The Twelve Wild Swans

by Starhawk

  When Juan Pablo was diagnosed with cancer, his friends transformed his hospital room with art and photographs and flowers. David came and told him the story of the Popol Vuh in installments to fit his energy level. Other friends brought poems, charms, spells, and the food he craved, making magic in what could have been a cold and sterile environment.

  The many women and men who continue to create, love, teach, priestess, and serve their communities while fighting AIDS, chronic fatigue, or other serious diseases are weavers in the dungeon. Weaving might mean lending a compassionate ear to the woman next to you on the airplane who is going home to her father’s funeral, or helping the young mother corral her unruly child in the subway, or offering to mediate in a fight between two friends. Cynthia and Patricia of Diana’s Grove have established sacred land and good relations with their neighbors in an area openly hostile to lesbians and Witches. Thorn weaves magic in the soup kitchen, Paul in the public schools, Gwydion in a large corporation, Melusine in city government; Alphonsus weaves magic by drumming in the streets, Rose May and Flame by counseling drug users who have been tested for HIV or hepatitis. To be weavers, soul makers, healers, culture shapers means to gather the power and take on the responsibility to affect the energies around us, to focus on our creative task whatever the circumstances we find ourselves in.

  Cultural healing is a collective effort. No one of us alone can fulfill Rose’s task for our whole society. We need for all of us to be Rose, to weave the soul of a transformed world. In that process, we will also at times need healing. We must know how to receive as well as give. Reclaiming’s Healing Ritual is a beautiful model of the fluidity we need to sustain great healing works.

  The Healing Ritual

  Our Healing Ritual has evolved over the course of four or five years, primarily at Witchcamps. In form it is different from most of our rituals, in that its power depends entirely on the whole community working together, and not on any individual’s skill or inspiration. The structure of the ritual is simple: the community creates a strong, sustained energy base, and individuals or pairs may go into the center to give or receive hands-on healing, drawing on the power of the group. The explanation, preparation, and structure of the ritual require great care, but once begun, it runs itself. All the roles are fluid, and every participant is free to step into any role.

  PREPARATION: Before the ritual, the group is given instruction in hands-on healing, in caring for their own health and energy, and in cleansing afterward. People with serious health concerns are encouraged to find partners to work with. Partners generally exchange healing, taking turns giving and receiving, but someone with an extremely grave condition may request several healers to take shifts and may remain in the center throughout the ritual. Generally, however, participants move in and out freely among the various roles.

  Four stations are set up in the four directions. Groups commit to priestessing at a station in shifts, so that everyone is also free to experience the circle. The air station might offer smudging; the fire station might have candles and offer brushdowns or cleansing energy work; the water station should provide drinking water and waters of the world (kept clearly separate); and the earth station might have food, herbs, and stones or crystals.

  The group creates sacred space, with a strong grounding and casting, and invokes the elements and Goddesses and Gods of healing.

  Depending on the number of people involved, the group forms one, two, or three concentric circles around a large center. A fire may be lit in the middle. Three or four drummers sit in a clump in the center, but most of it is open. Drummers do not have to be highly skilled, only capable of keeping a strong, simple, steady beat. However, it is vital that they listen to the chant, stay in sync with the dancers, and do not speed up, which can be more difficult than you might think.

  The circles begin a very simple chant and dance:

  Every step I take is a healing step,

  Every step I take is a sacred step,

  Healing, healing, healing my body,

  Healing, healing, healing the land.

  —DONALD ENGSTROM

  The dance moves clockwise: step, together, step, together … eight steps to the left, then four steps forward, and four back. It’s folk dance reduced to the barest minimum. The chant and dance, together with the intention of the group, begin to build an energy field.

  When they are ready, participants step into the center of the circle, drawing on that field to do healing work on each other. People may also bring objects to charge for someone who is not physically present. While physical healing is the core issue, some participants may choose to work on emotional or relational issues.

  As the dance goes on, participants may move into the center and move out, or go to one of the stations for a rest, a drink, or a brushdown. Drummers relieve each other. The energy base builds until the whole group is in a state of timeless entrancement.

  When the leading priestesses feel the energy begin to wane, they ring a bell or gong as a warning. The first gong tells the group that if they want healing and haven’t yet gone into the center, now is the time. The second gong warns those in the process of healing to complete their work. The third gong is the signal for the drums to fade, the dance to stop, and the chant to become a wordless cone of power.

  When the power is grounded, the group may choose to go on with other ritual acts or songs, but generally people are exhausted and ready to end. A priestess leads a formal grounding for the whole group, and people are asked to give each other brushdowns. The elements, Goddess, and Gods are devoked, and the circle is opened. Food must be available, preferably something with some protein, not just cookies and chips. Generally, one or two experienced priestesses make themselves available for anyone who still needs help fully grounding or integrating their experience.

  In a setting such as Witchcamp where the group has been opening psychically and emotionally all week, the healing ritual can be very intense. Some true miracles have occurred: a woman diagnosed with hepatitis C reduced her viral load to zero; a long-term marriage on the rocks found its love rekindled. For others, the results are more subtle. The first time I went into the center of the circle, I found that the struggle to allow myself to ask for and receive energy was in itself the healing I needed.

  We need many rituals such as this one, many ways to share energy and support, to sustain us on the Outer Path.

  As I write, Joan lies dying of cancer. An artist and lifelong activist, she has spent her life working for women and working for peace. Like Rose, Joan is weaving soul shirts down to the end of her life, making death into an art of courage and grace. Yet the work of peacemaking is far from done.

  Ron, who was given four weeks to live by his doctors, writes in his last e-mail: “Development, be it international, community or human resource (and always sustainable), has been my passion from Peace Corps days and I wasn’t quite finished with the job yet.” Like Rose, Ron has lived with passion and commitment to his task and love for the people he has served. He will never finish that work now, not even his own piece of it. Someone else will have to take up his tasks, or they will remain undone.

  We all finish each other’s work. Just as Rose’s task was begun by her mother’s ill wish, someone else will have to untangle the consequences of her unfinished shirt. Our story teaches us that there is always one uncompleted sleeve, that no great work is ever wholly finished.

  Yet an imperfect work may still be good enough. A partial transformation may still accomplish healing and change. A life lived in visionary passion is better than a life of cynicism and despair. So we must commit ourselves to the work and know when to end it and move on.

  When we take action to change the world, we rarely see immediate results. We march for peace, but war rages on. We educate people about violence against women, but we have no way to count the rapes and beatings we’ve prevented, only the ones that are still going on. When we do achieve success, it often simply clears the way for us to see more
extensive wrongs. Segregation was ended by the civil rights movement, but racism and poverty still blight lives.

  We can be sustained by knowing we are doing the right thing, by trusting that our actions have impacts we cannot see. But to stay sane, we also need a few visible achievements. Our story teaches us not to expect total success, but to acknowledge and celebrate our partial victories. And magic teaches us to consciously act ‘as if’: live as if the world we want to create already exists. When we do complete a task, even partially, when we gain even a small victory, we need to celebrate. The pyre that would have burned Rose bursts into bloom.

  Victory Ritual

  Reclaiming classes often end with a ritual planned by the students. Now we have reached the end of the Outer Path. Our journey draws to a close. If you have done the work of this book, you have acquired the tools of magic, the skills of healing, and the vision and wisdom to change both yourself and the world.

  Take time to think over your life, to think about the issues you’ve worked for, the great political struggles you’ve been a part of, the personal struggles you’ve waged, the work you’ve done in the process of reading and using this book. Know that however partial your successes might be, you have the right to declare victory.

  Create a victory ritual for yourself, your group, or your community. Consider what you need to honor. What work is not being acknowledged? Who needs appreciation? Are there political victories you’ve never claimed? Magical feats or creative works that deserve acclaim?

  How will you celebrate? A feast? A dance? A cake with candles? A ritual? An awards ceremony?

  You know how to create sacred space, how to move, shape, direct, and ground energy. Use your skills, and honor the work you have done.

  And so Rose’s story ends as she is embraced by her youngest brother, with one human arm and one swan’s wing. We have completed our initiatory journey. We have taken on the tasks of healing bequeathed to us by the mistakes of those who came before us. We have wandered in the wilderness and learned to follow a river to its end. We have stood steadfast in the face of rage and relinquished our own desires for revenge. We have learned to build a container for magic that can carry us away, and we have taken on a great task, a work of healing and transformation that requires all our passion and love. Our tools, our skills, and our allies have served us well as we have learned to withstand jealousy and projection and continued to weave even in the dungeon. We have overcome fear, died, and been reborn.

  Initiation means beginning. We have traveled the paths of the elements, of inner healing and outer change. Now it is the youngest brother’s journey we must follow.

  The One-Winged Brother

  You haunt the castle. When the feasting is over, when your sister has returned to the cares of her husband and her children, when your brothers ride out to hunt, you wander alone through empty rooms, your useless wing dragging at your side. Half of you is human, but half of you is still made for flight, and you yearn to soar on the updrafts and glide on the great currents, suspended, hovering, free. But you are earthbound, trapped. You will never fly again. And you will never ride with your brothers, for your wing catches in the trees and drags upon the ground. The maidens who chase after your brothers laugh at you, their hands covering their mouths to hide their mockery. And you cannot defend yourself. Your sister’s voice is restored, but now you are doomed to silence, mute as a swan.

  And when the loneliness becomes too much to bear, you steal away one night, to the cave where you lived so many years with your brothers, and with Rose always gathering, spinning, weaving. The cave is empty, silent, lonely, and you wander down to the shore. A small boat awaits you; see it on the shore, see how it looks to you and beckons until you step in, feeling it rock under your feet and steadying yourself with your one good arm.

  Lie down. See the stars above you. Feel the breeze that you once could ride to beyond the ends of the earth. Reach for it with all the longing for freedom within you, and raise your wing to catch the wind. Your wing becomes a sail; feel the wind push against it and the boat glide through the water, almost as swiftly as once you could sail through air. Feel yourself rocking, rocking, rocking, cradled on the waves, carried away.

  Sailing and rocking, rocking and sailing, the waves beneath you, the sky above. Almost free again, you hear the waves whispering, your journey a dialogue of sea and wind, rocking and sailing, sailing and rocking…

  Until at last the boat comes to shore. Feel the bow scrape the sand; feel it move beneath you as you stand and step out and pull it up onshore after you. A mountain rises above you, a black shape against the pattern of bright stars in the sky. A path leads up the mountain, and you follow, beginning to climb. Feel the breath flowing in and out of your lungs; feel the muscles in your legs laboring to carry you up where once you could have risen light on the updrafts and soared. But now, step by step, you climb. The breath rasps in your mute throat; the night is filled with voices, the calls of night birds, frogs, beasts. All have a voice, but you are only a mute not-swan, not-human thing, climbing and climbing, the only sound you make the rasping of your breath, while around you the night chorus sings the song of the wild.

  At last you reach the top. You pause for breath; you lay back and look up at the stars and cover yourself with your wing like a shroud. The stars are bright eyes in the night. Your ears are filled with the land’s voice, and even the stars begin to sing—high, bright notes like bells that ring and ring through all the space that separates you.

  Only you are mute. You long to sing, to join the chorus, to link your voice with those of the birds and the frogs. You open your mouth. You draw in breath and push it out again, painful and rasping. The stars are above you, but they could be below you, you could fall into them to dance and swirl and spiral in the dark. Breathe in; breathe out. No sound can force its way past your throat. Stop trying. Just breathe. And listen.

  Listen deeply to the birds. Listen deeply to the frogs. Listen to the cat sounds, the howl of the coyote, the murmur of a stream, the stars singing. It all moves to the same rhythm, it all sings in a harmony that begins to fill you, until your body glows with it, and your wing shines pearly and iridescent as the moon. The wild sings to you, and you are of the wild, never wholly to belong to the human realm. Your wing marks you as a creature of the elements, soaring through air, reflecting the sun’s fire, at home on the water, at home on the earth. Air, fire, water, earth—they echo through the voices that fill you, rising like an updraft to burst free from your throat, opening, opening, until your throat begins to pulse with sound and a great cry arises from deep within you, the cry of the earth, the wild, the song of the stars, ringing through you and awakening your silence into voice. And your voice rises and soars on the great currents of air, glides in perfect freedom over the far seas.

  The wild is within you; you are its voice. You will never belong fully to the castle, the realm of humans, for yours is a different task: to be the voice of the land, the stars, the wild things, to speak for them in the councils of the castle, to live on the borderlands, not one thing or another but always moving between, shaman, magician, Witch.

  And you lie for a long time, singing the song of the stars. Until you know it is time to return, return to the borderlands that lie near the castle, to take up your task, to use your voice.

  Say farewell to this mountaintop, farewell to the stars. Thank them and take your leave. And begin to walk down, down the hill, around and down on the curving paths, hearing the night chorus around you, feeling the weight of your human body and the lightness of your swan’s wing, and knowing how to balance between them as you walk. Down and down, until at last you come to the shoreline.

  Find your boat. Feel its weight as you drag it down toward the water. Feel it float and sink under your weight as you step in and push off, hearing the sand scrape under the stern.

  Lie down. See the stars above you. Feel the wind, and reach for it with all the knowledge of freedom within you, and raise your
wing to catch the wind. Your wing becomes a sail; feel the wind push against it and the boat glide through the water. You are rocking, rocking, rocking, cradled on the waves, carried away.

  Sailing and rocking, rocking and sailing, the waves beneath you, the sky above. Free again, you hear the waves whispering; you sing a dialogue with sea and wind, rocking and sailing, sailing and rocking.

  Until at last the boat comes to shore. Feel the bow scrape the sand; feel it move beneath you as you stand and step out and pull it up onshore after you.

  The cave stands above you. The castle awaits you. You will never be fully human, never wholly swan, but you are something more and less than both: the translator, the one who knows the language of birds and interprets the wind, the constant reminder in human halls that to be human is not all.

  Your wing is iridescent, pearly as the moon. It catches the wind and shines with its own light. Raise it high and proud; dance with it under the moonlight. Flaunt it. Admire its beauty. Cherish it. For what sets you apart is also what opens your ears and your heart.

  Sing. Speak for the land; speak for the wild. Soar.

  Bibliography

  Our sources for the material in this book were mostly not written materials but rather the collective experience of our community over the last two decades of teaching. And there are so many worthwhile books on the Goddess tradition, and so many being published annually, that to produce a comprehensive bibliography is a major undertaking. We refer the reader to the twentieth anniversary edition of The Spiral Dance for a list of suggested reading. Here we include works we’ve referred to and books by authors mentioned in the text.

  Adair, Margo. The Applied Meditation Sourcebook. Forthcoming.