The Twelve Wild Swans

by Starhawk

  The following meditation is widely used in the Reclaiming tradition. We use it to find the wicked vows hidden in knots in our energy bodies. You’re welcome to give it a try if you’d like to find more clues to your own “wicked vows.” Remember, it’s the vows that are wicked, not the perfectly understand able feelings of the hurt or angry person who made the vows.

  Finding the Wicked Vow in Your Energy Body

  In the following exercise, we will move through our bodies’ energy centers, one by one. We will seek help from sensation, from images and visions that arise, and from our inner voices. We will listen to the language of Younger Self as we ask for clues and signs that can show us how our bodies hold on to strong patterning from our reactions to past events.

  For this exercise we use the seven energy centers in our bodies called chakras. Although most Westerners have heard the word chakra only in association with Hinduism, the idea that our energy bodies have seven centers that correspond to the colors of the rainbow, the notes of the octave, and the energies of the sun, the moon, and the five visible planets has been part of the Western mystery traditions since pre-Christian times. These ideas are found in our oldest systems of symbols, such as the tarot deck. One route by which some of these ideas came into the Western mystery traditions long ago was through the Rosicrucians.

  Rose May Dance brought these psychic practices into Reclaiming. Rose reminds us: “This exercise is only a guideline. These are only some of the images associated with the chakras. Only you know all that is contained anywhere in your body and aura.” Here is one way we might do a chakra cleansing in the Reclaiming tradition.

  Exercise: Chakra Cleansing

  With your circle, create sacred space. You may wish to take turns leading this meditation, with one person beginning by running energy, and then trading off so each person leads the meditation for one chakra.

  Using the “Tree of Life” meditation, begin running energy. As you breathe in, draw in the earth and sky energy, and let them mix and dance inside you; on the outbreath, feel the energy flowing back to the earth. When your energy body is fully awakened, allow your attention to settle into your first chakra: your legs, butt, colon, anus, and perineum. Feel the earth beneath your feet, feel the bowl of your pelvic bones, and find the center of your energy in this part of your body. Let the color red light up this part of your body. Some of the gifts and challenges you may find here involve physical security, physical health, home, work and money, survival, and fear.

  Open your inner senses to find out if you are bound here to past or current relationships with other people, to images, to emotions, to memories that are not truly part of yourself. If so, simply allow them to move out of your energy body, beyond your boundaries, allowing these attachments to melt into the past, into the earth. If they hang on stubbornly, try using the powers of the elements on them, imagine them composting, washing away, burning away, or blowing away. Ask for help from deity, remembering that the Goddess wants and needs you free, powerful, whole, joyful, moving toward your life purpose and fulfillment. She will surely help you. Be open to help from your spirit, animal, and plant helpers and from your tools. Use sound and movement to help yourself: cry, hum, roar, shake, tremble, dance.

  Whenever we create space inside ourselves with a purification, we need to fill it up again with something we consciously choose. Otherwise, the next strong influence we run into may fill the empty space for us. So when you move energy forms out of your energy body, be sure to replace them. You may have a strong image of the energy you would like to feel in this part of your body: a warm hearth, a still lake, a flourishing tree. But if you don’t have something specific in mind, please fill the open space with the color associated with that chakra. Take a specific, concrete example of the color from nature; otherwise even a color can be too abstract. For red, choose the color of garnets, or the red rock of the desert, or the red of a poppy or rose you’ve seen, or the color of the planet Mars if you’re a stargazer. Choose something that has meaning for you personally and that you can strongly imagine. When your first chakra is glowing clean and red, move on to your second chakra, and repeat the exercise.

  When you investigate your second chakra, you will focus your attention on your lower belly and back, kidneys, bladder, lower intestines, and reproductive organs. As you explore this part of your body, freeing yourself from any bondage there, light up your second chakra with the color orange. Some of the gifts and challenges in the second chakra may involve creativity, sexuality, and fertility of all kinds.

  As you move your attention to your third chakra, you will give attention to your upper belly, between the solar plexus and the navel, digestive organs, stomach, liver, upper intestines, spleen and gallbladder, and your spine. Some of the gifts and challenges you may find here may include power and will. As you work through this area of your body, opening up space and freeing yourself, light it up with the color yellow.

  Moving on to the fourth chakra, we will attend to our rib cage, heart and lungs, back and shoulders, breasts, lymph glands, arms, and hands. Some of the gifts and challenges in this part of your body may include love, hurt, breath, and working with the hands. As you work through the sensations and associations in this part of your body, freeing yourself, fill it up with the color green.

  For the fifth chakra, we will work with the neck and throat, mouth and nose, jaw and ears, voice, and sinuses. Some of the gifts and challenges we find here may include communication and the expression of emotion. As we free ourselves in this part of the body, we light ourselves up with the color blue.

  Moving on to the sixth chakra, we investigate our thoughts, eyes, and mind, as well as our third eye—the spot between and right above the eyes. Gifts and challenges we may find here include memory, psychic abilities, intuition, and the inner senses. As we work through this part of our bodies, finding release from old bondage, we light it up with the color indigo, a dark blue-black like the summer midnight sky between the stars.

  Now we complete the work by moving to the seventh chakra, the crown, the top of the head. Here we may find gifts and challenges involving yearning for spirit and divinity. As we work through this part of our bodies, we light our selves up with the color violet.

  Now that you have worked through each of your chakras once, take a moment to check in with yourself. Are there people or situations that are important in your life that did not show up as you worked through the chakras? If so, you may take another moment to ask yourself where in your energy body you are still affected by those people or situations. You may need to go back and redo part of the work if someone important like your mother didn’t show up your first time through.

  A thorough chakra cleansing is a big working, especially the first time you try it. Please make sure that you have allowed yourself plenty of time for cooldown and for discussion in your circle or for journaling if you are working alone. Be sure to eat something substantial, including protein. After you’ve opened your circle, you may wish to bathe or shower, cleaning yourself with salts. Please don’t rush straight from this meditation to driving the carpool or going to work or falling asleep. Allow yourself a period of self-care first.

  This is a meditation that many Reclaiming Witches use on a regular basis to keep themselves free of bondage to the past. We use it to make sure we are progressing toward our own life’s meaning and purpose and to free ourselves from our “wicked vows.”

  Getting Acquainted with Anger

  Did you notice that in the story about the backpack full of rocks, my first reaction to Rose’s insight was to be slightly offended? That is actually a very important detail of the story, which parallels the swan brothers’ anger at their sister and their desire to kill her. When we find places in ourselves where we are bound to the past in unhealthy ways, whether through our trance work or through energy work, or in any other way, we may feel angry or ashamed or repelled by what we find.

  We all have secrets that we keep from ourselves, and often th
ose secrets are the powerful dynamos behind our most difficult, intractable personal suffering. Francie didn’t want to know that her problems with men stemmed from her childhood failure to live up to the role her father had assigned her—that of “Big Frank, Last of the Madisons.” I didn’t want to know that I was walking around awkward and stiff from the weight of false heroics. In fact, if someone had simply told me, I would probably have been very angry. When Rose told me her intuition of the pregnancy on my back, the strong, primitive imagery and the context of the circle work allowed Younger Self to hear what Talking Self could never have endured.

  For the swan brothers, their sister is not only the cause of their suffering, but is also their only hope of escape. When they meet her and want to kill her in their blindness of anger and desire for revenge, they risk killing the one creature that can help them, transform them, and heal them. In the same way, it is often the most-needed insight about ourselves that we resist most heavily. This irony is so painfully human, and so strangely familiar, that we dare not ignore it. Perhaps we can even use that knee-jerk overreaction of anger as a clue or sign to help us find our wicked vows where they lie hidden.

  Anger Exercise: An Anger Observatory

  Is there some situation or person in your life who brings up an extreme, irrational annoyance or even rage in you? Perhaps you already know exactly what you need to work with, but if not, try this little trick. Just think about traffic.

  Whether you’re driving, walking, or on the bus, isn’t there something that drives you crazy? Is it the double-parked beer trucks outside the market? Is it the oblivious teenager who doesn’t get up and give his seat on the bus to the pregnant lady with the toddler and grocery bags? The lost tourist driving three miles an hour down a congested street? The little red sports car that zooms from lane to lane, passing everyone?

  If I can catch myself in a moment of annoyance like this, I can observe a very interesting fact. There are probably several other people behaving just as badly who aren’t bothering me at all. Perhaps behind the oblivious teenager on the bus is a self-centered elder detailing her illnesses to a neighbor who is obviously trying to read his paper and ignore her. But neither of them is driving me crazy. It’s the oblivious teen who draws my enraged attention again and again. I can hardly stop glaring at him.

  Here is an opportunity to learn something about myself. If the teenager’s bad behavior is getting such a strong reaction from me, while other people’s bad behavior seems normal or understandable or excusable, then my reaction tells me something about myself, not something about the teenager. In most cases, if I’m honest with myself, my process goes something like this: “I would never act like that. I am a caring person. I would get up and give my seat to the pregnant lady.” And immediately under that, if I apply a deep, slow honesty, I often find some situation in my own life in which I am similar to the person I am angry with. Perhaps I am being oblivious of and not acknowledging a friend who really needs help.

  This is another form of my wicked vow. I decided long ago that I am a caring person, and I have a right to be mad at people who aren’t. If I find myself in a situation where a friend needs help and I’m not offering it, I have to keep this secret from myself. While I may have a very good reason for not offering to help my friend, I can’t make a conscious or flexible choice about the situation.

  Just as the swan brothers are stuck on the idea that they hate girls, so I am stuck on the idea that I am a helpful person. I am skewered on my own rigid, fragile self-definition, my “wicked vow,” and I simply cannot allow conflicting observations and insights into my awareness. Meanwhile my friend is not getting the help she may need, and I can’t tell her why because I’m busy glaring at people on the bus.

  Why not try this observation on yourself? Give yourself some time, and find several situations where your irritation or anger seems disproportionate to the cause. Simply write these down for several days in your Book of Shadows. In each case, note any strong absolute statements you may be making about yourself or others. The words never and always are key clues that cry out for more self-examination: “I never would say something that mean”; or “I always hang up my towel.” In each case, ask yourself in what ways could you be similar to the offending person or incident, perhaps in some completely different area of life.

  You may wish to discuss some of these situations and observations with your circle. Your circle sisters may point out at once that the cautious lost tourist driving three miles an hour is just like you: you’ve been waiting a year to ask for a well-deserved raise. They may know right away that the speedster in the red sports car is just like the sixteen new classes and projects you started this year but were unable to finish. The more accurate they are, the more likely you are to be annoyed, so be prepared!

  Releasing Your Wicked Vow

  Now, perhaps, you are beginning to have a pretty good idea about your own “wicked vows.” You may have found them in the trance to the salt shore or in the sensory inner world of your own body, in your chakras. You’ve also observed the patterns of your own anger and acknowledged how the things that make you angry on the outside may also be reflected inside you.

  For many of us, the anger we feel is something we have kept closely under wraps, never fully admitting it to ourselves or to others, never expressing it fully. But sometimes allowing emotion to express itself and peak can lead to liberation. Anger that threatens to overwhelm or numb or swamp us in its first flood can become a powerful river, even a focused laser beam, for change. Here is a story told by a Reclaiming Witch I’ll call Hermine, who was able to give full rein to her anger in the safe, sacred space of her circle. See what happened next.

  Breaking the Wicked Vow: Twelve Pounds of Purple Jell-O

  I was recently having a hard time with the residue of my relationship with my mother and the way I had been brought up. An important issue for me was the issue of boundaries. My mother had no sense of boundaries with me, still was invading my boundaries, and I was letting myself get overrun by people, was too wide open, and in turn habitually climbed all over other people’s “space.” I also was suffering from a pretty bad self-image even though I knew what my strong points were. I was in a bad depression, was ill with bronchial trouble, and was stressed out about money.

  I asked my therapist for suggestions on what to do, how to stop being a victim, how to grow up. He sent me into a trance state to find the answers to these questions.

  As soon as I arrived in my special trance place, I saw a large purple monster coming for me. I recognized it immediately. It was the same monster that had frightened me badly in a fever dream when I was a child, sick with bronchial trouble. The monster, which was blobby and changed form rapidly, sat on me to smother me. I began to call for my mother, as I had the first time I saw the monster. But when Mother appeared, I realized it was foolish to ask her for help, since she seemed just as harmful to me as the monster; in fact, she seemed to be part of the monster. I began to beat the monster back with fists and knives, and sometimes I seemed to be fighting my mother, too.

  My therapist brought me up out of the trance before I got any resolution. I saw that the trance had to do with my mother’s and my boundary problem, and I congratulated myself for not wanting to make myself helpless to someone who was harming me. But I wanted a “how”: I wanted to know what to do to stop being a victim, a helpless baby. I felt that the “how” must have something to do with my ritual knife, my athalme. The therapist suggested I make a monster out of Jell-O—nice and blobby and purple—and play with it and my knife.

  So I asked my coven, Sea Hags, to give me time at our next meeting, and I prepared a Jell-O monster, using red and blue food coloring and sixteen packets of Knox gelatin in a big kettle. I slid the Jell-O out of the kettle and onto a tray, and it began to undulate, which looked very promising to me. My coven cast a circle and asked for the powers to help us in our work, and I took a baby doll, blessed it, named it with my name— “Blessed be thou,
creature of art, thou art no longer a poppet but a living child, and I name thee Hermine” —and blessed my sacred knife. I lay down next to these tools and the Jell-O blob, and my coveners put me in a very deep trance.

  I had asked them to remind me that I could move and talk during this trance, that I had asked them to participate in the trance by saying things to me, goading me, doing whatever they saw fit. I arrived at a place of power and observed the four directions. Then my coveners told me I was in the center in a big bed and far off I saw something coming toward me.

  I saw that it was the monster, and I began to scream and shake, calling and calling for my mother. She did not come. I felt that the monster was on top of me, and I began to choke and cough. I got up and leaned over into the Jell-O and put my face into it. Then I rose up and began to pound and smash it with my fists, crying and shouting. I grabbed my athalme and stabbed at the monster, but this was unsatisfactory because the knife hit the metal tray under the Jell-O and there was no feeling that I had penetrated or hurt the monster. So I returned to pounding it, and it broke apart and scattered all over. Then I took my knife and carefully put the Jell-O back onto the tray.

  The Sea Hags reached over and messed up the Jell-O, scattering it on the floor and throwing it at me, taunting me: “Hermine, you’ve made a mess!”; “Hermine, you’re always such a mess”; “Hermine, clean it up!” The Sea Hags, who were being my mother, would not leave me alone. They started to physically attack me, pushing and pinching me. I threatened them with my athalme and demanded that all my coveners—my mother—leave the room. Still they would not shut up.

  Suddenly I lay on the floor and took my athalme and drew around the outlines of my body. I heard the Sea Hags go “Ah!” and I breathed easy. I asked, “If there are any of my coveners, my real friends, in the room, could they please come brush up my energy?”

  My covener Spider took my feet and said, “Whose feet are these?” “Mine, Hermine’s,” I replied. “Whose legs are these?” “Mine.” And so on up the body. I took hold of the baby doll and placed her inside my shirt and comforted her. I heard my coveners make baby complaints: “Who will take care of me?”; “I’m afraid I’ll never be happy”; “I’m afraid you won’t give me enough.” And I soothed the baby. I told her, “Well, I’m sorry you feel that way. You just have a good cry. You’ll be all right; everybody feels that way sometimes,” being careful to not make myself any promises I couldn’t keep.