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. 

Imbolc may be the earliest start of spring, and although on many levels we have had a mild winter, we're not done yet.  We just had a great run of days that went something like high of 36, low of 28...Brrrr!  And of course, just what did I do the day before the sudden freeze appeared?  Yeah, you guessed it... I had all my hair cut off.  Like the majority of my head is about a half inch of hair.    Looking ahead to the con, I'm seeing Bay Area nighttime lows that are 15-20 degrees higher than the present PNW daytime highs.... I'll take it!  I spent the past week wearing sweatshirts and hats around the clock inside the house, I'll be glad to ditch that routine for a bit. 

I went on eBay and held a wild hair dye buying spree.  I'm really embracing the Peacock's Tail phase of alchemy in my inner work at the moment, and trying to keep a variety of rapid changes going in my day-to-day world, and so I'm playing with color more this spring to put a bit of zing into things.  I'm still going purple but I'm going to have some mixed highlights, something I can play around with into summer where the where and what of the highlights will shift.  Colors ordered were Ultra Violet (dark blue-purple fave from last summer), Lie Locks (a fairly-strong-looking purple I've not tried yet), Bad Boy Blue (royal blue) and Electric Lizard (ECCC minion green, it just so happens...).  The box was anticipated to arrive on Monday Feb 10th but arrived on Saturday Feb 8th.  Hair shenanigans were moved up from Monday to Sunday.  I bleached all on my own this time.... whoa...

Among the 7 planets I am called the Sun.
My pointy crown symbolizes the process:
First, we become completely subtle and pure
And bind with Mercury,
Then the black raven grows.
It is buried in the grave,
Rising anew,
Adorned with lillies, and betrothed.
Then at last the Sun-Child appears,
Bedecked with purple on his throne.

~ from Hermaphroditisches Sonn- und Monds-Kind, das ist: Des Sohns deren Philosophen natürlich- übernatürliche Gebährung, Zerstöhrung und Regenerirung oder vorgestellte Theorie und Practic den Stein der Weissen zu suchen und zu machen. Durch einen unbekannten Philosophum und Adeptum in 12 emblematischen Figuren und so vielen Paragraphis. Mit Applicir- und Beyfügung so vieler Canonischen Versen des berühmten Schwedischen Adepti Northons: aus einem alten manuscript gezognener praesentiret. Nun aber nach dem mystichen Verstand und innerem Weesen expliciret, nebst denen Caballistischen Zeichen Salomonis durch einen Lehr-Jünger der Natur. L.C.S.
Mayntz, bey Joh. Friederich Krebs Buchhändler. Geduckt in der Churf. Hof und Univers. Buchdruckerey bey denen Häffn. Erben, durch Elias Peter Bayer. 1752.

The strangest manifestation of Solve as of late would have to be this weekend's discovery of my favorite jeans coming out of the dryer minus a goodly portion of each inner thigh.  Alas, favoritism combined with several weeks of freezing temps that brought long underwear into play seems to have resulted in the wear-through happening on the sly.  Not what I wanted to have happen when I was actually thinking "I should just wear those jeans the whole con, they'd be perfect..."  Fortunately a quick trip to the thrift store and $7 later I have jeans that just need some length hacked off the legs and they'll be good to go.  Which means tonight I'll be spending a short time with that most magickal of products:  Stitch Witchery.  A little cutting, a little folding, a little pinning and a little ironing, and I'll have shortened pants.  (But still be a Long Pants Man!)

Today is a traveling day. (Huzzah for the modern miracle of automated posting!)  Alchemically, it corresponds to dissolution, is attuned positively and is dominated by air influences.  I can work with that.  I arrive in San Jose tonight, the evening before the evening before PantheaCon starts.  My altar theme for myself this year is time and space.  I've tried to bring decorative elements that represent those ideas more overtly for the room decor.  Packing was extra spazzy this year, with entire wardrobe designs laid out and mapped to the travel days and then discarded to begin again from scratch.  I had both color scheme and bigender angst.  In a snow storm too.  Actually, the snow part was sort of awesome.  It took until I had my hair really nailed down for the clothing thing to work itself out. 

Lying in bed in the morning this past weekend, watching big clumps of soft snow plop down into my light well from the overhanging tree, I was reminded of both the gentle water and fire at this time of year.  A steady, smaller flame is what is appropriate.  Patient mindfulness.  Inner and outer observation.  Any extra energy or pushing ahead really needs to be saved up for just a bit longer, for the more fertile season of full spring.  Time to get some projects into the pipeline and put MayFire out on that event horizon.  

(the image this week is from last week's prosperity ritual, which took place during the Super Bowl broadcast.  That's the clay figurine which was broken up to release frozen patterns, entrenched habits and dried up thinking.)

With Imbolc, we mark the phase of Dissolution in the larger alchemical process of the year.  In the Pacific Northwest, Chinese medicine teaches that predominant health issues in this region will traditionally express themselves as issues of too much cool moisture.  So while it might be appropriate for alchemist's doing personal work in some areas to need to find ways to add liquids to their inner process at this time, I'm finding that a removal of some excess moisture is better suited to where I live as well as my present work.  Different areas have been reviewed and thinned out.  Items have gone to recycling, the trash and been donated.  I'm working to remove an excess of those fluid elements of life which can too easily flood us.  A big pile got picked up yesterday morning, yay!

Surveying what's growing in the house and yard, I've got a near-complete list of potentials for crafting my first homemade set of seven essentials.  Some herbs are in very short supply, others are much more generously available.  We have a few things on hand

• Saffron - Sun
• Mugwort - Moon
• Lavender - Mercury
• Jerusalem Artichoke - Venus
• Aloe - Mars
• Sage - Jupiter

We have a few things on hand which correspond to Saturn, however, they are all also toxic/poisonous in nature.  Not really where I should working at this time.  One Saturnian option is cannabis.  I'll have to consult my various oracles to see if that's appropriate.  Or where my poppy plants might correspond, and again if that would be appropriate.  Another option would be to pick a plant and grow it to harvest the material.  We're about to rip out our sage this spring, so I have to remember to let my housemate know I want the plant when it goes.  I'll have to read up on if I can pick Jerusalem artichokes whenever or if they do better with a certain season.  Our roots are a few years old, so there should be plenty to harvest. 

I'm really feeling the pull to purple already this year.  I felt red for a few weeks before I shifted my hair back in the fall, but it's even stronger and earlier this switchover.  It might have something to do with my personal processes.  It might be connected to sifting through all my clothing storage recently.  It might be related to my new minion.  Who can say?  There's a good chance that after being red these past two years at P-con that I will use that event as my changeover point this season.  I just got a haircut (goodbye dry ends from winter and hello, super short hair) and it's time to do roots again.  The whole back of my head is brown and grey, with the remaining red just being in the front.  Very nearly a clean slate.  Time to hit eBay for hair dye.

Speaking of the con.... it's ALMOST PANTHEACON!  Already part of my mind is distracted with the task of planning what to bring for this year's hotel room altar.  Something about P-con really seems to demand festoonery in the room.  And what to wear.  As with any year, I can't wait to see what this year's con turns out to be.  While clearly related, they really do tend to turn out rather differently from one another.  I've got trusted roommates, we're on-site, C's coven has a suite, people are teaching, all pieces that go towards making a great event. 

As the Super Bowl fell on Imbolc this year, I and my friend K decided to do some prosperity work during the game and see if we could use the happy energy of millions of people.  We started on a solar hour for Sunday, and continued through until the next Sun correspondence.  During the Saturnian time, to break and let go of old habits and that which isn't serving me, I smashed a figurine I made of myself a few Pantheacons back.  It was an air-dry clay that had never been fired.  I felt it was a great representation of everything stuck, dried, inflexible and featureless in my life.  The ceramic was still so sharp-edged that it hacked up the tea towel that K gave me to wrap the bag I put the figurine into before hammering it.  There were candles burnt, oils annointed and I made a charm from a mix of found and precious items.  The outcome of the game seems to bode well for the magickal work....

Just a little over a week ago, sunset time finally got late enough it reached 5pm.  Whew... there's something about that little bit of shift that suddenly makes everything change.  Just about and about doing errands I overheard a handful of conversations about how the slightly longer day is now perceptible and how that seems to have lightened the mood.  Of course, the impending Super Bowl is helping now too.  But the sunset will slowly continue to creep later and later until it peaks just after 9pm come summer solstice.  We saw blooming snowdrops on Bainbridge Island yesterday, and some pink camillias that had opened already.  Both there and here in town I've seen bulbs starting to put up shoots.  We thaw, we melt, we dissolve...  

I keep three mini shrines at home, along with a more substantial "alchemical" altar.  The minis are organized around Nigredo, Albedo and Rubedo.  For many years now, I've had a figurine of Sekhmet as the deity for the Rubedo, relating to the Crone and the red of the desert where I do a lot of magickal work, but I got the message a while back that she was no longer appropriate in that slot for me.  As the two other shrines have images and not statues for the related Goddess, I have been considering the replacement image.  It was clear as soon as I got to see the higher-res image that the picture I took of the Black Madonna at Chartres was to be the new deity.  That cathedral has two Madonnas (one above, one below), but the one I am speaking of is the Black Madonna de sous terre, the one underground in the crypt adjacent the ancient Druid well.  I will frame the print I made.  My Sekhmet statue will be re-homed at the temple in the Nevada desert the next time I am there.

"The Determination of our Diana's Tears consists only in their perfect and indissoluble Union with the fixt Vegetable Earth, philosophically prepared, purified, and spiritualized: for the love of which they are forced to leave their first universal undetermined Property, and be clothed with a determined particular one, which is required to this our Circulatum Minus."

~ from Circulatum minus Urbigeranum, or the Philosophical Elixir of Vegetables, with The Three certain Ways of Preparing it, fully and clearly set forth on One and Thirty Aphorisms. By Baro Urbigerus. A Servant of God in the Kingdom of Nature. Experto Crede. London, Printed for Henry Faithorne, at the Rose in St. Paul's Church-yard, 1690.

I was emailing with my friend C and it turns out one of the new spagyrics she is taking is the same as one of the new ones I got to round out my seven essentials.  What I'm working with is Pfaffia paniculata aka Suma (Sun), Wild Yam (Moon), Notoginseng (Mars), Cordyceps sinensis (Mercury), Turmeric (Jupiter), Sarsaparilla (Venus) and Myrrh (Saturn).  All these spagyrics are from Al-Qemi in Oregon, whose tinctures I've been working with since 2008.  I have had the good fortune to try many of their wondrous plant medicines over the years including some strange samples they make just for themselves.  If you meet them at events, see what's on their tasting menu if they are offering one.  I used pendulum divination to determine what plants to take.  If any of the bottles run out before the end of the year, I'll ask at that time if I'm to keep taking the same plant or pick a new one which aligns with the same planet.

I've been trying to figure out which book/guide to work with when it comes to choosing plants to make my own spagyrics.  I have two which focus primarily on the topic, from somewhat different approaches (good) but sometimes they outright conflict each other (confusing).  As with all things alchemical, there are some marked differences between various sources in regards to which planet different plants are said to correspond.  I think I'm going to really consider what grows in my yard and is most readily available (hey, a use for my over abundance of aloe vera!) and then see what the predominant planetary association is.  I should also dig up the material in my archive on the doctrine of signatures as that's probably going to come into play too.  The first of the spring 2014 gardening catalogs have started to arrive, so I have to see what jumps out at me there too.  We've had such a damn dry winter I don't know what to expect for spring weather at all.  I'm really not up for having a repeat of last year's June-uary. 

One major bump has arisen in my 2014 manifestations.  The dates for the NW Alchemy Conference shifted from Memorial Day weekend to first weekend in June.  I'm already booked for Shakespeare in Ashland the first weekend in June.  I emailed everybody and said I was still up to contribute to planning and all, but that for obviously conflictive reasons, I would not be at the conference this year.  Poo.  The slideshow of alchemy adventures in the UK will have to hold for now.  I checked a few other event dates and emailed another about timing to start to head off any more of this sort of thing.  My manifestation is slipping...

I've spent a lot of mental time revisiting Glastonbury lately.  There were so many layers of magickal history laid down there, I can see why some people go there for a visit and then never leave.  You could spend your lifetime peeling them back like so many layers of onion skin.  Here's one of the smaller chunks of the Abbey found on the grounds of the historic site and modern church.  There is a specific spot marked as being the graves of King Arthur and Queen Geneviere too.

When King Henry VIII took the throne, Glastonbury was still the seat of religion in England, and the Abbey in Glastonbury was rich as shit, and Hank wasn't down with that at all.  He sent some guys to take care of the Abbot, which resulted in the Abbot being hanged, drawn and quartered.  After that, London became the seat of English religious practice and the Church of England was free to dominate the playing field.  I found a website ahead of my trip to Glastonbury where a woman recounts how she conversed spiritually with the last Abbot of Glastonbury and he supposedly communicated to her that part of why he got offed was due to his practice of alchemy.  That's probably worth another look-see.

"Silver is less bounded by aqueous immaturity than the rest of the metals, though it may indeed be regarded as to a certain extent impure, still its water is already covered with the congealing vesture of its earth, and it thus tends to perfection."

~ from "The Stone of the Philosophers" by Edward Kelly, published in Tractatus duo egregii, de Lapide Philosophorum, una cum Theatro astronomiæ terrestri, cum Figuris, in gratiam filiorum Hermetis nunc primum in lucem editi, curante J. L.M.C. [Johanne Lange Medicin Candidato]., Hamburg, 1676.

Legend has it that Edward Kelly (magickal compatriot of John Dee) found some philosopher's stone while wandering the ruins at Glastonbury Abbey one day.  I can't help but imagine it like finding someone's dropped part of their stash on the ground.  "Dude, check it out, I found some Philosopher's Stone just lying on the ground at the Abbey..."  "Whoa, man, that's like so red....let's fire it up and transmute!"  However, that account was published by Elias Ashmole, and John Dee's own diaries give a different account.  I'm now going to remember this as one of those quasi-fictional moments in history, where there's the history and then the fictional romantic account and then my own pop-culture imaginings. 

One of my fairly recent fictional explorations of alchemy was a book called The Alchemist's Door by Lisa Goldstein.  While many fictions like to cast John Dee as a villain, this book had him as a somewhat befuddled magician, caught up in a web of intrigue due to the actions of Kelly.  He winds up fleeing to Bohemia (Poland) where a Rabbi and some alchemists help him stop Kelly's nefarious plans.  In the end, I found the book to have done a good job of riffing off actual history of the period and the mythology of the golem, but it was lighter in actual alchemical content than I hoped.  Alchemy is treated more like a character who the story rather hopes doesn't appear but inevitably peeks in a time or two. 

When I was first introduced to the alchemical process, the mysterious Peacock's Tail phase was described as falling at the end of the Albedo, right before Rubedo starts.  The more I've read and worked my own process, and learned more about laboratory alchemy, I've come to feel that it's more suited to falling at the end of Nigredo, before one begins to move into Albedo.  In my transposing of alchemical phases onto the Wheel of the Year, the Peacock's Tail happens after Yule (Calcination) and before Imbolc (Dissolution).  This year the flash of color(s) that signaled the event had to be the photo recovery.  Normally at this time of year it feels very wet and Solutio, but we've only just had our first whole week of rain this winter this past week and already that's stopped, so it's been more of an inner process this year.  But the feeling of things dissolving, thinning and separating gently is still lurking in there.

I've been doing a lot of bottle washing lately, hoping to get some cordial flavors finalized and portioned out soon.  I have to sit down and do labels.  I repeated a couple of fruits this year so those should just need typographical updating.  I have to start thinking where I want to plant the apple tree in the ground next month.  Time to start watching overnight temps.