New Moon

It is the new moon as I write this.  I love new moons.  It feels like a blank slate where everything is possible.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the power of a full moon but it just isn’t quite the same.  There’s something about the depth of the night when they’re no moon.  It’s like there’s a stillness that goes far beyond sleep, almost as if you could walk right into another world if you could find the path.

Back when I first started practicing magick I diligently celebrated every new and full moon esbat with a formal ritual.  Nowadays I celebrate the moon a little differently.  I still love doing big formal ritual, but I generally only bother if I have some specific magickal working that I want to give a boost.  If my working is only devotional I usually don’t pull out the props.  My gods don’t care whether my candles are pure beeswax or if my athame is damascus steel.  The gods can see into our hearts and minds and as long as your intent is pure and strong, everything else is just window dressing.

I like to celebrate the New Moon with some quiet contemplation.  I generally light a tea light or two (black if I have them – I stock up during Halloween), make a nice cup of tea, and have a seat on the couch in my office.  I’ll spend some time writing in my journal and generally decompressing.  I find that writing in my journal helps me to quiet all the crazed mish-mosh in my head.  It always seems that once my thoughts are on paper and outside my head I can look at them much more objectively.

If I feel the need I’ll break out one of my tarot or oracle decks and do some divination.  I have more than a dozen different decks, stones, runes, and pendulums, but I seem to always have one or two that stand out as the right ones to use for any given question.  I generally use beautifully illustrated cards, like the Brian Froud Hear of Faery Oracle, because the images speak to me in a way that stones or runes just don’t.  Although I do have a set of divination tiles that I created that I use for special occasions (I’ll blog about them in detail later).  The cards generally help me sort through all the things that confound me and I end up with a much clearer head.

I always close my esbats by communicating with deity.  Most of the time this involves having a chat with my spirit guide.  Yes, a chat.  I don’t conjure, summon, or make offerings to my spirit guide (not that he minds the occasional offering).  If I’m doing magick he just shows up and we chat.  It’s rather like having an imaginary friend who’s much wiser than you are.  I chat with him and get the answers I need.  Sometimes, when the situation is very complicated or I feel the need, I will go and communicate directly with the Crone - that is a bit more complicated.  The Hag is not a kind and gentle Goddess; she won’t speak to me directly unless I’ve earned the right.  When I speak to her I have to journey to her realm (the underworld), pass her guards, and usually make some kind of sacrifice.  This sacrifice is usually mental, though occasionally it’s physical (like sitting in an uncomfortable position for a long time or being really cold)*.  Most often my sacrifice is to look into what I call Dorian Grey’s Mirror.  Taking a good look at one’s weakest, nastiest, most base personal traits is a lot more difficult than you think, and when that look is powered by harsh winter it can be downright painful.  Once I’ve proven my worthiness the Crone will instruct me as she sees fit.

Simple as they are, my esbats are profoundly meaningful to me.  I always take the time to thank my Lady and my guide when they’ve helped me and will often burn some incense for them, but that’s really the most formal thing I do.  Just taking the time to reflect and be still, to really think about what my spirituality means to me is all I need to do.  My Lady knows my heart and it is hers.

All that matters it that which puts you in the sight of your God.

* Note – Sacrifice to my Goddess NEVER involves other living creatures.  I do not kill or injure others in my workings.  The blood of another is not mine to give.  If blood is ever involved in my workings it’s my own.

Welcome and Introductions

Welcome to Magick Under the Black Sun, a blog about the darker side of magick and pagan spirituality. It is my plan to update this blog weekly with thoughts and reflections on my personal practice and the darker side of magick in general.

For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Emily Carlin. I am a lifelong resident of the Seattle area and have been practicing dark magick for going on twelve years now. I am a graduate of and a professor in the Grey School (www.greyschool.com), where I am the Dean of the Dark Arts department. Some of you may know me as “Kalla,” as I have used this name in the magickal community for many years. I have switched to using my legal name because I am soon to be a published author and my book, Defense Against the Dark, is being published under my legal name.

I suppose the best way to start this blog is by explaining how I came to my current path. Pagan practices and spirituality have always resonated very strongly with me. It’s hard to pinpoint when my interest in paganism began, but I remember watching a PBS special on the ancient Druids when I was very young, maybe five or six, and remarking to my mother that worshipping the sun that gave us warmth and the crops that sustained us made a lot more sense than worshipping an angry bearded man in the sky. What my very Christian mother made of that at the time I do not recall.

My interest in the darker side of things also began when I was very young. I have been able to sense and communicate with sprits and other beings for as long as I can remember. When I was a child I had no idea how to process the occult information that my brain received and I was afraid to talk to anyone about it for fear that they would think I was crazy or lying. I was terrified of the things that I could sense but didn’t understand. So, like any industrious and naturally curious child I decided that I would learn everything I possibly could about what hid in the darkness so that I wouldn’t have to be afraid of it anymore. From that time onward, I have always devoured any bit of information on monsters, death, magick, and the occult that I could get my hands on.

My formal practice of paganism and magick didn’t begin until I left home to go to college. It all began during First-Year orientation at Wellesley. Orientation was a two week period where we First-Years had the whole college to ourselves to get acclimated and included several day trips into Boston and the surrounding area. I chose to go on a day trip to Salem, or as I call it Witchy Mecca. I went into every pagan shop and had to restrain myself from purchasing EVERYTHING! For the first time in my life I was surrounded by people who didn’t think talking to ghosts was nuts – instead, their reactions was “well of course you talk to ghosts, it’s rude to see them and not acknowledge them.” I bought a few books and read them cover to cover in just a few days.

I spent much of the next few weeks mulling over what I had read and deciding what I wanted to do with the information. I was still afraid that people would think I was crazy or worse – evil. Little did I know that the decision had already been made for me. When Samhain rolled around I discovered that one of the friends I had made was a pagan and she brought me to the college pagan group’s ritual – a ritual that would change everything for me. It’s not that the ritual was particularly good, in fact it was pretty mediocre, but something happened that I will never forget. At one point we were doing a guided meditation (that we later referred to as the “skittles meditation” – you’re sinking down, down on a fluffy pink cloud, now a blue one, now red...you get the idea), well I got bored and instead of walking down the broad forest path to my inner temple I buggered off into the forest. (Yes, knowing what I know now it was incredibly foolish of me to go wandering the astral by myself without the slightest idea what was out there, but it worked out well at the time.) After wandering through the dark forest for a while I came out into a clearing filled with people who, immediately upon seeing me, ran to me and I was engulfed in the most massive embrace. It would be impossible to describe how that felt. It was like the entire universe shook and all of reality was distilled into its pure essence and I knew I was home. These people were my ancestors, friends, and guides and they were welcoming me to my true path. At that moment I knew that I no longer had a choice to become a witch or not – I was already one and just hadn’t known.

From there everything just seemed to fall into place: I read every pagan book I could get my hands on, read every website, talked to anyone who didn’t shove me away. Details of my many misadventures in magick at Wellesley will have to wait for another entry, suffice it to say that I learned a lot in a very short amount of time. I found out everything I could about as many different magickal paths as I could and soon realized that I didn’t quite fit with any of them. At the time, the information I could find was all about either the “love and light” traditions of magick or the left hand path. The love and light was waaaaay too light for me, and the left hand stuff just seemed like an inverse of Christianity and I wasn’t interested in it either. So I started meditating on my own to see if the universe would point me in the right direction. It did.

Those of us who were there at the time fondly refer to Wellesley as a psychic accelerator. It’s full of ghosts, portals, and the assorted nasties attracted by 130 years of estrogen and stress. To be at all sensitive to metaphysical energies and live on that campus you either learn to protect yourself, transfer, or go completely nuts. I chose to learn to defend myself and learn I did. Soon it seemed that every metaphysical malady on campus was being laid on my doorstep or those of my friends. I felt like a real life Buffy the Vampire Slayer sometimes – and I liked it. I made magickal protection and self-defence my speciality and am now quite an expert. I’ve dealt with ghosts, demons, faeries, witch wars, and just about anything else you can think of. Protection became the major part of my magickal practice, but it didn’t quite fill up my spirituality. I wanted more.

They say to be careful what you wish for, you just might get it. What I wanted was to find a particular deity that I could really believe in and work with. For many pagans, such a call might be answered by Athena, Brigid, or Odin – not me, oh no. My call was answered by the Crone, and I don’t mean the kindly wise grandmother version of the Crone. My call was answered by the darkest aspect of the Crone, the Death Hag. That’s right folks, I worship death. No, this does not mean that I kill babies or small animals. No, I am not morbidly depressed all the time nor am I suicidal. No, this does not mean that I dress like a goth or an emo kid – unless I’m going to a party. A better explanation of my beliefs will have to wait for another entry.

My practice is about making myself a better person, improving my relationship with deity, and protection. Like many others, I believe it is my duty as a human to improve myself and become a better person. I use my magickal practices and spirituality to further this end. It is my goal to align myself with my deity as much as possible to grow closer to her and to become the best person I can be. As I mentioned before, I’m a bit of an expert in magickal protection and I feel it’s my duty to share what I know with as many people as possible. I see this work as service to my deity and an integral part of my spirituality. So yeah, that’s me in a nutshell. See you soon!