Who am I

In entering this class, and really following magickal practitioners around the web, I'm beginning to think of my place in all this, and my own path.  I see people that have been studying and practicing for half the time that I have, and see that they have published books and active blogs filled with information and guidelines.  Good stuff, too!  I have to think...why not me?  Where am I in relation?  I never think of stuff like this.

I've been into the occult since I was 11 years old. Early bloomer, right?  When I was that age, I was visiting a friend of the family. Apparently, while she and my mom were gossiping over coffee, I looked bored, because she handed me a stack of books, and said "I think you're old enough now, to handle some of this. See where it takes you."  The top book on that pile was Modern Witches Spellbook by Sarah Lyddon Morrison, and the next one down was Buckland's complete.  I snatched up Morrison's book, and sorta grazed through Bucky's.  From that day forward, I was a total practicing witch.  At 11, I was combing my mother's garden for usable plants, sticking pins in candles, burying mysterious parcels under trees, throwing stuff into moving water.  You name it, I was doing spells for it.  Not Wiccan, that shit never sat right with me, although I will say some of the better Wiccan authors have taught me plenty about spellwork, but I could never grasp the whole earth-based religion thing.  Throughout my teens, I voraciously devoured everything EVERYTHING occult I could get my hands on.  I stayed hours at the library reading mythology and researching ancient gods.  I was probably the only fifteen year old to have read Joseph Campbell and Anton LaVey.  I experimented with Satanism, atheism, shamanism, and all manner of pagan practices, never embracing one path, never settling into a "religion" of sorts. But always studying the tools of these faiths, the alphabets, herb lore, color indices, astrology, and above all runeworking and Tarot.  I've shamelessly and seamlessly included all pantheons and philosophies into my workings, always doing spells, both high and low.  I mean, I didn't know shit, but I was always doing something, anything with the little bit of shit that I did know.  Sometimes, it even worked!  (Lots of abject failures, too)

I got into ceremonial magick at around age 17.  An influential person in my life got me into Crowley, Enochian magic, Goetia, and all the really heavy stuff. Only, he did it for all the wrong reasons, and I went along with it all, unprepared.  It was an obsessed, dangerous relationship with a sick but powerful person, that culminated with him attempting to kill me.  I got out of that life, I put all magic aside, all tarot, ceremonial anything, shelved my books, turned away from Crowley, and just all of in general.  I focused on school, family, job, and went back to the magick I knew, loved, and practiced. Folk stuff, love spells, hate spells, runeworking. No demons in bags for me, no thank you.

Till my mid 20's that was satisfying enough.  Then I started picking the old books back up, digging for more, reading, learning.  I've read a lot of bogus crap, and a lot of genius writings, and I think only now in the past 6-7 years am I able to really look with a critical eye and sort it out.

My path has lead me back to the tarot, and I've picked the Thoth deck up again. Last year, I bought a book to really help me crack the Thoth code.  Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot by Lon Milo Duquette.  It threw open the floodgates, WIDE open, to all the old stuff.  Last summer, I bought more books in 3 months, than I've purchased in the past 10 years, and I am voraciously devouring each and every element.  I have dedicated myself to the path of Thelema, and the Great Work, and whoa.  Where I was once meandering through a forest, I'm now racing uphill at downhill speeds.  I GET it now. I have a purpose.  The good new is this:  All my past meanderings have only prepared me for what I'm doing now, this Great Work.  It's given me a tremendous knowledge of all things occult, all the connections, astrology, the tarot, stones, herb lore, god and goddess associations.  I mean, wrote down the concept of Tipareth before I even knew what it was.  What I'm going through right now is sort of a back-categorizing. Stuff I've known my whole life, the god within, the god without, as above so below, the eternal cycle of birth-life-death-reincarnation, that I've seen all around me, meditation, all this stuff...now has a name, and a place on the Tree of Life.  Now, it's all got a home, I have a title, and everything makes much more sense now.

I still balk at charts and alphabets and numbers.  I shun anything ceremonial and anything that seems artificial.  I hate memorizing countless long names. Names are things discovered and given by man.  It's a narrowing of the path. When I can feel and be and see and smell and taste and breathe in the element of fire, why must I name it anything but that?  Why give it some long Hebrew angel's name or something, when I can summon it through idea and visualization, and literally live in it  Names sometimes separate, and make things more confusing when I'm really working.  I've been successful and on my path for so long, I'm sort of used to the idea of working without the stuff, the tablets and wax seals.

To be continued, maybe...

The truths they already know

Lately, when doing readings, for both friends and strangers, I've been getting this a lot, "I sort of thought so, but you helped confirm it." or "I was afraid of that." or things along those lines.  Sometimes, tarot seems to make whatever nebulous idea, hope or fear, concrete, for someone.  The truth exists whether I read for it or not. People know more than they let themselves believe.  It's nice to go along with whatever feels pleasant or easy, or makes you happy, but the truth is there hanging around no matter what.  The hardest readings come when the truth reveals itself, and the sitter says "but I can't..."  Those are the worst.  It's difficult to watch friends and strangers box themselves in.

That happened with a reading the other day.  A man being strung along and manipulated in a glaring case of unrequited love.  Every card looking at it from her perspective, every single one was a sword.  Every card from his perspective was a major or a cup. It came out that she lied constantly from the moment they met, and that she only kept him around as a "maybe" because she knows what she can get from him (financially.).  Finally, after this exhausting roller coaster ride, I asked "How can S. help himself?"  There's the swords.  8 of Swords.  In relation to the question, and because the 8 of Swords came up for a question regarding the girl's feelings, before, I said simply. "Be like her.  Surround yourself with cold logic, protect your heart, gird yourself with rationality."

"But I can't," he says.  "she needs me."

The 8 of Swords? I should have told him the whole thing. It's him, imprisoning himself, he keeps going around and around in this dangerous, painful hamster wheel, because he, in some way...likes it. He takes comfort in being this brokenhearted heroic, romantic soul.

What can I say to that?  I don't get paid for commentary, I just get paid to pass along the message.  Hopefully it sticks. This time, I'm sure it didn't.