Stories from the Gleam

Stories.

Tales.

Myths.

Stories draw from the Gleam, and the combination of that source, the storyteller's blood, sweat, and tears, and the fascination or emotional reaction of the listener becomes something living, like a egregore but free willed.

The Gleam is a place of danger, the endless plains and forests and oceans.  Beyond the Veil, beyond the Gloom, the Gleam is endless.  It is dangerous, deadly, because there are no safe guards like there are here in the Dreamings we mistakenly call reality.

Many things live in the Gleam, for an endlessness contains no end of things.  There is a paradox where it's impossible to know, does the Dreamer, do the dreams and imaginings and fears, of the Dreaming populate the Gleam, or are the dreams and imaginings and fears of the Dreamer the echo or remembrance or viewing of the Gleam?  Do dreams and imaginings flow from the Gleam to the Dreaming, of the Dreaming to the Gleam?  Or both for that matter?

Stories draw from the Gleam.  In the Gleam, all stories are real, in some sense.  Some stories are distorted, warped images seem through the Gloom darkly.  Some stories are all too close to their source.  Does the Storyteller create the stories that are acted out in the Gleam, or view or receive the stories played out there and relate them?  Does it matter?

Stories draw from the Gleam.  Whether in Dream or Imagination, whether in vision or experience, whether reflected into happenings in the Dreaming, they draw the the Gleam.

The Gleam is a place of power, infinite, endless, forevermore.  The Gleam is power.  And stories, drawing from the Gleam, draw from that power, are energized, are made of the stuff of that power, the stuff of the Gleam.

Stories draw from the Gleam.  Stories innately contain power, are power.  The Story is the Gleam, and the Gleam is the Story.  The Storyteller is the Story, the Story is the Storyteller.  The Storyteller is the Gleam, the Gleam is the Storyteller.  The conduit.  The bridge.

Stories draw from the Gleam.  The Storyteller takes those stories, births them.  Tales are birthed, brought forth, manifest.  They are birthed in blood, sweat, and tears.  Nothing is born without effort.  Nothing is born without pain.  The Storyteller brings forth the story from the Gleam.

You get out of something what you put into it.  Nothing comes for free.  The work, the blood, sweat, and tears, is the cost, and the gift.  A gift for a gift.  The Storyteller gives of herself, the Gleam gives back.  The Story is born.

You get out of something what you put into it.  The blood, sweat, and tears of the Storyteller puts power into the Story, adds to the power from the Gleam.  The power grows.  The Story grows.  Life is breathed into the think that is not Dead, but have never lived.

A Story isn't a Story without a Listener.  A Storyteller isn't a Storyteller without a Listener.  A Story kept to yourself is a Dream.  A Storyteller without a Listener is a Dreamer.  But in the telling, the Dream becomes a Story.  In the transmission, the sharing, the teaching.  It matters not if the Story is spoken or written, until it is heard or read, it is the Dream.  When the Dream is shared, it becomes the Story.

The Listener is not listening, is not the Listener, if the listening is passive.  The Listener hears, listens, comes to know.  The Listener receives the story.  In the receiving, the Story is no longer just the Storyteller's.  The Storyteller and the Listener both hold the Story.  The Dream made flesh, the Dream manifest as Story.

In the Listener, fascination is born.  In the Listener, emotions are born.  This fascination, these emotions, feed the Story, it grows in power, it grows.  The Story becomes more than a Story.  The Story takes on Life, Spirit.  The Story breathes.  The Story takes on a spirit of its own, becomes a spirit,  The Dream became the Story, the Story became the Spirit, the Spirit lives.

But Spirits are living things, and living things like to continue living.  If the Spirit only exists between the Storyteller and the Listener, the Spirit dies with them when both are gone.  Or when the Spirit is forgotten, for while it lives, it lives on Memory.  Memory is in the Bone, enlived by the Blood.  The Spirit is in the Memory, the Memory of the Story, the Story of the Dream, the Dream of the Gleam.  Like all living things, the Spirit desires to survive.

How can a memory survive the one who remembers it?  Only in the sharing of it or recording of it.  But it is not a memory if it is recorded but the record is never picked up.  So, for the memory to survive, it must be either shared directly or shared indirectly.

The Spirit of the Story of the Dream of the Gleam compels the Listener to share it.  Some resist and Spirits die, living on only in the Gleam.  But many share.  In sharing, the Listener becomes the Storyteller, the Story becoming her Story, and in the telling, she once more births it anew.  The Story grows, and with it the Spirit, becoming stronger.  And the new Listener receives, as the Listener turned Storyteller did before her, as the original Storyteller received from the Gleam, through the the Gloom and the Veil.

The Story becomes the Lore with the retelling by the new Storyteller, and the Spirit of the Lore of the Story of the Dream of the Gleam is strong, and still wants to survive, to live on.

And the Lore is a very powerful Spirit.

FFF,
~Lorekeeper

Six New Books, From Inanna to the Grail, From Mongolia to the Modern World

Yesterday, I bought three new books from Night Heron, the local used bookstore, and ordered three from Amazon, which will be here in a couple weeks.

Starhawk is the author of the famous book Spiral Dance.  She is a Feri initiate who went out and did her own thing.  This book, Truth or Dare, is a look at the nature of Power and how to find us in our lives to create change in our lives and communities.  It uses the myth of the descent of Inanna, in several different retellings, to present this idea.  It uses the descent to show how we need to identify and shed off the things that hold us back.

This book, Elements of the Grail Tradition by John Matthews, looks at the test, trials, and initiations found in the Arthurian and Grail legends in the pursuit of the Grail, from the most ancient known Celtic legends up through the Middle Ages, to identify what the Grail truly is.

This book is by my friend Francesca De Grandis.  I've been wanting to get Goddess Initiation since I picked it up in the Tattered Cover down in Denver a year or so ago, before I knew Francesca and didn't notice who the author was.   I was very excited to find it here in town.  The book is basically a year long lesson plan on how to find your inner goddess and your priesthood.

This book, The Book of Qualities by J. Ruth Gendler, is basically a book of personifications of common human qualities.  A friend of mine from of mine from high school posted a piece about Beauty from it on Facebook and it really touched me, so I found it and ordered it.  It looks amazing.

This book is a guide to Mongolian and Siberian shamanism.  The author, Sarangerel, is actually trained in Mongolia.  She was born in the US but of a Mongol bloodline, and traveled to Mongolia and did the work and study and research to truly know the tradition and the people of her ancestors, then share it with world.  This book is her introduction to the tradition, including rituals and techniques.  It is one of the major sources for one of the books I'm reading, Calling Down the Spirits.

This is Francesca De Grandis's newest book, just recently released.  It looks amazing.  It is about finding and realizing your dreams, seeing your own beauty, and finding your freedom.  I'm really looking forward to it arriving.


FFF,
~Muninn's Kiss

The Making of a War Goddess

Last June, I had a dream that I was a young war goddess in training.  I won't repeat it here, but I described it in this post:

http://muninnskiss.livejournal.com/135624.html

I was discussing it with a friend the other day and something was pointed out to me.  In the dream, I had two things: a sword and wings.  She pointed out that these allow me to do two things.  The sword allows me to fight. The wings allow me to fly.  Pretty obvious so far, but what I didn't notice is these two are the instinctual responses to danger:  fight or flight.  Now, I have a tendency to withdraw inside myself when confronted with conflict.  I hide.  I cower.  I don't fight.  I don't leave (flight).

I have issues with saying no.  People tell me to do something (or ask in a why I feel doesn't give me a choice), and I do it to avoid the conflict and to try to make people happy.  Saying no would lead to conflict.  Conflict means I either have to fight or leave.  And I avoid that.  Not saying no is part of my reaction of hiding.

In the dream, I don't have the sword or the wings at the beginning.  I found the sword, my ability to fight.  I was given the wings, my ability for flight.  It is interesting that I was supposed to present myself to the group of women and didn't.  And then I went to them for a different reason, and they gave me the wings (which were weapons, too).  The room where the women were was underground.  It was a round chamber carved from grey stone, lit by candles or torches or some other source of low light.  It was very shadowy.  The women sat around the outside of the chamber and the other girls and I were in the middle.

The idea that I didn't have the sword or the wings, but found and received them is important, I think.  As are the circle of women.

FFF,
~Muninn's Kiss

Image by Luis Royo

Fight or Flight
By Muninn's Kiss

There she sits,
Upon the floor,
A child,
A girl,
Cowering,
Waiting,
For them to tell her,
Do this,
Do that,
She can't say no.

There she sits,
Behind the child,
A woman,
A warrior,
Black wings,
Silver sword,
Hiding,
Behind the girl,
Afraid to fly away,
Afraid to fight,
She can't say no.

There she sits,
My child self,
Cowering,
Helpless,
Weak,
Afraid.

There she sits,
My warrior self,
Hiding,
Strong,
Independent,
Afraid.

The warrior rises,
War goddess,
Valkyrie,
Wings spread,
Sword raised.

To fly or to fight?
To fight or to fly?
To lift the child to safety?
To stand in front and protect?
Either way,
Any way,
Is better than cowering,
Is better than hiding.

I rise.

Image by Luis Royo

Mighty Warrior
By Muninn's Kiss

I raise my sword above my head,
And show my mighty strength.
My slight body wire thin,
No muscles for to show.

Upon my arms the elegant blades,
I spread my arms for flight.
The wings they come upon my back,
Like two huge raven wings.

Do I fight, my sword in hand,
Upon the battle field?
Or do I fly, great wings spread,
To fight again some day?

But here I stand unsure of myself,
Not ready to fight or fly.
The mighty warrior lost in thought,
Unsure what she should do.

Romulus and Remus: Establishment and Witch

Back a while, I had a dream that I wrote about where there were four groups, two large, two small, and the two big groups were led by Romulus and Remus.  Later dream, we (the group I was in, one of the small ones) met Romulus and a small group of his people.  I don't remember them, but I remember a sense of his people (the small group of them, not all of them) behind him and our people (once again, not all of them) behind me and the leader of our group.  I was a priestess in the dream, and the leader was also female.  I think we were on a couch or something similar, and it seems like the encounter took place in a parking lot.  Our leader was sitting on the right hand side of the couch and I was sitting on her left, pretty close to her.  Romulus was standing, bent over her trying to sexually assault or maybe rape her.  She had her knee up trying to push him away and I was grabbing at his arm, trying to stop him.  He was dressed all in tight black leather that covered everything but his hands and head.  I woke up in the middle of the struggle.

It had been a very long time since I did any reading on Romulus and Remus, so earlier this week, I read up on them to refresh my memory.  The following are my thoughts on the story, some of the themes, how it relates to the craft, and some thoughts about the meaning of the part of my dream I expanded on above.

Before I get into the details of the legend, I'd like to talk about twins.  Romulus and Remus are of course twins, and this is very important.  Twins are very common in legends, myths, and folk lore.  There's something about twins that people find magical, unusual, mystical, or frightening.  Twins hold a special place in our psyches, and in the secrets of the universe.  What is a twin?  Our other half?  Our reflection?  Our doppleganger?  Some cultures see twins are evil, bad omens, demons.  Others see twins as a sign of favour from the gods.  In some cultures, twins, or the second twin, are killed, in others, revered.  A twin that dies can haunt their sibling or be a guide or protector.  But regardless of the cultural views, twins capture our imaginations, because they reflect spiritual truths and we know, whether we "know" or not, that these are important.

To look at a few sets of twins, I'll start with Cain and Abel, the first two children of Adam and Eve in the Torah.  Though I don't see anything in the Hebrew to show whether they were twins or not, traditionally, they have been seen as such, and I think the parallels with Romulus and Remus are important.  Everyone's heard the story.  Cain raised grain and Abel raised livestock.  Abel makes an offering to G-d or the first born of his stock and G-d accepts it (probably with fire from heaven).  Cain makes an offering of the first of of his crops and G-d doesn't accept it.  There's a lot of debate on why G-d doesn't accept it, but that doesn't matter for this post.  Cain gets upset and kills his brother.  Abel's blood from the land cries out to G-d, and G-d comes and asks Cain where Abel was.  Cain says he's not his brothers' keeper.  G-d makes him a wanderer.  Cain says everyone will try to kill him, so G-d puts a mark on him to protect him.  Many witches claim descendence from Cain, but I'd like to look at this a little differently.  You can parallel Cain with Romulus and Abel with Remus.  Depending on the version of the legend, Romulus killed Remus like Cain killed Abel.  I will talk later about Romulus being the Establishment, the Orthodox, those in control, and Remus being Witch, the source of change in the world.  Remus is a challenge to Romulus' control.  Likewise, Abel being accepted by G-d was a challenge to Cain.  And, of course, Abel's blood in the earth crying out has echoes in spirits of the land and of the call of the ancestors, of the Mighty Dead.

Another set of twins were Castor and Pollox.  I don't know a lot about them, so I can't say much.  They were the children of Leda.  According to some versions of the story, even though they were born as twins, Castor was the son of Tyndareus and Pollox the son of Zeus (in swan form).  Pollox was immortal and Castor mortal.  They were raised by Tyndareus in Sparta.  There's no story of a twin killing a twin here.  Castor dies in a cattle raid and Pollox goes to Zeus to intercede for him.  There are a lot of things that could be explored in this story, but not really anything I can relate to this post.

I'm not going to go into much detail here, but the Divine Twins are very important in Feri.  I've made a lot of posts about them in the past.  They appear in many different guises, but they can be seen as the two sides of the same thing:  the Summer and Winter King, life and death, creation and destruction, past and future.  The big thing related to this post is the interconnectedness.  Romulus and Remus, Cain and Abel, Castor and Pollox, you can't have one without the other.  The story is about the twins, not about on or the other.  It's the interaction of the two that makes the story.  Witch moves in relation to the world around her, not just the natural world but the social world.  Sometimes he works against the world, sometimes with it, but change needs something to interact with or it isn't change.  The stillness interacts with the movement of the Cauldron.

Robert Cochrane calls two of the Wind Gods, Lucet and Tettens twins:

(Lucet and Tettens are the Twins, the Children of Night and the Serpent, brothers and some say one and the same person. Fire and Air, growth and decay. One looks forward, the other backward. One creates, the other destroys, Castor and Pollox.)

Lucet is the King of Light and the Child.  He is the day, the sun.  Tettens is the god of witches, the winter, the night.

In Voudou, you find the Marassa, the twins.  There's a secret here, because the two become three.  the Marassa are mischievous and can be dangerous.  There's a lot that can be said about the Marassa, but I'll move on for now.

To be continued...

FFF,

~Muninn's Kiss