Journal The Druid’s Way

[Romolo]

January 2nd

We pushed open a door and find ourselves… in yet another hall. Can it be true? Another hall…

My spirit for 2024 will be to seek beyond the corridors. To explore the tiles. Push softly against the walls, hidden pathways may appear. Nothing is what it seems. The world is a strange place and humans are even stranger.

Waking up before sunrise is hard, but as Abramelin (and thousands of monasteries around the world) know/knew, nothing beats dawn. Dawn holds all the secrets, like crystals in a blood-red cave.

 

[Konsciencia]

Happy New Year Romolo!

 

[Romolo]

Same to you Kosciencia. Let’s transform ourselves into gold and make the world a better place.

 

[Romolo]

January 9th

Addictions and obsessions are demonic. They intrude our bodies and actions, but also thoughts, even our inner monologue before falling asleep. My co-worker’s gaming addiction re-surfaced, worse than ever before. Today he said: “I want to run a marathon again. Then at least I force myself to train properly.” But it won’t make you whole again, I thought. Why a marathon? To prove your worth to yourself, or to the outside world? It’s just a decoy. You temporarily take on the role of your Opposer, but your troubled self, your golem, is already waiting for your return in the dark, in your gaming chair.

Addictions exist mostly in closed spaces. Demons like everything rectangular: boxes, walls, ceilings. A white sheet of paper. In forests and greenery, they are quickly quenched by trees. A tree does not condone demons. Demons cannot approach trees without being sucked away into the void like a strain of hair.

But here lies another danger: the woods become a charging point for the druid. Back in their urban or homely environment, they run temporarily on this stored mana. And when the energy runs out, the old pattern kicks in... It’s the same problem with praying, offerings or sacrifices. Sooner or later you outrun your storage or your tribute. I wrote down a striking line from the Poetic Edda (the words come directly from Odin): “Better not to pray than to sacrifice too much: one gift always calls for another; better not dispatched than too many slaughtered.” (from “Sayings of the High One”)

And so the search continues, for the Flame that burns on the inside, not on the outside.

 

[Romolo]

January 23rd

I consecrated the 25cl of melted snow from yesterday’s ritual. Ingredients like this are precious. Whoever wants them, is too late: this may well be the last snow in Berlin that is still above ground, all the rest has thawed, unless another witch is keeping a potion. It looks like water but it feels alien, like something that only pretends to be water... Humans too can pass from one state to the next: solid, liquid, gas, plasma—but the transformation can (normally) only be seen from the outside. This “water” does not realize that it was once snow. In this sense I feel the allure of alchemy. You channel wisdom through the four elements. You “observe” the truth, then conceal it again through symbols, to keep your findings charged, like batteries...

The year has started well. I am painting the walls of my new apartment, white. I listen to Chelsea Wolfe and drink lemon infusion with laurel leaves. Still unsure where I will put my altar, there seem to be three options. My servitor/familiar appeared 6 times already, mostly playfully, in different manifestations of matter and medium. These choices revealed an excellent character and vivid imagination. I initially though 9 manifestations would be needed, but maybe I will modify my grimoire and move straight to the “tasks at hand”.

 

[Romolo]

January 27th

Yesterday I raked the pine needle branches that the storm had strewn all over the garden. I arranged them in two amphora, one left, one right of the altar, then gently poured a bucket of rain water over its rocky surface. On the soil, I placed three empty walnut shells in a triangle. In the middle, I left a fluffy ball of dry grass (some remnants of an old birds nest?). I imagine these as shrines or “resting points” for traveling fae-folk. I used to manage a few of those in the city. I would bike past, clean dirt, re-structure branches, leave some berries, apple seeds, a cookie. “Develop your generosity without witnesses,” said Gurdjieff.

 

[Romolo]

February 4th

One of the bushes in the garden still carries last season’s flowers: brown clusters of dried-up petals. The advice we got was to leave them until the first buds appeared. So today I finally cut them off, collecting a few handful of loose petals on a terracotta plate. While doing this, I cut the palm of my hand on a sharp branch. The tiny cut was exactly in one of my palm lines (I looked it up later, it was interestingly in my fate line, also known as ‘the money line’). I squeezed out a droplet of blood from the wound and rubbed it off on the mass of dry petals. I shook the plate horizontally, as a honest beggar would do, and the dry flowers answered in a whispering, sandy hiss. Then I placed the plate in front of the altar, as an offering.

 

[Romolo]

February 8th

The neighbors’ high-pitched voices come through the floor boards. They sound like fingers rubbing a glass with dishwashing liquid. I have so much respect for people with kids... I have often wondered to what extent it is egoistic to remain childless. To just be “the leaf on the family tree” rather than another bifurcation of branches. Just bloom and be beautiful, then be plucked by autumn’s skeletal fingers, and fall down in the mud, or be eaten, slowly, by luminescent aphids. The more I know, the less I fear death. ”And if I die today I'll be the happy phantom / And I'll go chasin' the nuns out in the yard / And I'll run naked through the streets without my mask on” (Tori Amos)

 

[Konsciencia]

I didn't realize, how much you've written. Wonderful

 

[Romolo]

February 26th

Gorgeous morning: the winter sun placed sharp origami stars on the edges of the parked cars. I saw this as I walked to my beloved park where I hadn't been for weeks, keeping my head straight with the mental image of the puppet-on-a-string. I decided to not wear my hat today and give my scalp some fresh air. I greeted the guardian tree of the park by putting my hand on his scarred trunk.

Yesterday I read a fragment from Ovid's Metamorphoses. I think I must have been processing the tale subconsciously as my eye caught a shard of a birch trunk (milky white with many scratches) in the shape of a boar's head. The piece reminded me of poor Actaeon who got transformed into a boar by wrathful Artemis/Diana, and then devoured by his own hunting dogs. I wrapped it in a blanket and also plucked one single radiant blue flower. The sculpture will go to my altar for further study and ritualistic use.

Further ahead I picked up an oddity; a cluster of branches still grown together, a sturdy piece, almost knee-high. Apart from a gripping claw at the edge of one branch, a strong pareidolia was missing. It reminded me of some intricate, multi-shafted rifle or maybe a weird Da Vincian musical instrument.

As I sat on a bench, meditating, a lady approached me. She exclaimed, "what a cute forest spirit you have there!", gesturing at the branch. This outed her as a magician in quite a sparkling fashion! She taught me that certain fallen branches are "wandering elements" that literally detach themselves from trees, and go roaming, like monkeys. She then hinted at the existence of a park in Schönberg that abounds with swamp elementals, "playful creatures, one of them followed me all the way home, well I didn't know it had until I saw a flash in my kitchen, and at night it giggled and whispered things in my ear, suggesting me to play with the lottery, whispering me numbers, and..." She went on in this fashion for about half an hour and I just sat there smiling. What a blessing that people like her exist! I told her I would visit that park soon. I memorized its name and the U-Bahn station she recommended.

As it turned out, we both did not have phones nor pens to write down contact info, but she took my purple lipstick and scribbled her phone number on a scrap of paper. She also offered me a book: dialogues between Indian sage Sathya Sai Baba and one of his German pupils.

 

[Romolo]

March 2nd

Before I got to breakfast, I started cleaning my altar. I felt like it had gotten too messy for proper offerings. I even ironed the handkerchiefs. The soft hissing sound of an iron caressing cotton took me back to childhood.

I decided to return the (now consecrated) head of Actaeon back to park. I had misread the original tale. Diana had not transformed Actaeon into a boar, but into a stag. The “cluster of branches” (cf. February 26th) had of course been his antlers. I found them dangling on the same tree where I had left them.

As I walked around with the (now complete) skull, I first felt the calm presence of Diana/Artemis, which then radically shifted into her chthonic form Hekate. This happened the moment I saw the front paw of a deer stuck between a branch and a tree trunk. The dark-brown hoof was pointing down. Here, was the clear instruction. I walked around the tree. The paw was real. It had marrow coming out on the other side, little white splatters, like cooked pasta. I did not dare to touch the relic, let alone take it with me.

I placed the deer skull down and put a branch between his teeth, as hunters do. I spent some more time connecting with the tree (pressed my own forehead against the trunk onto a small eye in the wood). Its immediate effect: incredibly sharp eye-sight. Just about to leave, a claw touched my shoulder. It belonged to another tree, actually to the very edge of a piece of dead tree that somehow rested or clung to its body of origin. I managed to free it by giving it a strong yank.

By now I was merely following/executing orders and allowing myself to become the vessel of the divine. I have rarely felt closer to a deity. I cracked off a thick staff covered in moss. I walked (strided) with it towards a high pine tree (the sun stuck in its tip). Put down your backpack, lay down the staff in the moss, get down on your back, as if the staff were your antlers. I did everything and watched the sky. The moss felt incredibly soft and calming.

When I got up, I heard bells. They chimed twice, then twice, then twice again. Whatever they were, the sound was angelic. I walked home, and knew I will hear those bells only once in my life.

 

[Romolo]

March 22nd

“The Lamp burns bright when wick and oil are clean. To make them clean a cleaner is required. The flame feels not the process of the cleaning.” (Blavatsky, Voice of the Silence)

It is no coincidence that the key scene of Fantasia is the one where Mickey “cleans” the house. Josephine McCarthy in Quareia, before you can start the tarot exercise in chapter two, writes: “Clean up any clutter, organise whatever is in that area or room, and make sure the room is clean.” The chapter is about tarot only in the surface, the underlying (subliminal?) message is to get your house in order. A big part of magic is how to get yourself to do things, to by-pass your own shortcomings, to give counterweight.

I find great pleasure in seeing the surprise at the faces of unexpected visitors when they see my house clean like a clearing in the woods. They are much more eager to sit down, to talk, to accept a coffee, and to come back another time. It is the same with spirits.

 

[Romolo]

April 1st

On my way home from the garden, I dropped a jar filled with a remainder of olives. This happened as I pronounced the word “Babylon”. I wrapped the shards in a thin plastic bag. Before disposing the bag, I decided to tear off an angle for ritualistic use, but in doing so I cut my right hand, a tiny scratch which bled nonetheless. I rubbed some blood on the plastic.

On my altar, I keep a pot of glazed orange ceramic. I tried growing a flower in it, but the plant did not look happy, so I decided to make it a cauldron, which by now contains two tiny bird bones, one big Y-shaped breast bone from a pig (barbecue remainders I accidentally dug up in the garden), three amber pearls I removed from our peach tree, some dismantled parts from earlier rituals—and the piece of plastic described above.

I am starting to understand the occult meaning of the cauldron. To the uninitiated, the witch potion and the pot in which it is brewed is nothing more than a theatrical joke. To the initiate, the cauldron represents a fusion of (fragmented) gnosis, a dissolved “solution”, a binding of elements. Much like the alchemist‘s idea of “the oven”, but with a sprinkle of anarchy.

Medea used a dry branch of olive to stir her cauldron. The potion allowed Jason to defeat the serpent-dragon Ladon and steal the fleece.

Post automatically merged: Apr 2, 2024

April 2nd

Sliding in and out of self-remembering like the tides, rising and receding, like the serpent, biting and releasing Her tail...

My progress in the past months has been astonishing. My inner worlds are becoming bigger and brighter, the mists are clearing. I can see it clearly now, the whole octahedron situated between the six coordinates (wondrous heights, nameless depts, boundless seas, iridiscent woods and bent plains) and in the middle clouds, curling and unfolding, rays, pools, pebbles.

 

[Romolo]

April 7th

I found another small bone. It happened at dusk. I was walking behind J on the narrow trail next to the cemetery right behind their house. We had eaten on a picknick blanket under the near-dead apple tree where J. had found morsels. I had never tasted morsels before. The taste was divine, almost unreal. But so as walked towards Volkspark Mariendorf I found this tiny bone and the funny thing was, I was just telling J. about Jake Stratton-Kent, who wrote that you can recognize a “goetic magician” as “someone picking things up“, most of which will probably end up in the bin. We ended up under a magnolia in late bloom (the thick, tongue-shaped leaves literally fell around us with soft thud, thud, thud), and then we pulled two tarot cards from a new deck. I have been reluctant about tarot lately but with J. I like to pull an occasional card. I had the Ace of Wands with a clear reference to trees but also a subtext of insects, maybe locusts. I left Hekate’s deipnon dangling from a magnolia branch.