a little witchy music for your enjoyment

witch

Bought a 35mm camera!

Haven't been using one since college, when I studied photojournalism.  Exciting times!  There are things, activities, actions that bring you back to who you are or move you further away.  I sometimes don' t notice when I am less myself, except by contrast when I am more myself.  What are some things that make you more yourself?

Review- Lon Milo DuQuette's "My Life with the Spirits: The Adventures of a Modern Magician"

There are some people who’s brains just fascinate me.  Even trickier to get a good look at a brain, when I don’t know them personally, and just know them by there writing.  Lon Milo DuQuette is on of those people who I would desperately like to know.  This book recounts amusing, frightening, enlightening, embarrassing anecdotes in a way that it seems like he is telling the stories to you in person over coffee. There are some fascinating cautionary tales, that still manage to make magick still seem amusing anyway.  He tells you the story of his life and how he came to be a magician, and then relates some stories of magickal events.  He adds enough details to these incidents that they are useful in seeing magick done by people in the current world, with everyday tools like cardboard to draw sigils on and clothesline rope to form the circle with.  I was also fascinated by the way that he can write about those events that are true and crystal clear in magick when you are doing them, but when you get done, seem crazy, even though you were there at the time.  This book was such a good read I couldn’t stop. 

If you like it, also read by him “Low Magick: Its All in Your Head…You Just Have No Idea How Big Your Head Is”

A little introduction

I don’t believe I every really properly introduced myself, just started talking at you as if you would understand straight from the beginning.  I am writing to you as Greyer Jane, A Mad Scientist Probability Engineer Conversationalist.  I believe in living an experimental experiential life. Think of it as bizarre art motion study.  I started life off of center, as I expect most occultists and maybe everyone if we would just admit it starts.  I liked to figure out how to do things, or just absently speculate or observe or daydream.  One of my early learning treasures was being taught to read by my Nama, before I was old enough to go to school, reading a Koala book over and over again.  My first book that I chose for myself was a Guide to Birds of North America.  I was a champion daydreamer in class, since I already knew how to read, living my life in school in my world and in the classroom by protest.  I read everything I could find, whether it was approved of by parental types or not, and found out some mysterious things really early. I was abetted by helpful Librarians, who in a very real sense raised me. I had the notion that anything labeled as History was true, and so became fascinated with the accounts of the Witch trials in Europe, especially accounts of evidence given.  Some of the first occult books I can remember reading from our Public Library were Arthur Edward Waite’s “”Book of Black Magic” and “Illustrated Anthology of Sorcery, Magic, and Alchemy”, by Emile Grillot De Givry.  I also discovered The Greek Myths as recounted by Edith Hamilton about the same time; in particular I was charmed by the stories of Athena. I lamented that we no longer had equality, Goddesses in our religion.  My own family was very laissez-faire Christian, mainly going to Church or believing or talking about religion at all on Holidays.  I read and studied all I could about the Craft of the Witches on my own.  This being the 70’s /80’s in Kentucky, it was very hit or miss in the bookstores.  That taught me discernment among the information I did find.  I went away to college, ostensibly to study History, but really regretting that I couldn’t study Occult.  At Westertn’s library, I discovered “Drawing Down the Moon” by Margot Adler and found that in the modern world there were actual functioning adults who considered themselves Witches and worshipped Pagan Gods.  It was a revelation to me.  The Advent of Amazon books and the Internet let me now live in a candy-store worth of information, and has also brought me the pleasure of the company of other Witches.

Leaving for PUF today!!

Pagan Unity Festival in Burns, TN.  Leaving my non-Pagan but still Lovely Loves at Home, to drive to the wilds of TN with my Glasgow Family.  Papa Oloyade is traveling with me, we will depart from his Momestary around 3 ish to go on Retreat.  Really so excited.
    Got my music, as their is nothing so inspiring as your own sound track of well chosen music.  my mp3 is one of my favorite magickal tools!  I have play lists for just about everything!  Back in the day, I had to make do with mix tapes.  I got upbeat nostalgia from the 80's of my youth music- from a time I was completely free and every choice, a world full of possibilities was just waiting.  I have mysterious, non english singing music, such as Dead Can Dance, Faun, Qntal, Medieval Babes, Clannad, etc.  When I want.   the comfort of human voices, but no lyrics that I can understand to get my brain caught in.  I have Trance music, both soothing new Age, such as Liquid Mind, and more peppy but still trancy trance- Transit, Logic Trance.  I have Bellydance, both classic, and World Beat-Djinn, Transglobal Underground, Oojami,.  I also have a playlist of Religious to me songs, and I really can't reccomend this category enough.  the most impartant thing is that they be religious to you.  Everyone's will be different.  Mine contains things such as "Private Revolution"  "Moondance", "Wild Thing" "Stripped", "Drinking in Gomorrah", "Down to the River to Pray" many other wonders and delights...
What would yours contain?  What does yours contain?  Give me some new music ideas!
     Also bringing my camera-  When I am on Retreat, or in a place I find most magickal, I take lots of pictures.  I isolate some of these, to stock my mental world as pictures for A thing or idea in my internal magickal world.  To explain myself better- I attended a workshop that took place over multiple session in the same place. I built up ties to the people there, and the land.  There was a patio, with a arched iron hinged gate, of those iron arrow looking things that border crazy Victorian houses.  It was right beside a tiki torch brass lamp bowl.  One of those pictures is now my mental image of the GATE to the realm of the South, the plane of fire.  I also put it on my shrine wall, so I see it often to reinforce my memory.  I also went to England after highschool, and stood inside Merlin's cave, under Tintagel.  I have a picture from inside the cave, looking out to the beach and the ocean.  all dark inside, and gently dim outside.  It is my mental opening to the Underworld, and the Underworld sea. I  built my  own collage world, not just going by what random occult authors told me.  My world is rich and magickal, and tied to my own personal initatory experiences.
   I also found that I benefit from random art supplies.  I aspire to be an artist, in the classical drawing painting sense, or at least enough to get images out of my head, and onto paper, to keep them.  Not happening exceedingly well, as of yet, so I work collage art, and also keep refining my drawing.  The group I was working with earlier, where my GATE to FIRE came from taught this, and I honestly thought it was crap when announced.  The plan was, an elemental gaurdian was summoned by the group, and then we all got quet to recieve information from them, and also to See them.  Then we got out art tools, still meditative, and recorded what we Saw.  Very effective.  I found that my brain gives me images of things I have seen before, or heard described before, as I Saw a Winged lion creature,(my Gaming days) and then a whirlwind with eyes ( I think a cherubim described in A Wind in the Door-one of my religious books) and then a hand in shadow laying down an empty lavender and yellow domino mask. ( I suspect a King in Yellow reference there).  Taught me that everything can be recorded, for better memory later, even if in bad art, that my brain will provide me with images, reference points, if I just let; and that the World will be revealed to me in a collage of things I already know.
And bring Chocolate, Marshmellows, and graham crackers, as spiritual knowledge is best enjoyed with 'smores

the Latest Mad Science!

not really much different from the old mad science.  I've been spray painting a folding carpenter's ruler white on one side, so that I can then write on it with a black paint marker, so that I can make into a manifesting triangle.  Like my best other ideas, I swiped it, or to put it less larcenously, I was 'inspired by others'  This idea i got From Lon Milo Duquette's book "Low Magick:  Its all in your head..."  part memoir, part humorous tale, part cautionary tale, part lesson from a very clever person, the best money I spent on a book in a while!  Don't take my word for it, buy the book, give a cool person some money, and get far more neat ideas than you can work through,

some of my latest schemes

Other than the Blogging, of course!  Thoughts i've had- have you seen the Crayola Make your own glow in the dark sidewalk chalk kit?  I had an idea, as I am wont to do.  They aren't all good, but they amuse me.  Since you are making the chalk from scratch, I was suspecting that I could make chalk out of the chalk and Cascarilla (egg shell powder).  Egg shell powder is very spiritually protective, based, I would surmise on the fact that the egg shell protects new and fragile life.  The chalk would then be spiritually protective, AND glow in the dark!  How cool is that?  Sprinkle it in a circle, in powder form, or draw with in on pavement.  Cirlces, Symbols, Veves- magickal possibilities here!!
Other thought I had was based on condition oils for carrying around, like solid perfumes.  You can keep in a pocket.  I am working on a natural solid perfume base, and then add the condition oils instead of just the scent oils.  Carry them in a little tin, like Burts Bees lip balm.  When you need a little extra  Magick, just whip it out!