Miss Twist's Weblog

My backs quite sore and the hens night at Witches in Britches (theatre restaurant for those not in Melbourne) was fun though my knee is officially fucked. The trip home was interesting to say the least. My usual confidence was shot because my knee was hurting quite badly whenever I moved on it or tried to pivot and I was on my own feeling vulnerable…

Dark ended up keeping me company most the way home. He/it/ze is currently curled up beside me on the bed, taking up most of it really. He is very tall after all. It’s strange being alone but not at the same time. He’s not real, at least not in a physical form. He’s a servitor-come-guardian-come-companion. Having him nearby the entire trip home got me to thinking about visualisation. I’ve been asked about technique a few times lately as I’m very good at producing strong visualisations and Dark is by far one of my best achievements in that field. Believe me it’s not that easy to visualise soemthing that changes according to its own will not yours.

Anyway point is I was asked and now I’m writing about how I achieve the results I do and here’s a rather vague 2am post…

For me it’s about engaging the senses, as many as possible. I don’t just see Dark. I hear him and smell him. I’m still working on physical sensation. There have been a few break through moments but not thing that wasn’t entirely fleeting. It started with snakes. For those of you who have not been exposed to the pleasures of handling a snake or are simply unwilling to allow me to describe what I visualise. I’ve been handling snakes since I was really little so am able to really get into this which is why starting visualisation exercises using something you’re familiar with is the best start. I tend to work with small snakes. First thing I notice about snakes is that they’re heavier than they look, so there’s pressure against your skin. They’re quite warm despite being a reptile, though usually a touch cooler than your own skin temperature at first. So you’ve got a weight on you and it’s about the same temperature as your skin, I focus on that until I’ve got that down. Then I work on the little details. Making the visualisation move requires a fairly good understranding of anatomy. Snakes move on a horizontal plane, their scales grip at the surface beneath them and they move forward by pushin off of this surface, always flexing muscle side to side rather than up and down. The scales are important here, snake scales are not, despite how they may seem, slimy. They’re fascinatinly dry and textured on the underside, smooth on the upper body, so you’re feeling thr rougher scales push against your skin and the body is basically rippling muscle squeezing and releasing to create motion. I follow this through with the slight tickling sensation of the snakes tongue as they tend to flick it in and out frequently, this is how they sense/smell. By the time I’ve gotten to this point I’ve usually automatically brought smell into it. Snakes smell of their environment, so a rainforest tree dwelling snake will generally smell sort of loamish. Visuals are easy from this point, if I even bother. That’s it really. I learnt that then just applied it to other things.

Death is with me.

Death. Metamorphosis. Change. Shedding of the old revealing something new.

I have been going through hard times of late. Ending of relationships, changes in my work place, unsettled living arrangements, feelings of being “kept” be people for all the wrong reasons and generally up in the air and unhappy. I suffer seasonal depression on top of this and, being mid-winter and therefore at the height of seasonal depression season, I’ve been struggling to cope. I started in therapy again to help get my head around things. I’m sure the therapist I see has no idea what’s with me as I just ramble incoherently at her a lot of the time.  The remainder of this post, which may get quite long, is going to explore what I’m finding out about myself, my thoughts and my feelings and also address one or two little but important things.

I try very hard to avoid huge ranty me based posts on all of my journals, and I have quite a few, this time however I’m not pulling punches in any way shape or form.

I feel used and abused by a lot of people I once thought of as friends. To be precise I feel like many of them think of me as an object for them to play with. A toy if you will. I don’t like this, to the point where the behaviour is making me want to avoid going anywhere near people in their entirety and is causing me to have anxiety issues when asked to go out to places where I know many of these people may be present. Telling them to stop appears to be a waste of time. Telling some of them to stop has resulted in petulant childish behaviour and outright anger and abuse from one or two others. I’m not very good at standing up for myself when dealing with people who move in my social circle (reasons for this below) so I’m failing to enforce the “back the fuck off rule”. This is causing self esteem issues that will be addressed in a little bit.

The next thing that’s been bothering me is my social circle at large. Well about 90% of it anyway. There are a handful of people from amongst the large circle of friends I had last year that I still want around. My social circle is practically incestuous, which in and of itself doesn’t bother me, but the lack of respect for other people’s privacy and personal space is starting to be beyond a joke. It makes me not want to be around them. The in fighting has begun as well, also making me not wanting to be around them. The petty little fights have started in places, as has the bad mouthing, back stabbing and nastiness that comes of knowing too much about people because discretion is a thing of the past that no one remembers anymore. I don’t want part of this so I’m actively avoiding outings and gatherings that require me to deal with it because, you guessed it, it’s setting off more anxiety issues.

I have really low self esteem. I had actually developed a reasonably good sense of self some years back, then I dated a complete prick who made it his business to destroy my fragile little tower of esteem. Being made to feel like I am worthless outside of being a toy for people to feel up and pose is having nasty consequences. I feel like it is expected that I allow people to touch me and treat me how they want to when they want to. I have had this backed up, as mentioned earlier, by people’s reactions to being told no. I’m picking at my skin constantly, fretting badly, hiding away from people because being face to face with people is etremely hard, I’m depressed (nothing new) and having a hard time coping with the things I NEED to cope with. Again, not wanting to be around 90% of my supposed friends.

What all this means?

It means I have to make a call, and I’m choosing to make it rather than hide from it. I am not putting up with this shit. The small group of people that I want to spend time with I will spend time with. The rest of them will go get fucked for all I care. I have no time for this.

In a manner this is part psych 101 and one and part major magical working.

There’s a lot of damage that’s been done over the years and it’s not an overnight fix but it’s a necessary start. It will be painful and tiring. I’ll keep rambling at my poor therapist because even if she doesn’t understand what I’m going on about, because I’m only half coherent, the sessions seem to help as a platform to work from. An unbiased mind asking the right questions to make me gather my thoughts into something I can work with rather than a huge mess.

I’ll keep seeking the company of people who encourage me to grow and change rather than expect me to fulfill a role.  I have also made my first active steps in finding new friends. I’ve applied to join an eclectic coven that meets regularly. I’m not sure how that will go, but after 10 years of solitary practice I think it’s time that I actually started communicating with others offline as well as on.

And I have already started working on my mind from that other angle. Magically I’ve done  little to support myself over the past few years. I’ve done little of anything really with my life in constant upheaval. I’ve had a very sharp wake up call in the guise of a semi-student-come-younger-peer’s actions causing me to have an old servitor/guardian become very active and with that I have been able to start working with inner spaces again. Mind temples, neurological symbolic spaces, temples of the aether, whatever you want to call them. Having not had a stable home in my life, these spaces were once very important to me and easy to work with, with all the turmoil I’d closed down my ability to access that. Having it reopened gives me a place to work in ways I can’t in the physical. Some interesting experiments to follow…

Eh you’ll hear about enough of them I’m sure.

Things aren’t good. They really fucking aren’t, but I’m going to put it back together. Slowly maybe, but I’ll raise hell if I have to. It wouldn’t be the first time, no one ever taught me to lie down and die without a fight.

This post will have follow ups, it’s mostly a statement of intent.

I have been thinking on, discussing and not doing anything about some sigils for some time. 3 of the to be precise

1. Health – Statement: “I am healthy”  Task: To make me and keep me physically healthy
2. Esteem – Statement: “I am worth it”  Task: To assist my self esteem because it sucks
3. Weight – Statement: none as yet  Task: This one, which is the work in progress at this point, it to assist me to lose weight and then maintain the healthy weight I will be at once I have done so.

Three sigils (?) each with a very specific and long term goal. My biggest debate at the moment is whether I’m making these solely sigils or going the step further and creating servitors. Either way the symbols that represent my will will be tattooed under one of my breasts running down my torso. Kind of like traditional kanji but not actually kanji. To maintain they will be tended to as part of my daily bath and body routine.

The very pain of having them done will be part of the charging, probably followed by large amounts of dance floor charging just to give it oomph.