Between Worlds, Shadows Drifting & Anchored
September 25, 2024
I feel between worlds lately, like theyāre moving by and Iām a paper-cut piece standing as they shift around me. I touch a bag of bread and feel the choices made several paces down the aisle. Sit in temple and take a breath, watch the candle blink, my face fade in the mirror, shadows move in the background. The world falls apart outside the window, past the door, the closet is free from either space. No movement outside, just a hum I donāt know Iām told to find, just the demon behind me, just the smoke in the air. And nothing beneath the floor, hollowness outside the walls, drifting some and no where all the same.
I asked for power, and knowledge. I thought it might be grounding? I thought it could keep these bizarre nightmares, waking and asleep at bay. Waking up to the world within, a difference clearly struck between those who make decisions and those who act them (although, itās not so cookie cutter, rebellion building and control tightening). Walking three steps and turning into another world than the one behind.
I feel like a ghost. Untethered and wandering from one world to the next, each just a little bit wrong in comparison. The people in one seem more innocent than those of another. The lights there too dark. The outside just perfect. My footsteps running parallel to whatever Iām chasing.
I was chastised a while back for dropping out of consistent practice. Told it messes with the state of self magicians put ourselves into. I guess if youāre constantly creating a portal inside yourself and then suddenly stop and halt the process for a while itās bound to be unsavory. I moved a while ago and havenāt found my stride again yet. But I held ritual last night, tonight.
Iāve talked about this before, damning ourselves. And Iām not going to say that everyone does. But itās undeniable what Iāve done with myself since beginning on this path. To take the littlest light into the darkness and emerge beaming. I donāt think Iāve managed to find even the lantern yet though. People talk about easy paths and hard ones, lay all kinds of claims on difficulties traversing this sphere of the unknown. So much fear and āconcern.ā Even if I were warned about this, Iād still have taken the path.
At every opportunity to be let out, Iāve dug my heels in further. And this, eerie feeling of being between, this is just another breath underwater. Another breath holding his hand holding my head beneath the surface.
Not sure how familiar anyone is with gothic literature (or even the rest I guess, but the example Iām thinking of is gothic) and the dark double. I was in ritual earlier this evening, and yesterday, etc. We canāt hold all that power ourselves in this world. These bodies are not meant for that. So then, if itās ours, who holds it? The concept of shifting between worlds is one and the concept of shifting between selves is another.
The dangers of glamours come clawing back up. The revelations of how settled into ourselves we are. Of how much we hand off or over to another. So often in ritual we are trying to change our state of mind, but I think thereās more to it than just a bit of extra quiet. I think itās more than just opening a portal in Temple for the spirits to step through, or even that we can peer through for a moment of time.
I think itās more like Dorothy. House - Temple - uprooted. Self in a different domain. Creatures and magic wandering free. And the tornado, summoned then by us. Iām not sure Iām entirely convinced magick takes place exactly in the place we step into and out of at the end of ritual. Not anymore if I ever was. And so, is the Dorothy of Oz the same Dorothy of Kansas? Are we the same in ritual as outside, the same when emotions run us through, when we kneel in contemplation? Are we always trickling through selves, and is the magick bound somewhere in there.