Instructor: Myrddin Masery - BA in Mass Communications and a minor in religion from Southeast Missouri State Univserity. Masery has taught spirituality and mysticism since 1998. More information at www.elodrym.org/myrddin.htm Location: http://elodrym.suddenlaunch3.com Course Length: three months (12 lessons) Dates: May 5th - July 25th, 2008 Cost: $90 Course fees will be donated to the creation of the Elodrym Mage Academy. Other fees: DVD rental or purchase
This is a fun and easy course!
Course includes viewing DVDs, reading an online cinema guide, and participating in the weekly class discussions.
The class begins with film definitions and the basics of film analysis. The course includes four films chosen by the instructor and students vote on three other films. Some films are in French, English, and African native languages. Foreign films include subtitles. After viewing a film the students participate in a discussion of the spiritual themes and the techniques used to portray it. In the final weeks, students will present cases for their nominees for best actor, actress, director, documentary and film. Winners will be chosen by the class.
Instructor's Picks:
War/Dance - nominated for best documentary 2008 Beliefnet Film Awards Into the Wild - Emile Hirsch won best actor 2008 Beliefnet Film Awards Angel-A Touching the Sound
Movies to vote on: Dark Crystal Legend Matrix Atonement - nominated for 2008 Beliefnet Film Awards Juno - nominated for 2008 Beliefnet Film Awards Amazing Grace - nominated for 2008 Beliefnet Film Awards Cider House Rules American Beauty
The Seven Principles of Magick as taught by the Elodrym.
The Principle of Attraction The Principle of Polarity The Principle of Return The Principle of Unity The Principle of Manifestation The Principle of Harmony The Principle of Power
The Principle of Return "All things return to where they initially began. Now while this can mean a physical place, it generally means a situation or state of being. For example, a living being is made up of the materials found within nature around them, i.e. the atoms and molecules that were in the food you eat and the air you breathe eventually come to make up the physical body you inhabit as your body uses the material to grow and repair. Eventually however, in physical death, all of that material is returned to the natural system from which it came to be used again by other life. However, in a spiritual sense, the return is not a circle, but more of a spiral, in that the journey we take along our path in life changes us, and so when we return to our origin (which could be a situation or state of being) we are changed by our journey, and so that which was once familiar is, by our change in perspective, once again new to us, and we are given to react differently than we once did, because though the situation may be the same, we are no longer who we once were. We have returned to our origins, but we are not the same as the person who originally left." Myrddins Arkayne Magii and Masery
February 2007 was my first year at Pantheacon and my first time at a West African inspired ritual. I attended an ancestors reverence ritual with Uzuri Amini and Vance Williams priest and priestess of the Ifa tradition and faculty members of the School of Ancient Mysteries/Sacred Arts Center in Oakland, California. Louisa Teish, author and priestess, was there to teach the songs and dances. At this ritual, Uzuri lead us through a visualization to meet our ancestors. In the otherworld, I was greeted by grandfathers I knew and many other ancestors I had never met. They offered overwhelming support and healing. They asked me to end the lineage of suffering that had coursed through my family. It was important for my healing and for the healing of others to come was their reasoning for doing so but they didn't explain how I was to do this. When Uzuri brought the participants back to the physical world, I shook and sobbed. I knew what my ancestors where talking about. My sisters, mother, and I had survived years of physical and mental abuse and to keep up appearances, my family didn't talk about it. Uzuri consoled me when the ritual was over. My ancestors had opened all of my chakras to start the healing process. I was lit up and hyperventilating. Uzuri helped me control my energy flow and refocus. I told her about what had happened in my family. She advised me to start wearing light colors and to take a long hot shower then sleep with white wrapped around my head that night. I went back to my room and took a long hot shower. I cried and begged my ancestors to help me know what to do! I felt their hands supporting me, moving black energy out of my body as light poured in up through my feet and down through my crown chakra. I didn't have anything white, so I slept with a towel around my head. I went on as usual, doing some daily mantras, thinking I would be fine and the cord of pain would dissolve on its own. Finally in late February, I became severely depressed and felt empty and lost. I went to urgent care sobbing saying I couldn't cope anymore with what had happened to me. I was put on anxiety medication and told to take some time from work. I went out on disability and joined a survivors healing group. Slowly, I began to loose my fear and gain confidence. I reached out to my uncles and told them everything that had happened. What I got in return was support and understanding. My mother and grandmother spent a week with me in the summer and we cried and hugged and made amends. My mother had been silent because she didn't think I wanted to speak of the horrible events and I hadn't spoken with her about them for the same reason! I eventually confronted my father, and though he is in denial, I healed from speaking my truth. At Pantheacon this year, I attended "Olokun - Finding Your Treasure Within the Deep". Again I was lead through the ritual by Uzuri, Vance, and Luisa. This time on a journey to the bottom of the sea, Olokun the divine deep, presented me with a mirror so that I could see all of my parts and reconcile who I thought I was with who I truly am. She knew I had done the healing work. I was no longer hiding in shadow afraid of the world. I was stepping out and the next step was to adore who I was. She also gave me and old book of knowledge and strands and strands and strands of gold and pearls. I grabbed all of them and tried swimming to the surface but I was weighed down until I agreed to share. The treasure became light as a feather and I broke the ocean's surface. The pearls and gold transformed into the sunset. Golden light blazed across the sky and reflected off the ocean. "All is radiance." I thought and I knew it was my life's path to share this radiance through teaching, which is what the book represented. I recently went to urgent care because of a sore throat. The same doctor greeted me with a smile. "How are you?" He asked. It had been almost a year to the day that I had seen him last. "I am doing so much better!" I exclaimed. I was back at the beginning. The place where I first admitted I needed healing and I couldn't do it alone. This time I wasn't drowning in emotions of despair and endless silence. I was confident and had found happiness. The secrets are now stories of strength and power. I am thirty one and I feel that my life is just beginning. I can be who I want to be. I can love all of me.
Saturday morning at last years Pantheacon, I saw many Santa Cruzians wondering the hotel. They exuded so much fiery life passion and yet had dark circles around their eyes. When I asked how the convention was going all they could say was "Pombagira and dancing all night with a passionate Brazilian Goddess of harlots." "Huh?" They all said they couldn't really explain it, it had to be experienced. I decided I would go next year.
So, I'm trying to decide what to do next at the convention and I read the description in the handy dandy convention guide.
"Pomba Gira Masked Fete! American Magic Umbanda House
This years Devotional to Pomba Gira, will be a Masked Fete! Dress in your loveliest and sexiest black and red, top it all off with your favorite mask and come celebrate the power and hard earned wisdom that is Pomba Gira."
Sounds good!
"Pomba teaches self-confidence, love of the body and mind, and how to make sure the bills get paid."
Nice inside joke.
"Remember to wear street legal cover through the halls."
What will people be wearing once they are inside the ballroom and those big doors are shut?
"No-one under 21 admited. No Photos!"
"What the hell am I getting myself into" I asked as I stood in line waiting to have my ID chekced with about a hundred people dressed in everything from fetish to gothic, to gothic fetish, to average clothes. Arkayne was not with me. What does he think about me being here? I took a deep breath and silenced my inner critic. Life is meant for living. I was going to do something for myself.
I walked through the doors and was greeted by fine dressed women, bosoms bursting. Their voices were sweetly Southern dripping with confidence and seduction, "Welcome. Welcome."
Tables were set up at the sides of the room. In excitement, people were already lining up at the back of the dance floor, tapping their feet to the heavy drums. Women on stage sang a soft continual "ohhh". I was drawn to a table filled with shinny gold and red beads. I reached for some. A feathery black and red fan wooshed in front of me. "All in good time my dear. All in good time." I pouted a bit, "I'm always attracted to shiny things." She laughed, "Aren't we all."
I sat down at a table and listened as the Priestess welcomed us all to her parlor and gave the rules of the house. Members of the American Magic Umbanda House were dressed in southern Bordelo clothes. The Priest wore a black and red tux with top hat. Then a man and woman knelt before her .... That's when the loud chanting began and the drums seduced us all. What I remember is heat, moving bodies, chanting. Sometimes beautiful women walked through with trays filled with cups of water. After what felt like hours of estatic dancing, I ran up to the drummers. Professed my love for the drums and danced. In my mind the drums were my lover sometimes they took the form of a human, sometimes I straddled the instrument and played. I was human and I loved my body, I loved the beat ... the beat was my heart, it was my heat, my soul. Oh my soul and the drums were one!
My eyes opened.
Sweat drenched my face and hair. The priest was fanning me with his top hat. I had tranced out and he had the good sense to not pull me out of it causing a shock to my system. Instead he watched over me. The drummers gave me some very appreciative smiles. I got my purse and left around the stroke of midnight, just an hour later, a bit scared that I had lost control and yet I was so empowered! I washed my face in the ladies room and drank lots of water.
My night got even better though, once I returned to the arms of my mortal lover.
Check in at the Double Tree Hotel found me in line next to Robert Young and Diana Young-Peck, founders of Mysterium OM. http://www.mysteriumom.org/ We had a very brief conversation on Sophia and Gnosticism. Several Elodrym students chose hexagrams for their protection lesson and when Diana mentioned it would be hard to walk the universal hexagram with a techno-trance dance going on next door, I knew I had to attend. I try to follow the synchronicities so I attended "Theatre of the Word. Sophia Zoe: Earth Mother Cosmic Daughter".
A large hexagram was marked out on in the center of the ballroom floor. The carpets in the convention ballrooms all had a center circle with a small spiral. I thought this was appropriate and always cracked me up at every ritual. So participants entered the room, with "temple" space marked by a large hexagram with a spiral at the center. We gathered in seats near the double doors.
Diana, elegant and mysterious in black, and Robert wearing white garments, introduced their theatre group and explained the ancient story behind the play. The primary sources for this ritual theater were "The Nag Hammadi Library" English translation by James McConkey Robinson (1984) and "On the Origin of the World" (II, 5 and XIII, 2) translated b y Hans-Gebhard Bethge and Orval S. Wintermute.
The workshop handout states - "A segment of this treatise [On the Origin of the World] tells a tale of the Divine Feminine as Pistis Sophia and her daughter Sophia Zoe. Sophia is the Greek word for Wisdom ... The Greek word ‘Pistis,' often simply translated as ‘faith' also can be interpreted as ‘belief' and ‘trust,' with implications of a begotten wisdom. Zoe being the Greek word for ‘life,' Sophia Zoe is wisdom learned, gained by life experience.
This Gnostic creation story "speaks of the Divine Mother sending her daughter to breathe life into the clay of Adam, and to instruct him in the ways of Wisdom. Ladies, how about them apples. *wink*
Though I enjoy archaic texts, my inner child, the part of me that wanted to explore other worlds with other magickal folk had a hard time sitting and listening. Energy was already building, it seemed, along the hexagram behind us. I fidgeted and stayed as respectful as I could. I would have rather been told a bit about the group then gone into ritual and experienced this story through the active telling.
Robert snaked the group into the hexagram and we spiraled our way in and then around the outer edge. The most amazing performance was his Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram. (For a very detailed description of this ritual, read lesson two of Donald Michael Kraig's "Modern Magick - Second Edition". This ritual is in Hebrew and it is popular among Ceremonial Magicians.
You start by envisioning yourself growing large, feet planted firmly on the earth, and you grow upward into space. Then you allow a brilliant light to flow into you for empowerment. (This is a very brief summary of course.)
Next you perform the Kabalistic Cross. It is a series of gestures made as you vibrate, in Hebrew, various names for different aspects of Divinity. Now, I'm sure you can imagine just how many variations of this ritual can pop up since it is in a language most Western practitioners don't know. I have seen rituals where the magician is breathing heavily as if he is preparing for a Kung Fu fight and he grunts out the names in what sounds like Klingon. Another time I watched a video of the ritual being performed to hard rock music and the magician sang the words as if he belonged to Korn or Cradle of Filth. I felt nothing and only saw the magicians ego.
Robert stood tall in the middle of the circle. The room was dimly lit and all was quiet. He rose his hand in such a way that it commanded my attention. The position of his fingers and wrists symbolized wisdom, and power through wisdom, and the power of action. The names of Divinity boomed forth from the beyond, past his lips, and into our very presence yet resonated with song as he wove each name into the next.
From that starting place, he then turned to each quarter and other actors invoked the elements. The ritual continued with actors walking the lines of the hexagram as they told the genesis story from the birth of the universe to the story of Sophia Zoe. We participated in what reminded me of a Gnostic communion. Taking an apple slice from Zoe as she and Adam asked us to eat from the tree of knowledge to gain life and from the tree of life to gain knowledge.
