satyapriya | Entries tagged with magic

In long ago rooms,
in a suburb now crowded,
I'm told there are still echoes -
my voice singing Johnny Cash songs.
I withdrew my energy from that house,
but I go there in dreams.
Today, it's still an area
for young families,
and there's mention of a woman's voice
who sometimes sings,
and once in a while,
weeps so sadly
that even a Johnny Cash heartbreak song
would hang its head.
In long ago rooms,
I left a younger self
to continue a life
that no longer fitted.
In long ago rooms,
in dreams, I still walk the floor,
wondering how to dig myself out.

Dear Real Toads and Others:
DreamWidth makes it difficult to comment on my poems if you are not a DW member. Apologies. I am, when I can, reading your poems, even if I'm not commenting. Boy, launching a book is time-consuming!
More apologies for these poems being so late to the party. Between book, NDIS, and the short story course I'm doing, plus family, and all that jazz, well...WARGH!!!

Rhyme scheme: a, b, c, d, e, f, g, f.

Rhyme... ugh. Well, okay.

Making Magic Anywhere

Herbs to strengthen, boost, clear:
into the tea egg, into the cup.
Colour comes to the boiling water.
I stir counter-clockwise
to follow the sun's path.
Later, herbs into the garden bed
with the wish to bless and nourish.
My vegetables blessed, and well fed.

Thanks to any Real Toads reading. I'm sorry DreamWidth makes it so darned difficult to comment if you're not a member. I am reading your poems, inbetween madly proof reading my new book, and preparing for its launch.
4 stanzas? No hope. I'm thankful I got this skerrick.

I had such big plans for myself in Brisbane. Not only the Novelists Bootcamp with The Resurrectionist, which were superbly worth it, and I got a lot, got mucho, got EVERYTHING from it, but I was going to plan my novel, start writing my novel, walk daily, get a spa treatment, maybe see a show, experience good food, and make new lasting friendships. I even packed a wee travel kit of witchy things to celebrate Lughnassad.
I did walk each day. I did plan, within the structure of the bootcamp. The spa was closed on Sunday. I ate at the local vegan restaurant Saturday night, and found a boiled caterpillar in amongst the noodles and greens.
The show, too much effort. Lughnassad, too tired. Friendships - well, we all have each other's email addresses, and I've made one reach out.
I'm too damned tired to do anything. A small part of me wants to plan and rewrite NIGHT THINGS. Another, larger part, just wants to stop doing everything and do nothing. I'm a blank.
And I forgive myself for it, because I had a major mental spill last week, and I'm still rocked by that. A bit scared that I'm back in dangerous headspace, even though I'm not consciously aware of being so.
I want to do nothing. I sit here in my hotel room, in the last 20 minutes before checkout, looking out the french window towards the forested hills close to Brisbane, and I think...nothing.
Dollops of images come from the weekend. Green texta squares on the whiteboard, showing how to outline scenes. The pleasure principle vs the death drive in novels. The transition points in a book. Our practice plotting of a book about Mandy the Australian lawyer, and Viggo, the Danish criminal mastermind, with his mother nicknamed Gunmetal Granny, and Sadie the cleaning lady.
I can't grasp any of it. Not today. It's a travel day, going home to the House of Plague (gastro through the family). It's a day for checking out books at the airport, and wondering where my next meal will come from.
Am I okay?
Fragile after a tiring weekend. Mind blown open. Feeling dull, and lethargic.
I see my psych later in the week, and also have a planning session with PizzaBoy about the last housekeeping stuff to do on THE COMMUNICANT AND OTHER STORIES.
My mind shies from structure, even though I desperately need it to feel secure and safe. Truly, I have to dissolve this image of the writer as wafty fairy being hit with mystical inspiration and know-how. Get out of my head, Guinevere. Why are you even in there as my image of a writer? You're a media witch who happens to write. The one time I sat in meditation and started to consider if you used magic to get where you are as a media witch and writer, that night, it was the only time in my life that I felt I'd been psychically attacked. If so, that's some mighty strong defences you have up around that idea that magic made you who you are as a writer.
And if so, why am I not doing the same thing. Magic is a tool, as well as a way of understanding the world and the Mysteries. Why am I not using this tool to do away with the destructive mind stuff?
Oh listen to my mind's response: because you'll cock it up, because you don't know enough, because you're a dabbler, because you'll become precise, and cold, and calculating, without heart.
Uh huh. What strange ideas you have, mind. Shall we do away with them? Yes, let's.

Chalk by Paul Cornell

Ugh, I didn't want to like this book. It's horrible. It's gruesome, scary, set in the brutal era of Thatcher's England, and there are absolutely no likeable characters.
I couldn't put it down. I read it in one day, finishing late last night.
It's compelling, dragging you along like a murderer drags a body through the forest, determined to bury you in landscape, era, pop culture, magic, and bullying.

Andrew Waggoner is a teenage boy, bullied at school, and at home, his parents want him to do well. There's a lot of off-scene worries about money, and the pressure is on Andrew to get a bursary at the end of the school year. Neither parent have much idea what goes on in Andrew's life. The mother is pretty much a non-character, mentioned only for being worried, or afraid of just about everything.
The father occasionally tries to get Andrew to conform to his closed idea of manhood, but mostly, Andrew is left to his own devices.
A group of bullies at school drag Andrew off into the woods and do something terrible to him. So terrible that it splits him in half, emotionally and mentally. There is Andrew, who is still gormless, and then there is another - Waggoner, who is tough, and seemingly born of the power held in the chalk hills in Wiltshire. The chalk horse features, and Waggoner is allied to something ancient, and is able to enact blood rituals in the world. It's Waggoner who gets revenge on those who hurt Andrew.
It's a graphic, brutal book, and at times I didn't want to keep reading.
It's a psychological thriller, as Waggoner gets Andrew in good with his enemies, and for the most part, Andrew is a horrid teenage boy who starts bullying others to fit in. He gives no excuse, but nor does the narrator shy away from admitting his every misdeed.
Set against this ancient power are two girls who are enacting their own forms of magic: lighter, based on pop culture, and music. There are hints of kitchen witchery.
Cornell steeps his novel in the music of the 80's, and Andrew is a big fan of Dr Who, Peter Davison era.
There is magic, storytelling, tv, pop music, terror, and evil. There is a strong element of 'be careful what you call up'.

Do I like the book? No.
Will I read it again? Probably, but not for a while.
How do I rate it? 4.5/5.
It loses half a point for the graphic violence.

I've been listening to 'The Break' by Marian Keyes on audio in the car. There's no way I'm going to finish it before PizzaBoy and I head away for our own break to Gaia Eco-Retreat (review after experiencing). So I've googling to find spoilers for how it ends. No one's giving it away. Plenty of hints, and yeah, I've gotten all that, because I'm at chapter sixty-something. But I need to know how it ends. The audio book will shortly go back to the library.
While I was tootling around the net, yelling 'Give me spoilers!' I came across a blog called something like 'eats vegetables and reads books'. It amused me, and I spent some idle brain time thinking what I could rename this blog so it would be a witty and clever book review thing.
Then I shrugged, and thought 'medicated, munching, and reads books' was both derivative, and boring.

Anyway, last week, I finished reading 'The Rules of Magic' by Alice Hoffman. It's the recently-released prequel to her famous 'Practical Magic'. This time, we get the story of Aunts Jet and Frances, who, in 'Practical Magic' are far more interesting than the main characters.
In this book, we see the childhood of the aunts, plus their brother, and their adult years leading up to the beginning of PM.
Frannie is a hard character to grab onto, but Jet was compelling, in both the 'what will happen' and the 'I wanna shake some sense into you' way.
I have to be in a particular mood to enjoy Hoffman, and her writing style, because she tells the reader. We are never intimately inside a character's head. Never. We don't feel their feelings, but we see their actions, and their thoughts. This annoys the shit out of me normally, which is why, even though I loved this book, and the take on magic is hedgewitchy, kitchen witchy, fanciful, and homespun, I don't list Hoffman in my top ten authors.
Nevertheless, I did like this book, and it's a keeper, which is a rare thing for me.
Does everyone live happily? Would it be a Hoffman book if they did?

I signed up for a Tarot Art Journalling course with Kiala Givehand a couple of months ago. March was THE month. The Facebook group went crazy, and it was all I could to do a daily pull and a matchbox-sized sketch, despite great intentions. Halfway through April, and I've just done my first lesson - Sigil work.
Because I was impatient to finish, the face has ended up looking like every face I've drawn since I was 15. I wanted her more manga, I wanted her more detailed, older. Well, I got a little older, because I put some bags under her eyes, but she's definitely big-eyed, with the same scrappy long hair I always draw because I get fed up by the hair point. I haven't even given her a neck. Under her face is a black cauldron full of black, red, and purple. The sigil I drew is on her right cheek, not her forehead like I planned. Her hair isn't red, her eyes not brown (like me). Purple, black, and blue hair, purple eyes, pinky red full mouth. She looks sad on one side, slightly distressed on the other.
Anyway, there she is in my art journal, with a sigil on her face. Now, I can leave that there, and move on with the next lesson, or I can work magic with the sigil, empower it, and set it free into the world. And I think it's time to do exactly that. I haven't worked any magic in at least two full moons, if not more.
I shall refer to my T.Thorn Coyle book of 'Sigil Magic for Writers', and perhaps read the pertinent chapters from a few other books to see which way of sigil empowerment I fancy. There's more than one way.
The first part of sigil magic is complete anyway, because I can no longer clearly remember what the sigil is for. Forgetting the sigil is often mentioned as an important step. Create it, empower it, release it into the world.
A recent talk with SexMagicMan: he says he's never come across the idea of forgetting the sigil purpose. He's done loads of magic across more than 30 years.
Oh, what to do, what to do....
Reading is always a good idea....