On Pride

When you close your eyes and let yourself enter the realm of fire, all guides will take you to a cave. If you enter the cave, it takes you to the heart of the everything, a river red as blood that flows hot and steaming under the world. The River of Fate. Fate is not nearly as rigid as we dream it is. It is simply the pattern of all things, the natural law that moves stars and oceans and cycles of the moon. It is the song that vibrates the lines of the world. The River is the heart of the pattern and its twists and turns are not known to us. But if you find yourself standing on its banks, you will know you have come to the place of surrender. We want to fight the idea of fate, to say that we must disprove it in order to be free, as if freedom is chaos. It is not.

Pride is the feeling one has when one stands on that bank of the River of Fate. It is the knowledge that you stand at the center of the pattern, and that makes one feel great and small all at once. Fate is potential. It is the law that bends the lines of the world. You, my love, are part of that law, subject to it and the creator of it all at once.

Witches are the blades of the Goddxs, the forces that carry holy will into the world. So if you find yourself there, know that you are being called to imagine what has not become yet, and to jump into that river. There are rapids, but you won’t know where they are. There are falls and torrents, around the next bend. There are long slow stretches and sandy beaches, and secret pools and gentle eddies. The witch understands that to jump into the river is to surrender to desire and to allow fate to take its course. You do not get to decide how to get there. We are tools of outcome only. We know where we belong. We know we are entitled to this. The River of Fate is our birthright, the freedom to surrender.

This sounds so poetic, but it is not always easy, especially for those of us who have not known freedom from the time we were small. For so many, we were told that we were not entitled to our own wills and desires. We were born to serve. What happens when the descendants of slaves stand on the banks of the River of Fate? They scream. They rage. They fight every chain, literal and metaphorical, that has ever been placed on them or their ancestors. They writhe and struggle and curse. I have watched my students do this, confounded by the feeling. “What is this feeling?” they scream. And I carefully place my hand on their shoulders and say, “Entitlement, my love. That feeling is entitlement. The knowledge of your birthright.” And they scream some more. Freedom is painful at first. I remember standing there, too, with a white woman as a guide. She brought me here, to the River of Fate and was mystified by my screaming. I remember when I got my acceptance to graduate school. My grandfather said to me, with tears in his eyes, that he was born on a hacienda, with a name that was not his. And now this famous university was going to pay his granddaughter to get her PhD. He looked at me as his destiny. That sometimes your actions set the future in motion. Our people have always played the long game. It’s why any of us are even still alive. He stood there, eyes shining, with all the pride of a possession that was a possession no more, looking at the glory of his own decisions. My grandmother just rolled her eyes. I think she always knew about Fate, and it was no more mysterious to her than the action of yeast rising, or scrubbing the tile. As if to say, we knew this one was going to do this. Stop being weepy, old man.

I am not mystified. I understand that all those times that I have been told no have built a tether that prevents me from jumping in. But being Wo’I, a coyote through and through, I chewed my way through that tether. I am a child of Father Sun and I am going to jump into the goddamn mother fucking River of Fate. It’s a fight. It’s why Fire is a sword. This is the moment that I pick up the knife that my Grandmother gave me and carve a place for myself in the world.

We often look at fate as something already written, predetermined. But that only works in the Western way of things. If you are part of the world, made of the same stuff, then you are an active participant in fate. Unlike that idea of predetermination, fate is pattern. Pattern is the face of God. Fractal geometry, Fibonacci sequences, the paths of the stars in the sky. All of these are expression of a deeper law that dances underneath. The difference for Witches is that we know where the River of Fate lies. And we know that every time we close our eyes and surrender to it that we set a path in motion that is guided by higher patterns that we cannot see. But as Witches, we also know that something called us there. Something that needed to be born. And so we surrender to the labor pains that birth new things into the world. We are the bridge between the worlds.

This is often where white witches ask, “but how do I know?” Oh, babies, let me tell you something. You are not like them. You had to chew through the tether. You had to break through the chain. You fucking know. And as you stand there, finally, in possession of your birthright, panting from the effort with sweat dripping in your eyes and a maniacal smile on your face, you will know. No one gave you your sword, you had to forge your own. This wasn’t just some guided visualization exercise. You are here and you are fucking ready. At some point, you will say it. You will give in to South holding you and stroking you and asking what you want. You will turn in his arms and yell in his beautiful face the name of your desire. In that moment you will deserve it. In that moment you understand what Western witches do not know. He will laugh and shove you into the River of Fate. And you will burn down the world. Every one of you will burn it down. It’s why I have dedicated myself to dragging as many of your beaten down sorry asses here as I can. Because at some point, you will give in to his embrace and make a new world.

This is the secret that is held in fire. That fate is woven not by some force above us issuing decrees. Fate is the collected desires of those who enter the River. And interdependent souls are weaving a world not just for themselves, but for the whole. We know how it feels. When one of us fucks up, it reflects on all of us. White people are individuals, and endlessly tell you this, especially when you call them out on being white. But we know that we are never individuals. And where that may be against us with stereotyping, it is in the end our strength. We never jump into that River alone, but accompanied by every ancestor, every child, and every family spirit that our blood remembers. Every baby born to labor until death and every granddaughter who rose up out of the suffering and sheer cussedness of those who came before her. We understand that our actions affect all, even the dead. Our will is holy will. We know.

El Canto Hondo, the deep song, sounds in the River of Fate that flows beneath all things. We are awash in it. This is the song of mountains and hummingbirds. Of the rivers that flow in those tiny veins and arteries that power the tiny wings you cannot see but can only hear. The desire to be born. The desire to become. It drives the ever-shifting Self toward creation. We never change without shifting the pattern. It is our obligation and duty to make a world for all.

And when you get out, my love, dripping and exhausted, you have arrived. You have changed the world. Now you fall and weep, because your labor is done. The pattern is made. Now he lifts you, beloved South, and kisses your lips. Well done, he whispers. He told me once, when I was afraid, “there is nothing in this world that is not born of desire. Everything is a creation of love. If you can dare to speak it, mountains will fall at your feet.” I have no need for mountains to fall at my feet. But I understand what he is saying. Dream bigger. Create more. Take up your sword and meet your destiny. After all, you crafted both sword and destiny. Be the pattern and accept Fate. Not in resignation, but as a faithful companion. It is what you were born to do, Nephilim, it is what you were born to do.