Aradia – Journey Through The Obsidian Dream

Rebuilding

Satyr Magos09/09/2014

Re-establishing my magical practice now that I’ve moved back to Kansas City has proven a greater challenge than I had anticipated. I’m managing to keep up my Esbats, but only barely. I have failed to resume making regular offerings to my familiar spirits, and the gods… well, since Aradia also had a Dionysus statue, the idol I’d kept in Indiana was only unpacked tonight. I have still not completed the masks the Witchmother instructed me to make, nor have I made any progress on the ceremonial witchcraft book I had once delusionally believed I would complete over winter break.

Part of the problem, I think, is the degree to which my magical practice has come to differ from Aradia’s. While she has found some use from the Orphic and Picatrix hymns to the planets, the Stele of Jeu is not at all to her taste. Meanwhile, I have (very much to my detriment, mind) fallen out of practicing the sort of visionary work that remains central to her practice, and she has picked up a bit of the Hoodoo that’s going around Kansas City circles these days (a Catholic upbringing and a better grounding in Chaos magic paradigm-shifting make that much easier a leap for her than it is to me). And the people we used to do Sabbats with are … not really practicing with us any more; we seem to be drifting apart.

Further, especially since we’re not practicing together like we used to, I feel really awkward practicing magic in a house where someone is not participating.

Of course, since we’re not doing magic the place isn’t really tuned to magic, and there’s more … resistance when we do do things.

This is all just whining, of course. The solution is clear and simple.

Resume the visionary work, keep at the planets, keep at the moons, and fucking DO MAGIC.

In witchcraft

Genius Locii: Overseer of the Standing Stones

Satyr Magos25/08/2013

When our friend Sthenno learned that Aradia and I were going on a road trip to the Badlands, she asked us to bring her back some dirt to dad to her collection of Earth and Waters from various parts of the world. She gave us a baggie to collect the dirt in, and a vial of water and a tea-light to serve as an offering for the exchange.

Although we were happy to oblige, there was the small concern of where and how to do such a thing. After all, the removal of any rocks or plants from a national park is technically a crime (though we carried off enough mud on or shoes and gear to equal easily five times the volume that we collected for Sthenno). Further (and, frankly, more importantly), this was not a region where white people have historically covered themselves in glory with regards to the First Nations peoples or the spirits of the land. Although Aradia got a slightly different vibe off of everything, the overwhelming majority of the spirits that I could percieve in the Badlands were fundamentally disinterested in my existence one way or the other.

The one notable exception to that was a spirit near our camp site. There was a hill to the West of us that called to me. And not just me: a camp of hippies near us took it upon themselves to climb the small mountain in the dark. Aradia and I watched their lights and listened to their yells; I very much wanted to follow them—as I put it then, “carrying our jug of wine and screaming like a maenad”—but Aradia disuaded me.

The spirit knew that we needed dirt, and it called to me. The second day we did climb the hill, and found concentric circles of carefully stacked stones with a set of three piles that were clearly an altar of sorts, and two extra pairs set like gateways at the heads of two paths leading further away from the site. The spirit—who we believe called others there to erect the “standing stones”—accepted Sthenno’s offer of water and fire in exchange for the dirt (though the wind made the latter … complicated), but wanted blood from Aradia and I without making itself particularly clear about what it was offering in return. We politely declined, and—perhaps as a result–the spirit also made clear that we were not to take any pictures of the top of it’s hill, so the above picture from the road is the only image I can offer you; one can just barely see the stones rising up at the top of the hill.

Upon our return, the dirt maintained a clear and potent charge, and Sthenno was startled but intrigued to hear the story. For myself, I look forward to hearing what comes of her workings with the dirt and the associated spirit.

The site, itself, remains clear in my mind, and it is my intention to return astrally to see what I can learn from that perspective.

In witchcraft

Taking Pain

Satyr Magos24/06/2013

Taking a break from all the Very Serious Posts which I should be writing, let’s have a little bit of story time.

Aradia and I are hosting some of my college friends right now, so we took them to our favorite bar in Kansas City, which also happens to be the best gay bar in town. It was also our first trip there since I got back from the summer, and we were delighted to find our favorite bartender working. He greeted us warmly, made our friends feel welcome, and made us the best drinks ever. It was glorious.

But he was also holding his left arm at a funny angle, and it was clearly paining him. I asked what was wrong, and he made a lot of inarticulate noises and hand gestures (which I originally translated as, “I was drunk at the time and I feel stupid”) before finally explaining that he had taken the pain from the lovely lesbian with the broken arm sitting next to us.

“Give it to me,” I said. “I’m a professional.” (Perhaps a slight exaggeration.)

“No,” he said. “I took it. It’s my responsibility.”

I respected that, so I let it go. My friends were like, “what?” and I explained the principles to them.

“Oh,” my one friend says, very much to my surprise.. “I did that once.” He goes on to tell me about how this one time he took half of his friend’s migraine so that they could both study before a test. “If I hadn’t done it myself,” he said, “I wouldn’t believe it was possible.”

The evening progresses, and I come back to the bar to order the next round of drinks. My bartender is in so much pain that he actually shorts me my change.

“Why do we do this, again?” he asks me.

“Because we can,” I say.

As I work down on my third bourbon, though, the whole thing starts to weigh on me. He’s nourishing the pain, taking it on as some sort of martyrdom, and it’s making it so he can’t work. I’m reluctant to push the issue, but Aradia argues that it’s just as idiotically macho to let him suffer as it is for him to insist on suffering, and that if I won’t take the pain off of him, she’ll do it.

We all finish our drinks, and its time to go. Aradia and one of my friends go to the ladies’ room, while my other friend and I go in search of the bartender to say goodbye and (again) offer to take the woman’s pain from him, and to tip him a little more before we leave. He refuses both my offer and the tip, but then he gets all weird about it, twisting my friend’s arm rather than taking the tip, and patting me on the heart with the wounded arm.

While his hand is resting on my heart something goes off in the back of my brain, and I just breathe the pain into my lungs, and exhale it as fire into the air above us.

He looks at me in shock and says, “You took it.”

“I did.”

“But you know we have to give it back.”

“No, we don’t.”

Aradia shows up and we finish our goodbyes with a little more drama and groping than usual, then leave the bar.

My friend can no longer contain his enthusiasm: “You breathed it out as smoke. I saw you take the pain. I was watching really close because I wanted to see how you did it, and I saw you breathe it out as smoke!”

There is nothing like third party confirmation to make an evening perfect.

I feel a little bad about it, now. He took the burden so seriously. But the whole martyr angle just grated on me, and the way he touched me with the wounded hand … it just seemed to be the thing to do a the time.

In witchcraft

Debriefing Venus Retrograde

Satyr Magos28/06/2012

I have just survived the first Venus retrograde of my career as a magician working with planetary forces. Not coincidentally, it was also the first such planetary movement I was consciously aware of. If I were a better keeper of journals, it would be interesting to go back and see what, exactly, my experience with such retrogrades had been before being aware of them.

Speaking only for myself, I believe that I passed through this retrograde period relatively unscathed. Perhaps my talisman protected me. Perhaps I just had my ducks in a row (unlikely). Or perhaps I was just too busy dealing with other people’s Venus-related explosions that I didn’t have time to stress out over my own.