person who might become a truly sympathetic friend.”
Fire Exercise: Shielding
With a partner, in sacred space choose a criticism or attack that you know for sure is inaccurate. Pick something goofy and irrelevant to start with, like “You’re always wasting our money on your sled-dog team” (apologies to any one who keeps sled dogs) or “I hate it when you dress like Scarlett O’Hara” (apologies to anyone who does so). Use the candle-flame meditation described earlier to awaken your sense of your energy body; then find your boundaries, and shield them with a strong protective image. Now ask your partner to attack you in the agreed-upon way. Depending on the image you are using, see if you can actually feel the attack bounce or reflect or bead up and run off your shield. Try several different images for your protective surface, and see which works best for you. Now switch, and let the other person try it.
Fire: Giving Back
It’s important for us to consider giving something back to the element of fire, just as we have with the element air. Do you know where the power in your home comes from? Are these renewable energy sources? Do they pollute? How about the power for your transportation?
How about the energy in your own body? Do you renew your own energy sources with nutritious food, rest, and exercise? Do you get enough fun to keep the twinkle in your eye and the spring in your step? How about great sex? That’s an excellent renewable energy source. Decide on one concrete way in which you can make change for the better in the energy flow of your life; and when you use energy, which is always, make sure you give something back.
Like Rose and her brothers, we have traveled to the salty, desolate shore where we faced our anger. Where we found that we had made wicked vows, binding us to past injustice, creating bitterness and revenge, we found the courage to break them. We learned to become aware of, and care for, and protect our energy bodies. We have begun a right relation with the element of fire. Now we are ready to take the next step in our journey.
The Inner Path
Rose follows the stream and finds her brothers. But instead of being greeted like the heroic rescuer, she finds that in their bitterness her brothers have resolved to kill the first young girl they meet as revenge for their plight. They, too, are trying to restore balance in their world. Although we may be horrified by their resolve, it rings true. It is a familiar human impulse to want to get back at someone who has caused harm. When we experience grave injuries and losses, it’s only human to try to regain control of the situation, even through negative or destructive decisions.
The Inner Path offers us each an opportunity to scrutinize our own life stories, to take a long look back and find “the wicked vows that we never should have made.” The wonder and magic of the story are that the brothers are not bound by their vow. When, with the Old Woman’s help, they see how wrong it was, they simply let it go and take up the threads of their lives again. The story offers us an opportunity to do the same, should we choose to do so.
Like the swan brothers, each of us has thoughts and feelings, even vows and resolves, based on our past experiences. The past is full of valuable information for us; it is a great resource that teaches us about ourselves and about others. It is the earth our wisdom grows in. But when our reactions to past experiences dominate our present in ways we are not fully aware of, we are not free. These wicked vows continue to affect our lives, making us do and say things that don’t really help us at all. We’ve got to break those wicked vows we never should have made.
It’s the most natural thing in the world for someone who has suffered from a painful or unfair experience to vow to never let it happen again. The swan brothers are not bad people; they are responding quite naturally to their rage and helplessness about the betrayal they have experienced. It’s the vow that is wicked, not the perfectly understandable feelings of the person who makes it. The vow is wicked because it binds us, not allowing us a fresh, powerful, effective engagement with the present. Rose’s brothers don’t actually want to harm her when they meet her; it is the old vow that is causing the trouble.
Most of us have made vows or decisions about ourselves based on our past experiences: “I’ll never love anyone as much as I love poor old Mom”; “I’m the kind and generous one, she’s the pretty one”; “I’m the kind of person other people pick on”; “I’ll never betray my financially struggling parents by having enough money”; “If I work hard enough in school, I’ll never get in trouble.” But years later we may find ourselves working eighteen-hour days, or broke again for no observable reason, or compulsively drawn into relationships with people who are mean to us, or repeatedly walking out on perfectly good love relationships. It’s clear that our wicked vows come with a high price. The vows often end up hurting us far more than the original injury did. This is the case with Rose’s brothers, who have vowed to kill the one creature who can help them, heal them, and weave their lives back into the design.
We are often not even aware that we have made these decisions. They may be well hidden under painful layers of anger and grief and shame. But no matter how well our vows and decisions about ourselves are hidden, Younger Self knows where to find them. If we ask gently and persistently, if we respect Younger Self’s language of sensation and image, trance and dream, we will be able to uncover our wicked vows and release them.<
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This is a moment of very delicate negotiation in the art and craft of self-love and self-care. Anger, grief, and shame often defend the most tender, the most raw parts of the self, those that are the least willing to see the light of day. When we search deep within, looking for the wicked vows we never should have made, we must keep the perspective of getting acquainted with ourselves in a gentle, friendly way. We must keep the perspective of the Goddess tradition, which honors all things in nature—the bee sting and the honey, the thorn and the rose. Our reactions to past events, no matter how much we may want to change them, are part of our natures and not to be judged harshly or disrespected.
We may find thoughts and feelings we judge as monstrous, like the swan brothers’ feeling that they’d like to kill the first young girl they meet. But we are not monsters. We are creatures of the Goddess, responding as we are meant to respond, and with our instinct and our intuition we have done our best. Everything in this world casts a shadow, and we are no exception. Our experiences, painful and joyful, all create reactions in the self, and some of them become imbedded and fossilized in our imaginations, our body wisdom, our emotional ecology, in ways that are not healthy. It is part of ongoing inner work to continuously seek out and release these forms of bondage. This work is part of the price of freedom and power. Now we seek healing; we seek to be whole and to be drawn back into the whole. Gently and persistently exploring our old scars and injuries, seeking ways to open where we are blocked, seeking release and relief—all are part of our task.
Breaking the Wicked Vow: Francie’s Story
Francie’s story is the one I always return to when I think about the wicked vow. The youngest child of an Irish family, she was the one still at home as her parents grew older. Her father drank too much, and when he would stumble home, it was Francie’s job to help him undress, get his shoes off, and get him to bed. She would have to get close to him, although he was sometimes violent and always maudlin. “Big Frank,” he would say to her, as though she were a son, “you’re the last of the Madisons; you’re our only hope.” Flooded with love and repulsion, pity and fear, the little girl resolved to herself that she’d make him proud someday.
I met Francie years later in Reclaiming circles. Her dad had died; she hadn’t saved him or made him proud. She still had a “deer in the headlights” look about her. She felt self-conscious and ashamed of her appearance. She’d had unsatisfying love relationships with men who weren’t very nice to her. She longed to write fiction but couldn’t get started. She was still bound by the “wicked vow that never should have been made.”
It took several years of trance work, dream work, and persistent, gentle self-care for Francie to uncover the raw, powerful memory that illuminated her childhood vow. Her voice was trembling when, safe in a powerfully cast and intimate circle of women, she finally described the exact feelings of trying to get her drunk father’s shoes off.
Francie was able, over the course of the next month, to do some private work at her own altar, releasing both herself and her father from the mutual bond of their pact. “The last of the Madisons” then proceeded to meet a lover and to start work on the first chapter of a detective novel. Francie had needed years of patient questioning to find out what was wrong. But once she knew, her “wicked vow” could be released at once, like that of the swan brothers.
Now, of course, Francie’s vow wasn’t wicked in exactly the same way as that of Rose’s swan brothers. Francie was binding herself to something that seemed kind and helpful, committing herself to somehow making sense out of the tragedy of her dad’s life by being Big Frank, the Last of the Madisons. But this was a wicked vow nonetheless, because no one can make sense out of another person’s life, no matter how hard they try. And another life may well be wasted in the process.
Do you have a guess already about your own wicked vows? What would it be like to look for a wicked vow of your own that underlies the disturbing sensation, or dream, or image that opened the door of the Inner Path for you? Maybe it’s just a matter of admitting to yourself something you already know. Did something pop into your head when you read that last sentence? Take a moment to close the book, close your eyes, and take a deep breath. If you allow yourself a moment of slow, deep honesty, do you have an idea of what your “wicked vow” might be? You can also try the following meditation.
Finding the Wicked Vow: Trance to the Salt Shore
For this meditation, you will need a bit of salt. When your circle meets, or alone at your altar, create sacred space, use your favorite trance induction, and go to your place of power. Greet the directions in your place of power. There is a path leading to the west. Follow it toward the place where the sun sets, into your own past, the land of memory.
Find the shore of the sea. Open all your senses to the sea, smell and taste the salt (please actually taste the salt), feel the salt air. There is a little dwelling here, on the seashore. Here are your brothers and sisters, and your own child self, and the other children your parents never had. Here you can talk with them or just be with them. You can ask their names and exchange tokens or gifts. You can ask, “What is the wicked vow that I never should have made?” They may be able to tell you, or at least offer some clues and signs. If you need help, allow the Old Woman to appear and help you.
When you are ready, thank everyone, and say good-bye. Know that you can return here at will, that this place is reached through your own place of power. This doesn’t have to be your only visit; you don’t have to do everything this time. Return the same way you came. Say good-bye to the directions in your place of power, and reverse the induction. Take your time returning to normal consciousness; stretch and say your name. Leave some time for discussion; let people talk about what they found on the salt shore. If you are working alone, write down what you discovered in your Book of Shadows.
Breaking the Wicked Vow: Another Story
Here’s another story about how I discovered one of my own wicked vows, with some help from Rose May Dance. Rose is one of the founding members of Reclaiming. A founder of the Prevention Point needle-exchange program, Rose has played an important part in making sure clean, safe needles were available to drug users and street people who would otherwise be at risk for AIDS and hepatitis C—even when providing clean needles was illegal. One night when I was first teaching in Reclaiming classes, Rose gave me a Witch’s greatest gift: she saw me more clearly than I could see myself, and she challenged me.
Rose and I were teaching a class together, and the women had paired off to do trance work. All the students were successfully absorbed in the work, and suddenly I, the inexperienced teacher, didn’t have anything to do. I went and stood awkwardly in the center of the room, arms crossed, certain that I should be doing something incredibly magical, but unsure what it was. Suddenly I noticed Rose beckoning to me silently. I went over quietly and sat down next to her.
As she pointed to my back, Rose said, “You’re pregnant. It’s on your back.” Her eyes were half blank, with the incredible depth of one who was seeing the unseen world. A moment later she was back to herself, and she said with a grin and a gleam in her eye, “At least you could try to get it around to the front!”
Although what she was saying seemed bizarre and maybe even offensive to Talking Self, Younger Self leaped at the suggestion. Part of me knew that the awkward posture in which I had been standing expressed a feeling of carrying a great weight of responsibility on my shoulders and back, a part of my body that was often tense and sore. Rose had “seen” this unhealthy knot in my energy body.
Throughout that class, I worked magically with Rose’s vision of me, which I experienced as being like my carrying a backpack full of rocks. I actually did fill a backpack with rocks, which I carried at class, feeling in the physical world what my energy body felt and looked like to Rose. Over the weeks of the class, my Younger Self, Talking Self, and Deep Self slowly came into agreement that this was no way to live and that something should be done about it. T
alking Self was able to understand that I had made childish “wicked vows” that put me at risk of seeing myself as the savior and protector of others. These vows gave me the burden of making what I imagined to be superhuman efforts for other people, efforts that they might in fact experience as interference, condescension, or simply showing off.
Now, I wasn’t wicked for making these vows, any more than Francie was. In fact, my feelings are quite common for the oldest child of a troubled family. Nevertheless, the vows were wicked, and they were holding me back from the fullest possible passionate engagement with my life, from becoming the woman the Goddess meant for me to be. So it was up to me to do something about them.
Finally I was ready to go to the beach and do a ritual to release the sensation of overresponsibility, weight, and pressure on my back. I took along a friend to help me, and we cast a circle. Inside it I ran around as long as I could with the backpack of rocks. Let me tell you, it’s hard to run in the sand with a heavy backpack! When I was utterly exhausted, I sat (or rather fell) down in the sand. I brought the backpack around to the front. What a relief! Taking out the rocks one by one, I named them with the false ideas I had about myself that gave me the feeling of overresponsibility for others. As I named each rock, I threw it as far as I could into the surf. Since I was still playing softball at the time, my arm was pretty good, and it was incredibly satisfying to see the rocks flying out beyond the breaking waves and sinking, literally like a stone. I gave my troubles to Mama Ocean, opened the circle, and walked away a free woman.
It would be inaccurate to say that I never again felt overly responsible for a child or a student or a friend. But that day marked a definite turning point in my relationship with myself and the beginning of a long-term, always improving release in that area of my life.
