Tuesday, October 01, 2024

Dog and Comet

Pit-Bull Terrier running out of a lake with an orange toy in her mouth.
Obligatory Dog Photo. We had a lot of rain the previous week.  This has cooled things down from the high eighties to the mid seventies—that's still warm enough for the dog to want to play in a local reservoir.  

The last few mornings, I've been looking in the east for Comet A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS.  I haven't seen it:  I think it's been too faint, and it's low enough that the hills to the east hide it before it gets too light.  I expect that I'll have better luck seeing it in mid-October.  

Apparently, there's another one, comet C/2024 S1 (ATLAS) waiting in the aisles; that one might be as bright as Venus a few days before Halloween.

Comet Neowise

It would be exciting if there were two comets 
visible in the sky at once. Finger's crossed; comets are notoriously hard to predict. 

Saturday, September 28, 2024

Virtual Eye vs. Virtual Ear

Crescent Moon
Lately, I’ve been self-indulgently going back through old blog posts to take a look at their structure… and (true confession time) to have an LLM generate a pod-cast on them. I’ve come to the conclusion that spoken analysis of some of my blog posts from an LLM feel less virtual than written analysis. Also, I’d say that there’s still some garbage-in/garbage-out going on in the analysis: since I’d fed it fifty different posts, the LLM doesn’t quite know how to deal with the wide-ranging topics, and defaults to statements about personal blogs being like a diary or a lexical exploration of how to live one’s life. My sense is that if I focused the source documents around just one topic, the output would be less general.

The virtual podcast is fairly amusing — the male voice sounds a little like A Martínez from NPR, the female voice sounds like the character Roz Doyle (from the sitcom Fraiser), and the script seems like it was lifted from a Radio Lab show. Occasionally, filler phrases like “totally,” “one-hundred percent,” “exactly,” “absolutely,” “of course,” “fer sure,” and “I’m here for it,” become obtrusive. Probably the more jarring moments are when one virtual host will talk about “clicking through the posts”: which you know couldn’t have happened because they don’t have a body.

I’d also say that two virtual hosts speaking about what I’ve written — at least when they aren’t looping through the same script for the third time — somehow feels more validating than reading a generated analysis. I’m pretty sure the hosts have been primed to offer emotional judgements (e.g. “he’s so vulnerable writing that,”) over the textual analysis. And the synthetic voices have fairly good (if sometimes glitchy) tone and inflection.

Jane Yollen was right, the ear and the eye are different audiences.

Tuesday, September 24, 2024

Equinox Ornithomancy

Heron stalking over water.
I spent the weekend of the Autumn Equinox recovering from my latest COVID vaccination (not so bad, I guess, but I could do without the fever and chills).

Between naps, I quickly read two saucy man-on-man murder mysteries set in a magical Victorian England (the “Charm of Magpies” series, by K.J. Charles) and finished up a re-read of “The Mists of Avalon” (which says less about imagined British Paganisms and The Goddess than I’d recalled, and could be paraphrased “Morgaine and her certainty are the common factors in all her failed, betrayal-filled relationships.”)

So this Equinox there was no dancing in a magic circle, nor harping under moonlight, nor meditating while incense floated around me.

However, on the Equinox, Mark and I did go for a long walk along the Willamette River and to Delta Ponds. As we were walking along the gravel path between the two bridges on the south end of the Ponds, I looked out on a strip of water running between two marshy beds of river grass. It was a little after the sun was in its meridian. A dark egret stood on the eastern bank, facing a white heron on the western bank. The two birds facing each other put me in mind of the Middle Kingdom hieroglyph for the horizon 𓈌 , although I believe two animals back-to-back more commonly hint at it in Egyptian art. Still, it was a striking image — almost like a tableau from tarot card — that seemed to signify the Equinox. I stopped to pay better attention to it; fixing the curving 
the shining water between the green grasses, a shadowy neck, white wings, narrow beaks, and the symmetry between the birds in my mind.

And like the tarot, it was telling me something I already knew: the day was the day when the balance of the season would shift into shadow.

Monday, September 23, 2024

Song and Magic

Long haird man with a grey beard playing a harp with a black cat in the foreground.I’ll confess that I watched the first two episodes of “Agatha All Along,” and now I’ve got the “The Ballad of the Witches’ Road (Sacred Chant Version)” playing in my head (written by Kristen Anderson Lopez and Robert Lopez, the same folks who brought you “Let It Go” and other Frozen songs).

It starts out in A minor, which is obligatory for that old time Child Ballad feel. It steers away from simple arpeggios just enough to keep you guessing, and there are accidentals and parallel fourths thrown in to break it out of a rigid pentatonic structure. The lyrics scan, with (mostly?) iambic hexameter in a rhyme structure AA (BB)C (DD)C for the verse and EEE(FF) for the chorus (which lends itself to a round of “down down down down / down the witches’ road”), flirting in 6/8 between a waltz, a conga, and a polka while still staying a chant.

The words mostly work. Since it’s a soundtrack from a work of fiction grounded in a Marvel franchise/Disney show, it’s not exactly a hymn to the Goddess nor a aria to the seasons and Earth processes — even if it does reference “Maiden, Mother, Crone” — I’m trying to decide if the folk references in the song constitutes cultural appropriation or not… and I think the chant is geared toward moving a story with Marvel/Disney magic in it more than stereotyping real-world magical practitioners.

At least it’s better than "Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo.” And so far, there haven’t been any references to “Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth.”

To be honest, I wish more of the traditional NeoPagan chants and poems I’ve encountered were half this good, and I can easily imagine using re-tooled variations like “down the autumn road.”

Wednesday, August 21, 2024

Dream: The Dance Student and the Ocean Horses


seahorse wind vane
I was an art student of some kind; like a dancer. I might have been a young girl, but during the course of the dream I became myself (probably idealized to be in my forties). I was attending one school (possibly Reed College), had been accepted at another school. The schools were along a long curving bay. The school I wanted to go to was away along the coastline, to the left; there were lights of small towns along the bay, and the school’s lights shone like small blue lights over the water.

There was a side-scene where three or four female councillors were discussing my transfer. They were all wearing narrow dresses, in a business-academic style. One councillor was championing me; I forget the details of the discussion, but there were some rules that would have to be relaxed or bent to allow me to go. My champion concluded the argument with “Well, at least my ass has a cleft in it,” (implying that the others were tight-assed), and “Excuse me; I’m being a bitch.”

Back at the beach, I stood on a high dune or loose sandstone cliff about eight feet high overlooking a lower beach and the water. It was twilight; there was enough light to see the sand and the water, but the lights were still on in the distance. I climbed down the nearly vertical embankment and realized that I’d left my backpack in the beach grass at the top. I started to climb back up, which became extra tricky—I moved as if through treacle, the cliff was suddenly extra crumbly, hand and footholds became inextricably difficult. The tide surged in, and I got wet from my feet to my knees.

After some effort, I made it back to the top of the sand embankment and my pack. I looked back down at the beach below. Suddenly, three white horses with rippling manes were on the sand below; I have the impression that they came out of the waves. They wove back and forth in front of me; they whickered at me, pulling back their white lips and showing their not-quite-as-white teeth. They wanted me to come with them, but there wasn’t a way for me to climb down and I told them so.

Tuesday, August 20, 2024

Old Skydiving Memories

100 Graphic
We’re cleaning out the garage, straightening out the old boxes of holiday decorations, tools, tents, furniture, books, and old paperwork. In the course of this, I found a manuscript of my 1995 skydiving memoirs. Oh. My. God. I was so earnest at twenty-nine, half a lifetime ago.

At the time, I wanted the memoir to be exploration of the questions, “is truth a static thing to be discovered or revealed, or is it an evolving thing that one grows into?”, “what are the boundaries of self, and when am I not-I?”, “how does one navigate and integrate different cultural groups?” and “what have I got to show for my thirty years on this planet?” Reading the account now feels like a collection of description-lite, barely-strung-together situations.

It mostly works on a mechanical level, but it doesn’t seem to work on a cathartic level—part of the problem is that I am not giving the reader enough background information. If I were going to write it again, I would introduce some of the folks more thoroughly. I would look for and emphasize repeating images and motifs in the descriptions of the jumps. I would address the elephants in the room: Arcosanti, my burgeoning queerness, and my failures at finding True Love and Romance. And I would add the last skydive I ever did, by myself, a few days before I returned to Oregon.

Sunday, August 11, 2024

Vacation Lessons

Bald eagle on a bare branch
When I fly, I like to pull tarot cards for myself. Usually this results in cards that are about travel. This time around the tarot suggested that I be more mindful in setting up habits around how I use my time.  The three-card-pull was a capstone of little observations I stumbled upon while away from home, work, and the Internet.

Pond turtle
My friends, who are only a year or three older than I am, are not exactly elderly, but they are in the early stages of being old.  This is better than being old like my parents, but still, as the saying goes, “We’re not exactly spring chickens any more.”  I have also fallen out of good fitness habits, and was in better shape this time last year than I am now.  If I want to be spry in thirty years, I need to be actively spry and limber now (glares the the joints of his toes).

White down feathers with white water lilly
The systems of air travel in the US are brutal to the under-privileged, the foreign, and the elderly.  To navigate in the world one needs a good credit card, a modern cell phone, mental acuity, and good English language skills.  And guess what, air travel is simply a simple manifestation of a much larger system of privilege.  I imagine that I’ll need to stay on top of how the world works as I age.

Dragonfly on a leafy ground.
I spend far too much time on social media, and far too little time playing the harp, reading tarot cards, exercising, learning Middle Kingdom hieroglyphs, or writing, and various “adulting” jobs like meal preparation, laundry, and general maintenance.  I suppose this means actively scheduling time.  Given my inclination to relax and recharge after work, I should probably limit my social media to a half-hour or so in the afternoon.

I can survive on just one sixteen ounce cup of tea per morning.  This feeds into the decision to aim for seven-and-half hours of sleep.  This means both going to bed a little bit earlier and getting up a little bit earlier.  It also means I should more aggressively reclaim lost bed geography from the dog.

Pit-bull terrier on a davenport.
If I had to select which Tarot card symbolizes reclaiming lost bed geography from the dog, I’m pretty sure it would be the Nine of Wands, with the Seven of Wands reversed for those nights when she sprawls her body athwart the bed and crushes my knees and feet into each other.

Tuesday, June 25, 2024

Lunistice and Summer Solistice

Three vultures on a dead tree.
Last Thursday was the solstice, so I suggested that we hike up Spencer Butte and watch the not-quite-full moon rise before the sun set. In a different world, Mark and I would meet our gay pagan coven at the top for high ritual drumming and dancing; however in this world it was just us, lemon-honey-ginger tea, and macaroons. And my camera. And hippie-lite Eugene.

I may or may not have intoned intentionally trite couplets with poor meter while making vaguely mystical passes with my upraised hands and a spacey look on my face. Mark may or may not have said sarcastically, “that’s so hot.”

Shadow of Spencer's Butte on the Willamette Valley floor.
Spencer Butte is a Eugene City park. It’s not too much of a climb, but it is a good indicator of how in shape one is. We took the easy route up, mostly because I’ve sprained my wrist and I didn’t want to slip scrambling up the steeper side of the butte and re-injure myself.

The parking lot was full-ish, but we found a parking stall. The number of folks were evenly split between jogging attire, hiking attire, and hippie attire. As we hiked up the path, several scantily clad men wearing chunky jewelry descended; so I’m guessing we must have missed any Gay Pagan Men’s ritual at the butte’s peak.

Moon rising over the Willamette Valley
We walked among the cedars on the east side of the butte in twilight, but the growing Earth-shadows had not yet become one night. In some corner of my mind, Suzanne Vega’s “Night Vision” played. There’s arched stone causeway which lends itself to one of us shouting “Smooching Bridge!” which is followed by smooching.

It was around 8:15 when we achieved the peak and daylight. The climb wasn’t too bad, but I will admit that the stairs at the end were challenging.

Mark looking west into the Solstice sunset.
A group of loud folks coalesced at the end of the trail. Four vultures perched on a snag near by, and I took some photos of them. One by one they launched themselves into an updraft rising on the northwest side of the butte.

The old fire spotting station site freed up, and we managed to snag a seat on the flat triangle of concrete at the butte’s highest point. A stranger and his dog, Rico, joined us to get away from the jabbering crowd.

The haze to the east surprised us. Mark thought it was pollution stirred up by the 85F plus temperature. If you squinted, you could make out the Three Sisters. The sun was still about a handspan above Fern Ridge Reservoir on the western horizon.

John backlit by the setting Solstice sun.
The shadow of Spencer Butte stretched away from us, and I realized that it would be pointing in the general direction of moonrise. I had forgotten that the moon was at its lunistice, so it rose to the right of the butte’s shadow, about as far south as possible for it to rise. At first, you couldn’t see the moon as it rose just a little north of Mount June: its white dome blended in with the eastern haze. Slowly it inched upward until it broke away and hung over Mount June’s peak.

We turned around. The setting sun reflected off of Fern Ridge Reservoir, turning the western horizon into molten red gold.

Rising not-quite-full moon over Mount June.
We at the macaroons; they were a mélange of artificial flavors and aftertastes. We drank the tea, which was supposed to be summery and fiery; I liked it, Mark thought it was too sweet, but it did wash out the synthetic taste of the macaroons.

I took photos, pausing every now and then to appreciate what was going on directly. In a different time, I might have been drumming; in a different time, I might have chanted “Isis / Astarte / …” ; or walked a spiral lit with candles ignited with flame from the sun’s rays.

Rising not-quite-full moon over Mount June.
But just before the sun set, we started down the butte, descending into the twilight trees and not lingering at any potential smooching sites so as not to be caught in the parking lot in full night.

Our car joined the caravan of other cars heading back to Eugene. As Blanca Paloma sang AEAE (“…may they bury me on the moon / so that I might see you every day / every day but one…”) I spied a heart shape at the wooded side of the road: a three-point deer with its antlers arcing over its head.
Not-quite-full moon rising on the night of the Solstice.

Wednesday, June 05, 2024

Shiftless Youth

John, with long grey hair and a beard, looking disgruntled.
Lately, the alley near our house has become a popular hang-out for an octet of shiftless charter-school kids to take a noisy off-campus lunch. Aside from their litter, it would be more tolerable if they weren’t so loud and crude. Unfortunately, the fence they like to congregate at seems to reflect their conversations our way. 

Luckily, we’re not adjacent to the alley, so it’s not so intrusive (or late-night) than it was at our old rental near the fairgrounds—still, one can resort to pretending one is narrating an episode of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom only so many times.

While I do have some fantasies about high altitude ballistic water balloons, perhaps purchasing a few more loud wind chimes is in order as an antidote to their scintillating congress. I believe I’m obligated to come out in slippers and a plaid bathrobe and shout, “Hey, you kids…!”

I much prefer the Lycanthropic Tea-Time Ritual Children. Even if they do interrupt my afternoon writing, they have a more elevated (if shrieked) vocabulary.

Tuesday, June 04, 2024

New Books from Powell's

John with long grey hair and a beard standing beneath a Foucault pendulum so that it looks like he has a halo.
About a month ago, I went to Portland for DrupalCon, a convention focused on Drupal, the open source platform for many of the web servers where I work. I picked up some technical information, had a few “aha” moments (and a couple of “grr” ones) over how things are done at work, and it was a good chance to network with coworkers in other departments.

During one of my free evenings, I managed to shop at Powell’s Books. I haven’t been to Powell’s in over five years, at least. When I was at Reed, we would have occasional pilgrimages to Powell’s Books; the place seemed larger and more labyrinthine then. We used to just wander through the stacks any which way, and it seemed like there was always hidden treasure on every shelf. This time around I felt a little rushed and presented with more dross. Maybe I’ve gotten more picky.

I purchased a large bag full of mostly science fiction and fantasy, two books on "Magickal Mixology", and two books about medieval cathedrals (research!). Alas, when I got back, I discovered that one of the cathedral books had been cut up a bit by a scapbooking monster previous to selling the book to Powell’s. The fiction books were fine; I managed to pick up “The Calculating Stars,” by Mary Robinette Kowal, which I’ve enjoyed; the cozy “Legends and Lattes” books, which were refreshingly light; a recent-ish anthology of Valdemar short stories, which were diverting; a collection of David Sederis essays, which I haven’t gotten though yet, and some other books in the to-be-read pile. So far the only book I have’t been enchanted with is an anthology of short stories loosely based on Oregon folklore, which was a staff pick, so I’m giving it more of a chance, although it seems to be less “folklore” and more “campfire gothic.”

It’s nice to be reading fiction again—or rather, it’s nice to be reading things that are a bit more current than “Magic’s Pawn,” “War for the Oaks,” “Foundation,” or “Talking to Dragons.” Which I love; but I suspect one reason my writing sounds like it’s from the 1980’s is that I default to older books and stories that are comfortable when I’m not reading more modern works.

Saturday, May 04, 2024

Slow Saturday

A long haired man peers over the book "Fowler's Modern English Usage." Bookshelf in background.
Man, I am low-energy/tired today.  I'm not sure if it is pollen, or rain and overcast skies, or what.  Instead of writing, I really want to take a nap.

The other day Mark opined that I have a lot of books that I don't like and that buying the books is giving money to folks who produce them will only encourage them to write more books that I don't like.  This was after I mentioned that it was easier to get through some of Dion Fortune's more turgid prose in the Mystical Qabalah if one read it in a Monty Python accent.

I thought about it some, and concluded that possibly Mark was expressing a desire to hear more about what I found useful, interesting, or entertaining about books read over the last year.  

On the Neopagan front, I am looking for rigorous books written by a more priestly Ronald Hutton, or a more scholarly Starhawk, who is writing for a general audience generally, and who might address a cis-gay-male audience specifically (if only because I am a cis-gay-male).  Recent books I have read have been more folk-magic/lucky-charms focused than focused on Ritual High Magick as it pertains to a Platonic just life.  Insert the speech about diversion, superstition, and habit countered by goals of celebration, communion, and transformation here.  

On the fiction front, I've been rereading old favorites more than new releases.  For fiction, I suppose I'm looking for the next Ursula Le Guin: she was able to write about social issues with a skillful use of language that rewarded the reader instead of exhausting or depressing the reader (or at least me).  I'm thinking perhaps science fiction and fantasy is still recovering from grim-dark dystopia works (and hasn't been helped by COVID and world politics).

...And now, time to nap.


Tuesday, April 30, 2024

Writing and Beltane

Grey haired, grey bearded man with fallen cherry petals on him.
I've just finished a short story manuscript and I'm taking a quick break.  I will give the manuscript a rest and see if I like the ending more in a day or two.  The story is in fourteen sections and is about 5500 words.  If I can knock off 1000 or 2000 words, that would get it closer to the sweet spot of 4000 words for short stories.  

Tomorrow is May First, which makes it calendrical Beltane.  Since it's a Wednesday, I think we'll wait a few days to when the sun is half-way between the equinox and the solstice to celebrate.  Besides, it will probably be raining.  Even if Mark won't countenance a bonfire, we can light a bunch of candles in our fire place.

Onto the back-log of unfinished and stalled manuscripts!

Monday, April 29, 2024

Review of “Psychic Witch”

Man examining a book with piles of books in foreground
“Psychic Witch,” by Mat Auryn is an introductory book of “meditation, magick, & manifestation” with a folk magic emphasis. It contains magical theory and accompanying exercises to help a magical practitioner learn foundational techniques and build up from them.  While not especially original, it is accessible to the solitary practitioner new to concentration, meditation, and visualization.

“Psychic Witch” is not a book about starting or working within a group or coven.  There are references to Wicca, other Neopaganisms, and ceremonial magick, but the author’s witchcraft is more centered on solitary trance work and folk magic.  While the author identifies as a gay man, the subject matter is aimed at a general audience (sorry, no Sex Rituals of Gay Pagan Men here; this isn't a work by Storm Faerywolf). 


Books like “Psychic Witch” are often compared to Dion Fortune’s “Mystical Qabbalah,” which is grounded in early 20th century British magical theory and colonialism, or Starhawk’s early works, which are grounded in Goddess-centered alternatives to the patriarchy (and Ronald Reagan).   My impression of “Psychic Witch” is that it is an introductory text drawing mostly from later Neopagan (and New Age) authors, such as Raven Silverwolf and Christopher Penczak.


The book’s chapters have a web article feel.  Some chants and spells have awkward scansion; but not as egregious as other recent Llewellyn books I’ve read, and at least there’s an attempt at more complex meter.  I’m sorry to say that the binding of the softbound Llewellyn edition I purchased was of poor quality and the book began shedding pages after five days of a first reading. 


The opening chapters introduce the reader to Auryn’s cosmology. He makes a distinction between psychics who perceive spiritual energy (e.g. through clairvoyance) from the higher self, witches who affect subtle energy (e.g. through casting a spell) via the lower self, and psychic witches who do both (this implies mundanes do neither).  There’s a few passages which hand-wave about “discernment” and “energy,” with statements about reality being energy and subtle energy being information. There is also some light review of brainwaves and the pineal gland which make the science fiction writer within me wince.  The end thesis is the pineal gland is a psychic Witch Eye which is a key organ for working with and powering magical operations—this is a more focused version of the theory that the chakras are magical energy centers centered over or connected with various endocrine system glands.


Auryn writes, “Magick is the manipulation of subtle energies in a specific manner to influence a desired result.” Although it’s a modern rewording of “actions performed within the astral plane have their effects upon the material plane,” it seems more physics-justified than Aleister Crowley’s definition, “Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will;” Dion Fortune’s, “Magic is the art of causing changes to occur in consciousness, in conformity with will;” or Starhawk’s combination of “Magic is the art of changing consciousness at will,” and “A spell is a symbolic act done in an altered state of consciousness, in order to cause a desired change.”  


While there are some other science and technology references to “downloading (spiritual/psychic) information” elsewhere, for the most part this feels less an attempt to give his system a science pedigree and more an attempt to offer physical, physiological, or cognitive behavioral explanations for why meditation and concentration are foundation skills to build upon.  My only critique of using Science Says arguments is that Auryn writes that the subtle energies used in magick cannot be physically measured—which means Science can say nothing about them.  Dion Fortune gets around studying the unmeasurable by making a distinction between natural science and occult science.  To his merit, Auryn doesn’t use the words quantum or entanglement; although he does use the word fractal in some explainations.


Early chapters focus on various mediation, concentration, affirmation, and visualization techniques. These are used to perform standard grounding and centering exercises from the Western European twentieth century magical tradition.  Extrasensory perception is explored with suggestions for seeing auras or hearing spirit allies.   Standard purification and shielding techniques are built on top of the development of subtle perception.  


Auryn introduces the concept of the triple souls in chapter 6.  Drawing from the Irish poem, “The Cauldron of Poesy,” he builds an integrated world and body view.  A person has a Higher, Middle, and Lower Self; these in turn are connected to a corresponding Higher, Middle, and Lower (or Under-) Realm.  The selves and realms form the underpinning of an introductory text on standard 20th century reincarnation belief.  This belief is that the higher self in the higher realm (possibly the astral plane), connects with a lower self (your shadow self or “Sticky self”) from the underworld (with references to Jung, the collective unconscious, “earth energy”, and ancestral memory), to create a temporary physical body, the middle self.  


Subsequent chapters explore the lower and higher selves with an aim to connecting with and making conscious the shadow or id elements of the lower self, and with connecting with the true or divine will of the higher self.  The ultimate goal is to bring the views of the lower, middle, and higher self into aligned focus and achieve a powerful altered state of conscious. In this exalted state a psychic witch can perform (healing) spells. Auryn pauses a moment to extol readers to act from a place of service and  (Starhawkian) power-with instead of power-over. 


Chapter ten explores the creation of sacred space, or the magic circle.  Chapter eleven introduces the five Platonic elements earth, water, fire, air, and spirt/ether (which Auryn calls “quintessence”).  Chapters twelve and thirteen revisit the realms in terms of subtle (unrecordable) energy, and launch into simple astrological meanings of classical planets—the Sun through Saturn.   After an introduction to one’s body’s aura, chapter fourteen assembles the concepts of the previous chapters into a technique for mediation/spell casting which starts with a foundation of the physical and works to bring successive selves, bodies, and realms into focus on the same goal.  


Chapter fifteen is a series of spells or “magic tricks.”  This chapter comes close to “Prosperity Check” territory.  While there isn’t a Spell To Get a Parking Spot, there is a “Money Magnet Multiplier” spell which involves drawing the glyph for Jupiter onto a dollar bill during a waxing moon (repeatedly, if necessary).  I suppose that this isn’t all that different from complicated sixteenth century spells to summon beings of extraordinary knowledge and ask them, not what the true nature of solar fire (nuclear fusion) is, but rather where the nearest buried treasure lies—or even standard prayers for protection, health, love, and prosperity.  While elsewhere Auryn mentions the practical aspect of spells needing the witch to work toward desired results (e.g. hitting the pavement and handing out resumes in addition to staring at a green candle for money), the wheedling charms in this concluding chapter leans toward the more superstitious and self-serving end of folk magic.


As an introductory text, Psychic Witch is a wide-ranging guide for secular-leaning, solitary practitioners new to spell-casting and folk magic (as opposed to, say, someone on the path of a priest or priestess of a Gardnerian Wiccan coven). Its strength is that it starts with basic foundational techniques and instructs the reader to practice, practice, practice.

Tuesday, April 23, 2024

Spring Iris

Purple, about-to-open iris; blooming azalea in background.
The irises are flowering out front.  They get more sunlight than the irises in the back.  I love the way that they smell, which too me has deep base notes with a touch of sweetness.  Writing this, I think iris and carnation would go well together. 

Monday, April 22, 2024

Agates, Seals, and Florence

Bundled up man holding up a medium sized agate, which is backlit by the sun.
We went to Muriel O. Ponsler Beach again to escape rising pollen levels and to search for agates.  This is the time of year when the pollen levels start to rise; the trees are very active right now, and I'm not looking forward to when the grasses start up—after an hour of typing outside, my laptop, keyboard, and mouse have a dusty yellow coating.  It's good for Mark to get out of the pollen and it's also good for him to get out of the house and into nature.

Mark is a natural early riser.  I pulled myself out of bed at 5 AM and we managed to leave the house a little before 6, just after sunrise.  By pre-arrangement, Mark drove, and I napped a little.  

Pit Bull Terrier carrying a ball on a rocky sea strand.

I must have misread the tide tables, because at a quarter 'til 8 the tide was much, much higher than I thought it would have been.  "You be sure to keep an eye on the ocean," Mark warned.  "Don't think I didn't see you last month, standing on a rock, surrounded by water, with a funny look on your face."  (Reader, I was in no danger of inundation, and the retreating flow of the ocean around the rock formed a natural deposit of agates and stones of interesting nature.)

When we got to the beach, there were only three or so other folks there, so we could let Aoife off leash while we threw her ball for her and hunted for agates.  Sometimes she'll drop her ball on top of an agate, at least for Mark, but this time around we stumbled over two really large ones on our own.

Seal poking its head out of a foamy surf.
Afterward, Mark wanted to go to the Strawbery Hill park and look for seals.  I was hoping that I'd be able to photograph them, but they were mostly in the water.  The tide and foam and my far-sightedness made it difficult to zoom in on them with my camera.  It was easier to get images of cormorants.  I was hoping that I might catch a pelican or two, but they were too far out to get a good likeness. 

20-sided icosahedron displayed in a metal frame.
We were in Florence by noon, where we walked along the streets and docks.  Florence is a very dog-friendly town, which I hadn't realized until then.  That said, Aoife was very leery about going down one ramp. They've made an effort to have interesting art along the paths—an icosahedron caught my eye; I thought it was welded metal, but I think it something else.  


White-tipped pylons holding river docks in place.
We grabbed a light snack from a dock chowder stand, but the combination of Three Aggressive Dogs (snarling and lunging), hot noon-time sun, and a busy dock wasn't the best for the dog (she didn't like it when a boat bumped into the dock next to us), so we ate quickly.  

The nice thing about leaving for the coast at dawn is that one can spend a sufficient amount of time enjoying it and still get home by mid-afternoon.