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A Gathering of Hours - tithe - 04-20-2016
I. Monday
from Mōnandæg, Monenday, Moon day, connections with lunae dies, Somavãra. Astrologically represented by a crescent moon.
5 am. Run.
Gray-clad, gloaming-clad, hair in a tail. Cut through a park, be steady. Push yourself harder, play intervals. That's how harpists and pianists learn to place their fingers and make music. That's how your body will learn how to be faster, better, stronger. Let the heart sing, no matter how weary.
6:30 or 7 am. Breakfast.
Prepare & devour. A feast: fried plantains, eggs benedict w/ spicy mango and pineapple hollandaise, tomatillo cactus salsa, refried (home made) black beans.
And then the Crow to work.
7:30 am. Shower.
Water purifies. Water hallows, certainly. Water is the element of intuition water is a triangle pointing downward. Water is the upper right point of the pentagram. Water is Cups. Chalices. Circles. Bells.
8 am. Languages.
All morning there has been noise, stride and heart and city and nature and crow and sizzle and hiss and sluice. Those languages you may know. Here: a Lady-Wizard leaning sight-hound intent over a craftsman's desk, of good wood, gowned in silver and varying shades of green, a slant of light weaves a ruddy-spark ember halo above her dark head, casting her like the Moon too: half-in-shadow, half touched by brilliance. First there are words. Learn the words. Then there is form. Learn the form, learn the shape, learn the architecture. Then there is translation: prove what you know, prove every language has the same heart or reveal its heart. Struggle. Then: try to rule your tongue. Speak and hammer at the accent as one smithing a sword will hammer at the blade. Languages. Master them or they will show you a place where you are lost.
Study
Study
Study
10 am. Work of the Hands
There is always a project. Sometimes the project is fine art, paint and ermine brush, sometimes it involves burnishing, mixing, something it involves research flipping through books much of your life involves fipping through books. Sometimes it is wood or metal work. Today it is aes Cyprium it is Venus's metal the flexible sheet of blushing firelight which hardens when you hit it and hit it and hit it with a hammer beat it into shape and hammer hammer hammer.
True: Without this metal there is only selfishness at the knotted heart of desire, imperfect and corrupted; without this metal, no peace is possible; without this metal, transmutations will be impermanent, as it will lend strength to whatever it binds with. This metal swears an oath has sworn an oath is oathsworn and cannot be other.
Bang bang bang bang
bang bang bang bang
The shadows dwell;
the light keeps catching its breath;
Copper will cut; thorns spring up from the edge, and they bite out a drop of blood, which becomes a smear on the lip.
12:30. Another Break Fast. Light repast.
Out.
This is where there is a danger of chance meetings, of interesting individuals. This is where there is a promise of purposeful meetings, individuals of interest. Hello. Meet me here. I long for you.
1:30. Work of the Mind.
Drive out to Morrison: try a different route every time, explore. Always there is a pang during the descent down and down again, into the library proper. Sometimes you make tea but haven't you been idle during that long drive and isn't it time now to get back to work? Strive. Dare. Perfect.
Stay there for hours, meaning always to be home first, but there are books here and histories and there is much to learn you have not yet learned. Right now, you are focused on something which is immanent, which you have a knack for, but the books you are dragging out are all wrong: you know they are not right, and it is frustrating, but you enjoy the hunt. In the library you fill the room:
as naturally as air. Air is the element of the mind, air is a sword slice. (You cannot shuck your myth.
But what do the stories really know?)
6:30. Practical Application.
Back in your home (not always back in your home). Here are some hypotheticals: How easy is it today to fly? How quick can you run when Mercury is at your heels? If you gesture, just so, how much force can you put into the arc of that knife? How did you get home - did you open a gate? How bruised are you, from pitting yourself against reality? Can you dissolve what was aes Cyprium into Essentiae and how does it taste if you do? Apply what you have recently learned.
Pronounce that phrase: quickly, quicker, quickest.
Observe. Prepare tomorrow's tasks.
7.30. A Meal to Feed the Body and Sustain it.
(Crow returns home.) A meal. Healthsome: wholesome. Feel: like a lick of fire suddenly given oxygen; understand you were tiring, but no longer.
Listen. Coax. Discuss.
8.30. The Mysteries.
Retire to your study, but grow weary of being alone: go into the other study, or curl up on the window seat downstairs. This is when you sometimes try to meditate, and usually fail: how to disengage your mind from all that you tried to learn? You know you must. But must you?
Tonight: write in a hand-bound book, a journal. All your journals, most of your journals, are hand-bound, the fabric and the wood and the glue and the metal (when there is metal) chosen with care for the symbol of it, and you scribe carefully with your pen that which you want more of after today.
10 pm. Languages.
Babel. Think differently. Understand otherwise.
11 pm. Bed.
Unless the Heavens have other plans, or there is some meeting in the firmament to rule your night: some transgression to watch for, to harness, to speak by to note sharp-eyed. Part of your name is a psychopomp, and you are tired but alert. You must resist sleep for a little while, that it know you will not skim much more deeply.
--
Begin again.