My sights, my songs are slightly charred

[kiya]

Well, I see the ones who crawl like moles
Who for a front would trade their souls,
A broken mirror's the only hole for them;
And for you who'd exchange yourselves,
Just to be somebody else,
Pretending things you never felt or meant;
Hey, you don't live what you defend,
You can't give so you just bend.

(This entry may contain sex, pride, self, power, passion, love, law, knowledge, liberty, and/or wisdom. It may also make no damn sense. Caveat lector. Purchase not refundable without receipt. Offer not valid in some states of mind.)

I've been spending a fair amount of time the last week or so thinking about the Black Heart of Innocence. It crops up in the damnedest places, as a relevant thing to the conversation. Synchronisity and reading about Shiva, I suppose.

I wrote a piece for Witch Eye that didn't make it in to this issue -- faerywolf says he'll put it in a later one at some point -- about Feri and damaged sexuality. Partly in response to what ardaniel called "Look at me I'm so sex-positive see my Black Heart Feri" or something to that effect. I wrote a comment to carolyn_korone about sexuality-flaunting and paganism a bit ago. I've been watching pantryslut noodle about with the subject.

It's said that working the Iron Pentacle (Sex - Pride - Self - Power - Passion) properly will make the Black Heart clear. The more I work the Iron, the more I feel the need for the Pearl, and I hope we'll be doing that come this next quarter, because Iron is not enough for me. Love - Law - Knowledge - Liberty - Wisdom. The Black Heart lies at the center of both.

Like everything, I come around to ma'at. (Speak ma'at, do ma'at, as I just said elsewhere. The words are the reality created; create ma'at.) Healthy self, healthy relationships, healthy cosmos; the intricate braided lacery of building all of these. I wonder ... and now I need to write it, the pentacle whose prime point is Ecstasy which is ma'at in cosmos.

How beautiful is the black lascivious purity in the hearts of children and wild animals...
-- Victor Anderson

I think the thing that strikes me the most in seeking the Black Heart is the need for the genuine, the true responses, without the second-guessing, without misalignment. There's a bluntness to it, like the child who says the things the more awkward would prefer they not repeat, but unlike very young children, there is understanding there, not mimicry.

I got pondering at this partly through reading twstdmonk, who just strikes me as being very much there, in tune with the Black Heart. He doesn't feel a need to hide things like the fact that he gets a kick out of tying up pretty women and hanging them from things; it's just there, a facet of himself, without shame or ostentation, spoken of without shame or without revelation, living present.

I think kink can be a tool for this sort of thing, in general; it can also be a mask used to block the genuine manifestation, too, so that gets tricky. But I can dig down in myself and into my childhood and find the threads that are my kinks, and when those strings get played on, the things that result come out pure and clean and full of raw reality that was before I was broken.

And there's a deep magic there that's entirely another coil of rope. Digging down into the places where the sexuality unfolds from, whether the keys there are some sort of kink or some sort of relationship or some sort of situation or something else, the stuff that gets unlocked there when it comes out is heady and potent and cleansing and unapologetic: it is what it is, unquestionably itself, with its own demands and its own nature. The kundalini cobra's bite, like that of many poisonous reptiles, can bring about visions. As the Pythian oracle's warning label said: know yourself.

Truth is alchemical: it transforms. The rich wildness of the heart that Feri cultivates demands growth. Black is the colour of fertility and regeneration in Egypt: the flesh of the mummy is also the rich earth brought by the flood. The Black Heart of Innocence is that creative soil, rich with possibility.

Just living on the edges of that raw wildness, it will claim its moments of sudden admission, sudden revelations of truth, the burning moments where the only response to, "I love you" is a blurted, "That's so cool!"

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
I Corinthians 13:4-7

I keep coming back to genuineness. I think sometimes people mistake genuineness for being in-your-face, like being out is often taken for being pushy and abrasive.

I have a complex relationship with truth. But I frequently come back to: just because it is true does not mean that it is relevant. There are thousands of things that are true about me, thousands of true things I might say or do at any given moment. I am always selecting among them and deciding which ones I shall express; it is not self-censorship to do so, simply finitude.

They do not stop being true if I am not currently directly expressing them, but it is not genuine to treat them as always relevant, always dominant, always a part of what is happening in this moment.

And at the same time -- just because some things are frequently compartmentalised, or frequently uncomfortable for other people, or otherwise thought best to keep hidden away does not mean that it stops being true -- and if there isn't a true reason to conceal them, I generally don't bother.

Back to living genuinely. Which looks like flaunting to some people, and being closeted to others, often on the same actions, and I find that fucking hysterical.

Love is an act of blood and I'm bleeding a pool in the shape of a heart.
-- "Space Dye Vest", Dream Theater

ibnfirnas is fond of quoting W. H. Auden's "September 1, 1939" lately: We must love one another or die.

These things take investment, they demand; they come with obligation, and obligation beyond the self. I am fond of noting that a baby that does not receive social contact will die when people try to treat other humans as capable of being entirely independent, having no interdependence, having no obligation to care for each other. Iron is Iron because it runs in the blood, but Pearl is as much an act of blood as Iron: the blood of the community is the blood of the people.

Live. Love. Be. Believe.
-- "East", The Crüxshadows


Yeah, so that's a chunk of what's on my mind these days.

Comments

[elf]

One of the bits I got from veedub when I first started studying with her, and was playing with IP stuff and black heart stuff: She pointed out that, running the IP energies, there's the black heart right under Sex, in the center of the line between Self and Power.

That notion--that the black heart is the midpoint between self and power--still gives me twinges. (And I leave them uncapitalized because it's a subtle realization, and should be played with without undue emphasis on labels.)

We are Love--
You and I and
We are all Love
And if God is Love
Then we are God--
--"Season of the Witch," James Leo Herlihy
Pearl is the layer of beauty one builds over pain. Pearl is an act of transformation, of claiming what hurts you and turning it into something precious and dazzling. Iron is essence--essential--Pearl is interactive. Iron is what you are; Pearl is what you do.

[kiya]

Hm, the are/do is an illuminating one -- the more secure and stable I am in being the more that needs to manifest . . .

I have been told that I am a verb.

[elf]

I am sex. From that, I make love.
I am self. From that, I make knowledge.
I am passion. From that, I make wisdom.
I am pride. From that, I make law.
I am power. From that, I make liberty.

Pick new verbs, repeat as long as it remains interesting. (Err. Except you gotta kinda tone it down to go to work and like that. Running the IP constantly is, umm, interesting, but can have a detrimental affect on income.)

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

The Black Heart of Innocence is that creative soil, rich with possibility.

That's a useful way of thinking of it. Thanks. And this is something I could do with remembering:-

There are thousands of things that are true about me, thousands of true things I might say or do at any given moment. I am always selecting among them and deciding which ones I shall express; it is not self-censorship to do so, simply finitude.

[kiya]

I sometimes find it fraught to decide whether or not I'm going to take certain opportunities to, for example, make my minority status clear. But remembering that bit means I have a better handle on the pressures of doing so; I don't feel that I have to be The Poly Person or The Plural or The Pagan or whatever else just because I'm present and can think of a way to wedge it into the conversation sideways.

[whispercricket]

I've been thinking about this sort of stuff (in very general terms for "this sort" - Black Heart, Iron Pentacle bits, context of -being- myself and what that might actually mean) recently - thanks for posting, because it generally resonates something that I end up thinking about further or in a slightly different context. :)

[lady-and-lion.livejournal.com]

Wow. There's a lot of amazing stuff here. What spoke to me most was your commentary about truth and what is relevant. This has been a big part of my own struggles and musings about whether to remain "closeted" and what exactly that means.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I've been fiddling with the IP and tarot. Nothing at all firm at this point, but it's been interesting to play. The inspiration was derived partly from your song/IP thingy (exercise?).

[pinkpolarity.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting this, it's a lot of food for thought (some of which I just addressed in cloth_of_five, of all the comments I might get, I'm most interested to hear yours). I wish I could see the comments to carolyn_korone and the words from ardaniel. I also wish I could read what you wrote for Witch Eye. The interaction between damaged sexuality and the primacy of sex in Feri is the biggest thing holding me back from engaging with it. I'm both impressed and fascinated as I'm watching you wrestle with it-- for as much as you register your own damage, I can tell you that you're much further along than I am. Ecstasy in Pagan paths seems like one of those dividing lines, another elephant in the circle, that people either instinctively draw to or they don't. Material-- and Thorn's book counts for this-- written by and for (for lack of a better term) "ecstatic practitioners" presumes that instinctive draw, but doesn't IMO speak well to those who "don't get it".

They do not stop being true if I am not currently directly expressing them, but it is not genuine to treat them as always relevant, always dominant, always a part of what is happening in this moment.

Thank you especially for this, this is essential. I've got the same issues as lady_and_lion, although slightly altered. I always have the desire to unpack my entire tangled yarn-ball on subjects because it *is* relevant, in a way, to understand how I got from there to here. Yet the few times I've actually done so I know I've gone too far, said too much, given away too many truths about myself to people that weren't intimate enough with me to know what to do with them. And yet the knowledge that by choosing to hold things back, people will simply misunderstand (the person, for instance, who, after all of the things I pulled from my deep self and put out there about Bush, came away with "she's voting for him because her god said to") frustrates the living crap out of me. But hearing "it's still true, even if you don't put it out there" is useful as a reminder, that you haven't denied the truth of yourself if you need to hold things back.

[kiya]

I can mail you the Witch Eye piece if you like -- faerywolf says it'll be published in a later issue, most likely. I can also see if I can dig out the comment notify, it's in my comments file somewhere. ardaniel's comment was from IRC. ;)

teinedreugan was saying on the way home that he's seeing me being clearly a lot more centred and aware in my sexuality than I've been; the Feri training is a goodly part of that.

Truth is a complicated bloody thing.