Walking the web with Elephant

Tonight I decided to do some work with Elephant and time. I went into my ritual room and put on the necklace I associate with Elephant and the bracelet of Elephant hair and then pulled out the statue which wears the other bracelet of Elephant hair, as well as my painting for elephant. then I turned out the lines and sat in front of the statue and centered myself, so I could get focused on Elephant's presence. When I was ready, I laid down and keeping a hand on the statue, allowed myself to travel to the silver web. Once there, Elephant started discussing memory, not so much as a stable picture of the past, but rather as an active re-imagining of it, as well as an influencer of the present, and a dream of the future. He then talked about how being aware of your present circumstances was very important to really working with time.

"You are too focused on the future...not just you, but so many others as well"

He showed me several incidents, including one from today where I'd gotten caught up in future imagining of wishful dreams, while ignoring information in the present that could've told me that such an imagining was just a diversion of energy and thought better put elsewhere. The information was there all along...I'd intuitively acknowledged it, but still ignored it with my conscious mind, until I couldn't ignore it because information was presented that showed me that what I hoped for wasn't going to happen.

"Pay more attention to the present moments and the information in them...that will show you what paths you can take, and there are always multiple paths."

So then he also pointed out how elephants always have to be aware of a lot of information happening around them all the time. They can't just blindly look ahead. They need to listen to the vibrations and communication from other elephants, but also the land, as well as pay attention to their memory of a place, so they can find their way. Elephant said that the silver web has it's own vibrations and even as I can create my own paths, it's a wise idea to pay attention those vibrations as I navigate through time's possibilities.

"The more aware you are of the information available to you, the easier it is to pick out the possibilities that are most available to you, or find your way around obstacles that'd hold you back from a possibility you want to work with."

So I'm coming away from all of this with a realization that yes, sometimes I do live too much in the future, and I want to focus more on what's around me that I'm not noticing as much, and use that awareness to help me with my time work.

After I finished the work with elephant, I did a fan dance as a way to close the the sacred space and thank elephant. I have a fan, one of those ones you can hold open with one hand, that spreads out in a half circle, and I started dancing with it, using it to express my thanks. It was fun to close the ritual that way, and allow myself some artistic creativity with using the fan as a ritual tool. I plan on working with it more, in the future.

Space/Time Connection Working

I've been getting pinged by the Spider Goddess of time quite a bit since I switched over from emptiness to Time to come and do a getting to now you ritual of sorts. It was that this evening, but also more than just that. I went to my ritual room and pulled out the voyager deck and from it constructed a circle and triangle for ceremonial work. I've decided that I'm no longer going to use the voyager deck for divinatory work...just for the ceremonial/experimental magic I've been using the deck for the majority of the time.

After I constructed the circle and triangle, I pulled out the paintings for Elephant, Purson, Thiede, and the Spider Goddess, as well as the memory box I use to access the silver web of time. I then first approached Elephant and asked for entrance through the gates of time. He said yes, and told me to also make some more time for him, so we could explore some facets he could show me in regards to time. I took the key from him, and fit it into the loc of the memory box, and opened the box.

I called out to Purson to be guide through time, to Thiede to be my guide through space and they both came, my guardians on journeys into the silver web. Then I reached out to the spider goddess and she told me that tonight we'd work on utilizing the silver web to make a particular connection happen. She told me to think about what connection I might like to make, and then told me to shuffle the rest of the Voyager deck to pull out th cards that represented me and the connection I wanted to make. First I pulled out the seeker card, for myself (how appropriate), but I had to do a lot of thinking about what I wanted to connect. I decided, in the end, not to connect with a specific person or entity, but rather to connect with an archetypal awareness that I could present some information to about the connection I wanted to make. The Spider Goddess thought this was a good idea, and I proceeded to shuffle and pull a card that represented that awareness.

I then activated the magical circle for connecting with that awareness and putting my own card into the memory box and setting it on the altar, proceeded to explain at length what I was looking for. Then I and that awareness shuffled the cards from the elemental hexagon deck and from that we pulled out what I would consider to be a confirmation of those attributes, but also an imprint of them into the archetype, so it could seek out what I was looking for. After that the spider goddess suggested that she and I shuffle the cards a second time. So we did that, and the second spread revealed/set the path by which the possibility I was seeking would manifest.

The spider goddess also pointed to a specific book on my shelf Fusion of the Five Elements by Mantak Chia, and said I should start doing the exercise in that book for my morning daily ritual. The emptiness working has deconstructed all of my former energetic structures and the Fusion of the five elements is a practice that creates a spiritual embryo (among other things)...she seemed to feel it would be useful for me, so I'll be starting that practice as of tomorrow. Then I closed it all down. Overall, an interesting working, with more to undoubtedly come.

Into Time and Space

After I finished my emptiness ritual and had cleansed myself of the paint, I moved right into the ritual to accept time as the new element. I put on the bracelet of elephant hair, and the elephant necklace and put before me the painting to elephant. I asked elephant if elephant would allow me to enter the gates of time and was told yes. Then I evoked Purson and Thiede as my guides through the silver web of time and space. I did an exercises of putting increments of time into each other until the increments become meaningless.

I opened the memory box, which is my gateway to the silver web and put both my hands on its sides. And I traveled along the silver web until I came to the center, where the Spider Goddess of Time awaited me. She held up the book of her mysteries and said, "It's good you have this back, now paint what I show you."

I pulled out my paintbrush and waters color and painted a web of time. Just one colors, lots of silver-gray...I asked her...was this really it? And she told me that my perceptions of time were too limited by human made standards of time. That what I painted wasn't even so much a symbol as a way of relating to time and space, a way of moving past the linear perceptions and measurements that mark time by human standards. She told me that this year would be a move away from the mystical path I've been on, back to more of a focus on magic, but also a focus on changing those limited perceptions on time...that all the material she'd put in my path the last couple of months was partial prep work for the workings ahead.

And with that, she stopped my hand, looked at my work and said, "Start with this and see what it teaches you."

Then I closed the gate to the silver web of time and gave my thanks to Thiede, Purson, and Elephant...and to her, the spider goddess of time. And so that's the beginning into the element of time.

Time Magic: Purson

When I got home on Sunday from Fall Eq, one of the first things I did was go back to my ritual room and get started on the next painting for the time magic ritual I'll be doing in October. This time, the painting was for Purson, one of the Goetic Daimons of Time, and one I've been working with closely for some time. Purson is one of two guides for time, in my paradigm. The horn he blows in a symbol of sound and its relationship to sound, in terms of tuning potentialities into actual realities. Purson, as a guide, provides safe passage on the silver web of time, and can act as an intermediary for the magician, when the magician wishes to work with the Spider Goddess of time. As an interesting aside, Purson stabilizes time, while the other guide stabilizes space. Below is the painting I created as a Seal for Purson.