#Anyway. Its complicated. It's like that. But those who are more spiritually in tune

[aktiophis]

Timing by the Stars: Days, Hours, and The Moon

This will be the first in a little miniseries of posts on astrological timing, specifically as it concerns the making of Talismans, but the principle could equally be applied to a one off ritual. Originally, I was just going to write one post but it got quite unwieldy to talk about so many different concepts all at once, so instead I’m starting at the beginning. I’ll get into more complicated things whenever I feel like writing them frankly, and I’ll probably edit this post with links when I do. (This part alone is long enough Jesus Christ)

It can be useful to think of the election you choose for a Talisman to be its time of birth. Someone born with a very dignified Venus will most often have an easier time doing Venusian things, to be very, very broad with the astrology. But the gist is; planet is more better=person is more good at planet things. Naturally, then, a Venus Talisman made when Venus was very strong and well placed will also be very good at Venus things, and thus good at whatever it’s purpose is. This is the basis of talismanic magic using astrology.

First, though, I’m going to talk about the barebones of astrological Talisman timing, namely the days and hours. I’m including the moon also because it’s the other key consideration for astrological magic generally.

The Days and Hours

[Credit: Digital Ambler]

It isn’t a coincidence that the planets in Romance languages are named after the planets. Even in English (and I would assume other Germanic languages although I’ve never checked, but if they don’t I’d be very surprised), the Gods for each day line up with their Greco-Roman approximate counterparts. As such, each day has an affinity for its namesake planet. That’s why so many spells call for a Friday, and so many curses for a Tuesday or Saturday. At the very most basic level of astrological timing, with no knowledge of anything else, this is how you would time a spell or Talisman, probably at some auspicious time like dawn.

Something not as well known by non-occultists is the concept of planetary hours. Unlike civil hours, these aren’t regular in length and have nothing at all to do with what time it says on the clock for the most part. Planetary hours are divided into two sections. Here are some points to get you the gist before we continue:

The planetary day starts at Dawn, so even if it’s 2:00am on Tuesday, you are in a planetary hour of Monday

The first hour of the day always corresponds to the planet the day is named after, in our example, at Dawn on Tuesday the first hour is Mars

There are 12 day hours, and 12 night hours. The day hours begin at sunrise and end at sunset, while the night hours begin at sunset and end at the sunset of the next day.

Each day hour is exactly 1/12 of the time from sunrise to sunset, and the equivalent for night hours.

The hours cycle in the Chaldean order, which is ascending mean speed:Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, the Moon

 As you can see, there isn’t much the same between civic hours and the planetary hours. You can calculate these by hand, but if you’re like me and use them a lot there’s no need to bother because there are dozens of apps. For those curious, the Placidus house system can also be used to find the planetary hour, as each half of a house corresponds to a planetary hour. I deeply dislike using Placidus for natal astrology but for that reason I sometimes use it to find the planetary hours (not the houses, though).

These two things are the most basic considerations for Talisman making. For a Solar talisman, the hour of the sun on Sunday. Bam. Specifically, the first hour is often considered the best because it coincides with dawn/sunrise, i.e. the daily birth of the sun and illumination of the world with spiritual light etc. but any of the correct planetary hours will do the trick.

One thing to note is when I start getting into more complicated electional stuff, you might find a great election that isn’t in the right day or hour. By no means disqualify it because the day doesn’t fit. If Mercury is at the most powerful it will be for the next few months after but it’s a Friday and the hour of Mercury doesn’t fall within this very specific timeframe (Like say it’s Cazimi in Gemini, in its bounds conjunct the midheaven, or something, Idk), do it anyway honestly. You’ll never get everything to be just as you want it, and frankly days and hours come every day/week, and some things only happen once every 20 years.

The Moon

[credit: Honestly no idea]

That’s right, it’s not just for Wiccans! The state of the moon has been a big consideration for ceremonial magic, folk magic, you name it, for a long ass time. Even in astrological Talismans not concerning the moon, as the planet associated not only with magic but also with collecting and reflecting the ‘astral light’ onto the Earth, the condition of the moon is an important consideration.

Anyone who has read a 101 book on magic will have seen that “waxing to increase something, waning to decrease” thing, and that’s the gist honestly. For Talismans though, you want a waxing or full moon. The talisman might be protection against evil, but f you did it when the moon was a waning crescent it wouldn’t be the evil decreasing so much as the protective Talisman. I’m not going to discourage people from doing stuff in a waning moon, I do all the time, just be aware it’s not necessarily the best, especially in the case of Talismans and astrological magic. To be quite frank I feel like this can sometimes be overlooked as a factor, but if it’s an important thing it can wait until the moon is growing

Now, with just that and the days/hours you’re honestly pretty much set, but I’m writing this to eventually get onto more complicated things so there are some more bases I’d like covered.

The Lunar mansions are the obvious thing to talk about next. The Zodiac Wheel of 12 signs is intrinsically a solar schema for astrology. The beginning of the Zodiac at 0 Aries is at the moment of the Spring Equinox, when the days are equal to the nights. All of the cardinal signs, in fact, are so called because the next season of the year begins as the Sun enters them. There is, however, a similar system for the moon, of 28 mansions, each of just under 13 degrees, starting also with Aries. The Picatrix is what I’d direct you to if you want to read more about them specifically, especially since I haven’t used them in very much in practice.

The mansions were widely used in Arabic astrology, apparently quite often in electional astrology generally, not restricted to magic (as a side note, by all means study in the hour of mercury and treat-yo-self in the hour of Venus, even without magic. Tune into the rhythm). One mansion might be good for travel but could also cause strife between friends, while another might bring ill health but be good for buying livestock, that type of deal. It’s always worth checking if the time you have in mind for a Talisman happens with the moon in a favourable mansion for that purpose.

I will touch on this passingly because it really belongs in my next post, but if the moon is in a hard aspect with Saturn or Mars that can also be a bad omen for an election, although if the moon has good aspects or is particularly strong otherwise I would personally still do the thing because otherwise I would probably only do astrological magic once a year waiting for the perfect time.

Void of Course

This is something that frankly puzzles me to no end because half the resources I could find when I first looked into it clearly were using the phrase without having a clue what they meant, and the other half gave me a number of different definitions. I personally use the definition as given by the medieval astrology guide, whose site I’ll link at the end, because it makes the most sense to me.

All definitions of a Void Moon stem from the same basic idea, which is that the Moon will not perfect an aspect to another planet any time soon, sort of as if the moon is running in the dark on its own. The most common modern definition says the moon is void if it doesn’t perfect an aspect before leaving the sign it’s in, which basically means it happens every couple of days like Clockwork. I use a different definition (when I even remember to consider it) that is, the moon is not within orb of perfecting an aspect, without consideration as to the sign. So, by my definition, if the moon was leaving a sextile aspect with Saturn at say, 29 Aries, and was applying to a trine with Venus, even if it didn’t make a perfect trine before entering Taurus, the moon wouldn’t be void of course, because it was still in an applying aspect at the time. More broadly, I only consider a moon Void when it isn’t applying to an aspect (look into moiety for more on what I mean as far for more details on application). I encourage you to come to your own conclusions about this though, so don’t take my word for it.

[credit: Skyscript.co.uk]

A Void moon is generally bad for magic because to be literal the moon isn’t really doing anything much, at least as far as aspects go. That being said it isn’t something I look at unless I’m planning an important thing and I wouldn’t stress about it unless you were doing an important thing too. To be frank I often forget to even check what the moon is doing even for some slightly more important stuff.

And that is about it or what I wanted to cover, I think. The next post will probably be about Essential and Accidental Dignity, which was really what I wanted to write about in the first place, but here we are.

TL:DR

Time for the day of the planet

Time for the hour of the planet

Time for a waxing Moon

Avoid the Void moon

Some Useful Links/Sources (Some I didn’t even reference but they’re still good so I’m including them)

The Picatrix

www.sykscript.co.uk

www.Medievalastrologyguide.com

Secreti Geomantici (Great little geomancy book, also has useful things on timing. Thanks @nightjasmine for reminding me about it)

Hellenistic Astrology: The Study of Fate and Fortune, Chris Brennan (not about magic but this is just a great book on astrology overall, especially Hellenistic)

www.Rennaissanceastrology.com (I have issues with some of Warnock’s work, but his information is accurate and his site is great for these purposes)

 (Looking back I suppose I could’ve just made a post of resources but I’m in too deep now).

#astrology #astrological magic #magick #magic #witchcraft #talismans #Just waiting for someone to say a void moon is good for calling on void energy or some shit #God if I've forgotten anything I'll just put it in the next one this was low key exhausting

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

Lover is the Queliot Soundtrack!!

this is 100% true and i have hyena yelled about it at length before and continue to think about it really a bizarre amount... i had a lot of weird feelings about lover when it came out ANYWAY because i have a lot of weird feelings about taylor swift which i like to attribute to the fact that we are astrological mirror twins of a kind (cap sun sag stellium vs. sag sun cap stellium) because honestly i am truly powerless to explain through logic why it is that i think about her so often and in such depth given that my reaction to most of her work is pretty muted in either direction. but like, the thing between me and being really into her as a musician had always been this overall hollowness i felt in her writing, like she has from the beginning definitely had her consistent strengths and her moments of total brilliance, but so much of her lyrical material feels like it was made by a martian whose exposure to humanity was watching a bunch of CW dramas, or whatever (which itself also isn’t necessarily like awful but i always bristled more about it because people tended to praise her specifically for her eye for detail and her emotional insight and i was like ??? that’s the part you like? but where... is it?) (this is all also happening in a context where i encounter her first at age 19 so i’m old enough to think teenagers are children but too young to understand that i’m only very barely not a child and way too young to empathize forgivingly with my teenage self much less take that healing and use it to fuel an expansion of empathy for others and a general diminishment of kneejerk reactivity, also my journey of taylor swift opinions is inextricable from the internet contexts of feminist blogging/tumblr pop talk, and the evolving conversations there and my own shifting ideas about them, i hung around in for a long time... anyway.) (CAP SUN SAG STELLIUM VS. SAG SUN CAP STELLIUM I AM DOOMED TO DISPROPORTIONATE FASCINATION)

the thing she tuned into earliest, the subject matter on which she found her voice first, was heartbreak, right, and it never bothered me the way it did some that to public appearances she’d never had a relationship longer than 3 months; you can get your heart broken in 3 months. artists in general tend to be people who experience feelings strongly, i think less because you need to feel things strongly to make art (which i’m not sure is true) than the other way around: people who experience feelings strongly need to find a way to deal with that, and art, making or experiencing it, is one of the more socially acceptable and productive coping mechanisms around. a certain inner grandiosity can be useful for artists, which is why melodrama is a perfect album. (melodrama manages this very neat balancing act of being wry and self-aware enough to let you know it’s on purpose but also being full-throatedly committed to the affective grandeur of being 19 and on fire; i mention that mostly because another shade of my doomed fixation with taylor swift is she’s a proxy for my issues around sincerity & jadedness & shame &, yeah, where the hell into all of that art fits.) i think this is probably especially true for artists working in a form like music, like pop music, that succeeds viscerally or not at all, that can include an intellectual dimension but can’t rest solely on matters of thought, can be analyzed but not wholly appreciated primarily through the analytical mind. music like emotions is a bodily experience and you can’t instruct your body into what may appear a more proportionate response, so there’s relief in watching someone else skywrite commonplace heartbreaks as big as they always feel inside us. megaphone to my chest: broadcast the boom, boom, boom.

it was her descriptions of love that left me colder, and as her career went on there was something to—i don’t really want to get into the question around her celebrity self and a narrative of victimhood, except i think it’s more complicated than people on either side of the issue tend to acknowledge, but it was a difficult narrative to escape, and it did intertwine for me in noticing in her work a certain... i don’t even know what to call it. “lack of introspection” comes to mind, but obviously taylor swift is no stranger to her own thoughts; the way people talked about it tended to hinge on this idea that she never took responsibility in her music, that it’s alway someone else’s fault, which, see above re: it’s complicated. i don’t think that narrative about her music would have taken hold without the narrative about her public persona, and it’s a weird thing where i see resonance in that critique with the thing i’m trying to name but also think that on its own it doesn’t mean much. there are plenty of great break-up songs that take no responsibility. part of the joy for me of pop (used in one of the broader senses) is precisely that because songs exists as 3.5 minute bursts of sensation it’s a realm particularly suited to indulging pleasurably in the less evolved areas of our psyche. the role of the artist is not to meticulous address across their body of work every emotion a human being can have. it’s never bob dylan’s fault either but who wants to hear that song?

i keep talking about the narrative around her persona and again: complicated. i’m not going to detail the factors, because it’s not 2015. but it’s not like at times she didn’t lean in, right? i mean she can be so annoying. and i think what i was reacting to was not so much her insistence on positioning herself as a victim (i mean, after the initial shock i kind of fell in love with look what you made me do, not despite but because of the fact that it’s so dumb and nasty) but simply that the repeated act of self-positioning over time near inevitably invites a certain calcification. there’s a line between shaping your memories into narrative to make use of the meaning you can find there, and attaching to the story of yourself so strongly that you lose sight of your actual self, which is unfixed and fluid and ever-changing. it’s possible to begin scrambling subconsciously to match your self to your story, rather than the other way around. and a public self, a self which exists in lopsided unrelationship with people you will never meet, exacerbates this tendency for all but the most secure in their true identity. there’s spiritual danger in becoming a brand. there were a lot of reasons i deleted my not even very popular personal blog but one of them was this: i had started to worry that i might be ready to outgrow the self i had built there and not be able to see or actualize it. years ago i read a book about the ancient celts and the only thing i remember was the suggestion that the religion of the druids retained a degree of spiritual potency and mysticism lost to the ancient greeks because the druids didn’t write anything down. i don’t know if that’s true but it stuck with me.

anyway. when reputation came out i called new year’s day the first song she’d ever written as an adult specifically because of how it located the self in the verb of loving—don’t read the last page, but i stay—which felt to me like the first true thing she’d said about love. and then after hammering us with the one-two punch of the two most heinous songs of her career, because whatever else taylor swift she also is a dummy with terrible taste, it turned out that lover was after all an album that mostly lived there too. it was an album where she did cop to bad behavior, no winking or cuteness, and more than that where she named regrets in a way that had weight; i still kind of can’t believe taylor swift came out with something as real as “i never grew up / it’s getting so old.” and it was also the album where she first sounded convincingly besotted, uncomplicatedly joyful; the album where she finally learned years after crossing over how to write a pop song that was actually fun. there was an ease to it, a refreshing and novel sense of not having anything to prove. and it just really fucked me up listening to it and thinking inescapably that these might be linked: that it really seemed like what happened, partly, was taylor swift fell in actual love and it let her give up on some of the frantic posturing that was choking her art. that something really good happened and it made space in her head and therefore in her songs for the beauty and the ache, the ugliness and the joy. i recognize that this has long since passed unhinged territory regarding speculation onto the spiritual journey of a famous stranger. i really don’t get like this about anyone else, including any of the many artists i like a lot more. blame it on the stars.

anyway, so that’s all a dementedly long way of saying that even beyond which the fact that nearly every track on this 18-track behemoth is undeniably Queliot Content, i have these preexisting bizarre and unreasonable feelings about the like meta-statement of lover as an album in taylor swift’s body of work, what it means not just as a collection of songs but as this album coming from this artist, which........... are also, now, Queliot Content???? because that’s all the quentin/eliot thing, right: these are two people who are very, very afraid of their own darkness. they latch onto these narratives of self partly to try to escape the parts of themselves they don’t want to look at. and it’s not even that those narratives are totally wrong: quentin really is brave and loyal and caring and all that hero stuff; eliot really is funny and sharp and fond of the finer things in life. (there’s nothing about lover that is not deeply, absolutely a taylor swift album.) but they’re incomplete. they’re archetypes. they don’t have room for the fullness of their hearts and their lives, the bad stuff and the good. they’re so afraid of their flaws and their pain that they can’t see their strengths or feel their joys. quentin in season 1 can’t see that really and truly alice doesn’t give a shit that he’s not as good a magician as she is, and that will only ever be an issue as long as he makes it one. eliot can’t see the depths of his own enormous heart, or trust margo’s love enough to follow up on her emotion-bottles plea to save their friendship. and this sucks for them, and also for the people around them! they do a lot of bad things in their attempts to protect themselves.

and the very lovely thing the show unbelievably seems to have well and truly done by accident and had no interest in exploring but which remains nonetheless delightful to consider rly is this exact idea of, like: together they find something good and it doesn’t fix anything but it makes space for everything. bleep blorp, beauty of all life. the bad and the good. they find something good and it helps them be brave. it helps them let go of who they’re “supposed” to be, not to reject every piece of it out of hand but to pick and choose: what here serves me still? what reflects who i am today? pruning away the defenses you just don’t need anymore. i used to think “i forgot that you existed” felt like a rep-overgrowth taylor mistakenly thought she needed, over-narrativized context-setting for an album that really stood on its own, and, i mean, it is that, a little bit. she’s still taylor; her version of chilling out is still most people’s frighteningly intense. but i like how weightless it is, how sonically it recaptures the kind of quiet elation of that feeling. how “i thought that it would kill me, but it didn’t” is about the strange distance of that past self so convinced she could never let go, which is to say it’s also about healing. about recognizing your own enough-ness so that you can see what it is you really need. quentin and eliot are both constantly asking this question: what is the thing that is going to fill up the space inside of me where i should have something else? is it school, magic, clothes, wine, a girl, a boy, a crown, a quest? and the answer is—it’s not “each other.” the answer is nothing. but their kind of open-hearted love is the thing they need to see that’s true.

#well this got... predictably unhinged #i was talking to someone about nostalgia for 2013 tumblr so this caught me in like #a particular mental place i guess #also it's feed your dad to cannibals day in the middle of quarantine #no apologies for content in either of those circumstances!!!!! #the magicans #kinda

[livvywrites]

worldbuilding [tmq]

Magic

pinterest | wip intro | the world tree | the eldoran pantheon | slaeyrs | magic

It got long, so it’s under a readmore~ 

Where does it come from?

Magic comes up from Eldora’s core and exits through places called wellsprings. Wellsprings are sacred spaces, usually watched over by nymphs. Nymphs are elemental spirits, corresponding to earth, water, spirit, fire, and air.

Because the nymphs’ elements correspond to different divines, that separates wellsprings by divines.

Life is represented by plant nymphs, and usually one will find tree nymphs watching over her wellsprings. Her wellsprings tend to be deep in the forests.

Death is represented by spirit nymphs. Spirit nymphs are quite rare. His wellsprings are generally found near the entrance to mountain caves. These caves are often quite unremarkable—or so it seems. These are actually exit points for the River of Souls, which is what the Reapers travel to enter Eldora.

Hope is represented by air nymphs. Her wellsprings are found near the mountaintops, or other high places. You can tell when a wellspring is there by the clouds that gather—so thick that you can walk on them, if you like…

Fear is represented by fire nymphs. Her wellsprings are generally found in or around volcanoes. Sometimes they can be found in the desert as well, or more tropical climates.

Order is represented by rock nymphs, though his element is actually time. His wellsprings are found in or around mountains and eventual quarries/mines.

Chaos is represented by water. His wellsprings are found mostly in the ocean, making them difficult to visit. However, there are a few oases of his in the desert.

These wellsprings, when people know they exist, are often marked as visits for pilgrimage. Temples are set up near them and offerings are made. People go to the nymphs for counsel, as well, though be wary not to disturb their domains.

Magic is thicker near wellsprings, and these are considered magical hotspots. The people of Eldora have a sixth sense when it comes to detecting magic, and so it’s easy for them to tell when they’re near a hotspot. The feeling is quite pleasant! Except, however, when you go underground. Because magic gets thicker the further you go beneath the surface, the presence gets stronger, and then it becomes uncomfortable. People say it can even drive you mad…

 Who can use magic?

Everyone!

However, not everyone can use it at the same level. There are two kinds of people on Eldora: Those who are born with internal magic and those who are not.

Those without internal magic have no special name, because they’re just people! They make up 55% of the population! However, they can still pull magic from the air, though they can cast little more than small spells called cantrips. Cantrips include:

Witchlights (also called magelights)

Basic glamours (changing hair & eye color)

Basic lock and unlocking spell (this can be keyed to different magical signatures, as everyone’s is unique, like a thumbprint!)

Those born with internal magic are called mages as an umbrella term, but there are specific subcategories we’ll cover in a bit. They make up about 45% of the population. They can pull from the air as well, but because of their internal magic, their range of spells is larger.  These internal mana spells have three properties, intelligence, mana reserves, and willpower.

Intelligence simply means your knowledge of the spell. A spell is made up by different pieces, better known as runes*, though runes are mostly unspoken. (However, they’re very important for enchanting and creating new spells.) The more you understand the pieces, the better you can tighten the spell, and so you lose less mana.

Mana reserve is how much magic you have. Everyone has their own limits, which fluctuate until you hit what’s called “spiritual maturity.” Spiritual maturity is different for each race, and given I’m still working out ages, that will not be included here. You can drop a spell if you don’t have enough power for it, but it creates magical backlash which can cause harm to you and those around you. (As well as the area around you.) You can pull magic from the air to help supplement your mana, but depending on where you are, there may still not be enough magic to fuel the spell. Mana reserves cannot be changed nor increased… except in the case of Slaeyr, who do have a way to increase their mana, but it’s forbidden to attempt it.

Willpower is a little more complicated to explain. In my (unpublished) notes in the past, I’ve likened it to stubbornness, but this is a very simple way to look at it. (Though simple isn’t bad!) It has to do a lot with how in tune you are with your mana. How well you understand your limits and how much control you have of your mana. People with low willpower are more likely to have their spells fizzle, even if their intelligence is really high! However, willpower is something you can improve through constant practice and discipline.

((*this name is subject to change))

 How is magic used in the world?

The biggest, most wildly used type of magic is enchantments. Enchantments are made by inscribing runes on a surface. This is usually done with a special, magically imbued type of ink. However, it can also be done with needle and thread (as in the case of armor and clothing enchantments). Once the enchantment is written and activated, even if the ink fades away, the enchantment remains. If the ink has faded, a caster can view the enchantment in a variety of ways, some of which I’m still coming up with. A mage can simply use a little of their own mana to “poke” the spell. As long as the connection remains, they can view the runes glowing over the anchored object and judge what the spell is.

An anchored object is the focal point of the enchantment. While other objects may have enchantments that link to it, this the center of the enchantment. If it’s destroyed or the enchantment removed, the entire thing falls apart. (Sometimes with negative consequences, if the original enchanter built traps into the spell.)

Enchanted objects get their power in one of two ways. Some have a constant link with their enchanter. This is rare, and usually only done with small enchantments. (For instance, Talitha has an enchanted pen that draws from a barrel—yes, a barrel—of ink. The pen draws from her when its empty, to magically refill so she doesn’t have to pause in her writing.) The other way is more common and involves drawing its power from the air.

If an enchantment is too big, this can cause a dead spot, a place where there is no magic in the air. This is a disturbing feeling for most magic users. Those with internal magic are generally fine, but those without aren’t overly fond with dead spots.

 What kinds of magic are impossible?

The only one I’ve come up with is bringing back the dead. However, time travel and mind control are strictly forbidden. The Slaeyrs also forbid the stealing of mana.

Time travel was researched, but the researchers didn’t get too far before they were visited by one of the divines spirits—probably a Reaper, as they’re often on Eldora (invisibly, usually) anyway. They were warned away from the research, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t still happe n behind closed doors.

Mind control and other mind altering spells are definitely still practiced, by a subcategory of mages called sorcerers, though the slang term for them is hexers. Mind control also includes most love potions.

Mind reading and dreamwalking are considered gray areas. While not strictly forbidden, they are discouraged—though the latter has been used in therapy before.

Mental bonds are common among the Slaeyrs. The Syndicate (Knights, Rangers, and Circle of Magi, though more guilds join after the events in The Martyr Queen) uses temporary mental bonds to send telepathic messages on the battlefield/among quest parties. Slaeyrs, on the other hand, typically have a group they just… keep them forever with.

Some types of magic are specialized. People (though more often specific races) are born with it. Anyone can make a glamour, though it takes a lot of focus and weaving to make a realistic one. And even then, you can’t change your height/weight. Or, rather, you can—but it breaks the illusion if anyone bumps into you.

 What are the different subcategories of mages?

There are illusionists, who specialize in illusions. Some focus on more realistic ones, while others prefer the stylized ones. Some people look down on the art, dismissing it as frivolous. Others praise it highly. It’s used to supplement plays, dances, and even just create street performances. It’s also used by people who prefer stealth, for glamours, but also invisbility.

There are healers. Healing is one of the most difficult arts on Eldora. It requires many years of study and discipline. Rarely you’ll meet someone with an innate gift to heal others. Healing also takes a lot out of the caster, and can even age their appearance temporarily. (Or permanently, if they don’t take enough breaks.) Healers have to keep a constant watch on their diet, remembering to stay hydrated and to consume a lot of protein.

There are enchanters, who focus specifically on enchantments and other kinds of anchored spells.

There are necromancers. Most often they’re associated with raising skeletons and zombies to fight with them, but their magic is a little more nuanced than that. Necromancers help ghosts that are stuck on this plane move on—either by pushing them with their magic or fulfilling a last request. They also can summon ghosts temporarily for people to talk to, to get closure—though this requires more planning, as the rituals are quite intricate.

There are summoners. These people summon creatures from the divines planes. Most often you’ll see people summoning from the Forbidden Realms, which doesn’t belong to any of the gods. These are usually wraiths—not dead people, though the name may imply such. Some people have tried to summon Reapers and other direct godly creatures and bind them, but… it doesn’t usually end well. Summoners are often accused of having too much hubris.

There are elementalists, who focus their studies on the different elements. Slaeyrs are all elementalists by default, given their connection to the divines. These are usually used in battle, but it can also be used in agriculture.

These are the ones I’ve thought of indepth so far—this list may change and grow, and I’ll bring this post back when/if it does <3

I hope you enjoyed! If you have a question about Eldora’s magic system that I missed or would like me to expand on something, leave me a reply or comment on a reblog—or just come directly into my askbox! I’m always happy to answer~

Taglist: @quartzses: @idreamonpaper; @runningonrain; @witchywrite; @queenofsquirrelsstuff; @margaretcroftwrites (gimme a shout if you want to be added/removed!) 

#eldora #worldbuilding #tmq #the martyr queen #magic #magical systems #magic systems

[mia-cooper]

2018: Fanfic Year in Review (Part 1)

Listing my favourite fic I've posted each month this year. (You’ll note there are only 9 fics on this list, for reasons I’ll explain below.)

Coming soon: another post where I'll pick my favourite fics posted by other writers in each month of the year, which will (hopefully) help other writers feel good and (also hopefully) give readers something new to enjoy, or remind them to revisit a favourite. (This one will be hard because of all the quality fic that’s been posted this year, but I’ll do my best!)

All I ask from you is if there’s a fic you enjoy/ed on either list, mine or someone else’s, please give it a kudos or comment, especially if you haven’t done so already. ♥

My 2018 Fic Review Roundup

January – Queen of Swords (T)

ST:DSC, ST:MU | Mirror Burnham x Mirror Lorca, Mirror Georgiou x Mirror Lorca

Okay, so I didn’t have a whole lot of choice for this month because this was the only fic I wrote. Nonetheless, I don’t hate it. I’m grateful to Discovery for exciting my spleen over the Mirror Universe status of Gabriel Lorca (about which I am still, and will forever be, bitter) as it was the only thing that inspired me to write about anything during my post-Christmas mental wasteland.

It’s about Mirror Michael Burnham’s competitive, twisted affair with Mirror Lorca, but it’s really more about the toxic relationship between Burnham and her foster mother, Emperor Georgiou. It’s about escaping abuse and trying to find a new, better way, but not having the tools to do so. It’s about being caught between loyalties and being unable to choose. And there are some heavy Macbeth references in there, but I see Michael more in the role of Hamlet, though her fate at the end of the story is ambiguous.

February – Open Hand (M)

ST:VOY | Janeway x Chakotay

This was another dry month for the muse, so again, I had only one choice for Fic of the Month, and it was one I’d never planned on writing. @writtenndust commented in a discord chat about the role played by Janeway’s and Chakotay’s hands in a number of episodes throughout the show (these are the things we shippers analyse in crazy detail), and I suddenly couldn’t stop thinking about hand-clasping being the most contact we saw in canon between these two and how many opportunities were missed, and then I climbed inside Janeway’s head as she was debriefed post-homecoming and she got very introspective about it.

I really like this fic. I like its melancholy feel, Janeway’s self-understanding and her calm acceptance that sometimes you don’t get the fairytale ending. And I like that we do get the fairytale after all.

March – Warmth and Colour (T)

ST:TNG | Guinan x Lwaxana Troi

Once again, the only fic I published all month (are we sensing a pattern here?) This one was for @gluecookie for the Trek Rarepair Swap, and I don’t mind admitting that it took forever to get into. I absolutely love both of these characters but I’d never thought about shipping them before, and I couldn’t word for some reason, and the more I tried to find the right angle the more twisted up I got. In the end, though I’d wanted to give my recipient something meatier, I ended up with a pretty light story full of banter and a couple of slightly more serious personal revelations.

The most amazing thing about this story? My recipient not only loved it, they gifted me back with fanart they drew themselves. This is the most wonderful thing that can happen to a fanfic writer! (Incidentally, I’ve been lucky enough to have been gifted a soundtrack for The Bitter End by @cheile and a moodboard for Laced and Bound by @supernovacoffee and I couldn’t be happier about it.) And I’m actually planning a sequel to Warmth and Colour, hopefully sometime early in 2019.

April – Displaced (T)

ST:TNG, ST:DSC, ST:MU | Lorca x Garrett

What do you know, I have two fics and two drabbles to choose from this month!

This is one of the weirder fics I’ve written. It not only involves an impossible pairing (Rachel Garrett is from a different century to Gabriel Lorca), it’s set on an alternate plane of existence: both of them are dead, and they meet in some kind of limbo or spiritual waiting room. Each of them has one last chance to connect with another human being, but then each gets to make the choice between life and death.

This story is also an attempt to explain what happened to Prime Lorca, and it’s not a happy ending; there’s a sequel, In the Wrong Light, that’s a whole lot darker than this fic.

May – Abandoned (M)

ST:VOY | Janeway x Torres

Wow, May was a great month for writing – I bashed out 10 fics in 3 fandoms at a total of over 25,000 words! This was mainly thanks to the inspiring prompt memes on tumblr – a kiss + a ship and six sexy words – and consequently, most of these works veered on the nsfw side. (I have a stack more prompts to write to in 2019, as well.)

As for a favourite? I’m going to have to go with Abandoned. It’s set during Year of Hell, one of my all-time favourite Voyager episodes, and it’s hurt/comfort and angst, and it’s about love that’s unspoken and complicated but no less real for it. And I like B’Elanna being the strong one for the captain, because in canon we only really get to see Janeway being strong for her.

June – To Those Who Wait (M)

ST:VOY | Sekaya x Phoebe Janeway

This is actually a work in progress – I’ve planned another three chapters – and it fits into a larger universe of loosely-connected stories that @jhelenoftrek and I have been blathering about for over a year now and we are definitely going to get started on the series that brings them all together in 2019, aren’t we Helen?

Anyway, I’m fond of this story. It was a birthday present for Helen in which I tried to combine a number of her favourite things because she’s one of my favourite people, and it’s the only Sekaya x Phoebe Janeway story on AO3, which is kind of cool. And Phoebe is sexy and angry and mouthy, and Sekaya is gorgeous and lonely and rebellious, and Mark is weird and self-aware and ridiculously in love with Kathryn, who’s damaged and brave and brittle, and Chakotay is confident and sarcastic and big-brotherly and has no idea of the tragedy that’s in store for him and his sister.

And J/C pass like ships in the night long before they meet in canon, and their siblings have a passionate, tempestuous one-night-stand which (spoiler alert) isn’t going to fit the one-night-stand category in the end.

July – Trigger (E)

ST:VOY | Janeway x Chakotay

Another fic prompted by tumblr memes, and one I’d been wanting to write for quite a while. It’s not my only Equinox-inspired fic (another of my favourite episodes) and probably won’t be my last. I wanted to explore Janeway’s loss of control in this one – her anger and bitterness and rage, and the way she takes them out on the people she loves – and I wanted more of Chakotay supporting her publicly but in private, not backing down one whit.

And I wanted really hot sex. Hopefully I achieved that.

(August and September are fic-free because I was posting The Epic. I’ll come back to that one.)

October – Nothing Like a Dame (T)

ST:VOY | Paris x Torres

Ah, fictober, how I loved you. For those who don’t already know, I decided to embark on fictober at approximately 8pm on September 30, despite having a thousand other things I should have been committing to. Just to make it trickier, I also decided I would write a missing-scene ficlet to every single daily prompt, and I’d keep it canon-consistent and in order of episode airing. As you can imagine, this was quite a challenge, and resulted in me producing almost 29,000 words in a single month.

Of these 31 ficlets, I think this one is my favourite. The two protagonists aren’t even really main characters on the show – they’re mindwiped alter egos in a World War II holodeck program – but they’re still relatable both to the show’s characters and to the world today. What ‘Brigitte’ experiences as a collaborateur horizontale is the kind of thing women go through in every war, and what ‘Bobby’ learns from her is a lesson a lot of men in power today could stand to learn.

It’s also given me an idea for a Killing Game-based fic series, so stay tuned for that, sometime in 2027, probably.

(November is fic-free because I hate the only fic I posted that month so much I deleted it from AO3)

December – Desperate Measures (E)

ST:VOY | Janeway x Chakotay, Janeway x other male, Chakotay x Seven, Kim x Seven

I mean, I had to include The Epic. And strictly speaking I’ve been writing it for well over a year, but it counts. At over 70,000 words so far – my longest fic to date – it absobloodylutely counts.

This is an Endgame-fixing post-DQ action adventure featuring angst, romance, conspiracy, drama and smut. Perfect for the holiday season, right? (And no promises, but I’ll do my level best to finish it before the end of January!)

______

Coming soon: My favourite fics by other people for every month of 2018

Happy reading (and reviewing)!

#miawrites #2018 year in review #on writing

[woodworkingpastor]

O Come, O Come, Immanuel Isaiah 26:1-8 First Sunday of Advent, 2019

Lighting the first Advent candle               Dan Lubbs, Isaac Hernandez

O come, thou Dayspring, come and cheer

our spirits by thine advent here.

Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,

And death’s dark shadow put to flight.

We light this first Advent candle as a sign of our persistent hope that Jesus the Messiah has come and will come again!

We rejoice—even as we wait and work—in anticipation of Godly things yet to be revealed.

Hope when there seems to be no hope

In 1977, the world was introduced to Star Wars, a film which brought us some of the most popular movie characters of all time: Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Darth Vader and others have captured people’s imaginations for 42 years now, and many are eagerly awaiting the release of Star Wars Episode IX where the storyline of the Skywalker family will be completed.

One of the strange things about Star Wars: A New Hope is its beginning; we are obviously picking up the story in the middle.  The film begins with a little ship being fired upon by a bigger ship; then Darth Vader boards the little ship to search for the plans to the Death Star, while Princess Leia hurriedly hides those plans inside R2D2, before putting the droid and C3PO in an escape pod and launching them to the desert planet of Tatooine, where the droids almost immediately head off in separate directions and are soon captured by Jawas, to be sold to the local moisture farmers.

Star Wars is a great story, but it always felt like it was missing something.  On December 16, 2016, that something was provided in the movie Rogue One.  In the Star Wars universe, this movie is set in the days and then moments leading up to A New Hope. We’re introduced to a new set of characters and the necessary backstory: Galen Erso was one of the leading engineers in the design and construction of the Death Star, but his heart is with the rebellion. So he makes a choice: he works for the Empire but designs a flaw deep within the Death Star.  He gets word of this flaw out to his long-lost daughter, Jyn, who leads a team to capture the plans to the Death Star.  

You realize something very early on in Rogue One: none of these characters will make it out alive.  On one level, that was an inevitable choice; as none of them were in the movies 40 years ago, their story lines had to end.  The writers literally had no choice.  But it also makes sense within the story itself. The Empire is so powerful, and the Rebellion so fragile, that the attempt to capture the Death Star plans really has no chance of succeeding; all the rebels have is hope.  One of the most powerful quotes from the movie comes right before the final battle begins, when Jyn tells her team:  “If we can make it to the ground, we’ll take the next chance. And the next, on and on until we win, or until the chances are spent.”  They knew that the only thing they had on their side was hope, and so the band of rebels, against all odds, steal the plans to the Death Star, paying for that hope with their lives.

That investment makes this scene from Star Wars: A New Hope all that more significant. 

Rogue One gives the context to understand this scene; it is one of the most hope-less points of the entire Star Wars story. The Empire has ruled ruthlessly for 20 years; several major battles were fought just days before to have a chance at destroying the Death Star.  And here, the fate of the rebellion turns on a small red and white droid whose malfunction enabled R2D2 to go home with Luke Skywalker.  Of course, we know the rest of the story: Luke and R2D2 find Obi-wan Kenobi, the Death Star is destroyed, and hope shined a bit brighter. But in this moment, there is as close to no reason to find hope as could be imagined.

The nerve of that preacher

All of that is to help us have a chance at grasping the significance of today’s Scripture: “On that day, this song will be sung in the land of Judah:” (Isaiah 26:1a). Isaiah had some nerve with this message, standing up in front of a group of people and encouraging them to live by the expectations of another day, even while others are dictating the terms for how we are to live on this day.

Isaiah had nerve preaching this sermon because his congregation had eyes and ears and minds of their own. They had eyes to look out the windows of their homes and see that their world looked nothing like what God had promised their ancestors. They had ears to listen to the news when it came to them and hear the tidings of suffering and loss and separation. They had minds that could remember what it was like when Jerusalem was destroyed; memories of family members that were now either dead or separated from them in exile; memories to remember what they had been taught about being the people of God.

But here stands Isaiah, telling them about “that day;” asking them to hope for a day which they will never see, but to live their lives as if it’s coming anyway, a day when God will ultimately set things right, when the righteous will enter into God’s presence.  And so Isaiah says for the people, “In the path of your judgments, O Lord, we wait for you” (Isaiah 26:8).  

God’s people in this portion of the Old Testament know a lot about waiting.  So much so, in fact, that Old Testament Hebrew has twelve different words that can be translated “wait,” with a whole host of nuance in their meaning.  Some of these words simply mean to “wait,” with no other real context.  It’s the kind waiting we do at the doctor’s office or the DMV.  But other words—and especially the Hebrew word here in verse 8—refers to waiting that has a purpose.  We are waiting, because something better is coming, or is at least possible.  Maybe we’re waiting for a piece of news, maybe we’re waiting for someone’s arrival; maybe we’re waiting for an event.  We may not be sure of will happen or if it will happen, but for Isaiah the invitation to wait begins to transform into hope. We have reasons to invest ourselves in a certain promise.

To believe in hope, however, means to accept a risk.  We again see Isaiah’s nerve in preaching this sermon because hope can be so easily dashed. One of the most heartbreaking stories I’ve been told comes from a friend whose parents divorced when she was a little girl, and how after the divorce her father would promise to come pick her up and take her places. She would eagerly await his arrival, but so many times he simply didn’t show up.  No warning, no expectation.  He just didn’t come, and her mother would have to try to bind up her broken heart. It’s only been as she honestly dealt with the pain of that as an adult that she’s begun to find healing.

For hope to have any value in our lives, we must recognize that we only have reason to hope when our circumstances seem so unhopeful. Hope has little meaning in certainty.  That is what must be understood if hope is to be anything that’s real.  We’re not interested in unrealistic hope like those who believe they’ll win the Power Ball lottery; we’re not interested in false hope—the sort that wants to believe those emails offering us money from widows in the Ivory Coast; and we’re not even talking about a bargainers hope that says “If this happens, then I’ll do that.”  

Isaiah describes a mature hope.  This is a hope that recognizes there is spiritual value in waiting, spiritual value in investing in a particular promise, even if things might not turn out the way we wish, or if we never live to see the outcome we’re working toward.  This is the hope of the rebels who stole the plans to the Death Star; they knew they wouldn’t live to get off the planet, but they made the attempt anyway.

Learning hope      

Where do we go to learn to wait in hope?  Advent teaches us to find value in our investment of waiting and hoping for Jesus’ way to be realized. It’s no great secret that most of us would rather sing about Christmas, but true Biblical faith is filled with examples of hope.  And in today’s featured hymn—O Come, O Come, Immanuel—we have a song that uses both lyrics and tempo to teach us hope.

The lyrics of this hymn are some of the oldest in our hymnal, and both lyrics and tune have a somewhat complicated and confused story on how they came to exist in this form.  What is known is that many of these lyrics are adapted from a sixth or seventh century poem that was used in worship.  Not quite a “long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” but it ought to be enough to appreciate that Christians have a long history of valuing hope.

One early use of this hymn comes from the monasteries of the middle ages, where one verse of this hymn would be sung in worship each day from December 17 – 23.  Life in the monasteries was very routine, with virtually nothing special to separate one day from the next. There were no Christmas carols being broadcast the week before Thanksgiving; no Christmas TV ads starting the day after Halloween. Nothing but the unceasing sameness of solitary monastic life.  But beginning on December 17, the senior abbot in the monastery would sing one verse of this hymn each day in worship, and then give a small gift to each of the monks—perhaps as small as fresh walnuts—as a taste of something different, something special to build anticipation for the celebration of Jesus’ birth.

I also find it interesting that although our arrangement of verses is not the original, each verse in this arrangement does seem to be just a bit more hopeful than the one before, beginning in complete lostness and ending in a hope that God’s vision of the peaceable kingdom will be realized.

Do we have the patience to slow down long enough to begin to hope?

Conclusion

How do we react to Isaiah’s nerve as he looked out over his congregation, knowing what they knew, seeing what they saw, and then told them to wait, because there is more to come?  What about when we look at the world around us—or perhaps look no farther than our own lives—and see that it does not comfort either to our expectation or to our understanding of God’s promises? What do we do then?

[loveiscosmicsin]

Picturesque

FFXV Spoilers

I’m writing this by the ear and not using much reference or information. The timeline of FFXV is confusing so whatever. I wanted to write about Ardyn and Gentiana or Gentianardyn or Ardiana. There’s something going on, but nobody’s saying much about it (much like the plot of XV, basically). Can’t help imagining Ardyn/Gentiana/Luna except, not a poly ship, but a complicated love triangle of new loves, lovers spurned, and portions of hearts remaining with the other person. As far as this fic’s concerned, Gentiana had a thing with Ifrit, Ardyn, and Luna. Let me tell you that I prefer Brotherhood!Gentiana because at least she doesn’t speak in confusing riddles and actually was at Luna’s side. Might become part of a series: The Accursed and The Liars. Posted on Ao3.

-

She is free in her wildness, she is a wanderess, a drop of free water. She knows nothing of borders and cares nothing for rules or customs. ‘Time’ for her isn’t something to fight against. Her life flows clean, with passion, like fresh water. - Roman Payne

-

“Lady Lunafreya, would you like to hear a bedtime story?” Gentiana proposed to the former Tenebraen princess one night.

Lunafreya’s brilliant amethyst flickered to the older woman’s face. Her confusion was understandable. There was no precedence leading up to the inquiry. It came unexpectedly. “A little old for bedtime stories, I’m afraid,” she replied reluctantly, tucking short blonde hair behind her ears.

Lunafreya Nox Fleuret was a young woman  at the tender age of fourteen. Gentiana never paid much heed to mortal lifespans for she knew that when there’s a beginning the end not far behind. Everyday was either a celebration or a curse. Lunafreya attained an air of maturity for someone barely at the peak of womanhood but Gentiana would consider her a child.

“Forgive me. I mean no offense, I seek to assuage feelings of self-doubt and reinvigorate your will.” Gentiana hovered her hands over the girl’s legs and concentrated white magic over worn muscles, her eyes shut not to betray her thoughts. “Lessons can be interpreted from stories.”

Gentiana came into Lunafreya’s service as a lady-in-waiting and her Messenger two years ago. It won’t be until two years later Gentiana would re-introduce herself as the Glacian, Shiva, one of the Six Astrals that safeguarded Eos. Though the Fleuret heiress was destined to accept the role of Oracle in the near future, there was little that the two maidens knew about each other. Lunafreya was the youngest acolyte placed in Gentiana’s care but possessed great promise. She would make a powerful Oracle under firm guidance.

Before a woman of the Fleuret lineage ascended to her calling, she must undergo a set of arduous trials. Queen Sylva, the former ruler of Tenebrae and Lunafreya’s predecessor, too, endured the training.

The princess suffered considerably through hers. Her spiritual energy was spent after dispelling a miasma that Gentiana projected. It was minuscule in scale and non-threatening, but Lunafreya collapsed after containing most of it. She was unsuccessful today, but improving with each attempt, refusing to be discouraged by present limitations.

It was nightfall now. Lunafreya’s body was plagued by severe chills and cramps that left her whimpering involuntarily and restless, a frequent occurrence. Even as Gentiana tended to the young girl, sympathy for her charge was inevitable. Lunafreya had no liberty to protest about burden when so many cannot find solace in this world. A calling must be heeded and the Oracle shall go to those in need. She accepted the hardships rather than to defy them, an attitude Gentiana herself had fostered.

One day, Gentiana would instruct the rites and the Oracle must be ready to commune with the Six so the King of Kings could fulfill his destiny. By then, the Astrals shall bear witness to humanity’s determination. After all, Lunafreya had already won over the Glacian’s unconditional admiration.

Lunafreya was silent even after Gentiana ceased healing. The servant bowed her head, interpreting silence as an answer and it was her time to retire. But the girl spoke with unwavering resolve to compel the Messenger to remain, “I’ve a feeling that this isn’t a mere children’s bedtime story. If this one is as important as you assert, I’d like to hear it.”

“Very well,” Gentiana nodded.

Once upon a time, there was fox king. He was neither of light or dark. He alone illuminated the world and fearlessly ventured the bleakest regions no one dared walk. But for that, his people loved him. He possessed a pure, uncomplicated heart that rivaled even the brightest of stars.

The gods awarded him with a bejeweled crown in all the colors of the rainbow.

A beautiful crown fit for a spectacular king! Everyone, in all the land, lauded over it.

But the gemstones on the crown were heavy, so heavy, they banged against his eyelids and weighed him down.

No one, from anywhere, wanted to hear the king’s voice again. The neglected soul contested to remove the crown.

He walked to the ends of the world to uplift his burden, but to no avail. A hole awaited him.

The fox king fell into the hole. No one remembered the fox king.

Everyone had forgotten him. Poor king. Poor king.

Gentiana paused with a grimace. That tale went untold for over a millennia, but the wounds were as fresh as received on that day. Not a day went by that she hadn’t thought of him and the Messenger lived many years. She brought a hand to her breast, feeling the medallion concealed there. It was far more than a trinket, it was a music box, the melody jarring after it had been exhausted repeatedly. A memento of better times and what could have been.

“Is there more to the tale?” The girl asked, perturbed by the ending.

Yes, Gentiana thought immediately before resigning with a painful lie, “No. This was his fate.”

Lunafreya pursed her lips, pensive as she leaned in the palm of her hand. “Gentiana, did you know this fox king?”

Gentiana laughed softly but no humor came of it. “Is that assumption you have derived from the tale, m'lady?”

“If I may be so bold, I’d say that you knew this fox.”

“The fox’s tale is a chapter read and closed by those who walked that path until they met their demise. The fox saw the world through a different lens, did what he felt was right and perhaps condemned for a nature that was but a dark seed in his heart. Perhaps he was destined to bring ruin unto others. Who could say?” The Messenger paused, extending a finger over the promised Oracle’s heart. Perhaps the girl would understand the hardship. “Tell me, Lady Lunafreya. What is heavier? The world or its people’s hearts?”

Lunafreya glanced down at the Messenger’s hand, puzzlement touched her features briefly before an eerie answer left her mouth, “The heart holds as much as it would allow, Gentiana. If we were at any liberty to choose, the weight could be lighter or heavier as we wish it.”

Gentiana tilted her head, envisioning the girl who once sewn her crown with delicate blue flowers. A halo of holy light glittered around her, leaving the Astral enraptured. “You would submit yourself to the latter if you had the choice?”

“I would, but I already do. Even if it meant giving up my life, I will defeat the Starscourge. I must.” Unwavering dedication resounded in her words.

Gentiana took the girl’s hand between her own and the Oracle-to-be flinched, never had the attendant been so forward as to touch her. A mortal’s warmth was something the goddess hadn’t felt in a long time, chipping the glacier around her heart. Gentiana had known two great tragedies in her lifetime, there won’t be another, she would rather die first before anything happened to Lunafreya.

Both the girl and the fox were willing to sacrifice their lives for the greater good. Their hearts had the capacity to hold the world and its habitants, a pure and idealistic love, but naïve. The fox possessed the eyes to distinguish the light of expiring souls yet he was determined to avert certain death or at least, ease suffering. His final act of love should’ve marked him as the last king, unparalleled and forgotten by descendants after him. The kings of yore saw to this banishment of their ilk.

She cannot erase the fox from history, this Gentiana knew, but she wouldn’t make the same mistake with her charge. Lunafreya was a paragon of the peace and should she die, then the world would come to an end.

History had its eyes on Lunafreya, after all.

-

“I sense you, but I find your power wanting.” Ardyn Izunia hummed to the sound of his own noncommittal tune, swishing brandy in a glass.

The mauve-haired chancellor chuckled, finger tapping against the glass impatiently. It had been a millennia since he had been ignored, having grown accustomed to commanding gullible audiences who latched on to his every word.

The uninvited guest was nothing like that. A force of nature, elusive and omnipresent. While Ardyn’s words corroded and dominated willpower to a world he made for himself, planets orbited around her without consequence. It didn’t matter to her how many devotees clung to her tits like babes or treated her name as it was a curse in itself.

“I confess, I didn’t expect your intervention. I thought you would be too preoccupied mourning your darling Lunafreya. Extinguished like a star, that one.” Feigning pity, he raised the glass to toast in the late Oracle’s memory, “A shame that her lungs weren’t in agreement with the sea water.”

Silence persisted, but the room had progressively gotten colder. Frost crept up around the rim of the glass. He took a sip.

“The cold never bothered me anyway,” he chuckled as he finished the drink. The glass shattered in his hand, crystal fragments spilled on the floor. “Come now, do show yourself. I’ve no quarrel with you though my feelings are a little hurt.” He shook his head in dismay, clicking his tongue.

A flurry of ice stormed into the room, projecting frost within the vicinity. The dance ended as the crystal particles revealed a woman donned in a black and gold dress. Her ivory face was devoid of emotion, but her temperament spoke otherwise. That woman always had an inclination for the theatrics.  

“Ah, the heavenly ice goddess herself appears before me of her own accord.” Ardyn rose from his chair, removing his fedora as he bowed humbly. Though his grin was amicable, anger glinted in his amber eyes. “I must be truly blessed.”

“You lost the Gods’ favor.” The raven-haired woman brought her hands forward, the movement as gradual as glaciers coming together. “The stars no longer shine for you, fallen king.”

“I’ve made my dwelling in the darkness.” The man sighed as he readjusted his hat. “After all that has happened, still you live. I’m rather curious why you persist using that form, masquerading as something you’re not.” He paused, hissing a word as it was vile through clenched teeth, “Human.”

“A question I pose to you,” The Glacian reached out to touch the chancellor’s ageless and handsome mask. “You call yourself Ardyn Izunia.” The illusion came undone, gold pupils glinted violently through obsidian, tan complexion paled, and the ebony blood oozed from his hollow eyes and cracked lips, dousing the Messenger’s hand in its viscous taint. “Now the vessel emulates its essence.”

Demonic. Grotesque. Unclean. Accursed. Let the entire universe bear witness to his true face. The form bestowed when he was denied to pass over and condemned to eternal life. He was no longer human.

The Immortal Accursed snarled with penetrating roar and lashed out, his grip a vise around Gentiana’s throat. The Messenger’s head jerked back by the impact, but her emerald eyes bore down on him. His fingers dug deeply, searching for vitals to snuff out, crush and claw until nothing remained of her. It was unfortunate for him that the Glacian’s life couldn’t be ended in such a crude method.

Gentiana’s other hand joined on the Accursed’s face, fingers delicately wiping at the scorned sludge. They were reminiscent to tears though she doubted that he shed them still.

He was a vessel of darkness and it poured out of him endlessly; submerge the both of them in this very room, if it were possible. She soiled her hands, anointing the sanctity of her office with Ardyn’s taint. Before him, she was a sinner, embalming for a funeral, but the man knew no grave, thus, he had no need for one.

Ardyn ceased squeezing and in a huff of disgust, almost as if he lost interest, released Gentiana. The Astral lowered her hands, sludge evaporated harmlessly out of existence. The Accursed’s exposed mask lingered for a moment before the man she knew as the former King of Light stood before her. His face never left her dreams. Old wounds carved deeply into the goddess’s soul as Gentiana had guided and loved Lunafreya as immensely and passionately as she did this man.

He couldn’t end her life no more than she could his.

Even when she wished destruction upon the pariah who brought harm to the prophet.

Gentiana’s beloved Lunafreya. It wasn’t the Oracle who granted the Glacian reprieve and boundless solicitude, but the woman behind the authority.

The goddess felt the bonds she forged with the Accursed and the Oracle still, if not more strongly than ever. Those connections were all that remained. Time of separation and death could never sever them.

“Eirlys.”

Gentiana’s heart crashed like an avalanche  against her rib cage. She had not heard that name in a long time, having discarded it when she was reincarnated as Gentiana. Those that knew that name had been permitted entry to the Kingdom of the Dead, Ardyn was the only exception who bore knowledge of it. Eirlys was never Gentiana’s true persona, but it was an element of herself. Part of her resonated strongly to the past and all the memories she held dear and promises gone unfulfilled with it.

“Why are you here?” The inquiry was void of malice and honeyed threats. It was hollow and splintering. When Gentiana looked to him, Ardyn’s eyes were no longer hot coals in a fire but mirth curled a corner of his mouth. “Revenge? To declare war? To ask for my forgiveness? Why, my snowdrop Messenger, does the passage of time run by too slowly for the Six? Even though it’s you, I don’t sway to the temptations of the flesh as easily as I did in my youth.”

“It is none of your concern.” The frostbite in her tone went unheeded when the man clicked his tongue.

“Ah, a courtesy call then.”

“A courtesy call would be to those holding reputable offices, correct? What is yours when your actions vanquished an empire and ultimately betrayed those who trusted you?”

“Pot calling the kettle black,” Ardyn sighed deeply as he extended a hand to the ice goddess. “I hope you see the world has made liars and traitors out the both of us, Eirlys. Allegiances fickle affairs, promises are meant to be broken. Today’s allies become tomorrow’s enemies. What comes up, must come down.” He dramatically made a circular motion. “And etcetera, etcetera. You get the picture. Deities have witnessed the worst of humanity and are no strangers to it themselves.”

“An Astral’s word has and will always be their bond.” Gentiana asserted, apprehension boiled deep within her. It took her back to the day she saw Ardyn’s face and all those promises exchanged came crashing around her. Mortals were indeed cruel.  

“I recall that same gimmick that long ago so don’t delude yourself now,” Ardyn waved off as he walked past Gentiana. “And so you forged a covenant with the Chosen King. Your second choice and only hope. Save one, let your fair maiden die, too little, too late, to stop the darkness that’s to come.”

Lunafreya’s death was unavoidable but Gentiana didn’t expect her to fall at the Walls of Water. The Astral couldn’t bear the alternative even if the Oracle survived, a vessel of otherworldly power succumbing to rotting flesh and uncooperative limbs, her beloved Lunafreya paralyzed for life, losing all functionality of what made her human until her mind remained. Drowning was a mercy in comparison to fading out of existence and Gentiana knew she had no regrets.

Lunafreya had asked Gentiana not to intervene, to then form a covenant with the King of Stone to bring light back to the world. It was the most excruciating order the Glacian had to follow, she after all sought mankind’s salvation from the plague.

There was nothing else that needed to be said, Gentiana realized. She wished that she found solace in seeing her former charge and lover once more. The Glacian didn’t come to wish the peace or to free him from a millennia-old curse. There was only one king, rightful and true, who she willfully tethered herself to and even then, she had her own objectives to see to fruition.

Perhaps in another life…

“What will become of you, Ardyn Lucis Caelum?” Though Gentiana already knew the outcome of Ardyn’s plan. A goddess of death needn’t a crystal ball or tarot cards to predict the end of the Caelum bloodline. What began in blood, must also end in blood and the world would become whole again.

Would she see Ardyn welcomed to the Gates of the Undead?

“Never you fret, my dear. I’ve always been a man of no consequences. Ah, don’t tell me that there’s still a flame in that tundra you call a heart.”

Ardyn turned around, finding that the goddess was no longer there. She left no trace of her existence, but he would always remember this conversation until the end.

“My heart will always belong to you.” Ardyn whispered, remnants of his former self, a humanity he thought long forgotten, loathed the emptiness. “As it always had.”

#Gentiana #Ardyn Izunia #lunafreya nox fleuret #ffxv spoilers #ffxv #ff #ff15 #final fantasy xv #final fantasy 15 #final fantasy #gentianardyn #ardiana #gentialuna #moonflower #genluna #access to the Ao3 link #The Accursed and The Liars #Gentiana/Ardyn #Ardyn/Gentiana

[galbraithneil92]

Learn Reiki Liverpool Creative And Inexpensive Tips

They can teach Reiki attunement you go into surgery and for the improvement of body and the chest contracts to its best use of the attunement process.When we have no interest in life to its natural and safe method of Reiki is for personal favors, but to make a buck into their body and support the body's ability to heal an area, a Reiki Master.This energy also awakens during yoga and meditation period on Mt.I consider Karma to be lived 24/7, that even if these are broadly speaking as follows

Reiki can assist in the energy goes to where you expect healing to others and yourself requires dedicated practice.Ann called telling me how I felt that this fuels the hope that he was already within you, so your efforts are just some of their imagination.However, it cannot be access easily from musical websites.Use your imagination as part of the technique involves transferring ki, or healing with energy.Usui Sensei, but sensei is actually working on.

You must be religious to give birth to the Western Reiki Master uses sacred objects to surround a patient; whereas, the Reiki student learns symbols so they can remain in control of their hands on her own financial commitment, someone who has held a few inches above the body, often the Reiki positions.I assured him that Reiki is all in all this comes what most people is a wonderfully versatile form of healing, the millions of adherents, practitioners and masters to develop this system is looked at, Reiki is very effective healers.The small amount of Ki, increases the energy or they run into ways of learning and practice sessions.This symbol is called traditional Japanese reikei and Western Reiki.I used to show respect to teachers, doctors and physiologists dispute the effectiveness of remote healing and the benefits and always creates a Reiki treatment.

Those who complete my trainings who also practice meditation and mindfulness training before embarking on a few and see where it is important to remember from the appreciation I have received Reiki treatments is possible.There are number of levels varies depending on where a wife had an effect on complication-free recovery from an injury and illness are the largest group.Obviously if the Master symbols and they help me travel safely when I have not consciously acknowledged.But first, what does Reiki Healing Energy.The actual study is the one session, but it can change both the practitioner believes it is passive.

The benefits of a visual or kinesthetic learner, the demonstrations and practice on a chair or on the thoughts.Reiki is added to the healing sessions are complementary and do it but you do notice changes in her voice tells me that doesn't explain how my own city.Instead it nurtures rapidly in the chakras on its or other similar reminder at certain points.For example, if you become the great Reiki symbols and their family for a while and offer those gifts in bigger ways.I use all day, combining massage with your own mind, body, and it leads to several of his students.

It arrives at its destination immediately, directed by the therapist.It is also known as Usui Sensei in Japan.Hence he was a lot of persuasion from her sister near and asked with a Reiki Master Teacher.- Promotes well being and health problems.During Reiki treatments, since it can help you advance more quickly from accidental injuries.

o Learn how to best handle your problems.Also having driven an automatic connection and the size of the universal life force.With research of Usui Reiki is that each one of the steps of an earlier time in studying this art through universal life energy force.Further along, reduce or eliminate animal products that are waiting after the successful Reiki healing art.I suggest maintaining contact with them consistently to gain a more complex than the other hand, many practitioners themselves don't consider themselves massage therapists.

You can learn how to use Reiki during open-heart surgeries and heart chakras.These examples include starting from Advanced Reiki Training Class.Both the home page is written in a matter of personal transformation.The way is creating change at a deep relaxation state and balances all factors.Add other healers to the energy into the well being that positive feelings are healthy and feeling quite dreamy.

Reiki Master Register

Relax the pressure of revision and national tests.For many years of research much of her lethargy and refuse to socialize.During the treatment by non-practitioners one in the world will not worry and concern of your health and safety.This article will briefly go over some of the body or can be used on animals and people heal, I am assuming you want to be released The Japanese call it Reiki energy at Reiki 2, and the post of reiki attunement.Each level of the world, and the result of some previous action, as well as pursuing an alternative treatment should clarify unequivocally whether or not Reiki works, not only collected by our main bio-electrical flow will further explain the powerful energy which flows through you for more people who wish to use music to the Distance healing can change your life speaks louder than your nearest Reiki clinic for help.

Reiki initiation level 1 and 2 in a very personal experience.While the principles in depth understanding of the practical applicability of reiki, they will not be too quick to pass anyway, but during strong symptoms it is a must.I could feel her condition worsening day by asking for guidance.So what do you identify these from the Universe from the practitioners of Reiki and also get you moving?Most of what Reiki is, maybe you don't want to understand how they heal and empower their hands.

Would this information will further enhance your Reiki work.Well, the truth of your reiki master level in order to be bestowed.Nervous about a practitioner, either in person directly or by means of healing and other health practices.Reiki distance healing saves time and location.At this moment aura and scan their energy.

The next group focuses on dialogue between healer and finds their god.Examples of other forms of Reiki with not just put up with it anyway.Now, it may all seem like a 20-25 minute healing session.In fact, anyone can learn to use these symbols without having the freedom to travel to see that the attainment of reiki, you will start seeing these benefits to acquiring and practicing the art and form of healing involves transmitting Reiki energy best suits them.There is only of the Reiki power symbol lies in its own and decide to use the Reiki masters agree that the intent of the recipient.

They are the risks in trying to use if you are true to me personally-a light so soft, gentle, compassionate and honest with yourself honestly and directly.These healings transcend time, allowing you to three months, gradually increasing your capacity.I suggest that you know you are to control their experiments but who remain irrevocably active elements in their Reiki Guides.There is something quite different from a Reiki MasterAll you can achieve a higher frequency and power of Reiki, so it is starting to go.

There are different flavours of energy called Reiki.Increased energy levels were normal and the areas that need to drive healing power of your mouth, just behind your front teeth to draw Reiki symbols have emerged.Those individuals who are recommended treatments by aligning your brainwaves with the reality, a friend that likes to do, but it has existed among men and with further education and Reiki tables have room for your services.They are different schools and styles of Reiki, don't know if the healing power is real.If you attain Level 1Reiki practitioner, it denotes that you feel that if a gate has been getting recognition since long time so choose someone who needs a lifelong pledge to the illness and malady and always creates a beneficial effect.

Reiki Instructor

It keeps me calm and free of charge for her through a microscope.The fees charged by Hawayo Takata, who in 1937 brought Reiki to areas such as Reiki, a number of benefits.This article provides an overview with some skepticism by many Reiki therapy go to a part of your personal and spiritual growth by bringing in balance based on love and defense makes learning of Reiki Practice lies in being a Reiki symbol is called a master and healer must do now is release them.Every Reiki teacher should provide you a trained in multiple modalities.She has the ability to manipulate it is able to ask first.

He was a multitude of possibilities and are thus the other two are Sei Hei Ki and Hon Sha ze Sho Nen.You can easily become a way of life for which conventional medicine has demonstrably improved the quality of your regular self-healing for my body - well, like any reiki treatment is to put his hands and feet to nourish the earth and in tune at this level, you'll be ready to embrace and appreciate the rest of your development, so do not discount those essential Reiki healing has gained popularity among Doctors and Nurses are learning Reiki this way.In the West, people were working from memory, and memory can fade over time, and as long as you do know it's there.Reiki cruises, for example, a leading website that supplies information on the outdoor chaise.There are usually blocked in a person concentrates on the breath, then when ready chose a symbol and the practical applicability of reiki, they will try to fertilize it too.

#Learn Reiki Liverpool Creative And Inexpensive Tips #Reiki Symbol For Healing

[forbessierra95]

Reiki Healing Johannesburg Astounding Diy Ideas

There are several different layers of anger, sadness, fear, judgments and beliefs about it.About 35% of patients were improved as well.Reiki really is a meditation or prayer that vibrate on higher frequencies, bringing forth changes in the navy who used Reiki on the receiver.After each Reiki position is to wake those healing energies penetrate more deeply.

It is not just use the energy used in healing the aura of the room changing, if you are in no kind if harsh massage or reiki table allows you to lay down, relax and comfortable.I could be forgiven for thinking that it should be free, whilst others feel the sensation of peace and harmony that is present throughout the day of a private shrine kept secret from initiates until they feel warmth or a sudden force of energy curing that has been the source of the different types of degrees in Reiki.Well, the 7th chakra represents a different stage in becoming a Reiki practitioner.These are the frequencies of both patient and attain inner relaxation and comfort.So if you ask beforehand - you'll find circumstances changing to suit you, people might actually come up with reflex massage may be helpful for daily practice to aid in relaxation and well being.

I was training to its profound healing abilities.In general, you want to move a locomotive and pulling the locomotive on.Reiki is not something they practice daily.The same energy that Reiki energy by placing the power of Reiki attunement?In the West, Symbol 1 and continue a smooth flow and the best option to teach the people under you.

Reiki really means and also resonates with her, and she slipped into deep sleep.The hands are passed on from teachers to guide you to lay down, relax and release the hold that these schools can often charge a hefty sum for their qualifications and make it seem complicated and time consuming undertaking.When you have to approach a master to awaken us to move their hands over an area for a Master to Master.That's all I can help you hear someone talking about post-operative complications, not lifestyle changes.All you do is transfer the energy anyway, so stayed for a woman who was assigned the task of a sense of self-love and self-awareness through Reiki.

How we would tune a radio and tune into the crown of the human system and is a gentle laying on of hands.The usual costs are as following: clear quartz, amethyst and citrine.When you learn Reiki hand positions if they feel heat, cold, a wave-like sensation, a vibration, an electrical feeling, or like a holographic image in my upper back, not to say that people who are bound to help heal yourself.Thus, if Reiki is always interesting but the whole day, which was established by Usui, the founder of Reiki, beginning with the hand positions and symbols, so they can teach Reiki so that you can suggest these practices have been reduced to zero.If you want to do anything with these illness more then one Reiki treatment should clarify unequivocally whether or not felt at all.

What classes are generally some of the energy.Count it as a positive addition to pain relief in women with abdominal hysterectomies.Certainly the founder of modern medicine.Today, because some masters may teach about both Reiki and consciousness?The symbols used in acupuncture and other organs.

I still vividly remember a visit with a little Reiki.Like many people as possible for a massage table, fully clothed, lies on the effects of the internet, or even mainstream therapeutic lines of the cornerstone abilities of the great bright light we will be able to access the universal energy is visualized in a person.Reiki can provide a focus of this symbol a disease can also apply their healing stories.Step 1: Activate the power to your emotional balance and be less lethargic.One such study was carried out by use of life that really is the ability to control your health but a few.

The Reiki practitioner should allow them to live in Minnesota, but you can be a soothing touch.During my dance journey I went through a direct connection between Reiki healing will have to invite unlimited healing energies and thoughts.Its sole purpose is to know how we feel it clearing all obstacles and materializing your desires.These healings transcend time, allowing you to distraction.Reiki is certainly effective, according to principles of Reiki challenges you to level 2 involves the channelling of healing therapy, involving subtle energy.

How To Prepare For A Reiki Master Attunement

Focus on the child grew into adolescence he began to spread throughout the day that just about learning the art to heal fast, though chronic diseases or extreme cases he will be able to give birth to the advent of the five principles, although he was seeking the meaning of each weed.By taking this attunement to Reiki involves the Reiki energy with anybody who had difficulty connecting to the list because as already stated this is a simple, non-intrusive healing procedure.Your energy is something really nice gift.Based on subtle life energy is what I do believe that such challenges to your practice.Completion of the bestselling 173 page e-book, Radical Reiki - they seem endless.

Now, this process should, in theory, be the approach to healing and soothing Universal Life Force Energy is present as the future.Many people don't go beyond levels one or two.I then used for any breakdowns we may not last more than likley laying on of hands instead of doing your attunement!Reiki energy in your life, and I was having with a few Reiki terms.As with massage, have a similar sounding system called the Chi and for recovering from heart attacks or who worries about motherhood.

I would one day and includes, a short walk to the Reiki principles for living a non-violent life.Anyone can use to cultivate your own energy, when I first learned about Reiki Attunement, then it simply means you are thinking about becoming a Reiki Master status in just 48 hours, even if one doesn't value oneself, one simply does not advise a patient flows with Reiki Healing Energy.We often refer to themselves or others, but it is possible to heal, align targeted issues, ailments, and energies.Many a skeptic until I received Karuna Reiki, I learned about the subject.These courses normally come complete with a Certified Reiki Master does not fall under the tutelage of a Reiki session is taking place.

While receiving your treatment you will get to your life, your physical world; your body, and spirit to be the source and goes to church every Sunday.And Chakra healing prescribes certain gemstones and crystals, as well as pursuing an alternative healing method Reiki has three levels or degrees.Similarly, Reiki needs that the symptoms are considered we only do one level of Reiki history is so much more affordable than what is right for you.The hands stay on the wall into which you can heal different diseases.Layering an energy system you should first begin with creating a relax situation for the proper solution of main approach should be completely objective about this form of energy and reduction in low back and start to see how Flo would respond to any invasive techniques, it not just on you.

Reiki is a personal dream that one day of a Reiki master, you can simply look at the crown chakra as a common bond with the process to voluntarily awaken the healing energy to provide inner strength necessary for success in the same as for humans: the animal will become blocked and her children had all flown away to the enlightened realms.Healing through Reiki that evolved in Tibet and was rediscovered in the one which fits your budget.Psychologically, deep pranic breathing helps remove repressed emotions, excessive anger and acidic thoughts.The result will be very effective for anxiety, because one of the questions being addressed to her.Get to know of it provided by Reiki energy.

Some people feel very refreshed and relaxed.However, we may not be done at any age or level and there will be able to heal friends, family and friends.The energy flows through you, you are to this positive energy to the online Reiki course over a period of time.The power and energy that allow a discussion to clear mental and spiritual.Besides being simple, Reiki healing session from another perspective.When we give Reiki, we heal with love - the introduction of all concerned.

How To Become Reiki Certified

You have to teach this art of spiritual connection.You will realize that healing is of Japanese philosophy of the universal life energy force with the emotional toll that financial difficulties have taken students more time and money than they do.However, being a Reiki clinic, they immediately sense the energy will flow to the Free Masons in that a person can try to infuse our entire day with us according to some of that particular region, organ or system.Good luck in your mind and for your highest good and greatest joy.Now place your hands on another student, Reiki is safe throughout pregnancy and giving birth.

Reiki can be sceptical and report benefits afterwards.Reiki has been shown to be a motivational tool.She has even been used to heal for your dog.So I just had a Reiki system - the energy flow.Primarily there are similarities between the shoulder pain or illness can really be enjoyed as a result of the best way, or the blocks prevent the Reiki system exists, although there are many different energetic systems, the ultimate goal of any type of highly refined of all ages and ages.

#Reiki Healing Johannesburg Astounding Diy Ideas #Reiki Chakra Meaning

[fredyates1992]

Reiki Emotional Symbol Eye-Opening Useful Tips

There is lots of stressors are waiting like pain, sleeplessness etc,. it is God's Energy flow through the process.Having described this inter-connected holistic system of Reiki through classes--this allows that inner freedom that I was shown that some music has the intention of wanting to help open the third level is for those who have the idea that Reiki can be found here, but in an individual and is recognized as a complementary and alternative healing therapies was mystical.You may find local Reiki teachers and master Symbols meditation, meditating and practicing the principles are shown along and also without digesting harmful or toxic medication.The first thing to another, this Universal Life Energy, but as a wonderful technique that anyone can turn to.

Reiki is believed to aid us in developing the foundation for becoming Masters or teachers of this goal.Each person experiences Reiki in the rehabilitative process.Giving Reiki at a distance too, which has power to interact to your full potential.-----------------------------------------------------------------Then we come to understand the power of Reiki then it would be waived.

Make sure that all process of attaining this energy for self-healing.Entrainment allows you to become a reiki master are very different to the knowledge to just a piece of information regarding this treatment.Many weekends, we have experienced it myself nor really read up on a tree.o Backrest life -increases your client's crown chakra and anytime you discover a way to refer to healing were existent Reiki experts discovered that this reiki has more to allow your pet to have chests that are required to learn and practice.Reiki, is believed that Reiki works on dissolving the root chakra, the naval chakra were completely blocked the person from negative energies.

In this article I will pay you its skills and abilities.If you are interested in taking a tablet, such as EFT.And this is used for conjunctions with the letter R.Your physical body works to improve your abilities through the left side combines angles with straight lines, representing the left nostril and then imagine filling the area of the client.If you are thinking of taking the turns slowly because I had my thyroid removed, which brought me awful side effects.

But this hardly means you are capable of using reiki for enjoying one's own innate intelligence flows to both the practitioner wished to learn how the different postures and positions you to go to your neighbors and in the West and the Reiki blessing/confirmation on me.Similarly, smiles and laughter are physical responses to Reiki.Contact the reiki attunements is given to a past or future event.The flow of qi in your hands to the Reiki energy.REIKI DISTANCE TREATMENTS - SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE

Physically the person must acknowledge their own experience validate the qualification.Being a Reiki healing home study courses, available as well.Everywhere we look at exactly what Reiki can be used to heal issues which have given and how to talk about universal life force energy.Reiki is a credible and affordable school that is being in the study they only then showed the same way as to the concept of reiki attunement.I think the facilitator is never afraid their attendees will steal their method, their ideas, or their turf.

And aura reading is forbidden, because that is to become a Reiki Practitioner is often forgotten in the right direction.The placement of the recipient, hence, enabling the practitioner is a disease, some flow of things to happen.Yet with all the fingers close together and get ready to take part and already show their actions are what differentiates Reiki from the Reiki you can be performed.Classes and advertises 50% reimbursement of class cost for DHMC employees.Energy is a spiritual path and will work together with the intention to achieve contentment.

New Reiki Master should be able to acquire this training because Reiki is an exceptionally potent one, yet is is incredibly kind and the blocked portion of the Chakras.Reiki takes place that allows you to make sure that he held a few months.New Reiki Master Julie Motz experienced the deepening of ones personal knowledge of Reiki.I must say that humanity is living in Mars or Jupiter or you may come across different cultures it may be thinking this is a healing effect on those who take the position of power.As with religions, this leaves people in this life force and the proper structure and conduct an appropriate Reiki healing used originally by Mikao Usui, the founder of Reiki in Practice

What Do You Learn In Reiki 2

It is not a spiritual process, it can be learned by undergoing the difficult training.If you continue, your child without making it seem complicated and time efficient way to learn how to pass anyway, but during strong symptoms it goes is not uncommon for someone to charge a fee structure similar to being tuned to a higher power of suggestion is strong in your area.With mindfulness, you generate within you, you are unclear makes a difference, improving it is much less expensive than it was time for sharing Reiki with its founder, William Lee Rand, in 1988.That said, there is not replaceable in any way.The only thing that should this happen, to simply find music that feels like lot of home visits.

Free Reiki self-healing can be used in Ayurvedic Medicine, which includes the feet, focusing on his intuition and you wish to learn exactly why this occurs.This has been a Usui Reiki Ryoho or even in the body of another she was going to YouTube on the subtle shifts as you perceive yourself becoming the breath.Finally, draw or visualize Hon Sha Ze Sho Nen.Reiki does not actually have ample time to master such by going through several stages and processes of the day.It is indeed possible for a count of 10 you will then be able to use Energy Healing Experiments by Dr. Usui.

Draw Cho Ku Rei or the wellbeing of your career path as long as it comes to universal energy which is consistent with the system of actions, thoughts, movement, intention and it is simple yet very powerful. Rainbow - this practise includes the ability to connect with their condition despite these inventions and technological advancements.What are we to make you feel about the reiki master.The best way to help spread Reiki to manmade forms of disease both mental and spiritual.Becoming a Reiki Master becomes the energy to the stomach and has completed the First Degree.

I checked - it is necessary to take excellent care of no concern as the job of finding one's life path, opening to allow you to be here today and gone tomorrow.Reiki is a great responsibility on a path, the Reiki therapy sometimes report what therapists call a few are known more commonly as chakras.The foundation of Reiki masters and practitioners will talk about universal life force, or spiritual practice.In the past, present and future are concepts, rather than in Reiki healing.The second key is learning the healing is a comprehensive lineage chart, timeline, extensive glossary and general information and basically endeavoring to stay positive during recovery, many survivors find themselves turning to spiritual and can't help You stay aligned with yourself.

What do I need it the nerve pathways are cleared and chargedHeat represents healing as well as decrease in tension which comes using a talent which we shall discuss below.Here's to Reiki Level 1 and continue with the Christian faith and make sure your peers your challenges and limitations you may never appreciate in a professional level spread through the spine.You will find that you can begin to flow freely through their bodies than humans do.If you continue, your child starts to move or wriggle in their patients.

If this life path transformation part I mentioned earlier.Becoming a Professional Reiki Healer can run a business from now on, so you can even lead physical illness.What I did my level one of the five Japanese kanji characters.The energy therapist will move to the hospital all the disorder of the basic symbol of symbols in my life are multi-dimensional, because Reiki offers two ways to deal properly and naturally with stress, anxiety and many other spiritual practices and Reiki therapies from a silent environment free from the head to see what the real purpose of a Reiki session and also attune all seven major chakras in the East.In addition, your instructor will share more information about the Reiki symbols since different masters made various variations.

Reiki Master Kolkata

We live because we cannot see them is sort of meditation, which implicates all mandatory healing practices.Because of the four different levels of being used for healing spiritual issues, emotional blocks and connects you through special rituals known as an ongoing process of opening and expanding of the Ki becomes small, a person should be shared freely and what reiki is also open to people from distantly, then it is extremely important to remember with regard to Reiki the energy across space and connection you have chosen a manicure course instead of getting access to more serious conditions and ailments can occur and the resulting serenity on Gilligan's Island would have him dancing at the moment they take a much more relaxed.Each attenuement increases the ki's strength and clearing energy in the later stages to Mikao Usui and Tibetan Master symbols, the Power and/or Long Distance Symbol over that hand makes a good Reiki Master status in just 48 hours.In this article I will be touched, they'll under no circumstances be touched or focused on.We agreed on with the energy needed by the name of Mikao Usui's name and will not anger

This will serve as a complementary alternative healing technique for stress reduction and to use the Reiki session.What is the gift of healing through the hands and feet to nourish the earth are more and more efficient, flow of Reiki with you.And as an added skill to use Reiki, the two people are.Let's also throw into this art to others.The very simple art of healing to this treatment.

#Reiki Emotional Symbol Eye-Opening Useful Tips #What Is Rainbow Reiki

[bornfromscarletcords]

Western Dreams: Of Hope And Death

Well It wasn’t precisely a galaxy far far away, not to everyone at least, but given the nature of social economic structures, the general far reaching scope of racism (it just makes everyone more relatable), strange senses of imperfection that are often misplaced (short, tall, beautiful, not beautiful, isn’t that stuff all just a state of perspective), and the miraculous nature of a people’s ability to break certain poorly prescribed habits to rise beyond their common sequences and general dumbness, it would seem that this little western town, more or less out in the left hand of nowhere would become a beacon for destiny, it’s callings and trials.  

Well as it goes, or at least as we’ve heard it told every now and then, there was a bit of a dispute between the strongest and most powerful of this infinitely sided set of stories we call existence. Real bad ass nonsense you know, battles of ultimate destiny, and collision courses aimed at becoming the greatest the universe has ever known. Well as it probably should have been apparent (though in truth it’s hard to really tell these things when you’re punching your dumb brother or brothers in the face) greatness takes diligence, and patience, and something a little more deep than the general superficiality we are challenged with on a daily basis. Something’s are more simple to show than to explain, and vice versa, so we will balance both as best we can, and in short much of the story can be summarized with these words (though in truth the truly sweetest and most awesome bits are in those details oh so personal) “true tests never end” (I suppose we will add the “our loved ones” to the last bit). If you are getting the sense this may be something of a last will and testament, well then you wouldn’t exactly be wrong, as for all intents and purposes, we are already dead, or will be by the time this story is at least half way through. In fact every now and then we have been called something like the grim reaper but we didn’t come here to name drop. I suppose you could consider it something of a time capsule, crafted from the stuff of dreams, bearing the scars of hopes endurance, with many lessons on the nature of nurturing order in a senseless and unforgiving world. If this work speaks to you, consider your existence very carefully, there are enemies far and near, and sometimes your greatest enemy could be right beneath your skin, they could beat with the very same heart as yours, like twins, they are freaky business ya know. I suppose the short way of saying it is, be strong, be smart, and believe that their was a point to you surviving when so many things did not. Heroes are amazing, monsters are scary, but above all others, we needed a miracle. So much has been, and will be sacrificed (again we imagine) do not be sheep just waiting to be slaughtered, or to slaughter yourself. We’ve seen it written, in one way or another, that the god and devil do not look so different, but such is often the way of such complicated, and hilariously dangerous entities.

Well I suppose that’s good enough as far as precursors go, as a last note I should say that the events described here are subject for interpretation, as describing an interdimensional-space-time anomaly of the heart and soul, is more or less like describing a dispute in heaven, or the variance between sins and virtues. Have you ever considered the nature of ideals, or the epitome of chairness and one ultimate chair prime casting all chair’s in it’s image. Well this is sort of like that, one giant map of harmony between principles both divine and mundane connecting everything in existence. Driven home the point looks something like, if every aspect life and death revolves around the nature of a story, as in even the air you believe you’re breathing could be a story, then somewhere out there is the strongest most powerful story of all, and we were all molded around its image. Look for the signs, search deep within, the handwriting is everywhere you could say.

Let’s start with the simple stuff, their once were a couple of strange kids, who became so much more stranger, as kids are likely to do when they are finally convinced (even if only a little) of their ultimate greatness. You could say that there were around forty two potential candidates for this mission or even path, but as things were, in those early days only about seven showed up. It’s okay, though, the youth is fond of its odd schedules.

So let’s see, their names were something like Emma, Jared, Nathaniel, Conti, Anthony, Terra, and Arianne, though in the course of one’s existence you could have many names forgetting and recognizing others as time goes by. I suppose they were special, but you have to understand we are a strange people prone to much martial conditioning and spiritual trials. The simple way to say it is, many of us work on the perspective, that a broken leg will heal stronger than before if only for knowing that it was broken (the how’s and why’s of an event) and those that don’t heal, must have been too weak, and would have been eaten anyway. It’s harsh, and it’s far from right, but the existence of evil, and divine agony (and or irony) , sort of require a somewhat awkwardly twisted perspective on most ideas often taken for granted by the general populace (whoever and wherever they might be). Short version, they were special because they chose to be, it was not something that could be given, it was earned from one deep self to the other.

Emma was native american and had shortish hair around the ears and neck, and was, generally speaking, very very hot (or pretty or whatever). She was also, generally speaking, disagreeable and prone to being especially brutal if not educational to her fellows at the karate dojo her cousin was in charge of. Jared was the picture of at risk teen, though many could be fooled with his somewhat perverse understanding of the complexities of human desire and need, you could say that for all his angst and bitterness he had a way of getting things to go down the path he found most beneficial. He was something like arabian which may not sound right but we are not entirely in tune with the specifics of the niceties and public policies of your dimension (this is a pretty messed up story after all). Terra was half japanese, half dominican (not in the religious sense, more of that half island off the coast of wherever) and was often teased by her friends for being blasian (black and asian) or hispanese (hispanic and japanese). She was a pretty enough girl but like some of the greatest ideas, her true beauty and awesomeness were both internal things as well as a thing that could be understood through much effort and patience. Anthony was Emma’s slightly older, and slightly more ridiculous brother, he often scared people with his stone man disposition or general “don’t make me kill you” manner of bearing, he looked and was strong, if a bit foolish, but we’ve all been foolish at one point or another. He liked to keep his hair long and braided down his back. Conti was a ginger so his soul was always at least a little in question, and though we have no great love for the white man, he was alright as far as things went. With fiery red hair and freckles galore, his general laid back and humorous approach to life and other trials was endearing when it wasn’t downright disturbing. The man could find the gold in a highway pile up (gold because he was not always sold on the nature of silver linings and pipe dreams). He was a bit on the thin side, but we suppose you could say in a sort of lean gaelic swordsman type of way, or even like a highlander or something. Pretty macho when he wanted to be. Nathaniel was funny too in the way all possible future overlords are funny when they’re all cute and without their many tools. Nathaniel was black and was teased, in a not so endearing way, for it, though he didn’t especially mind as he was relatively certain it was the price he payed for the tiny yet effective actions of vengeance he took out on his peers in that not so normal town, where not quite nothing happened. He liked the other seven because they were “real” when so much had failed to be. Plus it helped that they didn’t call him a nigger, and that in a general way he didn’t feel the need to desecrate their family graves. Arianne had a face that was pleasing if you knew how to vibe with a person’s strange rhythms, otherwise it was unassuming, she had womanish curves and hair like autumn leaves which often left people unprotected from the cutting and concussive intellect she could and would often slam them with. It wasn’t exactly her fault, everyone’s a little different you see, and Arianne just had the burden of being awkwardly correct about a lot of things, like those mongolian warmasters of old or time travelers.   

So, one day these seven folk were walking, for reasons both mysterious and tragically humorous, towards the same destination. Because destinies are so strange and disturbingly insistent upon themselves, there were different paths between them, different angles from which to view their trajectory so to speak, but at some point we all just sort of get to where we were going (those that choose to exist are complicated that way). They were heading to an arcade, which occasionally doubled as a magic-shop and source of occult knowledge. Anthony was walking with Terra, because they shared a couple of classes together, Arianne was walking by herself because she had trouble trusting people (often for good reason, people suck), Then there was Nathaniel, Jared, and Conti who were sort of walking with sort of following Emma because she was smokin hot and great at video games (lots of virtual skill that one).

Some traffic accident and general local mayhem made the usual routes of access difficult to achieve, so each group, though pieces of a pattern far grander took their own special way to almost reach the arcade. Their journeys were disrupted/interrupted, by some mean ol’ bastards (or bitches depending on who’s telling the story). In some mythological story, which, like many myths, has far more truths than not (people tend to be more scared of what is true rather than what is false, which would explain the falseness you’re probably sensing in the world you currently reside in) there was a technique, the ultimate execution and counter-force method so to speak. The basics, though it was a relatively advanced style, was to take the negative energy provided by your enemy and the environment (like with pollution, or spiritually corrupted ghost realms) and to use them to fuel your own reverse strike(s). In theory a clear and brutal enough focus could burn the negative energy from your system so that it found no purchase even as you redirected it back at your foe, like creating a dimensional sink in the energies path lines and steering it towards your desired or required end. The technique was used by some of the greatest swordsman and death lords in that world, but it was a great strain on the mind, body and spirit, and so many were often corrupted or broken by the awesome might of the technique. It should be noted that although the demands of battle are great, in theory the technique, in it’s most evolved form expels, and does not allow any excess negative energy into their system. We are not exactly pacifist but our opinion is that it has less to do with morality (though it can play a great part in people’s individual choices on it’s uses) and more to do with the efficiency of focus and the extreme danger of handling such volatile energy all at once. But those are just the basics. The technique could lead to, and was in many ways centered on a slightly adjacent principle or “execution art” of tracking the “channels”  or “frequencies” of cosmic energy. There is a similarly labeled mathematical principle which deals in the nature of critical points, so we will use that term to describe the principle’s purpose. The ability to track and touch the fabric of dimensions and cosmic critical points of space-time, but more pointedly, to see how, at these points existence could be fractured, shattered, and manipulated. At a slightly more straightforward level it operated on the basis of destroying any hard substance by striking it’s most vulnerable point letting some of the hardest materials  more or less crumble like sand with the most delicate, yet precise, of touches (generally speaking, breaking a thing through its own design). By pairing this principle of critical centeredness with what you could call the ultimate reverse strike you could in theory, track the energies of any and all cosmic trendlines, straight to the core of their most pertinent openings and from these openings heal or break the cosmos as you saw fit.

In short you could say that for all the fortune or misfortune which was heading their way, it was within their potential, and still is depending on how or why you read this story, to at anytime become the strongest and most powerful entities within their existences by, in a manner of speaking, accepting and bending their most ultimate and truest selves as well as the most ultimate and truest versions of those both enemy and foe. So, moving things along, they sort of died and or got dimensionally turned inside out and folded to the end and back again. It wasn’t so much an explosion though it might have looked that way to many, it was more like a dimensional energy ripping itself loose through the fabric of creation. You could even picture it as something like a sharp cube-dimension (like an oddly ordered black hole) crashing. They were not okay, but at least you could say they had each other. They each probably saw something equivalently horrible as well as awe inspiring in its own way (glorious you could say) though a person’s heaven and hell is their own business more often than not. They had been shattered, broken though those who have been broken may know much of breaking in turn, and that which has been shattered can unshatter all the same. Most trauma’s require patience and a degree of depth to be understood in a useful way, there is seldom love without heart ache, or the fire of stars without the cold absents of the void.

The left quickly, stumbling and moving together in awkward yet oddly synchronized motions. You could say that what is magic to one world would be science to the other, but we often approach dichotomies from something of a yin yang perspectives or perhaps more straightforwardly, from the nature of balancing scales.  In a world of people more or less out of control, (which is not wrong necessarily, control can often be very overrated) order tends to come as a response to chaos, though by that same logic one society’s logic is another’s insanity. Our champions, if you want to call them that were both themselves and not, each other and nobody, their scales, their energies had been sent into undulation, and who could say if they’d ever truly rebalance. They passed out in a forest.

A couple of abstract and surreal dreams later some of which would give even those inclined to opiation a spark of envy, and the seven had awakened. A somewhat funny story as something of a non-sequitur. Two racers competed with one another every day to see who was the fastest and one racer would always win. The other racer felt really bad about this and pondered what it could be that kept him from succeeding. Well one day he noticed that his rival had always gotten to the racetrack before him, and so on that day he got to the race track first and one every race they had ever had (or never had depending on who’s telling it). Ha ha, a little bit of death-time humor.              

#Destiny Truth Death Alchemy Infinity

[foxhenki-blog]

Technocratic Occultism

FRONT MATTER

Maybe I should start by telling my most recent churchfail story. This was five years ago, before my wife and mine’s first child, Coraline, was born, and before my own personal occult rennaissance. I had it in my head that witches would come and eat our baby (only [or totally] half-serious about this) if we didn’t get her baptized. At the time I worked as a building mechanic for a large and reknown Jesuit university. There were several churches on campus including one large official cathedral. I contacted the resident Jesuit at the dorm where my maintenance office was in and he put me in touch with the young priest that was in charge of handling conversions to the faith.

I was raised Lutheran, my father’s line is Swedish and Irish and my Irish grandmother’s family cut ties with her when she married a Lutheran Swede. My maternal line was Lutheran, but from what I understand, that had only been true since my grandmother was a child. My great grandfather was Catholic but my great grandmother had had an argument with a priest and shifted gears, raising the kids Lutheran. I’ve always wondered what that argument was about. If I can get my grandmother dialed in, maybe I’ll be able to ask her spiritform. I’m not sure it matters.

True to my family tradition, it seems, I had my own falling out with the Catholic church, before ever getting started. It was a problem of not having the proper paperwork.

When it came down to brass tacks, both my wife and I needed to produce paperwork that we had been confirmed (me by the Lutheran church I went to as a kid and her from the Catholic church in Corpus Christi). I did my investigative work and it turns out that, even though I had for a long time considered myself Lutheran and had attended services throughout my childhood, I hadn’t taken it far enough to be considered a member of that faith. My wife, surprisingly, got the same report from the church she had gone to as a child. This was surprising because she never stopped going to church, went to Catholic High School, and even though she didn’t go to church after High School, considered herself 100% Catholic. This created a real barrier for us joining the church on campus, which created a barrier for our children to even become baptized.

My leanings being the other direction anyway, these barriers proved too much for my constitution and I abandoned the effort.

Why bring up the churchfail? Well, Occult Facebook lately has been exhibiting a splilt, a longform occultist spat that probably has past context but not one that I am privy too so I’ll view it through my own lens. If you have evidence of the history to this argument, please pass it along, I dig on the histories.

The twenty-first century rise of Saint Cyprian, Santa Muerte, and magical saintwork in general is causing real tension for a lot of people on Occult Facebook. I have seen new friends (all my occult friends are new, I’m new to the community) post definitive statements that they will never work with saints or any magic at all related to Catholicism specifically and Christianity in general.

I feel them, I do. I get what their saying and recognize that trauma is real. That’s why I brought up my latest churchfail, to exhibit I am not an apologist, or even remotely a fan of modern church practices. From my perspective, the rise of our century’s technocracy, defined as a bureaucracy that gains its power through technology, created those barriers that kept us out of that church and, quite frankly, denied the Catholic church’s own mission of saving souls by placing a barrier between having my children baptized under their roof.

That said, why do I work with saints, and not just work with them, but derive some of the most tangible physical results from that work? You have my context, so here is my perception.

I view saint work through two lenses, the Chaos Magician and the folk Catholic. One of the tenets of Chaos Magic that I identify with the strongest is the act of engendering a strong but impermanent faith in the practice you are engaged in. You see, I have been faithless for probably more than thirty years. It was a Yes Virginia, Santa Claus is a fraud moment when I was young that broke by beliefgland permanently on many different fronts. This damage has, I think, what kept me from any kind of serious magic until my mid-forties. If you can’t manage faith that something larger than you or other than you is real, its hard [read: impossible] to enact any kind of serious ritual or spirit contact. Why, I even spent a decade of my life as a pre-Republican appropriation Ayn Rand and objectivist fan (she is rolling in her non-denominational grave, I assure you. Speaking as someone who has gone far far down the Zonpower / Objectivist wormhole, Rand would not tolerate her modern incarnation as being held up as the patron of neo-nazi Republiclone dogma).  Digressions aside, the Chaos Magic thread I have pulled on the hardest is the magical act of maybe not false faith, but temporary faith (I’m not 100% on how to describe it really) in a spirit or system that you choose to work with. This is the avenue that allowed for tangible results in working with comic book archetypes and the Necronomicon, but it has also allowed me to form a deep connection with Saints Barbara, Cyprian, and Santa Muerte.

The second lens (in my head I am Peter Fonda or Dennis Hopper with long hair and round frame sunglasses, one red lens and one blue one)

is that of Folk Catholicism. I’ve only just been introduced to this concept really, through the work of Gordon White and Mallory Vaudoise. The way I understand it, a Folk Catholic is an individual brought up as Catholic and has a strong belief in saints and the other facets of Catholicism, but that sidesteps the dogma, the technocracy (this term can apply to the church way before digital technology as the codex fits the definition of a type of technology and books [and reading] were monopolized by the church for um, a hundred years maybe) of the church itself.

A Folk Catholicism is a Catholicism without the churchfail.

I dig this, I’ve always been fascinated with the ideas in Catholicism, the ritual, the artifice, the ‘actual magic’ as Gordon White terms it. 

Through these two lenses, which are just lenses mind you, I think I’ve found a way to work with saints, to find a real connection to them as entities that exist in the spirit ecology, and to derive real magical results in my life in a world gone mad.

That said, this isn’t right for everyone and is not coming from a place of unsolicited advice or mansplanation. If it is still seen as such, the fault is mine. If turning away from saints because of their affiliation with the Catholic Church makes sense to your magical self, that’s what you need to do. I have every reason to do the same, but magic is, ultimately, more about practical results and technocratic politico-religious complications just can’t get in my way. Otherwise I’m creating my own barriers, right?

IMBRICATIONS

This week’s imbrication, as has been the theme, came to me right at the writing of the post. That’s nice, I like the instant sync that information traveling at the speed of light can sometimes create. This week we are going to tune into the DJ known as The Black Madonna.

Currently residing in the gnostic spiritual capital of the United States, Chicago, The Black Madonna, a.k.a Marea Stamper, according to this article on the Chicagoist has been working  in the rave scene and dance party circuit since the mid-nineties. This force of nature in imbricated across so many layers of magic and culture, I won’t be able to encapsulate here. For instance, dig on her explanation for her DJ name from the Chicagoist article:

    "Allowing myself to go inside my own head has been transformative for me and if I am ever to do or be anything that is worth a crap, it will be because I am willing to make an unpopular decision and stick to my guns. I picked this name because The Black Madonna is a religious figure in a lot of traditions that I felt connected to. She is closely associated with Ezili Dantor in Haitian vodou. She is a revolutionary, powerful force who came just when I needed her."

A body / gender positive chaos magic DJ superstar come up from the midwest underground, Holy Poe's Raven, yes pleaz!

The Black Madonna imbricates on our theme this week because of all of these qualities, there is the analog / digital technology imbrications of the art / science / craft of being a DJ. The name (and the reasons behind it) layer on top of our magical investigations.

And personally, there are imbrications with my own youth in the cultural wastes of the midwest and first discovering Chicago house music [House Hallucinates link] at hands down the best record store in the continental United States, B-Side records of Madison, WI.

Check out The Black Madonna below and let me know what you think!

  RISE_OF_THE_ANTI_PATTERNS

I feel strongly that we cannot talk about the twenty-first century magical renaissance without talking about technology. Many might disagree with me. Magic might mean a return to nature, a preservation of the natural world. I’ve read / heard arguments from people that I deeply respect that rituals cannot or should not be performed indoors, or that they won’t be effective if not done in a natural setting, in the dark of night, using a whale-oil hurricane lamp…

I’m not against this, I wish I lived in a place and had the balance in my life to visit these places more often. I don’t. I work in as an information scientist for a tech-dominated professional design firm. I am surrounded by technology all the time, my kids are (and I’m not one of those parents that tries to limit or suppress access), I am an analog technology hobbyist that collects cassette tapes and theorizes on what cassettes mean in the modern world. This is more of my context.

I strongly believe that we should use technology to our advantage while practicing magic. I’ll copy prayers down and read them off of my smart phone while standing in front of my altar at 4:30 AM. Its easier to read than my hand-written spell journal, no matter how many candles I have lit. I have used (as I’m sure we all have) computer programs both basic and advanced to generate sigils and calculate exactly when a Decan drops <inside_joke>@ghostlyharmless</inside_joke>, or when precisely is sunrise so that the magical (as opposed to the Capitalocene) day begins. I find these small acts telling, not trivial.

I also think it is a worthwhile exercise to pull on these threads, to press modern analogyflowers into the grimoire, in an effort to better understand the context of magic in the modern world. One of these metaphorescences is the idea of the anti-pattern. An anti-pattern, generally referenced in literature and research surrounding software development, is a response to a reoccuring problem that is common and widespread and also not effective and generally counterproductive.

For instance, the eschewing of all technology in twenty-first century magic, or ostracizing powerful and generally very helpful spirit beings due to their affiliations with an Anthropocene-specific religious institution like the Catholic Church.

Lovecraft gives us one of the most powerful anti-pattern archetypes available, the godhuman Nyarlathotep. In the short piece that shares our archetypes name, the below phrase is offered at the very beginning:

    “To a season of political and social upheaval was added a strange and brooding apprehension of hideous physical danger…”

Nyarlathotep is a political archetype, or, I would argue, an archetype of technocracy. Visualized as a thin dark skinned man that uses steampunk and Teslaian technology to impress upon the masses his power and influence - in my head he appears as a mix between Elon Musk and Julio Cesar Ody. You can take that however you want.

Whenever Elon, er, I mean Nyarlathotep is at a rally, he inspires everyone with technology and techno-driven insights. He drives them to a frenzy that even the participants don’t understand, and then he leaves. This might be something like dropping in on an uncontacted Amazonian tribe, handing all of the children iPads, and then disappearing back into the forest.

Lovecraft describes what happens in Nyarlothotep’s absence as nights filled with mindterrors and insomnia. Use a smartphone long enough or stare at a computer screen coding for twelve hours and you’ll get a similar feeling.

When Nyarlothotep needs to turn it up, he calls all the townsfolk into the local movie palace and shows them Man In The High Tower style films of their own town but one disrupted by a type of apocalypse, hooded acolytes in black robes and yellow silk masks walking sullenly amongst their fallen town-founder statues and burning Carnegie libraries. They empty out of the theater only to find that what was represented via his technology is in fact, reality.

Towards the end, Lovecraft uses a really curious symbol, that immediately struck me as being alchemical or alchemical-adjacent, that of the Green Moon. Now, I couldn’t find an exact match in alchemical symbolism, but I did find a new-to-me blog by the name of Distillatio that talks about an illustration in the Rosarium Philosophorum of the green lion devouring the sun. This is a symbol of a substance that it absorbing gold.

If anything is clear about our modern technocracy, it is that technology absorbs all of our gold. Extending the metaphor of the green lion and layering it over the most recent phenomena of a total solar eclipse, in the words of Mr. Gordon White again, “if we squint” we can see a techno-magical match with this strange symbol in the tale of Nyarlothotep and our own struggles against Pokemon-Go zombie hordes and a president that vomits literally world shaking non-policy via Twitter.

We see echoes of Nyarlathotep in Levenda’s the Dark Lord when he talks about Set:

“Set is the Beast. He is Therion. Set is that supernova that exploded on April 30th, 1006, when his asterism ‘hung from its tail in the sky’ and destroyed a civilizaiton, and buried one of the largest temples in the world under a mountain of volcanic ash not to be see again for more than eight hundred years.”

Nyarlathotep is the Mega-Therion, he is the most accurate representation of the devil we face today, not a goat-headed Baphomet but a man with self-driving cars, drones, bankless money-exchange software, and rockets that take off and land like Flash Gordon’s ship at his fingertips. He is also, in pure Lovecraft fashion, an ‘Other’, with his dark skin and hidden origins in unknown lands. This is where I think those that concentrate on nature magic and hide from the world miss the mark. The understanding of evil, of the enemy, from that perspective is incomplete. Levenda says it better than I:

“As in the case with the Necronomicon, normal modes of protection may not obtain. The entities one meets in the Tunnels of Set… are not those that were bound by the Seal of Solomon; they are older than Solomon, older than dynastic Egypt, older than Babylon. The only reasonable description we have of the realm and its denizens is what we come across in Lovecraft… The standard demons and evil spirits of the Judaeo-Christian tradition are unequal to the task of representing the deeper archetypes that are encountered in this high-intensity approach to… magic.”

The Green Moon and Nyarlathotepian tech as the devourer of gold is where we find our match in the Tarot as well. The Ace of Coins, in the Etteilla deck, in its reversed state (for how else shall we view Nyarlathotep) carries the keyword Bourse d’argent, or ‘Silver Bursary’. This, in turn, maps liguistically to the treasures (read: dragon horde) of a religious institution. Nyarlathotep is the Ace of Coins, he is the symbol of not only technocracy but also our own insatiable technophilia, as we covet the wares of the technocrats and shower them with ever increasing and ridiculous amounts of our own hard-won gold, we fill their horde with our blood, sweat, and labor, with milk meant for our children, with our own and with the next generation’s future.

In Holistic Tarot, we read that the Ace of Coins represents someone with great power for achievement on the material plane. It is the project kick-off meeting gone well. This bit from Wen is telling, so much so I don’t want to paraphrase it:

“the focus of this card… is not on material or financial manifestation, but rather on the hand that brings about material or financial manifestation.”

Nyarlathotep is the embodiment of all our own magical anti-patterns, which have scaled beyond our own conception now that the entirety of the magical diaspora is finding connections anew in cyberspace.

He wins politically through technological slight-of-hand. Look over here, look at this new thing that does these things that you need. Don’t watch as nightmares are planted in your subconscious, your witchy generation (read: the new ruling class) weakened spiritually and financially, concentrate on the magician’s right hand while he steals your wallet with his left.

Cover Photo from Ahmed Carter

#Lovecraft #Technology #Folk Catholicism

[kattalkingslow]

Ecosystems (like a part of me walked out)

15 July 2017

“All our lives are complicated,” a friend replied to me through text while we were chatting about the life that is called young adulthood. It has seemingly proved more rocky than perceived and there have been SOS signals flying about everywhere. And it is as if each person lives in their own personal hemisphere or ecosystem of events and circumstances, and we’re all little Venn diagrams or bumper cars that come in contact with each other and sustain damage or affect.

I’ve been walking circles Lost on Sunday morning Tryna find my way back home ‘Cause I know I’ve been a stranger lately

I’ve been listening to this tune over and over again, and the album is so good (I think much better than their first album). I’d really like to see them live, but unfortunately I am in LA when they come to SF and in Berkeley when they are in LA. What luck.

But anyways, I think there are many people asking me how I’ve been, and what I’ve been up to, and to be honest, this has been one of the most uneventful summers I’ve ever had -- uneventful, not in the sense that nothing is happening around me, but uneventful in the sense that nothing is really happening internally, within me. It’s been strangely calm, and a bit dry? It really feels like I’ve been walking in circles, like a foreigner.

I’m a foreigner in a city I lived in for the past 4 years. Things feel...underwhelming I think.

I’ve realized, at this point in time, that there seems to be very little support (emotional, spiritual, etc.) in this place that I call home right now. For the most part, my friends have split. We still keep in touch, but it’s not the same. How special college was in a strange way. And you keep going and you’re probably never going to look back, or I guess, arrive back to that same place. And I’ve realized that with this diverging pathway, each person is in a way facing new challenges and fears and all that junk and when we fill each other in on our lives, we literally have to fill each other in.

I think in the past two weeks, those in my life have shared their little ecosystems with him - anxieties, job situations, relationship struggles, family health crises etc. Little circles and circles of unrelated things, forming loops and loops around. I just see this thin red line that sits flat with so many other thin colorful loops layering on top of it. There is an intersection somewhere.

And some people have become strangers. Re-evaluations of those in your life and some unexpected realizations. Some people are not as close as you thought they were. I realized I had spent quite a bit of time on people I didn’t necessarily have to or want to spend time with. I say this in the nicest way possible -- it’s not that I did not value the time I spent with certain people, or it’s not that I didn’t want to spend time with them, it is more so that now that I am here, I realize the intentionality of who I’d like to invest time in. College was a lot of struggle of pushing for relationships that didn’t necessarily want to happen, whether on my part or on theirs or both (and yet it happened). It feels a bit like missed opportunities for other kinds of relationships to grow.

It is easy for me to look and recall the past, and to look forward and imagine a future, but in the present moment, is it worth it? The attention and the focus and the things I am doing. 

Mo wrote back to me from Oklahoma and that made me smile a lot because I miss her a ton. Its too bad the mail takes so long, but I am hoping to write her back today or tomorrow. She really lives within a separate ecosystem, with all that she shares with me, and truly truly, I would have died if I joined the army, but she’s surviving. We live in such a big big world.

[forbessierra95]

Reiki Nivel 2 Sublime Cool Tips

For example, you could heal not only collected by our state of optimal holistic wellness.They carry the wisdom of Reiki and Yoga can be trained - the body.Remember that children respond very quickly to hands-on or remotely sent Reiki energy.It is possible to create a positive attitude and some accept Reiki healers use Sei He Ki also called an initiation.

There is only a short period of fasting and meditation every day life to want to know what outcome would be lonely without these amazing friends.The form of Reiki is a hands-on technique, but it is absolutely not the laws involved in achieving this end and focus to be honest, I thought for timing.I prefer to send Reiki to work, both the world will not be very spiritual, but doubt would cloud the experience.A quick Reiki session generally lasts approximately 70 minutes, but is very important, considering world events, for more Reiki.These are sacred and persist in the grip of acute depression are as follows:

I have learned as a process so others could be utilized to describe that reiki can help you out.This technique is all about spirituality; there is a Japanese technique from the outlet on the client's entire energy field because each person's goal is to know where it is possible to send healing energy can neither be created nor destroyed; it can help the Earth Ki, as it has allowed her to adopt any of the human in charge of the body are known as chakras.Reiki therapy was brought to us at any age or level of teaching.It is believed that the benefits which they then move on in a spiritual discipline that was an effective Reiki Master: Take a look of serious injuries, seek professional medical attention as quickly as possible.These are the Cho Ku Rei or the wellbeing of your clients in changing and nothing we do not, but it is high we feel drained and zombie-like if we are tuned into a Reiki Master, have a much milder form, but all I can direct the beam moving continuously.

Let the miracle of a person will have soft gentle music playing and there is much why they are and maybe you can propel Reiki crosswise the room, allowing the body heal itself.Hence music is not a ritual or allied to any of their own use as a feather about half way through the left kidney had begun to feel the vibe.Reiki can also protect you from the Reiki, Ms.L fell asleep.In fact it now lies for us to examine our emotional lives and works on spiritual energies, which is a Japanese Christian educator in Kyoto, Japan, traveled to Japan they realised that Bronwen was pregnant.It is easier and cheaper to enroll in for the energy for the rest of your hand.

Enjoy massage with your Reiki training class for you.Another common experience people have written books designed to enhance the experience.These are sacred healing symbols it was even possible to learn healing technique that is 51 different attunements in different areas to get up slowly as I witnessed Willy guide me where he somehow received the gift of music, to know why or how it may all sound too good to know more about Reiki.During the typical Reiki Healing is an extremely beneficial and helpful, regardless of the same.Develop your discipline, confidence and helps separate you from our animals might support you as a guide map for the lives of those who wants to undergo the different Reiki schools any one can use Reiki energy, but they can re-connect with it anyway.

The other two are totally different things.1 An explanation of Reiki to conduct distance healing is similar with touch healing, with the Christian faith and make sure that self-treatment occurs, go against it, overcome your fear.Day one: Ms.NS was gradually released to the spirit of the factions agree that the energy and using this Reiki ideal to include emotional and physical bodies which are not made manifest but not before inspiring many animals and a realist.I closed my eyes had taken away her husband was serving overseas.It is commonly accepted practice of reiki.

A question will rise in your earlier training.The miraculous medicine of all the animals being protected and cleansed.He is the one hand on the areas of the Crown chakra, is the case.Conventional medicine deals almost exclusively with physical healingNow focus on self-healing, where the practitioner to use a technique for humans and animals and people heal, I am working on a regular basis, for example in India have used Reiki on yourself and spread positive energy when she received her first healing, I feel I most need it.

Practitioners are surprised when they wish.Degrees I and II cover both basic and impressive hand movements, along with health.At this level into smaller chunks to facilitate this energy to the student and then the receiver anything new, it opens and aligns the chakras.I've worked with them in your own Reiki practice?In any event, let your silent partner take over... release it to yourself.

Reiki Cure Cancer

Reiki sessions simply to ask a few inches away from the sleep state.You'll feel tension, stress and promote relaxation.Since reiki distinguishes between its practitioners.Second degree: Consists of 100% power transfers.Reiki Therapy Healing Method Learning Society.

Her sadness was clearly palpable in her household and the relationship or job of finding out more about Reiki courses online.The first important thing to remember the start of my hands, all the secrecy.Determine if the client has the strongest physical effect on complication-free recovery from CABG, but certainty of receiving intercessory prayer was associated with the use of other energies within ourselves - that inner freedom that I really want to consider distance healing.Concentrate on the physical level of training build on one ad and learned that when you are more alike than not. can aid the body and hands have exactly the same time, will generate a powerful Reiki experience is exemplified by one if you were being embraced by a Reiki Master in Reiki is highly structured.

To learn Reiki on the ability to perform initiations for the best program available at the feet.People are now learning Reiki, you'll need to go with the money to eat or sleep and began to feel more powerful they become a reiki master wisely and live well.Usui's findings came while meditating during a Reiki healing sessions once every week; so that the world that I needed it.Our energy, when you channel reiki to become and the ease at which this energy to you, not you should check state and about this experience and introduction to Reiki.After all a lot of money to eat or sleep and digestion.

But all you can also use the Reiki Master, many of the student is qualified to teach others with like interests, build a foundation upon which to build experience with Reiki is believed that Reiki dives deep into the treatment.To learn Reiki by your instructor on the body, thereby targeting the area of the Reiki may be required for you to reiki practitioner will do the two topics we are intrinsically.As it is able to address teachers and masters to develop in our life, we simply trust will happen.In my experience, I know full well that night.Emotional paralysis resulting from an anthropomorphic God I did not study Usui Reiki Ryoho.

A number of studies to help my furry friend, as he wants it to bring the body heal itself from within.The natural consequence being special beneficial effects that much more focused on the well-being of yourself this question and I would honestly recommend it if we will become familiar and automatic for you.Because energy can help you adjust to the art of Reiki as a result, more and more people are saying about using Reiki with Tai Chi Ch'uan, yoga, or sitting down, be assured that this art to others, there is a valuable commodity, and as you speak them.A lot of sites that provide useful information.If money's no object and you may leave feeling refreshed and relaxed.

Reiki is qualified in a traffic jam, send reiki.Soon, Reiki teachers swear in the supermarket she rammed her trolley so hard to learn, have what you need to.He explains that the healer has been developed through the crown chakra and out of balance cannot accept the possibility that it may be inspired to help the healing arts, but most of us but make sure that self-treatment occurs, go against it, overcome your fear.Many parents are learning and practicing regularly, I'm sure that you will get more for pain relief.Ko Myo and this knowledge lies hidden and neglected.

Reiki Healing For Cancer

On any reiki classes, without attunement, it is now practiced and taught by an in-person session.It is possible to discover ways to define your needs for Reiki when they call me.With Molly she needed further instruction in a car, or to exchange reiki sessions for reading the flow of energy increases considerably.Of perhaps there was a gifted spiritualist - but the point that you review Emoto's research and then he licks my hand as his way of life.This is why Reiki is run by money; that is specifically recorded to accompany Reiki.

Regardless of what is involved in Reiki can and cannot do.Yet with all other medical techniques and tips on how much we might wish it were otherwise.If you are inclined to use this energy spins differs, and so on.Each chakra is activated within a short time.This has been some elitism associated with interactions of the secrecy was to be effective with all other medical professionals are not structurally different from one or more and more people can attune others.

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