Image copyright Taylor Ellwood 2021
8-22-2021 Last night I switched over to the Neptune current and worked with Ratziel, the archangel of the book and key. I did the ritual under the full moon, which is conjunct with Saturn and Jupiter. It felt appropriate because I had wrapped up the work with Saturn. What was nice is that I got to do the Sphere of Art in Eugene finally. I felt like doing that work, down here, really sealed me to this new space I am living in. I feel this deep sense of contentedness and peace, something I haven’t felt in a while, if ever. It surprises me to feel it, but I know I’m home. I know this is where I belong, at least for the forseeable future.
Today I’m continuing to unpack my home. It feels off to finally be putting art up that I haven’t seen in a year, and to be unpacking books, but mostly it makes me happy to be in an environment where I feel wanted and welcomed, even if its just by myself. I finally have a space of my own, and I didn’t realize how much I needed it. I feel welcomed in other ways as well and this has helped me feel at peace with my move, because I know I belong here.
8-23-2021 Today I began unpacking the art. Doing this was fairly emotional on a number of fronts. On one front just being able to unpack and hang art that had been put away and now allowed to be shown, because it would offend people I lived with (even though THOSE people never lifted a hand to help out or pay a bill). And there there were bittersweet memories. Bday cards from the ex, bday cards from my day, old academic papers…all my old and not so old ghosts rearing their heads and making themselves known to me. It felt like the scar tissue around my heart broke and old wounds broke open. I cried for a while and let it all out. Then I let go of some things and repacked other things. This feels like Neptune’s flow and I’m just going with it and trusting it will take me where I need to go.
8-24-2021 I unpacked the books. This place is pretty much good to go, other than a few pieces of furniture I’m waiting for. Ironically, however, I’m feeling weird about grocery shopping. It’s silly, but I’ve waited so long to have a kitchen of my own to work in and suddenly…I feel overwhelmed and panicked about what to do with it. I could only get so much stuff in the last few months and now I can get more, but what do I make? Taking a deep breath and moving forward. Bet none of you expected to read about a great mage like me being panicked about the grocery store, but even though its a good change, it’s still a change.
Grocery shopping worked out, but I felt a bit sad. The day has been mixed, which doesn’t surprise me. I’ve been unboxing my life and that naturally will bring issues up. I’m feeling pretty tired, but happy because my space is shaping up nicely. I like how it looks and feels. I think more thank anything I’m relieved that my life isn’t boxed up anymore. I never want to go through that again.
8-27-2021 I’ve gotten the new place buttoned up nicely (heh). I like how it feels. It’s home for sure, but I’ve also purposely designed the space to flow. I feel like I’ve tapped into Neptune’s flow in designing this space and it feels good to claim it in a way that works for me.
I can’t sleep today though. Today is a tough day, because of a year ago. How do you let go of the past? I don’t know sometimes if you can? How do you balance the scales? I don’t know. I guess you just have to do the best you can. Still today is a milestone of sorts and I’m just glad that a year later I’m in a much better place than I was. Maybe that’s how I balance the scales…celebrate the victories.
Saw the movie Reminiscent today. It was a good story, with some surprising twists. I think it was appropriate to see it today. It brought to mind some of the harder moments of this year, when I was obsessively trying to understand what had happened last august and how I had been so fooled. The endless replaying of the memories of the conversations…Watching that movie helped me achieve a sense of peace around the insanity of those experiences.
8-28-2021 Today I’ve been working on projects that feel to the wayside in the wake of the chaos in my life. I reactivated the indie author site and I finished compiling the journal entries from 2018-2020. It was hard to look at the last few month of 2020. I still feel a lot of shame and guilt around what happened. I don’t know if I’ll always carry it with me. I hope I won’t, but for now it’s still there…and yes I’m realizing it’s not all my fault. The further I get away from where I was, the more I see that while I certainly bear a lot of responsibility for what happened, there were other issues and problems as well that contributed to the mess. Still doesn’t make me feel good about my end of things. I never want to hurt anyone again the way I have hurt some of the people in my life. All I can do at this point is learn from my mistakes and be a better person to myself and other people. I’m working hard on being a better communicator, for example, and not keeping things to myself when I know I need to bring them up.
8-30-2021 I’ve started practicing my qi gong more intensely. I feel like I have a bit more breathing room I can put back into that practice, which makes me happy because its an important part of my spiritual path and while I’ve continued doing Gods Playing in the Clouds, I’ve felt like some of it has fallen to the wayside, which has been less then optimal. Having the new job is helping, if only in the sense that it provides a very specific and now I’m exhausted physically. And qi gong helps me get my mind back from the work.
I have been finding myself working through some triggers around old relationships, and not wanting to pass those on to what I’m discovering now. As I get further away from my marriage, I’m recognizing how I stifled myself in certain ways. I hold myself accountable for that, but I don’t want to perpetuate that cycle. It doesn’t help me or anyone else.
And sometimes all I can feel is the pain of old wounds. The pain of hurting other people and the pain of being hurt. I feel like a monster that has a beautiful appearance, but when people discover the ugliness in me, will they still want me? I get so afraid sometimes because I still have these deep hurts in me and right now they feel so raw. I feel raw. And I feel afraid that I’ll lose the people that have come into my life because they’ll see me, really see me, and decide they don’t like or want what they see. I guess if that happens, I’ll just do my best and keep limping along, alone…at least I know how to do alone and its safe, in a sad kind of way. I just don’t want to be safe that way…but maybe that’s what I really deserve.
8-31-2021 There’s nothing like having the light of truth shine on you to see your own hypocrisies up close and personal. And what you can do in such a situation? Own it. Own the hypocrisy for what it is, but also own the lack of integrity on your part. I have no excuses for my failure, and its not on anyone else, but once again it affects other people. How can I live a life of virtue, if in fact I’m NOT living the virtues, not living up to the promises I’m making? The answer is I can’t, and what does that say about me? It speaks to my failings as a person, to not exerting any self-control or awareness around my choices. That’s not how I want to live. It’s not how I want to show up in my own life, let alone in the lives of other people. And when I show up that way, what it says about me is not something I’m proud of. The only answer, the only remedy, is to take ownership of my choices and then move forward and do better, because the people I invite in my life deserve the best from me.
9-1-2021 The thing about working with Neptune that I discover each time, in some way, is that it really demonstrates the power of the current and how you are at the mercy of that current. You can fool yourself into thinking you have control, and then you realize you don’t. You can sink, swim, or float on the current, but you still have to play by the rules of the current. It’s not just a metaphor either…it’s a reality of magical work, but its also a reality of life and the one thing you even have some control over, you…well that’s its own current as well, but you don’t get excuses for your behavior and your choices in that. All you get is the choice to take responsibility, do better with your choices, and find the virtues you want to live by. Guess that’s why I’ve been studying both the modern and ancient stoics, because I’m trying to find a path forward in my life that reflects the values I want to live by. I don’t always succeed, and they didn’t either evidently and reading them as fallible human beings that failed helps actually, because it reminds me that I’m not alone…which doesn’t give me an excuse. I can learn from their mistakes and maybe make a few less of my own. Certainly that is worth striving for.
I read through some of my old journal entries and I shake my head. Have I really learned anything after all these years? I see an active mind, eager to learn and oh so willing to plunge into the depths heedless of anything else. Yet what I read from those older entries…I’m not that person anymore, just like if I ever re-read this entry I’ll recognize that the person who wrote it is not the person reading it. Life is change. So I look back on my younger self with some sense of grief and sadness over his choices, over his failures and mistakes and the pain he’s caused other people. I doubt most people write about that so openly, but I do. Yet I also look back on my younger self and see the breakthroughs, the realizations and the hard work. I can shake my head at his follies and ruefully reflect on my own fallibilities as well, but perhaps I should also celebrate his efforts and recognize my own. And perhaps I should see the progress and not just judge myself on the faults. I’m not perfect, or even close to it, but I do try to become a better person and there is some progress compared to that person I was so many years ago.
9-2-2021 I’m reinventing my relationship with the word safe. A point was made to me about its usage, and when I dug into it, I realized how much resentment I feel for that word and for all the times I was pressured into feeling like I had to make other people feel safe, because they were unwilling to examine and do work around whatever was going on internally with them. In fairness, I sometimes have also wanted safety assurances, so I own that. But I recognize that this word is a pressure of sorts for me, that leaves me asking a tough question: Why do I have to take on the responsibility of creating a sense of safety, especially if there is never any ownership on the other end of whatever might be internally arising that causes a feeling of insecurity. And I’m not saying that there shouldn’t be consistency and awareness around a sense of safety but how does that really occur? I think that can only be discovered on both ends of a situation, and if one end is continually expected to perform a specific function, but the other end never addresses the core issue, what does that really say about the relationship itself? Something to unpack further.
9-3-2021 Tonight I am listening to J and J play. I have never heard them before and it's beautiful to see them play and see the looks of love and affection that they share with each other. It kinda makes me sad to. I think about K and all the pain I caused her, a burden I will always carry with me. She loved me and I loved her, still love her, perhaps will always love her yet that love wasn't strong enough to overcome the pain that came between us. How I wish I could have done something different.
You cannot go through life and not hurt the people you care about. It's how you address the hurt that matters. I am trying to do the right thing in how I live my life now, but I’m reminded of my shortcomings and it makes me think of the advice my mentor recently gave me:
“A lover or partner is not there for you. You are there for her/him. Until we adjust to this concept of inner balance, we will most likely have relationship problems while trying, be it successful or unsuccessful, to lead the magical life.”
I would like to think that sometimes I’ve showed up that way, but sometimes I haven’t. Sometimes I’ve been selfish and what this leaves me with is the recognition that I want to endeavor to do my best, not to be so selfish in the future or in the present. I can’t change my mistakes, but I can and ought to learn from them and recognize the importance of taking care of the hearts and minds of the people I love.
Final thought of the day: I always find it interesting when random people message me on Facebook. What are they really after? What do they want? Why do they have to bother me? Oh and reading through journal entries from 2018, such joy to revisit myself and see me in such an unvarnished way. I honestly don’t know how people get this sense of how freaking aware I am from reading these entries. Why am I so fucking aware? Because I choose to bare my soul and let you in? And do you really think you’re in just because you read these words?
Being in with me is so much more than reading words. The words might give you a peek of the depths, but the lived experience is something else, and how short do I fall when you realize that the distance between the words and the lived experience is so vast, and that the person who seems so wise is such a fool and has such failings? How aware do I really seem to you when you discover that the great magician is just a person, like any other? It’s easy to fall in love with the image. The reality…the reality is something else.
9-4-2021 Case in point today. I have this person leave a few comments and she tries to make it seem like she’s doing me a favor by commenting, when what she really wants is for me to do a favor for her. And this is what I mean where I feel like I want to close myself off from other people. I give you the gift of my openness, my transparency and how do you respond? I want you to solve my problems (free of charge) because I granted you a crumb of my presence. Where’s the equity and balance? Where’s the truth and connection? I find I want unequal exchanges less and less. Why show up for someone who doesn’t want to show up for you? And I wouldn’t have an issue if the person had been honest, and not tried to make it seem like they were doing me a favor. I don’t need favors like that and I don’t want them.
Maybe my problem is I’m trying to hard to get things right, when I just need to chill the fuck out. I’ve been on edge on so long, I just don’t know how to chill out easily, but I think being on edge has just created more problems, when I just need to stabilize. So I’m going to stop trying so hard to get things right. It’s not like its working anyway and its just creating more stress and tension all around.
I feel so broken and I wonder if I’ll ever be whole again.
I’m tired of feeling so raw and wounded and hurt and just unstable. I remember what it was like to feel confident in myself, to know I had a path forward and know I had a plan and all the other things that come with such confidence. Now I feel like I've managed to pick up most the pieces and some of the pieces even fit together, so there’s some progress, but I also am realizing again that its going to take time. It’s going to take time to get back to a place of confidence and stability within and without. I’m going to take it a day at time, one step at a time and go easier on myself. I deserve some kindness from myself and I really need it.
9-5-2021 I was talking with an acquaintance about “awareness” and how I’m coming to dislike that word and she gave me a different perspective on it. She said, “You are aware of yourself and your failings and you know when you’ve been the bull in the china shop and you express awareness around that and around the impact of your actions, when so many people don’t, and just go on their way without recognition or concern for the hurt they’ve caused.” And I guess…I never thought of it in that way. It helped me see that maybe being considered aware (and actually being aware) is a good thing and some thing that speaks to people who want some of that awareness in their own lives. It’s not easy being aware. It comes at the price of the experiences you have and the recognition you cultivate around how you show up (and how you fail).
What caused me to feel so negative about that word aware was how the person from last year, who came to my life like a wrecking ball, told me how aware I was, and why that was one of the reasons she went for me. How could I feel good about that word after the fallout I’ve been dealing with for far too long? How could I feel good about it, when I saw so clearly that all that awareness didn’t prevent me from hurting people in my life? But the way my acquaintance put it today is helping me reframe my relationship with that word. Awareness doesn’t automatically presuppose that you’re not gonna fuck up. It doesn’t mean you aren’t going to hurt people sometimes with your choices and actions (and it doesn’t justify the hurt). But if you can recognize the impact and do your best to be a better person, that in and of itself is better than just going on your way, causing harm without recognition.
And I can safely say I haven’t always had this awareness. It’s been hard earned, and perhaps, just perhaps, it has helped me better with other people than I give myself credit for. I need to apply this awareness to myself, be kinder to myself. I’m hurting so much right on, on so many levels, because of things that happened, but also because I’m holding myself in a place of unforgiving judgment. And that just keeps me blocked. I’m doing some hypnodrift work around this and I’m going to try and do some direct work with Ingo, because I think that might help me get some breakthroughs and stabilize myself more.
9-5-2021 In The Courage to Be Happy a very intriguing idea about the past is shared: “Every person is a compiler of the story of ‘me’ who rewrites his or her own past as desired to prove the legitimacy of ‘me now.’ The author goes onto argue that the past does not exist. Quite an intriguing idea and when I apply it to myself, I see some possibilities: ‘The past does not decide now. It is your now that decides the past.” I think an experiment is in order…
Another interesting realization. Not knowing can lead to tension and attempts to to resolve that tension leads to distortion. I see that very clearly from recent experiences where every attempt to resolve tension actually created more tension, because I did not know what to do and instead of just relaxing and accepting I didn’t know, I felt like I had to force the situation. In the future I’m going to accept I don’t know and relax into that, because I don’t have to an answer and maybe there isn’t one anyway.
I think…I figured out the lesson Neptune’s been trying to teach me this month. Pretty profound and simple. Stop trying to know and relax into unknowing: Stop trying to control (not intentionally, but still) and relax into not being in control. Totally a Neptune lesson.
9-7-2021 Since the realization I’ve felt things shift. I’ve let go and am continuing to let go of the tension and the need to resolve it. I’d rather just be and let things fall as they may. The now defines my past. Making the choice to live this, both yesterday and today has helped me get through a tense situation and opened me to what is there, instead of doing what I otherwise find to be unworkable…
9-9-2021 Today I meditated on the first image of Mutus Liber, which is a book about the alchemical work with dew. I felt myself go to a place of water and interact with the element of water. I felt a transmission of sorts happen which likely ties into the other images.
In other news, my experiment with the present/past is working for me. I don’t feel weighed down. Recognizing that now is the defining of the past is helping me relax and let go of the burden of the past.
9/10/2021 I meditated on the second image of Mutus Liber. This second image appropriately enough has Neptune in it, in the dew, along with the sun and moon, speaking as much to the mysteries of water (salt?) and how the sun and moon both apply their own influence to the water, and then there’s the image of the alchemical kiln and you see how the water can be transformed alchemically into a refined substance.
9/11/2021 The third image of Mutus Liber shows how essential water is to every aspect of life. I meditated on this and felt the truth of water and the connection of it to all living things. It was quite profound and helped me appreciate a liquid I drink everyday.
In other news, I never want to be a source of discouragement to other people and if I find I’ve played that role it does remind me of how easy it is to say something well-meaning, but still have an impacts you didn’t consider. Sometimes its better to err on the side of being quiet.
I watched the Fruits Basket episode tonight where Ayame expresses a fear of being ignored by his brother Yuki, and the experience of nothingness that comes with that. I watch such shows, because the right pressure and expression breaks the scars within me, and allows me to open the wound and feel the pain, without necessarily inflicting that intensity on anyone else. I’ve learned again and again its better for the raw experience of my emotions to be kept to myself. So tonight I let loose and cried for a while, feeling all the pain and loss that came with my own experience of being treated indifferently, like nothing I did matter. Because nothing I did mattered…only what I had done wrong and to be held in such judgment…it hurts. At least it opened my eyes to the reality of my situation in a way I clearly needed to see. It almost cost me my life, but at least I finally realized just how toxic the situation was and escaped it.
But watching something like that episode can be useful when you need to feel the pain but you want to keep the expression of it to yourself. It lets you be vulnerable without getting hurt, for the only person you’re vulnerable with is you. I cried and lamented, and just…allowed myself to grieve and release.
It’s funny…how easily I can let other people be vulnerable with me, but how hard I find it to be that way with most people. And even if you read this, it doesn’t mean you’ve really experienced my vulnerability. You know of it, but knowing of something and truly knowing something are different realities, and most people prefer to know of, instead of actually knowing.
9-12-2021 I feel so clumsy when it comes to the relationships I have with other people. Then again, I wonder if other people feel clumsy too. I don’t know, but I suppose its the case, and all a person can really do is recognize their own clumsiness and do better. I just wish I knew how to do that easier than it comes to me.
I think too its realizing I don’t want to be a source of pain for other people and in a very real sense that’s how I’ve felt for a while now. When it seems like you only see the bad qualities of your personality, it can make you want to hide. But hiding isn’t a solution and I know, in the end, that I have to see and recognize my own good qualities…self-validate. I also need to recognize that I am not JUST a source of pain. I’ll get there eventually.
Meditated on the 4th image of the Mutus Liber. Felt appropriate for today, because I’m feeling a bit wrung out by recent and not so recent events, but alchemically I see how setting up the right dew collection plays a role in collecting the essence and why you may want to create a dew trap or something to that effect, for those purposes. I’m looking forward to doing the actual work, but the meditations are helping to prep me to do the work.
9-13-2021 This morning I was musing on something a person said to me the other day, about how tired they were of being a catalyst for other people. I can empathize with that statement. I sometimes feel that I come into a person’s life to “teach” a lesson, when all I really want is to be in that person’s life with the lesson already learned. It’s no easy thing to sit with and it is a good reminder to me, at the same time, to perhaps find a way to step back from such a role, or put better boundaries in place so I’m not in that role for a person. This can be hard to do though, when you end up naturally causing the necessary lesson to be learned for the person. I just don’t like the price that comes with it on my end, because I have to bear the weight of that lesson and whatever hurts it brings with it.
9-14-2021 Meditated on images 5 and 6 of the Mutus Liber. It was an intense experience of the process at work. I found it relevant that in a way I got started today by soaking wine bottles to get rid of the labels, so the bottles are ready. In a sense, I’m doing the same with myself. I also found an intriguing passage in Gold of a Thousand Mornings that spoke to the significance of Saturn in alchemical work and I shook my head in bemusment, because its becoming much clearer now what the old Titan has planned for me, and how the situation has been set up.
9-15-2021 Meditated on image 7 of the Mutus Liber. Something which stood out to me is how the essence of the dew is exchanged back and forth from mortal to divine hands and back again, speaking to the play of various energies and how they influence the dew being gathered as well as the work performed. It seems very relevant that what is put into this work on various levels will transform the nature of the work and yourself, but also your relationship with the spiritual forces you work with. It reminds me of SOA, which makes sense given that the SOA has an alchemical element to it.
I’m watching the last episode of Fruits Basket (the original series) and Tohru finds out Kyo’s true nature and of course Kyo naturally runs for it, because to have the ugly seen, so raw, would make anyone run. Who wants, really, to show the not so good sides of themselves after all? But later Tohru shows him she can accept all of him, and he says, “You didn’t have to love everything. Being afraid is just proof that you’ve truly seen the real me, after all.” And really its quite profound, because who doesn’t want the real version of themselves seen by the people that matter. I resonate with this…it speaks on a very visceral level to my own desires to be seen, truly seen.
9-17-2021 I meditated last night on image 8 of the Mutus Liber, which shows Mercury being brought into the process. Again and again what happens is this cycle of divine and mortal, of the bringing in of specific energies in order to refine the process of the dew work. Its fascinating. In Gold of a Thousand Mornings, the author says that to do the dew work, it is essential to meditate upon the Mutus Liber, because you are making your consciousness receptive to the alchemical work you are doing. Makes sense and of course it’s what I was intuitively drawn to do.
Last night my magical partner and I went and got the clear bowls for the dew work and got everything set up. She walked me through the process of how it should work and I instinctively set the bowls up in a triangle pattern. When we went to sleep I had intense dreams around the dew work, the author and his partner in Gold of a Thousand Mornings as well as connecting with my magical partner in the dream. And I felt this thawing within myself and a deeper sense of love and connection with her, because of the truth we’re manifesting with each other.
I meditated on image 9 of the Mutus Liber, which is an image of the sun and moon to the left and right, as well as the 6 saucers of Dew. Most importantly you have the pouring of the dew into a flask and then giving it to Mercury. I essentially did this very action this morning, which makes the meditation on it interesting, because it happened in reverse order, yet I felt this sense of holy awareness with the pouring of the dew and placing the flask in the right space. What I got from the meditation was a confirmation of that work and how important it is that this work isn’t done casually. It must be done with the right respect for the forces being worked with.
I’ve started watching His and Her Circumstances and much like Fruits Basket it has the necessary ability to hit certain buttons. I can empathize with the characters who wear masks because of the pressure they put on themselves, but also feel from other people to be a certain way. And what happens when the mask comes off? How do you relate to other people? It can be a challenge to discover. I learned a lot from being with K about how to take off the mask. I learned how to let people in, how to make friends. And fortunately even after everything I’ve learned not to put the mask on too much, at least with people I want to be close with. I still sometimes have a mask. I have to for most people. But there are some people I can let in. There are some people I can choose to bring into my life and not have walls up. My challenge, in Eugene, is finding such people here, but I’ve already found a couple, including my magical partner.
9-18-2021 I got up this morning. It was raining out, but I decided to go out and collect the dew because it felt right. I emptied the bowls and only focused on scraping the bottles for water. I felt the presence of my magical partner and the couple from Gold of a Thousand Mornings. The lesson from this is do the work regardless of what the circumstances are.
During SOA today, I decided to do Heaven and Earth Qigong throughout the SOA. I noticed that this seems to naturally add and enhance to the experience of the SOA. It makes sense because H&E works through the micro and macrocosmic energies, and so it fits both the invocation of the elemental and underworld and stellar cosmos, as well as the balancing of the energies so that everything is manifested accordingly.
Meditated on image 10 of the Mutus Liber. Also had a profound realization about the Mutus Liber…that it describes the relationships of the elemental and planetary energies to the dew and shows how to transmute them through the work, but also how the work you do brings you to a divine communion with the forces that you are working with. You see it in that image, but also in all the others.
I did some qi gong work. Earlier today I took some liquid gold and during the qi gong work, I suddenly remembered how a person’s saliva, during qi gong, can be used as a refining mechanism within the person because of the way the saliva is stirred by the qi being circulated when the tongue touches the roof of the mouth. The liquid gold reminded me of that and its a good reminder of how the saliva itself can become an alchemical agent.
9-20-2021 Yesterday I presented at the Astromagia conference, as well as moderating a panel. The presentation seemed to go well. I ended up in a stream of consciousness experience for an hour and a half mediating the spirits that came through and went all over the place, but nonetheless tied it all together. It was a presentation on the outer planets, but Saturn showed up as well and had his say.
I collected the dew this morning, with no rain, and there was a lot. It has a pearly color to it. Each time I collect it I feel this internal work happening and I end up reflecting on something related to sacred partnership. Given what the alchemical working is about, this doesn’t surprise me. If anything it helps me see on all levels how this work permutates my being and also calls for an examination of my relationship with myself and my magical partner.
What I thought about is that I want a feast, not crumbs. I want rich depths and engagement. I want to not be an after thought, something which is fit in when its convenient.
Image 11 of The Mutus Liber is of a baby Mercury in a dew drop with the sun charging it and the masculine and feminine principles uniting. The woman is the active principle while the man prays, passively. Actually in a lot of the images the woman takes a very active role, but in Gold of a Thousand Mornings, the author takes a disappointingly parochial view that the woman is meant to be passive.
Tonight my magical partner and I did the SOA and then did the full moon ritual. It was really moving. We reflected on how our partnership had grown stronger and how we had chosen to commit ourselves to each other fully, and to this magical work. We thanked Saturn and Mercury and recommitted ourselves to each other and to the dew work we’re doing together, which will help us deepen our knowledge of the mysteries and each other.