via Gallery Far4

1. Created Spirits

Making a servitor is one way to automate those magical/energetic tasks that need regular upkeep. For example, I created a spirit (not a servitor specifically, but close enough) that helps me manage my income. I could enchant on a weekly or bi-weekly basis to do the same work he does for me, but he handles it exceedingly well with little input on my part. Having spiritual allies is very useful if you have the skill to communicate with them.

Read Post »

An update in five parts:

1. Beltane – Over the winter my partner and I spent a lot of time discussing the advantages and disadvantages of attending a large group ritual. We talked about the dangers of tying your energy in with people that have very different goals and ethics, but we also discussed the importance of attending an event with people that we didn’t agree with. In the end we went to Beltane again this year, but differently than before. Our little group camped in a little grotto up in the woods rather than the public and crowded spot we used in prior years, and during the main rite we stood outside the circle and held our energy slightly separate from the rest of it. People definitely noticed – but as with the rest of our behavior that weekend, it confused them more than anything. We also held a very impromptu ritual to invite the Trickster archtype as a sort of mid-point between the dualistic Goddess and God rites that are held, and it was very powerful (and confusing for everyone that crossed our path during the Fool’s Parade)

2. Compartments – As I could have expected, my vague attempts to compartmentalize my life by only writing about one topic per blog/social media outlet failed miserably. My life has been dominated by the garden, as it will be every Spring, for the past few weeks. Since all my magic and work has gone towards the plants and the land, I didn’t have much to say here because it was all intertwined and inseparable. I’m going to start using this blog to cover all of the work I do around the Witch House (that I feel like discussing) instead of trying to keep my multi-faceted efforts cleanly segregated.

3. Training – I’m still in the planning/dreaming stages of my self-imposed training program. I have been struggling with some physical issues, mainly the fog and brain funk that accompanies depression. I never have to spend all day in bed, cry for no reason or give in to the rat-wheel of anxiety attacks anymore, but I can’t control the fog. I’ve been working on building my self-discipline instead of jumping into the training program because I want to stick with it once I really start. I keep forgetting how far I’ve come in just the past year – last year in May I had a half-assed garden and was doing a passable job of paying the bills, while the year before that I could barely make enough to keep us fed and often retreated for days into mental isolation to cope with the new challenges. All I tend to see is how far I am from my idealized goal, not how far I’ve already come.

4. Connections – It’s been a tentative and gradual process, but it seems like we have a functioning Intentional Community on our hands here at the Witch House. I can’t say too much but there are four adults (including me) working together and things are really getting done. We’re calling it Runewald for now and making a bind-rune to represent us increased cohesion noticeably. Awakening a long-dormant farm is much easier when you have multiple people coaxing the land and giving the barn the support it needs to come together again.

5. Temple – I’ve been renovating the Temple ever since we came back from Beltane. When the men went off to the God Ritual during the hottest part of Saturday, I sat with my feet in the water of the little creek running through our campsite and smoked my spirit communication blend and read the tarot. There were butterflies and low flying crows and spiders with golden bellies, and I received a lot of guidance that made things clearer to me regarding my responsibility to the spirits. Nearly half of the shrines in the Temple have been re-built and the rest are in a state of beautification right now. Having the space match what my inner vision feels like (not necessarily looks like) will help me feel comfortable spending time here, therefore increasing 1) my self-discipline when it comes to meditation and other spiritual work and 2) my mind-set during services.

It’s midnight and there is way too much H.P. Lovecraft going on in the living room for me to focus on a full-sized post. Here’s three disparate yet related chunks to fill in the gaps.

Increased Power

It’s a bit early to say, but I have been seeing some serious improvements since I added the new power collector to the Prosperity Web. The addition made a big impact on my workflow, and it also made me reconsidering my schedule. I had been holding a Temple service on Wednesday which took a few hours. After I added the power collector, I started to feel like the practice wasn’t working – taking half a day off in the middle of the week left me pressed for time both in the Temple and while working before heading up there. So far I’ve decided to move it to Sunday, that weird day that isn’t fully the weekend but still isn’t part of the work week. I grew up in a vaguely agnostic household, so I’ve never particularly associated Sundays with anything specific. Tomorrow will be my first attempt at a Sunday Temple service – last week was so in flux that I got a free pass and made up for it over the week.

The Year Of The Root

Cosmic Purple Carrots (courtesy of Pick Me Yard)

I’m not sure where my love for the mystery of root vegetables developed. I never enjoyed eating them, especially not potatoes or rutabagas, as a child. I think it developed later, and I know that it really turned the corner into Important when I picked up a 25 cent copy of Jitterbug Perfume at a thrift store in rural Georgia because it mentioned Pan on the back cover. The lavish treatment of the beet root set all those dormant seeds to germination in my brain. I’ve written about it before – namely the Underground Heart, but with the arrival of the rabbit came the wild and tame carrots and with the fox came the twisted fingers of dandelion root.  This year will be the Year Of The Root. The thick and heavy clay soil that kept my root seedlings at weak seedlings all summer long has been circumvented this year with some clever containers and custom-blended soil. Last year was my introduction to the World Beneath The Soil as I traveled through dens and caves with my Council of friends, but this year will involve a lot more deep-delving.

Strong Foundations

See, it all ties together, roots = foundations in some way. I’ve been pushing ahead in a lot of areas of my personal practice, but it has only served to highlight the areas that I missed out on during my first few months and years delving into the language of the spirits. I’m not quite a crooked Tower, but I’ll end up that way if I don’t stop to rebuild some of my important foundations. I’ve decided to focus on the basics that I need to grow in the disciplines that excite me the most. For example, I’ve managed to take a few successful journeys to other places, but my most basic meditation skills have atrophied since I stopped a daily practice. I can get to the right brain state with the right triggers of ritual sounds and sights, but I need to be able to get there without it as well. I’m going to crafting my own sort of training program to stretch and strengthen my mental and energetic muscles. I’ll be posting about some of it once I work out the details in the event someone else is interested in the same kind of development. I briefly considered pulling a training program from one of the thousands of books recommended by everyone in the occult blogosphere, but I already know I don’t have the discipline to follow a program not directly related to my goals.

I linked in to the Prosperity web during the original firing on December 21, 2010. It’s a group working designed to build a web that delivers prosperity, specifically in the form of moneys, to participants. It builds on the web of the Linking Sigil/Ellis and also links to Jupiter and Mercury. I’ve seen results with it since the original firing, but only in the past few months has it really been active for me.

A few months I created a sort of mojo hand as a physical link to the web, and since then I’ve felt like I have an ally in the prosperity related works. He ended up manifesting one day as a small green devilish fellow, and then a few days later I stumbled over an image depicting him quite clearly.

Domovoi by Alice Duke

Read Post »

Seasonal changes are always a hard period of time for my brain for some reason. My focus and concentration starts to drift away as soon as winter starts turning into spring. The constant tension between warm and sunny days and the cold, bitter rains doesn’t help things either. Right now I am knee deep in trying to get a number of things off the ground, and most of them are in their most difficult stages. Temple Day gives me something to base the week around and guarantees that I get at least a few hours of clear thinking and intentional quiet.

I’ve been working to develop rules about etiquette when entering and exiting the Temple space. Since there is a door, it’s easy to define how to act during this time. I’ve drawn inspiration from the etiquette expected at temples around the world, including Buddhist temples, Shinto shrines and Hindu mandirs.

The rules I have written in the Temple journal so far include:

-Purifying with sage and holy water before entering each time, not just the first time during a service. (I have to come and go a few times to clean out the offering dishes and fill them)

-Bowing to the shrines when entering. Bowing is a sign of respect in a wide range of cultures, and has less of the total piety that kneeling or genuflecting represents to me.

-Touching the ground, and then touching the forehead. The dust on the ground of a sacred place is holy, and works as a reminder of the physical as well.

-Working around the room in a clockwise fashion in the beginning, then counter-clockwise at the end of a service. It adds structure and makes movements more intentional.

-Starting with Papa Legba, who is in the center of the room at the intersection of all of the altars and shrines. If the Temple has a gatekeeper you should start everything with their permission and end it with their blessing.

Other common rules of behavior found in historical and modern temples involve dealing with other visitors, which are slightly less applicable to my situation. No one currently living here or that visit want to enter the Temple of their own accord, so I don’t tell them they need to. Since it’s mostly my responsibility, I’m going to put off developing etiquette for interactions until the need arises.

Wednesdays are my days for going upstairs. I work a half day and do some chores so things don’t get behind, but at most that only takes a few hours in the morning. By the afternoon or evening I head up the stairs and into the temple. I’m still spending most my time up there just sitting and letting it all soak in, but I’m working towards creating a more structured weekly service. I’ve got to feel it out instead of just writing something down and hoping that it works since there’s 13 deities and spirits currently residing in the temple, with 5 more scattered throughout the house. That’s a lot of input on what I’m doing and it takes a while to listen to them all in turn.

Read Post »

For some reason, the past few years have driven me towards taking up all the practices I swore I would never use during my adolescence. As a kid I grew up with parents who moved to rural Georgia for reasons I still don’t understand, and we kept animals until the year I moved out. My mother bred and showed rabbits (think of the Westminister Kennel Club Show, but with rabbits). This meant 10+ a week caring for them. They weren’t a source of food or money, so I grew to see animal husbandry beyond a few pets as a waste of time. The stifling idiocy of the small town around us also convinced me that the city was a far more preferable place. Of course, I was also an atheist.

Read Post »

I’d like to say that moving was an uneventful process, but as you can tell from my months long absence, it was not. Moving into the new Witch House (what my mom called it when she came to visit) started with a 6 day period of no contact with the outside world because 1) the only Internet service provider in town is really a front for brain parasites, and 2) we had no car. Then the lymph node in the crease of my right thigh swelled up to the size of an orange, then my sinuses exploded, then a million other things happened. A car happened, a roommate happened, Imbolc happened, moving the fire servitor and cleaning 5 gallons of creosote out of the stove pipes happened, etc.

Read Post »

I’ve been keeping a tight lip about our plans because most of them have changed, as they always do, and if I wrote about everything that seems like it will happen I’ll look like we never actually follow through on anything. We’ve perfected the art of moving with the flow of energy, instead of against it, and so I haven’t been sharing anything about the future on here because I never know what it actually will turn out to be.

Read Post »

Ryohei Hase

The Rabbit was technically the first of the spirits to come to me in the role of a guide or co-conspirator, but didn’t become fully articulated and separate from the general swirl surrounding me until after the arrival of Le Loupe.

Read Post »