convocation part two
So I went to the Artemis ritual because I wanted to see how a goddess takes someone's body for her own.
It was in a room with a bunch of candles and tables set up, and a lady with a bowl and pitcher standing at the entrance to wash peoples' hands. There was someone on the floor wrapped up in a yellow sheet. When it was time for the ritual, she slipped off the sheet. It was a cute, dark-haired girl in a yellow dress, and I felt this weird stingy electric feeling. The only thing I can describe it as was awe. Not entirely fear, but the feeling that I was in the presence of something much more powerful than myself and that I really, really had to respect that.
The ritual was about letting go and finding your quarry--Artemis the huntress. We had our hands bound with a thin length of hemp, and then we talked to Artemis, who gave us advice, and she cut it off and tied some yellow ribbon around our wrists, and told us not to take it off until it falls off. Huh, I hadn't thought about that ribbon until now--I can't remember taking it off. But I looked at my wrist, and it's gone, so it must have fallen off. I won't tell you what I talked to her about, but she was very, very kind and I felt very comfortable and emotional with her. I felt a really major connection. I stuck around after the ritual ended to talk to the people who had put it on, and the girl who was "horsing" Artemis looked really wiped out.
That was the end of the night for me. There was some karaoke, but I was too tired and impatient to partake, so I came home and cuddled with Sara and extracted a promise from her to go to the Masquerade Ball.
The next day started late for me, as Sara was spending the night and I didn't have any classes I wanted to take at 9:30 AM again. I ended up going to a Muse Meditation ritual, which was nice and gave me a chance to nap a bit and imagine Tragedy and Comedy getting into a stick/knife fight. There was a guy in there who was really obnoxious--he kept interrupted the prof, answering other peoples' questions without giving warning or raising his hand or letting the prof answer, making stupid jokes ALL the time. It distracted me a lot. But the prof was really nice. Afterwards I ended up going to the dealer's hall and buying a meteorite necklace, a stone dingo, and then I met the prof there and bonded with her over the fact that she had written a gay werewolf romance and I wanted to write a gay werewolf cowboy romance. She even invited me to her critique group!
Then I went to a class on energy manipulation with Mark Mandrake, the gentleman in the suit. Now, I have actually had some experience learning about energy manipulation, and from everything I was able to glean, it was completely ridiculous and consisted of people fooling themselves into believing that warmth from their hands was "chi energy" and that they could throw energy balls at people and have that work. While I am still unsure of the veracity of the existence of "chi energy" (which may completely disqualify me as a pagan, because fucking everyone I talked to accepted it as a fact of life and said they could feel it, no matter what their path or other beliefs were), I gotta say that Mandrake's class was at least reasonably convincing and entertaining. The man is a good teacher. He was prepared, gave simple and clear explanations of what he was doing, answered questions, admitted when he wasn't sure about things, and had us doing basic energy manipulation exercises with partners. I did start the class feeling really twitchy and energetic, and when he did the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram my ass started to twitch randomly. Then I felt better. Dunno what that was all about. But we did a couple of banishing and cleansing exercises, learned how to shield, and then stood around and threw energy at each other. (We were supposed to send negative emotions. I sent guilt to my buddy, and he didn't seem to be getting it, so I leaned forward and whispered "When's the last time you called your mother? She misses you" at him.) My partner said he thought I had a "weird, constantly moving energy" that he couldn't hit. This is not the first time someone has said "I can't affect you with my chi energy because your aura is weird" to me.
And then Mandrake announced that he was going to hold a secret underground Chaos Magick class at midnight in his room :D I stayed after class to ask him a crucial question. See, I've done guided meditation, I have tried visualizing energy, I use my imagination a lot when I do pagan-y things. But I'm always conscious of using it and of what I'm imagining--when there's something there I can't control (like having a dingo spirit animal, or not being able to go into the Tunnel of Earth in one meditation we did), it stands out a lot. Other people don't seem to have this kind of control over what they experience, or they seem to be surprised by the fact that they can imagine things, or something--they consider their meditations to come from somewhere other than their own head, or consider the things they visualize to be real in some sense. I know that I can imagine myself anywhere the hell I want. I know that I can imagine a goat in a party hat to be eating my sofa if I want, and my sofa won't be eaten and there won't be any goat-in-a-party-hat energy floating around because of it. But I don't know if this is because I'm so shitty at channeling or sensing or...whatever...or because other people don't use their imaginations in the same way I do. Anyway, Mandrake seemed to believe that he was telepathic, but when I started to ask him what he thought, he went, "You're wondering if you're crazy!" with a big smile on his face like he was so excited to console me. And I had to go, "No, I'm wondering if everyone else is crazy." I know the difference between what I imagine and what I experience pretty well, but I can't make that judgment for the things that other people claim to experience. He said that he really, really had to think about it and would find me later. He never did quite answer the question, though Ben did--he said it was that I was experiencing the same thing as other people did, I just had to work on believing that it was real. I don't quite know what to do with that answer, but at least it's an answer, you know?
ANYWAY so then I went to a technomancy class, which was way less Neuromancer than I expected. But I brought my sonic screwdriver with me, which made everyone cheer (pagans LOVE Doctor Who), and one lady said that when she did astral travel, she imagined an astral TARDIS around her. I just thought that was the coolest thing.
Then it was going to be time for the Masquerade Ball. I wandered around a bit and managed to gather a solid crew of people who all wanted to go to IHOP, and Sara appeared and found a bunch of old friends to hang out with. We hung out and ate pancakes and bonded. The waitress was adorable and had this cute little Southern accent and showed us her tattoos. We talked about RPGs and shared stories about our time at Con. People agreed that my energy was "weird, sort of curly and twisty, like your hair" and "bubbly." Huhhhh. I really don't know what that means. But okay.
Holy shit I've typed a lot and I'm trying to do a bunch of crap. I'm going to save the rest of this for next post.
It was in a room with a bunch of candles and tables set up, and a lady with a bowl and pitcher standing at the entrance to wash peoples' hands. There was someone on the floor wrapped up in a yellow sheet. When it was time for the ritual, she slipped off the sheet. It was a cute, dark-haired girl in a yellow dress, and I felt this weird stingy electric feeling. The only thing I can describe it as was awe. Not entirely fear, but the feeling that I was in the presence of something much more powerful than myself and that I really, really had to respect that.
The ritual was about letting go and finding your quarry--Artemis the huntress. We had our hands bound with a thin length of hemp, and then we talked to Artemis, who gave us advice, and she cut it off and tied some yellow ribbon around our wrists, and told us not to take it off until it falls off. Huh, I hadn't thought about that ribbon until now--I can't remember taking it off. But I looked at my wrist, and it's gone, so it must have fallen off. I won't tell you what I talked to her about, but she was very, very kind and I felt very comfortable and emotional with her. I felt a really major connection. I stuck around after the ritual ended to talk to the people who had put it on, and the girl who was "horsing" Artemis looked really wiped out.
That was the end of the night for me. There was some karaoke, but I was too tired and impatient to partake, so I came home and cuddled with Sara and extracted a promise from her to go to the Masquerade Ball.
The next day started late for me, as Sara was spending the night and I didn't have any classes I wanted to take at 9:30 AM again. I ended up going to a Muse Meditation ritual, which was nice and gave me a chance to nap a bit and imagine Tragedy and Comedy getting into a stick/knife fight. There was a guy in there who was really obnoxious--he kept interrupted the prof, answering other peoples' questions without giving warning or raising his hand or letting the prof answer, making stupid jokes ALL the time. It distracted me a lot. But the prof was really nice. Afterwards I ended up going to the dealer's hall and buying a meteorite necklace, a stone dingo, and then I met the prof there and bonded with her over the fact that she had written a gay werewolf romance and I wanted to write a gay werewolf cowboy romance. She even invited me to her critique group!
Then I went to a class on energy manipulation with Mark Mandrake, the gentleman in the suit. Now, I have actually had some experience learning about energy manipulation, and from everything I was able to glean, it was completely ridiculous and consisted of people fooling themselves into believing that warmth from their hands was "chi energy" and that they could throw energy balls at people and have that work. While I am still unsure of the veracity of the existence of "chi energy" (which may completely disqualify me as a pagan, because fucking everyone I talked to accepted it as a fact of life and said they could feel it, no matter what their path or other beliefs were), I gotta say that Mandrake's class was at least reasonably convincing and entertaining. The man is a good teacher. He was prepared, gave simple and clear explanations of what he was doing, answered questions, admitted when he wasn't sure about things, and had us doing basic energy manipulation exercises with partners. I did start the class feeling really twitchy and energetic, and when he did the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram my ass started to twitch randomly. Then I felt better. Dunno what that was all about. But we did a couple of banishing and cleansing exercises, learned how to shield, and then stood around and threw energy at each other. (We were supposed to send negative emotions. I sent guilt to my buddy, and he didn't seem to be getting it, so I leaned forward and whispered "When's the last time you called your mother? She misses you" at him.) My partner said he thought I had a "weird, constantly moving energy" that he couldn't hit. This is not the first time someone has said "I can't affect you with my chi energy because your aura is weird" to me.
And then Mandrake announced that he was going to hold a secret underground Chaos Magick class at midnight in his room :D I stayed after class to ask him a crucial question. See, I've done guided meditation, I have tried visualizing energy, I use my imagination a lot when I do pagan-y things. But I'm always conscious of using it and of what I'm imagining--when there's something there I can't control (like having a dingo spirit animal, or not being able to go into the Tunnel of Earth in one meditation we did), it stands out a lot. Other people don't seem to have this kind of control over what they experience, or they seem to be surprised by the fact that they can imagine things, or something--they consider their meditations to come from somewhere other than their own head, or consider the things they visualize to be real in some sense. I know that I can imagine myself anywhere the hell I want. I know that I can imagine a goat in a party hat to be eating my sofa if I want, and my sofa won't be eaten and there won't be any goat-in-a-party-hat energy floating around because of it. But I don't know if this is because I'm so shitty at channeling or sensing or...whatever...or because other people don't use their imaginations in the same way I do. Anyway, Mandrake seemed to believe that he was telepathic, but when I started to ask him what he thought, he went, "You're wondering if you're crazy!" with a big smile on his face like he was so excited to console me. And I had to go, "No, I'm wondering if everyone else is crazy." I know the difference between what I imagine and what I experience pretty well, but I can't make that judgment for the things that other people claim to experience. He said that he really, really had to think about it and would find me later. He never did quite answer the question, though Ben did--he said it was that I was experiencing the same thing as other people did, I just had to work on believing that it was real. I don't quite know what to do with that answer, but at least it's an answer, you know?
ANYWAY so then I went to a technomancy class, which was way less Neuromancer than I expected. But I brought my sonic screwdriver with me, which made everyone cheer (pagans LOVE Doctor Who), and one lady said that when she did astral travel, she imagined an astral TARDIS around her. I just thought that was the coolest thing.
Then it was going to be time for the Masquerade Ball. I wandered around a bit and managed to gather a solid crew of people who all wanted to go to IHOP, and Sara appeared and found a bunch of old friends to hang out with. We hung out and ate pancakes and bonded. The waitress was adorable and had this cute little Southern accent and showed us her tattoos. We talked about RPGs and shared stories about our time at Con. People agreed that my energy was "weird, sort of curly and twisty, like your hair" and "bubbly." Huhhhh. I really don't know what that means. But okay.
Holy shit I've typed a lot and I'm trying to do a bunch of crap. I'm going to save the rest of this for next post.