The Blessing Of Rejection

א' אב התשס"ח
Lughnasadh 2

Given the metaphysical reality of soul-friends as discussed in my previous entry (Anam Chara - Reyah - Soul Friend), it becomes clear that each of us, in our search for a coven or other esoteric group in which to belong, the concept of soul friend bonding is very important and consequential to successful shamanic magical mystical work. Necessarily then, to be 'rejected' from core membership into any particular coven or esoteric group should be understood through this concept.

Each of us needs to find our true place, the unique coven or esoteric group which will support Divine consciousness among the collective blend of soul friends. Finding our true soul friends takes time, commitment to pathwalking, exploration, iterative self-evaluation and patience. Likely, we will be rejected and we will reject others many times upon this quest. These rejections are not value judgments, but steps upon the way toward finding our true group of soul friends.

I give thanks for the those times I have been rejected, for they have sped my way toward finding my soul friends as opposed to being held back by remaining where they are not.

We can learn from many people, but few are those who are greatly blessed to learn among soul friends in the metaphysical sense, made of the same 'soul-stuff', as described by the terms anam chara and reyah.

Anam Chara - Reyah - Soul Friend

א' אב התשס"ח
Lughnasadh 2

In follow-up to an April entry (Reyah - A Friend Like Me), I've discovered the Celtic term which describes the concept of soul-friend (as does the Hebrew term, רֵעַ reyah). The Celtic term is anam chara.

Oonagh Rodgers explains the Celtic concept of anam chara:

Anam Chara is a Gaelic word meaning soul-friend. Anam - soul, Chara- friend. The concept derives from an ancient Celtic tradition and is still a popular practice in many spiritual traditions in Ireland today. The anam chara acted as mentor, teacher, companion and spiritual guide. The emphasis was on spiritual companionship and direction as opposed to today's romantic notion of the 'soul-mate'. The relationship was much deeper and often lasted a lifetime.

The Celts believed the anam chara was joined in an ancient and eternal bond with his/her friend of the soul and this bond could not be broken, even if the friend moved away and there was a great physical distance between them. The Celtic understanding did not set limits of time and space on the soul nor was there any split between the sacred and the mundane. All aspects of life were manifestations of soul.

Many ancient Celtic philosophies or perspectives passed into the Irish Christian Celtic tradition and in spite of many attempts in the past to 'Romanize' Irish Christianity, these remnants remain. There has been a surge in interest and an urge to reclaim the wisdom of our Celtic spirituality.

However, the danger lies in approaching the tradition as another fashionable and exotic spiritual programme. The anam chara reminds us that spirituality or soul work demands commitment and the willingness to embrace the light and the darkness of our life's journey and allow it to be.

"In everyone's life there is great need for an anam chara, a soul friend. In this love you are understood as you are without mask or pretension. The superficial and functional lies and half-truths of acquaintance fall away. You can be as you truly are .... The anam chara is God's gift..." John O' Donohue

In Jewish Kabbalah, one's anam chara is called a reyah. King David had a reyah, an anam chara - Jonathan.

Edain McCoy discusses the ancient Celtic concept of the anam chara (soul friend bonding) as it exists within the context of shamanic traditional Celtic Witchcraft in her book, Celtic Women's Spirituality: Accessing the Cauldron of Life.

Tradition, Daughters Of The Divine

כ"ה סיון התשס"ח
Alban Heruin 26

I dreamt.

I had a baby girl somewhere down the (family) line. Her birth name is Gwenn. Gwenn is a Welsh name meaning blessed. An inner name within her birth name is Susy (סוסי literally means 'my horse' and mystically means to actively project the Creative Evolutionary Power of the Infinite into the finite).

I nursed her in the dark.

Susy has a talent no other human child has - she can dematerialize and rematerialize to teletransport herself from place to place in spacetime like on Star Trek. Only, unlike Star Trek, Susy doesn't need a transporter machine. She can actualize it naturally, at will.

In the dream, Susy teletransported herself between points in the living room, rematerializing against the surface of my right leg. As she did this, I heard Susy in conversation with unheard unseen spiritual beings neither I nor anyone else in the room could see or hear. The language Susy spoke in simple song was Divine, primordial, pristine, exquisitely complex, complete and unknown in the known world. While in my body in the dream I could not understand the Divine words Susy spoke, I intimately recognized the Divine language with which she sang - for I had once clearly spoken it too. I remembered speaking it - I knew it though I didn't understand it in the dream - it was the language I had spoken before I was born, as I was incarnating, in the womb and during the early post-natal period of life. It is also the language of the epiphany, a language of the Witch Ancient of Days.

As Susy was teleporting herself from one place to the other within the living room, a house cat (we don't have a house cat in real life) walked from a third outside point through the line-like area between the two conjoined points of Susy's teleportation in spacetime. A single hair of the house cat was caught in the fuzzy dimensionless void where Susy "existed in interim", but Susy discerned the single hair to be "nonself" while she was still "nothing" and "spit out" the foreign cat-hair before it became incorporated into the material of her own rematerializing body. (The house cat represents some specific magical knowledge or "particular wisdom", that evidently is not "particular" to our manifest "line", thus it was rejected as "foreign" to our "particularity".)

My family was in the living room as Susy was teleporting from one point in the room into the space beside my right leg, and I said to them, "She is communicating in an ancient Divine language to me - remember when I told you about before I was born and that I did this once? Gwenn is doing it too."

I woke up.

Gwenn is my granddaughter, my daughter's daughter. We are children of the Divine Feminine Essence.

This is an example of Traditional Witchcraft and Torah Nistar.

Reyah - A Friend Like Me

ב' בניסן תשס"ח
Annwyn 3

In follow-up to my Craftwork entry, Another Like Me, I've found a word to describe the kind of witchy-friend I am looking for - a reyah (רֵעַ) meaning a "close friend" of the same soul-stuff. Given the complexity of my soul, such a witchy companion may be hard to find around here. But, I can't, won't believe that no other like me exists. Somewhere out there is a reyah for me.