When last we joined our hero (me) I was prattling about how good things were going financially, and that it seemed like my mundane work was creating its own momentum in the magickal world. Since I was abiding in the Sphere of Jupiter, and had been for quite some time I thought it would be good to shift gears into Mars.
The Tuesday after I posted (three days later) I opened up the Sphere of Mars and stepped through. Moving away from the prosperity and growth of Jupiter, into the strength and action of Mars, who knows what the future would bring me? I went to work the following day, and got my two week notice.
Normally I hate, with several passions, people spouting “all these things happen for a reason” or assume that when something negative happens after magick it must be for a good cause we just don’t see how yet…but I could not be upset about losing my job, it was just too ironic the timing.
Anyways, the timing was perfect, my Beloved had just bought a new house and would take ownership the last week of my job. He had never lived completely alone, and felt a bit overwhelmed. So the day after my last day at work I fled the country and stayed with him for a week. I helped he figure out what needed to be done in terms of fixing up the house and the like. I’m not normally that impulsive, but I hadn’t taken a vacation more than a long weekend in seven years, I was unemployed, and I was running Mars through my Soul.
Of course it wasn’t just a fun visit, or an altruistic one, he moved to the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. Now that doesn’t mean a lot to a lot of people, but I knew of it, he had told me a lot about it growing up near there, I had friends who had visited with interesting experiences, and Jason Miller has talked about the interesting nature of the place. So I took some time on the trip to explore the Barrens, meet and connect with the spirits there.
As a note I’ve never travelled very far from home, and this was the farthest I’ve ever been, and that was interesting. I’m so connected to the spirits around me (specifically the Great Lakes, especially Ontario), that I keenly felt the absence of their presence and flow so far away. I felt a bit unbalanced, and even helpless. I know the flows of this larger geographic region, when I want to connect to something, to do something, I know where and how to reach out and plug in. But suddenly all my helpers were gone, all the movement and energy was foreign. It made me think of the various accounts I had read about shamans being powerless too far from home. In fact one day it was going to rain, and it was important to me that it not rain, so I tried my usual method of shifting the weather. It doesn’t always work, but I have pretty good success in short bursts with it. Yet it was like I couldn’t get a grip on the weather system, and I think part of that was the spirits and currents I usually work with, just weren’t there and that method wouldn’t work. Disorienting, but a reminder that I’ve focused too much on some methods, and not others.
It was also a chance to learn new flows, my Beloved was very patient with me performing chöd everywhere, or leading him through the forests blindly telling him that I could feel where certain spirits and nests were located, or traipsing through old cemeteries in Philadelphia as I introduce myself to the Lords of the Dead for the region. I collected lots of dirt while I was down there from the shore, and cemeteries, and odd places in the Barrens.
Once I got home I puttered around and fixed up my house. Rinpoche flew into town and decided it was time for me to finally receive my yidam after two and a half years of waiting in spiritual limbo. Finally having enough of Mars’s unemployment and action I shifted into the Solar sphere. Within the week I had a new job, and while it’s not in my field, I’m now working on the administrative side of one of the country’s largest chains of funeral homes and cemeteries, which, if that isn’t appropriate I don’t know what is. I got the call about the job just before I left for temple to receive my yidam.
Getting back to the real world, a work schedule, a new magickal schedule, and explore what doors the Solar sphere has for me.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends.
MM: Mars, Bringer of Unemployment and Journey to the Sun
