This is Not an HSA Blog

This is NOT an HSA blog.

This is the (occasionally drunken) ranting of a satyr magician.  This is the place where I tell stories about shennanigans I’ve been up to.  This is the place where I share the results of my experiments, both magical … and occasionally social.

Now, with that said, you’re probably going to hearling about the HSA a lot.  The Heartland Spiritual Alliance takes up more of my time and energy than anything but my novels.  My work for the HSA overlaps significantly with my spiritual and magical practices.  And I have … thoughs on Pagan leadership and Pagan culture.  So my work with the Sacred Experience Committee and Board of Directors is going to come up.  But from this platform, I am NEVER speaking in an official capacity.

I feel the need to say this, explicitly and in writing, for three reasons.  Firsly, three of my last six posts have been related, at least tangentially, to my work in the HSA.  Secondly, in speaking privately with other current and former HSA staff members, some have felt that their words are always heard in an official capacity.  Thirdly and finally, we hope to have an official HSA blog up in the relatively near future, and I want to be 100% clear with the world that this is not it.

The Journey Through The Obsidian Dream is, always has been, and always will be my personal soapbox and public journal.  The opinions expressed here are my own, and soley my own, and subject to change as I grow and learn.  They have, in fact, changed before, and will change again.

 

Ancestors for the Alienated: First Contact

At last Thursday’s Spirit Circle, Shauna Aura Knight’s Full Moon included an invocation of the Ancestors and the Descendants – either literal or figurative.

As I mentioned fairly recently, I’m SUPER UNCOMFORTABLE with the notion of ancestor work because, as a white person, there is no clear differentiation between my biological ancestors and White Supremecy.  The descendants part was more uncomfortable for reasons that ar much more personal as a child-free individual who may or may not ever take students or produce work whose influence might be equivilent.

But one of the things about rituals led by other peope is that they sometimes go places you weren’t 100% prepared for.

In this case, at least, I was about 50% prepared.  I didn’t expect it to come up in the moment, but I had names to call.  In that moment, two particular names came to mind.

I called out to Aleister Crowley and Pamela Coleman Smith as my occult progenetors.  My mental image was, in case it’s relevant, drawn from the most common pictures available of them.

Contact with Crowley was … ephemeral.  Neither positive nor negative.  Further experimentation needed.

Smith, on the other hand, responded warmly.  Positive contact.  It was a fleeting moment.  No terms were discussed.  But the mother of the modern tarot is open to further contact.

Corn Moon Musings I: Recovery

altar-4

I’ve come at it sideways from more angles than I can count, and have probably even said it outright once or twice before, but: I have been struggling.  Since I closed down the Sunrise Temple and moved back to Kansas City and began backing my way out of the rigorous but ultimately toxic-to-me ceremonial pracctice I had there, I have been wounded and flailing and desperate to refind my path.  Without the rejuvination of ecstacy, the majority of my magical work was dedicated toward material prosperity, and it was exhausting.

Moreover, culminating in March, I enchanted myself out of a job.

And, it’s worth noting, into a new one — one which pays only half as much, but has left me with the time and energy to puruse my writing more seriously than I have done since the first months back from Indiana.  And the time to promote my photography, if not the money to pursue it.

But the ice-bath of sudden and unexpected unemployement left me shocked and twitching   Combined with some structural issues with my house, and some mental health issues …. well, I’ve been limping from one crisis to the next, barely keeping up.

Last Thursday, though, as one of my many duties with the Sacred Experience Committee, I hosted and participated in a chant workshop and Full Moon Ritual led by Shauna Aura Knight here in Kansas City.  An hour and a half of light trance followed by an hour long group ritual of singing ecstacy, with someone else doing the heavy lifting so that I could have my own experience.  The ritual’s central conceits were seeking healing in the Sacred Well beneath the World Tree, and then descending further into the underworld to find and recclaim our power.  Despite the public forum, I was able to go deeper and clearer than I have in months.

I was brought to cliff where my astral temple used to stand — shattered and burned more than a year ago now (have I ever told that story?).  I called the Well up to the center of where my temple used to be, and the Well moved the landscape to suit its purposes, drawing the cliff face down into the earth so that what had once been a mighty bastion of stone overlooking the astral sea now stood only as a low wall against a high tide.  The borders of the realm collapsed, or perhaps moved outward beyond my sight.

I submurged myself in the waters of the Sacred Well, let them fill me and wash over me and run through me.

The next two days were a hard crash.  Friday I was hung over like I’d been on a whiskey bender, not participating in a ritual.  I was sick to my stomach, weak and light headed.  Saturday I was hit hard by depression and anxiety.  I felt useless and alone.

Yesterday, though, despite getting up early to help with some heavy lifting, I felt increasingly myself throughout the day.  Private, custom jewelry commisions started falling into place: I expect at least two down payments within the week.  I meditated last night without having a panic attack.  As I examine my aura, now, I find I am more stable, more full, than I have been in months.  There’s a …. spot on my back that may need help from a more practiced healer than I, but it may also sort itself out if I can re-establish a daily practice.

For the first time since coming back to Kansas City, in general, and since losing my old job in March, in particular, I feel genuinely ready to face the world.  There are enough irons in my fire that it is time to stoke the forge, and to begin striking as the irons grow hot.

The lesson, here, is threefold:

  1. Yes, sometimes you fuck  yourself up doing magic.   Particularly when you are getting results.
  2. More magic can be the solution.
  3. Even knowledgable, practiced witches, sorcerers, and magicians benefit from letting others take the helm.  Speaking for myself: I believe that I need a great deal more of that right now.

Hymn to Baphomet

baphomet

A new hymn for a god/dess of witches, sorcerers, and madmen.

 

Hymn to Baphomet

Io Baphometos!

 

Strange god!  Gnostic god!

Creator and destroyer!

Friend to the alienated,

lover and beloved

of artists and magicians!

 

You who reconcile false dichotomies:

mortal and divine; man and woman;

human and animal; of the Earth and of the Air.

You are of the Dark Moon and the Light.

Solve et coagvla.

 

You are the Sabbatic goat!

Winged, and crowned in horn and flame,

sacred hermaphrodite;

Thyrsus and caduceus, thy tumescence.

You are the Mysteries made flesh.

 

O you Hidden One!

You are ancient yet unfinished!

You are many formed, many natured!

Panphage pangenitor!

You are All-Father, All-Mother, All-Lover!

 

Io Baphometos!

All hail Baphomet!

Ego Trip

Sometimes it is nescessary to remind ourselves of our cosmic insignificance.  At other times, it is nessecary to remind ourselves and those around us of who we are, what we’ve done, and what we are capable of.

The following is a personal meditation.  Perhaps others might find value in making one of their own.

Ego Trip

I am the Satyr Magician.

I am an explorer of four worlds,

charging wildly into madness,

with a machete in one hand

and a jug of wine in the other.

 

I have lain with the Heart Encircled by A Serpent.

I have been seduced by both the Moon and the Sun.

I have seen visions of the Cosmos and of Elder Ages.

I am an initiate of the Seven Spheres

and of the Underworld and the Four Realms.

 

 

I have battled ghosts and Shadows.

I have been adopted and abandoned both by familiar spirits.

I have been assaulted by Guides and rejected by my ancestors.

My flesh has been home to goddesses and demons.

I have crafted new life from fragments of my soul.

 

I have survived every enemy that has arisen before me.

I have been both lover and beloved,

and I have survived those endings, as well.

I have built myself up from raw earth

only to burn myself down again for fun.

 

I am the product of both my experiences

and my ambitions.

I am the Obsidian Dream.

I am Teiresias of Dionysos.