Blessed Bees * last updated August 23, 2000

Urban Magick
by Melissa Oringer
(c) Melissa Oringer, 1998-2000, All rights reserved

I can attempt to address this issue. I'll share one of the most profound experiences I've had as a priestess.

I was a solitary then and had been living in the California East Bay for about two years. There is a beautiful national parkland where I did tons of hiking and a special place where I did magic and private ritual. It was at this special place, the top of a ridge where a dead tree and very large rock jut out over an enormous valley filled with green growth and grazing cows, the ocean along the horizon, this is where I dedicated myself to a Goddess as her priestess. The Goddess is Ma'at, who I conceptualize as the fundamental Core, the truth that remains regardless of any other existence. The ultimate paradox.

A few days later, I was walking about during my lunch hour in downtown Oakland. It was a beautiful, comfortably warm, sunny day, and I wasn't thinking of much of anything, simply enjoying the warmth and the movement. As I passed a fire hydrant, I experienced a profound shift in perception. The boundaries between "I" and everything around me were blurred. I was the fire hydrant, the plate glass window behind it, the cracked cement, the whirring cars, the hurrying people, the weeds, the dusky air, the computers in the display - everything.

I had stopped walking and suddenly remembered myself which was enough to snap my perceptions back to their "normal" place.

From then on, I knew that "the land" means everything. Everything is created from materials of the earth upon which we also originate. There's nothing to leave or to escape or to find - it's all here, always.

She's some Goddess, is Ma'at.

(c) Melissa Oringer, 1998-2000, All rights reserved