Not So Much in the Feet

Last night, I posted about sensing things through my feet. I tried the same today. No dice. I got nothing. I did recognize my mind once to try fill in the blanks but that was obviously not the same thing.

However, I did pull up energy out of the earth all day as I walked. It put me in a good mood. I noticed some things that I feel I need to keep to myself for the moment.

Last night during the meditation, I noticed the energy on my left was an ugly yellow. It was white on my right. Nothing felt right that I pulled from above. Things felt fine when I pulled from the earth. I immediately new that I was meditating during the void course of the moon. I checked and I was.

Interesting Effects

I've been doing the pillars and spheres meditation from Jason's book, Strategic Sorcery. The results have been interesting.

Many months ago, I posted about feeling things through my feet. I've begun doing this again. I've had the following results:

In a Uncle Harry's Bagel Shop: Swift Commerce
In a grocery store: Old Commerce
In a Subway Sandwich Shop: Pain/Old Earth. This was curious as I figured a few decades of 'bad neighborhood' couldn't damage the earth that way. I think someone was murdered nearby. I draw that conclusion because it felt the same as it did the one other time I felt that. That impression was very reliably confirmed.
In my office: Place of Labor
In the long empty office in the same building: Work Unit
On the grounds of my work place: Fading Pain. The sight has long been used as a hospital. In fact, there are two retired hospitals. The pain I felt was the grieving of the living for the recently dead. It was not the pain of the mental patients we serve now. Interesting.

I am finding it interesting how I can feel a difference in the energy at my feet and that different feel is instantly translated into words. The words are always something other than my preconceived notions of the place. Though, sometimes related. I can't say it was a stretch for Uncle Harry's to be swift commerce. But the word was swift and I was expecting successful. Others were much different than I expected. My general policy is to trust intuition that runs counter to my preconceived ideas.

I am not sure how to make this practical yet. However, the practice alone is fascinating.

My back has been horrendous of late. Really bad. It hasn't been this bad in over six months. Last night, I used the skills gained from the meditation and felt my own energy. I then tried to straighten the obvious detours that were either causing the pain or the result of it. I feel much better today.

I have also noticed that even in pain, if I walk and consciously draw power from the earth, I feel better. I can walk easier. This does take some concentration but not a great deal considering how new I am to the practice.

Golden Dawn and the Tarot

I have seen it written among the blogs and I believe elsewhere that the Golden Dawn was first to link the tarot with spiritual pursuits. Prior to this, the tarot was used for fortune telling.

My research of late has found this to be incorrect. Papus wrote Tarot of the Bohemians (1892) in which he outlined how the major and minor arcanas both reflect the tetragrammaton. Though, he was a member of the Golden Dawn Paris temple. I find his book curious as not only does he not mention the tree of life but his system of numerations does not compare to same. Then again, I am only a third of the way through. It was fun to see the link between Papus's diagrams and Tyson's diagrams on on the interplay of forces associated with the tetragrammaton.

Alphonse Levi was the first to link the tarot to the tree of life. While his associations were somewhat altered by the Golden Dawn. Given that he died before the Golden Dawn was founded, it is safe to assume that the Golden Dawn built on his work, not the other way around. It is possible there various people knew one another. For instance, Levi died while Mathers was in his twenties.

In the 16th century Jacob Cammerlander outlined the moral and spiritual associations with each of the tarot pips. Given the Golden Dawn was founded in 1888, it is unlikely that he appropriated their concepts.

This is in no way to say that the Golden Dawn folks didn't have a huge influence on the way many of us look at tarot cards merely they were not the first to connect the tarot to a spiritual practice in print. Given the spiritual/religious connection can be traced back to the 16th century, I believe it is safe to assume many an unknown practitioner found a similar use for the cards long before the Golden Dawn was conceived.

A Tad Embarrassing

I've been keeping this shadow self journal for only two days. I am literally getting anxious about going to bed. It is a like being a little kid all over again.

How do I know this is from that journal? I have no idea. I just do.

Couldn't Sleep Due to Rock in My Head

The shaman gave me a stone he said would help me when working with my shadow. I was not sure what to do with it. So, I decided to leave it next to my laptop so it could 'help' me as I write out the journal. When I went to bed, that didn't feel right. So, I placed in my temple room. That room has a double cubical altar and four side altars for the elements. I placed the stone on the earth altar.

Upon laying down I felt nervous. My heart was racing. My blood pressure felt up. I felt sickly. I couldn't sleep. After an hour or two of this noise, I removed the obsidian from the temple and placed it back on the kitchen table next to the laptop.

I nodded off quiet easily.

The New Blog

I was impressed with the Druid's blog in that on his third post, he put himself out there. He did some magick and posted without knowing the results. A lot of folks post only successes. The Druid is not afraid to expose himself as a long term student of the arts magickal. I find that to be pretty cool.

Meditation

Did the pillar and spheres meditation in the temple room tonight. My concentration was pretty good. Oddly, I had a vision of two upper middle age black women encouraging me when I was doing the air sphere. It was hard to keep from laughing. I am assuming these were just phantoms/illusions but it was a bit out of the blue for me.

During this meditation, water became more real and I could smell the earth. This time I didn't want to have all that energy running through me as I tried to sleep. So, I shoved it into the earth with the focused thought of saving money. We'll see.

Mixing Things Up

I noticed something in this weekend's activities that must be commented up. In times past, I'd say such things were a mistake. Now, it is part of my unifying structure at work.

There is something called the Law of Contagions. In a nutshell the law states that those things that touch one another can influence each other even when they are apart. This is how sympathetic magick works. Give someone a lock of your own hair, fingernail clippings, etc and they can 'link' back to you quite easily.

This law is easily observable in human behavior by observing our ideas. I have ideas that I learned from folks I haven't seen in twenty years but still impact my personality and point of view.

The law of contagions applies in greater force in proportion to intimacy of contact. By this I do not mean physical intimacy but how deeply the contact strikes the psyche. For instance,reading a book may have no impact at eighteen but that same book may deeply influence that same person at twenty-one. Even if the book is never reread, its influence persists because the person was in a deeply receptive mode, as receptive applies to the particular ideas, emotions, or other inputs offered by said book.

So, why do I bring this up now?

I have been struck by the kindness and good will of many people I saw this weekend. Those themes have continually played in my mind. I've wondered why I'm on this particular mental loop. Then it struck me.

The Druid that journeyed for me is a very kind soul. Given that I was very open to his suggestion going into the particular working, his kindness resonated within me. The law of contagion at work. Gee, I wonder why my HGA sent me to him.

Inversely, My Gal had gone to him a few months ago for healing her asthma. She was cured instantly. She reports that the Druid then mentioned blogging to her. Once the Druid interacted with me, his blog appears. Perhaps the law of contagion applying itself again? First the seed is planted with the asthma healing and the seed was watered doing his journey for me.

This is a natural process and should not be feared. However...

The Alexandrian Wiccans I used to circle with had a rule they called "proper person". It is a term I bristled against until I learned their meaning. Proper didn't mean good or bad. It meant sane or not. You don't circle with crazy people because the law of contagion applies. Perhaps their method of working made such connections so intimate that the law had a huge impact.

Many of today's neopagans could learn something from the Alexandrians on this point. Neopagans will hop into almost any ritual without caring that they are circling with some pretty unhinged people. I can leave it up to the imagination on what happens should the law of contagion come into play.

Meditation

I've been doing this daily and have noticed a couple of things:

First, I noticed that how thoughts are getting interrupted automatically. I realization that their is a thought 'to eat'. Then it is followed with, "where did that come from? I am not hungry."

The second thing I've noticed is that when thoughts interrupt my meditation and I stop them they are occasionally replaced by an image. The image appears unrelated to the interrupted thought but it has the same emotional impact. This occurs even when the image is utterly benign. If I stay focused on the image for just a bit, I could see some action in the seen or action would move into the scene making the emotion of the image clear. I am not sure if that is to explain the emotion or if it just a buried part of the scene.

Shadow Work

I completed the first day of writing at 5:15 PM. I was surprised by a couple of items on the list and a couple that are not on the list. It is hard to describe the feeling I have. I'd almost say that I'm opening up to a higher plane but it doesn't feel quite like that. The emotional feeling is not being fully expressed. I can feel the suppression of pain.

New Blog/New Work

There is a new blog that went up last night. I have added it to my blog list on the lower right of the page.

The fellow that writes it is one of the nice guys of the occult community. He went from Wicca to Druidism over the years and does a lot on healing work. I've known him a bit less than a year. I am not sure what to say about him except that, like me, he is very much focused on what he does. I will let you learn about him as he writes.

He is the person I went to this weekend and asked about an issue I have. He did a journey and rather than solving my problem for me, he came back with a set of instructions for me to follow. I was a tad disappointed that I didn't have a solution simply handed to me as I've seen the results of his instant healing work. On the other hand, the fact that he didn't showed me a couple of things.

First, when he said my HGA spoke to him during the journey, I believed him because the tone of what was said sounds very much like my HGA. Secondly, my quiet of late HGA is being very loud in telling me as I write this that they did speak.

Second, he is wise enough to follow the advise of someone's else's spirit rather than imposing his own solutions. I know the Druid would have liked to help directly but he listened for guidance instead. That is a mark of wisdom and experience.

The advice he gave is how to deal with my shadow self or what I call my lower self. Recently, I was given the name of my lower self. I didn't quite know why but I made sure I didn't forget it. Then, I start learning how to work with the lower (but not less divine) realms of magick doing Jason's meditations. Next I'm told I have to deal with this character by the Shaman/Druid. I love the synchronicities of magick.

My task is to write a very specific journal on a nightly basis and two months his evoke my shadow and have a chat. I really doubt I will be posting the journal. I will be posting about the journal and the rest of this work. This may be quite the trying ride.