Power and Personal Choice

Igoranti quem portum petat nullus suus ventus est. 
(Seneca — "If you don't know what port you seek, no wind can take you there.")

None of you remembers Shagirogh, the great Dravidian mage who murdered Dirsegian the beggar poet in the second millennium BC.  Shagirogh's scrying had showed that the poet would sing a song so beautiful as to far outshine his own fame, and he was an expedient man. 

In the spring of the following year, Shagirogh grew restless in his dark tower on Avar hill.  Hour after hour, day after day, for weeks on end he called the demons and bound them.  Encircling himself with wards, he spoke forbidden words of command, and when the nameless beast of Ardur rose in rage, like flame splitting the hills, he dared cut out its great stone eye with an ice knife and embed it in his own forehead. 

With the knowledge that poured into him through the stone eye, he bound the winds and drew up molten rock from the heart of the earth.  The other mages of the world, feeling his power, joined to restrain him.  He smiled and the emperor's army, 121,716 men strong, instantly died.  In seconds, their bodies blew away as dust across the sands, but their souls were trapped in the stones of his dark tower, forming a barrier impenetrable to his enemies. 

Shagirogh reached out with his mind across the world.  No man or woman could resist him.  He reached out into the universe and drew power from the stars.  He breathed and lakes dried up.  He frowned and mountains vanished.  He stood at the top of his tower and laughed, while the sky roared in fear. 

And he thought there was no limit to his power, nothing he couldn't do.  He challenged all living creatures to name him a task he could not instantly perform. 

Far away in Western lands, he heard a sparrow chirping that he was a sad old man trapped in the fears of his miserable and unchangeable childhood, who could not himself bear a child.  He could not bring the dead back to life.  He could not sing. 

In rage, he lifted his wand and the sparrow died of fright.  Snatching its spirit with his astral hands, he forced it to live again.  Gathering all his power, he ejaculated from his penis a perfectly formed infant who rose and sang the song of the world.  In amazement and horror, Shagirogh recognized the infant as the murdered Dirsegian. 

So beautiful was that song that the stones of the tower softened, and the souls of the soldiers were released, and the stone eye wept and fell from his forehead and returned to the earth.  The demons unbound circled the infant, dancing what we now call jigs. 

Shagirogh found that his magic had left him, and his strength was utterly exhaused.  The infant, shimmering, turned to him, bowed low and said courteously, "Thank you for your help.  I apologize for the inconvenience, but some songs are fated to be sung."  He vanished, and Shagirogh became a beggar. 

Personal power may be largely an illusion.  There is undoubtedly a great deal of power accessible to us in the universe, and with effort we can undoubtedly harness it, but that never makes it ours.  It's easier to be controlled by power than to use it. 

People have liked to believe strange things over the years.  For much of recorded history, some people have thought they could own others.  Some men still believe they can possess a woman.  Many people think wealth is a god.  Some people believe themselves to be powerful. 

I think rather we are only sparks, dreaming sparks, struck from the infinite cunt of the Goddess by the God's impractical cock, and the only power in us is the power of our dreams, which are not ours alone.  We reach for them as we flash out. 

It is a thousand times easier to destroy than to create, a hundred times easier to take than to give, as easy to die as to live.  Our lives are so short, our dreams so vast, no one could blame us for being sensible, for doing what we have to do, for taking candy from babies, for backing away from trouble.  We're right to be afraid; we could easily be hurt, as we've been hurt so many times already.  Better do the hurting this time. 

But perhaps there is no safety anywhere except in your wildest, most sacred dream.  Perhaps it's better to use the power you harness toward fulfilling what you truly want in your heart, toward reaching your true place in the universe, than to achieve a hundred easier goals that turn out to belong to other people.  Perhaps. 

Of course, as you struggle heroically to translate a sacred dream into even the crudest map for your life, the laughing God lays out picnics on the green grass beside you, and the laughing Goddess spreads desire on your heart like butter on warm bread.  The ascetics warn you to avoid these distractions, but I trust the gentle laughter more than voices of sere old men whose own dreams often seem small and broken. 

I was a child in the 1950s after World War II.  During the war, women had held high-ranking jobs with important responsibilities.  When the men came back, though, the women were glad, by and large, to see them safe again.  The men, those who had seen action, were shaken and guilty.  "I had to be a part of that," they told themselves, "or I wouldn't have been a man."  They elected Ike because he understood.  Women felt their fear and horror, and nurtured them uxoriously, and fucked them for children, to make up for the war.  It was the baby boom. 

In the '50s, all the boys wore military haircuts, "crewcuts."  Girls wore dresses and didn't like sex unless there was something wrong with them.  Everyone was normal or Communist.  Normal people were Christians.  A few unfortunate people were Jews.  No one was black.  Look at the magazines and newspapers if you don't believe me; no one was black. 

Granted, the '50s in America are stamped with all the specific economic, political and cultural factors of that time and place, but I believe they also stand as a general model of patriarchy in the making.  War is the essential ingredient. 

However else you describe it, war is a contest of power.  The greater force defeats the lesser.  An army combines the strength, skill, courage and intelligence of thousands of individuals into an organization dedicated to serving as a weapon.  By design, the only way to oppose an army is with another army.  All political power for the last 4000 or 5000 years has had to be backed by armies, just as economic power has had to be backed by gold and silver. 

Militarism requires and rewards conformity.  Up until recently, it has almost always divided men and women into very different roles and has always placed men in charge.  Not only that, battle exacts a price beyond the wounded and the dead.  It is the survivors who carry their horror, fear and guilt home to the children.  The little sons of soldiers learn that a man cannot afford to show any vulnerability and must live behind thick walls of insensitivity to hide it. 

And where did the classic madonna-whore construct arise if not in the soldier's mind?  Men in the field fuck where they can, in the knowledge that each fuck may be their last.  Sex can be wildly impersonal, grounded more in animal fear than in desire.  When women picture men without affect, who only see body parts, warm, animated tits and cunt dissociated from a human soul, they fear the soldier.  The soldier can't even see the woman he humps hurriedly, as he watches death over his shoulder. 

At the same time, soldiers must believe that their absent wives and girlfriends are pure and untouched by desire, filled with patient, selfless love, waiting just for them.  It's the only comfort soldiers can afford.  Then, when they come home again, they find their wives' real lusts disturbing, even disgusting.  Sensitive to every nuance, and desperate to avoid rejection, the women hide their sexuality.  Everyone teaches their little daughters what kind of woman Daddy thinks is nice.  Nobody talks about why Daddy goes off looking for a camp follower from time to time. 

If you see traditional war as a potent breeding ground for patriarchal attitudes, it's interesting to consider that traditional war has become somewhat obsolete.  One slender girl in control of a nest of nuclear missiles can now defeat a million hardened soldiers and obliterate their nation. 

As the value of traditional militarism has diminished, men have begun to look for the things their fathers gave up to be soldiers or pseudosoldiers, and women have begun to reclaim the things forbidden to a soldier's whore or wife.  People have begun to recognize choices that have long been repressed by military and religious patriarchy. 

We often speak of personal power, but I suggest this is a cultural oxymoron.  Power is not personal; it has to do with exerting your will outwards on the world.  We all need it, just as we all need money.  As with money, however, we give up something to get it. 

When people speak of personal power, though, I think they're often referring to personal choice.  Everything we need to be free, everything we need to have choice, is within us.  Undoubtedly every one of us could make choices that would bring us vast external wealth and power, if we only knew how.  We could also choose to be in better shape, to be nicer, to be more honest.  To make a choice, though, I must first see it, and then… choose. 

For me, spirituality is the investigation of personal choice in our free fall across the universe.  It has to do with discovering what I want, deep within myself, as opposed to what my father wants or my mother wants or my friends, church, company or culture wants.  It has to do with determining what choices I can make to seek what I want.  It has to do with finding the balance and the strength to make those choices. 

Because others have similar feelings, the Craft has enjoyed increasing popularity as patriarchy has lost a little power.  The Craft is not a religion; it doesn't tell you what to believe or want.  The Craft limits your choice in one respect only: Do what you will, as long as you harm no one. 

The Craft provides a context within which to seek and follow my own spiritual path, not only in a spirit world, but in my daily life.  In this context, in communion with the god- and goddess-forms who speak to me, I am learning what is sacred in the things I yearn for and gaining access to the vast torrents of chaos and fluxes of energy that can bear me where I need to go, if only I can grow to find the courage and the will to go there. 

Is it power I need?  I don't think so.  The sea winds are plenty strong.  If I can choose my port, set my sail and let the stars guide me, I may come to land again. 

(originally published in 1997 in Widdershins volume 2, issue 7).