I got talking to IAO131 over on reddit about “the OTO experience”. I lamented that basically no-one was doing magic in the particular lodge. The Gnostic Mass is nice, but it’s not participatory magic. I wrote all this with a certain sense of irony – My wife just left her eclectic wiccian coven to join a gardenarian coven because the eclectic coven was so eclectic that people didn’t recognize it as wicca anymore. I joined the lodge to do magic, and the gnostic mass seems to be it.
Now, there was a magical meetup I had been trying to get to for a while at the lodge and every time I went to go, something came up. This is a pretty clear case of magical resistance. Seriously. Car accidents all the time (not me, but enough to stick me in traffic), something would double book me which was important or work related, the weeks I was on call, something would explode on a Sunday afternoon at 4pm. I work in IT. Who is doing anything Sunday afternoon at 4pm except channel surfing?
Finally I said to hell with it and decided I was going to go. This is the expression of Will refined in the heart of stars! This is the purest expression of intent! This is my resolve tempered in the heat of the forge of resistance as to be willing to leave an hour and a half early for what should be a 45 minute drive (usually 60 in traffic)! From Hell’s heart, I stab at thee, oh poorly organized mass transit system!
At least the car started. As it stood, I was 10 minutes late. But, there was a parking spot directly in front of the lodge. Magical resistance just turned into magical creepy.
Two people attended, aside of myself. I got talking to the new bodymaster about what it was and why I was unhappy and he agreed that members of the lodge had wanted to do more for a while, but the old bodymaster sort of gave up. The old bodymaster is a bit of a control freak and insisted on doing the gnostic mass himself. He still does. The lodge does two masses now. He also didn’t want anything else happening in the “gnostic mass space” except for the gnostic mass. Since the temple is the largest room and the lodge proper is made up of the temple and the “lounge”, the temple is the only room we can really use. Thankfully the new bodymaster is intent on practicing his own magic and frankly pulling rank. Really the bottom line here is “The word of sin is restriction.”
The new bodymaster likes to practice energy work. I sort of rolled my eyes at this because I felt it was firmly new agey but I was willing to give anything a go once. Turns out not only is he a seriously gifted person and not crazy (something rare in magic), but he’s decently well read enough to get things done. Case in point, he was quoting from Tyson’s The New Magus when explaining what’s going on. The New Magus was eventually re-edited into New Millenium Magic and it sucked. If you have a chance, grab the first copy. I just grabbed The New Magus off half.com for $5, so it won’t kill anyone.
Anyway, the process of creating these egregores went something like this – everyone decides on a “theme” for the egregores. Then people decide what godforms embody these themes. It doesn’t have to be all from the same pantheon, me being really classical only really thinks in terms of the names of God and Angels, but one of them ended up hosting Dionysus, Hern, and Apollo. Gender polarity is important when using deities which have gender, which is something I haven’t even considered before. Everyone jokes in Dogma about the Angels not having the goods, but it’s true. Constantine does the whole gender-neutral Angels thing really well with Gabriel played by Tilda Swinton. Then we pick a set of colors, and a number. No-one is allowed to pick anything without explaining it, dice are not suitable here. The bodymaster then does his ‘energy work thing’ (not sure what the nuts and bolts are of this) and ‘gives’ you the energy to meditate on. I’m about as psychic as a brick as I’ve written in other posts, but when he ‘gave’ it to me I got the normal magical feeling. We then meditate for five minutes or so to determine any impressions we get. The energy was so seriously well-defined I got communication almost immediately. He then passes around a notepad and without looking at anyone elses drawing, we flip to a clean page and draw or write down stuff. The two guys got shapes, I tend to have wildly complex visions.
For the “mother” figure, I clearly saw a crystal. The crystal was clear and raw, like it was fresh hewn from the ground. It was marginally cool to the ‘touch’. Something was inside the crystal, which I figured out was a bird. Upon closer examination, the bird was a peacock. I decided to try to move into the crystal with the peacock and rather than end up in the same space, I found myself in a vortex which was pulling things in. This was a good polarity for a female figure. This completely defies cabalistic analysis to me. I suspect the energy was Crowleys vision of the 30th (first) Aethyr. This would be good because it’s also the sphere closest to Earth and the material, also because Harpocraties is Horus, and Horus is a falcon headed God, but the falcon is blue. Oops. I described it as a peacock, the magical current got in my head and I saw “blue bird” and completely missed the association. Hang out with the OTO, have OTO themed visions…
The “father” figure (his words, not mine, male and female would suffice) was similarly configured with Gods, colors, and numbers, and he ‘made’ the energy. A vision of this was a honey bear. This is confusing as all heck and I mentally tried to banish it a few times but the honey bear persisted. It’s just a bear, hanging out, filled with honey, with the stupid yellow tube on his head like a hat. Then I got a mercury sphere, which I would have intellectually written up to being Saturn but seemed to be emitting light, so it was like a silver sun. The sun was setting behind the honey bear. We collected the visions and came up with a composite drawing, honeybear on a dias with the setting silver sun behind him. It’s probably supposed to be Anubis in my mind, but again, I didn’t realize this until I came home and went over my notes. It’s also really interesting commentary on the relationship between the various godforms people chose.
He then ‘selected consciousness energy’ to put in the egregores. This is Crowleys CHAOS. Once properly installed, the energy is put into the candles with the appropriate sigils-from-visions on them, given a lifespan, and lit and we all enjoy some diet soda and discuss things. We’ll see if the egregores manifest. If not, we’ll rip them apart and start over.