She Continues
A friend had bugged me ages ago about writing on “ritual dramaturgy,” and the idea made sense, got me thinking, but despite making an outline and starting to draft something, it fell by the wayside because it got boring. I was approaching it in the wrong way, and I was very much overthinking it or […] … Continue reading…Ritual Dramaturgy
The “Spell to Helios” in the PGM—PGM IV.1596-1715, specifically—is described as “the consecration for all purposes.” I’ve performed this spell on four occasions with different timings and processes. I was asked the other day about my experiences with this spell, so I thought I’d write some on it because I think it points to the […] … Continue reading…Helios Reflections
I have an operation coming up that is one-part astrological talisman, one-part spirit fetish, and one-part pulling Stuff from the Depths closer to my incarnate life here on the skin of the world. The impetus for this project emerges out of working with the decans and, after a point, very specific things that started to […] … Continue reading…Properties & Sympathies
I recently read Alexander Cummins’s new A Book of the Magi from Revelore, but this isn’t a review of that book. However, I was reading it as I was also pondering Jeffrey Kripal’s work, Paul Weston’s work, and I have a head full of witchy, imaginal, otherworldly stuff otherwise. Anyway, as I’m reading Cummins with […] … Continue reading…Imaginal Materials, Ritual Dramaturgy
Josephine McCarthy (amongst others) have observed that a ritual begins when you first have the intent to do the ritual: …if a magician or a group of magicians/priests are planning to do a major working, the energy will start to form itself from the moment the time, date and intention is set. The initial action […] … Continue reading…Sibyl & Wyrm
And yet, as I reflect upon these topics, I feel like conceiving of these engagements with the Unconscious-Dreaming-Spirit World from a theatrical or aesthetic perspective misses the mark. Art is the road, or a royal on-ramp. In treating enchantment and magic as “aesthetic” enterprises, I wonder how much that keeps that which is imagined or […] … Continue reading…Living Enchantment
As I explore forms of magic and enchantment that would’ve been well outside my wheelhouse, well outside my inclination many years ago—I have a pile of grimoires that make a goodly amount of sense these days to me; I have various practical enchantmenty documents lying about on my hard drive or bookshelves; I have my […] … Continue reading…Reflections on Enchantment
If we want to avoid being characters in someone else’s drama, then I argue that this theatrical, shapeshifting, role-shifting perspective is one magicians, witches, and other practitioners should cultivate. We want to be the directors, writers, and volitional, agential, aware actors even as we perform different personae. Magonia and Faerie and spirits often have associations with tricksterism: however, so do witches and magicians. Fight Trickster with Trickster, I say. As we work to better know and bridge with our deeper selves, with our own spiritual realities through our enchantments and practices, and as we do so in pursuit of realizing and having—of earthing–our faërian dramas, so too should we be ready to adapt and improvise when we encounter the daimonic, Magonians, spirits of all kinds, the other, and even each other… … Continue reading…Cosmic Theater
Okay, so here’s the always fantastic Alkistis Dimech of Scarlet Imprint talking at Trans-States: Now, as I listened to her talk about butoh and how dance describes a space we create and then intersect with the world, I couldn’t but help thinking of creating magical/sacred space, ritual, and art in general. What I love about […] … Continue reading…Exorcising Neo-Platonism 1: Space & Movement
The topic of the spirit of a performance came up, and that led further into the intersection of drama, ritual, and magic. … Continue reading…Ritual, Acting, Enchantment