by the way i’m crazy – Page 4 – Journey Through The Obsidian Dream

Ivy-Clad: Mirrors, Masks, Magic, and Art

Satyr Magos21/11/2012

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.

In art

Whispers of Madness and Insurection I

Satyr Magos20/11/2012

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.

In witchcraft

Getting One’s Hands Dirty

Satyr Magos08/11/2012

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.

In witchcraft

This is My Brain on Chaos Magick

Satyr Magos21/10/2012

I was an arrogant, ignorant ass way back in the day. At seventeen I was already trying to write manuals of what little I knew about magic. I didn’t know shit, not that I could put into words, but I tried anyway. But I was also a little precocious: the very first book was subtitled “A Path to Madness”. Yeah. I was also pompous … even more than I am today. That said, however, there does seem to be a strong correlation between the practice of magic and the appearance or experience of insanity.

For myself, that correlation predates my study and practice of the occult. Although many, even in the United States, had it much worse than I, my childhood was far from idyllic. The living hell that most people experience in Junior High was my experience of elementary school; in retrospect, I was always a little queer, and I imagine that the other children knew before I did that I was Other than they. As I’ve mentioned before, some years of my magical practice—age twenty-one through twenty-five, in particular—revolved around getting a grasp on my sanity more than anything else, but the more Project Null brings my early experiments back to conscious recollection, the more I wonder if the first two or three years of my practice didn’t destabilize me more than I realize.

Although I cannot help but think that there is a certain amount of self-aggrandizement in the framing of it, Chaos Magick, in particular, has a reputation for shaking the foundations of one’s sanity. Stephen Mace, Peter Carroll, and Phill Hine all mention it[1]. The good master Jack Faust had some things to say about it, as well, which resonated with me deeply[2].

I’ve mentioned in greater and lesser detail that over the last few weeks, my paranoia and social anxiety have been off the rails. I’ve been so out of sorts that I dedicated the Dark Moon to banishing more than anything else: performing the Stele of Jeu two days in a row, and three days in a row of my LBRP variant. I felt fabulous … until I encountered people. There’s a lot of astrological garbage going on right now, but a lot of it’s kinda where I live, anyway, and it doesn’t seem to be affecting everyone else as badly. You, my readers, are clever people: you already see where this is going.

Somewhere last week, I started entertaining the idea that I might be under magical attack. And yesterday I was almost certain that was what was going on.

Now, it fifteen years of magical practice, I’ve been attacked (not counting the whole B situation) maybe three times, tops. Probably only twice. But shit’s been exploding in my brain for almost a month, now. Still, I exercised appropriate caution with that idea. I asked ZG about it during my Dark Moon journeywork … unfortunately, her answer was unintelligible. Yesterday, when I was about ready to unleash the hounds on whoever or whatever was coming after me … I sat down with my tarot deck, got a little gnostic with my pipe and my porto, and laid down some cards.

Hahah. Oops.

No. I’m not under attack. I’m short-circuiting myself and suffering from psychic weather. College campuses are not healthy places, psychically speaking, and my shields aren’t strong enough for my increasing sensitivity. There may or may not be a particular person or persons who are exacerbating the problem (Immediate trigger: Princesss of Disks), but the root cause is my own magical work (Early cause: 2W)—possibly my get-laid enchantment, or even the Chaos Magick project as a whole. Interestingly, the solution seems to be blazing forward at full tilt boogie (Conclusion: Queen of Wands) until I achieve some sort of balance (Next step, surprising experiences: VI the Lovers, XIV Art). Sadly, the result (8D) will not be as epic as the process. The spread, for those unfamiliar with it, is the Ankh layout from Hajo Banzhaf and Brigitte Theler’s Keywords for the Crowley Tarot[3].

So, in the spirit of charging ahead, I finished up the first of several talismanic enchantments I have in the works: turning my bi-pride triangles into a protective talisman which doubles as a giant neon-flashing sign, “Hey, I’m fucking queer,” since so many people seem to miss the point. In the next weeks, I plan to lay some sort of sigilized enchantment on every piece of jewelry I wear on a regular basis.

I’m also escalating my meditative practice and my daily devotionals. This morning it was suggested to me, as I performed the Rite of General Offering, that I add a small daily shrine to my seasonal altar. That seems like a good place to start.

1 – Mace in Stealing the Fire From Heaven; Carroll in Liber Null and Psychonaut; Hine in Condensed Chaos. Probably more people elsewhere, as well.

2 – Yeah, Jack: I been creeping’ yer blog, cruizin’ yer archives.

3 – pp.35-6

In witchcraft

Dissonance and Resonance

Satyr Magos09/09/2012

I have been practicing magic for just shy of sixteen years. I’ve seen some whack-ass shit—some of it way back in the day, some of it a little more recently. I even burned out the circuitry in my own brain on one occasion, a psychic injury from which I have only fully recovered in the last two years. Fuck: I spent the first five or eight years of my magical practice with no other goal than to get some sort of hold on what currently passes for my sanity. So when Peter Carroll tells me that Chaos Magick can lead to paranoia and obsession and outright madness, my first reaction is, “Been there. Done that.”

Oops. Stultus sum.

I have spent the last week struggling with depression and paranoia far out of line with my circumstances. Also, a round of insomnia which has driven me to work on perfecting my sleeping tea and which has rendered me almost incapable of focusing on my studies. Small noises in and outside my apartment have sent me into fits, searching for the source. I have heard things scratching at the doors and walls. In the moments between sleep and waking, I am haunted by delusions that someone or something is trying to break into the apartment. My dreams have been haunted by fear, death, and betrayal.

Yes, I have things to be depressed about. I have abandoned one lover, for a second time, in a far-away city; I have stayed in place as another moves on to bigger and better things. That these things are inevitable, and the only path to each of us furthering our ambitions, is little consolation: I miss them. Beyond that, finances are tight. I didn’t make enough money over the summer, leaving with debt at the beginning and my costs have risen. I’ve secured a TA position, which will provide me more hours than my post office position last year, but it’s still minimum-wage work-study.

There’s also stress. I’m studying two dead languages at once, which is a kind of mind fuck. I’m learning to weave, which is relatively straightforward on the one hand, but hugely time consuming. And I’m taking an upper-level class outside my field: Gender Studies, as a point of fact, which while somewhat familiar territory as a queer feminist, is rightly known as a field of particularly difficult-to-read theory.

But these very real factors are not sufficient to account for the degree of madness I’ve been struggling against, or the perfect (if short-lived) efficacy of banishing and/or meditation as a method of managing it.

All this, and I haven’t even performed my initiation in to the Chaos Current, yet, or the Mass of Chaos B for a second time?

Fuck. Me. Running.

I just hope that if I do go off the deep end, there’ll be someone left in my life to send in a rescue party.

Meditation

My meditation has been going fabulously. I have missed only one day this week—Monday—and I have meditated in excess of 30 minutes on two occasions: almost exactly half an hour Tuesday night, before sleep; and a somewhat harder to quantify amount Friday afternoon at the loom, made up of uncounted three to eight minute intervals as I lost myself in the rhythm of the shuttle and reed.

Which is fucking good, because, as I said above, it’s been the front line of defense against the hordes of my internal demons.

Magic

I have been banishing and refining my Q-Cross every day, but done little other active magic this week. What I have done is dwell upon Chaos Magick, its paradigms, and Project Null. Having produced the first half-dozen glyphs of my Sacred Alphabet, I must now begin to conceive of how it will grow. I have also been preparing for Monday morning’s Mercury Cazimi election.

And, of course, as is my custom, I spend Friday night cleaning and smudging my apartment. I also performed a couple banishings..

The most concrete product of these musings and meditations can be seen in the image at the top: a syncretic chaosphere for Aradia, myself, and anyone else who chooses to join in with Project Null. An image, a sigil if you will, to help unite and power our efforts. Our own little runoff stream of the Chaos current.

Dream

Although my dreams have been consistently violent, they have only been clear enough to record after waking about every other day. I’m always vague in the mornings; it’s twice as bad when I actually wake up with the alarm, rather than before, and that is always the case when I have to dose myself in order to sleep.

For the curious: the tea I’ve been drinking has been valerian, mugwort, and white willow at at 2:1:1 ratio. Last night I added 1/2 part mint and reduced the dose from 4 tsp to 3, which has produced the best results so far. Mugwort tea gave me nightmares as a teen, too, but almost never since.

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.

In Uncategorized

Welcome to My Personal, Political, Magickal, Clusterfuck Life

Satyr Magos12/06/2012

[Warning to the people who know me IRL: this gets personal at the end and might be a little awkward.]

So …. I’ve picked up a few new readers in the last weeks. Welcome to the Obsidian Dream, folks: it’s good to have you along for the ride. As of last week I know have more “followers” here than I had back on blogger, and (although I know there’s some overlap between the two, and that many of my beloved readers don’t use those buttons for whatever reason) that feels pretty damn good. My monthly hits aren’t quite what they were, but I haven’t actually been keeping up with the posting that well these last couple months, either, and I suspect those facts are closely related. I’m grateful to have you all.

Things have been interesting here in the Satyr’s life: working in the mall to cover rent and summer spending money, living with Aradia for the summer, studying my Attic Greek (but not enough), the whole HPF main ritual drama and the continuing fallout, researching my planned switch from disposable razors to a straight edge (not because it’s superbutch, which is almost creepy enough to be a reason not to do it) but because it’s more environmentally sustainable), my car breaking down earlier this week, getting ready for Sannafrid coming out to visit next week, and getting ready for the giant fucking party we’re going to have while she’s here.

I’ve been doing some visionary work, but haven’t yet reached a point where I can provide an interesting narrative about it. The Moon has a lot to teach me, but it seems like I have to fuck shit up for the correct information they’ve imparted to rise to the surface (“No, man, like this: like I showed you already.”)

I’ve been working images of Venus and the Moon, inspired by my work with the Moon Talisman at Heartland and based on more of the descriptions from Christopher Warnock’s Picatrix translation. This has been a technical challenge, but super-fun. I plan to do at least one Picatrix-based image for each planet. Posts for each of those are forthcoming upon their completion.

Progress in my ceremonial studies has slowed greatly. Partly because I’ve been resting, partly because I’ve been researching, and partly because I’ve been devoting a lot of time to try to actually understand what I’ve already learned. The biggest things I’ve gotten done in this regard, lately, is downloading AstroWin and Morinus Tradional as potential alternatives Astrolog. Further, my studies have also been slightly hampered by the ever-clearer knowledge that, while many planetary magic techniques are really interesting and awesome (electional talisman construction, for example), my own talents slant so hard toward visionary work that ceremonialism, Hermetics and astrological magic will always be peripheral to my practice. They’re good, solid tools—fun to use and especially to make–but never my favorites.

Two things have consumed the last week more than anything else, though: emailing back and forth with the HSA Sacred Experience Committee regarding the horrible ritual, and getting ready for Sannafrid’s visit.

I have, to date, exchanged nearly a score of emails with the head of the Sacred Experience Committee and a couple other people involved in the ritual planning and execution. The initial emails were heated; since we have begun negotiating a face-to-face meeting (moderated by the former head of the SEC, an individual whom I respect greatly), things have calmed a little. The meeting will take place tomorrow, and a full report on the exchange will be forthcoming, as will be analysis of how I feel this event was exemplary of what I feel to be one of the greatest failures of the neo-Pagan and magical communities today: a deep and unexamined investment in the patriarchy which poisons all of our lives.

Although an altogether happy occasion (as opposed to the other, which might turn out well or might finish ruining Heartland for me), Sannafrid’s visit will be, in some ways, an equally iconic rejection of the mainline narratives which dominate our lives as people with one foot in the “Muggle”[1] world: I’m not just involved in deeply loving relationships with two different women. Although they have never met, they have always known about each other, and next week my “girlfriend at school” is going to come visit me while I’m living with my “girlfriend at home”. I don’t even know where to begin counting all the “rules” we’re breaking, let alone deconstructing them, so I’m just going to go for the lulz: Sannafrid is actually going to arrive while Aradia is away on a business trip.[2] Yeah. We’re all emotionally mature grown ups, capable of negotiating such potentially treacherous waters, but there is a lot of negotiating and triple-checking that needs to be done (in addition to all the housecleaning) to ensure that everyone’s on the same page about what is and isn’t going down, and that everyone’s anxieties are being allayed and that everyone’s needs are being fulfilled.[3]

The fact that both of these events are happening (and could only happen) while Venus is fucking retrograde is … interesting. Also: this shit. WTF, life? Man, am I glad that I made those Venus talismans.

All of this is to say that, while I’ll be doing a lot of magic in the next ten to twenty days, and finishing out some Big Shit Already In The Works (including at least one more write-up from HPF), it’s probably going to continue to be a month of light posting. Welcome to my wild and crazy life.

1 – Referring to people who don’t practice magic, see ghosts, or talk to spirits. On the one hand, I hate this Harry Potter-born neologism. On the other hand, it’s so much less problematic and idiotic than any of the alternatives I’ve heard or used: normal, once-born, cowan, mundane, uninitiated, blind, mortal.

2 – The best part is that, although it will work out for the best in some ways, we didn’t plan it that way. The dates for the business trip came down weeks after the dates for the visit were set.

3 – Wondering how this is related to magic or to my spiritual practice? Click here.

In Uncategorized, witchcraft

Of That Which Has Been Put Off : My Full Moon Reading

Satyr Magos04/06/2012

Sun = 14*Gemini – Moon = 16*Sagitarius – Venus Retrograde

Aradia and I had Pasiphae and Aidan over last night for some Full Moon socializing. The place was a little too messy for a full-on Esbat (the Battle of Mount Laundry has yet to be won), but we did spend quite a bit of time with our tarot decks. Aidan purchased his first deck at Heartland, and Pasiphae managed to get her hands on a copy of the out-of-print Rohrig deck she had been coveting for years. After I gave Aidan a reading, he spent the rest of the evening playing with his new deck, trying to grok the Celtic Cross and the internal logic of the cards. Pasiphae as equally eager to break in her new toy.

I actually haven’t had anyone else do a reading for me in quite some time, so I took advantage of the opportunity. Bought gently used, she’s still getting to know the deck and attuning it to herself. It’s already got quite a personality: it doesn’t want to deal with piddly shit. It told me the same as I shuffled it; it also demanded a specific question rather than a general reading.

So I asked it to talk about the direction my magical practice is taking.

The central thesis here seems to be “Good job; now get to work.” The Moon (which was central to my monthly reading as well) and the Hanged Man tell me that there’s some important work I’ve been dodging around.

“What am I avoiding?” I ask. “I’m hip-deep in the biggest thing I’ve ever avoided in my magical career.” I was speaking of the planetary and ceremonial magical studies I’ve been doing, of course. I put that shit off for fourteen-odd years.

Aradia knows me well, though. She knows the answer. “When was the last time you visited the Underworld?”

“I … uh … don’t know.”

And … that’s unfortunately true. The deeper into the planetary magic I get, the more my visionary work has been left by the wayside. I could blame that on the fact that it’s not really a part of the system I’m studying—even if it is a major component of Penczack’s High Temple, which I’ve been using as an outline for my studies—but the fact of the matter is that I’ve just run into one too many things that have scared me when I’ve visited the Underworld.

Between the unsettling demands some of my newer spirit-allies have made of me, and my seeming inability to explore new territories without incurring new alliances and their attendant obligations… Well, let’s just say that I’ve become very, very good at finding reasons not to do Down. Smart people can be disturbingly good at lying to themselves. And with all the Work I have been doing—planetary talismans, the Stele of Jeu, puzzling my way (oh, so slowly) through Agrippa and my newfound relationship with my Natal Genius, and even the continuation of Deb’s New Year, New You, which I have fallen so far behind on in the last month—it’s been particularly easy.

“But wait!,” you (my dear readers) ask. “Didn’t you work your way through that already?” Yeah, I thought that I had. Apparently I hadn’t. It’s that bastard Dweller at the Threshold again.

So I’m setting myself a new goal: to descend to the underworld every Sunday and/or Monday night, regardless of whether or not there’s Work I think needs to be done. It’s time to face the Moon.

Tarot card from the Rider-Waite tarot deck, al... — Tarot card from the Rider-Waite tarot deck, also known as the Rider-Waite-Smith deck. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In witchcraft

I Think I’ve Found the “Reset” Button On My Aura

Satyr Magos27/02/2012

Fair Warning: In this post I’m going to talk about some of the “woo” that a lot of serious magicians don’t seem to like to talk about, but which I’m pretty sure they all practice on account of… well… their magic works. Some of this sounds hokey, I know: if someone’s got better language to describe these things, I’d love to hear it.

Like many of you, I imagine, my earliest training in magic revolved around various chakra meditations. I imagined that I was discovering these features of my energetic body, exercising them like mortal muscles. I worked diligently to strengthen them, all on the assumption that the Eastern traditions from which they were “adopted” had knowledge of the subtle bodies that Western traditions had just somehow missed. Now I’m not so sure.

“Forget everything you were told about chakras.” Was it Peter Carroll or Phil Hine who told me that? I don’t have those sources at hand to look it up.

The last public Beltane ritual I attended featured a number of children (before they were sent off to finish their own ritual while we grown ups poured some wine and finished our own). The ritual leader pointed to them, and their as-yet-undifferentiated auras, and her belief that it was because, as children, they had not yet learned to compartmentalize their lives: that they did everything with the whole of their beings. The auras I could see … the explanation, however, seemed unlikely.

I have already mentioned that my ceremonial experiments have been moving things around: a Malkuth node below my feet, my Crown (Kether) chakra rising a little further above my head, Geburah and Binah nodes forming at my shoulders, and my lowest three chakras fading almost to nothing. I have been working to counteract these trends—or, at the very least, the untenable side effects. Since beginning my work with the Stele of Jeu, all of my chakras—except for my Crown and Heart, which have been maintained by my Yoga practice—have been fading, leaving my aura largely undifferentiated except for a dense corona at the edge. Interestingly, this is having none of the undesirable consequences of some of my previous experiments—unless the insomnia, which seems to have passed, was related. All this leads me to conclude that much of what I have taken for granted about my aura—seven chakras, various layers, and what have you—are not natural features but molds we train ourselves to fit within. The magic we practice shapes our “energetic bodies”, much as our experiences physically altar our brains… except more so.

What does this mean in practical terms? I don’t know yet, other than the obvious: I’ve lost another round of Everything You Know Is Wrong (I actually kind of love loosing that game; it means the universe it still interesting, and also that my experiments aren’t suffering from confirmation bias.). It certainly means that, if I continue this path and my familiar energy nodes are replaced by something new and different, certain exercises I have used for years will be less efficacious. As long as the benefits of jamming this Reset Button continue to be more positive than negative (and so long as none of the side effects are things I’m just not willing to deal with, “objective” measurements be damned), I’ll keep the course and see how things turn out.

In witchcraft

I Think I May Be Dead

Satyr Magos23/02/2012

I’d like to say I don’t quite know what happened to the last two or three weeks, but I do: stress, sleep deprivation, and school. I’ve been sick all semester, to one degree or another, and since the Full Moon my insomnia and temper have been so far out of control that I’ve been starting to wonder if I’ve been hexed. I know, I know: that almost never happens. And I’ve been checking my aura, performing banishing’s, and even trying the good Master Balthazar’s water trick, all with no signs of any attack. So it’s probably “just” stress. Probably.

I’m sure y’all know: stress and sleep deprivation make for a nasty downward spiral. So nasty, in this case, that instead of just dropping a class with an abusive professor, or even filing a report, I’ve been deliberating dropping a curse tablet on him, instead. (My school is so conveniently situated next to / on top of a grave yard … though I suspect the Quaker dead might not be very helpful in this regard.) Don’t worry, I haven’t done it. I know this impulse to scorch the earth and salt it is a product of that same stress and insomnia; it’s instructive in illustrating the degree, though.

This past weekend was Early Semester Break. I got caught up on my sleep (mostly; it takes more than a few good nights to completely make up for two solid weeks of not sleeping), but I’m still sick. (Hack. Phlegm.) My temper is still out of control. Everything makes me angry.

Still, my experiments continue. I have been performing DuQuette’s banishing/invocation in the mornings instead of the pentagram rite, to interesting effect. I have twice more performed the rite of the Stele of Jeu the Hieroglyphist—at the Full Moon and the Dark. My journeys to the Underworld and my Inner Temple have been … peculiar but, I think, productive. I have completed the first round of Deb’s New Year, New You project, and am looking forward to continuing with the project. My monthly Tarot reading looks good … except on my professional and social fronts. And I have completed the first draft of my Personal Manifesto of Sacred Sexuality.

Posts with actual thought will be coming soon. Also, site maintenance. Lots of it.