Attuning the Spirit Cord through Vocalization

One of the practices I've been working with lately is the vocalization of specific sounds for the purposes of clearing the energetic body of blockages, as described in Tibetan Sound Healing. As I've been doing this work, I've also been using the vocalizations to attune my spirit cord to my internal energy, as well as doing the vocalizations to clear out any energetic vibrations that don't belong in the cord. When I've done this work with the cord, I've vocalized the sounds and connected them to the astral version of the cord to vibrate and attune it to the sounds. My reasoning on this really is to actually set it up so that the cord enhances ongoing work I'll be doing using the 5 sounds. By attuning the cord to the sounds, I set it up to enhance and amplify the later work, since the spirit is a record and resonance of the magical work you do with it.

The way the 5 warrior sounds work is as follows: You pick something you will attune to, an emotion or an experience, and then you use each sound to vibrate your chakras or internal energy fields, if you prefer. You do this to simultaneously cleanse the chakras of blockages and to attune them to the specific emotion or experience you want to manifest into your life. What's fascinating to me is that this practice can be done in conjunction with the Zhine practice of stillness, helping you to enter into a deeper state of stillness. Equally of interest is the first sound and last sound are tied together.

The first sound is A (ah) and its used to set the stage for stillness work, helping you to enter a state of mind where you are just being. The last sound Dza (Tsa) is the sound of manifestation, and yet it also ties into and connects with the A sound that the practitioner uses. Tenzin explains that Dza will not work well unless you have some sense of A. What all this really means, in my experience of it, is that you are using all of the sounds to create a path of manifestation and doing just one sound will not effectively create this path, but using all of them will because of how the prepare and focus your internal energy, aligning it to the emotion or experience you want to manifest.

I'm actually using these sounds as part of the elemental balancing work I'm doing with stillness, in conjunction with attuning the spirit cord to the sounds. By attuning the sounds to the spirit cord, I can draw on the past experiences of them stored in the cord and use that to amplify the vocalization of the sounds for the various purposes I'm applying this practice to. In the case of the stillness, work, I enter into a state of Zhine and then vocalize each sound, which puts me into an even deeper state of stillness. The Dza sound is used to manifest the element of stillness into my life directly, so that I can work with it and learn from it in the various experiences I have in the living of my life.

The vocalization has become part of my daily practice. I suspect I'll primarily use it in conjunction with the ongoing elemental work I do, but I also think it could also be used to charge and fire a sigil or for any other related purposes a magician can think of, so long as the principle of manifestation is understood.

Radio Interview: I was interviewed by Scroll of Thoth on my birthday about pop culture magic, magical identity and other topics of interest.

Book Review: Tibetan Sound Healing by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche

This book provides detailed instructions on how to work with the five warrior sounds. The accompanying cd is really useful for helping you to learn the sounds, as well as get into the meditation. I've found that combining this with zhine practice is particularly useful, but you can also do this sound work on its own. Highly recommend for anyone interested in learning more about Dzogchen and also learning how to work with sound and energy work. The exercises in this book will help you with any kind of internal work you are engaged in.

Elemental Balancing Ritual Movement Month 24: Transition

9-24-14 This is the last month of the movement working and its a bit odd to realize that because I've spent almost 2 years working with this particular element. I feel like I've only dug in a little ways to movement in all this work I've done, but I've not doubt that there will be more realizations and deeper worker to come and I feel that I have reached a place of balance with this work. I also feel that the Plutonian current I've been dealing with, the night of the dark soul, is receding. When you do this kind of work you become attuned to the currents of energy or spirit you're working with and what I feel is I'm in this place of transition, movement slowing into stillness.

I also started work with Chockmah today. What was interesting about that meditation was recognizing that Chockmah is the beginning of limitation, the initial formation of possibility becoming reality, contained in a very conceptual form that then impregnates Binah, which provides further limitations. Nonetheless I recognized how a biological imperative is placed on the tree, male leading into female which then begats the next layer of the tree and I wondered what it would like if the direction of manifestation went counter clockwise instead of clockwise. This inspired me to think about the quiploth and at some point I must do some research to see if there anything to that, but it also strikes me as a limitation of the tree, bound to a physicality that may or may not be accurate. Of course I also need to recognize the lens of what I'm reading and how that shapes this perception as well.

9-26-14 I'm coming to the conclusion that for the most part weekend intensives don't work, though it probably also doesn't help that my intensive is happening during Mabon, which automatically seems to draw people away, but even without that I've come to recognize a trend that indicates that its probably better to just do webinars and teleclasses with occasional appearances at festivals and bookstores. It's frustrating to figure all this out the hard way, but sometimes its how you learn. My problem here admittedly is that  don't really pay attention to holidays in general and so that hurt me with this particular weekend initiative.

On a different note I've been losing some weight and that makes me happy to actually see it happening, but it also makes me think about what I'll do to make it actually work down the line when I'm not dieting any further. In Ladder of Lights Gray discusses the Auphanim, which are the angelic order of Chockmah. According to him they are the mills of God, creating and sustaining cyclical patterns until a person doesn't need the pattern any more. I've been contemplating that all day, seeing it show up in multiple ways in my life, and thinking of how those patterns are broken down by the work a person does that necessarily involves learning how to end a pattern instead of stay in it.

10-02-14 I finished up working with Chockmah today. When I worked with Ratziel, he showed me his book, but told me there was nothing in there I didn't already know, if I was willing to do the work. And I agree with that, because I find that Chockmah makes a lot of sense to me. Chockmah is patterns within patterns forming into more patterns that convey concept into reality. I do find it very interesting that as I continue this climb up the ladder, I'm also coming to a close with the movement work and getting ready for stillness. Kether is, I think, an embodiment of stillness in its own right, with motion moving toward stillness, and eventually into motion again.

10-6-14 In working with the angelic order of Kether, the impressions I've experienced has been as Kether as the first impulse...yes is everything and nothing, but its also the motivation to do something, to become something distinct from everything else. And when you consider that Kether is ultimately a label to that effect, which describes a Sephiroth, it makes a lot of sense. Kether is that beginning movement of becoming, that initial urge to do something.

The last week has been pretty challenged and at one point Kat asked me what the lesson was and I realized it was that I'm feeling blocked. So I took the weekend off and didn't do anything related to work. Sometimes I think people are so focused on trying to move, trying to find a way to get past an obstacle, they forget the value of just stopping and doing something else or nothing at all. Certainly I'm one of those people.

10-7-14 I connected with Metatron today, who pointed out something significant to me. He explained that even Kether has its own limitation and that the tree itself is a form of limitation that presents a specific way of working with reality that fits the needs of the people utilizing it but also limits those people to that system and the limitations within it. And it's a good point to make...any given system has its own limitations which need to be recognized because at some point a person can and often does evolve past it.

10-8-14 I'm feeling restless and depressed lately. I think it's the fallout from the recent trip, so I'm doing my best to sit with the emotions and get clear on what I'm feeling and why. Perhaps part of it also is that I'm going to be 38 soon. I realize that and I look at my life and it just seems like so much of it has been a mess, which I've managed to get somewhat cleaned up. I know there's plenty of accomplishments there as well, but I think you only really start to come into your own when you've lived life a bit. My twenties were me learning something of what being an adult is about, and my thirties has really been about establishing an identity of who and what I am and do. I'm realizing that and it just hits me I'll be older than my parents when I was born and what I have to show for it...depends on how you look at it I guess, but I actually think I have a lot to show for it...if I'm willing to recognize it.

10-9-14 I finished up with the Ladder of Lights today. There was something in it that Gray wrote: "We neglect Nothing at our greatest cost, for it is the universal element, the ultimate thought, and the unique source of all energy." That's my experience with nothing. Nothing and yet everything all wrapped up on the razor edge of Zero. I hadn't read the Ladder of Lights in a long, long time, but its been good to re-read it and to experience it in a different manner which is more focused through the practice I created around it.

10-15-14 I had an interesting dream last night. I dreamed I was interacting with the experience a person has with eating a Subway sandwich. It was pretty surreal, but it essentially opened my mind to some possibilities with pop culture magic that I'll explore in more depth in the book. The dream came about as a result of feeling a bit of anxiety over the fact that another person is presenting on the topic of pop culture magic. On the one hand, I'm glad someone else is doing presentations and on the other hand, there is a bit of possessiveness on my part and also the fear that what I plan to write will be obsolete, but the dream confirmed something for me and proved quite helpful in put that fear to rest. I realized that my own perspectives are unique enough and that other people presenting shows that pop culture magic is finally reaching that place of acceptance I'd always hoped for with it.

I also had an interesting experience with the Tibetan sound work I'm doing. I decided to do the chanting with the purpose of attuning the spirit cord to the chanting. I felt the astral version of the cord vibrate with the sound, attuning itself to the purpose of the sound and amplifying the effect. Further experimentation is warranted.

10-16-14 I'm feeling frustrated with myself. It feels likely lately I'm making all the wrong decisions or at least acting before I fully think things through. The intentions are good, but the results are less so. Ugh. I think I need to slow the fuck down, which is why it'll be good for me to take on stillness. Sometimes you get so caught up in the movement of life you don't do the necessary due diligence...there's no excuse for that.

10-21-14 Today is the last day of the movement work. I did my invocation of Eros and thanked him for all his help. I know I'll work with him again, especially because there is so much more to tap into with this particular element. I feel even, with 2 years in, I could spend much more time, but I'm also ready for Stillness and I know I will learn things about movement from Stillness. Actually when I think about Stillness, I recognize that I've been integrating stillness practices into my life for the better part of this last year. It's an interesting demonstration of how the elemental balancing work ends up blending together. Tomorrow I will do the ritual to set up stillness as the element to work with for this next year, in full.

Last night, I spoke with Kat about the elemental balancing ritual. I asked her if it was ever a burden for her, me doing this work, and she told me it wasn't...that she accepted it and understood its significance in my life and that she felt it had reverberations in her life as well, but that she welcomed them as part of being involved with me. It meant a lot to me, to hear that support for my spiritual work and the acceptance of just how important this balancing work is to what I'm doing overall. Having a partner who fully gets and supports this work and what it means not just to my personal development, but also the overall work I'm doing with magic is truly a blessing.

Happy birthday to me!

The Engagement of Books into Practical Applications

I've just finished reading and working my way through The Ladder of Lights by William G. Gray, which is a book on the Sephiroth of the Quabala. I'd read the book many years ago, but decided recently to revisit it and this time I didn't want to just read it. I wanted to experience it. So I decided that I would approach reading the book a bit differently. Instead of reading a chapter, I decided to read a section of a chapter and then work with the concepts and entities discussed in that section. The actual work consisted of meditation and pathworking as well as mediation of the forces worked with via my spirit cord.

I found that creating a program of practice around the book made the concepts within it come alive in a way reading it simply wouldn't. I've shared some of that work in my monthly postings about my elemental balancing work. The engagement with the angelic orders and the archangels was particularly useful, creating a kind of initiatory journey through each Sephiroth in order to experience and process what each Sephiroth does as a principle of manifestation.

One of my complaints sometimes about occult practices is how books don't set up the necessary engagement a person needs with the concepts shared in the books. Or the book will set it up as a cookbook recipe approach to magic, which is also less than useful, if you want to go into the depth of the work. However I think if you can approach a given book with an intention of how you can turn the content into a meaningful practice, what you'll discover is that you can get a lot from it, even if there is no practice application included in the book. You just need to be prepared to come with your own tool set, but really if you are actively practicing magic, this shouldn't be difficult. And if it is difficult, it is time to start doing the work.

I'm going to start reading and working through the Talking Tree next and I'll take a similar approach to working through the material, using both meditation and mediation to connect with the essential powers that be and the underlying concepts that create the tree of life. When you work with a book, the key is to dive deep and work with the underlying principles and processes of magic. Ultimately that's what you are trying to get to...a fundamental understanding of how magic works or why it works and then taking and applying that knowledge and information into practice to change your life. If what you are reading isn't being applied, it will never change your life or change the way you experience the world...not on a deep level and that deep level is where we want to go with our practices and with whatever we engage in.

Book Review: The Ladder of Lights by William G. Gray

By far, this is one of the best books on the Sephiroth of the Quabala. Gray does an excellent job of breaking each Sephiroth down by planet, angelic order, archangel and god name association and explaining the Sephiroth in each of these levels. You'll also find that this book is easy to adapt to whatever practice you want to use to work with the Sephiroth. If you want to learn the Quabala, this is a good book to start with.

The Spirits help those who help Themselves

Recently,  an acquaintance shared some difficulties he was having with some magic work he's been doing. One of the observations I made based on what he'd shared is that he's relying to much on spirits or magical entities to do the work for him. While working with a magical entity can be quite useful, there are limitations to its effectiveness and much like anything else, too much reliance on an entity can ultimately be a crutch to your magical practice, especially if you consider that the entities you work with have their own agendas and interests, unless its one you've created (and that has its own limitations). The truth is your average spirit doesn't want you bothering it all the time with requests. The spirits help those who help themselves.

In my work with various spirits, I always create a very specific relationship, and one aspect of that relationship is that I typically ask the spirit to do something for me that I couldn't do on my own. I don't ask it to do anything I couldn't do mundanely or magically, because doing so is a waste of the entity's talents, and is also laziness on the part of the magician. For example, if I'm looking for a place to live and decide to employ magical means to get the place, I probably won't call on an entity, because both magically and mundanely I have the necessary skills to get into a living situation that I want to be in. I know my own skills are sufficient for that task. On the other hand, I'll create an entity to help me become aware of opportunities I might otherwise ignore or miss out on, because the entity will have a perspective I don't have that can be useful for discovering opportunities. I'm employing the entity to use the skills that it has, in a manner which draws on its strength, while filling in a gap that I might not otherwise be able to address. It's better to employ an entity for a purpose that allows you to leverage its strengths for something you can't do on your own, then to waste its skills on something you can do.

Another way that I like to work with spirits involves getting the advice or knowledge on a given subject, either by asking them to point me toward the best resources, or if possible, do a direct download of information. The majority of times its a combination of the two. The reason this works so well is because the entity is providing you with something you don't have already and may not have the best skill at finding. An entity is happy to do this because it ultimately still involves you the magician doing the work. Sure the entity points you to information, but you actually have to follow up and learn it and then do something with it.

There's a theme here: Its better for you to attend to the detail work of manifesting desired possibilities into reality. Let the spirit handle the things you can't easily do or do at all. That's where the specialty of the spirit comes into play, and where it will be most useful to you. Anything you can do, plan on doing it yourself either magically, mundanely, or better yet both ways. Speaking of which: Take a multi-pronged approach and work with the spirit, but also add in your own magical work and mundane actions. It's better to implement multiple approaches to achieve your desired result, and better to take action, instead of just relying on an entity. In fact just relying on entity is the lazy magician's surest way to fail.

Space/Time Vibration Magic

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In my system of space/time magic, vibration plays an integral role in the manipulation of possibility into reality. I see vibration as an integration of time into space, wherein space is the palette or medium through which time is expressed. In my magical work, I've integrated vibratory work in a lot of what I do, with the idea being that different types of vibrations can be used for specific purposes. For example, when I do my invocation of the element I'm working with, I vibrate a specific sound that is used to channel the element both inward and outward. It vibrates inward through my physical and spiritual being, attuning me to the elemental force, even as it vibrates outward, aligning the environment around me with that same energy to create a field of elemental energy that brings that element into my reality and the experiences I have with it.

I've found a similar practice in Dzogchen, albeit done for a different purpose than my own. In Tibetan Sound Healing, the author explains that vibration practices are used to clear the space of a person of the internal blockages, desire, etc that obscure the person from reaching a state of stillness. In my own experiences with Zhine, which is a stillness practice of Dzogchen, I've noticed how being still initially brings to my awareness the desires, worries, etc. that come up in my life. I've actually used Zhine as a meditation for space/time work by using what's brought up during the stillness practice as a form of possibility exploration, but in the book I mentioned above, the author also includes certain vibratory practices that are used to attune the internal energies of the practitioner to the space of stillness, while clearing out the distractions. The author explains the following:

"You connect to the clear space because the energy and emotion that you brought to consciousness has been released. When the block dissipates, you feel some space. That space is something you want to recognize. You want to recognize and abide or rest in that space without changing anything." As you can see reaching this state of awareness is really about being still and not doing anything...just being. Doing anything brings back the attachment or blockage.

To clear the space, involves the vibration of specific sounds. For example, the sound A is vibrated in order to attune the practitioner to the space and clear out blockages from your inner energy and the environment around you. I've started doing this vibratory work in conjunction with my Zhine practice and what I found is that it brought a clarity of being to the experience of Zhine, a deeper being with stillness, because the sound opened me up to that space of being. When I do the Ahh sound and infuse it with vibration it opens the mind up, deepens the state of stillness and the awareness of possibilities.

Now in my work with space/time magic, a lot of the focus has shifted to identity work. And how all that connects to this vibration work is that by opening yourself up that state of stillness, that space of being, what you also open yourself up to is the experience of possibility. The choice to become a possibility moves you from a state of 0, of being, to a state of 1, of doing, reintegrating into linear time and space with the possibility as the new reality. This approach is admittedly different from the person of abiding in a state of stillness, but if we're serious about space/time magic then I think the exploration of vibration to achieve a state of stillness, where all possibilities are experienced and then choosing one can be quite useful. What this also illustrates is how a given system of practice can be adapted and applied in ways the originators wouldn't have used it. I know that my application of Zhine and the vibratory practices doesn't align with the stated purpose of the practice in Dzogchen, so I wouldn't call what I'm doing Dzogchen, so much as a derivation I've devised that utilizes the practice as a from of space/time magic work. As I continue to learn the vibratory practices, I'll see what else develops, but I already think that the vibrations could not only help you reach a space of altered consciousness, but also use that state to sync yourself to the specific possibility you want to manifest.

Explore related entries in the Library

• Vibration Element Pattern Disruption
• Vibration Element
• The Spider Queen of Time

Non-Anthropomorphic Pathworking Technique: Sound

In a previous post, I discussed how tactile awareness could be used for non-anthropomorphic pathworking. This time we're going to explore how sound and vibrations can be used for a similar purpose. Similar to touch, our hearing can actually help us connect with spirits, entities, and life in general in a non-anthropomorphic manner, if we train ourselves to use it for that purpose. In general, we use our hearing to help us with communication and not surprisingly part of what goes with communication is an expectation about how communication will happen. Humans use words, so we tend to expect communication to occur via words, even though that may not be the preferred communication of what we're connecting with. How often have you done a ritual working to a spirit and found yourself having a conversation with the spirit? Chances are you used words and expected words in return and perhaps the spirit accommodated you because of that expectation. How might it have communicated if words hadn't been the expectation?

We live in a world of sound. Even when we think we are in silence, we generally are still experiencing sound of some type in the world around us. Not all of that sound is used for the purpose of communication, but sound can tell us a lot about the environment around us (and within) and what might be in the same vicinity as us. If you have a pet in your life, you also know that pets can communicate with you via sound, and tat you'll interpret that sound accordingly. For example, I know the difference between the hungry meow when my cats want food and the meow when my cats want attention. There's a difference in tone and how the meow sounds. Communication is happening, but not via words, but through sound itself and my interpretation of what that sound means.

In part of the work I did with the microbial life in my body, I used sound as a way to connect with that microbial life. For example, I used the sounds of hunger and digestion to connect with the bacteria in my stomach. What I did is meditated and carefully focused my hearing on listening to the internal sounds of my body. So I'd meditate when I felt hunger and used the hunger sounds of the stomach to connect with the bacteria and then did the same with the noise of digestion after I ate. Hunger and digestion are two different sounds, so it gave me a chance to connect with the bacteria in each stage. The sounds weren't necessarily made by the bacteria, but it seemed to me that the sound was part of the experience and I used it as a way to connect.

When I do work with spirits around me or with some other type of life, I do my best to just open myself up to the sounds conveyed to me. If words are used I'll accept them, but I don't expect them because I realize there may be another way to communicate. Recently I did a working with the Chasmalim, which is the angelic order of Chesed. The way they chose to communicate with me involved changing sound frequencies in combination with light. My receptiveness to this communication helped me understand how they work and what they do in their roles of mediating the energy of Chesed.

As you can probably tell this kind of work doesn't happen with just sound or touch or sight. Usually its a combination of the senses, which is understandable because that's how we experience the world in general. What this kind of work teaches us is that the experience of non-anthropomorphic work will occur across multiple senses and we should necessarily open ourselves to using more than one sense if needed in order to have an experience with a spirit, entity, etc that we are seeking to connect with.

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I was interviewed on Pagan Musings Podcast about the difference between BNPs and leaders in the Pagan community.

Book Review: Fandom, Identities, and Communities in a mediated world edited by Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington

This is a collection of essays on pop culture studies, circa 2006, so some of the content is a bit dated, but all of it is interesting to read. However, one thing which stands out to me about this book is that many of the essays never really focused on identity in relationship to pop culture. I mention that only because I'd hoped to see more focus on that topic, and of course its in the title of the book. However what I did like about the book is that a number of essays focused on non-traditional fandom, with a focus on classical music, sports, and news fans, among other types, which made for some thought provoking reading. If you're interested in pop culture studies, or like me if you want to see what you can apply conceptually to practice based approaches to life, this book may provide some useful insights.

Elemental Balancing Ritual Movement Month 23: Closure

8-23-14 My mom has arrived from PA and is visiting for the week. We picked her up last night from the airport and when we got back I caught up with her for a while. We ended up talking about some past history and I got some validation about some feelings I was working through. So did she. It helped me a bit with the funk I've been in. Though I actually figured out something else about that feeling of depression. It's not so much a feeling of depression as it's a recognition of the transition from movement to stillness. Stillness feels disquieting, weird, and off to me right now, and I think part of how I've dealt with that has involved translating it into a feeling of depression. There's other factors too, but it is part of what's going on. That's the challenge with doing this kind of elemental work...you change from one element to another and it shifts your energy and experience accordingly.

8-26-14 So much on my mind right now as I write this. I feel a different sense of appreciation for my mom than I've ever really felt before. Having become a step-parent, I have some sense of the commitment, sacrifice, and responsibility involved in being a parent and it makes me appreciate my mom in a way I never did before. I see a lot of the choices she made in a very different light now, and while there's still a couple decisions she made that I disagree with, I find myself recognizing her as a parent through some of my own challenges around being a step-parent.

Part of what I'm also feeling is some sadness about her leaving. She's not leaving for a few more days and Kat pointed out that I seem to be front loading my sadness before the actual event. The truth is that I've always done this since I was a little kid. I found I had to do it to prepare myself for leaving her. I would only see her every other holiday and for six weeks out of the summer. It was hard to leave her and I always had to prepare myself emotionally by front loading that grieving so that when I got back to my dad's I could distance myself from it. In some ways, I think it was expected in his household, for I remember only crying at night, in the privacy of my own room, knowing I shouldn't show such emotion anywhere else.

This visit, just like the previous visit from my dad, has shown me some deeper parts of my mom, helping me to see her more authentically as the person she is. I feel its all related to this current work I'm doing, transitioning from movement to stillness and finding balance with these respective energies. It's also an iterative process of contextualizing people in my life in such a way that it allows me to process and understand them better because of this internal work I'm doing. I find that by doing this work it helps me continue to understand and work through my relationships with those people, as well as the internal blockages that come up as a result. It also demonstrates, to me, how internal blockages can show up in relationships you have and thus need to be worked through in order to come to a better place with the other person.

8-27-14 I've been reflecting further on my relationship with my mom, while she's here. I realize that my cooking and cleaning skills as well as my awareness of when to chip in and help out at home really originates from her and what she taught me. I feel this deeper sense of appreciation for her as a result, because I feel I have certain skills I might not have had otherwise. Because of those skills, I'm able to help out around the house in a way that isn't typical when it comes to men. I hear many stories about men who don't help out, who expect their wives to do everything and its likely because they learned that from their mothers. My mom taught me to help out, taught me to recognize that where I'm living is something I need to invest in, with my own efforts. She taught me not to expect to be waited on and for that I am so grateful. I feel a lot of resentment falling away in light of this visit, because I'm appreciating her in a new light, appreciating how she set me up to be an adult.

8-29-14 Today my mom headed home. Yesterday we played a couple games of Sorry. Before that I opened up to her and asked her if she loved all of me. She's never agreed with some of my choices, but I'd internalized that as a rejection of me and hearing her tell me that she loves all of me made a difference. I feel that this visit with her and the visit I had with my dad showed me certain things about both of them that I needed to see, which I feel is relevant to this work I'm doing. As I continue this transition into stillness, the movement I'm engaged in nonetheless sets the stage for the stillness work so that I can go deeper, as well as even setting the stage for further work down the line.

9-5-14 I've been doing a lot of work around Geburah. This is definitely a sephiroth that can kick your butt because it represents the forces of judgement. In my encounters with the Seraphim and Khamael, I was called out by each in respect to some of my choices and what I tell myself about those choices. Such judgment isn't easy to face, but it can burn away what you tell yourself and I think that's really useful. The magician needs to be honest with themselves, and if that doesn't happen, it inevitably stops the progression of the work you are doing. I spent a lot of time with this sephiroth working with that current for that reason.

I also got a new tattoo or rather a revision to an old tattoo. I've been feeling like I'm transitioning from Movement to Stillness, and so I got a script on my right forearm, which says "From 1 to 0" which is really a channeling of that transition, but also a comment in its own way on my work with emptiness and identity. The work doesn't stop...it just evolves and continues to change, but it is still and iterative process that allows the person to refine themselves.

9-10-14. I've been working with Chesed lately, particularly with the Chasmalim, which have shown up and communicated via light frequencies. It's quite an odd experience, but one I've opened myself to, recognizing that it is also representative of going higher up the tree from reality to concept. The different light frequencies seem to inspire emotional and feeling related responses from me.

Something else I've been doing is paying close attention to how I label myself and my behavior in relationship to other people. For example, I've found that I label myself as not very personable and I ask myself where that label comes from and I find that it shows up in my interactions with people...but is it accurate or just self-fulfilling. I'm not sure, but in paying attention to such labels, it also provides me the opportunity to change them if I so desire or understand them better. I'll admit I tend to look at situations with other people in terms of function and do consequently find it harder to sometimes relate to people, but I also know that can be worked with if I choose.

9-12-14 Yesterday and today I encounter Tzadkiel in my meditations on Chesed. He noted that compassion and Mercy can actually be harder than judgment, because judgment enables us to punish ourselves, but compassion forces us to face and recognize the truth of our actions and their consequences. I really sat with that and found myself agreeing. You can feel compassion for someone or yourself, buy you nonetheless know what the person has done and that person knows you know as well. It seems kinder and gentler, but maybe it really isn't.

9-15-14 Something which has come up this year, or at least has made itself much more known to me is the travel anxiety I feel. It ended up coming out in a big way last night. I think I feel it so much more because I'm doing so much more of it, and while the travel is a good thing, there's also that feeling of ungroundedness and of course the concern as to whether I can keep up with all the demands and needs of my business efforts and other projects. Nonetheless the root of it is also found in the traveling I had to do as a child, when I'd fly back and forth between my parents. I need to come to grips with it, because I know I'll be doing more travel as I continue to reach out and connect with my target audiences.

I've also been thinking about how important it is to do your own thing and not worry about what other people think or do in response to what you are doing. There will always be that crowd of people you look in on and realize you don't belong with, but there will also be the people around you that accept you and know you and want to enjoy your company. It's important to appreciate what you have instead of lookingly longingly toward some perceived "cool kid" crowd, which likely has people feeling a similar way about some of the people you know or even you.

9-16-14 I've started work with Binah and the associated planet of Saturn. The interesting thing about Binah is that it seems to be where limitation begins in the Tree of Life. Or perhaps its better to say its where limitation is given birth to. So it's interesting to contemplate that and understand Binah from that perspective. I've also been thinking a bit more about how I label myself. I realize that I don't feel personable to most people and its because I go deep. I'm intense and that intensity is what drives my interactions. As a colleague observed earlier today, I tend to be business focused and objective. I'm ok with that because its who I am and how I function.

9-23-14 Work with Binah was fairly abstract. It gave me a lot to think about in regards to limitations and how limitations can be used in magical work. In one sense its really more about being aware of limits in your life and recognizing them for what they are, as well as what you invest in them. Beyond that, I'm getting ready for my first weekend intensive and I feel excited and nervous about it. I figure once you do something you make it part of your reality and that's finally happening with this one happening in Minneapolis.

Non-Anthropomorphic Pathworking Techniques: Touch

In my recent post on Pagansquare I shared six anthropomorphic assumptions (and possible solutions) that can show up in your magical work. If you don't want those anthropomorphic assumptions to show up you need to develop some type of technique that allows you to get around them. The technique I've been developing, at least for working with the microbial life in my body, has involved using tactile awareness as the means through which to communicate with the microbial life. Tactile awareness refers to the sense of touch and kinesthetic awareness of feeling your body.  Approaching non-anthropomorphic work in this way has been very useful because its cut spoken language out of the equation and focused instead on experiencing sensation and using the sensations as a guide for the interactions with the microbial life.

I've also used this technique with my latest round of communion with the neurotransmitters. Just as with the microbial life, I've found that using the sense of touch as the basis for the pathworking has lead me to experience altered states of consciousness consistent with earlier experiences I've had with neurotransmitters. What's most fascinating however is how the sensations nonetheless have become symbols. In other words, the feeling of the experience will replicate itself in specific ways each time I work with a given neurotransmitter and that pattern then becomes a symbol, which can be meditated upon and used to experience the physical sensation, provided the person understands how tactile pathworking works.

Learning Tactile pathworking involves conditioning yourself to be aware of both surface and internal kinesthetic sensations. you can do this in several ways. First, I recommend learning and practicing daily some type of breathing practice, which forces you to pay attention not just to your breath, but also to how your body responds to the breath. If this practice also involves working with your internal energy, then so much the better as it'll teach you how to pay closer attention to the kinesthetic awareness of your body. As you learn how to move your kinesthetic awareness in your body, you can also try directing it to a specific part of your body and maintaining awareness of that part. What you'll discover is that your body provides you a lot of information that you normally suppress. However, suppressing that information isn't always useful and by mastering kinesthetic awareness you can learn ho to process and experience that information without the need to suppress it.

I also recommend stillness practices. Stillness practice teaches you to be still. That stillness will help you become awareness of surface feelings on your skin. It'll also help you tap into your deeper kinisthetic awareness, especially if you focus on a sensation like breath or your heartbeat. In fact, your heartbeat can be an excellent teacher for kinesthetic awareness because its something you experience all the time, but its also something you learn to ignore. You actually have to consciously focus on it to be aware of it, but if you focus your awareness on it, you can use the heart beat to create a rhythm that leads you into a meditative experience with your body.

Another practice that's useful is movement practice. Movement practice can be as simple as being mindfully aware of your body and how it moves when you are doing something, or it can be as focused as doing specific movements in a sequence and maintaining awareness of your body while doing those movements. When doing these movements, you want to pay close attention to how your body moves and how it feels as you move. For example, how do your joints feel when you move them in specific ways? By focusing on those sensations, you'll learn a lot about your body and how it feels when you are doing this tactile pathworking.

As you practice these various techniques, focus on cultivating your tactile awareness, both inwardly and outwardly. Pay attention to what your skin feels or how your fingers feel when they touch a surface. Pay attention to how you carry your body and how that makes you feel internally. When you do breathing meditation and move your internal energy, focus your awareness on how your body responds. By learning to do that, you can then focus your kinisthetic awareness inward. Then when you work with your microbial life or neurotransmitters or whatever else you'll be able to use that sense of touch for that purpose. In a future post, I'll cover how you can also apply this concept to sound.

How to recognize when desires or habits are connected to internal blockages

In a recent post I discussed how you could use meditation practices to work through internal blockages showing up in relationships you have with other people. On the S.O.M.A. Facebook group, several people commented on the entry and their comments sparked some further realizations about internal work. We discussed what happens when you're doing meditation work and the unhealthy patterns you are working to dissolve seem to flare up because of the work you are doing. There's two schools of thoughts on why that occurs. The first school of thought argues that the unhealthy habit is fighting back to keep itself in existence. There's certainly some truth to that school of thought and I think that a person can end up struggling with such habits and the underlying emotions if they aren't prepared for it to flare up.

The second school of thought offers an intriguing approach to this flare up of desire or unhealthy habits. It argues that when such flare-ups occurs its because you are actually making progress, and what initially seems like a regression is really just an opportunity to work more intensely with the habit or desire you are feeling. In my own experiences, I've found that this can be the case. You are doing the internal work, dissolving the internal blockage, and as a result you are freeing up all the tension and emotions bound into that blockage. The release of that tension and emotion can be accompanied by memories or by desires, which can be seen in this case as an attachment. If they are indulged in, potentially what happens is that the blockage reforms, but if you are willing to do the work, be present with the memories, and enter into a dialogue that allows you to work with what's being released, then the regression ends up being temporary.

When I've done internal work around specific issues, I've had those issues seem to take over my life, occupying my thoughts. However by accepting that as an indicator that the work is actually happening, it's also helped me recognize and understand that such a preoccupation can actually be a healthy sign that something is happening. You aren't repressing the thought or emotion any longer. The challenge is to learn to be present with it, which means that you acknowledge it, but don't act on it. This is hard to do for many people, because we live in a society that values action, but if you recognize that the choice to be present with what you feel or think is a form of action, what you'll realize is that simply being present with it is allowing you to do something about it. Indeed being present with whatever is coming up teaches you how to understand it and experience it without letting it consume you, which is a useful skill to learn for any situation you find yourself.

Meditation isn't a quick fix for internal work. It's a long process that can take years, but the results that can it provide you, if you stay the course is that you get a lot of clarity about yourself, you work through whatever issues are part of you and you learn how to direct your internal energy. When you are doing meditation to work through internal issues I recommend working with a therapist as well, because you can get some perspective from a person who isn't directly involved and who nonetheless can keep you grounded by asking questions and listening to what you are working through. If nothing else, make sure the people in your life know what you are working through. They can be a support system for you, helping you work through whatever is coming up, because they will hopefully understand what you are working through. Additionally by letting them in and discussing what you are working though, you may find that it takes a lot of pressure off you because someone else knows. In such cases, it is useful to ask the person to be present and listening and indicate whether or not you want advice. You may not want advice and if you tell the person you are talking with that, it will help them focus on listening instead of trying to problem solve.

Book Review: The Fruitful Darkness by Joan Halifax

This is a semi-autobiography that also explores Buddhist and Shamanic practices. I found it to be an insightful read, with many statements that caused me to pause and ponder them in relationship to my own life and spiritual practice. I especially liker the author's thoughts on stillness and silence, and found them quite useful to consider during a time when I'm in a period of transition. This is a book you'll read again and discover new insights each time.

Book Review: The Philosopher's Secret Fire by Patrick Harpur

This book takes the concepts Harpur discussed in Daimonic Reality and extends them further, exaining how the other world intersects with everyday reality through myth, imagination, dream, and even popular culture. He also explores the intersection of these themes with identity and how identity is formed for a person. Harpur does a good job with this book, showing how imagination impacts memory and identity, while also exploring Jung's archetypal theory in mythology. what I find interesting is how he shows how the otherworld interacts with people across cultures in a consistent way. It's an intriguing book that'll help you appreciate imagination and its intersection with the otherworld.

How to work through Internal Blockages in Relationships

A lot of the focus on internal work is typically oriented toward the person working inward on whatever tensions, blockages, etc. come up. However I think it's also worthwhile to look at internal blockages as they show up in the relationships you have with people in your life. Internal blockages are bound to come up by the very fact that any relationship brings with it conflict. Such conflict can either become rooted within you, festering as resentment and anger, or it can be worked through with each side feeling acknowledged and honored. I prefer the latter approach, but I know the former approach all too well, as does most any other person. It is all too easy to let emotions fester within, especially when it relates to other people and if you are in a situation where it feels impossible to find resolution with the person, it often feels like there can be no closure at all. However, I think closure can come about, regardless of whether you have it with the person or without.

The way you recognize an internal blockage with a given person is quite simple. Think about the person. What is the emotional response that comes up when you think of the person? Do you feel you can express that emotion to the person? If you find that what you feel is negative and yet you also feel you can't easily communicate to that person what you are dealing with is an internal blockage which effects the relationship. That internal blockage will always be there until you work through it. It will show up more when you are interacting with the person, but it'll also show up when you think about the person or remember an experience. Such an internal blockage can cause you a lot of pain and create divisiveness in the relationship if you are still in touch with the person. If you aren't in touch with the person, it still gives that person power over you because of how they make you feel.

There are a couple ways you can work with such blockages. If you are in contact with the person, what you can do is use meditation techniques that help you to be present with the emotions and dissolve the tension around those emotions. For example, I like to use the Taoist water breathing meditation, which dissolves blockages and tensions. As it dissolves those blockages and tensions, it release the emotions, which gives you a chance to work with the emotions. you might find that you enter into a dialogue or replay a memory, but do so in a manner where it provides a solution. Another technique, which can be useful is a variant of the Tibetan Chod technique, where you create a thought form that represents the blockage and ask it what it wants and needs. Then you feed it what it needs, in order to transform it into an ally. That ally can provide you useful information for resolving the conflict with the person.

In the case of the above techniques, you are still in touch with the person and have some type of relationship with them. To get optimal benefits from those techniques you should plan on having a conversation at some point with the person in order to discuss what came up as you did the dissolving work. It may not be an easy conversation, but it will be ideally a liberating one for both of you. But what do you in a situation where you can't contact the person you have issues with?

My suggestion is to do a banishing ritual. I've posted before about several types of such rituals you can do, where you banish the person from your life. The value of such rituals is that you create closure of yourself by destroying any remaining link between yourself and that person. After doing such rituals, I've found that I feel much better emotionally, because I no longer feel tied to that person in the way I did before. in fact, I don't feel an emotional response to the person. I know because I've actually run into a couple such people, after I did the banishing ritual, and instead of feeling the anger and hatred I'd feel before, I felt nothing. Indeed, if anything I felt empowered because I as no longer letting them have any control over me.

Regardless of what approach you take, its important to recognize and deal with the internal blockages that come up in context to the relationships you have. By recognizing and working through them you free yourself of unhealthy attachments that keep you and those relationships in a place of dysfunction. It is better to find closure than to continue to hold onto such blockages and the tensions they create.

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Anthropomorphism and its affect on Perceptions of Reality

I'm in the midst of my research for Pop Culture Magic 2.0 (thankfully I'm almost finished with it). Part of that research has taken me to some interesting tangents in relationship to how people experience the otherworld and daimonic spirits. While most people wouldn't associate pop culture with daimonic spirits or the otherworld, I'm seeing a connection and it's also helping me understand the affect anthropomophism has had on people's encounter with spiritual beings. Patrick Harpur makes an intriguing point when he notes the following:

"It is to our discredit that in order to draw attention to their reality, the daimons have been compelled to become physical and fixed, like crop circles. By Masquerading as - by parodying- literal facts, they answer our modern requirement for quantifiable effects besides which everything else is deemed illusory. In other words, their way of presenting their own metaphorical, mythical reality is to appear not as literal, but as if they were literal" [Italics are his] - From Daimonic Reality

What I take away from this quote is that anthropormorphism is at the root of modern society's fixation on quantifiable reality. There are, of course, other disciplines and perspectives which also inform that fixation, but if we examine anthropomorphism carefully, what we find is that it seeks to recast experiences with Daimonic reality, and indeed with the universe at large, into human perspectives that label and categorize such experiences into neat little boxes. The resultant problem with this is that it creates a rather static experience of reality that always needs to be situated in what humans find meaningful to them, as opposed to really being open to how the experience might change their perspective of reality. This leads to the issue described above in the quote, wherein the Daimonic spirits need to appear in a specific context in order to connect and communicate with us. That specific context is filtered, sanitized, presented in a package that is ultimately limited because of the need to attribute human behaviors, meanings and values on the connection that has occurred.

This does open the floor to a question however: Why do these daimonic spirits want to connect with us so much that they are willing to limit the context of the experience to what fits us? I think there's two possible reasons. The first has to do with symbiosis, and the second has more to do with how we limit the experience and how they respond to those limitations. Lets explore both reasons in depth below.

The symbiosis reason essentially explores the possibility that daemonic entities have a symbiotic connection of sorts that requires a connection. I'd argue that the connection runs both ways. In other words, there are benefits conferred to both humans and Daemons by the nature of the connection. As a result its worth it to the daemons to continue to have contact with us, even if that contact is limited in ways that makes it more acceptable to humans. What's fascinating is that if this is the case, Daemons have nonetheless adapted quite well, and one possible theory for pop culture magic could be that what we're really connecting with are daemons that have taken on pop culture as one way to connect.

The second reason focuses on the limitations humans create in order to interact with Daemons. If we use anthropomorphism in its various forms to categorize our experiences into something that is comfortable for us, the challenge for Daemons then is how to respond to such a limitation and that may very well involve taking on the limitation and its context and using that to establish the connection and then afterwards challenging that limitation in whatever manner possible. Thus they may act as if they were literal and yet find a way to challenge that sense of literal reality by helping the person experience something that can't be categorically defined very easily.

Bringing all this back to anthropomorphism and its affect on the perceptions of reality, I think that what we'll discover is that anthropomorphism really does limit our experiences and contact with the otherworld and with the kinds of experiences we can have. It filters out what doesn't fit the comfortable human definition of reality, so that what is experienced spiritually or otherwise can be explained away and written off into convenient categories and labels that seem safe. The problem with this is that if it ultimately a filter that may cause us to miss experiences and information we need to have access to. The challenge then is to recognize anthropomorphic inclinations and determine how useful they really are for the spiritual work we are doing. Are we truly allowing ourselves the opportunity to have an experience or just turning it into a label that makes us feel safe for the sake of not challenging our perceptions of reality?

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Seeking Submissions for an Anthology about Pagan Traditions

Megalithica Books, an imprint of Immanion Press (Stafford, U.K./Portland, OR, U.S.A) is seeking submissions.

We would like to hear from founders and leaders of as many different traditions and organizations, established and brand new, as possible.

Deadline for submissions is March 1, 2015.

By no means can we capture a portrait of every Pagan path. What we are trying to do is give aspiring and knowledgeable Pagans alike a springboard for proceeding with their studies, with information and stories from a wide selection of Pagan traditions.

We are looking specifically for articles and stories from tradition/organization leaders and founders as well as other leaders who have a wider view of the Pagan landscape.

Below are descriptions of the concepts we would like to appear in articles submitted for the anthology. This is generally academic, but personal stories within the pieces are highly encouraged.

To ensure thorough and accurate descriptions of your path, what you see below are not so much suggestions for essay topics as they are questions that we would like answered within essays, so that all pieces are validated in the eyes of the reader, and because consistency lends itself well to comprehension and comparison.

For the well-established tradition leader (Gardenerian, Vanatru, Alexandrian, Correllian, Asatru, eclectic Wicca, Helenist and Celtic Reconstruction, Stregheria, etc) we would like to know the basic structure of the tradition you come from. What types of magic you teach? What are some of the basic tenants and values of your tradition? How are groups structured? How study might differ for a solitary practitioner? How you have adapted the path based on your own experiences to fit your lifestyle? Try to come at it from a perspective of teaching students. Please give us a clear portrait of your path, and a little of your personal story so readers can relate. If you can, cite various in-depth texts at least twice in your work. This opens the door for further study by the readers.

We also want to hear from the young traditions/organizations being created as we speak. This is the place for founders wishing for future students. What inspired you to create a new Pagan path? From what cultures, religions, and traditions do you gather your concepts from? How do your morals and values play into the tradition? What would be the structure of a participant’s studies? What are rituals like and what types of magic are practiced?  Please try to cite various in-depth sources of your concepts at least twice in the piece, for validation of where you are coming from.

There are many leaders out there who lead groups that are not strictly based around one tradition or belief system, or are just well-known voices in Pagan forums. Give us your perspectives on some various topics such as: the rise and fall of Pagan traditions in modern times; the levels of dedication needed for truly embracing a Pagan tradition and the various emotional, spiritual, and mundane changes they bring with them; a sense of Pagan demographics. If you can cite texts for validity, please do.

–We would like to hear from a few people who practice two greatly divergent traditions as part of their path. This could be Alexandrian Wicca combined with Chemetism, or other such combinations. You are charged with showing a reader that taking a road like this may be challenging, but it can be done well. Some of the questions we would like answered in these pieces are: How do the tenets, magical practices, spiritual tasks, and forms of study from two different traditions mesh together? How did you choose a road like this, and what are the challenges you face? Please cite two in-depth sources within your work, at least one for each of the different traditions you follow.

 What we are not looking for:

–We are not looking for spiritual awakening stories or stories of how you found Paganism. We also are not after how you take what you learn from established traditions and alter it in solitary practice, unless you are forging a new branch of that tradition and have well-formed practices, values, and ways for people to learn in place and can discuss them with clarity.

–We are not looking for specific rituals or spells.

 Essay requirements:

2500-5000 words, to ensure that there is sufficient knowledge and details presented.  If your piece falls outside these limits, come to us and we can discuss it.

• Citations for all quoted, paraphrased, or otherwise unoriginal material
• Bibliography of works cited
• Prefer the Modern Language Association (MLA) Style http://www.library.cornell.edu/resrch/citmanage/mla
• A way to contact your tradition or organization so those interested may do so (if applicable).
• Send the file in RTF format.

Compensation:

Accepted contributors will receive a free copy of the anthology when it is published and additional copies sold at 40% off the cover price to contributors. All contributors will be provided with a contract upon final acceptance of their essays.

Rights:

This anthology will take nonexclusive first world rights for 6 months.

 Deadline is March 1, 2015.

For submissions and questions, please contact CJ Blackwood (cjblackwood90@gmail.com).  Please put “Immanion anthology submissions” in the subject line.

 Editors: The anthology will be edited by CJ Blackwood and Tara “Masery” Miller:

CJ Blackwood is a contributor for the Staff of Asclepius blog on patheos.com.  She also authors another blog, Tales of a Feminist Elemental Witch on WordPress.  She has been teaching crystal workshops at Pagan Pride events in Illinois for two years and will be presenting an “Awakening the Goddess Within” ritual from her own feminist elemantal tradition this year at Central Illinois Pagan Pride Day.  She writes fiction and poetry, and enjoys crafts, fishing, traveling, and spending time with friends.  She graduated from Illinois State University with a major in journalism and a minor in English.  She contributed to “rooted in the Body, Seeking the Soul: Magic Practitioners Living With Disability, Addiction, and Illness” under the name Lady Cedar Nightsong.

Tara “Masery” Miller is a panentheist Gaian mage who has a deep relationship with the Goddess Gaia. I’ve been involved with Pagan Pride Day, the Pagan Leaders Recommended Reading list with Elizabeth Barrett, and other wonderful magic circles over the years. She graduated from Southeast Missouri State University with a degree in mass communications specifically media studies and research and a minor in religion. Part of her course work included an independent study of mysticism in Christian, Pagan, and Native American traditions and a paper on Witchcraft in Colonial America. She was the editor of “Rooted in the Body, Seeking the Soul: Magic Practitioners Living with Disabilities, Addiction, and Illness.” She is also the editor of the Staff of Asclepius blog. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/paganswithdisabilities/ Her personal website is http://taramaserymiller.com/

 Immanion Press is a small independent press based in the United Kingdom. Founded by author Storm Constantine, it expanded into occult nonfiction in 2004 with the publication of Taylor Ellwood’s Pop Culture Magick. Today, Immanion’s nonfiction line, under the Megalithica Books imprint, has a growing reputation for edgy, experimental texts on primarily intermediate and advanced pagan and occult topics. Find out more at http://www.immanion-press.com.

Elemental Balancing Ritual Movement Month 22: Balancing Act

7-24-14 The second day at Pathways, we took Bill Duvendack to lunch. Bill is a stand up guy, intelligent, and he shared some interesting insights on the international community. We also talked more about one of the books he's sending to Immanion, which I'm looking forward to editing myself. Afterwards I did some Tarot readings and then the manifesting wealth class, which was well received. We had a larger crowd that night then the previous one. Afterwards we went to dinner with River Higginbotham, who'd been kind enough to host us while in St. Louis. We had some good conversations around leadership and magic. He has some similar interests in space/time magic work, and also the Seth material.

On the 23rd, we arrived in Indianapolis. Actually we checked out the cahokia mounds. I'd never heard of them before. We walked among and wood henge. What I felt was a residual trace of the original people. After that we drove to Indianapolis and I arrived at Spiritual Gardens. At that shop there was one person there for the workshop and I put aside all expectations or anything else and gave a really good version of the Alchemy of Breath, which I'll use in the future. It also occurred to me that I should write a book on that topic specifically. I've written about breath work in Inner Alchemy, but this would be an expansion on what I wrote there. The person attending the class bouth three books and this is only significant for one reason, which I'll share shortly.

Kat and I took the bookstore owner and her son to dinner. It turns out that the patron of the owner and the store is Papa Legba, a loa of the crossroads. Kat and I do a lot of crossroads work, and I felt Legba's presence show up at dinner. The receipt for the meal, plus tip came out to the exact amount I was paid for the books, which I found interesting. The shop owner also told me that Legba likes people to be humble and I realized that the workshop at the bookstore and the dinner was part of encounter with Legba, a test of sorts. Kat and I ended up chatting for quite a while with the owner about the Indianapolis community and at some point Legba came through and the conversation shifted to changes in the owner's life. I feel we passed the test, but it made me appreciate how the movement we experience in life sometimes happens for very specific reasons that remind us of specific lesson we need to take into account. Certainly the entire experience here reminded me of the importance of being humble in the face of success, accepting it, but not letting it go to my head either.

7-26-14 I've been working with the Elohim, which are the angelic order for Netzach. They've shown up as multi-faceted beings with mirror like finishes that mediate specific forces and serve as middle men to connect those forces to people. They are also mirrors of the heart and soul of the person. Sometimes they've shown up with lots of eyes, offering a glimpse into something else.

I've also been at the 2nd international left hand path conference. There's been some good presentations on luciferianism, secret societies, magic etc. I've also been able to meet a couple of people I've long wanted to meet such as Laurelei Black and Michael Ford. I'm grateful for the opportunity to speak and be at this event, and to meet the various people here.

7-29-14 Home at last. The 2nd international left hand path conference was excellent, with lots of good presenters. The trip home was uneventful, but the time away made me realize how much I value my time at home, how much I value PDX. It's great to move and to see further movement resulting as a result, but it's also good to savor hat you have and appreciate the space you are in. I feel the transition to Stillness starting.

7-31-14 Today I was working with Netzach and specifically the Archangel for Netzach, who is known as Auriel or Hanael. A while back in an R.J. Stewart workshop, I had an encounter with a being named Hanael, so when I did my meditation today it was the same being and it was fascinating because in the workshop the focus wasn't on connecting with archangelic powers. According to Gray this archangel directs energy from the athletic to artistic fields...he focuses people into a specific direction. We discussed that quite a bit today, in relationship to some of the changes occurring in my life. It helps me understand some of those choices as well as the benefits. I'll be curious to see what further work with him will bring about.

8-4-2014 It's horrible to tell someone that s/he is a disappointment. I heard that phrase far too often in my childhood. It shut me down. It told me I wasn't good enough. To hear it uttered about someone else always triggers a reaction within me.

8-5-2014 I'm reading The Fruitful Darkness by Joan Halifax. It's an autobiography of sorts about her work with Buddhism and shamanic practices. She makes an interesting statement, where she says there can only be a harvest when a person yields. It makes me think about the movement work and my recognition that sometimes to move, you need to allow yourself to be moved. Today I felt moved to stop by and visit Kat during her break. I told her how much I love her, how much she has moved me, how much she has helped me connect with parts of myself I had frozen and locked away. I don't always find it easy to express such things, but I felt a need to tell her how much she means to me, how much she moves me. So I let myself by moved by how she moves me and spoke my feelings to her, told her how much she means to me and how much she has helped me grow as a person.

8-9-14 I've been feeling the transition to stillness even more lately. It's a subtle transition, but nonetheless I feel that movement is morphing into stillness in my deep work and I'm ready for it. At the same time I feel that Eros will continue to be part of this work, which makes sense as I continue to develop a relationship with him. I haven't written about him much because the relationship has always been subtle, yet nonetheless I have felt him at work in the various experiences I've had and am having.

I've also wrapped up my work with Netzach today. Hanael actually assigned an angel of the Elohim order to me to help me with some specific internal work I'm doing. That angel is holding up a mirror for me...that is its function and yet that function is helping me to see what I need to do to take the internal work deeper.

Something I've been thinking about is leadership and how a good leader recognizes that s/he has feet of clay, or in other words recognizes the flaws s/he has. I definitely have some flaws and have made some choices over the years that were harmful to myself and to other people in my life. I have and continue to work on those flaws with the recognition that this work is a continuous journey. I also know I haven't always been a good leader. I've made some questionable choices that I look back on now and regret making. However what I can do with those choices is learn from them and make sure that I make better choices in my life and work.

8-15-14 I've been working with Tiphareth. I connected with the Malakim, which are the angels of balance. They seemed more abstract than the previous angelic orders, and told me that they were because their focus was on balancing the other Sephiroth and making sure that the right energies balanced each other. Meditating on this helped me appreciate anew the balance between movement and stillness, but also balance in and of itself as a principle of the world. I think I will explore balance as an element after Stillness, if balance calls to me.

8-17-14 The last few days have been pretty tough. I had a situation occur where I was essentially told I wasn't trusted. I got the situation resolved, or at least as resolved as it can be, but to have someone you respect tell you that they don't trust you or that they trust you in theory, but not in practice really hurts. At the same time I suppose what it also indicates is what the real nature of the relationship is. It saddens me, because I realize that whatever the relationship is or may be, this situation has changed it on both ends.

8-20-14 My continued work with Tiphareth has been interesting because of how much more abstract its been and how quickly its gone through. It really is a Sephiroth of balance, with the focus really being on mediating and directing the various energies of the other Sephiroth. It has made me think, as I've worked with it, about how important balance really is and how even though I've integrated into elemental balancing ritual, I haven't really worked with Balance in and of itself.

I've also been feeling a bit depressed. Ironically I've been a bit more creative or maybe I've just focused on that creativity as a channel for what I'm feeling. Regardless it is good to get things done and I like that I've made some progress on a couple of projects that had been proceeding at a very slow speed of progress. I suppose what it really comes right down to is figuring out how to take anything and find a way to use it if you can, including depression.

Silence and its place in Magical Work

In Western magic, one of the expressions is "to keep Silent." I never really cared for that expression, finding it to be antithetical to my craft as a writer and my desire to experiment with magic. But recently I've been reading several books and also doing a lot of work with stillness in relationship to movement and I've come to an appreciation of silence and its place in magical work. In Music Power Harmony, Stewart suggests that using silence in magic can become a foundation that realigns the consciousness and allows for deeper, more intensive internal work, while also shifting our understanding of music and the experience of it. Silence liberates us from habits because it causes us to examine and question them.

In The Fruitful Darkness by Joan Halifax, she states that stillness and silence is the foundation of our engagement with the world. It is an experience that allows us to interact with the world without necessarily acting on it. Yet what we get out of it is a different perspective and understanding of the world, based on experiencing it and becoming part of it without needing to change it. Something I've discovered over the years is that the need to act on the world diminishes as you learn how to experience the world directly. Stillness and silence teach you not to get so caught up in the drama, teach you to appreciate the nature of your connection to what's around you because you aren't so wrapped up in it, but can instead step back from all of it. We can get so caught up in the noise, so caught up in the distraction and diversion that we forget the connections, instead focusing on what will fill us up.

In the Dzogchen practice of Zhine, the person does stillness meditation, stilling everything and just being with the world, while not being attached to it. I've been doing this practice for a bit of time now and as I've done it, it's gotten easier to enter into that state of stillness and silence, though sometimes I still have challenges with it. What strikes me about doing Zhine is how much I end up hearing my own thoughts. I'm not doing anything, other than being still, so the thoughts come out, moreso for Zhine than other meditation practices I've done. Eventually all that mental noise dies down and what I'm left with is a state of being. I am here. Eventually even that fades and I just am, without attachment to space or time. In that stillness and silence I nonetheless find that I enter a state of connectedness that I'd never experienced until I did Zhine. The boundary between myself and the world around me thins, sometimes going away altogether, so that I enter a state of possibility, no longer caught up in conventional reality with all of its distractions.

I appreciate silence now because I understand its where inspiration and possibility are found. Allowing myself to be silent and still allows me to connect with the creative urge of the universe, Eros, in a way I couldn't before because I was so caught up in the noise. Now silence and stillness are part of my daily practice, part of my approach to magic and life. And through that experience the creative urge is mediated, experienced, and the heart of the world, the heart of the universe is entered. When the magician comes back from that experience, what is brought back is the impetus for meaningful change, both in the life of the magician and in the world, but done in a manner which is less about acting upon the world, and more about becoming the change you seek. By becoming that change, you change your relationship with the world and create the result you wanted to manifest instead of trying to force it into place.

Book Review: Music Power Harmony by R. J. Stewart

Music Power Harmony explores the connection between music and magic. The author also touches on concepts such as space/time magic, the power of words in shaping reality, the tree of life and its relationship to music and elemental calls of power. One thing I'd have liked to have seen more of in this book would be exercises that allowed the reader to implement the concepts. However, there is a lot of content that should inspire the magician, and this book will help you appreciate music and its relationship to magic because it is a fairly unique book in its focus. If you want to learn how to apply magic to music or learn more about the natural musical and magical abilities you have, this book will help you open that door.

Vowel Magic

In Music Power Harmony, R.J. Stewart makes an interesting observation about Vowels. He notes that the first sound that comes out of a person's mouth is always a vowel. You could say the letter Ks or Zs, but the sound of those letters is a vowel sound. The same actually applies to words. Say a given word and what you inevitably hear is a vowel sound. The vowel sound defines the rest of the words, connecting the consonants together in order to create the word. The vowel is at the heart of word magic, or as Burroughs might put it, its the nucleus of the word virus. The vowel is what we use to provide shape to the words, and in turn what gives the words the means to shape reality.

Stewart makes another intriguing point when he notes that we use sound to create a temporary pattern that expresses the fullness of the universe within the form of the word, attuning the word to universe and mediating the universe through the word. Burroughs made similar statement in some of his works on writing and the word. My own experiences with words has been one where I use words to start the path of manifesting a possibility into reality. A word turns a possibility into reality because it speaks that possibility into reality, makes it objective because it's not just in your head, but is a sound or is on paper. But the word is not just externalized. It is also internalized within the person, spoken within to align the person with the universe, even as it is sent out to the universe to align it with the person.

The sound of a word is not just a sound, but also a meaning. We invest the sound with meaning and articulate it for a variety of purposes that can ultimately be boiled down to one underlying purpose, namely the desire to change reality. Whether we are communicating, informing, educating, or expressing, what we are really seeking to do is create an experience with the words that changes something for us, both within and without. Recognizing this about words can help us appreciate their power and why we use them the way we do. The word speaks you. You speak the word. There is a relationship between the word and the person. That relationship is essential to the survival of both.

Words, by their formation, are a limitation of possibility. Words describe what reality could be, but also provide the necessary form to create that reality. For example, when I work with clients on their business, we put together a written business plan. The writing of the business plan focuses the client, turns the chaos of possibility into specific measurable actions, which in turn, lead to the manifestation of reality. I'd argue that words play the essential role of bridging possibility and reality. They provide form to possibility, while leaving enough possibility within them to let the person interpret and shape the meanings further before they become embodied into reality through the actions of the person. My own use of words is driven toward this kind of work, using them to forecast and shape the reality I'm stepping into, by providing enough focus that I can chart a path that then turns into action.

You might try the following experiment. Think of something you really want. Then write about it. Write about what you will do to achieve that result. Once the writing is done, seal it in envelope and put it away somewhere where you can find it, but don't open it until the the result manifests in your life. When it does manifest, look at the writing and compare what you wrote to what you actions you took. You'll probably find that the writing helped set the stage to manifest the desired result into reality.

Radio Interview: Go here to listen a live recording of my talk on Wealth Magic at the 2nd International Left Hand Path Conference.

Book Review: Fan CULTure: essays on Participatory Fandom in the 21st Century Edited by Kristin Barton and Jonathan Lampley

In this collection of essays, the authors share how fans interact with pop culture and corporations in order to keep their particular fan interests alive. There are three angles explored: Fan production, which shows how fans create content related to what love and how they get around potential corporate legal issues, the use of social media and how it effects fandom, and finally how fans influence the official content created by corporations. throughout all these essays, you'll get some fascinating insights into fan behavior and why fans do what they do as well as how it creates fan specific culture. Highly recommended if you are interested in pop culture studies or want to understand how fans effect pop culture production.

Want to actually do this, not just read about it?

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Deadline coming up soon: Pagan Leadership: An anthology on Group Dynamics, Healthy Boundaries, and Community Activism

E-mail for inquiries and submissions:  Shauna Aura Knight ; please put “Immanion Press Leadership Anthology Submission” in your subject line.

Megalithica Books, an imprint of Immanion Press (Stafford, U.K./Portland, OR, U.S.A) is seeking submissions for Pagan Leadership: An anthology on Group Dynamics, Healthy Boundaries, and Community Activism

Deadline for submissions: September 1 2014.

The words “Pagan Leadership” are often met with scorn and tales of failed groups and so-called Witch Wars. And yet, as our communities grow and mature, we find ourselves in dire need of healthy, ethical leaders. Anyone who has been in a group that said, “Let’s just not have any leaders or power issues,” has seen what doesn’t work. But what does?

This anthology will explore leadership for real Pagans and real groups. We’re looking for essays and articles that detail leadership success stories, best practices, and ways you have worked through challenges and obstacles. Our specific focus is on techniques to help Pagans build healthier, stronger, and more sustainable groups and communities. We’d like to see a combination of hands-on how-to, personally-inspired, and academic pieces that will offer readers tools they can use in their own groups.

What resources do you have now that you wish you’d had when you stepped into leadership? What problems have you faced and overcome? How have you faced the unique difficulties of grassroots Pagan leadership? What are tools and techniques that have worked? Essays and articles should be 1500-4,000 words.

We’re also looking for brief (500-1000 words) personal stories of what we might call leadership disasters—community blow-ups that you’ve personally witnessed or even mistakes you’ve made as a leader. With few exceptions, these would be published anonymously (not naming names/locations) in order to illustrate, through the personal voice of storytelling, the need for leadership education through the power of storytelling. These stories do not need to be formally written; they should simply tell a story about problems you experienced that caused a group to blow up. Note: We prefer shorter pieces for this, but up to 2,000 words might work.

What we are not looking for:

We are not looking for spells or rituals. We’d also prefer to not see generalized advice, like “leaders should delegate,” but rather, “Here’s how I learned to delegate in my group” or “here’s how a team I was part of successfully handled delegation.”

Here are some suggested topics to give you an idea of the focus of this anthology:

• Planning a successful Pagan event, or running a successful coven or circle, or—how those involve different leadership processes
• Skills to build community from the ground up, and skills to sustain a community long-term
• Organizational leadership techniques
• Transformational leadership and servant leadership
• Experiences with Pagan unity councils or other collaborative work between groups
• Dealing with local Pagan politics, including dealing with difficult, mentally ill, or abusive local leaders
• Dealing with difficult and disruptive group members, spotting predatory practices, red flags
• Gossip, bickering, rumors, and triangulation, ego and egotism, conflict resolution and personality conflicts
• Communication skills and techniques
• Personal work and self transformation required to be a leader, boundaries, dealing with personal burnout
• Administrative aspects of leadership, leadership structures like bylaws, mission statements
• Handling money in your group
• Ethics of leadership
• Delegation and dealing with volunteers dropping the ball
• Keeping people motivated, empowering group members and new leaders, passing on the reigns of leadership
• Creating a safe space
• Different leadership models (consensus, hierarchy, rotating leadership, democracy)
• Facing a leadership disaster/crisis

Submission Deadline is ____. Articles should be 1500-4000 words, although if your work falls outside those limits, do submit it – we can discuss this during the editing process. Personal experience essays should be 300-2,000 words. Drop us an email if you are unsure whether your idea fits into the content. The sooner you start the communication process the better, as after the deadline we won’t be considering additional ideas.

Do write in your voice! If you’re academically inclined or trained, feel free to be as intelligent and technical as you like, and writing in the first person is fine as well. These drafts will be edited in a back-and-forth process with the editor. If your essay is not accepted for the anthology, we will tell you after the first round of edits.

Essay requirements:

• Citations for all quoted, paraphrased, or otherwise unoriginal material
• Bibliography of works cited
• Prefer the Modern Language Association (MLA) Style http://www.library.cornell.edu/resrch/citmanage/mla
• Send the file in RTF format

Compensation:

Accepted contributors will receive a free copy of the anthology when it is published and additional copies sold at 40% off the cover price to contributors. All contributors will be provided with a contract upon final acceptance of their essays.

Rights:

This anthology will take nonexclusive first world rights for 6 months.

Editors: The anthology will be edited by Shauna Aura Knight and Taylor Ellwood:

Shauna Aura Knight is an artist, author, community leader, presenter, and spiritual seeker who travels nationally speaking on the transformative arts of ritual, community leadership, and personal growth. She is the author of several books including The Leader Within and Ritual Facilitation. She’s a columnist on ritual techniques for Circle Magazine and writes frequent articles and blogs on the topic of Pagan leadership, and her writing also appears in several Pagan anthologies. You can find her site at: http://www.shaunaauraknight.com/books  and her leadership blog at: http://shaunaaura.wordpress.com and her email address for this anthology is ShaunaAura@gmail.com

Taylor Ellwood is the author of Pop Culture Magick, Magical Identity, and other books on magic. He is also the managing non-fiction editor of Immanion Press. He can be found online at http://magicalexperiments.com

Immanion Press is a small independent press based in the United Kingdom. Founded by author Storm Constantine, it expanded into occult nonfiction in 2004 with the publication of Taylor Ellwood’s Pop Culture Magick. Today, Immanion’s nonfiction line, under the Megalithica Books imprint, has a growing reputation for edgy, experimental texts on primarily intermediate and advanced pagan and occult topics. Find out more at http://www.immanion-press.com.

How to Identify identity Work you need to do

One of the most important aspects of identity work is the identification of problematic identities that you want to change. Some of these identifications are ones you will want to change entirely, while others will involve a change in perception. You'll also find that some identities can't be changed entirely, because they are part of your experiences, but what can be changed is how you choose to relate to that identity. This means that you can have a traumatic event occur which becomes part of your identity. You can't change that the traumatic event occurred...it's part of you, but what you can change is how you interact with that event, how you use it shape your identity and your place in the world. As simple as that sounds, such work can be hard, but if you are willing to do the work, the resultant changes are worth it because of you become empowered.

The identification of needed identity work involves paying close attention to those aspects of identity you'd rather avoid, or where you have tension and emotional blockages. For example, in American culture, the body is usually an identity aspect that people need to work with. The majority of Americans have unhealthy relationships with their bodies, which are not always examined from a place of identity. When identity is brought into the picture, an exploration of the body becomes a history of how you've interacted with your body, as well as what comes up for you in relationship to your body and how you've tried to change your body. All of these issues play a role in shaping your identity around your body and they can only be changed when you confront them head on and recognize them for what they are: unneeded definitions about what your body ought to be according to mainstream culture. Once you've recognized those definitions, you can then create your own definitions which speak to the identity you want to establish with your body. This typically leads to healthier interactions because you are choosing the identity instead of having it foisted on you.

One of the ways I identify identity work is through meditation. Part of the meditation work focuses on the unresolved tensions I feel within myself. As I meditate, I allow the internal energy to flow around the tension I feel, gradually dissolving it, and in that process revealing whatever is at the core of the tension. I can then work with that core and relate it to my identity to determine how it contributes to the identity formation I have. Once I understand that, I can do the necessary work of changing that core tension into something which helps my identity and the desired reality I seek to create.

In your own identity work, look for those areas of your life that bring up feelings of stress and tension. Do you dread going into work or cringe when checking your balance? Do you feel like you are walking on eggshells around people in your home? Do you find yourself doing an activity that isn't good for you, but you can't stop it? Spend some time paying close attention to your daily routines and whatever comes up for you while doing those routines. What you discover will provide you the necessary direction you need to move in, in order to start doing identity work. Embrace those areas of tension and stress, no matter how uncomfortable they might be. You can do meditation or some other magical work, but the focus of the work should be on helping you to understand how the stress/tension contributes to your identity, as well as how you can change your identity by addressing the stress and tension you feel.

Book Review: Fan Cultures by Matt Hill

The author explores fandom as a culture from the lens of religion, cult enthusiasm, and psychology. He offers an alternative perspective to the works of other pop culture studies academics. I found his insights about pop culture fandom and religion to be particularly fascinating. This book will give you a lot to consider about how fandom engages pop culture and makes it part of their lives, as well as what can be learned by exploring fandom from disciplines outside the norms of cultural studies. What I also found insightful was hit detailed exploration of the hierarchy of fan culture, which was useful for understanding how fan communities work. If you are interested in pop culture studies or pop culture in general, this is a good book to read.

The Process of Magic Class Round Ten starts in one week!

 

Round Ten of the Process of Magic Class starts on August 6th.

Magic is a process that changes you and your relationship with the world, if you understand how the process works.

In this 24 lesson class, we will explore what the process of magic is and how it applies to you and your magical work. If you’re looking for a different perspective on magic that explores the underlying principles of how magic works, instead of focusing on the tools, ceremonies, and other optional features, this class is for you.Below is the syllabi for this course:

Lesson 1: An overview of the process of magic

Lesson 2: You and Definitions of Magic

Lesson 3: Results, Change, and their respective roles in magic

Lesson 4: The anatomy of the process of magic

Lesson 5: Culture, Ethics and Ideology

Lesson 6: What isn't essential to the process of magic

Lesson 7: Connection and its role in the magical process

Lesson 8: Intention, Attention, and Magic

Lesson 9: Inhibitory Actions and Magic

Lesson 10: Excitatory Actions and Magic

Lesson 11: Internal Work

Lesson 12: Spiritual allies and the magical process

Lesson 13: Invocation 1

Lesson 14: Invocation 2

Lesson 15: Evocation 1

Lesson 16: Evocation 2

Lesson 17: Divination

Lesson 18: Enchantment

Lesson 19: Astral Projection

Lesson 20: Banishing

Lesson 21: Attunement with the land

Lesson 22: The Role of Limitation in the Process of Magic

Lesson 23: The role of Transformation in the Process of Magic

Lesson 24: The role of Mundane actions in the Process of Magic

Plus Two Bonus Lessons!

To learn more and sign up, go here.

When Magic is only Mental

When I've taught the concepts of magical identity to different people, one of the questions that comes up is if magic is only mental in an ontological model. It's a fair question to ask, in the sense that the initial focus of the magical work involves becoming the magic. However the ontological model of magic isn't a psychological model, which means it goes much deeper than just a mental state. Becoming the magical act and result isn't just thinking about it. When I talk about directing the magic inward, as well as outward, what I'm really speaking to is a fundamental recognition that any magical act necessarily must change the practitioner as well as the world around the practitioner, in order to manifest a desired result. In other words, the magician must be willing to shift to a new state of being that allows for and embodies the desired result within as well as without. A purely mental model of magic wouldn't enable such work because it doesn't extend to the world around us, nor does it allow more than a surface level experience of the internalization of magic.

When magic is only mental, its not real. It's a thought, caught up in a swirl of other thoughts and emotions, transitory and illusive. And as a thought it's not even fully integrated with imagination, so much as it is caught up in the minutiae of the practitioner. I've never found a purely mental/psychological model of magic to be workable, because when its all in your head, it's solipsistic and self-obsessive. There is no real connection to the world and without that connection, magic becomes an act of deception and fantasy.

What makes magic work, in my experience, is the simultaneous crafting of the work inward within the magician and outward to the world. When the magic goes inward, it's not just effecting the mind of the magician, but connecting the magician to the inner contacts and spirit guides that are allies to the work the magician does. It is also going inward to the magician's connection with the universe, allowing the magician to change that connection. When the magic goes outward, it goes outward to the world around the magician, aligning the possibilities and variables into favorable outcomes that produce the desired result. By directing the magic inward, the magician becomes the desired result, while setting up the outside to create an environment that allows for the expression and full manifestation of that result.

Magic is lived...not just thought about. You live magic when you make it part of your life, part of who you are, as well as what you do. For me, what makes magic work is that I make it part of the expression of my life and recognize that the expression of my life is the extension of my being into this world. That extension allows me to interact with and change the world, even as in turn the world changes me through that interaction. When you live magic you become the change and its not mental, all in your head, but rather is lived through every layer of your being.

Book Review: Unseen Worlds and Practical Aspects of Spiritual Discernment by Anastacia Nutt

This book applies the concepts of spiritual discernment to psychic protection and shows the practitioner how to use spiritual discernment to recognize situations and people that aren't in alignment with the practitioner. The author provides some useful examples and exercises that the reader can use to apply spiritual discernment to their own practice. This is a useful book for beginning and advanced practitioners, as you will glean some gems of insight out of this text. The only downside to this text is that the author wrote it in two huge sections, instead of breaking it into chapters. However the various subheadings can be treated as mini-chapters for reading purposes. For any practitioner, the practices in this book will help them critically examine their relationships and spiritual practices with an eye toward discerning what is or isn't in alignment with them.

Elemental Balancing Ritual Movement Month 21: Responsibility

 6-20-14 When I was working with my spirit cord today, I felt it pulse and sync with my heart beat. It was quite an interesting experience and not something I'd previously felt in my work with the spirit cord. I also continued my work around regret. I dove in really deep today with that blockage that's by my navel, and I felt it continue to loosen up and as it did I experienced some memories and feelings about a couple of people and choices I'd made around those people. It was hard to feel those emotions, to be in those memories, but I let myself relax into them and as I did, I allowed myself to acknowledge and feel those emotions instead of avoiding them. I felt some sadness and a sense of responsibility that I had previously denied or tried to foist on someone else. Instead I chose to accept the responsibility. There's still work to do around it, but I felt taking that step was significant enough in its own right. 6-23-14 Regret is a form of fantasy, in some sense, and I find that as I delve into this work that some regrets turn into a sense of fantasy, a what if scenario. I realize such a scenario is a blockage, in and of itself, but it also an expression of the regret that can be worked through. So part of my dissolving work has involved working with the regret through the fantasy and using the fantasy to recognize certain realities that the regret doesn't factor in. One of the realizations I came away with is an awareness that I felt like I had to fit myself around another person and their issues and life as opposed to actively working on creating a true partnership. I felt this way multiple times with multiple people and that helped me look at the regret in a different light, because it showed me that the regret presented a filtered perspective. By doing the dissolving work it strips away the filter.

7-1-14 I've been continuing to meditate on regret and today I hit a realization about some of my choices earlier in my life that helped me understand that the reason I made those choices was because I was looking for something and fooling myself into thinking I could get it in the way I was pursuing it. Hindsight being 20-20 I eventually realized that my choices weren't providing me what I was looking for, but in meditating on those choices with the regret work, I was able to understand them in a different way that helped me find a sense of resolution about them I hadn't felt before. Working with regret in the way I've been working it has helped me see how the lack of closure creates regret but also how trying to meet a need can do the same. And when you do meet that need, you may still need to work with past issues in order to resolve those periods of time and occurrences in order to be fully present with the solution.

7-4-14 I'm feeling a bit frustrated lately. I'm having to change my event in Chicago into something else due to the lack of signups for the intensive. And it looks like my September event is encountering difficulties due to circumstances that originate with the place I'd be presenting at. What this continues to illustrate to me is that it may be more useful to invest in video and webinars for classes. While the initial cost might be high, the overall overhead would likely be low. After this month is over, I'm going to start doing some research into what other authors are doing...and this illustrates the importance of being adaptable, of being able to change movement as needed in order to go where you want to be.

7-8-14 I've been doing some work with Raphael, who is the Archangel of Hod. He's appeared to me as a doctor in a clinic, healing various people. He told me I needed to be open about my wounds if I wanted to find healing for them. Later on I talked with Kat and I admitted I was feeling depressed. A lot ended up coming out that helped me realize how much pressure I put on myself, but what really stood out to me was how hard it was for me to feel present with a part of myself that I identify myself as young boy. I think for men in general its hard to identify with the boy aspect of themselves. Part of this is because I think one of the immature images of men is men who never grow up, who essentially are still boys. However, I think that you can be a mature man and still connect with the boy within, but doing that easily...especially if that part of you has been so wounded...that's hard for me and sharing it with someone else is even harder.

7-12-14 I've been watching Neon Genesis Evangelion with Kat. It's been over 5 years since I last watched it. I've seen the series over 8 times. It's one of my favorite series and its also a cathartic series for me, because of the triggers and issues that come up in regards to my own relationship with my parents. However watching it this time around has been different. I've still felt some triggers and issues, but its different now, more muted. The internal work I've done has changed a lot of my reactions...its still a show that touches me, but it doesn't grab me in quite the same way. And I'm happy about that because as much as I like the show, it's good to know I've changed, that while it still touches me, it doesn't hit in quite the same way it did before.

7-15-14 I've come to a place with the regret work where I feel I've plumbed the depths as it were and gotten what I need from it. I'm glad I dedicated the time to it, but now I'll return to some other projects. I've also started work with Netzach, doing the initial phase of connection work, which I'll build on when the time is appropriate. It occurs to me that Netzach and Hod are mirrors to each other representing both the same and opposite principles, a union of opposites to create a composite realization, which would be Yesod, which when refined further becomes Malkuth. Of course the other Sephiroth also have something to add to that, but I'll get to those later.

7-20-14 I've started working with Netzach. Today I encountered the Elohim, which showed up as multi-faceted mirrors which mediated spiritual forces. They explained how they acted as connections between specific types of spiritual forces and the magician. Also Eros pointed something out today in my meditations, specifically noting how I've certain places in my life, certain relationships where the movement is stopped or blocked by how I let those relationships effect. Something to meditate on further. I'm in Chicago right now and visited the Life Force Arts center, as well as the Occult Bookstore. I liked the energy of the Occult bookstore and look forward to coming back some time and presenting again.

7-21-14 Left Chicago today. It's been years since I was there and what struck me the most about the city is the manic, frenetic energy. It's a good place to visit, but I don't know if I could live around that many people all the time. Feeling the movement of the city, both in terms of traffic and people was interesting. It has its own rhythm, made up of all the people, the traffic, events and everything else. And I could see how a person could tap into the energy to fuel their workings, though I think it would be dangerous. You'd have to be careful with how you were connecting and what you were connecting with.

And we arrived in St. Louis. The shop Pathways is wonderful, one of the best stocked occult bookshops I've seen, with hard to find works. The community is friendly and welcoming. I also felt the spirit of the original proprietor connect with me and welcome me to the shop. The workshop I offered was well received and I could tell it helped people come to some good realizations for themselves. More than anything I want my workshops to provide that kind of experience to the people who take them.