At the last half of the year, I find myself very behind in my reading. I am still only about a third of the way through chapter five. Now that school is over, I can catch up on my reading and other projects.
I finally completed my ritual book project – it came out wonderfully! I chose beautiful, antique-looking end papers and bound my book in black hard-back. It has all my daily rituals in it, including some other rituals from Modern Magic I have yet to try, and some other devotional rituals unrelated to Ceremonial Magic.
I also added the Banishing Ritual of the Hexagram to my daily lineup. Now my ritual practice consists of: the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, the Banishing Ritual of the Hexagram, the Middle Pillar Ritual, the Circulation of the Body of Light, and the Advanced Tarot Contemplation Ritual.
I was amazed at how quickly I was able to add the Banishing Ritual of the Hexagram. I had to refer to my ritual book the first few times I performed it, but in less than a week, I had it memorized. I continue to struggle with the Middle Pillar Ritual visualizations, and even going through the God-names quickly doesn’t seem to work anymore. I think perhaps painting or drawing the balls of light might help.
This month, I have added the foundational practices from Julia Cameron’s The Complete Artist’s Way: Creativity as a Spiritual Practice to my daily practice. This means taking an Artist’s Date once a week and writing “morning pages” every day when I wake up (after recording my dreams in my dream diary). I find the Morning Pages to be a helpful exercise – it’s a way for me to do a brain dump of everything on my mind. I suspect it will make a morning meditation practice much easier to perform because I won’t be tempted to think so much about all the stuff that fills my head.
I haven’t noticed any intense energetic patterns this month during ritual performance. I suppose the Banishing Ritual of the Hexagram has put a stop to that.
My goals for next month include getting caught up on my reading, start to perform the Advanced Tarot Contemplation ritual with the Minor Arcana (pentacles), and have a more structured meditation practice. I also want to continue to complete the tasks in The Artist’s Way, because even though it isn’t directly related to Ceremonial Magic, I’ve been feeling a strong pull to recover my creativity. Looking back over old pictures, I can see that when I included artistic and creative endeavors, I was much happier and productive.