Showing all posts tagged talking to spirits

In scholarship, witchcraft

Of Tradition, Synthesis, and Danger

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

You may have noticed by now, dear readers, that I cannot keep my mouth shut when I see people talking about things I have an opinion on.  And y’all know that I have opinions on nearly every fucking thing on this mad, spinning Earth.  But that’s what blogging is, right?  An opportunity to express our opinions?  Well, that’s one thing, anyway.  Unlike some of last soapbox moments, though, this is not a direct response to anything.  People write things, I read them, and it makes me think.(*)

I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a traditionalist.  I have never been invited to join a Lodge or Coven.  I had long disdained the grimoire traditions, and while I have come around on that issue in theory, the fact is (for reasons too numerous, and ultimately too obvious) that they will never be a major component of my practice.  It would be an oversimplification, but my practice could be fairly described as eclectic Wicca.

Nor am I a cutting-edge radical, disdainful of everything that has come before.  Hell, I didn’t even get into studying Chaos Magick until I started my ceremonial project.  Embarrassing as it is now, I didn’t really understand where the one ended and the other began; I just thought of Chaos as post-modern choose-your-own-adventure ceremonialism.  I know perfectly well that it’s a fucking bad idea to summon Goetic demons without the full pomp and circumstance: they’ll take that shit personally.  I know better than to mix and match traditions with no regard for the histories involved or the subtleties of difference in technique and emphasis.

My practice lies somewhere in between these two extremes.  I have pushed the Wiccan framework as far as it can go and serve my needs, and in doing so I have read about as far and wide as one can on the subject without ever being initiated.  I have moved beyond Wicca using shamanic techniques gleaned from Michael Harner, Gale Wood, Christopher Penczak, a few friends, a hand-full of workshops, and an ever-growing body of UPG—ever conscious of the deeply problematic elements of neo-shamanic practice, ranging from bad scholarship to appropriation of indigenous practices to outright “playing Indian”.  I have incorporated energy work with no parallel in any tradition I can find in print—Maya Heath’s Energies is the closest I’ve ever seen—but which a significant minority of the practitioners I’ve encountered in the world recognize as close enough to something they, too, did when they were young.  I’ve incorporated some of the Chaos techniques from my as-yet-incomplete survey—sigils in particular—and I’m working on comprehending certain portions of ceremonial arts as well—the evocation of spirits.

But, as you have already surmised, I am not content to merely reproduce the work that has been done before: I’m pushing forward in the directions that are most interesting to me, and where my native talent calls to be explored.  I’m experimenting with mask-making, and the particular sort of invocation and embodiment unique to mask-work.  Through my shamanic work, I’m engaging in congress with spirits the likes of which I have never seen addressed in anything I’ve yet read.  I’m experimenting with the use of sex, drugs, and music in my magic: this is fucking ecstatic work, folks, and sometimes I need higher octane fuel than I can (yet) get my brain to produce on its own.

RO (and all the others) is right to point out that yes, there are dangers.  When you mix traditions and tech—and I do both, for all my concerns about cultural appropriation and pissing of the various Powers That Be—things can go horribly awry.  But I’m with RO on the next step, too: do it anyway!  Magic has been a process of experimentation and syncretism for as long as people have been doing it.  Sometimes you’re going to botch.  Sometimes you’re going to piss off some people … or some spirits … or maybe even some gods.  People can be managed.  Spirits and gods can be propitiated.  Magical backlash can be healed.

Hell, some day you might even fuck up so bad that you have to step out of the game for a year.  Or three.  But you come back to it.  Trust me: you’ll fucking come back to it.

We’re hip deep in the forces of creation, y’all.  No matter what you’re told, there are no flawless systems.  Even when it looks like you’ve found one, you’re still going to have to adapt it to your own particular brain and body.  And even if you don’t, some spirit you get involved with is going to issue a geas or taboo that’ll fuck up your perfect tradition, rock your boat, and maybe even upset your whole damn world.  (Trust me on this one: if it’s happened to me once, it’s happened to me twice.)

(*) But rather than link to any of the inspirations for this musing in the text body above, I’m going to collect them here to make sure that none of this very interesting reading material gets missed.

RO has posted twice (at least) on similar subjects, and introduced me to some very interesting and important work being done in the Celtic traditions.  Jason Miller has also talked about his syncretism, personally, and recently more generally (though his snark about the issue of appropriation is grossly inappropriate).  Peter Alexander Vaughn has a couple posts that touch on the issues.

I’m sure there’s still something important that I’m missing.

In witchcraft

Tradition, Technique, Appropriation, and Exploration Part 2/2

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

The last post was already in the works when when Gordon, Jason, Jow, and RO began their discussion of the simplicity, complexity, and relative eclecticism of their practices.  I seriously sympathize.  If you’ve read my previous post, I imagine you can see why: eclectic Wicca, years of unverifiable personal gnosis (both my own and that of those I’ve worked with), Hellenic gods, neo-shamanic spirit-journeys, Chaos- and Hermetic-inspired sigils, masks and hammers and things no one else has ever thought to do with a circle.

As I said before: I’ve spent years searching for a tradition.  I’ve played with Cunningham and Conway, dabbled with Crowley, Carrol and Kraig, mocked Lady Sheba and Silver Ravenwolf alike.  I am a student of Tarot and astrology.  I’ve experimented with candle magic and sorcery and astral projection, with auric healing and magically enhanced massage.  I’ve tuned myself to the elements and grounded into the astral plane – invoked the cosmic forces of the quarters and cast spells with nothing but the power of my own aura.  I have gone on spirit journeys and hung out with gods and spirits.  No one tradition I’ve found covers half these things, let alone all of them.  So, while the search continues, I’ve been working on my own: a systematic breakdown of the things I’ve done (as best as I can with my substandard journals), and maps of the things I want to do in the future.  I doubt anyone will ever want to join, but it will be perfect for me. And who knows, maybe I’ll find the perfect apprentice some day.

And yet … I still wax poetic, sometimes, about Traditions and Orders.  I share that strange jealousy for those who can name their path and have it recognized.  Envy for those who’ve found a teacher or a system that they can adopt in toto – even if they still need to look outside that system for new techniques to fill its inadequacies, addendums and appendices to a finite and discrete system.

I’m white, (apparently) cisgendered, and from a (lower) middle class family.  The list of spiritual traditions that I have any “legitimate” claim to are relatively few.  Unfortunately, none of them are to my taste.  Which leaves me either blazing trails in a dark and moonless wilderness or seeking refuge in other spiritual lands … and trying to avoid the ones where the locals would just as soon I curled up and died.  Or, as always, all of the above.

Does it sound a little like I’d like someone to do the hard work for me?  Yeah, it’s a little bit like that: I envy the people who can just accept a prefab structure.  For whom any of the existing systems have meaning.  Satyrs are not, by nature, hard workers: we like to drink and dance and fuck (nymphs, eachother, mortals, deities … I deal exclusively with enthusiastically consenting humanoids of legal age, myself, but other satyrs aren’t so picky).  So, yeah, I wish I could take a lazy rout.

But I can’t.

So I’m ecclectic.  I look to the past and to the modern Western Hermetic and Witchcraft traditions for inspiration.  I learn techniques from anyone who is wiling to share – god or mortal – and try to make sure all my sources are ethically sound.  Still … inevitably … I’m a transgressor of spiritual boundaries even as I am of social ones.  I’m bisexual.  Although I’m male-bodied and I present (mostly) as masculine, I actually identify as “fuck you and your stupid gender dichotomy”.  I am a hedonist and an intellectual in a society that simultaneously condemns both pursuits and sees them as inherently incompatible.  I am a historian in a religion that is (understandably) skeptical of mainstream historiography (a post of its own for another day), and which in its attempts to acquire popular and legal credibility is increasingly absorbing the overculture’s anti-intellectualism.

I am a queer, hedonist, shamanic witch.  The party’s at my place, and we can talk Plato in the morning … maybe hung over, maybe still smashed.

In witchcraft

Tradition, Technique, Appropriation, and Exploration Part 1/2

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

I am nothing if not eclectic.  My sacred calendar follows the Eight Sabbats of Wicca, even though those dates have nothing to do with the actual seasons in which I live.  My ritual construction is firmly rooted in the pseudo-Gardnerian Outer Court Witchcraft of the sixties and seventies – Uncle Bucky’s Big Blue Book, Ed Fitch’s Book of Shadows – and certain modern plays on those themes.  I have studied the “core” shamanism of Michael Harner and Gail Wood (to name two), and learned tech at festival workshops and from friends whose linages are dubious at best.  I am now studying the Western Hermetic tradition, and though I will not adopt it in whole, I will certainly take what’s useful to me.  I’m increasingly fascinated by Chaos Magic (only ten years late to that trend, right?), but can’t quite swallow the entire open-source, paradigm-hat-trading irreverence to tradition it seems to require.  Dionysos and Rhea were present at my initiation, and I have spoken to Hephaistos and Apollon and to gods who still haven’t given me their names.

For fifteen years, now, I have searched for a tradition – one that will have me, or even one that I want to have me.  Initiatory covens are few and far between here in the Midwest, and I haven’t ever gotten invited to their Outer Court parties (though, looking back, I might have totally missed the subtext of an invitation once or twice).  I’m  a white USian, descended from the English on one side and the Germans (and Swedes) on the other.

But the gods who are mine by right of blood have never expressed any interest in me (being ogled by Freya’s handmaidens after invoking them at a wedding so totally doesn’t count) … nor I them, to be fair.  When I must defend my devotion to Hellenic gods – a rare event, but it happens – I cite the fact that my civilization is descended from theirs, even if my family is not.

In general, I give little credence to those to whom I might need to defend my eclectic neo-Wiccan practice.  I’ve never had access to sealed rites, so I can’t possibly have stolen them, and I think the effectiveness of my rituals says all that needs to be said about their validity.  Are some eclectics idiots?  Yes.  Do I struggle with the dissonance between Wiccan praxis and my queer feminist spirituality?  Frequently: the whole Goddess-God thing fucks with me a lot.  Do I have trouble fitting sacrifice to and propitiation of my patron and matron dieties into the Wiccan frame?  Absolutely.

The biggest problems start when we get into my shamanic work, which is where Gordon’s post on ethical syncretism comes in.  Simply put, there’s a lot of problems with my pasty white ass practicing anything that I could call “shamanism”.  There are the problems with the word itself: cribbed and Anglicized from a group of Siberian nomads.  There’s the whole scholarly debate on whether or not it’s even a thing, on whether or not the category works in the real world or if it’s just a way for anthropologists to lump together things that aren’t actually the same (which is a debate to lengthy and complicated for me to point you to any one or two sources).  And then there’s the part where most of the people who practice things we call shamanism don’t like us (that is, ignorant white people) stealing their rituals.

I strive to keep to what’s called “core shamanism” – the magical and psychosomatic techniques that transcend culture – but even that is iffy.  Even if shamanism is/was the universal root of all religious experience and expression, my culture left it behind so long ago that you can’t see anything but the roughest outline of its memory on the oldest rites we have.  I strive to re-contextualize it all, to provide the cultural and spiritual meaning in which all effective magic is rooted.  I disdain ayahuasca, datura, and peyote as entheogens in favor of flying “potions” such as absinthe and marijuana – drugs that, to the best of my knowledge, no subaltern group has staked out as their own, exclusive, spiritual tool.  I claim no titles, use no names.  The fact is that a certain rhythm of drum-beet can drive the human brain into places it is much, much harder to reach otherwise.

There are those who would argue that it is wrong of me to call upon the gods of Hellas using any rites but their own.  That my refusal to participate in reconstructionism – study it though I may, as a Classicist and an historian – ought bar me from calling upon the Olympians.  In my particular case, there are fewer who would argue that lack of blood-ties forbids me – Hellenistikos are less prone to that than, say, Asatruar – but it is still an issue.  Many of the most legitimate heirs are tied to the Greek Orthodox Church and disdain attempts to resurrect their old gods – you know I’m not going to listen to them.

Still, however carefully distanced I keep myself from the worst forms of cultural appropriation, I don’t know that I can actually divorce myself from the that legacy.  And yet … I cannot help but persist.  It is through this madly syncretic set of rituals and techniques that I have had my most profound spiritual experiences.  It was in a circle cast by Wiccan rite, using Harner’s shamanic techniques, that I entered the spirit realms in preparation for my initiation, and descended until I was greeted by Briareos*, Dionysos and Rhea.

The gods are the final arbiters of whether or not our rites are acceptable.  So why can’t I stop worrying so much about this?

*I don’t actually know that it was Briareos.  Possibly one of his brothers.  Regardless: he did me a favor once, and I needed to pay him before I could descend further.

In scholarship, witchcraft

A Sacrifice Is Something You Value

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

I was home in-between classes earlier this week.  I was still thinking on the issue of what sort of daily devotions to offer my gods while conjuring the Archangels every morning in the LBRP.

I made myself a pot of coffee.  (Mmmmmm … French press.)  My Kouros and Cycladic figures demanded a taste.

“Coffee?”  I asked them.  “Really?”

Oh, yeah.  They wanted coffee.  (As Aradia pointed out to me somewhat after the fact, “Well, it’s precious too you, isn’t it?”  Mmm, my precious.  Yes, yes it is.)

Two hours after pouring that caffeinated libation, I got an email announcing that the paper I was stressing out about would not be due for another four days.  I was free to devote the whole of my attention my spiritual obligations.

But I now know to pour a libation* of coffee to my Kouros and Cycladic figures every time I spend the morning at home and actually make a pot.  Perhaps for people who have been working with gods longer (or more intimately) than I have, this sort of thing  might come as less of a surprise.  Or maybe not.

* σπενδω – transliterated as ”spendo” – “I pour a libation” my new favorite verb.

In witchcraft

The Lesser Banishing Ritual of Not Paying Enough Attention to Your Patrons

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

This morning began with my second performance of the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram. The performance was less smooth, somehow, than yesterday’s – I kept almost forgetting small steps, like the Sign of Silence or the line connecting one completed pentagram to the one I was about to start – but no less effective. Actually more so, as I could feel the Archangels start to respond.

More to the point, I could feel the gods on my altar start to get jealous. They want daily attention, too. 

Which is in no way an unreasonable request.

I apologized to them when I was done, did my daily tarot at the altar, and lit them a stick of incense because that was the best sacrifice I had on hand.  And now I have an interesting dilema on my hands: how to perform daily devotionals to gods who haven’t quite gotten around to telling me what they want from me.

Now, this problem does not come entirely from the realms of things unforseen.  As a modern neoPagan, I had some concerns about invoking the Archangels of the God of Abraham in front of the same altar where I worship Dionysos, Hephaistos, Raea, and the Nameless; more to the point, as someone who’s been shit on by the world made by the worshipers of the God of Abraham, I have some strange reluctance and insecurities related to anything that might smack of that worship, and a closeted fear that my gods might not be able to help me if I piss that one off and he decides to shit on me.  Now, as Jack Faust rightly points out – albeit in a somewhat problematic attack on Star Foster, but what can you really say to someone who admits outright to being a condescending ass? – my paleoPagan predecessors didn’t see things that way.

My gods don’t give a flying fuck that I’m invoking Archangels, per se.  They couldn’t have cared less about the last month I spent daily performing the Quabalistic Cross, except perhaps liking that it made my offerings extra tasty/potent.  They also don’t care that, once I’ve gotten a handle on what I’m supposed to be doing, I might well replace those Archangels with them. 

They care that I invoked four Archangels into the Sunrise Temple two mornings in a row, and didn’t make them offerings of equal or greater value.  Which, again, is totally fair.

The problem lies in that the (neo)Pagan sources I have the easiest access to are lazy hippies who seem to see daily devotion as patriarchal oppression.  Unfortunately, I’m way too early in my studies of the Classics to have much knowledge of what ancient cultus practice entailed (not that I have any intention of reproducing it, but it’s damn good place to look for inspiration).  Now, I can – and will – turn to my copy of the Homeric Hymns and see what clues those can provide me.  I can – and, again, will – make underworld journeys to see if they’ll actually tell me what they’d like.  Until those tactics pan out, however, I’m stuck with good, old fashioned, incesne-and-candles-and-prayer ass-kissing.

So mote it be.  @_@

In witchcraft

There’s No Way To Tell This Story Without Looking Like a Moron or Possibly a Lunatic

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

For almost two years now, I’ve been working closely with a spirit I call Tsu (as in “A Boy Named ~”).  You’ve seen her mentioned here once or twice.  Only in passing, though, because she’s something of a long story.  You see … I think I may have made her.

The story actually begins back in high school.  Yeah.  I don’t know how many of you out there started practicing magic that young; but I know that those of you who did probably have your own set of “what the fuck was I thinking” stories, too.  Some of them might even start the same way: Like most young dabblers in the arts of magic, I suffered a certain paranoia.  I didn’t necessarily think that anyone or anything in particular was out to get me.  But they might be!  If not today, than some day! 

Like drawing and writing, I have a natural talent for shielding and warding, but that wasn’t enough for me.  I wanted to be sure that I was safe.  So I made myself a bindrune (a sigil, if you will), took a secret Name, and – I have no idea where this part come from – hid a piece of my soul inside a stone.  This might have actually been the beginning of some interesting Work, if I’d had any idea what to do with it.  But, again, I was young and dumb and (even more so than today) unclear on the benefits of the whole “Keep Silent” thing.

The stone – I called it my “Orb” (keep in mind, I was seventeen) – quickly became more of a liability than a boon.  So I took the Work I’d done with the stone and moved it from the half-inch bloodstone sphere I’d started with to something no one would threaten to swallow, and which couldn’t be quite so easily misplaced: a gray granite sphere.  Not long after, the Work somehow moved again – at the time I blamed an unknown wandering trickster spirit; in retrospect, I’m still not really sure what happened – from the granite to an obsidian sphere I had brought with me to show off. 

If I’d been a more clever lad, I’d have ended the experiment then and there.  In my mind at the time, though, Name, rune, and stone were linked and, having been made, could not be unmade.  Besides, everything else had gone so smashingly!  What else could go wrong?

For the next several years, the Orb – in its final incarnation as the obsidian sphere – was the centerpiece of all my magical work.  I used it to raise power; I used it to ground and ccenter; I brought it with me to every spell and ritual I participated in, and sometimes carried it around just because.

I think I was twenty-two when I decided I needed to retrieve that sliver of soul from the Orb, and unbound it with a spontaneous bloodletting at a pubic Beltane ritual.  (Of course that went over well – why do you ask?)  A year or two later, I decided it was time to put it back.  Only to reclaim the hidden fragment again, after another year or two.

Meanwhile and even after the final retrieval, the obsidian sphere remained a central part of my magical practice.  in particular, I used it to ground and purify my excess energy after rituals, and as a place to release and launder my unwanted rage and lust and whathaveyou.  I fed the energy in as a thread, winding it tighter and tighter.  There really seemed to be no end to the amount of power the obsidian sphere could store. 

Fast forward a few more years to my working group in Kansas City.  whether or not you could touch the Orb had become a somewhat juvenile test of how badass a magician or witch I met was.  Some people began to report that they could feel it watching them.  Then, one day, something inside the sphere “woke up” and started talking to us. 

It particularly liked to come out when the working group was over and discussing magic.  Of course I started talking to it; it seemed like the polite thing to do.  It helped me with the elemental and visionary work I was practicing at the time.  When I underwent my initiation, it asked that I give it a name.  So I did – Tsu is the abbreviated version.  It started complaining about the flavor of energy I was dumping into the sphere – which did and does remain one of my favorite tools – so I gave it a home in a tchotchke … a medusa statue I got on special when I purchased my Dionysos idol.

At which point things got even a little stranger.  Previously, Tsu had been amorphous: formless, or a vague humanoid shimmer, or (once, when it followed me to work at the mall) appearing in the form of a small Chinese dragon.  (Why, yes: sometimes, though not often, I do actually see spirits.)  Once housed in the medusa statue, “it” took the form of “she” and has appeared as the gorgon ever since.  She has taken up residence in my Inner Temple / House of Memory, and served as a guide on several occasions.  She disappears from time to time; most notably she was largely absent from HPF until very recently, when she asked me to make her a sigil/seal. 

So, of course, I did.

Although I occasionally refer to her as a guide, she says she technically isn’t one – or, more accurately, that she wasn’t at the time I asked. When I asked if she were my HGA she straight up laughed at me.

I tell you this story now, somewhat apprehensive.  Several witches to whom I’ve spoken seemed outright frightened by the story.  Others have merely been puzzled.  Neither reaction has been particularly helpful to me.

Did I make Tsu?  Do spirits often come into being spontaneously in crystals used as batteries?  Did some strange spirit leave her there, in some larval state, to feed and grow?  Am I just batshit crazy?  Seriously: What?  The?  Fuck?

In witchcraft

August Dark Moon Esbat

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

Two weeks ago, Aradia and my mother helped me lay the foundations of my house-wards.  Since then, though, my dreams have been more troubled than my waking life, alone, can account for.  I’m accustomed to living in a tightly Warded space, and although the neighborhood is quiet … it’s not that quiet.  Besides, I’ve been performing the Qabalistic cross daily for the entire interim: I was ready for a badass ritual, and I needed to prepare the space for rituals to come.

I began with a shower – a ritual cleansing that I often forgo.  I cleansed the space with a blend of sage, lavender, and kava – not my usual mix, but it was what I had on hand.  I called up an elemental circle, asking the powers, creatures, and beings of the quarters to guard my space so long as I abide there.  I charged a bottle of Dark Moon water to mix with my flying potion, and for whatever other uses I can find in the next month.  I made sacrifices to my household gods and spirits – mead for Dionysos and for the Nameless Ones; absinthe for the Nameless Ones, my journey-mask, and Tsu. 

Drawing on the theories of Frater Barrabbas, I opened a vortex within my initial circle and raised a cone of power as well.  With that power I turned to my oldest, but in some ways best, tricks: my Pentagram Ward, a structure upon which I will build more sophisticated wards and protection spells.  My power raised and protections in place, I could do what I’ve been putting off to long.  Doning my mask and downing my flying potion, I returned to the Underworld.

The world tree took me down to my Inner Temple, where Tsu, one of the spirits I work, with was waiting.  She pointed me toward a portal, and I followed.  Interestingly, the portal led first to campus, where I found another portal that led me into a void where I found the Leopard of Dionysos.  I was relieved to see her – I’ve been lax in my practice for a while, and I was afraid my allies had deserted me – but she reassured me that he was unconcerned by my absence; Rhea, on the other hand, was waiting for me.

I descended to a grassy plain I’d seen before, and went deeper into the Underworld via the Temple of Rhea I had seen before, during my initiation.  Dionysos appeared briefly – a translucent image, but still a presence – and I descended further.  I found the Magna Mater in a vast cavern, gargantuan and reclining as before.  I abased myself and apologized for not delivering Pasiphae to her before I left Kansas City.  A realization came to me suddenly: “This is all for my benefit, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she conceded, and pointed me to a tunnel leading down.

That tunnel, in turn, led to oceanic depths I had encountered before, most recently while exploring the Elemental Realm of Water.  It occurred to me that perhaps the Power I had encountered here had not been knocking me around for her own amusement, but that perhaps there had been a purpose.  I swam in the direction she had thrown me and discovered a passage leading up.

That passage led me to more familiar territories, the caverns beneath a ziggurat I had “discovered” in my earliest spirit-journeys.  Reaching light at the top of the zigurat, I encountered a spirit I had almost forgotten – a winged stone serpent placed atop that temple, whose nature I have never determined.  After a brief, silent communion with him, I was returned to the heart of my Inner Temple.

I concluded my journey with a brief but fruitful conversation with Tsu, and returned to my body to put a lid on the vortex and close the circles.

In witchcraft

Farmhouse Séance (or, Baby’s First Circle)

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

After the wedding, Aradia and I drove south to meet and camp with Pasiphae and Aidan (and their two daughters) somewhat east of St.Louis, in the rural regions whence both Aradia and Adrian hail.  The weather quickly drove us back to Aidan’s family land – where we had intended to meet at some point anyway and fantasize about converting it to a covenstead-slash-commune.  Through a series of miscommunications and Great Moments in You Had to Be There, Aradia and I ended up at the farmstead almost an hour ahead of the others.  Though the GPS led us to the address without difficulty, the nature of rural areas made us uncertain that we were in the right place, and we approached the house with caution.

Aradia approached first, only to retreat in surprise: the house did not like her.  So of course I had to investigate for myself, receiving a similar rebuff: we were not the people who belonged there.  Though the house was unlocked, and nature called loudly, we waited outside.  It was only when a family member arrived to work on the plumbing and to show us in that the house accepted our presence.

When Pasiphae and Aidan arrived, the feeling of uninvited faded further – though Pasiphae confessed that she had always felt it, as well,  and Araida and myself continued to feel scrutinized.  Aidan gave us the grand tour of the house, the crumbling sheds, the barn with the fallen wall at the pig wallow where a town drunk had fallen in and been devoured in his grandfather’s time.  The feeling of being watched grew stronger.  Aradia and Pasiphae grew increasingly nervous, though for myself the strongest impression I got was one of “What the fuck?  These people can see me!”  There was talk of doing divination to see what was going on (or had gone on) with the house and the land.

I felt watched, bordering on leered at, as I showered in the basement.(1)  Later in the evening, Aidan and I went on a run for ice and beverages, leaving Aradia and Pasiphae alone in the house with the daughters, Things One and Two.  They were thouroghly freaked when we returned.  Pasiphae reported being watched from outside the living room window; Aradia reported that Pasiphae slipped into trances.  As we continued to discuss the events and possible options – divination, circle-casting, ways to protect the children’s dreams – a light bulb exploded in Aidan’s hands, which he took as a warning to “be careful what you say.”

The whole situation reminded me of my first exorcism; perhaps that explains was why I was as cautious as I was.  I took out my Robin Wood deck and began asking questions: What will happen if we try to contact the spirits of the house and land?  How much of this drama did we bring with us?  The first answer was unclear, but the second was crystal: most of it.

It seemed inappropriate to just say that at the time, though, so I spent the next few minutes talking everyone down to the best of my ability.  That done I suggested a plan of action: use one of the poker decks that lived in the house to ask a yes/no question, “Would you like to talk to us?”, before casting a circle to shield the girls and their dreams (to say nothing of ourselves and our own.)   The answer we received was a resounding “yes”, so I put on my ritual jewelry (including the recently dedicated bracelet) and we cast the circle.

Pasiphae sat on the couch, holding a sleeping Thing Two.  The rest of us sat on the floor, Thing One safely in Aidan’s lap.  As always, we cast the Circle hand-to-hand in silence.  Thing One sat there quietly, at first – willing to endure what was expected of her for the moment.  Then she started smiling.  She reached out, grabbed Pasiphae’s foot (which Aidan was also holding, as her one hand was on mine and her other was holding Thing Two), and Aradia’s hand.  The Circle suddenly had five points instead of four.  A shit-eating grin spread across her tiny face; she was so high on power that I could feel it over my own.

I got out my cards and told them to start asking questions.  I started again with the Robin Wood deck, but switched to Crowley Thoth almost immediately:  Aradia and Pasiphae have only ever used the Thoth deck, and I was being ridden too hard to help in the interpretation.  They asked questions, I laid out cards – one, two, three, or more as the spirits of the house and land moved me.  Occasionally I was able to offer input or clarification, but not often. 

Thank the gods Pasiphae took copious notes, because I don’t remember much of the details.  Those spirits rode me hard.  I remember that there were at least three of them: the house, a guardian of the land, and at least one other.  I remember that it was very clear that they were no ghosts: none of them had ever been human.  I remember that they were asking the wrong questions, but I couldn’t tell them what the right question was – “What would you like to say to us?”  Finally, I reached a point of exhaustion, and Thing One was starting to get twitchy.  They asked a question that I hoped was close enough – “What would you like to happen?” – and we closed the Circle.

Thing One didn’t want to ground.  She ate every bit of power we released as we undid the Circle.  Pasiphae and I did our best to drain her back out, but she hung on to as much as she could with that same shit-eating grin.  Within ten minutes, she was out like a light.

The whole farm house seemed much more calm.  Everyone was more relaxed.  The children were safely asleep.  We were proud of ourselves.  Aidan was securing the children in their beds; Aradia was having a celebratory smoke.  Pasiphae and I were still in the livingroom, and it hit us like a ton of bricks: I felt the energy like a punch to the spine, just a little above my One Point, and surging out to my limbs.  We both nearly broke down and cried.  I slid off my chair, grabbed the tarot deck again, and laid out a basic 10-card spread (which I almost never use, favoring my Two Pillars variant).

Here were the answers to the question they were supposed to ask.  The house and the land needed change.  They could not stand being abandoned.  They needed a caretaker.  And they were damn glad to have had the chance to talk to anyone.

We all slept shortly thereafter.

(1) Though I later concluded it was Frigga’s handmaidens (remember the wedding invocation?) ogling me, not the house or the land.

In witchcraft

My First Exorcism

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

I performed my first exorcism at the age of twenty.  I was still living with my parents.  My best friend, Aurvandil, and his lover were living in a strange, half-underground two-but-really-one bedroom apartment in the biggest apartment complex of our hometown.  They had a ghost.

They lived with the ghost fairly amiably for most of the year.  He’d slam the cabinets closed if they left them open, slam the sliding shower door open if they left it closed, and a few other things I can’t now recall.  He was easy to appease, and Aurvandil was (and is) a superstitious sort, so he let it be … until things went awry.

We never figured out what set the ghost off.  Aurvandil was sitting in his easy chair watching television, his lover was laying on the couch with her book.  He kept his “water pipe” by the chair, invisible from most angles, beside an end table where the ash tray and the TV remote lived.  Out of nowhere there’s a loud, glassy, CRACK, and the smell of bong water fills the room.  The ash tray has moved itself from the center of the end table to the center of the bong, which is now laying shattered in a pool of resinated water.

I was the only witch he knew.  Of course he called me.

I brought over my Tarot deck, cast a circle, burned some mugwort, and asked the ghost what was wrong.  It didn’t answer so much as give me the finger.  The ghost was mad, it wouldn’t say why, and it was pretty hostile.

I got scared.  Aurvandil got scared.  So I recast the circle, and pushed it to the edges of the house.  I pushed the ghost out with the circle, and anchored the circle to the walls.

No more banging shower door.  No more slamming cabinets.  No more exploding paraphernalia.

Aurvandil did tell me that he could sometimes hear knocking on the walls … coming from the underground side in the office-sized second bedroom.

We were young and dumb, and if I had it to do over I’d do it differently … but that’s beside the point.  We were both very pleased with the results at the time.  Looking back, though, I wonder what I might have done differently.  I know things now that I didn’t know then, but I think if I’d approached the problem differently, there might have been a more peaceable resolution.

In witchcraft

She Below

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

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.