I feel beautiful today. Like spinning in a field with stars in my eyes and  flecks of stardust sliding off my body, complete with slow-mo cam to capture the moment. 


I didn't wake up that way. I woke up from a dream. I was wrestling with this black guy and fighting with him. And before that I was with this girl, The One, as it were, Evie I think. And we were running from an unknown something and chasing another known something a guy. We drove a submarine which turned into an airplane and we flew. Hm. I don't much remember the previous contents, nor the reasonings why I was doing these things with this random girl or chasing said guy. Strange. Waking up I thought of that and then the thought dropped into my mind that I needed to be careful, that I needed to jab a needle through my ear then cut my arms and spin until the blood made a complete circle and that that was the only thing that'd protect me. From what? o.O I didn't know what. I didn't know where the fuck that thought came from to begin with. I mean wtf was THAT? 

I mean I know what it was, it was a random dream-thought that sometimes occurs when one is in the process of waking up. I also know the content of the thought; that comes from back when, jeez, I was in my mid-teens and delving into the occult. Jeez the hours I spent at old libraries and bookstores mostly forgotten by the city. They were the best, I loved them very much even before I became obsessed by the idea of magic, the real names of God and other such things.The oldness, the dusty books and the smell just infused me with a sense of....potential in the place. The entire place felt like it had something deep within it waiting to be discovered by the right set of eyes. It was so different from the typical library or bookstore. CERTAINLY not that sterilized feeling of a Barnes and Noble or a dirty lowclass feeling of a public library. Instead it felt like I was in another age, another place. Even the architecture suggested it, curned and corners among the bookshelves, a strange stairway in the back where you could open up a door underneath and find even more books and a place to read with a little light. I'd visit and dig. Strangely, I don't remember anyone else ever being there. Surely the owners of said nooks were aware of me. There were, after all, people behind those ancient wooden counters. But I don't remember ever being asked anything more than a cursory question or two and being told the place was closing if I'd lost too much time. Mmm. I remembering all of this now. But I'm off topic aren't I?It's too easy for me to get lost in my love of musty old places with old things. ^_^ I shall get right back on track. 

Most people are familiar with summoning circles. That is, those rings with some sort of symbol inscribed along the lines. That's the trope anyway in movies and video games. In reality, that's somewhat inaccurate. In most forms of 'mancy that I know of, there are circles symbols outside the circle and also generally within as well. A circle alone (with symbols) is just a form of concentrated power, be it a cage or a foci. For example, with a foci of protection/power you will have a circle for yourself to stand in, and inside one ring will be names of God proclaiming your oneness or solidarity with God (in the solomon kinda way of doing things) literally proclaiming yourself to BE a God (in various others) within said circle. Other systems will use runes of power instead of references to a God or Gods. Essentially it's the same thing but with runes representing the necessary aspects of nature/the world, uruz, hagalaz and the sort. Inside another ring will be runes or inscriptions based on what you're attempting to do; references to luck or wealth or love if trying to promote those, strength and determination and solidity of mind if you're trying to bind a spirit, etc. In another circle will be runes/writing with the intent to protect as well as your name. Regardless of flavor, the point is generally to amplify yourself to a point where you can make what you're trying to do function safely. Next to that will be the circle of binding, aka the actual summoning circle that movies and games are so fond of. Typically there is a circle devoted to truth, binding one to speak truth within to it, a circle of calling to entice said spirit to come to begin with (a circle is useless if they do not choose to come at all!) and a circle of ACTUAL binding to keep them there if they do come. It's supposed to be easier to ask one to come than it is to force them to, you see. Inside the circle is the name of the target, the True name of the target with a capital T. All of this is for naught without the true name. 

Anyway, that's the general gist for many such symboled circles, rings of something to influence what is inside the rings, to strengthen or to bind, rings to symbolize intent and give the magic direction and further still, a focus to someone or something specific. Names are important in this kind of magic. Really though, what I got out of it was the most important thing about the circles was not the circle itself, not the letter or language or rune you used, but rather, the intent and the belief. The entire purpose of circles was to crystallize intent; to take an individual of many feelings and thoughts all of which go in many directions and to turn them into something sharp pointing only one direction. Only with one will and one unified sense of purpose can magic be achieved it is said many times in many different frameworks. It's all about intent and symbolism. That's the point I wanted to get at with all this talk.

So when I woke up to day and wanted to pierce my ear with a nail and cut myself and spin, twas a scary thing. Whatever I had been thinking earlier, my subconscious had reacted to something violently. Who knows if it was an odd sound outside, a fragment of the dream that I thought i remembered the end of but didn't or some other stimulus. Hell, if you wanna go there, can even say that it WAS something supernatural in the area and I sensed it. I don't necessarily believe that however. Whatever it was, the point of the ear piercing was to defile myself, to make myself unvirginal in a symbolic kind of way. Scarred bodies are not as preferable as pure ones, indeed they are useless for some purposes. In the Abrahamic traditions, it's because of prohibitions of God towards scarring the body, because having such scars move you further from Him. In others, it's about purity and completeness, the wholeness of one soul. So in piercing myself I would be making myself less of a tasty target. The ring of blood would be like a protection circle from something outside of myself. No symbols would be needed because the blood itself would be the symbols. It would be my own blood I would be expelling and written even on the tiniest bits of DNA is me, ergo no need for a name. It would be a symbolic outpouring of my lifeforce, quite literally that which powers me, ergo no need for runes of power. All that's left is the intent of protection, which is in the mind of the invoker. Spinning clockwise binds (left unbinds if you were curious) and creates the seal. Protected.

A valid question: why should this work? Because whateverI was thinking, I was not thinking of a physical body. That is, it wasn't you reaching across to slap me. Any human can easily breach a circle of protection; the laws of the physical realm are different and care little for drawings and symbols. However, when talking of, for example, a spirit, the rules are different. They are entities of emotion and/or thought living in a heterotopia of emotional/intellectual space. Knowing this, it becomes more understandable why a circle of blood is supposed to work. Question: How do you deal with a physical problem, lets say catch a baseball. Simple, you move your hands up and enclose them around the ball. You don't feel at the ball, you don't think at the ball. Thinking or feeling the ball will not stop it. However, physically reacting to it will impact said ball. Similarly, a being of emotion and thought with no presence in the physical realm (just as the baseball is purely physical and lacks presence in the thought and emotional realms) can be impacted with terms of emotion and thought. Remember what I said about the intent and symbolism being important? Yeah. That's why it they are supposed to work. Pathos to impact pathos. Whee, long explanations. 

Fun fact: back when I used to try to practice magic I tried to influence myself into picking out a rune to symbolize myself. I dreamed that night of Hagalaz, a rune most certainly resembles me and what I'm about even to this day. Interesting to me that it's so apt when almost all of the others would not describe me at all.

Copying and pasting because I'm lazy....

Hagalaz:

“Don’t try to fix what we should break before it breaks us.”

Hagalaz - “Hag-all-az” – Literally: “Hail” or “Hailstone” – Esoteric: Crisis or Radical Change

Key Concepts: hailstones, crisis and catastrophe, disruption, radical change, destructive elements of nature, severe weather, the uncontrollable, unavoidable unpleasantness, Jungian shadow, psychoanalysis, regression, acceptance of the unalterable

Psi: disruption, change, personal past

Energy: power beyond human ability to harness, perfect pattern, seed formation, objective confrontation, destructive natural forces, chaos

Mundane: bad weather, obstacles, surprises, shelter

Divinations: Change according to ideals, changes for the long-term good, controlled crisis, corrections, completion, inner harmony; or catastrophe, crisis, stagnation, loss of power, loss of property, short-term disappointment, victim-consciousness, obsession with the past, blame.

Governs:
Completeness and balance of power, integration of unconscious shadow elements
The inevitability of Fate, Wyrd, Orlog
Evolutionary progress and operations of becoming
The outworking of a perfect pattern
Protection through banishing or exorcising disharmonious patterns, protection
Awareness of the unconscious ideas for eventual processing
Causing discomfort in others by awakening their own subconscious ‘garbage’


Mmm. The rune of lightning and hail and terrible change, vaguely to the Tower on the tarot if you're more familiar with that. Nomnomnom. I should look back into runes, re-teach myself. Get a set and throw them, see what happens. Speaking of that, I still wonder where the fuck my tarot cards went. Since my trip to NJ I haven't been able to find them. This makes me sad. Once I find them I will do throws for people once again. =O