Ecstatic Agendas

This is an account of spirit contact during a weekend trip to the woods that my darling life-partner treated me to recently! The following takes place at night, in Western Oregon, in a popular state park. The park is situated so as to protect the remains of an ancient forest now surrounded by farmland and exurban sprawl.

I am not someone who usually “sees” spirits. Apprehending open-eye visual phenomena during rituals is extremely rare for me (although it has happened on occasion and usually in circumstances that allowed me to fast, isolate, and otherwise prepare myself for days or weeks beforehand.) In my more typical experiences, I receive aural data- both sounds that seem to come from nowhere in particular, and sounds that are clearly made by physical properties of my surroundings but which occur at serendipitous, highly coincidental moments in my rites. And sometimes, the signs of spirit presence are yet more subtle: physical sensations such as a chill up my spine or a popping in my ears; when I am working my magic indoors, the popping comes from the lids of jars in my workshop or elsewhere in the home. Sometimes I use what I think of as imaginal sight- “inner vision”, “active imagining”, “closed eye scrying”. What I receive from my efforts is often intangible, symbolic and easy to miss. Sometimes it is nothing at all in the moment- just waking epiphanies and dream oracles after the fact.

The point I want to make is that when we seek to communicate with these sorts of intelligences or energy currents, we have to be open, curious and finely perceptive to very subtle signs and triggers.

Some readers might be thinking, “You’re just scaring yourself, Jason! A chill up your spine, the crack of a branch in the dark beyond your fire? Just coincidence – grasping at straws!”

And that’s fine. I am not trying to convince anyone to believe me. Unlike the murderous monotheistic cults that have spread like disease across the earth, I have no mandate of converting people to my faith. It is not a faith. It is a subjective process of, as I said in my last blog, “anthro-poetic nuance”.

What follows is an expanded excerpt from my magical diary, plus some added commentary and background mixed in as well. I’m experimenting with a new format here: shorter, more focused micro-blogs that I can maintain as life gets busier, down here at the base of the volcano. All photos herein are by me, taken that weekend.

10:30/11ish pm.

Sitting near cabin. Arranged a few implements: black candle in soup-can lantern, Aktiophis seal, and incense tin – these three implements set in a triangle shape and surrounded by my volcanic bead necklace from Iceland.
Lit candle, repeated “Io Heka Io Ho Io Hekate” chant to still my mind. Prayed quietly to Hekate, unscripted, and lit one incense stick. Asked Her to connect me with the spirit of this place. Lit 2nd incense stick then spoke a short call to that spirit/s; also elemental acknowledgements and greetings to the trees, mountain, rain, and darkness. (Incense wasn’t staying lit in tin so i re-lit and held both sticks in left hand; my consecrated black knife in right.) Sat in meditation, alternating between closed eyes and candle scrying – extending my inner presence outward around me into the darkness, reaching for contact as I’d learned a few years ago from Frater Acher’s excellent manual Holy Daimon.

In one moment of inner perception I saw a small arm reach for the candle. I verbalized this, invited the spirit again to partake of the candle’s light and warmth. More meditative silence, then after a while I experienced the physiological sensations I associate with spirit presence: sudden tightness in chest, prickly goosebump chills up spine, popping sensation in ear.

I usually only feel one of these at a time but in this session all three happened, and quickly. Continued sitting in silence, waiting for further communication, and repeating my invitation for such. More notions of a vague, nonlocalized presence. Then at one point fear came upon me- not fear of spirits but wild animals! I had the thought, “what if i’m not sensing a spirit but a mountain lion watching from the bushes, or a bear, attracted to my incense?” As unlikely as this was, i couldn’t dispel the feeling. I began humming/ growling to warn any animals, but the feeling persisted and i decided i’d broken my concentration anyway so i stood, thanked the entities, ending with “I salute you!” Then blew out candle and entered cabin. Left implements out until morning.

Afterthoughts:

With eyes closed, my technique is to imagine the physical space around me as closely as i can, and ‘sense’ into it from my Self, trusting my intuition and what i am imagining- like an astral overlay of the physical space.

My assumption is that the arm was a particular aspect of the spiritus loci, since that’s what I was calling to. It didn’t feel like Hekate, but something smaller – and curious about me, like a gnome or leprechaun type of personality. However, the physical sensations I was getting felt like the presence of something bigger and wilder- maybe a composite spirit of the whole grove around me?

Despite the truncated ending to the rite, I am encouraged by the experience. A friend tells me to be patient and expect clarity to arrive in the next couple of weeks. And although some of the heightened sensual triggers were no doubt a result of being in a new, somewhat wild place, I am enthusiastic about repeating more of these experiments in my own yard and home, where I might be able to gain a regular rapport with local entities.

This isn’t a ghost story; it doesn’t end with curdled blood nor gossamer apparitions flying from the forest. The experience was quite mild compared to others I have read about and many that I myself have had. I would have liked to sit there in the dark with my tools a lot longer, waiting for the spirit to manifest in its own time so we might have a fuller conversation, but my own mundane concerns got the best of me that night. Still, the encounter was one more step in my personal process of attuning more subtly and accurately to the lush and nonlinear world of chthonic magic. Valuable and fulfilling in its own right, and as a guidepost for further adventures.

I welcome your thoughts, comments and communications!

Jason Triefenbach, HFHR

Jason is an artist, writer, and non-denominational minister with a garden and a lifelong interest in lurking around the Occult/ Paranormal shelves in bookstores worldwide. As Sun Duel they record and sometimes perform music with a variety of friends and loved ones.  www.linktr.ee/JWT9000