“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart”
-Rainer Maria Rilke
I picked up a small published version of “Letters To a Young Poet”, a tiny blue book filled with notes from an older Rainer Maria Rilke to a younger poet and cadet, from a university library while starting my degree program in Spiritual Mental Health Counseling. I don’t particularly remember why I picked it up: perhaps my husband did so for me, as he was much better read and educated than I was, and often knew what would keep me interested. Actually, now that I think more on it, I believe I had tracked it down in the process of a dream-ritual-hacking-program I was trying to initiate, that had lead me from Neptune to Orpheus, and then seeing that Rilke had written several odes to Orpheus, and finally landing on Letters To a Young Poet, as well as other, more obviously mystical texts he produced during his lifetime as a prodigious writer.
For a brief background on the text to the uninitiated: Letters was actually organized and published by Franz Xaver Kappus, to whom all the letters were addressed, and in response to. When Kappus was a 19 year old cadet at an Austrian military school, he had many questions about his life, and which direction he should lead it, and he ended up addressing them to Rilke. Rilke had attended the same academy when he was younger (and some introductory accounts and forwards to this collection, depending on the publication, entail former teacher describing him as a fragile, inward facing mystical boy trapped in an aggressive, testosterone world). The two traded correspondences between 1902 and 1908, and were put together into one text by Kappus three years after Rilke passed on, in 1929.
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Many times throughout history, folks from all walks of life have cited the old saying “You learn just as much your students when you teach.” Helping others find their way can open up new doors for us in our practice as much as burying our nose in a book to search out artifact knowledge. My own personal practice has lead me to use Letters as a sort of grimoire (even though it was made under no such intention) or guidebook in contacting my higher self. Contacting the part of me that knows what I want, is content with what I have, and more importantly, knows the path to get to the intersection of those two feelings.
Whenever I am at a loss, I pick it up, and flip to one of the passages inside. It isn’t really meant to be read cover to cover like a novel, instead it seems more useful as a sort of bibliomancy. When I am reading passages from it, I am of two minds: am I reading Rilke’s words in my own voice, giving advice to myself? Or am I receiving the advice and suggestions he has for me as if it is in response to my own questions and bewilderments? The lack of inclusion of Kappus’ notes leaves plenty of room for interpretation, and for the insertion and evoking of our own hopes, desires, and worries. Rilke’s poetic writing (even in day to day letters), also leaves lots of room through metaphor for elaboration and divination. Every paragraph he weaves is like a tarot card, with lots of images to deconstruct. There is a lot to learn here, but the best part, is that sometimes the most important pieces of epiphany we can gain from these pages are words we already know, but haven’t leased into our bodies yet. By Invoking the spirit and energies of what Rilke was trying to get across, we can Evoke those qualities within ourselves, and then teach ourselves what to do. Because more often than not, we already have an idea of what we are trying to accomplish, and how to get there. We just need someone to tell us, to give us permission. The great thing about magick, is having the ability to grant that permission, ourselves.
Ruune is a genderqueer composer and village witch currently hosting online talks titled “Divination as a Tool In Ritual Construction” and “Worldbuilding as a Tool in Chaos Magick”. Find out more HERE.
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