Ecstatic Agendas

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“All of us with wings” – Jane’s Addiction

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Like many people, my practice of magic is in some ways predicated on mapping – on positioning myself in time and space and keeping a record for further use. The palpitatic winding and unwinding of my soul enfleshed is relational to the compass points, the positions of the sun in the sky or intuited through the skein of the earth; the functionality of craft threaded through my life by the phases of the moon, the wheel of the seasons, and more abstract elements like the Planetary Hours.

Although the practice has been somewhat neglected in anglo-western culture at large, it is not uncommon for pagans, magical practitioners, and the otherwise spiritually-minded to pray to our ancestors. I have also begun venerating my descendants, and thereby positioning myself not as an endpoint or pinnacle in the unfolding of destiny but rather an axis pole standing now amidst past and future.

Likely unmarked on any map you have ever held in your hands, there is also a coordinate at which the world flows into each of us, and through us, and from us; a rhythm, a directionality, of the interior self. This can also determine the personal calendar by which we practice our devotions and our sorceries. Fatigue, lust, panic, or anger, and all the other daimonic emotions, may redirect our intentions; the mundane cares of the world – familial, professional, recreational – can assert themselves in ways that supersede the demands of historical precedent and biogeophysical systems.

The heart is a crossroads.

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I harvested and trimmed the dandelion roots pictured above in the hours before September’s full moon. A day later, as the moon did indeed reach its fullness, I consecrated a jar of water with prayers to Mene-Selene, offering of burnt laurel, and overnight exposure to her luminescence.

This past Thursday (Day of Jupiter), in the midmorning Hour of the Sun, I positioned my solar altar in the center of my yard, offered frankincense and lit beeswax candles. I called to my good daimon using their private song and name, then to my goddess Hekate (using a private epithet She taught me). I invited Her to tarry here and enjoy her “proper portion” of the offerings at hand.

I faced each of the cardinal directions and spoke a prayer I’ve written to them, waving the incense and sprinkling some of the moon water to each. Then holding aloft a small purple obelisk, I recited an invocation to Jupiter and dusted the object with cinnamon. I called to the spirits of this place, to the great tree under which I stood, to the spirits of the moment, the hour, the day, and the age. I called to the spirits of the past, present, and future, to the ancestors and the descendants, offering each their “proper portion” of the offerings.

Finally I addressed the sun by several names and titles, giving song and salutation. I lit a small bundle of oak leaves and waved its smoke across the altar. I poured water into the cup that rests upon the altar, and with the consecrated oil I keep there I anointed both my forehead and that of my small Helios effigy. With effusive and continuous thanksgiving I then lifted into the air a clay bowl containing the dandelion roots. I called down upon the materia the blessings of the sun from its stations at dawn and noon and sunset and midnight, petitioning the god to consecrate and empower the roots with all of his power and every blessing of his hours. I then thrust the roots into my jar of moon water, screwed the cap tight, and agitated it violently while chanting solar epithets sourced from the Greek Magical Papyri. I shook until the water in the jar was dark with the dirt of the roots, then drained it away onto the soil at my feet and returned the roots to the clay bowl. Setting these aside, I thanked the deities and spirits profusely, and then performed what is sometimes called the License to Depart, and which I personally end by saying “As you came in power, now go in peace, and come again when I call, that we may continue in friendship and collaboration.“

This story is more or less true and accurate, if one accounts for small holes in my memory regarding the exact order of events. (This margin of error is yet another facet of the body’s interface with time, and another consideration in one’s mapping of experience.) When I grind the roots, and perhaps roast them lightly in the oven, and when I make from them a tea or sprinkle them on my incense burner, or roll an oiled candle through them to light as further offering, I will remember even less of what exactly occurred. But an emotive imprint will remain as evidence of their sacrality, enacted in partnership with spirit, soil, place and process.

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Some announcements:

A) This particular narrative may or may not become part of an article-in-progress that I’m working on for the 2nd issue of Barbarous Tongues: a Journal of Arts and Esoterica! That collection is scheduled for release in early December, and subscribers to this blog will be offered an advance notice and exclusive coupon for a discounted price.

Issue 1 featured articles by and interviews with occult luminaries, artists, and ecologists including The Wilde Medium, Dr. Alexander Cummins, Tom Banger and more. Issue 2 will follow a similar rubric, with poetry, visual art, essays and interviews that cover a wide yet congruent terrain. (As I type these words I realize this is an opportunity for bald-faced promotion and so, in support of printing and distributing the upcoming issue, I am going to discount the remaining copies of ISSUE ONE to a mere TEN DOLLARS YANKEE from now until the release of ISSUE TWO.

How ya like THEM rutabagas?!?!?

B) I recently spoke with my new friend Luxa for her LUX OCCULT PODCAST. This is going to be my first time as a guest on a podcast and I’m quite stoked that it will be Luxa’s excellently empathetic and ambitiously erudite show. I believe the episode will be launching later this week, and I’ll send out another mini-blog when it does. (On a side note: the link above goes to her Youtube channel but the pod is available on Apple, Spotify, or wherever else you might indulge your penchant for weird data.)

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That’s all for now, friends. Until we meet again, may our every breath be a prayer, every word from our mouths an invocation, and our every action an expression of cosmic ecstasy.

Jason Triefenbach 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. Jason has been self-publishing zines and pamphlets since the early 1990s, beginning with a sloppy collage broadsheet Licking the Toe Jam, and culminating thus far in the limited edition perfect-bound paperback Barbarous Tongues: a Journal of Arts and Esoterica.