Harsh Beauty

I was trying to upload a really cool picture of Sherlock Holmes here, but the computer is being difficult so please just imagine it at your leisure...

To paraphrase one of my favorite Sherlock Holmes quotes, "When you remove what is impossible whatever is left, no matter how improbable, is your answer."

This has been running through my mind all day at work. Work has been grueling to say the least and this will be the first time that anything like a weekend has come my way since February. (Weekend two days off together... ode to joy!) To say that I have been a bit grumpy would be a vast understatement. Despite this, today I was greeted with a glorius carpet of golden wild flowers as far as the eye could see. Since I am in a high dessert valley, that involved the horizon. It was absolutely breathtakingly beautiful.

The dessert is almost devoid of standing water and fire, it is composed mainly of earth and air. For me, those are the two most challenging elements. Watching how life adapts to this harsh environment has been inspirational in my own alchemical journey. The Joshua Trees grow but an inch a year and get the water they need from the air. They adapt and stand firm, this is a good life lesson.

When I stop to think, there are really two major workings that have contributed to this Dessert wandering. The first was a request to HCOMA after my lodge dissolved into ecstacy in November. I asked to "Be given the strength to do what needed to be done." This was done at Seal beach while drawing sigils in the sand and letting the ocean wash them. It turned out to be way more foreboding than I intended. The process of needing strength is by implication stating that you will need to push through something. I really had a general idea of what I needed strength for at the time but missed the second half of that equation. I have found on this journey that I have done things that I did not think I was capable of doing. In some ways that is wonderful and in some way that is horrible. It is however edifying as a human.

The second working was a sex magick operation where all of the parts were fullfilled exactly as charged, but not at all how I had expected. When I went back recently to read the charge, the universe followed the letter of the charge. I was most amused. It manifested in a complicated and delicate way. At the end of the day the charge was accomplished and magickal childe is firm and palatable.

While this is not the life I would have chosen 2 years ago, it suits me just fine today. Funny how things change, but the magick remains.

And for today... first the exstacy then the laundry!