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Mostrando postagens de dezembro, 2012

A New Beginning; a New End

No matter ones creed, belief - or placement in time and space – it is always good to take regular times to pause and recapitulate. If this is not an ongoing process, at least the turning of the year is a good occasion to do so. It doesn’t matter that the New Year actually begins with the entering of Aries in the sign of the Sun or with Capricorns entering in the Sun – both the Ram and the Goat signals something worthy of contemplation.  Yet other cultures count the solstices as markers of renewal. They are both animal signs heralding new beginnings. Heralding the new should bring a death to the old. Parts of the old should be transmuted, other parts taken as lessons so we can count our blessings. The Western New Year falls anyhow within the perimeters of the rays of the fixed star  Deneb Algedi , the tail of Capricorn.  Cauda Capricorni  is one of the fifteen fixed stars and is evoked by the scent of marjoram. If the moon is favorable it gives victory in disputes and

Exu and the Sensorial Soul

“There is a beast in man that needs to be exercised, not exorcised” - Anton La Vey    The most common question I receive concerning Quimbanda is how one work with these spirits in safe but committed ways. If you ask around you will basically get two different answers on such inquiry. Many Quimbandeiros will say that you cannot learn how to tend to these spirits from a book and that full initiation (i.e. receiving the spirit vessels in where Exu and Pomba Gira resides and be crowned and cut as Tata/Yaya) is paramount to working Quimbanda. This is a truth with modification, because we have at least two nuances here. One is that some of these spirits are actually personal, they are yours. Quimbanda holds that if you are human, you also have a Pomba Gira and an Exu to walk with you and watch over you. I like to think about our personal Exu and Pomba Gira as a sort of balanced kakodaimonos , inflamed with the lust of life and opportunity. Just like our agathodaimon

The Gentle Death

Life is a mysterious condition. So many of us seem to struggle with finding Self and identity in a world of demands and flux where we constantly search the quiet place, the oasis of comfort where we can center.  To take time to one self is important, to make a date with Self, a regular binding commitment to be with Self– because in soliloquy we speak with source and our attending daimons and spirits. It is in the all-oneliness we find the breath of creation to inhale and give us pause – and it is here we commune with Self. The communion with Self is also a meeting with Death – who always surfaces to question not only who you are, but also what legacy you are passing down.   To know yourself in the embrace of Death is to gain a vision of legacy, an instant flash of what you leave behind. Selfhood is an axis where the world dances around in constant flux and moments – but yet that axis, that starry pillar is the marrow of this fluctuating Self that takes on masks and forms i

On the magic of ink and forms

The book as talisman, the words as prophecy, the ink as soul born blood and the letters as breath given up by spirit constitutes a magical or talismanic book, a book endowed with spirit. Types of magical books are found amongst the famous grimoires, the faustbooks/teufelbooks and the Cyprians in Scandinavia and Iberia – but also books like John Dee’s Tuba Veneris . In the case of Tuba Veneris the book and its ritual had to be instigated by ink and pact at a precise astrological junction. The pen guided by ink and intent would then seal the script in stellar and telluric virtue giving birth to a talismanic script endowed with a particular spirit that in turn holds the capacity for influencing those possessing the script. A magical book always comes with a daimon attached to it, the spirit of the book. The procedure of Tuba Veneris is one way of going about it. Another method is to fashion a contract with spirits presiding over a given mystery in the fashion of a pact, a