"A man who has a vision is not able to use the power of it until after he has performed the vision on earth for the people to see."
- Black Elk
Seven years ago I stepped into the fire.
After many years wandering through the nebulous Dreamtime of underworlds and otherworlds, meeting demons and shadows, magic and memory, dissolution and shedding, I was unwittingly called.
I remember walking down a dirt road in a far flung corner of the world when a voice spoke through the dust. It was time. I had gotten comfortable in that watery underworld of ours. As we tend to do. So magical, formless, mythical, dreamy. But one initiation completes, another begins.
The Path of Fire is a Path of Power. It asks for full commitment. It requires discipline and intent. It calls on us to make the effort. To willingly step into the blaze. It takes choosing your path over and over again, no matter how hard or how tired you are. The gods don’t like flimsy commitments, after all.
For seven years I walked the path of fire. It is not a gentle path, but like the soft ash from yesterday’s flames, it purifies us so completely and tenderly that what’s left is only the bones and potential of ourselves.
It is only from that which fire cannot burn, the bones of who we are, that we learn to meet, to face, and to hold the extraordinary powers of this universe.
Our capacity for holding power is only as deep as we’re willing to let the fires burn.
The allies we encounter on this path will meet us with fierce love. They will challenge everything we think we know. They will come with flames and blades, and destroy all the ways we continue to lose ourselves.
It’s within the rubble, within the warm ashes of our own cremation grounds, that we rediscover the truth.
The Path of Fire is a Path of Power, and power requires responsibility. Responsibility only comes when we cut the ways in which we feed our victimhood. And this requires fire.
Power, like fire, is raw energy. When used with wisdom and responsibility, the possibilities are infinite. When used without, it will always ultimately consume us.
I don’t take many people on this path, but I do guide people to meet this medicine, to meet the fire, and to reclaim the power and truth of who they are.
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