Dream: Flying Above The City

The latest dream was set in a city which might have been New York. The dream had been going on for some time, my recall starts on a sidewalk between very tall buildings. I recall that other people were walking along the sidewalk, but I don't recall any interactions with them. I think it was kind of dark, and possibly cloudy or rainy.

I think I flew by a power cable or possibly some light poles. At any rate, I found myself flying over a sidewalked area that was a kind of pedestrian mall in the sky. The mall in the sky was much brighter than the sidewalks stories below. I zoomed over the area in a kind of looping path that went up and around some of the other folks walking along the rooftop buildings and shops.

I was wearing my purple and black cloak, and I used it to fly up alongside of one of the buildings; I must have gone up something like twenty stories. At some point in the dream, I'm not sure when, I noticed the hem of my cloak was very tattered (it's fraying in real life). I'm not sure how, but the flat roofs of the building and its neighbor somehow joined together. Maybe I flew through a slot, or maybe the buildings were at an angle that allowed the roof decks to join.

There's a break in the narrative, and it turned out I was in LGL's apartment. I had come to visit him for his birthday. (In waking life, LGL had just mailed me a bracelet I accidentally left at his home, and his birthday is in a few days.) In the dream his apartment was two stories, with dark shag carpets and wood panelling and stairs and possibly conversation pits. I was early to the party, but some other folks appeared. I don't recall a whole lot, but at one point LGL and I were speaking and he went to his balcony, opened the sliding patio door (in waking life he has no patio, but apartments across the way do), and we stepped out. With great alarm, I noticed the balcony was under renovation and there was no railing (shortly after waking, or possibly just before I woke up, I realized I was still wearing my cloak and could presumably still fly, so the railing's absence shouldn't have been a big deal).

Dream Selfies

The dream was in progress; events had been happening in a in a cabin, but I don't recall them.  I started out talking with a guy -- I want to say he was in his 30s or 40s. I'm not sure where we got a blob of lava, a fist-sized blob glowing yellow and orange, but through the magic of dream plot it was available. I decided that I would use the lava to make tea.  I had a vessel, a kind of large snifter, made of clear thick glass.    The lava was boiling water in the snifter for my tea.  

There was a dream shift and I was in a large lake, or possibly an ocean.  Below me in the water was the large snifter and the lava blob.  I don't remember how I was able to bring the glass to the surface of the water, but somehow I did.  There was a sense that I was still making tea in the snifter with the lava, and that the snifter was containing the heat of the lava.   

As I looked down through the water, I saw a group of people swimming, almost as if they were flying.  One of them was in a trench coat and carried a stereotypical black English umbrella in his left hand.  It was P.G. I must have called to him, because P.G. came up to the surface.  We might have had a short discussion along the lines of "Look, I'm making tea."

I decided I wanted to post a selfie of myself making tea in a large snifter with lava. I placed the glass on a convenient near floating table.  My cousin, J.S. was suddenly there, floating in an inter-tube, and we had a short conversation along the lines of "Look, I'm making tea with lava."  My phone was suddenly available and I called up the camera function.

The sun was beginning to set, and it cast red-gold light along the water.  I don't recall if the selfie ever got taken before the dream moved on to other things.

---

In the second dream, all I remember was that we were at some sort of ocean side resort.  It was twilight, and I was on some concrete steps overlooking the ocean, leading up from the dunes with a bunch of other (random dream) people. We looked up and there was a missile coming straight at us—it just hung in the sky, getting larger and larger as it hurtled closer. I threw myself to the landing of the steps and covered my head.

Through dream-perspective, I watched the missile, which was about the size of a table, whiz over our heads and crash into the beach below.   Mostly sand exploded up into the air; it was loud, but probably not a loud as a real attack missile would have been.

The sky was dark blue and orange, and the missile was a dark lump near a large puddle of water on the beach.  I decided that I wanted to post a selfie to social media, so I took out my phone.  While I was composing a picture of myself along the steps and dunes, in the phone's screen I saw a man reflected in the puddle.  This was alarming, and I turned around to see him directly; he wasn't there, and I concluded that I'd seen myself in the reflection (in waking life, I'm not sure how this could be, as I would have seen the reflection of the back of my head).  

I woke up thinking that I'd dreamed about posting selfies to social media twice.

A Review of "The Satyr's Kiss"

Storm Faerywolf's "The Satyr's Kiss: Queer men, Sex Magic, and Modern Witchcraft" is a queering of of Feri Wiccan theory and practice, and a queer presentation of sexually explicit ritual and spell craft. 

I purchased this book because I'd been impressed with Storm Faerywolf's other writings about how using a calendar and clock effectively would help with one's spiritual practices; because he identifies as a cis-male, gay, Neopagan; and because if I'm going to read a book about sex magic, it may as well be cis-male, gay Neopagan sex magic. 

Like Starhawk, Storm Faerywolf's spiritual practice is grounded in the American Feri Wicca tradition of Victor and Cora Anderson.   But this is a book that doesn't take itself too seriously; it's a casual book that wants to take you to a fabulously earthy brunch.  This book is not "The Spiral Dance," and Storm Faerywolf is not Starhawk.  Neither is this book "The Triumph of the Moon," and Faerywolf is not Ronald Hutton.  

"The Satyr's Kiss" is divided into a philosophy section and a praxis section. The philosophy section is part introduction to Feri Wicca, part queering of Wicca, part gay history, and part the basics of sex magic.  The praxis section is a collection of rituals and spells.  

I found the review of Feri Wicca's concept of the three-part soul—fetch, talking self, and divine soul—interesting, as well as the mapping of Oak King, Holly King, and holy daemon.  I did wish for more of an exploration into the history of the two kings and why Faerywolf chose to adapt them as apposed to, say, Cernunnos and The Green Man or a trio of gods instead of a duo.  The Feri iron pentacle meditation is introduced, along with a queer variant called the amethyst pentacle. 

Gay history, like much of the material in this book, is painted in broad strokes, which gives it a strong 101 feel.  It does allow Fairywolf to construct a ritual calendar which supplements the Pagan wheel of the year and which honors the lives and deaths of various queer luminaries, such as Harvey Milk and Matthew Shepherd, and events such as the Stonewall Riots.  

While acknowledging the author wanting to avoid Hay's NAMBLA advocacy, I think there is a missed opportunity to explore Harry Hay's concept of subject-subject consciousness, and his ideas behind founding the radical faeries.  Given the number of times the author (possibly at the guidance of the publisher) reminds his readers that any sex magic described in "The Satyr's Kiss" needs to happen between legally consenting adults and that neither he nor his publisher are responsible for the readers doing something stupid or unlawful, I can see why glossing over Hay could be the easier path to take. 

In the same vein, I felt that Oscar Wilde's representation as a late 1800's aesthete and the historical backlash to the aesthete could have been expanded and connected to the sections on other types of gay cis-men.  Both Hay and Wilde are listed as honored ancestors, which would have justified a deeper dive, but "The Satyr's Kiss" really only lists people in summary.  At least this is a good starting point for folks wishing to do deeper research into the lives and main events of the queer community.

Other parts of the philosophy section broadly tell the stories of gods, heroes, mythical creatures (e.g. unicorns), historical, and contemporary figures through a queer lens.  There's not much consultation or interpretation of archeological or historical records, which contributes to a "I read this on Wikipedia" feel.  I suppose the point isn't so much to provide provenance for the stories as it is to provide queer inspiration.

The philosophy behind the sections on sex magic could be summarized "...Sex is something that we should do / Sex is something for me and you / Sex is natural sex is good / Not everybody does it / But everybody should / Sex is natural, sex is fun..."  Fairywolf points out that queer folks, even the ones who aren't cis gay male ones, are sexual beings, and as magic practitioners we should be able to practice magic with every aspect of ourselves.  The three main premises of sex magic are 1) the physical mechanics of sexual and erotic acts produces an ecstatic trance state conducive to casting spells and other numinous actions; 2) orgasm is a liminal and numinous state, and 3) because bodies are sacred, semen—like blood, saliva, or menstrual fluids—is chock full of life force and therefore an efficacious component of rituals and spells.  (While there wasn't a gay male version of Starhawk's "Spell To Be Friends With Your Womb," which would have been "Spell To Be Friends With Your Prostate," there were some that came close.)

In addition to some practical and health advice about sex, I also appreciated the advice about practicing sex magic:  "Sex magic is fun and powerful, but it should't be an excuse for being careless with each other's emotions or for simply expanding one's circle of sexual partners.  As always, if you want to have an orgy, have an orgy.  If you need Witchcraft to give you permission for indulging in carnal pleasures, then you have some deeper personal work to do first."  

The praxis section is less a book of shadows and more a collection of rhymed stanzas and suggestions for performing magical acts, with varying degrees of auto- or group sex.  Fairywolf is broad and general with his descriptions in an attempt at universality and to avoid "arbitrary details."  l should confess that I am not the biggest fan of the author's poetry.  Some of it is fine as ritual litany; some of it could use another pass to address issues with the meter.  As the author often prefaces his ritual descriptions with instructions to alter or rewrite ritual to better fit one's personal tastes and ritual needs, this makes me want to treat the poetry more like suggested guidelines rather than sacred texts.

The conclusion of "The Satyr's Kiss" is a general overview of what a queer coven might look like, with examples from Fairywolf's coven, the Brotherhood of the Satyr, and how the ideas, spells, and rituals presented in the book might be used to realize it.  Fairywolf stresses the importance of boundaries and the differences between a coven and group therapy.  A brief list of resources concludes the book.