Dedication

Tomorrow I am driving north to Seattle for a dedication. My dedication.

For the last year I’ve been driving 70 miles every third Saturday of the month to study with two amazing Feri/Faery initiates, NG and W. I haven’t written about it; it’s been something close to my heart and I wanted to keep it to myself. My teachers are private and don’t have much of an online presence. I only learned about their location and openness to teaching through word of mouth: one initiate introduced to me another initiate who mentioned NG and W and passed along their contact info. This seems to be my experience with mystery traditions.

A year and a half ago I wrote about being my own guru. At that time stepping into my own spiritual authority was a really important step for me. It was not something chosen to flout teachers or the wisdom and/or grace accumulated by others further down their paths than me; it was me accepting that I had to make choices and then act on those choices and learn from my own experience. I’ve had teachers in the past: some formal and several less formal. Some direct spiritual mentors, and some in an academic setting. I am grateful to all of them. But now I’m at a point where I am ready to walk more deeply with a teacher.

The ecstatic, mystery and more Left Hand Path traditions (both Feri/Faery witchcraft and Tantric Hinduism fall into these categories) all stress having a teacher. One has to learn and practice and experience on one’s own, but a guide is needed, indeed necessary, not only to avoid certain pitfalls, but also because much of the knowledge is not online, not written in books. Beyond oral knowledge there lies the Current that is passed at initiations.

What’s interesting to me is that many people don’t realize that even Christianity was once a mystery tradition. There is a part in the Orthodox liturgy where the catechumens are instructed to leave – only baptized Christians were supposed to witness, much less participate in,  the Eucharist, that mystery of bread and wine becoming flesh and blood.

Tomorrow I will stand before my teachers and …… I have no idea. I have no idea what the dedication consists of! I was told that I could wear ritual clothes (I have none, so I am wearing a black dress that I’ve only ever worn to sing in – a sort of ritual in itself) and that I could use a magical name or choose a name to use at this time (fodder for another post!). In Feri/Faery there is but one initiation, considered a marriage to the gods, where the Current is passed and lore is told. This is a formal dedication to my teachers and this path. No oath-bound material is passed, but more lore is given – a token of deepening trust. This is in a way a ‘going steady’ ritual. I let my teachers and other initiates know that I am serious and my teachers say, “Hey, I like what I see in you, let’s take this to the next level.”

I’m still interested in finding a Hindu guru. There is nothing in Feri/Faery or Tantra that I understand contradicts each other. In fact, the deeper I go, the  more compatible I find them. With due diligence on the seeker’s part, ‘when the student is ready, the teacher will find them.’ I am trusting in this right now.

And here I can’t really say more. Silence and discretion are important here, but I don’t write now because of that, I write because I don’t know anything about tomorrow! It’s a mystery……