Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Temple >

"Stupid" magick, religion and spirituality questions

Page: 1 ... 10 11 12 13 14(15)16 17 18 19 20... 83

Unconditional Love

14:26 / 20.05.06

It is important that the toilet seat is neither up nor down but in the transition between these states, not one polarity or the other, so that gender bias is released and realised as a transition that takes place over many lifetimes alternating between states. The art of magic is to make use of the toilet as the seat swings back and forth between these potentials.

14:51 / 20.05.06

Frequent stealing will put you in contact with hermes
...and also the priests of Justice, with their red robes and white wigs and followers with truncheons and handcuffs.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

13:07 / 21.05.06

Anyone know anything about a seagull-eating God? Coz one appeared to me in a dream last night.

I was back at uni, and had gone for some kind of career/life guidance. The person I was talking to was a pleasant man with greying sandy hair and light-brown clothes and a rather unnerving habit of reaching out of the room via the ceiling to grab passing seagulls and eat them whole. (I think they were seagulls. White birds, anyway.)

Unconditional Love

14:08 / 21.05.06

Could be a spirit of the dead who gets fed white birds as an offering, possible that the white birds were doves?

Less searchable M0rd4nt

14:35 / 21.05.06

This guy was pretty big. If he was a deader, he was a very powerful one.

16:52 / 21.05.06

What/who did this guy remind you of?
What did he say?

Could it be some weird Jungian stuff rather than a God contacting you (is there a difference)?

Ideas -

Birds often represent freedom and roaming and stuff. "free as a bird" and all that.

White birds tend to be associated with purity/innocence etc. (especially the aforementioned doves)

Seagulls are scavengers and fishers. Their link to the sea might mean something. What do you associated with the sea? Do you have any psychic resonance with the sea? Or with the act of scavaging or fishing?

Sea/water tends to be an archetype for the emotions.

Could the old man be some sort of paradigm, like 'old father time' or anything?

What sort of mental/physical/personal state do you associate with being at uni? Was it a time of growth, of learning or perhaps following rules and keeping in other people's guidelines? You say you went for some career/life guidance so maybe (and a very tenuous maybe at that..) you associate university with a time you felt like things were a bit on track and better-defined?

So a vague interpretation could be - You feel like you could do with a bit of understanding on where to go and what to do with your life, so you have looked back to the time when things felt like they were a bit better defined. You got chatting to time, who is old but pleasant and teaches us well, but who also seems to eat away at our innocence and freedom as well as your emotional self.

Or whatever this guy is, he likes to chomp away at freedom and/or emotion, maybe as a way of showing you his powers of control.

Or something.

Maybe it isn't any of that. You obviously know better than anyone what the resonances were/are, but those ideas might help for starters.

Apologies if this is wildly off the mark

Less searchable M0rd4nt

17:57 / 21.05.06

.trampetunia: He didn't look like anyone I know, either IRL or from myth. He gave off serious God-vibes though, seemed to exist outside our dimension; it was as if he was gigantic, able to stretch up into the sky and grab birds right out of the air--but at the same time, to present himself as an average guy you could sit across from and have a chat with. The birds, I got the feeling that they were just a favourite food. A lot of gods and spirits have a favourite food/drink they like to be offered.

He seemed a little distant, but genuinely helpful. Sort of a combination career guidance counsellor and shrink. I ended up telling him everything that was bothering me, all my problems (financial, psychological, spiritual, magical). He responded along the lines that over the next six months I'd be gaining a better understanding, seeing a bit more structure.

18:45 / 21.05.06

Cool. Sorry for trying to turn it into yr average couch session; it was just the only apporach I could think of that might offer some fruit.

Did you ask him his name?
Do you reckon you'll meet him again?

I've got an image in my head now of Kamaji from Spirited Away - the guy with the many stretchy arms and herb collection. I'll bet he's got a few seagulls somewhere in those boxes :-)

Still, glad to hear things are looking up for the next few months!

19:05 / 22.05.06

1. Are you sure it was an eating thing? First association with god-consuming-birds is the idea of Odin and his thoughts & memory transmitted by birds. Black ones.

2. Sea gulls aren't really considered edible, I don't think -- harder to catch than fish and not very palatable, like most scavengers & trash-eaters. I wouldn't rule them out as a foodstuff for some hard-up indigenous population, but I've never heard of, like, any Florida pioneers eating Seminole seagull stew or anything (and it seems like if it happened, I would have). ((Although to be precise, it'd be Caloosa or Timucuan seagull stew -- Seminoles came along later.))

3. Also, most gulls are kind of white with lots of gray, brown or black... different colored wings & heads. Albatrosses are more white. Whiter. Lots of resonance there, you know.

4. There's a Poe story -- precursor to Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness -- about an Antarctic expedition where the seagulls cry the name of lost god... tekeli-li... tekeli-li. There's a lot of color inversions in that story, too. I think it's called "M.S. Found in a Bottle" -- but there are a few MS/Narrative of... stories that kind of run together in my head.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

20:57 / 22.05.06

grant: yeah, I've read the story. Umm... well, he was definately eating the birds. And I got a feeling off that, like I was being told what offerings he might like.

The gulls I'm most used to are herring-gulls, principally white and light grey. I guess that's what I thought of when I saw the white feathers.

A couple of people elsewhere have suggested Njord, and I did think of old Mr. Pretty Feet, but the feel was wrong. Didn't feel like any of my regulars, you know? Someone new. Not that I've had much to do with Njord, TBH.

22:38 / 22.05.06

Herring Gulls?! Fuck, they snatch cornish pasties out of people's hands and terrify dogs. I'm writing a story at the moment with a father gull telling his son how the whole of Brighton is his kingdom and the inhabitants his servants. By chance I picked up a leaflet on Herring Gulls from the library a few weeks ago, they're amazing- mate for life, thrive on man, unerringly accurate shit, really really really loud when mating in their nests on your roof. A cleaning lady at my old work had to move house because a pair kept her up loudly gullfucking every night. Fierce, dude, anything that eats Herring Gulls and is on your side is good news IMHO. And they say RAWK! like demented Lordi fans.

22:43 / 22.05.06

Stupid question- if you find a grenade in your potatoes, who is that a sign from? Teh Lordi?

00:40 / 23.05.06

On sea gulls and the divine, Google gives me this Easter Island account of the creation of the Pleiades. Which is probably not too helpful. There's more detail here. Gulls are associated with the sea god Makemake.

This bit about the associations of the Ogham letter "F" might be more familiar turf -- Deities: Manannan as protector, Fionn mac Cumhaill as Chief of the Fianna
Meanings: physical protection, emotional protection, walls, containment, warriors or the military, hunters and the hunt, preparation and being prepared (goes on about relation to alder wood).

Deuteronomy 14:12-18 you might find disturbing, or not. (Sea gulls are unclean.)

Laguz?

Njord's messengers

Of note to me: Siberian shamans saw ravens and seagulls as interchangeable, at least in this one thing: They're both signs that Big-Raven is coming.

These things do lend themselves overall to an impression that Njord is hanging around, I think. Ocean gods tend to be inscrutable and a little scary. Alien. Drowners and treasure-hiders.

(This exsts only to vex me, I think. Google entry oddly mentions Mithra, without including the word "seagull" or "gull".)

(And given that, this bit from an article on "devil ships" becomes even weirder:
Northern mythology seems to have borrowed the dragon from the east.... Sigurd fights with Fafner, a creature half dragon and half man, but in other northern stories, such as the Gull-Thoris saga, we find a full-fledged oriental dragon with scales and wings.

The word "gull" here is translated elsewhere as "gold", and you know Freud was big on the significance of puns in dreams, right?)

03:37 / 23.05.06

Oh, and duh, more in yer facey, sea gulls are generally good omens for sea-faring folks because they mean land is near (bearing tidings of fresh food, a chance at R&R).

Less searchable M0rd4nt

08:05 / 23.05.06

Ocean gods tend to be inscrutable and a little scary. Alien. Drowners and treasure-hiders.

Nah, Njord is more about coastal waters and their bounty, a gifter of treasures rather than a hider of them. He was hard enough to axe His way into Asgard when the Vanir invaded, but He was a popular and well-liked God back in the day. Aegir and especially Ran are the scary drowny inscruitable ones.

15:38 / 23.05.06

Mordant

... I think you can cross the Celtic pantheon off the list of suspects as bird eating is pretty much a big ass no-no. Very very strong taboos about eating birds, white birds especially.

can you ask one of your other Deities for info? sounds like the riddle game of 'match the new Influence'.

My own version had me poking the Kemetic tradition until I recently got repointed closer to home. sigh. I'm realizing now that the point of the game was to break down preconceived notions I had about the Deity in question and let go of other people's (and mythic) interpretations and just let the relationship develop.

18:53 / 23.05.06

Barbelith was down this morning, so I put this about Athena and seagulls here.

The Sea-Crow.

19:42 / 23.05.06

grant

Anything on Saturn and seagulls? I was reading the hexagram thread and for some reason when I read 'Saturn' this subject did a little dance in my head. I googled it and got stuck in a flock of seagulls land. Googling Chronos didn't provide much more but something is resonating there for me and Mordant's dream.

Unconditional Love

20:23 / 23.05.06

when i was on holday in portugal, port of gulls or (gals perhaps) if you will, i made an offering to the sea to sort out a problem i was having with my family who i was on holiday with. But i also left an offering for the gulls, including money. i made the offering because id spent the day before talking to the sea from a cave mouth in some cliffs over looking what must of been the med and throwing stones in the sea in frustration.

At some point i wandered further, closer to the sea until i was gudied by two voices from the sea male and female to an area where all i could hear was a sea gull, here i was gudied to a patch of rocks and asked to choose 2 stones, which i did to serve a purpose to deal with the problem which they did and still do.

I neglected to bottle sea water which i was also instructed to do. I will procure some locally.

Earlier in the week i procured a small clay african mask showing two faces, i presumed it to be the marasa twins, upon purchase of this item, while returning form some caves along the beach, an african man approached me and struck up a conversation in portugese, unfortunately i dont speak portugese so the communication was rather short.

Later that night i was awoken from my sleep by an encounter with two spirits of the dead, one who had had his face blown off i think by cannon fire, the fear was high in this experience so i was glad i awoke.

The only cave i couldnt get to on holiday was secluded under a cliff top church, unfortunate because it was the most curious.

The gulls on the cliffs were constantly watching my behaviour so much so that i saw them as the bridge between the spirits of the air and the spirits of the seas, this is why i chose to make offering to them as well.

03:55 / 25.05.06

That last post brought to you at exactly 23:23 / 23.05.06, Wilson fans.

I don't know about Saturn and gulls. That "sea-crow" business as an esoteric motif, though (both the Greeks and the Siberians??), is really suggestive. And the idea of eating souls of the dead seems vaguely saturnine.

09:47 / 30.05.06

You know how in Greek mythology, if you say something boastful, the gods come and squish you (cf Ariadne, Niobe etc)? Well... if I accidentally said something along the lines of "I'm just as good as Loki" (not actually meaning that I am in fact an ancient trickster/fire god, just that if I was picking a character out of Eight Days of Luke to identify with I don't see why I couldn't be Luke instead of boring old Alan), should I start being extra careful around fire, mistletoe, etc?

09:57 / 30.05.06

It's probably not such a big deal if you aren't actively involved with said deity. If you had a full on relationship with a God, they knew you, trusted you, and you spend a lot of time hanging out with them - then you went about bad mouthing them around town - that would likely be a recipe for trouble. If you aren't already on the deity's turf, as it were, and didn't actually mean what you said in your heart, then I shouldn't worry.

10:28 / 30.05.06

Okay, good. That's what I suspected, but I thought I'd better check.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

11:02 / 30.05.06

Deva, you should hear some of the things that Asatrur say about Himself. If Loki took exception to that kind of thing there'd be an epidemic of spontaneous combustion. (If I said it I might be in trouble, but that's different.)

14:57 / 30.05.06

euphemism/nicknames are often used to speak around certain entities without attracting their ire.

You have to wonder though, at what point they do start learning those nicknames....

Less searchable M0rd4nt

15:09 / 30.05.06

My lot seem to like nicknames. Spose it reminds them of the Good Old Days.

17:00 / 30.05.06

Not to get too rotty but I just read a comic yesterday with 'Old One Eye' in it and thought the Old Boy must love His airplay these days. All sorts of comic and book walk-ons.

18:18 / 30.05.06

WLTM a diety who knows hir mathematics and is also 'friendly' for good times, long walks and help with my sums... Is my best bet to go with Thoth, create my own pythagorean, compass wielding archetype or is there a better 3rd way?

Less searchable M0rd4nt

22:35 / 30.05.06

Gosh, good question. Personally I'd probably go via the Dead and find some passed-on mathematician who was willing to help in exchange for the odd shot of liquor and whatnot, but that's just me.

23:29 / 30.05.06

Thoth or any of the achitecture Gods makes sense, as does ol'Pythogarus himself (as a Dead).

Less searchable M0rd4nt

00:10 / 31.05.06

Actually I personally wouldn't do any such thing because I have ready access to a mathmo, but YKWIM. However it might be easier to find an alive mathematician to help you out, Dovetailed.

01:41 / 31.05.06

Um. I'm not quite sure if this is the right thread; or if this is following posting etiquette, so mods feel free to change/move/delete as appropriate.

But i've got a nice shiny pretty much unread copy of Crowleys liber ABA - you know the big 'magick' one and i don't really want it. It doesnt you know 'click' for me.

So instead of ebay it, I figured it'd probably find a better home around these parts. I'm willing to give it for free, but obviously gifts or cool things for swaps would be appreciated too

The new owner would need to pay postage, so this is probably really only cost-effective for those in the UK or close-by.

So yeah. PM me if you want it.

[EDIT]
The two posters who have asked for this book are now in the midst of a showdown for possession of it, so i'm afraid this offer is no longer open. Thanks!

16:11 / 31.05.06

Thanks for your help guys; I guess I will try inviting Thoth out for drinks and a chat first.

I am an alive mathematician Mordant; I am rather more looking for a relationship with some power who can perhaps give me gentle pushes and insights during my calculations.

08:55 / 01.06.06

Like a muse? Polyhymnia was sometimes the muse of geometry.

"Polyhymnia (Polymnia), "She of Many Hymns," is the muse of Sacred Poetry and is seen with a pensive look upon her face. She brings distinction to writers whose works have won them immortal fame. She has also been called the Muse of geometry, mime, meditation and agriculture. Polyhymnia is often veiled.

15:57 / 01.06.06

Yes! Exactly Quantum; a muse! Why didn't I think of that? I've read a bit about Polyhymnia and the other muses just now; seems to be pretty much exactly what I was looking for. I especially like the fact that; "When Pythagoras arrived at Croton, his first advice to the Crotoniates was to build a shrine of the Muses at the center of the city, to promote civic harmony and learning", and hell, if ol'Pythag was a fan they must be worth a look in. I wasn't at all sure about Thoth; frankly I think ibises look a bit, well, weird (sorry Thoth if you are reading this; it’s just my own humble opinion). I kept envisaging offering him food or drink and not really having the right shaped vessels for his beak (Ha! You might say they wouldn’t “fit the bill”, geddit?).

So anyone got any experience with the muses (esp. Polyhymnia)? Any suggestions on how to court them and their favour? I read something about locusts being dead men who carried messages of favour from the living to the muses; reckon speaking with locusts/grasshoppers would win me any kudos, or am I better off with just direct evo/invocation?

Page: 1 ... 10 11 12 13 14(15)16 17 18 19 20... 83