Riding the Dragon
Posted on January 24, 2012
Filed Under Magic, Taylor Ellwood | Leave a Comment
It’s officially the year of the Dragon, and according to the Chinese Zodiac, it’s a Water Dragon Year. I was born in the year of the Dragon and although I am not Chinese, I have always identified heavily with Draconic energy and with the attributes associated with people born in the year of the Dragon. The motto for the Dragon is “I Reign.”
On Sunday night, I put together a ritual where I invoked the spirit of the Dragon and let it ride my body. My partner Kat witnessed the ritual and ended up speaking with Dragon as well. The initial part of the ritual involved the prep work.
Prep work
I decided that a Green Tea offering and Rice would be appropriate. While that was being made, I also decided I would paint my body, in order to invoke the spirit of the dragon.Here’s a picture of the ritual tools: Brushes and Q-tips for the painting as well as Body Paints:
I’ve always liked using body paints for ritual work. There’s something powerful about painting symbols onto your body, as a way to shift your presence into a ritual space. You Embody what you work, even as you create to embody the sacredness of the ritual. First I painted Talons on my legs:
I chose Blue talons for the Water Element. I then painted the Arm talons in Orange to acknowledge the element of Fire (since I was born in the year of the Fire Dragon).
Finally I finished up by painting my chest, stomach and Face with a design that I felt embodied the energy of the Dragon.
After the body paint was applied, the offerings were brought into the ritual room. Additionally a Hot bath was started up with a Green Tea Fizz added in for scent and ambiance. Both the doors of the ritual room and the bath room were closed.
To invoke the Dragon, I first presented the offering to a statue of Dragon. It’s a statue of a Western Dragon, but the spirit of Dragon was not offended.
The offering was a bowl of Rice and Green Tea. The bowls there offering was served in actually have enameled blue dragons and phoenixes on them.
I danced, allowing Dragon to take over my movements. At first he was on the floor moving on all fours. but gradually he climbed up until he was on two feet, and then continued to dance with angular movements. He had a low hiss according to Kat. After he’d danced for a bit, he drank some Tea, ate some Rice, and then drank some further Tea. He danced a bit longer. Then he walked to Kat and beckoned her to stand. He placed his mouth against her throat, and breathed into it, from three different directions. Kat said her neck felt different afterwards, that energy had been breathed into it.
Next he spoke with her about my desire to channel the energy of the Dragon for the Year. He told her he knew my desire to channel it toward business prosperity and Creativity for my writing and art. He also told her that it was important for us to continue our ongoing work together as it pertained to finances and love. The momentum of this year would really help with that work. Finally he told her that each week he wanted an offering made to him in the bowls that we’d used that night and once a month he wanted a full invocation/possession ritual. Kat was asked to relay that message to me.
After that he walked to the door of the ritual room. He explained that when he opened the door he would be opening it to financial and relationship success for both of us. After he opened that door, he opened the door to the bathing room, again explaining that he was also opening it to prosperity and creativity for my business and writing/artistic endeavors.
The bath was used to wrap up the invocation. He went into the water, and Kat bathed the body, and afterwards I emerged as the paints were removed. She told me the conditions he’d asked for and I felt them reasonable.
This was a powerful experience for me, both in terms of the ritual itself, and in terms of reclaiming my artistic approach to magic. I haven’t used body paints in a long time and my choice to use them was part of my reclaiming and celebrating of my artistry and its place in my magical practice.
Book Review: The War of Art (Affiliate Link) by Stephen Pressfield
This is the kind of book you need to read whether you’re an artist, writer, musician, or a business owner. In this book, the author explores the feeling of resistance and how it shows up to impede your work as well as presenting strategies to help you overcome that resistance. He also discusses metaphysical aspects of inspiration. I found his advice useful and to the point. It helped me identify places where resistance had shown up to impede my own work. This book is essential because it provides a different perspective on resistance, while helping you find ways around and through it. Pick it up today!
Elemental Fire Month 3
Posted on January 21, 2012
Filed Under elemental work, meditation, mystical journeys | Leave a Comment
12-26-11 Fire burns and consumes. What you don’t want can be burned away, turned to ashes. You can recycle the ashes, contribute to new growth. For Christmas, my mom gave me a picture album with lots of pictures I don’t believe I ever saw. I can’t remember anything about a lot of those pictures, because most of them were when I was really young, or before the age of 7. I don’t have many memories from before I was seven. It’s as if they were wiped clean. It’s quite frustrating.
I’ve been thinking a lot about safety and what constitutes safety for someone. What makes a person really feel safe? What does safety embody for a person? I think of fire as an embodiment of safety. The warmth it provides, and even a psychological fascination with light, and the idea that being in the light can make you safe. There’s this draw to a fire and what it represents. We can be warmed by the fire, can even have a degree of visibility and protection, and yet the fire can also be a detriment. Your eyes have to adjust each time, and what feels safe may ultimately be an illusion.
12-27-11 Today’s meditation focused on desire, specifically what desire for others is really about for me. I think that’s such a hard question to answer in a way, because it really involves recognizing that there’s some level of selfishness associated with desire, and while that seems like a given it did make me think about what that really means. Selfishness isn’t bad per se, as long as it isn’t taken to an extreme. It’s just that when it is taken to an extreme it can go overboard, to the extent that the other person isn’t even considered. In looking at my past, I can safely say that I have been that selfish before and while the short term gratification was nice, the long term result was anything but. So for the moment I’m focusing on the selfishness piece of all of this.
12-28-11 Today’s meditation focused on polyamory. I’ve been in a closed relationship for almost two years, which has been the longest time I’ve been in a closed relationship. I’ve used the time to do a lot of thinking about poly and why I’ve considered myself poly. In all honesty, I’d have to say that my participation in poly is a text book case of bad poly. I’ve made a lot of the mistakes people make in such relationships and as I’ve looked over those mistakes and also what’s drawn me to that lifestyle, I’ve come to realize that I chose that lifestyle in part based on a belief of: “There’s no one person who can fulfill all your needs and its better to have multiple relationships to get all your needs met.” Or if I flip it a little I get: “I’ve been considered to be too intense, and its better if I spread the love around so I’m not too much for anyone person.” Both reasons are ones I’ve told myself and others and yet in considering them carefully, I’ve come to realize that for me, they are unhealthy reasons.
My reasoning about this matter is as follows. If I really believe I’m too much for one person and feel the need to spread the love, am I perhaps ignoring what it is that makes me too much for a person? am I perhaps displacing my needs onto other people, without examining them and seeing what’s healthy or isn’t healthy? And also what is it I am telling myself if I believe this message? When I’ve considered these questions, I’ve realized that poly, in the way I’ve approached it, has ended up being a crutch that has helped me avoid intimacy with myself, let alone someone else.
With that said, I know I’m capable of loving more than one person and I think it can be healthy to love more than one person. However, I know that even though I am capable, I also haven’t really laid a strong foundation to support such relationships. I’ve closed my relationship with my wife, in part because I know that I can’t do good poly, if I can’t even do good with a single relationship. We may never open the relationship up and that would be okay, because I would rather get it right with one person than continue to get it wrong with multiple people.
1-1-12 New year, new me. Today’s mediation focused on judgement. In all honesty, I can be a fairly judgmental person, but show me someone who isn’t. I don’t think I know anyone who doesn’t in one form or another judge others. But what Dragon pointed out is that the best thing I can do is acknowledge the judgments as I make them and then question them. So I applied that to judgments I’d made, and I realized as I looked at those judgements, how many of them were informed by things I had learned or observed about parenting based off how my parents raised me. It’s an eye opening perspective that is helping me view the person in question in a different light, and consequently influences my interactions with him. And I guess that’s the thing about judgements…where your judgements come from is based in part on experiences, observations, culture etc.
1-5-12 To be clear I’m not suddenly anti-polyamory. I think polyamory can work, and I know people who’ve made it work really well. But when I think about my desires, what I see that is problematic is my communication around those desires. It’s not the desire itself that’s a problem, but how I’ve communicated about it. Part of communication is vulnerability and that’s not something I’ve handled well in the past. When you grow up self-sufficient and think that you can’t rely on others, you don’t let others in. With Kat, I’ve been learning how to be vulnerable, how to really open up, and also how to listen. Its taken me this long to learn those lessons in communication, but then again I think its takes many people time to learn such lessons.
1-9-12 I’ve been meaning to write this since I realized it. I was feeling antsy the other day and when I got to the heart of my restless, I realized something fantastic, liberating really. I realized how much I’ve been drawn to, addicted (that could be too strong) to newness. Neophilia. It’s something that plays out in multiple areas of my life. New homes every few years, new relationships after a year or two, new jobs every so often, new video games (those aren’t so bad), new, new, new…And I realized I’m not really used to being stable or establishing roots. I don’t have many friends from long ago that I’ve stayed in touch with. Stabilizing myself, getting stable that’s just nothing something I’ve done. That search for newness has always stirred up some kind of drama and restlessness. Stabilizing with Kat, settling into a relationship and intentionally focusing on just that relationship…That’s new for me, but a different kind of new. I don’t need a fresh injection of something new to take away something blue. I just need to settle in and trust in what I discover as a result.
1-12-11 I’m reading the Art of War, which is about blocks to a person’s creativity. One of the forms of Resistance is Sex: “Sometimes Resistance takes the form of sex, or an obsessive preoccupation with sex. Why sex? Because sex provides immediate and instant gratification. When someone sleeps with us, we feel validated and approved of, even loved…In my experience, you can tell by the measure of hollowness you feel afterward. The more empty you feel, the more certain you can be that your true motivation was not love or even lust, but Resistance.”
That quote speaks to a lot of my experiences with sex. Sex to feel loved to feel approved of, but also that emptiness feeling, that hollow sense of non-gratification, that desperate air of the hungry ghost. I know that all too well. Sex, for a long time, was just the big empty. Sometimes I used it to escape from everything, and sometimes all it really did was remind me of how hollow my life was. Nowadays it’s different, the sex is more about connection, an intentional conscious bond.
I’ve also been thinking about how I spend money. I’m mostly satisfied with my choices, but there’s also a sense of: what do I really have to show for it? I’m tired of just floating in some space. I want to make definite plans, move forward, and although I have a better financial sense of things then I used to have, and can make my pennies squeak for all their worth, I’ve also got a feeling of wanting more for that buck.
All of these things are distractions from that internal fire, yet they are also relevant to my fire, because they are shadows cast by the flames. I feel like a lot of my life has just been a shadow. I’ve never really known fire…I’ve just known a shadowy impression.
1-17-12 One of the activities that Kat and I have committed to doing involves reading books on relationships and money together. We’re currently reading Your Money or Your Life and Journey of the Heart. Both are excellent books and as I re-read them, I catch things I hadn’t previously gotten in the first reading. And what it makes me realize is how important it is to cultivate your inner fire. I’ve only seen shadows and I’d allowed my fire to gutter out, especially several years ago. Now I’m feeling more creative than I ever have been, more inspired really, and at the same time happier than I’ve ever been.
Yet I think I had to let my fire gutter out. I had to experience what it was like to lose that edge, so that I could really appreciate what I have with it. When I did the Love and Emptiness workings in particular, I put myself through the abyss and experienced my shadows fully. Identity saw me crawl out of the abyss and start a path of re-discovery, which continued through the year of Time and space and has moved into this year of Fire. But a big part of that work has also been an intentional cultivation and creation of my relationship with Kat, and that very intentional focus has also spread to cultivating that internal fire that inspires my creativity.
A fire that isn’t carefully cultivated goes out eventually, but if you know to feed the fire, you can keep it going for a long, long time. The books I read with Kat and the conversations we have around them feed my soul and creativity. There are perspectives she offers that I in turn apply to my life. I have a true partner, someone who is willing to walk this journey with me, and so I find that I have help cultivating that inner mounting flame.
1-20-12 There is something to be said for being in an uncomfortable space, because of the opportunities it affords you to grow. I’ve said that before, and I’ll likely say it again, but I realize it anew in the context of choices I’ve made in my relationship with Kat and in my life in general. I’ve always had a fear of letting someone in. Most people only get to a certain level of closeness and then I keep them there. I know where it comes from. It comes from having the rug pulled out from underneath me when I was 10. One day I had a step-mom, I called mom, and the next day I had someone taking out her anger and frustration on me. And this has been a rinse and repeat cycle several times over. It’s hard, consequently, to really trust someone, to really believe that the closeness you feel is genuine, or that it will last. My biggest challenge with Kat has really come down to opening up to her and telling her where I am at, or how I am feeling, when I feel afraid to be that honest. Coming from a life, where I learned early on that it was better to hide an unpleasant truth, learning to be truthful enough to no longer hide has been hard. Yet when I look at previous relationships, I clearly can acknowledge that my dishonesty hurt those other people far more and created far worse problems, than if I had simply opened up and been honest. Yes, the truth might not be something the other person wants to hear, but at least it will set us free to be present with each other, instead of just going through the motions.
Secrecy and Magic
Posted on January 19, 2012
Filed Under Culture, Magic, occult culture, Taylor Ellwood | Leave a Comment
Mike posted some excellent thoughts about how secrecy destroys knowledge. I agree with him. I’ve always found the culture of secrecy within the occult to be problematic. I get that, at least as it pertains to magical orders, that the secrets of those orders are maintained to determine who gets into the magical clubhouse and also to demonstrate proficiency in that order. But the dare to be silent aspect of magic has always struck as a form of false modesty, inspired by a desire to posture and smile cryptically, knowing that you are special because you reveal no secrets.
That’s a bit exaggerated, but I’ve never bought into the dare to be silent schtick. Certainly Crowley, one of the proponents of that rule had no problem being anything but silent when it came to his practices. I say dare to be vocal, dare to share your ideas. Dare to share your experiences so others can learn and in turn share their own.
I was reading recently about a scientist in the mid 16th or 17th century. He’d developed this microscope, one of a kind, that provided a level of accuracy that had previously been missing. He wouldn’t share the design. He wanted to keep it secret. To this day no one has any idea how he built his microscope. Since then better microscopes have been developed, but what a waste of knowledge, because of need to keep the technology secret.
One of the reasons I write this blog is to share my ideas and current projects. I realize that some reader or another could take the idea and do something with it. I want them to actually. Same for the reason I write my books. Secrecy does destroy knowledge.
What’s so special about secrecy anyway? I’ve never seen the point, which is probably why I never joined a magical order either. It would be too hard for me to keep secrets that, imo, shouldn’t be kept. I’d make a bad lodge member.
What’s your take on secrecy in the occult?
Why Magic is ultimately a personal experience
Posted on January 18, 2012
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I’ve been reading Magick of Thought, a blog by Mike Sententia. It’s an interesting blog and his approach to magic is innovative, but it also highlights why I think of magic as a more of a personal experience. When I read his work, I get where he’s coming from, but I wouldn’t really approach magic from that angle, and I don’t think he’d really approach magic from the angle that I take. I find his approach to be a very technical process, that relies on a very precise and somewhat scientific defining of reality and how everything works. Ironically, my own process is not too dissimilar. Much like Mike, I’m a stickler for definitions and my own process is again based on a very precise understanding of how magic works and where it fits into the rest of life. But there are differences, and when I read his blog I see those differences and I actually appreciate them, both in terms of providing me topics to write on, and also for the fact that Mike conveys a very unique vision and approach to magic, which is not something come across everyday.
But what stands out the most to me is that ultimately for Mike, myself, and for many other magicians I know is this: The process of magic, the defining of magic…all of it is a personal experience. You know the joke: Ask five Pagans what Magic is and you’ll get six definitions. Actually you’ll probably get more. It’s the diversity of those experiences which is so important, because it provides a variety of experiences that other people can learn from. Certainly in reading Mike’s blog, I’ve had an opportunity to look at magic from his perspective, and although it doesn’t necessarily quite fit into my experiences, it nonetheless provides some perspective that I can and apply to my magical work.
When I first started experimenting with pop culture and magic, what I cam to realize is that all the ritual finery, actions etc., are just props. What matters is the underlying principles. If you understand the principles of magic, you can personalize the props and you can even personalize the principles. I certainly have and nothing has happened beyond what I wanted to have happen.
Magic is a personal experience and although we can provide a methodology and process to explain it, its still subject to interpretation and ultimately to personalization. The effective magician takes what someone else has put out there, and modifies it to fit his/her understanding of magic. And the test: does it still work? If that test is passed, that is what matters.That is what proves it works.
Resistance and internal work
Posted on January 17, 2012
Filed Under Inner alchemy, meditation | Leave a Comment
I’ve been reading the War of Art (affiliate link) lately and the author talks a great deal about resistance as an enemy to creativity. I think he’s right, to a point. I also think resistance can indicate something that needs to change, but what’s relevant here is how resistance can be used in internal work, to discover what you need to work on and dissolve.
Any time you feel resistance to doing something or you feel a need to distract yourself from what you are doing, it presents you an opportunity to do internal work to dissolve resistance. The desire for distraction is a form of resistance, even as simple dislike for doing something is also resistance. When you come up against it, embrace it and start meditating on it. Listen to what your resistance has to say, and then dig deeper. What’s really underneath that resistance? What’s the underlying emotion that’s really prompting that resistance to doing what you need to do?
When you focus your meditation on answering this question, you may find that it uncovers a lot that you weren’t facing. It’s important to face the issues and deal with whatever emotions arise as a result of the dissolving work. As you resolve such emotions, you will that it frees up a lot of energy, and that your resistance will also dissolve. Resistance is not necessarily a bad thing to feel, as long as you can knowingly act on it and use it to work through what is underneath it.
My altar redone and claimed
Posted on January 16, 2012
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Recently Kat and I captured a few wild kittens and tamed them. During that process we allowed them to use my altar as a den of sorts, so for a little while it wasn’t an altar so much as home. Now the kitten are relatively tame and enjoy the exploration of our entire home. As such I’ve reclaimed my altar, but I decided to play with it just a bit. 
I usually have the chess set arranged in the pre-game pattern but this time I decided to set it up as if a game was already being played. I’m not entirely sure how I’ll experiment with this as yet, but I do have some ideas, as it pertains to wealth magic, and even magic for my life. I could associate different pieces with people or events happening in my life (or that I want to happen) and then use the chess board to “play” the possibility field into my favor.
I’ve added some modeling clays and also a bag of body paints, a reminder of how important art is to my magical workings, and the need to re-integrate it into my work. Now that I’m feeling back to my creative genius, the need to express it is something I’m planning already for a ritual next weekend.
Elephant also has a prominent role on the altar. He has for a while, but I think he’ll have an even more active role soon. The Memory box is in its usual space, as our the dual Tarot decks I use in my readings. It’s good to have my altar back. It’s going to be seeing a lot of activity in the coming months!
Symbols, Archetypes, and Reality in Once Upon a Time
Posted on January 12, 2012
Filed Under entities, Experiments, Pop Culture Magic, Taylor Ellwood | 2 Comments
I love the new show Once Upon a Time. It’s an intriguing mix of Faerie Tale with Modern world. Hopefully it’ll last more than one or two seasons. Perhaps what I love most about is the intersection of symbolism, character archetypes, and reality. In one sense, the show is depicting two alternate lives for each character, and yet in another sense its depicting how people in a small town end up trying to embody and act out faerie tale roles they’ve been assigned by a child trying to find meaning in his life. You can interpret it a variety of ways I suppose, and that’s where I see the show as a kind of magical act/metaphor of reality.
What makes it so evocative is the ability to portray two different realities and while it can be argued that the faerie tale reality is the “past life” of the characters, it’s also their future and present, because they are stories constantly retold and relived in the imagination of the people telling them.
At the same time, this show also explores the modern “real” world as a faerie tale world in its own right, something not real, but just as made up and surreal as the faerie tale world…and why not. It makes perfect sense to treat the modern world as just another faerie tale, but what I find so fascinating is how in one degree or another the characters are playing out the themes of their lives, becoming the archetypes or at least trying to as some part of themselves rebels against the curse.
I have no doubt I’ll have further analysis of this really fascinating show. I’m admittedly geeking out a bit, but this kind of analysis and research is part of how I create effective pop culture magic workings. The more enthusiasm you invest the more real it becomes, and that’s part of what makes pop culture magic viable…Plus in this case it also is combined with my interest in how pop culture reinvent and retells older mythology in modern contexts!
Safety and Magic
Posted on January 11, 2012
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This post is prompted in part by Rowan Pendragon’s post about Safety in Wicca and in part by the latest episode of Once Upon a Time, where Rumpelstiltskin learns that magic always has a price. My whole approach to magic is focused on experimentation, which necessarily involves experimenting with magic in ways that aren’t necessarily tested or true at the time. There’s a bit of risk involved.
I also hold a traditional view of magic, I suppose, in that I think that magic comes with a price. I know its not fashionable to look at magic in that way, but in my experiences there is always a payment. Magic never comes free, nor should it. If you desire a result, you have to put something into attaining it and if you choose to work with an entity, then you need to be prepared to offer something in return.
When I did my ritual where I gave my blood to the elemental spirits in return for some of their power, I wasn’t going for a safe version of magic. I was offering something of value, something that had meaning in return for something of equal value from the elemental spirits. I knew I had to offer something of value and the fact that I gave blood, which might be considered scary to some didn’t bother me at all.
Magic isn’t meant to be sanitized or safe. Truth to tell, spirituality in general isn’t meant to be safe or sanitized. It challenges you to grow as a person and puts you in some uncomfortable places. If it doesn’t, you’re doing it wrong.
Part of the thrill of magic, part of the experience is the willingness to go places where angels fear to walk, where there be dragons and the unknown. What’s the point, if you don’t challenge yourself?
Multiversal Tone
Posted on January 10, 2012
Filed Under Occult, occult culture, poetry, Taylor Ellwood | Leave a Comment
The hypnotic movement of the music,
the sashay that calls for a steady shuffle
as you and I move in time
we create this altered reality
a place of eyes,
your eyes staring into mine
mine staring into yours
Your soul baring its truth to me
showing all your possible timelines
realities unfolding
as you say,
“Here I am in all my multiversal glory.”
You are everything and nothing
Your eyes are eight arrowed stars
that portray entropy
The music swirls, stings, rattles
its not just a sound
its an experience
shaking the very boundaries of the bodies
engaged in this dance of robotic, synchronized movements
back and forth, back and forth
all is bliss, all is bliss
Reveal yourself to me and I’ll show you a new reality
in my own eyes
as I unveil my secret self
displaying the glories of my true nature
the celestial nature of my tone I bring to the universe
perfect sound joining other perfect sounds
we create this harmony
gears in clocks,
the ticking of time
the movement of space
Here we are
you and I.
How do you define wealth?
Posted on January 10, 2012
Filed Under Magic, Taylor Ellwood, wealth magic | 4 Comments
One of the questions I’m asking and answering as I start work on the wealth magic book is how I define wealth. Do I define it as money? The answer is yes and no. I think money is an essential characteristic of wealth, but doesn’t solely represent wealth. Actually I’d argue that money can represent wealth, but it can also represent poverty and a whole host of other meanings. Money as a symbol is…quite diverse in meaning.
Wealth, on the other hand, isn’t necessarily so diverse, but certainly it can be illusive. What is wealth? What does it really mean to be wealthy? The definition of wealth is something that seems to tease people. And what one person defines as wealth another person disagrees with…not that it really matters. The real question is: Can I embody my definition of wealth in a way that is maintainable?
Speaking from experience, its taken me a while to embody wealth in my life, and maintain it. I’m still learning how to do it, although I seem to be getting better at it each day. Persistence is another ingredient of wealth. You have to be persistent and focused on it, in order to attain it. That’s actually true of anything you want in life. If you really want it, you’ll find a way (maybe even an A).
Magic is one means toward that end, and when you combine multiple means (like creating multiple income streams) it makes it much easier to achieve the desired result. My own quest toward wealth has focused on using multiple means to that end, and its a continual project, one I enjoy thoroughly. If you don’t enjoy it, I advise not seeking it.
My definition of wealth is simple. I love to live by my own rules. Life on my terms is wealth. This isn’t to say I’m in control of everything, but rather that I am doing what I love to do, at my leisure, and maintaining and improving it, while also being able to enjoy everything that brings pleasure to me, and allows me to continue to work on the projects I value most. That’s my definition of wealth.
What’s yours?
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- Chapters 3 and 4 of Magical Identity are revised. Next is chapter 5, where I'll need to integrate more sources into the content.
