The Tattooed Alchemist

Be Distinguished By Many Colors

It was while I was growing my microbial leather that I figured it out.  Alchemically my life is about fermentation right now.  Everything I read or hear that I don't like makes me feel like my face is making the same face I feel when I smell fermenting material.  Slightly sour.  I had just gotten some books from the library on bread-making, having made poolish starter bread for a few years now and wanting to get into levain, and suddenly my neighborhood blog announces there is a new backyard bakery opening just one street over from my house, specialzing in levain breads and offering a bread share program where they deliver to your house once a week.  Then I had a conversation with someone and something they said made me feel my fermentation smell face and inside I had the "a-ha!" moment.

"Take oil of olive, honey, rectified spirit of wine, of each a pint.  Distill them all together in ashes.  Then separate all the phlegm from the oils which will be distinguished by many colors.  Put all these colors into a pelican, and add to them the third part of the essence of balm and sallendine, and digest them for the space of a month.  Then keep it for use.  The liquor is so subtle that it penetrates everything."

- "Elixir Substilitatis" from ALCHEMY RISING: THE GREEN BOOK, Scarlet Imprint, 2015.

So I've got some rough sheets of microbial leather drying.  One is very thick and one very thin.  It was a nice experiment but it's clear the time to master the growing would be longer than I wish for general use.  Moving on to levain and continuing to explore fermentation will be more useful overall.  I'm going to try one of the bread shares for four weeks, where I will get a loaf of bread per week.  I need to observe my desire/consumption at that rate and volume, and see what this baker's bread is like.  I also need to read up on seed cultures and mother cultures and watch the thrift stores for containers and a few tools. 

It's not just doing fermentation, it's acting like fermentation.  I have to go a little slower than I might prefer.  I have to watch how things develop more.  I have to trust that smelling bad psychically can be a sign of either bad or good, and I have to pay attention to tell the difference.  I have some person work that is forming, a series of three rituals, and as they came into being and went from one ritual to three, I realized that was a fermentation too.  That work is in the fall and winter.  My pendulum and working with alchemical timings led to specific dates and influences, and it's clear I have to ferment before and between those works, like how dough is folded and proofed while developing. 

Talking with a friend about sweetening work led to a discussion of how I'm always just a bit off the usual, and that led to "what if the flavor I've been looking for all this time isn't sweet?"  More reading and meditating and it's clear that where most people might do sweetening work magickally, the flavor that is more appropriate to the feelings I want is umami.  All the fermented foods are in that grouping. Just like my tiny house has to be designed for how I am going to use it, I have to take the time to find the strange, liminal counterparts to everything I do in my magick too.


Cause That All The Matter Be Dissolved

Alchemy is a distillation process by which a great quantity of matter is purified until there is a small amount of something related but different at the end.  How one goes from a conventional, modern, Western lifestyle to one of a tiny houser is not unlike alchemy.  It's just that suddenly my equation for calculating dross just shifted so that something like ninety percent of my life is now judged as dross.

Some aspects of the lifestyle really do suit me and hopefully, I will find a way to exist inside current society in a way that is more comfortable for me by making these shifts.  So far, shifting over to a slightly parallel track just feels...wrenching...  I had an excellent conversation with my housemate the other day, as she too is working to live in a way that is more "true" and also finds it discomfiting in similar ways when moving away from the predominant mainstream.  

Yet seeing more the matter to wax thick and to sink to earth, and this thickness stood first upon the water, and so leaving by little and little the thickness they saw the earth drowned himself in the water and stand in the bottom of the vessel under the water, which earth was yellowish black and feculent, they said that this was perfect corruption. Kindle the fire in the furnace after the Philosophers manner, and cause that all the matter be dissolved into water. Afterwards govern it with easy fire till the most part be turned into black earth, which in 21 days will be done. Know that this science is none other thing than the perfect inspiration of God. For all the Magistery or art is but of one thing and we shall prove it by the saying of the philosophers.

from the Pretiosissimum Donum Dei (photo of the Red Spring, Glastonbury, England by Rae du Soleil)

Having communicated with my fire family, I am now in that strange space where they try to offer the help they think I need or they feel like giving while I either try and explain myself more clearly or attempt to gently demur.  I am becoming more and more attuned to language.  How in one sentence there is the offer of understanding and support but a statement later the words have shifted and suddenly I can feel the subtle social pressures trying to nudge me ever so gently.  Like Henry Rollins, this is why my optimism wears heavy boots.

I have my kombucha culture and will soon begin a new type of alchemical experiment:  culturing cellulose fibers to make vegan leather.  It should take a few weeks depending on ambient temperatures.  I think I'm going to grow it in my large glass water bath vessel from my distillation rig.  That should give me a round piece in the end, as whatever shape a container I use will wind up shaping the material that grows.  I will want this to be several centimeters thick.  I understand this material is not waterproof on it's own but I have a few ideas along those lines from all the mask-making I've done. 

My first official load of downsizing went to the thrift store the other day when I was out doing errands with my father.  I have plans to ditch another infinitely significant load this coming weekend, as I will need a vehicle to get rid of what I have on hand.  The city is doing a recycle event where they will take anything with a plug.  I'm going to take advantage of that and let go of a desktop computer, a large television, a carousel DVD player and a VHS player.  Thirty years of technology now obsolete.  Everything will be environmentally recycled, reclaimed and disposed of properly.   

The impulses that attach us to things is strange.  Right before I came home from Las Vegas, my friend there gave me five teacups, things she'd purchased just for me...despite knowing that I had just spent three months getting rid of possessions in her home and about to come home to mine and attempt to get rid of even more.  I just took them to be polite and now they are in a pile to be donated away at the next opportunity.  I have yet another load of books the pendulum separated out for removal, and it's even larger than the last two chunks I sold.  There's a good chance those will remain piled on hand until I head south for Ashland and pass through Portland.  If I have to let go of books, I'm going to do it at Powell's.

A Most Secret, Celestial, Invisible Earth

My Vigil of the Eye is almost at its end.  Talking with my friend, she said she felt two months was the perfect length for a trip, and I have to agree.  If my relocation had only lasted two months, I would not have the distinct "I'm done!" feeling that has been upon me as of late. 

Did I discern what I truly want and need from in amongst all that my heart feels and which I have observed?  I feel that "sort of" is the best answer, as true to my usual form, I really feel like I had some good experiences which helped me clarify a bunch of shit that I now feel I would prefer to not do again.  I can tell that both my tastes and preferences, and my wants and needs have all shifted in terms of how I view my main alchemical fire family.  I love them deeply but what I really want and really need is not what they are anymore.  I share some of their values but am seeking something less focused on theatrical performance and more on living systems.  I don't want a social community, where I just live in the same city as some of my tribe and we just have fun together.  I want some land and some deeper connections and I recognize that means sharing challenges along with the fun.  I'm just enough off from the core ways of being with the Vortex that I won't get the connection and validation that I seek and need because I don't quite do what that group lauds/supports/encourages.  I've been coming to events in Vegas for a decade and there's only one single person here who ever regularly contacts me in Seattle.  I'm not going to cease my involvement but I am going to seriously reconsider my investments of time and energy and new levels of priority and allocation are going to come into play.

Behold, I will tell you as plainly as I may. There are in the world two extremes -- matter and spirit. One of these, I can assure you, is earth. The influences of the spirit animate and quicken the matter, and in the material extreme the seed of the spirit is to be found. In middle natures -- as fire, air, and water -- this seed stays not, for they are but dispenseros or media, which convey it from one extreme to the other, from the spirit to the matter -- that is, the earth. But stay, my friend; this intelligence hath somewhat stirred you, and how you come on so furiously, as if you would rifle the cabinet. Give me leave to put you back. I mind not this common, feculent, impure earth; that falls not within my discourse, but as it makes for your manuduction. That which I speak of is a mystery: it is coelum terrae and terrae coeli, not this dirt and dust but a most secret, celestial, invisible earth.

from Magia Adamica: or the antiquitie of magic, and the descent thereof from Adam downwards, proved. Whereunto is added a... full discoverie of the true coelum terræ... By Eugenius Philalethes. London: T.W. for H.B, 1650.

The last two days I spent at a tiny house workshop.  If I had to sum it up in a word, I'd pick "specificity."  That's the entire goal of the process and the end result:  to make a house specific to the residents and their most important activities.  I have started to have some really interesting ideas, things I had never contemplated in the last two years of following the movement.  My house is going to be alchemical, and I have to explore how to apply those ideas to every detail of every part of it.  As above, so below.  As within, so without.  This is going to be harder than I can possible imagine. 

I want a porch on my tiny house that is larger than what most people build so it seems like getting a slightly longer trailer is the way to go.  I had been thinking of the bathroom and kitchen at the hitch end but now see them very much at the door end.  I see two lofts, stairs up and most likely a cathedral ceiling section.  I liked the wood stoves I saw, especially a very teeny UK model.  Composting toilet.  A bit of internet research last night showed me that my idea of using earthen plaster to combat the moisture issues that can happen in tiny houses has already been tried and it would seem that even when being moved around, the plaster stays on the walls of the house.  I had a vision of the hitch end being one gigantic floor to ceiling bookcase. 

In some ways I have a huge list of things to do when I get home, and yet I also feel I have no idea what I'm going to do.  Who am I kidding?  I'm spending the first three weeks at home freaking out about the Emerald City Comicon.

To Sense Without Erratic Notion

The talk that Normandi Ellis gave at Mysterium keeps echoing for me, the part where the Pharaoh was wrapped up and left inside the underground tomb to psychically become a gelatinous mass and transmute into a new form.  By the time I get this post written up and it goes live, I will have just about a fortnight left in my three month Vegas tenure.  I can't tell where I am in the process of transformation but my Vigil of the Eye revealed the process to me and there is a mixture of both revelation and revulsion in that sort of naked lunch moment.

My Mercury Retrograde was somewhat quiet but since going direct, I have seen all manner of strange and sudden energetic shifts.  I had an interesting healing session with my friend J.  She just lets Spirit run through her, blending a variety of modalities.  She found some key points in my body that were tied to important blocks of energy and important moments, a very way-out-of-left-field approach that landed smack on some stuff that then shifted palpably.  Weird stuff that made me feel funky but then better.  That's about as good as it gets.

This riddle placed in Space of mental motion
Is plane to sense without erratic notion
Motion's confined to various centriq place
Never to pass ye boundless bounds of Space
Thus each beginning doth its end contain
And End once made it must begin again
For what was done by one Creating Word
Must by this Three in one be understood

from Place in Space, transcribed by Adam McLean from MS. Sloane 3797, folios 3-5.

R is about to have another round of surgery so she's been incredibly focused and easier to work with this past week.  It made for a long and intense work day Friday.  I got called over to E and G's unplanned Friday night, only to find myself suddenly serving an eviction to a developmentally-othered man from their neighborhood.  I got to stare some more hoarder culture right in the face, and I have to say, the RV interior most closely reminds me of things I've cultivated and lived in myself.  We know the crazy guy got into the RV through the main door because the entire inside is built up so that all the surfaces are covered and all the windows are blocked, so if he'd come in any other way, the "crust" would be broken and you'd see where because the inner layer would be disturbed.

It's going to be some sort of special kind of epic when I go home after this three month away-mission and look at all my own shit again.  I can tell I'm going to be hugely relieved and simultaneously disgusted.  Ah, my blessed paradoxical state, how I love thee....!

Anyway I got to be sort of scary and yell and agress because this guy doesn't understand "Go away, please leave, we don't want you to come here anymore."  E is aghast that something got in past her house wards.  I'm just happy this is happening towards the end of my stay and not the beginning.  My E immunity is full-developed now and I can handle the sudden deployment of the extra cray-cray.  Plus she was more than happy to be the one to call the cops so really once I got done with my performance all the stress part was over and I set about seeing what needed to come back to the house.

Saturday was the DMC's Imbolc ritual.  It was interesting to listen to so many people say how they wanted to get together with me before I go.  I don't actually expect to see any of them because they've been saying stuff like this since early December and when I follow up, no one replies or makes genuine plans.  By coming closer for a time, I can now see how much outside the Vortex community I am, and always will be.  The Heart wants some of what the Vortex feels like, but the Eye needs it to be more practical and real.

Then there was a power surge in Seattle that blew out the wireless modem.  My housemate on that end is surviving on her office connection until a new one arrives later this week.  And then there was the extremely brief email from my mom, informing me that my aunt in Santa Cruz had fallen and broken both her upper arms.  The Mercury Shadow lasts until March 3, the day after A comes home from Costa Rica.  This last bit could be very interesting.

The Etheric Forces Of Nature Which Are Fully Active Underground

At this time we are in Mercury retrograde, during the time of Aquarius, poised right before the moment of Imbolc.  Societal collapse shows more clearly all the time where I am in northern Las Vegas, but so do all the more pleasant distractions.  Right now, one of my witchy sisters is on the road, headed to points south and eventually landing sometime this evening at the Goddess temple.  I will be seeing her tomorrow.  The second sister arrives on Friday, and the three of us will do Mysterium this weekend.

Because it is so enigmatic an attempt will now be made to explain as fully as possible in what sense it acts as an inspiration to the alchemist. The symbol is a woman pouring out the contents of an urn. This might seem an unlikely symbol for an air sign. The explanation is this: the contents of the um represent irradi­ation, the etheric forces of nature which are fully active underground.

-- GOLD OF A THOUSAND MORNINGS, Armand Barbault, 1969, translated from the French by Robin Campbell 1975.

Although this is the time of the gathering of the First Matter, here in the desert, there's no gathering of morning dew like there might be elsewhere.  I will be doing that work in the Inner realm this season, where raw lead seems to be in abundance.  The Air of Earth is radiation:  that reminds me of Art Kunkin's work with the Philosopher's Stone, and his irradiating pears with pitch-blend and eating them.  

Last year I learned that the material you use to collect the dew is important, for if you use a metal or wooden bowl, the dew will be instantly attuned to either the Metal or Plant Kingdoms if caught in these, and so I had to switch to ceramic or glass.  If we get any more significant rain here, I may put out a vessel and catch some, because you can't get much more rare in energy than Las Vegas rain water, I figure.  One of those really windy, rainy days would be rather potent.

My Vigil of the Eye has made some things very clear at this point.  Once again, I find myself orienting from what doesn't work for me.  I think it's about time I stop letting others tell me that I'm a negative person just because I look for the bad and move away from it instead of looking for the good and moving towards it, like most humans seem to do.  As much as I share a lot of individual strands of different values with the Vortex community, nothing 'Vortex' connects back to my life in Seattle.  Meaning, aside from anything that is directly me, no humans here maintain any awareness of or connection to my life outside of Las Vegas.  While there are people whose lives and existences I care about when I am not in Las Vegas with them, I do not find that sentiment comes back the other way to Seattle.  Truly, it does not.  People like when I'm here, but it's not essential, they aren't bothered one way or the other if I'm here or not... and I've decided that's not serving me.  If I'm going to put effort into a spiritual community, I want to feel like they care that I'm part of the community.  I want them to care what I do in the community, and how I do it. 

And just as I was reading about how some people are rejecting being "makers" because it devalues those humans who are not, this community puts an extremely high value on Performers.  I am a not a Performer in any of the ways that this community values them, and I have been aware of that devaluation for a long time. 

There's also something about this community, and how it clings to older power structures, the "old boy" network.  I had been thinking about it last year, and then there was a beautiful man who spoke to how he was really struck by how women are missing from leadership roles at the Illumination afterglow, and that locked right in with a quote I had read the week before, and now I find all these months later I'm not the only woman with whom that idea has been fermenting.  I suspect there are a group of us (of all genders and roles) who have sort of stepped up at fire circles over the years, or been groomed to take over certain tasks, and it's becoming clear that while we don't mind inheriting the fire circle tradition, we aren't about to take on every last little facet of the tradition, especially the ones we know are are "-ist" or an "-ism."  

I put in presentation proposals to an event the last weekend in July.  If I get accepted, I will not be attending Illumination.  Overall, I did not enjoy the expanded Fall Fest/Bonedance event this past October and as much as I am now the Vortex registrar, I don't see attending that event as being something that serves me.  Especially as that now is in direct time conflict with my saffron harvest.  Packaging up my saffron to give as gifts, I realized how much I had really been anticipating the harvest and all that activity myself.  I willingly missed the harvest of my first real saffron crop and, after the fact, that bums me out. 

The approach of Imbolc certainly has revealed some interesting mental seeds.  In my alchemical interpretation of the Wheel of the Year, this is the time of Dissolution.  Time to dissolve all in water, and wash away disillusion.