Jeebuz, but I am glutted on movies and it's a wonderful thing.  It was X-Men last weekend (finally, it didn't suck!) and this weekend we have Maleficient.  (memo to self: find horns) And I'm ready to keep hitting it weekend after weekend all summer.  When I'm not busy with other stuff.  Suddenly there's this path that's cleared up in the fog and it extends out into October.  I got an email laying out dates and events for Fall Fest/Bonedance, and it's been split to be more of a two weekend thing.  Looks like Jeff's previous schedule of total overlap just isn't flying anymore.  And really that's probably for the best.

Next up travel-wise is southern Oregon in early June and an extended weekend in Ashland.  We FINALLY are going to stop at the Enchanted Forest on the way down.  The gigantic witch's head is reason-enough alone.  We get The Tempest and Into The Woods in one long, ass-busting day.  I think we're one inside and one outside theater-wise.  I'm bringing that amazing purple blanket that I got from Tara at Illumination last year just to be safe.   

We've had this threat of rain virtually every day, just like you'd imagine for Seattle, and yet it never quite kicks in.  I'm trying to gauge influences and warmer temps to find a good day to get some spagyrics started.  I think it might be convenient for me to do them in tiny craft batches as I have plant material and containers available.  If I do them in pairs-ish fashion it will work out a lot more easily than if I do seven singly.  I also have to decide if I want to get my Mercury for that here in WA or wait until I hit OR in two weekends.

For PantheaCon20 we had a full moon, Mercury was in retrograde, the first two days were alchemically aligned with digestion and the last two were with dissolution.  From what I experienced, it was a great con with a lot of old stuff and new stuff, and my balancing act of all that and taking care of myself worked.  I had really good friends at the con with me, and I felt our room situation was utterly drama free this year.  I felt like I got really good quality one-on-one time with each of my three close friends at the con, and I also managed to get alone time when I needed it too.  

I didn't think I'd be dyeing my hair peacock before I went, but I did.  I didn't think I'd run into other people who seemed to have the same idea and who did peacock hair that didn't look anything like mine and yet was totally recognizable as also being peacock hair, but I ran into two of them.  And one had formerly had flame hair which I did last August.  And that's just three heads out of an entire con.  I was wearing my Gojira slippers when I encountered a furry.  I mesmerized a lady's baby with my Minion.  I got to use my first gender neutral pronoun in a group discussion.  I did not endlessly snack on sugar.  Despite staying up nearly every night until 1:30am, I did jump right out of bed at eight the next morning and was out the door anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes later to do something starting at 9am. 

I attended two rituals that were closely adapted from original material created in the late 1800s.  I'll take that as a sign to look more closely at the material I have which deals with the same time period.  Undoubtedly this will relate back somehow to the photographic material I have from Notre Dame and the writing of Fulcanelli.  I can tell already.  I created two charms as part of two classes.  The first was in one of those two Victorianesque rituals, the other was in Kalla's pop magick class.  One is a stone which was soaked in wine and charged by placing it under my tongue and reciting a long spell.  The other is a slight-imperfect 12-sided die which looks kinda flamey and which is now connected to an energetic thought-form, otherwise known as Agent Fox Mulder.  I really left my mind open to see if any of the characters I've obsessed over or put energy into over the years wanted to step up when it came to that ritual, and that's who did.  I have to craft a new mojo bag that can be tucked into my everyday bag and which will hold a few more things than the one I have now.

I will be exploring and playing with all my ideas and self-created roadblocks around the concept of daily practice for a bit.  Or maybe I'll be bugging myself about just thinking about it and not doing much.  Suffice to say, I got to hear some stuff I needed to hear again in that class and we'll see how I do with it.  I got a physical, jewelry-style charm at the con too, from the vendor Amber Moon, who made my walrus ouroborus.  It's a tiny magickal cottage, and I'm going to charge it up to help me manifest Right Home, in whatever form that is best for Me and my Found Family. 

I had not done any sort of sacred/bdsm scene at the con in years, and I have to say I had one hell of an efficient and yummy one this year.  I tried to keep it simple but allow the involved humans to get a deeper experience, and make the entrie exchange more sacred.  It worked alright, almost to the point where I was a little amazed myself at what had happened.  One of those instances where I found myself durings bits of it watching my hands and then I'd reconnect that they were mine.  Those freakin' Gojira slippers were ridiculous, extremely comfortable and unexpectedly grounding.  It made it much eaiser for me to draw energy up and into my various arm actions.  I just know one of my mentors all those years ago would have been proud of the silly slippers.

And now we look ahead, to March.  Ahead of us is wind, the equinox and Separatio. 

I've been doing alchemical fire circles (alchemifires) with the Vegas Vortex and related groups for a decade now. It's been interesting to watch the process refine and change over the years, and I made the effort to go to a variety of different fires so that I could see how the various branches of the Fire Family did their own thing. Mostly I've interacted with the West Coast off-shoots. I'm glad I got to three of the Hawaii/Oahu events before that group chose to disband at the end of 2012. There were a few years where there was some really fun experimentation and exploration in terms of ritual structure and alchemical metaphors, but things seem to have settled down much more now.  Illumination is clearly the next-gen of circles but so far it's working on disseminating the established culture, or at least that's the direction it seemed to take in year two.  If I get the chance to go see how Four Quarters does their alchemifires, I'd be curious about that one.

A few years back I took Robert Bartlett's Prima class on practical lab work and seeing how all the alchemical metaphors and material applied to actual laboratory chemistry was fantastic. In turn, this inspired me to start looking at laboratory procedures and how we might find new ways to play in ritual, riffing off other processes versus sticking to just the classical seven-phase structure.  For my own ritual work, I've been working with nine phases, adding Multiplication and Projection at the end after Coagulation.  It makes more sense to me to not just be standing there holding gold, and to do something after making it as the proper conclusion.

" I, Saturn, the greatest of the planets in the firmament, declare here before you all, that I am the meanest and most unprofitable of all that are here present, that my body is weak, corruptible, and of a swarthy hue, but that, nevertheless, it is I that try you all. For having nothing that is fixed about me, I carry away with me all that is of a kindred nature. My wretchedness is entirely caused by that fickle and inconstant Mercury, by his careless and neglectful conduct. Therefore, I pray you, let us be avenged on him, shut him up in prison, and keep him there till he dies and is decomposed, nay, until not a drop of his blood is to be seen."

~ "The Twelve Keys of Basil Valentine," from Ein kurtz summarischer Tractat, von dem grossen Stein der Uralten...', Eisleben, 1599.

Having had this recurring Ripley Scroll thing, as I mentioned last week, I got to exploring the work of George Ripley more, and his Twelve Gates writings.

1. Calcination
2. Solution
3. Separation
4. Conjunction
5. Putrefaction
6. Congelation
7. Cibation/Nutrition
8. Sublimation
9. Fermentation
10. Exaltation
11. Multiplication
12. Projection

Not only do I think there could be benefit in having the metaphorical ritual/inner process not end with Coagulation (creating the gold), but I also found from my own work that having more and shorter phases across a long period of time makes for a more smoothly flowing ritual.  There's less up-and-down as far as actions which mark the time, and it's easier to give more intentional action to a shorter period of time.  Less loss of momentum.  We already have an established structure at work in the community, so introducing a variation isn't that difficult.  It's sort of like how Illumination tried something last summer that was sort of like the usual affinity group process but they changed the metaphor and didn't assign specific group leaders.  There were enough attendees who were familiar with collaborative improvisation to hold the hands of everyone else who was freaking out from never having done it before.  In my perfect world, I'd like to do this at MayFire where almost everyone knows the drill, and we'd just play the game with some new pieces.  One catch to that might be that it is such a small event, having more groups would make them too small to be practical about this.  Illumination which runs double to triple the size of a MayFire could be more suitable.

Gates one through four are standard.  Putrefaction is really interesting, because at Vortex fires rotting is lumped in with Calcination and I think it would be really interesting to have done some purification work and then take a deep dive down to see exactly what the shit is at that point.  Congelation is a thickening and slowing down.  The Cibation phase is the perfect spot for literally "feeding" the ritual or group.  I'm not yet sure how a group would enact Sublimation.  That's rare enough physically as it is.  Fermentation is standard.  Exaltation, Multiplication and Projection seem like a great way to energize and head to the end.  Bring the energy up, expand it and then connect it to the world outside the ritual space.  Seems like a natural to me.  Ripley has a section after the gates he calls the Recapitulation and that seems like the afterglow part of the ritual.  I need to research more into the phases and explore their facets.  I also think the symbolism of "gates" could be significant.  

I'm still working out the manifestation of cob house workshops and festival fires for the spring and summer.  May has the potential for one cob workshop and two potential events.  In earlier May is MayFire in Vegas and (hopefully) at the end of May will be another Northwest Alchemy Conference.  I haven't heard from Karen since late summer so I guess it's time to go poke her and see what's up.  June or July could have cob building.  June has Shakespeare in Ashland.  Early July I usually house-sit for the 'rents, later July has a faerie festival potential.  And August is Illumination.