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. 

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. 

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.

~ 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. 

Somehow, once upon a time, my housemate and I agreed to take another friend's treadmill which wasn't doing anything at their house.  And for a while, it did something in our garage, and then it took became just another thing to put things on.  Last week my sister found someone who was willing to be the next residence for the treadmill, so a huge space just opened up in our garage.  Behind where the treadmill was is a fairly comprehensive pile of boxes, most of which belong to me and many of which haven't done much since I moved to the Emerald City (on the winter Solstice 2005). 

I'm slowly making my way through the boxes.  I have a box that is now the "to be shredded box," and I'll probably borrow my dad's very sturdy home shredder to take care of that pile as I can feed more stuff into it compared to the teeny one I have.  Stuff that is garbage, goes right into the garbage can in the garage.  Same for stuff that can go right to recycling.  I have a box started that is for items to go to the thrift store.  So far, lots of what I've gotten into is paperish, but I know it'll get more thrifty when I get down to heavier boxes at the bottom of the stacks.  Some of it's funny, some of it is bizarre (as in why do I still have this junk?) and it's very much Nigredo work.

Take good heed for this your fire
The fire with water bright shall be burnt
And water with fire washed shall be
The earth on fire shall be put
And water with air shall be knit
Thus ye shall go to purification
And bring the serpent to redemption
~ David Beuther, Universal und Particularia... Hamburg, 1718

More Ripley Scroll energy. I had the extreme good fortune to see one in person in London in the summer of 2012. The British Museum had just discovered they had something like only the 23rd one to exist, and it had been sitting uncatalogued in their basement for several hundred years or something like that.  My meditations on Yule about finding a new formula upon which to possibly base an alchemical fire circle ritual led me to delve into Ripley's Twelve Gates. 

This blog then did something I've been trying to do for about a year and a half, and that's recover the lost originals from the early portion of the European trip.  My iPad crashed during the download and, for reasons that are still unclear, various other photo software programs never could access or find the originals.  However, the media function here can access that hidden folder, and I stumbled across them while looking through my photo files for images for this blog!  There's no coincidence in alchemy.  I get it.  There's a lot of work to be done to actually recover and organize them, but I have my missing larger file size photos from Glastonbury and London.  My GSW pics from that trip were all fine, but the really personal magickal stuff (totaling just over a thousand images) from early in the trip were cloaked until now.

My health finally recovered enough that I felt it appropriate to take a mini-retreat made possible by my parents doing some travel and wanting a house-sitter.  I waited until I'd had my glorious Hobbit late night last Thursday and traveled south on Friday afternoon.  It was one of those long-haul busing actions.  The second leg of that was me and about four dozen, hardened, urban middle-schoolers.  It was interesting to watch my aura auto-deploy itself:  in a space where the standing room was sardine-tight, no kid wanted to sit next to me but had no issue sitting next to any of the older-looking adults. 

I got to spend about four days on the shores of Lake Washington with Mt Rainier seemingly sitting just on the other side even though it's really a couple of hours away by car.  Yes, it's that huge.  It's blanketed with snow and is just beautiful.  There are an amazing number of hummingbirds there, taking advantage of the feeder my parents have hanging out on the deck.  When Kalla came by on Saturday we went outside so she could photograph the mountain, and the birds were zipping right past us, totally at ease and playing with each other.  That night we went to the luminary display around Greenlake.  It was nice, not too cold and dry. 

"When you see your matter going black, rejoice, for this is the beginning of the work."

- Rosarium Philosophorum

I have finally begun an undertaking that is an elementary and classical step in alchemy, and interestingly, one which many modern alchemists overlook.  I'm surprised that I didn't do this sooner, but then it also makes sense that I am doing this now as the sign that I am ready to do this, and wasn't supposed to do this before now.  I am about to begin my work with the seven essentials.  This is a course of spagyrics attuned to the planets and the days.  People who dismiss laboratory alchemy are those that tend to discount or miss this process in alchemical growth.  In straight-forward terms, the alchemist assembles seven spagryic tinctures, one for each planet and you take them as appropriately attuned on each day of the week for a year.  

As with all alchemy, there's no one way to do this.  In fact, one of the methods is to start completely randomly.  Others say to start based on choices made from one's own astrological chart.  Others work with plants native to where they live.  When I took Robert Bartlett's PRIMA class, he talked about this and how ingesting the plant medicine would bring about alchemical understanding no matter how you chose to start, and just by doing so, the process would unfold and offer up guidance in its own way.  Sort of like, if you just start walking the path, you'll learn and get there along the way.  While the taking of spagyrics is said to lead to comprehension and effects that can't happen any other way, it's in the making of your own spagyrics that is supposed to really bring about deep insight and subtle knowledge. 

For my first round of this, I am going to be working with spagyrics made by Al-Qemi, of which I already have an assortment.  I had to order a couple of planets for which I didn't have a representative tincture, and I did that using a pendulum to select the plants.  While I take these, I will work on a series of tinctures that I prepare myself, with the plants chosen based on things I grow myself or which come into my life or otherwise indicate they are part of the series. 

My sister found a friend to take the treadmill we have in our garage that we got from another friend of hers, and so this next week, when I am done with my mini-retreat, the garage should quite literally begin to open up.  I will have access to a variety of things of mine that are boxed up behind where the treadmill is now.  A definite dross pass through the garage is going to happen.  I'll be curious to see what's been stashed down there which I have forgotten.  I know there is some kitchen stuff in those boxes, but I can't be exactly sure what else.  Probably art supplies, and undoubtedly a goodly amount of novelty accumulation.  I'll get to confront feelings of needing to keep things with the fact that I have not had to use or access those things in about seven years.  Nigredo, anyone?  One other side effect of the garage makeover should be being able to have a bit more lab space.  I'd like to get my cordial stuff situation down there and not be in the kitchen with it as much. 

This coming weekend is going to be sort of stupendous.  Friday night I'm going to do my traditional Yule vigil, ahead of the actual moment of Winter Solstice on Saturday morning, about an hour after sunrise.  Damn, that's gonna be one hella long night, but then again, it always is.  Saturday itself has a variety of options.  From Saturday night into Sunday morning, I have been invited to attend a Yule vigil held by a couple I met at the cob workshop this past summer.  Most likely I will try and do the Unsilent Night Seattle event (dependent on weather), at 7:30pm and then head over to 2nd Yule when that finishes up.  I am going to bring all my tea gear and offer gongfu-style service to whoever is attending.  These are geeky, kinky peoples so I'm really looking forward to it.  It's going to be extra nice because my aunt and uncle in Boston gifted me with a water warmer off my Amazon wish list for the holidays.  Now I'm really ready to crank out the tea!  I'm looking at it as being like two nights of fire with the first being serious magickal workings and the second being a party fire.  Thank goodness it's not really fires because two sixteen-hour stints on my feet less than 12 hours apart would be rather painful.  I'm really looking forward to rocking the Gojira slippers the second night.  That crowd should dig on them.

With all my magickal energy and attention having come back to me and my own priorities, I find myself looking at my alchemical processes and the Wheel of the Year.  I got off of following the Wheel as an alchemical process what with all the distraction and that's been a real disservice I've done myself.  A few years back, I had a year where I really followed the sequence of correspondences I established for myself and it would up facilitating a really amazing period of growth and prosperity that last several years.  Clearly I have come full circle and have to reinvent.  I'm trying to get on the 'upside' of Nigredo, working with it and diving deeper, seeking the Sol Niger instead of wallowing at it's mercy as has been the case for some significant portions of this past year. 

"Wherefore my Child, all is concealed in Saturn, which we have need of, for in it is a perfect Mercury, in it are all the Colours of the world, which may be discovered in it; in it are the true black, white and red Colours, in it is the weight, Saturn is our Lattin."
- "A Work of Saturn" by Johann Isaac Hollandus, From Of natural & supernatural things. London, 1670. Transcribed by Joshua Ben Arent

The cold snap has hung in there, although there is moisture coming and once our cloud cover/blanket returns, temps will warm up a bit.  But in that teeny overlap, we might get some snow flurries.  Alchemy has a lot of literature about collecting dew and other forms of water that carry life energy, but living in a place where dew in the spring just doesn't hardly happen, I've been investigating other forms of water collection.  The debate on snow is plentiful.  Some feel it's just frozen rainwater.  Some say it's got the lowest content of secret fire due to the time of year.  (nigredo water?)  Here's the "catch" on catching water:  it has to be captured without touching metal, plants or humans.  To do so will energetically realign it with one of those three realms.  So, using my weatherproof and lightweight metal mixing bowl of the past is out.  I'm going to try using a huge ceramic bowl or maybe an enameled cooking dish, the latter of which would be much more resistant to freezing and breaking.  Or I'll have to rig up some sort of fabric snow hammock. 

Made a supreme score for the Pagani wardrobe on eBay the other day.  Second time I've gotten a pair of their pants where the design is no longer available, and saved $50 off the retail price.  Those  are some serious peacock's tail pants.  

I did some work in the animal realm last spring, making a lard soap.  It came out a tad too brittle, a sign of being off just a tad on the fat to lye ratio, and I've just had it in the cupboard ever since, but now I'm about ready to grate the whole mess up, melt it down and add just a touch more oil to it and it should be able to be re-cured into functioning soap that may be just a wee bit super-fatted.  Which is actually a luxurious thing.  Working with animal fats is one of the few ways you can do alchemical work in the Animal realm in the modern age without running afoul of animal cruelty laws.  I don't mind if my vegan friends find it distasteful. 

My folks are off to CA to see my Mom's sisters.  Normally I would go house-sit at their place but with this chest cold still taunting me, I'm not up to it as much as they have a super comfy sofa that sits in front of a huge tv with way too many channels.  I'm just not up for being ill in a place that takes an hour and a half on public transit to reach. 

Tomorrow night, technically 12:01am Friday, we see the second installment of the Hobbit.... Me and my red beard are totally ready to go.  We sprang for the really good tix this time, no Lie-max, it's the real deal (and 3D) down at the Science Center.