Born Free
A follow up to yesterday's post on sacrificing kings
Good Morning Readers,
I hope you are finding spaces to pause and breathe this week, that you are able to take the wide view when faced the calamities occurring on all the screens that seduce us into the narrow focus that keeps us trapped in either/or thinking.
When we step away, we realize this is a both/and world. Look around you right now. Even if you’re in a city surrounded by skyscrapers, that sky you can see when you crane your neck is not black and white, is it? Maybe it’s a gray day and it’s not exactly blue like my sky here in Hawai’i, but gray is still a color, a blend of black and white, in fact.
I’m writing this little note to do some housekeeping, and to add something to my post from yesterday, “The King Must Die: Taking a Mythic Lens to the Presidential Debates.” (click green to go there.)
I’ve mentioned before that the act of writing for me is a high-wire act. In the rush of energy, sometimes I miss telling you about a patch of ground below that could land the whole piece safely. It’s not a net, because like I said, I write without one, but this little patch is actually much stronger than a net. It’s a landing place, an invitation to safety.
In past posts, I’ve mentioned that one of the frameworks for my entire body of work is Mū Hawaiian magic, known as Heka in the Mū dialect. I’m not going to go into all the details of Heka (look through the archives for my 9 or 10 posts that begin with “The Art of Spellcasting” if you want an embodied deep dive), but I will say that, high on words and ideas, I neglected to ground yesterday’s meditation on ritual sacrifice with its counterpart, invocation.
Magic is actually a technology. There is a formula, and in Heka, a spell consists of equal parts sacrifice/banishment and invocation. If we sacrifice or banish something—a king, a president, a bad habit, a negative belief, a terrifying emotion, and don’t invoke what we want to fill its place, the universe will fill that space we created with whatever it wants. This may be something to our liking, but there is no guarantee of that. Even if it, wouldn’t you feel safer, more connected to nature and the cosmos, more grateful for the gift of life, if you knew you were participating with it as a co-creator?
Your presence here on Earth is not some random mistaken. Get creating!
I learned from Ke’oni Hanalei, a descendant of the Mū Hawaiians who preserved these ancient teachings, that emotions, addictions, bad habits, negative thoughts, are legitimate sacrifices. If we can shift our thinking to the internal and sacrifice our despair, our collective blindness, our belief that we have no agency, invoke what we want in their place, which for me would be hope, clear vision, and unshakeable faith in our ability to create a just world; and if we direct our will to administering this spell by making the inner corrections that will allow each one of us to achieve energetic buoyancy, our culture will shift.
Boom. Easy, right?
For those interested in 1:1 mentoring with me to support you in being delivered unto buoyancy, know that I will soon be opening spaces up to board The Coracle, an online rites of passage, grounded in myth, folk tales, and Mū wisdom. Stay tuned.
More housekeeping
Paid subscribers, from now on you will always find an audio version of posts beneath the paywall at the bottom of these essays. I don’t want to mention it every time at the top because it’s clunky and the words show up on the graphics Substack sends me to promote my work. Just scroll to the bottom if you prefer to listen, and thank you so much for supporting my body of work financially!
Free Subscribers, I’m curious if you would be willing to upgrade to paid if I lowered the price a little. I would really like to grow my income from Substack, but since I’m not a well-known writer, I don’t have a huge audience willing to pay for my work, which is why I offer most of my posts for free. I really want people to read them! Keep in mind Substack takes a cut of whatever I charge, but I might be willing to lower my yearly price from $70 to $55, and the monthly rate from $7 to $5. Let me know if the comments if this would motivate you to upgrade. If enough people commit to yes, I may do it. I spend 10-20 hours a week on each essay. It’s real work, and while no one deserves anything, I would love to shift the source of the majority of my income from massage and caretaking to writing and teaching. Having proclaimed that, I sacrifice any doubts that can happen, and invoke a bountiful flow of money from my writing!
New things coming for Paid Subscribers
As soon as I finish the final edits, all current paid subscribers will be receiving a 96-page PDF book I wrote on the craft of poetry called Weaving a Basket of Words: How to Write a Poem to Carry Water. It is chock full of inspiration, craft tips, and I am going to start posting one of the thirty lessons in it monthly exclusively for paid subscribers, and hold a monthly Zoom call where readers can share how the lessons have flowered in their own writing.
I am also available for 1:1 journeys through the book if that’s your preference. That will be arranged between us. Not sure yet of the final exchange. Inquire if you’re interested!
And from now on, all paid subscribers will be receiving a PDF of the book when they upgrade or take out a paid subscription.
I think that’s all for now. I know the 4th of July is controversial in some ways. It’s a celebration of colonialism and empire, but I have always loved it, and am really missing the exuberance of the 4th celebrations on the east coast where I was raised. I have always used it as an opportunity to yell “Born Free!” at the top of my lungs while riding a bike as fast as I can. You may not want to celebrate America. You may feel jaded and cynical by the hypocrisies of colonialism, but that doesn’t meThe Cosmic Owl by Louise Edingtonan you can’t celebrate your own independence. Remember, the world is not black and white. There is room for both, and a whole lot more. So Happy Independence Day. Born Free!
Recommendation
I heartily recommend
, by here on Substack. If you like my approach combining current events and mythic currents, you will love her writing, which does the same through the lens of astrology.Here’s a post to check her space out: The Cosmic Owl
And just because I love saying it, one more time—BORN FREE!!!
Let me know here if you’d be interested in upgrading to paid if I lowered the price.
Kō aloha lā ea
Concentrate on love by way of the light
This is Vyana from New Thought. Love your writing and all, and yes, I could do $5/month.