{"id":579,"date":"2015-06-15T20:24:09","date_gmt":"2015-06-16T04:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/shekhinahcalling\/?p=579"},"modified":"2015-06-15T20:32:02","modified_gmt":"2015-06-16T04:32:02","slug":"anu-sent-me-a-litha-dream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/shekhinahcalling\/2015\/06\/15\/anu-sent-me-a-litha-dream\/","title":{"rendered":"Anu Sent Me a Litha Dream"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I\u2019m taking a break from priestessing Litha this year, and I\u2019m loving it. No planning meetings! No subcommittees! No invocations to write or trance journeys to stress over! I get to just show up, even bring my daughter if she\u2019s up for it, and enjoy the ride!<\/p>\n

The most interesting part is that I have no idea what\u2019s being planned for the ritual. Usually I can recite the ritual outline by heart by the time the doors open, but this time, I know which deities we\u2019re working with and that\u2019s about it.<\/p>\n

But the control freak in me also finds that a tiny bit nerve-wracking, so of course I had a dream about it.<\/p>\n

In the dream, the\u00a0shop\u00a0at which we hold our rituals<\/a> had turned into some kind of mansion, with a large hall decorated\u00a0in deep reds and burgundies and\u00a0velvet curtains. Very womb-like. After I settled into\u00a0the audience, music started up and dancers in dark red costumes began to perform. Wow, they\u2019re really good,<\/em> I thought, impressed with the organizers. Where had they found these people?<\/p>\n

I watched the dancers for a few minutes. Then\u2013I love this\u2013everyone in the audience started necking.<\/p>\n

Just as I was thinking that this was the best ritual I\u2019d ever attended, I woke up. The dream followed me, though, in that way that dreams have of bleeding into your waking life: as I opened my eyes and found myself in my bedroom, I realized that the dancers had been singing. The words \u201cLove! Anu! Love! Anu!\u201d echoed in my mind\u2013ending, with a conspicuous emphasis, on \u201cAnu.\u201d<\/p>\n

Well. Sometimes you can\u2019t quite tell if a god is talking to you; other times it\u2019s pretty cut and dry.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
This was the least raunchy public domain image I could find. Image credit Wikipedia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My main takeaway from the dream was fairly simple, but easily forgotten. The dream explicitly connected Anu with love, which made sense, considering her role as fertility goddess. But Anu isn\u2019t a goddess of romantic love. Anu isn\u2019t interested in courtship or ballads or Valentine\u2019s Day cards. Anu\u2013and the Morrigan in other guises\u2013is a goddess of primal<\/em> love: the deep, pheromone-driven\u00a0love that makes us pine for\u00a0our coworkers, Facebook-stalk our roommate\u2019s girlfriend, make fools of ourselves for one slim chance at getting laid. Anu is the crush, the infatuation, the dizzying turn-on. Anu is the pheromone-driven force that makes us procreate and multiply. Anu is the bunnies fucking in the field, the flower beckoning bees to fertilize it, the apple tree laden with fruit. She\u2019s more, too\u2013she\u2019s a mother goddess, an earth goddess, a personification of nature\u2013but, the dream told me, she is also a sex goddess.\u00a0During\u00a0a significant moment in\u00a0my\u00a0dream, while everyone was kissing each other on the neck, I thought about kissing someone\u00a0on the lips and laughed. In the dream, such a practice\u00a0seemed impossibly funny. Why would anyone do that?<\/p>\n

(If we approach\u00a0her\u00a0this way, as the sacred\u00a0embodiment\u00a0of our limbic systems, it\u2019s not a great leap to the Morrigan\u2019s other extreme, is it? Our will to survive\u00a0can swing us towards love or violence.)<\/p>\n

This is why the Goddess of the Land as a goddess of sex is so ubiquitous.\u00a0Think, for example, of Inanna. Sex is life. I\u2019m not talking about\u00a0rape. Or\u00a0sexual assault. Or\u00a0domination that uses sex as one of its tools. I\u2019m talking about real, enthusiastic, consensual, love-driven sex.<\/p>\n

But is love, in this sense, the same as lust? Yes. No. Absolutely. Of course not. If the question bothers you, just think about that moment when you finally get to touch someone you\u2019ve admired from afar. When your skin touches theirs, are you thinking about that funny joke they told two months ago or the fact that they like Game of Thrones<\/em> as much as you? Probably not.<\/p>\n

Of course, the dream left me with one unanswered question: why Litha? Why now, and not Beltane? Maybe Anu is giving me a heads-up that our Litha ritual is going to turn into a giant orgy. Whoo hoo! Or maybe the \u201cwomb\u201d in which our ritual took place was the Goddess\u2019s womb, pregnant with a\u00a0Horned God already dreaming of meeting his consort.<\/p>\n

In any case, happy Litha! I hope yours is full of pleasure and abundance, whether you\u2019re sexual, asexual, or anything in between.<\/p>\n

(And for those who are perennially inclined to thump\u00a0the lore or get worked up because my experience with the Morrigan\u00a0doesn\u2019t match up with theirs\u2026chill, okay?\u00a0Your practice isn\u2019t threatened by some random blogger who had an interesting dream.)<\/p>\n

Hey! Do you like my writing? Then click here to like Asa West on Facebook<\/a>\u00a0and get it crammed in your face all the time!<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anu is a goddess of primal love: the deep, pheromone-driven love that makes us pine for our coworkers, Facebook-stalk our roommate’s girlfriend, make fools of ourselves for one slim chance at getting laid. Anu is the flower beckoning bees to fertilize it, the apple tree laden with fruit, the pheromone-driven force that makes us procreate and multiply. She’s more, too–she’s a mother goddess, an earth goddess, a personification of nature–but, the dream told me, she is also a sex goddess.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1913,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[112,151,3,72],"tags":[12,13,26,114,40,44,46,113,66,69],"class_list":["post-579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anu","category-goddess","category-morrigan-2","category-sabbats","tag-deities","tag-deity","tag-goddess","tag-litha","tag-morrigan","tag-pagan","tag-paganism","tag-sex","tag-witch","tag-witchcraft"],"yoast_head":"\nAnu Sent Me a Litha Dream<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Anu is a goddess of primal love: the deep, pheromone-driven love that makes us pine for our coworkers, Facebook-stalk our roommate's girlfriend, make fools of ourselves for one slim chance at getting laid. 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