{"id":1053,"date":"2013-02-04T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-02-04T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.wordpress.com\/?p=1053"},"modified":"2013-02-04T07:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-02-04T13:00:00","slug":"an-early-experiment-in-shape-shifting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/2013\/02\/04\/an-early-experiment-in-shape-shifting\/","title":{"rendered":"An Early Experiment in Shape-Shifting"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wouldn\u2019t have called it that at that time, of course.\u00a0 Shapeshifting was something that happened to your body, something dragons and gods could do, but mortals could only pull off in the pages of the trashy fantasy novels I liked to read.[1]\u00a0 Sadly, I don\u2019t remember what I actually did<\/em> call it:\u00a0 it would be misleading to say that my notes from those earliest days were a shamble: I didn\u2019t keep any.\u00a0 All I have are some drawings that I can date back to 10th and 11th grade, and four lines of notes dated 8.11.98.[2]<\/p>\n

It might be an understatement to say that I was socially awkward.\u00a0 I was never actually<\/em> that kid with no friends, but when I say that I often felt<\/em> like I was, I think a lot of you might know what I\u2019m talking about.\u00a0 But, unlike a lot of socially awkward people, I understood the principle of trial and error: when I identified a behavior that wasn\u2019t working, I would try substituting a new behavior.\u00a0 And I sometimes got very, very creative with my \u201cnew behaviors\u201d.<\/p>\n

In the process of one such episode of social (and magical) trial-and-error, I \u201cidentified\u201d (read: developed and then \u201cdiscovered\u201d) four \u201cfacets\u201d of myself which I understood as other \u201cselves\u201d inside me.\u00a0 Each one had a name, which I will totally not share because \u2026 well, I was a 17 year old who read too many fantasy novels, and I\u2019m embarrassed by my former self.[3]\u00a0 Each also corresponded roughly with one of the four Classical elements.\u00a0 The language I use to describe these things today, of course, bears little resemblance to the way I conceived the experience at the time: again, the lack of journals.<\/p>\n

The first was my academic self: small, self-contained bordering on asexual, a creature of elemental Air in a brown trench coat surrounded by walls upon walls of books.\u00a0 At times I identified with him very closely, even using him as an online identity.\u00a0 At other times, though, I feared that his erudite reticence served me poorly.<\/p>\n

The second was a sort of Fiery shadow-self: hot, sharp, dark, and savage; he carried a sword, wore a black cloak, and had black eyes with no visible iris or pupil.[4]\u00a0 He was my rage, my hate, my impulse to violence \u2026. I believe, at the time, that I framed him as a sort of self-defense mechanism, or protector.<\/p>\n

The third was a great, horned beast-like figure: massive and furred, with wings and claws, even digitigrade legs and a tail.\u00a0 Interestingly, the drawing from my oldest Book of Shadows depicts him standing on an ocean shore\u2014someplace I had never yet been, nor ever felt the elemental pull to that so many seem to experience at some point in their life.\u00a0 He was elemental Earth and\u2014more interesting still\u2014the bearer of both my sex-drive and social impulses.<\/p>\n

Fourth and finally was an aspect of myself that I was never able to put an image to: Watery and female, the keeper of my emotions, intuition, and pain.\u00a0 This is the earliest point at which I can recall having conceived of myself as partially female.\u00a0 Not much later than this, I would come to the conclusion that I was \u201cYin instead of Yang\u201d[5] in nature; if I\u2019d had the framework, I might have experienced this as gender dysphoria, but instead I was simply bitter that my sensitive, emotional nature was so difficult to reconcile with my masculine body and socialization.<\/p>\n

I worked with the first and third \u201cfacets\u201d extensively: calling upon the one or the other when intellect or social grace was called for.\u00a0 I worked with the second mostly to the end of keeping him at bay: I have feared my own temper for many, many years.\u00a0 I had no framework within which to relate to the fourth, though I wanted to: my experiences had already taught me that my emotions were chiefly a means through which others could torment me.<\/p>\n

Over a period of several months, however, I found myself increasingly unable to function without slipping into one of my personas.\u00a0 I felt like I was fragmenting internally, splitting into four separate entities.\u00a0 To my credit, I immediately recognized this as a bad thing.\u00a0 My solution, which I actually still stand by in retrospect\u2014I might or might not do differently, now, but knowing what I knew then, it was the only sane solution\u2014was to reincorporate all four.<\/p>\n

In essence, I created four separate magical personas, then devoured them.\u00a0 All at the tender age of seventeen.\u00a0 Now, to put this in a little bit of context: I had read Eliphas Levi\u2019s Doctrine and Ritual of Transcendental Magic, but I hadn\u2019t understood a damned word of it; following that, the most sophisticated thing I had ever gotten my hands on was a dumbed down version of the LBRP.\u00a0 These were my days of DJ Conway and Amber K and Scott Cunningham.\u00a0 I had no way of understanding that this magic might be called invocation<\/em> by some, or shape shifting<\/em> by others.<\/p>\n

Given all that, then, I don\u2019t think I did too badly.<\/p>\n

\n

1 – Still like to read, actually, though I don\u2019t talk about that side of my nerd-ness, much.<\/p>\n

2 \u2013 Yeah.\u00a0 That\u2019s right. August of 1998 and before.\u00a0 We\u2019re stepping into the Wayback Machine<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

3 – If you think that I have an overdeveloped sense of drama now<\/em>\u2026.<\/p>\n

4 \u2013 See note 3.<\/p>\n

5 \u2013 People who know something of Chinese mysticism need not inform me of how asinine this was.\u00a0 I do know better now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wouldn\u2019t have called it that at that time, of course.\u00a0 Shapeshifting was something that happened to your body, something dragons and gods could do, but mortals could only pull off in the pages of the trashy fantasy novels I liked to read.[1]\u00a0 Sadly, I don\u2019t remember what I actually did call it:\u00a0 it would … 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":[38,246,258],"class_list":["post-1053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-witchcraft","tag-by-the-way-im-crazy","tag-shapeshifting","tag-stories"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8kUcm-gZ","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053","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=1053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}