Boreas, Aleister Crowley, Dreaming Tea ... and Peggy Lee

"Boreas, I conjure thee, receive me on thy pinions in the air, as thou didst ravish thine Athenian bride."

Nonnus, Dionysiaca 1. 134 ff (trans. Rouse) (Greek epic C5th A.D.)

Boreas, Greek God of the North WInd

Now, call me a hopeless romantic, but if I had been Nonnus, the one writing those lines (and if Nonnus had been a woman), I might have tried to sound ... oh, I dunno … a little more enthusiastic? A smidge more … passionate?

"Boreas, I conjure thee! Receive me on thy pinions in the air – as thou did ravish thine Athenian bride!"

Boreas, lest thee hast forgotten ... eth ... is the Greek God of the North Wind. He of the Purple Wings, the wings on his legs, the bad temper ... I have grown somewhat fond of this guy. Well, except for the small issue of kidnaping and ... what was that euphemism again? Oh yes ... ravishing! ... and ravishing his future wife.

The cad. She’s out dancing next to a river … which girls and women often do, I’m sure, as our favorite past time is dancing on riverbanks for no good reason … Boreas comes along, blows her skirt up, and … wham, bam, she’s pregnant with at least four children. Ravishment, indeed.

As a matter of fact, Boreas was so skilled at the "whoosh!"-"bam!" – "thank you, ma’am" that mares were turned away from the North Wind when he was invoked. In other words, if Boreas could ravish his wife by blowing up her skirts, he was also skilled enough to impregnate a mare the same way. Face the relevant mare lady-parts into the North Wind and let Boreas do his thing. Voila! Foals galore, even without a stallion nearby. This guy is awesome.`

Well, before we get into invoking the four winds – and, while I’m at it, NOT aiming anything impregnateable in his general direction – here goes Test #1.

(sip) (swish, swish) (swallow) Hmmmmmm. Not bad. (Having my first cup of Galangal Root Tea.) Fragrant, earthy, delicious, with a hint of a ginger-y bite. Supposedly, it’s a good tea to take before going to sleep, so why I’m taking it now (1:49 pm, Saturday), I have no iddddeeee .... zzzzzzzzz.

(Blink)

Sorry. Actually, the reason I tested it earlier is because all of the components for Test #2, the Dreaming Tea arrived. This would be Christopher Penczak’s "Dreaming Tea" recipe. (The Plant Spirit Familiar, page 170). And now, I will share with you my official Book of Shadows entry pertaining to "Dreaming Tea". Ahem:

"Holy crap."

Well, I didn’t say it was a sedate, cool, calm and collected response; just that I had recorded one.

I do not recall any dreams (which is unfortunate), but I passed out at around 7:00 pm Saturday night and still felt seriously drugged twelve hours later, to the point where, were it a commuting morning instead of a Sunday morning, I would be concerned about trying to drive in that condition.

The tea itself was bitter, so I would like to find something that would make it more palatable – I could only drink about half of it. BUT, I should note that I was also drinking the Galangal Root tea during the day, so it may have been a factor, intensifying the results. I should test that theory.

[Test result: I tried the Galangal Root tea alone the following Thursday night. This was a dangerous test, inasmuch as I had to get up and drive to the railway station the next morning. I slept deeply from 7:00 pm at night until 4:00 am the next morning – nine hours – but did not have the "intensely drugged" sensation I described previously when I woke up. I also don’t recall having any dreams. Now I have to test the Dreaming Tea without the Galangal Root chaser.]

Another issue: Penczak was never clear as to whether it was a decoction or an infusion. I went with the decoction, which may have resulted in a much stronger brew; I might want to try re-creating it via infusion next weekend. It could also be me, and my tendency to physically overreact to most drugs and medications. You know, give me Nyquil, or any antihistamine really, and I pass out and sleep through the entire illness, no matter what it was. Maybe I should have diluted the tea more than I did.

Dionysus! The Pagan Book of Days tells me that this is the start of two days of celebrations in honor of Dionysus (if you’re Greek) and Bacchus (if you’re Roman). Purpose of the celebration? To promote a fruitful grape harvest! The Witch’s Book of Days inexplicably says "Examine both your friendship braid for new additions and removals, and your cobwebs for progress." [Long pause. Assume bewildered expression. Play theme from the "Twilight Zone". HUH?????]

Moving on: was searching for something to read during the morning and evening commute that did NOT require enormous amounts of concentration. Main reason: if the train isn’t packed with women open-mouth coughing like Typhoid Mary all over everyone, it’s packed with women babbling like a pack of shrill baboons on their cellphones. It’s enough to drive you bat shit crazy, and if nothing else, it shatters what little concentration you have left into little shards of half-assed attention.

In any event, I started reading Richard Kaczynski’s, Perdurabo: the Life of Aleister Crowley, and found myself fascinated and paying more attention than I expected. Richly detailed, well documented – so far, the parts I’m enjoying the most is Kaczynski’s explanations of the rites Crowley performs at each OTO level ... and the realization that the spirits he conjures are sometimes deadly accurate ... and sometimes so off-base you have to admit that they’re not only NOT scary, they’re fairly stupid, to boot. Even Crowley gets tired of them, after a point, and begins to suspect that learning to conjure them was relatively pointless. [Musical soundtrack: "Is That All There Is?", the awesome Peggy Lee version.] Some of the other spells he does are so interesting you can’t wait to try them out yourself. The invisibility spell, for one. And no, it doesn’t make you actually invisible. What it does is make you "unnoticeable". My favorite ritual diary entry: he figured it worked when he walked around Mexico City in a red cape and a crown and no one even looked at him. He also teaches you the reasons for the basic "rule" I mentioned earlier: "never invoke anything you can’t banish". Proving that even Aleister Crowley can be incompetent at witchcraft, when he’s impatient and just learning the ropes. Now I don’t feel so clueless.

I’m thinking he would have loved the "Ghost Hunting" era of today. He knew so many spirits and so many so-called "demons" on a first name basis – and could control them without even exerting himself – he could probably walk into one of those places haunted by some sort of annoying what-have-you and toss it out the window without breaking a sweat. And then take a swig of champagne and saunter out the door.

Basically the biography tells you something you probably already knew: fundamentalist christians are idiots, and are practically paralyzed by fear. There were plenty of moments when he was told by an invoked being to do something and because he perceived the request as "black magic" refused to do it. He just didn’t argue when British pinheads in the Church of England labeled him "the most dangerous man alive" – all that accomplished was help him sell his books, and, apparently, to get Mr. Signpost tossed on death row. Of course, Crowley might have also pointed out that it was being born into a fundamentalist christian household that inspired him to seek alternative spiritual paths in the first place, but he didn’t do that, either. Heh! I’m loving this biography.

I Test Datura Veneziana, Christopher Penczak and ... The Hand Arrives!

Enjoying Black Jack's (in Boston, not Cambridge) vegetarian ravioli: half butternut squash ravioli, half stuffed vegetable ravioli, smothered with broccoli rabe and artichoke hearts, all tossed in pesto, garlic & olive oil. YUM!

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 horny as hell unexpectedly and intensely interested in things of a romantic nature during the days surrounding the full moon, and it seemed to keep going. I made the decision: yes, I want to invoke a spirit. For myself. Yes, the purpose and reason for doing so is fairly self evident.

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.
 

The Great Dreaming Tea Experiment

Happy Terminalia.

Well, actually, Terminalia was the 23rd; but I wasn’t online that day. So ... HAPPY TERMINALIA!!!

Back on 07 February 2011, I decided to change my religion to a perpetual worship of Terminus, the God of Boundaries. I announced that the "credo which must appear on the holiday cards which I fully expected my friends and relations to send me each February 23rd (and I’m still waiting): "Concedo nulli". Translation: "I yield to nobody". Each year I preach a sermon to the masses: ‘I VANT TO BE ALOOOOONNNNE!!"

It’s something akin to the official holiday of anti-social, grouchy people like me, who set wide and rigid boundaries around themselves. Love it!!

I’m continuing to read The Plant Spirit Familiar, becoming more and more engrossed with it. I wonder if the entire "wicca" century wasn’t really just an opening door for those of us who are intent on pushing wiccan boundaries back towards truth, angrily and forcefully, if necessary. I was screeching (a few entries ago) about defiantly forbidding the fear-filled beliefs of monotheism to infect our teachings; to question everything; to make certain we knew that our sources weren’t demonized now because christians had infected it with their intense fear of sexuality first.

Penczak has another version of that urge to push back against contemporary wicca: "As witches we are growing away from the model of using plants and tools of all sorts, back to an animistic wisdom, where everything is a potential partner, an ally, a familiar spirit, not a tool." (p. 281)

Considering how long most of us have suffered under others clinging to the (erroneous) belief that human beings are superior to every other living being on the planet – and that includes the planet herself, not just plants, animals, rocks, earth, fire and water … and every other type of resource! - I loved this concise summation of the way things should be.

I am teaching myself the principle behind the Doctrine of Signatures … I am astounded at everything I’m learning about natural spirits. Learned the coven of the guy who wrote it – a literal paragon of non-judgmental virtue, unlike a mess of other people I could name (like me) - isn’t that far away: just past the Methuen border into New Hampshire, in SALEM! (HAHAHA!)

Sorry, the irony of that never fails to hit me in the head. Slightly less than a year ago I was curled up in a fetal position, sucking my thumb and whimpering, "I will never ever EVER go back to Salem!!" – forgetting there were more "Salem’s" than just the Massachusetts one. And so here I am, thinking, "Hmm. I should go to Salem."

So here’s the first recipe I’m going to try: Scullcap. Hops. Valerian. Poppy seeds.

Fine. It WOULD sound disgusting, unless I quickly clear up three misconceptions: a scullcap is not a SKULLcap, we are not going to murder the Yalie valedictorian and chop him into bite-size meaty bits and make a stew out of him, "hops" doesn’t mean "beer" in this context and yes, you can visualize the Wicked Witch of the West crooning, "Poppies! That will put them to sleep! Sleeeeeep," while gleefully waving her mortar and pestle around, red smoke spewing everywhere. Yeah, like THAT happens every time I crush herbs. Red smoke spewing everywhere ... blinding and choking the winged monkeys. Poor li’l guys.

The recipe is for Dreaming Tea, but appears in the book after instructions for both water infusions and decoctions. My first question: so which is it? Do I infuse? Do I ... er ... decoct? Well, here’s my opinion: no time like the present to learn by experience. First step was to order the ingredients, none of which I had on hand, not even the poppy seeds. Here’s hoping the scullcap, hops, valerian and poppy seeds arrive sometime this week. And then I get to figure out what happens after I drink it.
Lastly, I finally had to come to terms with the fact that Massachusetts – despite its horrible history in Salem – still enjoys making life difficult for its witches – athames are illegal here, for some reason no one can explain to me. You can buy KNIVES all over the place, single sided and double sided, but you can’t sell athames here. So here’s my silver athame. It started out its life as a silver letter opener; now its a consecrated athame.

More later.