How I Align My Body-Mind-Life Force With Love To Make My World A Temple For Pagan Love Magic

I invoke and feel the Essence of Feminine Love

(For me this in the Shadows of my Self -cast in the depths of the Earth)

I move my attention from the Earth, through my feet and up my legs and I focus on my anal Base chakra

The centre of my Red Lustful Love

Located with the Essence of Earth to the North

I move my attention to my cock-and-balls Sacral chakra

The centre of my Orange Love Balance

Balancing Love Lust and Love Power

I move my attention to my Solar Plexus Power chakra

The centre of my Yellow Love Power

Located with the Essence of Fire to the South

I move my attention to my Heart chakra

The centre of my Green Loving Feelings

Located with the Essence of Water to the West

I move my attention to my Throat chakra

The centre of my Blue Verbal Expressions of Love

The arbiter of Loving Thoughts and Loving Feelings

I move my attention to my Third Eye chakra

The centre of my Purple Loving Thoughts

Located with the Essence of Air to the East

I then invoke and feel the Essence of Masculine Love

(For me this is a bright light shining down on me from above)

Does the Soul Have a Neuroanatomical Basis?

My soul is like a hidden orchestra; I do not know which instruments grind and play away inside of me, strings and harps, timbales and drums. I can only recognize myself as symphony

—FERNANDO PESSOA, The Book of Disquiet

This quote is from the front of a book I’m just about to read: ‘Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain: The Evolution of Consciousness’ by Antonio Damasio

The author is a neuroscientist who has been studying the neuroanotomical basis of emotion. I think he may have written the book which will provide some of our alexithymic brethren with the hard evidence they require that there is more to self than flesh, blood and cerebral cortex!

Do Not Read This Poem About Men-Loving-Men Spirituality!

Whoever you are holding me now in hand

Without one thing all will be useless,

I give you fair warning, before you attempt me further,

I am not what you supposed, but far different.

-

Who is he that would become my follower?

Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections? Are you he?

-

The way is suspicious -- the result slow, uncertain, may-be destructive;

You would have to give up all else -- I alone would expect to be your God, sole and exclusive,

Your novitiate would even then be long and exhausting,

The whole past theory of your life, and all conformity to the lives around you, would have to be abandoned;

Therefore release me now, before troubling yourself any further -- Let go your hand from my shoulders,

Put me down, and depart on your way.

-

Or else, only by stealth, in some wood, for trial,

Or back of a rock, in open air,

(for in any roofed room of a house I emerge not -- nor in company,

And in the libraries I lie as one dumb, a gawk, or unborn, or dead,)

But just possibly with you on a high hill -- first watching lest any person, for miles around, approach unawares,

Or possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of the sea, or some quiet island,

Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you,

With the comrade's long-dwelling kiss, or the new husband's kiss,

For I am the new husband, and I am the comrade.

-

Or, if you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing,

Where I may feel the throbs of your heart, or rest upon your hip,

Carry me when you go forth over land and sea;

For thus, merely touching you, is enough -- is best

And thus, touching you, would I silently sleep and be carried eternally.

-

But these leaves conning, you con at peril,

For these leaves, and me, you will not understand,

They will elude you at first, and still more afterward -- I will certainly elude you,

Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, behold!

Already you see I have escaped from you.

-

For it is not for what I have put into it that I have written this book,

Nor is it by reading it you will acquire it,

Nor do those know me best who admire me, and vauntingly praise me,

Nor will the candidates for my love, (unless at most a very few,) prove victorious,

Nor will my poems do good only -- they will do just as much evil, perhaps more,

For all is useless without that which you may guess at many times and not hit -- that which I hinted at,

Therefore release me and depart on your way.

Walt Whitman

From the Calamus Poems

1860

You can read the full cycle of 45 short poems at http://gaymensvirtualbookgroup.blogspot.com

Spectral Love

Red Love Lust

Orange Love Balance

Yellow Love Power

Green Love Feelings

Blue Love Words

Purple Love Thoughts

Pure White Love

Purple Love Thoughts

Blue Love Words

Green Love Feelings

Yellow Love Power

Orange Love Balance

Red Love Lust

I Am The Whore Of Babylon And I Give You Pure White Love!

A Dream Queer Scene

I have a dream of a scene…..

The tarmac of St James’ Street is gone and in its place is luscious green grass, trickling fountains of crystal clear water, trees, shrubs and flowers. People come from afar to hang out here because this is the friendliest, quirkiest and most original scene in the land.

The Red Roaster Café spills its tables and chairs out onto the greenery. No longer a narrow space it has expanded into the adjacent buildings on either side and is open until the early hours of the morning. Gentle music tracks pulse into the air interspersed between the sound of recorded birdsong, random chapters of audio books and cult comedy show clips.

Opposite is the queer bookshop- Bent Books- a private library club (non-members pay a quid entry fee to peruse) where readers settle down to a good queer book with a nice cup of hot chocolate by a roaring open log fire. This is a book heaven with sections on queer studies, LGBT fiction, poetry, biography and spirituality. It’s a great place to drop by and just bump into friends or make random connections with fellow-readers. There’s a good-sized meeting room here for queer book groups to discuss their book of the month. Upstairs there’s a spacious air-conditioned lounging area and luscious roof garden. Clusters of people are drinking mint tea and exhaling green-blue smoke inhaled from communal hookahs- relaxing, giggling, enjoying the art of conversation. It’s early Saturday evening and this is where we come before the Club.

The club is called -not Envy or Revenge or Spite or Hatred- but ‘Club D.U.B. [Dressing Up Box]’. Here is a club where we play with cross-dressing and dance. Here the gender binary gets a chance to be deconstructed. As you go in there’s an enormous changing area. There are clothes rails creaking under the strain of hundreds of sequined dresses and fur coats. There are Tina Turner wigs and high heels for the blokes and false beards, tweed suits and hard hats for the women- all items for sale or hire. Once dragged up the music is pumping and the dancing’s grinding. Trans is the order of the night: men and FTMs meet men/ FTMs, women and MTFs meet women/ MTFs and all the combinations in between. Men and women are even getting it on! There’s ironic femme frolicking and butch posing. In this fabulous space people are drawn to each other by animal chemistry and not because they exist within a perceived gender/sexuality box.

After the club we head to the No Talent Cabaret Bar. A drink buys the obligation to put on a 3 minute turn. Some sing, some recite poetry, some dance, some sit surreal-ly and stare. All offerings are met with tumultuous applause.

Next day we head back to the street. Next to the cabaret bar there’s the Tantric Massage Temple with massage rooms where folk can spend time growing deeper in intimacy with each other. Throughout the day there are group Tantric massage classes and meditations. In one of the group rooms queer folk are holding hands and sharing what is in their hearts. These heart circles mean we can bravely grow in emotional strength by declaring our vulnerability. We are loved and accepted by the circle because of the strength of this vulnerability.

Here there is no attitude and no bitchy-queenery. People smile, are interested in each other, are prepared to give each other the time of day.

Hmm-well I did say it was a dream....

So until the Brighton scene gets a bit closer to this I’ll need to keep going to Faerie Gatherings. The next Albion Faerie Gathering will celebrate Imbolic at Featherstone Castle in Northumberland 27 January-6 February 2012

http://albionfaeries.co.uk/featherstone2012.htm

So skip Christmas this year, book your holidays for late January and turn some dreams into reality!

A Book that Changed My Life……

The Ethical Slut: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships and Other Adventures
Dossie Easton, Janet W. Hardy
Ten Speed Press, 2009 296 Pages

I've been practicing Ethical Sluttery for 18 months now and it's all been down to the September Edward Carpenter Community's Gay Men's Weeks

It all started in September 2009- “The Dance Between Power and Intimacy”-my first ECC experience and, there I was, all alone.

Back home I was in a long-term relationship. The erotic expression of our love for each other had stopped years before. We were maintaining a monogamous tradition fearing the potential destabilising consequences of messing with the arrangement. I had been interested in meditation as a homphobia-free means of satisfying my hunger for spiritual nourishment and, I suppose, at the time I was searching for a spiritual home.

The workshops during that week helped me to put my monogamous sexual barriers down. I explored how the experience of erotic sexual massage could combine with spiritual meditative practice and how loving intimacy was rapidly fostered between individuals who were prepared to engage in vulnerable-making self-exposure. I didn’t realise at the time that this would set a foundation for me to embark on a path of authentic personal growth and enable me to engage in loving encounters like never before. Wow!

When I returned from the week I was on fire! The stakes were high but I had to risk discussing with my partner making changes to the 12-year-old monogamous agreement we made when we’d first met. Being a naturally jealous bloke his reaction was to be cautiously OK about it. We agreed to me doing sexual things outside the relationship provided I would tell him what happened if he asked but not to tell him if he didn’t ask. I love him and I didn’t want to hurt him but I also sensed a chance to grow emotionally, spiritually and sexually. Here was a genie, which could not be popped back into its bottle.

A good friend made on this first Gay Men's Week introduced me to the Faeries and I went to three gatherings that year- Featherstone Castle, Folleterre and Wansee. As is often the case I came away from each of these gatherings with something important learned about myself. Featherstome held a mirror up to my life-long approval seeking programming. Folleterre helped me to reflect on how my father’s [patriarchy’s] disapproval of the feminine aspects of my nature set the scene for not only my internalised homophobia but also a kind of internalised misogyny of which I had been previously completely unaware. Wansee opened my eyes to how the way I presented myself to others was profoundly affected by fear of shame and social rejection.

So it was in the context of this roller coaster ride of personal growth and self-discovery that I was introduced to The Ethical Slut

I wasn’t sure if it was possible to be a Really Dirty Slut and to also be a Really Good Person at the same time. This book showed me how!

The authors reclaim the abusive term Slut in the same way that Queer has been reclaimed for marginal sexual orientation and gender identity and in the same way that Faerie is reclaimed to proudly assert our sissy natured-ness. ‘Sluts’ are those who dare to have sex more often, and in less conventional ways, than everyone else and, who refuse to be cowed into submitting to the social norms. ‘Ethical Sluts’ are those who do this openly, honestly, lovingly and caringly with the intention of harming no one.

I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who is stopping themselves from having, or openly admitting to having desired ethical sex out of fear that it would be immoral, socially disapproved of and because the consequences would mean guilt and social exclusion.

The authors convincingly argue that our society is geared towards regulating sexual relationships so they fit into monogamous, politically and economically acceptable hetero-imitative configurations, which provide ostensibly stable environments for habitat-living-style-consumerism and child rearing. They confront the idea that sexual relationships exist in a ‘starvation economy’-' i.e. that there aren’t enough sexual relationships to go around and so sexual relationships need to be jealously protected and safeguarded. They argue that there is an infinite potential for sexual relationships of all shapes and sizes and the key to accessing these in order to meet one’s many and varied sexual appetites is, firstly, honesty in communication with one’s partners and, secondly, negotiating clear unambiguous agreements which enable the involved partners to feel emotionally safe and secure.

Of course it isn’t all necessarily going to be a bed of roses and it would be surprising if jealousies didn’t arise in polyamorous arrangements. The authors present convincing arguments about how the working through of jealousies is a potentially very good thing both for the development of the affected individuals but also for the relevant relationships.

It could even be possible that ‘compersion’ –the emotion of joy at one’s partner’s happiness with another sexual partner might even prevail!

The interesting thing about becoming honestly polyamorous [as opposed to the conventional dishonest non-consensual non-monogamous pattern of polyamory-or ‘having an affair’- prevalent in western cultures] is that it allows you to enjoy a wide variety of sexual partners without having to lie or feel bad about it. And rather than distancing you from love and spirit it has the potential to deepen you spiritual growth too. If that isn’t enough to convince, you also get a chance to feel the full force of conventional societal disapproval and to work on your own issues of guilt shame and approval seeking!

Read the book and start to change the world!

The Faeries Taught Me How To Fly!

I was sitting by my fire last night watching the flames flickering around the burning logs remembering the tribal faerie camaraderie of a blazing Folleterre campfire from just a few days before.

Two years ago the Faeries were to me, a strange, esoteric bunch of folk on the margins, gathering together in weird and wonderful places and living basically without the necessities of standard creature comforts. I now see a Faerie Gathering as a rich source of spiritual nutrition and an opportunity for physical and psychological healing. The Faeries are my community group. Better than that-they are my family!

So how did I transition from Faerie-sceptic to Faerie-sister in a mere 24 months? I suppose any metamorphosis requires a pre-change period, a caterpillar phase. My caterpillar got tired of waiting for a spiritual home to present itself and decided that she would need to become the spiritual home she longed for. Reading books like ‘The Artist’s Way’ by Julia Cameron, 'The Power of Now' by Eckhart Tolle, and ‘Coming Out Spiritually’ by Christian de la Huerta helped to nourish and nurture my nascent yet deeply conflicted spiritual nature and my creative soul.

Then my personal life reached a crossroads. I was exhausting myself attempting to sustain my partner in a kind of co-dependent set-up. I felt damned if I did something about it and damned if I didn’t!

Enter Stage Right the Edward Carpenter Community. What a lovely bunch of guys. A virtual and episodically realised intentional set of communities. During the course of a September Gay Men’s Week at Laurieston Hall [a great rambling mansion in Dumfries] I was gently encouraged to put down my defences and to make myself sexually and emotionally vulnerable in the company of loving, caring strangers.

By sharing my deepest darkest dilemmas, I was coaxed into finding solutions and galvanized into overcoming my paralysis.

Friends made during that ECC week encouraged me to attend a Faerie Gathering. Featherstone 2010 introduced me to the magical world of Faeridom. Gifted Magical Boys, Shamans, Magicians Alchemists, Story Tellers, Androgynes, Dancers, Musicians and Poets drawn together to love, to laugh, to heal and to co-create. Through the patient love generated in Heart Circles there and at four subsequent gatherings and, through some deep authentic faerie friendships I’ve grown to understand some of the unhelpful, distorting drivers in my wounded self.

At the start of my second half-century I finally recognised how my child-like desire for, and righteously indignant sense of entitlement to, my fathers crippled love kept playing out as a recurring approval-seeking theme in most of my interpersonal transactions and how this interfered with my capacity for true love and deep intimacy.

Thankfully I can now let go of shame as a guiding influence in my decision-making. Instead I embrace ethical consensual non-monogamy as a way of enriching my loving relationships.

Faeries have emboldened me to experiment with tantric meditative sexual massage practice and thanks to Tantra for Gay Men, there is now a regular monthly meet-up here in Brighton.

I am now on a Buddhist-Tantric-Pagan Spiritual path, which affords me a sense of peace and tranquillity in the noise and the chaos of modern life

So thank-you ECC, thank-you Faeries, thank-you T4GM without your existence I would never have developed my Faerie Butterfly wings and learned how to fly!

Resources:

ECC

www.edwardcarpentercommunity.org.uk/

Albion Faeries

www.albionfaeries.co.uk/The Faeries.htm

Folleterre-Eurofaerie Sanctuary in the French Vosges Mountains

http://www.folleterre.org/home.htm

T4GM- Brighton Tantra Club

www.tantra4gaymen.co.uk/events-calendar

I’m not going to write about pride this year.
I’m sure we’ll all get through it in our own ways!
The day after pride I’ll be heading off to a faerie gathering to take in the sights, smells, sounds, flavours and sensations of the beautiful Folleterre Faerie Retreat in the Vosges Mountains of Eastern France
Faeries speak from the heart in Heart Circles passing a talisman, which gives the holder the fully concentrated attention of the group. This practice helps to develop a sense of authentic subject-subject relatedness to each other and to the world in general. Faeries will gently Hiss if they identify with, or wish to be supportive of, anything said or done in the Circle
This is what I will be saying.........

Right from the Heart of a Faerie

Faerie friends please don’t Hisssssssss…….after this!

It will only mess with my approval-seeking issues

And it just might serve to skew my words away from the authentic voice of my heart

Big Heart Circles make my chest thump with fear

How will I speak with honesty?

Will I be heard with love?

My mind goes blank and drivel comes out of my mouth

It’s so easy to make a weird first impression

Maybe I’ve already pissed off those who find approval seekers tiresome!

I am learning that the potential for intimacy to grow in my world

Comes from honestly and bravely owning up to my vulnerabilities

So here I am! Stripped naked before you all! A crowd of loving strangers!

What is my truth?

What do I seek to become every moment?

Where am I coming from and where am I going? I’ll tell you:

I want to cultivate a sacred sexual and emotional intimacy with the people in my life

And to recognize the sterility and emptiness of a life surrounded by others ignorant of my true self

I want to find ways to have a helpful influence

But I’ll shy away from Earthly Power

I want to keep my energies in balance

And remain present to the healthiness of my beautiful body

In a kind and caring way, I am discovering and dismantling sources of homophobic and transphobic shame which, in the past, have stifled the choices I’ve made and I hope my new-found sense of shamelessness is not seen as selfish and antisocial

But instead helps others to follow my example

I have discovered that for most of my life I have been carrying a barely conscious sense that I had an entitlement to being loved, an entitlement to being engaged with, an entitlement to having people assist me and an entitlement to being approved of!

I’m not entitled to any of these things from anyone but myself

I’m trying to de-commission my ego but I want to become more tolerant of my little shrunken ego and much more tolerant of the big fat egos of others

I want to give big free dollops of love generously from my heart-just for the sake of it!

When the shadow in this community, and out there in the wider world, becomes manifest …..

I want to be able to recognize it as a part of who I am

It will be something I dislike about myself which I am trying to move away from or

It will be something I haven’t quite acknowledged in my own nature projected onto others

I’m on a quest for Joy and making lots of friends but in a binary world it is easy to make enemies- both real and imaginary…….

So-if I upset you it will not be intentional-

and so I ask you now- do not look angry or smile and bitch about me to yourself or someone else

Please please talk to me about it.

Otherwise I won’t be aware of my mistake or I’ll have to assume I’m just imagining it!

That’s probably enough for now!

An Original Albion Faerie Queen- one of Britain’s Stately Homos

Just as it is inevitable, that a career in politics must end in failure, then too, perhaps, every relationship with a hero must end ultimately with disenchantment….

The enchantment with my hero began when, as a shy queer adolescent searching for affirmation in a homophobic Catholic school in the homophobic North of England, I became aware of a character so totally convinced of his inalienable right to be queer that he flamboyantly asserted his sexuality and endured the sticks and stones hurled at him by an even more hostile bygone era with equanimity and wit.

To my scared and nascent queer nature these strident personality attributes [which I would not have dared to dream of emulating] became a beacon of hope towards which I could steer my sense of ‘daring to be different’. So whilst my brothers had their posters of football and rugby players [whom I would secretly lust after] plastered on the bedroom walls, my forbidden aspirational role model secreted in the far reaches of the back of my mind was one of Britain’s Stately Homos!

Whenever I reached an important coming-out juncture in my life and was quibbling with myself about wimping out, I would refer back to my icon, take succour, feel the fear then just get on with it. So it is to Quentin Crisp that I give thanks for the proper development of my queer sensibility.

Without his existence, without his avidly read life story as depicted in The Naked Civil Servant, without his witty epithets thrown in the face of unanimous disapproval, I might never have overcome what seemed at times to be the overwhelming odds against me. I might never have been brave enough to take my first faltering steps towards the consummation of my disapproved of sexual passions. So thank you, Quentin, you were to me, at that time, a character of epic proportions, unknowingly spurring me on from strength to strength.

I have learned, however, over the years, that you were, as I am, a human being with faults and flaws and for that, of course, I forgive you. Your insufferable egocentricity might even have been the source of your immensely shameless, eccentricity! As bravely shocking as larger-than-life characters such as you can be, I have learned to be cautious around those of your ilk. I need space to express myself so I now spend time on relationships with those who are not only busy developing their authenticity but who are also interested in, and affirming of, mine.

There was a stage in my life when my co-dependency had me hanging around guys with massive egos so I could hide away by relinquishing my own. It is interesting that just as elements of Quentin’s brazen character spurred me on to become my true self, the deficits in his nature have me recoiling towards a quest for true intimacy in love. Sadly, it seems, this would have been something completely anathema to him.

So Quentin Crisp I celebrate your life and your death in me. Had you not been so unashamedly You, I would never have been so unashamedly Me!