Within the next few hours, I will be departing for Phoenix.
The last week has been busy. I've been packing, moving boxes around, cleaning, going through drawers and storage containers and following old roads down memory lane. Some of the memories have been good, others remind me of the past and people that I've cut myself from. My mind is constantly a flurry of activity, looking at everything and how it fits together, analyzing myself and my place within the world.
In this moment, I feel like I'm standing on the precipice of something. A chapter of my life is closing, as I give up my place of living, and herd the majority of my belongings into a 5x7 storage unit, as this room looks less and less like it belongs to me as my things leave it- an empty shell, a place of potential for someone else to take my place here. This is no longer my home, but that doesn't scare me. Somehow it instead gives me hope.
I'll have a lot of time to think about where I'm going and what I'm doing, while I'm traveling. The desert has always been a place of healing for me, a place for new beginnings. The pacific northwest with its towering trees, forests lined with moss and ferns, whispering creeks, and pounding waterfalls is my home...but the desert is where I go to be reborn.
I have some work booked out that way already, and hope to have more soon as well. I expect to be arriving on the 8th, barring any issues with the van I'll be traveling in, or any issues crossing the Mojave. Fingers crossed that everything will go as planned there.
I'll likely have a lot of free time on my hands, so if anyone who reads this happens to be in the Phoenix area, hit me up and lets meet for coffee or something.
For once I feel like I'm going towards something instead of running away from something else. I'm running towards my stability, a stronger foundation, my future... and when I return to Washington, I'll have the resources I need to get a place for my love and I, and to bring him here at last. I'm looking at the possibility of moving to Tacoma- a nice middle ground between Olympia and Seattle, as well as the home of one of the photo studios I frequently work at already.
So when I pack the last of my things away, and turn my back on this place I've called home since September, it won't be with regret. It will be silent, with purpose, and a smile of knowing for the future that I will create with my Will and my own two hands.
The exploratory writings and magical experiences of a Hermetic Egypto-Pagan.
Friday, April 5, 2013
Friday, March 15, 2013
How I Almost Broke Olive Garden
Yesterday I went to the Olive Garden, and having been
thinking a lot about art lately, I was admiring the interior sculpture and
decorations in the building while the friend I came with, had run to the
bathroom. I specifically noted the lion heads carved in relief, peering out of
the walls from above the columns framing the lobby. I wondered to myself while
I waited “are they plaster, or are they something else?” I didn’t know if
anyone who worked there would have any answers, but I figured I would give it a
shot.
I leaned over from my spot waiting on the bench, and
I told one of the employees standing behind the pulpit-like reception area that
I had an odd question for him, and proceeded to ask my question. He craned his
head backwards, and looked up… and it seemed as if he had never looked up
before. He soon agreed with me that they probably were plaster, but I noticed
he couldn’t stop looking up after that. Other employees noticed, and soon they
were looking up as well.
A small mob of people then gathered, all remarking on
how they had never noticed the lion heads…or the other little decorations
throughout the building. One woman was absolutely giddy as she realized that
there were elegant lion head decorations in varying sizes throughout the
reception area and into the dining area. It was as if I had suddenly turned a
restaurant into an art gallery with a simple question.
There was a time I would have been afraid to ask a
question so completely outside of that employees role…mainly out of fear of
being seen as stupid for asking for some reason. Over the past year, I’ve been gaining a great deal more
confidence and nonchalance- I’ve got no real reason to care about what other
people might think about my eccentricies, its better to just be myself and
speak my mind (usually anyway, sometimes my mind is a VERY politically
incorrect sort of place)
I wonder what would have happened if it had actually
been busy at that point. Would I have broken their system? Would they have been
so busy looking up like children seeing the sky for the first time, that their
duties would have been forgotten? They were so suddenly lost in their own world
when something was introduced to them that made them wonder about something,
that made them see an extra dimension to the place they worked that they never
noticed before. For a moment, they were individuals, laughing and smiling, and trading jokes, and not cogs in a corporate machine.
The power of a question is absolutely amazing
sometimes. If you ask someone a question, psychologically it makes that person
feel like you value their opinion. It makes them feel “important” and usually
it makes them wonder about the answer themselves if they don’t know the answer.
It’s an easy way to flip someone’s world upside down, especially if you’re
presenting them with new information entirely.
What does this have to do with magic? I think it has
to do a lot with magic. It has to do with how easily things can be missed by
people, and how easily perceptions can be changed. A simple question likely
changed the entire day for the people who were working there. It made adults
into curious children. It made their lives a little bit more interesting, and
showed them if only for a moment just how much you can miss that is right in
front of you.
It isn’t so much an exercise in magic itself, as it
is in psychology, and how that plays a part in the types of people who become
magicians. I really do wonder now if people really don’t look up normally. Is
this the kind of mentality that separates the magically minded from the average
person?
I guess I can use this to segway into a similar story.
Back when I lived in Portland, and my lizard was about a couple of feet long, I
had him out with me during the summer months quite a bit. Sometimes I walked
him on his leash downtown, and other times I sat down on benches with him right
next to me, so we could sun ourselves.
I was sitting at the bus stop with him once, and a
lady moves to sit down right next to me, almost on top of my lizard. I politely
stop her, and when she realizes what she almost did, she backed up a couple of
feet- she had thought my lizard was a purse. She saw the color of leather, and
his tail, as a strap, and her mind filled in the rest to create an illusion of
what experience told it was there. I have had that same exact reaction a number
of times- they all think he’s a purse, because they aren’t actually looking. At
some point they stopped looking, stopped experiencing the world around them,
and only saw the world they expected to be there.
I had other people flat out denying that my lizard
could be “real” and had to be some kind of toy or something, when he was
sitting right on my shoulder, flicking his tongue out and looking at people. The
mind is terribly good at denying what is right in front of it.
Sometimes what you think is a purse is actually a
lizard, and sometimes all it takes to see something new in the world is to
actually open your eyes.
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Home
Starting in April
5th, I will no longer have a place of residence. I will be using this time to
travel extensively for work, saving up money for several months worth of rent
for when I return to Washington, and to draw, paint, and reflect on what
matters to me most in my life and how I'll be getting there. I'll be staying
with friends, and traveling across the country...all of which brings me to the
thoughts I've been having the past few days on what the idea of "home"
is to me, and how it shapes how I view the world and the situations I'm cast
into.
Home is something
carried in the heart. It isn’t a physical thing. It isn’t something you can
see, smell, taste, or touch. It isn’t something you can grasp with your hands
only to have it taken away from you. Home is an emotion. It’s something we
grasp with the fibers of our soul, and only we can remove ourselves from that
place. If one truly knows what it is to be, this is something that can be
understood.
Without the meaning
we give it, our lives mean nothing. We fight, we struggle, we die, all for the
sake of survival…because no matter how much we may sometimes feel worthless,
there’s a part of us that knows that we’re worth it, if only to ourselves. This
is my experience at least.
Growing up in
California, I often wished I could find “home” it was something I longed for,
something I wished I could understand. I ran from the place I was expected to
call home, more times than I can count. I found solace in travel, in
continually moving forward. It was something that gave me strength. Maybe
because in wandering aimlessly, I was able to find comfort in my own sense of
home-less-ness.
It took me
losing…..so much throughout my life for me to understand that the only sure
sense of home you can hold onto, is carried within the self. Places can be
taken from you, people can oust you from places where you lay your head, and
territories can be taken by the strongest… but who can take you from yourself
but you? Who can take the beauty of the world from you? Who can take from the
world the beauty in the reflection of a solitary raindrop? Who can take from
you the heavens, with all its wonders?
I have lost nothing.
My heart may hurt from time to time, but the fact that I can feel it at least
means that it still belongs to me. What is life except what we make of it? I
can spend my time worrying, or I can spend my time doing. I know one will get
me somewhere, while the other leaves unanswered questions, and something to be
desired. I know there’s nothing to do but to move forward, and to know that
there are people in my life who I treasure, and who treasure me. I am not
alone, and I have lost nothing.
Soon I begin a new
journey, but in the end I know that I will be stronger and wiser for it, and
that in just a couple of months, this weary heart will be warmed by a loving
embrace once more.
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Down the Rabbit Hole
I came down to Portland a little over a week ago for work, and found that I was unable to find a ride back up as soon as I intended to. While I was a little upset about this at first, and about the cancellations I had to deal with, but with a little bit of work I was able to turn the situation around. I managed to use it as an opportunity to start marketing myself in a place I hadn't lived in for about two years. Portland really isn't that far from where I call home these days, and I managed to make some business connections that should hopefully lead to future work.
While in Portland I manged to spend some time around some friends I hadn't seen in a while, got some work in town, and eventually managed to make my schedule line up with my previous cancellations. I've noticed that when I have goals in mind, and the motivation to push myself forward, work almost always seems to find me. When I wasn't working with photographers and videographers, I was working on logo designs. Am I making a lot all at once? No, but still the work is coming in, I'm making business connections left and right, and I'm keeping myself busy to the point that it's almost overwhelming.
I'm lucky in that the majority of people I know and am close to, are also magic-users, or at very least familiar and open to the concepts involved. This has also allowed me to work on my magical healing skills on multiple people in the past month. I'm no miracle-worker, but I know enough about using elemental energies and my Will, that I can at least usually soothe pains, and potentially speed up the healing processes.
For years I lived with someone who while open to magic, was never open to having it used on them for whatever reason, even for healing purposes. I don't have this problem with the person I'm in a relationship with now thankfully, and this has allowed me to stretch my magical muscles a bit more than I'm used to these days. Not only that, but its helped reinforce the idea that "yes" I AM doing something when I lay my hands on someone and bind their wounds with energy, or help their headaches, or loosen sore muscles.
When you're practicing magic outside of a group, there's only so much that you can see to reinforce the fact that you're actually doing something other than waving your hands around and deluding yourself. Its when others notice, when others tell you sincerely that you helped make their foot stop hurting, or somehow (at least temporarily) helped their headache. There's something powerful about that, about the idea that "this person experiences this too!" along with the idea that somehow I was able to help this person, this friend who trusted me.
Results in magic are often internal, and I think this is because on some level people are afraid to say that its more than just "in their head" because of the extra implications that holds. We try to put magic and our experiences with it in a little box that explains exactly how and why these things happen. Some of us try to explain it with science, some of us try to explain it with religion, but the fact of the matter is, regardless of reason, magic exists, and we all have the power to influence our realities on levels that many may even be afraid of acknowledging.
I struggled for years with the idea that magic, that entities, were somehow both internal and external forces. It was easier to believe that it was just my own subjective reality, and that this reality somehow helped me. These days I feel it goes far beyond that, and that if my magic is somehow just existing within my own subjective reality, then there would be no reason for others who exist and have their own realities to experience the manifestation of my magic in their lives at all.
This means that if it purely existed within my subjective reality, that no one else would be affected by it, but this isn't the case. People are affected when I work magic on them, even the ones who originally may not have expected anything to happen at all. This means that magic is objective, that its viewable, and in some cases the results are even tangible.
I don't consider myself fantastic at what I do when it comes to magic. Its been a lot of trial and error and guesswork with different techniques. I have gotten burned before, but you can only really learn sometimes by touching the hot stove and realizing "yes, that is hot, yes it does burn, I shouldn't do that." Magic isn't safe, but life inherently isn't safe either. Its a big scary world out there, and a lot of people want to just live out of their labeled boxes, without ever looking outside of them. They play in the sand, but never look up and realize that there's a sky. It's not for everyone, but its there for those who have the courage to look, and decide for themselves.
Its your reality after all, isn't it?
While in Portland I manged to spend some time around some friends I hadn't seen in a while, got some work in town, and eventually managed to make my schedule line up with my previous cancellations. I've noticed that when I have goals in mind, and the motivation to push myself forward, work almost always seems to find me. When I wasn't working with photographers and videographers, I was working on logo designs. Am I making a lot all at once? No, but still the work is coming in, I'm making business connections left and right, and I'm keeping myself busy to the point that it's almost overwhelming.
I'm lucky in that the majority of people I know and am close to, are also magic-users, or at very least familiar and open to the concepts involved. This has also allowed me to work on my magical healing skills on multiple people in the past month. I'm no miracle-worker, but I know enough about using elemental energies and my Will, that I can at least usually soothe pains, and potentially speed up the healing processes.
For years I lived with someone who while open to magic, was never open to having it used on them for whatever reason, even for healing purposes. I don't have this problem with the person I'm in a relationship with now thankfully, and this has allowed me to stretch my magical muscles a bit more than I'm used to these days. Not only that, but its helped reinforce the idea that "yes" I AM doing something when I lay my hands on someone and bind their wounds with energy, or help their headaches, or loosen sore muscles.
When you're practicing magic outside of a group, there's only so much that you can see to reinforce the fact that you're actually doing something other than waving your hands around and deluding yourself. Its when others notice, when others tell you sincerely that you helped make their foot stop hurting, or somehow (at least temporarily) helped their headache. There's something powerful about that, about the idea that "this person experiences this too!" along with the idea that somehow I was able to help this person, this friend who trusted me.
Results in magic are often internal, and I think this is because on some level people are afraid to say that its more than just "in their head" because of the extra implications that holds. We try to put magic and our experiences with it in a little box that explains exactly how and why these things happen. Some of us try to explain it with science, some of us try to explain it with religion, but the fact of the matter is, regardless of reason, magic exists, and we all have the power to influence our realities on levels that many may even be afraid of acknowledging.
I struggled for years with the idea that magic, that entities, were somehow both internal and external forces. It was easier to believe that it was just my own subjective reality, and that this reality somehow helped me. These days I feel it goes far beyond that, and that if my magic is somehow just existing within my own subjective reality, then there would be no reason for others who exist and have their own realities to experience the manifestation of my magic in their lives at all.
This means that if it purely existed within my subjective reality, that no one else would be affected by it, but this isn't the case. People are affected when I work magic on them, even the ones who originally may not have expected anything to happen at all. This means that magic is objective, that its viewable, and in some cases the results are even tangible.
I don't consider myself fantastic at what I do when it comes to magic. Its been a lot of trial and error and guesswork with different techniques. I have gotten burned before, but you can only really learn sometimes by touching the hot stove and realizing "yes, that is hot, yes it does burn, I shouldn't do that." Magic isn't safe, but life inherently isn't safe either. Its a big scary world out there, and a lot of people want to just live out of their labeled boxes, without ever looking outside of them. They play in the sand, but never look up and realize that there's a sky. It's not for everyone, but its there for those who have the courage to look, and decide for themselves.
Its your reality after all, isn't it?
Monday, December 31, 2012
Goodbye 2012, Hello Adventure!
I've always found that for me, winter is a time of looking back at where I've been, and who I've been...and looking more closely at who I've grown into. This usually starts around my birthday in November, and the trend continues prominently into the coming new year.
2012 has been a year of trials, heartbreak, fear, and scrambling to survive both inside and outside. I feel like maybe I've somehow come of age. 25 years old, somehow feels like I'm more "adult" than when I turned 18 and crafted my plans of escape into the real world, free of the trappings of my parents dangerous eccentricities, so that I could breathe and find myself.
Ever since last January when I broke through the blocks of my own fear and uncertainty and made spirit communication so much more....simple than it was before.. I've been focused more intently than ever on who I am, why I do the things I do, and ultimately who I want to become.
Some people close to me have started calling me a "priestess" and I don't know if I like that or not. Titles come with baggage, expectations, or at least that's how I feel. I'm not trying to be anyone other than myself. I owe myself at least that much after what I've put myself through the past couple of years. I'm not sure what that title actually means or if I want it. What guidance I've given people over the years has been simple, and usually I let people find their own answers. Answers come from within the SELF not from me. Have I provided aid and comfort to friends with wounded hearts and souls? Have I helped protect those close to me and taught them the bare bones basics of how to cleanse their homes and protect themselves? Yes. Again it all makes me wonder what Priestess actually means, when I do these things as myself, and as a friend.
2012 was all about putting my journey into perspective in a way that I could understand. It brought to light old pains and sorrows, and forced me to deal with harsh realities. It forced me to grow up in a way that I thought I had, but I was mistaken in that. And in those moments of pain and suffering, in those moments when I was at my lowest, I found those who truly care for me, and those who made false promises, and abandoned me when I needed them most. Some of the people who stood there and offered open arms surprised me with their gentleness. I know the people I should truly value in my life now beyond the others. Despite the suffering that I had to endure for that to happen, I'm thankful that I'm no longer chasing shadows and sweet voices crafting illusions for my mind and heart.
I've also discovered that when you're at your lowest, even if you're not someone to take risks, its easy to leap for something new even when you heart is raw. That's half the reason I'm in Pennsylvania right now. I came out here to check the market for clients out this way, and to do some work with people who had already shown interest... but I also came out here because when I was at my lowest, I felt something in someone that I had never felt before.
A good friend who I had known for a...long time, but who had never shown a gentle side, was there for me after I was assaulted a few months ago. He called me every few hours to check on me and make sure I was ok, and he saw through my own lies to myself that I was doing fine. It wasn't some kind of subversive ploy, or comforting words with nothing behind them... there was...a level of love and care in what he was doing, in every word, and every second he took to comfort me and help me find my strength...and it was a level I had never felt before. Somehow, despite how hurt and betrayed I was feeling from...lots of things, somehow I trusted him without question, and knew every word and every emotion I felt from him was sincere.
While our choice of techniques in magic have always been very different, he's never looked down on me or tried to change me for it, or anything else. My ex...never really was good with empathy. This whole situation helped me to realize how much he'd checked out emotionally. And while I knew it was a huge risk, a few months after I broke up with my ex, I decided to come out here and see how this good friend and I actually connected. We live on completely opposite coasts, but...after staying in his home for two weeks, I genuinely think there's a chance, and there's also mutual interest.
We've worked magic together, had fun with random shenanigans in the woods, including but not limited to snow ball fights, building fire pits in the woods (I built a nice big stone circle for the fire, and it was right next to a river, and it was very damp out, so it was perfectly safe) and even though I got sick and was in bed for nearly a week and managed to hurt my leg, he helped take care of me without complaint and always had hot tea handy.
I'm also making plans to purchase a boat to eventually live on, back in the Seattle-area. Yes I might be going crazy, but if I am, I think I like it...because it's the kind of crazy that brings new adventures into my life, because I'm not afraid of being alive, and because I know which people in my life actually have room for me in their lives. I know which people in my life I should treasure, though thankfully most of them I did already.
I think the only way to establish my "Kingdom" is to know that it doesn't have anything to do with having lots of money (though that can be nice) but has everything to do with establishing "myself" and being someone that I can be proud of- something that I think the people and spirits in my life would agree with.
So here's to 2012, the year of pain and challenges which helped me to discover what actually matters in life...and here's to the coming 2013 which promises to be very interesting indeed. Perhaps in the next few months, you'll see me blogging from my future yacht.
Here's to life, the people in my life I cherish, and to adventure!
2012 has been a year of trials, heartbreak, fear, and scrambling to survive both inside and outside. I feel like maybe I've somehow come of age. 25 years old, somehow feels like I'm more "adult" than when I turned 18 and crafted my plans of escape into the real world, free of the trappings of my parents dangerous eccentricities, so that I could breathe and find myself.
Ever since last January when I broke through the blocks of my own fear and uncertainty and made spirit communication so much more....simple than it was before.. I've been focused more intently than ever on who I am, why I do the things I do, and ultimately who I want to become.
Some people close to me have started calling me a "priestess" and I don't know if I like that or not. Titles come with baggage, expectations, or at least that's how I feel. I'm not trying to be anyone other than myself. I owe myself at least that much after what I've put myself through the past couple of years. I'm not sure what that title actually means or if I want it. What guidance I've given people over the years has been simple, and usually I let people find their own answers. Answers come from within the SELF not from me. Have I provided aid and comfort to friends with wounded hearts and souls? Have I helped protect those close to me and taught them the bare bones basics of how to cleanse their homes and protect themselves? Yes. Again it all makes me wonder what Priestess actually means, when I do these things as myself, and as a friend.
2012 was all about putting my journey into perspective in a way that I could understand. It brought to light old pains and sorrows, and forced me to deal with harsh realities. It forced me to grow up in a way that I thought I had, but I was mistaken in that. And in those moments of pain and suffering, in those moments when I was at my lowest, I found those who truly care for me, and those who made false promises, and abandoned me when I needed them most. Some of the people who stood there and offered open arms surprised me with their gentleness. I know the people I should truly value in my life now beyond the others. Despite the suffering that I had to endure for that to happen, I'm thankful that I'm no longer chasing shadows and sweet voices crafting illusions for my mind and heart.
I've also discovered that when you're at your lowest, even if you're not someone to take risks, its easy to leap for something new even when you heart is raw. That's half the reason I'm in Pennsylvania right now. I came out here to check the market for clients out this way, and to do some work with people who had already shown interest... but I also came out here because when I was at my lowest, I felt something in someone that I had never felt before.
A good friend who I had known for a...long time, but who had never shown a gentle side, was there for me after I was assaulted a few months ago. He called me every few hours to check on me and make sure I was ok, and he saw through my own lies to myself that I was doing fine. It wasn't some kind of subversive ploy, or comforting words with nothing behind them... there was...a level of love and care in what he was doing, in every word, and every second he took to comfort me and help me find my strength...and it was a level I had never felt before. Somehow, despite how hurt and betrayed I was feeling from...lots of things, somehow I trusted him without question, and knew every word and every emotion I felt from him was sincere.
While our choice of techniques in magic have always been very different, he's never looked down on me or tried to change me for it, or anything else. My ex...never really was good with empathy. This whole situation helped me to realize how much he'd checked out emotionally. And while I knew it was a huge risk, a few months after I broke up with my ex, I decided to come out here and see how this good friend and I actually connected. We live on completely opposite coasts, but...after staying in his home for two weeks, I genuinely think there's a chance, and there's also mutual interest.
We've worked magic together, had fun with random shenanigans in the woods, including but not limited to snow ball fights, building fire pits in the woods (I built a nice big stone circle for the fire, and it was right next to a river, and it was very damp out, so it was perfectly safe) and even though I got sick and was in bed for nearly a week and managed to hurt my leg, he helped take care of me without complaint and always had hot tea handy.
I'm also making plans to purchase a boat to eventually live on, back in the Seattle-area. Yes I might be going crazy, but if I am, I think I like it...because it's the kind of crazy that brings new adventures into my life, because I'm not afraid of being alive, and because I know which people in my life actually have room for me in their lives. I know which people in my life I should treasure, though thankfully most of them I did already.
I think the only way to establish my "Kingdom" is to know that it doesn't have anything to do with having lots of money (though that can be nice) but has everything to do with establishing "myself" and being someone that I can be proud of- something that I think the people and spirits in my life would agree with.
So here's to 2012, the year of pain and challenges which helped me to discover what actually matters in life...and here's to the coming 2013 which promises to be very interesting indeed. Perhaps in the next few months, you'll see me blogging from my future yacht.
Here's to life, the people in my life I cherish, and to adventure!
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Lady of the Flame
As the days grow longer, and the air grows colder, I find myself going over the year's events in my mind; the good, and the bad. I think of the choices I made, the cause and effect that brought such things about, and what I can do better in the future, for myself and for others.
I've known that I needed to get back in touch with Sekhmet for some time now, but for one reason or another kept putting things off. I wanted to have the blade completed before I called on her again, but it wasn't in the cards. Something from my recent past came back to haunt me however... and I knew in that moment that I could wait no longer.
Nothing had been done with my assault case. I know that because the person who did it had the gall to contact me, from the phone number I provided to the police, to ask if I wanted to "work" with him again... and yet they claim they don't have enough information to find the guy, and that they're busy working on "more important things" and basically aren't allocating even enough time to find out who the phone number belongs to.
Now, I've had self esteem issues for years. I've questioned what "right" I have to raise my power against others off and on. But by the gods, I was angry! And damn did it feel good. No flashbacks, no "I should have done this, I could have done that" no feelings of fear or vulnerability... just raw, primal fury. The reason I made the police report in the first place wasn't for "my" sake, but for the sake of others who might get reeled in by him- I KNOW he's hurt other people before, and I sure as hell doubt I'll be his last... but apparently my word means nothing to the police. Maybe it's because I'm female. Maybe it's the nature of my work. The bottom line here though is that the "why" doesn't matter. What matters is that nothing is being done.
What does this have to do with Sekhmet? Everything. Sekhmet is the vengeful Will of the gods. She's the fires of anger and passion that judges without mercy. She is strength, her very name is derived from the word Sekhem, the ancient Egyptian word for power, and might. She takes action for what is, not what might be. I spend too much time worrying about whether any action I take in any situation is Just. I look so closely at situations that I lose the big picture entirely, to the point where the essence of the situation becomes skewed and meaningless. - I need her type of thinking in my life- action not reaction. But it had been months since I had summoned her, and the last time I had, I had tried to use her power for something...that looking back on it... was frankly really petty and I paid the price for it.
I had no completed blade to come to her with, and wasn't sure how I should approach the situation. So I decided to kill two birds with one stone- I had been meaning to get back into painting, so I pulled out a pile of blank paper and a pencil, and I sketched out a couple of ideas. Once I had something I liked, I decided to get started on the actual painting. I spent a few hours here and there, losing myself in my work. I was determined to paint the best picture I have ever done, and to dedicate it to Sekhmet as a show of my devotion to her Mysteries. Sometimes it felt like I had a pair of feline golden eyes watching me, staring into my soul as I worked. I gave myself a deadline, and stuck to it.
Once it was completed, I waited until the noonday sun was at its peak, and then I called her. I burnt incense for her, I lit a special candle for her, and I offered the painting to her, placing it on the wall above my altar. My altar room was dark except for the light from the bright red candle, and the eyes on the painting seemed to glow from the candlelight. I sat in front of the altar in the dark with her, and we talked for a bit; though mostly she was silent. I confirmed that we were on decent terms, she gave me a few choice words about things I need to do in my life, and that was pretty much that.
The painting itself easily is one of the best I've ever done, if not the best- so I definitely met that goal. The blade? Well I still plan on making it, but I've decided to wait until I have better materials and resources to create the handle. Finances are a little tight as always, but lately they're tight for the right reasons- things like saving money for plane tickets so I can travel and work and build new relationships with clients, and so that I can get health insurance when I get back from my trip to Pennsylvania :)
With that said, casting a handle in copper or bronze and plating it with gold, is a little out of my current price range. I just feel like cold casting would have been a lot of trouble and money for something that wouldn't turn out as nice as something done "right" involving pouring molten copper and gold- something born from heat and fire. It just feels like for Sekhmet, there NEEDS to be fire involved. Anything less just feels wrong, or half hearted at best.
But for now, contact has been re-established, and I'll be working with her more closely. I will also be making contact with Hathor, so that I may know them both, and learn to balance my passion in anger, with my passion in the arts, and all other things. It's something that's been missing from my life. It comes in spurts, but sporadically. I'm aiming to fix that, and to bring myself more into balance :)
Oh, and here's a photo of that painting I did-
That's all for now. I may be silent until after the new year. Got lots of exciting stuff coming up :)
I've known that I needed to get back in touch with Sekhmet for some time now, but for one reason or another kept putting things off. I wanted to have the blade completed before I called on her again, but it wasn't in the cards. Something from my recent past came back to haunt me however... and I knew in that moment that I could wait no longer.
Nothing had been done with my assault case. I know that because the person who did it had the gall to contact me, from the phone number I provided to the police, to ask if I wanted to "work" with him again... and yet they claim they don't have enough information to find the guy, and that they're busy working on "more important things" and basically aren't allocating even enough time to find out who the phone number belongs to.
Now, I've had self esteem issues for years. I've questioned what "right" I have to raise my power against others off and on. But by the gods, I was angry! And damn did it feel good. No flashbacks, no "I should have done this, I could have done that" no feelings of fear or vulnerability... just raw, primal fury. The reason I made the police report in the first place wasn't for "my" sake, but for the sake of others who might get reeled in by him- I KNOW he's hurt other people before, and I sure as hell doubt I'll be his last... but apparently my word means nothing to the police. Maybe it's because I'm female. Maybe it's the nature of my work. The bottom line here though is that the "why" doesn't matter. What matters is that nothing is being done.
What does this have to do with Sekhmet? Everything. Sekhmet is the vengeful Will of the gods. She's the fires of anger and passion that judges without mercy. She is strength, her very name is derived from the word Sekhem, the ancient Egyptian word for power, and might. She takes action for what is, not what might be. I spend too much time worrying about whether any action I take in any situation is Just. I look so closely at situations that I lose the big picture entirely, to the point where the essence of the situation becomes skewed and meaningless. - I need her type of thinking in my life- action not reaction. But it had been months since I had summoned her, and the last time I had, I had tried to use her power for something...that looking back on it... was frankly really petty and I paid the price for it.
I had no completed blade to come to her with, and wasn't sure how I should approach the situation. So I decided to kill two birds with one stone- I had been meaning to get back into painting, so I pulled out a pile of blank paper and a pencil, and I sketched out a couple of ideas. Once I had something I liked, I decided to get started on the actual painting. I spent a few hours here and there, losing myself in my work. I was determined to paint the best picture I have ever done, and to dedicate it to Sekhmet as a show of my devotion to her Mysteries. Sometimes it felt like I had a pair of feline golden eyes watching me, staring into my soul as I worked. I gave myself a deadline, and stuck to it.
Once it was completed, I waited until the noonday sun was at its peak, and then I called her. I burnt incense for her, I lit a special candle for her, and I offered the painting to her, placing it on the wall above my altar. My altar room was dark except for the light from the bright red candle, and the eyes on the painting seemed to glow from the candlelight. I sat in front of the altar in the dark with her, and we talked for a bit; though mostly she was silent. I confirmed that we were on decent terms, she gave me a few choice words about things I need to do in my life, and that was pretty much that.
The painting itself easily is one of the best I've ever done, if not the best- so I definitely met that goal. The blade? Well I still plan on making it, but I've decided to wait until I have better materials and resources to create the handle. Finances are a little tight as always, but lately they're tight for the right reasons- things like saving money for plane tickets so I can travel and work and build new relationships with clients, and so that I can get health insurance when I get back from my trip to Pennsylvania :)
With that said, casting a handle in copper or bronze and plating it with gold, is a little out of my current price range. I just feel like cold casting would have been a lot of trouble and money for something that wouldn't turn out as nice as something done "right" involving pouring molten copper and gold- something born from heat and fire. It just feels like for Sekhmet, there NEEDS to be fire involved. Anything less just feels wrong, or half hearted at best.
But for now, contact has been re-established, and I'll be working with her more closely. I will also be making contact with Hathor, so that I may know them both, and learn to balance my passion in anger, with my passion in the arts, and all other things. It's something that's been missing from my life. It comes in spurts, but sporadically. I'm aiming to fix that, and to bring myself more into balance :)
Oh, and here's a photo of that painting I did-
That's all for now. I may be silent until after the new year. Got lots of exciting stuff coming up :)
Sunday, November 4, 2012
Halloween
I'm still around, just focusing on things like my Japanese class, and working on getting back to work now that I've taken a couple of months to recover from the assault, mentally and physically.
Taking a couple months off from work means I'm having to start spending most of my time marketing aggressively, the rest working on my classes, and the rest having some semblance of a social life so that I don't drive myself crazy...well more crazy ;)
As always magic is still a core part of my life, but haven't really had a lot of time to sit down and figure out if I have anything worth talking about much.
Halloween was mostly uneventful. Did some crazy dressing up, experimented with making a dragon prosthetic and doing the makeup for it. I think I succeeded. One of these days maybe I'll get to work on this stuff for films or something. That could be fun.
Hmmm maybe I should whip up a sigil for that and get to work :) Goodness knows I have plenty of free time, right? :P Ah well, I enjoy life anyway. Definitely going to sigilize that shit though and start dong more Jupiter work. I can always make more time.
As for other aspects of Halloween, after I weirded out everyone in my college classes, I came home, and spent some time with the roommates and random friends that showed up. All in all a good night capped off by spending some time in my ritual space in meditation.
I discovered recently that the blade that I'm going to be using for Sekhmet's blade, is indeed a spear head, and not an old knife blade. I spoke with someone much more knowledgeable than I, when it comes to ancient weaponry. Apparently the Greeks, Macedonians, etc, were all using socketed spears like I had thought- but the lower infantry still used things like copper spear points for throwing spears. Because they were cheap, and easy to produce for large numbers of lower ranking soldiers. The implication is that the blade I have was likely used during the time period of Alexander the Great during or after the conquest of Persia (considering the location the seller told me it was from, the type of patina it had before I removed it, and the design of the spear head being decidedly Mediterranean.) The type of spear head itself was designed for piercing leather armor, and not metal. From what I was told, often once a spear was thrown in the middle of battle, it was not recovered. This spear could have found its mark, or it could have been one of the many that missed their target and remained strewn over the battle field. Fascinating stuff really.
I've now designed the handle for the blade, and just need to make it, and get ahold of some of that ren-wax stuff once I clean up the metal again. Once I have that, I can polish up the blade again, and put the wax on to protect it.
In other news, my 25th birthday is coming up. Hopefully it'll mark a change from all of this 2012 hustle and bustle and things will actually slow down a little. (maybe) I'm going to be spending some time with a friend of mine on the East Coast for a few weeks while working to expand the market for my modeling services out that way. I've already picked up some interest from photographers in NYC just with the announcement that I'm traveling to PA to scout things out, so here's to hoping that 2013 is going to be less crazy than 2012, and that I get to meet more interesting people out east :)
Taking a couple months off from work means I'm having to start spending most of my time marketing aggressively, the rest working on my classes, and the rest having some semblance of a social life so that I don't drive myself crazy...well more crazy ;)
As always magic is still a core part of my life, but haven't really had a lot of time to sit down and figure out if I have anything worth talking about much.
Halloween was mostly uneventful. Did some crazy dressing up, experimented with making a dragon prosthetic and doing the makeup for it. I think I succeeded. One of these days maybe I'll get to work on this stuff for films or something. That could be fun.
Hmmm maybe I should whip up a sigil for that and get to work :) Goodness knows I have plenty of free time, right? :P Ah well, I enjoy life anyway. Definitely going to sigilize that shit though and start dong more Jupiter work. I can always make more time.
As for other aspects of Halloween, after I weirded out everyone in my college classes, I came home, and spent some time with the roommates and random friends that showed up. All in all a good night capped off by spending some time in my ritual space in meditation.
I discovered recently that the blade that I'm going to be using for Sekhmet's blade, is indeed a spear head, and not an old knife blade. I spoke with someone much more knowledgeable than I, when it comes to ancient weaponry. Apparently the Greeks, Macedonians, etc, were all using socketed spears like I had thought- but the lower infantry still used things like copper spear points for throwing spears. Because they were cheap, and easy to produce for large numbers of lower ranking soldiers. The implication is that the blade I have was likely used during the time period of Alexander the Great during or after the conquest of Persia (considering the location the seller told me it was from, the type of patina it had before I removed it, and the design of the spear head being decidedly Mediterranean.) The type of spear head itself was designed for piercing leather armor, and not metal. From what I was told, often once a spear was thrown in the middle of battle, it was not recovered. This spear could have found its mark, or it could have been one of the many that missed their target and remained strewn over the battle field. Fascinating stuff really.
I've now designed the handle for the blade, and just need to make it, and get ahold of some of that ren-wax stuff once I clean up the metal again. Once I have that, I can polish up the blade again, and put the wax on to protect it.
In other news, my 25th birthday is coming up. Hopefully it'll mark a change from all of this 2012 hustle and bustle and things will actually slow down a little. (maybe) I'm going to be spending some time with a friend of mine on the East Coast for a few weeks while working to expand the market for my modeling services out that way. I've already picked up some interest from photographers in NYC just with the announcement that I'm traveling to PA to scout things out, so here's to hoping that 2013 is going to be less crazy than 2012, and that I get to meet more interesting people out east :)
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