Lessons of the Elephant God
Today I did a working with Elephant, a check-in if you will. He said I was making good progress, learning to sit in the moment, but that he also noted that I still would sometimes get too focused on projected outcomes. And he is right. I’ve been getting more comfortable sitting in the present moment, but I still sometimes get caught up in projected outcomes, in fantasies, if you will.
“You are your own worst obstacle, because you can’t see what’s in front of you. What are you dealing with right now in your life?” He asked.
“Divorce, figuring out what I’ll do career wise, and also working on my small business”
So don’t you think,” he continued,” that you owe it to yourself to be present in those circumstances and situations, without focusing so much on projected outcomes. You’ll get to the future soon enough, but sit in this moment right now and be present with yourself and the environment around you. What do you need to know about this moment, about this place you are in?”
I thought about that and I realized what I really need to know is that I can be present in the insecurity, in the moments where everything isn’t defined as much as I’d like. That until I was present in those moments, I might be missing out on details and information that could help me make an informed choice about the circumstances I found myself in.
There’s no need to escape into a projected outcome, because doing so actually keeps you where you already were, but deludes you, instead of enabling you to be mindful and aware of yourself and your surroundings. That is the lesson the elephant god continues to teach me and each time I see it in action, I come closer and closer to accepting it and living it.
Topics: Elephant, Taylor Ellwood, elemental work, space/time magic | Comments
Space is the Place part 3
Two weeks ago, I found out I was getting a divorce. Needless to say that kind of threw me off when it came to magical work, but in truth it also lent itself to my work with space. We still live together but I moved into my own room. Getting used to having my own sleeping space has been rather interesting, especially since it’s not something I’ve had for the last four years.
Tonight I finally did my third working to Thiede, in this case to claim my new space as my ritual space. I pulled out nine stone eggs and arranged them in a circle around me, pulled out the memory box and got elephant’s permission to open the gate of space/time. Then I evoked Thiede, and placed my hands on the memory box and let him guide me on a journey to claim my space.
He asked me what had changed in my space, and I told him my perspective, my sense of freedom, my place with different people. Then he showed me how to take the spatial awareness that we’d been cultivating and apply it to the room I was in. The room become a dome, like a bucky dome actually, with different matrices forming and in each matrix was a perspective, a place of awareness about not only the physical space I was in, but also the space of my life. Thiede asked me if I was really ready to claim my space, not just the room, but my space as a person. Was I ready, he asked, to be true to myself about what I wanted in that space.
And I thought that for the first time in my life I can be honest with myself about what I really want…or more honest than I have been, because I’m through with buying into certain societal expectations about what I should want in my space, from another person, etc. I realized that I don’t want to compromise my sense of space for someone else, not if that means I’m unhappy as a result.
I claimed my physical space, but also my metaphysical identity space, to be true to what I want in that space, so I can be true as well to who I allow into that space. And I recognize as well that every other person has his/her own space and so each person must respect his/her own space…I claimed my space, and my awareness of that space. Thiede told me than to do another working with Elephant and get ready for Purson…
In other news…
Panthea-con schedule is up. I’ll be teaching the class on Space/Time magic on Saturday morning at nine.
Topics: Dehara, Taylor Ellwood, Thiede, deity, elemental work, meditation, space/time magic | Comments
Space is the Place part 2
I worked with Thiede again last night, or rather he took me on another journey into space. This time he made the point that the notion of space being empty is another cultural construct, but that space is never empty. There is a lot of different things in space, so to speak. It made me think of the little motes of light that I see in everything around me. I’ve seen these motes of light for as a long as I can remember and Thiede had me focus on them and when I did so I could also see lines connecting each mote to the other. This, I might add, is something I’ve seen before with Thiede, years ago, but this time I had a different appreciation, because what he showed me with it is how everything is connected together. How all of this comes together and creates this overall experience of the world that makes sense on a sublime level. And that was it tonight. I’ll work with him again soon, and I’ll finish this post then.
Worked with him again tonight. I saw a central hub connected to spatial points. I was inclined at first to view it as an experience of movement, but Thiede corrected me, noting that thinking of space in terms of movement is derived from being a moving being and applying how one physically navigates space to the experience of space. But navigating through space isn’t the same experience as space itself can be…and as I thought about it, my own changes of awareness in a given space has much more to do with a change of perspective than actual movement. Movement is a convenient metaphor to explain or situate space for a person, but I haven’t necessarily moved from a space I’m in so much as changed my perspective about that space, because my awareness of it shifts to something new. It’s an interesting way to think about space…I always exist in the same space, but my awareness changes how I understand that space.
Topics: Taylor Ellwood, Thiede, meditation, space/time magic | Comments
Space is the place
Tonight I chose to work With Thiede, my guide for space. Anyone who is familiar with the character of Thiede from the Wraeththu series will remember that he’s character who is able to alter the awareness of space and time, to put people into different spaces. Tonight I chose to do my first working to him, in the context of the element of space. It was a very interesting working.
He just had me meditate on the concept of space without trying to apply movement to it. He told me that the inclination with space is to apply some kind of movement or activity to fill it up, or to associate it with time to give it a sense of movement, but that such associations may be incorrect and more so the result of human perception and the need to do something with space (and Edward Hall alludes to this very issue in his work on space and culture). Meditating on space without defining it, experiencing it is so different because it suddenly treats space as an entity unto itself, instead of as a background or something to be filled or moved in. In fact, in one sense Space can’t really be moved in, so much as it can be moved around. I don’t know how else to put that. I’m sure further meditations will provide more clarity.
What I came away with is a different awareness of space. I’ll be doing more meditations, and may make the dancing I do tonight part of the experience of space from this new perspective that Thiede has gifted me with.
On a different note, I was struck to today how easily we create stories and perceptions about other people that aren’t remotely true. That someone who seems successful might be suffering a lot more than how s/he displays it…just how private a person’s world can be, and what may never be noticed unless you actually begin to interact with that person (and even though how much will you really know?).
Topics: Dehara, Magic, Taylor Ellwood, Thiede, meditation, space/time magic | Comments
Laban, and a meeting with my Anima
I’ve been reading Laban for all, which is a book that describes the dance techniques of Rudolf Laban. I was introduced to it by Bill Whitcomb. We both find the mapping of the movement of the body to be fascinating. Last night I decided to try out the basic steps for Laban. What stood out to me about the experience was how much attention I needed to pay to each of the steps I was doing.
I know that as time goes on, muscle memory helps a person incorporate the movements so that s/he doesn’t have to think about the movements, but I felt the experience was useful last night for helping me really sit in my body. I’ve been finding that incorporating more physical body awareness into my ritual work has been essential for the identity work I’m doing, and most importantly for getting past cultural memes that otherwise influence how the body is perceived and interacted with.
In complement of that I’ve also been working through some of the exercises in the Eight Circuit Brain. Last night, after doing the steps, I talk a salt water bath and then did a meditation visit with my concept of the Anima. I’m going to continue down that particular route because there’s some work I wish to do with it. Meeting with the Anima proved useful because I was able to recognize that it is from my concept of her that in some ways I’ve based my understanding of the opposite sex. So how better to examine those beliefs than to do so with her? I’ve found myself dealing with a recurrent issue of idealization and according to Antero Alli, working with the anima directly is the best way to deal with such idealization. Last night’s first visit did seem helpful for that purpose. I could place that idealization on the Anima, without having to bring it back with me.
Topics: Magic, Taylor Ellwood, mystical journeys | Comments
Travels into time
I went into my ritual room day. I’d fully cleaned it yesterday, and I was ready to get started. I place different pictures and statues of Elephant around the room, including a poster of Elephant made by Ravenari that Lupa got me as a Christmas gift.
I dressed in my ritual garb, including a necklace for elephant and a bracelet of elephant hair. I put on my robe and ritual pants I have. I placed all my time magic tools in the center of the room and then sat down and when ready touched each painting for each of the time and space entities I’m working with and asked for an audience with them. I then unlocked my memory box and used it to travel into the spider web of time and meet Elephant, Thiede, Purson, and the Spider Goddess of Time.
First I apologized to each of the entities in turn. I haven’t done much in the last with this working, partially because of having a house guest in my ritual room, but in some ways moreso because of ongoing business busyness. Needless to say something I’ve realized is that I don’t want to sacrifice my spiritual life to my business life so I’m working on trying to get a better work-life balance into place.
After that the spider goddess directed me to look into a window she presented me. When I looked into it, I saw images of the coming year, different moments that could occur. She told me she was giving me some information that would be useful for specific moments coming up, and that I’d have access to it when I needed it.
After that I did a meditation with Elephant, a recap of what we’d been working on before, i.e. learning to be present in the present, but also some further direction in terms of some personal issues I’m working with right now that have illustrated to me how much I sometimes invest my attention into possible futures. The direction boils down to a realization I had earlier today about the awareness of an energetic blockage and how I could stop feeding that blockage by learning to see how it showed up in my behavior to encourage situations that I didn’t necessarily want to deal with. If I could dissolve the sensation of the blockage it could help me with the tension I was feeling. Elephant explained that the same awareness of that tension could be used to also get focused on the present moment…so we’ll see what happens with it.
In other news, here’s a couple of links to a podcast interview of me and Lupa and a book review of Multi-Media Magic
Interview with Erotic Awakenings about Kink Magic
A very good and balanced review of Multi-Media Magic.
Topics: Elephant, Taylor Ellwood, Thiede, elemental work, energy work, purson, space/time magic, spider goddess of time | Comments
The Atlantic
While I was visiting family for the Holidays, one of the happy circumstances I was able to get was a chance to reconnect with the Atlantic ocean. The Atlantic is different from the Pacific ocean. More inviting for one thing, but also, for me, its pretty significant because I made an offering to it long ago. I gave it something important to me as a way of connecting with it’s elemental power.
So when I saw the Atlantic for the time in quite a few years, I felt an instant recognition of that bond. It was a sensation of coming home, in its own way. I did a little ritual to the Atlantic the first day I was there to honor that recognition.
Sometimes that’s what magic is about…that recognition of significance, that celebration of connection,that realization of history in one’s life. For me, visiting the Atlantic was exactly that and very magical as a result.
Topics: Magic, Taylor Ellwood | Comments
Future obsession, present awareness
The present unfolds when a need is met that previously was bothering you to the point of obsession. The shift of energy away from that place of obsession frees up awareness of the present and can help a person get more focused on living in the present. When you have an obsession, you’re always living in the future, living in that moment of imagining what will happen when the obsession is realized. Nothing else exists after that moment and in many ways nothing exists before it.
A person living in the present is likely free of such obsessions. S/he is living in the moment, hopefully aware of multiple possibilities, but not overly attached to any specific outcome. This occurs when we can leave behind the focus on the future and/or have the obsessions that fuel the focus on the future met. The clarity that results when those obsessions are realized is a clarity of purpose and awareness, for those obsessions no longer occupy your thoughts or emotions, freeing both resources up. The issue then is can a person keep those resources for the present or have them snapped up into the future?
Topics: Taylor Ellwood, identity | Comments
Latest releases from Immanion press
Immanion Press/Megalithica Books would like to announce its two newest nonfiction releases! We now have both of these books in stock here at the Green Wolf, so here’s the official announcement.
Women’s Voices in Magic edited by Brandy Williams is a phenomenal collection of essays from female occultists and magicians. People often think of female magical practitioners as mainly witches and neopagans, and the areas of ceremonial and chaos magic as more male-dominated. The essayists in this collection would like to disagree, some politely, some not! We discuss everything from our historical predecessors to the effects pregnancy has on magic, dealing with discrimination by other occultists for our sex, and how we work to change the assumptions that are made about us. Click here for more details, including a list of essays, and ordering info!
As for our other release–chaos magic has been around for a few decades now, and some would argue that it’s long since gone stale, assimilated into a more mainstream, image-oriented form of occultism. Liber 767 vel Boeingus by Josef Karika takes chaos magic back to its exploratory, experimental, and lovingly irreverent roots. Based on the author’s fifteen years of practical experience, and written with a good dose of humor, this text includes a wide variety of ideas for magical practice, from new takes on sigils and servitors and technological magic, to innovative ways to work with memories and dopplegangers. Here’s where you can find more info, and place your order!
Topics: Immanion Press, publishing | Comments
Group time vs Individual Time
I got into a really interesting metaphysical tonight with my friends about group time vs individual time. I was describing to them some of my paratheatre work with time and we got to talking about the difference between Western time, which is monochronic and this very scheduled and linear with one thing happening at a time and polychronic time where lots of things could be happening at the same time and its very non-linear with little in the way of scheduling.
Then I began thinking about group time, time which is created when a group starts meeting and working together. It’s a kind of sacred time in its own way. When I interact with a group, the experience of time changes quite a bit because of the group interaction, but also because I’m no longer in individual time, time spent with just myself. And I notice with group time it is different because with interaction of other people, the sense of time changes. It feels like the moment lasts longer, instead of with individual time, where the awareness of time is based more on solo activity and when those activities are finished.
It’s an interesting realization and it speaks to some degree to the efficacy of group time, because everyone participating in a group is also participating in the experience of time in that group. The contribution of each person’s awareness of time creates the experience of group time an consequentlly can alter the awareness of the flow of time.
Topics: Taylor Ellwood, space/time magic | Comments
