{"id":94,"date":"2011-09-18T08:48:00","date_gmt":"2011-09-18T13:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.wordpress.com\/2011\/09\/18\/the-lesser-banishing-ritual-of-not-paying-enough-attention-to-your-patrons"},"modified":"2011-09-18T08:48:00","modified_gmt":"2011-09-18T13:48:00","slug":"the-lesser-banishing-ritual-of-not-paying-enough-attention-to-your-patrons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/2011\/09\/18\/the-lesser-banishing-ritual-of-not-paying-enough-attention-to-your-patrons\/","title":{"rendered":"The Lesser Banishing Ritual of Not Paying Enough Attention to Your Patrons"},"content":{"rendered":"

This morning began with my second performance of the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram<\/a>. The performance was less smooth, somehow, than yesterday\u2019s – I kept almost forgetting small steps, like the Sign of Silence or the line connecting one completed pentagram to the one I was about to start \u2013 but no less effective. Actually more so, as I could feel the Archangels start to respond.<\/p>\n

More to the point, I could feel the gods on my altar start to get jealous. They want daily attention, too.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Which is in no way an unreasonable request. <\/p>\n

I apologized to them when I was done, did my daily tarot at the altar, and lit them a stick of incense because that was the best sacrifice I had on hand.\u00a0 And now I have an interesting dilema on my hands: how to perform daily devotionals to gods who haven\u2019t quite gotten around to telling me what they want from me.<\/p>\n

Now, this problem does not come entirely from the realms of things unforseen.\u00a0 As a modern neoPagan, I had some concerns about invoking the Archangels of the God of Abraham in front of the same altar where I worship Dionysos, Hephaistos, Raea, and the Nameless; more to the point, as someone who\u2019s been shit on by the world made by the worshipers of the God of Abraham, I have some strange reluctance and insecurities related to anything that might smack of that worship, and a closeted fear that my<\/em> gods might not be able to help me if I piss that one<\/em> off and he decides to shit on me.\u00a0 Now, as Jack Faust rightly points out<\/a> \u2013 albeit in a somewhat problematic attack on Star Foster, but what can you really say to someone who admits outright to being a condescending ass? – my paleoPagan predecessors didn\u2019t see things that way.<\/p>\n

My gods don\u2019t give a flying fuck that I\u2019m invoking Archangels, per se<\/em>.\u00a0 They couldn\u2019t have cared less about the last month I spent daily performing the Quabalistic Cross, except perhaps liking that it made my offerings extra tasty\/potent.\u00a0 They also don\u2019t care that, once I\u2019ve gotten a handle on what I\u2019m supposed to be doing, I might well replace those Archangels with them.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

They care that I invoked four Archangels into the Sunrise Temple two mornings in a row, and didn\u2019t make them offerings of equal or greater value.\u00a0 Which, again, is totally fair.<\/p>\n

The problem lies in that the (neo)Pagan sources I have the easiest access to are lazy hippies who seem to see daily devotion as patriarchal oppression.\u00a0 Unfortunately, I\u2019m way too early in my studies of the Classics to have much knowledge of what ancient cultus practice entailed (not that I have any intention of reproducing it, but it\u2019s damn good place to look for inspiration).\u00a0 Now, I can \u2013 and will \u2013 turn to my copy of the Homeric Hymns and see what clues those can provide me.\u00a0 I can \u2013 and, again, will \u2013 make underworld journeys to see if they\u2019ll actually tell me what they\u2019d like.\u00a0 Until those tactics pan out, however, I\u2019m stuck with good, old fashioned, incesne-and-candles-and-prayer ass-kissing.<\/p>\n

So mote it be.\u00a0 @_@<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This morning began with my second performance of the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram. The performance was less smooth, somehow, than yesterday\u2019s – I kept almost forgetting small steps, like the Sign of Silence or the line connecting one completed pentagram to the one I was about to start \u2013 but no less effective. … 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":[94,139,193,265],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-witchcraft","tag-gods","tag-lbrp","tag-penczaks-high-temple","tag-talking-to-spirits"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8kUcm-1w","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94","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=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}