The arcane has been something to me that, once accessed, unlocked a door that lead to a corridor that lead to a subsequent antechamber of my soul that hasn’t been inaccessible since that time. I would like to think that the same conditions then, are that which makes up the bulwark of the mechanism now, despite development, advancement and a keen understanding of the forces at work, and how they operate today.
In the beginning, it was the colossal force of nature that called to me. So pure, so real, and all one has to do is go outside to see it. It is a slow, deliberate intelligence that moves life on Miðgarðr. To simply observe the natural processes of things, undisturbed, can teach you everything you need in this existence. That is primal wisdom. No more games, no debate, no internal or external disturbances — just what is. Fight all that you want, but deep in your heart you know that this is the abbey from which all truth emanates.
Many years ago, a span of over two decades, I can recall the rush of excitement when winter would occur. I never cared to layer my clothing, or don arctic coverings, only my father’s field jacket from the 1970’s; armor returned from battle and used again through time and space. What I do remember is the moment I would first walk outside and feel the chill upon my face. It was like mother’s-milk to my spirit. The cold: it spoke to me of high adventure, deep forests and dark gods. Comparatively, I was remarkably lacking the academic and educational fervor that I would across the next two decades develop. I didn’t need it then, and I could discard it now without a care. Unlike many academics, I treat that discipline with an extreme amount of suspicion, especially my own, for to scrutinize one’s own work is the mark of authentic truthseeking in my opinion.
On a night free from responsibility, hard-earned and difficultly acquired, I would set off, sometimes in a blizzard, with a destination in mind. I loved watching those places of an open expanse receive the maelstrom that is a winter storm. No matter the lighting, snow itself is reflective based on the presence of water in its frozen, crystalline form. Water does not reflect light, but rather refracts it, meaning slowing it down and slightly changing its direction. The frozen crystal additionally, has many crystal faces inside of its complex design that do reflect light, and often creates a spray of light. That’s only one crystal in function. Now imagine a tundra-like setting that has rapidly onset. Formerly places normally seeped in blackness, now bathed in an eerie luminescence that one could almost believe augments the starlight.
These are the vistas that are recalled ever darkly from my youth. A journey there and back again, to some remote location, far away from the likes of man. And when that deep isolation, complete with an untethered locality acquired was achieved, it was then that the sorcerous operations would begin. My esoteric tools from then have rarely changed. It is a simple assembly of dagger, a chalice, a cauldron, a stone dish, runes and a quartz crystal tetrahedron. I remember very vividly the manner of dampening my cerebral sensory input, and allowing the body to be the sole interface of stimuli. The cold; the cold wind; the dark; the snow; the starlight. It doesn’t take much to align the soul with that angle that understands one is standing ever and always among the dark forces. Waves of primal energy and cosmic gravitational force — it’s always there, we just don’t see it, not always.
Sinking deeper and deeper into the feeling instead of the thinking, the limbs no longer seemed moving through air, but moving through the astral — indeed it always was. It was at this moment that I would comprehend the magnitude of my forthcoming actions. They would not be meaningless gestures made to a lonely void in the middle of nowhere without consequence. No, I was linked into that razor’s edge between worlds: the twilight of the gods.
Anything I would then do and say: full conscious that the eidolons born from that operation would be as real and effectual as the causal reality with its physical laws and parameters.
They say blood is the key. One’s blood and its strengthened pathways back to the beginning of our ancestors, results in a resurgent atavism which produces the conditions of a time, a people, and a realm that is not confined by the postulations of earthling science.
Then there is the hermetic method, which over time became more and more exacting, but for purposes of then, was only rudimentary. Hermeticism was/ is a great wellspring of knowledge to enrich one’s spiritual journey, but it is not the final word [on anything]. The dark forces exist beyond our control, exactly as described in the beginning of this piece, insomuch as they exist as an acausal mirror baring the reflexion of nature in the vast beyond. Therewith the most genuine manner in which one might perform magickal operations is to enter into a momentary symbiotic connexion with these energies and intelligences, en masse, or in-part. And in this cooperative, temporal to permanent existence, those forces might then be made sensitive to the subtle prompt that hermetic techniques, formulae and invocation might promote…
In my fallible opinion.
Wintyr
ISW / 9AO
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