It’s been around three months since I last wrote a blog article, and I have been busy with life and took a sabbatical from writing so I could focus on other things. While writing expresses my inner thoughts and feeling for others to share, sometimes I get busy doing other things, and of course, life often intervenes. Besides, after completing my writing projects for the year, I felt like I wanted a break, and so I took one. Now, as the autumn turns the summer’s heat and verdancy into the coolness and startling colors of autumn, I feel the urge to write again. So, I am going to be posting several blogs in the waning days of the year, and entering the holiday season with hope and love’s anticipation. Things in the world and with me will be getting better each day.
On July 15, I loaded up my vehicle with my bags, books and musical instruments, and began my travel to Atlanta, splitting the journey into two days to make it a comfortable drive. It was a wonderful drive through western North Carolina and South Carolina from central Virginia. While the weather was very hot, I traveled in relative comfort in my air-conditioned car. I was anticipating my destination, since I had never been to this particular convention.
When I got to my destination the next day, I marveled at the amazing beauty of the hotel and how it was integrated into a wonderful park full of trees, shrubbery and flowers. Although the architecture was very modern with lots of glass, it seemed a very magical place, and I was grateful for its uniqueness and esthetic beauty. I went the usual check-in and settling in, but I noticed an influx of very odd looking people dressed in unusual clothing. Yet recognized them as “my people” since they were Witches, Pagans, occultists and magicians of various stripes and traditions. It brings a warmth to my heart to see and engage with these people, for only in this group do I feel like I am a worthy member who is valued and regarded as belonging. Through a life dedicated to Witchcraft and ritual magic, I have found myself typically alone and often estranged from the rest of the world, even when in a crowd of people at some venue. Not so when I attend a convention of like-minded souls. It is like coming home, and being once again with my people.
This year there were many old friends attending this venue, and there were many people who I had never previously met. The first day was one of meeting and greeting old friends and engaging new people, and also just being there and watching everyone. I also brought my flute with me and found a place near the two story windows and played my heart out, with tears in eyes, while a summer storm unleashed a river of rain water cascading down the windows and into the outside garden rivulets. It was a mystical experience that profoundly affected me, and made me realize that I was missing making music and sharing it with friends. I realized that there were many holes in my life and many things that I was not experiencing because of my busy professional life that takes most of my days during the week.
All that happened on the first day, and it only got better after that. The convention was well organized and there were many workshops, lectures and rituals to attend, but I could only sample a handful each day. I found that there were a lot of very gifted and brilliant people who were presenting thoughtful topics about the various areas of interest and concern for my tribe of folks to which I had become a member. While I did not attend very many rituals, since some of these were held after 10 pm, and being an old fart, I was finding myself getting tired and sleepy at around that time. I am so used to waking up at half past six in the morning, and even at the convention I found myself waking up before most people, and was able to wander around the hotel with few but the staff lurking around.
I taught a class on my book Abramelin Lunar Ordeal, and that went very well. I came up with an illustrative graphic diagram of the ritual stack that I use to achieve my K and C with the HGA that compare to the Ba part of the soul in the Egyptian system. I don’t think that I have ever presented a more cogent picture of what the ordeal is actually like and how it functionally works. I wish that I had this graphic and its associated explanation when I wrote the book. It would have been quite illuminating. However, since the book has all the rituals in it with an explanation of each one and their sequence in the ordeal, I feel that it is complete. However, when talking about this book and how the rituals actually function together, I found this diagram to be very helpful, since the attendees may not have read the book or be familiar with my methodologies for working ritual magic.
I got to talk to my friends Ivo Dominguez, Sean Wilde, and Alannah and Eric Brown quite extensively. I also met Maevius Lynn and her husband, Richard Kaczynski and got to talk to them for a while as well. I also ran into Tony Mierzwicki and caught up with him, since we had not seen each other since I had last attended Pantheacon. There were feasts, drinks and quiet moments of talk that were perfectly delightful to me. Time seemed to just rush by and soon it was time to depart for the two day drive home.
While the journey to Mystic South was pleasant and fairly uneventful, the journey was stressful, hazardous and I feel I am lucky to have made it home. As I neared Raleigh, a very heavy rainstorm dumped a deluge of rain, and I just so happened to pass through when there was a massive traffic jam. It required all of my driving skills to navigate a way through the stalled and crawling traffic, and what would have taken less than half an hour actually took me two hours to get around the town and the storm so I could venture north to my waiting hotel room on the North Carolina border. The second day was a lot less stressful since the rainstorm had blown past the southeast and headed out to the Atlantic ocean, but still, I was rattled by how bad the return trip had turned out. Yet as I pulled into my home driveway, I felt relieved to have made a safe voyage despite the return trip and its challenges.
Echos of the magic, the wonderful people and the illuminating discussions still reverberated in my mind, and it brought a smile and a warm feeling to my heart. I know that in the coming new year, I will likely seek to return to that amazing Mystic South convention to hob-nob with my people once again.
Frater Barrabbas
