[Most recently edited 9 December 2017]
I began this blog—as “antiquated” a concept as blogs have become—because a god asked me to do so. So I did. I had been keeping a magical journal (“grimoire” as I pretentiously like to affect to myself—and sometimes here) back at some point prior to 2013. I began in earnest, though, with Antic Delights on 2 January 2013.
Let me back up, though.
My first journals date to probably 1993 or so—I’ve gestured back to those on occasion here, but I’ve not transcribed them. I was a bit out of high school, had just started my first year of uni, and I ran into a crisis that led me to seeking after the Otherworlds and magic. Combined with a lack of access to reputable teachers, this decision led to some wacky hijinks and the usual paranoid stuff that happens to many folks who come at the occult for the first time. However, to put it more simply, in questioning what I wanted with my life, I found myself answering that I wanted “to live a magical life, to be magic.”
I eventually found other, non-local folks in the heady days of the mid-‘90s online, and that meant encountering a lot of drama and a lot of internet ego and so forth and so on. I eventually fell away from online occult, pagan, magical communities and drifted into going back to uni after a point. And going to uni turned into going to grad school. And so on.
As I approached the end of grad school, I started to realize exactly how bad grad school had screwed me up emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. Part of the problem was that grad school is an extended form of academic indoctrination, and grad school is also a bubble reality that surrounds you. As the end of that period of insulation (incubation?) loomed, I began to feel dread, anxiety, and restlessness.
A friend had previously pointed me at T. Thorn Coyle’s Evolutionary Witchcraft. I had a copy of the book, and I had looked at it in passing a couple of years previously. During the latter stretch of grad school, I went back to Thorn’s book and started reading again, and I started trying to align the triple souls. As I admitted to said friend, Thorn and Feri saved me. I started trying to call up the Guardians. And my current practice began to take shape. And it began in a fit from January 2013 through about early autumn, and then it resumed with a vengeance in the winter. Eventually, I realized I’d been ignoring—no, not quite hearing a call from two goddesses for most of my life. (At times, I’ve conflated the two of them and others, but I think they are more sisters and kin these days.) I began to realize how odd occurrences half a lifetime or more ago had actually meant something. Also, I had to admit that half a lifetime of experience, education, and more had helped me get further than I had earlier in my life.
Eventually, one of my allies (The Morrigan) asked me to share my experiences with people in some way. At first, I think I talked myself into transcribing my journals and posting edited and redacted entries on a blog—this blog. A few people had paid attention, had liked the odd entry, had decided to follow the blog, and to you I extended my thanks and renewed greeting. However, I’m well aware that this blog and these entries have probably remained rather opaque over the months I’ve kept up with this blog. In part, I’ve lacked the time and energy to devote to cleaning and organizing, let alone crafting fairly coherent posts that aren’t just transcribed entries.
However, She has prodded me persistently but gently over time to do something more. A friend suggested that smashing this blog into a recognizable and—dare I say it—reader-friendly shape was something I might consider.
So I started doing that.
In 2016 I also discovered Rune Soup, and I found enough there that I began the Premium Membership there first thing in 2017.
2017 was a very busy and a very magically fruitful year. Rune Soup and Gordon White fulfilled my decades-long desire for a grounded, embodied, philosophically-nuanced and fruitful approach to magic and enchantment combined with a definite call to do it. 2017 was a shitty year in many ways, but it was also a great year for my practice and thinking.
A Belated Introduction to This Blog
In this blog, I begin from the following premises, in no particular order:
- Magic and enchantment is real, possible, and fucking great.
- The Otherworlds/spirit worlds are real, accessible, and something to explore/work with.
- We exist within one corporeal realm within an indefinite multiverse, with the Otherworlds mediating our usual experience of that multiverse. (“There are other worlds than these…”)
- Magic, art, imagination, and the Otherworlds are indelibly tied together and are probably the same thing.
I am a “polytheist”—I believeultimately that all gods are real in some way, whether asin GODS, spirits, dragons, angels, fae, accidental egregoric mashes, archetypal forms worn by entities, intentional egregoric entities, numinal/function-oriented beings that underpin reality, ghosts, Mighty Dead, plants- and animals- and objects- and landscape-as-spirits-and-persons, and whatever. I believe all of those are out there. Furthermore, I’m willing to accept most everything imagined as being a spirit being (god, elemental, spirit, angel, fae) exists and has some value of realness, and that realness is often a matter of how much we pay attention and engage with them., but maybe not the way we imagine—and quite a few of them have an existence not dependent upon our thought or belief. (It’s amazing what happens when you treat people like people.)- I don’t particularly care if you adopt a psychological, archetypal, or similar model. I’m probably not talking to you, though. That said, read and stick around if you want, but I’m not going to debate the point with you, though I’ll acknowledge those models inflect our individual experiences of the Other.
- Magical work necessarily ends up involving “soul work” and personal work in terms of psychology and self-definition. The nature of your soul work you can look at as if it’s your great matter, your great work, etc. Some of that work involves getting around the stuff in your head that tells you magic isn’t real (or is just a user interface shell for NLP and CBT and other forms of self-therapy).
- Many things get in the way of us and magic/the spirits/the Otherworlds/other stuff you and I might want. Some of those things are part of you, some of those things you’ve been inculcated into, and some of those things have been inflicted upon you.
- I’m not here to teach you. I’m not trying to teach you. I’m presenting material here. I’m representing reality and my experiences in a particular manner. But I’m not here to teach you.
- The soul/spirit comes in many flavors.
Now, I figure I should get the following declarations out of the way:
- I am not initiated in any tradition. I will reference several people (like T. Thorn Coyle), but my relationship with these people comes entirely out of reading what they’ve written and maybe the odd conversation. I’ll let you know if that changes. So I am self-taught, with some consultation on the side with friends and the Rune Soup Premium Membership. This blog is not a Feri blog, not a Wiccan blog, not any kind of blog but my own.
- I am not part of any particular group, coven, lodge, brotherhood, sorority, arcane association, or publishing group. I’m a solitary person working here on Earth. I do hang out at Rune Soup, though.
- That said, my core magical influences include Feri (primarily via Thorn), Chaos Magic (as a gateway paradigm or metaphysic), “Celtic” mysticism, Hermeticism, and more. However, as I will undoubtedly repeat at some point, Chaos Magic is a gateway paradigm, and Feri is a gateway practice. Otherwise, my background is eclectic and syncretic. I draw upon that personal gnosis I have experienced. Someone tried to tell me that all these influences would make People think I was frivolous. Whatever. Wear protection if it bothers you.
- I identify as gender-queer and faerie. I prefer she/her/hers for pronouns.
- I’ll avoid posting my old journal entries here in favor of, well, hopefully more coherent content. I will likely keep my “categories” named after whatever grimoire I’m transcribing at the time.
Previously edited to update my current reality! (2/25/2017)
Image:Group of common ravens at a landfill, by William I. Boarman of USGS