The Twelve Wild Swans

by Starhawk

  One summer at Vermont Witchcamp, I led this exercise together with Baruch, who is a therapist in his day job. My negative self was Ilsa, the Fascist Healer: “You must do what I say, or you will not get the full benefit of the program!” One thing that struck both of us was how quickly, in the group of forty people, we learned everybody’s name. Each person became distinctive once we knew their shadow character, and most of the characters were actually quite endearing.

  Throughout the rest of the week, every time I issued an instruction, someone would inevitably ask, “Do we have to do that?” “You don’t have to,” I’d begin to reply, “but…” A chorus of voices would gleefully interrupt: “If you don’t, you will not get the full benefit of the program!” My control issues were dealt a gentle but effective blow.

  After a time of working with your shadow self (which will vary according to the setting), go back into sacred space. Remember that Rose does love her brothers, and her love allows them to give up their revenge and to change. Call up your shadow self, and take some time to examine it and meditate on its positive qualities. Ilsa, for example, really cares about people. Give each person in the circle a chance to reintroduce their character and claim its positive qualities. This is often a good way to end a class or workshop.

  There are many levels of shadow work. For Rose, her brothers’ desire to kill her is, in a sense, the shadow of her desire to save them. To truly integrate our shadows, we must also examine our assumptions and beliefs. Katrina is a woman of many facets: a strong psychic, powerful priestess, activist, and engineer. She trains groups in diversity work, which inevitably involves confronting our shadows. She suggests the following approach to identifying some of our shadow beliefs and desires:

  Meditation on Opposites

  At your altar, write down some of the things you think, want, need, intend, or desire. Pick the top five.

  Now, say out loud the opposite of each one. If you believe that people are basically good, you might say, “I believe that people are by nature evil and sinful.” If you deeply desire a committed relationship, you might say, “I don’t need or want love.”

  Notice the things that are most intense for you, that carry the most charge. They are clues to where your shadow lies. What happens when you meet people or groups who espouse those beliefs?

  Sometimes identifying our shadow can tell us something surprising about our true beliefs. Katrina describes what happened when she was working with this exercise: “I thought, What’s the opposite of something I believe? And what popped out of my mouth was, ‘I’m beautiful.’ So I had to stop and go, ‘Whoa, I don’t believe I’m beautiful? I really need to work with that!’ And that means the beautiful sister is my shadow.”

  Shadow Beliefs

  Following is an exercise I suggest for those of us with strong political convictions. It’s especially helpful when we are trying to build coalitions with those whose beliefs differ from our own.

  1. Write out a list of five to a dozen of the principles and ideas you most deeply believe in.

  2. Now, over a moon cycle, devote a day to each. Walk through your day asking yourself how you would look at the world and at each choice you make if you held the opposite belief.

  3. Keep a journal of your insights.

  When we are familiar with our own shadows, when we know and acknowledge our worser selves, we are ready to work toward a new level of community healing. We can embrace diversity without projecting onto others our own unintegrated selves.

  Rose has run forward to embrace her brothers. Her deepest desire is to connect with them. But first she must hear their anger, their vengeful vow. So, too, when we attempt to connect across the barriers of our differences, we may encounter hostility or anger instead of gratitude. And we may make mistakes. Try as we might to be sensitive, we may say things that offend others or may be heard in ways we didn’t intend. We have different triggers that set off our pain; we cause hurt when we mean to bring comfort.

  A man walks up to a woman, gives her a warm, affectionate hug—and restimulates all her memories of sexual abuse. A woman walks up to one of the few African-American women in a group and tells her, “I’m so glad one of your people is here,” instantly making her feel set apart, isolated, and seen only as a category, not as a person. We can put out lists of things not to do or say, but we can never anticipate all the things we might do wrong or say wrong.

  What we can do is learn to listen well when we’ve made a mistake. When we are the targets of rage, like Rose we must learn to stand our ground without ourselves becoming either vengeful or victims. Sometimes our part in healing centuries of oppression may simply be to hear the pain, to bear the rage, without retaliating and without becoming guilty or defensive. When we can simply listen, trusting in who we truly are, magic can happen. Energies can shift, old promises can be broken, patterns can change.

  The co-counseling community has a useful descriptive phrase, target groups, to delineate the groups that have historically been on the receiving end of oppression: women, people of color, lesbians, gays, transgender folk, the disabled, the young, the old, and so forth. Oppression is more than just prejudice. Prejudice consists of the prejudgments we make about people because of their gender, color, age, nationality, or other characteristic. Prejudice can be hurtful, limiting, and shortsighted. But, as Katrina puts it, “when your personal prejudices are backed up by the military, the legislative and judicial branches of government, as well as industry, academia, and religion, it becomes more than just being impolite or ignorant or rude or displaying poor taste. It is oppression.” Oppression is structural, embedded in all the institutions of society. Your Aunt Lucy’s discomfort with your homosexual relationship is prejudice. The fact that you cannot marry your partner is oppression.

  As Witches, we experience prejudice almost every time we name our religion. We experience oppression when our Pagan identity is used as an excuse to deny us jobs, custody of our children, or the respect and privileges given to members of other religions. We daily see our beliefs trivialized or falsified by the media or sensationalized to promote horror movies or right-wing political agendas. We know what it is to be a target group, and our experience can help us learn to be allies of all people fighting oppression.

  When we’re in the target group and somebody says or does something hurtful, how do we say, “You’ve just victimized me!” without taking the stance of a victim? How can we empower ourselves in such a situation?

  Silence, in Rose’s story, becomes a magical tool by which she gathers power. But silence in the face of oppression is not empowering. Instead, we must speak.

  “I” Statements

  Gail is a Reclaiming teacher from a Jewish background who facilitates empowerment workshops for at-risk populations of diverse racial, cultural, and economic backgrounds. She works with the homeless, with battered women, with women in transitional facilities and prerelease programs, and with recovering addicts.

  “It’s a real self-esteem issue to stand in our power and speak out when we feel attacked,” she says.

  Witches have tools for mobilizing that power: breathing, grounding, and anchoring to our core worth. In Gail’s workshops, she teaches a formula for using “I” statements: “I feel [state the emotion] when you [name the behavior] because [say why]. I prefer [state what you want] and then [name the change that would follow].”

  She cautions that the emotion named must truly be a feeling, not a judgment: “I feel hurt [or scared, angry, humiliated, etc.],” not “I feel that you are an insensitive jerk.”

  “I feel angry when you interrupt me because, in my experience, men often interrupt women as a way of not listening to us. I want you to wait until I finish speaking, and then I will feel respected.”

  “I feel hurt when you look directly at me every time you mention race or racism, because I feel you are seeing me only as an African American, not as a person. I prefer you to address your remarks to everybody, and then it will be more clear tha
t we all have a stake in fighting racism.”

  Formulas such as these can be restrictive, but also helpful. “When we respond in a reactive way, that’s a learned behavior, something we learned way back,” Gail says. “We have to learn a new behavior, and you can do that only by practicing it and really believing it. Once you practice it, it sinks in to an unconscious level, and then when you’re in a more charged situation, the new, more desirable communication skill will automatically come out.”

  To undermine the “ism” brothers, we must speak out when we feel oppressed or when we notice behavior that is oppressing others. We all must be responsible for changing the communication patterns and power structures in our group.

  Four Steps in Fighting Oppression

  Katrina suggests four steps for those who want to be allies in fighting oppression: see it, believe it, say it, act on it.

  SEE IT: Racism, sexism, and homophobia are often subtle. We don’t put Whites Only signs up in our meeting rooms or ritual spaces. But we may unconsciously ignore the contribution of a person of color while listening attentively to a white person who makes the same point. We may not notice that while only a third of the people in the room are men, most of those asking questions or speaking are male.

  BELIEVE IT: We are all experts on our own oppression. When oppression is named by members of target groups or allies, believe that their perceptions are real. Understand that what you might see as an isolated incident is part of a larger pattern, a structure of unequal power that may be operating in ways you aren’t conscious of.

  SAY IT: When someone around us behaves in an oppressive way, it is our responsibility to name it. As allies, we must challenge the racist remark, the sexist joke. Countering prejudice and educating people on all the complex issues around diversity are burdens that should not be placed on the target groups alone.

  ACT ON IT: White people ran the stations on the Underground Railroad during slavery times. Germans hid Jews from the Nazis. Men have been allies of women’s liberation; straight people have marched, petitioned, and gone to jail for gay liberation. Rose does more than deplore the state of her brothers: she determines to free them from their enspelled state. In acting to free ourselves and all people from oppression, we, too, will gather power.

  When we have hurt someone, deliberately or inadvertently, we must learn, like Rose, to hear their anger without denying our actions or responding with our own rage. Sometimes the anger directed at us may be out of all proportion to our actions. It may carry with it the residue of thousands of years of pain. If we can stand firm under the onslaught, listening without personalizing what does not belong to us while being willing to own and change what does, we open an opportunity for healing.

  Such skills do not come easily or automatically. Gail suggests the following exercise for working on deepening our ability to listen.

  She Who Listens

  In sacred space, invoke the Goddess as She Who Listens, the old woman. We might call her Stone Woman, for she can be silent as the mountains. Each person chooses a partner. One in each pair imagines herself as the old woman of our story, wise, silent, and deep. The second partner tells her story, while the old woman listens in total silence and acceptance. Then reverse roles.

  How did it feel to be listened to without judgment? How did it feel to simply sit in silence and listen?

  The group might also experiment with variations. You might invoke Echo and reflect back to your partner what you have heard. Or call in She Who Feels, and affirm your partner’s emotions. Discussion might take place in sacred space or after you have opened your circle.

  If you are working alone, go to your sacred spot. Find a special tree or a boulder or something else that can represent the old woman. Invoke her into your object, and tell her your story. Remember the energy, the feeling of being held in silence and attention, so you can call it back the next time you are asked to deeply listen.

  Diversity Walk

  Gail suggests another exercise that can help open up and focus discussion around difference.

  The group stands in a line against a wall. The leaders call out a category: “Anyone who identifies as African-American, take the walk.”

  Those who take the walk go to the opposite side of the room and turn and face the group. The leaders ask the following three questions, reminding everyone to breathe, ground, and speak and listen from their core:

  What do you want the others to know about you?

  What do you never want to hear again?

  What can those who didn’t walk do to support you?

  Creating a Welcoming Space

  Katrina, in a leadership retreat for the National Organization for Women, found herself constantly being asked, “How can we bring in more women of color?”

  She led the following meditation for the mostly white group:

  Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and imagine yourself walking into a room full of men. What would they have to do for you to feel included?

  When the women reported back their answers, she told them, “Now you know what you need to do to make women of color feel included.”

  The meditation can be varied to reflect different issues.

  Identify a group that has more structural power than you do. Imagine walking into a room full of executives, senators, tenured professors—whatever. What could they do to make you feel included? How can you build that process into your group to include others?

  “It’s not about superficial diversity—what the group looks like,” Katrina says. “We need to nurture the root structure to support a greater diversity. It’s about being accessible, so everyone who wants to can come and can understand what the hell we’re doing. And making sure we have an inclusive process, so that when people do come, they have a chance to contribute and feel that they were heard.”

  Wherever injustice exists, rage is born. Whenever one group is sacrificed for the interests of another, anger and the desire for revenge arise. In the story, Rose’s brothers resent the favoritism shown to a woman. In real life, most often the favor goes to men. In our communities, when we work with gender issues or with other forms of diversity, we encounter the depth of rage and pain that arise from the past.

  In the Inner Path, we worked with our personal anger. But when we move out into the world and confront entrenched systems of power, we often encounter within ourselves a rage that is all the more intense for being impersonal.

  Rage is a powerful, life-giving energy. Anger motivates us to change, to fight injustice, to right wrongs. But rage and anger can literally burn us out if they remain in their raw forms. To hold them, to mobilize their power, we need to transmute them into creativity and passion.

  Rage Ritual

  Donald is a warmhearted, funny, flamboyantly queer man and artist in middle age, who usually sports some outrageous hairstyle and a few earrings in each ear. He is called the Widow Engstrom, for he has seen two beloved husbands and many friends and lovers die of AIDS. He lives with AIDS himself, and his intimate knowledge of death has deepened both his rage and his compassion.

  “My life has been full of rage,” Donald says. “It started with Vietnam, and it just kept going. When AIDS began killing people in the gay community, I was surrounded by a sea of people dying a preventable death. I’d go into uncontrollable rage, striking out against anything.

  “I had to figure out a way to work with that rage. When I first got really serious about studying this form of magic, I could never go visit the south, the direction of fire. It was the hardest place for me to go. I felt like I was swimming down a river of fire. Then I thought, That’s a good transition for me from being in a whole ocean of fire!”

  Donald created the following meditation:

  In sacred space, imagine that your rage and anger are a sea of fire. Breathing deeply, slowly begin to breathe in that sea, to focus and narrow it down into a flow, a river. Say, “This is a gift, this rage is a gift,” and bring it in tighter and tighter.

&n
bsp; When the sea of rage has become a river, keep breathing. Imagine it growing tighter and more focused still until it becomes a laser beam. Where in your body does that beam originate? Your belly? Your solar plexus? Tell yourself that it will give you the courage and focus to do what you need to do. How will you direct it? How can you call it up when you need it?

  Working with Gender Issues

  When we have acknowledged our pain and rage, we can begin to consider how to work together. In Reclaiming, we commonly hold rituals in which women and men celebrate the Goddess together. While many of us prefer covens that are all women or all men, our large seasonal rituals and most of our Witchcamps are mixed.

  In many communities, however, the growth of the Goddess tradition has centered around women who have desired a space free from men in which to develop our magic and our power without having to contend with the residues of patriarchal structures. In time, some of those women may wish to work with men and yet find it hard to imagine how to create a mixed sacred space that continues to empower women. Many men have also explored the power of men’s circles and drumming groups, yet they may feel unsure of how to bring their bonding and insights back to a mixed group. Other groups may work happily with both genders, yet unless the underlying issues of power are addressed in some way, we risk replicating the subtle hierarchies of the larger society.

  My partner, David Miller, and I have for many years led groups and workshops together specifically focused on consciously bringing women and men together in sacred space, with awareness of the energies and issues that arise. Over the years we’ve developed a structure that works and some guiding disciplines.

  David is a big man in his late fifties, gray bearded, bald, round bellied, quiet, and warm. A radical Catholic in his youth, he was the first draft-card burner to be prosecuted during the Vietnam War and spent two years in federal prison for his commitment to peace. Since then he has worked as a social worker, a cabdriver, an attorney, and a writer, and raised four wonderful daughters. When we work together, he is able to both support me and hold his own, allowing us to model a shared flow of power.