We began by filling our pewter cups with mead and started by daydreaming our own visions.
We stood as a trio, and thought about our futures – that vision, that future place where we want to be, where we see ourselves. We visualised it into our cups of mead, envisioning vividly within a liquid crystal ball of viscous honey.
Holding that vision within our minds, we looked each other in the eyes, as if connecting our future visions into one, and then drank up. Imbibing that future into us.
Into our empty stomachs the vision-infused gulps of mead hit us pretty quickly, and went straight to our heads. It was now time for the initiation.
I got the axe out and unsheathed it. Jeremy took it off me and slammed it into the log, and it now looked like we had established our place. The axe was waiting to be harnessed.
I took off my shirt and then got my other prop: a ridiculous yellow apron and an old lady’s bonnet.
Before I performed the initiation, I read a passage from the Epic of Gilgamesh.
“Here in the city man dies oppressed at heart, man perishes with despair in his heart. I have looked over the wall and I see the bodies floating on the river, and that will be my lot also. Indeed I know it is so, but whoever is tallest among men cannot reach the heavens, and the greatest cannot encompass the earth. Therefore I would enter that country: because I have not established my name stamped on brick as my destiny decreed, I will go to the country where the cedar is cut. I will set up my name where the names of famous men are written; and where no man’s name is written I will raise a monument to the gods.” The tears ran down his face and he said, “Alas it is a long journey that I must take. If this enterprise is not to be accomplished, why did you move me, Shamash, with a restless desire to perform it?”
We drank another gulp of mead, reflecting on that last line – Why did you move me? We had been moved by something, and that’s why we were here – with a restless desire to perform it.
We established where North was and I aligned myself, standing on the flat rock between the pool and the river, and holding the axe up in front of me, dressed in a ridiculous costume and closing my eyes.
Some years ago, I saw a group of morris dancers. Normally, I thought morris dancing was laughable and ridiculous. But not this company. One of them was dressed in this yellow apron with a bonnet on and he danced around with a brush – he looked like a silly old biddy. It looked completely absurd, but I was fascinated by his sheer presence and power, and the focus in his eyes as he performed movements and growled and shouted orders at the others – oscillating between dancing the same movements, and then renegading the moves and stirring up strife. I wondered what he was doing as I stood there watching. But as he continued to mesmerise me and aggravate me with his actions and presence, I knew exactly what he was doing.
It was ritualistic and he was on another plane of consciousness. It was the absurdity of the costume that gave him the assertive power, I thought. What’s more, as I felt myself becoming more aggravated and confrontational by his behaviour, I was also somehow envious, and I knew that at some point I would be taking his place, which is what I wanted to do there and then.
I then researched ancient rituals and even tried re-enacting them with close friends for significant occasions (before a wedding or before the birth of a child). I became aware of how important each aspect of the ritual was. If one part was missing or out of place, the magic ceased, the dream would disspate, with only reality and frustration remaining.
I remember watching a film of Buddhist monks in the forbidden city performing ceremonies, very aware that everything they did was infused with significance and meaning. It was a sort of language that I became sensitive to, as if I could read it subconsciously, with the understanding within me being the raw emotions that were immediately stirred up as a result forming an archetypal language.
I had also become aware from my own pursuits in high level sport about the importance of these moments, movements and language leading up to the event, and especially right before it. I became hypersensitive to the language or topics people used. I refused to listen if someone told me that they felt tired. I refused to allow the language to enter my conciousness. I would abruptly stop conversations like that, or assert my own positive feeling to override the latent spiritual information hanging in the air. Even now I need to reassert with the words strength and power. Everything was significant and it became something that was heightened to, something that compelled me to act.
A magical state of conciousness could only be achieved if everything was right. If only I could put into words that rare fleeting feeling. I wanted it.
Now it was time to stir things up and summon that energy. I breathed in deeply through my nostrils and felt the blood pumping through my arms, thighs and towards my feet and fists. I knew that I wanted FOCUS and that I would call for this but I allowed myself the openness to see if anything else came up.
“Here I am looking to the North”. I said, feeling at first slightly unsure about hearing my own voice in the forest, and then I paused, remembered that I was in the forest, in a ludicrous apron, but in position. It was absurd, but it would have been more absurd without any absurdity. I overcame my initial uncertainty, reminded myself that I was also bare-foot and and bare-chested, and called out what I wanted: FOCUS. My voice burst out into the valley. Jeremy and Matt called it back, and I told them that their calls weren’t enough – they were holding themselves back – so I told them to fucking do it properly.
So they did it properly.
I wanted to muster up that unleashed aggression and focus it. I needed them to do the same.
I turned to the West, now looking down the valley, reciting the words followed by my call for FOCUS, then awaiting the call from the others to confirm that need. I faced all the directions, East then South, then I looked to the sky, called up, and looked to the depths of the earth and kept calling again.
I then returned to face North, outstretched both my arms. Closed my eyes. I had been waiting to do this in the woods for some time, and now here I was barechested, dressed in a ridiculous pinny, but fuck it, now it was time to lift myself up. Up into the highest parts of the sky.
“Here I am part of the stars”
“FOCUS”
“FOCUS” they called back.
Yes – I held that moment, now breathing through my nostrils the billions of droplets in the air, and imagining the word ‘focus’ surrounding me in bright red letters, surrounded by billions of stars. Yes, I wanted that focus, and now I had it, I had that high state of consciousness of mustered up energy, held in a wobbling orblike poise. Ready to be directed. Focus!
I relaxed my arms to my side, breathed normally allowing the leafy green world to come back into consciousness. I was standing on a rock, next to a river in a forest. I stepped down.
Next was Matt’s turn. Jesus, I was now fired up with adrenaline mixed with mead, and I started pacing up and down growling and shouting at Matt and Jeremy.
He performed the rites. I could tell he was still holding something back, and he said so too afterwards – something for us to work on.
Then it was Jermey’s turn. He was dithering and messing about with something, and I, still all stirred up, wanted to see him get on with it, so shouted at him to SHOW UP (which was one of the principles we had written together).
He got up, performed the rites. His voice echoing into the forest – a joy and inspiration to watch.
He was shaking afterwards.
I read out the passage from Gilgamesh again and it had more significance this time.
Inspired by the others, I decided that I needed to do one more round. Another something needed to be worked out – what was it?
I stood there and lifted the axe. What was it. I opened my mouth, and in that instant, in front of me a thousand pages flicked past and my finger stopped on one page, and scrolled to the last sentence.
It came to me: ‘It was just a clue, but I took it’. I didn’t call it out. I just spoke it out.
“It was just a clue, but I took it,” I said with some relief.
I could feel the underwater source of energy and emotions had been stirred up inside of me.
This line was a reference to Carl Jung. In one chapter of his memoirs, he talks about a significant breakthrough that he had made and how it came about. He ends the chapter with this magical line, ‘it was just a clue, but I took it’. I must have read that passage years ago, but it came back to me in a surge of emotion. It was significant to everything that we were doing, as we were going to find out.
After all of that, we had one more last round of mead, and it became darker under the forest cover.
Our stomachs started growling for nourishment.