Update on what I am doing

I have been at work with many things and as many drafts and half written posts I have I thought I would condense things down:

• A couple of weeks ago I did a charity shop raid where I found wonderful pieces of clothes, office skirts, blouses, delicatey cardigan things and dresses for pittance (including a marvelous red dress which would have been £60 but I nabbed it for a tenner and it has been proven rather...lucky...shall we say) 
• I have also noticed the quality of my work improving when I change into work clothes instead of jeans (the piece of clothing I cling to the most). I also managed to overcome my fear of being mocked for wearing rather shorter skirts than I would have when I paired them up with a lovely blazer
• Because my lovely friends have been quite disgusted with the amount of time they have been locked up with cells and infection protocols there have been many invitations to clubs and pubs and the mojo I worked to get me more male attention worked! I was waltzed (literally - waltzed - off of my feet three times in the last month. These things never used to happen!)
• Spirituality wise I put my shoulder to the wheel and have almost completed my months offerings to the Angels who rule the Mansions of the Moon. It is a simple rite, totally stripped down because I have not the space nor access to proper materials to go full blast. It seems to be working though.
• Ancestor offerings have been kept on a regular update and offerings made to planetary spirits. Hekate gets her share as well.
• I have run into walls when I am doing exercises though, I have found myself getting rather sleepy or low on energy when I try something that should be rather easy.
• Mood wise, I am happier. So much so. I mean not everyday, not all the time. But I feel more me than I did this time three months ago. Not some empty shell. I'm not sure how long this will last, but I am grateful for how I am feeling now. I tend to get a different reaction from people now, relationships are a lot easier

One last thing. I am *hopefully* planning a trip to London soon. For my birthday last year I got a chance to see Much Ado About Nothing, playing in West London, there was a bit of a hoo-hah but I ended up spending the whole day there and I cannot begin to describe how utterly brilliant just being there was. I didn't get to see half of what I wanted to see (British Museum being the main thing) but I long to go back.

It is a city where stuff happened - still happens - and the inspiration I got from it was like jet fuel.

Anyways, it has been rather a sappy post filled with talk of dresses and boys and cities. But a post needed to be done.

Repeat after me: 'I am not Batman...I am not Batman' - NYNY Experiment

Hello, I haven't posted for a while, but I can assure you much has been happening and much progress has been made.

As well as new super secret goals I may reveal shortly (I pretty much live by the whole, review, analyse and and update model of goal setting) I thought I would start on this week's post

Deb is so right when she talks about synchronocities in this project, while I haven't been posting my work up here, I have noticed the similar energy levels thing she talks about.

More on synchronicities. A series of odd coincidences occured whereby my friend and I were discussing an awesome talk from TED on vulnerability and I ended up reading a poignant letter in this awesome advice column

However, the discussiong with my best friend on the TED topic brought up something I thought was relevant.

'You need to be less Virgo'  she said


'What do you mean? Virgos are awesome!'

'Yes, but your brand of Virgo-ism means you view your emotions and needs as messy, ugly things that need to be tidied away and never shown to anyone'

'Well I wouldn't put it quite like that'

'Well I would, last time you ended up crying in front of me you could not stop apologising for it'

Suffice to say, what she says is true and in the spirit of becoming more vulnerable I will explain. I have a stupid irrational fear of asking people for help or telling them what I want because fear they will think I am a selfish git and leave me, it is far easier for me to type this than explain - with words - to my closest friends.

But if someone calls me and asks me to do something? I will do it, because I feel I need to keep earning their friendship by helping them whenever I can. Truth is if I didn't have friends who were quite intuitive it could cause a lot of problems in our relationship, hell it has caused problems in the past.

Moral of the story: use your words, express your needs and let your friends help you, we can only grow stronger as a whole if we help each other up. I sure will try to remember to do this myself.

And in no way should this song be your theme tune

Idiocy: I haz it

So Eli over at Moody Tower has posted about symptoms about being under a crossed condition. Read it!

Crossed conditions can happen for a number of reasons, one of the most cited reason is being under a magical attack and these sorts of things can happen. You get the back up of a fellow mage, and they break out the crossing oil and poppy seeds, and calling down whatever spirits in their little black book to bring the hellfire to your doorstep.

Or sometimes your crossed condition is the result of your own stupidity naivety.

A lot of nasty coincidences started to build over the year, big and little things, which really started to add up to what could point to a crossed condition in my sphere.

Pshah! I thought to myself, crossed conditions only occur when someone else sends them on you! I have never spoken really to someone who practices magic enough to be sent a crossed condition. I only lurk on the internet blogs, I don't have much of an online presence, I can't have a crossed condition!

I started to blame it on initiations from rituals I was undergoing/trying to get in contact with my HGA/a predisposition to anxiousness and depressive tendencies. But it just seemed to get worse and I kept coming back to the idea that I could be under some sort of affliction.

Crossed conditions can be quite a hard thing to diagnose for yourself, so I decided to get a second opinion from a highly experienced reader.

Turns out I did have a crossed condition, however the source of my crossed condition was from a previous working with a spirit. I can't go into much detail suffice to say it was my fault for being overambitious and stretching myself beyond what I was capable of and then stopping abruptly when it got too much. Had I recognised the symptoms earlier and had been doing regular offerings and regular upkeeping, I could have curtailed it and it wouldn't be such a bugger to shift now.

So I started back doing regular offerings 2-3 times a day, petitioning my Genius and setting up a proper space for me to work in and doing regular practice of some sort - that seemed to improve my mindset huge amounts. Scale down and look at other I could try and develop. Things have started to get a little better.

On Jan 1st I did my regular reading for the New Year, specifically looking at that issue. The advice I got was to fight back the passivity I was feeling, that Eli mentioned in her blog, and to get a hold of my sphere and act like a ruler, but I am.

I'm not out of the woods yet, but there are babysteps being taken and I hope to see big improvements before long.

 So if you do think you could be under some sort of attack, I reccomend reading Jason Miller's fabulous 'Protection and Reversal Magic' for good ideas on how to protect and start the clean up yourself and going to get a reading from someone with experience. Personally, I reccomend Conjureman Ali, he was profressional, honest and very helpful when I e-mailed him.

New Year New You Prompt 4 - Relax

[Lush Honey Bee Ballistic]
So for Prompt 4, Relaxing and rewarding.

I'm can make idiotic choices in terms of choosing something to reward myself with, my most frequent choice for rewarding myself is putting off having to deal with something difficult ex 'I have dealt with x difficult task, now I can put off doing y'

No very productive, it would be fair to say.

However, I'm making the trip back up to uni and back into Dorm Life and more importantly, Life Without a Bath Tub. So I went shopping in Lush today and got a few little bits including the ever lovely Honey Bee bath bomb. It smells gorgeous and it makes the tub water turn yellow.

So, hot bath, a lovely cup of tea, and perhaps a few episodes of my newly discovered guilty pleasure - Mob Wives.

New Year New You Prompts 2 and 3 [Part 2]

Actual *actual* goals

Okay, as much as meditation will help me get out of the black hole and help me keep on track, I will need  to have a few things to aim for.

This year is a landmark year for me. I will be graduating in 6 months time and will need to get back home. From what I have been told, it will be difficult to get a job in the field I specialise in without a Ph.D., and I am not sure I want to continue with it anyway. So goals:

Thesis writing:
For the first month
1) I aim to write 100 - 300 words per day (start next week)
2) I aim to do at most 2 hours of reading (start next week)

I have a nasty habit of leaving things to the last minute, not something you can do with a thesis. So I plan to do this as early as possible in day - after I wake up. I get Wednesdays off and the weekend. If the words 'oh I can do it later, I have plenty of time' that is a signal for me to now it *now*.

Magical work
1) Sweetening my supervisor and the administration (start tomorrow)
2) Mantra to Ganesha for support (tonight)
3) Start collecting ingrediants for a study support mojo hand (tonight)
4) Create Crown of Success/King Solomon's wisdom vigil light (tomorrow)

Debt
Like most I have accumulate a bit of debt.
1) Finish bank stuff (tonight/tomorrow)
2) Appply for one of those top-up credit cards (10th January)
3) Start mapping out ideas for secondary stream of income - selling divinations/magickal products etc. (within two weeks)
4) Create a budget and stick to it (within three weeks)
5) Sell something to three customers

Magical Work
1) Ask Genius to provide help with this
2) Gather dirt from bank to work with
3) Experimenting with a few techniques gathered from Strategic Sorcery course - the Information/Causal/Etheric level
4) Invoke Sachiel/Jophiel/Hismael and ask them for assistance - inspiration for secondary income/wheels to turn in the bank
5) Invoke a couple of the Archangels from the Mansions of the Moon to help with business ideas

New Year, New You - Prompts 2 and 3 [Part 1]

The most difficult thing I am facing when writing this post is challenging the idea that things could be better than they are, more specifically that *I* can be better than I am and I have the resources and capability to do so.

This is one of the symptoms of depression. It is a rotten, rotten liar. Of course I can get better, the situation can be better, but the question is how to do so.

Meditation.

Oh how I loathe meditation! Sitting down and being quiet and realising just how my brain picks up patterns to distract me is very tedious because it feels like constant failing and an absolute waste of time.

However, there was a time when I was more disciplined in my meditation, I learnt to feel when my jerk brain was rebelling and started to create anxiety and fear over little things that it just didn't want to do.

Sometimes I would get anxious answering an e-mail from University or going into the bank. Before realising that this was just my jerk brain rebelling, I would procrastinate, but when I realised that the fear was just an illusion of sorts and that I would not be harmed from facing, it became a prompt. I knew when I was feeling anxious it meant that it was something I could do that my brain didn't want to do, it wanted to distract me instead.

For many reasons, big and little, my practice got waylaid and I forgot this key insight - I slowly stopped applying it to my daily life and things - anxiety and depression - took over.

So my main goal is getting back to meditation, slowing down and courting the silence within. This is going to be key to sorting out my health, creating financial discipline (knowing when I am spending because I need something versus spending to make me happy) and helping me to become a better sorceress/witch/Girl Who Does Shit.

It is also something reasonable I can achive, if things seem big and scary I can at least sit down and close my eyes and chant IAO to myself for 5 minutes. As much as I may drag my feet to get there.


Continued in Part 2.

First Prompt: On the uses of Van Van and Gates

So Deb put her first prompt up today for the NY NY project. Now I have to admit I have been thinking about goals and things I would like to aspire to and I all I can come up with is: 'stop feeling ick' - which is brilliant in terms of its specificity and it's measurable *snort* however it does gain points on it's being relatively attainable and realistic (sort of). You can't start building houses if all you have is sand and mud as the foundations.

So to stop feeling ick, it is tme to start with the small stuff:

I already have a head start in terms of having tidied my room, but it has been about a month and a 1/2 since I did a proper cleaning out. So here is what I plan to do:

1) Stele of Jeu/calling on Agathodaimon/asking the Logos to shine the light upon me and my space to cleanse it from unwanted and corrupting energies

    * The whole 'make all spirits subject unto me' bit can help me in shoving out the unwanted energies/spirits/larvae and what not lurking about

2) Solar work - opening a solar vortex (AND CLOSING IT AFTERWARDS)

(using something inspired from FR RO's Astral Warriors Handbook)

    *  This is the equivalent of opening the curtains and watching all the cockroaches and rats scuttle away

3) Saturn work - defining the boundaries

    * Now the solar work will only chuck stuff out, using Saturn work will help define the boundaries between what's in and what's out.

4) I then use sea salt, Uncrossing Oil, Van Van Oil,  Basil and Hyssop and put them in a small pot, pour boiling water over them and start cleaning the walls/windows/doors from the back of the room/house to the front. Whilst doing this I chant something as I am cleaning out - psalm 23 is always a good one

5) Propriating - making offerings and inviting the right things back in

    * I generally then use frankincense oil and a candle and make an offering to the protective spirits/ancestors/Hecate and generally make peace with all and any

On the decluttering:

I have to admit, when I first heard that my first instinct was like 'No! I can't do that! What if I *need* something?' and now after much thought...it's still like that. Although admittedly I can think of a few things - clothes that don't fit and I don't wear - that I would not mind parting with. But when it comes to books... they're my precious.

However, a valient effort will be made to make some progress on the decluttering.

On Time Management

Gosh - my time is being eaten up by so many other things that I am using to distract myself and my work is suffering for it. Not only does am I distracting myself from my grief, but part of me rebels against my work - it isn't what I want to do and I cannot get out of it yet. If I am honest I am scared to do what I - there are so many expectations upon me. But what I do spend my time on does nourish me (it just isn't what I'm suppose to be doing)

On Rocks

I am currently dealing with ongoing grief, stress, anger channeled inward and a bad bout of seasonal depression. So yes, I am clinging to a few rocks. I am does planning on doing some ongoing Jupiter and Venusian work to relieve the worst of it. My morning practice is now including a mantra to Lord Ganesh which has really had a positive effect on my mood.