Driving to Yule

[sabrinamari]

My friend Peggy (eoma_p) is learning Blue Star.

For the last 20 or so years, she's been one of my closest Christian friends. She was raised in small towns all over the south, and spent her teen-aged years in southeastern Oklahoma, maybe an hour and a half from where I grew up as a teenager. I've gotten used to thinking of Peggy as my really cool, surprisingly unconservative southern Christian friend.

Peggy has always been accepting and supportive of me. She sent her daughter Rose (lady_daegonna) to FSG under my care for many years, and she's always been very comfortable with Paganism. Still, her recent discovery of the Craft/festival part of my life and her entry into it has really thrown me for a loop.

So now, she's learning Blue Star. It's going kind of like this:

Peggy: "Why do you call the quarters?"

Me: ::Brain stops::: Thinking: "It's possible not to call quarters??? Really?"

Me: "Ok, it's gonna take me a minute to answer that one. That's sort of liking asking an anthropologist, 'What exactly is culture?'"

Then I explain the idea that the quarters, or the elements, are the building blocks of the universe as we know it, and are arguably even more basic to Pagan thought than the Gods.

There is a moment of silence.

Peggy: "That's a metaphor."

Me: "Well, I think of it as something that applies on every level."

Peggy: "Sabrina, chemistry disproved this idea years ago. It's based on an old medieval model of the world. Water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen. Fire is rapid oxidation."

Silence.

Me: "Peggy, I love you."

***

For my more cautious friends: this post was Peggy-approved. If you don't want to be featured in my lj or, for that matter, in my classes and talks, I encourage you to tell me so. That way, you can feel safe in the knowledge that your part in my life is truly private.

Comments

[rio-luna.livejournal.com]

love this!

[shades-of-nyx.livejournal.com]

I already love Peggy.
That's fabulous. Yes, we use metaphors for or microcosmic representation of the Universe.
Another answer, for "why call the Elements" that you might not want to give a VERY new student is that we are calling actual Entities to guard our space, they are specific and very real. We have made a "deal" with Them, and They with us.

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

I am sure we'll have this conversation very soon---as soon as she gets back home, settles in, and reads this response. : )

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

To someone who wouldn't get what Shades pointed out, I would suggest:

Death: WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF YOU HADN'T SAVED HIM

Susan: Yes! The sun would have risen just the same, yes?

NO.

"Oh, come on. You can't expect me to believe that. It's an astronomical fact."

THE SUN WOULD NOT HAVE RISEN.

She turned on him.

"It's been a long night, Grandfather! I'm tired and I need a bath! I don't need silliness!"

THE SUN WOULD NOT HAVE RISEN.

"Really? Then what would have happened, pray?"

A MERE BALL OF FLAMING GAS WOULD HAVE ILLUMINATED THE WORLD.

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

You know, I've been thinking of this dialogue, too. And Peggy would really appreciate it. She has a wonderful mind!

[eoma-p.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, the kids discovered Hogfather on Netflix a few weeks ago. I wondered if the quote could be from there, but it seemed like too much of a coincidence. Sometimes the universe has to bludgeon me...

(Thanks to jeneralist for confirming my unspoken suspicion.)

[evcelt.livejournal.com]

Peggy sounds pretty cool! It's good to have your assumptions questioned.

But magic is metaphor, really. It's why it's an Art as well as a Science... it's a poetry of reality, a way of engaging our minds with the Universe, meshing in with the flow of what is becoming, homing in on the sensitive dependencies on initial conditions so that we can nudge at just the right place and change the world.

[evcelt.livejournal.com]

Yes.

And the rest of this dialogue, too...

[arielmn.livejournal.com]

Smiling...I want to meet Peggy.

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

I hope you can, someday.

[wgseligman.livejournal.com]

Here's another way of looking at it: The confusion is in the multiple definitions of the word "elements," and using the same words to categorize them.

In physics, the terminology is to call the three types of "charges" of quarks red, blue, and green; every proton has one of each color, so it appears color-less. Someone who didn't know physics, but did know art, might object because red and blue and green pigments mixed together do _not_ make something with no color. And they don't... when you use the definitions of "red," "blue," "green," and "color" in the context of pigments.

The elements we use in ritual aren't the chemical elements. We use the same words as in the ancient Greek model of the world in terms of earth, air, fire, and water. But the two systems are different (chemistry describes the physical properties of elements, religious describes the properties of spirit).

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

Oh love this response---I enjoy having so many smart, learned friends.

[akrissy.livejournal.com]

oh, i need a "Like" button for this one. Thanks crytolos.

[eoma-p.livejournal.com]

Glad to have been such a source of amusement. One of the things I love about pagans is that my questions don't shock or offend.

@Nyx, that's a scary answer for a new student to hear. Actually, I'm going to surprise Sabrina and postpone that conversation till January when we'll have plenty of time to talk in person. I don't think it's a phone call sort of convo.

@pierceheart, what's the quote from? Something I need to read prolly.

@arielmn, maybe at Beltane or FSG? I'll be there...

@crytolos,this resonates, although physical experience of the four "elements" affects my spiritual knowledge. I've walked on and gardened in something called earth, drunk and bathed in something called water, watched something called fire transform wood into ashes, and I'm always breathing something called air. This history influences how I see the corresponding spiritual elements.

What prompted the question is that it MAKES SENSE to me to cast a circle -- that's our boundary or container, depending on our goal. It makes sense to me to invoke the God and Goddess -- we want masculine and feminine, yin and yang, and all the other polarities in our space. Often we choose particular aspects or embodiments of those polarities, such as Demeter & Apollo.

I'm struggling with why we want these four spiritual elements inside our boundary. Do they hold the boundary? Do they provide building blocks for our work? Will they kick our bu**s if we're not polite enough to include them? Do we need them to establish directions inside our space? Do they remind us of a collection of spiritual properties we need to balance?

Why?

[ingridsummers.livejournal.com]

How about - we want them because they are really cool and bring an energy into our sacred space that contains the sacredness of the physical word in which we live. They are such a part of our physical manifestation that we can't really not bring them with us, so we acknowledge their presence and thereby acknowledge the sacredness of ourselves.

Re: Why?

[shades-of-nyx.livejournal.com]

Yes, this.
We are building a sacred model of our physical space. The Universe is our Macrocosm, the Circle our Sacred Microcosm. These "Elements" are representatives of our big Universe brought purposefully into our little sacred microverse.

Re: Why?

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

Mmm hmm.

[shades-of-nyx.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I wasn't sure I wanted to say that. I'm talking from WAY OVER HERE, and it may as well be in Sanskrit. My apologies. There is nothing skeery there. I promise. My perspective is also different from most. And, your proverbial mileage may vary.

Welcome to our community!

[eoma-p.livejournal.com]

Thanks! It's an awesome community to be part of. It's not a scary idea, so much as a big idea. I love the story of the five blind men and the elephant, and your answer makes the elements part of the elephant, and a part that I just can't wrap my brain around yet.

[evcelt.livejournal.com]

I'm struggling with why we want these four spiritual elements inside our boundary. Do they hold the boundary? Do they provide building blocks for our work? Will they kick our bu**s if we're not polite enough to include them? Do we need them to establish directions inside our space? Do they remind us of a collection of spiritual properties we need to balance?

In my experience, all of those are true to some extent... even the "kick our bu**s" clause- in the sense of "if you don't factor in a basic force, it may do something unexpected," rather than "you'll PO something that will then put the boot in." I think there are some trads where that latter is actually the case, though.

Source of the quote

[jeneralist.livejournal.com]

@eoma_p, the material that Pierceheart quoted is from one of my favorite books for this time of year: Hogfather by Terry Pratchett. It's one of a series of semi-satirical and entirely entertaining books set in The Diskworld. Hogswatchnight is their counterpart to Christmas, and the Hogfather is Santa Claus or Father Christmas.

Kind of.

Re: Source of the quote

[eoma-p.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the clarification. As I noted above, the universe thinks I need the Hogfather right now. I think that will be my laundry folding movie tonight.

[jasminewind.livejournal.com]

This is a great line of inquiry and I really appreciate you asking this question and letting Sabri share it with all of us. In my work with ritual, the circle made much more intuitive sense than the elements did as well. I've come to an interesting relationship with them after years of exposure and reflection. Just letting you know that the whole of the model doesn't have to resonate in order to use it, learn from it and be served by it.

[hypanebliss.livejournal.com]

Ritual for me is about shared common space. Many of the pieces we weave together are performance based and often involve theater. Why? So we can understand that language that is being used. We know what fire, air, water and earth represent in our lives. By calling in those four basic elements and through the utilization of affirmations at each quarter, a shared experience is begun.

That's my really pretty way of saying "No, we don't *need* to call the quarters." :)

Many of my personal rituals involve absolutely no tools at all. I often view the process of breaking down the Universe into smaller metaphors as a means of attempting to understand the whole. It's all encompassing and wonderful yet terrifying at times...

Well met. :)

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

Excellent response.

[evcelt.livejournal.com]

Peggy sounds pretty cool! It's good to have your assumptions questioned.

But magic is metaphor, really. It's why it's an Art as well as a Science... it's a poetry of reality, a way of engaging our minds with the Universe, meshing in with the flow of what is becoming, homing in on the sensitive dependencies on initial conditions so that we can nudge at just the right place and change the world.

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

[the-smith-e.livejournal.com]

Well, my smart ass answer would be: "You don't need to, just say the space is sacred and pass this horn." :) But, that would be mean.

[eoma-p.livejournal.com]

Not mean, but VERY funny.

[the-smith-e.livejournal.com]

Well, I am not wiccan. I call myself a heathen philosopher.

HUGE Thanks to EVERY ONE of you

[eoma-p.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for you beautiful, insightful, impassioned responses. I've learned from every single one of you, and I'm grateful you took the time to share your knowledge.