Sunday, March 27, 2011

Becoming the main character of our personal mythos


When I was a child, my favorite game was one where I was the young princess of a magickal land. In this game, I saved the kingdom, treated the people fairly, and fought off magickal disaster numerous times. As I grew older, I looked to other archetypes to fall into and found many of them to be lacking. Once I discovered Paganism though, I started to purposefully cultivate archetypes within myself such as Artemis –strong, independent, just. The idea of being the main character in one’s personal myth was very appealing. Whether we actively believe this or not, we are creating our story through the years of our life. If the story has plot lines, morals, and gains momentum or gets lost without a plot is up to us.

Monday, March 7, 2011

just before dawn


It is just before dawn in the Northern lands. Morgan waits, yet the waiting does not imply patience. The waiting is a quiet, dull boredom that isn't yet excited. The dawn chorus has not arrived and there is not tense anticipation for the explosion of the day. All she feels is an anxious annoyance at being awake, still, and waiting, for the dawning of just a normal day.


Morgan knows she has made progress, no longer in the still, dead, timelessness of the Temple of Saturn. Yet, the experience gained seems to resemble more jadeness and weariness than it does experience or wisdom. Soon, the dawn will start and the day will take over. The machinations of daily life will stir and the gears of progress will leave such doubts behind. But for now, there is nothing but the stillness and the churnings of her fretting.


Day by day, petals fall from the stem, leaving an ever unfolding bud that opens in fullness. The frustrated impatience is a choice she has made. She strains to hear the first bird start its song and wonders in the solitude, what colors the clouds are turning. Those hues of orange, magenta, and impossible pinks burn out the mists of the dreams still clinging to the edges of her vision. A scraggly owl tries to shake off the evening rains to get some sleep. Charon has already stayed the mooring pole against the bank, not turning back now. It doesn't matter, Morgan thinks to herself as she shakes off the draught of sleep. Cronos will take his due. It is another day, Sol rises and there is work to be done.


Why?! The constant crowing echos in the back of her brain. She offers no answer for the eternal hypothical question. Clothes, coifed hair, the mask is assembled, piece by carefully chosen piece. Silence, methodical rhythm of unquestioning traditional practice. Work, this is life, the push forward in undeniable.


"Sigh, leisure is not my lot." Thus it has always been, and that's okay. The work of today will turn into the fortress of tomorrow. That time is not now. Tears now brushed aside, she takes up her sword, her bow, boots and assundry sachels.


"Why!?" calls the voice, quiet and lingering.


"Because I am aware of the truth. It gives me no other choice but to live up to it. Every step in this life I walk as an ox pulls its burden forward. It is the ox's place and this is my lot. I can only change my fortune by each day, and today is my day in this life. It's not all bad..." she finishes as if she'd truncated herself.


"...just wish I didn't feel so alone."