My latest Beltane altar, built on the first night of the Full Moon. Needs more phalloi.
Continuing Experiments with Sigils
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.
Dark Moon Navel-Gazing: the Status of My Practice
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.
February Dark Moon Tarot
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.
Imbolc Altar 2014
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.
A Hymn to Dionysus
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
ξένια: The Ethical Implications of Hospitality and Witchcraft
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):
- clean water, and what food and booze I can afford to share (all my friends being as poor as I am, that painful caveat is mutually understood)
- a safe place to stay at the end of the party and an intervention of they are too intoxicated to travel on their own
- a safe place to stay when traveling through my territory
- the use of my shower and laundry facilities
- that, barring simple accidents, their bodies and property are safe within my territory
- that they may always request a change of subject, excepting only if an intervention is taking place
- that, while sexually charged situations may arise, sexually predatory behavior will never be permitted
- that, should anyone encroach upon them, I will always take their side
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.
τούσδε ἡδονάς ἐρω: Because You Asked For a List
I like to be touched
For no reason,
Before we take off our clothes;
Before we are even alone.
A hand on my shoulder or arm,
A brush of your fingers against mine,
Reminds me that, first, we are friends.
I like to be kissed
Tenderly, then passionately.
Slowly by turns, and then hard.
My mouth, my cheeks, my eyes and ears.
I want your hands
On me:
Everywhere:
My face, and my arms,
Your fingers in my hair.
Play with my nipples,
My back, and my thighs.
Let your hair cascade
past your shoulders, falling
over me: silken caresses,
the smell of human and shampoo.
Kiss my wrists, my ribs,
My ears, my neck,
My fingers, and behind my knees.
Linger
on your favorite parts.
There is no part of my body
I do not want in your mouth.
I like to look at you
Beneath me, smiling;
To see you atop me
Taking your pleasure.
I like to be fingered
And fucked in the ass.
Penetrate me.
Claim me.
Leave your mark
for the world to see
or not.
I like to take turns,
On top and on bottom:
teasing and talking.
fucking and laughing.
I want you to tell me
what you need,
What feels good.
Teach me where
To touch you and how,
What not to do.
How many times can you cum?
There should be laughter
And love, whatever the flavor.
Pillow talk about verbs,
And the friends we both lust after.
And even if you can’t stay
until morning,
stay for a while, in the quiet,
so my oft-broken heart can believe,
though you’ve given no cause for doubt,
that you will still respect me
when you’ve gone.
Playing the Vessel
Over the course of the last week, I have twice played meatsuit to familiar spirits. Last Wednesday, as a part of my extended Samhain rites, I allowed my natal daemon, SKM, to ride me through the school day. Saturday night, I followed this up by offering the same privilege to my natal genius, ZG. Both experiences, while much less intense than I had anticipated, were equal parts surreal and informative. I required only one thing of either of them: that, in riding me, they not undermine any existing alliances and relationships, a restriction which neither found to be a burden that I can tell.
SKM, it turns out, is a huge fan of poetry (I am not): when I went to a performance with several friends Wednesday afternoon, he was moved to tears. He is very formal in his language and purposeful in his movements. When he first entered into me, it was a clear and visceral sensation—particularly odd, as I was driving at the time. He seemed especially fascinated by the experience of having hands.
ZG, I should not have been surprised to learn, is very, very quiet. She speaks only when there is something to be gained from it, and then in as few words as possible. I barely noticed when she came into me, perhaps because our ways of thinking were so similar, possibly because the copious amounts of absinthe I had consumed that night (it was my birthday party) served as a sort of lubricant.
Where SKM was content to observe but willing to act, watching from a distance was ZG’s preference. Both seem to approve of the people I surround myself with.
Tsu, my first familiar spirit, who had never expressed interest in possessing me before that I can recall, reacted jealously that ZG and SKM had had the opportunity before ze had. So I’ll be reporting on that experience at some point in the future.
Orphic Hymns: Taylor vs. Athanassakis
Classicist Apostolos Athanassakis recently released a new edition of his English translations of the Orphic hymns—previously released in the 1970s and, to the best of my ability to determine, the first new translation since Thomas Taylor’s in 1792. I’ve been going over the hymns and notes for the last month, and using the hymns in my rituals for the last two weeks. I must admit, that I’ve been rather surprised by the results.
Firstly, the Athanassakis translation is every bit as different from the Taylor as I would have imagined: no anachronistic rhyming couplets, no 18th century euphemisms or evasions, no substitutions of Roman names for Greek. Because Classical scholarship has come a long way in the last two hundred years, I do not hesitate to assert that the translations are more accurate for reasons other than the brutal mangling needed to turn Koine iambic hexameter into English rhyming couplets. And, to my delight, my own translation of the Hymn to Phanes ends up looking pretty solid.
For worship of the Hellenic gods, the new translation is by far superior: epithets are better preserved, and Athanassakis pointedly maintained what he felt to be the religious feel of the texts. Dionysus, Phanes/Eros, Hermes, and Aphrodite have all responded well in my private rites.
For in/evocation of the Planetary powers, however, and to my extreme surprise, I have found the Taylor translations to yield much better results. This is partly because, however I may despise them aesthetically, rhyming couplets make great magic. This may also be partly because the Taylor translations have been so thoroughly incorporated into the Hermetic tradition, and thus provide better access to that magical current. Further, the actual textual differences between the texts(coincidentally or otherwise) align the Taylor translation more closely with the Planetary powers than with the divine mythology.
Thus, while I must strongly advocate that any Hellenic-flavored neo-Pagan invest in the Athanassakis translation, as well as anyone with a scholarly interest in the hymns, ceremonial magicians have no need to do so.