As I said, I have been reading a group of magickal best selling authors: I’d already started Grimassi’s Italian Witchcraft. and Oberon Zell-Ravenheart’s Grimoire for the Apprentice Wizard for solid refresher and background information, finding it helpful. I did take "Wicca 101" at Enchantments back … er … back in the Stone Age, so I definitely do need a solid refresher. Hence Christopher Penczak, Oberon Zell-Ravenheart, Raven Grimassi and Donald Craig’s introductory structured courses,
Right now in Apprentice Wizard, we’re in the process of coming up with magickal names and aligning ourselves with color preferences and associations. Magickal names was fun. And by "fun" I mean: not as easy as it looks. You had to try and match your Life Path number with the number of your magickal name – in my case, my Life Path is a 9, so all of the letters of my new magickal name had to add up to 9 as well.
Datura Veneziana? I sorta liked it. I’ll mull on it for a while.
The February Full Snow Moon went visually missing thanks to a day of snow and rain and yet still had an impact on the hormonal side of things. Apparently, it doesn’t matter whether the moon is visible or not for its impacts to be felt. Translation: I was
So – what I have learned so far: invoking and generating spirits are functions of intent, will and an enormous amount of studying on the process of doing it. I’ve been told that learning the process is out there if you know where to look. Out of the teachers I have investigated lately, Christopher Penczak seems the most likely to provide the type of instruction that works best for me: he’s mostly logical, he does his historical research, he doesn’t try to pass anything off as traditional when it isn’t, and he doesn’t get all silly over things. He’s also nowhere near as judgmental as I am, so I could probably learn from him better ways to react to things I find distasteful or ridiculous. I only wanted to once chuck his book across the room – an excellent statistic, as I often want to toss other people’s books at least once a page after encountering something so inane it made me want to scream.
Penczak’s one logical misstep so far came from The Witch's Heart: that I had to love myself before anyone else could love me. That doesn’t even coincide with the basic foundation of all things "magickal" – I think he should have said, "To draw someone to me, I need to will them to draw close to me." Did he understand Crowley’s Thelema? "Do as thou wilt shalt be the whole of the …"
If I WILL it, someone will come to me and love me. No magickal law ever said anything about my having to love myself. In fact, I don’t even know what "loving myself" actually means. That I’m an expert at performing "the greatest love of all"? I’m a narcissistic twit? I play with myself in public? I’m not even sure "loving myself" is a good idea. That’s Tinkerbelle and her sparkly wand stuff, not witchcraft. It’s based entirely on whether or not I WILL it so. So, yeah … I think Penczak really dropped the magickal ball on that one.
I mean, think about it. Has he actually read any newspapers lately? He has just gone through an exercise of defining what love is, for each person, so obviously, he’s aware that people do define love differently. Women who stay with men who beat them up define love in their own way. Women who are morbidly obese have to define love another way. Sick, ill, crippled, mentally ill – how do these people define love? How about women who have been through a horrific relationship and no longer trust love as they once knew it? Do they love themselves, or have they erected walls so high most men can’t be bothered to climb them? Should they be denied love in his universe? Methinks he needs to rethink that part of the chapter, because my first reaction was, "Huh?? That can’t be right."
And I’ve also learned: be careful what you wish for, but not because something unpleasant happened. Actually, it was a result of something lovely happening. Once I had made the decision to go ahead and work diligently for this outcome, I was laying in bed wondering what this relationship would be like. Oddly enough, it almost felt like anticipating a first date: what would he look like? Would I be able to see him, or would he be invisible? Would he be with me all the time, or only occasionally? Would we have fun, or would he be serious and pretentious and (*yawn*) boring? Could he get seriously kinky if I wanted him to? What would he get out of the relationship? I knew exactly what I wanted to get out of it, but would he be okay with the reality that I was, at least temporarily, perhaps longer, partially paralyzed; given to painful spasms that twisted my legs and feet into knots when I least expected them? What would HE get out of the …
… a male hand closed around my ankle. I say "male" because the grip was large and masculine and hard. I felt each and every finger of this hand. I gasped and then squeaked and then – forgive me! It was instinctual! – pulled my foot back in surprise. The hand disappeared. It happened so quickly I thought I had imagined it; then I knew for a fact that I hadn’t. A warm bolt of electricity sizzled through me – head to toe – I was so startled and then excited when it happened. I was still tingling from the experience a good thirty minutes later. It was a warm, luscious, delicious tingling, and EVERYTHING in me was tingling – not just my ankle. I can’t explain it any other way.
"I’m not afraid! Please come back!"
But that was the only physical sensation I had (so far). Later, I was annoyed that both cats were out of the room – I was sure that had they been there, both of them would have reacted to the presence, however brief, and I might have anticipated the appearance somewhat; not been taken so much by surprise by it.
But it did make me realize that I needed to be very clear and very specific as to what I wanted and needed from the relationship, AND to build a strong enough relationship in the spirit world so that I could very clearly hear what it was HE wanted and needed from the relationship. He’d let me know he was there. We just needed to start building this structure between us, and then move into it It gave me something very definitive to look forward to, and gave me something to work towards. And yes, I just ended both of those phrases with a preposition. So sue me.
Naturally, as soon as I made that decision, a government agency who shall remain nameless decided to show up the very next day for a biannual inspection of the facilities which I call "the office". This is primarily the focus of my entire job, being able to produce any record they needed in 30 seconds time, so I now had to work some awful hours for two weeks straight. Exhaustion and high-level stress set in. I was too exhausted to do anything beyond go to work, come home, collapse, go back to work, etc.
I decided to attend a (for want of a better description) three-hour "Commune With and Learn From a Tree" workshop in New Hampshire, to be held a few weeks from now, on a Saturday. With my own history, and being able to hear trees under adverse circumstances, I suspected this was the direction I should be headed, and wondered if perhaps the spirit hand had originated from within a grove. I loved that idea. I wondered if he was also going to mention the Italian "Moon Tree" that Raven Grimassi mentioned in his Italian Witchcraft book.
Given my propensity for getting seriously lost and misdirected within a matter of minutes anytime I went anywhere, I decided to take a "trial run" trip to the workshop site on a peaceful Sunday. I immediately knew there was a huge difference between Massachusetts and New Hampshire, when I did get seriously lost and didn’t even blink an eye … if I were in Massachusetts, I would have been shrieking and banging the steering wheel in a rage. In New Hampshire? Meh. Passed though a beautiful and peaceful area of New Hampshire, and thought, "I would love it here." If the commute is survivable, maybe I’ll move.
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