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.
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:
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
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.
Over the course of the semester three new magical tools have come into my possession: a pentacle, a staff, and a black-handled knife. The pentacle I picked up at a swap-meet hosted by the local pagan store. The staff is hand-made by a fine gentleman in the local community, and was given to me as a gift. The knife was also a gift, a birthday present from another friend here in Sunrise. These were my first clues that it was time to get back to my basics. I didn’t ignore the message, per se; I just couldn’t figure out how to enact it in the context of my current workload.
Sannion asks: “how much is too much? Should you always put it all out there or is it okay, even necessary at times, to hold some things back? Do you always have to be honest, vulnerable and pushing against limitations? What if the things you feel called to express are somehow counterproductive to the greater purpose of your art?”
Art—the good stuff, at least—is all made by bleeding. Enough is already too much.
You have to hold something back: it’s a matter of survival. You must retain some essential kernel of self, whatever that is, hidden away in your heart-of-hearts, so that, after you’ve created—ποιῶ, facio—until you’re dry and dying, there’s something left to regrow from. Because you must always be honest, especially when you’re lying through your teeth. That honesty makes you vulnerable, even as it makes you powerful. And art that isn’t pushing against some limitation, even if its only the artist’s own endurance, isn’t really worth doing. It might be fun for the spectator, but not to do.
In all these things, art and magic are very much the same: the whole point is to split yourself open and stir up whats inside, mixing it with what’s outside and what has never been and what just might be, if only we dream hard enough. Artists and magicians call upon dreams and images, draw them out of the ether by rite or by sheer will, and manifest them in the material realm. Spirits, paintings, narratives, curses, symphonies, motion, pleasure, creation, sculpture, ecstasy, destruction. We stalk labyrinths of mirrored hallways, staring into the abysses that can only be found within. We embrace each distorted image for the truth it reveals, and listen carefully as it whispers to us of the secrets that cannot be found in the mortal world. We craft masks fabricated from our dreams and nightmares, stitch them together with our own tendons, and then endow them with such glammours that only others of our kind can see the grotesque materia at the heart of the wonders the uninitiated applaud.
One must hold something back, lest one be consumed utterly …. but, at the same time, the degree to which one holds back is the degree to which failure is almost assured. And yet … only we can know the things that we keep back. Only we can judge what is too precious, or too awful, to share. What will contaminate the work. What will overpower the work.
We ride the razor edge, and we are always bleeding.
I was born under a bad star, as were we all. But my family did not know the signs: there must have been birds and other omens—I suspect every birth is so attended, if one knows how to look—but they were not recorded. I was not marked out for my destiny, and so I was thrown into the Factory with all the others: I was dedicated to the Illuminati at birth. They looked between my infant legs and called what they saw a “penis”, then mutilated it to fit their Platonic ideal. They wrote “male” on my birth certificate, and gave me a name which would be recognized as such. They put me in front of a television, and told me in countless little ways that it was my task in life to learn and uphold the Rules.
Unrecognized, I had no one to name for me the craving for knowledge I felt, no one to explain the shadows and voices and intercieses which (I thought) only I could perceive. I heard rumors of such things, of course, but the sources were … less than credible. I knew better than to trust them, yet I could not help but believe. So people called me gullible, a “moony” child, doomed to amount to nothing, perhaps a career in the arts. Perhaps they were right.
They made a mistake, though, in permitting me unrestricted access to books stores and libraries and the Internet. Or perhaps it was not a mistake. Perhaps it was the only true rebellion that my parents could dare to make. So I read voraciously: stories of love and independence, stories of epic quests for identity and community, stories which undermined popular narratives of strength and herd-minded “individualism”, stories of magic and heroism. I could not always avoid the mainstream narratives—I had no way of knowing that I ought!—and so the stories were mixed in my brain and I still sometimes struggle to sort them out.
There were a few children who were more like me than the others. They showed me books I would not have found, otherwise, and shared my fascination with the hidden things in the outside world. But they also craved acceptance from the larger world—as, to be fair, did I at the time—and they were willing to go to any lengths to achieve it: displaying their burgeoning masculinity by tormenting and brutalizing the one person they thought they could. Me. And then mocked me when, put in a positions where I might do the same to others in turn, I refused.
Cruelty is the first and last tool of the Illuminati, of the Archons and the Black Brotherhoods and all their slaves. Violence is the second. It is by these tools that the structures of power most faithfully reproduce themselves. The world can be a terrible place, and there are times when cruelty and violence cannot be avoided, but they are few and far between, and to take pleasure in them is always an only a service to the Powers that enslave the world. I knew this in my heart without being taught, from the earliest days of my memory, but the knowledge brought me such torment that I almost forgot, and even now struggle to hold onto it. We must resist, of course: complacency only serves their interests. But in resisting, we provide them an opportunity to mobilize: the police, the media, the counter-protests by those who worship the Archons. This dilemma must be confronted at every turn. It cannot be overcome entirely.
I told the story so many times, I don’t know if its even true anymore. Like when you practice a conversation so many times that you forget that you haven’t actually had it … only with reality at stake.
How do I know that what you and I both call “blue”, doesn’t look to you like what I call “red”?
Are we even really here, or are we just figments of our own imagination?
I am an unreliable narrator. But at least you can trust in that: you can rely on me being unreliable.
I’ve told so many stories. I’ve read so many stories. Some of them were never meant to be true. Some of them revealed the truth by the fact of their untruth. After all, it’s so very easy to loose sight of the truth in a steaming fecal pile of facts: have you watched the news lately? I have juggled truth and lies for so long that no one will ever be able to say which is which. Some truth is still true; some lies are still false. Some lies have been made true and some truths have been overthrown in the quest for a new world order—and this has been my work.
I am not the only one. Perhaps I am the least.
We are all the Illuminati, each and every one of us. It is we who are the conspiracy, all the more powerful because we do not know, or refuse to acknowledge it. We invent the rules as we go along, then blame others for our behavior: citing precedent as if it were relevant. All it takes to prove that something new is always possible is to do something new. It is we, alone and collectively, who determine what is real. What is possible. What is portrayed in the media.
There are forces arrayed against us who wish to create change, this is true: there are Archons and Black Brotherhoods and other forces of inertia and retrofuckery. They are powerful, and to defy them is to risk shame and death and maiming. But they can be fought. The can be defeated. And to concede to them is to face certain shame and death and maiming. The war cannot be avoided: the war is already on, and they knew you were the enemy even before you did. They knew because we are all the enemy, before we are initiated into the Illuminati. Even then, even after they have initiated us by baptism and circumcision and education and imprisonment and advertisement, they will never trust us. It is in our interest to turn on them, and they know it even if we do not.
The Ptolemaic geocentric model of the Universe according to the Portuguese cosmographer and cartographer Bartolomeu Velho (Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I have just completed three consecutive weeks of daily planetary conjurations, two of those weeks overlapping with the two phases of Rufus Opus’ Seven Sphere in Seven Days challenge. The results included several visions of the Planetary realms and a ridiculous boost in personal power, and culminated in the ability evoke planetary forces at will … and my first magic-induced migraine since I recovered from my blown a gasket eight years ago. Ultimately, it seems to have served as an initiatory culmination of last year’s ceremonial study.
When Rufus Opus made his challenge, I was already on my third day of planetary rituals prompted by my spirit-allies. Although that first Jupiter conjuration was relativity weak, things escalated quickly. I could see the group current flowing across the sky as I did my work, and I bathed in it. I caught glimpses of the Planetary Realms of the Sun, Mars and Mercury—powers I had not touched so successfully or so formally, if at all. I received ritual instructions from Saturn, and built on my relationship with the powers of the Moon.
The group took a break between Phases I and II of the work, but I continued in between: making my first foray into the Planetary realm of Venus and receiving further instructions on how to perform my conjurations even better—most significantly an upgrade for my Circle of Art and Triangle of Conjuration.
When Phase II began, I was rewarded with a powerful Solar initiatory experience—less than apotheosis, but more than dismemberment. Then the tone changed radically. Although I was able to make contact with each of the Planetary powers in turn, the effects felt anticlimactic after the visionary drama of the week before. I could certainly still feel each planet’s influence—in fact, I could feel it continuing to build throughout the day, particularly as the First Hour of Day passed from the Eastern time zone into Centeral, and as the Third Hour of Night came around. It was at this point that I found the discussion group on facebook to be particularly helpful, as others were able to point out technical differences between Phase I and II that I had not been able to perceive, and to confirm that I was not alone in this particular manifestation of effects They also reminded me that, within the Hermetic frame, the planetary powers are not so much places or forces (as I usually concieve them) but refracted lights emanating from God. RO, in particular, suggested that I take some time to look inward at the changes going on within my sphere; doing so revealed that, by Thursday evening, I had tapped into far more planetary power than I had realized.
Saturday, though, I went over the cliff. My final ritual left me filled with black light and white light. I bumped up against the edge of something, the limit of Saturn, and when I came back to my body full of that bi-colored light, I saw a six-winged figure looming over the current. Things have been quiet on the board and in those corners of the blogosphere since the project finished, and I think that whatever I caught a glimpse of (Iophiel?) might have borked some brains that got a better look.
As usual, I had performed my rites at the First Hour. Within a few hours, my head started to hurt. I thought it was psychic feedback from lunch on campus: things were a little strange over the weekend in the wake of a tragic accident involving several students. Come the Eighth Hour, though, the pain had escalated to the point where I could no longer function well enough to run the errands necessary for my birthday party. Fortunately, Aradia—in town for the party—was driving and able to get me home, where I promptly collapsed into bed with a full-blown migraine headache.
Ninety minutes later, I felt up to taking some painkillers, and was finally coherent enough to put two and two together: the psychic weather—no matter how nasty a college campus can be—was not enough to lay me out like that. It was Saturn that had pushed me over the edge from “magicially manic” to “magical migraine”. Looking to my aura, I concluded that it was too densely packed: I separated out the planetary power—not wanting to ground it altogether—and pushed it out to the edges. That felt better, so I pushed the edges out further. The further I pushed, the better I felt. When my aura was bigger than campus and the surrounding college-owned student ghetto, the pain was finally manageable. It finally disappeared about the time I pushed out to the city limits. That sort of “coverage” is unsustainable, of course, but the pain did not return as my aura deflated over the course of the evening.
The final Saturn ritual brought with it a sense of finality. Whatever it is that my spirit friends wanted me to get out of daily planetary rites … I’ve gotten. I can now channel planetary power at will, just as I can elemental power, though I’m still struggling with the personal consequences of hot-and-cold-running-Venus (just as a for instance), and half a week later, I’m still struggling to maintain my aura at a reasonable level. There have been no new migraines, but my energy level has been up and down like an EKG and requires too-frequent “maintenance”.
Clearly I had some unfinished business with the planetary powers that I began working with during the ceremonial experiment. That’s been fixed: I have now received my first initiation in the seven Planetary Powers, complete with dissolution, crippling agony, and even some ἱερῳ ἀναμιγνομενος. And I’ve also just been handed a brutal reminder of what happens when I let my magical practice get too high-octane.
So I’m taking a short hiatus from magic: doing just enough to keep from setting off the cold-turkey migraine. My Dark Moon rites have so far been minimal. I’m going to get back into more “pure” Chaos Magic pretty soon here, but I am definitely not fucking around with any more Hermetics until Mercury goes direct again.
But, before I fall further down the NaNoWriMo rabbit hole for a few days, I want to thank Rufus Opus and everyone in the Seven Spheres In Seven Days working group for the opportunity and the camaraderie. It was a mad ride, y’all, and I’m glad I didn’t do it alone. I know that I would have gotten even more out of it if I could afford RO’s Gates Rites (and I am not for a moment questioning that the years of practice that went into developing those rituals is worth $12 a pop: I just don’t have the scratch), or if I were capable of believing in the Ptolmaic/Hermetic cosmology as the Truth, not just aTruth. In the end, though, I got enough: initiated into Hermetics with a Solar immolation and Saturnian icepick to the brainpan.
On Sunday, the fifth of November, I cast my first curse. In the Hour of Saturn, I called upon the forces of Saturn to empower a sigil aimed at securing Todd Akin’s defeat in Missouri, and asked them to see to it that the election brought Todd Akin’s political career to an end. While the latter point has yet to be seen, Clair McCaskil took the congressional seat last night.
The following hour, that of Jupiter, I called upon the forces of Jupiter to empower a sigil aimed at securing the presidential election for Barrak Obama. He won the presidency by an electoral landslide: 332 to 206.
Obviously, I cannot claim sole responsibility for these events. But I think that myself and those others enchanting for these outcomes definitely had an influence.
The inspiration for these rites came to me as I was performing my weekend devotions, after my very successful invocation of the Sun. I drew up the sigils, drafted them onto note cards and duplicated them on my maps (the state and world maps, respectively), and waited for the appropriate hour. At that hour, I painted the appropriate sigil, and called on the Planetary Powers using the Circle of Art I had drawn up the day before. I then chanted “it is my will” over the sigil and lit a candle. Upon so charging the sigils, I lit them in the candle, burned them in my cauldron, and pushed the energy out into the world through the sigils on the maps.
My first political enchantment and my first curse all in one. And plans to Hot-Foot Powder a professor I hate, but who teaches a class required for my major.
Yeah, this is my brain on Chaos Magic.
Much like the one time I stole from an employer, there’s a certain cold liberation in giving up the moral high ground. When you can never again make a claim to ethical purity, you have more freedom to decide what standards you want to live up to.
I describe myself as a “witch” in part because of the ambiguity of it. A witch is neither good nor evil, but somewhere in the middle … or both, simultaneously. And yet I hold myself to these insane ideals of ethical absolutism.
Don’t I keep saying that anything worth fighting for is worth fighting dirty for?
RO is always going on about how magicians are beyond ethics, beyond good and evil, because we can see further down the chains of events than mere mortals. On the one hand, this sounds like a lovely monotheist cop-out: “god is on my side, motherfuckers!” On the other hand, my Scorpio shadows whisper, “You do know you know better than they do. Do what must be done.”
I can’t decide if I feel dirty or powerful. Maybe a little bit of both.
I actually haven’t done today’s full Seven Spheres invocation: just my own morning planetary work. But the Lunar influence was strong with me this morning, and I hammered out a set of seven planetary invocations this morning over breakfast. Below is the first of them, which I won’t actually get to until next Sunday (obviously), but I look forward to performing the Lunar version this evening. Also obviously, this builds upon the Saturnine instruction I received over the last two weeks.
INVOCATION: PETTITION FOR ACCESS TO THE SUN BY WAY OF THE ARCHANGEL MICHAEL
Build your altar and your Circle of Art as instructed by Saturn.
Perform the Titan’s Cross
Perform the Invocation Rite of the Pentagram
Kneel before the altar and light the first candle and fumigation.
Read the Orphic Hymn to the Moon
Light the candles on the Circle of Art and pour a libation
“I call upon you, O Archangel Michael whose sphere is the Sun,
You do not know me: I am Tieresias of the Obsidian Dream,
and I call upon you in the tradition of magicians dating back to Moses,
and in the name of Rufus Opus and the Seven Spheres Group.
By this seal I invoke you, and by the secret names of God
which have been handed down to me and which are inscribed there on.
That I might most fully participate in the rites Seven Spheres Group,
I ask that you lead me to the Gates of the Sun, and vouchsafe me entry.
Permit me a glimpse of Iophiel, he of the eighth sphere.
