Journey Through The Obsidian Dream

Having read The Elements of Ritual, Aradia was already a fan of Deborah Lipp before we attended her workshops at Heartland Pagan Festival 2011. In her workshops and previous books, Lipp complains that publishers have been printing and reprinting the same dozen 101-level books on witchcraft for the last 30 years. Her most recent book, The Study of Witchraft: A Guidebook to Advanced Wicca, is an answer to that complaint. It is an excellent answer to that complaint.

Speculating as to why so few books on Wicca have anything new to offer, Lipp concludes that it is because in the Good Old Days (an implication she makes with all due irony) the shortage of books on witchcraft forced a Seeker to study farther afield. It is in those “outside” studies, Lipp argues, and in the process of applying the core ideas of witchcraft to both those studies and one’s life as a whole, that “advanced” Wicca actually happens. She goes on to suggest areas of study, both wide and deep, which she believes are essential.

The Study of Witchcraft, then, is ultimately an elaborate framing device for an extensive reading list and a few “homework” assignments aimed at better understanding those readings. I have read – at best – 10% of the books she recommends. Those I have read, though – Ronald Hutton’s Triumph of the Moon, Carlo Ginsburg’s Ecstacies, Charles G Leland’s Aradia, Dion Fortune’s Sea Priestess, to name a few – and the number which have been in my “to read” pile, convince me of the quality of the rest.

In the introduction to her workshop, Deborah Lipp admonished her audience, “…[I]f you haven’t read two books on witchcraft, go read two books on witchcraft!” My advice would be, having done that, read this book (and at least half of the books it recommends) next.

In hedonism, witchcraft

Mingle Under a Darking Moon

Satyr Magos06/06/2011

The rituals at the last two Heartland Pagan Festivals were deep, dark, and powerful – digging up years of accumulated pain in the attempt to cleanse and heal them. The climax of last year’s main ritual featured the enactment of a confrontation between Demeter and Hades over the abduction of Persephone, where each participant let go of something, or honored something which they had lost. At the end of each ritual – and several of the workshops – nearly everyone was crying. (That I wasn’t, actually, was one of the Clue Phone calls I got that year: apparently I am still more emotionally retarded that I had allowed myself to believe.) This was at the height of a blue moon, following the full moon at Beltane.

This year the rituals were somewhat less focused. The opening ritual was about finding the fun and awakening the inner child; the main ritual was about blurring the line between the Sacred and the Mundane; the intensive workshops were largely aimed at the BDSM and polyamorous communities, so Aradia and I did not attend. This year, however, was not a blue moon but the last bleeding edge of waning and the first night of the Dark.

There had been storms for most of the week, and tornadoes Wednesday afternoon. The forecast for the weekend had been deteriorating slowly the closer we got. Camp Gaea was soaked and battered when we arrived.

The opening ritual began strong [1] with an invocation of the Four Elements. Guest speaker Orien Laplante cast the circle with a bell – more like a miniature gong on a string – a feat which I will have to reproduce at some point. Into that circle, we [2] called our various patron Goddesses and Gods, and spread that circle to the corners of the land. We were encouraged to reclaim our childish sense of fun, and given a length of string with which to affirm our purpose in being at the festival. Mine was to reconnect with the life I have – before moving on to my new life at Earlham, and I believe I ultimately achieved that goal. As always, the circle was left open, to be dismissed at the conclusion of the festival.

The main ritual echoed the first in structure. The Elements were invoked and Orien cast the circle with a musical instrument – this time a drum. As the elements were invoked, the circle was drawn in colored sands. The ritual leaders did a bit of sermonizing – telling us how we, outside the circle, could not know the things they experienced inside the circle – then directed us to step into the circle, and back out, to feel the difference. We danced in and out of the circle, walking and eventually obliterating the line, both literally and magically. It was fascinating to feel the edges of the circle unweave, blur, and eventually disintegrate. Ultimately, the ritual proved what we should always have known: that the distinction between the magical and the mundane is an arbitrary and illusory one.

The closing ritual, sadly, was weak. Firstly, I don’t care for the new tradition of holding it Sunday night, rather than Monday afternoon; although I understand why that might be better for the Sacred Experience Committee and even for some of the attendees, Sunday night is usually the largest bonfire and the height of the festivities, and having the closing ritual right before the bonfire undermines both events. Secondly, the closing ritual was just that – a closing. No energy was raised, I didn’t have time to enter a magical state of mind. We thanked the various powers for their attendance and bid them depart “at dawn”. This, I think, serves as an excellent example of the sort of drama that would work well in fiction, but not in real magical ritual – at least not for a group as large and un-integrated as a public festival; a close-knit coven might well find it effective.

As has been the case since I started participating it, the vision quest was my spiritual highpoint of the festival. This year’s them was The Odyssey, a narrative with which I can relate and whose characters I know well. Homer was the guide waiting outside. Athena [3] stood waiting at the first station, warning that though I had “survived the war”, there were struggles yet to come. As is often the case, I wish now that I had taken more time to meditate on each of these things sooner, while they were still fresh in my mind. Each of the guides had something of value for me, but only these stick so firmly in my mind.

The second station was the Winds, reminding that there was aid to call upon – a notion which was particularly helpful to me, given that so much of my magic is related to movement and progress, and who better to call upon for that (especially given my Wiccan ritual structure) than the Four Winds? The third station was a Kyclopes, reminding me of the debts of hospitality and the dangers of overstepping those proprieties. At the third station was Kalypso, followed by Tiresias, followed by the Siren. Eventually I came upon two suitors of Penelope, and finally stood before the great Queen, herself. Kalypso spoke of loneliness, and Tiresias warned of the debts to the dead. The Siren spoke of voices, warning against those that lead us astray – I am fortunate in that I can barely hear those over the screaming of my Muses. Penelope the Queen spoke to me of patience, a virtue I often neglect; my path is cleanly laid for the foreseeable future, now I have to walk it.

The sky was overcast for most of the weekend. The winds were high, and cold, hard rain threatened constantly. By the time Sunday morning came – and with it a much-hoped-for parting of the clouds – we were afraid that Thursday had held all the sun we were going to see that weekend. Spirits throughout the camp were low. People seemed to be trying too hard to have fun, and not succeeding.

Aradia and I attended only one workshop – a detailed and informative two-part lecture on the structure of spellcasting by Deborah Lipp, one of Aradia’s newest favorite authors. Aside from participating in the public rituals, we spent almost all of our time in camp – drinking, smoking, and feasting. I picked up a few pointers on hot stone massage from the gentleman associate of one of the Taco ladies, and intend to incorporate that into both my massage techniques and magical practice.

When Monday came – usually a day of frantic last-minute shopping, goodbyes, and intermittent packing – I saw the camp empty faster than almost any year. Everyone was exhausted and yearning for their beds – “to my babies and my fuzzies”, as one friend put it. Aradia and I were no exceptions.

[1] I will say that the invocation of the Great Buffalo in the North bugged the shit out of me. Sorry, Sacred Experience Committee, but even if your North Caller is Native (or legitimately initiated into a First Nation tradition) and has a right to that invocation, not enough (read: “few or none”) of your attendees have a similar right.

[2] Or, rather – the rest of the attendees. Although I am generally comfortable with Wiccan structure, the monism and gendering implicit in invoking Goddess and God in that fashion are still things I have trouble reconciling with my queer polytheism when I’m not in control of the ritual.

[3] Athena, as channeled by a friend of mine who will henceforth be known as such on this blog. I could tell just on seeing her that she was at least half-ridden, and talking to her later learned that she could not actually remember any of the individuals who passed by her. The presence of Athena was adequately clear that I was able to name her without any of her major iconography – helm, spear, or owl.

In witchcraft

Dreams of Gods and Spirits

Satyr Magos05/06/2011

I rarely have dreams that are explicitly Pagan. Even the flying dreams that have so influenced my treatment of dreams in writing draw more heavily on pop culture than on my experience of witchcraft. Last night was a notable exception.

The dream was set in a place that closely resembled the Lawrence of my youth, except that all the buildings seemed larger (a common feature of my dreamscape) and the houses to either side of my parents were rotting. The trees that lined the streets were taller, too – wilder – and the woods through which the train tracks passed were wilder.

As always, the earliest parts of the dream are the vaguest. I don’t remember what initially drew my attention to the car in front of my parents’ house – just that I found a lion-headed woman therein. She seemed to appear and disappear, sometimes more lion-like, sometimes more wholly woman. She was tired, drunk, or sleeping, and there was a staff of some kind in the back seat beside her.

I somehow discerned that she belonged to the house next door, and took the staff to show to them. A woman and a child were on the front porch, and a man coming down to the road. They didn’t seem to trust or believe me, so I threw the staff to them. It became a pitchfork and stuck in their door near the child – which upset me, but didn’t seem to concern them.

Back in my parents’ house, other creatures were appearing, and I gathered a group of people – D, and a half-dozen others that I can’t remember – to go wandering. We found ourselves along the train tracks, where it was winter and calf-deep in snow. Over in the street, we spy a pair of blue rubber snow boots walking on their own – each one about six feet tall. I am convinced that there’s an invisible giant in them and that if I touch it I’ll be able to see it, so I climb up the stone wall and tackle-hug it. I’m right – it’s an invisible giant, we can all see her now, and she can’t decide whether she’s more amused or disturbed.

My group goes back to my parents rental – which, as I alluded before – is three stories tall instead of two, and falling apart. We are all convinced now that All The Rules Have Changed, so we start climbing out of windows, leaping from building to building, and walking across the roof of the rental. My father is seriously disturbed by these events – the roof-climbing in particular, he’s afraid of heights (true story) – and my grandfather is in denial; I’m not sure where my mother and sister are at, but my brother is one of the people on the roof.

The giantess is coming to visit, and I’m very excited. My grandfather is staying at the rental house, and one of his friends comes by. I’m frustrated because I know that they’re going to be rude to the giantess, and because of course he’s going to have a guest if I’m going to.

About that point, I start waking up. Although I continued the dream – or new dreams with similar themes – I cannot remember any of those in detail. One featured the lion-woman again. The two surviving Gorgons made an appearance in another.

For all that I’ve somewhat fallen off my ritual practice, dreams like this indicate to me that I can’t be as far astray as I sometimes feel.

In scholarship

Occult Titles

Satyr Magos02/06/2011

I first encountered the title “Frater” in The King’s Dragon, by Kate Elliot. Although the novel (and its sequels) are set in a magnificently researched alternate Europe during the early Medieval period, it did not occur to me that the title might genuine until some years later when I came across the authors Frater U.D. and Frater Barrabas. I began to wonder what the title meant and why someone would want to claim that title – especially F. Barrabas, a Wiccan magician. Recently, I was introduced to a magical blog by one Frater Acher. All three are ceremonial magicians of one stripe or another.

Once is an incident, twice is a coincidence, and three times is a pattern. l have no doubt that the taking of titles is a long and storied tradition within (at the very least) Western occult practices. I have been led to understand that the titles within the Golden Dawn – and the Freemasons from whom they draw much of their ritual – can be quite elaborate. I know that it has been the peculiar practice among many American Wiccans to take the titles of “Lord” or (especially) “Lady” as part of their craft names. How widespread is this practice? How far back does it go? I now have a new area of research.

In witchcraft

She Below

Satyr Magos24/05/2011

As I ruminate on the subject, I realize that my first contact with the divine came well before the events that make better stories. I can’t actually find the event in my journals, so I am uncertain as to the exact date. I know it was the Spring Semester of 2008 or 2009. It was a beautiful day: the sun was shining, the grass was green, and I was meditating on the lawn at Maple Woods Community College – trying to balance myself between Earth and Sky. I felt something move beneath me: female, more spiritually massive than anything I had ever encountered before, and waiting for me. I didn’t fall over, but it was a near thing.

All my life, I have sworn that I would honor any divinity that deigned to seek me out, and I will confess that I was somewhat concerned as to how I might be held to that oath. I felt that presence several times – always patient, always waiting, inscrutable and distant beyond my ability to comprehend or express – before the definitive encounter in November of 2009.

That encounter came at a workshop Aradia and I attended at the local New Age bookstore. A lecture on Qabalistic thought and the 10 Sephiroth concluded with a guided meditation to the Sphere of Malkuth. Oddly, this involved first ascending to Yesod before descending back to Malkuth. Perhaps this is simply the best way to do things – either in general, or in the case of an open workshop where many are unfamiliar with the Qabala. Moreover, it has been suggested to me by a Chirotus that there is a second Tree of Life, inverted below the first, and that I somehow descended to that lower Malkuth. I wouldn’t know: my ignorance of High Ceremonial Magic is vast.

Ultimately, the mechanics of the experience are a little bit beside the point. I descended to the underworld, where I was led to a sacred grove and a pillar of light. I rode the pillar of light up, then down. And down. And down. And someone was waiting for me.

A gigantic queen reclined before me, gloriously nude except for her crown, flanked by lions. I had done some research in the preceding year, regarding goddesses of the deeper earth: I knew the iconography. Even had I not, her name echoed in my mind. Rhea.

I do not know how to describe our exchange, precisely. My notes record that I petitioned for her patronage*, but it would be as accurate to say that she claimed me for her own. Either way, a bond was forged – my first formal bond, though I had served Dionysos and Hephaestos in word and deed for years. Then she sent me on my way, long before the others were done with their journeys.

Since then, she has made frequent appearances in my explorations of the Underworld. When I journeyed in preparation for my initiation, it was to her temples that I was led. Later, she instructed me to inform an Earth-worshiping friend – a monist, actually, who has expressed discomfort distinguishing individual deities – that she was waiting and that it is to be my task to introduce them.

Despite all this, I have not yet succeeded in incorporating her into my ritual practice. I need to find or make an idol, sooner rather than later. Fortunately, the Magna Mater is patient beyond mortal comprehension.

*”Matron” might be more literally correct, but that word means something else in English.

In witchcraft

Gods of Earth and Sky – First Contacts

Satyr Magos17/05/2011

I want to write about my experiences with Dionysos and meadmaking. Which of course bring to mind my experiences with jewelry and Hephaestos, and with the upperworld journey that deposited me at the feet of Apollo – to our mutual surprise. I want to write about my experiments with my Kouros and Cycladic figures, and my attempts to reconcile my fundamental queerness with the archetypal Divine Masculine and Feminine. But, because I’m crazy, I cannot tell these stories out of order. In order to tell these stories I must first tell about the first times I felt the direct hand of the divine.

My first direct, personal contact was with a god I have yet to put a name to, in Thoth’s Grove at Camp Gaea, on Beltane of 2009. There was a lot going on that night, apparitions the like of which I had never seen. But that touch in that grove … that was about me. I performed my dedication that night at his behest, utterly abandoning the ritual I had been planning and simply letting go.

The next direct contact was late November of the same year: a Tree of Life meditation at a public workshop led me further down than it was intended to, into the den of the Magna Mater. She had been waiting for me.

Each of these deserves a full post of its own, and will get one. But it’s interesting to sit here for a moment, to look back through my journals, and recall – and in some ways realize for the first time – the way events in 2009 set so many changes into motion. My dedication. My initiation a year later. The Name I tried to give up and the Name I took tor replace it. The gods who have come into my life, the powers I have navigated and been transformed by.

I am no longer the person who retreated from St. Louis, let alone the person who left Lawrence for St.L in the first place.

In hedonism

Persephone’s Gift of Mead

Satyr Magos17/05/2011

I bottled a lot of mead over the weekend: my first five-gallon batch, the gallon I made for the upcoming Heartland Pagan Festival, and the batch my magical group helped me start last Midsummer.

The five-gallon batch is my second/third attempt at pomegranate mead. The first was fantastic – my best to date. The second I started (but which I won’t bottle until October) was for Samhain. This one I started in December and bottled last Thursday. It’s not as good as the first batch, but it’s very, very tasty.

Ingredients:

12 lb honey (used Sweatheart honey this time from my brew store)

4x32oz. pomegranate juice (I favor the Odwalla brand over Pom)

juice of 1 lemon, 1 orange

1 1/2 tsp tannen

2 1/2 tsp pectic enzyme

5 tsp yeast energizer

I ultimately added another 60 or so ounces of pomegranate juice as I racked the mead. The color and the flavor weren’t strong enough for my taste. The ultimate outcome, for some reason, was never as bold and red as the first, or as richly flavored. Maybe the Pom brand juice is dyed and therefore contributed a stronger color (disturbingly likely and all the more reason not to use it again). We’ll see how the flavor develops in the bottle, it might be just as good as the first batch in another few months.

This is the label I made:

The colors label didn’t scan very well, I’m afraid, but it looks good on the bottle. I’m very pleased to say that, uncolored and without any kind of label, my mother – who is not a witch of any stripe or even much of an antiquarian – was able to identify the figure as Persephone.

In hedonism, witchcraft

A Darker Shade of Beltane

Satyr Magos05/05/2011

This past weekend was Beltane. Aradia and I celebrated out at Camp Gaea with all the madness that usually entails, and a little bit extra besides. Last year, Beltane (along with Heartland Pagan Festival, 28 days later) coincided with a Full Moon. This year the Moon was Dark, and the differences were … interesting.

Beyond the sacred/ritual nature of the entire weekend,Aradia and I participated in four distinct rituals: the public ritual, a ritual toast, an underworld journey, and our ultimate ritual with Pasiphae and Aidan. Each was stylistically and thematically distinct. Half of them were purgative. By the end of the weekend, each of us – myself, Aradia, Pasiphae, and Aidan – had injured ourselves in some way.

The first ritual was the public one on Saturday night. More than two dozen people gathered in the Old Way ritual space – several entire families were present, and at least a half-dozen children. Aradia and I were there early, of course, and volunteered to light the torches. In the process, we also cast the first layer of the circle. (We’ve gotten very good at that.) The ritual itself was done in two parts. In the first part, the children raised energy by running in circles, then channeled that energy into a chalice full of seeds to be planted on a newly rebuilt berm and led out of the circle to do so. The second part of the ritual was for the grownups. We talked a little about our passions and art, then raised energy by singing tones. I wish I’d brought my drum. Then, without a closing of any kind, we were sent out in the world to “do something” with that energy – the ritual leader warned us, though, that she wouldn’t be held responsible for any consequences of that action.

Why, yes, I did go promptly drop that lust-bomb on the unsuspecting Cauldron. Did you even have to ask? Dionysos and Pan are very good friends, and it is for very good reason I have been more than once accused of serving the latter. I also charged my thyrsos with it and saved a lot of it for later use.

The second ritual was the ritual toast – a blot (trigger warning for rugged masculinity and associated memes) – performed at the behest of an Asatru gentleman we met while unpacking Friday night. The rite was simple and straightforward: each participant makes an offering to the sky and to the earth, then makes a toast; the others repeat the toast, then each offers their own toast (shared by the others) in turn.

The Asatru gentleman offered his toast to his mother, who had recently passed, and later returned to our camp with a bewildered look on his face. “I think that blot was the whole reason I needed to come out here,” he told us. He had fallen off his practice and his gods were calling him back. Though I did not particularly like him – he was the sort of person you might expect a self-identified redneck, knife-dealing, kinkster to be – I was honored to have served him in that fashion. If I am to serve the neo-Pagan community in the ways I envision – helping with rites, putting on traditions as masks for solitaries and disconnected traditionalists, among other things – I must be prepared to answer to individuals and traditions that make me uncomfortable, so long as they do not outright violate my ethics.

The underworld journey was semi-spontaneous. I had planned on doing one over the weekend, but when I felt called while watching the post-ritual fire and dancing in the Old Way, I also invited the nearby folks from the KU Cauldron to join me.

To my surprise, six of us wandered down to Thoth’s Grove (after nearly getting lost in Key Pass). We started by casting the circle in near-silence, hand-to-hand. “Visualize East,” I told them. There was a struggle, briefly, as everyone tried to find the “same” east, but once we chose it, all the other points were synchronized. The circle cast, I opened a portal to the underworld and introducing them all to the World Tree. My own journey was … fruitful, but I did not find what I was looking for. Most of the Cauldron didn’t speak of what they saw, but I was later told that they had all found the experience to be meaningful.

The fourth and final ritual was performed with our regular ritual partners, Pasiphae and Aidan, who were only able to make it out for that one night. We had two major ritual goals we wanted to accomplish: I wanted to dedicate my Kouros figure, the male half of the goddess/god duo I have been experimenting with; and to purge ourselves of our accumulating troubles, symbolized by the too-old and unlabled herbs from our magical pantry. The first went well: I felt Him awake with a sort of quiet humor. The second went even better, evolving spontaneously into a shouted litany of “Fuck you!”s as we pounded an ounce or so of whole cloves into dust in Pasiphae’s iron cauldron/mortar. Each of us ended up taking a second turn, and a new Beltane tradition was born.

As I mentioned at the beginning, the Dark Moon Beltane was of a somewhat different character than the Full Moon. Besides the purgative rituals and underworld journeys, everyone in my intimate circle ended up giving flesh to Gaea. I was bitten by a blackthorn branch I never managed to find, and reinjured my shin while hobbling about camp. Despite her best efforts, Aradia got a vicious sunburn, numerous bugbites, and reinjured the foot she wounded while traipsing about Nashville and Chicago with me last month. Pasiphae and Aidan were both attacked by the fire – he burned his hand, and an ember landed right under her eye.

Finally, though it didn’t play as significant a role in this years rituals as it did last year, I cannot leave out the mead. I bottled last years a week or so ago, as you may recall. We drank most of it over the holiday. It was awesome. I started another gallon for next year. It, too, will be awesome.

Despite the unintended blood-sacrifices, I declare the festivities a resounding success.

In witchcraft

Did You Conjure It Back?

Satyr Magos28/04/2011

My first ritual blade was a butterfly knife I purchased at the Douglas County Gun & Knife Show, back in my junior year of high school. Being the particular brand of young fool that I was, I carried it everywhere, despite its tendency to slip out of my pocket at inopportune moments. Inevitably, I lost it: it slipped out of my pocket one day on the bus ride home. Some weeks later, it reappeared: tumbling out of a stack of papers that I hadn’t touched in months, falling open and sticking into the ground at at my feet.

A few years later, I lost another knife in similar circumstances: it fell out of my pocket as I was walking home from the coffee shop. Somehow, while cutting through a wide park I on the way home from work the next day, I managed to trip over the lost knife. Yes, I walked that route a lot … but the odds of that are still pretty slim.

Monday, I lost my wallet in my night class. I pulled it out of my skirt pocket when I went through the drive-through for dinner and I stuffed it in the inside breast pocket of my coat. When I got home from class, the zipper was undone and the wallet was gone. I searched the apartment, called the school, emailed the professor, and ultimately cancelled my debit cards. This morning I found my wallet back … in the belt pouch I hadn’t worn since the weekend.

“Did you conjure it back?” Aradia asked me.

Not on purpose. I’m embarrassed to admit that it never even occurred to me.

In art

Astrological Characterization

Satyr Magos25/04/2011

For all that I have been a self-identified occultist since the age of sixteen, I am woefully ignorant of matters astrological. Don’t get me wrong – I spent my time studying sun-signs, just like everyone else. But I never graduated into complete charts. I didn’t even really know that they existed until well after I’d grown bored with the subject. I fell for the pseudo-scientific debunking games of folks like the Amazing Randy. (Hey, don’t blame me: I went to public schools. Critical thinking was something I learned later, out in the real world.) Since those early days, I have since learned that astrology is a massive, complex area of study with multitudinous, conflicting schools of thought. But it is only within the last year that I have begun to study it in earnest.

My initial forays have been sporadic. I still have a half-dozen charts I’ve promised people I would complete for them as part of my studies. (And I really will generate them soon. Before I leave for Real College, even.) Realistically, I’m only beginning to learn the vocabulary. The underlying theses still elude me.

As you delightful readers may or may not know, I am a novelist. A great number of my stories revolve around occult themes. Having recently started a new project, I decided that an excellent way to work on character development for the protagonist, and as an excuse to work on something other than my homework, I would create a birth chart for her.

It’s been fascinating work so far.

My chief resources on this project – astrology in general, not just Dorothea Faigin – are Astrolog and Astrology: A Cosmic Science by Isabel M. Hickey. The former came recommended by Chirotus, the latter I am “borrowing” from Aradia’s library.

Click image for full view.