Why I Magic: Dream & (Lots of) Exposition

I’ve been meaning to write about how I play at magic, but various mental dams and iceblocks keep tripping me up. So instead of writing the “how”, instead, I’ll write the “why”.

Magic for me has always been about control. Not control of other people. Not control of the dipshits and numbnuts that seem to be attracted to me. Not control of my environment. I don’t want the ability to call the rain to myself, or to trip the traffic lights to always turn green for me. (Not that the ability wouldn’t be nice to have and greatly appreciated, it just isn’t high on my list of wants. Really.) Not control of wildly random events. However, if I should manage to trip the lottery in my favor, I’ll not be too nonplussed about it.

Magic has always been about control of myself. I’ve spent over half of my life bouncing from one tyrant to another. Never given the freedom to develop my individual self, I was forced to comply with some one else’s ideal of the perfect female. The physical abuse was kept to a tolerable level. The psychological abuse caused me to split into a few dozen “alternatives”. Which version of me you was talking to was highly dependent on how much you could bluster me into submission.

My magic path started with the Tarot. My first deck is the Universal Waite, but I found myself unable to connect to it. Waite’s “Pictorial Key to the Tarot” often sailed far above my head and I understood very little of it. At a friend’s suggestion, I picked up the pocket Hanson-Roberts deck. The non-threatening images were easier for me to parse, and the concise meanings given in the little hardcover book was just enough to make me want to learn more. I returned to the Universal Waite, and to Waite’s book. Little by little, I began to see between the lines. The Tarot was more than just a divination deck, it was a tool for magic and advancement.

At first, I used the Tarot as a mirror. Reading for myself sometimes had me curled up in a little corner, crying my eyes out. Sometimes I threw the deck across the room, decrying it as superstitious bullshit. But after the emotional reaction, I had no choice but to admit, the things my decks were showing me were correct. For the moment. The more I explored, the more I understood, nothing is set in stone, everything can change, including me.

I already knew that I was connected to something Else for most of my life. Much of the brutality I suffered was in vain attempts to purge me of this demonic connection. But no prayer was fervent enough, no fast was long enough, no weight was heavy enough, no beating was thorough enough to remove the “taint” of these Dark Forces. Having made a complete split from Christianity, I turned to these shadowy figures in my dreams, and asked them to help me. Since they weren’t going to move out of my head, might as well make them pay rent.

My dreams showed me a different way of living day to day. A way of dealing with the trauma I had lived through that would not leave me a blubbering child pissing herself in the corner, flinching at every shadow and afraid to look up from the floor. Using the tarot cards as examples and doorways, my dream denizens helped me start on the path that would eventually pull together the various shards of myself into a coherent person.

Not all the pieces of my mind were eager to unite. I quickly found out how much Stockholm Syndrome can devastate attempts to move being a victim from present tense to past tense. I had encountered these poisoned shards often in the life I can remember. Most of the time, I would wilt before them, subjugate myself in the vain hope I would not be tormented by my memories and the vicious words beaten into me. Occasionally, however, I would stand to my internal bullies, and pull back a square centimeter of mental land here, a square meter of freed thought there. But fighting one’s self is exhausting, both to the person fighting, and those that love her.

During the Thoth panic of ’09, when all iterations of the Thoth deck became scarce on store shelves, a close friend gifted a Thoth deck to me. Finding Crowley’s “Book of Thoth” to be as penetrable as armor plating, I picked up a copy of DuQuette’s “Understanding Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot” to cut my teeth on instead. I was introduced to a whole new type of magic, a world view that made sense of my scrambled dreams and visions, and placed in my hands, formidable weapons to fight against the deadening past. I had never encountered anything like Qabbalah before, and the idea of having a Holy Guardian Angel to aspire to was much more appealing than trying to live according to a perfectionist god that would judge me unworthy no matter what I do.

I know my words have been rambling as I write this, I really haven’t explained “why” I engage in magic to any satisfactory degree. I have written more history than explanation, but I ask that you bear with me for a moment more. Allow me to digress, and tell you of a Dream of Importance.

~~~

I had been struggling through the entire day, dealing with my disparate shards of self as they fought with each other for control. I was tired, and weary even of living. My existence was naught but a cosmic joke played out on my comedic person. I had lain down for the night, as the memory of my childhood molester replayed over and over in my head. A shard of my mind continued the abuse, styling itself after the woman that had held a knife to my throat. I wanted the voices to stop, I wanted the memories to fade. I appealed in my heart to my HGA, to allow me the strength and knowledge to move on. If only my Prince would but kiss me, and awaken me from this nightmare!

I do not know when I fell into sleep. Only that I heard a command to “Open your eyes.”. I did so and looked around. I knew immediately, that I was dreaming, but this felt much more intense than a mere dream. There was a vibrancy to the scene. Like I was truly awake and in a different world. Everything about me was Dark. I was standing, but on a floor made of solidified Darkness. I looked about, but saw nothing that differed from the surrounding Darkness.

“If I were to kiss you, what would you do?” The question emerged from darkness, but I saw no speaker. At the question, I recalled my wish as I went to sleep. In fear, I took a futile step backwards, only to stand back at where the dream began. I could feel the world around me waiting for my answer.

“I would see that I am more than the events that have shaped me. That I am more than the words repeated to me. That I am something greater than the quivering mouse I can’t seem to evolve away from.” I speak with a clarity that surprises me. I’m not sure where the answers came from. I realize there is a part of myself that doesn’t believe what I am saying, even as there is a part of myself that wants to shout it to the world.

“Are you willing to do what must be done, even if it differs from what you think you want to do?” Uh-oh, that sounds like a loaded question. But I consider how I have lived thus far. Always reactionary, never with thoughtful response. Begging and pleading for liberation, but not really doing anything to achieve it. What the hell, why not. What I’ve been doing really hasn’t worked, so, why not?

“I am willing.” I see a large blade materialize out of the darkness before me. Even as it forms, it is in full swing. Before I can react, the blade slices through my body from head to foot. I stumble forward from the blow, even as I feel a part of me falling away behind me.

“Son of a bitch! Who did that? I’ll tie you on the rack and feast on your entrails one inch at a time!” I regain my footing and turn to see the new speaker. I identify one of the mental shards of my psyche, that has been successfully resisting unification. This… bastard… is a solidification of the remnants my childhood molester left in my psyche. He likes to take great delight in dragging me through reliving that horrid night, and takes great delight in trapping me in nightmares dominated by blood and blades. Fear overtakes me and I begin to whimper in fright. He sees me, that bastard “Jay”, and reaches for me.

A bright light sparks above me. As tiny as the head of a pin, as bright as the Sun. Jay recoils from the light and begins to throw expletives at it. The light asks me, “Are you Willing?” I could hear the distinction in the word from the previous question. I recall the scant bits of Thelema I have learned thus far. I realize the import of the question, and what is truly being asked of me.

“I am Willing.” I lift my arms upward towards the light. Willfully surrendering to it. This wretched creature that I am, this abused human, is blinded by her limitations and weaknesses. Whatever it is that I am to be, let me be it. Jay lunges forward, “The bitch is mine!”, he grabs me by the face but I have no fear of him anymore. The light explodes and what was originally the center, becomes the circumference. I stand surrounded by a sphere of pure eternal Light.

I… changed. I can not begin to describe the physical and mental shift I underwent. I can only say, a higher form of Keri came down to the human Keri and subsumed the human into the higher. I was able to look back onto my past, without flinching. I was able to analyze my current situations, without mourning. And I was able to see what had to be done to free the human Keri from her mental bondages.

Jay, was not part of this change. He continued to exist outside of Keri, like mistletoe growing from a branch of storm beaten oak. I was able to see how Jay had been formed in Keri’s psyche by the initial molestation. How he had been encouraged to grow and take on form by the lack of treatment after the attack, and the willful ignorance of her family members. Jay may have existed solely in Keri’s head, but he was an intruder. He did not belong there.

As the higher form, I extended my hand and created an imprisoning bubble before me. Into it, I summoned Jay. Not only Jay, but all the detritus that had been left behind by the scarring event. I watched Jay impassionately as he screamed obscenities in the clear sphere. His words would have sent the human Keri scrambling for cover, causing her to force herself to waken so that she may try and force herself to focus on anything other than the reminders echoing in her ears. But to the Higher Keri, to the genderless power that she had become, Jay was just so much an annoying thorn. One that was about to be forcibly removed.

All the hate, all the self-loathing, all the unstoppable impulses that arose from her molestation were included in the bubble with Jay. Higher Keri looked on the assemblage with detachment. She turned it this way and that, making sure that it was all gathered and sealed. Content at the result of her bindings, Higher Keri called upon powers outside of herself. She created a hole in space and time, a worm tunnel of sorts. Finally she spoke, addressing Jay.

“You are not of me. You are not part of what has assembled into the human form of me. You are alien, a parasite, a distraction. I’ll tolerate your existence here no longer. Return to your master that created you. Return to the monster that shed you. Feast upon the carcass of your own mother, for you have no purchase here anymore.” Higher Keri flung the sphere into the space/time hole with no ceremony. As the hole closed behind the sphere’s entry, the combination of Higher Keri and Human Keri shuddered. Something had changed, something had shifted. The merged self could no longer be tolerated.

The circumference of light that had enclosed the joined Keri shimmered and rippled. Our time together was coming to an end, but neither version of Keri was troubled by it. The human knew she could not carry the higher for much longer. The higher knew the human would have to return. An unspoken promise comforted both versions of Keri. There would be other times. And one day, there would be no separation.

The circumference of light violently shook and collapsed on itself. The knowledge and awareness of Higher Keri fled from Human Keri’s mind. Instead there was only the Darkness I started the dream in. It was after the light receded to a point, so small, it was beyond my human perception did I realize how exhausted I was. I fell into deeper sleep, wondering what the hell had just happened.

The next day, I was different. I couldn’t identify how, I just knew. I was different. I greeted my friends, and they also noted I had changed, but was unable to identify how. I told no one of the dream, but continued on with my daily activities. A few days later, I was exposed to a set of circumstances that would normally have triggered a mental attack by Jay. In reflex I steeled myself for the assault, but it didn’t happen. It was then, that I realized, Jay wasn’t in my head anymore. He was really gone. The weight and burdens I had borne for so long, was gone. I asked my close confidants to do their best to trigger Jay, and they did try, in vain.

Over the next several months, I realized to what extant that solitary dream/vision had affected me. I learned more about the HGA, about Thelema, and my own mental maps.

~~~

I started this post with the intention to write about why I do magic. This is why. I have put my mental self together as a result of solitary rituals and workings. I am more in control of myself and less at the dictations of circumstances and people external to me. As a side effect of this, I have found how to influence traffic lights, local weather conditions, and annoying dipshits. (Still working on the lottery.) But these side effects are accidental in nature.

I remember enough of the Higher Keri to be thirsty for more of her. I want to rise above the limitations of this human flesh, and be dissolved into the fullness of what I am. Whatever that may be.

It’s strange, but working toward that goal has helped me to live more fully in this life. It sounds like a strange contradiction. I wish the dissolution of the Self, and in doing so, my life is better and better.

I’ll understand if you, Dear Reader, dismiss me as some quacky female. A crazy woman tormented by hormonal imbalance and in need of licensed care. (Tried that, didn’t work out too well. See: “other people’s expectations”.) If you have questions, I’ll answer. This post does answer, why a faceted jewel represents me quite accurately.