Silent
Silent provides the tools for seekers to recognize their path and enables self-reliance for spiritual and magickal growth.
Seekers gain insight from his work and find their inner calm from his ability to listen and help others reflect.
Kallistēi
Silent • October 17, 2016
The Failure of Paris
There have been many parables throughout history. An early allegory is the apocryphal story of Eris and the Golden Apple. According to legend, the Apple was the cause of the Trojan War. Many versions of the first story are writ; The aftermath has been well documented. Invoked, I transcribe this lesson as told to me by Eris. She is my patron and guide. It is Eris’ first lesson and caution to mortals.
This lesson is not about vanity. Broadly all suffering results from the loss of self-control. When passions get out of hand from feelings of jealousy, inadequacy, or envy, mortals suffer. These passions turn to rage. The rage which is too oft directed inward or directed upon others whom they falsely feel are the authors of that suffering. When anger spreads, it becomes the plague called “War.”
Yet, War makes for good theatre that mortals seem to love and congratulate themselves on century after century. Wars are written with lengthy prose about heroes or people who did this. Perhaps it is the sacrifice of an individual for the greater good. There is an only tragedy and the vanity of victors in the end. War is the price for the loss of control. In the end, it only makes for loneliness.
You must understand a little about me, Eris, to understand the lesson. Am I a petty and small thing feeling sorry for myself for not being invited to the wedding of a mortal? Did I lose control? I am Change, Whimsy, and I am the stillness just before a flower blooms. I exist outside of the hierarchy of power. Therefore I am labeled a “disruptive” strife bringer. Discord. I am the divine feminine of creation that must not yield. The egg must break before you enjoy what’s inside; otherwise, it stagnates and rots. Yet even when change comes, there is a natural rhythm and order. I bear Witness.
The slight I addressed was not to me and my lack of an invite. It was to a power which does not yield or conform to hierarchy. Know this: my first Mystery is control, or as some would mark it, willpower. All control is self-control. Power over others is an illusion. You either have self-control, or you relinquish it to another. It is like the motion of your arm; muscles only pull in one direction.
I put two shiny objects made of pure Will given those assembled. What happened afterward was not of me.
Kallistēi – For the Fairest.
Conformity, mediocrity, and fear of upsetting the status quo were the order of the day. Divine beings like everything to follow their roles and play their parts. Their response to the apple was predictable. We all played our expected roles.
Poor role models were they for the mortals present.
The Goddesses thought only about how others would perceive them should they possess the apple. The embodiment of Wisdom couldn’t see the folly of squabbling over a trophy? “’ I am fairest.” “See me.” “Look at me.” “Desire only me.” Upon the apple, they pounced like ants devouring honey. Had I made it into a sword, they would have skewered themselves upon it.
Then Zeus did a most un-regal thing. To avoid conflict with His peers, He gave up control. True rulers are ready to take accountability and responsibility even when difficult choices, yet he left the decision to a mortal.
And what of noble Paris? His part in history is often called “The Judgment of Paris.” The years have been kind to him and his role in the ensuing bloodshed. The story is about my judgment and the failure of Paris. Paris had many choices. Cut the apple into three and appease the Goddesses. For that is the power of Will; no matter how small it is, you can always grow it. He could have taken the Apple for himself or destroyed it. The goddess would have killed him, but the war would not have come to Troy. He could have made the sacrifice for his people.
Paris lost control of selfish desire. Tragedy he brought upon his people, lust for an unobtainable creature. Helen was a Golden Apple I made in another form. Paris cast aside his mortal bride and so much more for Helen. He saw Helen not as a companion but as a possession. It was only fitting to his hubris that the most beautiful woman be his, should he not have the Apple. Through free will, Paris could have refused her gift of Helen.
And what of the Apple? Apple’s power develops your will if you consume it, but Aphrodite locked it away. She could only bear to give it out when it served higher greed. True beauty must be shared and seen by the light of the sun and moon to be appreciated.
My lessons are not easy and oft appear cruel. Baby birds are pushed from the nest to understand their ability to fly. Yet, not before their parents show them the way. It is instinctual. It is as all the others do, so they do it as well. In all of creation, only mortals have free will. It is your greatest gift, possibly the greatest of all. How you direct your choice sets your fate and those around you. My lessons teach self-mastery and growth: to grow, study self-mastery; Improve yourselves mentally, spiritually, physically, and emotionally; become your own most outstanding work. Otherwise, you will have proven to have learned little from my lesson. War will seek you out. And in the end, only I will bear witness.
Blessed be.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Walk into any forest in the Cascades and you are standing on the dead. The fir that fell forty years ago is now the nurse log feeding a row of saplings. The salmon carried uphill by an eagle became the nitrogen in the cedar's needles. Nothing in that forest is wasted, and nothing in it is afraid. We have built an entire industry on pretending we are exempt from this. We drain the body of its blood, fill it with preservatives, seal it in lacquered hardwood, and lower it into a concrete vault—as if the earth were a contamination to be defended against rather than the place we came from. Cremation, for all its simplicity, burns fossil fuel and sends the body skyward as carbon. There is another way, and it began here in Washington. Human composting—the law calls it natural organic reduction—was legalized in this state in 2019, the first in the nation. The process is unhurried and honest. The body, unembalmed, is laid into a steel vessel and surrounded by wood chips, alfalfa, and straw. No chemicals are added. The microbes that already live on the plant material, and on us, do the work they have always done. Over eight to twelve weeks, the body becomes soil—about a cubic yard of it, dark and alive. Families may take some home for a garden or a tree, or donate it to forest conservation land. What was a person becomes, quite literally, ground for new growth. I have sat with the dying, and I can tell you that the question underneath most deathbed fear is not what happens to me? It is did I matter, and will anything of me remain? The Hávamál answers plainly: cattle die, kin die, the self dies too—but what one leaves behind endures. We usually read that as reputation. I have come to read it more literally. A body that becomes soil leaves something behind that you can hold in your hands. Something that feeds. For those of us who keep the old ways, this is not innovation. It is restoration. Our ancestors were returned to barrows and bogs and burial mounds, given back to the land that fed them. The vessel and the alfalfa are new; the covenant is ancient. The earth gives, and the earth receives. Every harvest festival we keep is built on that exchange. It would be strange to honor the cycle all our lives and then opt out of it at the end. This choice is now legal in a dozen states and counting. If it speaks to you, say so—out loud, in writing, to the people who will one day carry out your wishes. Death plans left unspoken become burdens; death plans spoken become gifts. A leaf falls. A seed sprouts. The tree does not grieve the leaf, and the soil does not refuse the seed. When my own time comes, I intend to be useful one last time. That, too, is a kind of prayer. —Silent
For the Pagan and Contemplative Community
There is a grief that arrives before the death. It does not announce itself. It does not have a name that anyone uses at the dinner table, or in the waiting room, or in the parking lot of the care facility where you sit in your car for a few minutes before going in, gathering yourself. It lives in small moments. The first time they didn't recognize you. The day you realized you were making decisions for them that they would have hated. The night you caught yourself hoping — just for a second, just once — that it would be over soon, and then spent the next three days punishing yourself for the thought. This is called anticipatory grief. And it is real, and it is heavy, and almost no one will name it for you while you are living inside it, because you are the strong one, and the person you are losing is still here, and grief, we have been told, comes after. It doesn't always come after. Sometimes it comes alongside. Caregiving is one of the most demanding things a human being can do. It asks you to be present to someone else's diminishment, day after day, while managing your own fear and your own exhaustion and your own sadness — and while the world around you continues as though nothing unusual is happening. You go to the grocery store. You answer emails. You show up. You are praised for your strength, which is a kindness people offer because they don't know what else to give you. What you actually need is someone who will let you put the strength down for an hour. Not fix you. Not give you a plan. Not tell you that you're doing a great job, or that they couldn't do what you're doing, or that everything happens for a reason. Just someone who will sit with you in the weight of it. Who will not be frightened by what you are carrying. Who will let you say the unsayable things — the anger, the ambivalence, the love that is so tangled up with loss that you can no longer tell them apart. That is what I offer. I am a death doula and spiritual director. I work with caregivers who are in the middle of it — not at the end, not after, but now, in the long middle stretch where the grief has no official start date and the world has not yet given you permission to feel it. We meet, usually by video, for an hour at a time. I listen in a particular way — not for problems to solve, but for what is actually present beneath the exhaustion and the competence and the careful management of everyone else's emotions. You do not have to have it together when you come into this space. That is the point of it. A few things I will not do: I will not tell you how to grieve correctly. There is no correctly. I will not rush you toward acceptance or silver linings. Some things do not have silver linings, and pretending otherwise is a small violence. I will not give you more to manage. You are already managing too much. What I will do is be present — fully, unhurriedly, without an agenda — for whatever you bring into the room. If you are a caregiver and you are reading this and something in you recognized itself in these words, that recognition is an invitation. I have a small number of spaces available for caregivers who are navigating the approach of death alongside someone they love. The intake questions at tokeepsilent.me are where we begin. Or you can reach me directly. There is no script for this conversation. We simply start. — Silent