{"id":39,"date":"2011-12-31T15:45:00","date_gmt":"2011-12-31T21:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.wordpress.com\/2011\/12\/31\/new-year-new-you-that-which-has-been-put-off-for-too-long"},"modified":"2011-12-31T15:45:00","modified_gmt":"2011-12-31T21:45:00","slug":"new-year-new-you-that-which-has-been-put-off-for-too-long","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/2011\/12\/31\/new-year-new-you-that-which-has-been-put-off-for-too-long\/","title":{"rendered":"New Year, New You: That Which Has Been Put Off For Too Long"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Let’s face it, Charmers, the critical component to success or failure in your goals is your ability to do shit you don’t want to do.\u00a0 I can promise you that your goals are crammed chock full of glistening gems that you would rather claw your own eyes out than address.\u00a0 If you liked addressing these things, your goals wouldn’t be goals, they would be called Items I Am Already Doing No Problem-o.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

What have I been putting off?\u00a0 I\u2019m proud to say that, in all honesty, there\u2019s not much left.\u00a0 I\u2019ve dealt with<\/a> my fear of returning to the underworld.\u00a0 I\u2019ve started working on practical magics.\u00a0 I\u2019ve even dealt with most of the meatspace relationship issues that I\u2019ve been (uncharacteristically) letting fester.\u00a0 As I sit here and thing about things, that really only leaves one:\u00a0 putting out my shingle as a professional ritual specialist.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Long-time readers will recall that I\u2019ve talked about this a few times.\u00a0 I feel strongly called to serve the community in several ways, and feel that I have particular talents in other areas as well.<\/p>\n

1) Rites of Passage.\u00a0 This is the strongest calling by far.\u00a0 Too many people lack access to solid groups and traditions to help mark their transitions.\u00a0 Dedications, initiations, whatever.\u00a0 I have already performed my first wedding<\/a>.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

2) Protection Spells and House Cleaning.\u00a0 I have relatively little experience with most forms of practical magic, but when it comes to shielding and protection I am not afraid to say that I am a badass.\u00a0 I performed my first ghost-banishing<\/a> about a decade ago.\u00a0 I have helped mediate<\/a> between some friends of mine and the genus loci of their ancestral land.\u00a0 When the clueless amateur drug-dealers who lived in the apartment below Aradia and I got into fight where someone drew steel, the bullet went harmlessly into their floor instead of up into our apartment, us, or our cats (you may be tempted to call that a failure of our wards, but no amount of magic could completely shelter the building from their level of stupidity).<\/p>\n

3) Divination and Consultation.\u00a0 Tarot, astrology, natal genius\/demon work.\u00a0 I\u2019ve still got a lot to learn about the latter two, of course, and I\u2019ve only done public readings a few times.\u00a0 But it\u2019s valuable work and it can be immensely rewarding.<\/p>\n

4) Spells, Charms, and Enchantments.\u00a0 People have needs.\u00a0 I\u2019m a magician.\u00a0 Whether it\u2019s designing and\/or participating in rites for fellow practitioners, or doing it all for the \u201cmundane\u201d \u2026\u00a0 I can help.\u00a0 This, however, is where we really start to drift away from the calling into the \u201cthat would be fun!\u201d\u00a0 Designing and aiding in magical rituals for less or otherwise experienced practitioners falls into the same category as the rites of passage, but the rest \u2026 well, there\u2019s a little bit of greed and ambition there, too.<\/p>\n

5) Teas, Potions, and Homebrew.\u00a0 Because they\u2019re fun, and because when I really go at it, I\u2019m pretty damn good\u2026 even if most of my close personal friends are actually even better.\u00a0 Fortunately, back in Sunrise Indiana, I won\u2019t be competing with them.<\/p>\n

6) Mask Making.\u00a0 I make sacred masks.\u00a0 I need to make more of them.\u00a0 I can\u2019t keep them all in the first place, and the use of magical masks is a practice I wish to encourage in neo-Pagan witchcraft\u2014that means gifting and selling them.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a long list of services for a beginner.\u00a0 And how does one build a clientele?\u00a0 How does one make sure one\u2019s clientele doesn\u2019t reach a point where it conflicts with other obligations\u2014chiefly school, in my case, but also friends and family?\u00a0 And how does one advertise when one wishes, out of concern for one\u2019s academic professionalism, to keep a certain distance of plausible deniability between ones public identity and a blog such as this?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let’s face it, Charmers, the critical component to success or failure in your goals is your ability to do shit you don’t want to do.\u00a0 I can promise you that your goals are crammed chock full of glistening gems that you would rather claw your own eyes out than address.\u00a0 If you liked addressing these … 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":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8kUcm-D","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39","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=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}