John Burridge

The other week I was in rituals back-to-back. The “order of service” (to borrow terminology from the UU’s) in the Wicca-lite rituals I do begins with creating a sacred space for the ritual by calling in and imagining a protective circle of blue flame. I wound up speaking the invocation for both rituals.

For the first ritual, a four person New Moon Meditation Ritual, the invocation gelled; the imagery of the circle was clear in my mind and the words flowed; folks said afterward that that part of the ritual was very effective. The second ritual, a twenty person Equinox Ritual for Community, was also effective, but felt more forced. That there were twenty folks involved instead of four might have had something to do with it, but my sense is that I was more focused on recalling what words I had used earlier than on calling the circle.

Over the following days, I played around with words and sounds and came up with the following:

Blue flame, blue flame
Circle of blue flame
Be whirling earth
Be wheeling stars
Be flowing veil
Between the worlds
Make this space sacred space
Make this time sacred time
Negative spirits, begone! (clap)
You have no power here!
Blessed Be

We join the dream in progress...

(Sexy bits with naked men redacted.)

I was with a group of (presumably) gay men staying at a lodge in the forest and who were going to go into town for breakfast.  The meal was supposed to be excellent in a rustic setting—gourmet, but not pretentious; fulfilling, but not greasy or heavy; simple, but not unrefined.  I think we bussed (or rode a van) to a town that was on a large rocky outcropping (the entire town was built on one gigantic rock).

At the town, we entered a large, bright room where a circle of older women sat.  They were our breakfast hosts, and we thanked them for having us and they had a grandmotherly "aren't these fine young men" moment.  

We filed up some stairs carved into the rock.  The stairway was darker and labyrinthine; at times we were in rocky tunnels.  I found myself in a procession of people, mostly men, walking up through twisting stairways.  The way doubled back on itself, and I briefly glimpsed M.H. in his old red and black cloak as we passed by each other (this was apparently his cameo as he hadn't been in the dream until this point and didn't reappear later).

There's a break in the narrative.  I was either at the edge of a very large pool of water or floating in it.  There might have been stars in the deep twilight sky, but I couldn't tell you if it was dusk or dawn.  A pale hand—I couldn't say if it was mine or someone else's—held a lit lighter about an arm's length in front of my face.  At times the lighter's flame reflected above the surface of the pool, at other times the lighter's flame shone from under the water.  There was a circle of mostly youngish women around the pool's edge.

A chorus of women's voices began to sing (in waking life, they sounded like Bananarama singing a cover of "Spooky"; in 2/2 time):

They / say the moon / in the sky / is a lake / that would rather be a river //
They / say the moon / in the sky / is alive / so love her like a lover.  

A woman (at the water's edge?) began to speak, but at that point the house cuckoo clock in the kitchen began to count 6 AM.  I tried to stay in the dream and remember what she said, but the second cuckoo brought me into the waking world.

---

When I was relating the dream to Mark, he said the lighter sounded like a tarot card; I agreed, and added something about the Lady of the Lake.  Fire and water together primarily makes me think of the King of Cups tarot card, or secondarily the Queen of Wands.  I suppose it could be the Ace of Flames, or Lighters, but I'd have to meditate more on what it might mean beyond just being a cool image.

Thinking about the previous evening, before going to bed I'd been snacking in my Writer's Grotto, with a solar powered lamp underneath a circular glass deck table (one of four bought to be outdoor ritual tables), so that might have powered all of the circular imagry, as well as suggesting the Ace of Lighters Unquenched by Water.

The labyrinthine caves is a reoccurring dream motif, and I haven't figured out the precise meaning.  In this dream they were a transforming boundary separating the bright circle of elder women from the dark circle of younger women.  I used to have dreams where I would cross a boundary of water and into a magical zone, and lately twisty tunnels have taken on that role.  Sometimes caves turn into Caves of Wonder showing tableaus; maybe M.H. showing up was an attempt in this direction.   Sometimes tunnel labyrinths feel constricting, but this one wasn't. 

I don't know where the song came from.  This was the most lyrics I've dreamed since the 1950's-esque "In Corvallis" dream with the floor-show song, or the French burlesque song and routine "Va-vooom!"  both from decades ago.  Maybe I've been listening to "Agatha All Along" too much (having recently discovered it), but the song sounds more like "Spooky" -- the word play is fun.

I need to start writing my dreams down, lately I've been remembering more of them, at least in the mornings, and some of them feel like they could be stories, or at least like my dreaming brain is trying to come up with stories.

This weekend was a resting weekend.  I met with a critique group via Zoom, but I had not submitted a story for critique, so I only gave critique.  It was pleasant to visit with folks afterwards.  The closest piece I have in my inventory that is critique-ready (sort of) reads more like a first chapter than a complete story, and I spent some time earlier in the week writing the beginning of the next chapter.  

Mark and I worked on a birthday present for my dad--I have to say that Mark has done the lion's share of the work.  We'll see how well the gift goes over when we present it.  COVID has made celebrating with my folks a bit more awkward--we don't want to give them the omicron variant, which is currently being actively spread in the community, so we'll have to mask up in their house and not take a meal together.  It feels like a step backward after the easing of masking requirements in December.  Luckily, most of us are still within about two months of our boosters.  

We took Aiofe to Zumwalt Park, near Fern Ridge Reservoir.  It's a very large area, and dogs can be off-leash there.  Aiofe chased a ball for almost two solid hours.   

The Ides of Spring have come and (Sunday afternoon) I am writing in the backyard circle, underneath the cherry tree--which has lost most of its blooms in yesterday's wild thunderstorm--and next to the last blooming iris of this season.  The lilac tree nearby is still going strong with its blooms and scent.  I'd like to think that I'm writing between the worlds.

Yesterday evening (Saturday) I managed to catch sight of an incandescent, quadruple rainbow.  Banks of scudding clouds turned the sky a study of every shade between blue and grey.  A thunderstorm cell had passed by, heading east, and the sinking sun cast long rays underneath slate clouds.  I thought about photographing it, but decided that I wanted to enjoy the ephemeral nature of it instead--besides, the photos never do the real thing justice.

Earlier this afternoon, I mowed the lawn; the grass has been growing like crazy with the mishmash days of sunshine mixed with rain.  I started in the center of the circle of pavers and mowed the lawn in an ever-expanding deosil spiral.  I figured that doing so would be my urban version of dancing the May Pole, and I saluted the cardinal directions as the mower passed by them.  I suppose as far as rituals go, it was a ritual cleaning or straightening up.

The sod had grown over many of the pavers in the circle.  The North paver was visible because it's been covered by the labyrinth stone, but the other cardinal pavers were mostly overgrown--and the cross-quarter bricks and the ones dividing the circle into sixteenths had disappeared underneath a tangle of grass and roots.  I'm not sure if the pavers have sunk a little into the ground, or if it's the nature of sod to build up (although, looking at a photo from two years ago when the pavers were freshly laid, I'm thinking they've sunken).

I got a straight-edged shovel and scraped the pavers clear.  Which took more work than I thought.  I had to tap the hidden pavers to figure out where I should be scraping.  I wasn't sure what the best way to edge the pavers was, and ended up lifting the sod and grass up as I used the shovel as a lever with the fulcrum at a paver's edge.

Last year, Cicero especially liked to sit on one of the pavers, and would be temporarily named "Black Cat of the East," or "Black Cat of the Solstice," depending on which paver he sat upon.  This year, as I cleared the pavers, Aoife came up and sniffed each unearthed surface---I hope she wasn't eating the uncovered worms or grubs.

My reward for mowing the lawn and clearing the stones was to get out a folding table, some blankets and pillows and set up a writing area.  Of course, as soon as I did so, Aoife plunked down and made herself comfortable.

During all of this,  Mark looked out the window and said, "Whoa! What did you do?  It looks like you're hiding the evidence out there."  I had to admit the rectangular bricks especially looked like tiny open graves.

But what should I expect, writing between the worlds, summoning recollections, looking out of the interstice?

Went to the gym Friday Night and did the regular routine.

I had an e-mail exchange with high school friend, the Reverend Amy Beltaine. We were talking about the latest gender politics thing, which has been going on for at lest twenty years, and I wrote: "I think it's useful to think of enclave vs. exclusion. Holding space in enclave with like-people make it easier to process certain things. Holding space in exclusion of others is a form of using gatherings as a weapon."

Amy asked to attribute me, and the next thing I know, there's a link in her missive to my blog. Which currently is about cats and shoulder-bags. And writing and my not-frequent-enough gym visitations.

"Oooh, gotta fix that," I thought... although (looks at blog statistics from last week) it's probably a little late for that now.

The idea comes from a series of thoughts on group dynamics that I formulated back in 1995 at Arcosanti. I was working with a series of symbols, and circle was one of them. The NeoPagan ritual circle of protection was the starting point for one train of thought. In its positive manifestation, the circle allows for an enclave and focus of people with similar experiences, desires, or goals to work together and process. In its negative manifestation, the circle is an excluding boundary that can lead to homogeneity and stasis. The challenge that circle lays before us is to become conscious of all of the boundaries in our lives so that we can dynamically balance safety and focus against discrimination and moribundity.