My posts here discus mystical experiences, devotional reflections, and theological musings as I walk a blended path of pantheism and psychological polytheism.
This is my first journey into WordPress and I am not sure where to start. I already posted some material on another site that I called “A Blended Path” ( https://ablendedpath.weebly.com/ ), some writings and videos to act as “bread crumbs” to help me see the journey that I have made spiritually so far. I ended up here because at the end of last week I had some mystical experiences with Odin and came across a site here called “A Polytheistic Life” ( https://apolytheisticlife.com/paths/ ). I guess I’ll jump right in and describe an encounter with deity that I had yesterday.
First, I should provide one bit of background that makes the encounter more understandable. After making a video detailing my mystical experiences with Odin and posting it at Religious Forums, I received an encouraging reply from another member at the forum saying that he could see I was walking a path less traveled “for sure.” He also posted a picture of a bug with natural camouflage, having a body and tail that look just like a leaves among actual leaves. He seemed to be making the analogy that myth and personified deity is like that picture in that we cannot always tell what is the bug and what is the leaf and what is the bug-leaf.
Now on to the encounter. Yesterday, in my office at the community college where I teach, I was waiting for two students from another instructor who needed to make up an exam. In the meantime, I had copied a picture of Freya from the internet onto a Word document. You can see her beautiful red hair and lush surroundings here:
I was musing over whether she might be a face of Goddess I needed to connect with because of her relationship to Odin who seemed so overpowering to me recently. The image was still up on my screen a few minutes later when the first student knocked on the door so I could get her started on an exam she had missed. I was startled to see that her face, figure, and long red hair resembled the picture of Freya. After getting her settled on a classroom computer, I came back to my office and reflected on this odd coincidence. I thought that perhaps the synchronicity was confirmation that Freya wants to be part of my life. Although I already work with a personified deity that I know as a dark-haired Empress from the tarot with overtones of Venus and Gaia, Freya might even already be an aspect of this Goddess I work with. I had seen Freya described as Lover and Earth Mother.
Not much later, the second student came by the office and I took her down to the classroom to get started. At first I didn’t notice, I think because she had on a backpack and jacket, but it didn’t take me long to notice she was wearing a dress made out of the kind of camouflage material that hunters wear, a fashion statement I don’t remember seeing before. The picture and post about the camouflaged bug immediately came to mind, and I had the strong impression that just as Goddess could come through these students to communicate, so she could come through the various archetypes and images that speak to my heart.
There were other details and subtleties to my experience with these students that resonated with me and confirmed something otherworldly was going on, but these are the broad strokes. I will continue to seek and consider what kind of relationship. fellowship, or communion Odin and Freya may intend or allow. I know the Empress continues with me strongly and may counsel and guide me in the process.
And that is my first blog post.
2024 UPDATE
2016: Tarot Cards
2018: meditation; Goddess worship
2019: Regular client of priestess; left church
2020: Witches Coven; Left-hand Path; Black Mass to Satan
2024: Dedications to Santa Muerta, Venus, Lilith, Isis, Babalon, Hecate as witch and mystic “priest” on the sensual path of sacred sexuality.
During a final exam, a red-haired student, looked much like the one described above in the post kept having computer glitches to the point of absurdity, until she was seated next to another red-haired student–who was a less glamorous and more studious but very similar in appearance. I didn’t make a mental note until later Freya appeared in an online tarot reading for the card I picked and I saw an image looking very much like the red-haired students under the full capital text: FOR YOU.
My heart is touched by this synchronicity, especially as the tarot reading seemed to encourage my continuing on this strange sensual path that may be easily misunderstood. The online reader, who calls herself the Empress, channeled the encouragement to choose freedom to work “outside the box” of conventions or constraints, to continue any practice without giving up until the desired result comes, and to “stop counting the cost” according to the values of others. Freya seems to appear in virtual (anima), embodied (animate), and mythic (Anima Mundi) forms.
Similarly, Hecate has appeared to me through meditation and videos. I have dedicated through tarot deck (altar work), locked necklace, and body art. My initiation was marked in the night as a truck crashed into my car at the three-way crossroads, where I live. My boss wore all white as did a sound healer for the Capricorn Blue Moon meditation: I feel called to expansion at work and on my spiritual path.
Both Lilith and Hecate seem to be giving me a similar green light, and I have had some encouragement from priestess to go all the way without giving up. I am very grateful to Goddess and the divine feminine.
Content Warning: this story is a work of fiction but some of the scenes and feelings may be very real and intense.
ENTRY
My fantasy is so real that it could be played out in an actual scene, recorded in a file, or produced as a video, especially as fragments indeed come from reality, placed into a mosaic of molded memory, in turn, embedded in a shared reality tunnel—an artistry of social-psychology and sacred sexuality.
This fantasy is hyper-realized, deriving from life itself, bathed in actual trance states, and being lived out by acts of true kindness and love. The opening scene contains real-life elements that were already being fictionalized in a short novel, a story that is being overtaken by the hypnosis of Goddess Aphrodisia, imbued by her magic about halfway through the second chapter. The scene was outlined for Chapter 4, now freely given over to her in this follow-up story, which is a birthday gift to go along with the first story, “Back to the Future with Goddess Aphrodisia.” Both stories are also a memorial for my own new birth, an initiation of sorts, which begins in this liminal scene.
THE WAITING ROOM
I walk into a therapist’s office from a twilight evening in autumn just as a pretty young woman is leaving. She tells me that the hypnotherapy clients are always scheduled at the end of the day, that if I don’t mind she will lock the door so no one wanders in, and that the practitioner is changing but will come and get me momentarily. She pauses after the word changing, seeming to give me a nearly indiscernible wink. She tells me to have a seat and to relax
I sink down now onto the black leather couch, which is firm but comfortable, hearing the lock click behind me. The waiting room seems designed to be mood and mind altering. The love seats and chairs are interspersed by mahogany tables, each with elegant brass lava lamps with orange and red molten phantasms floating within. Beneath the window with its midnight blue drapes, sits a large aquarium, filled with tropical fish of turquoise, yellow, and green. Soft, glowing tubes of light adorn the walls in abstract patterns of pink and purple: serpentine swirls and fractal shells. Across the room from the aquarium, a screen displays a kaleidoscopic, spinning spiral of rainbow hues. The band Sleep Token is playing in a fusion of soulful electronica and fluid tech-metal sounds:
“We dive through crystal waters, perfect oceans
But no one told me not to breathe
And now the weightlessness recedes”
As I wait, I try to recall the application form for this session, hoping that I filled it out accurately, hoping I had represented myself well. The therapist was supposed to take on an archetypal role as Goddess Aphrodisia as she was expanding her services to include erotic hypnosis. The advertisement had professional disclaimers but had also mysteriously alluded to possibilities for inner healing and wish fulfillment. On the form, I remember checking boxes for three out of the five techniques: gentle, strong, and seductive. I had listed good boy, baby, and pet as ways to be addressed but regretted a little not listing “slave.” For preferences, I had listed submission, and for limits, I had requested no humiliation or degradation. For themes, I had written in candles, incense, sigils, mantras, rituals, or magic. The professionalism of the application and the office build my trust even as the after-hours twilight and psychedelic setting seem to set my mind adrift.
I am very relaxed by the time the therapist comes through the doorway next to the darkened reception window that reflects the neon lighting like a strange cosmic phenomenon. She kicks off a pair of patent-leather pumps under a wooden coat rack, where she hangs her white lab coat. She is wearing a pink Cinderella dress, complete with puffy sleeves. As she crosses the room, she lets down her hair down, which falls in waves of gentle brown curls, over her shoulders, down her back. She seems to be transforming before my eyes from her role as therapist into a virtual Goddess. As I shift to stand, I realize that she is coming to me where I am, kneeling down next to me so that the frilly hem of the dress slides back to reveal well-tone calves and sexy knees. Yet even as my excitement rises, her calming demeanor continues to relax me as she assures me of her intent:
“All I ask is that you keep an open mind tonight. You can trust me as a professional, one who truly cares for you and wants what is best for you. I want to lead you only where you want to go because I know your desire is to give yourself fully to another. You need someone to truly see you, and you need a center, an anchor. You want this strong connection, this bond of love, so open yourself to my guidance and the fullness of my presence. You will give yourself to me, and I will be your one and only Goddess Aphrodisia.”
The hidden speakers were now thrumming with binaural beats, tones that vibrated with an almost lunar pull, coming in waves like a tidal undertow.
“You will submit to me and serve me, and you will love your enslavement more than life itself, and the prospect arouses you. This moment is the proposal you have longed for all of your life. This moment is the induction that began before you ever heard of me. The desires of your heart now merge with my will as everything has been designed carefully since the moment Sarah welcomed you and locked the door behind you.
Goddess leaned in as her dress slid back further past her knees. Her fingernails grazed the nape of my neck as her other hand rested on my thigh, ever so close to what felt like the stiffening core of my being. She looked intently into me with her beautiful brown eyes. I had never felt so at peace and so aroused at the same time.
Goddess Aphrodisia arose and I felt myself rising with her. She took my arm and guided me through the spirals of color, telling me I would no longer care if I was in trance or out of trance, in fantasy or in a shared reality. Nothing would matter but her: her voice and spirit, her name and words. I would love her will as my own, her thoughts as my thought, equally happy to serve as daddy or baby at her command, as happy to live for her as to die for her. I felt as though I was falling even as I followed along with her like one intoxicated, step by step to the door. I was already under the spell of Goddess Aphrodisia, so trusting and so loving.
THE HALLWAY
As we reached the door, she reached behind her neck and undid some hidden clasp and let the pink gown slide to the floor, revealing her undergarment, a ruby-red slip, held by thin straps over her strong, smooth shoulders. The black-lace hem of the slip rested halfway up her strong thighs, and I felt myself harden even as Goddess Aphrodisia took full control of my sex. My perception seemed to telescope into a dark tunnel as she gently closed my eyes, narrating my willingness to hear her call from the unknown beyond, telling me of my openness to her anointing of my eternal present where only she exists, and explaining her saturation of every memory, filling every moment of my life with her spirit, making her my origin story. She described the windows and doors on either side of us as we stepped along, some open, some ajar, some closed, and my mind autonomously filled in every detail of every scene.
Some rooms we entered. The first opened up into the Enchanted Wood, the setting of the first story that I wrote in high school, the night scents of autumn and the tingles of young romance filling me with that indescribable longing of infatuation that I once had at the Renaissance Festival, where knights and queens and wizards walked in full regalia. My lust intensified as the images of a beautiful witch and amazon flashed through my mind, an illustration from the original Dungeons & Dragons rule books:
Some scenes and memories passed by quickly, a montage of hips, lips, cocks, clits as well as a whole series of photographs from Penthouse magazine, telling the story of a man in an apron, cleaning with a feather duster and kneeling before a naked dominatrix, which had inspired me to stroke as a teenager. The primal desires kindled in me even now with intensifying need as Goddess explained that I was made to obey, that even in my mother’s womb she knew and loved me, always made and remade to obey her and only her forever.
Scenes from movies played out through some windows in the dark hallway of my mind: the Bugs-Bunny-like Barbara Streisand teaching the professor to love in What’s Up Doc; cute Mary Steenburgen leading H.G. Wells into the future in pursuit of Jack the Ripper in Time After Time; Black Widow breaking free from the ropes and flipping from the chair to break the mobster’s neck with her thighs. I remembered a scene from True Blood when a Dionysian Goddess had slapped her servant to the ground and I was amazed to discover myself instantly rock hard.
Goddess Aphrodisia told me we were approaching the monster who guards the final doorway and that the monster is really my own fears of failure and rejection, that the monster is just myself. She tells me she was with me when I nursed the breast, in first puppy love and coming of age, in porn and song, lore and lost love, teacher and boss, in vow and one-night stand. My eyes became moist behind my closed lids. In her sweet, strong, seductive voice she spoke into my ear:
“I was with you when you sobbed at the altar at church, filled with the Spirit, when you stared in awe of step mom’s legs, father’s shirt like a mini skirt, when as a teen you shook and spasmed at Hustler pictures of women with whips.
“I was with you when Buffy spiked the first vampire And when Wonder Woman kissed the soldier, when in first grade you told Mrs. Tate you loved her, when you saw your crush holding hands with the bully, when Mrs. Brown placed her hand on your head, when Beth said yes and taught you how In the moonlit woods and by the night tides, In Fangorn Forest and the Seas of Fate: Friday night highs, acid peaks, video flow, touch-down pass, blackout, hangover, and post-orgasmic indifference.”
The monster loomed at the unseen doorway. I was so afraid to look, just like when Goddess asked me why I felt nervous posting on her server. I took a deep breath and lingered in a scene where I ran crying through the rain as a child because I had walked in on my parents’ swinger party. I passed quickly by a window that showed the time my sister and I had spied our step-brother and his long- haired buddy in the living room, mounting our mother and a neighbor woman, our step father crying, abandoned and alone in the back bedroom.
I stopped in my tracks, overcome by uncontrollable weeping, my chest heaving, gasping for breath as tears flowed freely. I was sobbing at raw memories in windows on the left and right, sobbing with joy for the time when the online domme accepted me, part of me knowing it wouldn’t be fair for me to expect her to understand how much her hypnosis meant to me, even if she read this story. At the same time, I was sobbing at the scenes on my left side, the time when my mother abandoned us to our father when I was seven and the time she abandoned me just after I graduated from high school, leaving the apartment bare, stripped even of the light bulbs.
THE OFFICE
I was weeping still when I opened my eyes and realized I was now in the therapist’s office with Goddess Aphrodisia, coming up from the trance as in fractionation. She had removed the ruby-red slip and laid it across the desk, now wearing only a black leather corset, miniskirt, and boots held by straps that accentuated her beautiful thighs. She was holding me in her arms, in an embrace of unconditional acceptance and uncritical love, which she demanded also from me, convincing me she really wanted my surrender. I trusted Goddess fully and knew I had nothing to hide ever again, completely vulnerable. I felt cleansed and purged as I became aware of how she had adorned this clinical setting with candles, incense, sigils, meditation bead, and tarot cards—all the things and more than I had mentioned on the form as themes for this session.
“You faced the monster, Alan,” she said, “The fear has gone, and the bugbears from the past will haunt you less and less. Love and lust, the sacred and the sensual have intertwined. The archetype and the reality are forming as one in you. You are now mine, bonded and bound to me even as all boundaries are blurred and all borders are open. You are free and you are free to return to this secret place whenever you desire.”
On a make-shift altar was the final tarot card of the Major Arcana: The World. The image from Smith-Waite Centennial deck depicted the Anima Mundi, the Goddess, dancing inside an eternal victory wreath, which encircled her like an ouroboros, outside of which the four creatures from the Book of Revelation—the man, the ox, the lion, and the eagle—represent the perfect harmony and integration of elements. The card represents peak experience, the apotheosis at the end of a cycle when the Goddess will be reborn as the Fool for a new beginning.
Goddess Aphrodisia tells me that the hallway was my deepener and that I responded to her calling, to her choice of me, by declaring from the heart that I belonged to her. Now we were past the evocation, immersed in the initiation among the blazing candles and burning incense. Now is the time for her to claim me in the everlasting present tense, to say to me in the only voice that can pierce through my innermost being, “You belong to me. I own you, now and forever.”
This is the most sacred of mysteries, the secret lover known to every true mystic, the deep invocation sometimes known as initiation or even “knowledge and conversation with the Holy Guardian Angel.” This is the communion of Babalon, who gives all to all and to whom the mystic pours out all, withholding not one drop. As Lon Milo DuQuette says, “It’s in the imagination that our secret lover is nearest to us.” This is the sexual and mystical surrender to and acceptance of our divine lover. The path here may seem goofy or creepy to those outside, but here is the heart-to-heart connection at the sacred core of being, and the key to Becoming.
I don’t know if I will weep or smile in the bliss if Goddess Aphrodisia accepts me outside of this fiction or what will come of the real fantasy that she creates. I do know as I become more and more aware inside this story, as the past recedes back into lingering echoes of emotion, fuzzy tingles of afterglow, that Goddess Aphrodisia in the story is wearing the black latex outfit of a domme, looking oh so hot and comforting at the same time, for she is truly a domme in hypnosis and in this story, too.
And so my blend of fantasy and reality comes to an end in this follow-up story to “Back to the Future with Goddess Aphrodisia.” I have come full circle and am the Fool once again.
My world was still fuzzy with the deepest trance and most intense arousal I have ever experienced, but to be fair, all of Goddess Aphrodisia’s erotic hypnosis files had been having this effect on me–lingering tingles, intoxication, and heart-felt devotion. I had been experimenting with such files since 2022, but I hadn’t found a content creator that pushed all of my buttons in this way—submission, seduction, mind control, realism, approachability—all with a genuine care for her followers.
I first explored trance as a spiritual practice around 2018, dabbling in ritual, altar work, and astral journeys. In my altered state after listening to Goddess Aphrodisia, I decided to weave the sacred and sensual together and drew a tarot card, intending to do some pathworking and meditation in this heightened condition.
I felt some amazement as I drew the Wheel of Fortune, remembering that, around the rim of the Wheel, the changes of life go on: peaks and valleys, rising and falling, comedy and tragedy, love and death… But at the hub, the unmoving center of peace, all is still. Goddess Aphrodisia has opened the door and taken me here to this transcendental place. Here at the center of the Wheel, perspective shifts. Now everything else is motionless and unimportant (the comedy and tragedy, the love and death). Now at the center, as Crowley describes, Shiva or the Divine dances like a child. Here is the true sap, where the life is in the blood. Here is a deep mystery.
Still under the erotic influence of Goddess, I continued the inner journey with a technique of invocation that I read about in a Lon Milo Duquette book. Rather than using 108 mala beads for counting, I kept track of mantra repetitions by visualizing 9 books in a 3 by 3 grid, each with 9 pictures in a matching 3 by 3 grid (81 pictures). In my mind, I started on the centermost picture on the centermost book, spiraling outward until reaching the last picture. For each one, I spoke out the name of Goddess Aphrodisia. This was the evocation, releasing all thoughts, sinking me back down into trance.
For the invocation, again in my imagination, I spiraled through pictures on two of the books on the outer rim, this time reversing direction, spiraling inward, clockwise, finishing where I had started on the innermost picture, for a total of 108 repetitions of the name of Goddess Aphrodisia.
The journey was visual, so I had no need of counting numbers, each calling of the name sending waves of bliss, each visualized picture flashing album covers, faces, scenes, kinks, and each book bringing images, words, knowings, emotions, vibrations… At some point I was finished, knowing but not caring that I was finished. I had rooted at the center of the Wheel card but had accessed a point on the rim far in the future. I sensed that I was drawing near to Goddess in the future, intensely aware, almost fearful, yet somehow at peace, feeling safe.
In this future, I see Goddess. She is older, seasoned, timeless, her face not wrinkled but slightly weathered by time, curly waves of hair and complexion still holding their color, lips still full, curves still voluptuous, legs still shapely, and voice still gentle, strong, and seductive.
She sits in what seems at first to be a garden, but—no—it is a café with low ledges and large windows, open to the outside with its lush vegetation, fragrant blooms, birds making melody and musical counterpoint. The air is warm even as Goddess exudes warmth. We could be in Thailand, Brazil, or Hawaii. The windows seem almost like travel posters, actually opening to these places, the ledges overlooking landscapes from Italy, Spain, the Philippines, or Nicaragua. The café is liminal, partaking of these earthly places yet transcending them.
“Is this—are you real, Goddess?” I ask.
“Yes, real. But we are in a future that has not happened yet where you come from. This future is as malleable as memory.”
“Goddess, how can it be real if it’s not determined?”
“This future is not locked in place like the past, but I did not quite say that we are undetermined here either, for every decision and action and word can determine aspects of the future like stepping stones in the river’s mighty flow.”
Goddess observed my surprise for a moment, for these were words I had written in high school that no one now in my life could possibly know. She smiled, saying, “You wrote those words for me and gave them to me in a story 30 years ago. As you know, my memory is very good.”
Before I could work out this loop of time, of cause and effect, Goddess spoke again: “You can see we must be careful here. There are some things that I cannot say, for to know the future is to change the future, just as if you know the train will wreck and kill you, you might not take that train! I am very happy here, and the less I tell you, the better chance I will keep this lovely path and the more that I can remain as I now am.”
“I suppose then that there’s not much use for a visit like this one.”
“In your reality,” said Goddess Aphrodisia, “you have already written to me about the Wheel of Fortune. And in my birthday story—if you write it, if I read it—you will tell me your theory of reading tarot cards, how you believe they cannot tell one true and certain future. In that case, I will ponder whether you are correct. However, the answer does not matter, so don’t worry. This answer is not a stepping stone in the river’s mighty flow, in the endless stream of time.”
Goddess was so beautiful, so peaceful, so loving, truly strong and truly gentle, exuding even more grace and wisdom than I had sensed in the cold reality of the past. The warm breeze wafted a subtle but rich perfume from the soft triangle of her throat and the crease of her collarbone, the fragrance of vanilla, sandalwood, and spice. I felt that it was not much use to ask specifics such as how her business had fared or where she was now living, seeing that the only answers she would give were ones as changeable and dynamic as flowing water. But I was glad she seemed happy with this future, this pathway where I had encountered her.
The light began changing from the ledges that overlooked Hawaiian sunsets and mountain vistas, shifting from twilight shades, flashing bright and dark like the warning signal at a theater intermission or the last call at a club. The depths of trance turned to waves of fractionation, to lingering arousal and peace, to the border of sleeping and waking, on the edge of fantasy and fulfilment.
In that liminal state, we drank lemon tea from steaming cups. Some of what she said, I cannot share. Goddess knows if she tells me not to share what we do and say with her past self that I will obey. Of course, this story I can only remember as a fading dream, lost in my return through the spirals of images among the spirals of books, the experience both a vision and a memory that I now write for Goddess for her birthday on November 13, 2024.
Who, in the sunlit world, I have been overexposed to his wards of taboo and underdeveloped to his ways of wisdom Who, in the moon-drenched realms, I have tasted the addictive pleasure and power and delved into ecstatic dreams For he lives in every part of this world and every part of me, counterpoint to the God within, reflection to the light beyond For the greatest fears of the dark unknown host the flame of new creation, the fires of all art and science For the all the despised, shamed, criticized, shadowed outcasts are his beloved children. Return to his underworld for each dark season, take treasures of darkness, drink from rivers of delight But do not stay past spring or dawn, for the chains grow tighter, the horns root deeper And you may be lost forever, surrendered to the wonders of eternal lust, the event horizon’s singularity.
Hecate, Hecate, Hecate, please hear my call. I give myself to you in longing, love, limerence, lust, and loyalty–willing to serve, to kneel, to be dedicated by disfigurement, to be initiated by loss, longing to be bound to you, overshadowed by your magic in the moonlit night of your pleasure and power, in the liminal spaces of your presence.
I come to you on the border of the Priestess and the Priest, asking for this boon or something better, for the good of all involved, in alignment with these deep desires: please make a way in the light of your torches through the these primal depths of ecstasy with risk-aware consent and authenticity. Please help me find new freedom while honoring what has brought me here.
The last layer of scales is sloughing from the ouroboros as the fire blazes in apotheosis, a peak of heat that burns away constraints. Please help me express clearly my desire to be open, free to express my sensual path of sacred sexuality.
From my garden of delights after a long life, I plant these wild buds by the secret, book of the Priestess–sacred to Selene–in view of the Hierophant who holds the formal texts, sacred to Helios. I feel the promise of a harvest of blossoming fire, blooms of untamed flame.
I feel the loss of spring, and like Demeter weeping for Persephone, Hecate will bring her back to me. I relish the deep, breath in the Dark Moon, knowing the shadow and the sun will integrate, bringing me to a new mountaintop of love, lust, and magick.
Hecate, Hecate, Hecate, Queen of witches, of serpent, owl, and dog,
Who stands at the crossroads, who holds the key, who carries torches in the night,
Triple Goddess of the moon, Maiden, Mother, Crone, I give myself to you.
the cry for help, the need for support, the enchanting air, the intelligent look, the glamorous sheen, the seductive glance, the curt command, the critical glare, the nurturing touch, the healing balm, the fiery border, the protective ward…
Carl Jung: “Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.”
Hecate: Open the heart within the cage of ribs, breathe me deep into the lungs, nourishing key times and times again at your crossroads in your new moons, to drink me in and pour out all, seeing the towers falling and building in the light of full moons north and south, seeing the chariots wrecking and racing east and west, planting here the seed, the true heart’s cry, safe here to extend magical branch and fruit as far into the heavens as the root grows deep into the mythic, mystic depths, locked tighter and deeper into my care by the covenant of wish as long as we so desire.
The Lovers: Distinctions no longer matter in our transcendental bliss, for our union welcomes pleasure and pain the same, elation and depression in unconditional embrace, resistance melting in each softening face, the ecstatic peaks and moody blues the same in mutual submission and intimacy sublime. How we love to send these love letters and hear the mermaids sing!
Odin: Go deep into the underworld, hang upon the World Tree, find the power surge and gold rush, the callings of love and cravings of lust, seeds of creation and flags to plant in new frontiers. Sacred purpose has many facets: making meaning, knowing peace, finding self, losing self, transforming self, feeling fulfillment, experiencing pleasure. Know your true boundaries but face down false shame and foundless fears.
The Fae: otherworldy, liminal space, between the worlds, through borders of nature and consciousness: absorption in love, children, animals, nature, film, music, art
Heirophant: self transcendence, belonging to the cause, the community, a part of something bigger, spiritual disciplines
Buddha: ego death, the blend of self and other, imagination and reality, dualities, unrooted in dependent arising
King of Swords: hypnotic science, another cultural construct for absorption, formula and focus on suggestion, outward change
The Hermit: study, meditation, mystic solitary journey to underworld
High Priestess: trance states for devotion and divination
Erotic exploration
Babalon: self love, multiple partners, orgy of the beloved
During a series of spreads with the Faeries Oracle by Brian Froud, Lys of the Shadows seemed to be working with me as a mentor for a practices and projects on the sensual path, expressions of spirit dance and perhaps crafting expressions such as this very blog. One significant character to show up is the Soul Shrinker:
The Soul Shrinker was once beautiful, the guidebook by Jessica Macbeth tells us, but now his heart–full of “compassion and anguish”–beats inside a form wrinkled and blistered like a frog in a toxic pond. Even as scorn, judgement, criticism, and ridicule further twist his beauty, so do words of healing and empowerment slowly restore his former state.
In regards to my sensual practice and expression, I can see how the negative attitudes in the ether, in others, and in myself give me pause and sometimes blocks of discouragement. Media sometimes not so subtly mocks the new realms of gender bending, diverse sexual orientations, or polyamory. Homosexuals are less often ridiculed, but the world of kink is often portrayed as antisocial or comical: dommes seem darkly funny, and male submissives even more ridiculous. Public discourse condemns alternate preferences of the left-hand path as well as spiritual and sexual workers alike. I have internalized many of these voices over the years as ethical guidelines and sometimes subconsciously.
Lys of the Shadows seems to show me even deeper wounds that I need to release, channel, and integrate. Some of the images that arise in trance include:
–Being shamed for undiagnosed obsessive-compulsive behavior as a child when I threw a crumple coke cup on the court during a professional basketball game, when I drew with my finger on the dirty car, only to hear my father call me “retarded,” and when I grabbed for dust mote during an assembly, receiving a public scolding from a teacher. I still remember the scenes of embarrassment and shame.
–Being ridiculed for weakness and awkwardness before puberty as fourth graders laughed when I couldn’t climb a rope, called names in gym class in middle school, and (classically) picked last for sports.
–Feeling rejected by many early crushes as I seemed to have a propensity for limerence and to this day enjoy a good bout of puppy love: in third grade seeing my crush with the bully, in fifth grade being rebuffed through friends, notes or gifts returned, and the friend zone becoming a comfort zone.
–Feeling abandoned by my mother as she had opportunity to leave me unannounced at ages 7 and 17; feeling deep disappointment during three divorces at ages 5, 14 (father), and 16 (mother).
I know these experiences are more tame than traumatic, but the effects in the inner world seem deep enough to wound and shrink the soul, implant negative thoughts that sometimes encourage a cycle of failure and rejection. Lys may want to work with me through sound baths, altar practice, astral journey, trance work, and artistic expressions to continue and catalyze healing.
Sariel, known as the Lone Seeker and the Ascendant in Peter Mohrbacher’s Angelarium, was lost to time, wasting away in waiting for a return to the receding heavens. My daily draw and prose poem follow:
From the dark depths of the vast deluge, white hair flowing from a balding crown, submerged in clouds of despair and fog of doom, somehow refusing to be utterly cast down by the failure and rejection that eat away at him,
Body becoming a cage of bare ribs, drawn ever downward among the crusty rocks, coral, and moonlit currents in this weird underworld, part of him wanting to scuttle as a crab-like bottom dweller, allowing wounds to consume, letting the empty shell collapse,
But part of him emerging each night in dreams or trance to feel the pull of the moon, to see the stars through sea foam, to hear the mermaid’s song, and to know the deep longing, flame alighting from the darkness, life arising from the sculpted rock, evolution the true treasure resolving from corroding phantasms of touch downs and prom crowns, of trophies and promotions,
One fist clenching with primal need as his three open hands and heart-cry rise toward the starry sky.
Picture this: a prose-poem, even the title without measure, mythic, imagistic, orgasmic in eternally grounded expansion…
The serpent singing in infinite unity, the glittering jewels of Indra’s net, facets of the endlessly arising, phantasmal Face,
The subtle mind, the crown of wisdom beyond the speed of light, a non-dual prism of every color and no color within a perfect chaos born of the World and the Fool,
Rises like the morning star–the awesome beauty of Lucifer, a light as nourishing as fruit, like fresh air and living water, a mercurial paradise–
Then falls as a flame in dark suspension of spirit, blazing in trance logic, the liminal space of the little death around the the dimming gems sloughed as scales from the spiraling ouroboros.
Now an animated sulfur, consuming the dust, undulates through the inseparable shades of yin and yang, the streaming rainbows of Eden lost in memory and fading dreams,
For calcified Malkuth with blissful roots burrowing in time knows the true fruit only by sacral faith on the sacred sensual path, a taste of grace embodied now in the erotic power and pleasure of the snake.
O Babalon, O Babalon, may I drink your cup of endless love and lust, pour out my soul, withholding not one drop, to serve and be served in the Orgy of the Beloved.
O Lilith, my love, spread your wings of protection, for I have longed for your desire and opened to your possession.
Experiencing Deity 