Invocation of Solomon

This is the invocation of Solomon I mentioned earlier. It's specifically intended for those of us descended from the House of David, but with some modification, you can probably make it work. I answered a couple of questions about it at the end.



I am [NAME], inheritor of the line of Abraham, blood-kin to Solomon the King.
My blood is his blood, and his kingdom is mine.
I invoke Solomon, Djinn-Master, Temple-Builder.
I invoke Solomon, Magician and the King.

I am [NAME], inheritor of the line of Isaac, blood-kin to Solomon the King.

My vision is his vision, and his foundation is mine.
I invoke Solomon, Djinn-Master, Temple-Builder.
I invoke Solomon, Magician and the King.

I am [NAME], daughter of the house of Jacob, blood-kin to Solomon the King.
My word is his word, and his brilliance is mine.
I invoke Solomon, Djinn-Master, Temple-Builder.
I invoke Solomon, Magician and the King.

I am [NAME], inheritor of the line of Leah, blood-kin to Solomon the King.
My heart is her heart, and her victory is mine.
I invoke Solomon, Djinn-Master, Temple-Builder.
I invoke Solomon, Magician and the King.

I am [NAME], inheritor of the line of Rachel, blood-kin to Solomon the King.
My self is her self, and her beauty is mine.
I invoke Solomon, Djinn-Master, Temple-Builder.
I invoke Solomon, Magician and the King.

I am [NAME], inheritor of the line of Rivkah, blood-kin to Solomon the King.
My will is her will, and her power is mine.
I invoke Solomon, Djinn-Master, Temple-Builder.
I invoke Solomon, the Magician and the King.

I am [NAME], daughter of the house of Sarah, blood-kin to Solomon the King.
My power is her power, and her glory is mine.
I invoke Solomon, Djinn-Master, Temple- Builder.
I invoke Solomon, the Magician and the King.

(Repeat as needed)
I invoke Solomon, Djinn-Master, Temple- Builder.
I invoke Solomon, the Magician and the King.





FAQ

• Should I use my Hebrew name, my “magical name” or my “regular” name? 
• You should use your true name. If you’re not sure what name that is, start praying by saying: “Hi, God. It’s me, _________.” Whatever name you filled in the blank with is the one you should use. 
• Can I do this in Hebrew instead? 
• If your Hebrew is good enough, go for it, but make sure your translation preserves the meter.  It would be better to do this invocation in glossolalia with the meter, than in unmetered Hebrew.
• Do I have to do this out loud? Can I just “think” the words? 
• Personally, I think it’s really important to invoke aloud, but try it both ways if you want and see what works for you. There's an underlying meter you should be able to feel. You might want to beat a drum (or table or thing) or rattle or such to it. 
• Where did you learn this invocation? 
• From Solomon, obviously.  Or, you could say, with equal accuracy, that I made it up in my giant brain.
• Why did you order the invocation the way you did? Wouldn’t it make more sense to put the matriarchs at the bottom and the patriarchs at the top of the tree? 
• That’s a question I only ever get from male magicians! ☺ I ordered them this way because my name is Sara, so I want to end with her. Feel free to reorder it however you like best. If you’re named after one of the matriarchs or patriarchs, I’d try to either start or end with that one. If you’re named Solomon, you win!

Meditation Tech

As many of you know, I've been meditating regularly for most of this school year.  I started in August, and I'm really glad I did.  I found it invaluable when I was deep in my grief.  My intent is to meditate twice a day, about 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes just before sleep.  I almost always manage about 15 minutes in the morning, and I often get up to half an hour before sleep, but sometimes I fall asleep before my 30 minutes are up.  I'd tried getting into the meditating habit many times before, but it never really stuck.  Here are some simple things I find helpful.

• Something Jason Miller told me:  "It's actually impossible to fail at meditating.  If you notice that you're distracted, and go back to meditating, then you're SUCCEEDING at meditating.  The only way to fail is to notice you're distracted and just give up."
• Set a timer.  Otherwise, I spend a lot of time wondering if my time is up yet.  I'm usually very good at knowing how long things take, but I find it very difficult to judge how long I've been meditating   (Some time ago, I wrote this article about improving your time sense...it's a useful skill that's relatively easy to cultivate.)  I like a timer that just chimes once, so I can go over time if I want to.  (Although in the mornings, I don't really have that option; my morning schedule is pretty tight.)
• Headphones with white noise.   Blocking out background noises makes it much easier, especially when you're first learning.  This site lets you mix your own ambient noise.  This is what I use for meditating and this is for trance work.  Heaphones also work as a signal to people that you're busy and don't want to chat (when on a bench at the park or on the bus or etc
• Isochronic tones on headphones.  I find this one especially nice when I have the time for it.  http://iso-tones.com/DeepMeditation.mp3  I think, probably, different people will get results from different tones.  I've tried a wide variety, and most of them just give me a headache.  I usually only use the tones when I'm really having trouble getting settled or if I want an extra deep meditation (when I'm very upset, or if I'm going to do magic after, for example).
• Breathing exercises I find very helpful, they only take a few minutes, and they're quite discreet.
• Take a deep breath in through your mouth for about 6 heartbeats.  Hold it for about  4 heartbeats, and then exhale for about 4 heartbeats.  Repeat.  I do this several times at the beginning, and it really helps.
• While meditating, I imagine my breath spiraling up from my seat to my throat, it does not descend, but just sort of relaxes as I breath out.
• Keep your hands open.  for some reason, my hands really want to ball up into fists, but its very helpful to keep them open.  I don't know why
• This is a new thing that I've never heard of anyone else doing, but I find it really helpful:  I set a timer for 5-10 minutes and let my mind just wander during that time, before I meditate.  This doesn't "count" as meditation time, but I find that, especially in the evenings, it gives my brain a chance to "decompress" from work before I ask it to be still.  I kind of "get all that thinking out of my system" before I start.
• http://www.vipassanadhura.com/howto.htm  This website is helpful.

Power Bracelet

Despite the goofy name, this is a cool Celtic tech I learned in shamanism class yesterday:  you take three strings of three colors (or more if you, like me, know fancy weaving techniques).  Then, you go into trance and start calling all the powers: all the gods, all the angels, all the demons, all the totems (not just animal totems...ocean and lightning and light and decay and everything), the ancestors, your past lives, your future selves, your heros, the matriarchs and patriarchs of your tribe, all the spirits, and then you ask who will loan you a power.  They each offer you a power, and you weave all the powers into the bracelet.  It's a wicked awesome.  I used to weave magic when I was a kid, but never quite like this.  If you email me your address, I'll make you one!  (Just in case there's actually anyone reading my blog, only the first 10 people get bracelets)

Dreaming of Bear

Last night, I dreamt of a medium sized black bear.  I was in a cave, and I was very tired.  Bear watched over me while I slept.  I kept saying that I had to get up and go do something (I don't remember what), but Bear said I had to rest and heal instead.  I kept arguing, I have to go, I have to go.  Finally, Bear turned me into a bear cub, and then stood over me while I slept.  I woke up early and quite refreshed.

Shamanic Journeying Class

So, I've been writing at http://30daychallenge.andriehvitimus.com/ and I've found it very helpful to publish my magical work for other people to keep me accountable, so I'm going to keep doing that here.

This weekend, I took a shamanic journeying class. The first day was only so-so, but today was great. I'll write about lots of techniques I learned later, but first I want to tell you about the last thing we did (because sometimes I'm just backwards like that)

Here's the basic technique:

You go down to the underworld, and you conjure three fears/blocks/things-that-holds-you-back to manifest appearance as combatant monsters. Then, you fight them. You fight and fight, as hard as you can, and then, just when you're going to win, you surrender, knowing that they only have power over you because you let them. Then they kill you, and you're dead. Then you ascend, and you look down at your body, and you're dead, and you get dismembered, and that sucks. Then you go up, up, up, and then you're in the Above, and all the spirits, all the powers, all the gods and all the angels, and the totems and the ancestors and the past lives and the future selves and all the everyone is there, and they make you a new body, and then that's good. Then you have to grab a hold of the shiny new spirit archetype of your new self and breathe it in, and then you some back to the world.

Here's how mine went.  I went down, down, down.  I sank and sank.  I was the center of the earth.  Baphemut was there. (I'll explain why I spell it that way in a future post...there's a reason)  I asked him to help me conjure my opponents, and he asked me what I was ready to give up.  I said three things, which I'm not going to tell you, but you'll probably be able to tell from their monster-forms.  

I shifted into a snarling wolf-monster; it was just like the Gmork from Never Ending Story, which used to terrify me when I was little.  It might have been Fenrir, or else it was just Fenrir-like. (I did not make the Fenrir association at the time).  I don't want to tell you about the second monster right now.  The third monster was a disgusting oozing worm-thing named Nig-Sluggoth. (not Yog-Sothoth)

I battled them.  I was like Simon Zealot, the warrior-magician, all spinning kicks and lunges.  I battled them like River from Firefly, ballet swords flashing.  I battled them like St George fighting the dragon (which is weird, because I NEVER do Saint work).  Finally, I remembered that I was supposed to not win.  I sat down, and became a tree, a tall tree, growing up.  And then I was dead.  Baphemut came, and picked up my body and strapped it to a big X shaped harness (I saw one at the BDSM club once, but I don't know what it's called).  Baphemut whipped me (which sucked a whole lot...I'm very very not into that)  I screamed and cried and it was very horrible.  I'm think I moaned and writhed a lot IRL.

Then I was dead, and Baphemut took me down and held me in his arms (he was very large).  Then he kissed me, and then he swallowed me, and then I was him (her?), and I was pregnant with myself, and then I had to give birth to myself, which was very hard.  And then I was done, and very, very sore and tired and thirsty.  I hurt everywhere now.

Afterward, on the way home, I had a vision about my lost mojo. When I was little, I had a giant yellow teddybear.  His name was Bear (I was not a very creative child).  I carried him around for a long time.  When I moved out of Broadway Ave in Pittsburgh, I carefully put him in a box I called my pirate trunk.  It was a leather covered trunk which looked like it had been underwater.  When I moved, the trunk got very wet, and Bear was covered in mold and partially rotted away.  I threw him out, and didn't think anything of it.  I think that's when I lost my mojo.  I'm going to try to make restitution to Bear and see if he'll take me back.

Spring Break Hermitage

I've been in semi-seclusion for 1.5 days so far.  Here are some initial thoughts:

• I forgot how much I love to read fiction. I devoured an entire Dresden Files novel yesterday
• Fresh juice is crazy awesome.  My favorite so far is cucumber, pineapple, hot pepper, basil.
• If you drink a pound of carrots (and no solid food) in 2 days, your poo turns bright orange.
• Butternut squash juice is gross.  
• Juice fast is pretty easy so far, but boring. Turns out I REALLY like food.
• I have amazing dreams if I wake around dawn, read for an hour or so and then go back to sleep.
• My mother is now a glowing bodhisatvah made from cobalt blue crystal who lives in Chesed and looks like a weird cross between Kali and the Virgin Mary. (not at all like the picture to the right)
• Meditating is much easier when you're not sleep deprived.
• I need to sleep a lot.  Seriously.  Given it's druthers, my body seems to like to sleep for about 6 hours, wake up for an hour or two, and then go back to sleep for another 4 hours.

Spring Break

Next week is Passover.  Because I work in a Jewish school, that means I have off work.  I've pulled some strings and rearranged some other things in order to make it so that I have a week completely off, and the apartment to myself.  I'm going to try and do a seven day meditation/magic/healing retreat type thing.  I'll start off Saturday, my cleaning up the apartment.

I got a juicer on craigslist, so I'm going to buy a ton of fruits and veggies and make healthy fresh juice, which I'm in the process of convincing myself is a magical refreshing, cleansing tonic/panacea that eliminates all toxins (whatever that means) and rejuvenates the body and soul.  I have not yet been completely successful at convincing myself of this, but I'm getting there.  It definitely sounds healthy, and I'm a big believer in magical potions as sympathetic magic, so mega-dosing on plant potion certainly seems like a totally reasonable way to invoke Spring.  Perhaps I'll drink only juice and water, and make a planetary themed juice for each day.  Like, Sunday it can be orange/carrot/ginger and Monday can be cucumber/mint/melon, etc.  Or whatever.

I'm going to unplug the TV and all that, but leave my computer for playing music.  I'll also try to blog every day.  I'm worried that might slip into facebook and nonsense, so I might handwrite a journal, and then transcribe it to the web after the retreat is over.

So, Saturday night I'm going to try to go to bed early.  Without setting an alarm, I'll wake up whenever I wake up (which is probably about 8ish...I wake at 6 on weekdays).  I'll do my regular 20 minute morning meditation, and then do some belly dancing work out for 30 minutes. (I want to say the dance in the morning is also regular...I plan to do it every morning, but I actually do it less than 3 days a week)  After that, I guess I'll take a shower and then drink my juice.  If it's nice, I'll walk down to the pier and watch the water for a while.  Otherwise, I think maybe I'll read for an hour or so.  Midmorning, I think I want to do some kind of Sun invokation.