Queer Spirit(ualists) with Attitude!

Attitude magazine this month has a colourful, somewhat teasing and intriguing, feature about some of the team behind this summer’s Queer Spirit Festival. The piece is appropriately enough entitled ‘Free Spirits’, making the point that here are queers finding our spiritual expression outside of formal religion. For some reason however the front page headline they chose to highlight the piece is ‘Meet the Queer Spiritualists’…..

Well spiritualism is generally associated with channelling the messages, wisdom and grace of the spirit world, with mediumship and sometimes trance possession. At first I was inclined to take some umbrage at the use of this word, after all a glance at the promotion for the festival will show that our focus is very much about this world – about healing, creativity, self-expression, love – about queer community, liberated from crippling religious structures, where our spirits can soar free. But of course what makes this experience so powerful and liberating, I believe, is that we include the trees, plants, animals, insects and invisible worlds in our expansive queer community cosmos.

I remembered how much we love to invoke the ancestors into our circles, how important it is to us to call in the power of the elemental beings, how much we love to invoke the unifying presence of our shamanic forebears in the indigenous peoples of the whole planet, and of the Goddess, of Pan.

Often we dance once the spirits are invoked, enjoying a space where it can come naturally to drop the chattering, questioning of the mind and move into synchronous rhythm with each other: rising gradually to peaks of ecstatic togetherness when the drumming takes off, when our dancing hits a frenzy, our voices open and the shouts reach to the heavens.

Since the article was published, Attitude have amended the title of the article for the online version: https://attitude.co.uk/article/the-pursuit-of-happiness-meet-the-queer-spirits-chasing-higher-rainbows-1/21464/

Attitude also used the term ‘HIGHER RAINBOWS’ – which I consider a peculiar term for us queer free spirits:

To me queer spirituality is about dropping the old patriarchal ways of hierarchy, of higher and lower, inferior and superior – and entering instead into the holoarchy of life, where every aspect of being has an integral part to play in the whole cosmic jigsaw of life. Astrology is one tool I use to understand that every part of who we are, that all of life and creation, is holy and has its own purpose, from the carnal and the banal to the cosmic and the blissful. Without one there cannot be the other, duality only exists to help us navigate the third dimension. So Queer Spirituality is not about getting to a higher, or better, place, than other parts of the lgbtq+ universe, it is about bringing in the missing element, the essential piece of the puzzle, that completes the whole.

I have written many blogs about the lost, forgotten or overlooked links between queerness and the sacred dimensions.. some links below.

Early May 2019 we are between the calendar Beltane MayDay and the approaching Beltane Full Moon in Scorpio on May 17^th. The veils are thin.

We are between the worlds.

This morning the moon is in Cancer, water element, sign of the Divine Mother. So this queer spiritualist thought instead of being agitated by the label he would live up to it:

This is what I believe the energy of the Divine Mother that I feel within me is saying to us this Beltane:

From the heart of the Mother

from our ancestors enlightened

worlds connect and the message comes through

you are another me and I am another you:

we are not these bodies

not the ego-mind

not the turbulent emotions:

when we drop identification with form and thought and feeling

there’s much, much more to find

the dance of spirit on the earth

is reflected in patterns in the sky

and once we get that we are the dance

we can stretch our wings and fly:

to attune to the seasons, moon and planets

IS to find the way home –

is the way out of delusion, disconnection, disaffection –

it’s time for humanity to renew the pact with life Herself

love and spirit connect us all

through prayer and compassion

we answer the call, build webs of love, cones of power

invoking the return of Her magicians

bringing humanity back to the Way

in these dark 21^st century days

The truth is within and it’s out there too

Christian gnostics and heretics, Kabbalists and Sufi mystics have long taught the way

Buddhist and Hindu sages were bringing the light of non-duality to the west since the 19^th century

but the last thing the desire-driven, power-hungry west wanted to hear

was that the ego was controlling the show and out of control –

our own european earth wisdom so long suppressed

we’d long forgotten our intrinsic belonging –

yet now as Mother Earth shakes and and fear spreads round the world

soon everyone on the planet may scream out to be whole

and the people of the Goddess

will step forward – and take up once again their roles.

Queer Spiritualism WHY NOT?

To conclude, I offer this….

MAY THE SPIRIT RETURN TO THE PEOPLE

From whom She was ripped apart

May the Spirit return to the people

As the Queer Healers remember their Art

The Warrior swords of the Crucified Christ from the 4^th century CE

Closed down our temples and slaughtered

Trans priestesses, women witches, genderfluid shamans and male sodomites.

Persecution of gay men and women witches intensified from the 11th century.

The political state took over this persecution from the 16^th century.

The death penalty was in place for sodomy in the UK until 1861.

But the climate of fear, of arrests and blackmail hit another peak for gay men in the 20^th century

And while the change over the past 50 years has been incredible –

No wonder we are a segment of humanity with health issues

Of course we are a people with emotional baggage that needs to be addressed

the issues arising from both HIV and CHEMSEX are the clear symptom of this wound

Still in the world today so many of our queerkind still have to live secret lives

have to live with fear, and the danger of arrest, violence, death

THE HISTORICAL PERSECUTION OF QUEER PEOPLE NEEDS TO BE UNDERSTOOD AND ADDRESSED.

OUR QUEER SPIRIT – REPRESSED FOR SO LONG – NEEDS ROOM TO BREATHE, ROOM TO HEAL, ROOM TO BECOME WHAT IT TRULY IS.

I applaud Attitude magazine for taking this important step in displaying through mainstream media that there are exciting developments going on in the world of queer spirituality. Thanks Guys!

https://queerspirit.net/blog/248-out-of-the-mists-of-our-long-oppression

https://shokti.blog/2019/04/28/gays-are-the-natural-priests-of-humanity/

https://rainbowmessengerblog.wordpress.com/2019/02/14/the-rites-of-queer-spirit/