I’m surprised to remember that when I was about sixteen years old, I read a lot of science fiction. I’m not attracted to it now, or in any case I am not reading it now….maybe the science fiction I was reading then was opening my mind and spirit to what I would now call magic and alchemy.
There was one book that described much about tele-porting and even then I knew that this was something I knew how to do but had forgotten the process. I read about astral travel and about life on other planets. Huddling down in the library, scribbling mental notes on my brain, I took to wondering how it was that I did not feel that I was just hearing about this for the first time. It was a definite remembering of past knowledge.
When I read ‘The Alchemist’ by Paulo Coelho, I understood alchemy as the outer quest for inner transformation. Then, I read ‘On Becoming An Alchemist’ by Catherine MacCoun. Wow! It was like a powerful bomb going off in my subconscious, this woman really knows what magic and alchemy entail. Except I am reading it again, and again, because most of it is so deep I need my hip waders on. The more I learn from her the more I fall into the depths of time and parallel dimensions, where I teeter on the edge of understanding.
I understand that like the Fey, I can materialize what I need from nothing. But my mind gets in the way. Yet, the strong feeling that the knowledge is at my fingertips never wanes. I am guilty of wondering about those other dimensions where I’m experiencing the adventures I dream about here. I’m frustrated that I can access them only at night when my soul is free of my body. The more I learn the more I need to unlearn certain constructs of thought.
However, when I cast a circle and step into the space that opens between the worlds, I fall into an intuitiveness that rocks my thinking mind. I instantly want to drop into child’s pose, a purely submissive pose that allows all memories of the magical path to permeate my sub-conscious. Alas, I cannot stay in that pose forever. I walk out of the circle somewhat enlightened and otherwise confused. There is a longing to be in creative space always, all ways. To be universe incarnate, to not be muddled by the constant need to understand, just to be the alchemist I’ve always been.