Starhawk - Spiral Dance.pdf - Witchcraft - niewidoczny.m

THE SPIRAL DANCE by Starhawk

Thanks and acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1. Witchcraft as Goddess Religion

Chapter 2. The World View of Witchcraft

Chapter 3. The Coven

Chapter 4. Creating Sacred Place

Chapter 5. The Goddess

Chapter 6. The God

Chapter 7. Magical Symbols

Chapter 8. Energy: The Cone of Power

Chapter 9. Trance

Chapter 10. Intiation

Chapter 11. Moon Rituals

THANKS AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book could not have come into being without the love and support of my

former husband, Ed Rahsman, and my mother, Dr. Bertha Simos.

For the opportunity to explore and strive to understand the Mysteries, I thank the

members of my covens: in Compost, Guidot, Quest, Diane, Beth, Arden, Mother Moth,

Amber, Valerie, and Paul; in Honeysuckle, Laurel, Brook, Susan, Zenobia, Diane, and

especially Kevyn, for the added inspiration

I would also like to acknowledge those who have taught me the Craft; and Cora

Anderson, Ruth, Z. Budapest, and the others.

I am also grateful for the support and encouragement of the Bay Area Pagan

community and Witches of the Covenant of the Goddess, and for friends and

companions too numerous to be listed here, in particular, I want to thank my brother-in-

spirit, Alan Acacia, and my brother-in-flesh, Mark Simos, for their contributions; Patty and

Nada, for being there in the beginning; Ann, for her inspiration; and Carol Christ and

Naomi Goldenberg, for their help in reaching a wider community.

Finally, I want to express my appreciation to my editor, Marie Cantlon, for her

sensitivity and courage in taking on this subject, and to Sarah Rush, for all her help.

To all of you, to She Who Sings in the Heart, and He Who Dances, this book is

dedicated.

Thanks for the Second Edition

I want to thank the members of Wind Hags, Matrix, and especially the Reclaiming

Collective. The rituals we have made together, the work we have done teaching, writing,

and organizing, and our s, conflicts, jokes, and discussions through the years form the

matrix from which my own changes have been born-I have been extremely fortunate in

my associations in the publishing world. Marie Cantlon, who edited the first edition, has

remained my good friend and editor throughout this decade and for all of my

subsequent books. She has also edited many of the books listed in the bibliography,

being a true mother of this movement. Jan Johnson and Yvonne Keller at Harper & Row

have been supportive and understanding editors of this edition. My agent, Ken Sherman,

has done his best over the last ten years to keep me solvent. Pleides Akasha assisted

me in preparing this manuscript with great cheerfulness. Raven Moonshadow reviewed

the Tables of Correspondences.

The Black Cats, members of my collective household, put up with my complaining

and called me to dinner. And I want to thank my friend Kate Kaufman for suggesting the

idea to do this edition.

While I was writing these revisions, two members of the old Honeysuckle coven have

made the transition into Mother in a literal sense, giving birth to two beautiful daughters:

Nora and Vivian Sarah. To all of you, thanks and love.

Thanks for the Third Edition

I want to thank my editor, Liz Perle, and all the folks at Harper San Francisco for

their warm support for this new edition. I am also deeply grateful for the continuing

friendship and inspiration and guidance of Marie Cantlon, who edited the first edition of

this book. My agent, Ken Sherman, has also hung in with me for the long haul.

I am fortunate having the love and support of many people around me. My

husband, David, keeps me smiling. My housemates and magical partners keep me

going, and Madrone and Jodi Selene in different ways attempt to keep me organized.

Mary Ellen Donald trained me in the magical skill of drumming. But most of all, I want to

acknowledge the inspiration of working with the extended web of Reclaiming teachers,

organizers, and community folks as we cocreate magic together.

And I acknowledge with sorrow the passing of my mother, Bertha Simos; of Raven

Moonshadow; and of Mother Moth. All of them leave a legacy of contributions to this

work.

STARHAWK CAZADERO, MARCH 1999

INTRODUCTION TO THE TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

Movements are like plants. Some, like annuals, spring up in a season, take over

the garden, flourish, and die when winter comes. Others, and the Goddess movement is

one of them, grow like perennials. In the first few years, most progress is underground.

Only when they have developed strong roots do the plants spring into wild and

exuberant growth. Perennials develop slowly, but they have staying power. They spring

up anew when winter ends. Their deep roots let them withstand drought. They live long,

and reproduce from roots and runners as well as seeds.

The Spiral Dance is a seed planted twenty years ago. Over the last two decades,

the Goddess movement has grown from many seeds, like a garden of long-lived flowers

and healing herbs. It's a big garden: I've tended only one corner of it. But twenty years is

long enough for perennials to come into full blossom and for fruit trees to mature. We

can look back now and see the results of our planting, weeding, and tending.

In 1979, I ended the book with a chapter called "Creating Religion: Toward the

Future." One of the disconcerting things about life is that the future has a way of

catching up with you. I wrote the book on an electric typewriter when White-Out was the

leading-edge word-processing technology. I wrote the ten-year notes on an early model

home computer with a minuscule screen and no hard drive, and I'm writing these notes

on a Mac laptop that, at five years old, is already outdated. My source of power is the

solar panels on my roof, and when I take a break from working I'll be checking into an

online meeting of Witchcraft teachers and organizers from across the United States,

Canada, and Europe, or possibly updating my Web page. The future is already here.

Besides technological changes, political changes have reshaped the world in the

last two decades. This book was conceived during the Carter era. Since then, we've seen

Reagan and Bush come and go, the waxing and waning of the revolutionary movements

in Central America, the fall of the Soviet Union, the end of apartheid, and the

impeachment of a popular president in a drama so sleazy and bizarre that no one in

1979 could possibly have imagined it.

In approaching this new edition, I wondered if the book would still make sense on

the edge of a new millennium, and in the light of both world changes and the

tremendous growth of the Goddess movement in the last two decades. Ten years ago,

we were still putting down roots, growing steadily but not as visibly. Today we are in that

fine flush of perennial growth when the roots reach deep for underground waters and

runners begin to multiply and spread.

In 1979, I was in my twenties, and most of my coven sisters and brothers were

also young. I was still inventing my own life and figuring out some basic things, like what

I wanted to be when I grew up and how to get the dishes done before the supply of clean

plates was exhausted. I'm amazed at how that person, that mere snip of girl I remember

being, knew some of the things in this book and why, if she knew them, she didn't apply

them more clearly and consistently in her own life.

Now I'm middle-aged. I'm wiser, neater, and less judgmental although far more

irritable. I don't see or hear as well, although I'm probably stronger and in better shape

(if thicker around the middle) than I was in my twenties. I already am what I'm going to

be when I grow up. Now I think about who is going to carry on this work when I'm gone,

and what I want to be in my next life. In this one, it's too late for me to become a surfer,

a professional flamenco dancer, a biological mother. These are choices I must now

accept. Middle age is a time for coming to peace with decisions and life choices. The

garden beds are built, and the perennials have had time to settle in. Either you continue

to tend them or you toss it all out and start all over again at a time in life when double

digging throws your back out. Time runs differently. This year we planted a grove of

olive trees: I'll be in my midfifties by the time they bear fruit, and an old woman when

they reach full maturity. Recently a friend I thought of as a contemporary informed me

that she was "raised on the Spiral Dance." Not long after, a young woman inquiring

about a class asked a friend of mine if she was familiar with the work of a woman named

Starhawk. "Oh yes, I know her well," my friend replied. "I work with her closely." "Oh-is

she still alive?" the caller asked.

I am still alive, and hope to remain so for a good long while yet. So is this book. I'm

gratified that I still want to work in this garden. The soil is still rich, and the structure, the

theology, the ethics, the politics, and the magical training and exercises are sound.

The insights in this book form the basic framework of understanding that has

supported me throughout my adult life. The perennials that took root twenty years ago

still nourish me. I know more about magic, ritual, energy, and groups than I did then. But

the more I know, the simpler magic becomes. I still use and teach the exercises given

here, and when I've changed them it is not because they're ineffective but because I felt

a personal need to do something new.

There are aspects of this book I wish were irrelevant. A major thrust of this work is

its challenge to the spiritual supremacy of patriarchal males and male images. I would

have hoped those issues would be outdated by now, but they are not. I'd like to think the

introduction to the fiftieth anniversary edition might read:

"This classic work of the past millennium brings us back to a time when religious

teachers, leaders, and deities were nearly all men. How hard it is to conceive of that era

now, when women abound in the highest decision-making bodies of every major religion,

when rape, incest, and domestic violence have become as rare and unthinkable as

cannibalism, when religious language is so universally gender-inclusive, when children

learn Solstice chants along with Christmas carols, Hanukkah songs, and Kwanzaprayers,

and new Goddess traditions spring up annually."

There are also plants that didn't grow and others that were probably a mistake to

introduce into the garden. In the 1989 introduction, I wrote extensively about my shift

away from a polarized view of the world as a dance of "female" and "male" qualities and

energies, and toward a much more complex and inclusive view of gender and energy.

That shift continues to deepen as I grow older, and it is still the major change I would

make in this book. I have commented on others in the notes.

I also notice that throughout this book, I'm critical of Eastern traditions. In the

seventies, they were the alternative people often turned to when mainstream religions

left a void. There were new gurus every month, and I saw many women I knew fall into

what seemed to me oppressive situations. Now, I have a lot more humility about judging

something that's not my own. I've also grown to appreciate the deep wisdom and great

diversity within those traditions.

Finally, were I writing today I would probably be more cautious about the history I

present. In researching a film on the archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, I've become aware

of the controversy that rages in academic circles around the history of the Goddess.

When I wrote this book, I was not attempting to do historical scholarship or archaeology.

Writing as a Witch, I felt free to involve my imagination in a reconstruction of the past. In

reality, the most "objective" of historians do the same; they're just not so blatant about

it. Today I might exhibit more middle-aged caution, but to do so might undercut the real

power of this history, which lies in the awakening of imagination and a sense of

possibilities. What I and many others are saying is simply, "Hey, it wasn't always like

this. It doesn't always have to be like this! So-what culture do we want to live in? Let's

create it!"

That statement could be read as the Short Form of the Origin Story of

Contemporary Goddess Worship. Recent attacks on the Goddess tradition have tried to

discredit our history, often with scholarship that is blatantly biased and inaccurate. The

idea seems to be that if they can disprove our origin story, they can invalidate our

spirituality. This is odd, because nobody applies the same standards to the origin myths

of other religions. Is Buddhism invalid if we cannot find archaeological evidence of

Buddha's existence? Are Christ's teachings unimportant if we cannot find his birth

certificate or death warrant?

Witches, on the whole, are interested in discussions of our history. There are now

conferences, magazines, articles, and panels at the American Academy of Religions on

the subject. But that interest is separate from any sense that the validity of our spiritual

choices depends on documenting their origins, their antiquity, or their provenance. This

has sometimes been misquoted as "not caring about truth." In reality, it's simply saying

that the truth of our experience is valid whether it has roots thousands of years old or

thirty minutes old, that there is a mythic truth whose proof is shown not through

references and footnotes but in the way it engages strong emotions, mobilizes deep life

energies, and gives us a sense of history, purpose, and place in the world. What gives

the Goddess tradition validity is how it works for us now, in the moment, not whether or

not someone else worshipped this particular image in the past.

In the past twenty years, our rituals have taken on a life of their own separate from

any question of origins. This year, on the Winter Solstice, the temperature suddenly

dropped below freezing on Solstice Eve. Nevertheless, over two hundred people

gathered on the beach, and most of us stripped off our clothes and went running into the

ocean for our now-traditional ritual purification. The exhilaration of the cold, the wind,

the beauty of the night, the sheer wild craziness of the plunge, and our naked ecstatic

dance around the bonfire created an archetypal Pagan ritual that felt thousands of years

old. I know this particular tradition was born out of a whim less than twenty years ago,

not Divine Decree lost in ages past. On one of the first Solstices I celebrated with my

early women's coven, we went to the beach to watch the sunset before our evening

ritual. One woman said, "Let's take off our clothes and jump in. Come on, I dare you!"

"You're out of your mind," I remember saying, but we did it anyway. After a few years, it

occurred to us to light a fire, staving off hypothermia, and so a tradition was born. (Do

something once, it's an experiment. Do it twice, and it's a tradition.) My knowledge of

the less-than-celestial inspiration of this rite doesn't diminish the power of the ritual for

me in the least. "What is the origin of this ancient custom?" is not something Pagans are

likely to say, although we might well ask, "Whose idea was this, anyway?"

In the history of the reawakening of the Goddess, 1979 was a pivotal year. The

ground had been fertilized by many people: Witches meeting secretly in small covens, a

very few open Pagan groups, the hippies of the sixties, and the feminists of the early

seventies. Z. Budapest had been teaching feminist Wicca in southern California for many

years. Women were beginning to look at religion and spirituality as a feminist issue.

Merlin Stone's book When God Was a Woman was published in 1976. In 1979, three

important works were published. One was this book. Margot Adler's Drawing Down the

Moon chronicled the growth of Witchcraft and Paganism through the seventies. And

Womanspirit Rising, edited by Carol Christ and Judith Plaskow, introduced the world to

the challenges women were posing to patriarchal religion both within and outside of the

churches and synagogues.

The year 1979 was also when my friends and I organized a large public ritual. In part as

a celebration of the publication of this book, we gathered artists, musicians, and dancers

and wrote poetry and music for a Halloween ritual we called "The Spiral Dance Ritual."

As in gardening, some things you plant persist and take on a life of their own. The Spiral

Dance has now become an annual tradition in San Francisco, with its own body of music

and liturgy. (See Resources.) Last year fifteen hundred people danced the double spiral.

The group that put on the first Spiral Dance evolved into a collective we called

Reclaiming. Many of us participated in nonviolent direct action throughout the eighties,

and the lessons we learned in empowerment, participatory organization, and consensus

process strongly influenced our organization and the way we planned, taught, and

created ritual. Over the years, Reclaiming also evolved. From teaching, training, and

offering ritual in the San Francisco Bay Area, we began giving weeklong summer

intensives, "Witch Camps," in other parts of North America and, later, Europe. Each

camp, in turn, became the nucleus of teaching and organizing in other communities. Our

local newsletter grew into a national magazine. Its latest issue reports classes and rituals

in fifteen or sixteen communities throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe.

Reclaiming has become much more than a local collective. We are a tradition of

the Craft. In the midnineties, we began a period of reorganizing and restructuring,

struggling with the question of how to expand without becoming a hierarchy or a

bureaucracy. In 1997, we reached consensus on the following statement of our core

values:

RECLAIMING PRINCIPLES OF UNITY

"My law is love unto all beings . . ."

The Charge of the Goddess

The values of the Reclaiming tradition stem from our understanding that the earth

is alive and all of life is sacred and interconnected. We see the Goddess as immanent in

the earth's cycles of birth, growth, death, decay, and regeneration. Our practice arises

from a deep, spiritual commitment to the earth, to healing, and to the linking of magic

with political action.

Each of us embodies the divine. Our ultimate spiritual authority is within, and we

need no other person to interpret the sacred to us. We foster the questioning attitude,

and we honor intellectual, spiritual, and creative freedom.

We are an evolving, dynamic tradition and proudly call ourselves Witches.

Honoring both Goddess and God, we work with female and male images of divinity,

always remembering that their essence is a mystery that goes beyond form. Our

community rituals are participatory and ecstatic, celebrating the cycles of the seasons

and our lives, and raising energy for personal, collective, and earth healing.

We know that everyone can do the life-changing, world-renewing work of magic,

the art of changing consciousness at will. We strive to teach and practice in ways that

foster personal and collective empowerment, to model shared power, and to open

leadership roles to all. We make decisions by consensus, and balance individual

autonomy with social responsibility.

Our tradition honors the wild and calls for service to the earth and the community.

We value peace and practice nonviolence, in keeping with the Rede "Harm none, and do

what you will." We work for all forms of justice: environmental, social, political, racial,

gender, and economic. Our feminism includes a radical analysis of power, seeing all

systems of oppression as interrelated, rooted in structures of domination and control.

We welcome all genders, all races, all ages and sexual orientations, and all those

differences of life situation, background, and ability that increase our diversity. We strive

to make our public rituals and events accessible and safe. We try to balance the need to

be justly compensated for our labor with our commitment to make our work available to

people of all economic levels.

Starhawk - Spiral Dance.pdf

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: