The Tattooed Alchemist

Yule 2018 Magickal Timings

2018-12-21T20:00:01Z

The deeper I get into alchemy, the more I look at components of electional astrology, correspondences and alignments. Here’s how things shake down for my Yule vigil over Friday night into Saturday.

From sunset to sunrise can be (almost perfectly) broken into nine equal time portions. I apply an alchemical framework to those divisions, something I first learned as part of a ritualized community but I don’t work with just seven alchemy phases anymore because I feel the classical seven is a good metaphor for teaching but actually incomplete for genuine magickal workings. I fee the practitioner is able to be more effective by performing Multiplication and Projection after Coagulation, and before cycling back to Calcination. I like to see how the planetary hours flow when compared to the framework and I look for alignments, what I think of as significant power points, those are the moments that might be appropriate for ritual what-not.

The actual moment of winter solstice is 2:23pm Pacific time. According to alchemical astrology, Friday is attuned to Congelation and has active/positive energy, and Saturday is not only a Full Moon but it’s attuned to Fixation and is also active/positive, more so than Friday. This is where stuff I've been doing more internally since Samhain comes out and becomes external work. This is when the seed of Projectio from Samhain, which was been planted in the fresh black Nigredo and has been undergoing Mortificatio and Putreficatio in the six weeks since will now have heated enough to ignite, and move into the phase of Calcination.

Christmas has come. The God is in the egg. I have prepared a rug for my God, an expensive red rug from the land of morning. He shall be surrounded by the shimmer of magnificence of his Eastern land. I am the mother, the simple maiden, who gave birth and did not know how. I am the careful father, who protected the maiden. I am the shepherd, who received the message as he guarded his herd at night on the dark fields. - Carl Jung, artwork and writing from, THE RED BOOK

All of the below times were calculated by a person in Seattle, WA. Your timings will vary. When I mark out points of significance, I'm indicating a point that can be used to start, a point that could be the peak in the middle, or a point which could be chosen as a finish. It all depends on what you are trying to accomplish.

2:13pm - Moon planetary house starts

2:23pm - the Winter Solstice

2:55pm - Saturn planetary hour starts

3:37pm - Jupiter planetary hour starts

4:19pm, Mars planetary hour starts

4:20pm - sunset in Seattle and the beginning of the Calcination phase. Something about a Mars hour colliding with 4:20 reminds me of the 4 of Swords from the Tarot of the Silicon Dawn where the two figures are sitting out the fight for a moment to smoke a pipe together.

5:37pm - Sun planetary hour starts

6:04pm - Dissolution

6:55pm - Venus planetary hour starts

7:48 pm - Separation

8:13pm - Mercury planetary hour starts

9:31 - Moon planetary hour starts

9:32pm - Conjunction - here we have another alignment, where the Moon hour and Conjunctio work come together. Alchemically, Conjunction aligns with Venus, the heart and the completion of the Lesser Work. The Moon in alchemy is Distillation. How can you work with Moon and Venus energies, to both refine and combine?

10:49pm - Saturn planetary hour starts

11:16pm - Fermentation

12:07am - Jupiter planetary hour starts

1:00am - Distillation

1:25am - Mars planetary hour starts

2:43am - Sun planetary hour starts

2:44am - Coagulation - in alchemy, Coagula is the Sun and the completion of the Great Work, so about a quarter to three in the morning by my reckoning and ritual is double Sun and may be one of the most potent moments of the night.

4:01am - Venus planetary hour starts

4:28am - Multiplication

5:19am - Mercury planetary hour starts

6:12am - Projection

7:55am - Saturn planetary hour begins Saturday

7:55am - sunrise in Seattle - And with one final alignment, the vigil ends right as a hour of Saturn which starts Saturday begins. Stay up or plotz as you need.

8:37am - Jupiter planetary hour starts

9:19am - Mars planetary hour starts

9:49am - Full Moon - bonus. You can work this energy now or tonight.

10:01am - Sun planetary hour starts

What I find really interesting is that I wrote out the alchemical phases on paper first, then marked which points would break the nine into three equal chunks and when I added the planetary hours, they aligned with the start, the two division points and the end. That’s part of why I opted to share this.

The Citrinitas Cordial

2018-12-14T21:00:00Z

Back in May 2018, a post on Tumblr (now deleted, I wonder what it was?) triggered me to do some lab work around the New Moon. I was given freshly-laid eggs laid that morning and suddenly I could sense that one of those bouts of magickal formulation was about to happen. Saffron and chamomile (both grown by me), and a variation on Oil of Egg, all infused together. It takes gold to make gold. I dream in clumps, not singularly.

The eggs came from my body worker, who lives just a dozen or so blocks away, and were hard-boiled Sunday evening (Sun day, Moon hour). I set an alarm for early Monday morning to wake up just ahead of the actual new Moon at 4:47am. I went from sleep to performing alchemical processes in just over 20 minutes with no shower or breakfast. I wake up like a light switch.

I got the saffron into the vodka and into the cordial maker and the egg yolks into the oven at the start of the new moon. The cordial maker was set to run for 24 hours. After just a couple hours, the saffron released all it’s color and bleached out completely.

The egg yolks spent a few planetary hours in the oven at a very low temp, drying out. I turned and crumbled them once per planetary hour. They released water content and got discernibly oily, which is the point.

At the first hour of the Sun on Tuesday, the chamomile was added. After that, the yolks went into the fridge, and I went back to sleep for a couple more hours. The infuser runs on a timer, so it just kept infusing right along.

Just after 3:30pm, when the next hour of the Sun started, I added the cooked, dried yolks to the mix, and left the blend to complete the timer cycle.

Post-active crafting thought: Citrinitas, duh. Yellow, yellow and more yellow occurrences and while it has been saffron for a while I didn’t really think Citrinitas until NOW. Okay, okay, clue-by-four received.

I filtered the blend and put it back into the cordial maker for another six hours to get sweetened and mellow a bit, and become a cordial instead of a tincture.

The unsweetened taste has too much bite and the chamomile and saffron should reappear a bit flavor-wise with sweetening. Oil of Egg quality readily apparent in the mouth of it. That is some wildly oily fluid.

And it’s the absolute most yellow thing I’ve ever made too. May Moon Citrinitas Cordial.

Paracelsus' Elixir of Propriety

2018-12-08T03:00:00Z

Long time no alchemic blogging. Really, 2017 and 2018 have been those kinds of years. I have few things I formulated that I will have to note here, like my wild Citrinitas Cordial.

I think I finally got enough saffron in my 2018 crop to go forward with the recipe that got me started on saffron in the first place, almost eight years ago: the Elixir of Propriety. This is a medicine crafted by Paracelsus, and one which he regarded most highly. I'm not using his exact 16th century formula because it requires a Pelican, a type of glassware I do not have. And it takes several months to make following his process.

But this essential formula stayed in play up until the early 20th century, with many healers compounding their own versions. One recipe which caught my attention and seems quite replicable is from Herman Boorhaave from the 18th century. This version also uses vinegar. The vinegar base would be especially suited to using my radiant heat cordial infuser but it needs about three cups of liquid to operate and as near as I can calculate, I'm need to have about 5 ounces of vinegar based on the weight of my ingredients.

“Take choice aloes, saffron, and myrrh, of each half an ounce, cut and bruise them, put them into a tall bolt-head, pour twenty times their own weight of the strongest distilled vinegar thereon, let them simmer together in our little wooden furnace for twelve hours: now suffer the whole to rest, that the fæces may subside, and gently strain off the pure liquor through a thin linen; put half the quantity of distilled vinegar to the remainder, boil and proceed as before, and throw away the fæces. Mix the two tinctures together, and distil with a gentle fire till the whole is thickened to a third; keep the vinegar that comes over for the same use; and what remains behind is the Elixir Proprietatis, made with distilled vinegar.”

I still have a small amount of saffron from last year's crop, but I'd like to make a couple dishes for the impending winter solstice with saffron in them, as that's how it gets used by so many European cultures, so I don't want to put every thread I can find in the house into this. However, as I sit here writing this, my brain is telling me I should use the ingredients I have, use the cordial infuser even if the product will be a lesser concentration than traditional, and let the 12 hours of simmering take place on the actual winter solstice. My vigil, due to my northern latitude, is almost sixteen hours, and since I want to share my night between my options (home vigil and friends vigil) that could actually work, where I start the elixir infusing early in the vigil and that part runs overnight. In the morning vigil hours, I can set the elixir to rest, and then after I sleep for a while, I can finish the reduction and thickening process that afternoon while still enjoying the full moon and alchemically fixative influences.

I'm liking this plan. Time to mix up enough saffron paste to cover my cooking needs, and then I need to figure the weight of everything I have left and that will go in the elixir.

Of Light, Or Motion, Or Life, Or Alterative Processes

2017-01-15T02:00:06Z

Ten months. This past year has not been as outwardly productive, and yet there have been so many internal shifts and changes. It continues primarily as such, both comforting and uncomfortable in its processes.

On and off as I have done lab work, there was always the vagaries of the fountain pump to contend with. That's what you get when you accept a gift of a free, used pump and then do things to it that are non-fountain-like. After many experiments where I felt the pump was on its last legs....I took a bit of time and online credit and now have a new pump for the condenser portion of my distiller. When I last searched for new pumps, pricing was double what I found this go around.

All philosophers tell us that there are four elements, which compose all things, and, by means of their diverse combination, produce various forms. But the truth is that there are only three elements, i.e., those which of their own nature are cold -- air, water, and earth. The defect of heat which we perceive in them is in proportion to their distance from the sun. Fire I do not acknowledge as an element. There is no fire, except the common fire which burns on the hearth; and its heat is essentially destructive. The heat there is in things is the product either of light, or motion, or life, or alterative processes. Fire is not an element, but a robber that preys on the products of the four elements; it is a violent corruptive motion caused by the clashing of two active principles. Thus, we see that it is an operation of two other substances, not a substance in itself -- a result of the active co-operation of a comburent and a combustible.

-- The Three Treatises of Philalethes

I sort of love the Pagan heresy in the quote above, that fire isn't really an element. That's just me, continually poking at shit that stirs people up.

Also over the mundane holiday season, I had the opportunity to unpack a shipment of gifted meat for another person, stuff where pounds and pounds arrive, specially packed with dry ice and sent overnight. The sort of shipment that comes in an incredibly dense and thick foam insulation container. The sort of thing that can act as a cooler, but with a few easy modifications, could potentially become a macerating vessel. This would be a simple as making just enough of an opening somewhere to run a power cord into the container and then it's your pick of either a low wattage lightbulb or an old heating pad that preferably doesn't have a shut-off feature. This is where you can then gently warm things.

Why would you gently warm things? Because that's actually how most lab processes start, with Putrefaction or Maceration. Only purely inner alchemists are the folks who think you just zip straight into 'burn it to white ash' and even the ones who really know what they are doing don't act like that. They hang back and start ritual slowly, letting others get all hot and bothered right off the bat. Warming up slowly before getting on with it actually works well for the predominant number of human activities but we have a really good thing about "do as I say, but don't watch how I actually do it" going in our modern culture at the moment.

Solstice evening I got a big batch of roses out of my freezer from when this one bush all came into bloom simultaneously over the summer, right near the summer solstice, and distilled rose water from that. You can't do steam with roses, the petals wilt into mush, this calls for a bath distillation. Like in a big cooking pot. Once that step was done, I ground up the bottle of expired saffron that an acquaintance gave me and added it to steep. I strained it the next day. That is the most yellow-stainingest fluid I have ever created. But it also shows that fabrics which are orange, which people call saffron-colored are not actually dyed with saffron. The fluid looks orange but the stain is close to lemon yellow when fresh, and butter yellow when faded. Not actually orange at all.

That There Is This Difference

2016-03-05T03:00:06Z

I have a couple of spagyrics that I wish to make, and with that process comes Calcination. It's how most people think of the start of the alchemical process, skipping the Putrefaction and Mortificatio that come ahead of it. That's one of the first lessons of lab alchemy versus a purely spiritual approach. It becomes clear that almost no process starts with fire, and that spiritual alchemy probably shouldn't either.

Recently, there was a post I read on Tumblr from an acquaintance, himself working on Calcination, and he was describing how difficult it was to achieve it. He had plant material in a closed crucible in his home oven, running as hot as it could for several hours, and did not have white ash. I sat down, went over a lot of my notes, looked in a few books and here's my post-Calcination interpretation of what is happening. Or more accurately what is not happening.

Mark also this with the most illumined of the Philosophers, that there is this difference, between vulgar calcination, effected by the force of fire, & natural calcination; that the first destroys the body, & consumes the greater part of its radical humidity; but that the second not only conserves the humidity of the body, it calcinates; but also considerably augments it.
from Letter to the True Disciples of Hermes by Alexandre Toussaint de Limojon, Sieur de Saint-Didier, 1688.

Calcination is where a material is burnt to the point of white ash. As much as a kitchen oven will clean itself by burning the layer of cooking grease on it's interior to ash, that does not mean a stove can burn anything else to white ash. In all honesty, it's not hot enough. The whole point of an oven is to provide controlled, precise heat so as to NOT burn what you are heating.

Really hot fires have access to lots of oxygen, and they have extreme temperatures. Let's look at campfires. They burn to white ash if made hot enough, but will leave blacken chunks of charred wood if not. Campfires burn between 700-1200 degrees depending on the wood used, the structure of the fire (how the wood is stacked) and turbulence (airflow over the burning material).

The first thing Robert Bartlett said to us about calcination when I took his Prima class was not to do it in our kitchens, and then he just started laughing. Apparently he gets asked about this all the time. Unless you have a wood-burning stove, and calcine inside that (which Robert sometimes does), a conventional cooking stove is not the tool to be using. Aside from a lack of heat, you also don't want all the crap that gets burnt off to get in your house or all over where you prepare food. You're doing chemistry, not baking a cake.

So, if kitchens are not the place to calcine, then what?

Good question. Calcination is best accomplished in the open air, with an open container, over open flame. Get outside and use your barbecue or a camp stove or a fire. Put your material to be calcined into a steel container. Have something with which to turn or stir the material as it cooks.

If you have plant material that has been in pure grain alcohol, you can light the alcohol and burn the material somewhat, but that's not enough fuel to consume the entire quantity at a level to produce white ash. That's another Calcination assumption beginning alchemists make that doesn't work for them.

With a kitchen stove, you can heat a material for five or six hours and just have black carbon. Over a camp stove, you can usually get to white ash in an hour because the area you are heating is focused and concentrated. It will always vary with what you are working with, and how large a quantity you are attempting to burn.

Take any and all fire precautions. Wear fire gloves when handling anything you have been heating, even if only for a little while.

Be Distinguished By Many Colors

2015-05-28T23:30:04Z

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

2015-04-10T00:48:00Z

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

2015-03-10T20:00:03Z

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

2015-02-25T00:00:05Z

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

2015-02-01T23:30:00Z

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.

The Vigil Of The Eye

2015-01-20T00:00:01Z

It never ceases to amaze me, as I use bibliomancy to randomly select alchemy quotes for my own growth and the titles of these blog entries, how the most relevant quotes are revealed based on my circumstances. As I write this, I am not in the verdant and icy Pacific Northwest. I am in the Vegas Vortex, where I will be residing for three months. And if you were to describe what it is I am trying to do here, outside of the pet-sitting for a friend which is a convenient hook, it is to have a Vigil of the Eye.

Vigil is the fruit of Hunger, for it expels useless sleep, often weighed down by too abundant nourishment. Now, contact between Man and the Celestial Assembly cannot succeed except during sleep, during a kind of doubling of the Soul outside of the Body. A sleep susceptible to freeing the Soul is a sleep which comes about during a serious fast. But our Vigil has another purpose. There are two types of Vigil:

a) The vigil of the Heart, which instinctively seeks contemplation;
b) The vigil of the Eye (vision), which realizes and objectivizes what is in the Heart (the Inner Temple and the Philosophical Egg), by defining it.

Vigil alone procures Knowledge of the Soul. It equates to Fire and to Faith.

I have many tasks I can accomplish here. I am trying to not use my usual ways of describing what I'm doing to see if I can find words and ways that support me more effectively. I have been on an effectiveness kick lately.

--------------------------------

Okay, so I wrote the above shortly after I got to Vegas in early December, and clearly I got distracted by the actual doing, and have not turned much attention to the contemplation until now. I have been more effective but the first month or six weeks here has been about helping others to be more effective and I'm only now starting to get around to just working on my effectiveness again. But I can say after my latest visit with my (literally) crazy friend E, I really am here on a Vigil of the Eye.

I think a lot of people who feel stuck in their lives could truly benefit from taking three months to step out of their regular lives and go do their thing and lots of different things somewhere else for that time period.

One aspect of this trip is looking at my daily life and what technically is important. I am trying to pare down with the goal of becoming a tiny-houser in the semi-near future. I could only bring so much stuff with me. I am living in a house that is really different from mine, where the human who lives here shares some interests but not much. Ever forget just what you have and what's important? Try living with another person's stuff, mostly. It's become clear what sorts of household tools and gear I consider necessary, because this person has different priorities. I am baffled how a chef can not have hardly any kitchen gear, but then again, this one digs on raw food, but how can she not have a colander or strainer? (Guess what I have to go find tomorrow?) How can someone who rivals me for clothing collecting not own any tools for caring for fabric and not know how to do laundry? No one is right or wrong, it's what we both prefer. But the clarifying effect, at least in my experience so far, has been great. Especially as I am at the mid-point roughly.

My life is way more about durable goods than this person. So much in this house is disposable. This small home went from having an overflowing garbage pickup twice a week to a partial can once a week when my friend left for her travels. She left me a t-shirt I could cut up to make cleaning rags after watching me grind my teeth at all the paper towel usage. I use all products for cleaning that are way more bio-safe and non-toxic. I keep things for repair and fixing in my home. We have good screwdrivers here but that's it. As much as I like tchotchkes and altars, this person likes them even more. I live with a scent-sensitive human, so I've learned to live in a way that minimizes scent. This person fixes smells by adding even more smells, while living in a house which is never opened to the outside due to living in the freaking hood. And a pet with asthma. I smelled nothing in this house for the first month due to the ever-burning incense, my nose just shut down.

One thing that people have always said to me, over and over my entire life that just got said again this week, is that I should have a pet, it would give me unconditional love and help me feel better when I am depressed. Just for the record, when I get really depressed and can not deal with taking care of myself, I think how if I had an animal I would kill it to save it from being trapped with and neglected by me. Yes, I willingly stepped up for this gig with pet-sitting, but remember these aren't "my" animals. As for that unconditional love, I have fucking buckets of that shit in my life and I wish I could either sell it to pay my rent or burn it so that it's not in my way anymore. Unconditional love never did anything to stop any of the teasing or bullying. Unconditional love just stands there and blinks and then says, "I don't understand you, but I love you anyway," and never tries to understand, leaving me feeling like unconditional love is a fucking liar. Unconditional love is one of the most passive-aggressive things I've ever encountered. Unconditional love doesn't seem to actually feel, like it's a cheap-ass way of ditching some genuine emotion that would be a lot more productive. Unconditional love is the "it gets better" campaign of feelings, where people talk a lot but don't actually take any action to change anything. I want passion, and challenge, I want someone I can fucking trust to watch my back, I want to help, I want to get helped, I want to explore, I want to struggle and grow. I want conditional love because all I have is unconditional love and it's killing me like the death of a thousand paper cuts.

Part of me feels off my *something* from not being able to observe Yule as I have become accustomed. I missed the intensity of the vigil, I missed having a fire in a fireplace all night. I'm sort of working up a series of semi-shadow exercises for myself, mini-rituals to help get connected back into some of the magickal abilities I turned off or destroyed during or after a moment of extreme self-harm as a kid. As I get some of the control and ability to discern some of The Other back, I also get these semi-magickal healing crises, just like if I was healing a mundane sickness. That's very hard to deal with not being in my own environment. As much as I can lie in bed here, it's not "my bed," and doesn't settle me the same as when I curl up in Seattle. I can't ever close the door to the room I'm in, as it has dog-protected cat space in it. And Areeya has lights that she never turns off, and I'm honoring her request to not turn them off, and that means I am not sleeping in total blackness as my body really desires. Sure I put my head away from the faint glow and yes, I even have a blindfold but it's not the same as sleeping freely in a sealed, black space. I got Areeya a mosquito net for Costa Rica, now I need to find me a blackout one. There's no outside or nature to go to when I feel I need that. Thank goodness for woodsy incense and Rainy Mood.

Imbolc will be here before I know it, as will my two Sisters-from-Other-Mothers for Mysterium. I'm so happy to know they are coming. My being here and having to tend a home meant no PantheaCon and the three of us have grown to really enjoy that weekend. And having humans who grok my shit is, as always, just such a relief. I'd like my keel to be a bit more even by the time they arrive.

Who By His Motion Makes Day And Night And Illuminates

2014-08-27T22:00:04Z

I can't believe the bullshit I made up in my head about what it meant to take a few weeks off from writing here. Seriously, you can't imagine what goes on inside my skull sometimes...

The first weekend in August I was at the Illumination gathering, held in Tidewater, Oregon. This event marked my eleventh year since I went to my first fire circles in the summer of 2003, and a decade since I got my magickal name and began my service to the fire. Truly, no two fire circles are alike and once again, I had an experience that was sort-of-like-but-not-really-like all the others I've attended. I had a hard time being in circle more often than not this year. But I had a good event with its own special challenges. I had to come to grips with some shadow work (no surprise there) but also my role as someone who embraces shadow work in a community populated by a majority of light workers.

I raised my hand to speak at the Heartshare, and was "on deck" to talk after another person. Who then spoke about stuff that I was just not prepared for that exploded all sorts of shit inside my head, so that instead of something nice and pithy I wound up spewing out a bunch of really raw stuff that I can't exactly recall now because I was so freaked out inside my head when I said it. Ah, the joys of speaking your heart in community....

From whence they anciently call the Sun the lord of the world: in whom there is life to heal all things, who by his motion makes day and night, and illuminates the whole world with his brightness. Wherefore Sol says, I am the stone; or in me is the stone. The philosophers also say: That the work of the stone is the work of a woman, and the play of children. The woman is sometimes the earth, sometimes the Mercury, which seems to perfect the whole work.

from Marsilius Ficinus, 'Liber de Arte Chemica', Theatrum Chemicum, Vol 2, Geneva, 1702.

So I do all that, and even more stuff with more strange symbolic meaning, and then my parents are moving to their new house. This move takes them from an hour or more drive south of where I live to a seven minute drive north of where I live. I walked over there three times in three days: it takes me just over an hour because the hill climb portion winds me. I'll get that down if I keep it up. The 'rents are tucked into a neighborhood chunk surrounded by a big park on three sides, and are just a few blocks from the Sounds shore. I don't know when I'll house-sit there as now we have the dog.

Oh. Yeah. Before I left for the weekend down the Oregon coast with the extended family, we got a dog.

I've been somewhat distracted for the last week because on August 15, HubPages (the #1 site I write on) announced they were acquiring Squidoo (the #2 site I write on). I can't even begin to describe the freakout that some users are having. I'm trying to not get agitated over things that haven't happened, or things that have. It might mean more money, or not. But it will mean a lot of content editing. And clearly, Google is not into content farms.

I hope everyone traveling to Burning Man is finding they can travel to Burning Man. Beware the mud!

It's officially announced: I'm the registrar for the Vegas Vortex. I'm going to be in Vegas for two weeks in October. The next part hasn't been officially announced, but here's how we want it to go: I'm going to move there for 3.5 months, from mid-November to early March, to pet-sit while someone else goes to Costa Rica to cook for lots of people.

And then I have to get my ass back to Seattle because I'm going to need to be standing in line at the ECCC at the end of March because John Barrowman.

The Angels Are More Lucid Than The Sun

2014-07-23T23:00:01Z

In the fullness of summer's heat, in the space between Litha and Lughnasadh, the alchemical materials are cooking away, distilling to become higher and more refined. In my household, lots of choices and decisions seem to have suddenly shifted or arisen or something, and everyone who's spent this past winter wishing or working to get something different most likely got a couple options thrown right at their head this past week. Distilling what do do about a fastball on the fly right towards your head can be tricky but it's either decide or watch that sucker hit you right in the face.

I'm down to just a few functional days left before I am off on adventures and I'm teetering on almost being booked up solid. My housemate's urge/desire to have another pet after the passing of the previous one this past year has suddenly come to a head this week, and Thursday is now an all-housemate trip out to the Olympic peninsula to look at a rescue dog. Yes, right before we all are going to leave town for anywhere between 5 and 15 days. All I can say at this point is stay tuned.

Out of the elements of fire and air are the sun, moon, and stars composed. Hence the angels are more lucid than the sun, moon, and stars, because they are created from one substance, which is less dense than two, while the sun and the stars are created from a composition of fire and air.

from TURBA PHILOSOPHORUM

Wednesday (today, thank the Goddess for blog queues!) is errand day. I get a haircut in the afternoon and the entire neighborhood will be going completely nutty-kookoo-bonkers tonight with the annual Seafair Parade. Anything I want to get done, I gotta get done before noon to be practical about it. There will be cannon fire and pirates by nightfall. Friday I have to soak up as much K-energy as I can before I leave. We're gonna make a night of it after she gets off work, with the chocolate exhibit at MOHAI and then we're going to see LUCY. Seriously, we have discovered that when I have longer trips, we both seem to have a touch of separation anxiety. We still email and whatever, but what stops is the use of each other as an external hard drive. And it's not about data files, it's the processing power.

Luggage is about to be staged and gear is on the verge of actually beginning to be packed. I have to do a weather recheck. And I got a head's up about a fancy-schmancy dinner for the family days, so I have to make sure I've got some clothing packed that doesn't have ember holes in them or pre-reek of smoke. This year, as I am not solo, I have initiated a grand nesting scheme, the end result of which is, I hope, that my gear stays drier and I can better facilitate my daytime and nighttime circle duties. If you get your stuff spread out over the Illumination site, it's almost as bad as when that happens at MayFire.

Kindle The Fire Of The Sages

2014-07-16T19:00:01Z

The heat of distillation can be quite fierce. We just had a week-long run of 85-90 here in the Emerald City, in case anyone was wondering just what people mean when they say 'climate change.' As with any time of extremes, as much as people complain, the extra challenge tends to make you drop away what's superfluous and just deal with what's necessary. Not unlike when I'm attending a festival. I'm definitely distilling across multiple areas of my life.

I have some filtration on my plate this week more specifically. The influences are pretty good and it's time my cordial stocks were replenished. I just have to work out how to do it in the cool garage versus the overheated kitchen. We're pretty much helpless to cool the kitchen until the overall temps drop. I've made some great headway on a few spots in the yard as the heat makes for very dead weeds and those suckers pull right up. I want to yank a bunch of vine-ish stuff out from under the butterfly bush we have in our northeastern corner of the yard (my zone) and get a flowering shade plant mix in there instead.

For this is the most excellent substance of the Sages, and is rejected only by the foolish. Its substance is like, but its essence unlike, that of gold. Transmute the elements and you will have what you seek. Sublime that which is the lowest, and make that which is the highest, the lowest. Take quicksilver which is mixed with its active sulphur; put it into a well-closed vial, and one alembic, plunge one-third of it into the earth, kindle the fire of the Sages, and watch it well so that there may be no smoke. The rest you may leave to me. I ask you to do no more, but only bid you follow my unerring guidance.

from The Remonstration of Nature, made to the erring alchemists, and complaining of the sophists and other false teachers. Set forth by John A. Mehung.

It's a fortnight until I'm on the road, so lists have formally started and piles are messily taking shape just about everywhere. The challenge to stay warm where I'm headed will be moderate for brief times but there's a dampness/dryness factor that seems to be to be more the key than how hot/cold. I have to figure out how to overlap fire circle clothing with choices appropriate to being with my family and going out to dinner and stuff for four days too. That's going to be a bit of a weird mix. I had a big phone call with my incense sister in Vegas the other night and we've both got lists of stuff to bring for bringing it on. We joked that although changes in how things run this year are going to free up most attendees from juggling costumes and props, some of us are just going to still be doing it.

And speaking of Las Vegas, that funky concept of me house-sitting for my friend and taking care of her critters for three months while she goes to Costa Rica is still moving forward. I now have a time frame. Her departure and return travel dates are November 29, 2014 thru until March 6, 2015. Talk about your distillation process, I've got to boil it down pretty simply and quickly: can I really live in Las Vegas for December through February? That just plain takes P-con out of the equation, and I'd be in town for Mysterium already. I'd be there for the holidays, that would be interesting. My friend actually proposed that I just stay after Fall Fest straight through all November, but I just dropped an event on my calendar for the first weekend in November, so I think on my end I'm going to try and work it so I head to Vegas two weeks early and get oriented with the animals and all. I still have to check off a lot of things before this is a locked-in done-deal, but like I said, it's still moving forward.

It Ruptures, Dissolves And Congeals All Things

2014-07-10T04:15:00Z

I feel like my past week was very dissolve... Sitting adjacent Lake Washington and observing the waters and Mt Rainier for hours. We even had a nice heat wave that reminded me more of the summer temps of my Eastern childhood. I got buzzed by hummingbirds. At dusk, I watched for bats. Gentle heat, lots of water....but not for much longer as I'm now starting my countdown to Illumination, and multiple alchemical fires.

As summer solstice is Conjunctio, thus Lughnasadh follows aligned with Distillatio, the distillation of Mercury. As Lammas celebrates the wheat harvest, so the process of distillation brings more discrimination to the alchemical purification. Now, having started to see harvest from our efforts earlier in the year, we begin to separate the wheat from the chaff in our processes. Having had discussions with people on the event side of Illumination, I have an outline and some guidance and thus what I'm going to be doing and bringing gets refined. And with Illumination taking place around Lughnasadh, really potent work can be done.

This fire is mineral, equal and continual, and never evaporates unless over excited; it has certain of the characteristics of sulphur, is taken and originates elsewhere than in the material. It ruptures, dissolves, and congeals all things, and similarly congeals and calcinates; it is difficult to find by industry or by Art. This fire is the epitome and abridgement of the Work in its entirety, taking no other thing else, or very little, and this same fire introduces itself and is of mediocre heat; for with this little fire the whole Work is perfect, and all due and necessary sublimation achieved together.

from Pontanus - The Secret Fire, 16th Century

I've been tapped to "co-docent" the circle, and while I am supposed to be put in touch with my other co-docent ahead of time, I'm prepared to show up on site in a few weeks with a name and the half face I remember and improvise from there. Because that's how fire circles go that way sometimes. I'm also going to be involved in incense/scenting and the root fire. Both those aspects of the circle are going to be tuned a bit more this year. For incense we're going to try and have intentionally-chosen scents at specific times with more purposeful scenting of the circle to help support the specific energy. We're gonna want a stash of charcoals for that, and I think I'm going to pick up a different type of lighter, one of those torch ones for cigars and high-wind conditions. I'm not dicking around with a damp charcoal in the middle of the night in a forest in the Pacific Northwest. I want that shit to light without burning my fingertips off on the lighter trying to do it. Why yes, I learned a few things this past MayFire, thank you for asking...

How busy I was at MayFire and how seldom I was at or in my tent made me contemplate how I pack in new ways. I'm on the meal plan this year, and I'm pretty sure that the post-Illumin road trip can be done stove and cooking gear-free, so I'll have some items to eat off of and not much else. I am going to have a lot of snacks however as the food altar at Illumination is one of the least compatible with me that I've encountered, not to mention once the dew comes down, anything that was out is totes disgusto and usually winds up being tossed which makes for lean offerings after that.

I have had my eye on a new pair of fire gloves. There were a few moments at MayFire where I was holding a totally flaming log and thought, yeah, these gloves have given many years of good service but it feels like I might want to start looking... I found a company that makes a variant of their hearth/fire gloves that have smaller hands and wrists for women. This is relevant to my tiny-handed interests. And there are at least a half dozen women who are just waiting to hear what I have to say, knowing how I use my gloves.

I have mugwort drying in the basement. I have to see what will be fresh in the yard that could get picked for the root fire brew. That's going to be varied a bit from how the Forestdance people do it, more Root Fire 2.0. We will not be doing any all-night complex phased rituals. They are doing one night with three big phases, down from the HFT's four-phase outline. But it sounds like one intention for this year is to keep people present and not have them spending all night watching a clock, getting together props and costumes, and waiting to perform. And as much as some people get off on the big organized thing, I think it's busy but not fresh like it once was experientially.

But of course, all that don't mean shit right now because I have a date tomorrow night.

The Indissoluble Bond Of Body And Soul

2014-06-26T06:30:02Z

In my alchemical wheel of the year, the summer solstice is distillation. A series of events and activities that began earlier in the year are all now coming to a time of finer planning and attention to detail. Given that we're still in Mercury retrograde, it means going a bit slower and understanding that things will come together more at the last minute, and that's okay. Expressing the energies of distillation means more mindfulness in decisions. My word back at MayFire was "choice." I have to make more discriminating choices now.

We've actually had summer-warm weather in the Emerald City lately. The garden is full of color, but we got enough water to top off all the barrels with the last storms so we've been able to ignore the hose for a bit longer. It's time to hit the walking-path-edge of the lawn again, to differentiate it from the formal meadow. Walking to the solstice parade, I took a photo of a fantastic patch of wild sidewalk garden which I felt was a perfect example of what we're trying to grow. I think I want to give Dad back his weed whacker and get a tiny push mower for our needs instead. It will wind up being a LOT quieter, and without having to deal with a cord, it might be a lot easier too.

For as the soul lives and moves in all the members of the body, so that spirit lives and moves in all elementary creatures, and is the indissoluble bond of body and soul, the purest and most noble essence in which lie hid all mysteries in their inexhaustible fullness of marvelous virtue and efficacy.

from The Sophic Hydrolith; or Water Stone of the Wise, That is, a chymical work, in which the way is shewn, the matter named, and the process described; namely, the method of obtaining the universal tincture.

A minor confusion about scheduling and just what got communicated in email has been cleared up, so my house=sit starts Wednesday, not Sunday. That's good actually. It might rain over the 4th of July. I'm sure people will still be firing off more than enough things no matter what the weather.

After the house-sit comes the family gathering. It would seem that there are plans in the works for some skeeball in a location on the Oregon coast known especially for this. I think skeeball was the only thing I can every say I loved about the Jersey shore. After some debate about who really wants to go where on the way down the coast and who wants to visit other people on the way home, I've been swapped back and forth between the two family cars and have landed back where I started: with my parents dropping me off at Illumination.

On the fire family front, I'm in part of the opening ritual the first fire at Illumination, and things have moved forward a notch in regards to some stuff under-development in the Vortex. I have sacred items to start assembling for August, some incense, some mugwort from the yard. Time to start keeping an eye out for any sudden fall travel deals.

With A Spoon Or Feather Dipping It In

2014-06-18T21:00:03Z

I finally heard myself, as I was telling my friend A at the neighborhood farmers market on Friday about my spring travels. It was the phrase "I broke wide open," that triggered my Coulson moment. When I heard myself say the phrase and remembered saying it more than once just like that. It dawned on me that this is not a "healing from," it's not going to go back to what it was before. The materia I shifted is just that: in a different place or arrangement. It's going to be slow healing, like this guy I knew who had a diverticula burst and they had to let his surgical wound heal open, not sewn shut. Yay, growth!....uugh...

I found this picture frame with an image of Mercury/Hermes at the Goodwill for $1, as you can see by the tag. Of course I got it. The image turned out to be a photograph, dated May 23, 2000 on the back. A brief bit of sleuthing on the internet and I believe there is a very strong case to be made that the picture now in my possession is the likeness of the Florentine statue of Mercury located in the Butchart Gardens in Victoria, BC, Canada. I don't know if the frame and image will remain together, but I can say that right off the bat I am just a tad more fond of the image...

Gather this with a spoon or feather dipping it in; and in doing so often times a day until nothing more arises; evaporate the water with a gentle heat, i.e., the superfluous humidity of the vinegre, and there will remain the quintessence, potestates or powers of gold in the form of a white oil incombustible. In this oil the philosophers have placed their greatest secrets; it is exceeding sweet, and of great virtue for easing the pains of wounds.

from The Secret Book Of Artephius, taken from 'In Pursuit of Gold' by Lapidus

The last few days I've been walking around in my neighborhood via a series of alleyways that I've never walked on or hardly noticed in the eight years I've lived here. Mostly you see garbage trucks using them. I can wander most of my immediate area now on a connected set of private pathways which almost no other people or cars is using. It's surreal.

The OSF production of THE TEMPEST was amazing. The spellwork in the play is exemplary, and you can see how it's been a huge influence over the centuries on magickal language. But when you really look at it, Shakespeare crafted some fantastic magick, stuff that was super-powerful and potent, and the language is amazing at the end when Prospero undoes all he's cast, and it's so fucking ethical it's a freaking benchmark when you look at magickal practitioners today, about 400 years after this stuff was written. And there was this one part where Ariel rose up on wings and I swear to Tumblr the costuming and freaking everything was like Attack on Titan and I nearly lost it, which is to say nothing of K's reaction. Being in the theatre, versus a dark movie theater, we controlled ourselves. Just.

It's one of those lull-in-the-action moments of the year, a gap of quiet in the midst of some really busy times and travel. I alternate between feeling restful and restless. The constant light is actually now so pronounced it's making me crazy. I'm up late at night trying to get to bed and then turn right around and wake up very early. We've been having a dry spring, and so it was nice this past week to actually have some rain. The garden and the barrels needed it, and you could tell the city residents actually did too. Cool, clammy, subtle humidity is annoying and it appears to be something we will be seeing manifest more here as the climate changes.

The Vinegar Of The Wise

2014-06-04T23:00:05Z

The astrological influences for the month of June are excellent for the first three weeks. In fact, Wednesday the 12th is aligned with Separation and falls right on the full moon. After I get home from Ashland I'll need to do a bit of cleaning (de-twigging) of plant material so I can get going on a few things. I have things ready for filtration and others that need to get bottled with Mercury. Due to my practice of recycling my containers, I'll be working in that order to make empties for the new projects. I also have some new tiny bottles that I have to find corks which fit them, or some other means of sealing/closing.

I am headed south this weekend, with stopovers along the route. We'll be over-nighting in Milwaukie, OR on Thursday. Friday morning will see us at the Enchanted Forest, about an hour further south in Turner, OR. I was here once in the 1970s, when the attraction was still quite new and there were no rides. K was here as a young girl too, but that probably was still in the later 1980s at the latest. A long time since we visited. But the memory of the ultra-uber-gigantic witch's head never faded for either of us. I'm sure you can see where this sort of thing is headed. Oh yeah, there WILL be pics.

Yet I let you know that it is properly called the Vinegar of the Wise, and that in the distillation of this Divine Liquor there happens the same thing as in that of common vinegar; you may hence draw instruction: the water and the phlegm ascend first; the oily substance, in which the efficacy of the water consists, comes the last, etc.

from THE SIX KEYS OF EUDOXUS

One play I am really looking forward to this weekend is THE TEMPEST. I've not seen the entire thing staged live, and have seen more things inspired by the original than it in its entirety. No doubt there will be alchemical allegory that will arise in there somewhere. I just signed up for JSTOR so I could have access to this major paper from a drama journal in the late 90s that specifically details the alchemy metaphors in the play. One of the big kickers for that one is that an actor with whom I worked way back in the 80s the summer I was employed by Shakespeare Santa Cruz is in the cast! I was looking up the actors online last night out of curiosity and there was Bruce A Young, still best referenced to other people as the big black transvestite hooker that Tom Cruise calls in RISKY BUSINESS. INTO THE WOODS I've only seen as the filmed stage play, and they're working on a movie adaptation now, so this should be good to see in that context. I'll be curious to see if they make the Wolf in this version as anatomically correct as they did on Broadway. Given the casting, I think not. In fact, the Wolf is going to be portrayed by the deaf actor from STTNG that we saw last season in CYMBELINE and THE HEART OF ROBIN HOOD. Several bit parts in ITW are going to be portrayed by Catherine Coulson, who was the Log Lady on the tv show TWIN PEAKS back in the 90s. Add to all that some daytime temps in the 80s, our penchant for shenanigans and we're looking at a majorly awesome weekend.

On the home front, I have my garden projects stabilized at the moment. Saffron is weeded, covered with compost and essentially "asleep" until the first of September when those bulbs will want to be fed. The roses I hacked back in February are gorgeous now, and clearly they like the big chop in the very earliest of spring. There has been some talk of adding back in a sage plant, but maybe in the front yard. Apple tree just keeps getting watered and watched. I think it's not going to set much fruit this year due to be moved in-ground, but that's for the best in the long run. White strawberries are just starting to come in, and having been moved to the front, they are getting a lot more sun and seem quite happy. Fruit yields on those are looking to be up this summer. I guess that means eating a half palmful at a time instead of three berries. Only catch garden-wise is the absence of rain. We normally don't have barrels running dry right at the start of June but, despite many predictions of various showers, the last two weeks in May were pretty dry. We just hooked up the hose to handle bigger stuff like the raspberry bed while we still water by hand on the rest.

Dissolved By Wisdom In Contrition, Assation And Fire

2014-05-29T02:00:05Z

Although I had this last week to myself, it was not the restful retreat that such a time usually is. Too much lead is loose and moving about in my head for that in the wake of MayFire. I have to work at finding ways to bring it to the surface and let it go that aren't so bumpy and randomized, sans my usual community ritual methods for the moment. I realize that my gardening is not just enjoying the activity, it's a means of grounding a vast amount of crap that otherwise would just pour out of me and pool up all over the place.

Meditating back on MayFire, I'm really struck by a moment that happened at the Desert Moon Circle Beltane ritual. This is a 30-year-old coven that has not only had continuous leadership that entire time but has trained their next generation of priests and priestesses. I'd known a lot of the group from the Vortex, but it was cool to see people's extended families or folks who weren't going to make it out to the Valley this year. During the part of the ritual where the men invoked and held god-space, and women invoked and held goddess-space, for the first time ever I felt like something was really wrong with me and the energy I was running in that moment. It's like I got pushed too far up the femme scale vibrationally. Something about the wording or postures somehow made it feel like more than I'd agreed to, or my own preferred vibration at that time. I'll have to watch and see what happens with that in the future.

The Lord gave Bazalael wisdom, understanding and knowledge (Exod 31, 34), there are the means, for Gold is dissolved by wisdom in contrition, assation and fire; the end is directed to invent works in Gold, Silver and Brass; which is not to be understood according to the sound of words but according to the intent of all distillation to extract the inward [perfection] and manifest the central virtue, for where the perfection of the matter is glorious, the perfection of the form must be more glorious.

from THE GLORY OF LIGHT, transcribed by Adam McLean from Ms. Ashmole 1415. f61-70.

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.

Sun and Moone in Hermes Vessell

2014-05-22T04:30:00Z

From the moist Northwest to the crucible of the Nevada desert. I deserved an ordeal and I got one. Three weeks. My first 10 days or so out at the Temple cleared the head space so that once I got into Vegas and started connecting with the community my Lead started to shift and I spent the second 10 days of the trip on an emotional roller coaster of personal work. Once I was out in the desert, I was either fully engaged in something volunteer/support-related, or sitting in a niche in the rocks weeping, or trying to take care of some sort of maintenance of myself. If I dropped the ball, it was in that last department.

My nest was a pile of gear bags heaped behind the chairs of the older couple I took on as Homecomers. I was almost never in my tent, and only managed to day sleep by curling up in the rocks. It was a windy, sandy year and actually not showering for most of the event was part of how I survived. My skin went insane and the cessation of the use of soap was what allowed me to get my itching and dry patches under control. I de-gritted my head under a faucet once a day and just brushed off everything else as well as I could. I shared stove and cooler space with Fred and Touina. There were only two other tents at site 1, every other tenter went to site 3, which wound up packed. Other than F&T, the other guys at site 1 were a new guy and his Army-PTSD nephew. It took ten years, but now I can say that I've heard a man say "Don't bother Daddy, he's been up drinking and dancing," as he went into his tent to crash for the day. Hilarious.

Seriously though, I wouldn't be surprised if my aura kept nearly everyone away from site 1. I had the hardest event ever in terms of the Lead inside my head. I've been cracked ever since spending the day with E, and will weep at the drop of a hat or the glimpse of an angsty oblique muscle, really at anything. A lot of extremely intense shit that's been kicking around in my head over the last year deliquesced in the desert air. Painful but insightful. I said a lot of shit to people that has not been being said. Got some surprised looks, and some support too. And then there were all the insane things that happened that weren't coming from inside my head.

Sun and Moone in Hermes Vessell
Learne how the Collours shew,
The nature of the Elements,
And how the Daisies grow.

From The Magistry, Hoc opus exigium nobis fert ire per altum. December, 1633.

This last year of near constant Nigredo finally seems to have popped and I shifted through a Peacock's Tail phase into Albedo. Hence my eye-moistened present experience. I am staring down some of my worst teenage damage, and I'm not sure exactly how this is all going to go. My sister said one of the most interesting things she's ever said to me just last night, as she was running around and freaking out as she prepared to leave today for a week of retreat, for which she is the main organizer. She said to me that she realized that it was hard for me to be in the regular world in some ways, but when you put me into an event/community situation, I was absolutely the most normal person there. Then she said that normal wasn't the word she wanted to use, but she wasn't sure what else to call it. I got she was implying not just how I am as a person, but how I function in that setting. That's some serious shit to ponder for this next week as I have the place to myself.

The three week relocation threw me in a way I hadn't had before, on the sunnier side of the seasonal change for once. I was gone so long the lateness of light in the evening shifted far enough that I've been completely thrown off since I got back a week ago. I can't tell how late it is at all at night, and it stays light until past 9pm at this point. That's kept a bit of the waking trance feeling from MayFire going. I have been sleeping up a storm. I actually had about 60 hours at MayFire where I got 3 hours of sleep out of 24 instead of my usual 6 hours. That was one huge altered experience that went on for days, with so much wind, and being up all night fire tending actively and all that napping in the rocks. I got to serve Rattlesnake Fred tea in his own tea house, after covering service so he could go see Ariel lead the Moon affinity group's transition ritual. That was serious gold. Emergency secret burger delivery to outside the afterglow: priceless. I worked the texting magic of the travel phone for that one. Bought UV sleeves on a whim in mid-trip. How have I never owned these until now? I will be packing for Illumination differently based on a few things I tried this outing.

On Which Evolution Has Not Yet Worked

2014-05-02T16:00:11Z

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?

Made Of Vitriol And Saltpeter

2014-04-23T21:00:00Z

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.

Come then, on God's Name, a little nearer me, and heed well the things which shall be shewn unto you. We will here take half an ounce of common Gold, and put it into this Aqua Fortis, made of Vitriol and Saltpeter, whereto we will add the same weight as the Gold is of, or a little more, of our Saltarmoniack, without which, the Aqua Fortis alone, and by itself, is not able to dissolve the Gold.

from Glauber's A Short Book of Dialogues, or, (Certain Colloquies) of some Studious Searchers After the Hermetick Medicine and Universal Tincture.

Neither Spirit Nor Smoke May Escape

2014-04-16T21:00:00Z

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.

Put the mixture into an earthen pot, and place over it an alembic or distilling vessel, rendered airtight with clay. Let it stand one day and one night before you put it on the fire. Then expose it to gentle heat, and let it distil continually for five or six days and nights. Thus let it flow by drops; carefully lute your glass receptacle so that neither spirit nor smoke may escape, and when the liquor distilling assumes a blue or pallid colour, then abstract nothing further.

- from Chapter 2, The Testament Of Cremer, Abbot Of Westminster, And Brother Of The Benedictine Order

I've had a few phone calls from Vegas. A's geared up and ready to rock and roll on whatever this is that she's doing. It's just going to be for a few hours one night, but I'm still totally all over it. It appears that my offer of help for getting ready ahead of time may involve digging holes. Speaking of phones, my Euro-trip candy bar died on me over ECCC weekend, but I went on eBay and bought another. I went for a full keyboard on this disposable model, and it will do WiFi too. Getting it up and running took about 10 minutes and mostly involved swapping the SIM out of the old and into the new. That will be nice for all the travel I have coming up.

On other tech fronts, I've solved my stove and cooler share for MayFire. And I got a strategy for being in town from roughly DMC's Beltane until MayFire set-up, so as to facilitate my ride-snagging on the front end. On the back end, I'm good with either being dropped at the Temple, or couch-surfing in town. Most likely those details will still be unplanned when I begin my trip. Which doesn't bother me, and it's interesting to think how once I would have lost my mind over that. I'm actually looking forward to nailing down a day to run around all over by myself. I have a lost photo safari to honor, and fisheye and macro effects in Vegas are going to be interesting.

Persist In The Asperity Of Fire

2014-04-09T21:00:04Z

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.

Let the Calcinatory Furnace be made square, in length four foot, and three foot in breadth, and let the thickness of the Walls be half a foot; after this manner: Luna, Venus, Mars, or other Things to be calcined, must be put into Dishes or Pans of most strong Clay, such as of which Crucibles are made, that they may persist in the Asperity of Fire, even to the total Combustion of the Thing to be calcined.

- Geber, from his Book of Furnaces

I just found magickal pants that look like my peacock hair on eBay. They are my size (meaning waist size) and are in a new-but-used state. I made an offer a bit below the "buy now" and it was accepted. I will hem the life out of them and they will be great. This is the largest-sized pair of Phoenix Rising pants I've ever gotten my hands on. I've sworn not to buy directly from the clothing designers at full price due to their sizing, which insists I am at least 6" too short for the rest of me. I buy their pants used and do alchemical things to them. Some might say I Frankenstein these pants. This pair is going to be epic. Memo to self: order more hair color now, so it arrives before you leave for Nevada.

Went to the fabric store to get last minute things for this weekend in Portland. Also went to see CATWS for a 2nd time, since it was playing right around the corner with a perfectly-timed matinee. So many feels. When I got home (Tuesday afternoon around 4ish), there was a message on the phone. From the guy who runs the Esoteric Book Conference, and is an esoteric press/publisher, who also puts out a periodical. They like my photos, and want to talk with me about putting them in the next issue of the Clavis Journal. I called back. I'll upload some stuff for them to review before I head south this weekend. That I did not expect.

Here In The Water, Air And Earths

2014-04-02T21:00:05Z

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.

I search in the water here.
The air should give me
I search in the earth
The fires should become for me
Something here, you fools, here in the water, air and earths.

In the fire, shall you busily search.
All here suddenly becomes.

~ from a 1747 oil-on-wood painting signed by a Johann Winckler

I was running a bath Monday morning, as much of my body felt like I took a beating instead of giving out hundreds of stickers to children, and I was struck with a visualization of all my names. Relache, the first "other" name, is Albedo. When I took it on and where I used it I was exploring and experimenting and dissolving. I stretched out, I explored little bits, I softened a lot of things. Rae du Soleil, the name I was given by someone who is an Elder and mentor to me, is Rubedo. When I get into her space and hold it just right, RdS is gold. This last year has been a grind, being in my own head a lot, bumping and crashing about in the Nigredo. But what came out of the dark eventually was a gender presence and maybe a name. I don't think this part of myself is the Nigredo, I think that's the me that's connected to my birth name. I'm pretty sure what I've found is the Peacock's Tail inside me. My own blue spark. I think. I have that sense of a lack of perspective from knowing you can't really see what's happening to you from your own viewpoint. I think I got my work for out at the Temple this year framed out for me.

And from there, we have to do a complete reversal from deep inside my own navel to out where all is just ephemera and oh so shiny.... CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER OPENS ON THURSDAY AND WE HAVE TICKETS FOR AN 8PM SHOWING. (wipes down keyboard and screen...sorry) I've un-tracked more tags in the last two weeks than I can count. I think a home showing of Cap 1 and Avengers that day is required. We've nearly got Stasi and Zella in order, so any coherence that K and I have after our cinematic climax this weekend will go towards those two. VMB in Portland on the 12th. Holy crap, how did THAT get here so fast? There will also be an H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival and CthulhuCon that same weekend. I learned that from a t-shirt being worn by a guy I met for three minutes in round two of Sci-Fi Speed Dating. I should get some boxes and see what books need to go to Powell's this round. Let the distillation continue on that front.

To Manifest Thought Are Words

2014-03-26T21:00:05Z

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.

"All the signs adopted by human industry to manifest thought are words."

~ from the commentary preceding a preliminary translation of Magaphon's French commentary to the Mutus Liber

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.

Projected Upon An Hot Plate Of Venus

2014-03-19T21:00:05Z

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.

The sign of the Work perfected will be this: If the Stone being projected upon an hot plate of Venus, doth melt like Wax, and not smoke, but penetrate and tinge, then is the Oriental King born, fitting in his Kingdom with greater power than all the Princes of the World.

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.

The Fruits Of Sun And Moon

2014-03-12T21:00:02Z

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.

~ from "Eckartshausen's Prayers," one of two prayers written by Karl von Eckartshausen for alchemists, from Über die Zauberkräfte der Natur, Munich, 1819, translated by Joscelyn Godwin

I got out in the yard during a break in the rain this week and did some pruning and weeding. The antique roses got their annual hack down. They responded so well to this last year, I hope we get even more blossoms this summer. I also finally got a handsaw and removed a super-thick-and-dead hunk of thorny cane. As I already have saffron in process, when I cut back some of the crazy rosemary growing intertwined with the roses, I did not save the herb. Both saffron and rosemary are Sun plants, so I didn't need another for my spagyric work. But I may take some rosemary from another bush later in the spring and distill some essential oil as it's so useful.

The housemate backyard survey/discussion required took place, and the apple tree has an agreed-upon new spot where it will be taken out of it's big pot and put into the ground. That's me digging a freaking deep hole. There appear to be some tulips in the vicinity which I will have to just encounter and move on an individual basis. We hope this allows the tree to stop dropping its fruit which is what happened last year. Temps also have shifted enough it seems like a fair time to pitchfork up all the straw and see how the strawberry plants overwintered. We decided that since these really are happier in pots, I'm going to move all the plants to the front yard where we have some large, fancy planters that don't have much going on in them, or only have early spring bulbs. The strawberries will wind up lining the front steps of the house. I have to look up strawberries alchemically. There's got to be something magickal/historical I can craft from these exquisite berries....

Sulphurous Nature Alone Doth Not Profit

2014-03-06T05:00:05Z

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.

In particular Transmutations, its Sulphurous Nature alone doth not profit, but with other Sulphurs, especially those of the Red Metals, it does reduce thick Waters, duly terrificated into Gold; so also into Silver, if its nature be subtilized into a thin water by Quicksilver which (amalgam) amongst others is made well enough by Tin.

- from the Aesch-Mezareph, translated into English, from W. Wynn Wescott's 'Collectanea Hermetica' series at the end of the 19th century.

I've gotten calls from both A & E in Vegas. E was blissfully short due to my wireless phones battery not being able to hold much of a charge (it's time to replace the battery). A was one of those long ramblers, with two cut-outs, one on her end and one one mine and the third time was the charm with the really wildly-departed conversation. I'm feeling more called to her event in April, but practically would dictate that I would then just stay in NV for three weeks, with the last week being MayFire. Turns out the DMC is having their Beltane the weekend in between, so the trick would be to get someone to bring me into town for a day or two and catch that. Perhaps stay with Johnny and Dani for that bit. Or now that A has her own place, I might venture forth and see what's up there. Freakin' Angel, that's what....

In the meantime I'm up to my ass in my own distractions with the mundane, especially on the pop culture front. I'm equally scared and looking-forward to the speed dating at the comic con. J thinks it's perfect that I'm doing it. I picked the number of sessions and which ones to register for by pendulum. I'm now down for two of them, one Friday, one Sunday. And I've gotten instructions on how to present myself different at each appearance. Seriously though, I've done kinky speed dating a few times before and mostly it was amusing to "meh," with a rare "wow, I hope that guy finds me interesting in two minutes too!" Which did happen once, and was nice sporadically for about a year after that. I need to just go read some angst and get this shit out of my system...

Thank goodness for cosplay distractions. K is funding an ocean of tulle, which will ultimately be draping attitude-misted gothic-sister personas. No-sew skirts. It's going to be epic, like the Evil Princess Skirts our five-year-old selves didn't know who to tell we were dreaming about them at the time. Only affordable. And I have some fabu ideas for making the ends more ratty and apocalyptic. And there was one important realization: the lower we make the waists, the more elegant the sweep. These need to be hip-slung skirts like what burst out from the lower edge of a tight corset, giving us longer torsos. I'll be wearing this thing again in the future with delight. But not at a fire circle, that's for damn flammable sure!

Then Gives The Chrysoprase

2014-02-27T00:00:00Z

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."

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.