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 …bunny blessings
I’ve been meaning to blog for days now, but it just doesn’t seem to be happening. I haven’t really had anything strong to focus on. The topics that have been on my mind either don’t coalesce into something writable or seem a bit done to death.
I’ve noticed that there are a lot of themes that come up in my writing. Time and again. Compassion and Suffering and their relationship to each other. Discernment and Judgment. I wrote the other day, and I thought I’d share here, “Judgment is weaponized discernment, meant to be used carefully and with precision.” Magic and life. Gifts. And of course, my own angst and challenges, which tie all of the above together with all the other randomness.
I don’t really have anywhere that I’m going with that, I just think it’s interesting to note the focus points of my writing. I think some of the reason I haven’t been writing as much lately (other than the fact that it’s summer and my mind is too unsettled to be coherent), is that a lot of the things I would normally write about seem done to death. By me or by others. How many more times can I write about the spiritual value of experiencing suffering?
I don’t know what that means, but I’m curious to see what comes if I try a bit harder to focus on writing things that are interesting, and not just rambling as I tend to do. Not that I intend to stop rambling. Rambling at the internet is my narcissistic way of clearing my head and processing thoughts that aren’t churning properly inside my head. But perhaps a bit more targeted rambling.
I had an interesting experience earlier today. I’ve been working with rabbit/hare (which I shall henceforth refer to as bunny) for the last few days. I’ve mentioned, I believe, that bunnies have been showing up all over my life for months now. A few weeks ago I started to take more note of them, and began working to understand the reason for their presence and my relationship with them.
I don’t have it all figured out yet, but in recent days I’ve had some really interesting things occur in my head. Some of them aren’t suitable for sharing yet, cause they’re still in the ‘pending processing’ bucket of my brain. But earlier today I was sitting on the train, and my mind was going a hundred miles a minute. I was moving from one topic, from one subject, from one task to another so quickly that none of them got any real attention. Worse, the effort was amping me up. I was getting excited, and anxious, and a little angry. I was beginning to get upset, and would have soon found myself in a downward spiral towards some nasty soul-crushing despair/depression. But I noticed bunny around me. Just energy, no actual bunny on the train. I closed my eyes and I focused on bunny and let some of that energy feed the bunny.
Then, as though it had never occured to me before, I wondered why I was holding on to all this energy surrounding all these things that need to get done. I kept pulling the idea out, the task, the necessity, and then tossing it in the air and trying to juggle as I pulled out another one, and then another. I was spending all this energy tossing the baubles into the air and trying to keep them afloat that my attention was turned away from where it belongs. On myself. On my work. On my God(s). On my community. And I wondered why I was giving that anxious energy to bunny, not that bunny didn’t deserve the energy, but weren’t there other places i could put all that energy that was built up, energy i couldn’t properly handle or use? I thought about my relationship with Diety and let myself commune with Persephone.
I released the anxiety, the pressure that was building up. I let the baubles fall into the pool at my feet, their form mingling back into the force of the potential. I gave to Persephone the stress and anguish and despair that was beginning to surface in my heart. And when the feelings and power were managable I turned my mind to Work. The energy was flowing through me, pure and strong. No longer blocked by the emotions and thoughts that were stuck in me. I called to bunny and gave the energy shape and form, and I sent it hopping along to some people who could use it.
http://s00j.livejournal.com/178858.html
And then I was calm and quiet. I had one of those moments of clarity, and realized I had just succeeded at something I’ve been working towards for a long time now. For a brief moment, I let go. It wasn’t long, but for a moment I just let myself be the conduit, the vessel of power. And I have Bunny to thank for that. For the stamping of his foot and the twitching of his nose that made me notice him. For his presence, and the tricks he plays.
I suspect I’ll be seeing a lot more of my new animal-guide, and you’ll probably be hearing a lot more too. And that’s it for tonight I think. There’s a lot more, but I do want to get up for work in the morning, so I’m calling it.
share the gift (of bunnies)
magical sub-space
I’m sitting at Leona’s waiting for @Si_Storm to get here. We’re having an impromptu dinner. It’s about 6:30. I’d much rather be here than at home doing laundry, which is what I should be doing. There are other things I want to get done tonight as well. The number one priority is washing my gi. I’m sure I’ll manage that. I was also planning on doing some magical work tonight. The moon is beginning to wax again, and it’s a good time to create a magical workspace in our temple room. A ceremonial magic workspace that is. The temple room houses a lot of different type of work, but I haven’t practiced any ceremonial magic since the move, and I’ve been feeling the bug the last couple weeks. I don’t mind occasionally doing ceremonial magic in the main temple room, but some of the spirits don’t like it, and ceremonial magic tends to enforce a really specific structure upon the energy of a space, and that’s not really suitable for the type of energy we want to cultivate for the temple room. Thus, I’m going to create a sort of sub-space beneath/above our temple room in which to work ceremonial magic. I’ve done it before, but never on this scale. I’m looking forward to the effort, which I will probably make tonight.
Laying the framework isn’t really that hard, although it can take a lot out of you, and it requires a good amount of focus and discernment. I’m essentially separating the energies of the space into two distinct spaces that occupy the same physical dimensions. The number one skill in this is the ability to define those spaces and discern them from one another. It needs to be cemented with consistent use though, which means doing some ceremonial magic pretty regularly for at least a few weeks. This will give me a very good reason to practice some more ceremonial stuff, and the drive to do so.
The easy way of doing this is more commonly called dressing the temple. When a space has an altar set up, with specific hangings and items placed upon it, it is the temple space. When those accoutremonts are stripped from it, it becomes mundane space. While there is nothing wrong with this, there is a challenge and enjoyment in using a smaller key. I have not decided exactly what the key will be, but it won’t be as large as setting up a full temple space. Largely because I don’t want to go to the work of setting up that temple space every time I want to work ceremonially, but also because the challenge and effort discerning and holding the spaces seperate based on a smaller change or key is a very useful tool in awareness and separating magical consciousnesses.
(Break for Dinner)
I’ve started the work tonight. I created the physical representation of the key, and began to do some ceremonial magic in the space. I found after showering and washing my gi that I wasn’t feeling up to doing a large working tonight, so I’ve started the framework via effort, and I’ll continue to build it over the next few nights. Sometime in the coming days I’ll do a larger working to construct and officially dilineate the space, but the framework is built and ready to go on the Mental and Astral planes.
I beg your Bardon?
On the train. Full schedule today. Gotta run home and get my gi then go to karate, then out to center on halstead for a meeting, then back home. Somewhere in there i feel the need to do some thinking and writing other than what i’m going to get done here on my blackberry on the train.
It’s dark moon and i’m being pulled between my normal angst and the joyous power i’ve been cultivating for the last few days. Most of today has been really good on that front, although there have been a couple moments of despair, by and large i’m pregnant with possibility today.
There’s also a solar eclipse tonight, i’m not sure if i’m handling dark moon better because of it or if i’m really just getting better at turning that dark power to it’s appropriate uses. I’ve got a bunch of things spinning in my brain right now. A fair number of them are financial, and i hate that. I hate thinking and worrying about money. I try really hard to let it go, but this is one thing that i’m not good at releasing.
I’m 29. I know it’s okay that i’m still finding my footing and figuring out how i can best relate to money in my life and in our culture. But there are so many things i’d like to do that money would help with. I suppose i should just work on them anyway, that’s what i’d tell anyone who expressed that thought to me. Find the root of the work, the calling, and work at it from whatever angles you can. If that includes money, then it does, but posessing money is never the only road to efficacy.
I started reading initiation into hermetics yesterday. I’ve been on a bit of a fast from the written word, or printed perhaps. I haven’t actually read a book since late june, possibly longer than that. I’ve been bored by them, unable to become engrossed or lost in them the way i used to. It’s been getting harder in recent years to maintain a focus or desire to read for pleasure. I’ve been going in bingelike spurts for over.a year now. Maybe i just haven’t had the brain power to devote a part of my mind to actually absorbing and experiencing new charachters, new worlds, and new stories.
But i’ve had any urge to focus on something concretely metaphysical for a while. I think part of the urge is that i’ve been spending a lot of time in the theoretical and mystical lately. That could also be part of my lack of interest in fiction at the moment. Bardon is kind of a quack, and not always easy to read, but the book and it’s philosophy are very concrete, and rooted in disciplined practice, which i appreciate, particularly now, when i’m feeling a bit divided between my concrete life goals, the nebulous realm of my heart, and the changable realms of the spirit. Bardon would probably diagnose me with an excess of all the fluids, except electromagnetic, which is not sufficient to mediate, translate, or conduct the volatile and teeming quantities of electric and magnetic fluids through the manifested fluid of the tetrapolar magnet.
Sounds so simple doesn’t it? It means i’m a tightrope walker upon a line too frail for the accoutrements i am carrying with me. It means that i need to focus on the element of air to discern, divide, and mediate the conflicts between my will and my desire.
Mystery, the self is thy name.
Cupid Chastised
Last Friday at the Art Institute I saw this painting, by Bartolomeo Manfredi, called Cupid Chastised. I haven’t been able to get it out of my head since then, and I’m probably going to buy a print of it soon. It’s really rare that an image of any kind strikes me this way.
It was clear that the winged one on the floor is cupid. I did not realize until I was reading about the painting earlier that the woman is Venus, and the man is Mars. It seems there is a difference of opinion on what exactly is taking place. A few sources indicate that Mars is beating Cupid at the instruction of Venus, possibly because of his disobedience in courting Psyche. Others indicate that Mars entered to find Venus and Cupid in an embrace, and was so incensed he began to beat Cupid.
I don’t have time to find a copy of Golden Ass and look up the actual scene that is supposed to be depicted, but it’s definitely something I’ll be looking for in the not too distant future.
As far as the image itself goes, there is an unavoidable sexual energy that emenates from it, perhaps most noticable in the expressions on the faces of the figures. Cupid seems torm between pain and pleasure (a state I know well). Venus seems concerned, but not angry or scared. It’s interesting to note that she’s holding one of Cupids arrows in her hand. Mars is fixated on Cupid, intensely focused on his goal. I don’t know much about art, but this doesn’t speak to me, it sings to me. It inspires me, which is something that I think is core to the meaning of art, for me at least.
Auric Lawn Signs & advice from the Divine
I was going to do a tarot reading and post it tonight, but that doesn’t seem to be in the cards, as it were. I’m feeling a lot moving around me regarding the divine today. For the last several days actually. Yesterdays funk of pain is perhaps a good example of how much stuff moves around in the presence of the divine.
It’s hard for me to define my relationship with the Divine. As I recall saying recently, our individual relationship with Divinity is something based inherently in the experiential realm. As a result, we can’t really define it, or comprehend it, or translate it. I believe the disconnection between our subnoumenal experience of the Divine, and our attempt to expose that experience through language (a tool precisely tuned towards definition) is one of the greater challenges that faces us all, most particularly the mystics.
As a mystic I live in many worlds at the same time with varying simplicity. Some days it is very easy, and others very difficult. I’ve noticed that it seems to be getting more difficult for me, and I’m kind of wondering why. I find that I sometimes can’t ignore or set aside a thought or message that is nagging at me. I seem to be prone to slipping into trance state of varying depths whenever the opportunity arises.
While I don’t want to blame them, I think a fair part of this has to do with the people I surround myself with. More and more I am spending large quantities of my time in communion with people of a mystically focused bent. As I’ve commented in the past, I find that there is a disportionate growth of spiritual/mystical/psychic experiences in people when they are in proximity to other people. I could write quite a bit about my thoughts on how some gifts/energies/flavors/vibrations compliment each other, heighten, enhance, and sometimes greatly expand each other; but the important thing here is that any psychic gift or talent you have will get stronger or develop faster if you are in regular contact with a resonant gift. If you have latent abilities and you happen to move in with two experienced sensitives, it is very likely your sensitivity will wake up and become active.
For some reason, the last 6 months have seen quite a few people enter my perceptual circle, and many of them have talents that resonate strongly with my own, and I’m noticing a difference. This is all relevant, I promise.
Recently, I met someone who has a relationship with the Divine that I can’t really define. The best way I can put it is that he has been claimed. The Divine (for lack of a better identifier) has made it clear that this person is theirs thank you very much. As I shared with a friend earlier today, it as if there is a very polite “do not step on the seedlings” sign posted in this persons aura. I’m a very curious person, but I know the handwriting of the Divine, and I prefer not to test the possible annoyance of disobeying that sign. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this, is that this person seems to have very little, if any, awareness of this connection. This person is watched over, and for whatever reason they haven’t been made fully aware of that guardianship.
The Divine works in many ways, and often they are beyond our ken. As a friend recently said, “Their sense of humor is completely bigger than ours, and they don’t care that we don’t find it funny.” More than just humor, the Gods are working with a much larger set of images than we are. Just as we, as mystics, witches, magicians, and others are working with more information than our mundane counterparts, who are working with more information than your average puppy. The universe is large and complex, and we can not hope to understand the system. The best we can do is work with the best guesses we have and listen to the guidance of those who see more than we do.
And so I’ve found myself turning to the Divine more and more frequently in my daily life. When I don’t understand what’s going on, or when there are just too many things for me to get a handle on all the pieces, or when (like yesterday morning) I feel small and crushed and full of needs that will not be met. I’ve found myself turning my eyes to the Limitless Light, and listening patiently for an answer. And I’ve found that I am never let down.
Tonight I’m thinking a lot about Persephone. I’m drinking pomegrante juice and trying to let her power suffuse me. She reminds me of the power of sacrifice, and that there can be great joy in surrendering to a power greater than your own. The word Denial is coming up for me a lot lately. It first showed up in some channeled messages about two weeks ago, and it’s been cropping up in a few places since then. I’m not sure I understand it’s importance yet, but I figured out part of it today.
One of the things that we emphasize in the west is Will. We focus on the development of, honing of, and attainment of our Will. We have a whole religion devoted to it. We lean towards recognizing Will as the most important thing there is. Unfortunately, we’re westerners, and the idea of Will inevitably gets conflated with ego. The Will of the Divine, our Higher Will, the guidance of our Holy Guardian Angel, is ultimately beyond our sense of self, our ego. But we so rarely manage to look beyond. We try and define our Will in concrete terms to give us things to focus on, missions to accomplish. The reality is that Will is a being, not a doing.
Our Greater Will has to do with force, not form. Our Will is not to rid the world of homophobia or discrimination. The very idea of action is anathema to the principle force that we are. Action is a result of our Will, it is the outgrowth of who we ARE. My Will is to become fully enflamed with the light and force of my own soul. When that is done, I can not act against my Will. The two goals are one. If we assume that we are spiritual beings having a physical incarnation, than our Will must be disincarnate at it’s root, and it is thus unmanifest force. Our Work is to align ourselves with that force, to make ourselves the perfect vessel of that force, to seek the grail, if you will.
And to do that, we must understand the limits of our own ego. Our ego tells us that we must accomplish great Works. Our ego tells us that we must do something, help someone, change something. How can I tell though, when ego is protecting itself, or when I am moved to act by the Force that is my Will? Thelema tells us to seek the knowledge and communion of our HGA. But that is the same as achieving one-ness with our will. What can we do in the mean time?
The answer lies with the Divine. Persephone sees more than I do. As does Gwyddon. The Divine that surrounds me, that offers me their love, can help me decide when to act and how to do so. When I feel the urge to act but question myself, I find that turning to the Divine seems to lead me true.
This is especially important when making decisions inside a complex system, as I mentioned earlier. There are times when we have an urge to act or fight for a cause that seems right to us. We are willing to put a lot on the line for that for better or for ill. The very urge to fight comes from a place of ego, and so I always tend to question it.
Perhaps one of the biggest problems we have as humans is that we too often ask “What do I want?” and too rarely ask “What is best for everyone involved?” Ignoring my ethical challenge with the idea of determining what is *best* for anyone other than myself, the important part of the question is to consider the system as a whole, or at least as much of it as you can. Often the decision is clear, and most often it is not in line with my personal egotistic desire. Thus sacrifice, personal desire for the good of the whole. This is an easy choice to make most of the time. Sometimes not so easy.
What is more difficult is when the situation is larger or more complex than I can truly fathom, or has more moving parts or variables than I can reasonably control to work towards a specific outcome. This is when the light of the Divine really comes in handy. Pretty much any sticky social/organizational issue falls into this category, largely because people are unpredictable, and anything you do now is likely to have consequences far into the future. So I ask my Gods and Spirits if they can help me puzzle out what the best choice is, or what the possible results of a certain action are.
It’s late and I’ve rambled enough. Gotta get to sleep now. Share the gift.