Satellite link has been funky for days.  And yet, posting on Beltane seems appropriate.  My hands are falling off from dryness.  I have torn cuticles, scrapes, nicks, a burn and two splits and that's just my right hand.  Seriously, I need a copy of Louise Hay's Little Blue Book to look up right hands.  

I can't comment on the Sekhmet theft at this time.  I have heard both all the official and unofficial findings and theories, and my dream is to see cops show up at MayFire and take someone away to be questioned.

Two boys from FetLife are emailing, because this only happens when I'm out if town.  One is 24, can hold lucid email conversations and is a horny nerd boy who likes CBT.  Then there's the 41-yr-old guy who went from "hmmm..." to "not good" to "I have to back out of this conversation, like yesterday."  I'm holding out hope for nerd boy for the moment.  

"It is a green and sour fruit, compared with the red, ripe fruit. It is metallic youth on which Evolution has not yet worked, but which contains the latent germ of real energy, which will be called upon to develop later."

from Fulcanelli's MYSTERY OF THE CATHEDRALS.

The news about my friend E is really not good now that I can talk to people who are not her.  She is in extremely bad shape due to the government taking away all of her pain meds that work and only giving her morphine.  Or as everyone phrases it, they're trying to kill her.  Apparently she's had more weight loss and some strange bouts of bleeding.  I am relocating to A's starting Friday night, and she's just about 4 miles from E's, so I will get in a visit before I hit the deep desert.  Might be the last face-to-face we get.

A May Day ritual was to walk the bounds of your land, so I have been circling and crossing the Temple land a lot.  I try and get out for a few hours in the morning, then get off the land through the midday and get back out in the evening.  I am the only one at all here who goes out to the Temple after dark.  There are two sort-of-hilarious lesbian women staying here this week, who were just passing by, and they are having a classic road adventure much like the first two years when C and I hit the road in NV in the early fire community days.  

We had the new moon gathering last night.  It was a potluck and crafting session.  Highlight of the crafting session:  having listened to five late-teens and early-20-somethings go on about the recent Jaguar commercials, I interjected how a friend and had driven an hour to an obscure town north of us so that on January 30th we could see a same-day broadcast of Tom Hiddleston performing in Coriolanus in London.  If we had been in an aircraft, the oxygen masks would have exploded down from the ceiling right after I made that statement.  Not a one of them said anything, I had outclassed their entire combined fandom in a single move.  K, my twisted little sister, that one was totally for you.

Tonight is Beltane at the Temple, Friday I relocate to A's (AMC 10 within blocks!) and Saturday is DMC's Beltane.  I will see the Mermanor for the first time ever.  And then who knows ahead of MayFire?

I told myself I would start this week's blog entry out at the Goddess Temple in Nevada, as that is where I will be going on Tuesday the 22nd.  However, the theft of the statue of Sekhmet at that sacred space overnight on Good Friday is too near and dear to my heart and I am noting that unfortunate incident here, now, still in Seattle.  If it be Her Will to be out on walkabout for a very brief time, so be it.  However, I would very much like to see Her return, especially if that could happen during my trip there in these next few weeks.

So, yes, I am counting down, making piles, taking things out of piles, putting things on top of other things and putting a lot of things into little bags, and then putting those little bags into bigger bags.  All while chanting the mantra "less is more."  I have the ride out to the desert sorted.  I just have to work out what I want to do with the few days at the very end of the trip and coming back.  The trick will be to try and swing it so I can hit the afterglow.  I haven't done that for MayFire very much over the years.  I've got my PowerPot and solar recharging kit, and a solar shower.  That should make me more able to meet my needs right there on the sand. 

As I've been cleaning out old odds and ends over the last few months, I've been saving up items that somehow told me they were destined to go to the Temple.  By now, it's not just a few things, it's a small bag of figurines, chunks of rock or glass, and all manner of crafted totems.  These items represent a wide range of energies, gathered from so many different places.  I'll be taking gifts for various sacred spots on the land, and the different entities in those spots.  I've restructured my incense bag AGAIN.  By which I mean for like the fourth or fifth time since it grew into its own bag.  As usual, I have a goodly amount of stuff but am perpetually running low on charcoals.  That's the first thing anyone into incense asks anyone else into incense at gatherings:  "Do you have charcoals?"  We all seem to only ever have three.  I did remember to get a few extra lighters as the wind in the desert can be hard on sources of flame and lighters that seemed like they were just new can suddenly be empty.

Alas, the clouds came in and sealed over just as the lunar eclipse was just to get started.  I made do just fine with a live stream of an observatory feed on the internet.  Magickally, kept things simple.  I had been contemplating spending the alchemical Easter doing a distillation but some household matters came up which needed tending and I shifted to more of "get your lead out" spring cleaning vibe instead.  A great productive day after that.

I have heard back from the EBC and I am not a featured artist this year.  That's actually okay, as had I gotten a slot, I'd then have had to figure out how to resolve the conflict with the already-scheduled trip #2 to Ashland this year.  There is an option for me to sell some art there, maybe, but I think it's best to just keep energy going toward the journal publication option.  I also had an idea for what could be a proposal for an art installation that would run from summer to fall as part of the Carkeek Park Heaven & Earth 6 exhibit.  The idea is based on the Notre Dame photos too, something along the lines of making a symbolic cathedral viewing experience.  Roughly.  Sort of... Anyway, I still have time to think about that.  The facts that it's practically right next to my parent's new house and the title this year is "As Above, So Below" are nudging me.

I actually got an application sent off to the Esoteric Book Conference on Tuesday, which was their deadline.  I wasn't sure I was going to do it as I couldn't think of a bookish-enough presentation topic, and then I decided I would put in an application as a visual artist.  I'd like to share some of my alchemical photography from Notre Dame in Paris.  So, the application is in with some sample images and we'll see what happens.

I am confirmed as heading up the Mars affinity group for MayFire.  The last time this occurred the infamous Transformation Safety Agency came into being and people had to check their baggage and fly; we had a 10-year-old "Iron Man" in cardboard and aluminum foil armour shedding his symbolic lead; and "the big finale" was 'Ease on Down the Road' from the Broadway musical The Wiz, because "you don't carry nothing that might be a load..."  With that as the past precedent, there's no telling what's gonna happen this year.

As I begin this blog entry in an only-hours-old wake of my first Emerald City Comicon, I have the clear sense of having been inside an energetic crucible, but one which is of a different form than my other communities/peoples.  Having chosen to volunteer part-time to qualify for a full-weekend badge made for things being busy but good.  It took as much daytime energy as a night fire circle, except my circles are about 150 tops and this was over 70,000.

Apparently one thing I did successfully that hardly anyone else (if at all) managed was to get my non-legal/magickal name on my badge.  I don't know what made another Minion ask me if Rae du Soleil was my legal name, but when I said no, they were envious.  At no point in the volunteer process did anyone ask me to show them legal ID, so... I used the name I always use at events and festivals.