Making Wands

One of the things that has changed since I updated regularly here, is that I'm apparently a wand maker now.

About a year ago, a friend of mine suggested that I try getting into the wand market for Harry Potter fans... So I did. I have my suspicions that some of them might be for more than costuming, but that's their business, not mine, unless they choose to share.

I'm not sure how familiar everyone is with the Harry Potter universe, but they have something called a "Patronus" which is sort of like a protective animal totem. A lot of the wands I've seen have been simple, and clearly turned on a lathe. Most of the commercial wands would only take a few minutes to make, using those methods.

I wanted to do something different that I thought people would appreciate...So I started offering wands with animal carvings on them, the handles carved into animals, or other unique combinations of features.

Most of my work so far have been commissions. Now I'm trying to move towards making wands and then finding a buyer later. It's tricky, and a little nervewracking, because I don't know when, or if those things are going to sell. Trying to make a "living" as someone who makes magical tools, (or costume tools, depending on who buys) is never easy. But I'm doing my best to move forward, and just keep making things.

For having started about a year ago, I think I've come a long way. I went from just carving wood, to noticing the characteristics of the wood, and how I can use them to make a more visually appealing piece. It's obvious that different types of wood can be drastically different than each other, but until today, I'd never seriously thought about things like utilizing the differences in heartwood and sapwood.

To see what I mean, I've included a video of the current wand I'm working on.



What other projects have I been up to? I'll tell you later. :) I should have some more updates soon.

Life doesn't come with trigger warnings

I left you hanging around this time last year in 2015. Since then, I've had to uproot my entire life multiple times, and have even moved across the country. My perception on life has been turned upside down multiple times, and I have both lost old friends, and gained new ones.

I'm not sure what to say. It feels like I want to say so much, like I have all of this pent up emotion and experiences that I want to cry out and share... but I can't just let out a primal scream, and flood your minds with the images, and the emotions of the things that have happened in the past few years. It doesn't work that way. I wish it did.

I'm a different person than when I last wrote here. It could be argued that every experience changes us... but this has been like a trial by fire. I've been burned more times than I can count, but I have always come out of it somehow. I can't explain the whys, or the hows, but it feels like my past is someone else's life. It feels distant, disconnected.

I find it hard to connect to the things and people that I used to connect to. Magic is still a part of my life, it's still important to me. It's a part of the fabric of reality, how could it not be important? Anubis and Sekhmet still walk with me, though their voices are more like whispers through static, than the rich clear tones I once heard. Fear blocks their voices. I have become like a cornered animal, always wondering when and where the next ambush will be set. I try to break free of this mindset, but I have yet to find how. Some days are worse than others. Some days I wonder if maybe I'm just insane. Other days I wonder if maybe it's the world that has changed, and not myself. I'm living in a constant state of inner conflict.

Maybe this is just how life is, and I didn't notice until recently? There was a time I was so bold, so fearless, and looking back, I know I'm not that person anymore. Can I be strong again? I don't know. I've seen so much darkness, so much suffering, pain, and corruption. It feels like in the past, I was strong for other people. I protected my friends.... but myself? Not so much. I thought I felt "old" then. I had no idea what the word meant. I still probably don't. By most people's standards I'm still young.

I don't model anymore. I had too many close calls, and touchy photographers trying to feel me up. In places that I should have been safe, I wasn't. Even within the arts, there is no much corruption now. I can't model for schools, without wondering if the coordinator who hired me, is also a human trafficker on the side, who wants to try to sell me to Middle Eastern Royalty. - This actually almost happened. I'm getting chills just writing about it. My heartbeat is erratic. I need to breathe, but breathing feels so hard sometimes. If the person who hired me had thought they could get away with it, I would have been in a bag. I have no question about that.

This is the world we live in. It came as no surprise to me whatsoever when the news broke that Hollywood might have a rape and pedophile problem. Last time I tried to join a modeling agency, the coordinator wanted to "spend time with me alone, and enjoy some drinks"... yeah I know what that's code for.

So now I find myself having been so exposed to the darkness, that I'm having trouble finding light. It's like a campfire at the edge of reality that I'm desperately searching for. I keep looking for that flickering light, so I can reach for it, maybe sit for a moment and feel that warmth of hope again... but all around me people are caught up in their own pettyness, marionettes of the cackling shadows that move them to fear, and hate, when they should be asking questions and seeking knowledge. It's NEVER as simple as the narrative that you're being spoon-fed... and holding fast to lies when you should be seeking Truth, is the surest way to ruin.... and it's this knowledge too, which is a source of my sadness and ire. Gone are the days when people looked into the gray places to seek and find what was hidden... now they expect it to be handed to them, and have the folly to trust those who are more interested in money, and ratings, with having given them the truth!...And of course I'm referring to the media, the government, and any figures of authority that you allow to have power over your own thoughts. Watch how quickly things that were stated as truth one day, are refuted the next! ...and the masses smile and nod, and forget that their overlords ever were mistaken.

Perhaps I sound crazy here... but I'm starting to not care. I've watched so many people I thought were intelligent fall to the dogwhistle of hatred. Convinced now that there are enemies all around them, they push their agendas regardless of others that might be forsaken by them. Has it always been this way, but I was too blind to see it? Too naive? Why is it so hard now to find, and grasp the light that I feel I once carried within me?

Despite this dilemma, despite this cognitive dissonance I face within myself, and within the world, I continue to walk forward, and make sense of the world that I've found myself in. I feel like a stranger in a strange land, where no one is strong enough to ask the hard questions, or to face themselves in the light of their own shadow. It's a dark light, but it's real. Some days I wonder if everything else isn't. When things are too bright, it's impossible to see anything as it is. So in what dwells the Truth and in what dwells the Lie?

At what point do we become an adult, and leave behind the child?

Goodbye

Now that I have a tumblr together, I'm bringing this blog to a close. Maybe I'll revive it someday, but I doubt it.

If you want to follow my art, you can follow me on Tumblr: http://astraljackal.tumblr.com/

:)

Changes

I feel like I'm outgrowing this little place on the web, and outgrowing talking about my experiences and my practices and beliefs in general. The farther I go down the rabbit hole, the more I seem to come back, re-observe my surroundings, and realize that often what I know is not what I think I knew. In turn, this means that I know nothing.

Your Truth might not be the same as mine, and if there is one thing I have learned that is crucial on this journey of life...is that you have to find your own answers. If you just have answers handed to you, it becomes meaningless, and the value of those answers cannot be truly comprehended as a result.

It is so easy to treat the pursuit of magic and knowledge in ways that fall into something as futile as mental masturbation. Without the practice, without diving in and having those experiences, mentally going through the motions and trying to understand them, will never bear the fruit you're looking for. You might think you find them, and then you reach out to grasp them, and find that it was just another fantasy, another perverse creation of an arrogant mind, claiming to understand how the cogs of the universe turn, and sometimes even WHY they do.

For some, magic is something that is a means to an end. For others, magic is a study, and the "science" of the metaphysical world....to others, it's a little bit of both. But getting back to the point... it's pointless. At this point, my practices and my beliefs are so mired in personal experience, inside jokes, and...life, that I don't feel I can really continue to speak of my personal journey to everyone.

So, instead, I've decided to focus my online presence into my art, and let it show my growth and progress in another medium. I don't want to tell you what to think- what you think and how you interpret the world is up to you.

I'm working on starting a Tumblr to do this, and in turn use this to challenge myself and grow into a better person and artist. This blog is kind of dead, and I'm starting to think that maybe it should stay that way. I can do better, so I will.

Per-Sabu

It's been hectic here. It usually is when I haven't posted for a long time. I don't really have much to say myself, but ran across an incredible wealth of knowledge recently on the "jackal" deities of ancient Egypt. This was all collected by Bezenwepwy, a fellow Anubis/Wepwawet cultist :)

If you want to learn about Anubis, Wepwawet, other "jackal" entities related, and unrelated to them, go check out her website at: http://www.per-sabu.org/

There's more information and even photos of artifacts, murals, etc than you can shake a stick at.

I'm deep in some kind of weirdness with trying to find myself. Not sure when I'll be posting again.

Death

Being someone who has worked with Anubis since a child, you'd think I must have known death. The truth is quite the opposite. I saw that which was dead. I felt the lingering presence, traces of the soul that was once there, and I also saw that which the soul had completely left, with no traces to be found.

To witness death, to witness the actual transition that takes place from life to death, is something else entirely. To witness death, and to understand what is happening, is to lose innocence. I never lost my innocence when I lost my virginity. I never lost my innocence even when later in my life I saw the dark underbelly of the world, and understood how closely I had come to....my own death.

We are always several steps from death, until it catches up with us. This is a fact of life. We are born, and one day we will also die. No matter how much we may want to not think about it, this will come to pass.

The death I witnessed, was not pretty. It was not slow, but it was not fast either. My attempts to save the life that passed between my fingertips, was started too late. I was ignorant, and so I failed. His heart had already stopped, and by the time he breathed out his last, his soul went out with his breath.

Og was there with me. We both tried to save this small, and fragile life that we held in our hands. Our breath, and our magic came too late. We didn't know that the breaths that the life before us was struggling to take, were because the heart had stopped. We didn't know that the gasps for air after the seizure were agonic breathing- the herald of death.

When you see death happen, you know it has happened. There is no mistaking it for anything else. When the soul has passed, you can tell that it has gone from the body. There is a reason that the soul is also called the "breath of life" in scripture. When you witness the final exhalation, the lungs deflate. The ribs show through, and it looks nothing like sleeping.... as rigamortis sets in, the body begins to re-inflate, giving the appearance of life, but this is false. It is a false hope, that will destroy you if you hold onto it. It is the denial of what you have just witnessed, because you have not been exposed to death. Your innocence has been lost, but you can't even comprehend it.

We are a society that hides death. Our sick and dying are kept in special facilities, rather than cared for in their final moments by their families and loved ones in their homes. We are never educated about it in any formal way. We only experience it typically, as older family members pass away as we ourselves age. We may or may not be invited, or even able to attend the funeral.

I was young when my grandfather died. I knew of death, and wanted to be able to say goodbye at the funeral. I was not allowed.

When my pets died as a child, I never saw the death. I usually came home from school, only to find that my parents had disposed of the body. My own dog was taken away by the gardeners, and disposed of in the trash.

We fear death as a society, so much, that we destroy the evidence of it, regardless of whether it is human, or "animal"

But I will tell you now, that life, is life. A human life measures the same as that as a lizard, if it is that which you love. In the end, all of us will some day breathe our final breath, and take our souls with it. But if you truly love something, someone, cherish it even as it dies. Cherish every moment you had with them, and respect them even in their death. That body was the precious vessel that carried the soul  you loved so much. Never forget that time you shared, and send them off with love in your heart. Don't hate them for leaving you, and don't hate yourself out of fear that you failed them.

Grieve, send them off, and live on, taking your knowledge with you, so that maybe, you and that which you love, can find the happiness, and the peace that you have searched for.

 Innocence is the veil that obscures Truth.

The worst thing we can do is force others to stay innocent, when knowing death, and how to honor those in death, can teach us the true value of life.

The Desperate Cry of Humanity

It's been a while hasn't it?

It's been busy here in my little universe. One thing after another, one step at a time, one step forward one step back... all leading to the realizations that I've had in the past few months. Sometimes you think you've seen the abyss, and then you realize that you've only scraped the surface of that inky blackness that lies below, all the while you're falling, silently screaming, because the world doesn't hear your voice. It doesn't acknowledge it. Your screams fall on closed ears, on closed hearts.

 This is the desperate cry of humanity, this is the universe that we both love, and hate. It's the way of things that must change. We ignore the suffering of humanity. We see that trembling, dirty hand, reaching out of the shadows, the haunted eyes that have seen too much, and that yet, are daring to hope... and the world turns its back, and averts its gaze, continuing on, leaving the desperate behind, dehumanizing those who can't be a good cog in the machine.

You may think you know. You may think you understand. But almost without exception, you do not. You will look for signs, for signals, ask for proof, and justify your hatred, or aversion of what you fear. This is human nature. Us or them, male or female, good or evil. We explore the universe in concepts of duality.

Life is for the strong, life is for those who deserve it, and those who deserve it is those who can prove their worth to those around them- that is the message that is sent from on high. (on high being of course the top offices of multi-national corporations that control the world economy)

And that, is the problem- our very society is structured around the idea that we have to be worth something "to others" and while this in itself isn't a bad thing (what's wrong with being helpful to each other?) it points out the issue that self-worth is almost an impossible feeling to attain without the praise of others. In a society that is based on judgement of a person's worth to "them" this creates a problem.

The problem is something that I've at least touched on in the past, that I have realized through my own explorations of my psyche: Humans (at least in this country) are so focused on separating the "human" from the "animal" that the concept that we ARE very much animals, and that this affects our society and psychology very strongly... is completely missed, or often misused by those in power who use this to their advantages.

We think we're so advanced, but we're children playing in a sandbox, playing at being adults. We're playing house, and missing the greater world around us, and even the small things in front of us. We should have so many advantages as humans- we are creators!... and yet... I see crows waiting at stop lights, waiting for the cross walk, hopping across the road as soon as the light changes. I've seen "animals" working together to aid each other gather food, or help each other in other ways... more than my eyes have seen humans do the same.

The city I live in, doesn't even have a 24 hour pharmacy anymore. There isn't even a single pharmacy downtown, and the clinic downtown is open at weird hours/days... those who need help, often have to travel to find it. Even with "healthcare reform" I've been unable to find a "real" dentist office anywhere who will take my insurance. I'm treated like a pariah as soon as it's discovered that I have insurance through the state, rather than something fancier. A friend of mine can't get even vital testing for a disease that runs in his family, because it's not "pre natal."

If he was pregnant, and there was a risk of passing it on to the child, they'd cover it... but because he's not, they refuse to pay for the testing that he needs, in order for his doctors to listen, and act... This is a double standard. He's alive, he's a human being, and he deserves to know whether he needs to start having yearly, invasive checkups, that the doctors also refuse to do, unless he actually has the diagnosis. $1600 out of pocket to find out if he's at risk for the same disease his father, and others in his family have, and yet... the doctors require diagnosis before treatment of any kind, even preventative treatment that would cause no harm to him to have.

In the city I live in, police chase off those who look "homeless" or "dressed poorly" telling them to leave town, because they "don't want them in their city" and people "loitering" in the downtown park where the food carts and benches are, where fresh, clean water is readily available... are harassed by officers, and threatened, told they have to leave after dark, because the park is "closed"...despite the food carts running and people buying food. It's a double standard, designed to gentrify the area, when it has a long, and rich history of being a place for the unfortunate to always have access to clean water, and a place to rest. The founders of the park would be horrified, but the "shareholders" who are working to gentrify the area have spoken.

We are numbers, checkmarks, statistics. Even when people can look us in the eyes, our lives are worth nothing other than what we can be sold...and if you can't be the "product" or the "consumer" then you are an outsider, a nothing.... dehumanized, silenced, stigmatized.

Yes, there are good people in the world... but we have to see through the lies first. We have to break through the illusions, and shatter them, before we can fight back in a way that does more than clatter against the armor of the serpent's scales, angering the beast enough to silence you completely.

This is why magic is important. We are the ones who dare to stare into the abyss. We are those who see through the illusions, and those who dare to leave the sandbox behind, to try to understand the greater world. We are all gods in training, and learning to see the sandbox for what it is, is the first step to the adulthood of humanity.

What will it take for us to see that we are all the same? That life, that experience is sacred, and that in the end, we all want, and all deserve the same basic needs as everyone else? Some people seem to think that people who suffer, suffer because they deserve it, or because they have a lesson to learn from it... In many cases, I will call bullshit... but what if your suffering is supposed to be a reminder, a look in the mirror, to the rest of humanity? A reminder that we are all human, and that we strive for acknowledgement from an uncaring world?

We try so hard to justify ignoring the suffering of others, that I've even seen "karma" cited as a reason in magical circles to not help people when they're clearly in trouble. It goes so far, that I've even seen things like "rape" justified as being a part of a "lesson" that someone apparently "needs" for their spiritual growth. This is of course, disgusting, utter bullshit, and the trap of sociopathy that egotistic magicians fall into.

 Being a mage isn't about being uninvolved, and separating yourself from the rest of the world, and the rest of humanity....It's about knowing your own current well enough to walk into the world, and change it with your very presence....inspiring, creating, and aiding those who are trapped in the sandbox, so that they can stand with you- on their own two feet, instead of sinking into oblivion. What else are Gods supposed to be doing?