Before me lay the raw materials to craft a ritual tool of beauty and power. My new-born daughter's naming ritual lay just weeks ahead and, as I practice in my Tradition, I needed to carve a bowl for the child's naming. The wood for the bowl had been gathered at Winter Solstice, the day that the sun begins to grow in strength in the solar year. Harvested from the mountains where I do much of my sacred work, I had chosen birch, one of the nine sacred trees, symbolic of the Goddess, of birth and rebirth, and of joining a family or clan. It has rested in front of the family hearth all through the holiday season, soaking up the laughter, joy, and love of family members at Christmas and Yule. The first cut in it's shaping took place at sunrise on the Spring Equinox; once more the power of the sun had been connected to the raw materials, growing in strength from the day I began to work with the wood. I carefully gathered the sawdust and stored it in a jar prepared for the purpose, knowing I would want to call upon the energy again in another rite.
And in my haste to work with the wood, in the rapid drying from Winter Solstice to the Spring Equinox, the wood had split, cracking badly, unusable for the task at hand.
So what do we do when our magic doesn't turn out quite like we expected it would? When our intent and the reality before us simply don't mesh? When, despite our best efforts, the tool, ritual, or undertaking just didn't turn out?
A Matter of Balance
The first thing to do is to consider the attitudes we approached the endeavor with. Were we motivated by selfishness and greed? Did we simply seek to raise ourselves in the eyes of our peers or community, to bask in the attention and status?
We need to consider the energy that was at the core of our being during the undertaking. What we're looking for is a lack of balance, a place where the energy may have gone astray, slipping from the direction we intended in our minds, to the course we held in our hearts. Many Pagans believe that every event, every occurrence, every experience happens for a reason. Lessons usually don't focus on showing us where we're strong; they generally point out the areas where we need work and give us the opportunity to overcome some of our shortcomings.
Balance is a tricky thing. It's the process of being assertive and humble at the same time. When I work with students, we constantly evaluate our own progress and how we each connect with the bigger picture around us. We also look to see if we've laid the groundwork for the endeavor we're preparing to initiate. What is appropriate for us to be doing at this stage in our growth? Are we ready to lead, have we developed the skills, wisdom, and respect necessary for others with more experience to follow our guidance? Have we put in the time and energy necessary for our undertaking to be successful?
I was always taught by my teachers that to interact with the world from a place of balance, we must reach out with our strengths, while turning inward to address our weaknesses. I had spent many years learning to craft tools and write rituals; almost a decade had been spent in the Wild, working with Nature spirits and the energy of the wilderness. Was it appropriate for me to be crafting the bowl at this time? Yes. A child's naming is a beautiful thing and I had done a great deal of preparation while my daughter was still in the womb. Was it the harvesting of the wood where I had gone wrong, collecting a long the circumference of the desired bowl, discarded wood that the road crews had left behind. Once again, I was in the clear. I had given thanks to the spirits of the tree. My misunderstand wasn't a matter of balance. It was time to look deeper.
A Matter of Clarity
The second thing we need to consider is whether our vision was crisp, clean, and accurate. Often, we will truly believe that there is a need we need to meet, a situation which we must address. We feel that by our actions, whether mundane or magical, we can solve the problem before us and bring a sense of balance back to the world.
Our problem is that we don't often look deep enough - especially when intense emotions are concerned. We look within, see the turbulence or desire on the surface of our emotions, and believe that the issues end there. What we need to do is continue to dig deeper, until we reach a point that the answers begin to become uncomfortable, when we're not sure we want to look any farther inside. It's just behind that point where the truth of the matter lays.
This most often becomes a problem when we're dealing with volatile emotions - passion, anger, and the like. It's extremely easy to lose ourselves in the flow of energy, to be swept along with the emotions and simply follow where they lead. Unfortunately, they often lead us to a situation where the heart of the matter builds to the point where we have no choice but to address it. This is a common situation in those who use spellwork to address their needs and concerns. A binding spell to keep the chaos out; a love spell to keep us from feeling lonely; stepping into a position of leadership we're not ready for so that we'll appear important in the eyes of our Pagan peers, and through their validation, discover worth in our own. None of these are answers. Each of these will continue to intensify the energy at the heart of the matter until we are forced to deal with it.
So I stepped back and looked again at the ritual before me, at the tool I was working to craft. Was my focus making myself or my path appear important in the eyes of my family and friends who attended the rite? Answering a question like that is simple. In your mind's eyes, you simply imagine the rite, slowly subtracting the parts you have questions about. One by one, I erased people from our guest list until it was only myself, my wife, our child, and our chosen Goddess Mother. Would I still do the rite? Would it still be as potent as before? The answer was a resounding, "Yes." My desire to have them there was simply to have them share in the joy that the child who had come into our lives brought to all of us.
A Matter of Time
The other aspect we need to consider is time. So often we allow our desires and our perceived needs to accelerate our personal timetable, to lead us into situations and positions we're simply not ready for. A teacher with little personal experience to teach from; a spell cast before we tried a single mundane solution; an answer leapt into with little thought and even less consideration for the outcome or circumstances.
The easiest way to work through the matter of time is to imagine ourselves taking that step in the future. Would I be a more effective teacher if I first put in the personal effort to hone my knowledge and wisdom? Would I be a more effective leader if I put in the time and effort to build a base of experience to lead from? Would I be more sure of the spell if I tried other solutions first, putting in the work myself before each possibility failed? It's often a fine line to walk, between growing towards a goal and realizing that it's time to take a step into it.
So I looked at the materials that I had gathered before me, at the energy that I had carefully woven into them for use in my daughter's naming ritual. Could the wood still be used for another purpose? Would the energy have a greater significance at a later date?
What I found was that the answer to both questions was, "Yes."
What had begun as wood for a naming bowl will be kindling to start the bonfire at Sparrow's coming of age ceremony. Where wood would have simply been gathered for the purpose, we now will start the fire with the energy of her birth, with magic that was begun while she was still in the womb, before she took her first breath of air, before she looked into my eyes for he first time. I'll be able to say to my child, "Tonight, you become a woman. The fire before you that lights the darkness symbolic of the unknown world ahead, is lit by the power of love and of magic. This fire is kindled from wood sacred to the Goddess, from a land where your father worked his magic and learned his path. It was gathered at the Winter Solstice before your birth and it's crafting was begun at the Spring Equinox just months before you were born. As you grew, so did the sun, and that energy from those days is here in this rite."
So what began as a bowl, will soon be carefully split into kindling, bound into a careful bundle with old cloth donated by her maternal grandmother, and the bit of magic will be saved, a part of our house and home, until she becomes a woman and prepares to step out into the world.
In case you're wondering, I still made a bowl. It's carved from red maple, a piece that I found in a local woodworking shop with more personality that I could have ever dreamed of. One look at it and I knew it was perfect. Funny, when you take the time to look inside and ask why, things usually work out better than you ever dreamed they could.