Playing in the Circle

This is a story about play, which is ultimately about mastering the hidden arts of summoning angels and demons. But first, it is a story about stillness and movement, silence and self-expression. If you’re really paying attention, you’ll notice this dichotomy is always present in our bodies as we navigate shared space.

At a recent circling event put on by The Container, the tension between these two poles kept rising to the surface. It revealed hidden connections, hidden conflicts. It helped us investigate shame and anger and defensiveness. So, in that way, it served as very sacred medicine.

One of the purest ways it showed itself was through the impulse to play. But as is so often the case in adults, this impulse was forced to sit and rattle the bars of a cage.

I want to play, but I don’t know how.

It Has to Start Somewhere

Where in us do we find the power to move, to break the stillness?

When we do manage to, it unleashes so much energy in the space. A single person’s flash of creativity or daring or simple noise can be enough to open the door for others. It unlocks that cage and allows our impulse to stretch its legs and join the others. (This is important: your play can free others to join in on the fun themselves.)

But then, once we’re going, we enter into a new phase of the work.

The circle gives us a space to watch this change come over us in slow motion. Oh yes, this can be painful. It can poke and prod the most tender reaches, our most hidden faces.

We might even ask ourselves in growing horror as we sober up from our exercise in liberation, Is it okay I just did that?

While we might assure others that of course, it’s perfectly fine to play, we also know that play can have disastrous consequences. Remember, the cat plays with the mouse.

This Is Why We Stopped in the First Place

As the domain of children and the young at heart, one might be forgiven for thinking play is a harmless endeavor.

But when we choose to explore these powers, we find ourselves in deep, deep waters. Maybe that’s why, as we grow up, we get much more serious. Not because it is “childish” to play but because we learn it’s far too risky. Best to tighten the tie. Best to put on the makeup. Best to leave the powers of imagination and free expression alone.

This, ironically, we call playing it safe.

In circling, however, we are invited to return to this dangerous artform. We can play the angry tyrant, the doting lover, the valiant warrior, the laughing crone, and anything else that passes through us as we open our expression up to the mysterious winds.

And this can be confronting to our sense of self, to our internal rules of what is appropriate, and even to fundamental ideas about how the universe works.

Really, you might be asking right now, play can upset how I view the universe?

The trickster is the most playful of mythical figures. And what is it we love and fear about those stories of coyote? Just when you think you know what’s going on, you discover you don’t.

By going slow and staying observant, the circle is the perfect place to get turned upside-down by the full impact of play in all many facets.

In the parlance of our time, we fuck around and find out.

Welcome to the Deep Magic

Here be dragons, yes. But that is precisely why we are called to use the summoning powers of magic in the emergent space of a circle.

The amount of energy that is available, the intensity of presence in the participants, and the attunement to forces seen and unseen is the stuff of magic. Occultists for millennia have tried to cultivate such a field, and circlers create it all the time.

In the circle, play creates shapes that draw things in. (What these things are, who knows?) By allowing things to rise up through us and express themselves, by allowing ourselves to be surprised by what we do next, we take part in magic at some of its highest levels.

What happens through us is not fully ours. It is something else—a merging of the beings in the circle both corporeal and not. Angels and demons join us in the room. This is a far-out fantasy land, at times, and taking it seriously (even a little) can really do a number on your ontological assumptions.

But whether you take new reality vehicles out for a spin or not, play is always a great way to do some good old fashioned inner work.

For most of us, play has been long suppressed. The reasons for this can be shown to be paper tigers. The hesitations and fears we have are often proven false. But our worries (of people judging us, of being “over the top,” of saying something too real, of hurting someone’s feelings, etc.) sometimes come true, exactly as we feared.

What then?

What do we do when our play leads to interpersonal fallout? To massive impact? If we have silenced ourselves for a long time and then burst out in a moment of freedom, how do we handle someone in the circle feeling hurt by our actions?

If we keep circling and circling and circling, this typically is all the better for our practice. After all, if we fear something could happen and it doesn’t, we might not learn anything. But if we fear something and it does happen, we find out what exactly we were so afraid of.

This is all possible as long as we’re willing to get out of our cage and play a little.

Come play with us at our next event! Here is a link to the MeetUp. And here are the details:

Playing Outside the Matrix

On a recent episode of The Container, we had Rob Kancler on to talk about “the Matrix”—that mixture of social norms, material realities, economic systems, religious beliefs, psychological wounds, political ideologies, etc. that make up what we consider “real.”

Would you like to escape the Matrix, or at the very least take a much-deserved vacation from it? Check out this episode.