It was well into the pandemic. My job required frequent travel before, but as social distancing, working from home, and self-quarantines became our new normal, my biweekly overnight excursions turned into mostly video conferencing and phone calls. I hadn’t left the state in months. It was nice to sleep at my house and deeply heal from road rigor, but after continual road trips for eight years, I missed getting out. Since my work is in manufacturing, I am an essential worker and when I get the call, after approval from Human Resources, I do go out; plague or no. This time I was headed out to look at air pollution control equipment outside of Buffalo New York.
From Southern New England, the drive to Buffalo is an all-day affair, especially in late fall when the grey sky turns dark before the workday ends. This was my first outing since I’d begun studying Quareia’s initial module on the Core Skills of magic. I was eager to put some of them to use outside of my home.
I’d listened to all of Josephine McCarthy’s interviews on various podcasts (Glitchbottle, Occult of Personality, Deeper Down the Rabbit Hole, An Infinite Path, and Thoth-Hermes) before and during the excursion. I pulled into a hotel in West Seneca, a town just south of Buffalo well after nightfall. I was feeling fairly exhausted.
My first order of business was the cleansing ritual for a space (module one lesson seven). Before I got into magic and meditation, there were TONS of nights spent in mild discomfort in hotel rooms, thanks to the lingering vibes. I used to have a few (or more) drinks to shrug it off, but I’ve transitioned to healthier ways to unwind, which don’t dull the senses I’m now developing, so ignoring and sleeping in someone else’s spiritual filth is no longer an option. As it had after doing the cleansing in my home, the energy felt so much lighter, and more free. I felt like I’d displaced a bunch of spiritual grime. The place still smelled of Lysol, so I know it wasn’t physical uncleanliness!
I should have started off by sealing the window and door (module one lesson five), but maybe if I’d done that, then I wouldn’t have this story to share!
I settled into the room and called my brother. We talked for a while and then I let him go. I was getting sleepy and I still wanted to practice a Vision exercise (module one lesson three) before bed. I laid down and imagined I was at home, then I imagined walking about the house and sealing all the windows and doors with energy, to keep entities with hostile intentions away. Something I do nightly. Then I imagined walking out my front door, up the hill, and down the road a few blocks to the town library. I wanted to see if I could imagine looking at the copies of my book series, Anki Legacies, in the library’s Local Author section. To my surprise, the books appeared to me to be little statues of people! To my greater surprise I started to get a sense of dread and a deep chill ran across my physical body. The sort of chill I’m getting more and more used to as a sign that a nonphysical entity is present.
I finished my Vision exercise and sat up in my hotel room bed. I realized I hadn’t sealed the room’s windows and doors from hostile entities, so I did it then, despite the fact that I already felt an odd presence in the room. Then I recited the pentagram breastplate (module one lesson seven), which Quareia’s author and founder Josephine McCarthy describes as a form of passive protection like a fighting stance.
I knew something was there in the same way my wife knows when I’m looking at her bottom, even though she’s facing the other way. Something was in the room and sizing me up. I decided to confront whatever was paying a visit.
I said aloud, “Is there something I can help you with? I’m glad to do it, if it’s within my ethics.”
Then I went back into Vision and imagined walking around the room, trying to “see” the visitor. I tried looking into the mirror. Nothing.
Once again, I said aloud, “I’m new to this, I’m sorry if I can’t see what’s in front of me. If you’d like to communicate in my dreams, I’d like to know what you’re here for.”
I’ve referenced several Quareia lessons already, but I want to point out that I was going off the book here. I’m sure there are lessons further on that deal with this stuff, but Quareia is a self-study course and McCarthy encourages students to think for themselves. Plus, what choice did I have? Something creepy came a calling!
I drifted off to sleep thinking that the room cleansing was probably a similar act to a hiker trying to sweep out a cave to sleep in, only to discover and wake a hibernating bear.
I dreamed I was in a warehouse purchasing department office that I worked in ten years before, only I held the same position I currently have. I was there to meet a new colleague. The woman was strange. She asked a lot of questions about my work. I assumed she was a part of the marketing department’s lead generation team and offered her my cold call and email templates, along with some of my technical blog articles.
Then she took me to another cubicle and showed me a sheet cake. She explained that that worker was out of the office, then she and I ate all the cake together.
Then things got scary. My new colleague suddenly felt more real than everyone else in the office. She told me she was going to take all my customer accounts away. That she was my competition! There was someone else in the office and she turned that guy into a marble statue. I knew the woman wasn’t actually human. She started screaming about wanting blood and death.
Like a good dream journaler, right when things started getting interesting, I woke up and started writing it all down. As I wrote, I got the chills, like real cold. I was shivering, even though the thermostat was set five degrees warmer than I keep the house (everyone does that in hotels, right?). I was getting bombarded with feelings of dread, fear, and panic. After recording the dream, I began freewheeling, groggily putting the pieces together. I jotted these questions on my dream journal:
- Is the lady in my dream an angry local spirit?
- Is it the entity I invited into my dream the lady I ate cake with?
- Is eating cake symbolic for taking things that aren’t yours?
At this point the chills causing me to shiver and the negative feelings spiking into my usually stoic psyche were almost as intense as the time I had a panic attack. If I ever had doubts of spirits or ghosts existing, they were fucking gone. This thing in the hotel room with me and in my dream was more real than most of the humans I interact with.
I said aloud… well in a creeped-out whisper, “I’m Shane. I’m here working for a company that helps factories clean their air and water. I’m only here for tonight and to visit a factory that makes medical supplies, then I’m going back home. I was born nearby in Erie and some of my family lives near there. Did I offend you by eating someone else’s cake in my dream? I’m sorry. I brought my own food!”
Then I took out a little gluten free (yeah, I’m one of those…) carrot cake, unwrapped it onto a clean hand towel, and poured some fresh spring water into a cup on the desk in front of the mirror.
“Please accept my offering. Have my piece of cake and some fresh water.”
As soon as I did, the chills went away. I didn’t feel doomed or afraid anymore. My hunch about the dream being a failed interview was accurate.
As I lay down, I felt compelled to research the history of West Seneca. I turns out that a group of native people called Moundbuilders lost the land to the Erie tribe, who later lost the land to the Seneca tribe, who were swindled out of the land by local settlers of European descent.
The dream about eating someone else’s cake made total sense. I have no idea exactly what that entity was, but perhaps it was an angry land spirit or the ghost of a first American tribal woman. I think that performing the hotel room cleansing alerted her to the fact that there was a living person around who might be sensitive to her presence.
In hindsight, I’m glad the encounter happened. I think it’s important to consider boundaries and to be careful not to take more than what we must to thrive. Expansion and over-consumption are two harmful side effects of Western culture and as I learn to be more helpful to the human, natural, and nonphysical world(s) with magic, I’ll do well to keep those shortcomings in mind and to find ways to mend old wounds.
Now that I’ve worked all the way through Quareia’s module one on Core Skills and have had another spirit encounter that left me wondering (an article for another day), I can also say that using Tarot can answer some of your spiritual encounter mysteries. So check out my article on divination if you haven’t already.
Building the Philosophers' Stone 