I have been so silent recently, I thought I had better pop my head around the door and see if the world was still spinning. I have just finished module eight of the Quareia course and that along with module seven are busy in the formatting stage and should appear soon. It has been quite a wild few months… I have not really surfaced for air much and have just been writing, eating, sleeping and writing… oh yeah, and writing.

A few nights ago I realised that the schedule was maybe getting to me: I was in bed, and just dropping off to sleep when I realised my fingers were on the duvet and were typing out my thoughts as I was drifting off. But it is worth it… the apprentice section only has two more modules to go and then it will be complete… that will 500,000 words down and only a million to go… a million… gulp!

What really makes it worth it is seeing people engaging in the course and doing the work themselves, under their own steam and making discoveries for themselves. I get messages from people all over the world who are studying the modules and each person seems to have their own unique way of approaching the training. It is interesting seeing people having to learn how to adapt how they think in order to be able to do the exercises, (I don’t have an altar table… to which I reply use a chair. Or even a hard back book….). Adaptability is a great skill to have in magic. For some, finding incense, or even candles has been tough. We in the west forget that we have everything to hand whenever we want it. Some people are connecting with the course from various African countries, China, Russia, India… some who have to engage the course in a net cafe, or at college. It is humbling to see that determination… particularly from some folks in China who are having to dodge around internet restrictions. Kudos to them!

The process of immersion in writing this work is very interesting: once you get in to a rhythm and routine, your subconscious comes out to play and hangs the washing out. I find myself including work in the writing I had totally forgotten about. It had sat in a dusty corner of my mind for years patiently waiting for its day to hang back out in the sun again. So it is a very productive process for me also. Though my laptop has not been overly impressed.

For those who know me, you will remember that I have a tendency to blow things up. This skill of mine has tended to fade somewhat with menopause – I am far more chilled these days than I used to be. But unearthing some of this work seems to have plugged parts of me back up again and after a few days of zapping the cats and the husband, I went on to blow up various household items and finally the laptop. The hard drive committed suicide and that was that. Thankfully I only lost on lesson as I have learned from bitter experience to back everything up.

It was a bit of a panic moment though. With working on Quareia full time, we are living on a shoestring, and confronted with a pile of smoking dead appliances did not make for a happy day. And it also brought the course to a sudden smoky stop. But some heroes came to the rescue and I now have a temporary new one that will pass on to Stuart, my partner, when my Josephine proof one finally arrives from its long journey (thank you William!). Communities are such wonderful things!

As more and more people begin to work with the Quareia course, I thought it might be a good idea to have a facebook page where apprentices can connect with each other, make friends and hang out. It is not a place to get help… students have to work things out for themselves… but I think for some people it makes the boot camp aspect for the first few modules easier to cope with when you know there are other people also doing magical press ups and getting sore muscles. If you are reading this and are studying the Quareia course, and wish to join the FB page.. it is a closed page that is invisible on facebook.

Update 3/24/15 – I did have my email here if people wanted to join the FB group but some people who have read this blog have misused it, so I have removed it. Sadly you are going to have to fall across the group by knowing someone who is in it or connected to it. Sending me your facebook name is of no use as you have to either be on my friends list (no, don’t even ask), or I need to have your email. So let’s see how ingenious you are.

It is so exciting for me to meet all these various people who are studying Quareia and for them to connect with the various magicians who are involved in Quareia. We are slowly becoming a family and the wide variety of people from all areas of the world are amazing people. It has also been interesting to see how at first we bring out cultural and social expectations to the table only to find that they do not fit with people from other more different cultures. In social media this can often result in clashes and misunderstandings, but it has been wonderful to see people adjust how they communicate in order for it to be more understandable and less confrontational. Instead of reacting to something they took the wrong way, they are politely and kindly asking for clarification from each other. That care alone helps to build a family.

And on a lighter note, spending so much time writing has brought about a new delight. I take a break every 40 mins for a coffee and I take it outside so that I can stretch my eyes by looking into the distance (important if you do a lot of close up reading) and I am getting to watch a lot of the wildlife antics that I would have otherwise missed: the crow who whoops like a monkey, the finches who play dive bomb from the telegraph lines, the raven who comes to hang out, the badger that bumbles through the garden in the evening, the meer sparrows (a bush of sparrows where they take turns in sitting at the top of the bushes watching the path), the mad farmer who drives past the house every 10 mins… I jest not.. literally every ten minutes… sheesh…. I have no idea what he is doing…. And jackdaws who pretend to be crows, the heron that lands on the thin tree and almost falls out each time…

And now I am starting on the module that deals with planetary powers, how their influence magic and how you engage magically with them to make the most of their influence. At this rate, the apprentice section will be fully finished by the spring equinox and will be fully formed and born right on astrological cue. So busy busy!! And the Fellows of the Quarry will be coming together for a meeting soon, where we can bash out a few of the details of the mentoring methods, so that all is in place for when the first few survivors of the magical boot camp apprentice section are ready to take up the mantle of Initiate and plunge into deeper work. This is all very exciting!

and it is a group effort with lots of people helping in so many ways, either through technical work, editing, formatting, keeping me connected to the world, ensuring I have a laptop to work on, and to all the contributors who are keeping a roof over my head while I work… it is an amazing coming together of people to make this happen.