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.

In early January I posted this

This is the mid year redux post in which I laugh at myself for not having even remotely done what I was planning.Lemme see… Before e start, in my defence, this year has been a complete write off so far.

Monthly Tarot - Complete fail however I have been using my decks more and more so I am getting more familiar with it and thanks to Alan Moore’s Promethea I’m enthused to really get in and study them.

Inner Temple of Witchcraft – FAIL

Meditation - Still with the leg problems but have been doing the dd bit of yoga

Devotions - Were going quite well to my little crisis of faith

So what have I been doing?

Well other than a minor melt down, my own fault now that I think about it, I did call upon Violet Grimm, I’ve been… having  a minor melt down.

Someone might want to grab that there leash of mine...

At the moment I’m delving further into the tarot, looking at some healing stuff for my minor melt down (not so minor really) and am doing some aromatherapy study. I’m still daydreaming about the personal divination deck and focussing mostly on my art.

That’s it really, nothing much to see here.

Picking the conversations with Frater Victatio back up after failing at the Destruction topic. Wander of to Melbournostika to see his brain meats on display.

So the question being addressed in this installment of our conversation is “If you could create an alternative divination deck what would it be like?”

Oookay, mean question to ask an artist. My brain goes CREATIVE ACTIVITY SQUEEEEEEE!!! at the very idea of getting to create a divination deck that is entirely personal, then it starts thinking about the possibilities and then 5 minutes later it over heats, dribbles out my ears and I crave sugar something shocking.

If I could create a completely personal deck what would it be like…

I’d use cards about the same size as Tarot cards as I find these a nice easy size to handle and the cardstock is usually good to work with. The number of cards I think would start off quite small and grow as I felt it needed to. I think he important aspect to me would be personal symbolism and fluidity.

I’d want each card to be able to stand on it’s own as a symbol of something (death, life, sex, lust etc) and be workable as a meditation focus as much as I’d like to have them work as a traditionl divination deck. I know I’d want to add cards and remove tham as time went by, or even change the individual card to soemthign more meaningful etc. I tink it would evolve from something quite simple into something quite complex over time.

The symbology would be personal to me. I see them as a combination of images created by me and text. Sometimes entirely symbological (Is that a word?) and other times character or situation driven images. They’d have to have colour. I like colour a lot.

I don’t think a deck I’d created would be useable by anyone else in any way because of the way I think, but I think I’d like hat i create to be able to be used ina  similar manner to my tarot decks.

This is another figure it out for yourselves.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=647r1kCw384]

Tell me what the rain knows
 O are these the Tears of Ages
 That wash away the Wolf's Way
 And leave not a trace of the day?


Tell me what the rain knows
 O is this the flood of fortune
 That pours itself upon me?
 O see how I drown in this sea


Hark, hear the howl that eats the moon alive
 Your fur it is on fire
 The smoke turns the whole sky raven black
 And the world upon your back will crack


Where will you go
 Now you've no home?


Let the rain wash away your last days

I guess I’m having a crisis of faith of late in a way…

I copped a mouthful off of someone who I have quite a bit of respect for, and who I feel I have lost a great deal of respect for now, over a comment on LJ. Now it seems silly but as I only know this person via LJ and have no other way to judge his character this is it. This person, J, is a very intelligent atheist with some very definite opinions regarding religion which I personally have no problem with, however I do take issue with an uncalled attack that shows no ability nor willingness to engage on a matter. He was right, I was an idiot. I object to being called an idiot by a someone because I expressed an opinion he disagreed with due a difference of faiths. I can see where he would be coming from had I posted this opinion on his blog, yes, but it was a mutual friend, one whom I know and am close to who was seeking advice from his own blog not J’s. The point of this rambling is it really bothered me…

I gave a slightly facetious yes dear *pat pat* response then went and got on with it, but I’m a slow burner and when someone does something that doesn’t sit well with me I tend to linger on it. This did not sit well. It did not sit well at all. His response was the one I consistently get from atheists. You have faith, you believe in something, therefore you’re an idiot. Never mind that they, including J, actually have no idea what I believe nor why. So lately I’ve been thinking long and hard about faith.

There are a few different forms of faith as I see it.

There is the troubling blind faith. Blind faith, in my opinion, is dangerous. Belief without question as an adult shows an inherent unwillingness to think for ones self. To place everything in another beings hands, your life, your actions, your family is to put aside all personal responsibility. Destiny is at fault, fate is at fault, God is at fault but never you. You don’t have to think you just have to follow and, of course, the man telling you it’s ok to marry a 12 year old girl and consummate that marriage is not lying to you at all.

There is the well experienced faith. The faith of someone who believes utterly because they know. You find this kind of faith amongst those that have come out of huge life changing events, whether deliberately inflicted or otherwise, and know beyond all things that there is a truth. What that truth is varies, but it’s a truth. This kind of faith often falls over into the former blind faith with overzealous religious fanatic types, but with many it’s a simple comforting thought that this is how it is for them. Some will go on to preach to others and some will just get on with their lives comfortable in their knowing.

And finally there is faith questioned. Not necessarily questioning whether there is something bigger but questioning what it is, what it does, why we should believe in it, how it should be allowed to effect our lives. It is the type of faith where destiny isn’t an option, fate doesn’t exist and God can be as almighty as he likes but we’re still responsible for our actions.

Of course there is also the complete absence of faith.

I’m in what I guess is a reasonably unique predicament yet at the same time very much not. I am, as usual, questioning my faith. I keep a fairly tight reign on myself. I don’t follow blindly, I have no belief in destiny and fate is for those who can’t walk to their own beat. I accept that not everything is under my control but what is under my control is how I react to those things. I act accordingly. I make sure to deliberately question my faith and beliefs regularly so as not to fall into the trap of being stuck and unable to grow, or accept others points of views.

What is bothering me lately is not an absence of faith per se, but a questioning of it. I believe(d) in deity. I do not think deity holds huge sway over my everyday life but I did believe in it. Yet now I’m beginning to question that belief, that faith, in something higher than I. Not because I don’t believe it’s possible but because all my personal experience with it can be bought back to me.

I believed therefore it was real.

This is pretty much the one solid truth of magic if you think about it. Your reality is your own, effected by your beliefs and shaped by your perceptions, and, should you so choose, changed by your will. Many people do this last indirectly. A magic user of any kind does it directly and knowingly. With this in mind it’s easy to see how a deity and ones experiences with deity could be a direct creation of ones mind.

If someone can believe enough to make Mr Spock a deity for a time in their minds why not Quan Yin or Zeus?

Are the deities I have always thought of as separate entities truly so or are they simply massive thought constructs?

My thoughts are not covering new ground here, yet at the same time, for me, they are. I’ve always just believed in deity, the very concept of it at least, and now I’m querying that.

Yet all this questioning does not take into consideration a few other things. Who are the wanderers in my head, the people and creatures that show up time and time again? Are they something I created that have become something more or something more that has taken interest in me? Why me? Why them? and so on and so forth. What are they?

They could just be figments of my imagination, but then where does that leave, well, everything within my practice… and so the thoughts go on.

I’m a solid believer in slow process. Faith doesn’t sneak up on you, nor does it suddenly vanish, even if it sometimes feels like it does. The relaisation that you’re beliefs have changed is not earth shattering nor is the actual change, it’s just a shift in awareness, but the bit in the middle where you do all teh questioning really does drive me mad.

Ongoing discussions with Dana of Crying of the Sirens.

This one’s just a matter of curiosity on my part. How you make/made your internal world, especially if like Dana and myself you actually interact with it outside of daydreaming.For me the process was both very simple and very difficult and is certainly ongoing.

I have a VIVID imagination. I’m talking insanely vivid and active. The type of mind that is going constantly. Over the years, from childhood to now and probably far into the future, there have been reoccuring figures/actors/players within the stories. Each of these figures changed a lot over the years. Gold was originally a boy, not a petite man. Dark went through a vast number of incarnations and Whym was a vague fluff of a teen that was always in trouble for the vast part of his incarnation.

To be simple about it they are all complete figments of a bored imagination.

On a more complex level at some point I began to interact with them. Not directly at first. I started to put stylised versions of my problems into their stories watching them react as the viewer. Over time a new character appeared, at the time she was all blond hair and blue eyes, who seemed to be the character having all the problems. If I look back now I have no trouble identifying the teenaged character as the me I wanted to be. She took my place in the stories.

Eventually I stopped observing and started deliberately placing myself in amongst them. Talking to them, playing with them, and quite often being surprised by them. The longer I interacted with them the more real they became so it was with almost no surprise that one of them popped up in the real world, so to speak, when called upon…

Yeah, it’s pretty muh been downhill from there :p