One hesitates to speak of good fortune – it’s taboo. One is simultaneously afraid of being named a braggart, and of having one’s luck evaporate. Be that as it may: I have long lived a charmed life. Being in the right place at the right time is pretty much my story. I have achieved this (inasmuch as it is an achievement, rather than a blessing) through two things: listening to my instincts, and my web of influence.
Growing up in Lawrence, I walked everywhere. As a young magician (though that word implies more intention and structure than I ever had going on), I practiced magic everywhere I walked – spinning webs, lobbing energy spheres, or even just playing around with subtle trance states. Over time – years, literally – I became increasingly attuned to those places where I spent the most time. If something interesting was going on somewhere I frequented – I knew, and I would show up just in time.
This was before the days of cell phones: if you wanted to meet someone somewhere, you had to call them in advance and hope they happened to be around, or make use of a pay phone (if there was one) when you got there. My magical friends – Kat, Lyra, James … I use your real names here in the hope that you recognize these stories and contact me – rarely had to call me. They would just show up, and there I would be. Thirty minutes later, if I wasn’t waiting for them when they arrived.
I came to call this knowledge of time and place my Web, and anchored it to a number of tools that lived on my altar (my Orb, in particular, if you recall it from the Story of Tsu). When I wanted or needed something, I fed that need into the web – no ritual, no ceremony, just focus – and it usually manifested sooner rather than later. When I moved out of my parents’ house into my first apartment, I moved it with me. I moved it again and again, as I moved around Lawrence.
When I moved to St. Louis, it was a little more complicated. For one thing, the move was so frantic that I forgot to take down the house wards before I left. For another, I was homeless for the first ten weeks – it’s hard to set up a power-center while living out of your car and sleeping on your buddy’s couch. (Not saying that it can’t be done: I’m sure many of you out there are up to the task. But it was very hard for me.) When I finally got my apartment, I still had to make another three or four trips back to KC to get my things, including key components of my altar. Nor was my life in St.L ever really stable: unemployment, temp jobs, and the batshit crazy jewelers I worked for there; friendships falling apart, an ill-chosen romance, and isolation.
Still, I did my best: laying down lines of power as I searched for jobs, marking trails as I did what partying I could. As wrong as so many things went, they still went very well in many regards. I had my choice of lovers, though I can’t say I made the best choices. I never went hungry or got into any real trouble. Despite my initial successes, it took about a year before things really started moving in my favor … and by that time it was too late. Too many things had already down the shitter. That said, I got out of my lease without a problem and found a safe place to land.
Kansas City – where I landed – was a little easier: being closer to Lawrence, where too much of my energy was still invested, things didn’t have quite so far to stretch. I had an easier time getting jobs, making friends, and even started going to school. All of which made it easier to lay down roots and get more of the same. Again, though, it took about a year for things to really get rolling – for last-minute decisions and gut-felt impulses to star putting me where I needed to be; to get that feeling of “I need to be a Missie’s tonight”. It was a series of fairly wild coincidences led Aradia and I to being in the same place and time at the right moments – little, if anything, in my life has turned out quite that well.
Now that I’ve moved again, it’s time to build a new annex to my web. Hopefully, between my more sophisticated witchcraft, my more focused intention, and my larval ceremonial practice, it won’t take a whole year to get the web established. I’ve already started the process. I’m making interesting friends. Let’s see how it goes, shall we?