A one way ticket to Alabama

I attempted to upload a picture that said "Welcome to Alabama the beautiful", but there was in internal error that prevented that process. This does not bode well for technology in that state.

A couple of weeks ago I went down to LA and felt that things were changing, I just didn't realize how drastically. Within the span of a few days I had three job offers to consult. It sort of kills this semester, but all of them are opportunities that I should really take.

The first two are actually together. My best friend from high school is starting his own business in Huntsville and needs some help with the EPA and regulations. They have a sister company that they are working with who needs the same sort of help. Late next week I will be getting on a plane to Alabama that does not have a return flight. This is more than a little disquieting, but I don't know how long this process will take. Hopefully it should not be much more that a week or two. It could, however, be incredibly lucerative in the long run. This should be quite an adventure.

When I survive that I will come back home and deal with family Christmas. That is probably more dangerous than this hippy in Alabama.

In mid January I should be starting another contract job working for the woman who trained me in this business too many years ago. It will be fun to get to work with her again. We will work 18 hours a day, but it should again be short term lucerative and great fun. That hopefully will be about 6 weeks.

The good Frater has graciously volunteered for cat duty. I hope the two of them can work it out :)

So when I said the tides were changing, I had no idea how fast and in what direction.

All I keep thinking is of John Lennons line: " Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans."

My Pisces side is thrilled with the adventure and my Taurus side is not at all thrilled with the impending change to my schedule. The bull will just have to learn to roll with the punches. Yeah, I will keep you posted on that :)

For now I am off to contemplate my universe and I hope you enjoy doing the same.

Tides are changing

The above picture was taken last weekend at Seal Beach when my LA family was kind enough to take me down to the water. As a Pisces it was like plugging into a battery.

I process life and magickal things slowly. It is ironic because I usually process information very quickly - right up until it impacts me. Then it hits a filter. A big Taurus kicking and screaming filter.

When I did the cube of space talk I could not get the corner that was Death ( Scorpio) to balance in 3 space for love nor money. It kept twisting no matter which ropes I tightened or loosened. Eventually, I gave up and make a joke about it being a lovely rhombus of space and continued. This was a big screaming visual clue that I was missing something large. I was just trying to ignore it.

Last weekend I went down to LA to dissolve into ecstasy the Lodge where I started. In speaking with my family it was decided to be a sort of day of the dead party. As a joke and serious life lesson I brought my wedding dress. That had dissolved into ecstasy many years ago amicably. I spent 18 months hand beading the thing, it was nice to wear it again. Well that and I really liked the tiara. I could not help but think of myself as a large representation of the Art card. I had a white dress, a crown and red cloak. Whether or not I consciously planned it, there was alchemy a foot.

As part of my trip my siblings took me down to Seal Beach. They graciously allowed me to put my feet in the water. While there I had an inspired moment to draw a few of my personal magickal symbols and charge them with the energy of the ocean. I then watched as they dissolved and spoke with HCOMA from the Tablet of Union about my intentions. When I was done, nothing but sand, dreams and water were left.

When we were defending the mural, one of the elder photographers had a great line. He stated.

"I have always lived by to thine own self be true and the rest was negotiable."

That line has been running in my head since I got back from LA. Changes are a foot. Big life changes. I can feel the pull of the tide and must embrace Death and let go of those things that are no longer of me. I must embrace the putrefaction that Scorpio implies and move on. Compost happens.

In that line of thought I have a few things that are nonnegotiable.

1. I am a Thelemite sex magickian
2. I am a Druid
3. I love deeply and fully

Beyond that, everything is negotiable.

Boom boom go the lights

So after working on some glorious physics most of the day, I went out to a local bookstore to continue as activities went on at the house. I took the laptop with me which was mistake number 16 on the day. I finished the lab and then it ate it. Just when I thought that this joy would never end, they started playing Christmas music.

That works as my personal lesser banishing ritual, if Santa has not made it down the parade yet!

So I get home and the house has an eerie candle lit glow. I am already in a bad mood and I am not sure what this is about. When I get in to investigate there is no power to just the house. The neighbors are fine, it is just the house. WONDERFUL!

The back story to this is that the Good Frater has been working on Jason Miller's class meditations. He has been feeling everything and pulling energy out of the Earth.

The Hamster immediately jumped to "What did you DO???"

I went out and checked the circuits. Everything seemed to be on. Shit!

I went back in the house and was positively sulking by now. I asked the good Frater to ask the various house guardians what the nature of the problem entailed. He was on too many pain pills to hear clearly so he gave me the "phone." I started asking questions and got opposing (but ultimately true) answers. Again a lesson in asking the right question...

Finally PG&E shows up and explains that our meter is "blown open". It happens with these smart meters he says. Within 2 minutes we are up and going. I thank the man profusely and eye the good Frater.

Coincidence? Maybe? Just in case no more of that! It will be hard to explain why we have gone through 27 meters.

The good news is that I am no longer the only one who blows up electrical equipment. Yes I will savor this moment! Assuming that the lights are on long enough for me to post this.

Cube of Space and the aftermath

This glorious image was taken off of the site:
http://www.maybelogic.org/maybequarterly/06/images/Figure5.jpg

They do incredible book bindings and as soon as I win the lotto, I am on their doorstep!

The last two weeks has been an adventure to say the least. The Cube of Space talk went well and several folks expressed interest in the OTO classes. I realized though why I was actually there about 5 minutes into the talk. There were two girls down front that were not so sure about all of this, but they really wanted a tarot reading. I found it funny that I was Hamster kicked into tucking my cards into my bag that morning. I had not intended to do anything with them. The Hamster knew otherwise.

After the talk. which rambled a bit I admit, the girls tentatively approached me. They asked me how much I charged for a reading, when I said that I didn't they were a bit shocked. We went over to a quiet area and as soon as I pulled out the Thoth deck one of the girls noticed the Hermetic Cross on the back of the cards. She asked me what the cross was and as I explained it. You could literally see both of them relax. It might not be the largest moral victory but if two young ladies came away from the event with a sense that we are not out to sacrifice cats and other such nonsense, then it was time well spent.

Since the event several folks have come up and asked for clarification on the specifics. All in all I would say it was more sucessful that I anticipated.

Some of the unexpected fall out came from the annual edition of the "drama club."

From my humble experience people come to paganism for a number of reasons. Most of those can fall into three general catagories: a quest spiritual enlightenment, flipping off the mainstream religions and because they are just generally hard to get along with and need some reason to scream that they are being persecuted. The last one rarely has anything meaningful to add to the pagan conversation. They are however often the loudest.

This years drama club escalated to thinly veiled threats of some sort of violence against the good Frater. It really was a banner year. I am generally a calm and gentle soul. Right up to the point where you threaten me or mine. If you want to see a mother bear in action just push, trust me she is in there. I take all threats seriously, but must say that some of the chaos was amusing. The genius ringleader decided that I just wanted to burn all witches. I explained that since I had been HPS at several large wiccan gatherings and would have to set half of my family on fire, it was probably a bit off the mark. While amusing I must say that eventually all of this gets old.

It is why in many ways I prefer as Jason calls it the cabal. I enjoy the company, online or in person, of Working magickians. The local community is so diverse and diluted/polluted that it is hard to find working magickians here. In fact the concept of magick is often very foreign and scary to the local community. Thinking happy thoughts and dancing around with flowers in their hair is about as far as they go. And that is fine. I just prefer the company, online or in person, of working magickians who do not meet me with stunned silence when I explain my recent working.

Enough for now. More later on the new adventures :)

Peace to all and enjoy your universe.

In Defense of Artistic Freedom

This morning I had the intention of bageling as we do every weekend and working on the semantics of tomorrows presentation. (Please read as Pisces procrastination and working on scrambling details together - small stuff like the actual cube...) All of that changed with an article in our local paper about a mural in an artistic area of town that was going to be painted over due to neighbors complaints. Mind you this is the ART district.

So we went down at before 8 am to see it before it was painted over. On the way down I was formulating a protest strategy in my head. The good Frater looked at me as if I had lost what was left of my little mind. Hyped up on coffee and Jackson Browne CDs we headed down. As soon as we got there we both realized that painting over this beautiful mural was travesty of justice. A few other souls were gathered and we worked out a very impromptu plan to protest instead of sitting Shiva (sorry for my bad Hebrew spelling.

We knew right then that our day had taken a dramatically different but important turn.

When the artists who had been working for free and supplying their own paint for this 125 foot mural heard that it was going to be painted over, they "modified" their mural to express their displeasure. Their acts of definance emboldened the rest of us.

We went and gathered supplies, lawn chairs, bits from Lowes for the actual cube and headed back. The revolution may begin, but we will be comfortable for it!

Soon we were a small group of motivated souls bent on stopping this action in a peaceful way. We were a rag tag bunch at first. Just a few old hippies and a few young artists. Soon our numbers swelled to about 150. There were old ladies in Jaguars and starving artists standing side by side. Quietly protesting with our presence our moral outrage. We were all prepared to get painted over in order to make our protest heard. Soon some of the old hippies had contacted the press and the social pressure mounted.

The artists came and explained their mural to the crowd and the time for them to come and paint over it came and went. We took some group pictures and sort of toddled off to wence we came.

We went back before dinner and it was still there along with the artists. We thanked them again for their efforts and then found out that the owners had reconsidered their choices and the mural stays. For now. For the next few weeks.

This battle is far from over, but it is my sincere hope that if we can come together peacefully over art that we show progress as a people. Baby steps in the name of artistic freedom. Baby steps, but steps none the less.

Now to sleep. It will be a long chaotic day tomorrow. Peace be with you.

Tarot pursuits and focus - the magoclal mystery tour

This weekend, I attended the good Frater's tarot talk. As usual he did very well. The after conversations were splendid. The class contained some of my favorite magickal folks and it is always nice to be in their presence. No walls necessary just a comfortable sigh of home.

I had a chance to hang out with the man who started my OTO career and he is always fun just to hang out with. The stories and magickal bubbly bits always get my wheels turning.After that we went down south and I was privillaged to get to hang out with my mentors. They are great folks and they have the most amazing way of striking just the right note with the tuning fork to get me humming for quite a while.

The drives back are some of my favorite times. The good Frater and I have purged much of the extraneous noise from our lives. So the radio chattering away is just annoying on long trips. We bounce ideas off one another and try to piece together different pursuits most times. This was no different. Armed with new energy and focus there will be many changes coming in the upcoming year. There were many projects that were woven together along the way. Some of tarot and her mysteries, some of enochian pursuits and one of my own personal projects involving book binding will be worked on in the near future. The dark part of the year is shaping up to be a most productive look inward.

Stay posted for next weeks cube of space adventure. I suppose at some point I should write some of what I am going to say for an hour down on paper. Though I almost hate to ruin the surprise :)

Peace to all where ever you may be.

Shifting perspectives at 800 miles per second

This image was snagged from http://accuracyandaesthetics.com/518

I thought that it captured the spirit of the last two weeks. The Earth spins through the galaxy at approximately 800 miles per second. Hence we are always on the go :)

As a pisces I tend to pick obscure topics to speak on for our local Pagan gatherings that interest me. If I am not passionate about a subject it really just isn't worth either of our time. Ever since the Enochian workings I have been fascinated with the information pieced together for me and more importantly it's practical implications. I mean understanding it is one thing, but DOING something with it is quite another.

I ponder things and how they are connected constantly. Honestly, I go to bed wondering about space fabric and quarks. I have done so ever since I can remember. The fascination of how things were put together inevitably brought me to tear a lot of things apart. Some of which did not go back together as smoothly. Object lesson dually noted.

One of my favorite Einstein quotes is "The most inconcievable thing about the universe is that it IS conceivable."

I apply that logic to magick as well. If you understand how the natural world works then you can work within that frame work with minimal efforts to bring about the desired effects. This is a whole lot easier than fighting the whole system. It can be done but takes a ton more energy. There are times for both.

As I have been delving into the Cube of Space talk, I realized that I had at least half of it ass backwards. The books that I am using rely heavily on BOTA and GD symbolism. Which is fine, but I have problems with a system that cuts the Enochians completely out of the picture. Since working with the Tablets they have become intertwined in my universe in a most delightful way.

The parts that I had backwards where on the Hermetic Cross or the Rose Cross. I had always considered that the center was spinning and that the outer parts were manifestation that had stopped. As I dug deeper I realized that the center and hence the cube is really just potential energy.

It is potential and hence IT is stopped and the little white bit in the middle of the Rose Cross is really the axis mundi of a cosmic proportion. All of this is just waiting to blossom into manifestation.

Since the tarot and the cube are really about circles and rotation this will become the central focus of the talk.

The cube is primarily made up of the 3 alchemical, 7 planetary and 12 astrological symbols. Yet, they are in concentric circles to one another and all with POTENTIAL energy. As we start with the alchemical we have the 3 mother letters and the supernals - all of the building blocks of creation. Then we move to the double letters and the planets. We bend the tree so that the Universe is at once above the Abyss and creation as Saturn and then at the point of manifestation in Malkuth. And the snake eats it's tail... As we move out again the astrological signs are made up of stars far beyond the planets. We move out and then we move back in. The wheel turns and we create out Universe.

As the cube is created, it sits with cosmic potential just waiting to become motion. This is where the magickian comes in. Realizing how the universe is made allows us to apply the pressure in the right spot to bring things closer or farther away. We are our own microcosm and macrocosm. As above so below.

As we speak the good Frater is in the bedroom practicing his speech. He will know it inside and out by the time he gives it.

Next week I will physically construct the cube from PVC pipe, cards and twine. A few days before I will jot some notes on a few pages and make sure that I have my facts straight.

My goal in the talk will be to connect with each person there and have them come away with a little something to think about. So I will have my outline but I will be listening very closely for what my Hamster has to say. I do not wish to teach magick, I wish to train magickians in the tools at their disposal.

I have had enough theater and public speaking training to have it come off smoothly and only the good Frater and I will know how different our preparation methods really are :)

Well off to sleep. Peace to all.