Magickal Realism

Chapter 5 Exercise: If I were 20 and I had money:
Given my cirumstances at 20, I have a pretty good idea what my 20 year old self would have done, much to my family’s chagrin. My parents were proactively out of touch with modern college life, and their values about it crippled me in many ways - I had to skip viable internships, got passed over for promotions, and hordes of issues based on my lack of car and my parents belief that “schoolwork comes first” completely absent of taking who I was or what life was like in the 90s into account. Never have I seen two people so insistent that it was still the 1960s. I’m still working on forgiving them for all the stress they caused me, especially since my career would have worked out much differently if I’d had transport to those internships.

Given that terrifying absence of support, if I had money when I were 20:

College was my big dream, my grand escape from high school, and I loved it. So most of what I would have done would have gone towards developing myself there.

Magical Issues
The Artist’s Way is having a significant impact on me in the magical arena. Along with my first contact with Eros, and his promise of protection, I’ve channeled a spellbook and been quite prone to dreams and visions since beginning this process. Since I’m already trained to let the divine work through me it’s broadening channels, and bringing out things that relate to me as a priestess as well as a creative person. In a way, it’s a review of my training. In a way, it’s an advancement. There are, alas, some crazymaker effects that are directly part of the life I’ve chosen that chose me in return. Eros is protecting my physical well-being - but because this process brings up my vulnerabilities, those vulnerabilities send signals out to the Crazymaker Spirit du jour and somehow I have some damn thing attached to my aura that is throwing off my sense of balance and making me dizzy. I’ve done my medical checks, it’s not that, and I’m pretty sure this was a package addressed to me ¹ I think it is happening for a divine reason: in the occult community, there’s always a certain amount of shame attached to having dumb shit that’s part of being an occultist happen. Curses and attachments are embarrassing things. It says a)you’re crazy and self-important and believing yourself cursed to feel important b)that you’re incompetent because you couldn’t maintain your defenses c)that you’re a drama-queen and ultimately, d)that you’re not to be believed and you shouldn’t believe yourself. Ultimately cursing someone has with it the forecurse of blaming the victim. A lot of these ideas and attitudes were stirred around because there has been a movement within Wicca ever since it became Americanized to convince people Wiccans don’t cast curses, and I would say the bulk of pseudo-Wiccan Pagan types that dabble don’t even know how. The idea was that if you took the technology away, the behavior would stop. There are some glaring holes in this logic, and one of them is currently attached to my neck, much to my serious irritation.

That said, it’s not stopping my life or anything. It’s getting more ritual out of me, which is what the gods want, and it’s becoming clear that it was humans and not them that wanted to suppress my ritual voice. The dizzying pain in the neck is a pretty good metaphor for that, and whoever delivered the package should be deeply, deeply ashamed.

1. As always, I could be wrong, but my personal practice does not involve doing stuff where this could happen randomly. [↩]

Tags: i plant the seeds

Category: Artists_Way