Excepting the Valentines’ Day Full Moon, when I was laid low with the literal flu and a fever of 104, I have performed the Stele of Jeu the Heiroglyphist (or one of my experimental variants) at least twice at every Full and Dark Moon Esbat this semester. It has, to my own surprise, become the centerpiece of my magical practice over the last few years. The results of the ritual, however, have been in no way consistent.
I have written about the ritual before–perhaps more than anyone on the internet except Mr. Jack Faust, who introduced me to the ritual–and I don’t want to re-tread too much ground, but there have been some interesting changes, particularly lately. In my two years of research, now, I have found about a double handful of people who mention or advocate the ritual. Only two have talked about the effects of the rite, or their personal experiences with it, and they have spoken to me mostly in private. I don’t know if this in any way resembles the experiences that others have had with the ritual.
When I first began performing the ritual, I could feel it sending shockwaves throughout my world. My web of power trembled. Cracks emerged in the foundations of my reality. I got so high on power that sometimes I could barely walk to bed at the end of the ritual.
As I became fore familiar with the ritual, the effects seemed to diminish. The earthquakes were fewer, further between, and came mostly when I was either performing the ritual at a place of power or making the most radical changes to the structure and performance. It became a sort of touchstone, a powerup, and I had to push the power out into my web. I began to use the power to help the people in my web transform their lives. Then I hit a breaking point.
In the last months, I’ve been keeping the power of the ritual to myself again. And, rather than being disruptive–rather than earthquakes and cracks–the power of the Headless One has been regenerative. The cracks in me, the cracks in my life, have been filling with that golden-white power, and they’ve been starting to close.