A widely popularized witchcraft tool that had its inception in Faery / Feri is the Iron Pentacle (IP). This tool, originally employed for something a bit different, is now used for internal examination and self-inquiry. It explores aspects of self and the divine that stir us and speak to our innate nature as human persons: Sex, Self, Passion, Pride and Power. Self-inquiry is an important practice in Faery witchcraft, for in understanding and remaining curious about our own fundamental awareness, our deepest essence, we understand the nature of divinity (you can work in the opposite direction, as well). It also allows us the opportunity to untangle mind stories and release energetic (emotional) knots or constricted areas, which is important because as we engage practices that increase our life force we want clear channels for that energy to flow smoothly and with ease.
Remember that Faery seeks to emphasize our divinity, to stress that everything in the universe is divine, and that we are all God Herself – there is no distinction. The IP can be useful in pursing this inquiry.* In a culture or family where sex is seen as shameful, or our innate interests and capacities are diminished, we need a practice to assist our examination of those essential energies and the judgments shaped around them in order to reclaim the parts of self that we ourselves have marginalized.
Our reclamation of self applies to all the parts of us. God is self and self is god and god is a person like my self. When engaged in self-inquiry we discover things like grief, pain, and fear. These parts, or emotional impressions, were imprinted because we felt shame, or feared we were not enough, we felt unworthy or somehow inherently flawed. This imprinting can be deep, and our minds can rush to create stories around them, often in a bid to protect us from feeling them. Our stories frequently kick in if we get too close to the original wound, or something in our environment feels too similar to that deep grief, pain or fear. These are wonderfully protective measures we adopted long ago which are probably not serving us now. Also, as life force flows into us it is shaped at a pre-cognitive level by these impressions. They then influence how we express life force in the world. In the present moment we might find ourselves in cycles of stuckness where the story is activated but the life situation does not warrant the response or accurately reflect it, or likewise we are simply caught in repetitive behaviors or thinking patterns. Until we process – feel and integrate – the deep feelings, our body remains in a state of self-preservation and alertness, engaging its stories for protection. As we begin to journey inward during self-reflection and inquiry we bump up against our stories, and they may deflect our gaze, wishing to remain hidden.
Don’t turn away. Keep your gaze on the bandaged place. That’s where the light enters you. – Rumi
A practice I have found helpful on my path of releasing stories, in order to feel the deep pain, fear and grief and then integrate it (a key part of the reclamation process) so I can fully express my inherent nature without restriction, is an acronym I learned from Tara Brach called RAIN (to learn more about this beautiful practice I recommend Tara’s book Radical Acceptance. I also recommend this book if you experienced past trauma and, like me, utilized the effective tool of freezing, also known as dissociation).
Recognize what is happening;
Allow the experience to be there, just as it is;
Investigate with interest and kindness;
Natural loving awareness (non-identification), with self-compassion.
These are deep practices that I’m not going to outline or explore here but I do want to emphasize the importance of acceptance – allowing the experience to be, just as it is. We are accepting all that we find, all that we feel, all that we are. Don’t worry, acceptance is not resignation. It is an opening that allows us to bloom. It allows those innate traits of the IP to flow freely in us.
From you all things emerge
Let’s go back and recall how this whole thing started.
She looked into the curved mirror of black space and saw by her own light her radiant reflection, and fell in love with it. She drew it forth by the power that was in Her and made love to Herself. Their ecstasy burst forth in the single song of all that is, was, or ever shall be, and with the song came motion, waves that poured outward and became all the spheres and circles of the worlds. The Goddess became filled with love, swollen with love, and She gave birth to a rain of bright spirits that filled the worlds and became all beings.
All beings, that’s us – you and me – all that we are, all that we feel, all that we ever will be, think or do, are not just part of her …. They Are Her. We are her. She is us. God is self, Self is god. All of it, all of us, birthed into the world through love. The black space and the radiant light. Ecstasy and separation. My pain is her pain. Her joy my joy. There is nothing in me that is not of the gods. Nothing wrong, nothing broken, nothing shameful. Nor was there ever anything wrong with our experience, our reaction, our response. All experiences, all emotions – the joy, sadness, fear, anger, longing – all of it is divine. There is a tricky catch here, because placing value on any one emotion over another will inevitably lead us to self-judgement, or even a type of spiritual bypassing. Naming one this or that is just a story.
There is an invitation to go deeper here. These emotional impressions arise within us, or are imprinted, due to past experiences. My fear of judgement and reprisal was laid down on top of my sense of self, and this experience left me with emotional impressions that produce fear, doubt and mistrust. As I explore, especially within my own body, I can discover the stories I use to protect me from the pain and sadness of feeling judged, recall or find my self buried there, and embrace who I am without self-judgement, radically accepting all that I am, all that I feel, all that I have experienced, knowing the story is not me. If this is hard, use RAIN. The steps of RAIN help us maintain openness and clarity, so we can see that our stories aren’t us – even the “good” ones (be careful here because stories are tricksy). Labeling one story good (I’m smart, I’m capable, I’m determined) and another bad (I’m sad, I’m no good at this, I never get it right) has the same impact as labeling emotions. Not all the stories the mind creates to keep us safe from the deep feelings are “bad” stories, but all the stories impact us the same way. Believing the story keeps us identified with it, and hinders the integration process.
There are also physiological causes of pain and sadness, such as experiencing chemical depression or seasonal affective disorder (I experienced SAD while living in Ireland), or physical illness. I felt grief and fear when parts of my body became paralyzed in 2015. There was nothing wrong with my body because I experienced an illness (that’s a story), it didn’t mean I was bad or had done something wrong (another story), and there was nothing amiss in feeling the naturally arising emotions associated with my experience (more story making possible). It just was. The human possesses a wide spectrum of emotional capacities that are inherent (i.e., divine). There is also nothing better about feeling healthy or happy – it’s just another story. (I know, I know, but when we place a value on health over pain we risk self-judgement when we don’t feel healthy all the time – and how in the world could we.) Acceptance is not resignation. It is an opening to bring clear and kind attention to our capacities, our experience, without giving fear based stories the power to shut down our lives.
from you all things emerge
Spiritual growth is not about feeling happy or overcoming deficits (that thinking arises from a morality system not part of Faery). Personal growth is not about achieving all my dreams. These are all just stories. Natural growth is a process of unfurling and it includes eventual death and decay. Radical acceptance of all that I am, all the world is, all that She is without judgement allows me to be fully human, and being fully, freely human is growth. Faery is rich in this world view. In Faery we know that all things, experiences and beings emerge from Her, and to her they will all return – are continually emerging and returning.
Am I saying we should just accept all the horrible things happening in the world? To never strive to be better?
Yea, kind of. Striving is different than open engagement with the things I’m passionate about, it’s different than investigating with love those tender parts of my self that react out of pain, it’s different than remaining curious about myself and the universe I am part of. Acceptance also means opening to my natural outpouring of compassion and love for a hurting world. It means staying open, not closing myself off. Accepting and loving my experience of paralysis and recovery means opening to my curiosity about my own body and my relationship with it and the world around it. These may or may not change my physiology, but they do open me to life. The Life I am living right now.
Be gentle with yourself. We’re all in this together.

*There are experiences of the IP that are vibrational, and more subtle, but that gets into an esoteric discussion not appropriate here.