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I just got back from holiday and one of the nice things about getting away with my wife is we’re both interested in magic, even if these sometimes seem to be for separate ends. While the vacation to New England certainly had it’s share of historical interest, I got a chance to sneak in some magic. The folks we met up there were also phenomenal. I won’t suffer the readers with another rant about the magical community at large but I think it’s a rare thing to be able to sit down with four different people who are all members of four different occult groups and not have a murder by the end of it. To be fair, the majority of us were also OTO members in addition to something else and I think that helps people get out of the fishbowl, so to speak.
Our campsite was technically “no smoking”, which means “go into the woods”. Perhaps ironically instead of providing a stone or grass area to smoke in, the policy only serves to push people into where the undergrowth would actually be a fire-hazard. Regardless, I managed to track down a boutique tobacco shop and while my wife was hanging out with the upline I ducked in and grabbed one of “their blends” of cigars. The Red Lion name wasn’t lost on me. It was probably a re-labeled La Aurora, the La Aurora white-pepper-and-leather is a dead giveaway to their middle of the line smoke but not bad. For whatever reason we had two hours to kill and my wife wanted to nap, so I decided to go walk around the woods and find a nice place to sit. Now, I don’t particularly think that every circle of stones is holy, and I actually think that finding such places is difficult at best. I also don’t think that landscaping is a substitute for a henge, so I’ve been keeping an eye out for places which feel right. The fun part was – I wasn’t looking right at the moment. I merely wanted a quiet place to sit down and dig into some reading.
I found a rock which looked pretty darn comfortable and sat down on it. The rock was cool, and it was smooth, and it was also round. I lit my cigar. While I was making sure the head of it would burn nicely, I happened to realize that none of the other stones in the area were round. They were all sort of craggy. This means the stone I was laying out on happened to be old. Much older than the rocks around it. I laid back in the sunlight and really soaked up the whole scene and noticed how pretty the light was as it filtered through the tree. I realized I was laying under an oak, which I didn’t recognize at first since those sorts of oaks don’t grow near me. As I laid there I also realized the forest animals weren’t particularly upset at my presence. I could hear children laughing and playing at the other campsites, but more immediately at hand were the noises of groundhogs pawing through the undergrowth and birds flitting about. I realized the stone had taken on sort of a hollow quality to it, so I decided to descend. While I meditated on the stone a bit, I didn’t particularly sense an individuality as much as one of the dwarves but more of a giant, sleeping body. However after establishing that no-one was home in the rock, or at least not actively interested in kicking me out, I realized that the stones were laid about under the oak in roughly a circle. Had someone come here before me? Perhaps, but the rocks were large, at least the sized of pumpkins, and covered in vines and roots. The “circle” wasn’t immediately obvious as a circle, but none the less was present.
This gave rise to an interesting idea. What if the sleeping rock wasn’t the home of a spirit, but rather a spiritual home? Was it mere coincidence that the rock was large enough for me to lay comfortably on? If the rock is the place of rest for my spirit, then who is in the circle? I became aware of the tree in the middle of the circle, which had not one, but two ‘doors’ made of healed callus’ on the bark. They seriously looked like doors. A bit of meditation later and I had decided that one old landvættir occupied the tall door and a younger one occupied the smaller door. The older one wasn’t terribly talkative but I did get a sense of acknowledgement. The younger one was bouncy like a ball and seemed happy. My gaze was drawn by the younger one into a square rock under a leaf I hadn’t previously noticed, but it was about the size of a cobblestone. It also had the unique feature of being one of the few rocks which didn’t have a ridiculous amount of growth pulling it down into the earth. A small electric tingle took me and I realized that whatever I happened to be hanging out with wanted the foot of the cigar and was willing to give me the rock (with the small, bouncy spirit) to come home with us. I thought it would be a fun thing and I knew just where I was going to put the rock, so I put the cigar in the larger door and brought up the rock with me into the larger stone.
About this time my wife wandered into the clearing after figuring out where I was (probably by scent alone). I explained why I hadn’t gotten any reading done and why I was playing with rocks, and said it was a natural grove. She didn’t jive with it at first, and grabbed the tree, but didn’t sense anything. I had her stick her hand on the large door and she went cold, and got goosebumps. She thought it was neat but wanted dinner, so we didn’t hang out much longer. However on our way out she wanted to know why I was lugging around this rock, so I handed it to her. Goosebumps again.
Anyway, the rock now lives outside our house under one of our ash trees, which also has a ‘door’ in it similar to the one the oak had. It is probably the most fun thing we took home from vacation, I plan on having the magically inclined folks handle it for fun when they’re over (provided they don’t know the story).