times.
ENCOUNTER WITH THE DARK GODDESS
On February 16th 1997 an event occurred that was at once long and carefully planned and also hastily thrown together at the last minute. It took careful set up and was completely without expectation.
The setting was a convention in the Oakland Marriott Hotel given by the owners of the Ancient Ways store on Telegraph and attended by 1,100 pagans and those curious about pagans. The hotel was full, as it has been when there is a Science Fiction convention there, with folks dressed in eclectic and sexy clothing with assorted hair colors and most unusually placed jewelry.
It was called Pantheacon or all-Goddesses convention. Saturday, Sunday and Monday and Friday afternoon as well, there were two to four time slots during which there were at least ten interesting things scheduled, not to mention the dealers room and just wandering around the hotel. The larger rituals and dances and those that took an openended time were held in the evening.
Workshops and rituals were held on old and new religions from Africa and Norway, the Americas, China and Japan. Shamanism and belly dancing, ti chi and drumming. Marketing and how to be interviewed. Sexual, non-manogamous, and magical ethics. History, healers, life transitions of every kind. Interfaith, Hebrew goddesses, and even Christianity. Such things were talked about , explored, experienced and elucidated.
Rooms were open for the larger organizations; Reclaiming, the Fellowship of the Spiral Path, the New Reformed Orthodox Order of the Golden Dawn, and others, to host casual evenings. Though there were complaints, as always, that some rituals or topics went beyond the comfort level of some participants either in explicit sexual images our in their intensity, despite ongoing efforts to code those that might, as well as complaints that the whole thing was uptight and repressed, a good time was had by quite a few. The preceding October, after finding that my teacher of Western Mystery Tradition, R. J. Stewart, would not be available to lead a workshop at this gathering, I talked to a friend, an the organizer of the workshops at the convention, and offered to lead an introductory Western Mystery Tradition1 journey as a workshop. He said that he would find out what was scheduled and get back to me.
Shortly after that, I found that Mr. Stewart had concerns about the giving of this working2 that had to do with copyright laws and the making of money. As I had no intention of making any money, I corresponded with him about this. I got his permission to proceed as long as I read it directly from his previously printed material and did not draw on anything that I had been given that was not in print. I said that I would do this to the best of my ability and thus received his consent. The difficulty about this was that I had been on this introductory journey with him several times, and it had differed each time as any journey or visit with friends might. To keep it within a given script carries the same problems as keeping any familiar ritual gathering, such as Thanksgiving or the Fourth of July, on a given script. Yes, many things would be similar but there would be variations as reality intruded on expectation and the biscuits in the oven were forgotten again. Also, I had never read the printed version myself but I knew that I had plenty of time before the convention. So, with reservations and assuming that I would tell the participants the agreements and reasons, I waited to hear from the selection committee for Pantheacon.
That was in October. I did not hear from the convention organizers again and had assumed that they had decided against my presentation. I did not bring it up with Bob Stewart when I attended a three day working into the land of death led by him in January. The Sunday before the convention I came back from a trip to find that the convention organizers had sent a message asking if I could get a brief explanation of my workshop and an introduction of myself for the convention program to them before they went to print on Wednesday. I had less than a week to get my act together.
Fortunately we both had e-mail and I took an hour or so to quickly compose the biography and introduction, and I sent it to them, in triplicate the following:
“Title of presentation: Underworld Journey: Guided Inner Passage to the Primal UnderWorld Temple to meet the Dark Goddess
“We will descend into the holy earth to meet the Ancient Providence using the symbolism of the Western Mystery Tradition as presented by R. J. Stewart in his Underworld Initiation3 and Earth Light.4 Various encounters will, or will not be made by the participants. This sally5 is led by one consecrated to the work.” Speaker: “Sally worked with the Western Mystery Tradition as taught by R. J. Stewart for three years and has been consecrated into this work by him and his wife Josephine. She has trained for and/or studied and worked with several traditions and finished the four year study for Feri Tradition initiation with Chris Rossi, a student of Victor Anderson. Sally has had a working coven for fifteen years.”
Then, in preparation for actually leading the journey, for the first time I read it as published. I was shocked! Though the four or five essentials were, of course, included it was very different than I had ever experienced it either when lead by Bob Stewart or by Chris Rossi or others in the bimonthly group, or when I had gone down on my own or taken others. There were many elements that I had not seen before as well as many other elements that were not mentioned in the published version.
I didn’t have time to consult with Mr. Stewart as he was in process of moving to America. I knew that I would respond to whatever really happened when the journey began, otherwise known as responding to the impulses of the moment, no matter what I may have planned the scenario would be. So, I read the published journey through several times and planned to do the best I could.
When I registered for Pantheacon the next Friday afternoon I was handed a purple ribbon to attach to my name tag that said “Speaker.” I was prouder than punch to wear that around the convention.
At this point I cannot tell exactly what transpired but this is close enough.
I found the room for the working and set up the quarters. Blue for water, emotion, intuition in the west. Red for fire, energy, passion in the south. Yellow for air, breath, thought in the east. Green for earth, manifestation, wisdom in the north. Black for the Void in the center. I set up an infuser, a candle-heated cup of water that infuses the air with incense without causing those allergic to smoke to have breathing problems. In it I put Mr. Stewart’s faery incense. A few people came in and sat down as I sang in the elements, setting up the corners for our work on a aural, as well as visual, level.
All traditions are a fusion of the teaching and the teacher. That which they have been taught, which may be written and dogmatic or oral and situational, and that which they themselves bring to the teaching. My previous magical training and “My Daily Prayer,” a song that I had written, which went into the singing in of the elements to set up the circle, were more generic Celtic (with other influences) pagan practice and less what I had been taught by R. J. Stewart for the Western Mystery Tradition.
Eventually, there were forty-three people, just as many as would fit in the chairs and on the floor in a circle around the room. When most of the people had come in I started telling them that though, as I had said in my biography in the program, I had been studying Victor Anderson’s Feri Tradition6 , and there was much intertwining of the two as far as their Celtic roots and teaching about the Fey7, what I was about to do was not of that lineage. I repeated the warning that this was all under copyright, and that therefore all I could do was read from the book. I could not guarantee, however, what would actually happen when we got into the Presence, but what they all must hear is that my plan was to read from the book.
I spoke to them of the intent to go to the primal temple of the UnderWorld, which is also the Innerworld, and enter the presence of the Dark Goddess. Intent is the key. Teachers have said that energy follows thought, for thought is energy8, so therefore intent leads. From the book Earth Light by R. J. Stewart, as well as my experiences in his workshops, and my other studies and experience, I told the people in the room “To approach this reality within the Earth, we must [give] form to the energies at work.”9 The people at the working mostly knew what this meant, for many of them had come to Pantheacon already trained to some extent in magical or esoteric work. This working can be called a guided meditation or a trance journey or a shamanic journey but as it goes to a real place that is perceived by our senses and imaginations as similar to, and also very different from, our consensus reality I simply call it a journey.
That with which we were about to work was real on an energy and sub-energy level and available to our conscious minds in forms taken from our knowledge. You can say that the forms in which we see them are from our imagination but my hesitation in describing them in this way is that they are in no way themselves imaginary. To some extent this is true of everything we see. You can try this out for yourself; if you see a photograph that you assume to be one gender and are then informed by the caption that the person is really the gender that you did not assume, your view of their appearance will then change.
I explained the four directional temples of Western Mystery Tradition. Inspiration and instruction in the east. Initiation and purification in the south. Giving and taking in the west. Death and regeneration in the north. I told those assembled of light and life and love and law in the four directions, The Void, the Chaos, is in the center out of which emerge the ever becoming/ever unbecoming. I lit the infuser, lit the candles in the quarters and the center and turned out the light.
It did not take very long for the room to settle into stillness and for everyone’s eyes to close and their breathing to become calmed.
I began to read from “The Dark Goddess” from Earth Light.10 “First we see in the floor, in the center of the circle, a circular wooden door. . . .The door opens. . . revealing a passageway below. . . . and we see a steep flight of spiraling stairs, turning always to the right. These are of rough stone, cut directly out of living rock. Along the left-hand wall we see a thick braided rope made of three strands colored red, black and white; it is fastened to the wall by bronze pins, each one having the head of a dragon holding the rope in it’s jaws.
“. . we enter the steep stairway and begin to descend, holding the triple rope. . . . we feel the presence of the rock all around us. There are faint vibrations in the stone . . as if a deep resonance passes through the fabric of the Earth. As we descend, we feel a growing warmth, yet the walls of the rock stairway are cool. We feel the presence of the inner fire, and respond to it.(Pause) “We reach the foot of the stairs: there is a low opening and over it hangs a tiny lamp, glowing with a steady white flame. . . we affirm our intention to pass through into the Temple of the Underworld and meet the Dark Goddess, if she chooses to be present.
“We go through the opening and emerge into a dark cavern, . . . .In the center of the cavern is a still, black pool of water. . . we step forward and look into the pool. . . (pause)”
Here I closed my eyes and felt myself in the experience. I felt how deeply in we were. Perhaps you could liken it to being deep in an hypnotic state, or deep in the Spirit. When I continued I did not follow the written word as closely. “. . .we become aware that [there is] a presence in the cavern. “
At this point I felt Her immediately before me and yet I continued to say the words of the printed journey. “Someone is present in the other side of the cavern standing in front of a dark cleft of rock.”
In the printed form there is much description of what She is holding and what we can and cannot see of Her. I said none of that. From this point I said more and more what I had heard on my previous journeys here and what I felt here and now.
“ We approach the Dark Goddess. We give Her the gift that appears in our hand. It may be something that we wish to keep but It must be given. (pause for a long time) “Now we emerge from communion and find that our offerings may have been exchanged. (pause)
“There is a small shelf or alcove in the wall behind Her. There may be something in this. (pause)
“ It is time to return to the outer world. We walk back past the pool, through the arch and up the long steep flight of spiral stone stairs holding the triple cord. We reach the doorway to the outer world and climb up. We emerge into a familiar room and return to the position in the circle where each of us began the journey. The door closes, fades. We return to our outer awareness.”
There is profound silence in the room for awhile and then people begin to stir and shift and stretch. Eyes begin to open. Some of the people look around and finally a few of them look at me.
We were in for just twenty minutes.
I ask people if they wish to share what they have experienced, and many tell bits and pieces of their stories. Many are moved beyond understanding, beyond thinking. This time there was much interaction with the pool. Visions from the pool, or going into it, or through it to something deeper. Many people said that the Goddess came out of the pool rather than in the back of the cave and I remember that I had felt her immediately in front of me. One woman was scared by what she experienced, for she was filled with blackness. Two people and I tell her information about what she has been through, that this is a common image for one taken under the care of the Dark Goddess and she is no longer scared. A few people met animals or other creatures. One woman had to give herself as a gift to the Goddess. Several people relate images or symbols or experiences that are typical of this trip or that relate in some way to this working as I know it. There are also many tales brand new to me.
I am always fascinated with this part. My feeling, when I am guided on a journey like this, is that though I usually have followed along nothing much but energy has happened to me. I often have mundane thoughts intrude. Then I find myself relating an image here and a feeling there that end up abundantly detailed and profound. When I lead a journey I have never lost the faint worry that I will say all these words and go to the place I have been led to and when we come back everyone will look at me and say; “We heard all you said and it was a lovely story but nothing else happened. Was it supposed to?” Yet every time there is a sense of wonder and depth in the room as people tell of teachings and meetings, visions and emotion, energy and awe.
At this point I do not remember much specifics of what was said. This is also common for me and I think a way of giving people their privacy. There were also many people who did not wish to share. I I felt the room grow restless even though we were not through with our allotted hour and a half. So I asked their patience, blew out the candles in the directions and the center and thanked them all and sundry. Several people stayed to talk to me privately or to take one of the flyers that I had brought of a workshop that Mr. Stewart is presenting in May, or to look at his books I that had displayed. A few asked about Feri teachers. When everyone had left I put everything away and took it all to the speakers lounge and went to lunch.
Throughout the rest of the convention people came up to me to speak of their journeys or ask questions. I made a few connections that I hope to keep. The woman who had been scared, and whom I had met once before, asked that I be part of the initiation that she is seeking from another group. One man, who had not spoken to me in the room, came up to me and said that he would never have believed that he could get that deep in so short a time. I said it always seemed to be that way with the work in the UnderWorld.
Bibliography:
As any modern Pagan knows too many books go into creating a personal thealogy to mention. These are just the books of R. J. Stewart used in this journey.
Stewart, R. J. The Underworld Initiation. Kent, U. K. Thorsons Publishing 1985 A journey toward psychic transformation
---- Robert Kirk - Walker Between the Worlds Dorset, U. K. Element Books 1990 A new edition of Robert Kirk’s The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies published circa 1690 with commentaries
---- Earth Light. Dorset, U. K. Element Books 1992 An ancient path to transformation and rediscovering the wisdom of Celtic and Faery lore
----The Power Within the Land. 2nd ed. Dorset, U. K. Elements Books 1994 The roots of Celtic and UnderWorld Traditions awakening the sleepers and regenerating the Earth