“The Alchemy of Fire”

2003 – “The Great Mother”

The Temple of Mercury

Whilst wandering the western coastline of the Americas, I am led to a Kinko’s. Intuition draws me to the internet as I pull up ‘Witchvox’, a pagan community site that I knew about but had never visited before. Here, I see an advertisement for something called ‘Firedance’, a collection of fire magi in the mountains of someplace called ‘Santa Cruz’.

Magi in the Mountains

This was to be my official introduction to the hermetic tribes of the Americas, where I would encounter a number of avatars who would become significant characters in my story.

The Firedancers

Down in the dust bowl I encounter the firedancers, each in wielding with the light and the motion in endless spirals.

There is deep magic here. Something that I am just coming to understand as the vast energies play across my senses in flickering swirls

The Magical Market

During the daytime, I find myself wandering through the marketplace. I find such things fascinating, for they are, to me, the real iteration of the magickal markets of ancient Stories. Where craftspeople peddle their wares, flush with the vibrations of their emanation. It is here I run into a couple, a magickian and priestess by the name of Oberon Zell and Morning Glory Ravenheart. Theirs is a beautiful combination, flush with love for each other. A sense of sanctity that I wonder if I will ever share. We make fast friends, discussing the nature of magick, of wonder and Story.

To see Kiana Love here was surprising, as I had last seen her in the urban corridors of New York. Yet surprising as it was, it carried with it a deeper understanding … a blossoming sense of the forces that lay beneath the surface of the world, forming the architecture of our stories.

Alchemy of the Planets

As I arrive, it dawns on me that while there are other fire spinners here, such is not the main focus of the event. Instead, it is a collection of intentional magickians and light workers, doing a vast ritual around a fiery cauldron. How amazing, I think, that I have been brought to such a place. Surely such is the proof of the synchronicity at work. That in my ignorance I was brought to something magickal and profound. As I wander about the property, I am amazed by the number of magickal beings that I encounter. Magickians and priestesses. All throughout the day workshops are presented, all offering some kind of healing and personal transformation, with a focus on the all-night rituals surrounding the fire. As I come to understand it, theirs is a very systematized form of magick involving the circular orbit of the planets, far different than the ‘adventure’ form that I was encountering with Serge King back in the islands of Kaua’i.

I feel the ritual, the opening of sacred space, the energies moving through this McBride and his entourage singing across the ethers.

I love the fire. The circling, swirling energy of it. It is a formless thing, full of Life. I feel a strange resonance with it that I cannot explain, yet my energy feels boundless, like the Fire. I find myself dancing around it, feeding it energy, receiving energy in return, around and around and around. Later I am told this is a ‘Mercury’ circle, modeled after the planet closest to the Sun. At the time, this means little to me. Later I will learn that such is part of an alchemical series of rings designed to facilitate the process of personal alchemy, the classic magickal idea of ‘turning lead into gold’. For me, in my elemental nature, it is simply dancing, breathing and feeling the Fire moving through me. I care little for the outer circles, thick with slow-moving, shuffling people. Such does not suit me. While writing from the Now I have appreciation for all the aspects of personal alchemy, this is 2003, and I am just returned from the islands of Kaua’i, dancing for the Fire which is my lover and friend.

As the night approaches, I find myself fascinated with a red-haired maiden. (This is, for the record, not the first nor the last time I’ll be fascinated by maidens) Around her, I sense the swirling energies of Venus, of Aphrodite, and I feel a deep desire. One of the older priestesses notices my interest, and suggests that I invoke the energies of Pan, the Forest God, as we enter the ritual space.

I wander the landscape of the place, intent on shifting my energies. I had read about this kind of thing from the books I had perusing while still living in the City. From what I understood, there was an intentional energetic, in which one simply called upon the elemental qualities and brought them through their being. So then this is what I did, invoking the energy of the forest.

The Magus McBride

I feel the impressions through the field as he approaches, that same texture of positioning. He doesn’t realize it, and I stand there, holding space.

It is here, sitting by the side of the fire, that I meet a wandering God of Earth. In the fields beneath the surface, I feel him, the aspect of the great Gorilla, of the alpha protector of the pack, made of the myths of the Greek and the Native American. He carries with him a great drum. His name is Mitch, yet I refer to him as the Gorilla King as to his countenance in the Mythica.