For almost two years now, I\u2019ve been working closely with a spirit I call Tsu (as in \u201cA Boy Named ~\u201d).\u00a0 You\u2019ve seen her mentioned here once or twice.\u00a0 Only in passing, though, because she\u2019s something of a long story.\u00a0 You see \u2026 I think I may have made her.<\/p>\n
<\/a> <\/p>\n The story actually begins back in high school.\u00a0 Yeah.\u00a0 I don\u2019t 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 \u201cwhat the fuck was I thinking\u201d stories, too.\u00a0 Some of them might even start the same way: Like most young dabblers in the arts of magic, I suffered a certain paranoia.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t necessarily think that anyone or anything in particular was out to get me.\u00a0 But they might be!\u00a0 If not today, than some day!\u00a0 <\/p>\n Like drawing and writing, I have a natural talent for shielding and warding, but that wasn\u2019t enough for me.\u00a0 I wanted to be sure<\/em> that I was safe.\u00a0 So I made myself a bindrune (a sigil, if you will), took a secret Name, and \u2013 I have no idea where this part come from \u2013 hid a piece of my soul inside a stone.\u00a0 This might have actually been the beginning of some interesting Work, if I\u2019d had any idea what to do with it.\u00a0 But, again, I was young and dumb and (even more so than today) unclear on the benefits of the whole \u201cKeep Silent\u201d thing.<\/p>\n The stone \u2013 I called it my \u201cOrb\u201d (keep in mind, I was seventeen) \u2013 quickly became more of a liability than a boon.\u00a0 So I took the Work I\u2019d done with the stone and moved it from the half-inch bloodstone sphere I\u2019d started with to something no one would threaten to swallow, and which couldn\u2019t be quite so easily misplaced: a gray granite sphere.\u00a0 Not long after, the Work somehow moved again \u2013 at the time I blamed an unknown wandering trickster spirit; in retrospect, I\u2019m still not really sure what happened \u2013 from the granite to an obsidian sphere I had brought with me to show off.\u00a0 <\/p>\n If I\u2019d been a more clever lad, I\u2019d have ended the experiment then and there.\u00a0 In my mind at the time, though, Name, rune, and stone were linked and, having been made, could not be unmade.\u00a0 Besides, everything else had gone so smashingly!\u00a0 What else could go wrong?<\/p>\n For the next several years, the Orb \u2013 in its final incarnation as the obsidian sphere \u2013 was the centerpiece of all my magical work.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 (Of course that went over well \u2013 why do you ask?)\u00a0 A year or two later, I decided it was time to put it back.\u00a0 Only to reclaim the hidden fragment again, after another year or two.<\/p>\n Meanwhile and even after the final retrieval, the obsidian sphere remained a central part of my magical practice.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I fed the energy in as a thread, winding it tighter and tighter.\u00a0 There really seemed to be no end to the amount of power the obsidian sphere could store.\u00a0 <\/p>\n Fast forward a few more years to my working group in Kansas City.\u00a0 whether or not you could touch the Orb had become a somewhat juvenile test of how badass a magician or witch I met was.\u00a0 Some people began to report that they could feel it watching them.\u00a0 Then, one day, something inside the sphere \u201cwoke up\u201d and started talking to us.\u00a0 <\/p>\n It particularly liked to come out when the working group was over and discussing magic.\u00a0 Of course I started talking to it; it seemed like the polite thing to do.\u00a0 It helped me with the elemental and visionary work I was practicing at the time.\u00a0 When I underwent my initiation, it asked that I give it a name.\u00a0 So I did \u2013 Tsu is the abbreviated version.\u00a0 It started complaining about the flavor of energy I was dumping into the sphere \u2013 which did and does remain one of my favorite tools \u2013 so I gave it a home in a tchotchke \u2026 a medusa statue I got on special when I purchased my Dionysos idol.<\/p>\n At which point things got even a little stranger.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 (Why, yes: sometimes, though not often, I do actually see spirits.)\u00a0 Once housed in the medusa statue, \u201cit\u201d took the form of \u201cshe\u201d and has appeared as the gorgon ever since.\u00a0 She has taken up residence in my Inner Temple \/ House of Memory, and served as a guide on several occasions.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 <\/p>\n So, of course, I did.<\/p>\n Although I occasionally refer to her as a guide, she says she technically isn\u2019t one \u2013 or, more accurately, that she wasn\u2019t at the time I asked. When I asked if she were my HGA she straight up laughed at me.<\/p>\n I tell you this story now, somewhat apprehensive.\u00a0 Several witches to whom I\u2019ve spoken seemed outright frightened by the story.\u00a0 Others have merely been puzzled.\u00a0 Neither reaction has been particularly helpful to me.<\/p>\n Did I make Tsu?\u00a0 Do spirits often come into being spontaneously in crystals used as batteries?\u00a0 Did some strange spirit leave her there, in some larval state, to feed and grow?\u00a0 Am I just batshit crazy?\u00a0 Seriously: What?\u00a0 The?\u00a0 Fuck?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For almost two years now, I\u2019ve been working closely with a spirit I call Tsu (as in \u201cA Boy Named ~\u201d).\u00a0 You\u2019ve seen her mentioned here once or twice.\u00a0 Only in passing, though, because she\u2019s something of a long story.\u00a0 You see \u2026 I think I may have made her. The story actually begins back … Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[149,214,258,265,284],"class_list":["post-101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-witchcraft","tag-magic","tag-pushing-the-boundaries-of-coincidence-and-chance","tag-stories","tag-talking-to-spirits","tag-tsu"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8kUcm-1D","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}