Showing all posts by Satyr Magos

In hedonism, scholarship, witchcraft

Hyperbolic Masculinity as an Expression of Queerness and a Source of Magical Power

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

In the ancient world, the power of magic was sometimes understood to be fueled by twistedness and inversion[1]: twisted, spiraled, and backwards writing; calling upon the restless dead for aid; binding.  In a sense, I have been drawing on that for years: flaunting my difference, my Otherness, and making it into a source of distinction and recognition.  I have, at times, less-than-half-jokingly referred to my gender identity as “witch” rather than as masculine, feminine, or even genderqueer in the sense that word is usually understood.  I wear skirts instead of pants whenever possible, and make elaborate ritual robes for myself which double as “costumes” and festival garb, and I wear my peplos in effeminate fashion.

I am queer and I am a witch and people fucking know it.  I am that I am.  Certainly there are disadvantages to this, but there is power in it, as well.

And yet …. Gayatri Gopinath would argue that my “cross-dressing”[2] is, itself, an expression of another form of hegemony, which conflates same-sex desire with gender deviance.[3]  Thus, disdaining the Euro-American emphasis on androgyny and inverted gender expression, she argues that what she describes as “hyperbolic femininity” can be and is a clear expression of queerness and queer desire among some women.[4]  Because she is largely discussing this phenomenon in the context of popular South Asian culture and the tension between nationalist and diaspora populations, she cites a number of films for exempla of this phenomenon: Fire (1996), Ustav (1984), and Hum Aapke Hain Koun…! (1994), in particular.[5]  This idea is particularly moving to me at this stage in my life, when, given my career choices, publically “cross dressing” as I currently do may well be barred to me. 

I am not willing or able to live without being visibly queer. Interestingly, though, I have already been engaging in behaviors which could well be described as “hyperbolic masculinity”: adopting and adapting exceptionally butch tropes to serve my queer sorcery.  For much of my life I have shaved with a particular brand of razor; to my annoyance, they have phased out my preferred model, and even if they had not, my environmentalist and feminist ethics, as well as my poverty, all agree that I should cease to patronize the company.  So I have acquired an old fashioned straight razor from an estate sale, and am simultaneously learning the art of shaving with a deadly blade and the skill of keeping it adequately sharp.  When not in use, the razor lives in the box on my altar with my Venusian seals and talismans.[6]  Having recently given in to social pressure and conceded to the wearing of a neck tie—at thirty-two years of age, a (hypothetically) cisgendered-presenting male can’t get away with disdaining them in a “professional” or formal environment—I have committed myself to learning complicated and uncommon knots.  My favorite, so far, is the Eldredge knot, which I find works particularly well with my Jupiterian tie.  The Trinity knot is also fun, though I haven’t quite mastered it.  My taste in the ties, themselves, is just as eccentric.  I wear a vests and jackets at times and in places where they are entirely over-the-top: my co-ed campus where pajamas are as common as cargo pants and my favorite dive bars, for example.  My chivalry knows no restraints of class or virtue:  I hold the door open for everyone;  I will come to the aid of anyone who asks nicely, male or female, “purest” virgin or even sluttier than myself; and I do the damnedest to keep my nose out of other people’s business unless that business is actually hurting someone else.

The thing of it is, I take a great deal of pleasure in my male body.  It’s the constraints and strictures of masculinity which I despise:  The presumption that I must dominate or be dominated.  The presumed (and violently enforced) limits on my capacity for emotion and its expression: that being hurt by someone, or sympathetic to the pain of others, is proof of weakness and failure.  The constant “threat” of loosing my Man Card—I burned that piece of shit long before I began identifying as a queer or a feminist—and all the Guy Rules I’m supposed to follow in order to keep it, and the way in which my refusal to play those games threatens the masculinity of others, and thereby exposes me to the risk of physical and sexual assault.

But my my body?  The flesh which thousands of years worth of mystics and puritans have said that I must despise if I’m ever to touch the divine?  I love it!  The mass and strength of it: the wide shoulders and large hands, and the long, square lines.The warmth and shelter and pleasure I can offer by virtue of my size and above-average core temperature.  All my hair; both that on my head and all the rest. The nipples which serve no purpose save for my pleasure, and being pierced.  The push and pull of penetrating and of being penetrated. 

It helps that I’m pretty, of course.  But I think I’d like my body even if I weren’t.

And it infuriates me that the value of my flesh—the likelihood that I will be aided by the police, or assaulted by them; the quality of the medical treatment I will receive; my chances of promotion or even employment; and so many other things—depends on the degree to which I conform to the hegemonic expectations of others.  I hate that my ability to survive in the world is dependent on playing into a rigged game that literally kills the losers.[7]  I hate even more that, when I play, the game is stacked in my favor.

All of which is why I have, traditionally, drawn my power from my identity as an outsider, the monstrous Other.  Sadly, though, that game may be played out for me.

My best hope, now, is to discover if I can draw power from from the other game, too.  There is magic in the authority that flows from being perceived as a butch (cis-het) man. I just have to hope that if I’m very clever, maybe I can figure out ways of making certain that my share of that hegemonic current always undercuts the banks of its headwater. And I have to hope that if I’m very lucky and careful, as well, maybe I can do it without being poisoned when I drink from that most bitter well.

1 – Ogden, Daniel. “Binding Spells, Curse Tablets, and Voodoo Dolls in the Greek and Roman Worlds.” Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: Ancient Greece and Rome. Edited by Bengt Ankarloo and Stuart Clark. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. p.29

2 – A problematic frame that implies there is some validity to the distinctions between gendered clothing, that the “line” I am “crossing” in my dress is in some way real.

3 – Gopinath, Gayatri. Impossible Desires.  Durham: Duke University Press (2005).  You should read it.  It will make you smarter.  It also digs into the way heteronomativity and nationalism are intertwined.  Good stuff.

4 – Ibid. 104

5 – Ibid. 24, 103-13.  Actually, it’s pretty much her core methodology, but these passages are particularly relevant.

6 – In an unrelated note, even if you don’t use a straight razor, I really recommend making the switch to an old school shaving brush and mug with a good organic soap: it’s actually cheaper than chemical shaving cream, works much better, and feels really, really good.

7 – Through race- and class-based differences in health outcomes, a racialized and classist prison industrial system, and institutionalized racial violence in the forms of police brutality and murder, and the unequal enforcement of the death penalty.  There are months of research to be done on this subject, though, so, no: I’m not just going to cherry-pick you some links.  The science is in; do your homework.

In witchcraft

An Early Experiment in Shape-Shifting

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

I wouldn’t have called it that at that time, of course.  Shapeshifting was something that happened to your body, something dragons and gods could do, but mortals could only pull off in the pages of the trashy fantasy novels I liked to read.[1]  Sadly, I don’t remember what I actually did call it:  it would be misleading to say that my notes from those earliest days were a shamble: I didn’t keep any.  All I have are some drawings that I can date back to 10th and 11th grade, and four lines of notes dated 8.11.98.[2]

It might be an understatement to say that I was socially awkward.  I was never actually that kid with no friends, but when I say that I often felt like I was, I think a lot of you might know what I’m talking about.  But, unlike a lot of socially awkward people, I understood the principle of trial and error: when I identified a behavior that wasn’t working, I would try substituting a new behavior.  And I sometimes got very, very creative with my “new behaviors”.

In the process of one such episode of social (and magical) trial-and-error, I “identified” (read: developed and then “discovered”) four “facets” of myself which I understood as other “selves” inside me.  Each one had a name, which I will totally not share because … well, I was a 17 year old who read too many fantasy novels, and I’m embarrassed by my former self.[3]  Each also corresponded roughly with one of the four Classical elements.  The language I use to describe these things today, of course, bears little resemblance to the way I conceived the experience at the time: again, the lack of journals.

The first was my academic self: small, self-contained bordering on asexual, a creature of elemental Air in a brown trench coat surrounded by walls upon walls of books.  At times I identified with him very closely, even using him as an online identity.  At other times, though, I feared that his erudite reticence served me poorly.

The second was a sort of Fiery shadow-self: hot, sharp, dark, and savage; he carried a sword, wore a black cloak, and had black eyes with no visible iris or pupil.[4]  He was my rage, my hate, my impulse to violence …. I believe, at the time, that I framed him as a sort of self-defense mechanism, or protector.

The third was a great, horned beast-like figure: massive and furred, with wings and claws, even digitigrade legs and a tail.  Interestingly, the drawing from my oldest Book of Shadows depicts him standing on an ocean shore—someplace I had never yet been, nor ever felt the elemental pull to that so many seem to experience at some point in their life.  He was elemental Earth and—more interesting still—the bearer of both my sex-drive and social impulses.

Fourth and finally was an aspect of myself that I was never able to put an image to: Watery and female, the keeper of my emotions, intuition, and pain.  This is the earliest point at which I can recall having conceived of myself as partially female.  Not much later than this, I would come to the conclusion that I was “Yin instead of Yang”[5] in nature; if I’d had the framework, I might have experienced this as gender dysphoria, but instead I was simply bitter that my sensitive, emotional nature was so difficult to reconcile with my masculine body and socialization.

I worked with the first and third “facets” extensively: calling upon the one or the other when intellect or social grace was called for.  I worked with the second mostly to the end of keeping him at bay: I have feared my own temper for many, many years.  I had no framework within which to relate to the fourth, though I wanted to: my experiences had already taught me that my emotions were chiefly a means through which others could torment me.

Over a period of several months, however, I found myself increasingly unable to function without slipping into one of my personas.  I felt like I was fragmenting internally, splitting into four separate entities.  To my credit, I immediately recognized this as a bad thing.  My solution, which I actually still stand by in retrospect—I might or might not do differently, now, but knowing what I knew then, it was the only sane solution—was to reincorporate all four.

In essence, I created four separate magical personas, then devoured them.  All at the tender age of seventeen.  Now, to put this in a little bit of context: I had read Eliphas Levi’s Doctrine and Ritual of Transcendental Magic, but I hadn’t understood a damned word of it; following that, the most sophisticated thing I had ever gotten my hands on was a dumbed down version of the LBRP.  These were my days of DJ Conway and Amber K and Scott Cunningham.  I had no way of understanding that this magic might be called invocation by some, or shape shifting by others.

Given all that, then, I don’t think I did too badly.

1 – Still like to read, actually, though I don’t talk about that side of my nerd-ness, much.

2 – Yeah.  That’s right. August of 1998 and before.  We’re stepping into the Wayback Machine.

3 – If you think that I have an overdeveloped sense of drama now….

4 – See note 3.

5 – People who know something of Chinese mysticism need not inform me of how asinine this was.  I do know better now.

In witchcraft

Personal Practice: Imbolc

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

Imbolc is a holiday generally associated with the coming of the spring, the lactating ewes, germinating seeds, and the waxing year.  It’s a fire-festival honoring the goddess (or saint) Brigid (however you prefer to spell her name), overlapping a little with the simultaneous holiday Candlemas.  Of course, all these things are rooted in the climate and culture of England, where Wicca and modern Neopagan witchcraft were born.  I do not live in England.

I live in the Midwestern United States.  I can’t speak to what the ewes are doing, but there is no germination going on here, no coming spring.  Growing up in Kansas as I did, I’m accustomed to Beltane festivities being interrupted by snowstorms every once in a while: the second of February isn’t the end of winter, it’s her darkest heart.  And, unlike last year, it even feels like it.

Further, I don’t live and die by the agricultural calendar, like my ancestors did.  Nor do I romanticize it in quite the same way as many of my Neopagan peers.  No …. I live and die by the academic calendar, by which measure Imbolc isn’t the beginning or end of anything in particular.  This year it happens, coincidentally, to be the first Saturday of the month and the end of the third week of classes.

So I celebrated small.  Offerings of beer and wine the night before.  That morning, I bolstered my usual weekend offerings with an inordinate amount of candles.  Then, the night of, I made more offerings of wine and mead before I went out drinking with a few close friends.  We celebrated the hope that it might someday again be warm.  I had two bottles left of the Imbolc mead that was bottled last year, made from Pasiphae’s blackberries, and I brought one of them to share.  Those who partook enjoyed it immensely.

Blessed Imbolc to those of my readers who celebrate it.  May your hearth be warm, your beer frothy, and your belly full.

In Uncategorized

Fermenting

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

I have several posts in various stages of draft completion.  I have several more somewhere in my head.  Sigils.  Shape-shifting.  Visionary experiences.  Curses courtesy of Catullus.  Blessings and curses inspired by Homer.  I have plans for my temple, and experiments in kitchen-witchery to report.  Planetary rituals and experimental Dionysian devotions.

None of them are ready to share, at this moment, nor will they be for some time.

Things have been kind of crazy for the last two months: the crash that followed my three weeks of daily planetary work; the paths being opened for me by my gods and familiar spirits; the personal drama of school, winter break, and the return to classes.  Neither long distance relationship nor polyamory are easy, and combining the two … well, it’s made for a very lonely satyr, lately.  I’m researching graduate schools and brainstorming for the undergraduate thesis which I start on next year trying to settle on a magical motto to take up at my next initiation in the summer.

The state of the Neopagan and magical communities in regards to issues of social justice continue to infuriate me, but I’m currently experiencing a period of burn-out where only the most egregious offenses can rouse more than a half-hearted “WTF is wrong with you?” from me.  This is doubly frustrating, given Gordan’s assurance that the tides are right for political magic right now, and made particularly bitter by the way in which it has very recently infringed upon my personal circle.

All this is by way of saying: I’m tired, folks.  I regret this unplanned hiatus, but I can’t promise that it won’t go on a little longer.  Please bear with me while I ferment in my own juices for a while: I promise to serve up some fine stories when I’m ready.

And, yes, I do realize how meta it is to write about not writing. 

In witchcraft

Shaping and Shielding IV: KC Christmas Edition

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

The proto-coven was blessed with an overabundance of exceptionally watery Scorpios, each with radically different approaches to shielding.  While the differences were intellectually fascinating, however, I never had call to use any of them, as they were alien to my native ways of practice and all had various side-effects that I was unwilling to tolerate.

One such took a rather literal view of a watery aura: viewing it as a watery planet, with the most dense and personal things sinking to the core and the “garbage”—the psychic flotsam and jetsam of the outside world—floating and forming a hard crust on the outermost surface.  I hesitate to go into greater detail for obvious reasons, but suffice to say that the negative side effects were exactly one one would imagine, and were entirely invisible to to the individual in question as they largely reinforced his male-socialized solipsism and emotional disconnect.  Thus, I initially dismissed the technique, despite  its magical  efficacy, because—despite my continuing attempts to deconstruct those—I already suffer from an exceptionally bad case of those same toxic masculine narratives.

It occurred to me, however, that those side effects would be totally neutralized by abandoning the shield once I had gotten home and banished, and only rebuilding it when needed.  With that in mind, I used the technique to augment my various protection talismans when I went back to the mall to work Christmas season over my winter break.  Combined with my various talismans, the effect was near-perfect.

Unfortunately, I had an entirely different set of psychic challenges to overcome when I was not at the mall.  Being a generous hippie soul, Aradia had permitted her room mate (also her brother) to bring in a friend who was out-of-doors.  And, when it came to light that the couch monster had neither car nor job, and no real prospects of or interest in acquiring either, she did not promptly throw both both unemployed alcoholics out onto the street.  Further, working two jobs already, she had neither the time nor energy to maintain her magical dominion over the space, which took on more and more of the psychic malaise of the two young men who never left it except to go to the bar.  (No, we don’t know where they got the money for that.)  In short: “home” was not as safe or relaxing as it ought to have been.  I have found, however, that shielding and the use of protective talismans within one’s own home leads to an unpleasant sort of disconnect.  So we tried other things.

My daily banishings—both before and after work—helped some.  As did evicting the couch monster about a week after I arrived, and the wave of sage fumigation we did to clean out his lingering presence.  As did the fiery wall of protection I threw up around the building after a particularly nasty incident between the downstairs neighbor and her own family.  A major cleaning spree did wonders.  The whole mess was so toxic, though, that, while things were better, it didn’t start to really get right until the dark moon, when Aradia and I burned through an entire wand of white sage over the course of two days of fumigations in conjunction with white-light bombing.

The dark moon fumigations were the most effective, after physically getting rid of the couch monster, but the fiery wall of protection was the most interesting.  I started by daubing my fiery wall of protection oil (of course I left some with Aradia.  duh.) on the entrances to the apartment.  Then I did the same for the entrances and doorsteps of the building.  Then, standing at the threshold of the property, I performed the full Qabalistic Cross and, using the power I drew down in that fashion, cast three nested circles: one around the apartment, one around the building, and one around the entire city block.  Finally, I anchored the circles to the fiery wall of protection and made that structure into a semi-permanent (“semi-“ because I didn’t anchor any of it to a talisman of any kind) ward structure.   The whole thing was done empty-handed, save for the oil: my ritual robes and blade were left in the temple.  I haven’t practiced that sort of energy-shaping work very much over the last year and a half—it didn’t fit very well with the ceremonial experiment or Project Null.  The last time I’d attempted anything on that scale, it took the aid of a half-dozen other similarly experienced witches.  Perhaps if I had been more in practice it would have accomplished more.

In hedonism, witchcraft

After-Action Report for Enchantments of Fall 2012

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

When I came back to school in the fall of last year, I enchanted heavily for a few things.  Some of those I doubled down on over the course of the semester.  I mostly used sigils, though there were also a few planetary rituals, and a few projects that started over the course of the semester.

Sigils for Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll

These results were mixed. 

One sigil was specifically aimed at getting people to give me weed for free, and that worked splendidly: I was given some smoke to bring back to the temple with me from KC, and when that ran out I was able to make it through the rest of the semester on the generosity of friends when I visited their homes and on shake and roaches provided to me by my neighbors.  Hell, I’ve still got some of that left.  That sigil is DEFINITELY getting recharged.

Another sigil was targeted at convincing people to give me booze.  This, too, worked like a champ: people brought booze to my house and abandoned it, they bought me drinks at bars (even when they didn’t know me), and I was even able to get a couple commissions for my homebrew operation.  The effects even continued over winter break, with two different people handing me large quantities of honey to ferment.  Another sigil for the permanent collection.l

Finally, and this may be part of the problem, I had several sigils aimed at getting laid.  I took several different tactics: my sexual needs are met, people feel comfortable approaching me for sex, I have generous and intelligent lovers … all to no avail.  The only people to grace my sheets last semester were my partners Aradia and Sannafrid.  Unfortunately, they were each only there for a week at a time (not the same week; my life isn’t quite that awesome) out of the eighteen week semester.  I was getting a little desperate by the end, and as things stand I have no new prospects for this coming semester.  (Anyone reading this blog is, of course, welcome to volunteer.)

Sigils for Health and Happiness

Again, results were mixed.  I specifically enchanted that I be “sound of body and mind”.  Perhaps that wasn’t clear enough.  I also enchanted for the solidification of old friendships and the establishment of new.

Physically, I was healthy for most of the semester.  I was laid up with a fever for a couple days, once, but it wasn’t that bad.  What really fucked with me, though, was the bouts of insomnia.

Mentally, things were much worse.  Maybe it was the Chaos Magic.  Maybe it was the absence of friends on campus.  Maybe it was Saturn in Scorpio, combined with the psychic backlash of Aradia’s Saturn Return.  Whatever.  I spent the majority of the semester depressed, neurotic, and struggling with paranoia.

I didn’t make many new friends this semester, but I did make one or two, and I was able to really solidify some existing acquaintances.  These are good things.

Sigils for Wealth and Prosperity

These enchantments were utter failure, at least in the short term.  I tapped every resource I had and called in every favor owed me, and I still had to beg for money from friends and family to make it back to KC for winter break.  The school actually threatened to not let me come back next semester unless I paid them part of what I owed them before the start of this semester.

Now, that’s all been worked out.  In fact, I may actually end this semester ahead rather than behind.  But it took a lot of enchantment—some of it by friends of mine—and more than a little hard work in the material world to get there.  And I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Sigil for Academic Excellence

I haven’t been invited to Phi Beta Kappa yet, but I did earn an honors GPA this last semester, despite being on the verge of mental collapse.  3.69 for the semester is nothing to sneeze at, particularly given that I was doing two dead languages at the same time.

Shielding Talismans

These, made toward the end of the semester, were a resounding success.  Coming back to classes this semester, in fact, it’s been a little bit of  a shock to me to realize that I actually need them at school more than I needed them in the mall.  Apparently, at least right now, I find the psychic miasma of adolescent angst and the occasional authority-abusing professor to be more toxic than the capitalist nihilist malaise of the indoor mall environment.

Conclusion

So, overall mixed results for manifesting my will last semester.  I got most of what I needed, but not everything I wanted.  Two sigils, though, proved so effective that I’m going to turn them into semi-permanent talismans, which is a definite win.

This semester, I have set myself a challenge of launching a shoal of sigils every Sunday.  For myself.  For my friends.  For politics.  For the world.  For whatever.  Three to five sigils every seven days.

Let’s see how this goes.

In hedonism

Lavender Infusion

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

At the same time that I started my wormwood infusion experiment, I started an infusion of lavender vodka.  The recipe was simple: 1/2 cup of lavender flowers infused into 750ml of 360 Vodka.  I let them steep for three days, then strained them out with a coffee filter and funnel.

The results are beautiful.  Sweet Dionysus.

Over rocks and with a proper portion of tonic water, the lavender vodka is like a glass of pure summer: lying in the sun at the edge of the water, the wind playing through my hair.

In hedonism, witchcraft

Mad Satyr Wormwood Infusion

Author Satyr MagosPosted on
a Henri Privat-Livemont poster advertising Abs...
a Henri Privat-Livemont poster advertising Absinthe Robette. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My primary flying potion is absinthe.  Although a touch unconventional (not having any deadly poisonous hallucinogens or rendered baby fat or any of that), I find it highly effective, particularly when combined with drumming and occasionally marijuana.   The major problem is that it’s fucking expensive, and it flies a little in the face of my DIY ethic.  So I’m trying to make my own.

The First Experiments:  Bacardi 151 Rum (151 proof) vs. 360 Vodka (40 proof)

Herbs – ground together and sifted into repurposed  glass bottles.

3/4 oz. wormwood (~1/2 cup)

2 Tbs. star anise

1 Tbs. fennel

1 Tbs. mint

1 tsp. hyssop

1 tsp. angelica

1/2 tsp. coriander

1/4 tsp. caraway

Infusion – liquor poured over the herbs.  Then the waiting.

One batch of herbs is being infused into 151 proof rum, the other into vodka.  While my recipes call for high-proof rum, or even pure grain alcohol, I have some serious doubts as to how that’s going to work with the flavor profile.  I’m also a little skeptical that the high proof is actually necessary for thujone extraction.  Finally, in the backassward states I live in, high proof alcohol is taxed to the point where it is actually more expensive than alcohol fit for human consumption (and, living in the United States, there’s always the issue of denaturing).  My research recommends three to ten days for thujone extraction, and basically the same time frame (at least three days, or until you run out of patience) for other herbal infusions. These, my first experiments, were infused for four days.

Results

Neither infusion took on the characteristic green color of absinth: both are rather brownish.  If I recall correctly though, the green comes from a second variety of wormwood and from the mint, which I may add more of.

Both varieties have a strong bitter undertone, which I had hoped to avoid with the short infusion period.  The rum infusion tastes much more like absinthe than the vodka, and the native flavor of the rum covers the bitterness a little.  Mixing the vodka infusion with sugar and water opens up the flavor and dials back the bitterness; I believe that a second lump of sugar will perfect the cocktail.  (I will report on the rum infusion when I deliver it to the friend who paid for the experiment.)

Visionary results from the wormwood infused vodka were well within expected parameters.  I suspect the same will be true of the rum infusion.

Conclusions and Sources

One of my two primary sources for this experiment recommended infusing the alcohol with the wormwood first, then the other herbs.  I will do this for my next experiment, tasting it as it steeps so as to better gauge the efficacy and bitterness over time.  I may also steep each of the herbs individually so as to best understand their flavor elements, as well.

Each 750 ml experiment lost about 20% of its volume to the herbs, which I had infused loose.  I will tie the next batch in cheesecloth or cotton, which satchel I will be able to better extract the finished potion.  Larger batches may also help solve this problem, as the herbs can only absorb so much liquid.

The above experiment was cobbled together from two recipes:

Dangerous Minds DIY Absinth – Originally intended for use with a still.

Ingredients: Alcohol 80% and herbs (the most common bought in the chemist’s, in grams per 1 liter of alcohol):

Herbs:
Wormwood: 100 g
Fennel (fruit): 50 g
Anise: 50 g
Mint: 15 g
Melissa: 8 g
Chamomile: 3 g
Cumin: 10 g
Angelica: 10 g

Original “Classic” Formula

750 ml. 151 rum

One ounce dried chopped wormwood

One tablespoon fennel or anise seeds
One tablespoon dried angelica root
One teaspoon dried hyssop leaves
One half teaspoon coriander seeds
One quarter teaspoon caraway seeds
One pinch cardomon pods
750 ml. 151 rum

And for future reference: another Homemade Absinthe Recipe.

In witchcraft

Lucky 13

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

So concludes another rotation of the Earth around Sol.  By the Gregorian calendar, at least, counting from the approximated birth date of the Christian Savior.  For many years now I have also counted my year Samhain-to-Samhain, emphasized by the fact that my birthday is only seven days after.  And most recently, I have also come to live and die by the academic calendar, which is not quite half done.  By any of those counts, though, this has not been the best year ever.  Not by a wide margin.

It’s been a trial-by-fire since the end of the last Spring semester: going back to the mall for the summer, but somehow not making enough money to actually cover my rent; an art class that consumed twice as much time and energy as it was supposed to; higher costs of education combined with a slightly smaller financial aid package—culminating in the very real possibility that I might not have been able to go back to classes in January if I had not been able to find work over the break; financial policy madness in the United States which may STILL reduce my financial aid to the point where I am unable to finish my degree; fewer friends on campus and fires all over the terrain of my social life; the paranoia and insanity associated with Chaos Magick; and, just for spice, a little bit of inheritance drama on my father’s side of the family.

Don’t get me wrong: I’ve gotten a lot done, magically, and there’s been some significant awesomeness in my personal and academic lives.  I finished off the ceremonial experiment and started Project Null, and in doing so I’ve made friends and inroads all over the cosmos.  I’ve come to new levels of understanding and communication with my lovers and our burgeoning polyamory.  I’ve solidified a few friendships, and maybe even started a couple new ones.  Despite the exhausting workload, I ended the semester with a 3.69 GPA, bringing my cumulative at the new school up to 3.44.  And yet, especially as I look a the two lists … it definitely doesn’t weigh out the way I want it to.

So fuck you 2012.  Good riddance.

With that in mind, I did a Tarot reading for the coming year.  My card for the year is the XX Aeon; as I was shuffling, I also caught glimpses of the XVI Tower and XXI the Universe.  When I did a full spread, 0 the Fool, XIII Death, XIX the Sun, and VI the Lovers were all prominent, as were the Queen of Wands and the Page of Swords.   II the Priestess and XVII the Star also made appearances.  Except for Death in my 10th House (professional recognition; clarified as 6 Swords, not III the Empress), the reading is overwhelmingly positive.

Sure, that could be the 6 of Swords as “travel” not “fleeing disaster”, but … I don’t like that shiny red reset button blinking on my career dashboard.  It makes me nervous.  I don’t graduate until 2014.  This is the year I take the GRE and start filling out grad school applications.   An ill-timed “Death” in my professional life …. well, y’all get the idea.

When I get back to the Sunrise Temple – I’m in Kansas City with Aradia for the winter break – I’ll compare this reading with the annual I did at Samhain.  This should be … interesting.