Hello WITCH readers – Carolyn Elliott here, founder of WITCH – I’ve been a bit quiet lately – I was actually on a long sabbatical from doing magic.
Strange, I know – why would one ever take a break from doing magic?
Well, I had gotten to a place where I was so damn good at results magic / practical magic (as taught in my INFLUENCE course, which opens again in September 2017) — that it was no longer scratching my itch for growth and I needed space and time to figure out “what’s next.”
So I figured out what’s next – and I’m calling it the Promethea Working. It’s a 12 week effort of evolution that starts today.
Why am I calling it the Promethea Working?
For the simple reason that I’m going to be invoking and inhabiting the main character from Alan Moore’s acclaimed occult graphic novel, Promethea.
Why Promethea?
Well – like Alan Moore himself, I have a deep interest in the weird intersection of magic and literary fiction.
So one of the best ways I can think of to stimulate this intersection’s effects in my life is to work magically with a character from literary fiction.
Also – for the past year I’ve been in a bit of a slump, resting on my laurels ever since I accomplished the BIG practical magical feat that I had feared I would never attain – becoming open to receiving true, committed love.
Falling in love and joining my life with my husband Taia Kepher was and is a huge source of joy for me – but it also left me with that “wow, gee whiz, I have everything I want – wealth and health and love – what the fuck do I do now?” feeling.
I gradually realized that part of what was keeping me feeling “slumpy” in my magical practice was the lack of an ideal to inspire me and challenge me.
So I proposed various ideals to myself over the past 12 months – including Wonder Woman and Crowley’s Babalon – and none of them were resonant enough to fully stick with and galvanize me.
But Promethea is both resonant and permeable – she’s an archetypal fictional entity who exists to be invoked and occupied. She’s the undying, indestructible incarnation of the Power of the Imagination.
Also, Promethea’s adventures and aims are intimately tied up with ones that I’ve been gradually realizing I’m attracted to – namely, the spirit-liberating adventures and aims of ceremonial magick, of hermeticism and the qabala.
Let me tell you: I resisted my interest in ceremonial magick for a long time for a long litany of reasons.
1) It smacks of patriarchy with all its male-gendered names for God.
2) It uses Hebrew, and I am not a fan of the Old Testament, with the exception of the really sexy bits
3) I’ve known plenty of ceremonial magickians in my life, including ex-boyfriends and my father, and I’ve not been all that impressed with their results or enlightenment.
And yet.
– Something tugs at my soul when I look at the Tree of Life glyph.
– The qabala connects very beautifully with everything I’ve already studied in Tarot and astrology.
– I can accept the notion that the Old Testament is a metaphor or code of a deeper wisdom.
– I can get down with the idea that the seemingly male-gendered names of God in the qabala are not actually so, as the Absolute transcends gender.
– I can accept that my ex-boyfriends and my father’s lack-lustre magickal careers aren’t necessarily an indictment of a whole tradition – after all, I know plenty of assholes with PhDs in Critical and Cultural Studies, and the process of getting a PhD in Critical and Cultural Studies was still valuable to me.
Objections could be raised regarding the wisdom of invoking Promethea, an entity from literary fiction – as in, perhaps it would be wiser for me to invoke a more traditional deity – but what can I say?
Sometimes I like to do “unwise” things with my magic, it’s how I learn and have fun.
Also, Promethea, being a heroine, gives a distinctly feminine twist to the old boys’ club of ceremonial magick, making the whole thing more personal and appealing to me as a woman starting to practice ceremonial magick.
So here’s my plan for the Promethea Working:
Each day, I’m going to invoke Promethea, do some basic practices of ceremonial magick (the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram and the Middle Pillar), study hermeticism and the qabala, maintain a dream diary, and work on lucid dreaming and astrally traveling the qabalistic paths.
I’m also going to work each day on my physical health and fitness – because, you know, Promethea is a comic book heroine and she kicks ass.
(I confess my mostly sedentary internet witch lifestyle has left me in less than total ass-kicking physical condition.)
I will consider the working a success if – by 12 weeks from now – I find a distinct evolution in my spiritual and physical inspiration and cultivation, plus some Promethea-related synchronicities.
I’ll update you each week with the progress that I’m making on the Promethea Working.
If you’d like to join me in the project, you’re very welcome to. In Alan Moore’s story, there’s sometimes multiple incarnations of Promethea at once ;)
Here’s a “before” picture for my start of the Promethea working – I’ll give you an update picture each week, and an “after” picture at the conclusion of the working, 12 weeks from now.
The featured image at the start of this post, by the way, is by J.H. Williams III and Mick Gray.
