First off, I want to say hello and thank you to all the new people stopping by the blog lately. The blog’s public followers have almost doubled in the last week, and a crazy number of people have added me on Google+. Thank you all for reading. Seriously. It fills me with a decidedly un-satyr-like sort of joy to have you here.
Second, a ritual shared with me by Aradia and being passed on to another friend who is likewise in need of some magical self-care. I’m putting together a packet of such self-care rituals and meditations for that friend, and I’ll be posting some of the other exercises here over the next several days—many oldies but goodies that have been in my Book of Shadows for years, others contributions from various friends, and some inevitable overlap between the two categories. Nothing too heavy-duty—that would defeat the purpose—but hopefully helpful.
Finally, a post by one Soror A.I.D., detailing some energy work she’s been experimenting with. The post is from April, so I don’t know if she’s made any further progress with this experiment, but it reminds me a lot of the magic-games I used to play back in the day.
I remember learning how to shield in highschool by visualizing myself in heavy anime-style plate armor. I remember trying to meditate one day, and being unable to reach a real trance until I’d peeled off some seven layers of accumulated shielding. I remember learning how to move and generate magical energy, after many fits and starts by holding a magnet toy in my hands and feeling the changes it made in my aura.
I remember learning how to shield effectively, without cutting off the world around me, by figuring out how to deflect the probes my coffee-house friends would push at each-other—worm-like tendrils and bright orbs and sharp splinters of will—and learning how to pierce shields in the same fashion. I remember learning to play “catch” with those same bright orbs, to decode and reproduce energy signatures as part of complex but meaningless games. I remember the blades of power I made, and all the good they never did me except to scare a few people who knew even less than I did.
I remember shaping and transforming energy—earth to air, light to dark, hot to cold—all day and every day, just because I could. I remember weaving it into complex shapes for no other reason than that I could, and maybe to see what would happen.
Is it any wonder I blew a gasket?
In the years since, I’ve done relatively little of that sort of things. Some games of “tag” with the proto-coven and Aradia. Innovations in circle-casting and house-wards. Some experiments in magical healing. Oh, and that whole weird thing with Tsu.
I need to get back to it. I need to find my old journals and re-read them for inspiration. I need to re-read Maya Heath’s Energies which is the only book I’ve read that talked about that sort of thing even a little bit. And I need to find more bloggers who aren’t afraid to talk about the kinds of magic that sound like a fucking fantasy novel. What could I do with those old techniques now that I know how much more is possible? What could I learn about myself and the world and magic?