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.

experiential embodiment

, , ,

The Somatic benefits of martial arts

, , ,

Photo by Craig Adderley: https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-a-man-and-woman-doing-martial-arts-1543932/

I recently started learning Kung Fu at a local studio. I had been interested in studying Martial Arts for a long time and had gotten into Qi Gong because of that interest. While I continue to practice Qi Gong and appreciative the meditative and energetic aspects of the practice, I also wanted to branch out to a more martial form in order to better understand the differences, but also see how one practice might comment on the other.

While I definitely have gotten that benefit from starting to study Kung Fu, what I also came to appreciate about Kung Fu were the somatic benefits of the practice. As I learn a given move and enmesh it within my body memory, what stands out to me is how the practice engages me on multiple levels of knowing and consciousness. My body consciousness is engaged when I learn how to step or move a part of my body, but my memory is also engaged, both in learning the move, but also considering how I might have applied it in different situations in my life. My emotional consciousness is also engaged and I am able to work through and release emotions with the practice.

Somatic work has become a kind of buzz phrase of late in the holistic sphere of activities, but somatic studies have been around for a long time, and whenever I learn a new form of body work I look at how I can integrate it into the existing body practices I already practice. For example with Kung Fu, one of the experiences I’ve been paying more attention to is the angle of a movement. I first learned about the angle of a movement by studying the dance disciplines of Laban, who broke movements of the body into the platonic geometric shapes and showed how a given movement could be performed with these geometries in mind.

The difference between visualization and experiential embodiment

One of the problems I see occasionally in occult literature and conversation is that a given term will be used to try and describe a wide range of experiences that may not fit that term. For example the term visualization is sometimes used to describe sensory experiences that aren’t visually based. It’s a convenient term because its meant to describe an experience you’re having, but the problem is that the focus on the visual and on the sense of sight influences the understanding of that term.

If I use the word visualization to describe a magical working, what I’m typically describing is an experience where the visual component of the experience takes priority. For example, if I’m doing a pathworking, I might visualize specific imagery that is used to create the environment I’m going to work in. Visualization has become a more prevalent technique, in part, because of visual media and the role it plays in our everyday lives.

,

Walking the Land

,

One of the earliest magical practices I did and still do to this day is something I call walking the land. Walking the land is a practice where you connect with the elemental energies of the land, by walking the land and opening yourself up to the experience of the spirits speaking to you, through the journey you take. I first started doing this when I began practicing magic. I would go for long hikes, alone, and just walk and connect with the land, letting it speak to me.

Many years later, and I still do this practice. I have a small park, near where I live, and I walk it every few days, just to experience the place and the life of the trees, plants, and other beings that live in that park. I also do this whenever I go hiking in the gorge or along the coast. When I do this practice, I do it in silence, my hands outstretched, and I will just quiet my mind, and listen.

Where I'm going next with magic: Experiential Embodiment

I've been thinking a lot about where I want to go next with magic. When I wrote Magical Identity, I felt like it planted a seed for what I'll term experiential embodiment. But like any seed, some time was needed to let it germinate and flower. 

But for the near to intermediate future I'm finished with pop culture magic and I find myself coming back to experiential embodiment, both in the form of the current book I'm writing, and in my magical experimentation in general.