Sacred and Religious Potions

Potions come in all types, from the most practical of "low" magical blends like Money-drawing or "Get the heck off my lawn", to more spiritually-oriented or so-called Theurgical drinks for connecting to a god or goddess, the moon, faeries, or your highest wisdom. Any drink, fluid, powder or unguent, if empowered with blessing, meaning or magical intention, is technically a potion . . . even if it's not referred to as such.

One of the most common sacred potions, I realized today, is the wine found in the Christian Eucharist.

Spiritual classes at Trinity finished up for the summer this Wednesday, and the one I chose to attend was the last of Canon Michael's series on the mystical meaning of the Eucharist, called "Elements of Soul".

It's always a good feeling when you hear someone else speaking on a level you understand, and I was immediately engaged. We watched a video featuring one Ken Wilbur, on mysticism and the stages of human development as related to the Eucharist.

Of these Stages of Human Development, there are six:

• Archaic. -- "You are what you eat." First stage. Most fundamental, literal level. Not without some truth, either: eat GMOs, become toxic. Extends to: Eat a lion, gain a lion's strength. God, become God.
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It may sound odd to be addressing any aspect of organized religion on this blog. A lot of witches and pagans who "revert" from organized patriarchal religion, as I did from Episcopalianism at age nine, virulently reject their faith, its dogma, and anything to do with Jesus, out of a need to reform their identity and find out what their souls need. Often they replace one form with another: Wicca is a religion too, albeit a less rigid one, as is Buddism, etc.

But as I see it, one of the milestones toward being a true mage, or mystic, is precisely the ability to see above the cubicle walls of dogma and religion that people tend to build around themselves for protection. It means being able to see the Greater Truth underlying people's behavior, beliefs, adherence to certain habits and rituals, and loyalty to various diety-forms (or not). It also means being able to embrace that greater wisdom as found in each faith, pattern or modality you encounter.

In more earthy terms: A mage knows how to sort the treasure from the bullshit, and toss out the latter.

This is the state I've reached today, where I can discard or look through much of the language and squabbling forms of religion to see the commonalities among them, and the greater meaning in each. I reverted at a young enough age, I've had time to make some progress since; I've been up the spiral enough times to view Jesus, what he stands for, and human nature itself with what I feel are clearer inner eyes. I do my best to adhere to many of those basic principles, too, such as nonviolent action, community and mitigation. In a way, I suppose that makes me a Christian!

But what I've learned is, the majority of most Christians aren't There yet --- they don't have a view that expansive, and still believe in the narrow path of either/or, of being one of them or not. (The very fact I have to use the words "them" and "they" indicates a forced separation, and a realization that I have an ego, too!) I do not only adhere to traditional dogmatic church teachings in my quest for wisdom --- and that only is a big hangup for lots of people, like an invisible wall. Because I also embrace things like magic, hoodoo and quantum physics, I describe myself by the word "mage".

The Eucharist is to me a good example of this. The symbolism of the wine is that of blood, specifically the blood of the Christian founder, which in a literal sense has a startlingly primitive, pagan, even zombie-esque feel to it: Does the nice old lady next to me in the pew really imagine herself to be drinking blood? Blood has of course been viewed since the dawn of humanity as not only a symbol, but the very stuff of life, so this makes sense. But then there's the bread.

The greater truth here, then, is even more important: The Eucharist affirms, first, that despite our quibbles and differences and the illusion of our separate forms, we as humans are united in common life, energy and soul by a need and gift shared by all --- food and drink, and food and drink are the substance of the Divine. To me, to accept the Eucharist means to willingly see the dude next to you as being made of the same stardust you are, and as literally Divine; and, here's the hard part, not separate from you at all. (I didn't say it was easy, and it ain't, because there are people I really don't like in that church!)

Second, it suggests that sacrifice is in fact necessary, but we can approach this by discarding the baggage of guilt and sin altogether: It's as simple as, Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it only changes form; so to maintain a form, you have to consume, and so other forms must die. Forget the "fallen" crap. We're not all evil, cursed beings, and Earth isn't fallen or cursed, either. But, we are trapped in a world of illusion, duality, push-and-pull, live-and-die, and conflicting forms, until we make our way back to Unity. At the highest level of meaning, Yeshua bin Josef --- Jesus --- was attempting to lead people to a state of Unity, of non-conflict, while they were still here on Earth in material forms.

The Eucharist then, as I see it, is a sacred act of acknowledging, and literally becoming, Unity. Becoming God, or the Divine State. We're all made of the same stuff. Eat the same stuff. Eat each other's stuff, while trying to survive. Eat, even, each other. To remember this underlying Unity, despite the tumbled chaos of our material-form dance, is to recall our sacredness --- and hopefully to act in the world with more respect because of that remembrance. People get caught up in dogma, and start throwing the word "sin" at other people, usually out of fear, and without looking in a mirror first. But what, if it exists at all, is sin?
Sin is acting purely out of illusion of being separate.

Take a Monsanto executive. He knows he has to eat to survive. (Toilet paper is nice, too.) Nothing wrong there, that's just life. Maybe he even eats with respect, or says grace at dinner. Maybe he recycles yoghurt containers. But does he remember, is he aware, or does he care, that the food on his plate is the same stardust as the food on people's plates in the low-rent district, and that it's all sacred? His job all but mandates that he continue to poison millions of people, plants, animals, acres of dirtand waterways, in the illusion of separation of his actions and their consequences from everything else. The idea of separation, and making choices based on it, is the sin. The state of sin is one in which fear and control obscure the greater Unity of us all and, ultimately, love.

And we all do it, because the illusion of these material bodies and the challenge of daily survival is very convincing and very distracting.

By remembering our common Unity, Jesus suggests, and following his footsteps and tips, the most fear-plagued tax collector may be whole again.
"Come to the table."

Vh