music: "Turkish Dance" by the Spiel Klezmer Band

Still reading The Hero With a Thousand Faces (Joseph Campbell), and I find myself going back and re-reading sections that I missed or was lost on. There's something about this book that requires a read, then a re-read...the first time around, there were aspects that I am only now slowly struggling to absorb in their subtlety. (Although I feel, refreshingly, like a first year student, there's a freshness to it that is hard to place.) I marked this passage down as I was reading further, then came back to it:

"It has always been the rime function of mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward, in counteraction to those other constant human fantasies that tend to tie if back. In fact, it may well be that the very high incidence of neuroticism among ourselves follows from the decline among us of such effective spiritual aid. We remain fixated to the unexorscised images of our infancy, and hence disinclined to the necessary passages of our adulthood. In the United States there is even a pathos of inverted emphasis ; the goal is not to grow old, but to remain young; not to mature away from Mother, but to cleave to her." - Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, (pg 11)

Even written in 1949 for the first time, he still, STILL has a grasp on the human situation...and how we decay as people and as a culture. It amazes me, but when this was first written, most likely it was not as pronounced as it is now. I find myself, (and have found myself) surrounded by child-adults, who project their responsibilities onto others, women who's concern is not their children, but themselves, men who's concern is not building a home, but themselves and (in both cases) their never-ending search for youth.

As I've said before, the standard of what we consider 'adulthood' is eroding away into nothing. So many people embrace that life, the responsibilities of child raising and home building who are not ready for it...who project onto their mates the stress of being the 'adult' while they are perpetual children...and ashamedly, I see more women doing it than men. It may be that in women it is easier to see, but at the same time, I feel ashamed that our culture indoctrinates us to be little girls all our lives...encouraged to play house from a young age on, but never encouraged to grow within ourselves.

Gray begins to bud at my temples at 25. Likewise my husband, 25, is balding on top, his beautiful, but saturnine features made more so by graying facial hair. In this, we both feel as though we have earned those marks, and we bear them proudly...no, we will not be very pretty in our old age, but we will reflect our lives...which is, perhaps, the better thing.

music: "Minor Swing #1" by the Rosenberg Trio

I've begun to think a very non-chaote thought...how best can a magician, a worker of the Will, reconcile those disciplines with belief in, say, the God of the Christians? I myself am not seeking such a reconciliation, my relationship with Deity is my own, (and at that, while similar to several things I see, not similar enough to conduct meaningful dialogue), but at the same time, I find myself wondering...how would one reconcile belief in Will-Working with say...Eastern Orthodox?

I've recently met someone who I think I may ask. The problem that I have faced with answering this question in the past is that most authorities on the Christian faith respond to the working of the Will very negatively...but this individual displays interest in Qabalism, and is in some ways very intriguing to me. Most often the answer that I get is something akin to 'magic is a sin, it mocks God', and I find myself asking why that is...because in my own eyes, the working of one's Will is a function of reality...something that was, according to that paradigm, something that God not only knows about, but placed there for a purpose.

If you are given a tool, why leave it on a shelf to gather dust? Most Christians understand prayer well enough, but attempt to explain to one that prayer and devotion are a form of theurgic magic in the eyes of someone who practices, (that is, working one's Will by asking God or a spiritual entity for aid), and is only slightly different from thaumaturgic magic, (that is, working one's Will by focusing one's Self and from that point, interacting with reality) and you have a fight on your hands not unlike trying to bathe a cat.

It is something I've always wanted to find a reconciliation for, but never have. I've had my Art called everything from 'soulless prayer','apostasy', to 'heresy' by people of the faith, and I find it downright silly.