asking desire to slow dance during the longest song

In the Reclaiming tradition, we have core classes. One can take them to learn about Reclaiming culture, magick, and community, and to meet cool people. Elements of Magick is the first one, the foundational one, the one that is a pre-requisite for the rest (mostly).

I’ve been co-teaching an Elements of Magick class online, with a lovely co-teacher and friend, and also with Aphrodite as the main character in this offering. Why?

Why not?

After all, we’re heading into Venus retrograde, into the months where Aphrodite has been traditionally celebrated with festivals, and into Cancer season. I mean, if there was ever a time to work a bit more with Aphrodite, it’s now. (By my logic, anyway.)

Elements of Magick includes sections with Air, Fire, Water, Earth, and Spirit. The class goes over each element, some ritual skills, and embodied experiences.

And last night was Fire. With Aphrodite.

Hail and welcome Desire.

Fearing It, Feeling It

If you asked me to list my desires at one point in my life, you would have gotten a very short list, if you got a response at all. I would tell you I was the ‘easy one’ and the one who didn’t ‘need’ all that much to be satisfied.

Lies, all lies.

Enter: Aphrodite. While I’m not going to say that meeting the Goddess of Love turned my life around, I am going to admit that she had a large influence on introducing me to my own heart. The one that didn’t want to beat too hard or too much, in case someone didn’t like that.

Desire was something that felt selfish and ill-fitting. As someone who leaned in the direction of service and obligation to be valuable, desire sounded like a distraction. Something that would, gasp, have me focus on myself about all else.

Imagine.

Today, I can (literally) give you a list of my desires. Not that I would give it to just anyone, but I do know what they are now. And they change and they expand, and some have fallen away. Some are unmet still. Some are met on the daily.

Desire takes up space in my life. It influences and helps me return to myself, to what is important, to where my heart is — and what it needs.

Dancing with Desire

In class, my co-teacher and I wanted an embodied experience of desire, while being online and in a group of strangers. No small task, sure. For this type of work, I turn to music, unsurprisingly. I turn to intuition and trance. Before class, I found an old playlist and listened to it, moved with my body, and dropped into desire.

Just for a little bit.

I moved my hips to the way I can hold onto stories and stories I tell about stories. I breathed into the way I can put my desires away because serious things require all of my focus. I sighed at the way I can still settle for less than I really want. I stretched into the places that want to tighten, offering them just an inch of relief and respite.

I stopped asking questions. And I waited for Aphrodite.

When Aphrodite Calls…

The godds do not always come when I call. But Aphrodite often does. She arrives as a breeze on my shoulder and a warmth in my chest. She comes as a whisper of welcoming. She comes as a friend, an ally, a soft place to land.

She came to me and my desire as an invitation. An invitation to know, to feel, and to speak. Aphrodite came as a reminder that my desires still live in me. They fill me and feast on me. They widen and shrink, depending on how I remember and meet them. Desire moves from my heart to my hips, or over to the small of my back and the right side of my neck

Desire lives as I live. It is not a thing to be achieved or accomplished. It is a certain sensation that holds hands with my lifeforce and says,

“Let us expand to the edge of skin, to the places of touch and tone, to the wild texture of innocence and audacity. Let us be all that we are. No less.”

She came to me. And I listened.

Today, or any day, or every day, I invite you to dance with desire too. Find a few songs that move you in ways you need to move. Close your eyes and feel what desire carves out in the spaces you hold.

Let it move around, wriggle around.

In case this needs to be said, desire isn’t just about sex. It’s about wanting something. It’s about wishing something would happen.

Let desire lead. Let desire love. Let desire show you what happens next.