Solaria Divina

Tag: intraspection

  • Spirit of a dress

    I thoroughly believe that objects, buildings, and things we find in nature can have either organic or aggregate spirits. The ladder especially applies to things that people create: clothing especially if made with natural fiber, glass and ceramic pieces, wooden furniture, buildings. Metal and gemstone jewelry, leather goods, and artwork also do this. The spirit of the creator, the energy of the materials, and the experiences that object goes through, create sentience. For instance my old college dorms, which were active for 50 years, probably had massive, well developed personalities thanks to thousands of students and visitors, many of them there for long periods of time. It’s really tragic in my mind that no one took last pictures or created a memorial archive of stories from people who lived in those dorm towers before they were demolished. I’m trying to do something in a smaller way for a much more personal object.

    Part of how I self identify is usually wearing a dress or a skirt and top combination. Many dresses and skirts come and go. I wear them out or I resell them because they didn’t work for me or I was just over them stylistically. A few stand out. A sleeveless sweater dress I had for a few years, had a really beautiful ivory and black snake print and a full skirt without any annoying seam at the waist. I wore this until it developed a very strange white stain that we couldn’t get rid of. I was sad to see it go. Another that I wish I could have memorialized but was actually stolen was a short sleeved oatmeal sweater dress, with a skater silhouette and brown button appliqué. I meant last summer to create a photo shoot with it before retiring it as the buttons were coming unstitched. But someone took it from the dryer. There have been others. The oldest, and the one most deserving of memorialization, I purchased in the spring of 2010 from Lane Bryant. It had a beautiful floral print, a relaxed waist, long skirt, and a double layered bodice giving a graceful layered texture in the front. This dress was with me through multiple moves, service trips in college, parties, moments when my life collapsed or dramatically shifted. I started noticing signs of where seven or eight years ago and decided to cut back on how often I wore it to preserve it. Last year I took a photo of it folded up with a note card giving the date I bought it approximately, and then the date of the photograph. A series of things are about to happen to this dress, which feels like a friend, feels like it has its own spirit, but feels like something that has reached the end of its life cycle. I’m going to take one last photo wearing the dress, with full hair and makeup, even though the dress is clearly falling apart. A piece of the dress will be cut out to be framed on my aesthetic archive shelf. And then the dress is being cut up into ribbons and turned into a crocheted basket. There is an actual grieving process for me with this. But I am trying my best to translate the memory and the energy of this dress into something that still lives beyond its original purpose. This has seen multiple versions of me, and it has all of those contained within it, from festivals and shopping days to days when I was really sick, to days when I was working for good or just having a good time. It has seen beer spills, paint splatters, endless crumbs, dirt and blood, long bus rides on hot summer days. Yet it always made me feel like I looked great. I didn’t decide to completely take it out of rotation until I noticed one of the shoulder straps was coming apart. Not when the little bead that kept part of the front weightted so it folded down disappeared. Not when I noticed minor separation in the seams under the arms. So now it gets a new job, a new life cycle, because the one thing that this dress does not deserve is being discarded. I’m not going to discard a dress that felt so light on hot summer days, that looked amazing when I wore my hair down my back, the summer sun turning it red. It had a soft silhouette and a skirt that actually moved with your body, and got me so many compliments. Sometimes the things we own integrate into who we are to a point where they are no longer just possessions. They become complex pieces of us and everything we’ve been through, and I belive their next life should honor that. 

  • My holiday season

    In many Pagan and folk traditions, the end of April and early May is almost like a second Halloween, a threshold season. I’ve never really been into the hype around Halloween and the cultural wave of witchy kitsch that rolls through. I mean the pumpkin spice and the chocolate is nice, but I’ve always been frustrated by everyone wanting to pretend to be a magic practitioner or an entity from folklore, and then mocking people who believe in these things the rest of the year. I feel like I’m the only one who identifies this way, but I have this intense need for celebration. Very akin to how I feel going from Halloween, which I have mixed views on, to Thanksgiving, and then into winter solstice season. The drag for me when it comes to Thanksgiving and Christmas is that I am usually mostly on my own. But the transitional period we are in right now heading towards summer solstice doesn’t carry the same weight. It does however carry a parallel celebratory energy. And the fact that I’ve been feeling it lately in my bones tells me one thing. It’s time to lean into this. If only there were summer solstice decor widely available.

  • Memento Vivere

    Sable’s nicknames were sweet girl and honeybee. I also referred to her in conversation sometimes as a salty diva because she was very much the Primadonna. She would be seeking attention one minute, and then I would walk by her a few minutes later and she would bite my foot just because she was annoyed at my presence. She never really liked toys and knew how to remove a collar. She was absolutely food crazy, and if she really liked you she would let you hold one of her paws while she took a nap. An absolute lap cat, she did not love being held but would refuse to get off of you no matter what you needed to do, or how quickly you needed to do it.

    Sable was born sometime in the spring of 2014. I never got the absolute correct date. But I got her in April 2015 so she was between eight and 10 months old at the time. At first the Humane Society would not let me visit with her because they wanted her to be adopted with her former housemates. The owner had gone into hospice. I was on the verge of signing the paperwork for a sweet little black cat named Diamond, when they came in and told me I could see her because the other two cats from the same house had been adopted without her. She completely ignored me at first, until I put my hand on her scruff the way a mother cat would, and then she climbed all over me. She wasn’t the cat I was necessarily looking for that day, but apparently she was the one I needed.

    Over a decade, several moves, friendships coming and going, and me trying to figure out what to do with my life, Sable has been there. She struggled with a stress related bladder disorder and a congenital lung condition. She hated wet food for most of her life, but would eat canned chicken or tuna. She also had this walk like the patterns in her fur were some kind of fashion statement, and always wanted me to turn on the faucet so she could drink from it. I never had to worry about her trying to go outside, and while she would watch the birds, she didn’t seem to care to try to catch them. Another nickname I jokingly had for her was sun patch cat. Because as with most cats, sunbathing was one of her favorite activities.

    There is something about that face that I always felt was almost human but I could never explain why. She knew how to manipulate with those eyes. After she came back from the vet and they had had to give her a breathing tube during dental cleaning, she had lost her voice for about a week. She figured out that if she used the same tone even when she was recovered, I would think it was adorable and pitiful and give her what she wanted. Which was generally treats.

    Sable passed away around 7 AM Sunday, August 31 of this year. She was losing her vision and mentally declining. Lung and liver conditions caught up with her and we were also dealing with a flea infestation. Someone removed all four sets of her claws as a kitten, so she had difficulty scratching let alone jumping to high places to get away from them. while I was treating my place and her, I missed the signs of anemia and she declined very suddenly. So this afternoon I laid her to rest.

    The first thing she received were what I think of as grave gifts. I work well with water and fire magic. I gave her black mother of pearl, a cowry shell, and one other I don’t remember the name of. She received four stones. Blue kyanite, aquamarine, quartz, and agatized coral. I covered her with a blend of lavender blossoms, sea salt, some ground ginger, and a little dragon’s blood oil. The last thing was this champagne silk scarf I kept in my purse. We draped it over her before covering her up. I wanted her to have a true funeral, the kind of burial that ancient pagans would give those they love with all sorts of riches included in the grave. Before we filled in the grave, I finally just asked that her reincarnation would be a reward for all that she did. I was not in the frame of mind to decide what God’s to call. I had held her while the grave was dug. I had made an impression of her paw print in clay that I will paint later on. I was not a perfect pet parent, we frustrated each other and argued, and she gave me plenty of sass. I wanted to make sure, because this isn’t done enough, that she had a respectful sendoff. Too many sweet babies are just discarded, or owners treat them as accessories instead of members of the family. That was my first strong opinion I think, that pets are family, and I remember I took so much crap for that in third grade. Please keep your cats inside, make sure they know love every day, and don’t just discard them when they become slightly inconvenient.

    The phrase memento vivere means remember to live. We are all getting swept away in the horror that is our world right now. I can translate sadness over the shitty way so many of us treat animals who love us into just doing more for the ones who have chosen me. I can acknowledge how awful our social climate is, and then prioritize doing things I enjoy like going out for coffee, artwork, thrifting and music, because personal happiness in the little moments is resistance to the darkness. I can prioritize remembering to say good morning or good night, checking on my friends occasionally without needing to be prompted, sending out a birthday text or condolence wishes, because those things forge our connection with each other. Say good night, memento mori, say good night and drive safe. Memento vivere, say good morning and you matter to me. Remember you will die, but also remember to live. Because as far as I’m concerned there are three things to do in life. Have a good time, try to learn something, and live in a way you can be proud of at the end. But I need to add to that. Be there in a genuine way for those you share this life with who are genuine with you.

    Hail the traveler. Good night sweet girl.

  • A few things I have learned

    Most skilled magic practitioners and spirit workers are not going to share methods in depth. This is because it is actually a good thing for people to earn their own knowledge, and because there are many people in these online spaces who will try to mess with your workings For an ego trip. I’m here to share the lessons I learn through my efforts. Not necessarily how I came to understand them.

    We all need deep, mutually respectful, open connections with one another. But many people are quite shallow and overextend themselves, through a sense of entitlement, demanding too much of us without building a trusting relationship where boundaries are respected. This can be emotionally invasive or abusive communication that makes us uncomfortable, invasion of personal space or physical contact that is unwanted, among other things. What this does is put us on the offensive, where we are trying to repel any potential threat and we are stuck in that state of mind. This behavior is often rooted in a sense of superiority.

    On the flipside, sometimes the people we love give us a sense of being able to trust them and we pour into them, but they don’t give back. They don’t open up to us. So we’ve shared our emotional and spiritual resources with them, and left ourselves with less than what we need. It has to go both ways. Then we shut down in order to protect what we have. In our own minds we become both the giver and the receiver. We literally feed on our own energies while we are closed off from everything else. This is stagnation. This lack of natural flow of energies between you and those who genuinely love and reciprocate with you actually undermines your ability to manifest. You want to protect your resources from those presuming to take from you. That’s wise sometimes as I’ve talked about in other posts. When you create a new connection with someone you start off giving in small ways and you see how much actually comes back. Be honest with yourself about what you are experiencing. another difficulty arises when someone pours into you so much that you are overwhelmed, literally your energy shrinks to accommodate how much they are giving you. So you want to watch for those who drain you, those who demand too much from you, and those who overwhelm you. These issues are all talked about in psychological spaces, but they affect you on a spiritual level as well by creating blockages that make it hard for you to grow, evolve, and manifest.

    The other thing I have discovered recently is the way you want to be perceived can very much undermine your own growth. Within certain parts of the broader occult community, even among the so-called left-hand path practitioners, a hierarchy of purity and virtue, of power, of ascendance, is pushed, even subtly. even when supposedly we are forging our own paths, there are still prescribed ways we are to go about magic and spirit work. And most people don’t seem to realize that they are allowed to experiment, be authentic, and question what they are taught. Sometimes there is wisdom, but sometimes it is OK to create something new and evolve.

    What I discovered about myself is that even though I considered myself somewhat of a dark magic practitioner, even though I mostly rejected the conventions of western magic practice or so I thought, I still really liked it when I was perceived as friendly, digestible, someone to be looked up to. But I like every other human am messy, gray area, random and chaotic. And because magic is fundamentally about sentience, that’s how magic is as well. Magic is about forging relationships with spirits of open communication, respect and honesty. It’s about dirt, blood, how we feel in our bodies, and bringing together the parts of ourselves we have lost or disregarded. Even the parts that suck. Because the worst in ourselves is usually based in experience that has to be acknowledged and healed. And that’s messy work.

    The best of your magic comes through when you are honest with yourself, neither trying to force an external perception of your value, nor looking down on yourself. It comes through when you are able to listen to wisdom but also be authentic, intuitive, and experimental. And it comes through when you are able to forge relationships where there is a mutual, respectful, and deep seated connection based on trust and open communication. Because you starve when you only have yourself to feed on.

  • Reviving my practice

    After 17 years officially of being a magic practitioner, I had lost my love for this essential aspect of my life. This was caused by a few factors. I couldn’t summon the energy to make my working stick. I found constantly setting up candle rituals and all of the paraphernalia you need for a western based magic practice tedious and cumbersome. I still, and always will, speak with the gods I worked with, but I didn’t want to do and own all of the things without some serious results. I had to do some investigating, and I had to change course. The moment I made that decision, everything opened up. Here’s how.

    I had to stop blaming myself for the low rate of successful spell work when it came to my own goals. The work I did for others was generally successful. Through some divination I came to understand that I just didn’t have the energy to support my workings. I had to learn to find healthy external sources. And I had to learn to be proud of the skills I had gained thus far.

    I had to put the wonder back in magic. Science and spirituality go hand-in-hand. And no matter the religion, people have always observed the workings of nature fairly accurately, with simple differences in terms of who these workings were attributed to. Science gives us understanding of the atmospheric patterns that create storms, but that does not mean that gods or spirits associated with those storms aren’t involved. The science will be there behind the currents of energy in the universe, as well as our gods and spirits, and I don’t necessarily need to grasp that mystery in order to have a healthy practice. I just need to trust it. Dreams and imagination play a large role in a healthy spiritual and magical practice, but when those things are overshadowed by rigid logic, the joy and authenticity drain away and my heart wasn’t in it anymore. I had to learn to set aside rationality and analysis and just allow my practice to breathe and evolve. I think in part this comes from feeling that my very creative and intuitive nature is less valuable than an analytical one in the culture we live in, which feeds on creative energy until creators are starving, but does not foster new creative growth.

    I needed to lean into my dark feminine power. It was time to focus on rebuilding the connections between body and spirit, accepting that my nature is intense and chaotic, and learning to love that. There was also some emotional decluttering to be done. Of hobbies that were not enjoyable anymore, of connections that did not serve my growth, And of the self doubt created by negative reception of my ideas by others in this community. I had to shed some emotional and intellectual baggage. My spiritual energy is precious and it was being spent in too many places. Now I am in the process of rebuilding those stores and mostly trying to take a break from expending them.

    At least for the moment I no longer feel the need to necessarily talk to anyone in my personal life about my practice. Right now I don’t want any of the types of input that I’ve experienced for the last 17 years to interfere with my work. And I don’t feel the need anymore to have my methods validated. I feel like I am turning inward, to become as strong as I can. but here and now, I am sharing my experience and tips with all of you who read this, in the hope that you find what I have to say valid and useful, and maybe what I have to say can help you evolve your own practice. 

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started