In the glade, I kept drifting into hypnogogic states as dreams crept in. K thinks I might try riding that rather than fighting it or feeling bad about doing so. I want lucidity, so—also, I haven’t been trying to direct my dreams. I’m still in my houses, rooms, and institutions. Before going down into bed, or as I do, I should will to dream of Elethis, the Morrigan, Saiyûnor, etc. I want to get a passport again—try for an Irish visit, if I can. But chat up ________ [about business].
The matter-spirit divide is fair bunk. We only think spirit is separate because we’ve pushed not spirit away, but interconnectedness, the other, Otherworlds, other people, other parts of ourselves. The hunger for spirit is often a hunger for connection, but we often render that hunger obsessive, as complete [subsumption] and submission to the “All” (complete interconnectedness)—it’s the extreme other end of where we are ordinarily—the swing from Cārvāka to Jainism. Buddhism is the Middle Path between the two, but it’s a bit spirit and immaterial—but the spirit/elthil/imaginary is still there but pushed out of casual awareness and often disparaged unless filtered away from “imagination” and into patriarchy and subjection—y’know, Abrahamic submission. But “spirit” and “chimerical” is already there with us—we just don’t pay attention and have filtered it out. Everyone talks about keeping “grounded”—but surely we’d adapt? Mind you, it’s less “grounded” and more we’d not want to deal with this bull shit and corporatist consumerist […] neo-con corrupt culture if we would work with that other aspect of reality. When we cease being blinded and look to ourselves, we reclaim our elthil and deny it to the machine and thought-gods.
Creativity, imagination is empowering, allowing you to imagine new things, new ways of being, to reflect, to consider, to imagine yourself in new ways and new actions. Yet we do our best to crush it and force it into strange shapes, subjected to authority’s limited vision. Entertainment encourages us to invest our will and elthil into social visions and approved culture. But entertainment is still “art” in that it is still alterior, and it still has us immerse & compare our lives with that we witness—and discontent and reflection can still occur. Though it may not accomplish much culturally, but it leads individuals closer to the Path.
RPGs have commodified characters while also—what—encouraging close identification with characters who are close avatar proxies for the players. But immersiveness is rarely pursued. This is intentional on some level to make RPGs less subversive and less projective.
RPGs and esotericism/occultism was always there, just theater and more.
POTENTIALITY -> VIRTUALITY -> ACTION -> ACTUALITY
Impotentiality
—————————————–>KNOW WILL DARE
What is the point of “conjuring” a spirit in the tradition? Why did ______ want me to call up the dead? To show that it was possible. That there’s more than social mobility, pop culture, state authority, human subjection to Order. It’s a demonstration that there is more—and it’s there beyond this mundanity.
The cliché, of course, is that such displays terrify their spectators[1] into avoiding such things in the future and to retreat to the safety of church-approved spectacles and wonders and of mundanity. But that desire is there even if there’s an attempt by folklore to contain that desire. The stories show us we still have that desire. Bloody Mary & similar urban legends point to a similar desire, a desire tinged with a contrary desire to reassure us it’s not real, save that we keep telling tales of those who find out it is real.
Paxson points to developing sensory cues for shifting to different levels of trance. She notes the kinds of awareness we move through already—reading vs. tending to a child vs. etc.—
- Counted breathing (4-4-4) for trance
- —practice until your body has the rhythm down pat.
- Incense
- Texture of costume
- Chanting
- Drums (1 beat per 4-7s)
- Music
- Paxson should avoid VR metaphors as they aren’t good ethos & are dated
- Movement-spurred trances tend to be active & ecstatic
- Kinesthetic (dance, mudra, etc.)
It is a beautiful day, and in the shade with this breeze, it’s fantastic.
Projecting into memory to augment sensory detail.
Paxson points out that obvious uses of occult map systems—ToL, Ygg, Buddhist mandalas—for navigating the worlds, and as aids to med. However, I’ve previously noted the paradigmal limitations of these systems, and the ways they shape Presence/identity/self.
Thorn offered her directional associations, as well. Paxson notes a sense of structure is handy, nonetheless, and I concur, even if only for conperceptual purposes. Indeed, Paxson advocates a journey trope structure—entry, travel, return. She frames this in terms of a “more intentional and gradual journey.”
Soul loss can result, Paxson says, from rushed or inartful returns—and after a fashion, I’ve been pretty slack re: my exercises at [work]. Now, I may want to check for such things—I do tend to leave my Presence in [Elethis] or even [Corunor]. If I’m just going into dreams of my own, it should be less an issue. Alignment can help, too, I’d think, and attention to Presence. But also, I’ve left pieces of myself in places & moments—[a list of such moments and places follows]—I think I should reclaim what I’ve left in these times & places, and recover myself from my journeys. I let my “fetch”/Presence wander away from me—and there is a difference between cycling elthil without her and with her. I can recall her, should I do so.
Paxson recommends a base camp—an “astral temple” as others put it—my glade.
(Am I still on the threshold? The front door to the Beyond—into the Worlds?) (Yes, in part)
I should develop a more articulate description of the glade, [Elethis], [Corunor]
Also, passages, portals, doors, veils, arches, paths—
Paxson frames all this as an “inner space” experience, though she likely does so for the broader audience she’s writing for.
I read Paxson’s account of her unexpected encounter with a raven as a guide, and I think about K, even MW, and I feel a wind and the presence of something, and K merely says, “Yes,” as he suns himself. K has at times seemed raven-like to me, as he reminds me. (MW—“I ain’t saying anything.”) (Also, since he got bigger, K’s been honing his draconic sense of wit. (“Yes, I have.”))
There’s someone there—but I’m not quite ready to see who. Or he/she/hir/they are coming, approaching this reality and my consciousness.
Animal, spirits/gods, the dead
It’s come in on the wind
It’s the Morrigan (“Yes,” K says.)
Dana, ______, Macha, Nemain, Badb—these are “kennings” & names and roles for Her, just as Odin has many names.
And so should you—
Paxson advocates affirmations, and I’ve been doing something similar with my “I reject…; I embrace my wings…” But she also suggests affirming our abilities, powers, allies, and so forth—even the ones we want to develop. It’s a general form of spelling.
[…]
Part of my sensing today has been the Otherworlds and the liminality of part of my life moving on from [uni] and [old job]. I said goodbye and verbally reclaimed myself from different buildings on campus.
[1] I encountered a version of this linked account years ago, in some context.