Those Who Pray, Those Who Fight, Those Who Work: Musings About Labor Day

Yesterday was Labor Day in the US, in a lot of ways the Twin of Memorial Day.  Labor Day is the first Monday of September and Memorial Day the last Monday of May.  If you consider March, April, and May as Spring, June, July, and August as Summer, and September, October, and November as Autumn, Labor Day and Memorial Day mirror each other, exactly thirteen weeks apart, a quarter of a year.

But it's not the date that makes them Twins, that ties them together, but their nature.  There's two parts to this, the original intention, and the organic evolution.

Though it has evolved, Memorial Day is and always has been, throughout its history, a day of remembering those who died serving in the United States armed forces.  It is ultimately a day of mourning for the fallen, characterized by visiting graves and laying flowers and other offerings on the graves.  It has evolved in that people don't only visit military dead, but family as well in a lot of cases.  It has become almost the US's Dia de los Muertos.

Unlike Memorial Day, Labor Day is a celebration, not mourning.  It was a day created to honour the contributions of workers to the economy and society.  However, seldom is that element mentioned at this point.  It is seen as a reward for laborers, giving them a day off, laborers used to mean all those who have jobs, though I don't think management and others that aren't laborers in the traditional sense.  It is normally celebrated with picnics and barbecues, the last weekend of the summer season.  It is celebrated with family.

You have several levels, as I said, that make these two holidays Twins.  The first is obvious.  Memorial Day is a day for the military, Labor Day is a day for civilians.  This has been a strong dichotomy throughout history, with the addition of a third group, which I will get to in a moment.  Rome had a strong division between the civilians and the soldiers.  Civilians where pretty much set in their place unless they became soldiers.  You were either a citizen by birth, or you became one serving as a soldier.  There were other groups as well, but these were the largest two.  Medieval thought described the three estates, Oratores, "those who pray", Bellatores, "those who fight", and Laboratores, "those who work".  A simplified summary of India's caste system has four main castes, with the outcasts as a fifth.  These are: Brahman, "priests", Kshatriyas, "warriors", Vaishyas, "traders", Shudras, "workmen", and Panchama, "the fifth".  Traders are of not, because as the Borges developed in Europe into a Middle Class, it was traders that they were.  But priests and traders are smaller portions of society, by their nature.  Fighters and laborers are the largest portions in all societies that have try classes or castes.  And they are very much opposites in their nature, but both essential for society.

On a deeper level, the two holidays represent life and death.  Memorial Day is a day of mourning the dead.  Labor Day is a celebration of life.  Memorial Day is visiting the dead.  Labor Day is spending time with family, the place our life came from.  Life and Death.  What is curious, these days, opposite on the calender and opposite in nature, are opposite of the older holidays, holy days.  Spring is normally a time of rebirth and life, Candlemas and May Day, the length of days growing.  Autumn is normally a time of death, harvest, Samhain.  But these two are opposite that.  Why?

If you think about Labor Day from an agricultural point of view, you realize Labor Day is during harvest time, and in many parts of the US, the end of harvest.  It's appropriate that laborer's would be celebrated after harvest, after the hard work they have done.  So Labor Day is easy to see as a traditional harvest festival, especially with the focus on the family gathering around food.  And the food from harvest, though often seen as dying, is the life that gets people through the winter.

But what about Memorial Day?  It's important to note that the current Memorial Day comes from the Northern date after the Civil War.  The Southern equivalant occurred on May 1, May Day.  The secret here comes from a detail of the ceremony of visiting the graves.  The practice of laying flowers on the graves.  This practice is very ancient and didn't start with the holiday.  The holiday determined a specific day for an older custom.  Now May is well known as the month flowers bloom (though it's not as set as customs imply).  May Day is most commonly celebrated with gathering and giving of flowers.  Flowers on graves probably came from creating a place for the dead that was like where they would go in death, in the belief it would make that place better.  Just like the Egyptians filling tomes with what the dead would need.  So, if the intended custom was the placement of flowers (and the original name was Decoration Day because of this custom), it only makes sense that it would need to be at a time when flowers bloom.  Suddenly, Memorial Day becomes a flower ceremony, the placing of flowers on graves becomes a ceremony of planting, just as the body placed in the ground is the seed, the death that will bring life.

So the two Twins do in fact fit their seasons.  Memorial Day, a day of death, is a day of planting.  Labor Day, a day of life, is a day of harvest.

To get back to Labor Day specifically, lets look at labour itself.  In Kabbalah, this is Olam HaAssaiah, the World of Action.  It's the world where things happen.  It isn't the World of Planning or the World of thinking.  It's the World of Action.  Priests in most cultures deal with spiritual things.  They are the ones who pray, not the ones who act.  Traders typically take the things made by laborers and transport them then trade them with others.  They distribute the result of others actions, don't act themselves in the way we're discussing.  But both laborers and warriors act and change the world, laborers typically by creating and building, warriors by killing and destroying.  Ultimately, labour is action, and action is the stuff of this world and the only way to change the higher worlds.  This is why down to earth, salt of the earth, people are the ones who labour, the farmers and ranchers that produce our food, the construction workers that produce our shelter and roads, the steel workers building skeletons of our cities and the cars we drive, the miners and droppers and rig workers who give us energy for our electronics and our heat, that provide the iron and copper, the lumberjacks that provide the wood for our houses, the teamsters who get our things from one place to another.

Part of the reason the craft has always been made up of outsiders is because we span the classes and castes above.  We work.  You can't be a witch if you don't do the work.  We trade.  On multiple levels.  On a mundane level, most magical services were bartered and traded for.  A charm in exchange for food, a curse in exchange for repairing my fence, an amulet for a bushel of wood.  On a spiritual level, much of magic is trade with the spirits, giving them something in exchange for a service or information from them.  Witches tend to be excellent traders.  We fight.  As Victor Anderson said, the craft is martial and a warrior tradition.  It's not coincidence that many folk tales are about witches flying to fight spirits in the night.  As Cochrane said, "What I have, I hold!"  What can you hold if you don't fight for it?  And we pray.  All spells are truly prayers, but more specifically, we are Priests and Priestesses.  We form the Bridge between the people and the gods, between the Kingdom and the King, between the mundane and the Divine, between this world and the otherworld, between heaven and earth, between this world and the underworld, between life and death.  We are the Bridge because we stand between worlds.  We are liminal, neither here nor there, but both, so can connect the worlds for others.  We are Priests, Warriors, Traders, Workers.  We are all things.  Liminal.  So we become the Fifth, the untouchables.  Because we can't be contained in category because we claim them all.  So we become outsiders, Other, Monster, untouchable.

FFF,

~Muninn's Kiss

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

On Priests, Priestesses, Bridges, and the Abyss...

The Priest and Priestess have been coming up a lot in my conversations with people and in my mind and Fetch.  I've talked off and on about this role, but haven't really put it all together.  In this post, I'll use Priestess generically, though I mean both Priest and Priestess.  (On a side note, Priestess was originally Priestress, which I like.)

Rope bridge in Indiana
Jones and the Temple of Doom.

To me, the role of Priestess is that of a Bridge.  The Priestess joins the mundane and the divine together through her.  Over that Bridge, the Ineffable, the Divine, G-d, God Herself, crosses over and comes to earth, comes to the people.  Over that Bridge, the people cross over and come to heaven, come to God Herself.  The Priestess is liminal.  She isn't of the "common people".  She isn't G-d (depending how you look at it).  She's in between, one foot in each world.  Like Witch.  Taboos and Geises are part of every culture, every religion, every tradition.  These are the rules that define the interactions of the members with each other and with the gods or spirits.  Most importantly, they define the boundary between Human and Divine.  The Priestess Bridges that boundary and allows the crossing over, unites the two sides of the line.  But that Bridge is only necessary and only important and only seen for what it is if the boundary already exists.  It's the image in Judaism of the curtain that separates the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle and the Temple.  There is so much symbolism in these two structures.  Only the High Priest could cross over, pass through that curtain and enter the Holy of Holies, and only once a year, to sprinkle blood on the Mercy Seat.  The taboo was broken once a year by him to bring unite the people with G-d.  But this was still dangerous.  There was a rope tied to his leg and bells on his clothes, so if he was struck dead, the bells would cease and they would pull him out.  There is an inherent danger in breaking of taboo.  This idea of a Bridge and the Priestess is very important in my practice and my beliefs.  Witch is the Priest and the Priest is the Bridge.  It's jumping the broom, crossing the hedge, it's the joining of heaven and earth and earth and the lower world in the axis mundi, the compass outside space and time yet including all of it, the centre which is the circumference of all.

Going back to one sentence I just said, if the Bridge isn't needed if the boundary, the taboo, the geise, doesn't exist, why have the boundary in the first place?  Wouldn't it be better to have no separation between Divine and Human?  No boundary means no Bridge and no separation, right?  Isn't this what we want, union with the Divine?  At first glance, it seems like it.  But we are Human.  Without the boundary to begin with, we don't see Human as one with the Divine, we see the Divine as one with Human.  We can't see the Divine because we are looking into a mirror with Human eyes and only seeing our self, and not just our self, but only the mundane aspect of our self.  We miss the Divine and so end up creating a separation between Human and Divine, and unlike the taboo boundary, this is a boundary we can't see and so can't cross.  We aren't aware it's there in the first place in order to cross it.  The taboo, the geise, creates a boundary we can see and are aware of.  We can point at it and say, on that side is the Divine and on this side is the Human.  So when it's time to cross it, to break the taboo or geise, we are able to see both the boundary, the Abyss, and to see the Bridge, the Priestess, which is us.  Before that point, the Priestess crosses for us and connects us, showing glimpses.  But when the time comes, like the Hebrew High Priest entering the Holy of Holies, we become the Priestess and the Bridge and cross to the Divine.

Kai no kuni Saruhashi no shinsha
no zu, ‘A True View of the Monkey
Bridge in the Province of Kai’
by Shotei Hokuju.  Image
from JapanesePrints-London.

One way to look at the Bridge is as spanning the Abyss.  When I talk about the Abyss, I usually am referring to the concept in Kabbalah.  In Kabbalah, there are four worlds.  The first, Assiah, the World of Action, corresponding to Malkuth and is the physical world (where actions, change, can occur) is separated from the second, Yetzurah, the World of Forms, corresponding to Yesod, Hod, and Netzach, by the Firmament.  Yetzurah is separated from the third world, Briah, the World of Creation, corresponding to Tipherah, Geburah, and Chesed, by the Veil.  Briah is separated from the fourth world (or is it the first?), Atziluth, the World of Emanations, corresponding to Binah, Chokmah, and Kether, by the Abyss.

Below the Abyss are the things we humans, with our human minds, can understand.  Across the Abyss are the Supernal Triad, Kether, Chokmah, and Binah, which can't be understood with the human mind or intuition, intellect or emotions.  Any words we use for the things across the Abyss don't come close to describing them.  It is more this abyss of ability to comprehend that forms the Abyss than anything else.  Part of it is protection for us, lest we be destroyed or go insane.

In the midst of the Abyss is Da'ath, Knowing, the "false Sephirah".  Depending on who you ask, Da'ath is either a trap or a treasure.  It's the "false Sephirah" because it doesn't really exist on the Kabbalah Tree of Life.  The Sephiroth are eternal, they are the Divine in this world and are the building blocks, the DNA if you will, of creation.  Da'ath only exists in the moment, only when you're in it, then it's gone.  It's a trap because you can get lost in the Abyss if you're not careful, and find only insanity.  It's a gift because it is a glimpse at the Supernal Triad.  In Da'ath, you get a taste of what's beyond, a glimpse that changes you, for Da'ath is intimate knowing.  What you see becomes a part of you.  But you can't stay there without losing yourself in the Abyss.

Da'ath, sitting in the Abyss, connecting the two worlds, is a Bridge.  It connects that which we can comprehend to that which we can't.  Da'ath is the Priestess.  She stands in the Abyss, holding the Divine in one hand and the Human in the other and brings them together.  She helps the people get that glimpse across the Abyss that will change them forever.

Though there were concepts of Priestess that I encountered before then, my current understanding of Priestess started with my understanding of the Hebrew letter Chet and the Chatoteret.

The Fallen: Wisdom and Death, Arddhu and Anna

What can popular media tell us about spiritual things?

The Fallen
By Seether

She's wearin' dresses on the borderline
(lookin good)
Or making senses that were lost in time
(make amends)
This liberation is the one they'll love for ages (hey man I see them comin' again)
Just cut those dresses make you look so fine (you're a ten)
Put on that shirt and you'll look so divine
(i'm impressed)
This generation won't forgive those signs of aging (hey man I see them comin' again)
I got my ticket for the next makeover
I got my ticket for a stolen ride

I believe, I believe
I believe in the fallen
I believe, I believe
I believe in the callin'

They got injections for those facial lines (make amends)
Break out the scalpel keep the nose defined
(look again)
A crucifixion of the love we've known for ages (hey man i see them comin' again)
You're much too pretty you don't need your mind (just pretend)
Just bat them eyelids get your heart's desires
A resurrection of the shallow and the vapid
(hey man I see them comin')

I got my ticket for the next makeover
I lost my taste for this I'll keep my pride
I believe, I believe
I believe in the fallen
I believe, I believe
I believe in the callin'

Reject

I got my ticket for the next makeover
I lost my taste for this, I'll keep my pride
I believe, I believe
I believe in the fallen
I believe, I believe
I believe in the callin'
I believe in the callin'

Image from My Jewelry Blog

In my Good Friday post, I talked about how our society doesn't like death and avoids the subject.  It isn't just talking and thinking about it that we, as a society, avoid.  We also do everything we can to eliminate those things that remind us of death.  We use plastic surgery, as this song talks about, to avoid looking like we're aging, because aging reminds us of death, that we will die some day.  But avoiding death makes life shallow, because death is very much a part of life.  Life loses its meaning without death.

Another way we avoid death is to take people as they get older and put them in old folks homes, and then we don't visit them, because their age reminds us of our own mortality.  We put them away, out off sight, out of mind.  If we can't see them, they aren't there.  If they aren't there, there is no aging, there is no death.  Hiding them is our immortality.  Or so we hope.

Cora Anderson, Grandmaster of Feri
Image from Harpy Books
Taken by Valerie Walker

There was a time when the elderly were venerated.  They are wisdom.  They are the ones who would teach the young, imparting their wisdom and experience, at least what the young were willing to listen to.  They might have been too old to do the heavy work required for the community, but they still had a purpose.  They were still valuable, and valued by the community.  By putting our elderly out of sight, we don't just deny them a purpose to live for, we deny ourselves the wisdom they can impart.  With the loss of their experience, our society is getting dumber and more foolish.  "Where there is no vision, the people perish."

Death and Wisdom are very closely connected.  Robert Cochrane described the feminine Mysteries as the pentagram as Life/Birth, Love, Maternity, Wisdom, Death/Resurrection.  Wisdom is the stage that proceeds Death.  It grows out of Maternity and heads toward Death and hence Resurrection.  In avoiding Death, we avoid Wisdom.

When I think of Wisdom and Death, I think of the Anna and the Arddhu, the Feri gods returning to God Herself.  One isn't Wisdom and the other Death, for both are both Wisdom and Death.  In this situation, they are the Divine Twins.  They are separate, yet they are the same.  They are both near Death, and both long to impart the Wisdom they have to those they care.  They are both dangerous, as Death always is, but their Wisdom is worth it.

Image from
Star of Nuit blog

It is significant that the Anna stands as priestess of the Star Goddess, not young Nimue or nurturing Mari.  It is Wisdom, standing closest to Death, which is also Rebirth, that is closest to God Herself, who can stand as the Bridge between Herself and us.  The marriage of the gods is in Death and Rebirth, an end and a new beginning, like all initiations.  The Anna stands at the Altar of the ineffable, her red veil covering her face, waiting for us to draw near.

The Arddhu stands at the Gates of Death.  But the Gates of Death are also the Gates of Life, another set of Divine Twins.  Everyone comes at the end of their life in from of Arddhu, and all pass him coming into the world.  It's the same Gates, yet we see them differently depending on which direction we pass.  Storm says Arddhu is Guardian of the Crossroads.  Crossroads are transition points, liminal points, the passages between worlds.  As are the Gates of Life and Death.  What is Witch without the crossing between worlds?  And how do you cross without Arddhu?  All must come to him, but Witch comes early.

FFF,
~Muninn's Kiss

*And, as my About This Journal page states, this entry, like all my entries, express my opinions, my experiences, my ideas.  Though they are influenced by others and I quote others, don't take what I say as dogma or doctrine for any tradition or religion.

Romulus and Remus: Establishment and Witch - Part 2

Okay, back to Romulus and Remus.   I'd first like to quote from the Wikipedia article about them, since I think it gives a pretty good summary.  The think to remember is that there are many versions of the myth.  This doesn't reflect all of them.

Romulus and Remus are Rome's twin founders in its traditional foundation myth, although the former is sometimes said to be the sole founder. Their maternal grandfather was Numitor, rightful king of Alba Longa, a descendant of the Trojan prince, Aeneas and father to Rhea Silvia (also known as Ilia). Before their conception, Numitor's brother Amulius deposed his brother, killed his sons and forced Rhea to become a Vestal Virgin, intending to deprive Numitor of lawful heirs and thus secure his own position; but Rhea conceived Romulus and Remus by either the god Mars or the demi-god Hercules. When the twins were born, Amulius left them to die but they were saved by a series of miraculous interventions. A she-wolf found them and suckled them. A shepherd and his wife then fostered them and raised them to manhood as shepherds. The twins proved to be natural leaders and acquire many followers. When told their true identities, they killed Amulius, restored Numitor to the throne of Alba Longa and decided to found a new city for themselves.

Romulus wished to build the new city on the Palatine Hill but Remus preferred the Aventine Hill. They agreed to determine the site through augury. Romulus appeared to receive the more favorable signs but each claimed the results in his favour. In the disputes that followed, Remus was murdered by Romulus. Ovid has Romulus invent the festival of Lemuria to appease Remus' resentful ghost. Romulus names the new city Rome after himself and goes on to create the Roman Legions and the Roman Senate. Rome's population is swelled by incomers, including landless refugees and outlaws; most are men. Romulus arranges the abduction of women from the neighboring Sabine tribes, which immediately leads to war but eventually results in the combination of Sabines and Romans as one Roman people. Rome rapidly expands to become a dominant force in central Italy, due to divine favour and the inspired administrative, military and political leadership of Romulus. In later life Romulus becomes increasingly autocratic, disappears in mysterious circumstances and is deified as the god Quirinus, the divine persona of the Roman people.

The image of the she-wolf suckling the divinely fathered twins became an iconic representation of the city and its founding legend, making Romulus and Remus preeminent among the feral children of ancient mythography. The legend as a whole encapsulates Rome's ideas of itself, its origins and moral values; for modern scholarship, it remains one of the most complex and problematic of all foundation myths, particularly in the matter and manner of Remus' death. Ancient historians had no doubt that Romulus gave his name to the city. Most modern historians believe his name a back-formation from the name Rome; the basis for Remus' name and role remain subjects of ancient and modern speculation. The myth was fully developed into something like an "official", chronological version in the Late Republican and early Imperial era. Roman historians dated the city's foundation from 758 to 728 BC. Plutarch says Romulus was fifty-three at his death; his reckoning gives the twins' birth year as c. 771 BC. Possible historical bases for the broad mythological narrative remain unclear and are much disputed. Very few scholars believe in the historicity of Romulus and Remus, but Andrea Carandini is one. He bases his belief on the 1988 discovery of an ancient wall which he names as the Murus Romuli on the north slope of the Palatine Hill in Rome, and dates to the mid 8th century BC.

In all versions of the myth, there are strong parallels between the birth of the twins and the birth of Moses in the Torah.  Both were meant to die but were saved.  Both were placed in baskets in a river, in this myth on the Tiber instead of the Nile.  Both were saved from the river.  Moses was found and raised by a princess, whereas Tiberinus, the river deity, directed the twins' basket to the reeds where they were rescued and suckled by a wolf.  There are a lot of parallels between how the Jews view Moses and how Rome viewed Romulus, but I won't go there here.

Whether the myth is true or not, whether Romulus and Remus really lived, whether they really founded Rome, doesn't really matter, like it doesn't with most myths.  The myth, Romulus, is Rome and Rome is Romulus.  The myth shaped Rome and Rome shaped the myth.  You can't have Rome as it was without Romulus.  And you can't have the modern Western world without Rome, because it grew out of Rome.  Most of Europe and the New World are the result of Rome.  Basically what is identified as the Christian world is the modern Roman world.  The West is Rome and Rome is Romulus.  We, the modern world, are the results of this myth.  Romulus formed the Roman Senate in the myth, and Western government, and also Western religious structures, come from the Senate.  It is all the product of Romulus, Romulus the son of a god, Romulus raised by wolves, Romulus the shepherd, Romulus the warrior, Romulus the leader, Romulus the kinslayer.

But what of Remus?  There is no Romulus without Remus.  They are twins.  The story of Romulus is the story of Remus.  There's a reason why Remus, so mysterious to historians, is always part of the story.  But all the stories are either about both doing something or about only Romulus.  Who was this Remus?  Why is he important?

Seeing Romulus as the leader and Remus as the follower is easy with the focus on Romulus.  It's easy to think Remus just followed his brother's lead, never questioned, never argued, did whatever Romulus wanted.  But is this true?  The stories say they both proved to be excellent leaders and gained many followers.  It wasn't just Romulus the leader and Remus the follower.  This matches my dream with each of the twins leading a group.  But what more do we know about Remus?

Some versions of the myth tell of a disagreement.  The twins want to build a city, the city that would later be known as Rome.  They disagree on which hill to build it one.  They decide to use augury to decide.  Remus sees six eagles (or vultures) and Romulus sees twelve.  Remus claims it favoured him because he saw his six before Romulus saw any.  Romulus claims it favoured him because he saw more.  Romulus and his followers start building a wall (or a boundary, a trench, etc, depending on the version), while Remus watches, criticizing.  I'll finish this story in a moment, but first, what do we see here?  Is Remus just a follower?  Obviously not.  They disagreed, and Remus didn't just give in.

The end of this version is interesting, and gets to the root of where I've been heading.  Remus jumps over the wall as an insult to the defenses.  Romulus gets mad and kills Remus and says, so will happen to anyone who jumps over the wall.  This can, of course, be taken as talking about that anyone who tries to breach the defenses of Rome will be killed.  And this understanding would have been the one Romans saw in the myth.  And for a long time, anyone who went against Rome ended up losing.  But is there another way to look at it?

The wall, the trench, the boundary.  Liminal.  Crossing over.  Liminal space is important, because a boundary in the physical world reflects a boundary in the spiritual.  Witch lives in the liminal, one foot in each world.  Part of what makes Witch is the crossing over.  Some use the term jumping the hedge.  Is it a great stretch to compare this to jumping a wall?  Can we see Remus as Witch?<

Romulus is the one building, he is the establishment.  The government, the Church, order, the authorities.  Remus is on the sidelines, the outcast, Other, Witch.  Remus is a threat to Romulus, to what he is building, to his plans.  Other is always a threat to the establishment, whether the establishment is Christian, Muslim, Jewish, pagan, heathen, atheist, whatever.  Witch is always a threat.  Because the establishment doesn't like change.  Change can't be predicted, can't be controlled.  But Witch is change.  Change can't help but come.

So, we see Romulus as the establishment, and Remus as Witch.  Romulus isn't evil, nor is Remus.  But neither are good, either.  The Church isn't evil, the government isn't evil, science isn't evil.  Witchcraft isn't evil, either.  There is no inherent good or evil in either.  But both may do evil or do good, or more accurately do harm or help.  Romulus kills Remus, not because Romulus is evil, and not because Remus is evil, but because Remus is a threat.

But what is Romulus without Remus?  The important parts of the story are done with Remus' death.  And what is Remus without Romulus?  They are twins, they are one.  Romulus is Remus' reflection, and Remus is Romulus' reflection.  They are each others' soul.  So too with the establishment and Witch.  Without Witch, there is no change.  The establishment becomes stagnant.  And without the establishment, Witch becomes complacent.  You see this in today's witchcraft.  It has grown in numbers in the last sixty years, but so has the number of "witches" who aren't serious, who just think it's cool, who never dig deep.  The establishment and Witch, like Romulus and Remus, are two sides of the same coin, the outside expression and the inside expression.

Okay, back to my dream.  In my dream, both Romulus and Remus were obviously leaders as they each had large groups of people.  I only one I actually encountered was Romulus.  Was Remus already dead by then?  I don't know.  But as important as he is in myth, as important as he is in the discussion above, he must not have been important in the dream.  It was our interaction with Romulus, with the establishment, that mattered.

Romulus was the large group, the majority, as the establishment always is.  Or, I should say, followed by the majority.  We were the small group, the minority.  Romulus' people seemed like followers, lackeys.  It was him and those who followed him.  Our group felt like a team, one.  There was a leader, the secular leader, the representative.  And there was me, the priestess, the spiritual leader, the Bridge.  But we weren't above the rest, superior to the rest.  We were all equals even if we had different roles.

Romulus tries to force himself of the leader.  She is the physical, I am the spiritual.  She is this world, I am the Otherworld.  She is human, i am divine, fey.  Together, we are whole.  Together, we are Witch.  He forces himself on her, because he can touch the physical word.  He can touch the body.  But he can't touch the spiritual, he can't touch the soul.  I aid her in trying to fight him back.  We are one, so we fight together, the spiritual aiding the physical, the soul aiding the body.  It's only together we can fight back.

There is a lot more in my dream, though some of it is personal.  And there is a lot more to the story of Romulus and Remus.  But I'll leave both be for now.

FFF,
~Muninn's Kiss