#30daysofmagic

[magickandmayhem]

My Brain Gets the Evening Off

I got The Contemplator as my card to concentrate on for the day. It’s kinda all about taking a mental break from a problem and coming back later with a fresh perspective. Since a good part of my day was spent debating philosophy with my therapist and working on chapter outlines for the book I’m supposed to be developing, I took the contemplator’s advice and took the evening off. 

My partner and I made chocolate chip muffins and now I’m playing video games and watching twitch. I’m playing modded Minecraft. FoolCraft 2 specifically. I’m breeding chickens to get diamonds and trying to find an infinity cow. Modded Minecraft is just pure crazy. I love it. I’m just over here savoring a low-stress evening.

[magickandmayhem]

My Therapist Teaches Magick and She Doesn’t Even Know It

When I think about the way my therapist encourages me to think and the exercises she has me try, I think of the Mitch Hedberg joke where he said that his mail man was a drug dealer and didn’t even know it. Because my therapist basically just has me practice magick but calls it by different names. She’s had me charge items with a certain feeling and then discard them, she’s challenged me to look for things that work instead of getting wrapped up in the mechanics of it all, and she’s encouraged me to see the world as a spectrum and not a duality. All of these things are all already really important to my magick. My therapist has just helped me expand it all to the entirety of my life. Which I thought I had done previously, but I was very mistaken. Oops. But now I’m working on it.

Currently, she has me working on a very very rough draft of a table of contents for a book I’d some day like to write. I’d never really gotten a solid start on it up to recently because I just didn’t feel like I had much to say. And I didn’t know where to start for that matter. Forcing myself to sit down and write chapter titles, though, I’ve realized I have a lot to say. I want to write a book about magick for those that have suffered and understand intimately the feeling of living in desperation because I think magick to us is different. I think we can use magick to help ourselves take steps forward in the terrible situations some of us face. I’m not saying that I can conquer trauma and poverty with magick. I’m saying I found magick because of those things and it’s helped keep me alive. It’s the tool that’s there when nothing else is. It’s the part of my life where I always feel capable. I want to talk about all of that. And I want to talk about the potential pitfalls in the current magic communities for us desperate bunch. And I want to talk about the strength of people that live a life where they fight against something every day. And I want to talk about magick because I fucking love it.

[magickandmayhem]

Change Is Stressful

We got a call back on an apartment we’re interested in renting. It’s a nicer neighborhood, a small building with bigger apartments, and it was a place we’d never thought we’d get a call back on because there’s always a huge waiting list. We’re waiting to hear back about seeing the place and asking all the important questions. There are a bazillion little things that would mean we’d have to turn it down. I’m excited and stressed about it all at once. Even more stressed that we didn’t get a return call to set up a showing right away.

I decided that I should probably reach for The Servants to help out. I did a reading and everything looks like it’ll turn out well, though it’s going to be tough. I’m down with that for sure. So, I’m planning on calling on The Contemplator and The Witch as needed this week so stress and worry don’t keep me from getting anything done. 

I’ve also been looking into astrology lately, mostly because it’s never interested me very much and I’ve always dismissed it, but I feel like if I understand the whole system a bit better maybe I won’t be so quick to call all of it bullshit. Just the newspaper horoscopes. They’re always solidly bullshit. A friend recommended astro.com to get started and a few books.

[magickandmayhem]

Makin’ Jelly

I got The Dead and The Master in my cards, so I decided today to make jelly from frost grapes picked from my home town. I’d watched my grandmother make grape jelly when I was a kid, but I’d never actually done it myself. At the end of the day, I had a whole quart of jelly, enough leftover juice to make syrup for a french toast dinner, and completely purple hands and counters. I’m counting that as a win. If that fucking jelly doesn’t set up I’m gonna cry. I don’t know why I’m so worried though, I’ve made jam before and never had a problem. I’ve already agreed to make another batch or 3 actually. And I’ve agreed to make some wild plum jelly and syrup too. It might be a very busy week for me. 

[magickandmayhem]

A Day of Divination

My local witchcraft related group met up today to do some divination and my makeshift Servants deck did some work. I was a little worried that it would be hard to read them for others, but it was as clear as ever. I also got to have a really long discussion about numbers and their meanings and different styles of reading. I also got to see someone do a reading with a system they made from scratch for themselves and it was so inspiring. I was fascinated and I really want to take a shot at making my own divination system. Especially since I’ve seen so many people doing exactly that and being very successful. I’m definitely a big fan of using The Servants as an oracle deck, for instance. I think Tommie Kelly did an astounding job at making a system. I’ve kinda stuck to tarot and things very similar, or at the very least made by others. Everything else I do is kinda hodge-podge and of my own making (typically) so it seems like a good time to do that with divination.

[magickandmayhem]

The Final Day of the Novena

The 9 days are up and tonight we’re making an offering to The Chaste. Each night of the 9 days we added a word that helped build on what success would look like, and 1 penny to represent the slow build towards success. What started as an insignificant cent is now nearly a dime. The idea is that change takes small steps and time. Since I feel that the novena was a successful start on the path to healthy choices for my friend, we’re making offerings to conclude it.

My offering is this: a public, whole hearted thank you to The Chaste. Thank you for reinforcing feelings of dedication, discipline, and confidence. Thank you for paving the way for the first few crucial steps on a much longer journey.

[magickandmayhem]

The Healing Powers of Nachos

I missed posting yesterday because I was feeling under the weather and I’d gotten The Healer servant 2 days in a row and decided that meant an evening off with my partner was in order. We binge watched some Bleach and ate nachos and it was awesome. 

Drawing The Healer reminded me of something else awesome that I haven’t mentioned here yet. 23andMe is doing a study on depression and bipolar. If you agree to give them access to your genetic data for their study and do some questionnaires each month for 9 months you get some of their services for free. according to their fact sheet about it, you will “... receive over 70 personalized genetic reports online about your health, ancestry, and traits.” As far as I can tell, it looks like that would usually cost about $200. Regardless, though, I think the more research into mental health the better. The way I see it, even if I feel like, at the end of the 9 months of questionnaires, that it wasn’t worth the time, at least I contributed towards research. I think that this is a really neat way of getting genetic data from a large number of people who suffer from major depression or bipolar.

Also, the insight for ancestor related magic could be pretty sweet.

Link:

23andMe Study FAQ Sheet

[magickandmayhem]

Data Collection with The Servants

I started drawing cards from The Servants deck 8 days ago now and when I started that I also started keeping a Google Form that I fill out every day so I can keep track of which Servants show up often and which ones never appear. 8 days isn’t a lot of data to go off of but I’m looking forward to seeing the breakdown after the month is up. I know that The Guru and The Master have shown up a few times and have been very helpful.

When this month is up I think I might apply the same strategy and do a standard deck tarot reading each day and track it too. Especially since I have a deck I want to get more used to working with. I occasionally like to tackle my magick as a science experiment or data collection because it gives me direction when I want to tweak something. Right now I’m tracking servants so I can better understand when each of them works best. But also for the insight into what is and is not appearing as I mentioned earlier. I also want to check at the end of the month to see if certain Servants are appearing more frequently together. It could be an indication of how they’ll best work for me, or maybe just an indication of who they play best with.