talking to spirits – Page 5 – Journey Through The Obsidian Dream

HPF 2012: The Blessings of Dionysus Upon you All

Satyr Magos30/05/2012

"Bacchus" by Caravaggio. — “Bacchus” by Caravaggio. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Flannigan’s Right Hook was playing their cover of Paint it Black as Aradia and I stumbled back from one of the furthest-flung encampments at Gaea, still high from our first shamanic journey. That was Friday night of HPF 2009, our first year together; they played again the following year on the Sunday night main-stage, to which they returned this year. I missed the first part of this show, too, eventually abandoning half of my encampment to their face-painting shenanigans.

After the quiet of rest of the festival, walking up to the stage was like running face-first into a cacophonic wall of neon light and raucous sound. A beautiful, much-needed wall, the impact with which brought me back to 2k9 and ‘10, returning to those moments in cyclical time. The guitars, the cello, the electric fiddle … it was catharsis, pure and powerful.

I needed it desperately. The festival, to that point, had had its ups and downs. The main ritual, the day before, had been an utter disaster from which we were all—despite the passage of twenty-four hours, multiple cleansing rituals, and the completion of the public closing ritual just hours before—still recovering. Even the land was stained.

So I stood there, vibrating with the music, and trying to let go. To let go of my frustration with the Sacred Experience Committee. To let go of my frustration with my camp-mates, most of whom had not yet made it to the pavilion[1]. To let go of my desire for the festival—which I have been attending since I was eighteen years old, to which I have introduced probably a dozen people at this point, and to which I had brought three “virgins” this very year—to be perfect, and just enjoy it as it was in the then and the now. Perfection doesn’t exist in this world. I’m skeptical that it exists anywhere. …. So why, then, do I get so upset when things turn out to be less than perfect?

The music was amazing, the light show was a blast, and I was drinking thoroughly-blessed wine. And yet, I was still struggling to find the fun. My ambivalence must have been clear. When Aradia asked me if I was alright, I didn’t lie.

Aradia and Aurora had been to one of the workshops I’d missed on account of my work exchange obligations. The workshop was on aura cleansing and chakra balancing. Together, as I stood there listening to the music, they worked over my energetic bodies until I was almost in tears. Finally, something inside me broke loose, the tears came, my aura opened up, and I was able to let go and find the fun. Power filled me, and a few sudden insights.

The band was clearly having the time of their lives, too. Somehow, bottles of mead kept finding their way on stage. At one point, the band stopped to toast the audience. I raised my glass and toasted them back: “The blessings of Dionysus upon you all.”

My wine, as I said, was well-blessed. Recognizing that I was not the only one in my encampment stained by the miasma of the previous night’s ritual, I took the box of wine Aurora had offered for the purposes, and called upon Dionysus to bless it so that all who drank of it would be purged of the stain and incited to sacred revelry. I wish I’d thought to wright down the specifics, but I kinda got lost in the moment. I completed the blessing by pouring a libation in a circle around the box; suddenly, it was “hot” to the touch.

“Holy shit,” said Aradia. “What did you just do?”

When I toasted the band, my blessing spread to their bottles. But one of the things about working with gods and spirits, I guess, is that once you start talking to them, they’re listening more than you realize. And I had said “upon you all.” Little lights started going off in the audience as the blessing spread to those bottles. And then little bells started ringing in my head as other bottles throughout camp were lighted with the same blessing, too.

It was about that time that the rest of our encampment showed up, beaming and with faces painted. The wine flowed liberally and, when the concert was over, we found a secluded place to load a bowl while they lit the bonfire.

The tenor of the evening was changed, radically, and for the better.

1 – I love you guys, but you can’t spend five days camped with anyone and not end up a bit frustrated at some point.

In scholarship, witchcraft

Shaman: My Uncomfortable Relationship With a Problematic Word

Satyr Magos20/04/2012

[This one gets a little rambly.]

These last weeks have seen a bit of traffic on a subject near and dear to my heart:the relationship between modern neo-Pagan animism and magic, cultural appropriation, and the word and figure of the “shaman”. It “began”—so to speak; I don’t know that any of the authors read one another—with Alison Leigh Lilly and an interesting vision of where a combination of steampunk aesthetic and neo-Pagan praxis might lead (and the follow-up). Next were Lupa Greenwolf’s posts (one and two) on her own discomfort with, first the word, and then the militant and un-self-critical reaction to her use of it. Finally, VVF weighs in heavily but thoughtfully on the other side of the issue.

This is an issue that I, too, struggle with. I since first being introduced to shamanic visionary techniques by a friend in St. Louis—fortunately, after I became at least tangentially aware of issues of cultural appropriation—I have always avoided the title “shaman”. I don’t come from a culture that awards that title. Actually, strictly speaking, no culture does: “shaman” is a bastardized Anglicization of the Siberian word “saman”. It was adopted in the late 19th Century as a catch-all term for indigenous religious healers and, over the course of the 20th Century, came to be associated with particular types of trance-induction and spiritual mediation. It was in that latter sense that I was first introduced to and familiarized with the word, and—because that was what my sources told me the word for the kinds of magic that came most naturally to me was—came to describe my visionary practice as “shamanic”, or “shamanic witchcraft”.

But there are anthropologists who don’t even think it’s a real thing (damn, why don’t I have my full library with me so I can fucking cite that? please forgive me and use your favorite search engine): that “shamanism” is a social construction created by Western scientists as a way of understanding and conflating certain kinds of indigenous religious and magical practice which have no Western analogue (well, unless VVF is right about fairies, or unless you count theurgy). This argument carries more weight the more research I do. Yes, it’s helpful to create categories of like things so that we can better understand similarities, but … At the very least, one must simultaneously acknowledge that the categorization is alien to the system being observed. Better practice would require a more proactive attempt to first understand the “shamanic” practices as the people to whom they are native understand them.

A number of my religious/spiritual/magical practices are rooted in what is known in some circles as “core shamanism”—that is, the use of drums, dance, rhythm, and/or drugs as techniques of achieving certain states of altered consciousness, stripped of their original cultural context and any elements or trappings that are most obviously cultural appropriation. This is the work advocated by, for example, Michael Harner and Roger Walsh.

I’m not called to work with remains and spirits of animals, as Lupa is; nor am I as well known either she or Allison. These two facts shelter me from an awful lot of the bullshit, allowing me to work my way through these issues in relative peace. But my magical talents seem much better suited to exploring the Otherworld than anything else, and when spirits appear to me as animals and refuse to give me names, calling them “totems” and referring to them as Wolf or Leopard are pretty much the best I’ve got in terms of precise language. And, though there are problems with it, as someone who identifies as a writer first and foremost, precise language is kind of a big deal to me. Hell, the pursuit of precise, accurate, and affirming language is a huge part of my feminism/anti-racism/social justice effort. When my need for precise language pushes me into dangerous territory, all I can say is “I’m sorry. I’m working on it.”

I’ve spoken before on how uncomfortable I am with the the parts of neo-Pagan practice that dance around and over the borders of cultural appropriation, and of my personal relationship with those elements of practice. Increasingly, I find myself referring to my magical practice as “visionary” rather than “shamanic”. “Visionary” has it’s own problems—there’s these pesky associations with leadership and hierarchy, for example—but at least it doesn’t reek of colonialism. At the same time, though, I—like Lupa—struggle with the idea of bowing down to people within my own community who seem more interested in being the morality police than in actually serving social justice.

The more research I do, the more I come to understand that, while many of the techniques have been lost, “shamanic” practices are not absent from the Western tradition. Witches with flying potions, fairy familiars like those VVF talked about, Hellenistic theurgy, astral projection and pathworking. I’m not a theurge. I may worship the gods of ancient Hellas, but I don’t buy the ideas of a fallen/impure world from which one MUST ascend to reach the gods. Some gods are Up There, sure; and some are Down. But there are plenty of them Right Here With Us, too. I don’t to much pathworking because it’s too structured: I don’t like having my conclusions fed to me the way much of the pathwork I’ve seen seems to do. And I’m just not very good at astral projection (yet). But the fact is, I have the raw materials from which to build a cultural context for my visionary work. Until some spirit teaches me better ones, though, I’m pretty much stuck with the “shamanic” techniques I learned from Harner.

And, as long as I’m stuck with Harner—and Wood, and Walsh, and all the others—I’m pretty much stuck with the word “shaman”, no matter how much I dance around it. No matter how uncomfortable it makes me. And I don’t really know how I feel about that … let alone how I should feel about it.

In art, witchcraft

Seeking the Natal Genius II

Satyr Magos17/04/2012

Almost two weeks ago, the Saturday after Mercury went direct, I made a second attempt to contact my natal genius, whom I will hereafter refer to as ZG. In order to do so I drew a second, less inspired, Triangle of Conjuration and performed the operation at the appropriate Hour of Night. The sigil and name are blacked out for obvious reasons.

The Triangle on the right is the first; the left is the second.

In one sense, the evocation went well: I was able to produce a much clearer and more iconic drawing of ZG, and even to establish a certain degree of mental/psychic rapport. She’s a strange creature, whose imagery and iconography come from no particular time and place (though, given my own nature, what surprise in that?): bearing the wings ubiquitous of spirits in the Mediterranean and Near East, with a horned crown and clawed feet that remind one of the powers of Bronze Age Mesopotamia, a multiplicity of limbs evoking Indian gods, and a face which resembles something out of Hebrew tradition. The outline of the picture below was produced through a sort of automatic drawing, where I asked the spirit to appear to me and then waited to see what turned up on the page; the colors were added for aesthetic sake, but were not received during the communication.

On the other hand, the conclusion of the experiment was less than ideal: ZG used that psychic contact to inform me clearly that the approach I was taking was not working and would not work. Essentially, she dismissed me, and I am left with the relatively little information I acquired through the initial contact.

Is this a normal rate of progression? Am I doing something seriously wrong, or am I just so used to unusual degrees of success that I don’t know what to do with a more “natural” learning curve?

Most importantly, I’m still left with the primary question which led me to phrase my evocations the way I did: what the fuck do I do with my natal genius now that I’ve found her? Given her Saturnian nature, should I ask her for help exercising discipline, especially in terms of time management? Since she is Scorpio, shall I enlist her aid in my plots and schemes? As much help as those will be, what little I have seen others write on the matter seems to imply that the nature of a natal genius is far broader than these things. Can anyone share some personal anecdotes or published sources for me?

In witchcraft

IRC and an Astral Interwebs

Satyr Magos10/04/2012

When I was 16 or so, I spent my nights on IRC chat. I didn’t really have access to other Pagans back then—if there was a witch/New Age store in Lawrence at that time, I don’t remember it; I couldn’t have afforded workshops even if there had been; and I wasn’t in the habit of driving to Kansas City at the time—so the internet was my primary access point to the Pagan Community At Large.

Damn I wish I had those log files, but they must have gotten lost three computers ago. I can’t even remember the names of most of the people I talked to, though I may still have a few pictures of them somewhere in the archives. SnowLeopard. Latinius. Tig. My handles were ScholarMage and ShadowWolf. Don’t judge me: it was the mid-90s. Handles making references to totem animals were ubiquitous, and there was inevitably enough overlap that most of us had two or three variations on our favorite handles on case our favorites were taken. No one had registered or proprietary identities: that’s not how IRC worked.

These things come to mind now in part because of a recent post by the good Jack Faust. When I think of the combination of magic and the internet, two experiences from my faunish days come immediately to mind. Although I know I wrote about them at some point, I haven’t found these events in my very fragmentary journals from the time, so I have to rely on the hazy images of memories a decade and a half old. Both push the borders of my “adult” credulity, but this is how I remember them.

Much of the time I spent not-on-the-internet was spent at a coffee shop called the Java Break. One night, walking home, I felt like I was being followed. I kept looking behind me, but the streets and alleys all seemed as deserted as usual. I was wound pretty tight by the time I made it home. That night I woke from a dead sleep to see a large, cat-shape sitting beside my bed; this was doubly strange because I slept on the top bunk, which mean the cat-shape was just floating in the air. I was (in retrospect, unaccountably) terrified, and I asked it to leave. It got up, shrugged, and departed: fading out of sight as it walked in place. When I shared this experience with my IRC friends, SnowLeopard claimed it was her spirit guide, checking me out because he was bored. This may have been the first time I ever saw and interacted directly with a spiritual entity.

On another occasion, someone on the chat circuit wanted to show me how to call lightning using a stone circle. Somehow, though I had no experience or training in (or even vocabulary for) visionary/astral work (in fact, this was the heyday of my failed attempts at astral projection), this gentleman was able to transmit to me, and I was able to receive and experience, a process of calling lightning to oneself from the center of a stone circle. The ability to so something like that is, of course, an extraordinary claim: one that I have never tested, though I can still (as with many of my visionary experiences) recall the scene with incredible, visceral clarity. For whatever it’s worth, I imagine that a person with adequate focus and training could possibly manipulate the magnetism of a storm to that degree. (Why not? I’ve seen people make fire dance to their will, fuck with lights and computers in improbable ways. I, myself, have changed the wind to keep campfire smoke out of my eyes on numerous occasions.) I don’t, however, believe for a moment that a magician has any better chances of surviving a lightning strike than anyone else, even if he called it down.

That’s it: A spiritual visitation on one occasion, and a shared visionary experience on another. Two anecdotal accounts from a not-particularly-tech-savvy, pubescent, magician-in-training who wasn’t even keeping coherent journals at the time. But it makes one think. What might be possible for someone who was fully-trained? Particularly someone actively interested in techno-magic?

In witchcraft

Devotional Musings: Dionysus I

Satyr Magos05/04/2012

This post has already taken me too long to compose. I started it almost as soon as I first posted about the Urban Dionysia. The fact is, I find it difficult to write about my personal experiences with the gods. Some of those experiences have been very, very strange—to the point where, even after a decade and a half of living a magical life and talking or reading about other people’s magical lives, I don’t have an adequate cultural framework through which to process them. Other experiences, which may seem downright pedestrian when I reduce them to words or which I may know full well parallel the experiences of many, many others, have simply affected me so deeply that I cannot bear to subject them to public scrutiny. (The events which comprise my previous post include some of both) And, inevitably, part of it is that I spent so much of my life being angry at the very idea of gods that I still feel like something of a chump, sometimes, for honoring them. I’ve alluded to this last point before, and it is from there that I will begin.

In witchcraft

Dedication

Satyr Magos05/04/2012

Sometimes you have to need to provide context before you can tell a story. Sometimes, it’s best to tell a story first and dig into the context afterward. This is the story of how I came to perform my re-Dedication as a part of my Beltane festivities in 2009 … I’ll get to the context in a little bit.

It was my second Beltane after my failed life in St. Louis, the first with Aradia. It may almost go without saying tat we were at Camp Gaea, with my massive tent set up in Dava Wood. I had big plans for the weekend, aimed at jump-starting my magical career* in preparation for the re-Dedication I intended to perform at some point over the summer, and we were partying with the KU Cauldron. It’s tempting to break this into three different stories which coincidentally took place over the course of a single evening, but … I’m not so sure that they’re unrelated.

In witchcraft

Seeking the Natal Genius I–Or, Satyr’s First Evocation

Satyr Magos20/03/2012

Last night, during the Hour of the Moon, I performed my first spirit evocation using something like the Triangle of the Art. I have made contact with spirits before, of course, using shamanic techniques and Wiccan invocations and even a bit of mask-work. But if my experience as a jeweler has taught me nothing else, it is that studying someone else’s techniques is an excellent way to refine your own. Thus, the Triangle of the Art.

I have by now studied a half-dozen forms of evocation: the Goetia, Donald Michael Kraig, Trimethius, the Stele of Jeu, and others whose names I either don’t know or can’t remember off the top of my head. Combining techniques developed by various modern magicians and shared at the Queen of Pentacles with my own artistic talents and gnosis, I produced my Triangle.

For my first such evocation, I chose to contact my Natal Genius as described by Agrippa—or, more accurately, as described by Rufus Opus and Frater Acher, augmented by my thus-far-infantile examination of Agrippa and Frater Acher’s generously free-for-download spreadsheet calculator. It seemed like both a natural starting point for experiments in Triangle evocation—a spirit not just friendly to me, but actively interested in my advancement, and likely to be particularly amiable to such contact—and a natural outgrowth of my work with the Stele of Jeu. As to the timing, I chose to operate on the Night and Hour of the Moon because I am a witch at heart. And, as a witch, my first allegiance will always be to the Moon.

I sketched out my Triangle of Art last Thursday evening, when I was struck by sudden inspiration. I re-calculated the name of my natal genius (I had forgotten to round up the degrees), and developed a seal and a preliminary pronunciation. Following the lead of my Muse, I elaborated on the utilitarian format of the Triangle until I had something that looked more like a grimoire-based design: my genius’ name written in Hebrew inside the Triangle, my statement of intent spiraling clockwise around it in English, and the names DIONISUS, RHEA, and AGATHOS DAIMON written in Greek along the inner edge of an outer circle. (I’ll post pictures once I have the chance to scan it and edit out the most intimate details.)

I did some preliminary divination, sought the approval and aid of my patrons and guides, bribed the one who thought it might not be a good idea (the consensus was overwhelming … I’m not sure why my Kouros disapproved), and cast my circle. Taking up my pens and pencils, I inked and colored the Triangle I had constructed in advance, and finally placed my obsidian sphere within the Triangle as a focus. I chanted the name of my Natal Genius 76 times using the counting beads I strung at the beginning of spring break. When I was done, I poured a libation of mead and sat back and waited with my sketchbook in my lap.

There had been a build up of power as I chanted, but at first nothing happened. After a while I took a hit of absinthe to facilitate the visionary process, and when that didn’t work I started to get worried. After a while, though, impressions started coming to me: I started by drawing the seal of my Natal Genius on the page, and a rough skeleton of a humanoid figure. The impressions I got became more and more clear as I worked and started adding copies of the seal around the page. Soon, the spirit was able to correct me on the pronunciation of its name, and the image grew even more clear. Finally, it was able to instruct me in the proper construction of its seal, and the image came together along with a list of associations.

The figure that appeared to me was a little on the feminine side of androgyny, with six eyes in an otherwise featureless face, arms that doubled at the elbow, ephemeral wings, and a serpent for a tail. It told me it’s nature was of the sign of Scorpio, of the planet Saturn, of elemental Earth, and of the number XVII.

Then the Hour of the Moon—the time frame I had built into the statement of intent—was over, and the spirit was gone.

I was too exhausted to perform the Lunar journey I had also intended for the evening. I was also too wired to get to sleep for several hours afterward.

Despite this success, I think that I need to curtail some of the experiments I had planned for the near future. I’ve made so many Otherworld contacts in the last six months that I think the best thing to do is to focus on developing those relationships. I don’t want to loose the momentum I’ve got going, but I also don’t want to miss opportunities for learning and spirit-relationships because I’m moving too quickly.

In hedonism, witchcraft

A Personal Manifesto of Sacred Sexuality (v1.0)

Satyr Magos14/03/2012

FIRST PRINCIPLES

I cannot speak for anyone but myself.(This is part of what I mean when I talk about feminist witchcraft.) Your mileage may vary.

This manifesto is a work in progress.I have practiced this lifestyle for years, but I have never attempted to articulate these positions before. Revision will inevitably be needed, even just to fully account for the experiences I have already had. As I continue to live a strange and interesting life, I will acquire new perspectives that will transform the ideas of which this document is a reflection – perhaps radically.

Pleasure, in and of itself, is not shameful or even neutral: it is an inherent good.Does this mean that no harm can come from pursuing pleasure? Of course not. What it does mean is that abstinence from pleasure is, at best, morally neutral, and that the condemnation of pleasure is fundamentally immoral.

Healthy sexual relationships are founded on a model of enthusiastic consent (1). Not just “okay, whatever”, but “fuck yes, do me now”. “I like it when you touch me this way.” “No, put your hand there.” That said: I have a very liberal definition of sex. It is entirely possible that some people on my “List” might be surprised to find themselves there, as they do not consider what we did to be “sex”. That’s fine: it’s not my place to define other people’s experiences for them, but neither is it their place to define mine. We were there, good times were had. I have no interest in legalistic definitions of what counts and what doesn’t. This ambiguity makes the principle of enthusiastic consent even more critical: one does not simply agree to “sex”, and thereby agree to whatever happens thereafter. Communication, then, is also absolutely essential. What “counts” as sex is irrelevant if everyone involved is excited about what they’re doing. Being certain that everyone is not just “consenting” but “enthusiastic” requires communication: honest, explicit, and even graphic discussions of what you like, what you want, what you don’t want to do right now, and what you will never, ever do. Don’t like the sound of that? Piss off: go back to masturbating in the closet with the lights out. If you’re not mature or confident enough to talk about it, you’re not ready to do it.

Communication and enthusiastic consent—and, by extension, good sex—are founded on respect. It is impossible to respect either yourself or your partner “in the morning” if you did not respect both yourself and your partner when you began.

WHAT IS SACRED?

Sacred things are those things which have been touched by the divine. Those things which bring us closer to the divine. Those things which help us realize and understand and manifest the divine.

Which, of course, begs the question: “What is the Divine?”

As a witch and an animist, I believe that the divine is inherent and immanent in all things. The divine is that which exists between the warp and the woof of reality—the very space between the twisted fibers of the threads. Divinity manifests in mortals and in gods, in that which is animate and that which is other. But while the divine is omnipresent, it is not readily apparent. The toil of daily life hides it even from those few whose eyes are not veiled. Although the language I use to describe it is often different, in practical terms this looks a lot like pantheism.

Thus, we must seek the divine through the medium of the sacred: rites and spaces, rituals and tools. We practice ways of life which cultivate a recognition of the divine so that we are awake and watchingfor those moments when the veil parts and the divine is revealed.

This is religion. This is worship. This is meditation. This is the Great Work.

You are the serpent that bites its tail.

WHAT IS SEX?

Sex is that which arouses and and fulfills. Sex is the consummation of desire—by oneself or with another. Sex is mutual and consensual. It is more than “just” kissing, but doesn’t have to end in orgasm. Sex—done right—is adoration, even when it doesn’t look that way to people who aren’t involved.

If you ever have to ask, “was that sex?”, the answer is probably yes. Oral sex. Cyber sex. Anal sex. Fucking. Sucking. Licking. Touching. Teasing. PiV. Pegging. Tribadism. Silk feathers and rose petals. Leather corsets and vinyl pants. Whips, and chains. In the road. On the roof. In the woods. Even in bed, just for the sake of variety.

With two or three or four or more. By yourself. With a stranger. With a friend, or even a spouse.

Making love. Sexual intercourse.

Whatever your style is. Whatever you want to call it.

WHAT IS SACRED SEX?

Sacred sex begins with the recognition of the divine spark within oneself and within all others, and the recognition that while that spark may be easier to perceive in some individuals, each and every one of us share the same potential. We are all Gods. We are all Goddesses.

Sacred sex proceeds with the recognition that the body is not just a vehicle, or even a vessel for or temple to the divine (though it is these things, too): it is, itself, part of the immanent and omnipresent divinity. As such, it must be honored and maintained: by proper feeding and exercise, by cleansing and purification—yes, occasionally even by austerities—and by libations and festivities. By pleasure.

In a solitary practice, sacred sex serves to unite the divinities of the self—the soul, the flesh, and the divine spark in each that unites the individual with the rest of creation—through the medium of pleasure. By honoring that spark, the inner flame of divinity is stoked and grows brighter.

With partners, sacred sex serves the same purposes and more. Recognizing the spark of divinity in another, devoting ourselves for the duration of the act(s) to stoking the divine flame(s) of our partner(s), we open ourselves to the experience of true unity. Unity with our partner(s) individually and with Creation as a whole. This does not mean pretending that you or your partner are a particular divinity—Apollon or Aphrodite—but recognizing yourself and your partners for the divinities you already are.

Sacred sex, at least for the duration of the act, breaks down the illusory barriers between self and other, between mortal and divine. Sacred sex teaches us that the mortal, material world is not, and cannot be, “profane”; that “profanity”, if it even exists, comes from degradingthe mortal world and its denizens.

Done right, all sex is sacred.

Done right, sacred sex does not leave the practitioner wasted or reduced. Spent, perhaps—as one feels at the end of any vigorous exercise, or powerful ritual—but revitalized, glowing, and more whole.

But this is all too theoretical. “O Satyr,” you ask me (probably more than half sarcastically), “how does one go about all this?” (Or perhaps you’re not being sarcastic. Perhaps we’re sitting at the bar or by the bonfire, and you’re hoping for a personal demonstration: please, make sure I can tell the difference.)

The path is yours to find, but I started with magical healing massage. Massage is an excellent metaphor for sex, anyway: explicitly negotiated boundaries of skin and touch and oil and pleasure. (Obviously this is much less true in a professional setting.) I reached into the Earth for power, and poured my aura into the shoulders under my hands—transmuting pain through warmth of touch, kneading, and Light. With sex it’s the same, except I use my whole body and it comes more naturally. And, yes, if your partner is not giving equally, it can be just as exhausting as you imagine. It’s worth it though. I promise.

SACRED SEX AND RITUAL SEX AND SEX MAGIC

One of the interesting things about the taboos surrounding both sex and magic is how similarly they function. The subjects of sex and the occult are so toxic to large stretches of our society that even asking the most academic questions about them is seen as suspect. At the same time, there is an assumption that any soul who strays off the approved path will throw themselves whole-heartedly into the practice of either or both. We cannot provide sex education for our children: that might lead them to having sex (Ugh … folks? They’re gonna fuck anyway. Hormonal minds will find a way.) or figuring out that they’re queer. We cannot allow our children to play Dungeons and Dragons or read Harry Potter, lest they succumb to the inevitable temptation of the occult. (Sorry, y’all. Some folks can’t ever be trained not to see the fairies.) Thus, discussions of sacred sex seem inevitably tied to discussions of sex magic: one leads to the other. It makes sense in a certain light. Both subjects are often deeply taboo. So, too, ritual sex.

Let us take a moment to define them, as I understand them at least, relative to one another.

Sacred sex, as described above, is the pursuit of the divine within oneself, one’s lovers, and the world as a whole, through the act of making love.

Ritual sex is the incorporation of sex into formal religious ritual. Historically, there is the well-known (and possibly mythical) hieros gamosof the kings of Sumer to the Goddess Ishtar through her priestesses. In the modern world, of course, we have the Wiccan Great Rite (which may or may not be as mythic as the first).

Sex magic is the use of sexual arousal and/or the act of sex as an engine for achieving magical effect. I am most familiar with this in terms of Chaos Magic and charging sigils, though I am aware of other systems such as that of Donald Michael Kraig and Donald Tyson, and am in the process of learning about them. I am led to understand that there are sexual elements to many other traditions, as well.

Beyond this, I can speak very little to these subjects. While I have had partners who were theoretically interested in ritual sex, it never quite happened, and I don’t know enough about sex magic to even ask someone to try it with me.

1—The link provided was the best 101 resource I could find. Here are a couple more relevant links.

In witchcraft

Lunar Journey II

Satyr Magos09/03/2012

Because, to my mind, 4am 8 March is actually more Wednesday night than Thursday morning, I performed my Esbat rites on Wednesday. Initially, I didn’t feel as “on” as I did Monday night, but the journeywork turned out to be more productive, if less dramatic.

I made another Lunar incense blend: calamus, eucalyptus, jasmine flower, myrrh, and willow. I actually liked my first blend better, but this is why we experiment, right? After charging the incense and a bottle of lunar water, I mixed my flying potion (1), donned my visionary mask, and descended to the underworld through the Void.

Approaching the world tree, I asked to be returned to the Realm of Yesod and the Moon to further explore it. Taking me DOWN this time instead of UP, the tree deposited me back on the island with the nine-pillar temple. I began my work by leaving offerings of light for the two figures in the temple, and the entity which had “roped” me Monday night.

There was a land-bridge off to one side which I had neglected to investigate last time, so I started there. Strangely, it didn’t go anywhere: although I tried to follow the coast I found past the land-bridge, I kept finding myself back on the shore of the island. Frustrated, but undiscouraged, I dived into the lake instead.

Swimming down, I encountered a dolphin. I asked it if it was there to guide me. “No,” it said. I asked it why it was there, but it didn’t answer. It did, however, follow me as I continued swimming down.

“This is an awfully small body of water for you,” I noted.

“Well, yeah,” it acknowledged.

“Where do you come from?”

“Out there.”

I asked it to show me, so it led me—almost faster than I could follow—out to another, deeper region of water. Down and down it led me, vanishing as I found myself on the bottom of an ocean floor.

Being the bottom of the ocean, there wasn’t any light, and it took me a few moments to adjust my astral vision until I could see. (For some reason just conjuring a light didn’t seem like a good idea.) When I could see, I found myself surrounded by massive, alien creatures, all trudging toward the direction from which I had come. I couldn’t see them clearly—mostly just massive legs and bodies, dimly seen through the dust they raised—but they were legion, and each hundreds of times more massive than I. I swam in the direction from which they had come, and none deigned to acknowledge me. Eventually I came to a place where I was alone.

After swimming in random directions and encountering a lot more nothing, I drew a circle in the sand of the sea bottom and sat down cross-legged, waiting. soon I began rising, and eventually broke the surface.

I cannot remember—could not, in fact, even immediately upon returning to my body—how I transitioned from floating over this massive, primordial ocean to standing once more in front of the nine-pillar temple. This time when I ascended the stairs, the figures had moved. They moved again in front of me, and acknowledged my presence. We communicated briefly, and I received a positive response when I asked if I could return for instruction. The woman reached out and touched me, and I was filled with a vibrant, cool energy.

I returned to the world tree, and through it to the waking world. The journey was done.

I think I will do one more lunar journey before moving on to Hod/Mercury.

1 The usual, lately: absinthe and sacramental mead at a 1:3 ratio. It’s a little stronger and a little easier to slam than properly louched absinthe, if not quite as exquisite.

In witchcraft

A Devil on One Shoulder and a Genius on the Other

Satyr Magos08/03/2012

Although some of my whining might have given the wrong impression, the fact is that my ongoing research and experiments in the Western Ceremonial tradition have been an absolute blast. I’ve already learned so much, and I know that I’ve barely scratched the surface. Fuck: the year I’ve set myself to this subject will not be enough time to do more that scratch the surface thoroughly, and probably not even that.

Before Sthenno pointed me to Rufus Opus’ blog about six months ago, I had never even heard of the Natal Genius or Evil Daimon. With the help of Frater Acher’s spreadsheet, I was able to calculating mine without slogging through the abominable and obnoxious translations of Agrippa that I have so far been able to put my hands on (they may or may not be accurate, but they’re mind-crushingly dull to read, and I already have to put up with enough bad academic writing in class). But, at least in part because I have not been able to make my way through Agrippa, I’m not entirely certain what to do with them.

RO has spoken of binding the Evil Daimon, though later that was discussed as being more a matter of last resort (can’t find that post back to cite, sorry). Punching “having calculated my ‘natal genius’, what do i do with it?” into Google got me more RO, linking the Natal Genius to the HGA.

Now that I’ve finally stumbled across a method of conjuration that I think I can work with, the question of “what do I do with my natal spirits” becomes a great deal less academic. I can’t think of a better place to take my experiments with spirit conjuration (thus far limited to the Stele of Jeu) next. Can you?

The major thing holding me back at this very moment is that, in the absence of any actual knowledge of the subject, I find myself imagining my natal spirits as a cartoon angel and demon, sitting on my shoulders. I imagine the one extolling me to activism, devotion, and random acts of goodness that I can’t name off the top of my head; I imagine the other encouraging me to seduce, to take vengeance, and to throw down and party like I never have before. Neither one will let me sleep. Sleep is for the weak.