His Lordship Mercury Retraces His Steps

I have a tentative relationship with Hermes, mainly through my relationship with Dionysus. However the fact that He's helped me in the past doesn't mean I'm immune to the effects of His retracing His steps. What I find interesting about Mercury retrograde is that the effects vary so much between events and between people. For example some retrogrades are all about communication going awry. Others about technological glitches (gremlins). Others about major setbacks that affect and color all experience for a long time afterward. So while someone is complaining about computer and car troubles, others are too busy arguing with everyone to   even register that there's a problem. And then sometimes you get hit with the big storm and the ironic timing only occurs to you later.

These past weeks have been extremely challenging in terms of technical glitches and minor problems including the following:

• Issues with two laptops
• Problems during a desktop upgrade
• Broken crockpot
• Misbehaving drier
• Problem with car

We did manage to have a nice holiday weekend and avoided buying anything on Black Friday. Still it's been a challenging couple of weeks. Now that this Mercury retrograde is officially over, I'm hoping to continue some forward motion on a number of projects -- including a critical studio upgrade.

9 Other Ways to Incorporate Sigils

In my previous post, I presented a way to modify a painting in order to contain a sigil so subtle that you could hang the painting anywhere. Here is a short list of other ways that you could incorporate sigils into everyday objects:

1. As part of a logo design (success, notice).
2. Sketched on your front door jam (security, welcome).
3. On your walls, under a new coat of paint (health, happiness).
4. Inside your kids' clothes when they go to camp (safety, joy).
5. Traced in the foam on a latte -- or a pot of broth or a vat of beer (plenty).
6. Scored into a loaf of bread before baking (nourishment).
7. Chalked on your tires before a long trip (protection, good mileage).
8. In sharpie on the soles of your shoes (intuition, luck).
9. Slipped into the battery case of your laptop (knowledge).

Artful Festivals

Sannion once again posed a thought-provoking challenge:

1) Tell us something about the festivals you celebrate.
2) How can you make these festivals more artful?

I started writing up a review of my household's celebratory practices, but it got rather long and tedious (well, not to me, but certainly to others). So instead I thought I'd talk about the kinds of things we do when we celebrate and how those things could be more enhanced to be more artful.

Feasting -- a major component of our holidays is a fest element. Now in times of old, feasting was a rare thing and an opportunity to celebrate a bountiful harvest and give thanks. Nowadays we are awash in so many cheap calories, imported choices, and options that for many people all meals turns into feasts while for others there are lots of edible calories, but not much nourishment no matter what they eat. So in order to make our celebratory feasts more meaningful, it's important to feast mindfully. Here are some of the things we strive for: Celebrate prosperity by focusing on local harvests and harvest times (we have feasted entirely from what's available at our local farmers market). Make everything as much as possible from scratch (and I mean everything -- homemade pie crust with a filling of home preserved cherries topped with homemade whipped cream). Take the time to make the cooking and preparation part of the celebration (for us Thanksgiving starts with breakfast mimosas and includes an entire day of spending time in the kitchen together as a family). Cook magically (baking is a traditional, but brewing, stewing, really any type of cooking can be done with magical intent). And finally use the food to create connections with the people you care about.

Crafting -- in our family there is rarely a difference between mundane crafting and magical crafting. Creating something either for the celebration or as part of the celebration (or both) is a great way of making the holidays more meaningful and making your life more magical. This is especially true when you involve children in your celebrations. From homemade tree ornaments, to carving pumpkins, to Brigit's crosses... the trick is to empower the crafts with a bit of magic. And if you choose to do outright spellcraft (which we frequently incorporate into our holidays as family activities) make them as creative as possible. My daughter has both a child's sense of wonder and of cynicism (both of which I encourage). Sometimes she participates and sometimes she doesn't. That said, a bunch of brightly colored sharpies makes the sigil wishing so much more fun!

Decorating -- I'm not a Martha Stewart type, and don't spend crazy amounts of time decorating, but there are celebrations for which the decorative / magical trappings (again there isn't a lot of difference for us) really lend to the experience. So while you won't catch me buying napkins with turkeys on them (ick!) holidays like Yule and Hallows do have their designated decorations. And in terms of the religious and magical elements of the holiday, none is complete without some beeswax candles, purchased specifically for the occasion from local sources.

Offering -- Yeah, so this blog is all about magic. But many of the holidays we celebrate have a religious component. From our traditional ancestor altar to offerings to specific Deities, we do incorporate religious elements. However I have to say they are usually more personal and low key then some of the other aspects of the holiday. Even worship that might not seem that way (music and dancing come to mind) are less focus. I've always been uncomfortable with showy faith and religion in the spotlight. I prefer a personal connection. In terms of increasing the artistry here there are definitely opportunities to be really creative in our offerings. Whatever we give to the Gods should be our very best.

Hidden in plain sight

One of the most interesting aspects of sigils is that to the untrained eye, they are nothing more than squiggles that can easily and unobtrusively be incorporated into all kinds of art. This is a very different take on sigil art than my very obvious sigil paintings -- where the sigil itself is the subject. This is more about hiding the sigil within the item so that it becomes appropriate in more contexts. Here's a quick and dirty example of what I'm talking about.

This is a cellphone picture I took this summer while having dinner out with my family. It was a gorgeous evening, seated right out on the dock of a lovely lakeside restaurant, and we were treated to a beautiful sunset.

This is a version of the picture where I added a sigil for joy, using the two lights on the far shore as part of the sigil.Notice anything? No? I didn't think so. In fact, at such a small size, you probably can't see anything at all.

Up close, you can see it, but it hardly detracts from the picture. Up close you can also see that this is a pretty quick and cheap photo edit which I did in just a few minutes using MS Paint. Using a more sophisticated application with filtering capability, you could do some very subtle and beautiful manipulation of an image. In fact, this sigil is not charged or active (though joy would be a perfectly appropriate sigil to include in this image since that's what I was feeling when the picture was taken).

I imagine that this picture could be printed, charged, and then hung in any place (like an office) where you want to experience more joy without, you know, having giant magical symbols around.

I've Only Seen Paintings of That Painting!

There's a scene in the movie Kung Fu Panda (what can I tell you, I have a kid) where the main character Po is excitedly exploring the "hall of warriors" filled with sacred objects and treasures. He's overjoyed to fanboy levels at all the famous artifacts and at one point he exclaims: "I've only seen paintings of that painting!"

This is amusing because, being in ancient China, photography doesn't exist. The only way you could see a painting without going to see it with your own eyes is to see... well, a painting of it. This sounds bizarre to us in the age of recorded images and that's why the quote is funny. But at the same time, there's a lot of truth to it. After all, why do people visit the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa? Why don't they just buy a print or look for images (and they are legion) online? High quality digital images have stunning clarity, and quality copies painted by artists in China can be hung in your own home. So why bother with the original?

Because potentially there's something special about the original. Because it's not a picture or copy, but from the hand of an acknowledged master (plus it was in <i>The da Vinci Code</i>, so that totally gives it cred /sarcasm).

This is on my mind today because of a very wise comment to my last post by forestdoor:

...I think it's kind of defeating the point of "destroy your art" to keep a virtual image of it. That's not really letting it go, you know? I think the point of the challenge was to pour yourself into something and then entirely release it....

Of course, she is completely correct about this (plus hey, comments!). The goal of the original challenge was to create something and then destroy it completely. To put yourself in to your art and then deliberately destroy that piece of yourself. Of course Dionysos would approve.

Still, the digital image isn't the same as the original. Or as I said in my reply, "It doesn't have the energy that the sketch did. Just like I don't think you could print a sigil painting from my blog and expect the sigil magic to work for you. Because the magic is in the painting and not the image of the painting."

Sannion recently posted about the difference between paper and digital books, and linked to an article that spoke about the difference between CDs and vinyl (I think that article was misguided by the way, vinyl and CDs are fundamentally the same, it's iTunes and MP3s that are the truly "new" and "unreal" form of media -- though at another level, if it's not live music it's recorded, period). In any case, I think there's a lot to explore and examine here, not just about the nature of art, but of the nature of reality. How much do we consume as opposed to experience? And how much do we create?

Still, I agree with her, it's "cheating" in light of the purpose of the challenge to keep copies of the work. Of course I also realized that I hadn't destroyed the energy in the sketch. I offered it to the dead, who took it and left nothing behind. So by the time I destroyed it, it wasn't 'real' anymore. It wasn't my sketch, just graphite on paper.

I'm glad that our beloved dead accepted my offering and I may include that in our tradition moving forward. But it wasn't the same as the challenge that Sannion proposed.

Years ago, I lost a roll of sketches in a move. There were several that I was very fond of, including one of giant fruit bats and another of a couple of punk kids with mohawks. I loved those, and they are gone forever. My husband once lost a hard drive with a ton of original music that hadn't been backed up. His compositions (including all the recorded tracks, seconds, scratch tracks, etc.) were gone forever. Those were painful experiences, but again not the same as <i>deciding</i> to destroy an image.

I'd still like to take on the challenge. However, I won't be deliberately destroying any of my sigil paintings because, well it's one thing to destroy some of yourself, it's entirely another to destroy a symbol of love you created for your family. But to pour yourself into an image and then kill it? That's some trans formative magic right there. I wonder if I'll have the courage.

Art, magic, energy, originality, creativity... these are interesting waters we're treading.

For the Dead

Sannion over at the House of Vines made a challenge to create a piece of artwork and then destroy it. I was considering taking on the challenge, but before I could something interesting happened...

On Hallows Eve, our family traditionally does an ancestor altar. We set it up after the candy oriented festivities wind down and make it an end to our evening. It includes pictures of our beloved dead, candles, and then a host of treats including tea, liquor, sweets, bread, dog treats, salt, fruits (always including a pomegranate), and so on. I also include a bunch of red roses. The next morning everything is tossed into the compost -- returned to the earth.

But this year I somehow found myself late in the evening with no flowers -- a terrible oversight.

I was fretting about shortchanging our beloved when Sannion's challenge came to mind. I went through my sketch book looking for a piece that would be appropriate and that I really liked. The sketch wasn't necessarily the most perfect thing I've ever done, but the symbolism was right and I knew it would pain me to destroy it. This isn't the best picture, but I wanted to record it for posterity before I burn it. I don't post pictures of altars (particularly not ancestor altars), but snapped this quick before we lit the candles.

So a big thank you to Sannion, who's suggestion helped save my ass on All Hallows Eve.