Initiation Revisited

[wren]

A journal entry for my online druidry course...

My journey, thus far, has included a very long and arduous initiatory experience, though I did not come to see that until it ended. In the past months, I have come from being an earth-bound, weighted and pained body to being a free-flying soul. While I have opened my mind to my studies and my quest for knowledge, I have found the power to heal and become whole within me.

I have learned to meditate and find those Otherplaces beyond this one. I have found there the darkest and softest of cocoons, the world pulsing with the beat of the Oran Mor, and the strength to do what I must do. I have heard Danu’s voice calling me to feel her and sense her and open my heart further to her. I have found a guide in my meditations, old and wise and filled with patience, who has helped me see the meaning in my visions. I have stepped between the mists and danced to the music of the Great Song.

I have found Animal Guides in Wren and Turtle and Butterfly, who had taken me to greater depths of myself and greater heights of understanding. I have found the means to communicate with the Ancestors, both of my blood and of this land, gaining lessons and guidance from them. I have joined a Grove, where I hope to learn Welsh and lore and to experience writing and participating in ritual. I have discovered new depths of artistic talent, new inspiration for poetry, for drawing, for carving.

I have felt the pull of the wilderness and answered it, by opening myself up to the Spirits of the Ancestors and all those Others who walk this land still. I have communed with trees and herbs, wind and fire, water and earth, to find my place in the world. I have learned the vast difference between health and wholeness.

I have learned that my twenty-year illness was my ‘spiral into darkness’. I was stripped of everything I was before. Having now shed my illness like a snake sheds her skin, I come forth a new being, completely exposed with new skin. Like the butterfly, I changed within my wasted body, unseen by anyone, understood by none, to emerge an entirely new entity. I have wings to fly, I have beauty all my own, and I have work to do.

My body senses the world around me like never before. Air passing over me, scents surrounding me, light, color, texture… everything is new and different. I am witnessing the NJ autumn, the changes in color and the brilliant blue sky for the first time in ten years and, in many ways, for the first time ever. I feel things in such minute detail and with such indescribable pleasure. I weep with joy over the smallest and most precious things… things I neither saw nor appreciated before my illness. I stand in the rain, with the 'tears of the universe' sliding down my skin.

While I can say I am ‘spiraling upwards’ and walking on air, I am also looking down and within. I no longer fear either the darkness or the wildness within me. In fact, I welcome them. I embrace them both and know there is much to be learned by wandering into the darkness. I do not for a moment think this will be my last journey into the darkness nor my last initiation into a new understanding. Like the Tree of Life in my drawing, I will reach upwards and downwards to find all the lessons in both places. To ignore one is to waste the other.

As I often do, I began this journal inspired by the questions. I only went back to re-read the course book and my first essay on initiation after the journal entry was underway. What I found made me smile.

First, that shamans often say they undergo a trial of severe illness for a period of seven years. The last seven years of my illness were the most intense in every sense of the word. That through initiation we have unlearn all we knew before. That is indeed the case and I have experienced just such an ‘unlearning’ since I began this course and worked to become whole again. What I had forgotten from the reading, because at the time I was not ready to understand it, was that now I must learn my sacred role in the world.

I am a new being, inside and out. I am reborn and ready to take my first steps in the world. I am a being born of darkness and light, who will welcome any and all trips to the fire to reforge the shining sword I have become.

[bran_sinnach]

In the old story, the wren defeated the eagle to become king of the birds, defeating him through the use of her wits rather than her wings. In this same way, you our wren have used your own wits, as well as courage and patience, strength and compassion, used your soul and its depthless resilience to defeat a much larger, more powerful foe to not become queen of the birds, but to become the master of yourself. I think I speak for everyone here when I say that we are proud of you and all you have done and overcame, and I am sure the future holds nothing but promise for you now, as this wren weathers her harshest winter and the long sleeping butterfly at last emurges and unfurls new wings to dry and strengthen in the light of a new dawn before taking its rightful place in the sky.

[wren]

Thank you, bran. You are quite the poet!

[Senbecc]

bransinnach said:

In the old story, the wren defeated the eagle to become king of the birds, defeating him through the use of her wits rather than her wings. In this same way, you our wren have used your own wits, as well as courage and patience, strength and compassion, used your soul and its depthless resilience to defeat a much larger, more powerful foe to not become queen of the birds, but to become the master of yourself. I think I speak for everyone here when I say that we are proud of you and all you have done and overcame, and I am sure the future holds nothing but promise for you now, as this wren weathers her harshest winter and the long sleeping butterfly at last emurges and unfurls new wings to dry and strengthen in the light of a new dawn before taking its rightful place in the sky.

Our Wren...Yes, she is a precious commodity to our land, what would I have done without her? She has accumulated so much knowledge in what sounds like a very short amount of time, and her knowledge grows and reaches new horizons even now as we speak.

I do like the reference here, it is...fitting I think. She has defeated the darkness, and has lit her own path as well as ours with the light of her knowledge.

Happy birthday sis...

[wren]

It does feel like a birthday. In fact, I would say that this wren was reborn on Samhain, the start of a new year and a new life. And, my birthday gift is that no one walked with finer companions than I have found here.

[Senbecc]

wren said:

It does feel like a birthday. In fact, I would say that this wren was reborn on Samhain, the start of a new year and a new life. And, my birthday gift is that no one walked with finer companions than I have found here.

We walk among giants Wren...Giants.

[bran_sinnach]

wren said:

It does feel like a birthday. In fact, I would say that this wren was reborn on Samhain, the start of a new year and a new life. And, my birthday gift is that no one walked with finer companions than I have found here.

And each of us may say the same for you, wren, for truly we could not find a better companion to walk with if we traversed the world over. Know that when I see the wrens nesting in my yard now, I always find myself thinking of you. We Druids chose well in seeing ourselves within the wren, and we here at Mystics were blessed ourselves in having the wren choose to see herself within us.