Riding the Dragon

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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!

Explore related entries in the Library

• Dragon Ball Z
• Wealth Entity (Dragon/Western/Eastern Dragons)
• Dragon
• Aphrodite

Elemental Fire Month 3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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?

A Vision of Tomorrow

Each year I do a cut-up collage, which essentially serves as a magical enchantment for the next year. This particular magical working is inspired by William S. Burroughs, and I always make a point to listen to Burroughs when doing this working. This year's collage was dedicated to Bune as both an evocation of him for Wealth Magic purposes and also as a way of praising and raising attention about him.

At the same time this collage and the other one are magical workings for my businesses, or vision boards if you like. I'm in the process of rebranding for my main business, as well as working on the social media presence for Immanion Press, and I'm even doing some refining of magical experiments. It's a lot of work, but its also a lot of fun.

How this works is twofold. Your scissors is the tool of cutting. You cut any previosu meanings away when you cut the words and images out. Then when you put the collage together, you glue your meanings into the words and images, imprinting them with your desires. The glue is the imprint of meaning on the blank void of paper, bringing meaning with image and word to create an enchantment (or evocation) of the desired reality. You can fire the enchantment off a variety of ways, whether its via sex magic, or using your creativity as the firing mechanism, or showing it in a public space, with people sharing it as the firing mechanism.

Pre-makes: an example of retro pop culture

I've started doing some research for my new Pop Culture Magic book. Bill Whitcomb recently told me about Pre-makes, which are little video previews of current movies remade as if they had originally been shot in the early fifties. The one above is a pre-make version of Ghostbusters. Aside from the charming use of older footage, these premakes grabbed my attention because of how it combined retro pop culture with modern versions of pop culture.

I think, with the right video skills, it'd be easy to make any of these premakes into an audio-visual enchantment or evocation of some kind that could be charged by the views, and even social media activity that people created around the videos. You could even set it up that every time the video was shared it was fired again. These kinds of videos can provide an infinite variety of opportunities for the enterprising magician who has time and expertise in making them.

Looking at this video, what I was most struck by, however, was how the person who created it was able to take themes from a later movie and apply them to a collage of images from older movies and "re-make" the story or at least a trailer of the story. It illustrates how themes can be re-appropriated into different media, and also how no story is so original that there isn't some basis for it in the past.

What do you think?

The requisite new year post

It's 2012. When you look back on 2011, you might be thinking of everything you accomplished or everything you didn't do. Maybe you're also thinking of new year resolutions or how you'll do what you didn't get to in 2012.

Stop. Just stop for a moment. Those are all such automatic thoughts, such cultural promptings that its worthwhile to consider a different tact and step out of the automatic grind that is New Years.

Every day of the year signals a new year that is starting, because one year ago that day started and ended. But we only think of the new year a couple times out of the year. We think of it in January and you might think of it also around your birthday or around Samhain, if that's your thing, but in general people don't consider that a year can end on any day, and begin on any other day. It's all arbitrary.

So 2012 is here. What has really changed from yesterday or the day before? Nothing but numbers. Nothing but an arbitrary measurement of what time it is. Take that new year fervor you feel, that burning passion that you will make changes and ask yourself: "How can I sustain this each day of the year, every year, so I actually make the changes I want to make?"

Each day provides you an opportunity to change, to make a difference in your life or someone else's. Sustaining the momentum is what the real challenge is. People start out with resolutions and then they are ground away. Nothing feels new, everything lacks a certain luster. Sound familiar?

If you want a new you...if you want to keep those resolutions, develop a long term sustainable plan that you can hold yourself to, and if possible get some help with accountability by partnering up with someone else who wants to make changes.

Successful long term magical work is based on a systematic approach to what you are working on. Thus, for example, I have my year long elemental balancing rituals, which serve to focus my internal work on specific themes that I can use to measure my change or lack thereof over the course of the year.

I'm developing an online correspondence course for people who want to learn my approach to magic. It seem to be quite the rage right now...actually I think its been that way for a while. What sustains my approach to this particular project is the idea that once its completed, it'll be very easy to add changes onto it, while providing anyone who takes it a chance to experiment with my approach to magic. But the only way such a program will work is if the people taking the class actually have a sustainable model for integrating what they are learning into their daily lives.

It's 2012. What will you do to develop a sustainable process that you can use to create effective change in your life and maintain that change?

Latest Radio Interview

Here's the archived version of the recent interview I did about my new book Magical Identity with Justin from Sothis Media. If you didn't get to listen to interview, or just want to listen to it again, click this link!

Book Review Self Comes to Mind by Antonio Damasio

This is an interesting book that presents what I'd consider to be an ontological perspective on neuroscience, identity, and consciousness. The author presents some intriguing ideas about the intersection of these concepts, particularly where consciousness originates from. I'd highly recommend this book as one that will get you to think about your brain and body in a new way, as well as provide new perspectives on what self is and where consciousness fits into it all.

Social Media Magic

I'm debating right now what my next book will be about, but I've already got some good ideas percolating. No it won't be social media magic...though that could be the name of a chapter.

Anyway, I've been playing around with my Facebook Timeline, adding some events to points in the past, mainly where I moved to and where I've lived. I wish they would let you create future events on your timeline, but it doesn't look like they do. However the possibilities of using an FB timeline for a bit of retroactive magic does excite me, especially when you can add pictures and videos to a specific date in time. You can graphically rewrite your timeline and make it into a very creative experience.

For example I've added several fiction events to my timeline. I've done it for the sheer humor of it, but there's nothing to say that you couldn't go in and rewrite portions of your life with modified details, and use that as a kind of narrative that also retroactively rewrites your life. And if you can get people into participating with you via tagging, you can even come up with some clever meta events.

It's really about having fun, but also getting creative with your life. Changing what happened on the timeline might open up some possibilities for you, or if nothing else give you closure on events in your life. It's something I'll keep playing with, as much for whimsy as for any magical purpose. The time line is a graphic and textual narrative of your life. It can represent where you've been, who you've met, what you've done...and it can part fact and part fiction. FB probably wants it to be all fact, but why make it all fact?

What about you? How would you experiment with the Facebook timeline?

Self-Evocation 2011

Here's my latest painting. It's a self-Evocation painting. I do these occasionally and I use them to paint an internal landscape of my consciousness. This one is actually quite nice and feels much more peaceful compared to some of the other ones.

A self-evocation is really a snapshot of time, a way to connect with a particular moment of my life. I've used the paintings occasionally to interact with younger versions of myself. In a sense the paintings act as a temporal powerspot. It's not the only method I use for accessing past versions of myself, but it is a useful method to use, and one that provides something to focus on to help you reach that past point of existence.

Archetypal actions

I've been watching Nikita lately, which is the newest rendition of La Femme Nikita. In one of the episodes, the actress playing Nikita does the famous action of diving into the laundry chute to avoid being incinerated by the missile. You know the action I'm talking about. It's the action that occurred in both movies and likely occurred in the other La Femme Nikita series as well. It's what I call an archetypal action, an action that defines and embodies the archetype or character. It makes you think of all the iterations of that character. It brings that character to life for you.

If you're an actor, or a magician doing that action can also make for an effective invocation, though I'd recommend against diving down chutes to avoid being incinerated. My point being however that if you look at pop culture and mythology in general you will likely find specific actions or activities that a given character, god, etc did and those actions are part of the archetypal consciousness of that being. You may even find that there are actions that repeat across different cultures, with the result being that the action taps into something deeper than the faces that happen to display the action. You tap into the essence of the archetype, something faceless, that nonetheless represents what it is you want access to. An archetype isn't just the face, after all...it's the actions that embody the concept.

Part of my work with identity has involved using space and movement to shift identity. Archetypal actions can be a part of that work, particularly when you want to invoke a spirit by embodying it. Actions allow the spirit to take over, to possess and become part of your experience even as you enter into its experience. I've done such actions in my work with Elephant and Dragon for example, but also with various characters I've worked with. By mimicking the movements and actions, a person invites a different body awareness, and can use that awareness to call to the entity of choice that s/he wants to work with.

A Yule Ritual

The other night, for our Magical Experiments meeting, we decided to do a Yule Feast and Ritual. The Feast was Roast Beef, Mashed Potatoes, carrots, beans, garlic bread and spiced wine and cider. It was an excellent way to celebrate the solstice, with good friends. But it was also a magical act, in and of itself, celebrating each other's fortune and also promoting that prosperity for the next year. The ritual was a simple, but focused working. We were first given papyrus reed and a pen. On the paper we wrote down or drew a symbol of something we wanted to get rid or banish from our lives. We had the option of telling others what we were getting rid of and then we lit it on fire and focused our intention on banishing it from our lives.

Afterwards we were each given a candle and on the candle we wrote or carved a symbol that represented what we wanted to bring into the new year. We burned the candles for a bit, but then snuffed them. I have mine on my desk and I will light it again on the first of the year.

Tonight we're buying the ashes, so that what was banished is recycled to the Earth.

Elemental Balancing Ritual Fire Month 2

11-27-11 Something which has always frightened me has been my own fire. It's frightened me, in part because of the various people in my life who at one time or another told me I was too passionate, too intense, or just plain too much. I've gotten so used to pushing that intensity down or directing it other places because no one wanted to handle it. But it wasn't just the intensity. It's also been the anger. Fire embodied anger for me for a long time, and I've never been comfortable with anger, from myself or anyone else. As I was meditating today Dragon pointed out that fire didn't have to be any of these things. That the only one who'd perceived it that way had been me, but also I didn't have to continue perceiving myself in a particular way either. That's something I've been discovering in my relationship with Kat, and also discovering that I am not too much for myself or someone else.

I've always been driven by my passion. That can be good or it can be bad. Just depends on what you make of it, but I'm not going to bank the fire of my life or my relationship with fire because of an ill conceived perception. If I hold onto it, I empower it...and if I let it go, I open myself to new possibilities.

12-2-11 The meditations have focused on anger this week. Dragon had me do a history of anger, both in terms of how I've seen anger expressed and how I've expressed it. When I look at the history of anger, I start with my Dad. With him, anger was always a volcanic eruption. It would build and build up and then one day explode. His anger was always fast and hard, and you never knew what would set him off. Both my step-mom and mom tended to be more passive aggressive in certain ways, though my step mom would also be overly aggressive. She encouraged it in her daughter as well, who learned early on that she could take her anger out on me with no repercussions. What I learned early on was that I had to repress my anger. I wasn't allowed to show it, and if I did show it, I got disciplined.

Even later on I had experiences where for the most part other people expressed anger, while I kept a lid on it, except for the rare occasions when it'd pop out in a volcano. Consequently my own relationship with my feeling of anger is an uncomfortable one. Even with the internal work I've done, I still feel afraid of my own anger. I've recently been working on expressing it, and listening to it, instead of repressing it and this seems to help, but learning to listen to an emotion you've normally repressed isn't very easy. Listening to my anger means letting myself be vulnerable to feelings of hurt as well. It's not that I'm not aware of those feelings, and that I even feel them, but feeling them in conscious conjunction with anger is a whole another experience.

12-5-11 In today's meditation, Dragon pointed out that anger, for me, seemed to really be about control. specifically not feeling control and wanting control. I think that's true for me. When I look at the situations in my life a common theme is not feeling like I had control...feeling like I was under someone else's thumb. And the anger I feel is an anger of not feeling acknowledged. It's an anger that I haven't let go, because I'm trying to cling on to some kind of acknowledgement of the hurt I've felt. Yet that anger doesn't give me that acknowledgement. It just ends up being something I stew in.

I've come to realize as well that I'll likely not get the acknowledgement I want from the people who've hurt me. and Maybe even if they did, it wouldn't be enough. It all comes back to holding on to this anger, to this hurt that I've felt. Dragon asked me what it would be like to actually let go of that anger, to actually release it, instead of holding onto it and letting it define my identity. I don't want that anger to identify my identity, but I know why I've held onto it so much. For so long, going back to my childhood, holding onto that anger was what got me through difficult situations. They couldn't take my anger from me, and I could use it to prove they were wrong. That kind of motivation was what kept me going through a lot of hard times. But holding onto it now doesn't really help. I'm not happy holding on to it. I need to learn to let go.

12-7-11 I allowed myself to articulate my anger, and the underlying feeling of rejection that seems to accompany that anger. It's not anger toward just one person, but a lifetime of people, who in one way or another showed me that I wasn't a high or important priority in their lives. Being able to articulate that to Kat, to share that pain and anger helped. The realizations I've been having about my anger and the underlying emotional bedrock that supports it shows me how important it is that I finally feel like I am an actual priority to someone. There's a sense of relief and disbelief.

12-8-11 I always find it fascinating how the experiences in my life fit neatly into the theme I'm working on. Today at my small Business Management class, the instructor brought up the value of changing your stories. He said the stories we tell ourselves set up the scripts and situations we find ourselves in. I certainly know this, but hearing it again today caused me to experience it a different way and apply this idea of rewriting old stories into new ones to some of the stories I have been telling myself as I've been working with my anger this month. For example, telling myself a new story of: I am loved, wanted, desired, needed, appreciated, and supported in what I do, and how I choose to do it is a powerful change for me. I hadn't, until recently, ever really felt supported. Now I do.

12-17-11 Owning my anger, acknowledging and taking responsibility, but also choosing to know I can feel anger. I've been thinking about that all week, and how I can own my anger to empower myself. Owning anger isn't pushing it down. Owning anger, for me, is learning to let go, instead of holding on so tight. I don't need it to define my identity anymore.

Desire has been coming up a lot as well, which makes sense, given how much fire is associated with desire. I've explored desire in other elements, but fire brings its own perspective on desire. Desire has such twists in it. to be desired and to desire. Am I desired for one aspect, or is the desire for the real me?

12-18-11 Sometimes the person I'm the angriest with is myself. I've always found it hard to forgive myself for what I consider mistakes. My first marriage is an example of that. I'm angry at myself for staying so long in what was clearly an unhealthy relationship for myself and the ex. The choices I made in that relationship are ones I've looked over and questioned, because they were symptomatic of the underlying unhappiness. I'm responsible for staying in that relationship for so long. Still hindsight is 20 20 and as I've continued the internal work around that relationship and the choices I made in it, I have to acknowledge that where I am now is not where I was then. I can look back and judge myself or I can look back and see a very fallible person who made very real mistakes and has since learned from those mistakes. I don't feel the anger often toward myself anymore, but occasionally it still comes up, and tells me I still have healing and forgiveness to do.

12-21-11 The other day Kat and I were having a conversation and she said, "I know you're angry with me. Let me in." It took a while, but eventually I told her what I was feeling angry about. It was interesting for me, because even though I knew I felt angry, being so honest about it involved being so vulnerable as well. It was hard to be so vulnerable, but it was also so freeing to tell her how I really felt. So often I've held my anger in, until finally its erupted...how much better to simply admit it, and be open about it. As this month ends, I feel more comfortable with my anger, and with what the work with element fire has revealed about it. That's what the elemental balance work is all about.

Spatial Dynamics and Magic

Space is one of those elements that continues to fascinate me, especially when I look at how people use space to situate and express their own identity. I came to this perspective through the anthropological of Edward T. Hall and Alexander Laban's perspectives on space and movement. The occupation of space whether with objects or with politics or spirituality. The application of space in a person's sense of identity via home, work, car, etc. Now apply this to magic. Magic is about changing a space. It changes a space by turning possibility into reality. Space changes, becomes a different space when a possibility is brought into reality. Space is changed by time, with the understanding that time is what brings possibility into reality, while space provides the necessary anchor for reality to exist in.

A person is his/her own space. Space acts on space and in turn is acted on by space. The person expresses his/her space in the external space, but that same space also shapes the person's identity. When a person performs an act of magic s/her is inviting in both time, and specific defined spaces to modify the current space s/he inhabits, both in terms of identity, and in terms of circumstances the person is in.

Fear and Magic

I read a post where the writer argued that if you weren't feeling fear in your magical practice, you either aren't human, or you are trying hard to stay in your safety zone. I get the point of this post, and to some degree I agree with it. Feeling some fear as you break your boundaries and challenge your identity is a good thing. It means you're doing the hard work. Challenging yourself to move forward when you feel fear is a necessary part of life in general. When I practice magic though, I don't feel fear. I feel empowerment. I feel excited, alive, vibrant. Magic is life, magic is power, magic is turning the impossible into reality. When I feel fear, I feel it in the moments when I do internal work, and I face within myself those weaknesses and issues and hurts and pains. That's when I feel fear. That's why I do my internal work...to reach a place of understanding and resolution with those fears so that when I practice my magical work, there is resolve and knowing that what I do aligns to my identity.

We all approach magical work differently. When I work with the elementals and spirits I approach them as friends, as companions. Other people do not. I think how you approach such beings sets the tone for the type of interaction you'll have with them. Thus to approach them as friends, to approach them with confidence is my own way of knowing them. It works because it's something I feel confident in. It works because I know my place in relationship to their own.

Fear is a funny emotion. It can paralyze a person, motivate a person...it can block and push. I find that knowing where to encounter fear changes your magical practice. Encountering it in my internal work and making it an active part of that work has changed the external work and the need to do the external work, and changed my life...its much quieter now than it was before.