Showing all posts by Satyr Magos

Aradia and I celebrated Beltane this year with a brief but much-needed retreat to Camp Gaea at the beginning of last week.  Our ritual was small and private: the ritual burning of the leftovers of our magical practice since Samhain — sigil sketches, expired maeteria, and the like — and the detritus of the job I was let go from at the beginning of the year.  There was a great deal more of the latter than the former — despite the planetary witchcraft experiment, which has yielded largely negative results, the majority of our magical energy over the last year has gone toward the coming festival — and I believe that I got a great deal more out of our ritual than she.

That night and in the morning, I was struck by an epiphany of sorts.   It came to me in the form of one of the first lines I wrote for the Earth Ritual, with which we  will open HPF 2016: “We are of the Earth, upon earth, and, in the end, below the Earth.”

Two nights later, when I performed the Stele of Jeu for the Dark Moon — my first return to that ritual in many months — the power came, as usual, but to little effect.  Previously, when I have performed the Headless Rite, the power has rushed out into my Kingdom, opening fissures in the landscape of my life even as it filled others.  This time, however, it merely rippled out over a smooth plane, affecting nothing except perhaps to burnish the already polished surface.

For three solid years in the Sunrise Temple, and more haphazardly since coming back to Kansas City, I devoted myself to courting the spirits of the Upper Worlds — spirits of the stars and planets, of the Heavens Above.  When I tried to bring my practice back to the home-place of Witchcraft, I tried to do it incrementally.  My first forays back into witchcraft merely changed the means by which I sought those starry powers, re-callibrating my rites into things that would make sense to witches who, eclectic though they may be, had never dabbled in the Legemeton or the Golden Dawn.  I didn’t want to just abandon all that I had learned.  I wanted to, somehow, bring back the wisdom and the power I had learned among the stars.

This, I believe now, was precisely backwards.  Someday, I will write my book on planetary witchcraft.  But first I must make myself, again a witch, rather than the sorcerer I have become.

What I need to do now is resume my former devotion to the gods and powers . This will, of course, almost certainly prove to be a false dichotomy in the end. But I must follow the path where I see it.

 

The Empress, according to Jessa Crispin, is sometimes an indication to do more rather than less, to revel in your fecundity, to make use of your resources as diversely as possible.[1]

The Empress has featured prominently in my readings over the last quarter, but I did not learn this about her until this last week … mere days after I was let go without notice from my position at the jewelry repair shop where I have worked, now, for just over eight years.  My position was eliminated to make room in the budget for another sales person, a decision which speaks volumes about the company they were becoming.  That sort of decision making is, of course, why I was already looking to leave, albeit on my own terms.  The decision having been taken from me, I find myself feeling liberated rather than diminished.  I am now free to embrace the empress.

This is not to say that I have not spent a great deal of the last week reeling.  Even welcome change can be a shock.  But, more than anything, I have spent the last six days working diligently at my art, my obligations to the HSA, and the maintenance of my home.

In the month since my last post, there have been so many things which I have tried to write about, but found myself wordless for a variety of reasons.  But they all come down, I think, to this: capitalism is torture.

Yes, I am a historian.  And, yes, I do know how hard people in pre-capitalist societies had to work to put food in their bellies.  Frankly, that’s the point: most of what 21st Century capitalists know about the world before before 1865 is the lies they commissioned to make the past look nastier.  Before our current level of labor specialization, before the theft of the means of production, peasants were oppressed but rarely starving, and they had the tools to grow their own food and manufacture their own goods, and sufficient surplus to trade for what they could not make.  And let’s not even get into what a bad deal the agrarian revolution turned out to be, ten thousand years before the rise of industry.

Work is toil.  Capitalism is torture.  And in the week since I was “terminated” (think really hard about how fucked up that metaphor is for just a minute), I have been physically and spiritually healthier than I had in months.  My allergies are receding, despite the early onset of spring.  My sleep has improved in quality, and though I haven’t gone to bed a minute earlier, I’ve been getting up earlier and more energized.

I am adrift, now.  My circumstances (fortunate in so many ways, compared to so many others, a fortuitous intersection of luck, privilege, and preparation) are such that I must find new employment.

But I am not rudderless.  I have a trade.  I have a number of other skills.  And I am always willing and able to train.  And, with a little bit of luck and maybe a bit of help, I might just be able to leverage myself into my own employer.

A few short pieces of my fiction will be available for sale, soon, as ebooks.  And I’m going to keep submitting my novel for publication until I have the means to open my own publishing company(only about $500 with careful use of print-on-demand services).  And my photos are even now for sale.

Expect to see more art here in the near future.

And expect to see more magic.

In the meantime, my apologies for my unreliable posting schedule.

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1. Crispin, Jessa.  The Creative Tarot: A Modern Guide to an Inspired Life.  New York: Touchstone, 2016.  pp43-44

So it seems that, in all the alternating depression and excitement of the last month, I forgot to announce some fairly important and amazing news!

My artwork was selected to represent the theme of this year’s Heartland Pagan Festival!

My formal Artist’s Statement reads as follows:

The image is constructed of circles interlocking in the manner of Celtic knots.  The outer four circles contain the traditional alchemical symbols for the four Classical Elements: Earth, Air, Water, and Fire.  The central circle reveals a landscape at sunset or sunrise, with a road stretching from the foreground plains to the sun-topped mountains in back.  The plains are marked by a lake on the left and a tower on the right.

The symbolism may feel familiar to students of the tarot, particularly decks descended from the images of Pamela Coleman Smith, and this is no coincidence.  The tower by the lake and the road evokes The Moon, which challenges the practitioner to face their fears head on.  The tower, on its own, evokes The Tower from which the unwary fall when they cannot overcome those demons.  The Sun shines down over it all: the mountain cliffs from which The Fool threatens to fall, the road The Chariot traverses, and the field where Death reaps. This is the magical and material World made up of the Elements which we must explore and master.

But here, in this public yet intimate space, I’m just going to come out and say that I’m fucking ecstatic.  Seriously, I cannot even begin to articulate how happy it makes me to have my art representing the festival that has been such a significant part of my life.

Moreover, between my position as Chair of the Sacred Experience Committee, my committee’s close work with the Speakers and Bands Committee, and now the official festival artwork, I have a hand in most of the most visible aspects of Heartland Pagan Festival 2016.  And just to be clear, this is not a power trip.  This is me nerding out hard core.  This festival has been a huge part of my life since I was eighteen years old.  I have attended more festivals than not since 1999 — twelve out of sixteen, if I recall correctly.  And now, just by virtue of having shown up to do the work, I have a significant voice in how this festival is going to be experienced and remembered by everyone who comes this year.

So please, allow me to invite you to join the festivities.  Come to Heartland Pagan Festival 2016 and explore the four elements with me.  (Please forgive the current state of the web page; we’re suffering some technical difficulties, but the registration system DOES work.)  When you get there, look for the long haired, tattooed, hippie fuck in too much eyeliner working the Sacred Experience Committee booth, and tell him you want to throw back some mead with your favorite satyr.

And, if you live close enough that you’d like to get involved, don’t hesitate to member up at the same link.  There’s a lot of work to be done to put on a festival, and we’ll be glad to have you.