Painting by Remedios Varo
I have almost reached the mid point of the course writing project I am working on, and what a strange magical journey this has turned out to be. When I started writing Quareia, I had no idea of what was truly ahead of me and what an amazing magical journey it is turning out to be.Besides revisiting the basic steps up to initiate, I found a strange magical dynamic kick in that seemed to trigger fateful events around me. Whatever subject I was immersed in for writing a module, magical things would start to crop up that were directly related to what I was writing about.
I would write about magical aspects of death, and people dropped like flies around me (uhoh)… I wrote about obscure deities, and they would turn up at my house in the form of cards, statues, found objects, and when I wrote about the kings of Egypt, regeneration and Maat, the blue heron turned up outside my house.
Benu Bird
The blue heron was looked upon in Egypt as being the Benu bird, which signaled renewal and re birth (phew…).
It has varied from the sublime (the visit from the Benu bird) to the ridiculous – I was writing about magical restriction (Gevurah) and time, and our village church clock stopped chiming the bells, and the clock itself stopped. Hmm.
This was a double problem because our wee village has a goose who is a bit of a village character, who honks every time the bell chimes. Not only had we lost the beautiful sound of an ancient bell tolling, we had lost the call of the goose….. bearing in mind that the goose is heavily tied into the mythology of Amun, the Egyptian deity.
Amun is the unknowing, the air, the utterance…. And our village goose resides to the east of us (east – air). I used to enjoy his honks, and suddenly the village had been plunged into silence. Silly I know, but I missed him.
But once that chapter on restriction was finished and I moved on to creation, the flow of time, and the Light Bearer (Lucifer), the clock was fixed, the bells chimed once more, and goose is now back on form, honking every time the bell tolls. His counting has gotten better too.
Immersing oneself back into the shoes of the apprentice was a very enlightening experience for me, as I see it now from a very different perspective than I did twenty years ago.
And now the march into writing the initiate work has proven to be just as curious and thought provoking. I am nearly half way through the initiate section which is yet another journey and is throwing up more and more things for me to re assess, revisit magically, re test, and to think about. What do I put in? what do I not need to put in? what writes itself without me realizing until I have read it back?
by Casper David Friedrich
What has struck me the most so far in this journey, is the quiet withdrawal from the world. It was not intentional, and at first was simply a matter of having no time to do anything else, or to go anywhere.
But as I got deeper into the writing, it began to feel like seclusion was helping the process, so that I would not be distracted or influenced by anything else. But there are so many births of new ideas happening, and interesting discussions going on between very different magicians, I sometimes feel like the kid sat in detention while everyone else plays out (oh boody hoo… suck it up girl!!).
And yet there has also been so much creativity: I have also been helping to form the magicians deck with Stuart Littlejohn and Cassandra Beanland, two amazing magical artists. Listening and watching them converse with the paintings, allowing the visionary beings to flow through their hands onto paper and canvas has been a truly inspiring process.
Once it is finally in print, (soon….) it will be very interesting to work with as it is based on inner contacts, magical beings and all the things that we magicians tick our hands and minds into.
The next module I am about to tackle is all about deities and how to work with them as magicians in ritual and vision…. So I had better start making room on the sofa for when they all turn up: I guess the house may become a wee bit crowded for a while. And I will be interested to see which deities turn up and wish to be included and talked about: I leave the door open with the writing to see what wants to come through, which can be a bit of an adventure.
One thing I can say though, is we live in very magical times….. thanks to those who forged interesting new and experimental paths in the sixties and seventies, and the joys of the internet which allows world magicians to talk to each other, we are all forging new, sometimes chaotic, sometimes erratic and wild, and sometimes breathtaking new paths.
This is a very tough time in history for a lot of people, but it is also a fascinating magical time, and it is so wonderful to be alive now!
Josephine McCarthy 
Great you had the time to reflect on all this. To assert extent you can see those doing the course are encountering things in life connected to the work.
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yes, that is true… quite a few people are seeing correlations between their magical life and what turns up in their every day life… which I think happens anyway, we just become more aware of it.
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Josephine, I recently went on a Shaman Journey. I love the way you talk about the Magical things that happen and the stories they create. I was blessed by a way to open to a different dimension recently with the Upper World, Lower World and our world, the Middle World. I love the description of the Goose and the Heron. It is interesting to me that both of the birds are so comfortable both on earth and in the air. What wonderful things we learn when we have the gift to be able to travel truly in the realization of how many dimensions there is in life. Today, I saw my Animal Guide, Eagle hunting close to the ground with glorious wings spread and graceful but purposeful movement. It made my heart soar happy that I could carry my vision and be reminded of my Journey. Also to be able to share this with others. Thanks for the advice you gave me earlier this spring. Have fun sharing your home with many visitors. Bless you and Cheers, Debi
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I have seen the blue heron aswell. I have so much to share with you, your book is helping to save my life. I thought to check here today and found a new post. Wonderful. So you have experiment ts for students to work on, you said you were doing a course write up?
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I can share that my system of ridding the nastiest, so spirits can disguise themselves as people? I followed some once and they run from me then dissapear.
DEJA vu? I wish my head was in better shape…it’s hard to type instead of talk….I practice a magick that takes advantage of this phenomena…I like the words “atavistic resurgence” I can stop bad people from doing something bad…or…stop the demon/parasite? Ahh…have a good morning, I’m in California. Love and light
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I love the preview of the deck, that is one of my favorite cards, and my birth card… I am not a deck collector, but I may have to collect this one!
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I am glad you like the deck… it is nothing like a tarot deck, but is itself. We will be doing pre orders soon and I will put up a notice on this blog when we get to that. We are all so excited that it is finally going into production!
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Well I think this Lady Hierophant will definitely be my go to look for old age! She reminds me of the Lapp Witch out of “The Snow Queen”
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I will pass that on to Stuart, the artist… it will make him smile 🙂
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Hi all, reading all Josephine’s books, cant thank you enough, so clear minus the b/s of others.
I am in the southern hemi, Adelaide Australia, Just wondering, the directions you guys use in the north are so foreign to me, its freezing cold at the moment and we look to the north for our warmth and directions for windows etc. Obviously from our south we have the antarctic. Also to be taken in to account is Uluru, a massive weather beaten iron rock many kilometres square
rising above the flat outback in to the sky, and when it rains is a mass of waterfalls. This is north of my location but it is such a magnificent symbol of the southern hemisphere. Would love Josephine [and anyone else who is interested] to experience this. Cheers from Australia.
Light Life Love and Liberty AnnXXX
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Ann again, I know this does not relate to this article but wordpress will not recognize me or allow me to email and comment on stuff, its all too hard. Cheers all
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Hi Ann, Yes, it will be pretty different in the southern hemisphere.. when it comes to magical directions, use the ritual ones the same (east/air/life, south/fire/future, west/water/dying, north/past/dead), when ti comes to the magical landscape, work with whatever is there.
It sounds like a beautiful and powerful place where you are…. my aunt lived there for a few years and some of my cousins where born there. They brought back some amazing stories with them.
Jx
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I do not know how people survive when they are not sensitive to all those things that the Universe constantly tosses at us to keep us headed in the right direction. What a magnificent revelation it all is when doing the Great Work. LLLLAnn
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