Mab of Dream

'Sophie says I expect them to just instinctively know. That I'm waiting for them to be understanding and caring without ever opening up to them. If I want them to follow the script I've got written out in my head, she says I have to let them have it.'

'The Onion Girl' by Charles de Lint pg 139

This thing with the pendant and the mannequin is going on a bit. It started off symbolic, and still is, but I think that by the time I resolve the issues in my head and get it back, no-one will give a monkeys anymore. LOL What am I going on about? It's a Third Degree High Priestess pendant, on a necklace, which is gorgeous in itself. I bought it from Froggie's shop at the beginning of August and, by the end of August, it was sitting around the neck of FT Kate's art mannequin. It still is. Symbolically, that's me surrendering my right to be a HPS, just for the moment. I'll pick it up again when I'm ready to.

Let's get one thing straight first. I'm not answering here what makes every High Priestess; or what the set in stone definition of a High Priestess is per se. This is what it means AT THE MOMENT for me. Right now, that's all that matters. Afterwards, then the like of Cerr, Vetch etc will be canvassed by me to find out what they think - or more likely, an e-mail to Witchgrove - but these are my questions and my answers to myself first. My definition of my religious role.

Everyone else tells me that I AM a HPS. Not only that but a kick-ass one as well. Some tell me that I don't need a pendant to be that - those are the people who have totally missed the point. Folk tend to think that it's my ability that I am questioning, but it's not really, it's the responsibility and the limitations that I'm questioning. Can I live with the latter and do I want to take on the former?

Let's start with the latter, because it's shorter and Saoirse has already answered it in a way that even I can't negate. The major limitation of being a HPS is that you aren't deity. I WANT to be able to tell folk for certain what's behind the Veil; I want to be able to hold their hands as they walk into the gates of death and not leave until I've deposited them safely with the Dark Lady, had a cuppa, got them settled and noted down all the last minute messages for those back home. In short, can I live with the fact that I can't, but I will be the one whom folk will come to for the next best thing - my opinion, my advice, my thoughts?

Of course, it was WM Mike that has brought this one into sharp focus. That conversation a month before; the responsibility I felt knowing that I'd told him what I thought and then he'd gone to find out for himself; and the fact that I could not be there with him, when I'd seen him so scared at lesser things, when the moment came to pass over. The thought that I could have been the last one to betray him nearly killed me on that Sunday/Monday. The thought that I couldn't hold his hand through the gates, that broke my heart.

Limitations indeed. But Saoirse responded to this one. She looked at another angle. How would I have felt if this happened and I hadn't had that conversation with him? That, indeed of worrying about betrayal, I knew that I had information which might be right, but I hadn't passed it on. I thought on that - would Mike have defaulted into belief in Hell? He is precisely the sort of bloke who would have condemned himself to Hell. Maybe the information that I did give him, if I'm right was enough to let him find his Heaven instead? Uncertainty, yes, but if I had a time machine to go back to that night I canted with him and I had to have that conversation again in the knowledge that he was shortly to be killed, what would I have said? I've thought VERY long, deep and hard on this one. I'd have said exactly what I said that night without the foreknowledge.

Saoirse's perceptiveness also gave me another stepping stone to tackle the limitations question in my head. I don't like it. I wish that, if I couldn't do it, there were others who could do it. For example, I emotionally couldn't cope with doing any more to WM Mike's Memorial pages on the web-site, so I SOS'ed and Anna and Dani stepped up to the plate and took it off me. There's cool. So why can't that happen at the point where I, as a human, have limitations, simply because I'm not deity. It can. That's where the Goddess steps in, isn't it?

'THERE is my trust in what I believe.'
'Leave' by REM

I can safely say now that the limitations part of my questions have been dealt with. Without trusting deity to not only take over where I can't go, but also to be there within, beside and guiding me, then what business have I being a HPS anyway? Without deity, then it's all secular. If it's secular, then it's power struggles. I've never been interested in power struggles.

It's only the responsibility side now that needs work. Resolve that and I'll get the pendant down. First there's the definition, in my head, of what a priestess is and how that's different to a High Priestess. There is only one difference - the priestess is one of many; the buck stops with the HPS. In practice. In theory, the buck shouldn't stop for any intelligent dude - they should be questioning everything and finding the questions within themselves. They shouldn't be asking me and that's it. They should be going out there and finding out what Pixie's take is on it, or Anna's, or Laurie's etc. Not mine alone, because that one is filled with my bias, my background, the last book I read, whatever's in my blood stream. It's easier to be a priestess, because it's not expected that you have all of the answers.

Being a HPS takes nerve. It takes a serious amount of courage and if you're finding that courage, there has to be a good reason for yourself. Why else should you waste all that good adrenaline? It takes courage to think calmly, when folk are shouting around you; and courage to follow your own instinct, when the shouting is a chorussed demand to follow everyone else's. A priestess has the right to follow the crowd, the HPS has not. It's better to walk away and if others follow, then so be it; if they don't, then your paths have converged that moment and they may or may not meet again. It's having the courage to defend the underdog, even against the bacchae.

'They would have torn her into pieces but
Nobody dared...'
'A Girl Called Johnny' by the Waterboys

Have I got the guts to stand against the crowd? Yes. I learned that in High School. I've got the courage to do all of the above. The question remaining - why should I? The answer, because, let's be honest, it's what I do best.

What I wasn't looking out for was the fact that I could see reflected in others their own definitions of what a High Priestess is and does, and I was doing my best to live up to that for their sakes. It's no good then reverting to inner self five minutes later, because it's already over then. It's having the courage to retain your own identity in the face of a dozen expected identities being thrust onto you. We'll call that a lesson learnt then. I cannot be everyone else's definition of a HPS, I can only be my own.

The trouble being that I only learned that one, answered that question, last week. REM's 'Walk Unafraid' slotted that piece in. REM had been trying to tell me all year what's wrong, because THE soundtrack of the year has been 'Country Feedback':

'I was central, I lost control
I lost my head
I need this...'
'Country Feedback' by REM

I have been trying to tell myself all year that I wasn't listening to myself nor my own instinct anymore. I was trying to be what I perceived others perceiving me to be. How fucked up does that sound? I was also ignoring myself telling myself this. The moments when the walls came tumbling down? There were several - they came as beats not one huge crescendo. They were, without exception, times when I went against my instinct to either follow the crowd or else do what I thought others expected me to do. There's a big lesson there, isn't there?

I am not anyone's pet HPS. I'm not a trained monkey on a leash. If I am prepared to be like that, like I've been for most of this past year, then I'm no longer even being a HPS. I'm selling that station very cheaply to the nearest bidder really, aren't I? It's nothing to do with respect, tolerance and equality, once you scratch the surface. I need to resolve how to marry all these elements before I pick up that pendant.

FtE called it right, when he wrote on Witchgrove:

'It might be the people who stopped worrying what everyone else thinks whos closer
to there spirituality coz they there own voices arent drowned out by listening to everyone elses voices.'

It wasn't fear with me. If I'd caught myself at it, I'd have stopped. I half wish it had been fear, because then that would have alerted me to what I was doing. Instead there were only clues - only truly relaxing when I was with the like of FT Kate, Ian etc.; the fact that 'Country Feedback' became so huge etc. I should have noticed these things, instead of acknowledging them and not paying attention to the message they were adding up to tell me. I mean, does the Universe have to take out a double page advert in the 'Express and Star' for me to listen to it these days?

It wasn't fear. It was me working on three levels - the instinctual level shouting NOOOOOOO; the underneath level saying, 'Be a HPS... be a HPS'; while the surface level was listening to everything everyone was saying and was reflecting it back at them. I'm not being very articulate with this part, but I know what I meant.

At some low level, it was ALL blind panic. Shonna's trusting ME with the Grove (ok, with the other Mods as well, but... ME?!); all those big name Pagans in my inbox; all those folk saying I WAS a big name Pagan; all those people looking to me for wisdom. 'kin Hell! I'M BLAGGING IT!

Or am I? I think the trick with me is always never to let me believe that I'm not blagging it. As long as I think I am, then it all works out beautifully. Everything else is too blinding.

'I'll be clumsy instead...'
'Walk Unafraid' by REM

Can I be clumsy and still be a HPS? I want to know the terms and conditions before I sign on the dotted line. And what are the holidays like? And the pension scheme?

Mmmmm.

yours
Mab
xxxxx

Posted by: Mab / 4:02 pm