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.

Geburah

Elemental Balancing Ritual Creativity Month 13

0-22-2019 I am creating a drawing of the archangel Khamael for this month’s work with Mars/Geburah and of course Khamael. I’m also watching one of my favorite movies, A Beautiful Mind, which is a biopic of sorts about John Nash, the eccentric mathematician. I like the movie because I can identify with the character, both in terms of his awkwardness with people and the unusual perspectives he used with his mathematic work. And I can appreciate his struggles, because of my own, though mine aren’t the same as his. I know what its like to be on the edge, to flirt with madness as you pursue genius, as you pursue the distinctive ideas that matter, going against the grain of conventional ideas to discover the potential that lies within the unconventional. I also know what its like to let my own arrogance delude me, and the subsequent fall that can happen with such delusions. At some point in the movie, his roommate tells him that his problem isn’t in the room he’s in, but in the world out there, that he has to discover the problem that other people have. It’s advice I resonate with. It’s what lead me to explore magic from a process perspective, because the problem I’ve found again and again is that magic isn’t approachable from an esoteric perspective. What point is there to practice magic if the work is harder than it has to be?

And I know the doubt all too well that one feels when what you’re trying to pursue doesn’t seem to work or come together. It’s taken me a long time to find what works, to discover the path forward. It’s involved failing and falling, and then climbing back up because I won’t give up on my ideas, on my work, and on the magic. It’s required discipline as well, finding the routines that work and sticking with them even when in the moment there has been despair. Now I am the phoenix rising from my own ashes, and from the hard earned and learned experiences that will always ground me by reminding me to stay humble, while pushing me to continue exploring the edge and embracing the unconventional.