Last night I finally unpacked my second Dionysus statue–the one that went with me to Indiana and back–and dedicated the altar he now shares with Eros and Aphrodite. This is not their final home, but the vanity I wish to appropriate for this purpose is still full of heirlooms.
No, your eyes do not deceive you: that is a penis-shaped bottle opener front and center. I got it in Athens.
Re-establishing my magical practice now that I’ve moved back to Kansas City has proven a greater challenge than I had anticipated. I’m managing to keep up my Esbats, but only barely. I have failed to resume making regular offerings to my familiar spirits, and the gods… well, since Aradia also had a Dionysus statue, the idol I’d kept in Indiana was only unpacked tonight. I have still not completed the masks the Witchmother instructed me to make, nor have I made any progress on the ceremonial witchcraft book I had once delusionally believed I would complete over winter break.
Part of the problem, I think, is the degree to which my magical practice has come to differ from Aradia’s. While she has found some use from the Orphic and Picatrix hymns to the planets, the Stele of Jeu is not at all to her taste. Meanwhile, I have (very much to my detriment, mind) fallen out of practicing the sort of visionary work that remains central to her practice, and she has picked up a bit of the Hoodoo that’s going around Kansas City circles these days (a Catholic upbringing and a better grounding in Chaos magic paradigm-shifting make that much easier a leap for her than it is to me). And the people we used to do Sabbats with are … not really practicing with us any more; we seem to be drifting apart.
Further, especially since we’re not practicing together like we used to, I feel really awkward practicing magic in a house where someone is not participating.
Of course, since we’re not doing magic the place isn’t really tuned to magic, and there’s more … resistance when we do do things.
This is all just whining, of course. The solution is clear and simple.
Resume the visionary work, keep at the planets, keep at the moons, and fucking DO MAGIC.
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.
My latest Beltane altar, built on the first night of the Full Moon. Needs more phalloi.
Just fired my first sigil in months. Damn that did feel good.
Which gets me thinking…
I’ve been hanging out on tumblr a lot, lately, and the chaos magick tag is occasionally overwhelmed by people posting sigils to be empowered by those who view them.
On the one hand, that’s brilliant. Taken cumulatively, with as many people would see such a thing, even their mere passing notice would raise more energy than most of us can do on our own. I mean, I like to think I’m a badass, but come on: even if only you, my readers, see that shit: y’all are badasses, too, and (between the wordpress and the tumblr) there are over a hundred of you. That’s some serious magical power.
On the other hand, however, it poses an ethical concern. How do I know that I can stand behind every objective that someone else might throw out there? I don’t know who you’re cursing. I don’t know what politician you’re backing. Witches and magicians, contrary to our own protests, are, as a group, no better than anyone else: we have our retrofuck misogynists and racists and homophobes, we have our predators and rapists and murderers and demagogues. And, love you though I do, my dear readers, I also know (as you do, being exceptionally clever as well as badasses) that we don’t actually agree on everything. So how can I ask you to, never knowing the statement of intent, back everything I might choose to post.
And, from another angle entirely, what are the risks? Douchebags and trolls abound. How bad could your shit get fucked if someone decided they didn’t like the look of your sigil and decided to deep-six it? Or follow the power back and put the hurt on you? Sure the odds are low. I’ve been doing this shit since I was sixteen years old, and I’ve been magically attacked by exactly one person that I know of and been haunted maybe a handful of times. The next time the sun enters Scorpio, I will celebrate my thirty-fourth birthday. But people do, occasionally, find me personally obnoxious, and I have burnt a few bridges in my day.
So I’m not posting the sigil this time. But I’d love to hear people’s thoughts on the matter: logistical and ethical, both.
There are a wide assortment of reasons that my magical practice (and, with it, my blogging) has been, at best, sporadic for the last year or so. Some of them are magical dilemmas (how to incorporate the experiments and lessons of the previous two years into my personal practice), some of them are spiritual failings (see previous, also: devotional work is hard and scary), and some work and school related (overtime in the mall! senior thesis! trying to catch a date!). But I think the biggest reason is that I’m lonely, and that I just don’t enjoy working or worshiping solo.
A good number of my most exciting magical and spiritual experience have been in group contexts: my first elemental energy work, my past-life explorations, the spirit-hunts, and the aura-games with my friends in and just after high school; the WPA/KU Cauldron before and after my failed life in St.Louis; discovering partner-magic with Aradia, and later with Sannafrid; the trials and tribulations of the proto-coven. Even most of my best solitary experiences took place at times in my life when I had physical access to other practitioners to plan, brag about,and/or commiserate over my experiments and experiences.
Every time I go back to Kansas City for breaks, doing magical work with Aradia, Sthenno, Pasiphae, and Aidan are among the highlights of the trip. When Aradia and I went on a cross-country road trip, we made a point of doing magic in each of the two parks we visited, and those moments were definitely among highlights of the vacation.
Since Sannafrid graduated, though, and since things got weird between myself and some of the local pagan group … I’ve had no one to practice with. My current lover is, against my own rules, not a practitioner. And our schedules don’t line up particularly well, leaving me struggling with another of the various unintended consequences of having taken the name Satyr Magician: too horny to think is also too horny to do magic, and there’s only so much I can do to take the edge off all by myself.
Now, I don’t mean to give the impression that anything’s hopeless: despite the flu that took me out for the entirety of the Full Moon, my practice is the best it’s been in a while. With the help of my familiar spirits, I’ve been repairing the damage to my Inner Temple–escalating rites followed by a whole lot of nothing was pretty hard on the place. I’ve been working hard (again) on getting my shields back to a level where they keep out what they need to without blinding me to the world. (This seems to be one of those never-really-quite-work-it-out problems.) My Sight has definitely been improving, though my mind-reading/empathy is still not back to what my crazy Scorpio ass expects it to be.
But it’s just not as much fun to tell Aradia about my latest adventures over the phone, or Sannafrid over chat. I need a physically present community. I need mentors and students and peers to keep me honest and innovative. And I need it to be fun. As hard or as frightening as an individual experiment or experience might be, my practice as a whole has to be pleasurable. I am, after all, a hedonist witch.
There’s a little bit of love goin’ on in the Current Position and the Querrant cards, but … dag, I ain’t feeling it right now. Very intrigued by the parallel sevens in the “inner influences” positions, and the parallel knights in the final outcomes.
This year more than usual, my Imbolc prayer is for the return of warmth.
Also, really trying to rock the candle / light theme this year.
All hail Dionysus
lord of the vine
Liber Pater
source and surcease of madness
It is you whom I honor
as I prepare my cups
and when I empty them
in vino veritas
You are Zagreus
to whom Zeus bequeathed the throne
You are the bringer of wine,
the liberator and savior of mortals
It is you to whom I pray
when my mind betrays me
when I weep for no reason
when I lay shaking from passions
which even I cannot name
All hail Dionysus
lord of the vine
Liber Pater
source and surcease of madness
Behold, ξένια (xenia):
“… There you have my lineage. That is the blood I claim, my royal birth.”
When he heard that, Diomedes spirits lifted. Raising his spear, the lord of the war cry drove it home, planting it deep down in the earth that feds us all and with winning words he called out to Glaucus, the young captain, “Splendid–you are my friend, my guest from the days of our grandfathers long ago! Noble Oeneus hosted your brave Bellerophon once, he held him there in his halls, twenty whole days, and they gave each other handsome gifts of friendship.
…
Come, let us keep clear of each other’s spears, even there in the thick of battle. Look, plenty of Trojans there for me to kill, your famous allies to, any soldier the god will bring n range and I can run to ground. And plenty of Argives too–kill them if yo can. The men must know our claim: we are sworn friends from our fathers’ days till now!”
Both agreed. Both fighters sprang from their chariots, clasped each other’s hands and traded pacts of friendship.
— Iliad VI.251-279. Translated by Robert Fagels. Penguin (1990).
From ξένος, “stranger” (though, specifically a civilized neighbor, not βαρβαρος ) and often translated as “guest-friendship”, ξένια was the ancient Hellenic practice of hospitality that assured travelers a safe place to stay, on the one hand, and the good behavior of guests on the other. In a very real sense, the reciprocal obligations obligations of hospitality among mortals mirrored the reciprocity of piety and patronage between mortals and gods: it was a covenant. Guest and host honored their duties alike, because it was one of the founding ethics of their society; to fail to do so invited chaos. The central conceit of the Iliad, after all, is that Paris/Alexandris violated the terms of hospitality when he abducted Helen (willingly or unwillingly, the primary text is unclear … and how does being brainjacked by Aphrodite, as Helen implies she was at III.460-5, calculate into discussions of consent?), and the otherwise un-unified whole of Greece went to war for it. For further examples, the whole Odyssey is basically a treatise on what goes wrong when you violate the terms of hospitality.
This is one of the Hellenistic practices that translates almost directly into my own life: all who come under my roof come under my protection–for the duration of their stay, at the very least. Those who partake of my hospitality may always expect (at the very least):
But the idea of sacred hospitality also intersects, in my mind and heart, at least, with Hermetic notions of the Kingdom and with my feminist notions of witchcraft. For those who partake of my hospitality on the regular, the protection follows them home. And, however problematic it may be, I expect the same of them. They are allied nations, in a sense, and the standards by which I judge the hospitality they offer are raised considerably. Although I have never been handed this law as a taboo, it is the only position I can hold given my particular background of neo-Hellenism, Hermetics, and feminist witchcraft. Simply put, fair or not, I hold the hospitality of others to my own ethical standards as a matter of spiritual obligation.
The thing of it is, though, these are not just words. Ideas have consequences–ethics in particular. What does one do, then, as a modern neo-Pagan neo-Hellenistic feminist witch, the divinely-charged manager of one’s own spiritual world, when one learns that a friend–the lord of an allied Kingdom–has grossly violated the laws of hospitality?
Clever readers will have already noted that this is a particularly neo-Pagan spin on one of the fundamental issues in feminism and other social justice movements: how do we police our own spaces? What is the best way to respond to racist, sexist, and homophobic language when it’s coming out of the mouths of people we love? What do you do when your friends exhibit sexually predatory behavior?
I don’t have the answers to these questions, unfortunately. Confronting bigots in the wrong way often leads to them doubling-down on heir biases; socially isolating predators can lead to faster escalation. Do we bind them then? Curse them into oblivion? Feed them to the Furies or to Tartaros, himself? But I’m tired of seeing these issues blown off in Pagan circles as “divisive”, or being the fault of people who just can’t hack it (whether “it” be the liqour they’re drinking or the permissive atmosphere of festivals or whatever), or dismissed as “politics” and therefore unrelated to spirituality.
I am, however, hereby formally proposing that, at the very least for those of us who see a sacred component to hospitality, these are issues of spiritual consequence.
