The Twelve Wild Swans

by Starhawk

  Finally I asked the Sea Hags to bring me up out of trance. I showered, and we feasted.

  Since that time, I have had some amazing breakthroughs about my love life, about my mother—understanding and forgiving her, sending her healing—about my money trip, and I am not running myself down very much. I am doing better about discharging my responsibilities and have not posed as a victim once! I use the mental image of cutting a boundary around myself with my knife when I am in an intense situation that would usually make me lose it. I am a Witch because I get to work with tools.

  Hermine was able to find her rage, tracing it all the way back to her childhood. By allowing her anger to come to the surface and be fully expressed, she was able to work directly with it and gain some tools and self-confidence for protecting her boundaries. Only then was she able to embark on the journey of forgiveness, breaking her “wicked vows.”

  Fire Ritual: Breaking the Wicked Vow

  Here is a ritual that can help you tie your story to Rose’s and give you another opportunity to break your “wicked vows.” Arrange for some private undisturbed time if you are working alone, or do this ritual with your circle sisters. You will need a safe place to build a fire, and fire-building materials. You will also need paper and writing materials.

  Create sacred space together. Build a good strong fire, and let it burn until there are hot coals and some good-sized pieces of wood burning well. Each person should try to write down her “wicked vows” that never should have been made, as clearly and simply as possible, on a piece of paper that she is willing to part with. When you are all ready, prepare to burn the papers. Sing over them, chanting songs of fire, of purification, and of freedom. Allow yourselves to enter a light trance.

  When the time is right, burn the papers. Watch how they burn, how fragile the paper and the vows were. Watch, too, how the fire keeps right on burning. Meditate on your own lives. What are the deeper sources, the deeper motivations that remain when the wicked vows are gone? What are the burning logs, the hot coals in your life? What powers you, at your core? There may be some healthy anger left burning there—anger at injustice, at unnecessary suffering, the anger that arises when the innocent, or the very web of life itself, is threatened. Not all anger is wicked. Anger can be healthy fuel, raising energy for change, when it is channeled not toward blame or shame, revenge or self-destruction, but toward transformation. You may wish to speak of your values and passions. Try to use single words, not losing focus with lengthy discussion.

  When you are finished, put out the fire safely, and open the circle. Take a bit of the ashes of this fire and place them on your Rose altar, to remind you that you have the power to release your “wicked vows” as you continue to discover more about yourself and that you have deep sources of energy for your life that go far beyond your “wicked vows.”

  Exercise: Creating a Personal Anger Ritual

  Now that we have done a purification by fire and thought over the stories of Big Frank, of the backpack of rocks, and of the purple Jell-O, do you feel called to craft a “wicked vow” spell of your own? Is there something specific that you need to do between the worlds to bring up and to release your own wicked vows? In the fire purification ritual, we released our anger into a bonfire. In the story of the backpack full of rocks, I released my troubles into the ocean. In Hermine’s story, she released her anger into a physical object, the purple Jell-O. What element could help you with your release?

  Find a way to translate your own personal story, with its colors, images, and sensations, into a spell of your very own. Assemble your tools and toys—whatever Younger Self wants and needs. If you are lucky enough to have a circle of sympathetic friends, let your friends help you act it out in sacred space. If you do your magic alone, create sacred space at your Rose altar, and complete the spell by working there. But even if you do magic alone, remember to get help and support from friends and teachers when you allow your hurt and anger over past injustice to arise. When doing challenging magic, we each need the perspective and care that can come only from other people.

  You have faced bitterness on the salt seashore. You have acknowledged and released your own “wicked vows.” You have left behind the burdens that kept you earthbound. You are lit up from within with a beautiful rainbow of healthy energy. Now you are ready to ally with your own “dear sister” and fly free. Now you have the passion and the power you will need for that flight.

  The Outer Path

  When, like Rose, we have listened to our own intuition telling us that something is out of balance, when we have sought the truth and left our protective shelters, when we have followed the river to its end, then we are brought face-to-face with great injustices that we can no longer ignore. Our world abounds in inequality. Daily the media bombard us with images of wealth and success, yet beggars crowd our streets. We are building prisons faster than schools, and whole groups among us see their opportunities limited, their dreams blighted, their jobs threatened, their communities under siege. In spite of all the liberation movements of the last century, society still too often discriminates against people because of their gender, color, sexual preference, age, or class.

  Injustice brings forth rage. Rose’s brothers are filled with rage at the loss of their human lives because of their mother’s preference for a girl. We empathize with their hurt and anger, for at some point in our lives we have all seen someone else preferred above us, and we know how it feels to envy the favored one.

  Rage is a powerful and dangerous emotion. Anger is life-force energy that can mobilize strength we didn’t know we had. Channeled and directed, rage can be a gift, a great creative force. Undirected, it can destroy the very things that might have healed us, as Rose’s brothers might have killed her because of the vow their anger and jealousy led them to make.

  To change the world, to be true healers and shapers, we must be able both to withstand the rage of others and to channel and contain our own anger. As leaders, we must take up Rose’s challenge: to hold her ground, not to slip into being a victim. She must neither allow herself to be killed nor respond with her own rage and disappointment; rather, she must trust that the powers and allies she has already gathered will speak for her now. Rose may seem passive, but that is only because she has already acted to set in motion the forces that will protect her. Her willing assumption of the task of healing, her generosity toward the old beggar woman, have won her the protection of the Crone. We too must find and know our allies, and the work of this chapter begins with identifying our sources of strength and support.

  We need strong support to acknowledge and transform our own rage and jealousy—not the personal anger we explored in the Inner Path but the collective anger, the deep and ancient rage, associated with all the ways in which our differences have marked us as targets of oppression. The pain of discrimination goes back centuries, millennia, and when it surfaces it can be overwhelming. When we have been hurt or oppressed, we can easily become the swan brothers, wanting to kill the first person we meet. If we bring that rage into a position of leadership, we can become destructive and even abusive to others.

  When we take a stand for what we believe is right, when we challenge systems of injustice, we often face powerful opposition. As Martin Luther King Jr. said in his “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” “The privileged seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.” We must channel our rage into focused action that can undermine unfair privilege and bring about true justice. We cannot afford to squander our rage on our brothers or sisters. We need allies as powerful as the old woman, and we need to learn to be allies to ourselves and to each other as well.

  What is an ally? In the magical realm, an ally is an aspect of the Goddess or God, an Old Woman, an ancestor, a spirit, a constellation of forces we deeply identify with and feel a special connection with. Those spirit forces also have their own tasks and works and may come to us with aid and blessings when we take up challenges that augment theirs.

  In our
daily relationships, an ally is someone who offers us support, who stands beside us in our struggles, who watches our back. “An ally is someone who, although not the target of an oppression, is outraged by its existence and is willing to act on that outrage,” says Katrina, a Witchcamp teacher who as a lifelong activist and an African-American woman knows the power of a strong ally in confronting injustice. “We are all potentially allies in the struggle against oppression.”

  Remembering Our Allies

  The power of our outer work in the world depends on the depth of our connection to the springs of life that feed us. To make our work effective, and to stay sane while doing it, we need a strong, daily personal practice. The tools we’ve developed to deepen our connection to the Goddess—grounding, calling on the elements, working with our anchor, and bringing ourselves back to our core worth—are all important aspects of inner healing, but they are more important than ever on the Outer Path. We very easily crowd our lives with work for others and forget to leave time for our own work. We may be teaching so many classes on meditation that we don’t have time to meditate, or facilitating so many rituals that we never do ritual for ourselves.

  Many of the rituals and exercises in this book are designed to deepen our relationship with the Goddess and our connection to the mysteries. Now is a good time to review them and to ask yourself the following questions:

  Who are my allies between the worlds? Which aspects of the Goddess, of the Gods, which ancestors, do I feel most deeply connected to?

  What can I do to deepen my daily, ongoing connection with them? Are there offerings I can make? Specific meditations, prayers, or exercises? How do I express my gratitude?

  Before beginning a project, a class, a campaign, ask:

  Who are my allies in this work? How can I invoke them? What offerings should I make? How will I work with them? Thank them?

  Who are my human allies? What are the issues and struggles that I must ally with in order to do this work?

  Love Bathing

  Sage is a Reclaiming teacher from British Columbia who has a strong daily practice and a powerful connection with a very personal Goddess. She suggests the following simple daily practice:

  In sacred space, ground, center, and breathe deeply. Imagine your awareness dropping down into the center of your belly. Let yourself be still in that place, and just open to a vision of the Goddess sitting opposite you. Experience her opening her heart and pouring out her love for you. Remember, you don’t need to do anything to earn her love. She’s going to love you no matter who you are or what you’ve done or failed to do. Breathe in her love, fill yourself with it, and know that you are her beloved child. When you are ready, return and open your circle.

  To move in the world as a person grounded in our true, creative, wild power is to walk with a sense of honor. Honor is an old-fashioned word we tend to associate with a testosterone-driven urge to leap into sword fights over every imagined insult. True honor, however, is grounded in the deep knowledge that we deserve to be treated with respect and compassion and is made manifest in the way we treat others. Honor is balanced with humility in the Witches’ liturgy “The Charge of the Goddess,” in which we are told: “May there be beauty and strength, power and compassion, honor and humility, mirth and reverence within you.” Humility comes from the same root as humus, earth. It means to remain close to the earth, grounded in the deep willingness to offer others the respect we would receive. To walk with honor is to acknowledge our gifts, experience, and skills, to be able to offer without imposing, advise without believing ourselves infallible, share our experience while admitting we might not know what is best for someone else.

  As honorable people, we keep commitments and act in a way consistent with our own ideals—not out of fear of punishment or of divine judgment, but out of a deep sense of self-respect, a sense that to do less would be unworthy of us. And so to walk with honor, we must also learn a lesson from Rose’s brothers. We must not mistake honor for the blind following of unwise promises and vows or the seeking of revenge. To be fearless shamans linking the realms of earth and sky, walkers between the worlds of magic and manifestation, we must relinquish our desire for retaliation.

  None of us like to think of ourselves as jealous or revengeful people. But we are all also subject to the temptations of revenge. They arise daily in the most ordinary of situations, and the vengeful urge often disguises itself as a righteous sense of justice.

  Once a Reclaiming teacher who shall remain nameless sent out an e-mail commenting on a task I and some others had taken on. Her post sent me off fuming, feeling that our work was unappreciated and that we were being patronized as well. I composed a stunning response. It was calm, thoughtful, full of forbearance and the wisdom only an elder can muster up. But before pushing the Send button, I decided to get a second opinion. I asked my friend Rose May Dance to read the post. She did, and then she asked me, “Why do you want to send this?”

  I thought for a moment and then had to answer honestly, “I want to make so-and-so look really bad.”

  I didn’t send the post.

  Like Rose’s brothers, we must overcome the desire for vengeance if we are to nurture the powers that can truly heal us. Our revenge may be expressed so subtly it is hard to recognize. Daggers and poisons are easily identified as weapons and challenged; hostile remarks, unfair criticisms, and toxic atmospheres are harder to confront. The more power we have—whether it be power-over, the formal power to allocate resources or make decisions; or power-with, the influence we wield—the more potentially destructive our revenge can be.

  We relinquish revenge because of our sense of pride and honor, as an act of self-respect. We let go of vengeance out of love and concern for our larger community. To be a true leader, we must be able to look at each of our acts and say, “How will this affect the community? Is it worth dividing the community for me to be proved right? Would I not be destroying the very source of support and healing I most need?”

  And we relinquish revenge because we hold a vision of healing, for ourselves and for the world. Magic teaches us that the ends do not justify the means. Instead, the means themselves shape the ends that follow. We cannot achieve healing through vengeance. We cannot serve a broad vision by being petty and spiteful.

  Revenge and Impact Meditation

  This is a meditation to help us let go of anger and hurt and consider the impact of our actions. It’s a good one to do in the midst of conflict or before answering your e-mail.

  At your altar, place a bowl of salt water in front of you. Breathing deeply, think about the conflict you’re involved in. Let yourself feel your anger and fantasize about your revenge.

  Now, stop and ask yourself, “If I did this act, if I sent this message, how would it affect my community? What is the truest good of the whole community in this matter? What true allies would it bring me? What is my vision, and would this really serve it?”

  Allow your desires for revenge to swirl and flow into the water. Breathe up power from the earth to charge and transform those energies. Remember your allies, and bathe in their care for you, and in the love of the Goddess. When you are ready, drink a sip of the water. Take back your energy as creativity, compassion, and love.

  Subtle Forms of Revenge

  Following are some examples of the kind of subtle revenge an empowering leader must relinquish in order to act with honor:

  • The urge to make someone else look bad to the group or feel bad about their behavior;

  • The urge to punish someone who has criticized you or not supported your program;

  • The urge to get rid of someone who causes you problems.

  We cannot afford to exclude people simply because they do not agree with us or because they once slept with our lover or have an annoying personality. Over the years, I’ve found that every single person I might have at some point wanted to eliminate from our groups has gone on to undertake important work that I didn’t have the time, skills, or energy
to do myself.

  And often that person I most want to get rid of is merely a shadow of myself, the mirrored image of qualities I can’t acknowledge in myself. Rose is the swan brothers’ sister: she is deeply akin to them. Were they to kill her, they would be killing a part of themselves. So, too, we often lash out at just those qualities that are our own mirrored shadows. Part of our magical training is in learning to see, know, and work with the energies locked in our shadows.

  Meeting Your Shadow Self

  In a safe, relaxed space, consider the previous discussion. When have you acted as the swan brothers? When have you fallen prey to your own urge for revenge? For control? In what ways does it manifest itself uniquely for you?

  Think about one situation in which you’ve behaved in a way that is out of balance. Just for a moment, let that energy and emotion take you over. Who are you when you’re caught up in it? Imagine that you literally become a new character, a vengeful swan brother, a different self. Let yourself create that character as if it were a character in a book or play. What is its name? What does it look like? What is a typical thing it might say? A gesture or posture it might take?

  When your character has taken form, introduce yourself to the group, along with your typical statement: “I am Attila—stay out of my way!” “I am Pathetica—and, oh, never mind, I can’t do this sort of thing.”

  While you might expect this process to be painful and embarrassing, in reality it usually becomes bonding and funny. It’s a wonderful thing to do in a group that has experienced conflict, perhaps before a long meeting or a mediation. People’s faults are much easier to accept when you know that they recognize them and can even laugh at them. And we feel much more relaxed in a group when we know that our worser selves have been seen and are not unique.