August 2011 – Page 2 – Journey Through The Obsidian Dream

It’s that time again. I haven’t done (or have done, but haven’t actually spent any time with) my full moon readings since the last time I posted here.

It’s appropriate, then, that this be my first post from the new Temple: a one-bedroom apartment where the sun first rises over the state of Indiana. I moved in the night before the full moon, and performed a simple Esbat and house blessing (which I will write about later), and did my monthly reading.

HOUSE	CARD	GENERAL MEANING	SPECIFIC MEANING
1^st – Self, Viewpoint	Ace of Swords	New beginnings, esp. ideas. Thirst for knowledge. Opportunity and clear decisions.
2^nd – Finances, Income	3 Swords	Heartbreak, disappointment, bad news, miscalculation.	Miscalculation, threat of loss.
3^rd – Daily Experiences immediate influences	Knight of Cups	Tender, romantic man; seducer and charmer. Expression of feelings.	Incidentally, the card who rules my birthday.
4^th – Home-place family, land, roots	XXI the World	Completion, joy of living. Being in the right place at the right time. Fulfillment and reconciliation. Warns against thinking one has reached the goal.
5^th – Fun / Pleasure children, hobbies,	Ace of Cups	New beginnings, esp. emotions & relationships. Bliss and opportunity.
6^th – Work illness, duty, routine	3 Disks	Taking concrete steps; translating ideas into reality. Slow process.	Stabilizing what one has achieved; turning projects into reality. The semester is starting in a week. I think the meaning here is pretty clear.
7^th – Partnership associations, spouse	8 Disks	Cautious new beginning. Moderation. Care and patience. Encourages letting time do the work for you.
8^th – Taboo / Crisis sex, death, taxes, loans	XX Judgment	Transformation and new beginnings. Hope and self-discovery. Spiritual development. Career progress.
9^th – Higher Perception journey, movement	3 Cups	Partnership, fulfillment, joy, exchange and rich harvest.	Gratitude.
10^th – Recognition career, ambition, status	XVI the Tower	Collapse, catastrophe, and new beginnings. Upheaval. Breakthrough. Liberation. Fate.	Radical change. A tour de force.
11^th – Friendships groups, social activities	4 Wands	Stability, order, and harmony. The Wheel of Fortune in miniature. Partnership and completion.
12^th – Secrets & Fears hopes, ambitions	Queen of Swords	Wealth of ideas, presence of mind, quick-witted. Independent. A person (particularly a woman) who exhibits these characteristics.	Of course I want to be the Queen of Swords. Or meet her. And of course I’m scared of her – you think I’m stupid or something?
+2 – Current Position / Outside Influences	7 Wands	Doing battle from the higher ground. Risking a single-handed effort. Growing beyond one’s limits. Taking a risk or hard assignment.
+2 – Current Position / Outside Influences	4 Swords	Peace. Rest. Stasis. Calm before the storm. Building one’s strength.
Underlying Theme	Queen of Disks	Fertility, sense of security, sensuality, serenity, endurance. Dedication to the task with endurance and patience
THEMES
Me / You – 1^st, 7^th	Ace of Swords		I really have no idea where this is going. “Focus on your self and let time take care of the rest”?
Me / You – 1^st, 7^th	8 Disks
From Where To Where – 4^th, 10^th	XXI the World		Neither of these cards come as a surprise this month. I just finished disassembling one life and must now begin building a new one.
From Where To Where – 4^th, 10^th	XVI the Tower
Fire – 1^st, 5^th, 9^th	Ace of Swords		Two aces – air and water. Another water card – the highly auspicious 3. But there are no fire cards in my fire trine. My passion is a hurricane, not a firestorm.
	Ace of Cups
	3 of Cups
Earth – 2^nd, 6^th, 10^th	3 Swords	Heartbreak, failure.	My material world has come apart and must be put back together. Nothing I didn’t already know.
	3 Disks	Craft and process.
	XVI the Tower	The shiny red reset button.
Air – 3^rd, 7^th, 11^th	Knight of Cups	Feelings and their expression.	My mind is going to be on everything but my mind this month. That’s something I’m going to have to be careful of.
	8 Disks	Patience and meticulous process.
	4 Wands	Completion and stability.
Water – 4^th, 8^th, 12^th	XXI the World		Again the major arcana speaking of completion and reconstruction. And again with the air-water connection.
	XX Judgment
	Queen of Swords	Discernment, brilliance

There haven’t been many surprises in this reading – well, except 8D, which might refer to my transforming relationship with Aradia (who has not moved to Sunrise, IN with me) or might refer to something new coming along much sooner than I would have expected or wanted.

There are only three major arcana cards in my reading, but they’re all doozies: XXI, XX, and XVI. I have pressed the shiny red reset button on my life.

Given the amount of upheaval in my life, it’s no surprise that my elements are out of balance. My air and water are cross wired – QS in my water trine, KnC in my air ; the AS and AC in my fire – and I have no wands except for the 4 in my air. I’m going to have to work very hard to keep from getting completely out of balance.

I started this blog under my real name. It seemed like the thing to do at the time. In November of 09 I hadn’t quite made the decision to become a professional academic, let alone begun to process everything I was going to need to do to achieve that end. I was going to school, yes, but … I still thought of myself more as a jeweler than anything else. As a jeweler, practicing magic in a city where I have an established base of power, I have nothing to hide.

But now I’m moving, and I have academic politics to think about. The people where I’m going don’t know me, and I don’t know them. And when I finish my Bachelor’s degree, I’ll be moving on to another school where I’ll have to rebuild my reputation from the ground up again. (And, of course, there’s the whole angle where I might just join the war.) Having this come up when you search my real name might be inadvisable.

My career as an occult author is, at best, years off. Until then it seems prudent to adopt a pen name. I will not name the school I am attending, or the town I live in – though anyone willing to websearch the details I do give will no doubt be able to put two and two together. I don’t need a secret identity … just plausible deniability. As such, I would ask friends who know me in the real world to post comments here on the blog, rather than on my facebook – as an added bonus, our resulting conversations will be better preserved for posterity.

Allow me, then, to reintroduce myself: I am Satyr Magos. I have been studying witchcraft since 1993 and practicing since 1996. I am deeply eclectic – the kind who can lecture you for hours on the schools of thought I’ve studied to get to where I am. Although I do not think of myself as Wiccan, many of my rituals are based in that framework. At the moment, I would describe my practice as Helenistic neo-Wiccan shamanic witchcraft. I am, for the moment, the one and only Initiate of the Obsidian Dream.

For the first two-thirds of my life, I was an angry agnostic and my magic was largely theoretical – personal shields and house wards and tarot and playing magical tag. In 2007, shortly before my life in St. Louis failed utterly, I began making offerings to Dionisos, Hephaestos, and Apollon. The first two took me in readily; Rhea informed me of her presence in 2009. I am still negotiating with Apollo – and now with Athena and Hermes, as I more seriously devote myself to school.

At the same time I began working with gods, I also began to study shamanic techniques: a friend of mine took me on my first journey to the underworld. I read Penczak’s Shamanic Temple … but it was Michael Harner’s Way of the Shaman that actually got me somewhere.

I put off studying ceremonial and Chaos magic for most of my life. There was too much penis-waving and too many invocations of a god I don’t trust in the former; the second, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, gave me flashbacks to playing D&D in high school with that older friend who never moved out of his parents basement. I am dedicating the next year of my magical life to filling those holes in my magical education. In the process I aim to develop a daily practice, and master the skills needed to aid other witches with their spells, potions, and rites of passage.

Welcome, again, to my blog. When I started it, I never imagined that I would have over a hundred pageviews in a month. Thank you all for coming.

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