Back from class last night. My poor car is sounding pitiful – muffler issues, I hope? – but couldn’t take her to the doctor ... by which I mean the GM guys in Haverhill ... until I got my PIN number. Explanation: on Friday the 31st of January, 12 days ago, my debit card was either lost or stolen, I’m not sure which. I discovered this late on Friday, when I had de-trained from the Haverhill line in Andover and opened my wallet in preparation for a visit to Sunoco and a tank of fuel. No card. Anywhere.
This is not a reassuring turn of events for a Friday night – had I left it in the office? Had someone taken it?
I had many years earlier switched from the Bank of America – just as they tried to roll out a $5 fee for something absurd and I decided enough was enough – to a local credit union. I’d liked their sales pitch: no fees, no minimums, etc. Have had no issues with them since. But then I hadn’t lost my card before. At the BOA, if you lost your card, they (for a modest fee of course) would hand you a replacement to use until they could send you a new one.
But the Merrimack Valley Federal Credit Union did not. You could call an 800 number and report the card lost or stolen, but you had to call the bank for the replacement card. And the credit union had no weekend customer service. I had to wait until Monday just to ask for a new card.
They sent you a new card of course (with the PIN number to follow a few days later to activate it), but there was no interim card. You had to withdraw cash and the gods help you if you ran out of it before you could get back to a branch (which was local to the Merrimack Valley; no branches in Boston or Cambridge where you worked, and no extended hours for the commuters who worked in Boston) and withdraw more cash to tide you over.
And then you sat and waited. And waited. And waited for the U.S. Postal Service to deliver your new card. Adding to the anxiety: all of the mailboxes in our building had been torn out of the wall, and no matter how often you called, Royal Crest Estates, North Andover refused to repair them. A bunch of us finally took pictures of the vandalism and reported Royal Crest to the Postmaster General after a full month of mail being left out in the open for anyone to steal. And both my replacement card and pin number was coming via the U.S. mail.
It took 7 days for the card to arrive, which I couldn’t use without the PIN. And the PIN number still hadn’t arrived ... 12 days after I discovered the card was missing. I finally advised my office that I would be coming in late – I had to wait until a branch opened and withdraw more cash.
This I explained to the car, who has a puppy-tail wagging personality, as we drove to the bank. “You have to help me cast a spell,” I told her, “to get my PIN today, so that I can call the doc and get you looked at.” A minute later, a teller told me she could activate my card and give me a PIN number right then and there, so I wouldn’t need to wait for the mail. Is my car awesome or what???In gratitude, I filled up the tank to the brim, so she had a full belly, and she purred all the way to the train station.
The spiritual side of this: my habitual reaction (and you’ve seen this in this blog!) is to rant about the “Sky Sadist”, berate myself for not paying attention and causing this mess and carry on in a state of rage. I saw the first glimmerings of that back in the parking lot after detraining, an urge to blow up in fury. Instantly – I stopped. Remembered everything I had learned in class and in my readings. Remembered I had power and was not a victim of anything. Reminded myself that I was a witch and had the ability to protect myself. Reminded myself that exploding in rage only sent a world of hurt out into the universe and solved nothing. Took a deep breath. Cast a spell of protection over the card – where ever it was – and over all my incoming mail that no one would touch any of it - and let it all go.
And am still amazed at having done that. I guess I am changing, aren’t I? And nothing unexpected happened as far as my bank account went.
Class: So last night we worked with color; sending it out, immersing ourselves in it, and sorting through the sensations and associations of the different colors, and jotting down brief notes while in meditative trance – I’m lucky I could read my notes later; I did it with my eyes closed.. Later, I was comparing my associations with Christopher Penczak’s in The Inner Temple of Witchcraft.
I particularly liked his opening words in the entry for black: “Black is a highly charged color. People either love it or hate it ...” I had jotted down, “I don’t like this.” as I was visualizing black bubbles raining down upon my head. So I probably fall in the “hate it” category, although I’m not sure why. I wear the color on occasion; have comforters with black in them; don’t ever recall thinking, “I really hate the color black!” – I just didn’t like the sensation of black surrounding me – at all. Wasn’t all that fond of lime, orange or yellow. Loved red, green, gold and indigo. And of course the aquamarine, which immediately reminded me of the ripples of the lagoon surrounding Venice.
So it was interesting. Next month: auras and chakras! Can’t wait for that one!
Am finding it fascinating to learn how John Dee equated poetry with hermetic magick … as he believed mathematics to be part and parcel of the same, the rhyme and meter of words could perform works of magick as well … I’d be interested in the examples he used. (You know me and poetry …) I suspect he was analyzing the earlier Greek poetry when he had this revelation, but I’d still like to read his thoughts on it.
And, Marsilio Ficino! I didn’t start reading him as much as I read a quotation of his in D.P. Walker’s Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella (2000, The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA, p. 9), which is, despite the title, more of a Medieval and Renaissance history of the development of hermetic magick via humanist philosophers like Ficino, attached to the de Medici household. I'm really enjoying reading the biographies of men like John Dee and Giordano Bruno from the same time period. This book focused more on continental (specifically Italian) thought, which developed out of the rediscovery of Plato, among other Sophists.
The quotation described the vibrational power of music.
I immediately thought of (who else?) Piero Barone, whose voice sent such vibrations through my entire body the first time I heard it. Don’t get me wrong, I love all sorts of music – my iPod is filled with days’ worth of music. But hearing Piero’s voice the first time was the amazing, astonishing and (yes) erotic experience it was, as I might have said elsewhere, because it made me vibrate.
And not just my skull, or my teeth or anything like that ... but because it was as arousing an experience as (women would appreciate the analogy) sitting on a washing machine. Now that may be a subjectively personal thing, meaning he may not have that type of impact on everyone, but whatever it was in my physical body that was in tune with the vibrations that his voice sent out began to vibrate with (for want of a better term) sympathetic magick ... I still vibrate helplessly when he sings.
I can’t be the only one ... I’ve heard women in audiences scream out loud when he hits some of those notes and holds them. Now – maybe they’re just impressed with his lung power, and it isn’t though I can hunt them down afterwards and ask WHY they screamed in ecstasy just as he hit a certain note ... but if they’re letting loose with a shriek just as I’m having my “sitting on a washing machine” moment, and both happen on the same note? I’m figuring there has to be some similarities somewhere. In any event, I always thought I was weird, physically vibrating at the sound of his voice, but Marsilio Ficino certainly described the sensation to a “T” in this. And I also loved the quotation because even in 1536, writers knew how to start out slowly and rhythmically, increase the tempo bit by bit, toss out images like "penetrate strongly", "flows smoothly" and then the climatic "seizes" and "claims" ...! Actually, I should probably thank the translator as well, unless Walker translated it ... but thank you for this lovingly constructed observation, Marsilio! (pant, pant, pant).
“... Musical sound by the movement of the air moves the body; by purified air it excited the aerial spirit which is the the bond of body and soul; by emotion it affects the senses and at the same time the soul; by meaning it works on the mind: finally, by the very movement of the subtle air it penetrates strongly; by its contemperation it flows smoothly; by the conformity of its quality it floods us with a wonderful pleasure; by its nature, both spiritual and material, it at once seizes, and claims as its own, a woman in her entirety.”
Ficino, Marsilio, Commentary on the Timaeus, 1536, (Paris, 1536). Timaeus vel de Natura divini Platonis, Marsilio Ficino interprete: per Franciscum Zampinum recognita. And, for the sake of issue continuity, I changed “man” to “a woman” in this. So sue me.
But I have no intention of sharing this confession with the young tenor in question, trust me when I say this. Ignorance is indeed bliss sometimes. Let him labor under the false impression that women are just awed by his good looks and charm – or perhaps his lung power - lest he be grosseth out-eth.
(Besides, he’s feeling very holy right now; he just met the Pope, so this is hardly the time to explain to him in broken Italian what a woman sitting on a washing machine means. I’d probably have to resort to gestures and moans and doing a pitiful “Meg Ryan in the diner” impression. Some things are just better left unsaid, as they say.)
But back to Dee. I’ve finished Peter French’s bio of him ... the bibliography and footnotes were awesome, by the way and bear investigating further ... for now, it’s on to back to Yates’ Giordano Bruno, which I’d begun but interrupted to read the Dee biography.
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