1 post tagged “magick”
I am on a number of email lists that discuss various spiritual paths. Druidry, Gnosticism, magic and hermeticism, and the life of a small religious order in the Episcopal Church are among the topics I follow. Sometime ago, a wise older woman who is on several of my lists posted the following words:
One teacher along the Way taught me to carry a trident of power
within myself. The left tine is the Path you follow that helps you
get in touch with your intuitive self – more feminine or Yin. The
right tine is the active, conceptive path – Yang or Masculine. The
center tine is your Path with Heart – a true path that enables you
to hear the song of yourself. This is the path that allows you to
walk your talk and stay in your center in this World. The left/right
paths may change, depending upon your life's circumstances, but your
Path with Heart in this lifetime remains true.
Gareth Knight, a well-known occult author and member of the Society of the Inner Light, writes similarly about the Society's founder, Dion Fortune, that she followed a threefold path: the Green Ray of nature mysticism, the Orange Ray of hermeticism and ceremonial magic, and the Violet Ray of Christian devotion and mysticism. He connected these to the three paths that leave Malkuth, the sphere of manifest reality, on the Tree of Life: the path to Netzach, the sphere of feeling, the path to Hod, the sphere of intellect, and the path to Yesod, the sphere of imagination, which rises straight to the crown of the Tree.
I have come to realize that something very similar is true for me. While I identify myself these days primarily as a Druid, and specifically a Druid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America, my path is not confined to emulating the Druids of the ancient Celtic peoples, or even the Druids of the eighteenth-century Revival to whom my order traces its lineage. I also am a practitioner of the Western Magical Tradition in the form of the New Hermetics, and, somewhat reluctantly, an Anglican.
I do not say I am a Christian. Not any more. I am no longer engaged with the ridiculous power struggles going on in most Christian denominations; I am no longer at all satisfied with the road-map of human experience provided by Christian theology. Perhaps I am just too frightened by the rise of fundamentalists all over the map, in every religion and denomination--and they exist in Neopaganism, too. But I have realized that while I may not believe in the Virgin Birth, I do not want to give up Nativity scenes and Christmas carols; while I may not believe in the Resurrection, I do not want to give up the great rite that is the Easter Vigil. I do not want to give up the stories, pictures, music, and poetry which, for me, have long been the most important things about Christianity.
I make a rather bad Anglican, by a lot of people's standards--and no better a Pagan, by a lot of other people's standards. By my own standards, I am walking a threefold path that is intellectual and creative, artistic and connective, and spiritual and mystical, all at once. And the thing for which I am most grateful is that in my Druid Order, I am wholly within my rights to do so. AODA does not require me to be a Pagan in order to be a Druid.
Soon, I shall have my initiation into the First Degree of AODA. And soon, I will start attending Mass again. Meanwhile, I have meditation and magic and prayer. It's all part of the threefold path.
