In light of my my recent conclusions regarding my study of ceremonial and planetary magics, it occurred to me that with the Full Moon so close (the dark and lonely hours of Wednesday night, or the dismal pre-dawn hours of Thursday morning, depending on how you experience 4am EST), this week’s Day and Hour of the Moon would be a particularly auspicious for some of Lunar Work.
So, as the hour of the Moon approached, I rebuilt my Yesod altar and ground a lunar incense of calamus, eucalyptus, and myrrh (the only Lunar herbs I happened to have around the house). Since Gustav Holst didn’t deign to write a suite for Luna or Sol, I turned to my usual Michael Harner drumming for music to guide my trance. When my circle was cast, I administered my flying potion(1) and donned my visionary mask.
I dropped into full trance almost immediately, appearing in the Garden of Malkuth. For a rarity, I found the Otherworld cast in night— it’s almost always daylight in my spiritual journeys—with a full and glowing moon overhead. I called to the moon, and rose up to meet it. Passing through the silver disk in the sky like a portal, I found myself first flying through a vibrant purple haze, which parted to reveal the rolling mists I have always heard the astral plane described as. I set myself to find the Palace of the Moon (in retrospect, this was ridiculously vague), and flew through the mists. After a while I found myself not flying, but swimming through the mist, and then through night-dark waters. I swam up to the shore of a small island, cast in shadows under another full moon and clear night sky. A temple rose in the middle of the island, open to the air and consisting of little more than nine great free-standing columns, but I walked around the island before ascending. The beach was sandy, the rise covered in greenery and large rocks and bits of fallen masonry.
When I ascended to the temple, I found two figures there: a beautiful naked man, laying still but tumescent on a slab, and a woman in pale robes standing over him. Neither moved at all, even when I approached. Like most of the other figures I have encountered when travelling UP rather than DOWN, there was a hollow, static quality about them.
So I descended the stairs and set my sights on the moon above. Strangely, I had difficulty flying. I had to conjure a wind to lean into, like I did when I first learned to fly in my dreams almost ten years ago. Finally airborne, I flew upward into the moon. This time, rather than flying through a portal, it was like a window or a door: passing through I found a new void, full of points of light linked by lines of power, but when I turned around I could see the temple and the two figures far below me, as if I were looking out of one space and into another.
When when my back was turned, I suddenly felt something tugging me, as if by a cord. I turned to look, and a vast spirit was pulling me “upwards”. In retrospect it was foolhardy, but my instinct was to trust this entity (spirit? god?)—I thought it might be the god who called to me from the sky on the the night of my Dedication(2). I don’t know if it could read my mind, or if it was just amused at the world in general, but it pulled me up to itself through a “hole” between spaces much like the one I had just passed through, then flung me further “upward” into a vast and empty void.
The second void was very much like the one from which I had just been thrown, only it felt much larger. The star-like points of light were more distant and the threads between them were gossamer-fine. No sooner did I think to myself “Whoa! I wonder if this is where the Masters of Outer Darkness(3) live?”, then I saw a shimmer in the distance, and soon a lion-headed serpent appeared. I was nervous, but “sat” cross-legged and waited for the creature to make a move. It approached, as did more of its kind, and began circling me… at which point I really wasn’t sure what I ought to do if they did prove hostile, and the same entity which had thrown me out into that deeper void in the first place pulled me back “down” in the same manner.
Back in the lesser void, I could feel a disturbance of some sort back in the waking world. Having accomplished what I’d intended—locating the Palace of the Moon and exploring the Realm of Yesod/Luna—I returned to my body.
1 A lungful of (100% legal) blue sage this evening, instead of my usual absinthe. I was suffering from the delusion that I might do more homework after my trip.
2 Which, pawing through my archives for a link, I still haven’t written about. Fuck me running.
3 Ever read Michael Harner? p. 7 of the Harper paperback 3rd Ed.