On Suspension of Disbelief, and the Lengths We'll Go to Get Some

I keep starting posts and not finishing posts, attempting to edit and polish them into something beautiful, then leaving them forgotten in "drafts" for months.

This isn't even a metaphor for my life. It is just my life.

So today I sat in bed in what felt like the wee hours but was, in fact, not (thanks, blackout curtains!), attempting to summon the courage to join the world.

When You Mock the Void, the Void Mocks Back (Planetary Witchcraft Update)

Do you remember when I said I was going to update more regularly? About that.

But nevermind all of the recriminations.

Here's what I learned from the Sun. (Spoiler alert: a bunch of shit I should have known already.)

1) The whole Yule = return of the Sun thing has always felt really, really hypothetical to me. I mean, sure, the days are technically getting longer, but our the time we set up for our solar work was still smack dab in the middle of the darkdarkcold. And our work, when we did it, was mostly happening at night, inside. If I had been able to get outside, or even done more work during the day, I might have been more successful.

2) Getting to the Sun isn't hard. It isn't. In the one clear vision I had of the Sun, the rickety patchwork wooden ladder/staircase/boardwalk contraption I'd crossed over on was viewed with some curiousity from my guide. I don't understand why people come that way, he confided. A perusal of the perimeter of the surface of the sphere yielded infinite paths - many smooth, direct, and clear. If you want to talk to the Sun, you can, you know, just kind of talk to it.

3) Depression is not really solar. I was hoping to leverage the Sun to push through that. Again, actually spending some time outside in the sunlight might have helped. Conjuring the Sun in a dark temple? Less so.

We'll come back to the Sun. We'll work something out.

We moved on to Jupiter.

And, seriously, Jupiter.

We've done more work since Imbolc than we did in the entire six week period allegedly dedicated to the Sun.

And I will talk more about what that work has looked like. Soon. Really. Also to follow: a post about some trippy visionary experiences at a workshop this past weekend. First I need to decode my incredibly sloppy crayon notes.

The Necessary Tower

I spent much of yesterday ISO the Tower that showed up in my reading for the day. I told myself I would embrace it, given the chance.

I have an almost unlimited appetite for Towers and Aeons and indications that radical transformation is on the way. I am always looking for (r)evolution. Give me some moldavite and and initiatory vision and a new metaphor for death and rebirth any day. Let's fuck shit up. Let's burn it down.

Eventually, so goes the theory, one of these Big Bad Fundamental Shifts will leave me with something that's you know, actually workable. Something that I can poke and tweak into the life/mind/paradigm I want.

no hx of trauma (the story of a very expensive trance)

I am having shoulder drama. Whatever. Shoulder drama isn't new. What's new, this time, is that after a month of ibuprofen abuse, and ice packs, and chiropractic appointments (two or three times a week), my doctor looked at me, with a bit of concern, and said, "I think we should schedule an MRI."  Cue panic, and everyone I know sharing rotator cuff stories, and finally me being so bored with the whole thing that I start moving conference room tables again because it's just pain, after all.

tending the foundation (or, what I am so not doing right now)

For the record, I should not be blogging. I should be doing any number of things, but none of them are this. Also, warning: rambly.

A few weeks ago, a friend offered me a reading, which we finally got around to doing this morning. It's been a while since I got a reading from someone who wasn't me, and usually when I read for myself lately...let's just say it's not helping. There is a Hierophant, I don't know what he wants, we're in a standoff. More about that in another post.

My friend used a 7-card spread, one card for each chakra, which I kind of loved. I am a big fan of survey spreads - overviews. This is what's working, this is what you're fucking up, this is what the universe is attempting to beat into your head that you're not hearing. Right now I know that some things are working and some things are fucked, I just don't know which things are which.

ma(y)nia

"Shrill as a choir of children 
Urgent like the first day of May 
False and inflatable feeling
Tugs at my senses, big as the Macy's Parade..."
- Bright Eyes

Life is better since I put my altar right.

There is a peace in sunlight and wind and brilliant green, of letting the hum and buzz of life rush over and through.

But it is urgent. Behind or under or below that stillness, there is vibrant singing, desperate want. Trees are serene, perhaps, but leaves are vicious, reckless, demanding. On the smallest levels they are all screaming more, and so am I.

More of that, please. I want more light and touch and sound and taste. I am greedy, taking everything that I can, every opportunity to say yes, to abstain from rest, to absorb the sun of activity or conversation.

The world is greedy, too, asking more and more of me, and I am breathless with all that I can't keep giving, except that giving and getting are mostly the same, and every time I open my mouth and ask for more, I get it. I give it. We go on.

I suppose I can sleep in the fall.

thoughts on faith and object constancy (when magick and madness collide)

I remember asking, through a haze of trance and candlelight, "how do you believe in anything?"

It sounds accusatory, or skeptical - it was neither. It was desperate. It was pleading. It was, and is, a question central to the journey I'm on, however broadly you'd like to draw that map.

How do you believe in anything?