Planetary Witchcraft: Overview, Part One

I should write a "wow, I haven't blogged in a long time!" post, but I have no desire to do that.

I just want to talk about the new project I am embarking upon this year with Satyr: a sort of get-our-shit-together/unleash-high-weird/maybe-produce-usable-content project. First, some background.

Item: we have been getting Involved with Paganism, at least locally. And ideally that involvement should rest on a solid personal practice. And my personal practice has been less than solid, lately.

Item: I had a vision about 18 months ago in which a guide smiled upon all of my labors and the rituals I was leading and the paths that I was clearing for others. "That's all well and good," he said," but you still have to do your work." That vision's been haunting me.



Item: Long story, much abridged: Satyr and I don't really know how to practice together anymore. We've lost much of the synchronicity we had once developed. When discussing our plans for rekindling a practice that was coherent to both of us, we discussed (briefly) going back to Penczak* before deciding that we might build upon the bit of shared practice we actually have right now, which is planetary magick.

Witch-brain approved.

Item: Planetary magick works for me, but it's been weird to my witch-brain. My witch-brain cares little for angel names and passwords and pomposity. My witch-brain wants herbs and dirt and chants and colors and candles and smells and journeying to deep, dark/high, light spaces and possession and familiar spirits. My witch-brain wants radical insurrection and sobbing epiphanies. My witch-brain wants to hack the current and build a new bridge.

Those are the reasons. This is the plan:

We'll work with one planet at a time, a complete immersion, beginning a new planet at each Sabbat.

We began, appropriately, with the Sun, at Yule. We've a dedicated altar (not the one at the top of the post, that's the recently re-established seasonal house altar, because, you know, my witch-brain demands it).

Solar altar - Day 1.

At Imbolc, we'll turn to Jupiter. (Mostly because we both feel the need for some Jupiter, and we generally find it a pleasant and useful planet to work with.)

At Ostara, we will transition to Mercury. This has more to do with our personal calendars than anything else. Planning for Heartland Pagan Festival will reach near-peak-intensity during the Ostara-to-Beltane part of the year, and we'll need clarity and focus.

Beltane. Venus. Questions?

Midsummer will begin our work with Mars, either because approaching Mars with a solid foundation of Venus will be appropriate, or because by Midsummer in the Midwest I'll feel like going to war, anyway.

At Lammas, we'll switch to the Moon, and at Mabon, Saturn.

From Samhain to Yule, we're lacking a traditional planet. But we've talked about that, and since one of the goals of this experiment is to make planetary work more palatable to the witch-brain, we plan to apply what we've developed to working with the Earth as a planetary force.

I still can't decide if that idea is awesome or so fluffy I should be embarrassed to talk about it. But one of my strong suits, if I have any, is coming up with weird ideas. And, as we keep telling each other, and ourselves, this is an experiment.

Next post will bring the week-by-week breakdown, and after that, the early returns of our solar experiments.



*I am in full support of going back to basics periodically, and I've gotten a lot of good out of that series. We simply decided it wasn't necessary for us, right now.