Dear Readers,
I have had the hardest time finishing The Art of Spell-Casting series! I’ve known it was over for weeks now, but haven’t been able to find the words to signify that it’s complete. This makes sense considering Completion, the last principle of the oscillation of magic in Heka, signifies that a circumnavigation has occurred and convergence has been achieved. In other words, there is nothing left to say…
However, I still wanted to make it official with some words of potential wisdom that felt unforced and genuine, something that would show you what I meant, instead of just telling you that completion means we are complete.
Stalling for days, the pressure has been building. I finally got the idea to print out all the essays in this series and read them as one document. Doing this, I could see how each essay presented the reader with a path that could be followed to write poems (or stories or journal entries or invocations or even conversations) that have the force and power of spells. Although I devised this series as a kind of manual for poets to reanimate the English language through a merging with the primal patterns remembered in Heka, I have ever been aware of its larger implications, since language is such an effective way to communicate our thoughts and feelings, and some say is even the force that creates. In the beginning was the word.
Yet so many of us doubt the power of language these days. Language has been weaponized against us, dumbing us down so that we see things through such extremes polarities we forget we have choices and infinite creative possibilities. Some of the fault in this lies within the English language itself, the dominant language of empire and colonization on our planet. English grammar, with its focus on possession and the verb “to be” forces us into a prison of doing where we so rarely get to experience the safety of true belonging inherent in a language like Tzutujil Maya, where a person’s identity is determined by their relationship to a place.
However, things are not hopeless, even for minds shaped by English, which seen another way, is a most inclusive and expansive language. One of reasons people have such a hard time learning English is because it includes elements of so many other languages!
What is we could expand our concept of English with fresh concepts, like I have done here in the Art of Spellcasting, channeling the wisdom of Heka (Mū Hawaiian magic) into a modern application that could potentially heal the breach between modern humans and the rest of life?
Most of us reading this right now—our lives are not in danger. We have choices. One choice we can all make is not to accept the degradation of the English language, to resist the media’s attempts to polarize us with us versus them thinking that makes us feel we are prisoners of a system where we will always be pitted against an enemy. No more, I say. I dedicate my life to wild words, unexpected congruences, white doves resting in the mouths of lions! English, you are my ally, a revolutionary agent of change.
Backtrackgin a bit, for those new to this series, the essays can all be read in the archives and are all titled with The Art of Spell-Casting. There is an introduction, and eight essays, with this one being the ninth. I am going to compile them and edit them into a book that will be available to paid subscribers as a PDF that I will send out when it’s ready.
Before I give you my parting words inspired by reading this series as one stream from the Holy Spirit, let’s review the nine principles of the oscillation of magic and how I applied them to creative writing, or being an open-hearted, ethical human. I will also offer a one or two sentence summary of each principle that is demonstrated poetically in the essays.
Revelation—the realm of disclosure. Structure, rather than received form, is how soul appears in a poem. The soul discloses itself in each human uniquely through the human body. What is your structure? How is your body and its experiences shaping your way of expression and are you getting that into your poems or conversations?
Reflection—One’s ability to be exposed. What does the light gain by passing through you? How transparent and vulnerable can you be?
Refraction—Commitment is necessary to create momentum. Momentum creates velocity which will lead to outward movement. Without velocity, your poems will stay self-referential and not move out into the world to serve life beyond your own experience.
Diffraction—Here we find out if our containers and creations are flexible and tolerant enough to withstand the pressures of life. The way to do this is to allow the present moment into the poem. It doesn’t have to stay there, but allowing it in during the poem’s inception is like opening windows in a house above the sea that let the sound of waves that have no beginning or ending in.
Interference—If you don’t know yourself, warts and all, as well as your beauty, your creations will be distorted and your spells will be false, never landing in a place of true relationship with anything outside your mind.
Polarization—Polarity must be accepted as a natural part of this world, not shunned. Don’t look away from what’s painful. The greatest poems bear witness to this, embracing paradox and mystery and not trying to explain with logic, detachment or cynicism. Accepting polarity and incorporating it into your poems will open hearts. Polarity is not an enemy. It is a healer. Learn how to ride the charge to serve life.
Dispersion—Be clear with your intention every time you pick up a pen or sit at a keyboard, or every time you speak. I know this sounds like a monumental task, but the world could actually use less of our words. Dispersion is the process of white light splitting into colors. Be as clear as that so that your poems reveal something holy and true as the rainbow.
Scattering—is the process all humans, not just poets, must go through in order to make their greatest contributions. Being a full-spectrum human requires a dismemberment. Remember Orpheus—the great bard of Ancient Greece? He was torn apart by the Maenads, for choosing to workship Apollo over Dionysus. They threw his head in a river and it continued to sing!
Completion—occurs when we have circumnavigated all these principles, which are really just stages of life. Sometimes they are linear, sometimes not. Sometimes they are happening all at the same time!
At the very beginning of this series, I mentioned that the nine principles of Heka corresponded to the properties of light, seven of which are recognized by science. The two not recognized by science are the first and the last, Revelation and Completion.
Let’s pretend that the scientific paradigm changes in a flash of lightning and now science says there are nine properties. What would our world look like?
Remember, principle number 1, Revelation, is the realm of disclosure. If we live in a world where this property of light, which allows us to see, is not recognized, what are we missing? Since disclosure is the revelation of secrets, this would suggest there are things about the nature of reality, and thus ourselves, that we don’t know, not because we can’t see it (scientists do acknowledge there are parts of the spectrum that are not visible to humans), but because they are not even recognized as existing.
When Revelation and Completion are acknowledged, we know that light is magic, magic is light. When this happens universally, we will move from seeing to beholding. Until that occurs, we can do our best to free ourselves and others from the mental prisons that enslave us to a limited spectrum.
The small man
Builds cages for everyone
He knows.
While the sage,
Who has to duck his head
When the moon is low,
Keeps dropping keys all night long
For the
Beautiful
Rowdy
Prisoners.
— Hafez
It’s time for all us to recognize our power as creators and tap into the mystery, invite the unknown into our works of art and daily interactions. Let go of conspiratorial thinking. Stop worrying about who is trying to keep us limited and just pick up the keys. This act is what will cause the doors to appear. Keys in hand, we can walk through them into ways of being we can’t even see yet. I find hope in this. I hope you do, too.
Leaving out Completion, keeps us from accessing our full power. We remain limited beings who never settle in our own bodies to be intimate with the sensuous Earth, our ultimate lover who is longing to unite with each one of us to bring creations into this world!
Thank you for accompanying me on this months’-long journey through these principles. Sometimes I wish I could be more concise and timely, but I choose to stay aligned with my natural rhythms in writing these newsletters. I go through the things I write about, which I hope keeps the writing authentic.
I started this series with a pantoum, and I have written one to finish it, but before I go, some announcements about future offerings. As I mentioned, paid subscribers will receive a PDF book of all the essays in The Art of Spell-Casting with revisions and commentary. I am also developing a mentorship program based on the nine principles. I am most interested in working with people individually, rather than in groups, so if you’re intrigued by this prospect, please send me an email and let me know.
Upcoming posts on The Corpus Callosum Chronicles will be focusing on the stories I told in the Pu’uhonuanu in Piko: A Return to the Dreaming, so if you haven’t purchased a copy of the book yet, you may want to do that. You can find links to purchase the book or to review after the poem. Reviews really help get the word out about the book. They can be brief. It’s really just about bumping the algorithm!
Finally, I offer you my personal convergence as this series concludes.
The Art of Completion
Here at the end of this I find I have nothing to say except maybe it's just beginning. I have been consumed by this journey, though I'm still here in this body with nothing to say except maybe it's just beginning. Walk under winter stars, watch the deer disappear in the grass. I have been consumed by this journey. The frozen ground has forgotten me. Walk under winter stars, watch the deer disappear in the grass, allow yourself to be carried beyond memory. The frozen ground has forgotten me. Every breath, every step, every longing I allow myself to be carried beyond memory. My ancestors who crossed oceans are free. Every breath, every step, every longing is my atonement. Earth, I am home. I belong here. My ancestors who crossed oceans are free. The lost forests receive our grief as our atonement. Earth, we are home. We belong here. Our prayer now is empty me. The lost forests receive our grief. Our native tongues speak again the old stories. Our prayer now is empty me. Rain falls and the desert flowers. Our native tongues speak again the old stories. We cry out when each color of the rainbow appears, and when rain falls in the desert we know the world is our mirror. When we cry out when each color of the rainbow appears, in the shelter of the trees' rooted shadows, we know the world is our mirror. Released from meaning, in the shelter of the trees' rooted shadows we give ourselves completely to the night sky. Released from meaning we surrender to the velvet shadows, giving ourselves completely to the night sky. The end is always a beginning. We move toward the final light, give our final breath to all this beauty.