Intro

Welcome to the Brotherhood of the Phoenix workshop for IML 2008. For those of you who aren’t familiar with our group, we’re a neo-pagan order for gay, bi and transgender men who love men. Within this workshop, we’re going to discuss some of the cross-over between leather play and spiritual experiences, particularly as they relate to power exchange and ritual drama.

Extract from Awakening Osiris : a new translation of the Egyptian Book of the Dead by Normandi Ellis (Phanes Press, 1988)

I flew straight out of heaven, a mad bird full of secrets.

by William Shakespeare

Let the bird of loudest lay,
On the sole Arabian tree,
Herald sad and trumpet be,
To whose sound chaste wings obey.

I am the Blazing Sun shattering the Night.
I am the Phoenix Reborn,
The Impetus for the Birth of Creation

I am the Passion
Yearning for completion
To the Splendor of the Universe

The Universe is in constant motion. The galaxies are moving away from each other. The Milky Way, itself, spirals around for all eternity. The earth, our home, circles around the sun.

I am the Explorer. The wonders all around inspire me to set out on my own adventure. I have been many places and seen many things.

_This is the document I wrote up to aspect the Warrior in our 2007 Soul Song Ritual.

You know me. Long before the written word, long before your ancestors sat around their fires in the cold dark of the Ice Age, I was there. In the time of ancient Babylon, I was called Utnapishtim, He Who Has Found Life. It was I who survived the Great Flood, and I who taught the hero Gilgamesh the secret of longevity and the inevitability of death.1 To the Greeks, I was the Seer Teiresias, blinded by Athena as a child, but granted in exchange the gift of true sight. With my staff, I walked the lands of ancient Hellas, shaman of the serpent mysteries, sage to the kings. Even after I died they sought me out to hear my wisdom.2

Seek you night and roaring fire,
Drawn to the Phoenix pyre.
Watch the light and darkness dance,
Dancing, falling into trance.

Introduction

The concept of Will plays a major, if largely ignored, part in the worldview of western society. We hear about it from childhood; it is in religious texts, social mores, law-books, popular culture and colloquialisms. In neo-paganism one of the base dogmas taught is the Wiccan “An it harm none, do as ye will.” Another, somewhat more nefarious version, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. Love is the law, Love under Will,” Coined by Aleister Crowley, has been used and abused for all manner of purposes in recent years.

I am the resounding of the drum, the call to action

Image of a Phoenix Rising

“Be Well!”

“Good Health to you.”
This is my gift and my challenge to you.
For the health you enjoy, I have granted you
And I give you the challenge to nurture, sustain and grow this good health.

Eight shadows in the looking glass,
Lie beyond the twilight time;
Let the unsaid terrors pass,
And hear my shadows rhyme.

The child of the shadow’s soul,
He tells a painful tale;

I am the Explorer. I come from the east. Behind me rises the sun of a new dawn that illuminates the day before us. Our journey awaits.

But first, look back. Look back into this morning, just before the dawn. Do you see when I was with you? When you first began to explore this new life? Your first steps; your first crawl…The spirit of the explorer was within in you. Before this, the moment of your birth. The first moment you began to explore this new life with your new senses. I was with you. And I will always be with you.