I
held the oak staves up crossed before me and spun around the fire. I
moved to the drums, I moved to the sound of my friends as they
chanted 'Open the gates!', over and over again. I danced on the
energy as it rose.
“LET THE UNDERWORLD OF THE DEAD!”
I circled the fire sunwise, as the spear-carrying brothers of Sunna would.
“LET THE ABOVE WORLD OF THE GODS!”
The world moved around me as I continued to spin and make my final round.
“LET THE AROUND WORLD OF THE WIHTA!”
The moving became a blur.
“BE HERE IN THIS SACRED PLACE!”
Breathing heavily, but not entirely from the effort of movement, I stopped and gathered myself up. The staves felt heavy now, as though the threads of the worlds had been gathered up like the gossamer of a spiders web, and I pulled them apart from their crossed position.
“OH MIGHTY ALCIS, LET THE GATES BE OPEN!”
A shift occurred, a reality-bending shift that felt almost like reverb to me as I pulled the staves apart and then dropped to my knees to plant them in the ground.
“The gates are open”, I breathe, and then shakily make my way back to my seat to sit down.
It's not a shakiness born of weakness though, or of being unfit, but rather the shakiness born of energy coursing through the body. That feeling of being a conduit. I sit, I breathe, and I redirect the energy.
That night my dreams are laden with meaning, filled with liturgy and fire, wells, and trees – of recreating the cosmos as we understand it in ADF rites. They're not particularly restful though, dreams that are partially trance rarely are. They're half liturgy and rite, and half libraries, books, and parsonage. They feel like a homework assignment.
At Beltane, the gatekeeper will be Manannan Mac Lir – a deity with whom I have only more recently begun to worship and build *ghosti.
One of the things I like the most about ADF is our willingness to admit when we make something up, or pull it from non-Indo-European sources. The concept of gatekeeper and opening the gates was hard for me when first began in ADF, but increasingly it is with the gods and goddesses associated with the liminal, and of course portals that I work.
Yesterday felt right, yesterday felt like a tradition born.
“LET THE UNDERWORLD OF THE DEAD!”
I circled the fire sunwise, as the spear-carrying brothers of Sunna would.
“LET THE ABOVE WORLD OF THE GODS!”
The world moved around me as I continued to spin and make my final round.
“LET THE AROUND WORLD OF THE WIHTA!”
The moving became a blur.
“BE HERE IN THIS SACRED PLACE!”
Breathing heavily, but not entirely from the effort of movement, I stopped and gathered myself up. The staves felt heavy now, as though the threads of the worlds had been gathered up like the gossamer of a spiders web, and I pulled them apart from their crossed position.
“OH MIGHTY ALCIS, LET THE GATES BE OPEN!”
A shift occurred, a reality-bending shift that felt almost like reverb to me as I pulled the staves apart and then dropped to my knees to plant them in the ground.
“The gates are open”, I breathe, and then shakily make my way back to my seat to sit down.
It's not a shakiness born of weakness though, or of being unfit, but rather the shakiness born of energy coursing through the body. That feeling of being a conduit. I sit, I breathe, and I redirect the energy.
That night my dreams are laden with meaning, filled with liturgy and fire, wells, and trees – of recreating the cosmos as we understand it in ADF rites. They're not particularly restful though, dreams that are partially trance rarely are. They're half liturgy and rite, and half libraries, books, and parsonage. They feel like a homework assignment.
At Beltane, the gatekeeper will be Manannan Mac Lir – a deity with whom I have only more recently begun to worship and build *ghosti.
One of the things I like the most about ADF is our willingness to admit when we make something up, or pull it from non-Indo-European sources. The concept of gatekeeper and opening the gates was hard for me when first began in ADF, but increasingly it is with the gods and goddesses associated with the liminal, and of course portals that I work.
Yesterday felt right, yesterday felt like a tradition born.
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