autumn twilight
… where the water meets the sea, between the worlds, within the void …autumn twilight
… where the water meets the sea, between the worlds, within the void …looking in the mirror
It’s been several days since I’ve blogged. Nothing truly interesting has happened. At least nothing that seems that important.
I got my weekend to myself. I shared it with my family, but also took the time I needed. I don’t know what to do about Daniel, but that’s a whole story that I don’t feel the need to discuss at the moment. I’ve been searching for answers for a long time. Trying to figure out who I am, who I’m becoming. It’s never easy. There are always more questions, and I suspect there always will be. But there are some more answers now. They don’t make me entirely happy.
About six months ago I learned from my memories that I haven’t been whole in a very long time. I don’t know how long, but since childhood. I’m high-functioning, but I’m very damaged. My ego tells me that my functionality is a testament to my strength of character, of will. I’m not sure that’s true. Sometimes I suspect that my high-functioning survival traits have more to do with hiding the truth than they do with any show of strength or stability.
Around that time, I shared this knowledge with one of my teachers. What concerned him, what he seemed almost obsessive about, is that though I recognize that I’ve been damaged, that I can be healed. The wounds can be closed and I can be whole. He was most insistent about that. There is a part of me that detests that insistence, resents the intrusion, and distrusts the certainty of his words. At the time I told him I was working on it. That I was trying. The problem is I’m really not sure he’s right. I’m not sure that I can be truly whole.
We are creations of our world. Our experiences, perceptions, and discernments create the world we live in. And my world gives me precious little evidence of healing. All around me I see people who have had pieces of themselves ripped away. There are those who are far better off than others. But all of us are damaged in some way or another. Fruit on the rack, spotted, and growing nearer to rotting every day.
I look in the mirror, look deeply into my own eyes, and I see a well of sorrow. My eyes vary in color and highlight, but lately they are brown. A Deep ring of indigo surrounds them, and a pupil as dark as it can be. I look at my eyes and they don’t seem to be very connected to me. They are flat, and they hide anything that might give me away. As if it were someone else looking back at me, someone else who has taken over this body this life, and I don’t know that person.
In my head, in my heart, I’m just a kid. I don’t know that I consider myself a child, but I don’t feel like an adult. In my head, I watch what’s going on around me and I feel myself moving through it like a salmon in a stream, or perhaps a well. I can see everything and I understand it. But I can’t always express it. When I look in the mirror I see the person that the world sees, those solid eyes that give nothing away to anyone without the skill to See. That person has survived things I don’t even like to think about. He’s been through a lot, and the trials show. He is bitter and sometimes he is cold, and he will do anything in his power to protect me. And it’s not that I’m not grateful for that protection, but I do not want to be protected anymore. My bodyguard has become my jailer.
I’m not sitting back and waiting for the person I see in the mirror to go away. He can’t go away. But I am trying to figure out how I can let him pass without killing us both. How do I honor and celebrate the experiences he’s been through without just becoming who he is? How can I take back the power he has without destroying myself in the process? — It’s not an easy question to answer. I have a lot of ideas. Some of them seem to be working, but only time will tell.
Hungry…
I’ve got that sexually hungry feeling tonight. There is a thunderstorm raging. Probably partly to blame for the sheer sensuality and sex of how I’m feeling right now. Storms get me going. The rougher the better. Kind of like my sex that way.
I’m not very dominant. I enjoy being sadistic sometimes, I like to feel people hurting, but it doesn’t make me Dominant. It just means that I like to give pain as well as get it. I can play the role, and sometimes I’ll even enjoy it, but it’s not me, and it doesn’t really fulfill me. I’m in that mood right now. To hurt, or be hurt. Pain on either side is intoxicating. I love the feel of a body beneath me, or in my arms while he’s in pain almost as much as I love the feeling of being that person in pain.
Right now I’m feeling active. I’d deeply enjoy climbing on top of someone and worshiping their body with my own. My hands, lips, tongue, teeth, arms, all of it. Start at the collarbone, or at the hip. There is that spot anterior to the hip bone where the body dips in slightly. The flesh is always tender there, always soft and malleable. Just inside the pelvis. Kiss that spot and wrap your hands under him to the back of his kidneys. Rub there, just until he realizes that it’s a sore spot. Give him a hint that you can make the touch feel pleasurable and painful all at once. Exhale over his stomach and bite at his hip gently, worry the skin with your teeth. Scratch the back of his ribcage a little, watch his hands dig into the sheets, balling up into delicious little fists. listen to him moan as you bring his body to life, one touch at a time. Become a beast, the animal inside of you. When he growls, growl back, let it rumble low in your throat. Get hungry for him, taste the sweat and flesh. Curl a hand in his hair, pull it tight, slowly. Pull it more, let the pain grow slowly. Lick his abdomen and lean against his pelvis. Rub against him as he rubs against you.
Ah… welcome to my brain…
The first blush of Power… (story piece)
Power explodes inside of me, a hot storm of wind and lightning that boils through my body. No matter how often I call it, it still surprises me. It’s overwhelming and insane. I’ll never be able to control this storm, and so I don’t try. I throw back my head to scream, but there is no air, no way to do it.
The lightning bursts out from my mouth and eye, running along my face and down my throat, tracing the paths of least resistance down my body, wrapping around me until my entire body was burning with it. The whip struck me again, across the shoulders, and the golden glow of the lightning wrapped itself around the falls, drawn off of me. I found air somewhere, and I did scream. The pain of the whip was nothing, it was warm pressure, living heat against my skin. I screamed now as the power was ripped from my skin. The falls of the whip came down again and again, each time they drew back the power went with them, being dragged away from my skin. I could feel my eyes bleed to black, and the light was all too much.
I close my eyes against the light and the whip kept falling. As always happens, I start struggling. I know it’s no use, but the pain is too intense to do anything else. My body fights because it has no choice. The steel around my wrists heats up and cuts against me. I twist and writhe, jerking towards the wall to try and escape the whip.
The gatherer laid on harder and I opened my eyes. The light of my body was still bright and the power kept being pulled from it. I squinted at him and saw the hilt of the whip in his hand glowing with the magic harvested from my body. I pulled away and his dark eyes flickered with anger as he struck me again. I began to cry, as I always cry, and my tears were a stream down my face. I was no longer screaming, I had no power to do so. His forearm was beginning to glow now, soaking up some of the power in the whip. He began to strike me with more force, and I felt the power begin to draw back inside of me. My body jerked as the whip struck harder than ever before. And I felt a stinging pain in my hand.
Time slowed, stretching into one of those long moments where you know you have as much time as you need to do what needs to be done. I didn’t have anything to do, but my body had different ideas. I looked up at my wrist, and I saw it. There was a sharp spot on the manacle, it had nicked me. There, near the bottom of the metal was a spot of blood, moving down my forearm slowly. The power that had begun to draw back inside me burst back out against my body, brighter than it had been before, and my eyes adjusted to it. There was no pain to the fire now, just a welcome sense of peace. The power wrapped around me and there was something different about it.
The gatherer’s eyes widened with hunger. I could see his desire for the power that was pouring off of me now, greater than it had ever been. He swung the whip, but it never struck me. He began to scream. I saw the whip explode into fire, gold and purple, and the fire rushed up his arm and consumed him. His scream was over as quickly as it had begun. I fell to the ground, only peripherally aware that the fire had bled off my skin and that the chains and manacles that held me were gone. The floor beneath me began to burn with that fire, and it poured out from me, engulfing the room. The support beams were devoured and the ceiling began to fall. I had just enough time to rise up onto my hands before losing consciousness to the destruction and pain that engulfed me.
On the El to Work
I feel very distant from the world today. For a couple of days actually. I feel disconnected, like the things I’m thinking and feeling are private. And not necessarily things that I’m not willing to share, just things that sharing doesn’t spread. The moon is waning and I’m retreating into myself. I can hardly feel it at all, even though I know it’s only been a few days since she was full.
I want to call in to work, get some time off. I won’t, but I want too. I don’t have anything planned for this weekend, not actual plans that is. I don’t have anything that I have to go do somewhere. That’s good, because I need the time to myself. I’ve been needing it for a while, and I haven’t taken it. Or when I have taken it I’ve used it in the wrong ways. This weekend is a sabbatical for me I think. I’ll fast, and meditate, and write. I’ll sit.
I don’t know what the results of that will be, or even what the goals are, just that I’m feeling the need for it. That’s a rather mild way of putting it. I feel like I’ll die if I don’t take it.
On the Practice of Magic
Most, if not all pagans practice some form of magic. Or at least they say they do. Many people who don’t consider themselves pagans practice magic as well. The world is full of ceremonial and sympathetic magicians of all variety. In the neo-pagan community however, it strikes me as interesting how little real, solid, training there is on the practice of Magic.
Certainly many organizations have their own classes and structures to teach. The Brotherhood of the Phoenix has the Mystery School and several other curricula for membership. Temple of the Four Winds has a class structure that was written by Karen Jackson. Reclaiming has their Foundations of Magic (i think that’s what it’s called) classes. Most British Traditional Wicca groups have training programs of one variety or another.
But I wonder how many pagans have gone through a comprehensive, experiential, and thorough course of magical training. I know of maybe 30 people who have had some sort of recognized thorough training. Of those, there are many whose training probably isn’t as thorough as I think would be helpful. This is out of the hundreds of pagans that I have met and interacted with.
So where are all the rest of these practitioners learning to work magic? Is their magic effective? Do they know how to be safe? and careful?
It concerns me a little, as I think about it. Not to be dismissive of self-study, but it is very hard to learn anything through independent study. The more applied the skill is the harder it is to learn on your own, and magic is one of the most applied skills there is. I’ve done plenty of independent study. And I have a lot of independent experience. But it’s through my training and my work as a teacher that I’ve truly found the language of magic. I feel a little sad for anyone that hasn’t had the opportunity to study magic with a teacher.
Ideally, I think magic should be taught to small groups. The smaller the better. In a perfect world, it would be strictly Master-Apprentice relationships. One teacher with a few students at a time isn’t too bad, but one-on-one time is important.
I feel a bit of disdain for larger groups. Can you teach a classroom to play piano? You can teach them the notes. You can probably get them to plunk out Mary had a little lamb. But will they play with any art? It is the same with Magic. A Classroom is great for lecturing. It is great for the passing of information. But learning magic is not about passing on information. Anyone can lear the scholastic aspects of magical practice from hundreds of books.
The Practice of Magic is not so easily conveyed. It takes attention to detail. Careful discussion of experiences and occurrences. It takes a lot of questions and answer sessions. And that takes a large time commitment and a lot of individual focus. A talented and dedicated individual may be able to work these things out in their own time, through study and experimentation. But nothing replaces a teacher.
And sadly, there aren’t enough teachers. I’ve been called to teach for years. I know that I’m good at it. I’m a decent presenter and an okay lecturer, but I really love guiding people one on one or in small groups. I’m becoming aware that it’s time to start doing that work a bit more actively. Thus, I have something in the works. I’ll write more when it’s a bit more ready for public attention.