The Song of the Living

The modern Pagan path is unique in its sense of being Goddess-oriented. We are a people who acknowledge the presence and life of the beings of power in their female forms, along side with their fathers, brothers, male lovers and sons. Many of us acknowledge the feminine divine in what may be called the All, the One, the Great Spirit, the Universe, the Multiverse, the Infinite, the Limitless, God Hirself, etc.

I'll sit here in front of this computer monitor and quite boldly say
that all of us Pagans came to our present faiths because once upon a blue moon there was a Calling. We have all heard this calling to serve Goddess all in our own ways. I don't mean a Goddess entity, not a Deity (per se). But the Mother of all that lives and
the Goddess of all that is. Having been raised around the secretive Witches in my family and having first started studying the Craft on my own eight years ago, I often like to look back now and reflect upon how I once heard my Calling to serve Goddess, and to serve myself. (See my last blog post about how I came to the Craft!)

For those reading this who aren't Pagan, it is difficult to define or explain what the Calling is.
I suppose the Calling means something different to each Pagan, like the Bible does to every Christian and like the Bhaghavad Gita does to each Hindu. At its broadest, the Calling is like any other calling to do a specific something in your life, only this calling is a deeply rooted, spiritual one. This is a calling to follow the ebb and flow of the natural world in its entirety, to acknowledge all the natural processes that happen all around us, and to fully be a part of it in deep form. Many people are close to the natural and aren't Pagan, such as forest rangers, boy scouts and girl scouts, country folk, herbalists, and gardeners. Whereas the Gardener's approach to tending to his bed flower is one of love and adoration, the Pagan approach takes on a more spiritual spin to gardening, I would say.

Each religion has its own Calling, each Calling unique in its own voice. G.I. Gurdjieff taught that all of us are "asleep" and must "wake up" in order to achieve a higher level of consciousness and evolve. This disciplinary work, he called "The Work". Each religion has its people who are ready to do "the Work", and it begins by the Calling to wake up. Once we hear the Calling to serve, our world is changed forever, as there is no denying the Calling to serve, to do the Work towards something greater than ourselves, once we've heard it, no matter how hard we may try to deny it.

Any sort of calling is a bidding to arise and make action. From the horns of war calling upon the strength of men to meet on the battle field with blade and honour, to the call in ceremony to the Gods of old to come to the presence of the Witches in attendance to bear witness to their rite and rejoice in love, to the calling of a mother to her children when dinner is ready. The Calling is a bidding to "wake up" and do "the Work of this God", as the brilliant Victor Anderson put it.

This greater Calling reminds me of my minor callings, minor not in importance but in pitch of voice. Sometimes I have a small calling to have orange juice instead of apple juice. Sometimes I have a calling to be in some certain place, whether I consciously know it or not.

A practice I use when I'm at a big store is to just start walking around aimlessly in order to get more in tune to listening to my intuition. My in-tuition, my inner sense of guardianship, helps me listen from inside me to a calling outside of me. I have found really nice things that I have incorporated into my magickal and spiritual practices. Other times, my intuition and I have followed a calling that has led us to some kind and sometimes interesting persons. The key: just let your feet walk! And when you have this eerie sense that you should turn down here or a pulling to go this way, do it. This is a joy when your at a big shopping mall and looking for a neat outfit or at a bar and want to make a new friend. Following a calling to act using my intuition has never led me astray.

Teacher and Poet, T. Thorn Coyle teaches how there is our will and how there is our Will. She teaches how our will, perhaps the will to exercise or have good and mutual sex or to sit outside and read a good book, serves our Will to get out there and make a difference, to be more involved in your life or with your family, or to connect to the people in your neighborhood or the people suffering in wars outside your country, or even suffering in wars inside themselves here at home. Our Will is a Calling that is usually greater than ourselves and, through some neat-o paradox, completely attainable. To kiss this Calling of Will usually means your life will change forever. If change is inevitable, perhaps we should all align our will to the Will of the Calling, for we all have and will have our own interpersonal Callings.

Do you have a calling, perhaps to be more conscious of what you say before you say it and how you say it when you do? Do you have a Calling rise to some cause in your life or in the lives of a people? Do you will to fight through your depression and seek help? Do you Will to know yourself in all your parts? To you have
a calling to hug your loved ones more often, to pick up the phone and call that person you know inside you should apologize to? Do have a Calling to become a part of a community you know you'd love and cherish? Do you Will to live in harmony and in union with the cycles of the natural world, in a state of personal evolution? Do you will to open to the heart of Love?

What is your Will? What is your calling? What is your will? What is your Calling?



May we seek out our answers, and may we embrace the treasures we find.