So, a bit of history, some of which is probably buried many pages back in the Temple, with other threads circa 2007:
When I decided to give magic a serious try, I figured I'd start with invoking a god associated with magic itself, assuming that would be easiest. I don't recall the exact details of the first time I tried anything, but I know I tried contacting Odin, Hermes, Mercury, and Thoth all at once. Nothing much immediately seemed to happen, but then in the mail that day, I received a copy of "Journey from This World to the Next," by Henry Fielding (more a satire than a book on the occult), which I'd ordered over a month before and had pretty much forgotten about. Anyway, I started reading it that evening, and it begins with Mercury appearing to guide the narrator. So, I thought: "I tried invoking these four gods, then this god of literature and messages arrives in a literary work in my mail. I guess he's the one who answered."
After that, I read about Mercury, some of the stories told about him, the various things that he is the patron of, and tried at least get a general sense of the significance of these stories. I went around for a while leaving coins at "crossroads" (usually subway stations where many train lines met). I came up with a sort of greeting/invocation that evolved over time, praising and thanking Mercury for various things and just asking that he continue to grant me basic services (e.g. making sure someone got my message, or helping me to be at my best when writing fiction), and I recited that invocation pretty much every morning, facing the direction of the planet Mercury (East). And for about the last four years, I didn't try much more than that.
I think my basic idea when I began all of this was that, if you can say that such things as "language," "thought," "communication," "poetry," and "mischief," for instance, are all REAL THINGS in some sense, then if you name the grouping of those things "Mercury," then Mercury is in the same sense a REAL THING. And I didn't go much beyond that in my conception of what Mercury might be. I kind of just thought, "If I devote myself to Mercury by reading a lot, then Mercury will bless me with a better knowledge of literature, and more to draw upon in my own writing."
So then, a couple months ago, a friend gave me some acid, which is something I hadn't done in about eleven or twelve years, but which I had always gotten a lot out of when I did it in college. I'd been going through some rough stuff personally and had kind of been wanting to try it again just to shake up my way of thinking about this stuff, so my friend sent it to me as a gift. Anyway, I did it on my own, in my place, and for the most part I was just seeing where it would take my mind. But then at one point I decided to say my little invocation of Mercury, and after that I sat down at my computer and just started "automatic" typing a dialogue between me and Mercury. He gave me some advice, a lot of which was stuff that I had already known but hadn't articulated, but what surprised me reading the transcript over the next day was just how glib, and punning, and clever the "Mercury" voice was compared to "Me" voice. I mean, I'm a writer, so it's not unusual for me to get a character's voice in my head and have that voice come out on the page without consciously thinking about it, but if that's what I was doing with Mercury here, I think I did a surprisingly good job. And I think it seems somewhat natural that Mercury should manifest himself in the form of words on a page.
So, possibly just a meaningless part of an acid trip, but possibly a successful invocation? In any case, it helped. The advice was good, and I've since dealt with the stuff that needed dealing with. It just struck me as interesting, so I thought I'd share. |
