In doing this work regularly over the last few months with a small group of practitioners, in our own time and our spaces, I got some further insights and instructions to frame my practice in these troubled times.
My card chosen as Samhain for the “year” was the Five of Wands, the Lord of Strife. Grrr… not the omen one wants for a year. Five is the number of Mars in the realm of fire (wands). Astrologically it is associated Saturn in Leo. I remember my husband Steve getting the Eight of Swords a few years ago, and transforming it into a year long ritual in working with eight actual, albeit small, blades over the course of the year. He taught at our Templehearth conference about the experience. I love it, though I tend to be less patient than he is. I felt the need to change my fate for the year and transmute these forces at the head of the year.
As part of the work to transmute strife, a prevalent force in these days, I bound together five actual wooden wands with a Witch’s cord, forming an almost spider-like figure of twisted woods. I took one out to meditate upon them and see what insight they offered over the course of five days. On my altar the five of wands tied together and the card was to the right. On the left of the altar are items of Venus and love, helping me meditate upon the elemental concept of Love and Strife, Eros and Eris. This is a key elemental teaching from the Greek philosopher Empedocles, and part of my own upcoming Templehearth class. Between the two are my other cards of the year from Samhain, all three “magus” or magicians from the Thoth tarot deck created by Lady Freida Harris and Aleister Crowley. May the triple magick of the magician balance and harmonize love and strife.
Wand 1: Love
I am not sure where it originates, but someone told me recently the Five of Wands is like five people trying to put up a tent together, not listening to each other, and the arguments that ensue, and that idea has stuck with me. Being wands, I assumed the first step was to take action, to direct, to resolve strife, and while an action, it was not what I expected. The meditation said the first step to resolve strife is love.
You can stop someone from doing harm. You can take action, take a stand, but you need to do so without hate or ill wishes, something I struggle with in these current times. It can be easy to hate those hating you, causing harm and violence. I swing between my own pacifism and violence when looking for solutions in these times and the honest struggle of the ends justifying the means. Where is the line when lives are on the line?
The vision was looking at the current leaders of our nation, and world, like rampant toddlers. Frustrating? Yes, of course. Worthy of hate… I wouldn’t hate a child, though these adults are doing far more harm than any child could. But the vision was the Giant of the United States taking the whole regime, cabinet and oligarchs included, and putting them in a giant crib, a cage, where they could not escape and could not do any harm. The message was not only to love them, which again I struggle with, but to love them to quell the chaos and bring greater coherence, but to love all those they did harm to first. Focus magickally on the injured first, rather than than the perpetrator. Violence can’t be the first step to resolve the Five of Wands, or at least that was the message of first step. Intention and tone of the first step sets the tone of all else to follow. On this, I agree, so in that working, I chose love, held the first of the five wands, and like a scepter, radiated love (and the binding of the crib as a future jail sentence) in my meditation with the Giant. I balanced love with the image of the removal of harmful people from positions of power.
Wand 2: Stillness
I’ll admit, this step pissed me off. Yes, love to start, but now what is the action? I was told the second step was centering, quieting and finding stillness. One cannot take appropriate action unless you can see all the parts involved, and what they are doing, and what is creating strife and what is not. The image was becoming like the north star, and letting all other revolve around you for a moment. Become the eye in the center of the storm. Become the still point amid chaos. Then you will see what action to take.
The meditation, holding wand no. 2, was to connect with the land locally, for me the White Mountains, and then the land of the nation, and connect it to the North Star. Invoke stillness into the Giant before taking action, so the action will be clear and intelligent and not guided by rage alone. Rage can be sacred and get things moving, but there is also a call to be clever, thoughtful and protect those who have been and are being harmed, so rage must be directed from love and stillness.
Wand 3: Untangling
Wand No. 3’s work was less a wand or club and more of a comb. The message was about untangling. Much of our thoughts, feelings, ideas, dogmas, beliefs, etc have become tangled together -intellectually, emotionally, psychically. Most are unable to talk, let alone take action, without unintentionally tangling more. While I truly do believe everything is interdependent and interconnected, it also should have a cohesion and harmony, and when things get tangled, like a messy not, there is no harmony. Try to move one thing, and you inadvertently harm another. The message was to untangle within myself what could be untangled, and what couldn’t, cut. Like untangling thread, sometimes you need to cut, but most things can be untangle with some time and patience.
My guidance was on following the current moment backwards in time, to pivot points of importance in our shared history, and look at the energetic lines to untangle there. While i found myself focused on the last 10 years, it kept going back further, (obviously to the tangled founding of our nation, but I could get that far today). I got to the 90s, and for me, the first personal political betrayal in Bill Clinton’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Then I hit a wall and the message was to stop and rest, and return on a later date.
I often think of the world in terms of pattern, of fibers and webs, the web of wyrd, the tapestry of fate. To me, ultimately the Goddess of Witches is Fate, Necessity, unfolding in the past, present and future. The knots distort the pattern of the whole and part of our work in cooperative creation is working within that pattern, its beauty and enchantment.
Wand 4: Interconnection
For the 4th of the 5 of Wands, I had a vision of the four wands like four beams of light, arranged similar to the three rays of Awen, but four instead of three, and forming the starting geometry of a pentagram in a pentagon, but not with the final cross bar or “X”. Imagine a point with four rays coming out of it. If imagining a pentacle, the inner two rays, an inverted V from the top point of the pentagram star. The outer two rays either bend to form the arc of the pentacle circle, connecting the top point to the upper left and right points, or stay straight to form two sides of a pentagon around the five pointed star.
I thought of the four rays of civilization in Theosophy – Harmony Through Conflict/Art/Nature, Concrete Science and Technology, Devotion/Mysticism and Alchemical Transmutation. More importantly the message was abut taking actions where all points have a relationship with all other points, being surrounded by the pentagon, or a circle. These four rays show how all five points, the fur rays emanating down from a central point, show that starting point having a connection to all others. Through these direct connections, that is how you untangle and take action to build. When seeking to transmute strife, connect to all the parts, all the people, causing strife.|
Holding Wand No 4, the work was to connect to all involved in the chaos – the victims of violence and persecution, but also those perpetuating it, those directing and ordering it, and those benefiting from it economically and socially. It wasn’t a pleasant step, but without that connect, the magick would not have weight behind it. To truly shift, one must be conscious and clear of the connection.
I felt that all those involved were like organs within the body of the giant. Some of those organs are infected, sick, but parts nonetheless. The easy thing is wanting to cut it out entirely, and sometimes in medicine, we must, but some things need healing and regeneration. Untangle what you can, cut what you must.
Wand 5: United Will
The last of my Five of Wands ritual in cooperation with the Giant of the Nation. The image of the Thoth Five of Wands is a central dense wand dominating four smaller wands tilted to the sides. That imagery was held in my mind, until all the wands were moved vertically, to be facing the same direction, and then bound with a cord, so of course I took my other four wands, placed them together in one direction, and bound them with the cord I used. The five became one in my hand, and in my mind. The message was like a bundle of sticks, a woven rope, or anything with multiple parts working together, when working together, they are stronger than apart. An affirmation rose up and I repeated it many times:
“I bring together the will of the many towards the common cause of the Greater Good.”
The image became the Giant of the Nation, standing upright, and being many spines in one large spine. Many are aligned with the Will of the One. The giant took the regime and oligarchs and again put them in a crib that was a jail to stop them, and then focused on healing. I felt my body as the giant’s body, and felt the nation in the heart —heartsick, the liver —anger, and the lungs —grief. I began to work healing magick on myself and the giant in these places, mostly colored light but I also called upon the plant spirit dandelion for the liver.
Then we began energy work up the spine for the seven centers of power, so there is clear communication and flow in all the centers within the collective nation, human and non-human. This healing and purification to bring us wholeness as individuals and collectively.
My guidance in working with the troubles of this nation were around five points – Love, Stillness, Untangling, Interconnection and United Will. Yours will be different, but work your magick in the wholeness of our land and nation.