The Dusty Grimoire

When you fear something, it can be immobilizing. A magician, like most perfectionists, strives to control his own will in the chaos around him. By learning this control, the inner universe is at the command of the magician. One of the things that I have always had a problem overcoming, is the fear of what lies dormant inside. As an Otherkin, albeit a demonic Otherkin, my human nature was raised to be fearful of the things that were dark. Over the years, I have since embraced this aspect of myself. When I was a child, and having night terrors of me rending the flesh from my family, I was a very confused individual.

One thing that I did in order to learn more about my fear, was to immerse myself into the experience. While I was dreaming, I would often wake up in a panic, heart racing. If I did, I’d close my eyes, and hold that terror close to me, knowing that if this was the worst that I could feel, that I’d be stronger by being able to stand it.

Embracing the fear in other ways can be an essential practice to the path of a Shaman, Magician, or just a person wanting to improve their surroundings. In old days, there are reports and confirmations of people heading into the dangerous wilderness in order to master their fear of the unknown. The Native American tribes practiced this as a way of affirming the place in life of the person taking this rite of passage. The animal totem that would be symbolize them also came into the life of the person the passed this trial. While animal totems can be found through these exercises, they are a little bit out of the scope of this article.

I developed a meditation of primal human fears, both old and new. This meditation is meant to be guided by an outside party, because of the nature of the meditation I suggest it. If you do not have access to someone to read the meditation to you, you can record it and guide yourself through the process. For this meditation, we will be walking through different “gates,” through each one following a winding path that leads us up to, and through (it took me a few tries on some of these…) that fear. Every time I do this meditation ,I find myself at peace after the initial immersion. I suggest this meditation be done until you can get through all of the gates comfortably. I will publish them in short bursts at random- so to start off, here is the first one.

The Fear Gates

Gate 1

As you lay there, feel your breathing fill your body. Deeply in, deeply out, slowly. Come to a relaxed state, and allow the images in your mind to come, and pass, flowing off of you like water. Imagine your body, floating in the sea, the waves of thought gently rock you back and forth, relaxing you, calming you.

Now, feel the waves rock you a little more. Feel your skin shy away from something coming up from deep within the black waters. Feel something strong wrap around your leg, weighing you down. The serpentine coils engulf your leg as the water begin to thrash with the tentacles that threaten to swallow you whole. Feel the muscles as the tighten on your flesh, the slick of water as it is pressed from your skin and replaced with the cold and loathesome embrace of the monster below you.

Feel your breath, steady yourself and find the rhythm of the waves crashing around you. Feel yourself drawing strength from the beast, pulling it’s power into your body. As you sap it’s strength, feel it’s tough skin give way, and wrinkle. Pull from it’s core, and feel the limbs falling from your body. Breath deeply.

Feel the waves begin to calm.

Not to shoot a dead horse, but where would a page like this be without showing an example of my own techniques and energy manipulation ideas in this very basic concept? Well, I’ve got my trusty side-arm, and I’m taking aim.

The first thing that you want to do when learning to shield is get used to programming energy. It’s a simple process, however there is a learning curve involved where you will find yourself unsure of your own abilities. This is pretty standard, though getting past it without a friend or partner might be a bit difficult. My way of getting people over the learning curve is to play a simple energy programming game. It’s called “Pass the Psiball,” and I first learned it on Psipog.

This game is really easy. For beginners, you start with a list of tactile sensations that are going to be programmed into the energy ball- hot and cold to start, then something more specific as well; smooth, spiky, or spongy. The object is to encode the energy ball with a temperature and a shape, and pass it to a friend for them to interpret your programming. While also flexing your energy manipulation muscles, you get the option to learn to decode the programming of energy, on top of reinforcing your own programming skills. I’ve always used a short list for beginners, and of course you can increase the difficulty by adding more specific things, or a broader range of sensations, colors, smells, what have you.

Once you’ve gone through this a few times, you’ll probably notice the difference between tactile programming, and visual programming. Both of which are very usefull, and I’ve found more success comes from using a mixture of the two processes. Tacile programming is achieved when you feelthe energy moving through you, changing shape once it’s between your hands, raising or lowering in temperature. Almost like sculpting clay. Visual programming is just that- you visualize where your energy is, see it moving, and see the changes take shape.

This is one thos those that will be updated frequently, just wanted to post something.

There are obvious advantages to having a journal of any kind. Not only is it a great self awareness and reflection tool, but it also allows the writer to carry on their own stream of consciousness and vent their frustrations of the day out. Dream journals are also an important tool for many of us, allowing us to reflect on our subconscious happenings and learn more about the internal archetypes that affect us. While I’ve always felt that a journal should incorporate all of these things, and be an ongoing internal dialogue with your higher self in order to perpetuate the cycle of self awareness and personal ascension.

Now, that’s all fine and dandy, but for those of us who have a hard time writing, how the hell are we going to start a daily journal and make it interesting enough to keep up with?! Writers often employ writing prompts to get their creative juices flowing. They use these to start off, giving themselves a frame to start with and then let the writing go where it takes them. Once they have a beginning (which isn’t always “the beginning” if you’re talking about a story or an article) they can pull the parts that they feel are good, and use those as prompts for the next part of their work. I often do this when I’m writing stories for class, and it’s been an invaluable technique. Applying it to my spiritual and magical work hasn’t been easy.

I’ve been developing a list of writing prompts for a magical journal, one that will go through an entire years’ worth of entries, and many of them will reflect back on previous entries. I’m trying to make a generator that will be hosted on the Dusty Grimoire, and will walk through the years worth of entries, and then have a random generator that can be used when you can’t think of something to write. Of course, the focus of this project will be for self awareness and achieving your goals (mundane and magical, of course) so there will be an array of topics and journal ideas. Of course, many of the topics will seem like they do not belong, but once the writing starts you will find yourself reflecting upon your own experiences, and relating them to your goals. Through this, you’ll notice insight developing on how to achieve those goals, and how realistic your dreams really are. I’ll of course be using the Dusty Grimoire to post my own responses to the journal entries, and you’ll see the posts grow quickly once I get all of the prompts written and published. It’ll be a long road, and organizing all of the can be bothersome, but it’ll be worth it if anybody can be helped through my work.

Not to be the bearer of melodrama, but this post is going to be all about me. Still working on cleaning up my language from the vicious battle with my essay on energy manipulation, I figured I would lay back and enjoy the show with a few highlights of the last week or so.

1.) I’m no longer working 60 hours a week at my job, with a prompt display of my masculinity, I have secured myself a three day weekend that will last as long as it will support myself and my bad habits. Also, this will mean that I will not only have time to update the site here, but I will also be able to finally learn how to adjust my CSS and stylize the website more to my taste! Yay, custom images and graphics!

2.) Because I’m a nice guy, I’ve accepted a position with the Shadow’s of Valhalla Otherkin group (see RSS feed at right) as an admin. While I don’t suppose this will take much time out of my life, since there really isn’t much there to crack down on, I do at least want to make aware this fact so that no one tells me that they didn’t know. Here it is, typed, posted, and proven. Take that.

3.) I’ve officially announced my engagement. While not “new” news, it’s still news and I’m freakin’ happy. You should be too. Party like there’s no tomorrow (which, in hindsight, might involve a lot of crying and tantrums…hmm. Perhaps we should review that phrase to be updated.) and join me in defying the government! Only because it’s two guys openly expressing our love for eachother with that good old heathen handfasting. Joy, rapture, and the occasional 16 shots of rum.

4.) I’ve decided that rum is to be the libation of my choosing at my funeral. I don’t expect it soon, but be warned that you will be required to pour me several drinks upon my internment to the earth.

That is all, thank you.