Tonight’s meditative act consisted of pouring the candles for my second week of devotional prayer, which will be devoted to Baphomet, god/dess of Chaos Magick and fucking queers.
My first round of candles I poured in a single stage. Research in the interim has revealed that other kinds of wax don’t take that well, but because I chose soy it worked out mostly fine. I say mostly, because I did have trouble with the bottoms of the wicks drifting to the sides of the jars. In four cases, that only resulted in scorching the glass a little; in the fifth, it resulted in the bottom of the jar blowing out.
With that in mind, I poured the wax in two stages: melting a little in my pot, pouring just a finger’s worth in the bottom of each jar, and then carefully lowering the wicks in to the center of the cooling wax. By the time I’d melted enough wax to add any substantial amount to the jars, the bottom layer had cooled and I was able to pull the wicks taut and center.
While I waited on the wax to melt, I chanted the name Baphomet incessantly and channeled as much energy as I could into the melting wax and the vessels.
As a full time artisan, it was so easy it almost felt like cheating. That’s not to say that I had no intrusive thoughts — lovers, present past and prospective; holiday drama; shit, don’t light that on fire — but the Zone, toward which all artists strive, is only a half-step from meditative trance even under the worst circumstances. I find the Zone very easily, particularly while working on magical arts.
I think, though, that it was the correct choice. Following a week-plus-one of the intense spiritual and emotional labor of prostrating myself before the god I’ve been courting off and on for the last decade … it was both soothing and cathartic to take a lower-stakes route to meditation.