Much like my ability to see\/perceive auras, this propensity has always ebbed and flowed with my practice. With my magical practice escalating over the last couple years, so too have these psychic senses grown. the last months, apparently, my senses have reached a point where school is getting toxic. I know most of the things I want to know\u2014and sometimes more\u2014but the headaches and the vicarious mood swings are starting to become a little too apparent.<\/p>\n
Since recovering from my burnout, my primary shielding technique\u2014when I chose to employ one\u2014has revolved around different ideas of compression and displacement. My long-time favorite technique basically involves treating my aura like a Hoberman Sphere<\/a>. It\u2019s simple, effective against a surprising number of psychic \u201cweather\u201d conditions, and has few, if any, unintended consequences\u2014chiefly, it can put off a bit of a \u201cnot worth your notice\u201d vibe. The downside is that it offers little in the way of direct defense and none in the way of preemptive offence, and it\u2019s rather easy to forget about\u2014left closed too long, I sometimes get the psychic equivalent of muscle cramps.<\/p>\n Most recently, I\u2019ve been experimenting with layers. A layer of windows, as discussed before, as armor against psychic weather and the evil eye. Another layer, a bit deeper into the astral, of sensitive psuedopods to keep me aware of what\u2019s going on. It\u2019s been mostly effective, but oddly leaves me feeling<\/em> more cut-off from the rest of the world than I actually am, as well as seeming to put off a bit of an aloof and unapproachable air. I\u2019m trying to come up with a visualization that\u2019s produces a warmer and friendlier sort of charismatic aura, maybe even incorporating that as its own layer \u201coutside\u201d or \u201cin front of\u201d the glass panes. I\u2019m also trying to figure out what it is about those particular visualizations that leave me feeling so cut off.<\/p>\n Recalling my youthful experiments, I\u2019ve also tried reproducing my bad-anime-armor-style shields. They make me feel like a badass \u2026 and ramp up my aggression by about ten percent. They also have the interesting effect of limiting the field of view in my astral sight in accordance with the shape of the helmet I visualize.<\/p>\n The astute reader will have noticed a consistent pattern to my shielding strategy: they are all rooted in visualization and imagery. Although I understand that other magicians code instructions into their shields, keeping out \u201cnegative\u201d or \u201cunwanted\u201d energies \u2026 in this, at least, I cannot form anything for which I cannot picture a shape, color, and texture. I can\u2019t form an image<\/em> of a net that knows what I want to keep away and what to let through: I don\u2019t know what that looks like. Aradia can do it\u2014you should see the mad shit she can code into personal or house wards\u2014but I don\u2019t have the knack. There are, of course, those who say that this limit is self-imposed. I won\u2019t even argue. Self-imposed limits are just as real as those imposed from the outside. I\u2019ll overcome it eventually: it\u2019s really just a matter of creativity, which is one thing I have no shortage of \u2026 just occasional bouts of (sometimes long-running) blockage.<\/p>\n In the meantime, I\u2019m also looking to experiment with sigilizing personal wards and charging talismans. For a long time, I disdained that absurdly obvious and effective tactic as \u201ctoo easy\u201d or \u201ca crutch\u201d. (Y\u2019all may have picked up that I have had, and still struggle against, a tendency to be an unmitigated arrogant ass.) This is bullshit. I\u2019m a goddamn tool using monkey! Let\u2019s use some goddamn tools.<\/p>\n It\u2019s been a couple years since I\u2019ve been inspired to go so far back to basics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Much like my ability to see\/perceive auras, this propensity has always ebbed and flowed with my practice. With my magical practice escalating over the last couple years, so too have these psychic senses grown. the last months, apparently, my senses have reached a point where school is getting toxic. I know most of the things … 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":[212,247],"class_list":["post-1128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-witchcraft","tag-psychic","tag-shields"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8kUcm-ic","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1128","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=1128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1128\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}