Just a little over a week ago, sunset time finally got late enough it reached 5pm. Whew... there's something about that little bit of shift that suddenly makes everything change. Just about and about doing errands I overheard a handful of conversations about how the slightly longer day is now perceptible and how that seems to have lightened the mood. Of course, the impending Super Bowl is helping now too. But the sunset will slowly continue to creep later and later until it peaks just after 9pm come summer solstice. We saw blooming snowdrops on Bainbridge Island yesterday, and some pink camillias that had opened already. Both there and here in town I've seen bulbs starting to put up shoots. We thaw, we melt, we dissolve...
I keep three mini shrines at home, along with a more substantial "alchemical" altar. The minis are organized around Nigredo, Albedo and Rubedo. For many years now, I've had a figurine of Sekhmet as the deity for the Rubedo, relating to the Crone and the red of the desert where I do a lot of magickal work, but I got the message a while back that she was no longer appropriate in that slot for me. As the two other shrines have images and not statues for the related Goddess, I have been considering the replacement image. It was clear as soon as I got to see the higher-res image that the picture I took of the Black Madonna at Chartres was to be the new deity. That cathedral has two Madonnas (one above, one below), but the one I am speaking of is the Black Madonna de sous terre, the one underground in the crypt adjacent the ancient Druid well. I will frame the print I made. My Sekhmet statue will be re-homed at the temple in the Nevada desert the next time I am there.
I was emailing with my friend C and it turns out one of the new spagyrics she is taking is the same as one of the new ones I got to round out my seven essentials. What I'm working with is Pfaffia paniculata aka Suma (Sun), Wild Yam (Moon), Notoginseng (Mars), Cordyceps sinensis (Mercury), Turmeric (Jupiter), Sarsaparilla (Venus) and Myrrh (Saturn). All these spagyrics are from Al-Qemi in Oregon, whose tinctures I've been working with since 2008. I have had the good fortune to try many of their wondrous plant medicines over the years including some strange samples they make just for themselves. If you meet them at events, see what's on their tasting menu if they are offering one. I used pendulum divination to determine what plants to take. If any of the bottles run out before the end of the year, I'll ask at that time if I'm to keep taking the same plant or pick a new one which aligns with the same planet."The Determination of our Diana's Tears consists only in their perfect and indissoluble Union with the fixt Vegetable Earth, philosophically prepared, purified, and spiritualized: for the love of which they are forced to leave their first universal undetermined Property, and be clothed with a determined particular one, which is required to this our Circulatum Minus."
~ from Circulatum minus Urbigeranum, or the Philosophical Elixir of Vegetables, with The Three certain Ways of Preparing it, fully and clearly set forth on One and Thirty Aphorisms. By Baro Urbigerus. A Servant of God in the Kingdom of Nature. Experto Crede. London, Printed for Henry Faithorne, at the Rose in St. Paul's Church-yard, 1690.
I've been trying to figure out which book/guide to work with when it comes to choosing plants to make my own spagyrics. I have two which focus primarily on the topic, from somewhat different approaches (good) but sometimes they outright conflict each other (confusing). As with all things alchemical, there are some marked differences between various sources in regards to which planet different plants are said to correspond. I think I'm going to really consider what grows in my yard and is most readily available (hey, a use for my over abundance of aloe vera!) and then see what the predominant planetary association is. I should also dig up the material in my archive on the doctrine of signatures as that's probably going to come into play too. The first of the spring 2014 gardening catalogs have started to arrive, so I have to see what jumps out at me there too. We've had such a damn dry winter I don't know what to expect for spring weather at all. I'm really not up for having a repeat of last year's June-uary.
One major bump has arisen in my 2014 manifestations. The dates for the NW Alchemy Conference shifted from Memorial Day weekend to first weekend in June. I'm already booked for Shakespeare in Ashland the first weekend in June. I emailed everybody and said I was still up to contribute to planning and all, but that for obviously conflictive reasons, I would not be at the conference this year. Poo. The slideshow of alchemy adventures in the UK will have to hold for now. I checked a few other event dates and emailed another about timing to start to head off any more of this sort of thing. My manifestation is slipping...