Got a lot done today, magickally speaking.  We went to Red Bank for the final stuff I needed, basically just red sandalwood since Mountain Rose didn't have it, for whatever reason.  I also picked up a few new stones, an opaque blue stone the color of an October sky.  It's called angelite, which sounds hokey to me, but everything in Earth Spirits comes with a faint air of hokey, till I get it home, wash it, and make it mine.  Anyway, it just sang "purification" so, I scooped it right up.  I also picked up a new bloodstone, thinking it would be nice to have one...but when I went through my stones, I noticed I had like seven of them already.  What can I say, I really love bloodstone.  Seeing them all in the palm of my hand looked downright medicinal.  Maybe when I'm done working on the current project, I'll do a healing something.  I found an old empty gris gris bag, with the runes still seared into the leather, and still smelling faintly of dusty herbs.  I remember that one. It was designed for psychic power. To help the Sight.  It worked. I'm doing one for healing, I think, or just to stay healthy. They're very satisfying to put together, and unlike regular spells, when it's all said and done, you have this little locus of energy, this little power nugget to concentrate on.  Fucking cool.  Very hands-on too.

So, bringing these new stones home made me feel wistful and weird that my stones aren't in a special place anymore, just all thrown in a dishpan when we had to take the furniture out of the living room.  I haven't restored my Space since Sandy. All my tarot cards are stashed in the card catalog, but my altar fixtures were kind of scattered to the four winds. They still are a little, but it's better.  After Red Bank, we cleaned up my side of the bedroom, dusted and dedicated not only a sacred altar space, but we cleaned off my vanity and made a place for all my stones, and a small space for Luiz, too.  It felt good to do that. I'm still feeling a little euphoric, working in such close proximity to all my stones and objects of power.  I really wish I could find my athame, though. It got put somewhere when the flood hit.  It's eluding me, and that's bothering me.

A week from yesterday, is the time of the first ritual.  I've got everything ready now, except the athame.

This summer has been interesting.  Not the good kind of interesting, either. Lots of fighting and strife in the household, lots of weird and bad feelings permeating our otherwise extremely happy home.  I blame a lot of things. Sandy, for starters. This house was literally full of shit and water for a brief time, and while we bleached the fuck out of the physical, I'm sure it left some metaphysical grossness laying around.  Plus, every time we fight, we spin a tapestry of bullshit negativity and it has a way of collecting.  You've walked into places and felt this, everyone has. A foreboding, a nasty vibe, a "get me the hell out of here" kinda thing.  Conversely, my house has always been a warm, welcoming, inviting environment, where people are greeted with love.  I want it to stay that way, and lately, I feel like it's been slipping off into weird territory.

Time for a cleansing/banishing.  And not just any ordinary sage and drums cleansing either.  I'm talking like a mega house douching, the likes of which these walls haven't seen since just after we bought the property, back in 2003.  A giant high colonic for the oogy nasty vibes.  Cleaning on a mundane level, bleaching and sanitizing, then going through and doing it on a spiritual level.  That'll be on the next new moon.

Thirteen days later, on the full moon, we're renewing the protections.  Again, it's been a long time. Last time I did something on this magnitude was when the Witnesses were hassling me.  Not Luiz, but me.  He came along later, and I sort of slapdashed some more protection for him, but nothing of this scale.

I've got to shop for it, plan for it, make lists for it, think about it, build energy and store it, and make ready from now till then.  I've already spent a great deal of time and energy reading cards about it.  I want to make sure my intentions are pure, and I'm not trying to control any one person or element, but do something for the greater good of this house and all our loved ones that live here or pass through here.  It's exhilarating to undertake this. I just went upstairs through all my old herbs and materials, and cleaned out half of the ones that have gone to dust.  I found some really wonderful nostalgic items, left over from when I was a baby witch, in the 90s.  I sniffed all the resins and incenses, and along with the spellwork, I'm getting my shit organized again.  Everyone in the house is on board and into it, which makes it even more satisfying.  I need a few dozen certain kind of candles, and Irv volunteered "hey, wanna run to the candle factory in the Poconos on Sunday?"  I am over the moon.

Shopping for this stuff has never been easier. I got most of my herbs in one fell swoop from Mountain Rose Herbs, except red sandalwood.  This mystifies me, because they have fucking random hard to find stuff like agrimony, boneset, henbane, dong quai...but no sandalwood?  Not even listed on their site.  I'm going to have to bite the bullet on that one and go to Earth Spirits in Red Bank, and I loathe that place.  Well, that's not fair, it's been good to me, but I hate those new-agey emporiums, and I'm not fond of the dude the runs the show.

Either way, this is exciting.  I'm loving the process. I'll be even happier with the results.

Haven't written here in ages.  Been consulting the cards a lot.  I keep Druidcraft and Deviant Moon at my desk.  Baby Thoth at my nightstand, and Hanson-Roberts on my person.  Osho Zen resides nearby, for when I'm high and really wanna learn some stuff.  I've gotten some really brilliant guidance, simply by clearing my brain, and pulling cards.  I write them down. I read them both high and not.


Feels like I'm reading for others every day, almost, and I love it.  Luiz has gotten really good.  Lately I've had a spate of questions that I'm too close to answer.

Here was a good one.  I had such an amazing day today, so good, it made me ask "What am I doing right?"  He pulled from his Thoth the Five of Cups...  Disappointment.  I needed him to sort that out at first.  He was like "You stopped letting disappointing things rule your life."  I'm not deferring or submitting to someone that's spiritually inferior.  I'm aggressively and actively following my True Will.  I've become a lot more assertive in the past few years.  I've stopped disappointing myself, too.  The cups are balanced and clear.  The rest falls away.  Egos are destroyed.

I mean, just look at that. It's almost  hard to view.  Crowley/Harris certainly didn't pull any punches. I was there for a long time, but I can say for sure that the cups are clear and up out of that shitty emotional tidewater.  

Proof Positive

This is a good start, towards making me happy and decluttering.  Today, I cleaned off my bookshelf and organized my tarot collection.  Shown is the 50 or so active decks and some collectors.  Not shown is the drawer of unloved lovelies that I'm ready to trade off, and the first ed. Bohemian Gothic regular and silver editions, as well as the second edition pewter edition.  Down here is the second edition regular "seconds" deck.  Also...I like Deviant Moon, ok?  I love the unique artwork on his signed wrapped editions!

Seeing my bookshelf like that is awesome, too.  Now everything is right there.  When things are clean, Luiz is less inclined to stash my books in his deep dark shelves.

Tonight, maybe before I settle into a video game miasma, I'll dink around with Osho Zen for a bit.

Oracle Energy

I've been reading a lot of cards for other people, lately.  Not professionally, not for a long time, but for friends and family.  Every day, at least, sometimes a few times a day.  If not for that, I may have laid them aside, again.

I haven't read for myself in ages.  My cards are in a disheveled heap on my shelf, and I haven't been inspired to care for them or wander amongst them.  I've been using a standard "easy" deck for most things, and not stretching myself.

I should change the name of this blog from "Spinning the Web" to "Spinning my Wheels".

I'm only writing about it, because I notice it.  I've already put a plan into motion. I've been using an oracle deck for readings, because I haven't had the energy to really "connect" and I don't want to give cold readings. Even if it is for the same poor sap that hits up my inbox (and has for years) obsessing over this one chick that he STILL can't land.  Reading for him is good practice, so instead of giving him the "blah blah blah" treatment, I switched to Morgan's Tarot. It was a refreshing change, and sparked off an evening of tarot fun time, seeing if the oracle deck could answer serious questions.  I even compared it side by side with the most serious of my decks (serious, nonsensical, deep, pretty, with no further ado...) the Thoth.  A serious question's answer came back XX The Aeon from Thoth, and "AWAKE!" from Morgan's.  That pretty much did it for me.

For whatever reason, that sent me on a spiraling search for more intuitive oracle decks, and I wound up grabbing the Osho Zen (which I've had my eye on forever) and an oracle that utilizes sacred geometry.

Recently a close friend and I were discussing the importance of intuition (or, more like I was hamhandedly lecturing) vs. intellect.  I encouraged him to reach past the jungle gym if his extremely powerful intellect, and poke an intuitive finger into the universe.  Maybe I was really telling myself that, too.  Quit thinking, you're wearing yourself to a frazzle, and start feeling more.  Osho Zen is helping with that, like the oracles are.

As above, so below.  To see this through, I plan on minimalizing the stuff laying around,  and decluttering my space.  Today, I'm starting with my mystical bookshelves, moving to my desk, and other mundane things.

Humble Cake.

I just realized that the last two posts here are about mostly the same thing.  I feel extremely redundant.  It's there, and I'm promising myself not to delete it.  Apparently, I agonize about this more than I thought.  I'd totally forgotten about that one from December.

Luiz just called leaving my mistakes to speak for themselves a taste of "humble cake" So there we have it.  Now that I've thoroughly whined this to the ground, I can move on, amirite?

Also, I see a lot of posts about feeling "meh" and not taking up the cards much.  At least that block is clear.  I've been reading more, reading the cards more, and the movement is flowing again.  I've got plans, and ideas again.  It happens in a cyclical manner, I always go through a phase of freezing.

I use little words. I feel dum.

I'm having a minor crisis of communication.  It was triggered in part, by trying to explain the philosophy/non philosophy of Thelema to the uninitiated, then by listening to one of Joseph Campbell's many awesome and inspiring lectures.  Luiz pointed out some part that correlated with Thelemic/Qabalistic belief, and I was like "yeah, I know, I've been playing along in my head"  He apologized for insulting me.  He didn't insult me, at all.

The other night, we were with friends celebrating Luiz's birthday, and C. said "Now we should go through Liber Resh, for the birthday boy" or something, then Luiz countered with the fact that he never memorizes anything.  It came about because we were joking about birthdays, cold weather, invoking the sun, and other weird shit.  I froze and gave him the O.O look.  Now, in my head in response to Luiz, I thought "dude! That's a short one!  HAIL UNTO THEE ABODES OF THE DAY...or somesuch."  I could have said that.  Instead we have this.  O.O

I keep it in my head.  I keep it all in my head.  When it comes out, I can't remember names or dates, and I can barely cite books I get them from. If I wanna find some random correspondence, I can march to my bookshelf and pull out the exact book, and maybe flip to the right section.  If someone asked me, I'd be like..."hurrr...Google it?"  I understand Aeons, and I know how and when they flip over.  I feel the dying god everywhere.  I feel the bottom of the earth and I reach for the highest star, the HGA that's inside that little infinite center of me.   I've drank from the Cup, swam in the Cup, soiled the Cup, am the Cup.  I get the Abyss, the need to cross it, and what it might be like on the other side, and have explained it using analogies, but to present what I know in an informed intellectual sentence is where I stumble.  I'm having a hard time making sense right now.   I'm concerned that I come across as a total shallow dipshit.  Listening to Joseph Campbell explain something like that so eloquently and perfectly simply makes me clench my fists and squeeze back huge tears of stupid.  I'm dumbstruck.

It makes reading tarot cards difficult. Well, not reading.  Explaining to people.  Sometimes I get so toungetied and frustrated, I just point to the card, and say things like "LOOK! It's ALL RIGHT THERE!" I often resort to analogies, and like, bullshit self-help speak, because I often can't tell my sitters the real nuts and bolts of the card.  I know what every bend, star, lobster, leaf, and everything that is and isn't on that card means.  I know what it means historically, astrologically, numerically, runically,  in many different systems, and I know what it means pertaining to any question.  I can't tell it out loud.  I'm like "look..donkeys, ooh."  .  I feel like a hack.  Every time I talk about philosophy and spirituality, I feel like a hack.  I'm lucky, with Luiz, because he'll ask me a question, and I can say something like "Oh man.  Pfwah.  No!  Look."  Then I make mouth noises, and flip the card at him, and he understands.

In my own rituals I have been complicated, virgin beeswax candles handmade by the light of a full moon, star charts, robes, proper astrological houses in line, down to the hour of the day or night, with the wind blowing in the right direction, ritually charged implements made of the properly vibrating and resonating materials, chanting, learning whole alphabets and languages, I have done and ritually practiced all that shit.  I have been simple. Throwing a circle of table salt and praying.  Scrying into a campfire or a kitchen bowl of tap water.  It all works. It. All. Works.  When I speak, I lean towards the table salt and tap water language, I guess.  Sometimes, I worry that it doesn't work to get things across to other people.

Sometimes, I want to use big words and throw around names and numbers.  Now I just have to figure out what it will take to discipline my thinking/communicating centers.