An Intiation or Rite of Passage marks the entry into something. If you’re here, which hopefully you are, we are interested in a magickal or spiritual initiation. If you are here looking for another incarnate human to initiate you, keep looking elsewhere. Those exist and might be deeply transformative and important milestones to some, but the initiations I’ve experienced were with inner Allies. They were private unverifiable experiences that won’t get me a patch on a creepy sash or admittance into any Lodges or Orders. I’m not dissing that sort, it’s simply outside my experience and in my opinion, no longer necessary for me.
It was late summer 2018 and I had been dabbling heavily with intermittent fasting, Wim Hof Method breathing, and just started dipping a toe into the supernatural. Mrs. Mindbender put me on to an audiobook called Real Magic by Dr. Dean Radin. His psychological background and empirical approach to magick was just the inroad an open minded skeptical materialist like myself needed to fall into the rabbit hole! I was writing Rob Rogers Finds Hollow Earth at the time and created a blog called Letters About Real Conspiracies so that I could engage in what I thought was Metafiction, blurring the line between my fiction and my own life, with intention. While it was that, I also came to learn that I created a hypersigil; a symbolic recreation of my life. My protagonist Rob was basically me at the time and he discovered magick was real. So did I.
On a travel day to Erie Pennsylvania (city of my birth) for a business trip, I listened to Real Magick and the part about discovering your True Will; the reason for a person’s current incarnation, got into my head (hail Eris!) and I resolved to create my own ritual to discover my purpose here. When I arrived in town, I went immediately to Presque Isle to take a walk after ten hours on the road. After a couple miles hoofing the beautiful wooded peninsula, I went to the beach. Lake Erie was ready for its son and I felt the spirit move through me and begin my ritual, though at the time I simply felt the feeling of a ghost nearby through chills up my back (on a hot humid day) and by watching eight foot waves crash on the shore of the Great Lake. I knew something supernatural was afoot.
Later that evening I laid on my hotel bed and for about two hours I held or returned to the thought that I would remain there until I learned my True Will. I was doing two sets of Wim Hof Breaths and retentions followed by box breaths the whole time. Things started getting downright hallucinogenic!
Then I received the transmission. I saw myself as part of a magickal cadre whose purpose was to help the world. We would use magick to fix the environment, undo the social harms of patriarchy, and help all of humanity live in peace and prosperity. Then I spent three days fairly manic and blissed the fuck out.
I spent the next five years becoming Frater Mindbender; learning and presenting my understanding to others. In early July, I did a forgiveness ritual for someone whom I spent much of my childhood fearing and loathing. It turned out to be my final work needed before my second initiation.
The following week Mrs. Mindbender and the littlest Mindbender went out of town on a family vacation leaving me and my very independent teen Mindbender home alone for five days. I spent an entire day cleaning the house, yard, and storage spaces. I didn’t know it, but I was preparing for company.
That evening I had a fire out back and started to unwind. I saw a pareidolia through smoke of a large strong man. I leaned into it, a product of magickal training, telling yourself it’s just smoke in a human shape kills these potential experiences. I greeted the Ally, jumped up, set a place, and brought out a drink and snack. Then I started sharing my thoughts aloud. Then I started receiving thoughts that weren’t mine, or Eris’s (the Ally who usually communicates to me through channeling, All Hail Discordia!). He told me to cover my right eye, because it inhibits my ability to slip deeper into magickal consciousness. I obliged, and knew that my new Ally was Odin, the All-Father of Nordic myth.
Aside from the right eye patch, he encouraged me to put in one earbud (on the right) and to dance by the fire, which I did for hours. I would dance a few minutes, then receive a new thought from him. I grabbed my notebook and recorded EVERYTHING. To my surprise, the channeling did not end that evening. I was amped into a manic state and over the next four days hand wrote about twenty pages of notes on how to bring my 2018 vision into reality. I also received a clear understanding that aside from Eris and Bhairavi, whom I had already identified and accepted, Son Wukong the Monkey King who’d inspired two of my novels, Jord Grandmother Earth, and Odin were my Allied Deities. I received some awesome tattoo ideas to anchor them to me physically. I also received the outlines for three poems that praise the Maiden (Eris), Mother (Bhairavi), and Matron (Jord) spirits that move through Mrs. Mindbender; qualities that drove me deeply in love with her.
The quality of my notes and the clarity of actionable items for the next leg of my path (probably five years worth of work) was amazing. If you’ve ever done a psychedelic or had a strong metaphysical experience and tried to write down your brilliant insights, you’ll know that it doesn’t always make sense later. After my 2018 initiation, I really didn’t know what to do with the inspiration. I feel fortunate that I developed well enough to retrieve so much direction this time around. I believe the practices I’ve blogged about and the books I’ve listed were the training I needed to achieve that clarity.
I’d also like to note that the energy would have been detrimental to me if it weren’t for 10-14 hours or yard work each day, which deeply blistered my hands through work gloves and produced a lovely couple of front yard planter beds.
Several people I’m close with expressed their concern about my mental state during the five days and I refrained from driving, and other potentially unsafe activities. Thanks y’all! It can be easy to think you’re still on the normal plane…
When I did return to normal, it wasn’t the same normal. Magick is different to me now. I don’t need to practice things from books to enter magickal consciousness. Invocation and evocation, which terrified me inexplicably now seem unnecessary. Through the affirmation practices and rewiring shadow work I wrote about, I had indeed created the place within myself for like minded Allies to enter when they deem it would be helpful to me. My job as a working magician is simply to affirm and allow intuition to guide me into contact. I now see invocation and evocation as a shortcut to contact with entities. In my opinion, the methods can be dangerous, because if you are a suitable vessel for their energy they present themselves unbidden. If you pull something here that you haven’t conditioned your mind for, that’s when gnarly side effects happen. Basically, the side effects are ways for you to truly be the person who deserves what you’ve asked for. Instead, the affirmation practices allow you to become that thing naturally, through gently molding your ego/ subconscious/ auto-pilots into the holder of the virtues and values that an Ally is the spirit of. Then you can “get” the stuff that those traits attract, rather than cheating the system and paying for it later.
I see invocation and evocation as paying with a high interest credit card or taking a loan from a dangerous person. I see affirmations and my rewiring work as saving up and paying cash.
Maybe the same can be said of all results magick. But don’t take it from me. Fuck around and find out. I only suggest you fuck around with the safer stuff first.
What is my reason for this incarnation? In 2018 it was simply to help others. Now I understand that it is to help others live in compassion with all life and to live with equanimity within themselves. My goal is to do it so well that come midsummer 2028, I’m ready for the next revelation!
Building the Philosophers' Stone 