passion point

[chelidon]

For those who do Feri or Reclaiming work, some quick musings on the Passion Point of the Iron Pentacle from my partner, Claudia Manifest. For the past year we've been advising and participating in a group dedicated to teaching skills and techniques to people who want to teach in the Reclaiming tradition, using the Iron Pentacle as the framework for the first year and a day. I thought some of you would enjoy this.

More Ideas on Passion to muse upon in the coming weeks: Finding your Passion is to discover what you love to do and be, and to do it with full heart and mind and body and soul, to be in the moment, in the place, fully present. To feel connected, energized, whole and excited by what you do and who you are. This is Passion. What are you passionate about? What could you do all day and still want more of? What gets you up and out of bed, ready to go, because you just can't wait to get started? One of the most important things you can do is truly learn about yourself and your passion and work steadily to do more and more that you are passionate about, and let go of more and more that drains, depresses, and bores you to tears. I find it interesting that the Passion point is the point of Manifestation on the Pentacle of Life and the point of Knowledge on the Pentacle of Pearl. To know yourself, to create and flow, to open to / and call to your Passion (and Compassion) is to be in this Point.

Comments

[swansister.livejournal.com]

Yes, I remember exactly when I began to understand that passion was about life and not about sex. I took a class in which we physically walked and embodied the pentacle. As I was standing looking at a class mate who was embodying passion it suddenly occurred to me that I could have passion about people in life, about my work, about art... And Poof, I got it. I was so excited because until we embodied the pentacle it just didn't make sense to me.

Right now my passion for my work wavers. I work for local gov't and just can't seem to keep my passion for it daily. The public is hard to deal with it!

I do however have passion for others activities and people in my life.

Thanks,

Swansister

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

Ah, yeah, I love how physical embodiment often works so much better than metaphor. That's one of the reasons I love teaching drumming to folks as a way to learn energy movement in a very visceral, embodied way.

Passion is sooooo important. Particularly, as Claudia points out, to Knowledge and Manifestation.

In one of the Triads I work, Will/Intent/Desire, Desire, which is related to Passion, must feed the work for it to be truly successful. The result of Will and Intent alone is often barren, empty.

[swansister.livejournal.com]

The work that I do is sometimes hard and sometimes joyful because of the environment that it sits in. It is part of the system that I am engaging in because I would like to see it change. My will, compassion and a vision of what needs to change has a lot to do with "why" I am doing this work. Passion comes into play as my spiritual life feeds me to do this work. But Passion does not come into play as the major source of what drives me in this job. I have more passion for many other things. But I see this work as a necessary act of spiritual activism that is more than needed.

Love,

Swan

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

Makes sense to me. There is passion there for you, perhaps a mix of direct and indirect passion.

[skygypsy.livejournal.com]

hmm reading the last part, a visual came to me
that of being in alignment with Source so that being in that Point, is aligning yourself as a physical gateway to Source, like... hmm oh! hee, like the scene in indiana jones, where the staff in the correct place catches the sun and suddenly *foom* light streams through

ok well, it is clearer in my head perhaps ;)

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

I do think I see what you mean, or mean what you see, or...whatever ;>

My experience is that alignment with passion is crucial to living a genuinely fulfilling life. There is also work with reflected or indirect passion -- kind of like the moon shines with the light of the sun. If there is something we do have much passion around -- for example, buying a house or something else that requires large amounts of money, and doing a high-paying job works towards that goal even if the job is not one's Life's Work, that can work out and be fulfilling...for a time. Eventually. though, that "reflected passion" often isn't enough, the truism of "a dream deferred is a dream denied" comes to the fore and you have to go back and seek the true source and wellspring of passion, what is truly, deeply desired.

[skygypsy.livejournal.com]

that's such a good way of expressing it, the reflected passion. my parents' generation seems to feel that is an acceptable long term situation. at least they always advised me to "get a good job" and support my "hobbies" "on the side"... that just didn't work for me, but it seems to work for my brother. i dunno i sure hope finally pursuing my passion will allow me more harmony and fulfillment in my life...

[skygypsy.livejournal.com]

oh and am curious about the significance of the pentacle, how it's used in this work?

swansister mentions 'walking' the pentacle... like walking a labryinth?

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

Check here (http://www.faerywolf.com/essay_ironpentacle.htm) (note that I don't have any relationship to the author, but it is a good overview of the IP)

Yep, just like walking the labyrinth -- you can mark it out on the floor/ground, or trace a drawn one with your finger, through each point in turn, or around the perimeter. IP is one of the core tools drawn from Feri. If you do a Google search on "Iron Pentacle" you'll find plenty more good background info.

[celaenos-aerie.livejournal.com]

I'm really glad to see this, because I've been struggling with the Passion point for the last six months or so. This gives me good context for how to go about finding the things in each day that I am passionate about and how to bring more of that into my life.

However, I'm a bit confused by the mapping onto Pearl. The way I learned Iron and Pearl was Sex-Love, Pride-Law, Self-Knowledge, Power-Liberty, Passion-Wisdom; how do you (this being the general you) overlay them?

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

Ah-ha! How fascinating. lol! We'd been doing some experimentation/play a while back with inverted overlays (flip a Pentacle to "point-down," then overlay it on another) as an interesting way to look at shadow issues, and I suspect Claudia was either thinking back to that, or perhaps just spaced and wrote "Knowledge" while thinking "Wisdom" (and I note I didn't notice it either, perhaps not being fully present! ;>) You're absolutely correct that the usual traditional overlay is Passion-Wisdom. I'll have to ask her tonight whether that was intentional or not...

[celaenos-aerie.livejournal.com]

Would you say more about the inverted overlays as a tool for examining shadow issues? I'm always curious to hear a new way to use the pentacles.

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

It'd take a long time to go through a large proportion of the insights I've seen through this, but the stratospheric view is if you flip, say IP, and superimpose it on Pearl, the points which are "unattached" are Sex (in IP) and Love (in Pearl). How fascinating. Then match the other points, and see what you get. Interesting stuff, I've found. There's so much dogma and perceived power in inverted versus "upright" pentacles, that particularly with the Feri inversion, I personally thought there might be some really interesting insights to be had. For me, anyway, I proved myself right ;> I'm sure others have had the same idea.

Incidentally, I went back and looked, and Spiral Dance does map Knowledge to Passion, and that's the way I was originally taught. As veedub points out below, there are esoteric reasons/arguments to do it one way or the other, though I've seen it more commonly mapped Wisdom-Passion in recent years. I've seen it taught enough different ways that I honestly can't usually remember who did what, when.

[veedub.livejournal.com]

lots of people have played with the order of the points, to good effect. i've gone with passion/wisdom and self/knowledge, but there are some esoteric reasons for doing it the other way, which i won't go into (not because it's a secret, just that it takes too bloody long to explain).

the thing is, different models work equally well. they are simply models. just different ways of looking at the same thing.

but i've never taken the passion point to be sexual. i mean, there's a perfectly good sex point on the iron pent, so why have two? passion as what you're really passionate about is the intuitive meaning for me, and that might at times include sex...or not.