Queen of Swords

It remains true that the Underworld Path is my primary orientation as a priestess. I am initiated and ordained in this path, and intend to remain faithful to it.

I use the techniques and wisdom of Hermetic magic, including Qabalah, as my central mode of practice, and I both want and need to refine my skill and knowledge in this area.

I work with specific deities who don't have obvious connections to each other but who are all resonant with the Underworld Path as I walk it. (YMMV)

I want to increase my devotional practice to promote deeper relationships with my patron deities. This was once the center of my spiritual life, but grew tenuous in the years I wasn't sure about the nature of the Divine or whether there were individual gods or not.

My relationship with LM is a central part of my life and an integral aspect of my spiritual path. I want to enhance our working relationship as priestess and priest.

I am also ordained as a Grail Priestess, and I want to energize that aspect of my spirituality again. I smiled yesterday when I remembered that the oldest Grail text is Preiddeu Annwn the story of Arthur and his knights voyaging to the Otherworld to seek the Cauldron of Annwn. It's an Underworld text.

My sexuality is closely connected to my spirituality. I need to continue to explore how this expresses itself in public as well as private work.

I also have a vocation as a spiritual director and teacher, and it is important to me to strengthen my skills in this area and to express my gifts in public work. I would like to be financially rewarded for this work, but I don't want that to be my central motviation in doing it.

None of this is actually new, but as I re-establish myself in the upper world, it's evidently important for me to work through all of this again and reaffirm what I am doing and how it fits together for me, rather than just accepting what has become habit during the years of grieving.

It's my breath, my focus. . . and some of my energy. . . but this is The Tree of Life I'm working with. As the magus said: "Don't try to top it from the bottom."

I relaxed more tonight, was more yin, focusing on the fact that these energies already flow through me. I don't make this happen, I open my awareness, sharpen my focus, clear obstacles, get myself out of the way. (See: Don't top from the bottom, above.)

I also keyed in this evening to the awareness that the Spheres of the Middle Pillar don't exist in isolation. They are connected by Paths. Even though I haven't yet memorized the names and the attributes of the Paths, just seeing the energy flowing downwared through the Paths rather than having nothing between the Spheres was very helpful.


And: I did all my practices tonight and worked on my Tree of Life notebook -- even though I also watched a movie this evening. Go me!

For the last several months, some basic Ceremonial Magic practices have been part of my daily training routine. At first I experienced intense resistance to them, but my teacher kept gently insisting they were important. I could push back at her -- but when Ereshkigal put Her foot down, I didn't have any recourse.

I've worked my way through the overt resistance I started with, but still experience a lot of the more mundane I-have-other-things-to-do, I'm-tired, and etc. The absolute minimum requirement is that I must do at least one simple CM exercise per day, and one Middle Pillar per week -- but I understand that I should do more if I want to continue to make progress.

This has been a weird week, and I've been doing fewer exercises than usual. I've been distracted by a creative project, plus two after-work meetings I usually don't have, plus more focused time with my kid. It's a good thing I really looked at my pratice checklist today or I might not have realized that I haven't done a Middle Pillar all week.

About 30 minutes ago, I pulled dinner out of the oven and splashed a bit of vodka in my Diet Coke -- and then remembered that I hadn't done my Middle Pillar -- and that I couldn't do it once I'd consumed alcohol, until it had cleared my system. There wasn't another day to put it off. I had the "choice" of disobeying a direct order from Ereshkigal or changing my immediate plans.

I started this entry expecting to make a wry joke about not wanting to face the consequences of disobeying one of the original bitch goddesses -- but now that I'm here, it's not about that at all. Ereshkigal is my patron. I'm Her priestess. We have a sacred, oathed relationship. And part of that oath is that I do what She tells me to, for as long as I remain Her priestess. She doesn't issue many direct commands, and so far all of them have been about keeping up the practices that are necessary to continue my growth and deepen my skills. How am I supposed to begrudge that?

I did want to enjoy my drink with dinner, but I left that dinner on the stove, and the drink on the counter, and I stopped and I took the time to do the Middle Pillar -- and related exercises -- before I consumed anything.

And while I feel a bit ashamed of not having done a Middle Pillar before now, it feels good to honor the commitment and obligation I have to Her.

Last night I did a Middle Pillar exercise for the first time, using the ritual technique outlined by John Michael Greer in Paths of Wisdom, which is based on the Golden Dawn tradition.

I've been very faithful with my nightly hermetic practice, performing a Qabalistic Cross, Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, then another Qabalistic Cross, pretty much every night for at least four or five months. My experience with both the QC and the LBRP was that it took a long time to feel like I was getting anything out of it. Over time I felt more and more like "something" was happening, and since my initiation, I've experienced the energy of the rituals more deeply, and felt more confidence when I vibrate the words that are part of the practices.

My first experience of the Middle Pillar was far more intense than my first practices of the QC and LBRP. I clearly felt the energy coming into me through Kether, and had a strong sense of tingling and expansion in the Daath sphere in my neck. Moving the energy into Tiphareth made me feel like my heart was physically expanding. It was hard to get the energy down into Yesod and Malkuth, but it worked. Afterward, my entire upper body felt warm.

At first I was just going to record the experience in my paper journal, then I realized that I wanted to talk to my teacher about it. She was quite pleased with my results, and said that it was unusual for someone doing it the first time to have such an intense experience. According to her, it's often best for a neophyte to do it for the first time in the company of someone experienced, and that the activated spheres of the experienced person help activate the spheres in the novice.

I hadn't done the practice with another person present -- but I had broken from my usual pattern by putting on items of power before I began my practice: the chain necklace of my service to Ereshkigal, and the prayer shawl which my teacher had made for me last year, which was also blessed by LM.

My teacher and I think it's possible that my spheres were activated by the inner planes, working through the already charged items I was wearing. It's one of those "unprovable" things -- but fits her experience and my non-rational impulse to make them part of my work that evening.


The other significant aspect of last night's experience was that it's the first time I can remember that I went on to a more advanced spiritual/magical technique by building on a foundation of practice I'd established over time. I've just never spent the time and effort to establish that base before.

At the beginning of our time together, Ereshkigal gripped the necklace, pulled me close to her, bestowed a terrifying smile on me, and said, This is where you go deep. "Going deep" also involves getting to "build up."

It feels really, really good.

My spiritual studies definitely progress in a spiral pattern, with one thing being emphasize for a while, reaching a plateau, and then working on something else for a while as the previous elements integrate. The difference between this time of my life and others is that the different pieces are all being absorbed as part of a coherent overall path.

After spending months focusing on sacred sexuality and bdsm for my Pantheacon class, and dealing with the hurt of being written off by Michael as "a worthwhile sacrifice" to his higher priorities, I've been working with ritual magic again. As I've written here before, I've always had an intense resistance to these practices -- but that resistance has slowly been eroding. I'm pretty sure it's not the recommended technique, but I've been simultaneously reading several different books on the subject of ritual magic and Qabalah, with each one giving me a different perspective on the basic principles.

Why does this work for me? Because I have a hard time learning when I'm presented with the detail work first. I need to understand the big picture and guiding principles first, and then I develop the patience with the incremental steps of building applied knowledge through focus and practice on the basics. It helps, of course, that I have a teacher who can answer my questions about what is essential and what is personal choice.

As I told my teacher recently: it's like filling in the pieces of a mosaic. In isolation the bits have little or no meaning, but with enough pieces filled in, I can start to understand the overall design. Focusing on only one book is like filling in just the green pieces, or just the upper left hand corner: it's all part of the design, but quickly loses any sense of meaningfulness for me.

I'm not the easiest person in the world to have as a student.

The books I'm reading right now are "Learning Ritual Magic," "The Magic Tree," "The Disciple's Guide to Ritual Magic" (thanks, lupabitch!), and "The Thursday Night Tarot." The last one is a lovely, conversational guide to the Major Arcana through the lense of Qabalah, and since I'm pretty strong in Tarot, it's kind of reverse engineering for me. And of course these are not the first books on the subject I've read. Like most of us, I have a whole library of magical books -- most of which were never much use to me, but I carry the information from them, and it too is part of the mosaic.

How is all this working for me? Two days ago I drew a diagram of my own circle, elements, guardians, and etc. -- and although I've stood in many circles and cast a few (but not many) of my own, this was the first time I felt like I was truly in touch with the why, what, and who of it. This was the first time I felt the act of casting would have meaning and not just be a rote because-I'm-supposed-to act.

That was a good feeling.

My weekday evenings are focused on study and time with my kid, so I haven't actually done the casting yet -- but I'm looking forward to doing it this weekend.