I’ve been engaging a process of introspection as I prepare to perform my Step 4, cataloging my resentments and fears. For many years in therapy, I’ve been told that I eschew fully owning my personal power and capitulate to the dictates of others. For some months, I have been told that I am blocked from my power and I have, at times, felt the block itself — as if I could feel its outline and heft in the dark, without really understanding its shape or composition. Step 3 has occurred and now I perform a daily prayer at my altar; this has reawakened that physical space in my back room and that spiritual space inside me, so I took the quandary there and performed a ritual to ask: what is the nature of the block?
Altars and Incense
Because this website is meant to be a grimoire, a record of how I perform what I perform, I wanted to write up this experience. The first major component of doing a ritual is a quiet space. I tend to do a lot of my informal astral projection literally in bed, meditating before sleep or in those spaces of the deep night when I’m awake, but laying in bed.
I perform my more formal work at my altar. Stylistically, I prefer a clean and functional workspace, rather than one that is overly ornamental. I have changed out items on my altar based on my mood or to satisfy the trends my spiritual exploration. I am focusing on my relationship with Marbas right now, so my altar reflects that. I have my athame (a wicked folding hatchet I got at a Con), my wand (actually a metal knife sharpener), a black mirror (small circle of obsidian), and a statue of a gay body builder guy in a jockstrap and Otomix lifting shoes as a focus for my goals.
As a hold-over from my Wiccan days, I have the four elements represented. My chalice for water is a hollowed out bull’s horn that a friend procured in Africa. A black candle represents fire. Stones in a bowl, one of them picked up on the beach during my visit to San Francisco to meet JackDrago, represents earth. For air, I have a cast iron pot and lid where I burn charcoals and incense.
I sat naked at my bench before my altar and I tried to relax from the day and from the emotional turmoil I have been feeling of late. I took several hits of poppers, something I use to knock me out of normal function just enough to facilitate altering my mental state. I had a journal nearby with a pen so that I could write notes of what I heard or saw if needed. I began to pathwork…
Houses of Me
I know pathworking as a lot of definitions in the occult world. For my purposes, I define it as a method of visualization and projecting of my awareness through astral spaces, traversing a path, to an astral location where I interact with entities. I am able to reach those astral states because I imagine a journey through an environment and tell myself a narrative, also using techniques to concentrate that I learned through hypnosis, self and otherwise.
I start simply, by approaching a house. The house consciously symbolizes my entire psyche, represented as rooms in a building as an extended metaphor. I’m partial to Craftsman style houses, so this is a two story house with a wide front porch. I go up to the door and enter it. I know that there is a living room, kitchen, etc. on this floor, all representing my conscious self. Having traveled from the outside world into the house, I am shutting out mundane, outside influences from my environment and concentrating on what’s in the house.
I know there is an upper floor where I have a bedroom. I share the house with my alter personas, so each of them has a bedroom and they are sometimes mingling around on the main floor. But, I’m motivated today, so I don’t linger here to interact with them. Right inside the foyer is a door that opens to a staircase down. I take the ten steps down.
As I go, my clothing changes on its own from street clothing to casual “at home” clothing. I lose my shoes for sock feet, my button-down for a t-shirt, and my jeans for a pair of gym shorts. I’m now on the basement level, which I consider my “near subconscious.” There’s a media room here, a guest bedroom (oddly, never used), and a playroom/dungeon here. This is where I have fantasies, where I used to fap, where I daydream and contemplate things away from my busy consciousness and away from the outside world.
Across the hall from where the first set of stairs left off is a doorway of rough stone, semi-unworked. The symbol of Marbas is carved into the rock. There are no handles or fixtures, but I grip a side and pull; the door opens to reveal cavern-like stairs down, unfinished and cold. There are again, ten steps down. I head down as the door silently closes behind me. It’s dark, but I can see without a visible light source. As I walk down, my clothing just evaporates into nothing; step-by-step, I lose an article of clothing until I am naked.
At the bottom is a cave of unfinished, irregularly shaped walls. This is a my “deep unconscious,” a place where primal thoughts and feelings can be found, all of which are solidly “me.” I see a magical working space and I see square platforms where “versions of me” stand like mannequins. These are all living beings, seemingly frozen in time. They change from time to time, but are usually either projections of who I’d like to become or the manifestations of my “secret selves” I hide from others. There is a slave boy here on a pedestal, harnessed in leather, manacled to the square, placidly waiting to be used. There is a dominant, alpha male Master in leather as well, but he’s somewhat unformed as his features slide around into different versions of different men as I look at him.
I head toward an arch in the wall, stopping only to grab an ornate lantern (adorned with frescoes of bulls and hunting dogs in Celtic designs) that is lit and hanging on an iron peg next to the arch. The passage beyond the arch leads out of the cave, and thus, out of me. This is where I begin to astrally project.
The Wood and the Circle
The passage out is not long, but it is winding, switching back on itself a few times so that no natural light could shine directly in. I come out into a woodland in Autumn. The trees have black trunks, their leaves various shades of gray and black. There’s a musty wetness to everything, as if it had rained earlier, and things smell of damp and rot. The floor of the woods are filled with discarded leaves, wood shavings, decomposing things. The air is chilly but not cold and overhead is a sky in some fusion of twilight and deep night. There are overarching stars, but enough light from the sun, peeking it’s last light over the edge of horizon, that getting around is easy enough.
I walk forward, having gained a black robe and hood that manifests around me, but so loosely that it’s clear I’m mostly naked. The path is wide, the trees are spaced, and walking is easy. I come upon broad stone flagstones forming a trail that leads to a Stonehenge-like circle of menhirs. There are ten flagstones to the circle and I count each one as I walk over it.
In the circle, there is a broad stone altar at arm height standing before seven menhirs, each carved with the demonic sigil of a demon. The sigil of Marbas, my principle patron, emblazons the center menhir, directly ahead. The others position shift whenever I’m here and fade somewhat when I’m not focused on them. To the left is the sigil of Raum, to the right is Asmodai. There is one for Lucifer and one for Philotanus.
I set the lantern on the altar and wait a moment, speaking aloud the enn of Marbas to invoke his presence. I am not done travelling yet and I know it. But I take a moment to honor this place, my astral temple. Feeling the call, I walk to the right down a flight of stairs that circle the main altar and deposit me before the bases of the menhirs. There are ten steps down and I count them.
Each base has a door and each door leads to a place where I would contact the patron of that menhir. But today, only the base of Marbas is open. I understand; this is what I expected and wanted. I go to that opening and there is a hallway through the menhir that opens to another space. I head through the hallway, counting ten steps, until I exit a large boulder and enter the Twilight Veld.
The Veld
The Twilight Veld is Marbas’ astral domain. To me, it appears as an African veld, with tall grasses, stands of trees, and large piles of boulders and rocks. Whenever I come here, it is the same strange fusion of twilight and deep night as I experienced in the wood, but the woods are no where to seen. The types of trees, the overall environment, is very different here.
Always, Marbas is visible. He appears to me as an enormous black lion, elephant sized, with a crimson mane that wetly drips blood. Sometimes he is very near where I enter, sometimes far away. Sometimes he’s looking at me, sometimes he ignores me totally. Today, he is looking at something in the distance and is surrounded by my bull brethren.
As soon as I step out archway on the tenth step and enter the Veld, my astral form changes. I have a huge male body with the head of a bull. I have two sets of horns: two bone-colored ones to the sides pointing downward (bull horns), and two jet black ones standing spike-like straight up from my temples (demon horns). My skin turns a deep maroon color and my body hair is cream colored; I have become practically furred in cream colored body hair, but it has the texture and coverage of a very hairy human male, rather than an animal. I have a muzzle with a massive septum ring, and bull ears, one of which is pierced with an iron tag that has the number “71” on it (no idea what this signifies). I have human hands and human feet, but all four are over-sized, thick and meaty. My cock and balls are bull-sized and shaped, but also trapped in an elaborate iron chastity cage big enough to hide it all from my touch.
I am comfortable in this form and know that I have two others I can shift to: one much more human that reduces the bovine features, but with the same coloration and horns; one a total, animal-shaped bull. The first time I came here, I was able to shift smoothly and effortlessly between all three forms.
Looking ahead, I see my brothers — all bull-men like me — are in there “Minotaur” form, so I stay that way and walk over. I am welcomed by them, but the welcome is brief as Marbas has things for me to do, the reason I was drawn here. My gaze follows his and I see the Gate of Belial in the distance.
The Gateway
In another post, I mentioned that I encountered the Gate of Belial and that it had cracked open for me. When I first encountered it, I was drawn into the astral by Marbas and deposited on a stand of flat rock floating in open space, with the Gate, a huge 50-foot crystal gate with Belial’s sigil on it. Marbas had left me there, intent I should focus on the gate.
Now, this floating space-borne rock has apparently attached itself to the Veld for me. I take this as encouragement, as this means that what I am processing is bringing Belial’s energy closer to the rest of my system and thus, closer to integration and resolution. I walk to the gate.
Before, the Gate had cracked open only a small amount and had shown me the roiling darkness — my darkness, as Belial instructed me — beyond it. Today, the doors of the Gate stand wholly open and the tempest of darkness is clearly visible, twisting and churning like a vertical wall of oil that is being stirred by an unseen mechanism. I again take this as a sign of progress and encouragement.
I address Belial: “Belial! I am blocked. There is a belief that I am unworthy of power, of sex, of life, of success! Belial, you are called ‘The Unworthy!’ Help me break these chains and grow in power.”
Belial answered immediately: “Look beyond! See deeper! Outclass your critics with intelligence and action! Be serene and ruthless! BE unworthy! Your emotion belongs elsewhere, to others. Do not waste passion on infidels!”
His words were clearly in my mind, guttural and inhuman, but not harsh. They were perfectly comprehensible. I never visually saw him and my awareness of his presence on an energetic level was slight, and thus, easy to take. But he communicate perfectly.
Back Again
I knew that I received an answer to my question and thus, could depart. I felt Belial was done for the moment, so began to retrace my steps methodically.
When I got back to Marbas, my bull brethren were gone, and I waited a moment for Marbas to engage if he chose. He did not, so I made my way back to the arch in the boulder where I entered the Veld. I counted ten steps back to the base of the menhir, then ten steps to the temple altar. I retrieved my lantern, then walked ten steps back to the woods, back to the arch in that boulder, back into my deep unconscious cave. I set the lantern back on the hook and the robe I had been wearing disappeared. I went up the ten steps to my basement, then ten steps up to my consciousness, regaining my clothing bit by bit as I moved.
And from there, I dismissed the elements and formally closed the altar. I had auto-written Belial’s words in the journal I had ready, and wanted to mull over them. I’ll make another post about my thoughts on Belial’s message once I’ve had a chance to meditate on them.
