THOUGHTS ON PRACTICE - Written By Mad Queen
I used to see all over the world, gossamer spider strands. They vibrate and are invisible but I can see them move, the way they subtly shift the air. These are the same strands that let me talk to trees or hear histories in stones. To feel a thing and get a sense of what it might have seen. These extend also to people, these strands. Really they extend to all things and are between all things. I used to meditate in my backyard when I was a teenager and I would start by remembering and recognizing the strands. It was always easiest outside. The sway of the wind made the vibrations more visible, each blade of grass connected to a thrumming system of roots, the ground a living and breathing thing. I would sit there sometimes for hours, watching this. Feeling each thing I cast my eyes upon also connected to me. If I sustained this long enough I would see more layers, more strands. So many sometimes to where they blotted out the form of the world and all seemed to be naught but moving color and vibration, the ripples in between.
Later, I started to try to “single” these strands out, in relation to their connections to people. I realized I always thought of my sisters as an aqua color, and decided to “assign” people colors to their strands. This made it easier to discern what I was feeling and who it might be from, and also to allow me to connect with them as well. After a while this is a passive thing, to where I think of them and I feel like I just “know”. Sometimes it is flash of a scene, like a moment in a movie, other times it’s just a statement that comes to pass, sometimes – sometimes I feel like I am standing right in front of them, watching them. A few people in my life have been able to see me watching them, and from there interact.
I’ve practiced remote viewing in the past and found that often I would pick up more on the person and their surroundings than the object or subject of focus. This often still tends to be true, and this is a good practice for me still as it helps with information discernment.
I think of each of these invisible gossamer strands as wires so to speak, through which information flows. All things both take in and generate information, recycle it if you will. Humans do this with such beauty and complexity that over the years I have started to think of these strands holding a soft glow.
When someone I am connected to dies, this strand does not disappear, but it does change. The strands become silver to me in my mind, and they are connected forever to a space of time in which that person lived. In this communication still seems possible but it is with a mind that has come to pass, literally talking to ghosts. Sometimes though, ghosts have good tales to tell, and sometimes voices bring comfort. The other thing that happens is the strand splits in two, the silver strand connected to the past, the emanation of the person in the world when they lived it, as the other darkens and connects to the sky, it is also gossamer and invisible but a darker invisible. I wish I could show you exactly what is in my mind, for it is hard to describe and impossible to paint or draw.
Over time I noticed that all people have these darker invisible strands, and they all flow upwards towards the sky, some are pulsating and fluid, calm and constant, while others might have multiple strands whipping about in violent frenzy. This became my “blinding lights and swirling shadows”. The strands, because they are so many blot out the sun and the moon, blot out the world itself. All becomes this fluid dance of contrast that is incomplete without its duality. “As above, so below” took on meaning for me in this way, long before I learned the esoteric meanings given in books.
It was not for many years later that I had a similar understanding of the dynamics of “As within, so without”. This was far more of a dissolution than a building. I was meditating on my strands with my eyes closed, and trying to feel what was coming from the world and what was coming from the sky. Often times they mirrored each other. As I was doing this my mind drifted beyond the concept of strands of connectivity and followed the strands to the sky, to the stars. When I reached the stars I became overwhelmed with the vastness of the concept of space, and the strands from earth seemed tiny and insignificant in its wake. Even here, the same patterns play out, the same strands connect all things to all things, the invisible light and dark vibrating at greater frequencies and lower tones than anything I could experience on earth. While holding this place in my consciousness I became aware of a feeling of vibration in my body. It started below my stomach, right in the base of my spine and it continued up through my body. The distraction caused me to lose the intensity of the vision. I tried to recapture it, with momentary success. However in that moment I became aware that the vibrations in my body mimicked whatever strand I was focused on, and I could change the feeling and intensity by shifting my attention to different connections. The vision was fading now and I felt again awareness of the here and now. Instead I focused inward, concentrating on the energy I felt rising and falling, trying to control it in a sense. As I was doing this I remembered how my body was mimicking the vibrations I was focused on, and that what I was feeling was mirroring something external, that what was moving throughout the world and across the stars was also moving within me.
This realization hit me hard. I remember looking up and feeling like every strand of existence was exploding from within my core and extending to meet itself outside of me. I no longer had a concept of “me” other than that I was able to remember this. This became my understanding of “As within, so without”.
These are some of the core experiences that give meaning to those words for me, and this “state” as I think of it, is where I bring my mind when I am working magick. It will vary in intensity from latent, just a touch away awareness to extreme experience of dissolution/ connection.
Generally speaking I meditate to achieve this mind state daily, it takes me about 30 minutes. Prior to magick / divination/ ritual/ communication there is about another 30 in additional preparations and ritual I have since added in. An example of this would be a chant/mantra that I do to open (not really about the words, it’s more of the vibrations in it), personal invocation/communion (sometimes/depending) into 4- 7-8 breathing and visualization.
Once the conceptual state of being/awareness of being “As above, so below” and “As within, so without” it is generally maintained for a few hours. I do a lot of writing like this. If I am doing a ritual of some sort other states may be initiated either for their sequence or how they compound with this one. This will vary in method based on appropriateness but often includes movement, swaying, dancing, chanting/vibrating (mantras or sometimes just whatever sounds come to mind), further visualizations or breathing combinations, chemgnosis, or sexual exacerbation.
Over the years this state of awareness has morphed slowly to become my “baseline” in how I experience the world. Daily meditation helps to sustain this lingering sense, as well as exacerbate it as needed for work, personal insight, divination or prophecy.
Customarily my personal functional dogma concerning rituals is as follows:
I fast on Saturdays from sunup until sundown. Saturn is my benefactor and my initiator. I do this in honor of him and his lessons. This is not something I always maintain strictly but do hold as ritual at least 1-2 Saturdays a month.
I fast for 1-3 days for magick outside of daily practice and adherences. This is almost always planned ahead of time and preparations allowed for. Most of the time I simply fast on the day of an operation, however on what I think of as “Days of Approach” in which I initiate a form of personal alchemy, I will fast for two days prior and the day of.
I have a personal Invocation/ Prayer to Babalon that I say every morning in place of Liber Resh practices. I end it with “The Sun Rises When I Do”.
Each morning I mediate with Durga. The complexity and emanations of this Goddess find never ending synchronicity in my life and offers me unending perspectives to consider.
Notes re: A common morning visualization, you may have already read, there are several others I will document in the future “I would see a beam of the purest light emanating from her forehead. I would walk into it and I would feel my flesh burning but it didn't feel like burning it felt like floating away. When I reached the pinnacle the very point of the light itself and walked past it there was darkness and the abyss. If I stepped into the abyss the light was gone from behind me, but if I kept going it would emerge again from any given place, or from inside of the center of collisions between dark and dark. It reminded me of exploding satin. It instilled a profound sense of liminal or "in between" places. Places magick, abyss or the ayther creep into vision.”
I have crystals in almost all of my regular places, such as in my vehicle, on my desk at work, on my workstation at home, in my bedroom. They are constant reminders to me that I am of magick, even if the world around me might not be.
I have several pieces of jewelry that are magick, I wear at least one each day for the same reasons I keep the crystals around me. Of these are a quartz point I wrapped for a pendant, my amethyst cluster which is my oldest piece and always worn on the dark moon and/or for divination, a lapis bracelet, an onyx scrying ring, an old copper and black ring that I use when I call to Tall Man, a rose quartz pendant with its own significance, a pyrite cube pendant and several other small, handmade pieces. What is worn will depend on multiple factors but what is important to me is that something each day be worn of magick.
I maintain altars in my home for the same reasons as above. The central home altar changes but consistent ones are to Santa Muerte, Meluta (female wood demon, perceived often as mist), Tall Man has a box, and I maintain mini altars placements for each of the 7 planets. I am currently building an arrangement of time, and am seeking out 7 clocks to hang on the wall in a particular pattern to use as inspiration for current explorations. I have two thus far: my parameters is that they need be under 7 dollars – preferable gifted to me and “feel perfect”. I have a small divination altar/ table with the cards I use regularly as well as a strange deck I found that I consider a “living deck”. I never read from this deck, sometimes cards just jump out at me. The first reading I ever did I pulled three sevens. I also have a water scrying dish I made, some personal runes gifted to me (in an alien language I have no idea what they mean but they are quite useful) a few crystals and other such objects.
RE: “The Living Deck” I went exploring a strange attic one night with some friends, and found these in a box in said attic. The whole place was falling apart, the building was rented but in the process of being condemned. It had previously served as a rooming house so there were decades worth of things collected in the attic. The entire night was strange to begin with and finding this deck was an experience for me of which I do not yet know the full significance. Here are some images from the attic and the box I found the cards in, as well as the first reading I did with it. And yes, I shuffled them well. I believe these to be from the 70’s. I enjoyed this experience because it caused me to reassess how I thought about objects in regards to their ability to hold magick and/or channel information/intelligence. These cards have a malevolence about them but not necessarily “bad”. Hard to describe.
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