The Night of Walpurgis...

Believe it or not, meditation isn't always relaxing.

Sometimes, there is no void.  Sometimes, there is instead a flood of creative energy.  Sometimes, meditation can be almost overwhelmingly stimulating.

And today was one of those times.

The rush of ideas was so intense that I could barely concentrate on my breathing, and frequently lost focus.  And count - I counted to 108 breaths, but I'm sure I actually breathed twice that many.  And the inspiration was as varied as it was relentless.  I had ideas for stories I want to write, people I want to contact and the reasons why and the things I want to say to them, projects I want to work on and how I want to go about them, reminders, notes, insights and realizations of every sort.  For a while, try as I might to ignore it and focus on counting my breaths, I was even aware of this very post writing itself out in my head.  But the biggest and most immediate idea that occurred to me during this creative blitzkrieg, and the subject of this entry, is how I'm going to handle the Walpurgisnacht.

So, I had my last drink this past Sunday, and I had my last toke the Sunday before that (that's a story for another post), though it's been many months since I've smoked on a regular basis.  The plan was/is to spend a full year completely sober for the first time in my adult life.  This is something I've known I needed to do for a long time.  I'm a particular kind of addict (I'm sure there's a word for it, but I don't know what it is) - I can be addicted to this for awhile and then put it down, and then be addicted to that for awhile and then put it down, and so on.  I don't really have a drug of choice, per se, though I do have preferences, and there's some drugs I absolutely can't stand.  But what I'm actually addicted to, is getting high, however that happens.  When I quit smoking cigarettes, I compensated by smoking more pot.  When I quit smoking pot, I compensated by drinking more.  And I always knew I was robbing Peter to pay Paul, but at the time Paul was the one threatening to break my kneecaps, so I just told myself I'd deal with Peter later.  But I'm getting older now, and feeling more mortal by the day, and it's time to finally deal with my addictive behavior at the root, rather than dealing with any given addiction to a particular substance one at a time.

But there are some other reasons to do it, as well.  Purely from a health perspective, it'd just be good to give my body a bit of a rest from all the punishment I've put it through the last twenty years or so, now that I'm getting older.  It's also partly an experiment - I just want to see what will happen if I stay completely sober for a year.  It's partly to give my brain chemistry a chance to return to some semblance of normal, and then to re-evaluate and see how I feel, and who I feel I am.  And in part it's also a test - I want to see if I can do this.

Ok, so what does all that have to do with Walpurgisnacht?  The night of April 30th*, aka Walpurgisnacht, or Hexennacht, or Witches' Night, or May Eve, is a very important holy day on the Heathen calendar.  It is the counterpart to Yule, the holiest season of the year, and marks the other pole of the ancient pagan year (the two holidays being approximately six months apart).  As during Yule, it is believed that the barriers between the material world and the spirit world are more permeable on the Night of Walpurgis.  The Eddas (ancient Heathen holy epic lore-poems that comprise much of our knowledge of their religion and culture) tell us that it was on Walpurgisnacht that Odin earned the knowledge and power of the Runes.  He stabbed himself through the chest with his spear, pinning himself upside-down to the World Tree, Yggdrasil, and hung there for nine nights.  On the ninth night, May Eve, he "died" as much as a god-creator can, his consciousness leaving his body and descending to the three wells at the root of the World Tree, wherein he found and took up the Runes.

I know that I hung on a windy tree

nine long nights,

wounded with a spear, dedicated to Odin,

sacrifice self to myself,

on that tree of which no man knows

from where its roots run.

No bread did they give me nor a drink from a horn,

downwards I peered;

I took up the runes, screaming I took them,

then I fell back from there.

                                      -Runatal ("Odin's Rune Song")
                                        The Havamal


It is also the night before May Day (hence "May Eve"), which is, of course, the generative fertility holiday of Spring that gives us Easter and Beltane and all of the other "sex and babies" holidays associated with this time of year in the West.  And so for all of these reasons, Walpurgisnacht is traditionally associated with magick and sorcery (magick, like sex, being another form of creation).

For almost ten years now, I have celebrated Walpurgisnacht in the same way:  enjoying a specific psychedelic sacrament, and performing all manner of sorcery and divination and psycho-spiritual exploration until the Sun comes up on May Day.  So that's put me in a bit of a dilemma regarding how to celebrate this year.  Because I don't want to break this spiritual tradition that I have kept for so long now, but I also don't want to fail at staying sober almost immediately after I've started.  And it's further complicated by the fact that, though I realize it is technically a drug, and would affect my neurochemistry in the exact way I'm trying not to do right now, I really do not view this particular experience to be at all related to what I'm currently attempting to avoid.  What I'm struggling with right now is regular, recreational drug-use, and this is neither of those things.  This is not a fun, pleasurable drug that makes me feel good so that I want to do it all the time.  This drug is an intense, exhausting, highly spiritual experience for me, and more often than not Walpurgisnacht is the one and only time I'll do it all year.  It is impossible to get addicted to it, and I have never craved it.  So, while treating it the same as booze and pot might not be comparing apples and oranges exactly, it certainly doesn't feel like comparing oranges to oranges, either.  More like oranges to tangerines, perhaps.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and it's been weighing on my mind heavily.  My gut, my sense of flow, my sense of my Tao was telling me to go through with it, but when it comes to my instincts telling me to use drugs, it's hard to tell whether it's really my Tao or my addiction masquerading as such.  And I've spent so long training myself to ignore that voice inside me telling me to get high, and I'm focused so much on doing that right now, that even though I felt so strongly in my heart and my gut that it was the right thing to do, in my mind it's seemed like a death-sentence.  But when I examine my feelings, I really do not want to drink or get high right now, which leads me to believe that my desire to do this must be about something more than that.  But then again, "Denial is how it kills you," and I've learned to never let myself accept even the possibility of living in denial.  And so lately I've been leaning towards a compromise, wherein I celebrate the holiday as normal, only minus the sacrament.  It seemed like the only way to do it, really, but it left me feeling very sad for the loss of this unbroken chain of tradition (almost ten years!) and I just could not shake the feeling that I was doing something wrong.

But now I know what to do.  In that lightening storm of ideas that assaulted me during my meditation, it hit me.  And, as so often seems to happen with those "Eureka!" moments, the solution seems so obvious now that I cannot believe I couldn't see it earlier.

I will stay sober from now until Walpurgisnacht, as planned.  And I will celebrate that night, as usual, as I have so many years before.  And then I will start counting my one year of sobriety from the next day, May Day, the day of birth and re-birth and life and renewal.  I'm not really losing anything by restarting my year-countdown on May Day (oh, woe is me, I had to stay sober one year and two weeks minus one day, instead of just one straight year - waah), and I'm gaining a lot more in return.  And the spiritual meaning of it all lines up so nicely:  my year of sobriety, a year of monasticism and self-sacrifice, will span from Walpurgis to Walpurgis, the holy day celebrating self-sacrifice for the acquisition of power and wisdom; and it will begin on May Day, the holy day celebrating life and love and creation.  And having this period of sobriety line up with my spiritual model so well will give me another powerful incentive to see it through, and will significantly increase my chances of success.

It's perfect.  And in my heart, I feel it's true.  I feel it in my gut.  And I feel it too, in my head.  It all lines up.  It all feels right.  It flows, finally.

To sacrifice Self to my Self, with no drink from a horn, until screaming, I fall back from there.

This is my Tao.

...

*corrected from 31st - duh - 4/23/12