Banish Naught But All Re-Align
The life of the witch can easily be consumed by the practice of magic, be that the visceral arena of spellwork or the marking of time in circle and sabbat. These are moments that we learn to encompass in our training, exploring the various ways in which we will perform those rites or spells to fulfill a defined requirement of our work. In truth though many of us deviate well away from those preformed ideas and let the flow of magic itself dictate what we do, requirements being decided by circumstance.
Over the last 12 years my circumstance has been such that my work has had to incorporate a variety of health issues into its mixture, from a brain tumour to more recently a heart attack. In the Pillars journal, Volume 2 Issue 2, titled Seeds of Ares (2020), I wrote an article - Infused with the Terror of Thee: Bringing My Affliction into My Practice. The theme of this issue of Pillars was to focus on the negative or martial aspects of practice, and in my own essay I explored how the adversity and pain of a brain tumour had impacted my magical work and how I adapted and modified my work to not just work around these issues but to bring those issues into the work itself.
Pillars - Seeds of Ares, Volume 2: Issue 2
What I posited was that it was an issue that a lot of the guidance around magical work and affliction focused on adaptation and modification to set aside the disability as much as possible and to allow the work to continue in some capacity, and that this guidance was inadequate, itself slightly debilitating. Instead I suggested that the pain, discomfort and hinderance should become a core part of the work as that, in that moment, is your currently reality. We should not hang on to the idea of what a ritual should look like nor hanker to how something used to be. We should embrace what has changed and bring that affliction into our practice.
In the article I talk about how I factor the pain into part of my ritual practices and won’t repeat those thoughts here (I highly recommend getting a copy of that particular issue of Pillars, it is chock full of great articles by many insightful minds), but I will add a further way in which my new way of life post brain surgery has had me adapt my work. Part of my daily practice is what is called Stellar Transvocation, a form of work derived from the Dragon-book of Essex by Andrew D. Chumbley. The daily devotional work in part involves the recitation of mantic formulae as a connection is made between fourteen parts of the body and the fourteen stars of the constellation Draconis.
As part of my healthcare surrounding the brain tumour I have multiple MRI scans a year to keep track of its growth, a machine that is notoriously noisy making many loud reptitive sounds as the scan is underway. The first time I had an MRI I was fascinated with finding the patterning of the sounds and in so doing found myself being lulled into a reverie. The second time around I decided to go further and mentally incorporate the daily mantic formulae in sync with the machine. The visualisation of the sound forms in my mind as the giant magnets span around my head gave me a dizzying perspective on the process I was undertaking and so I have subsequently planned my scheduled MRI days around performing the transvocation at that time.
At the end of April this year, on the cusp of Beltane, I found myself in the terrifying grip of a heart attack. As a 46yr old I was caught very off guard by this and was in shock at what was happening. After spending the night in A&E I was moved to a ward where they worked to get me stable and investigate what had happened. Part of their investigations was a procedure known as an angiogram where a line is inserted into the artery via the wrist and taken up the arm and into the heart. Once there it injects a contrast dye whilst a live x-ray is used to see it spread through the coronary arteries to ascertain if there are any blockages. This is all performed whilst you are awake and once told this I asked the nurses if I would be able to feel the line going into the heart to which I was told that sometimes people do, sometimes they dont.
The heart as constrast dye is unleashed
During the procedure I became acutely aware of the lines traversal up my arm and to help put aside my anxiety I focused on turning my awareness in, to be present in the moment of what is happening inside my body, not what is happening outside. I found myself again drawn to the daily practice but this time focusing purely on the heart and in that moment the line, having now reached the point of my heart, was making itself known. I could physically feel its movement and my mind equated it with that of a serpent, writhing literally around my heart and seeking out its prey. This was a moment of blessing in a time of crisis for I was being given the oppertunity to be fully aware of this vital physical part of my self and was able to bring that moment in sync with the practice I undertake every day. Thankfully the result of the procedure what that there was no blockage that could have caused the heart attack (good and bad news as it still leaves the question of what did which is under further investigation), but the experience has left me with even more awareness and appreciation for both the daily work I do and other aspects of my practice.
Your reality is yours and at times that may well cut against the grain of ‘normal’ magical practice. If it does, see the blessing of what that can be and enliven it with your attention, nurture it with your experience and let it become a functioning part of who you are. Nobody can or should try to dictate what praxis should be for you - if they do, run very much the other way. As Andrew Chumbley once said…
“Banish naught, let all realign - For in Perfected Alignment unto I all things become Good, such is the Artifice of this Benediction.”
