On "Meditating"

When you start off in neo-Pagan or Occult training, you'll probably be required to meditate. But what kind of meditation? There are many different options, and all of them with different intended outcomes.

(& it goes without saying that, in our communities these spiritual techniques are often decontextualised and somewhat hollowed out from their original origins - providing different outcomes to that of their original designers, or existing without the checks and safety nets which originally accompanied by them. This article does not aspire to explain how these techniques work or what they mean in their original contexts; instead, it endorses the view that specific techniques can have universal applications once they are developed separately from an original idea. In short - I don't think one cultural group can claim ownership over the concept of “moving the body into stretches while focusing”; but I do think it's very important to not imply what you're doing is “yoga” unless it's sincerely rooted in its original context, so that ancient techniques are not lost through being watered down. When you're experimenting with a skill that's thousands of years old, finding the best quality original sources you can will always help you progress more easily.)

The standard Pagan meditation seems to be Lunar in intention. It provides firstly, greater focus (so our minds do not wander during ritual), and secondly it has an energetic component (breathing in or out, balancing, visualising energy motions and so forth). For this reason, I wouldn't advocate a new pagan starts with meditation every day - unless one hopes ones practice will be Lunar. Unless one hopes to master skills where great focus and energy control are very important.

Instead, let's define the purpose of a daily meditation more broadly:

“A technique which allows us to practice, experience and refine certain moods and skills - linked to the current object of our work - so we can may tap into them more quickly at need and develop our facility with them - and reaffirm our commitment to the thing that we are doing”

Within Fencraft, then, we have a map which includes six different magical modalities - and, therefore implying, six different “daily techniques”. Anything which correctly rouses the right kinds of skills or moods is appropriate; but here's my outline of the sorts of things I do.

The Solar: metta meditation

Metta meditation is originally a Buddhist tradition focused on the concept of lovingkindness. You can find a functional description of how to begin here.

The Solar rules peace, permanence and community - family and friendship - and the emotions and skills that allow these things to occur. “Love” is not one thing, and thus it isn't exactly linked to a single position, but it seems to be Solar. The Solar-Stellar is bliss in the landscape and sexual indulgence and being swallowed by sensation; while the Solar-Lunar is the purity of devotion and fierceness of love which might cause a man to, say, risk ones life to defeat great evil - the sharpness of love when we consider suffering, not really a tender feeling at all but something burning. Between them, the Solar sphere itself can stand as something of a moderating influence - love that can be safe, relaxed and nourishing.

A characteristic Solar practice is prayer; a worldview in which there are Greater Gods than us to whom we owe reverence and gratitude. Another is ancestor-work; a sense of duty towards those who came before that they may strengthen those who come after. In both cases, I think this is strengthened by allowing you to feel unconditional love within yourself, or practice feeling it towards others; if one is to love the Gods enough to serve them, then perhaps our first step needs to be to practice loving. And prayer can be a gateway to loving: saying thank you, saying wow, expressing trust in a higher power.

I think the same is true if we are to experience Solar gifts, or build our own strength to create them: to establish or serve a community requires a deep love to deal with morons justly and overcome petty squabbling; to raise a family requires a deep love to overcome tiredness and resist cruelty; to work in a group means to have pity for the failings of others and yourself, to overcome resentment and competition.

We could combine the underlying concept of radiating love with Solar visualiations - the sense of golden warmth, like mead, beginning from the belly. Its important not to replace the difficult truth of loving with the cosy appeal of imagining, but I also find that Solar fantasies like the mead-hall, a brotherhood of hunters, a community around a maypole, a family picnic, an isolated close-knit community - can work as foci for naming and seeking those emotions within myself, and attempting to express them outwards. I like that step in the metta meditation, where you rouse the emotion of love for something it is easy to love, and then try and connect it to a thing that is not easy to love.

Lunar: meditation for energy control

The outcome of Lunar preparatory work should always be a sense of clarity, mastery, and quiet confidence. It's the kind of meditation to which the New Age most commonly refers, for which you can likely find many different techniques across skill-based occult writers. If in the future you intend to direct energy around, then a bit of daily practice is a wise beginning.

A frequent point of struggle with meditation is the “sitting still doing nothing” (despite the fact that this is a popcultural memory of zazen, a single and rather specialised form). I'm a big adherent of medatitive activities which incorporate motion, because in some people those extra things to focus on can be the level of stimulation needed to quiet down a brain.

I've never studied yoga in any serious way, so I won't comment here on what outcomes yoga is traditionally “supposed” to create (certainly what you might call “Western yoga” is good for a Lunar role - releasing tension and stress and creating a vague whole-body wellbeing); but I've been passionate about Tai Chi for many years, attending classes at the local Chinese community hall, and reading a handful of serious books. Tai Chi is all about moving energy through the body, so it is balanced and prepared for use. The concept of shen, which is somewhat like a cat that is asleep - both perfectly relaxed, and totally ready to strike with precision at any moment, in any direction - is a common thing I relate to the Lunar.

Solar-Stellar: Mindfulness meditation

Mindfulness has got a bad rap, having been warped by self help culture and middle managers who wield it like a scalpel in the hope you'll be more productive. It's also been critiqued for its potentially dangerous qualities. It's that latter part that interests me; we like a bit of danger round here. What if we cultivated a meditation practice which was not relaxing - which was, in fact, a route to sublime terror?

The basic concept of mindfulness is that we bring our focus very consciously to the present moment. We might eat a raisin, mindfully, focusing on the tongue and the texture and microtastes; or scan the body, head to toe, attempting to identify all sensations there; or sit still and listen for every sound.

I think this is a perfect startpoint for thinking about the Solar-Stellar path, which rules the splendid crawling of ecosystems, trying to hold an entire forest in mind as we look at a single part of it.

So our mindfulness of the wild would be periods of doing nothing while being hyper-aware of nature: the motion of grasses, the flutter of birds, the sound of wind, or the ebb and flow of clouds over the mountain as the weather rushes through. Its part of what we wish to accomplish through Walking and Disconnection. I think the early scene in Midsommar, where Dani has taken mushrooms and finds herself breathing through the grasses in the wide-openness of wind, is a really good evocation of this.

Our mindfulness also encompasses mindfulness of what isn't there; when one is fully aware of the woods and fields, down to the little creatures in the leaves, one can be more open to the extra-sensory.

Lunar-Stellar: proper Eastern meditation

In the West, these meditation skills have been adapted to provide a sense of wellbeing; designed to be taken in moderation, and support daily life. However, these are not the original purposes of these techniques, which are instead ways to reach certain understandings and spiritual states. This leads to some of the dissonance between what Western meditation is supposed to do, vs what it can actually create.

Even a cursory overview of the (many & various) meditative traditions reveals ones which include focusing on nothing, meditating on the corpse and our own impermenance, courting the void, seeking emptiness, seeing the world as an illusion, attempting to distance ourselves from human attachments and desires - including our attachment to our own self of sense. One should not be too surprised, then, if these techniques done casually can mentally unbalance people. That's their intended outcome. One should also note that their purpose is not to lightly enhance a happy mundane existence, but is supposed to sit alongside restrictions of sexuality, habit and ambition.

"The field of boundless emptiness is what exists from the very beginning. You must purify, cure, grind down, or brush away all the tendencies you have fabricated into apparent habits. [Those tendencies are the clouds in our eyes.] Then you can reside in a clear circle of brightness. Utter emptiness has no image. Upright independence does not rely on anything. Just expand and illuminate the original truth unconcerned by external conditions. Accordingly, we are told to realize that not a single thing exists. In this field birth and death do not appear. The deep source, transparent down to the bottom, can radiantly shine and can respond unencumbered to each speck of dust [each object] without becoming its partner. The subtlety of seeing and hearing transcends mere colors and sounds. The whole affair functions without leaving traces and mirrors without obscurations. Very naturally, mind and Dharmas emerge and harmonize."[112]

It's frankly a little outrageous that one would attempt such practices to become more efficient in a customer service role.

However, within Landcraft, I think many of these techniques pertain to the Lunar-Stellar - ruler of asphyxiating mountains, of the intense focus and stripping back of all comforting illusions, and subsuming oneself to things bigger than oneself; slowing down ones heartbeat to a dangerous pace, or practicing deliberate derealisation.

I hesitate to advise large amounts of these practices outside their original contexts (where checks are built-in, or they are done with a mentor - or there is a deep context to “cradle" and contextualise uncomfortable experiences). When I've experimented with practices of this kind to channel and hallow Lunar-Stellar spaces, they have quite naturally been accompanied by deep depressions which took days to clear. Which is sort of what you're going for - to bring on the terror of the ice and snow, of a hostile cosmos or worse - an empty one. Still, I've rarely then been able to move from a LS practice to any kind of effective work - I've just needed warmth and recovery.

Stellar

With that in mind, I just wouldn't.

Solar-Lunar: ?

Left until last because I'm somewhat at a loss, Solar-Lunar meditations should leave you a bit amped up. What jumps to mind immediately for that is the haka, the Maori traditional dance you can still see performed by the New Zealand rugby team in place of a national anthem. I've never done the haka, but I always feel a little sorry for the other rugby team, who are trying to get into the zone for a tough match by droning out some godawful dreary Victorian drudge of a song; when opposite you, the competition are doing an intimidating warrior dance, stamping and roaring and wide gestures of the arm. Another associated idea I have is a rap battle verse, or the boasting of Viking heroes; the physical and verbal declaration of “watch out! I am here”.

Still: none of those are “meditations”, exactly. You could create a bold spoken statement of your own power and authority, to speak as if you know it to be true. Related to this might be the naming of authorities. This is the energy of a powerful smacking down, and it's placed opposite the Stellar on the map (and within it, all the things that need to remain banished in the outer darkness). And so, depending on exactly the divinities concerned, this statement could include a hefty “In the name of LUCIFER and ELBERETH and BABALON and LUNA”. You are the chosen, the special and the perfect. In a different kind of religious mood, this statement could instead affirm your own godhood and divinity. In any case, you are not to be messed with.

Another associated Solar-Lunar idea is to be "filled with light", with that light expressing some of the purifying-intensely divine-smiting-allbanishing mood one finds in Christian culture. So meditations which in some way make your body a vessel which is then flooded with holiness feel like a fit. The Qabalistic Cross comes to mind, as the basic ceremonial practice that both identifies you with God and a route to God.