{"id":77,"date":"2011-10-08T19:42:00","date_gmt":"2011-10-09T00:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.wordpress.com\/2011\/10\/08\/things-you-never-thought-could-go-wrong-with-magic"},"modified":"2011-10-08T19:42:00","modified_gmt":"2011-10-09T00:42:00","slug":"things-you-never-thought-could-go-wrong-with-magic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/2011\/10\/08\/things-you-never-thought-could-go-wrong-with-magic\/","title":{"rendered":"Things You Never Thought Could Go Wrong With Magic"},"content":{"rendered":"

We must never forget that there is more to magic than the mere performance of rites.\u00a0 One does not simply chant words of power and bend the world to one\u2019s will.\u00a0 One is also bent<\/em>, sometimes against our natural grain.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

This post explores an intersection of sex and magic.\u00a0 There are no \u201cgory details\u201d, but if the thought makes you uncomfortable you might not want to read it.\u00a0 You have been warned.\u00a0 With that said, though, I hope that even if some of the people who know me out in the world choose not to read this one, it might receive particular scrutiny from any of my readers who have more experience in these areas than I.<\/p>\n

Because this shit was so totally not<\/em> in the manual.<\/p>\n

<\/a> <\/p>\n

I have now performed the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram nearly every morning for three weeks.\u00a0 Magically speaking, this was a fantastic exercise: the energetic equivalent of a daily trip to the gym.\u00a0 The ritual got me out the door on several mornings when I thought I might not manage to leave the house.<\/p>\n

Not all, however, was as it should be.\u00a0 The first sign that something was awry came at the Dark Moon, when a nymph with whom I have been keeping company invited me to share her sheets \u2026 and I failed to adequately reciprocate that honor.\u00a0 It\u2019s embarrassing, but also a sad fact of male biology: sometimes the plumbing just doesn\u2019t work, especially when one is nervous, as one might be with a new, younger lover.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Then, a week later, I failed again.\u00a0 I began to wonder what was different \u2013 my diet has changed, but not so much or so badly as to cause that sort of problem; I haven\u2019t been that sleep deprived; I\u2019m in as good a shape now, physically, as I\u2019ve been in years; and it sure wasn\u2019t lack of interest.\u00a0 Meditating on the subject, I could only find one significant difference: the magic I\u2019m practicing.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Meditating further on the subject \u2013 perhaps the first serious self-diagnosis I\u2019ve done since escalating from the Q-Cross to the LBRP \u2013 I discovered that in the formation of a Malkuth-shaped energy nexus at my feet, my \u201croot\u201d chakra (the one between my genitals and the base of my spine) and my One Point (the one right above that) had been hollowed out.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Was I doing the LBRP wrong?\u00a0 I don\u2019t think so.\u00a0 Was I damaged by banishing elemental earth and invoking sexless archangels every morning?\u00a0 I think that might be it.\u00a0 Actually, given what came next, I know it was.<\/p>\n

Three days ago, I replaced the archangelic invocations with invocations of the elements.\u00a0 I did traditional chakra meditations.\u00a0 I could feel it revitalizing me, but it wasn\u2019t enough.\u00a0 Last night, I begged Dionysos for help with the immediate problem and sought answers in the underworld.<\/p>\n

I found myself in a primordial garden, Dionysos\u2019 white leopard and my side.\u00a0 The cat led me into the garden, warned me against the very very tempting apples, and gave me a krater of wine to carry as a gift.\u00a0 I struggled to keep up as the leopard led me through a series of veils which reminded me of nothing so much as the oppressive geometry which pinned me to the ground on my second underworld journey.\u00a0 It was a battle to maintain my shape \u2013 I was a man at the beginning, then the woman-shape I take sometimes in the underworld, then both, then the scarlet dragon I see sometimes in my visions of \u201cpast lives\u201d, then a skeleton, then a sphere of white light, before finally managing to maintain my own form.<\/p>\n

I caught up to the leopard at the steps of a great open-air temple \u2013 something drawing influence from Hellenic architecture, and the pagoda, and the most modern syncretism.\u00a0 I ascended the stairs and found a regal, queenly figure whom I know well.\u00a0 Usually she is nude and gargantuan, reclining in a cave within the bowels of the earth.\u00a0 Here she was only a little taller than myself, clothed in a rich and conservative chiton and a crown which resembled nothing so much as a castle.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnly mortals are naked here,\u201d she told me when I asked.<\/p>\n

I gave her the goblet I had been given, and she drank of it before instructing me to do the same.\u00a0 We passed it back and forth, and when it was empty I knelt and her feet and laid my head on her knee.\u00a0 She told me that the Banishing\u00a0 Ritual was, indeed, to blame for my \u2026 problem: an incompatibility between the rite and my own Work.\u00a0 She repaired most of the damage that had been done to me, and told me that when I returned to this place on the first night of the Full Moon, she \u2013 or her representative \u2013 would instruct me in the proper way for me to perform the rite.<\/p>\n

I returned to my flesh, cast back by that same geometric force.\u00a0 One hesitates to say more, for fear of being crude; suffice to say that my satyr\u2019s honor has been restored.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Could anyone have warned me that this might happen?\u00a0 Possibly.\u00a0 Does anyone out there have an explanation for this shit?\u00a0 Sweet gods of fragrant heaven, I hope so.\u00a0 Chiefly, though, I share this story in hope that someone out there might be saved from this problem.<\/p>\n

Also, I\u2019m really glad that my gods love me enough to help with this sort of problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We must never forget that there is more to magic than the mere performance of rites.\u00a0 One does not simply chant words of power and bend the world to one\u2019s will.\u00a0 One is also bent, sometimes against our natural grain.\u00a0 This post explores an intersection of sex and magic.\u00a0 There are no \u201cgory details\u201d, but … 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":[3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hedonism","category-witchcraft"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8kUcm-1f","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77","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=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}