Diana Rajchel » magic http://blog.dianarajchel.com a sense of humor,a sense of honor,a sense of the absurd,a sense of the Divine Fri, 10 Sep 2010 16:47:11 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 A signpost for my ancestors http://blog.dianarajchel.com/2010/08/16/a-signpost-for-my-ancestors/ http://blog.dianarajchel.com/2010/08/16/a-signpost-for-my-ancestors/#comments Mon, 16 Aug 2010 21:01:37 +0000 di http://blog.dianarajchel.com/?p=882 To my ancestors, I remember you
and send you my love as I resurrect your visions in this life.
The world is different now.
I give you the past, and you may rule it -
and in exchange, give me the present and future,
Because the divide of the universe makes it so I must live beyond you.
Live in the past and know you are remembered -
Make me proud, and I will do the same for you.

- Diana Rajchel

This came to me today, one of those whispered visions I get while making tea and minding my own business.


]]> http://blog.dianarajchel.com/2010/08/16/a-signpost-for-my-ancestors/feed/ 0 Happy Place….Sad Place http://blog.dianarajchel.com/2010/07/23/happy-place-sad-place/ http://blog.dianarajchel.com/2010/07/23/happy-place-sad-place/#comments Fri, 23 Jul 2010 17:14:19 +0000 di http://blog.dianarajchel.com/2010/07/23/happy-place-sad-place/ This local public art project that asks people to identify locations of strong emotional memory actually seems like a useful energetic map for magical types.
Our emotions are usually are first conscious sensor for anything non-physical, so recognizing areas of "frequent break ups" or "true love stories" or "great chidlhood moments" might help us understand why we react to certain areas in certain ways. Also, since building emotional frequency often helps a spell manifest, it’s especially useful to know areas where you might more easily tap that human energy if the needed emotion is one you’re striving to experience but haven’t yet.Tags: , , ,

]]> http://blog.dianarajchel.com/2010/07/23/happy-place-sad-place/feed/ 0 Synchronicity induced Inception http://blog.dianarajchel.com/2010/07/20/synchronicity-induced-inception/ http://blog.dianarajchel.com/2010/07/20/synchronicity-induced-inception/#comments Tue, 20 Jul 2010 23:19:43 +0000 di http://blog.dianarajchel.com/?p=808
Today did not go as planned. My writing buddy had to cancel our scheduled coffee, but since I was already wearing a skirt – and I don’t just wear a skirt casually – I decided to go for coffee on my own. Unfortunately, MetroTransit bus system seems designed to keep college students contained to one part of town and to prevent anyone from outside that area from entering. Since the bus I needed to get to Espresso Royale had just passed me on the way to the bus stop, and another would not come for a good 25 minutes. I climbed on the next bus I saw coming assuming it would still go on up University and I could at least enjoy a slightly shorter walk to my destination.

It did not.

Instead I found the bus careening down 35W, and I found myself deposited at Roseville Mall. Roseville may boast expensive stores, but free wireless for a writer looking to work it does not. So I sucked it up, bought a ticket to the next movie I could tolerate the idea of seeing and then took myself for lunch at a restaurant where the waiters attempt to ply you with booze when there’s a pretty good chance you’re on your lunch hour.1 Lunch was pleasant enough – read Proven Guilty from the Dresden Files, the waiter wasn’t excessively pushy for me to leave, and as it turned out lots of people must have taken the wrong bus because that was a fairly busy theater with a mature audience for a weekday afternoon.

It was totally worth it. Not only was it totally worth it, I am elated I got to see it by myself.

If you are in any way magically minded, you will want to see this movie. It explores layers of the conscious and subconscious, lucid dreaming, dream projection…all sorts of fantastic ideas we talk about but rarely try to express visually. While I know some old-school shamanic types get hung up on “well that’s not how it looks to me,” we can shove those aside into the Gallery of Point Missers and carry on with the exploration. There are certain TV shows and movies I bookmark as teaching tools, though I’ve yet to really use them: the tarot episode of Xena, What Dreams May Come, and now Inception.

Thank you spirit of G.O.D for sending me to that movie, and letting me enjoy it alone so I can process it wholly on my own terms.

  1. In the US drinking alcohol at lunch on weekdays is frowned on. We gossip about you Europeans and the beer in your workplace refrigerators with tones of scandal but looks of envy.
]]> http://blog.dianarajchel.com/2010/07/20/synchronicity-induced-inception/feed/ 0 Banishing magic: Made of fail pens http://blog.dianarajchel.com/2010/03/02/banishing-magic-made-of-fail-pens/ http://blog.dianarajchel.com/2010/03/02/banishing-magic-made-of-fail-pens/#comments Tue, 02 Mar 2010 15:00:47 +0000 di http://blog.dianarajchel.com/?p=433 pens

Made of fail pens - shot by Diana Rajchel

I have this box of pens, a type I used to love before gel pens were invented. The kind that live in that in-between space; not quite a marker, not quite a pen. I acquired them when a company I worked for went out of business. I snatched the box of them, knowing that I’d likely never see any benefits for my troubles, and probably on some level motivated by my frustration that what could have been a good job for me went to hell before I could even get anywhere. (If my old boss happens to read this: Phil, I’m the one who swiped the pens. I’m sorry. Also, I’d love to meet you for coffee sometime. I’m freelancing now.)

I now stash them in an old check box in one of my office drawers. Over the years they have dwindled from hundreds to a bit fewer. I’ve taken to using them for my Morning Pages, rather than the gel pens I so love. It’s become a strange ritual act every morning: as I write the crap contained in my head that stands between myself and creative production, I use these pens. As the pens are drained of ink, I also drain the circumstances that screw me over. These are my made of fail pens. By using them up, I drain out the failure from my creative wounds. Maybe I even drain the fail of old workplaces, psychological pressures and that weird period of job-hopping that was so little understood by those around me.

It’s not geometric like ceremonial magic or particularly folksy. It’s a pen, and it’s on paper. The energy all starts flowing from there.

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