Category Archives: Spirit

How we manage communion with Spirit as well as community with others. AKA religion.

On Turning Fifty

This is my year of gratitude. Not that I don’t already feel and express gratitude regularly, but this weekend—my 50th birthday weekend—made me realize that I need to focus for a full year on just being grateful.

I made this commitment after waking up too early this morning, a fairly regular occurrence unfortunately. My habit for those pre-dawn hours is to stay lying down, and search for a meditative focus to calm and center myself. Falling back to sleep is not my goal, though it sometimes happens. Rather, I want to make use of the liminal state to soothe any worry or anxiety that has me in its grip.

This morning in meditation I thought about my rich and wonderful birthday celebrations. For days I have been surrounded by humor, warmth, friendship and love, being toasted and fêted in such grand style it has been hard to take it all in. This morning I was able to sort out some of what has been going on for me under the surface. Overwhelmingly, I had the sense of long cycles being completed, and a feeling of grace at their fulfillment.

One cycle began soon after I left home as a teenager. I felt strongly that I wanted to have three children by the time I turned 30, so that by 50 I would be done raising them. This plan had its flaws of course, but it was also a profound sacrifice of my youth and freedom that I was willing to make. I wanted plenty of time to enjoy having grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and felt somehow that I wouldn’t find my vocation till later in life anyway, so spending my early years raising kids seemed to make sense.

As I sat surrounded by old friends yesterday, many of whom have known me since those early days, it slowly dawned on me that I really have completed that huge act of manifesting. My children are grown and pretty much on their own. I have my vocation, and my freedom. At fifty, a whole new life has begun.

The other cycle started more recently, and was marked by a big dream in early October, 2005. This was an extremely difficult time in my life. Just three weeks before, I had left my marriage of 20+ years after months of turmoil, and moved out to the coast. I knew by then what I wanted my career to be, but it was nowhere near developed enough to support me and my teenage daughters. Meanwhile, every day was filled with more painful revelations of just how bad my relationship had become. Everything behind me lay in ruins, and I could not see the road ahead.

Then I had the Bridge Dream:

I am approaching a toll booth at night, and scrounging in my wallet for the two dollar toll. I hand the fee to the attendant, and she hands me back a million dollars change! I hand it back, saying, “But I gave you exact change.” She says, “No, this is your change.” “A million dollars change? This is my lucky day!!!” I think as I drive joyfully off into the darkness.

A dream like this needs little explanation. Its clarity and simplicity meant that I could tell it to anyone and find instant agreement that ending my marriage and moving on was absolutely the best course of action. I told the dream to a group of Jungian friends, asking if they could see a downside to the dream. They were mostly silent, but one pointed out that energetically the distance between $2 and $1,000,000 was so vast that I should guard against exhaustion. Truer words were never spoken.

I have leaned on that dream for reassurance, trusting its truth when I didn’t yet trust my own. Yesterday, as I drove over the bridge on the way home from San Francisco, I felt in my bones that the Bridge Dream’s transformative process in my life is also complete. Perhaps there will be a moment when someone literally hands me a million dollars, but short of that I do feel a million times more alive, and more myself, than I did seven years ago.

The dream has seen me through some very low spots and helped me climb back up, and it has given me the clarity and compassion to guide others through their own dark nights of transformation. For this, I will spend an entire year in gratitude. I have my health, my life, my family, my work, my home, and a wonderful, shimmering circle of friends and loved ones. I feel truly blessed.

An eBook Rises from the Bathwater

When I started the Blog o’ Gnosis in 2005, I considered it a way to attract a publisher for my post-Circle Round books, the first part of building my “author platform.” Luckily for me this move coincided with the complete downfall of the publishing industry, and none of the three books I pitched over the next three years were picked up by any publisher, large or small.

If I had been able to sell a book proposal in 2005, 2006, or even 2007, chances are that I never would have written the long series of posts about Reclaiming that make up my latest ebook, The Baby and the Bathwater: What I learned about spirituality, magic, community, ecstasy and power from 25 years in Reclaiming. It was from commenters on this blog that I realized that there was a story in these posts that went beyond my efforts to make sense of personal experiences, and that writing about it might help more people than just myself. The ebook is made up of several posts I wrote here about Reclaiming over a period of four years, updated and with a new introduction that gives some backstory and puts them all into context.

If I had gotten a publishing contract for one of those early books, I also would not have followed so closely the rise of ebooks and self-publishing, and most importantly the shift in what is considered publishable material. Back in 2005, no publisher would consider printing anything that had been previously posted on a blog. Blogs were considered okay for marketing, but never for writing actual book content. This month, comedian Steve Martin is publishing a book of his previously tweeted tweets. Or rather, I should say that Steve Martin’s huge publisher Grand Central is releasing his book of tweets, which are no less funny for having been published first on Twitter. It’s a whole new world.

My professional life has become much more focused on publishing, with the new Authors Go Public meetups that my friend Suzanna and I are conjuring up in the Bay Area. On April 10, I will be speaking about my self-publishing journey, and how blogging has changed the power dynamics in Reclaiming and other organizations more than meetings or gatherings ever could.

Meanwhile, The Baby and the Bathwater is available here in pdf format. If you like the book, please help spread the word by telling your friends to buy it, and posting reviews on Amazon, the iBookstore, or the Nook store. (It will be available on Kobo soon.) If you are a blogger or podcaster yourself and would like to interview me about the book, I would be delighted.

Now that this book is launched, I will continue to use the Blog o’ Gnosis to develop material for future books. I definitely want to keep working with the California Cosmology idea, and will be writing more humorous memoir pieces as well. Meanwhile, you can read more of my thoughts on publishing, marketing and social media for authors here, and see all my stuff for sale at the newly revamped Serpentine Music & Media.

One thing that hasn’t changed since 2005 is the amount of effort it takes for authors to sell books. I have been doing this for a while, and I’m still learning how to navigate the landscape, how to engage with readers and sell the old stuff while writing the new stuff and making a living meanwhile. I am more excited than ever about what is possible, and know now from my own experience that it really can work. Here’s to all of us taking our empowered, writing selves, and going public with what we know, and the wisdom we have to share.

An Eye in the Storm: Victor Anderson’s Memorial

I wrote this piece shortly after Victor Anderson’s death, in October 2001. I am reprinting it here because Victor’s name came up in conversation with a friend this morning, and I realized that I want the story of my experience at his memorial to be available to readers here as well.

Things just hadn’t been smooth ever since September 11th. Schedules were thrown into a whirlwind, individual intentions and goals suddenly disappeared into an abyss as larger issues came into sharp focus. So I wasn’t really surprised when, just as I thought I had a free Monday to start picking up the scattered threads of my work, I got Max’s email announcing plans for his memorial on my first unencumbered work day.

Though I had only met Victor twice, I knew it was important to pay my respects on his passing. When my circle had gone down to spend afternoons with Victor and Cora, I had been captivated by his enigmatic presence, and understood the stature he had achieved as a teacher and a shaman. At the same time, he rubbed me the wrong way, and eventually I found myself getting up to help Cora in the kitchen as Victor went on weaving his sorcerer’s threads of world history, comparative religion, past lives, and magic in the living room. Still, he was too important a figure in the Feri tradition of the Bay Area, and also in the Reclaiming community, which had been my community for nearly 20 years, for me not to go if I was able.

I drove down from Sebastopol, worrying about traffic and whether I’d make it to Hayward on time. Then I reminded myself that the whole day was given over to ritual time, and the only thing to do was relax and let things happen. Macha and Anna Korn helped by coming along for the ride, so I could catch up with friends during the drive. We pulled into the Chapel of the Chimes in good time, as a light rain spattered the windshield.

There is something very magical, and primal, about memorial services. More than anything else the memorial helps us make the transition between thinking of a person as living and thinking of them as dead. But to me the distinction is not as clear cut: there is death in being alive, and a life after death that is longed for like a release from an arduous task. At the same time, the presence of a once living body that is now disintegrating  is an unassailable fact that demands from each of us a transformation of our relationship to the person who is no longer there.

Memorials also help the departing soul orient to the spirit world, and make the final break from its body. My experience that day was that Victor was completely conscious and aware of everything that went on at his memorial. I felt a deep sense of rightness when his son bowed before the casket, acknowledging the living presence of his father. Perhaps Victor was so strongly present in the room because even as a man he dwelled in the spirit world more often than not. My heart went out to Cora, who looked so frail and grief-stricken, and for whom the occasion was clearly far more than a time to philosophize.

Victor’s spirit was so powerful, and palpable, that I wondered whether the memorial would actually help him depart in any way. Then the bagpipes began playing Amazing Grace, and anyone in the room who was not yet close to tears soon got there. The energy in the room shifted, as the sound of the pipes seemed to infuse every molecule with a more intense vibration. Riding the waves of power being generated as the piper walked to the altar and back, Victor’s spirit washed over us as he began to separate from all the material objects in the room—his body, the flowers, the candles, the people—and fly out the open door, into the world beyond.

There is no easy transition between being witness to such and event and finding oneself in a parking lot in Hayward, amongst probably the largest crowd of Feri folk ever peaceably assembled. There were people there I knew and loved, many I didn’t know, and some people I’d only known through email. Conscious of the long ride home through the gathering rush hour, and partly because of the awkwardness of the occasion, I didn’t want to stay long.

It was on the drive north that the storm really got started. An occasional sprinkling gave way to darker clouds and distant rumblings. Heading across the bridge to San Rafael, it was raining steadily, and bolts of lightning crackled from the clouds to the dry earth. In California, the first rain of the season is always an important event, but this was no ordinary storm. We don’t get thunderstorms that often, particularly ones that cover as vast an area as this one did. The clouds were high and dark, and the sky for miles around looked like a giant blackboard. The sun was sinking behind the hills, but here and there it shone through and bathed us in light, as the rain came down and lightning struck all around. The bolts were clearly visible streaks like hieroglyphs against the sky, sometimes in rapid succession in the exact same shape, sometimes dancing all across the horizon.

I remembered someone that day mentioning that Victor had been born in a storm. As I drove through Petaluma, thinking about his teachings and my conflicted feelings over them, the setting sun came through under the edge of the clouds, right on the horizon. Sandwiched between dark hills and dark sky, it looked for all the world like an eye in the storm. I thought it was Victor, sight returned on a greater scale, checking to see who was paying attention. Since I apparently was, I started talking to him, acknowledging his prowess in leaving in so strong a storm.

I wished him well on his journey, and also prayed that the days of vengeance and vendetta in the name of religion were passing away just like his life, just like the storm. That is the place where I have to part company with Victor’s teachings, and I told him so. Many at his memorial said that he chose this time to cross over in order to work his influence on the other side. Given the opportunity to speak to him in that final moment, it was important for me to put in a plug for non-violence, which I believe to be the highest spiritual calling. I have no idea how his power will be felt now that he has passed on, but that day I prayed it would be for the greatest good.

Finally, as I climbed out of the Petaluma valley and the horizon receded from my sight, I found myself reciting the Buddhist prayer over and over: may all beings be happy, may all beings be happy. I feel privileged to have known him and Cora, however briefly, and am very glad to have made it to his memorial. I won’t soon forget how that bagpipe gathered Victor’s spirit and all our prayers and hurled them out beyond the veil, nor will I forget meeting him eye to eye, and heart to heart, as he left on the rays of the setting sun.

From Samhain to Solstice

It feels like it’s time to take down the Day of the Dead altar. I am not aware of any hard and fast rule about this, but just last night as I added more wood to the fire and glanced up at the mantle, I had the distinct impression that things had to change.

The novenas that Deborah made need to be put away, those with pictures of George Carlin and Abbie Hoffman packed side by side with the ones honoring my father and uncle. The ancestor shrine I constructed from bits and pieces of Raven Moonshadow’s belongings will be as well, along with pictures of my beloved nephew Alex, my old boyfriend Steve, my good friend Barbara, and so many others.

Maybe there is no clear dividing line in home decor, when the colors of Samhain pass away and those of Winter Solstice deck the halls. Maybe I am simply reacting against the emotional burden of having my nephew’s picture prominent in the living room, a daily reminder that I will no longer see him change and grow with the seasons. Maybe I need to bring my thoughts back to the living: my niece’s baby who has had a tumultuous year; my daughter the newly-minted college freshman; my ailing mother.

Whatever the reason, I find myself looking forward to decorating with colored lights, bringing in fragrant fir boughs and branches of bright red berries, laying out a runner of rich jewel tones across the dining room table. This will not be a year when I procrastinate and keep the house bare until minutes before the Solstice. I may even get out the colored lights to hang the moment I return from Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow in Oakland.

I have written before about the evocative beauty of the winter sky here on the coast. The night is an echo chamber for the sea, carrying the thundering sound of surf and a fine salty mist over the dunes and into the village. It is a stillness that quivers with moisture, a silence that cradles sound.

For the last six years, this vast hall of night has cradled me as well. I love it here more than anywhere else I have ever lived, particularly in the winter months. I love how we can see the storms swirl in from across the Pacific, and how we are also the first ones in the sun after the storms have passed. I see the light break through low on the horizon well before the rain stops, and hours before those living inland ever feel its rays.

My friends have been taking turns this fall, gingerly asking me how I’m coping with an empty nest. I hope they are surprised rather than alarmed when I break out into a wide grin and tell them I love it. Emptiness does not equal sadness to me but rather spaciousness, clarity, calm. I love my children fiercely, look forward to their visits, and thoroughly enjoy them while they’re here. And then they leave, the house reverts to stillness, and I can see again the headlands to the west, the crisp blue outline of Pt. Reyes to the south, and above and all around me, the endless sky.

Standing in Spirit – Centeredness Through Change

I love my work as a consultant on digital publishing and social media. It’s fun, I’m good at it, and it allows me time to write and keep up my radio show. Still, I was wondering when I’d get back into teaching, my other love. Now, it seems, is the time.

In 1999 I went back to school for a Doctor of Ministry degree, as a way to step back from all the teaching I’d been doing and reflect on what I’d learned and what I still believed. My dissertation was about women, power and leadership, with insights gleaned from dreamwork, Goddess spirituality, and the principles I’d learned while earning a black belt in aikido. I had seen a lot of examples of how not to hold power, and was convinced that it was possible to do it better, or at least avoid the most egregious errors I’d seen. In my dissertation, I started developing ideas on how to get there.

After graduating in 2003 I wrote a book proposal based on that material, and tried for several years to get it published. (I hope to publish it as an ebook this year.) Meanwhile, a friend asked me if I could teach what I was writing about—namely, how to stay relatively centered while holding authority and working well with others. The outcome was Standing in Spirit, a year-long training and transformative process to deepen personal presence while increasing outward effectiveness.

Leading the Standing in Spirit training for the first time was an amazing experience, and made me feel enthusiastic about teaching again. Then my father died, the economy tanked, and I had to stay focused on other things for a while.

But now it’s a new day, and it feels like a good time to start teaching again. I will be doing dreamwork in Chicago in May, teaching in Portland in July, and in June I am offering a daylong version of Standing in Spirit here in Bodega Bay, for anyone who might be interested. The full day is $50, and will only be open to 10 people.

You can see my full calendar of events here, sign up at the Standing in Spirit Facebook page, and even join my monthly dream group. Getting back into teaching feels great. But having something I’m really excited to teach—that’s the best.

Does Your Religion Pass the Briefcase Test?

I am proud to be a citizen of the United States, a country that is a beacon of liberty and religious tolerance for the rest of the world. I am all for freedom of religion too, yet there are some religions that I have a very big problem with. Specifically, religions that hold truck with locked briefcases.

I became aware of this fact while reading a recent article about Scientology. At one point the article describes some secret documents at the core of Scientology—maybe the ones about hydrogen bombs being dropped by aliens into Earth’s volcanoes 75,000,000 years ago, I’m not sure. When you reach an exalted level of Scientology, you bring your own locked briefcase to a desk, someone puts a few sheets of paper into it, you go to a secure room, unlock the briefcase, and then you can read these documents—once—before returning them the same way.

I read this and was repulsed. What deluded SciFi fan club would actually believe that reading a short story could cause physical harm to non-believers? And what group of people would be so daft as to accept anything transported by locked briefcase as God’s revealed truth—or even God’s working draft?

My repulsion lasted all of 30 seconds, however, before I realized that the incident was ringing a bell. Yes, I too was once involved with a briefcase-carrying sect, and lived to tell the tale. And not to be outdone by any two-bit space aliens, my story has handcuffs as well. Let me explain.

This particular group is still active, so let’s fictionalize it a little bit: it is hereby the Dairy tradition. In the Dairy tradition, you always leave little saucers of milk outside for the nature spirits and feral cats in your neighborhood. Dairy people are big on leaving offerings, which came naturally to me with so many teenagers in my house at the time. Communing with the spirits was just like doing a huge Costco shop one day, only to find that everything had mysteriously disappeared by the next morning. Practical spirituality like this suited my lifestyle, and I felt I had found my place among kindred souls.

One of the first things I noticed about Dairy lore it was its six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon-esque ability to be secretly connected to everyone else’s mythology. Celtic legends, it turns out, were suffused with ancient Dairy secrets, as were Hawaiian, South African, and Tibetan shamanic practices. Those early Dairy masters really got around!

Dairy people also felt very connected to the stars, and had elaborate means of contacting entities in the Milky Way and beyond, though as SciFi-inspired spirituality goes we were much more influenced by Lovecraft than Hubbard or even Heinlein. The smaller the sect, the more important these distinctions are.

Anyway, at one point my friends and I reached an exalted level of Dairydom, and were given copies of some short fiction, poetry, and arcane instruction written by early Dairy adherents. We dutifully studied the documents looking for something profound and earth-shattering, but came away scratching our heads wondering what if anything it all meant.

I privately dismissed most of it as the mumblings of drug-enhanced hippies who would never win a writing contest, but my friends were generally more tolerant. Then we got embroiled in an inter-Dairy feud about who should be allowed to read what, and soon we were visited by a Very Important Person who could either vouch for us, or banish us to the outer Dairy darkness.

He entered through the kitchen door and greeted us haltingly, with barely a smile. He couldn’t even shake our hands, because his right hand was still holding a briefcase that was not only locked but shackled to his wrist with handcuffs. All we could do was stare at the briefcase, stare at his graven face, and wonder what either held.

After sweeping his gaze around the room to be sure we were alone, he solemnly produced a key to the handcuffs, released his wrist, laid the case on the kitchen table, turned the combination locks, and opened it. Before us lay a stack of copies from Kinkos, the same papers we had been poring over for weeks. But they were revealed to us now in their proper context: as documents so dangerous and sacred they could harm the uninitiated viewer. Documents that at least one person would die to protect.

I knew right then that I could not be that person. I was prepared to be convinced by Mr. Serious of the value of these pages, but realized instead that this religion relied on a giant game of chicken to keep proving its own importance. Not impressed with the handcuffs? Maybe next time the briefcase would be attached to someone with a giant piercing, just like they did in ancient Sumer.

Our group soon split up, and I quietly backed away from any deeper involvement with Dairy. By all accounts their game of chicken is still going strong, but I have no desire to hear any details. I can be tolerant of other religions, just like our Constitution says we’re supposed to be, but sometimes that is best accomplished through blissful ignorance. Meanwhile, if anyone comes around here proselytizing with a locked briefcase in hand, I do have a home piercing kit right by the front door.

Poems for the Return of the Light

I have two poems to offer this year: an invocation by Leonard Cohen, and an elegy by Rumi. Both of these I read at my nephew’s funeral last Fall. Both I think deserve wider reading. So here they are, in honor of Brigid, the poet’s muse. May the light return to us all.

-

Holy is your name, holy is your work, holy are the days that return to you. Holy are the years that you uncover. Holy are the hands that are raised to you, and the weeping that is wept to you. Holy is the fire between your will and ours, in which we are refined. Holy is that which is unredeemed, covered with your patience. Holy are the souls lost in your unnaming. Holy, and shining with a great light, is every living thing, established in this world and covered with time, until your name is praised forever.

Leonard Cohen
Book of Mercy

-

Autumn Rose Elegy

You’ve gone to the secret world.
Which way is it? You broke the cage

and flew. You heard the drum that
calls you home. You left this hu-

miliating shelf, this disorienting
desert where we’re given wrong

directions. What use now a crown?
You’ve become the sun. No need for

a belt: you’ve slipped out of your
waist! I have heard that near the

end you were eyes looking at soul.
No looking now. You live inside

the soul. You’re the strange autumn
rose that led the winter wind in

by withering. You’re rain soaking
everywhere from cloud to ground. No

bother of talking. Flowing silence
and sweet sleep beside the Friend.

Rumi
The Glance

Leaving Hotel California

One of the themes of this blog over the last couple years has been California Cosmology, a term coined by Alston Chase to describe the curious mixture of Eastern and Western philosophies, speculative science and experimental psychology that has been California’s unique contribution to many modern social, spiritual and literary movements.

I have also coined the term “Hotel California Cosmology” here, meaning how good ideas can become something more worthy of a Christopher Guest parody than anything progressive, relevant or even helpful. One of the striking things about Hotel California Cosmology is how much sense it seems to make when you are in it, but then how jaw-droppingly awful it reveals itself to be once you are well away. In my article, I wrote about how the entry works:

But when you are searching for transformation, you can’t stay safe all the time. Sooner or later you will be sucked in by something and lose your bearings, because that’s the only way to undergo a powerful change. Finding yourself again is the tricky part, of course, but that’s kind of like waking up from a dream. First you have to fall asleep.

Now that we are in a completely new decade I want to approach this topic from a fresh perspective: how we wake up. For that, I have started a whole new category of blog posts here, called Leaving Hotel California. Those of you who are offended by satire should never, ever read these posts. For the rest of you, my people, let it be known that the gauntlet has been thrown. Not only will I talk about social and spiritual movements, but I’ll also veer into the land of relationships, negotiation, and what passes for love.

Of course, I will take pains to fictionalize some of this, because my intention is not really to skewer any person, place or thing. It is to highlight the delusions that pass for truth, and the truth that gets passed over as fiction, so that others do not have to make the same mistakes that I made. Maybe they will wake up more quickly than I did, and that will be good for them. But the one virtue of staying in the fray for as long as I did is this: I have ever so much material to draw from. It’s going to be a fun year.

My Very Best Piece of New Year’s Advice

I was explaining to my teenage daughter yesterday what a tough year 2010 was for most people, by way of an example from our own life. Here we were, driving on the freeway in my old Honda, heading down to San Francisco. On the back window of my car was a big white “11″ on a pink piece of paper, a temporary registration tag from the DMV. Consequently, the entire way down I was being extra good on the road and keeping an eye out for the CHP, who could reasonably pull me over at any time asking why my registration was out of date.

“You remember that fender-bender you had in my car last January, Jojo?” I asked her. Yes, she replied sheepishly. “Remember how I thought I’d taken care of all the paperwork and repairs and spending a new fortune on your insurance, by the end of May?” Yes, she remembered that too. “And then how in August I found out they were not letting me re-register my car until I had all kinds of other inspections done? And then I paid for all those and sent them their paperwork in September, but here it is the end of December and I am still waiting for the actual registration tags?” Oh yes, she knew all too well about the incredible tide of incompetence that her accident had unleashed.

“Well, that is exactly what 2010 has been like for almost everyone I know. You have setbacks that you expect to move through fairly easily, but instead they take 84 times longer than they normally should, and no matter how hard you try they just grind on, getting worse and worse, until either they are good and ready to be over or you die of exhaustion, whichever comes first. That, my dear, was 2010.” She understood perfectly.

On the radio today I inevitably wound up talking about dreams and predictions, because it was my last show of the year. If I’d had a guest or callers I would have asked for their new year’s predictions, but since it was just me I started talking about what I thought 2011 was really going to be like.

The first thing I thought about was last night, driving home by myself from the City, and coming across the blinking yellow “Flooded” signs blocking the road, because of all the recent rain. I thought that the road was probably passable since it had been clear all day, but wasn’t sure—and it was pitch black and freezing cold out, so I didn’t want to make any tragic mistakes.

There was a car pulled over by the side of the road, and I sidled up to it and lowered my window. Inside were two or three kids, probably Alex’s age, either stoned or just young and stupid. I asked whether they’d tried the road yet, and they said no. Then the guy driving says, “I just saw a shooting star. Do you think that’s a good omen?”

Without even thinking, I said, “Definitely. I’m going to give it a shot.” “I’m following you!” he called as I pulled away from them, squeezed past the signs, and started down the road. Of course, that meant he tailgated me the entire mile-long, slow journey down the road because he didn’t know any better, but that is a minor side point.

The real point of the story is that I didn’t even hesitate before declaring the shooting star a good omen. That is new this year, the unquestioned assumption that all omens are essentially good. It ties into a dream I had 6 years ago that maybe I’ll talk about someday, but was basically about interpreting an omen positively when privately I thought it might go either way and probably involved lots of bad news regardless.

This very difficult year has been full of good omens, and great things have happened, or have started to happen, to lots of people, myself included. The thing I have become most aware of, as I struggled through this year’s challenges, is that everything can change in a second. Luck is basically random, which means that if you’re having lots of what you consider bad luck, the longer you keep going the more likely it is that your luck will change for the better.

It’s not like I knew anything about the shooting star that kid saw, it’s just that I believe our best move is always to accept the omen as a gift. If nothing else, it means we are paying attention, we recognize an omen when we see one, and have the presence of mind to ask what its impact will be in our own lives. Especially in 2011, I think that kind of behavior is the absolute key to success.

The hardships of 2010 will not evaporate on January 1, and the dreadfully slow processes of change will still be with us in 2011, but there will be real opportunities opening up, doors suddenly swinging wide that we have been banging on for months if not years. The ones who will notice, and be able to act, are the ones who keep going because they know it’s just a matter of time before the tide turns. So pay attention, don’t let the bastards (or the DMV) get you down, and remember that the omen is always a gift.

If We Dismantle It, They Will Come

There we stood in a park in San Francisco, about fifteen of us circled around a large ceramic bowl on the ground in which we had written the things we wanted to see increase: more money for this, more power to that, healing for her, a better job for him. Interspersed among the slips of paper was a collection of seeds, representing the power of growth. Once we had raised energy for our intentions, we took some seeds home with us, to keep focused on the vision we were growing.

Rituals like this one can be inspiring and affirming, and most importantly, show no signs of going away. But at one point it dawned on me: every altar, bookshelf and windowsill in my house was now littered with sacred seeds and pebbles, fragrant bits of greenery, beads, pieces of yarn (cut from webs we’d constructed), half-burned candles signifying something, and other ceremonial souvenirs I had brought home. The thought formed unbidden in my mind: was all that growing and visioning still taking place, if I could no longer remember the point of each stone and leaf as I dusted it?

I kept quiet about my troubling thought, but like all seeds planted in the darkness it just kept growing, eventually making it hard to see what we thought we were doing. Then some unfortunate person posted a comment to an email list, suggesting that in response to the latest egregious corporate land-grab we should all imagine planting a forest of trees so thick it would trap the evildoers and prevent them from carrying out their scheme. It would be like in Macbeth, only with high-speed internet and better candles.

At that point I felt like the Lorax, speaking for all of the trees, seeds, junk and jewels I had collected in my house, none of which I knew what to do with after charging them with hallowed intentions and bringing them home. I spoke up: “I can’t believe you are suggesting planting another damn tree in the collective unconscious. How will we find a clear place to plant, with all the rubbish we’ve left there over the years? Isn’t it about time we found another metaphor for making things happen the way we want—like, for instance, pruning and weeding?”

Unfortunately my reasoning was lost on its intended audience, due to my strong, practically violent language. But thus began my own transformation from a ritual accrualist to someone with a tidier home and a different sensibility about magic altogether. I started thinking that perhaps the best way to get help from the spirits was not to construct a grand, visionary edifice for them à la Field of Dreams, but instead to clean the place up, invite them over, and see what they choose to build.

I didn’t throw out everything all at once. These were ceremonial artifacts after all, and shouldn’t just be swept into the dustbin without any thought at all. And while several items did find their way into the compost and trash, most were eventually set out under bushes and trees in my yard, residing there until they were carted off by activist squirrels in the neighborhood.

With the clutter gone, what remained in my home were things that did have special significance, and that I actually used. It took a while to get used to this new ritual aesthetic, but over time I feel it has streamlined my access to all sorts of worlds, and made my place a destination spot for helpful spirits year-round.

Now there is a comfortable clutter of personalities on my mantle for Samhain. That seems right—this is the ancestral mixer holiday, after all. Day of the Dead figures cavort with pictures of my beloved dead, the recently deceased get the chance to meet my grandparents, and there is plenty of food, music and candles for all.

There is a place for jumble and clutter, especially while everyone is getting along. But sometime in November there will come a day when it feels like the party is over, and it is time for everyone to go away until next time. I will relish emptying the mantle then, and will live comfortably in the silence until the Solstice spirits start knocking on my door and I let them in, one by one, slowly painting my house with colors and lights for a new year.