Showing all posts by Satyr Magos

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Another Year in Review

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

This year sucked.

I mean, not all of it, obviously. I’m not dead yet. Still walking and talking. I even accomplished some really amazing and important things that, in the rear view mirror, may eventually loom larger than the sucking. But for the most part, I spent this year crashing and burning after the stress and betrayals and hurts and failures of the awful year that came before.

People better known and more clever than I have been joking for months that 2018 was absolutely no less than three years long. I deeply resonate with that. Looking back at the first two thirds of this year, I can’t even say for sure what happened when because there doesn’t seem to be enough time for that much to have happened.

For that matter, the first third of this year blurs together with the last months of 2017. There was an awful lot of suck. Frankly, I don’t even know how to get into it without being accused of rumor mongering and poo-flinging, which is a large part of my radio silence over the last year and a half. The short version is that, following my departure from the HSA in November/December of 2017, I withdrew from public participation in the KC Pagan community entirely and lost a few friends along the way. I then proceeded to bleed on everyone within anime-blood-spray distance, and things only got more unpleasant from there.

Hands down, this has been the worst year for my mental health since 2004, which I spent almost exclusively hiding in the basement of The House on Shoal Lane. It even beat out Fall Semester 2012, which featured daily panic attacks and more reasons I will never trust a mental health professional. As unpleasant as it was to be around me, it was even worse to be me.

At the same time, there were some truly amazing accomplishments.

Even as other parts of my life were burning down around my ears, I spent the first three months of 2018 putting the final polish on my debut novel, getting the typesetting just right, and ultimately putting The Mark of the Wolf in print. I am now a published author. Bucket list item checked.

At some point last winter, a friend admitted to me that he was the proud owner of an under-used farrier’s forge. Over the summer, he, Kraken, and I set about teaching ourselves blacksmithing. I won’t say that we’re experts (or even very good), but I have now made three knives (mostly; I need to get a chainmail glove before I try to put an edge on them). Bucket list item checked.

(Between those two accomplishments, I have done everything that I dreamed of as a sixth-grade satyr. My childhood vision of my life is complete.)

After a year of trying and failing to get a D&D game off the ground, I launched my first 5th Edition campaign in a brand-new homebrew setting in March. The campaign is still going strong and a bunch of people I barely (if at all) knew are now my friends. While nothing compared to the preceding or following accomplishments, this is my first campaign since I stopped gaming for college in 2011, and has been one of my chief points of stability amidst the madness.

In June, the private working group Aradia and I have been hosting passed it’s one-year mark. At Samhain we came up with a motto.

At midnight New Years, as 2018 becomes 2019, I will have been with my primary partner Aradia for ten fucking years. This is an accomplishment that I did not, could not, envision as a child. Or even as an adult. Frankly, I’m struggling to wrap my head around any one putting up with me for that long even as it’s happening.

After a year long hiatus from public ritual, Aradia, Chirotus, and I submitted an application to perform a public ritual at Paganicon 2019. We were accepted, and our Classically-inspired purification ritual is currently scheduled to go just before the opening ceremony. (No pressure.)

In retrospect, regardless of how awful 2017 was, I think that a collapse this year was both inevitable and necessary. 2018 was the first year since 2011 (when I started Real Liberal Arts College in Sunrise, Indiana) that I haven’t been burning the candle at both ends. I knew since April that what I needed was isolation. It took till July or August before I got to the point where I just stopped returning messages. I should have just told (more) people that I needed to go away for a while and just done that instead of waiting until I Just Couldn’t Anymore and ghosting. I guess we’ll see in the coming months how badly those bridges are burned.

I want to end this on some clever note, maybe something upbeat. I don’t have it in me. But here we are, on the cusp of the new year. At risk of tempting fate, I’ll just take this moment to tell 2018 to fuck right off. You didn’t kill me, you fucking fuck. To the rest of you: raise a toast tonight to your own divinity, if nothing else. Raise one to the rest of us if you have it in you. I’ll see you all on the flip side.

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Life Chapter N+1

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

It is a common fallacy among writers, or so I am told, to see our own lives as a narrative arc.  I am more guilty of this than most.  I know that it is a fallacy.  I know that real life is, for better and worse, much, much stranger than fiction.  I know that mortal lives are always messier than that.  And yet … the arc of a story remains the chief frame through which I experience the world.

The last chapter of my life began when, upon graduating college, I moved back to Kansas City.  I returned to the mall jewelry store where I had spent the previous six years, off and on.  I volunteered with the organization that puts on the festival that had been the highlight of my year since 1999.  I got involved in a relationship with someone who, though the romance didn’t last, has proved one of the best friends I’ve ever had.  I buckled down and finished my first novel, and successfully ran a Kickstarter to start a publishing company to print that novel.  I started producing jewelry of my own design, mostly for myself and my closest friends, but solid work that I’m proud of.  I took up a whole new art, photography, which I grow better at each time I pick up my camera.

In December of this year, I formally resigned from all my positions and responsibilities within the festival organization.  In February, I released my novel into the world.  In March I taught one of my energy work classes at the Witches’ Meet-Up, my first class hosted outside the HSA.  All this to say, I believe that these events mark the start of a new chapter in my life.  I don’t know, precisely, what the road will look like, but it is my hope that it ends with me as a full time professional Pagan.  I’m already working in a Pagan jewelry store.  I have just released a Pagan novel.  I am building a small repertoire of workshops on magical technical skills.

In the last chapter of my life, I took on too much responsibility, too quickly, without adequately vetting the people I was working with.  In this next chapter of my life, I hope to deepen my personal practice, to deepen the relationships that survived the previous chapter, and to make more art.

Thank you everyone who’s been along for the ride.

 

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Mark of the Wolf Book Signing and Official Release Party

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

Hey, friends!  Do you live within an easy drive of the KC Metro Area?  Are you free the weekend of Sunday 2o May?  You should come to Aquarius Books and join me for the official release event for my novel!

I’ll be doing the usual book signing party things: reading a passage, taking questions, telling stories.  There will be snacks and beverages.  There will be a limited number of copies of the book available for purchase on site, but if you don’t trust your luck you can contact me directly (the preferred method) or purchase your copy from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or possibly even your local bookstore.  There will be some giveaway items, and possibly some prints of my occult art available for purchase.

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The To-Do List: Progress and Payment

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

Austin Coppock and Chris Brennan have described this era of Saturn in Capricorn as one of “credit where credit is due” and “reaping the fruits of your labors” … or, alternately, putting in the work for which you will ultimately be paid.  This has certainly been true of my experience so far.

In the second week of December, I found some hidden reserve of motivation and kicked everything in to high gear.  I did a photoshoot with a friend, trading modelling time for a custom pendant for a stone she had just acquired.  I made so much jewelry for Christmas presents it’s not even funny.  I found the strength to formally sever my ties with the HSA, following debacles that I may or may not yet discuss.

In the first weeks of January, I set myself to re-mastering lapidary stonecutting, producing the first several pieces in a series of labradorite cabochons set in sterling silver.  At the same time, I also redoubled my efforts to finish editing and printing my debut novel, The Mark of the Wolf.  By the end of January, I had finished the wax for the art-trade pendant and had ordered the print proofs for the novel.

In February, I made the final edits to The Mark of the Wolf and began shipping my Kickstarter backers their rewards.  I’m still working on that, but every little bit is a weight off of my shoulders.  I paid my debt to Bune, who helped boost my income over the last three months.  I have cast and finished and delivered the pendant for my friend who modelled for me, and can now with clear conscience begin sharing the images we made.  At the same time, I cast up a beautiful amber pendant that I’ve been wanting to make since I got that lot of raw black amber back in, what, October?  I’ve even gotten that D&D game off the ground, the one I’ve been trying to recruit players for literally a year.

Today is the first of March.  Last night I submitted my paperback for mass distribution.  Tonight I’ll do the same for the hardback edition of The Mark of the Wolf.  Then I’ll just have the rest of my kickstarter rewards to ship out, and I’ll be able to fully commit myself to promoting the novel and finishing the sequel, already in progress.

My goal for 2018 is to clear my plate of as many existing projects as possible.  To pay my debts and free up my mind so that I can pursue my larger goals with greater fervor and fewer distractions.  Highlights of the remaining to-do list include:

  • Finish delivering my Kickstarter rewards.
  • Hammer down a first draft of The Rise of the Necromancer, sequel to Mark of the Wolf.
  • Go back over my occult-themed photoshoots and put together a coherent collection.
  • Design a graduation ring for a friend from college about to get her masters.
  • Design an engagement ring for a different college friend about to get married.
  • Finish re/processing my photography from the pre-Lighroom era.
In witchcraft

Credit Where Credit is Due: Good Guy Bune Delivers

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

Back in September I performed my first conjuration of a demon from the Lesser Keys of Solomon.  Specifically, I conjured Bune using the ritual in Jason Miller’s Sorcerer’s Secrets.  I offered public praise and a copper seal in exchange for a boost to my monthly income from passive online sources.

September and October saw no action on that front.  I was initially I was concerned — my agreement hadn’t included a formal end or escape clause.  And there was the strange scene where Bune showed up and told me to get out of his way and let him work.

November, December, and January, however, have delivered.  Although Bune wasn’t able to do much through my passive sources — a small KDP boost — I did see a marked increase in real work coming in, both from the dayjob and side projects.  I’ve already sold five copies of the novel I put out at the beginning of the month, and I haven’t even promoted it much because I’m still delivering Kickstarter rewards.

I didn’t get quite the amount I asked for, but in retrospect a 50% boost in my income may have been just too much.  So I have paid Bune his copper seal, and here I offer public praise.

My wealth has increased thanks to Bune!  All hail!

On a related note, hit me up for Bune talismans in copper or silver.

In art

Announcing the Mark of the Wolf (Book of Secrets Vol. I)

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

 

When Margaret is attacked by what she believes to be a werewolf, her life is turned upside down. Confused and afraid, the only people she feels safe going to for help are the strange goth kids that everyone says are witches.

Dominic and Aaron are Pagans, not fools, and smell a trap. But Jacob insists they take her seriously. When they agree to help her, they – and all their friends – are swiftly drawn into a larger world of monsters and magic more dangerous than they had ever suspected was real.

This is the 90s nostalgia novel every queer and witchy horror fan as been waiting for.

After ten years of drafting and three years of editing, my debut novel is finally here.  The kindle edition is already out, and the paperback is coming very soon (shortly after the final print proof arrives on my doorstep, actually).  I’m diligently working on getting all the preorders out to my kickstarter backers.

The book (and the series to follow) and the world in which it is set are what I hope you will agree are an artful blend of genre tropes, folklore, the Western Mystery Tradition, and thematic innovation.  I think you, my readers and fellow occult nerds, will find it particularly interesting.  The characters will be painfully familiar to anyone who was practicing Witchcraft in the Midwest in the late 1990s.  The setting will be hilariously familiar to anyone who has spent any amount of time in Lawrence, KS.  And the story, I think, will be excitingly fresh to anyone who has spent any amount of time in the urban fantasy and occult horror genres.

In art, hedonism, witchcraft

Proof of Life

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

I am not dead.

I have not quit.  Well, not quit this, at any rate.

I apologize for my absence.  There have been shenanigans.  There has also been a great deal of artistic productivity.  I’ll be talking about the latter a lot.  It’s good stuff, y’all.  I’ll only be talking about the former a little, and that probably more than I should.

There’s also been a bit of magic, and I’m going to be talking about that almost as much as the art.  It’s been exciting and, wow, y’all, have I got some stories to tell.

 

In witchcraft

Meditative Acts: Day 10: Baphomet 1

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

Tonight’s meditations opened up the second phase of my meditative acts: devotional ritual and prayer to the distinctly post-modern god/dess Baphomet.  If linear time were a thing, we would say that the god Baphomet began as an accusation whispered against the Templars — possibly a French bastardization of “Mohammed”.  The goat-headed androgyne we recognize today was first attested by Eliphas Levi.  (See Wikipedia for the short version; enjoy your conspiracy-greased rabbit hole of choice thereafter.)  Levi was, in fact, my first encounter with Baphomet — Doctrine and Ritual of Trancendental Magic was one of the first magical books I ever bought — but, like much of the world, my relationship with the god owes more to Peter Carroll’s “Mass of Chaos B”, as presented in Liber Null & Psychonaut.

I built the altar slowly over the course of the day, but I inevitably found myself fussing with it throughout the evening’s meditations, trying to attune it so as to best please the god.

As I had planned from the outset, I opened my week devoted to Baphomet by returning to Carroll’s “Mass…”  The effects were, in some ways, less spectacular than the last times I performed the rite.  At the same time, I think my magickal voltmeter might be calibrated somewhat differently since then, and I now have an established relationship with the god, making a dramatic reveal on zir part somewhat unnecessary.  The rite completed, I lit my candle and sat to listen.

Four things stood out.

Firstly, Baphomet’s presence in the room was far more immanent than that of Dionysos.  Not that the god was closer, per se, but perhaps that zie had less distance to travel?

Secondly, I was informed that tomorrow night’s meditation is to be a return (again) to DDRH’s Baphomet Ritual.

Thirdly, I as I was meditating I became acutely aware of the attention of the other magical masks hanging in my altar room.  I’m really really not sure what to do with that.  Hopefully clarity will come with time?

Finally, sitting still for that lone is getting much easier very quickly.  So, something of a victory there.

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Meditative Acts Day 9 — Interlude 1 : Candlemaking 2

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

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.

In witchcraft

Do Magick Challenge: Meditative Acts Day 8: Dionysos 8

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

Last night I completed the first week of the December Do Magick Challenge.  In doing so, I completed a week of prayer to and meditation with the god Dionysos.  I have poured wine, drank wine, burned frankincense, and offered long-burning votive candles.  I have read Homeric hymns, Orphic hymns, modern hymns.  I have played music, and I have sat in silence.  I have felt both the presence and the absence of the god.  I have been numb, and I have been reamed out, and I have been brought to outbursts of both tears and laughter.

I have been so overwhelmed by the Christmas Holiday that I lost count of the days and doubled up on the fifth without realizing it.  So today was my eighth day of Dionysos.  But I think I needed it.

The intensity of the experience built quickly, with each of the first four days being much more intense than the last.  The next three days were less and less intense, but more and more lucid.  So much so (on both counts) that I found myself doubting the experiences, as they were, in many ways, too much what I hoped for an expected.  Tonight was the natural culmination of that arc, with the god saying clearly what it is that he wants and expects from me.

There are so many bits and pieces.  So many stories I could tell if only I had the words.

On a somewhat technical note, I have determined that, of the hymns I’ve found so far, the ones that move me best are the Orphic Hymns as translated by Apostolos N. Athanassakis.  In particular, I adore hymns 30. To Dionysos, 42. To Mise, and 45. To Dionysos Bassareus and Triennial.  Together, these three hymns invite the god to show up in his/her two mixed-gender incarnations, attend the initiates, and bring the party.

Probably the most interesting to people who are not me is Dionysus’ claim to the patronage of all the arts I pursue, not just the “theatre” of my storytelling.  I have always looked to Hephaestos as the patron of my jewelry arts, so this gave me a bit of pause; the ever estimable Jack Faust pointed me toward the Kabeiroi, sons of Hephaestos who were both master craftsmen and Bacchic revelers, as an intercessory force in that regard.  The notion of Dionysiac photography is more interesting still — very much the exploration of myth, ritual, and identity that I aspire to pursue.

Less interesting, but more personally relevant, is the question of my relationship with the god.  As someone who has very little personal background in worship, but a great deal of background in sorcery, I have often been at a loss for what the god might want from me in return for his blessings.  The last two nights the answer to that has been a vague but (in theory) reassuring “what you’re doing is great.”  Anyone who’s ever had a boss knows that’s not a phrase you can trust.  Tonight, though, the image was made more clear.  My role in this relationship is simply to worship … to drink wine, and make art, and make wine, and laugh and love and dance in his name.  Dionysus does not want or need me to be a priest or a temple-keeper or an evangelist or even a satyr.  I am a Maenad.  I don the mantle.  I perform the rites.  I live and laugh and drink and dance and fuck for Dionysus.  And when he moves on, I go back to my life until he returns.  That is to say, he is content with our relationship as it stands, and to maybe dial it up a notch or two.

I also got an interesting sense of approval that I will be moving on from Dionysos to Baphomet.  They share currents, it seems.