It's a folk myth that you can only get eggs to spin cleanly on either the fall or spring equinox.  It can be done at any time of day or year, but what you genuinely need to do this successfully is an extremely fresh egg.  

The light is now noticeably shifting, the dark slowly visibly rolling back.  Very sunny days or very dark days both stand out from the patchy-not-quite-grey that is our spring in the Pacific Northwest.  But once all the flowering trees pop, it's a good bet that we're well away from winter and we're there now.  Instead of dead yard, everything has suddenly turned into a mass of green weeds, not yet up to growing speed due to the lack of sun.  However we get three more minutes of light every day, so full growing speed isn't far off.  Now that the apple tree is moved, the herb bed where it stood in a pot is about to be taken out and reworked, with a nearby raised bed getting a big ol' expansion.  The sage bush in that area will be my next spagyric herb.  My housemate knows to save the leaves for me if she gets around to chopping it down during a time when I'm busy with something else. 

Mostly for this entire week, I've just been operating in fits and starts of cosplay construction.  My plan is simple:  whatever outfits are in the best shape to go as of Thursday night are what goes.  I've got several things in process but I've had some tech snafus, some which could be reworked and some not.  And wigs.  They're practically like caring for living creatures.  We have a room for Friday and Saturday night, which is going to be a Goddess-send when it comes to downtown access on those weekend mornings.  The density is going to be something to watch out for.  Saturday is the BIG day.  Last year, downtown freeway exit ramps got closed because too many people were trying to come into downtown Seattle.  I actually have four work shifts, with one coming on Thursday, the set-up/get-ready day before the con starts.  This is one of the most hilarious configurations yet.  I haul some of my gear downtown on Thursday when I go early to check-in and get my badge, and leave it at Kalla's office, which is in the vicinity.  I do that again Friday morning with the rest of my gear, then work an 8-2 shift.  Kalla will take the bus to work, get off work not long after my minion shift ends.  Then we'll find each other and a strange series of punts and adventures will begin. 

On the intentional, social aspect of the con, my pendulum was consulted when it came to the speed dating.  The pendulum had some specifics:  I have to go twice.  I looked up the planetary energies of each session.  For the first, I get a Venus day, and the session spans times of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars energy.  The second is a solar day and the session will receive Venus, Mercury and Moon energies.  I'm probably going to dress in an interesting combo of my own clothing and be sort of Blade Runner butch for one session and do my X-men movie Blink cosplay option for the other.  Her makeup isn't too crazy, her clothing is all mine, and really if I can just get a herringbone braid into her wig, I'll call the outfit done until such time as I make her jacket properly.  If my Lorelei outfit works out, I'll wear that the day I'm not speed dating.  A muting-face-cage-mask isn't the sort of thing to wear for that, but wearing something that just got seen for the first time three weeks ago on tv on the busiest day of the con would be just about right. 

I was re-potting strawberries the other day, moving them from where they'd been wintered over under a bed of straw into pots on the south side of our house.  A man was walking by with his dog and he stopped to admire a rosemary bush next to our front steps.  The dog ambled up the steps to greet me.  We chatted and I told him how I make essential oils and have made it from another rosemary variety in our yard but not this particular bush.  He looked up at me and said "You must be quite the alchemist."  I said that I actually was an alchemist.  He thought that was great, we exchanged names and shook hands and he was on his way.  Partly because of alchemy I don't think that was a coincidence.  And partly because his beautiful Labradoodle's name was Gaia. 

When I uncovered the berries from their winter hibernation the straw that had been heaped over the pots had a weathered layer on the outside, a drier layer underneath and then a really decayed, slimy layer down right over the pots.  On top of this layer were a LOT of happy, fat earthworms.  I carefully gathered up the straw and moved it to our compost pile so everyone living in the straw can keep right on doing what they are doing.  When I cleared away the straw from my fuchsia bush, there were no worms in the straw but the lowest layer that had been touching the dirt was thick with mycelium.  Another excellent garden sign!  This straw also got carried carefully to the compost pile.  Most likely when we get further into the project of the raised beds and moving that stuff around, the broken down straw and all the beneficial inclusions are going to get mulched into the new beds. 

The worms and mycelium got me thinking about various manifestations of elemental energies.  The worms were up above the actual dirt, almost living in the air, and yet buried inside a thick heap of straw.  That felt like Earth of Straw, if you were going to look at it like an alchemical purification.  And then over in the fairy garden, not one single worm in the straw and a thick paste of mycelium way down at the bottom.  Given the really delicate and serious transformative nature of mycelium, that felt like a manifestation of Spirit of Straw.  

from "THE TOMB OF SEMIRAMIS - Hermetically Sealed, Which if a Wise-man open (not the Ambitious Covetous Cyrus) he shall find the Treasures of Kings, inexhaustible Riches to his content."  H. V. D., 1674.

I had my last training/briefing before ECCC this past Sunday.  I had to go downtown to the Sheraton, which sits immediately adjacent the convention center.  Most of the area was utterly devoid of humans except for two types:  minions on their way to a last training or people doing the St Patrick's Day Dash.  Buses were re-routed, part of the freeway was closed, and it was raining like crazy.  The slightly soggy nerds were an excited and friendly bunch.  There are about a thousand of us, at least on paper at this time, set to help assist 75,000 at a sold-out event.  Ten percent will never make it to the con, for whatever reason.  Last year, 80% of the full-time Saturday volunteers never showed.  The event is working to really not have that happen again.  A distinct lack of parking contributed.  Various con methods were altered to get rid of lines and backup that also contributed.  It's going to be insane.

And every freaking day I think up another cosplay idea.  A pox on my brain.  Actually, if I can get the Blink wig braided, that's all that has to happen for that outfit to be done "enough."  But it's going to take a few tries, as I have never done herringbone hair braiding before.  I've got my bamboo strips ready to steam and shape, and went back and made way more screencaps of Lorelei's face cage in Agents of Shield.  There's a whole piece on the front I didn't notice at first, and it's not totally shown clearly.  But my brain goes "Huh...?  Looks like a spool or two and maybe some big gears..." when it tries to deconstruct it.

Over the weekend, K and I cut an entire 40 yard bolt of tulle into approximately 6" strips.  The 54" folded width was perfect as-is.  Once we had all those strips, we tied some elastic into loops to make waistbands, slapped in a movie and started knotting on strips.  Most of a movie later we had below-the-knee/tea-length, gothic/ratty, princess/fairy, black tulle skirts.  Materials-wise, that's about $15 per skirt and about three hours of crafting labor.  Stasi and Zella are gonna kill it at the PDX vampire ball. 

One really important pre-con detail did get crossed off my list this week.  I can now pronounced "yaoi" correctly and confidently aloud.  That was one of those things that just had to get handled. 

Suddenly this week, the energies have shifted sharply towards activities and actions that signal Separatio, the alchemical phase that I observe as aligned with the spring equinox.  This is the part of the alchemical process where decisions are made as to which materials are being carried forward and which are being removed after the stage of Dissolutio (which was Imbolc).  In my life, this often takes the form of firm decisions made and committed to for events in the spring and summer.  I'm picking which gatherings to attend and these then all shape the further stages of alchemy for the year.  Now is when I commit to working with certain energies and refinement processes, discarding other choices. 

I got email back from the temple priestess and I'm good to go for my guest house needs for my larger conceived adventures.  So, at this point, I just have to let a few people know I'm having adventures in April and May, and find my airline tickets.  I got email from the alchemical priestess in Vegas and have accepted her offer to run a planetary group at MayFire.  I have to let A know I'm hard-confirmed for her event April 26-27 and will arrive a couple days earlier.  I'll also get some gatherings at the temple too, for the new moon and Beltane.  And I have to check in with my Bay Area road-wife, as we barely broached the MayFire topic at P-con, and see how roadworthy she's feeling this spring.

1. Light Supreme, who art the Divine in Nature and dwellest in its innermost parts as in Heaven, hallowed be thy qualities and laws!

2. Wherever thou art, all is brought to perfection; may the realm of thy Knowledge become subject unto thee.

3. May our will in all our work be only thee, self-moving Power of Light! And as in the whole of Nature thou accomplishest all things, so accomplish all things in our work also.

4. Give us of the Dew of Heaven, and the Fat of the Earth, the Fruits of Sun and Moon from the Tree of Life.

5. And forgive us all errors which we have committed in our work without knowledge of thee, as we seek to turn from their errors those who have offended our precepts. And leave us not to our own darkness and our own science, but deliver us from all evil through the perfection of thy Work, Amen.

Last Saturday was the new moon, which I often do not utilize as an opportunity to do magick, but I'm starting to make it more of a regular habit to do so.  The moon cycle then takes on a nice flow of Solve and Coagula, whereas if I just mark the full moons it's not the balance of the two phases.  It seems like spring now, a continuous flowing between raining and not raining.  The weekend I was out of town at PantheaCon, we got some truly crazy weather and the snowpack that had been really light so far this winter season was apparently amended in one swell foop.

The spring crocus have come up and opened, although it's often so overcast that the blossoms are closed for most of the day.  The roses need to be cut, it's time to find a spot to transplant the columnar apple tree and I had a sudden inspiration last night to rip out some more of that nasty patch of invasive fennel (non-edible) and see if I can get some sunflowers planted in that spot.  Those would make a great border between our house and the neighbors where the fennel has been trying to run wild.  We have a lot of yard re-arranging still to do this coming season so I want to grow just a few things that are fun and don't take much effort.

Having had a variety of close calls with Mercury Retrograde action while traveling to and from P-con, and having dodged any untoward effects in those encounters, it does not surprise me that the retrograde finally bit me in the ass this week.  I arrived at my house-sit, about an hour and a half via transit south of where I live, and right as I slid the key into the door I could then suddenly recall with perfect clarity changing the key on the ring to not be the lake house anymore and instead be the park house.  And there I was, at the lake house door, with a park house key.  Expletive deleted, indeed!

So, I ditched my bags in the back yard, discretely watered a bush and got my tuchis back on transit to haul north again.  I had a proper bio break, grabbed a key, put on another warmer layer and headed right back out into near-rush-hour transit.  As with the previous run, everything with perfectly synchronized and I even beat the Google map estimates both ways by a bit.  I did a run to the PCC this AM for a few things. 

"You see by means of this diagram (which has been confirmed to be perfectly exact by J. Boucher, who received an identical one from his master Fulcanelli), that Cold and West generate Water, Wet and Hot generate Air, Hot and Dry generate Fire, and Dry and Cold generate Earth. In their turn, Earth and Air generate the Mercury Principle, Air and Fire generate the Sulfur Principle, and Fire and Earth generate the Salt Principle. At the second stage of The Work, the Mercury Principle and the Sulfur Principle generate Philosophical Silver, or Silver of the Wise, and the Sulfur Principle and the Salt Principle generate Philosophical Gold, or Gold of the Wise. The copulation of the two then gives the Chrysoprase."

From Spiritual Alchemy, Inner Alchemy - Ambelin, Translated by Piers A. Vaughan © May 2005.

So, my friend A is putting on a thing, a new thing, out at the Goddess Temple in late April.  I've been contemplating going to it on and off since she told me about it after Illumination last August.  I'd been feeling "on" again, and then my phone rang on Monday night.  We got cut off twice, but clearly the third time was the charm or the Goddess really meant for the call to go on that long, but I'm energized even more to the idea of going, and making it an extended stay at the Temple.  I'd be there for about a fortnight ahead of MayFire.  A's triple fire idea really could use some more anchoring from people who seem to grasp her framework, and it would seem I'm one of those.  Some of the work I'd like to visit this week while I've got myself in a retreat structure would be to divine out that situation and see if it locks down as a "go."  If I find the right one airfare, that would take care of most of it.  I should probably also contact Candace and talk with her.  There are some projects she and I could take on during an extended stay.

Looking ahead to late March and the comiccon... it's clear I have to commit to going to the speed dating.  Srsly.  Randomized, public risks are good for trying to break or shake off old patterns.  And the con environment certainly brings a truly new-to-my-experience level of novelty.  I have to go find a soundbite of Chris Evans talking about how what's best for you is to do what you fear.  I'm going to need the constant reassurance.  My bigender sense spins in circles at the thought, trying to figure out myself for this sort of challenge is almost paralyzing.  Clearly March is going to be interesting.

March 3rd is Girls Day in Shintoism, and Tokara will be having a special tohryanse (open house) this weekend for it.  Traditionally dolls are displayed for the week ahead of the holiday.  This makes me think about the pop culture magick class, and how I'm probably missing one or two necessary female action figures for such an occasion as that's where my dollish interests would lie these days.