Under The Juniper Tree

This entry is an answer to the comments on "The death of magick" by Protesilaos ( The way of the wizard ). While I agree with most of the content of the post, it heavily focuses on the individual capacities of the self; you can become a magus if you are focused or "special" enough, it's a matter of perception, of self-discipline, of endurance. This posture is not wrong by itself, but rather incomplete when it comes at the core of the initial issue: the death of magick. The magus, understood as the powerful glass-cannon entity, is never alone; one cannot simply become a wizard on your own, no matter how hard you try, and even if you could, that wouldn't fix the main issue: the disenchantment of the world, as Weber said. The magi need others to perform the rituals, either adepts or entities to work with; Elijah couldn't have annihilated the prophets of Baal on his own, nor woken up from under the juniper tree, nor Moses open the Red Sea, nor the mystics...

Recently I've come to the realization that the world has become quieter, but not in the "greenhouse" sense of quiet where I can listen to the birds and feel the sun on my skin while the world paralyzes and I feel part of an eternal cycle, quiet in the horrible way of a dead zone. Life feels boring, the days flow like water on a river; wake up, greenhouse, come home, eat, sleep, go to the beach/office, then work/choir, then the weekend arrives... etc. I've stopped listening to music, guitar feels less appealing and everything feels less colorful and exciting as before, even when I am in a better place in terms of health and physical condition. So I've been wondering why is this happening.  Is it the old  nihil novum sub sole ? Is it me growing older? Or maybe it's because my phase of a religious zealot on an epic Odyssey for healing has come to an end (either for the improvement of healing or me  being on a hiatus in that regard)? Has the inner fire that ignite...

 After talking with a friend of mine, I discovered that the root of all my anxiety has never come from dire economical factors but from a lack of trust in myself and my own capabilities, and I want to sit with that.  Since I was a child my parents were overprotective, and always called me names and all that whenever I failed at something or didn't match the expectations they put onto my shoulders; I remember being terrified as a kid, even to plea while kneeling to a teacher to not make me show my parents a note they would have to sign which said I forgot to do homework, or when I had trouble with school subjects, or how, when I was bullied, they just told me to grit my teeth and find a solution myself. I can even recall one time when I was 10 years old where I played sax at a Red Cross site for a music school event and I was so nervous that I fucked it up and they, logically, spent all the way home telling me how shitty I was and how the other kids were better than me. I was n...

 A lot of things happened, but as I have to go to a choir rehersal, I will keep it short. Regarding my espiritual life, everything has become quiet; I believe but I do not pray, I am dettached from the Church and I am no longer fighting with God, rather existing, which I see as an improvement. I pray from time to time, but not as an obligation or in fear in a kierkegaard-esque mood, but rather like someone who calls home from time to time. My health is going better; I am training, short sessions, little reps, bodyweight and some gym and jumping rope, but training. I managed to get some medical advice for free this time as a (I hope) lucky turn of events, but I will get onto that another day, as I want to focus on the Football World Cup and why it meant a whole world to me: I've never been a football guy myself; as I was not popular and grew up amongst elders, I had no one to play when I was little, so I was really bad and non interested on in on my teen ages nor early adulthood. So...

 This week has been good. I managed to pull out another case with a good result, the workload has decreased and I was able to sleep and just chill going to the beach and watching the football world coup prior to the new greenhouse cycle that starts tomorrow. It feels like these two months of nothingness were just a blink; that these four years of being injured by these insoles have been like a mirage. This has past, and so will the things that are to come. It is the nature of life. I am not yet fully healed; my feet had some issues to start with and those come back with the natural form of my feet plus the OG doctor could have modified them. The improvement has been massive; today I was able to do some leg workout without recoil and even if I have a muscle overload in the right leg (which I guess is the one that was originally modified) I feel great as this enables me to train again and take my health more seriously. More important, the feeling of powerlessness has dwindled. I have...

It seems like the insole plan worked. It worked perfectly; my feet are getting used to their original position and I feel relieved. I am being cautious, since old (the original) stiffnesses are coming back (I expected so), but it only means that its time to apply all the knowledge about my body I learned during this two years of practicing yoga. I will slowly train my legs and lower body again, and through progressive work, I will be healthy. I doubt that my body as I knew it will come back; I've been through so much, but still, it will be functional again, and that means a whole world to me. Curiously, I didn't feel euphoric; yesterday when I realized I was feeling good I cried of bliss and exhaustion at night, but today was pretty normal; I even got my neck injured due to a bad posture at the office and spent the whole afternoon sleeping trying to recover.  The spiritual side of things has taken a secondary role; I don't know if this ideation was mine alone or God had som...

These days life has been fundamentally grey; I tried not to indulge in my bad habits but it was impossible; the rumination and  the pain alongside the work frustration made it real hard to.  Still, I managed to pull something out; a last stand, a brink of hope, a reckless way out from my crippled state. And it came in a daydream.  Basically, the last correction at the podiatrist made me realize that we were correcting the very same insoles that fucked me up, so if only I could analyze and reverse the changes made or find the original shape of my feet, I could go back to a prior state of affairs. Lucky me I didn't throw away the original insoles, as I had a remembrance popping out of a prior podiatrist telling me that said insoles were pure shit, supermarket ones with some cork glued to them alongside the shape of my feet. I found them, pulled out the cork (and kept it just in case) and tried the insoles. It felt good.  Today I picked them up again; I had some weird s...