The Gods
I’m in Bali. I have been here for 23 nights. As I type it is just after 4:30 PM on a Thursday - Day of Jupiter in the western 7-day system (here in Bali there are several different numbered weeks). I have been reflecting on my relationships with the Gods - the Great Ones - quite a lot lately. I have been thinking about and feeling into the kinds of relationships I have with them, the happenings, the initiations, the marriages, the I-don’t-knows and the endless mystery of it all. It’s easy to think about the Gods in Bali, they are displayed everywhere, held in high esteem, and almost everyone is praying to them each and every day. It’s the culture. People often call Bali, the Island of the Gods. It’s an actively polytheistic (in practice) island in a modern Muslim (the largest Muslim) nation.
I am currently in my 25th year of consciously-cultivated magical practice and paying attention and in that time I have had a lot to do with the Gods. Not all humans are that interested in the Gods, not even all witches are. It’s not necessary to marry Gods, to take vows with them, to swear oaths and promises to them, or on those sacred relationships… most witches I know however do invoke the Gods, petition them, ask for their help in their sorcery, magical ritual, and divination. Sometimes we just ask for their guidance and presence. I also don’t think worshipping, honouring, or invoking the Gods makes you a better person, morally superior, or magically more excellent. In fact it may complicate all of that.
It sometimes felt like I had no choice. To be with the Gods. Of course I did and I do, and working with and honouring the Gods has taught me many powerful things about my own agency, authority, and sovereignty, perhaps three things that Gods possess a great deal of and know a lot about.
My current working definition of a God is,
A powerful spirit who has sacrificed themself on the altar of their own story, becoming immortalised through the sharing of that mythos through time and culture. They are considered by humans and other beings to be great, noble, and mighty spirits that entire landscapes of lore, ritual, and story are wrapped around. Gods usually inspire awe and reverence.
A lot of folks out there would hardly equate Gods or their vision of God with any old spirit lurking in the forest or mountains or acting as forests and mountains, but this animistic, spirit-filled relational, cosmology is natural to me and I don’t consider Gods always to be creators of entire universes or species. Certainly there are Gods tied to creation, destruction, and the history of peoples and lands and planets, but the phrase ‘the Gods’ refers to all of them. All the Gods. They are all important; to whom, when, where, and how is of course up for debate. This debate is usually the origin and development of their cultus.
I have ended up married to some Gods. Through my initiations in Wildwood and Anderson Feri Traditions I am wed to the Sacred Four of the Wildwood - Grandmother Weaver, the Old One, Our Lady, the Prince of Paradise - and the Star Goddess and Her Consort.
Here’s where it gets messier and I don’t always get it. I decided I don’t have to get it however, though at times insights come which blow my mind and seem to ricochet through many directions of time and space. It’s good to remember that I am simply one participant in this vast and spiralling labyrinth of happening.
I also personally understand myself to be held within a sacred triangle of Goddesses. These three beings are the Lady of the Wildwood also known as the Crescent-Crowned Goddess and the Rose Queen, Persephone (my Soul-Goddess, a term I coined and speak about initially in Ecstatic Witchcraft), and Kali Maa form a triangle around me. They form the three points of a sacred and special personal cultus I am a devotee/child/expression of. It has to do with me and how I relate to those three specifically. However, in this personal cosmovision these three are held by the flame of Brigid - who I know as Goddess and Saint - to whom I have taken oaths and who forms a strong part of Wildwood Witchcraft as I know and practise it. In Wildwood, Our Lady and Brigid have a deeply intimate and sometimes erotic relationship and Brigid Herself is invoked at the beginning of almost every ritual to guide, guard, inspire, and bless the working, the space, and the witches. As well as this Persephone is connected to Hekate, Dionysos, Aphrodite, and Hermes, Great Ones I have all made promises, oaths, or vows to. And I am not sure I always hold oaths and vows to be distinct, though at times I might. Kali is often considered to be an expression of Durga who is the angered form of Parvati, the wife of Shiva, and these latter two are the parents of Ganesha. So by deep power-filled relationship to some of these Great Ones, you end up relating to quite a few more, entire families perhaps. And my own fetch-mate - my primary spirit lover/teacher/provocateur - is sometimes a specific God and he is the ‘priest’ of the Morrigan, so that brings in that connection too. It’s wild in here. There are many strange and wonderful things I have experienced.
And witch, do I have stories.
On a flight from London to Dublin in 2010 while I was guest-guiding for a sacred sites tour Hermes appeared to me as I was praying to him for a safe journey. This was pretty routine. He asked me to make vows as his priest. I agreed, of course, because I love Hermes and he and I do a lot together and he has always come to my aid. I didn’t realise he would then throw me an ordeal that very day to initiate me as his priest. That night after the orientation meeting in the hotel, I blacked out, and came to with my mum, the organiser of the tour (also a trained and initiated witch), and another witch on the tour staring down at me as if they had seen a ghost, maybe several ghosts. Apparently a dead Irish man had possessed me and through me - and these three attendant humans trying to help this possessed human - finally was able to transition into the Beyond, or whatever that is. He needed people to forgive him and pray with him and then apparently off he went. My mother then begged me to tell Hermes never to do that to me again, and I did have that talk with him, and it hasn’t happened again.
After taking vows to Hekate - also in 2010 - as her priestess I ended up being handed - over the period of several months in 2012 - an entire system of magic and witchery. It was intended for people who were already witches. There were initiation rites and workings for dark and full moons, I believe also the 6th night of the moon. It possessed a rich cosmology and mythos and it was really a whole world unto itself. Several witches I know ended up going through all those rites - it was called the Black Stone System. It did however have me accused by people from my own community (albeit people who didn’t know me very well) of being possessed by malevolent spirits and misguiding my coven and community. That was a horrible time for me and I am glad it was a short time. Other than the fact that the rites were intrinsically chthonic and transgressive (as a lot of witchery is) I didn’t really understand why this particular accusation was being launched at me out of what felt like nowhere. I luckily was surrounded by self-reflective, grounded, and experienced witches too who knew that what was happening was a shitstorm mainly emanating out of two peeople filled with their own paranoia, anxiety, and need to be the only teacher in the room. Thanks, Hekate. Jokes, jokes.
In honour of Persephone I did years of work on reconstructing (through research of all kinds) both Lesser and Greater Mysteries of Eleusis initiation rituals and I helped to take various witches and pagans through those rites in community and privately. In honour of Persephone I wrote my first book, Spirited. The dedication is to Her. A lot of how I live my life, my ethos, my understanding as a magical being, is because of my relationship with Her. It was to Persephone I first gave my magical word in such a way. It has been 20 years since She came into my life and manifested visibly and profoundly before me during a full moon ritual in which I was invoking ‘the Goddess’.
The Gods will test us and they will also support and aid us. Do not forget to remind these Great Spirits that you are a human with limits, boundaries, needs, and desires. Do not forget to let them know, in no uncertain terms, what these are. If you are going to serve and celebrate the Mysteries of these Gods in this world and pour your time, resources, energy, skill, and power into doing so… well, you are worthy of being actively supported too. I have found that the Gods deeply respect witches and spirit-workers who go straight to them and let them know. I know that might sound intimidating, but the more intimate you become with these Great Ones, the more foundation and feeling you have to do so. I am also operating in traditions that celebrate and honour the divinity of each of us, that acknowledge that we each have a Deep Self, or a God Soul, or a Holy Daimon that is in fact a God-becoming or remembering.
There are also many Gods that I have deep feeling for or have had historically rich and complex connections with. There are Gods that I have done a lot of work with, have taught at WitchCamps for/with/through, invoked for specific witch’s initiations, petitioned, danced with, been possessed by, aspected, who are not the the Gods I have mentioned above.
Some of them are,
Quan Yin, Ganesha, Hanuman, Durga, Shiva, Isis, Osiris, Set, Cerridwen, Arianrhod, Ariadne, Freya, Dagda, Lugh, Oshun, Odin…
Several of these beings have shrines in my apartment and are deeply entwined with my cultural inheritance, ancestry, or magical history. Some of these Gods have - through all kinds of ways, including living human devotees - tried to pull me into their domain, their service and celebration, their worlds. This has sometimes been disorientating, confusing, and haunting, especially those last two. I have had to go to human devotees and priestesses of Oshun and Odin to ask for advice on how to best navigate a “thank-you so much, you are amazing, but I can not do this in this life.” By the way, you can do that. Do not think that each being you get a zing from or feel something for - or have a life-changing experience with - is someone you have to change your life for, build an everlasting shrine or practice to, or make promises to. Please, I implore you, remember that.
I once heard the phrase “dancing with deity” from a dear friend of mine, Seline. I believe she was using it for her experience of trance possession and ecstatic states with the Gods she has intimacy with, but it can also be illustrative of how it can feel to be in relationship with the Great Ones.
It’s a dance I continue to dance, that dances me, even when I am feeling vagued out, disconnected, or over the world… the Gods continue to dance through my life, through me, and through my magic. I am largely a happily Gods-bothered being. They have helped to make me a better witch, priestess, teacher, initiator, initiate, friend, lover, and human.
Peace, Praise, and Power to Them All. x
