• This is the only story of mine whose moral I know. I don’t think it’s a marvelous moral; I simply happen to know what it is: We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. Kurt Vonnegut
    Mother Night

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One of Seven Heavens

(Changed my crossposter settings to do the whole post over to tumblr, so we’ll see how that goes, huh? I was not happy with how the thing handled the Antinoan Poetry entry.)

Today, I find myself thinking of many things. This is the third post I’ve started. We’ll see if I finish it.

I am, as I often am, left dependent upon quotations. So I will start by throwing a few out.

“Feri legend has it that the Peacock was walking in the Garden of the Gods when he came upon the mirror of his mother, the Star Goddess. He gazed into that mirror and exclaimed, “Ha! Behold how beautiful I am!” He shook his tail until the seven heavens were filled with thunder. There was glory in all the worlds.” ~ T. Thorn Coyle, Evolutionary Witchcraft

“And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” ~ Luke 17:20-21, KJV (I picked the KJV because 1) it’s the one most embedded in English cultural discourse and 2) it’s one of the ones that more correctly translates the Greek with “within” rather than other variants)

“You’ve gotta dance like there’s nobody watching, Love like you’ll never be hurt, Sing like there’s nobody listening, And live like it’s heaven on earth.” ~ William W. Purkey, apparently

“I sat admiring the stained-glass and carved beams, half-looking, half-listening until I heard McKeeman say “Universalism came to be called ‘The Gospel of God’s Success,’ the gospel of the larger hope. Picturesquely spoken, the image was that of the last, unrepentant sinner being dragged screaming and kicking into heaven, unable to resist the power and love of the Almighty.” What a graphic, prosaic picture—a divine kidnapping. The last sinner being dragged, by his collar I imagined, into heaven. What kind of a God was this?” ~ Mark Morrison-Reed, Dragged Kicking and Screaming into Heaven

One of the blogs I read has been doing a series of posts about the Christian interpretation of preterism – a short definition of which is all of the apocalyptic stuff in Jesus’s ministry is interpreted as referring to Israel ca. 30 CE, not some future and unknown time. It is really rather relevant to my mood at the moment. (I have linked part 4; I recommend reading Beck for those people are are interested in that sort of thing.)

But here is that old idea: even in this time of crisis, perhaps especially in this time of crisis, the kingdom of god is there within you. Among you as a people. Here is the point where you must choose: the path of violence and damnation, or the path of community and communion. This is an old story, at crisis.

This is what prophets have always said, when there have been prophets. And I do not operate within a prophetic tradition, but I come from a prophetic culture.

Alternately, if I put my Craft hat on: perhaps it is the duty of the witch to be a prophet. In the old sense, the true sense, the traditional sense: not foretelling the future, but speaking truth to power, and saying, “If you follow these steps, then you will go down that road, and these things will come to be.”

Here is the choice, though:

Behold how beautiful you are, and fill the seven heavens – of which this Earth on which we walk is but one – with your thunder…

… or do not.

“A healthy priest makes all things sound.” ~ Francesca de Grandis

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