Spaghetti at the Wall

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I am a poly­the­ist pagan, and I work with The Mor­ri­g­an. This is my sto­ry of being called by Her (and even­tu­al­ly our work togeth­er).

You can go back to the last part, How Do You Spell, Skep­tic?, here. 

Or you can go all the way back to where the Jour­ney Begins. 

By the mid­dle of June 2020, I was an athe­ist try­ing to under­stand what the fresh fuck was going on, in any way I could that was­n’t a “mag­i­cal awak­en­ing.” And I would­n’t real­ize until late sum­mer who it was, but I was dream­ing about a pre-cop­per age Irish god­dess called The Mor­ri­g­an almost every night. 

These days I look back on my sar­don­ic skep­ti­cism with a bit of amuse­ment. I was try­ing SO hard to explain every­thing away. It took me years to real­ize that it did­n’t mat­ter whether I was hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with some com­pli­cat­ed inner arche­type of my own per­son­al­i­ty or a real­ly REAL™ spir­it, ghost, deity, undi­gest­ed bit of beef, blot of mus­tard, crumb of cheese, or god­dess of war, prophe­cy, mag­ic, and death. But at the time, all I could think of was that this need­ed to be framed in an explic­a­ble con­text, and that in some way, some long-dor­mant part of my psy­che was direct­ly try­ing to get my atten­tion in some sort of psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly unortho­dox way. I did­n’t real­ly know what it was or what it want­ed beyond my atten­tion, but it was haunt­ing my dreams night after night, some­times twist­ing them into night­mares. Usu­al­ly a woman in black or group of women in all black (some­times sisters—sometimes aspects of a sin­gu­lar). 

“Know me!” she would scream (or they would scream in unison…or one would scream while the oth­ers looked fierce), and I would jolt awake try­ing to fig­ure out what the fresh hell a woman/women in black might sym­bol­ize with­in the twist­ed labyrinth of my mind.

I was still quite the skep­tic at this point. I fig­ured I was uncon­scious­ly work­ing some­thing pro­found out. After all, we were enter­ing the third hard month of Shel­ter In Place, I was spend­ing more time alone than I ever had in my life (even as a pow­er intro­vert), and I was prob­a­bly doing more men­tal and emo­tion­al pro­cess­ing than I ever had. Noth­ing had quite hap­pened yet that could­n’t still be explained by some lev­el of self-hyp­no­sis, focused willpow­er, and the place­bo effect of belief. I don’t think kids can jump high­er BECAUSE they’re wear­ing Spi­der­man Under­oos either, but if they think they can, they try just a LITTLE hard­er. 

And then maybe they DO jump a lit­tle high­er.

This was a strange time for me. Strict­ly speak­ing, there isn’t, like, a school of mag­ic out there for awak­en­ing peeps even on the BEST of days, but this was in the full fury of Shel­ter In Place, so I was try­ing to work out almost all of this shit on my own with­out even being able to meet up with a local coven or some woo-woo friends. I had some zoom calls with some­one I lov­ing­ly call “my Yoda,” but most­ly I was try­ing to fig­ure out what mag­ic could do (and what it could­n’t) com­plete­ly on my own. I have to admit try­ing a few things that would bla­tant­ly defy sci­ence as I under­stand it. (Of course, they nev­er worked.) 

My rubric was always “Does it work?” That was all that mat­tered. If the cock­tail of con­fir­ma­tion bias, mag­i­cal think­ing, and cog­ni­tive dis­tor­tion was going to help me have a steamy hot date, I did­n’t real­ly care if it was because I lit a red can­dle first. If I was able to focus on writ­ing for five hours, I did­n’t care if it was “real­ly™” the flu­o­rite that did it. But I also want­ed to strip away dog­ma and cul­tur­al bag­gage from the spir­i­tu­al sys­tems that entwine most mys­ti­cism. I was par­tic­u­lar­ly averse to any kind of reli­gious trap­pings. 

I was show­ing up in good faith for most things, but I was def­i­nite­ly throw­ing all the spaghet­ti I could at the wall. If some­thing did­n’t stick, I was­n’t going to keep try­ing it. In the inter­est of not fuck­ing up my own abil­i­ty to do mag­ic by being such a hard­core nul­li­fid­i­an, I would pro­ceed with the best faith I could. I would research spells extensively—usually find­ing that 15 prac­ti­tion­ers would offer me 30 ways to do the same exact spell, so I would break it down to the things they all seemed to agree on—do all the rit­u­als one was sup­posed to do (light the can­dles, call the direc­tions, use the spe­cial ingre­di­ents), do all the visu­al­iza­tions involved, and be a good prac­ti­tion­er. I left a LOT behind right away or after a cou­ple of tries. And while I don’t want to be that per­son who sits there and says, “I’m work­ing with an Irish God­dess, but I think astrol­o­gy is bull­shit” (or some­thing), there are some things I def­i­nite­ly took one look at and knew weren’t for me. Maybe they might offer mean­ing­ful insights to peo­ple or be writ­ten in ways that cause peo­ple to reflect on their rela­tion­ship to oth­ers and the world around them, but they stand against—as in not just unproven but anti­thet­i­cal and mutu­al­ly exclusive—what I under­stand about sci­ence.  

Still I end­ed up with a robust list that had enough on it to devote sev­er­al life­times of work.

• I got into Tarot a lot. Prob­a­bly because there was a lot of Rorschach-inkblot inter­pre­ta­tion to the cards, they could almost mean any­thing some­one want­ed them to. They cre­at­ed focus and mean­ing and some­times gave me some­thing to think about that I was avoid­ing.
• I enjoyed cre­at­ing mag­i­cal foci like wands. I hand-carved a cou­ple, and got into the wood­work­ing and effort. I fig­ured if these things helped con­cen­tra­tion and I thought they worked to enhance a spell, they would.
• I enjoyed cast­ing spells that focused on me. Any­thing that would make a pos­i­tive change with­in myself or that would man­i­fest my desires by focus­ing my atten­tion  on them (in a way that my uncon­scious would then seek out oppor­tu­ni­ties to ful­fill). To me these kinds of spells seemed both more real­is­tic and ratio­nal­ly plau­si­ble (as well as con­se­quen­tial) when com­pared to, say, try­ing to get a good park­ing spot or come into mon­ey.
• I was also get­ting into the idea of con­scious­ness that exist­ed out­side of the phys­i­cal world. Be it uncon­scious man­i­fes­ta­tions (which I thought my dreams were) or some kind of spir­it or enti­ty that had some sort of abil­i­ty to exist out­side of a phys­i­cal, liv­ing brain.
• Charms (includ­ing crys­tals) became absolute fetish­es to me. They were use­ful even though I knew they were Dum­bo feath­ers. They real­ly worked only if and when I thought they worked, and I had my doubts that they did  any­thing but help me point my atten­tion. So I tried to use them to focus on what they intend­ed, know­ing that they were sim­ply point­ing the focus of my per­son­al mag­ic (focus, atten­tion, willpow­er) on what they sym­bol­ized.
• Rit­u­al was impor­tant only if it the act of doing some­thing by rote was feed­ing the high­er lev­els of con­cen­tra­tion and atten­tion. Oth­er­wise it was dog­ma, and I had zero inter­est in it.
• I got DEEPLY into med­i­ta­tion, biofeed­back, and self-hyp­no­sis. Although, I use almost no tra­di­tion­al meth­ods for any of these. Qui­et and mind­ful­ness tend to make me scat­ter MORE quick­ly because of my ADHD, so I focus on things like run­ning, ecsta­t­ic dance, or Tai Chi. Strict­ly speak­ing, these are more physical/psychological than alter­na­tive/­mag­ic/­woo-woo, but they def­i­nite­ly strad­dle that line.
• My med­i­ta­tion work dove­tails with ener­gy work, which is a much hard­er appli­ca­tion to explain with­in any sort of ratio­nal frame­work. But it was also prob­a­bly the most pro­found­ly tan­gi­ble to me. Med­i­ta­tion made me feel like my own ener­gy became pos­i­tive. Feel­ing the ener­gy of peo­ple or a room was part of every­thing that was hap­pen­ing and this whole awak­en­ing. Mov­ing ener­gy was some­thing I could feel (or thought I could if you want­ed to be a skep­tic). I had learned Tai Chi and how to cre­ate a “ball” of ener­gy per­haps a decade pri­or to these events. Sud­den­ly this exten­sive sys­tem of sens­ing and mov­ing ener­gy had a new appli­ca­tion. 

Dur­ing much of this explo­ration, I visu­al­ized it as try­ing to make a men­tal map of a dilap­i­dat­ed cas­tle or a man­sion in pitch black­ness where you can only feel for a minute or two each day. You could­n’t see, and you could­n’t draw what you felt, so it had to be com­plete­ly by mem­o­ry. Some of the rooms were unin­hab­it­able. Oth­ers bare­ly so. You had to remem­ber where the com­fort­able ones were, and try to fig­ure out how to find your way back by mem­o­ry and feel. I had only the vaguest sense of the shape that the whole thing took, and my rec­ol­lec­tion of entire wings was almost cer­tain­ly flawed. With lim­it­ed time to explore each day, I could spend days to have a good sense of a small area, or a vague sense of a larg­er one, but I often had to keep going back over things I’d hasti­ly already done to make sure I had­n’t missed any­thing. If I could SEE, of course, I would real­ize that I had missed a door to a whole oth­er room, con­fused a hall­way with a pantry or some­thing,  or dis­cov­ered that my idea of the lay­out was all wrong, but being entire­ly lim­it­ed to oth­er sens­es, I only under­stood the broad­est brush­strokes.

Mys­ti­cism is a con­vo­lut­ed path through cul­tur­al touch­stones, and I was intent on strip­ping away the cul­tur­al bag­gage that did­n’t serve me. I was­n’t going to mess with any­one’s closed mag­i­cal sys­tems, but I did­n’t want to get caught up in the anachro­nis­tic trap­pings of an open one either. To that end I learned very quick­ly that what WORKED (actu­al­ly “worked”) had lit­tle to do with oils, wands, charms, rit­u­als, spe­cif­ic words, or any­thing else. Those things could be use­ful, but only in as much as they served to focus atten­tion onto what was hap­pen­ing. And what was actu­al­ly hap­pen­ing was an act of sheer willpow­er. The more willpow­er that could be brought to the focus, the bet­ter the mag­ic worked. If I could give it hours of con­cen­trat­ed atten­tion, the mag­ic would work almost per­fect­ly.

There’s one thing some­one with ADHD hyper­fo­cus can do, and that is give some­thing hours of con­cen­trat­ed atten­tion.

In July of 2020, I start­ed to be able to hear myself use a dif­fer­ent voice.

It hap­pened the first time speak­ing a man­i­fes­ta­tion. I heard my own voice and it did­n’t sound right. It sound­ed deep­er and res­o­nant, and I’m sor­ry to use such a goofy pop-cul­ture image, but what it made me think of was Saru­man chant­i­ng to bring snow over Celeb­dil, Caradhras, and Fanuid­hol in The Fel­low­ship of the Rings, or per­haps even bet­ter rec­og­nized, when Gan­dalf calls out Bil­bo for try­ing to keep The Ring and yells at him (not to take him as a con­jur­er of cheap tricks). My voice sound­ed deep. Res­o­nant. It almost echoed. I paused and lis­tened and spoke a few more things, but the moment had passed.

I hear “the voice” from time to time now, usu­al­ly when my con­cen­tra­tion and willpow­er and atten­tion are absolute­ly laser-focused. I speak the words of what I want and it’s like they draw upwards to a new ech­e­lon of pow­er. One of the rea­sons I rarely use my voice when I’m cast­ing spells—rather than just focus and concentration—is because in addi­tion to a failed “voice” being kind of a dis­trac­tion, it almost feels like TOO much for a lot of spells. Like set­ting a bon­fire to cook a S’more or using a light­ning storm to charge an iPod. 

The pow­er that coursed through me after these spells was phe­nom­e­nal. I entered alter­nate states of con­scious­ness and would some­times feel crack­ling ener­gy for hours after­wards. The sheer ecsta­t­ic peak of that med­i­ta­tive con­cen­tra­tion could be its own reward, but also, as I start­ed to be able to focus hard­er and for longer, the spells them­selves became more and more pow­er­ful. Med­i­ta­tion and writ­ing I had strug­gled with for years start­ed to come to me as eas­i­ly as scratch­ing my nose.

I did­n’t real­ize it, but I was explor­ing a very mod­ern inter­pre­ta­tion of mag­ic. Some of what I was try­ing to do is almost word-for-word what 20th-cen­tu­ry Chaos Mag­ick is all about. 

I also did­n’t real­ize I was mak­ing a lot of mis­takes that an ear­ly prac­ti­tion­er who has absolute­ly no guid­ance would make. I might have been intel­lec­tu­al­ly strip­ping away the cul­tur­al dog­ma from mys­tic rit­u­al, but some­thing very sim­ple like hav­ing a basic pro­tec­tion invo­ca­tion between myself and the world around me was cov­ered in the 101 class I nev­er took.

I was still over­sen­si­tive to crowds and any­one with aggres­sive or cho­ler­ic ener­gy, and I could bare­ly stand to be around anoth­er human, nev­er mind crowds. I was hav­ing trou­ble just going into the gro­cery store to get food for the week, and I would feel over­whelmed after even an hour or two of being out. My job of watch­ing a kid involved inter­act­ing with the par­ents, and it was dif­fi­cult.

But there was some­thing out there, try­ing very hard to get my atten­tion. And even before I would ful­ly know what it was, it was going to start teach­ing me about this new abil­i­ty I was explor­ing…

Next: Three Gifts and a Lesson—The First of the Great Dreams

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