The Tattooed Alchemist

Posts for Tag: MayFire

It Ruptures, Dissolves And Congeals All Things

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. 

Dissolved By Wisdom In Contrition, Assation And Fire

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

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

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

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.