Although things haven’t quite gone according to plan over this full moon at the cusp of Aries and Taurus, it’s been pretty epic. I hesitate to say that I’m “back on top of” my visionary practice, because every time I say that, I fall back off. Instead I’ll just say that I’ve been doing a good job of keeping up with in over the last few Esbats, and that I’ve been having really powerful experiences as a result.
As I mentioned yesterday, the spirits on my altar have had a lot to say to me in the last week during my meditations and daily rituals. One such spirit, which has housed itself in a Cycladic figure that I have been using along with my Kouros figure to meditate on my relationship with the archetypes of the divine feminine and masculine respectively[1], informed me that it was time for us to have a sit-down.
Trying to make room for a full three-night Esbat and still leave room for both Samhain and homework, I started my Full Moon rituals Saturday night. I opened with the Titan’s Cross and Pentagram Rite, performed the Stele of Jeu, then made offerings from my new bottle of absinthe to Dionysus and the as-yet-unnamed Cycladic figure. I louched the absinth, put on Michael Harner’s Drums, and began my descent.
From the beginning, my vision was off-script. Stepping out into the void where I usually find the World Tree manifesting as a crystalline spire which rises into the “sky”. Instead, the world tree appeared as the intertwined bodies of an opposite-sex pair—an image I wear around my neck and have used in art as one way of conceptualizing certain Mysteries, but which I have never used magically—emerging from the void about their thighs and with light streaming upwards past their heads. The male figure was … blurry and passive, but the female figure beckoned me forward.
At first I attempted to enter the world tree as I usually do: stepping inside and descending as light moves through fiberoptics. I passed through her thigh and descended … but rather than landing at my Inner Temple, as I had intended, I was confronted by images I could neither comprehend nor describe and landed back in my body.
On my second attempt, I climbed into her outstretched hand and she swallowed me whole. I was briefly suspended in a dark, watery void, before falling down through more indescribable visions to land at the outer reaches of my inner temple.
The grounds surrounding my Temple were overgrown, and my Natal Demon, SKM, was standing on the parapets—grotesque, gothic fortifications which my Inner Temple did not used to possess and which it may or may not possess when next I descend. I entered the front gate and knelt at the base of the vast Cycladic statue just to the right of the entrance, opposite her consort Kouros to the left. In between them is a door that sometimes leads to the basement and sometimes leads to Mysteries; that night it led to the basement, where I sat down cross legged and waited.
Soon, a slender female figure descended and sat opposite me in the circle on the floor. I could not discern her face. I greeted her warmly and asked what I should call her.
“Witchmother,” she told me.
I asked her what her nature was, and she showed me a vision of deep forests and swamps and caverns, and flashes of secret rites taking place therein. I asked what she would ask of me in terms of rites and offerings, and she didn’t quite answer. I was left with a strong impression of “we’ll see where this goes,” but told me to continue the offerings I was already giving. Finally, I asked if she had anything else to show me, and tat’s when things got really strange.
She turned and went back up the stairs. I followed, and she led me past a series of places I half-recognized. Finally, we passed through a network of interwoven webs or light and glass-like two-dimensional planes which intersected at odd angles. I recognized the webs of light as relationships: when I’m at the top of my game, I can see those webs stretching between people and places and ideas: more intricate than any lace ever imagined. We crossed into a dark void. Up and up we went, vast nothing stretching above and behind us. Then she turned me around, and I saw the vast mass of webs and planes below, so distant as to appear small: the earth, and the worlds and relationships that make up all the people who live there.
Having shown me this, the Witchmother vanished, and I fell back to my body.
1 – I know I’ve talked about this before somewhere, but can’t find the posts.