I have a lot to be thankful for, this week:

 I am thankful for:

The fan mail I've recently been receiving. It's good to hear from people...I also appreciate the good reviews of IA and MOTE in Silverstar Magazine

The opportunity to present workshops at Harvest Home Gathering and make new friends. The fellowship I experienced there was very inspiring.

I am thankful for getting to meet A new friend who has already touched my life in wonderful ways. 

 I am thankful for having a wonderful dinner and good covnersation with Angel.

I am thankful for Lupa's continued patience and understanding and her efforts to make herself a better person.

I am thankful to myself, for being willign to face the aspects of my personality that I would sometimes rather flee from.

I consciously commit to manifesting

The wealth of the universe into my life so Lupa and I can achieve financial independence

Continued effort to dissolve blockages and be present with all of myself.

A conscious awarness of my boundaries and other peoples' boundaries.

Actually more than couple of Immanion Press books: http://www.horusmaat.com/silverstar/SILVERSTAR8-PG49.htm

And also some really good articles, though the format is a little wonky: http://www.horusmaat.com/silverstar/SILVERSTAR8.htm

The two reviews I liked the most:

Magick on the Edge: An Anthology of Experimental Occultism edited by Taylor Ellwood, Megalithica Books, 317 pages.

There should really be more books like this, collections of diverse and creative thought from practitioners who go beyond rigid definitions and into cross-cultural multi-disciplinary experimentation. Here we have clever and innovative essays by some 22 contributors covering issues throughout all space and time in magical fields including linguistics, hermetics, sexuality (see ‘Hillbilly Tantra’, great title!), inner alchemy and the transformation and mutation of earlier esoteric traditions. In some ways we seem in the 21st century to be going beyond Crowley and even Chaos Magick (though they remain huge influences for many) into unique realms of very personal kinds of synthesis. What hath the internet wrought? I love this kind of stuff…


Inner Alchemy: Energy Work and the Magic of the Body by Taylor Ellwood, Megalithica Books 2007, 246 pages, bibliography.

This is a very thoughtful and thought-provoking work, and one that clearly evolved through years of deep study and personal practice and drawing upon science both fringe and mainstream, magic both popular and obscure, and even NLP and the New Age. The author explores the nature of the body, the gates of the senses, the hidden powers of our various secretions and the possibilities of sexual techniques both traditional and kinky, the yoga of Taoist breathing and Tantric chakra visualization, the secrets of DNA and a series of energy workings. This is a substantial and very intelligent work that is worth repeated visits, full of unusual insights and unexpected connections. The existence of our bodies and our minds seems to be one of life’s few relative certainties, and the artificial divide between the two appears to be one of the most fatal flaws of western culture. If we make the effort to explore within, to transform ourselves, there is a chance for us to evolve.
I have previously reviewed Mr. Ellwood’s other books, and he is rapidly becoming one of my favorite living magical writers.

Where to begin...A lot's happened this weekend.

Ahh I know where to start: Thursday

Long plane flight...two notable aspects though.

1. Saw the second Fantastic Four movie on the flight. It was as cheesy and badly made as I expected. All of the actors were fairly wooden (including Dr. Doom which was a real disappointment to me, because he's one of my favorite characters). Also I didn't like the focus on what I consider to be traditional gender notions/clique notions. Invisible woman may as well have been invisible...she was more concerned about her wedding than anything else and didn't seem remotely intelligent. The torch was a player...need I say more...and then the cliqueish. At one point the general gives a speech about how he was a jock on a high school team and Mr. Fantastic shoots back about how he's the most intelligent man, and with the hottest person (debatable), etc...basically some teenage male posturing from grown adults...I would hope that such an interaction wouldn't occur in a military situation. The movie gets an eye roll from me.

2. Finished reading a really good book on Wealth Magic, which in line with some realizations I've been having about competition vs. cooperation also helped me appreciate the importance of service to others. Don't get me wrong I've done a fair amount of what could be considered service unto others, but I'm also fairly LHP in my personality. Reading the book (can't recall the damn title) helped me appreciate that the workshops I do and the life coaching I plan to do is very much about service to others regardless of other outcomes that might manifest from doing the work. In thinking from the perspective of providing service to others it helps me balance my LHP tendencies just a bit. I can serve myself in serving others as opposed to I serve myself first and world second...I'll be mulling this over more, so I'm sure there will be a post about it at some point for both the paganfinance community and here.

So after the flight we got a taxi and got dropped off at the campsite, just in time for food. Met John and Liz, who coodinated the festival and then met anotherjen, as well as Ronald Hutton and other attendees. Chatted for a while with all of them and then dropped everything off at the cabin.

After doing that I went back to the dining hall and saw a face I recognized from Etheracon: Jane Sibley. It was lovely to talk with her again. I was also introduced to Tannin aka baphometis. I introed her to Lupa, and as it turned out they already knew each other from a live journal community. Afterwards we headed out to the opening ritual, which was an interesting ritual which included Baphomet and Sophia in the invocations.

After the ritual drumming started up. I really didn't get into the dancing. I ended up talking with Ronald Hutton about Multi-Media magic and my two chapters on Definitions of Magic. It took a lot of courage for me to approach him. I had to admit I was afraid I would get the academic dismissal, but he listened and told me he'd like to hear more...so we made an appointment for Friday to do that. Afterwards I ended up getting into a long discussion with Phil Farber and baphometis about magic and publishing. Lupa joined us later, after having a fairly significant experience. We helped her through that and she went to bed. I ended up in Tannin's tent for more discussion and other activities.

Friday

Lupa taught her first class on Friday morning and did an excellent job of it. I mainly wandered around, chatting people up.

We co-taught Kink Magic together. We did a really good job with the workshop. It flowed smoothly and we didn't interrupt each other too much. Everyone seemed to enjoy it. I'll admit I was gratified to see the shocked look on Ronald's face as we described some of our practices (Later, at one of his workshops, he made a funny joke that he realized that was completely Vanilla with not even a hint of raspberry swirl).

After that workshop I just continued wandering around and hanging out with people. Flirted a lot with anotherjen. After dinner, I had my long-awaited and somewhat dreaded appointment with Ronald Hutton.

We talked about my definitions of magic and then I showed me the chapters, as Lupa had her laptop and was editing. He looked through them...and he liked them. I got some validation that I actually knew how to write academically when he told me that I could easily submit my chapters to several academic journals focused on the study of paganism and occultism. I later heard from someone else that he'd mentioned that most manuscripts he looked weren't up to his standards, but that what he saw of my work was fairly impressive. For me this was a form of closure...a feeling of acceptance...I'm thinking I just might submit both of the chapters to one of academic journals to see if I can get those published. I may or may never go back and finish my ph.d, but I can still be an independent scholar. He also offered to do a promo blurb for MMM, so that makes me happy.

Later Tannin and I helped Lupa with an experience, which I won't relate here as that is Lupa's story to tell, other than to say that I'm rather grateful for the advice I got from Tannin.

Saturday

I taught the undoing male stereotypes and body magic workshops. The undoing male sterotypes went really well. The body magic workshop could've been better. I tried some new material out and while the attendees got a lot out of it, I felt it was unstructured...so I'm going to be reformatting that one. But as always it's a learning process.

Also got to see Ronald Hutton do his workshop and wow...just wow. I was really impressed by his skills. Really knew how to present the material. We later chatted a bit at lunch before he left and I really hope to see him again at some point.

I also talked with Orion Foxwood afterwards, as I wanted a couple of suggestions from him on how I could make my undoing male stereotypes workshop more friendly to men who aren't het, and he had a couple good ideas. Might run that by Christopher as well at some point. Orion also said something really nice...that he noticed a definite change in me in terms of walking my spiritual path. And he's right because there has been and is a lot of changes going on in terms of what I'm doing and why.

Spent Sat eve in Tannin's company. We had fun and we taked for a quite while. Had some interesting realizations about work I'd done with Babalon years ago...sometimes the gods you work with/worship wander away and then return and she definitely returned this weekend. Later Lupa joined us and we all ened up cuddling in the tent to stay warm as it was "ass cold" to quote Tannin.

Sunday

 

Sunday was saying goodbye to all the new people we met. I met a lot of peole and I haven't really mentioned them much, but I had some really good conversations and interactions with all of them. I felt sad to leave, partially cause I was also leaving the East Coast again. Yes, I'm happy in PDX, but the East Coast also has a place...particularly new england.

Anyways said my goodbyes to everyone and then got taxied to the airport.

Flight home was spent mostly reading. I did learn something rather useful in terms of solidfying some of the subtler details of my definition of magic and my arguments about intent and impact...has a lot to do with identifying key behaviors...but that's all I can say for the moment.

Also learned a new energy technique from Chia's Fusion of the five elements...it's very good at purging the body of toxins, as I realized fairly quickly and might be an alternate dissolving method. I used it today to identify a blockage that the water meditation techniques hadn't made me aware of...further experimentation will be warranted.

We got home and teaotter and heron61 picked us up...thank you again both of you.

And then sleep

Conclusion: Harvest Home Gathering is made of win and if you live near it or can afford to make a long trip you should go because you will get a lot out of it. I know I did...believe me I'm only posting about the tip of the iceberg.

 

My latest article on Witchvox has gotten a couple of interesting responses from readers. One person thanked me and said it was the right message at the right time, but in another case I was preached at by what I'd consider the Wiccan version of a fundamentalist christian. The message wasn't very coherent, but the jist was this world was one of misery and that I had wandered off my path. Yet another person spouted out rhetoric that could have come from the Secret, explaining how everything was based on the law of attraction and I should only focus on intent.

The latter two responses are ones I'm not sure what to make of beyond the notion that they seem to subtly reinforce an observation I've made that there seems to be too much emphasis on intent and not enough recognition of impact. And that, as I mentioned in the essay, responsibility (as applied to intention) is taken to such an extreme that it becomes a form of selfishness as opposed to being responsible for the self, but also recognizing the impact of your actions on others and on the environment around you., so that your intent is balanced by your impact.

I have to admit I've struggled with this recognition of impact for the last two years, trying to figure out how it fits into my spiritual life and practice of magic. It's helped me realize when I have been selfish and I'd like to think has helped me become a bit more aware of how the impact of my actions and words is felt by more than just me, and also how that impact can last much longer than I might expect. And of course when I have those moments where I recognize the impact after the action has been taken, where hindsight is perfect, it occasionally makes me wonder how much I can effectively integrate this awareness into my life.

And yet that integration has helped on some levels. I've become much more aware of very subtle behaviors on my part, such as my avoidant tendencies, which once I became aware of the impact, helped me realize that some changes were needed. I'm still not working on some of those other behaviors, but I can recognize them in a manner that I didn't before. Sure I was aware of them and yes, even responsible for them, but I indulged in them, and I didn't question them...

And for me that's really what impact is about...it's about questioning those behaviors you pursue, questioning even your sense of responsibility for those behaviors, and also questioning why you have the reactions you have. In a sense, I consider the awareness of impact to be a step up in taking responsibility for yourself. Yes I'm responsible for what I do, but I'm also responsible for deciding if I can change what I do and also for why I want to change. I'm responsible for recognizing that my choices do have an impact on other people and on the environment.

Now lest anyone think I'll suddenly turn into a people pleaser...far from it. My awareness of the impact my actions have on others is a calculated awareness. In some cases I may very well choose not to take an action because I know it will hurt people I love and care about and I care about what those people think and feel about me. In other cases though that awareness has motivated me to take action for myself, recognizing that the benefits of the impact outweigh the potential harm. In fact, I've found myself becoming more direct and upfront in expressing myself, but also, I hope, becoming more receptive to others.

Sometimes I fail. There've been a few cases where that's occurred since moving to Portland...but integrating this awareness isn't easy, especially if you've lived most of your life on autopilot. Each failure is a reminder I can do better, and an opportunity to learn how to do better.

Two and a half years ago (really) I realized I didn't really know myself...that for all the magic I could do, and all the results I might get, if I didn't understand the impact and how my internal state would react to that, the result would just drift away...successful for a moment but then gone. So, at least for me, the awareness of impact is a necessary part of my spirituality, balancing and informing the intent that manifests it. It's provided a better awareness and even some peace. Oh and boundaries...boundaries are good, especially for someone who never really had any.

http://www.witchvox.com/va/dt_va.html?a=usor&c=words&id=11855

 The perils of solipsism in magic

 I need to try and update this more. I was just thinking how one wonderful thing about being with someone is you get to do some thigns you;d done before, but without that person...in my case watching the first season of smallville with her on dvd...a simple pleasure but worth it.