Mystery ~ sacrifice
Lammas ~ August 1
Patron: The Sacred King
Reflection: Knowing all we know, what shall we do?
Story: Elder Brother: Magician by Khalila RedBird
At least one Tradition knows him and calls him “Elder Brother”. Deity—the One, transcendent—chose to incarnate in him in a time and place where people, seeking the path of commitment to the One, had lost touch with imminence and the knowledge of their own Divinity.
And so Elder Brother was born, and later his brothers and sisters were born and raised in the home of their father and mother and taught the lore and traditions of their people.
When he reached that time of maturity when the vigor of youth and the wisdom of age combine to greatest effect, Elder Brother set forth on his mission to contact and reawaken the Divine in his people.
He was a powerful man—fit, hearty, tough, and strong, able to walk miles through hilly country, to live in the open for days on end. He found his sustenance where he could, and when he could not, he did without. From his own experience and that of his friends, he was well acquainted with the troubles of the body—of hunger, thirst, fatigue, disease.
First with his wife, family, and friends—expanding to reach the people of the cities and the countryside—he sought to touch the Divinity within by exposing his own and calling to theirs. With his keen, shrewd mind and the fruits of his years of study, he argued rationally and successfully with those whose Divinity could only be reached through the mind. With others, he was at home in the world of emotions—of love and despair, of triumph and loneliness, of yearning and frustration—and he joined with them in the heart.
From all his learning, compassion, and insight—walking in the worlds of matter and of spirit—Elder Brother realized that the wall between the people and awareness of their Divinity was built on centuries of tradition—through legends and lore, and then through customs, rules, and laws—that humankind had brought all the troubles of the body and of the spirit onto themselves—that even the joys and blessings of body and spirit were evidence of their flawed nature—of their Otherness.
In all this, Elder Brother knew that his success in awakening imminent Divinity in his people, during one short lifetime of teaching, could only be transitory, without a magical act—tearing down the wall of Otherness built over the centuries. That magical act must speak in the language that the people would understand—must resonate throughout all time and space—well beyond his own mortal incarnation.
He chose the language of sacrifice—of the ancient tradition of the Sacred King giving life for the land. To do so, Elder Brother brought a climax to his mission—turned from walking and talking with people in the countryside to entering their capital city, proclaimed as King, at a time of festival of sacrifice and redemption.
Using all of his persuasive powers, he established himself with his people as worthy, in his human person, to accept punishment for all of them for all the supposed failings of humankind—past, present, and future—which were the bricks in the wall of Otherness. For those who carried those bricks of guilt and shame, who accepted his sacrifice in their behalf as redemption, those bricks would be as if they never had been—and the wall would be removed.
The magical act was spectacular, crafted with all of his intelligence, wile, and will. He chose time, place, actions, participants, words, and symbols to maximize the resonance of the sacrifice with lore, legend, custom and tradition, hearts and minds. He ensured that the priests of the sacrifice were outsiders—not of the people already struggling with the bricks of guilt and shame.
Elder Brother powered the magical act with his own blood—with the physical pains of torture—with the emotional pains of his mother, wife, and friends acting as witness to his agonies—with the spiritual pains of, for a while, being unsure of his purpose and will in the face of his agonies. And he bound the act with his discorporation—returning to the One as the heart of a loving, vibrant, life-affirming pattern.
Visit: ToolMaker to gain the tools of magic
Rite: High magic