Month: March 2012

Ascended to Tiphareth.

I feel balanced. Whole. Complete.

I feel like I can legitimately let go of all the worries that used to creep into my consciousness, and without these fretting thoughts taking up my thinking, I can really relax into the majesty of existence.

This world is majestic. We live within Beauty. Our curse as humans is that we can neglect to notice it, or rather, we forget. Without continual reminders, we can easily slip back into dissatisfaction with the world, instead of ecstatic fascination with it.

Previous spheres have ended with a stagnation, a miring in the vice of the sphere. Is the same possible here? Will we descend into Pride, or can we truly stay in continual appreciation of Beauty?

I bring this up, because spending two months in this sephirah sounds mighty nice to me. If we are going to pace ourselves so we can meet in person at the right place along this journey, I nominate this stage as a good place to spend some extra time.

Balance, on the equinox.

And on the tree.

I’ve been adrift lately with regards to our work, not sure what I should be focusing upon. With the earlier sephirah, we were invoking the energy of one sphere; now, we are suspended between four of them, at the intersection of the Tower and Temperance.

Catastrophic taming, I suppose.

We are not in Hod or Netzach; the point of equilibrium between us, where we are, is more than just a balance between right and left. It is also a balance between Yesod and Tiphareth.

As I look to the left and the right, I also need to look above and below.

The splendor of the intellect is a place I spend most of my time anyway, with the work that I do. I understand Hod very well. At first, I assumed I would need balance with Netzach, and that was the great lesson for me here.

My emotions, however, are known, and tamed. I may lack in the ability to use my emotions for manifestation, a very potent force, which is why I created the ALF project, to ensure I practice this power diligently.

The most I am out of balance, when I examine my known self, is with thoughts of lust.

I have a very high libido. Thankfully, I have a lusty wife, and access to a world of porn. I never go dissatisfied.

My satisfaction takes temporary precedence over my other thoughts, however, 3-5 times per week.

Sometimes, this depletes my chi, dulling my effectiveness, all because idle lusty thoughts creep into my mind and consume my thinking and feeling capacity.

So today, I looked at the Tree, and asked where these lusty thoughts originate.

It is, of course, in the imagination, in Yesod. Corresponding with the second chakra, of course.

I imagine sexual fantasies frequently, and not because I need to, or because I am recently deprived. It is idle. In a word, masturbatory.

I hold of my intellectual thinking time to an appropriate portion of my day; if I have a great idea that needs further development, I record it into my voice recorder, and when I am alert and caffeinated, I review my notes and implement them.

Likewise, I should not be indulging in lusty thoughts when it is not the time for me to be indulging in them.

During the other portions of my day, I do not want to descend into baser thoughts. I want to look higher, into Beauty.

This, then, is my final lesson of balance at this point of the tree.

In my right and left hands, my intellect and my heart.

Below me is my desires. Above is my higher self.

I do not wish to completely abstain from my baser desires, but I will refrain from continual indulgence, in order that my higher mind can spend time untarnished in the forefront of my thoughts.

Let’s buck a trend.

Magicians, nowadays, are broke financially.

 

Not all of them, I’m sure. You’ve probably met plenty of higher-ups in MMS who have successful businesses and careers under way; in general, though, magicians tend to be pretty strapped for cash, as a rule.

 

I have theories about why this stereotype exists, and is fulfilled. By scraping so much of the energy around us out of our personal space, we can sever our relation to the natural abundance of the universe.

This, coupled with a societal prejudice against woo-woo, can detract from our ability to foster successful business relationships. (Notice how insular communities like fundamentalist churches are populated with successful businesspeople who always do business together, and you can see the disconnect I am describing.)

Magicians don’t patronize each other’s businesses like Christians do, because there’s not nearly as many of us, and so many of us are broke.

We like to trade.

Barter works well for us, because we rely on money from outsiders (non-Magicians) outside of our circle to pay our bills, so we CAN’T be insular.

However, I wonder if we can step out of the classification of ‘broke magicians’ and into the demographic of ‘successful people who happen to be magicians.’

Any thoughts on how to firmly make that shift?

I have an idea…

Since I know that money is tight, and you are trying to get more clients, and still want to do the apprenticeship and talked about doing a trade, I’ve been thinking.

The question was:

What do I need or want that Caelan could offer?

Book Trailers!

It would showcase your video editing skills, it would pad your resume, and it would create something that I have been looking to have done anyway.  (There is a guy here in Seattle whose name is Brady Hall and he makes over $100,000 a year making book trailers for romance novels – http://youtu.be/650aVI4y3Us this one is funny (and Drago was in it)).

Anyway, I think you have e-copies of a few of my books, right? Is this something you would be interested in doing in trade for the apprenticeship stuff?

I need to do something to start increasing book sales and I think that having a catchy or clever video or book trailer I can embedd into my website and my Amazon author page would help.

What do you think?

Full Moon and the Kabbalistic Prayer

I’ve been waiting for this prayer.

You gave it to me once before, when you cleansed my house in Portland.

(I’ve got a note to ask you about my office – let’s chat about that sometime.)

While you and Karl were at work, I was given your spellbook, with the authority to copy only that one spell out into my grimoire. I used that prayer frequently, gaining access to deeper levels of spiritual immersion, by calling the names of every angel on the tree in turn.

It was my favorite.

But, I did not bring that spellbook with m when I moved to Costa Rica. I only brought a handful of books, out of my huge library (I kept about half of it in a storage unit, which is where the spellbook is now). See, books mold here, and without a room with air conditioning where you can keep your books, paper will mold in under a year. I’m already seeing it happen to my books here.

So I’ve been without this prayer for a while, and I’ve really been missing it.

Now, I’ve got it in digital form.

I’ve been sitting on it, not reading it since you sent it over a few days ago. I’ve made a commitment to perform the Middle Pillar every full moon, as a way of keeping the ritual in tune and increasing the strength of my aura.

I just now realized, I actually missed the whole ‘middle pillar’ part of the ritual tonight.

  • Going up through the sephirah and calling them by name, check.
  • The Pattern on the Trestleboard, got it.
  • The three circulations, oh yeah.
  • The Kabbalistic Prayer – knocked me into my first seizure in months.
  • But did I actually move Jakin and Boaz into the Middle Pillar?

Oh, I forgot…

I was pretty trancey, and I was looking forward to

  1. jumping back into my favorite meditation/ritual/prayer of all time for the first time in more than half a year, and
  2. using my new wand.

I didn’t consecrate it, but I realized, I have a wand. I carry it around all the time.

I was looking to the East, where the full moon dominated the sky, and I looked through a fence made of sprouting logs. The top of my mountain has a great elemental spot for ritual work; to the north is the mountain face, to the south is the majestic view, to the west is the creek behind the foliage of the jungle (and even a tower of water, a cistern that feeds the houses below) and to the east, I can see the city in the distance, obscured by two rows of twine that join parallel wands, branches of jungle trees that were cut down, and then regrow when one end is stuck in the ground.

Quintessential Air, over there.

And since that’s the element I am most comfortable with nowadays, I looked at my iPhone in terms of this element, when I had to transfer the digital version of the Kabbalistic Prayer out of the pages document you sent, and into the body of an email that I emailed to myself.

Atop the mountain, amidst my rituals, I took my wand out of my pocket, called down this prayer from the heavens, and it appeared within my wand. (It was even playing music to set the mood for my meditative space.)

This realization that my phone serves structurally as my Air Wand was very fulfilling for me. I’ve got a new appreciation for it, in an elemental sense.

Going through the Kabbalistic Prayer was majestic. At the end it felt as if a thunderbolt struck me from the sky, and I shook with the power for some minutes. Looking around at the moonlit landscape, still in a trance, I stomped the ground and exhaled, pushing the energy into my roots, to keep it from agitating me. It helped to ground me further, thanks to the grounding and root chakra work I have been concentrating on for the last week.

Now, I am simultaneously wiped and energized. I’m going to write on affirmations for a while (such is the task of being a writer, is sticking to your own self-imposed production deadlines) and then meditate before a long, restful sleep.

I really enjoy this apprenticeship. Thank you so much.

A dis-service?

There are times in which I feel as though I am doing you a disservice.  Although I know you are receiving great benefit from all of the information, energy and rituals I send your way, I feel sometimes as though we are doing it ‘fast food’ style and trying to cram in as much as possible in the least amount of time.  Which I guess in some ways is good, considering really that there isn’t a whole lot of ‘time’ left.  Perhaps what I am saying is…. everything I’m giving you, each sephoria, in a classroom setting or face-to-face, would take AT LEAST one month each. With exercises, journalling, checkins and dedication to the path for an hour at least each day.  I have all the worksheets and daily ‘stuff’, but we neither of us can commit to that kind of time. So… we do the best we can.

I guess, all I am saying is… if I miss something, or if you don’t understand something, please say something or stop me.

;–)