spirits, Magic
Taylor Ellwood
The relationship between sacred kingship and ...

One of the books I’m reading lately is King, Warrior, Magician, Lover by Robert Moore and Doug Gillette. It’s a fascinating book that explores the archetypes of the mature and sacred masculine. This is currently part of the spiritual work that I’m engaged in as I explore my own relationship with masculinity and heal the ancestoral and contemporary wounds that I’m becoming aware of as it relates to how masculinity is treated and perceived in modern times.

One of the aspects I’m exploring in particular is related to sacred kingship and the land. I am in the process of exploring the new city and surrounding areas that I live in. While I’ve lived here for a year, I didn’t have much opportunity until recently to really begin exploring the area and developing a relationship with the land. I find it fitting and useful that part of the process has also involved cultivating a relationship with the land, particularly on the basis of the relationship has with their home and how that relationship plays out in sacromagical work one does in connecting with the land.

meditation

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What does it mean to be grounded?

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In an interview I did with Liz Worth, we ended up discussing the need to find balance in your life and not go overboard with your spiritual work. It got me thinking about what it really means to be grounded, especially in relationship to my recent article on recovering from spiritual burnout. I know from my own experiences and what it’s like to go overboard, because I’ve done it with magic and with being a workaholic sometimes. I’ve had to learn the necessity of achieving a better sense of groundedness in what I do through having experiences where I overdid it.

I’ve been reflecting on my own sense of balance quite a bit over the last few years, because I’ve had to make some changes in how I approach my spiritual work, my writing, and other facets of my life. I’ve realized that being grounded isn’t simply making sure you eat a bit of food after a ritual or a do a banishing. Being grounded is connecting to your life in a meaningful way that doesn’t always involve a sense of having to do something, fix something, manifest something, or otherwise deal with whatever seems to be driving you.

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The Magic of working with your emotions

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When you think about your emotions, perhaps the last thing you might consider is that there is a magical aspect to your emotions, or that emotions should even be worked with magically. After all, emotions seem to fall in the domain of psychology and while you can do shadow work around emotions that isn’t always considered “real” magical work. Yet in my own experiences and in observing other magicians, I think there’s a real need to work with the emotions and to do so in a way that is healthy, while also recognizing the role emotions can play in magical work.

What I’ve discovered in my own magical practice, and from observing other practitioners is that while magic can solve some problems, it can also exacerbate other issues, and this can include issues around the emotions. Certainly when I look back at my younger self, I see recognize times when I was reactive with my magical practice because of the emotions I was feeling at the time. I let those emotions take over my identity in the moment. As I began doing internal work aka shadow work around my emotions, it also changed my magical practice. I became less reactive in my usage of magic to resolve problems and started to carefully consider the impact.

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The Ethics and Pragmatics of Love Magic

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Should you do magic to find your ideal romantic partner? And if you do love magic should you try and get a specific person to love you or should you take a more generalized approach? I answer these questions and explore the topic of love in general and share my own pragmatic approach to handling love and love magic.

How to create and sustain a consistent meditation practice

One of the questions I get asked is how to create and sustain a consistent meditation practice. It’s a good question to ask, because it can be a challenge to make time to meditate, especially when you’re working a full time job, have kids, and other responsibilities that can eat up your time. And maybe you have none of those things. Maybe your challenge is simply around the act of meditating and you struggle to make any progress with meditating. Regardless of what the reason is, it doesn’t have to be hard to develop a consistent meditation practice.

The first thing that needs to be realized is that there’s no idealized state of being that says your meditating. A lot of people get caught up in the idea that they have to empty their minds in order to successfully meditate. While a state of no-mind is one example of a state of meditation, you can also be meditating in other states of mind. For example, I regularly do Taoist meditation, which among other things includes the dissolving of internal tensions and blockages. Sometimes thoughts and emotions come up during that process and then I’m working through them in meditation. That is still a viable state of meditation.

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Case Study: Creating the Elemental Balancing Ritual

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I created the Elemental Balancing Ritual in 2004 and I have used it ever since then as a year-long (or more) magical working dedicated to an element that I work with during that year, as a means of both doing internal work and aligning myself with the elemental energy I’m working with. Elements I’ve worked with include earth, fire, and water, but also include emptiness, love, movement, still, and creativity. This year I’m working with the elements of Connection and Truth, which is the first time I’ve worked with two elements, but there’s a reason for it, because of the spirits I’m working with.

My definition of an elemental energy and/or spirit differs from the conventional definition which only recognize 5 elements: Earth, Air, Fire, Water and Spirit in the West and Earth, Water, Wood, Metal, and Fire in the East. I’m not basing my definition of elements solely on a seasonal perspective or from the perspective of what constitutes the Earth in a primal sense of the word. Instead I consider elements to be primal forces that move us and are mediated by us. For emptiness, as an element is something most people grapple with at some point in their lives and it is something that can move a person to take actions to try and fill that emptiness or come to peace with it.

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How to do internal work around long term issues

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I share how to do internal work around long term issues in your life and explain why you can't always resolve those issues in one shot.

Learn how to do internal work: https://magical-experiments.teachable.com/p/internal-work

Get free ebooks on magic at http://www.magicalexperiments.com/free-books

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Ongoing Work with Qi Gong

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Over the last few months I’ve been learning some different qi gong methods and practicing them, and while doing that also integrating into the Sphere of Art work, where I’ve found a natural fit for them. In this post I thought I would share the work in some detail, and what I’ve discovered as I’ve done it.

The qi gong practices I’m mainly focused on doing is Energy Gates and Gods Playing in the Clouds. Energy Gates is a combination of a standing practice with a few movements, which when done properly move the qi through the body in a spiraling manner. Gods Playing in the Clouds is a set of movements that works through all of the energy channels and the nei-gong. I’ve currently learned 3 of the movements and I’m learning a 4th one now. I’m also taking a 4 weekend intensive which explores the spine and which I’m finding is relevant to the rest of the work. I’m practicing the Qi Gong between 1-2 hours currently, though I plan to increase that a bit more once I wrap up the day job and I figure out what my new routine will look like.

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What happens when the internal work gets hard

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I discuss how to handle internal work when it gets hard and share some of my own experiences around that as well as how to handle thoughts in internal work.

Learn how magic works at magical experiments university: https://magical-experiments.teachable.com/

Get free e-books at http://www.magicalexperiments.com/free-books

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Sigil Walking

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Sigil walking is a technique I’ve developed based off Bua Gua, which is a martial arts moving meditation of circle walking. I recently had the opportunity to learn the basics of Bua Gua and it occurred to me that the principles of circle walking could be applied to charging and firing sigils for practical magic, or for invoking and working with a spirit. It is suggested that for you to get the possible use out of this technique, you should make yourself familiar with some type of walking meditation that moves the energy.

In Bua Gua, when you walk, you are pushing your internal energy to the Earth to connect with the Earth energy and then bringing that energy back up through your body and connecting it with the Stellar energy. Or at least that’s my experience when I do the walking. Since you are raising energy in this way, it occurred to me that you could also direct that energy accordingly, either for a practical magical working, or as a way to connect with a spirit.

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Elemental Balancing Ritual Creativity Month 18

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3-23-2020 Last night I transitioned over to Ain Soph Aur/Pluto/Suvuviel. The three veils aren’t typically included in a Tree of Life work, but it seemed appropriate to me that I work with them. But I’ll admit I sense of morbid amusement that I would start working with Pluto on this month, of all months, when we’re dealing with the corona virus. Then again, it really is appropriate because Pluto is about death and rebirth and all of us, in one form or another, are going through exactly that.

Suvuviel is also appropriate because he’s the archangel of the present, and of the spirit cord. He ties everything together with the cord, but he can also unravel the cord. He’s present in all moments, because he is part of the present.

When I connected with Ain Soph Aur/Pluto/Suvuviel, I felt like I was at the very pinnacle of the solar system, looking back at the sun and the planets, at the earth and everything going on and I felt Suvuviel come through and explain that part of this experience is necessarily about seeing the entire picture, looking beyond the immediate circumstance to the underlying patterns. I’m not just looking at this moment in time, but all the work I’ve done the previous 17 months.

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My experience with Dao-Yin exercises and how I learn new movements

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I’m currently practicing Dao Yin exercises that I’m learning from reading The Four Dragons by Damo Mitchell (affiliate link). As with any new practice that involves the manipulation of one’s chi, I find that its really useful to learn a practice in stages, and course correct as needed based on the experiences you’re having with the practice. In the case of learning the Dao Yin practices, the one I’m currently practicing and learning are four basic exercises that are designed to help you purge pathogenic chi, through the movements.

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Endarkenment Ponderings and Experiences

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I decided to take a class taught by Anastacia Nutt, called Endarkenment, which explores the process of settling into the rhythms of winter, among other things. I thought I would share here my notes and observations. I’ve purposely kept this post separate from the elemental balancing work, because it is its own thing and I want to honor it as such.

12-16-2019 I got sick a couple days before the endarkenment class started and on the day before, I lay in my bed, in the dark, feverish and afraid of the dark and yet opening myself to it nonetheless and letting it fill me. It felt a lot like stillness, like a sense of timeless infinity that poured through the entirety of my being and reminded me of how small I am and yet how intricately woven I am into this thread of life.

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How to embrace and work with the shadow aspects of yourself

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As I’ve been working with the Chesedic current this month, one of the elements of the work I’ve been encountered are the shadow aspects of that current, which have manifested in being more aware of my own selfishness and how that selfishness shows up in my life. I’ve also had this mirrored for me in a fiction series I’m reading, where the one character’s selfishness has really stood out to me more than it may have in the past. Yet what I’ve found most fascinating with all this is a very interesting approach to this work with the shadow aspect that’s being called forth.

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How I learn inner alchemical techniques

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Right now, I’m learning Dao Yin exercises, which are exercises you can do to get rid of negative chi, while also cultivating positive chi. Whenever I learn a new technique, I take my time and learn them step by step, instead of trying to do the entire technique at once. I also make sure that I’ve learned all the preceding techniques and have a thorough understanding of how they work, before learning a new one, because learning the new technique necessarily builds off the preceding techniques.

A huge part of learning a technique is also paying attention to the experience. In fact, I’d argue that’s the most important aspect of learning something, because the experience will tell you a lot about what you are doing and may indicate if you are doing it right or if there is something that doesn’t fit.

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How to use Inner Alchemy for allergies

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The other day in the Magical Experiments Facebook group, one of the members asked if it was possible to counteract allergies using the methods I’ve shared in the Inner Alchemy series. I told the person it might be possible, especially if you were to take a targeted approach to working with your allergies and the neurotransmitters that can play a role in signaling the body that you have an allergy. For this article, I’ll describe how such a process could work and what you would need to do, if you were applying my processes to your allergies*.

Before we get into that, I do want note that your body has the responses it has for specific reasons, that are designed to keep you safe. Thus our process isn’t about suppressed allergic reactions, but rather its about figuring out if there’s a way to cure the allergy. The reason we don’t want to suppress the reaction is because the reaction is a symptom, a signal of what the underlying issue. Suppressing the signal doesn’t solve the problem, and if anything may cause you to ignore vital information that you need to have.

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The Spiritual and Practical Ecology of Offerings

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In The Spell of the Sensuous, the author shares that when he was visiting Indonesia and learning from some of the Shamans there, he would observe that people would leave offerings outside of their house for the spirits. One day, curious as to what happened with the offerings, the author followed someone, saw them give the offering and then he waited a while. Then he walked over and he saw that ants were carrying off the offerings.

What the author came to realize is that making the offerings had a spiritual impact, but also an ecological one. The ants didn’t show up in the homes where offerings were being made, because the offerings were set far enough away that the ants could get the food and go on their respective way.

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How Embodiment connects you to your environment

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The majority of my current magical experimentation is on experiential embodiment, which is focused on entering into a conscious relationship with the body, as opposed to merely inhabiting it and treating it as an object. Yet what I’m finding with this work is that it’s not merely helping me continue to collaborate with my body as a living universe in its own right, but also connecting me more intimately with the environment and world I live in, as well as with the fellow living beings I share this space with.

I’m reading the Spell of the Sensuous and Processmind and both books explore how connecting with your body also opens you up to connect with your environment. What both authors recognize is that the choice to be sensually and experientially present with your body necessarily also opens you up to becoming present with the space you are interacting with in your everyday life. Embodiment teaches us not to take for granted the world we live in or the bodies we are fortunate enough to have access to.

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How to untangle Jealousy from Creativity

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I’ve been reading The Courage to be Disliked and one of the ways this book has been helping me involves how I look at creativity and jealousy. When I look at my own experience as a writer and magician I can point to moments where I have felt jealous and have reacted to that feeling in ways which really hasn’t helped my spiritual practice or my writing. But jealousy is all too easy to feel and respond to.

2018, for me, has been this huge process of coming face to face with the things in my life that serve to destabilize my work, productivity and overall life quality. And since I switched over to creativity as my element to work with that too has brought me face to face the issues that have haunted me.