The long-promised public magic post.

Okay. Feel a bit nervous of doing this, because I'm well aware that from the perspective of a not-into-magic person it makes me look utterly mental and more than a little foolish. I'm a lot more comfortable these days squirreling everything away behind custom friends filters, locking it down, keeping it private. Staying low key. Heh.

But I also feel that that's a bit cowardly; like I'm shortchanging the people who might be interested or even inspired. So here we go...



Well, here we are, then. Where to start...? I dunno. Maybe standing in the supermarket in 1977, trying to will my Mum to buy me sweets. Maybe making my first "potion" at nine, my first dowsing pendulum at ten, getting my first deck of tarot cards at 12. Maybe all the years spent noodling around with fluff-wicca, then high ceremonial, then rune-work, all the time looking for something that felt right.

All kids work magic. I just never grew out of it.

In my magical career, the strongest and most resonant experiences in my life had been with ol' Hey-Zeus and his Big Daddy (this was back in my single figures for the most part, although I suffered the odd relapse well into my teens) or with Team Norse. Why them? Well, I guess they were the only pantheon that didn't make me feel like a massive cultural imperialist, like a rich student crashing a vodoun ceremony in search of a new high. As a pallid anglo motherfucker who'd had little exposure to cultures other than her own, I had issues with trying to cosy up to, say, the Hindu pantheon for example. I'm a bit more relaxed about the whole thing now, though I still have problems with the easy cultural appropriation that tends to occur in the magical community generally.

I worked with them on and off for a good while, mostly in a rather distant way, through the runes. I was still at the stage of treating them as godforms then, and my results were all pretty lackluster until I cluelessly decided to evoke 'the Loki godform' as an agent of change.

Yes, well. Those of you who have been following this story will know that "change" in this context was interpreted as "six-car pile up with added zombies, please," as my life as I knew it sank into the mire. There was about a year or so where every element of my life was meticulously smashed to smithereens: job, relationship, everything that mattered went.

For some years before all this latest stuff kicked off, I'd been pretty much committed to chaos magic. That didn't feel right, exactly, but at least it was a loose enough fit not to chafe in any of the raw spots. It felt sort of safe--which is not the same as right. No Gods, you see. Just godforms. (The Magician Is God! You're nothing but a pack of cards! Bwahahahaha!) I left godform work alone for various reasons only partly related to fear. Over time, I drifted into a less po-mo way of looking at deity work in magic and began imputing some form of awareness to such powers. I came to feel strongly that it just wasn't okay to work with what I still called 'godforms' unless there was a special resonance, a calling, to a certain pantheon or entity--which calling I resolutely denied feeling, even as I yearned for it.

Tip for those who would work magic #142: Do not ignore Gods just because you think they don't go with your stuff.

Late last year, I got into ancestor work. (I would use the phrase "ancestor worship," but what I mean when I say "worship" and what others hear is very different. The word does not connote grovelling or abasement to me, only celebration and the acknowedgement of worth, but it tends to go over very badly.) It started very simply, with me just taking a moment now and then to tell them how things were going, what I was thinking. I would ocasionally tip out a little libation of water onto the ground as an offering. Eventually I got a small wooden box which I used as a focus for these chats. (These days they have a proper harrow in between Odin and Thor... but I'm getting ahead of myself.) Around the same time I began to get seriously interested in hoodoo rootwork, infinately preferring that very direct, simple, immediate brand of magic to more rarified ceremonial practices or the somewhat superficial nature of my own work with chaos magic (that's not to say that chaos magic is superficial, BTW, just that my own practice thereof was rather superficial). I found that I dug that kind of work, that it resonated deeply: magic that gets under your fingernails. I reckon it's as trancendant and complex a path as the flashy ceremonial route; I'm still only scratching the surface.

So anyway. There I was, pootling along, minding my own business, when I walked smack into an occupational hazard of the practicing magician--to whit, Gods. Not godforms. Actual smack-you-round-the-head, send you scary visions and generally fuck with your brain argh what the ever-loving fuck GODZ!? Specifically, of course, that would be Loki.

Well, I kind of freaked for a while there. Even though I was re-evaluating some stuff at the time and even tentatively considering working with him again, I still had it in my head that this 'godform' was dangerous and that his turning up in my life again could only mean trouble. I went running to my online circle for advice. I recieved lots, all of it well-intentioned, all of it helpful in its own way, all of it recieved with much love and gratitude... and most of it contradictory. One piece stood out as level-headed, from a guy who already works with firey, scary powers, and it essentially boiled down to this: Pull yourself together and make an offering, find out what he wants. (He put it much less sharply than that, but there's yer gist). So I did.

Weird night. Lost about four hours. Other stuff happened. Remind me to tell you about it sometime. Maybe in a couple of years, when hopefully my hands won't shake when I think about it.

Which didn't stop me doing it again a couple of weeks later, and making regular offerings on pretty much a weekly basis. After a time, I put up a permenant shrine in my house. I light candles there, burn dragon's blood, make offerings of coffee, orange Tang, or hard liquor. I don't know why coffee. He just likes it.

Then I started to get messaged by various of his drinking buddies. When I say messaged in this context, I mean odd little synchronicities: a scrawl of graffiti one day, an advertising poster the next. Little signs that add up to something bigger.

First came the great-grand-daddy of them all: Odin. Others followed. I performed blots in their honour, listened to what they had to say, asked questions. Sometimes you'll get answers in words, sometimes images. Sometimes you'll just get a sense of a presence in the room with you, and the answers will emerge over the next few days. I'm still going through this process with each in turn, celebrating their mysteries, trying to build a workable relationship with them. Is this magic or worship? Is there even a difference? For me, increasingly, the answer to that last question is No.

In essence, I have converted to Northern heathenry. The grubby, Godless little chaos magician has gone and got religion. You may all laugh now. I sure am.

(I do wonder if this has all been some kind of psychotic episode, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I'm still open to the possibility that it is all in my mind. I will remain so, because giving up the doubt is a sure way to join the ranks of the deluded wankomancers. Goodness knows, we don't need any more of them.)

The way I work it now is that I approach the pantheon using faiths such as Vodoun and Santeria as templates for my rites. I don't know of any other heathen that does this. I guess I'd seem pretty outlandish to the homesteading, folkish, Viking-re-enactmenty crowd, but the African-based syncretic faiths just resonate more deeply for me than rites based on high ceremonial magic, Christian liturgy or Wicca. Go read the Eddas and the sagas--those are vibrant, vital, immediate Gods. (Mead! Fighting! Screwing! Eating! Self-mutilation! Transvestitism! Blokes getting pregnant! I LOVE THIS PANTHEON!) Look at the animism: each hill has its spirits, each rock, each tree, powerful beings that repay reverence. You have your personal spirits: your ancestors, your guides, just as people who practice Vodoun have their own personal Lwa, usually their ancestors. There are tons of parallels to be drawn and learned from. Treating the Gods like they were Lwa or Orisha just seems to go over in a way that I can't imagine a load of po-faced thee-ing and thou-ing would. Hel with all that--heat things up! Fix them some grub, pour them a drink, dance for them! Makes for very strong, direct contact.

So yeah, pretty outlandish. I've sort of given up on the idea of joining a hearth, because... well, just look at me. John the Conqueror root on my harrow to the fertility god Frey. Fast Money incense burned as an offering to Freyja (whose harrow also boasts one of those Chinese lucky cats), not to petition her for gain but to send 'wealth' her way in a sort of essential, magical sense. Offerings of sangria to Odin. Unfortunately, a lot of heathens would run screaming into the night if they saw all that. There's a tendency to try and remove anything "alien" from one's blots, which I personally feel is a mistake. Sure, attemting to bring in as many elements as one can from the past is a fine thing--it brings one closer to one's ancestors, and I'm certain that it pleases the Gods. But fear of the alien, fear of bringing novel or foriegn elements into play--I don't think that's healthy. I think it's backward-looking and limiting; it doesn't allow the Gods their full expression in this time, in this place, as part of a living culture. Plus it re-enforces and attracts the worst kind of prejudice. (I'm particularly unimpressed by the concept of "folkishness," the idea that one must be of Northern European stock to worship the Northern Pantheon. I'm sorry, all due respect and everything, but fuck right off. Really. The Gods'll pick who they pick and call who they call. They don't need jumped-up arrogant bigots to do their choosing for them. People like this are the reason I will be wearing my mjollnir under my clothes for the forseeable future.)

Then there's this laughable prejudice against magic that I keep coming across. Like I was saying elsewhere recently: "To be a proper religion you've got to ape the Xtian model: Gods and Godsmen over here. Filthy witches over there. On top of that big pile of kindling."

Added to which, the kind of direct contact which is the goal and the mainstay--the heart, soul, blood and bones--of my work now is frowned upon by many, being regarded as somehow taboo. How dare you try and touch the Gods with your sticky mortal fingers!

And this is before we get into the whole Loki-worshipping thing, which is a bit of an issue since the vast majority of heathens out there insist on regarding him as a kind of Satan stand-in. I've actually come across people who won't say, or even type his name; they write it as L*k!. Bless. (Psst! If you want Satan, dearies, the Church is back that way. Please hand in your drinking horn on the way out, and take your dualistic crap with you.) He's not "safe" or "nice," but then for that matter neither's Odin.
Loki is heavy gear, for sure, and I wouldn't recommend that just anyone should try to work with him, but he's not Teh EVAL!!!1! either. I'm not worshipping the Devil here. He's a wild, firey God, a lover of strife for what strife may teach us, a lot like the Orisha Ellegua in Santeria. A trickster, but also a teacher. He's not always easy to be around and I don't think I'll ever really get used to his presence in my life, but a magician could hardly ask for a better ally than Loki.

That's assuming he is my ally. Still not completely clear on that point.

I can hardly believe it's been such a short time since my first contact episode. In that time, so much has changed; my whole approach to magic is different now. Confident? Secure? Nah. Like I say, heavy gear. Not entirely sure I'm really up to it, to be honest. I only know that I have to try. There's no map of this territory, not really. You have to travel it yourself. Kinda like playing Mornington Crescent.

This is moving so fast and it's so damn strong and I'm acutely aware of how easy it would be to lose my grip; to slip helplessly off and under those eight crushing hooves, never to rise. But this is where it's at, you know? Everything else I've ever done looks like a joke next to this. I have come to a place now where I am no longer doing magic; magic is doing me. You don't work this, you live it. The rider and the ridden, moving as one.