Alone With The Gods

In the mornings I walk in the woods when it’s quiet and still and the sound of birds and other creatures stirring offers a rhythm and texture to my slow, contemplative pace.

With my dog at my side, I take time to notice the leaves, the reflection of the sun as it catches remnants of spider webs draped across bushes and trees. I feel the coolness of morning and smell the freshness of the air.

Is anything more sacred than this?

This is my church. Here, I commune with Goddess and God and the spirits that live in the woods. This is sacred to me. This is where the gods live.

My strolls through the woods are quiet and phone free. There is no wi-fi and no computer. Only my thoughts and prayers and offerings.

This is were true poetry is born. This is where gnosis is born. This is my church. And when I listen, I hear. When I look, I see.

I am reminded of this from Song of Myself by Walt Whitman:

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look
through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the begin-
ning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

Urge and urge and urge,
Always the procreant urge of the world.

Something to think about from the forward to Yearning for the Wind:

Once upon a time a spell was cast upon people across the land. The spell made people believe we are all separate beings with no connection to each other and no connection with nature or the rest of life. The spell continued with the belief that anything we could not see, hear, feel, smell, or taste with our ordinary senses did not exist. And the spell caused people to believe that only humans had a soul which a punishing God judged the nature of. Happiness only came from financial gain, collecting material objects, and having power over people, the animal world, and all of nature. The spell also set the belief that individuals were not creative and their role was to behave and conform to society.

The effect of this spell put people to sleep. They forgot about the beauty of life and their own soul’s purpose. The light went out of people’s eyes as the old knowledge of how to talk to nature was forgotten. Empty gazes and looks of fear and desperation replaced the light. The veils between the worlds closed down. Magical thinking was replaced by reductionist thinking. The magic was gone along with people’s souls. These were dark times indeed.

Dark times lie ahead too. As a people, we live more outside of ourselves than ever. We don’t know who we are and we tend to know our favorite celebrity better than we know ourselves, our families and our community.

Maybe it’s easier to simply put our minds and our consciousness on auto pilot, coasting through a series of events and moments until we ultimately take our last earthly breath. Maybe.

Or maybe we need a counter spell, something powerful and timeless that can shake the foundations of nothingness and reconnect us to our essential nature, something that can expose the Archonic forces that rule our vicarious existences. Then, we can shed light on the fact that there is light within us and even in these dark times we can find the switch that turns it on.