Salmon

It’s pronounced phonetically, like “SAL-mon”, and we adopted him from the RSPCA on Sunday.  He’s an incredibly friendly attention-whore and loves to rub his head up against your legs and hands in attempts to pat himself.  He’s all skin and bones now but with all the food he’s been wolfing down since he’s arrived, we’re sure that in no time he’ll be as soft as his pompoms.  His favourite toy, Mr Starfish, is a purple starfish hung with tassels and bells and stuffed with catnip.  Salmon amused himself for hours with it today.  However, when it is nap time, he likes to hug his wiggling Mr Mouse to sleep.

Enjoying some pats

Getting comfortable in his cat bed

Preparations

Getting ready for a new addition to the family…

Getting food, treats, toys and litter box ready

Scratching post

Online Qabalah Course

I just submitted my final assignment of the semester of my online Qabalah course.  It’s such a rewarding feeling to know I committed myself to this endeavour for the past 8 weeks while it was completely voluntary.  I look forward to enrolling in courses on basic Wicca in the next semester.  I am looking for a fun way to jog my memory and offer some structure in my life.

Dreamwork – “The Seminar” – Stage Two

This is an idea I have had floating around in my mind for some time.  After the morning I posted about my “Seminar” dream, I contemplated the symbols of the dream, jotted down some notes on what alternate actions and events could represent a more favourite meaning, then entered into a pathworking session back into the dream:

I returned to the seminar at my high school.  I arrived early and chatted to the speaker a little before I went and sat in the seat beside where my colleague was in my dream. When my colleague arrived, he saw me and introduced me to his brother immediately.  We chatted animatedly at every chance and when it was my turn to present, I stood up and talked about my experience with wealth magic.  We ended up finishing early so my colleague, his brother and I walked to the bus stop together.  They were about to head down the staircase I found myself in but I steered them in the other direction, reminding them (and myself) that it was my high school after all and I happened to know an athletics carnival was going to be taking place there and that I knew of another exit.  We arrived long before our buses were due to, so we had some coffee while we waited together.  Incidentally, I also visualised my wealth entity with me throughout the pathworking.  He is adorable, quite like a child, always filled with wonder and amazement.

My interpretation that this dream is asking me to stand my ground was tested quite viciously today.  A Masters student of mine just received his final mark for last semester and it was a disastrous mark because my lecturer accidentally left off a digit in one of his essays’ mark.  Panicked, he travelled into campus to see her and incidentally found out about all the marks I awarded him, including a 5/10 for his participation.  He wrote me an infuriated email about him believing he was a stand-out student of his class and accused me of under-marking him all semester.  This student is rude, aggressive and self-important and I allowed myself to be intimidated into considering conceding to his demand to increase his mark.

Since then, I have considered it deeply and decided that I must continue to stand by my decision to award him the mark I did.  As a tutor, I saw my role as going beyond only imparting course content, but also teaching my students the people skills necessary for their future work and life.  It is my conviction that this student needs to learn the important lesson that he cannot bully his way through life, demanding higher salaries, better jobs and equally, more marks.  He needs to earn his worth.  As such, I cannot justifiably award him a higher mark above those of his peers who out-performed him.

However, the final decision, which has not yet been determined, is up to the lecturer.

Dreamwork – “The Seminar” – Stage One

Before bed, I was doing some magic last night in my study when I kept being distracted by light and/or shadows flying across the walls. My blinds were shut tight, but I am not about to jump up and say that’s definitely something paranormal because I’m so easily spooked I can’t even watch trailers for horror films without ‘hearing strange noises’ at night. However, I received the distinct sense that my wealth entity was trying to contact me. I have him my full attention but all I could gather from him was an image of him holding out some gold coins. So I asked him to come to my dreams that night, even suggested that if he didn’t know how, he could ask for Hades’s help as I know Underworld deities have long been believed to preside over both the dead and dreams. Further, it’s not the first time I would have sensed him in my dreams anyway. Oddly enough, I did have a detailed dream I remembered in the morning, the first I have had in weeks:

[The dream is here for my own references. You may wish to skip past it and just read my methods.]

I attended a seminar held at my old high school. Soon after we began, I turned around to find a former colleague and his brother sitting two rows behind me. I was desperately excited to talk to him and catch up but I couldn’t interrupt the speaker so I sat on, all the while thinking how I would approach him after class. The seminar ran for two days, and every time an opportunity came up to approach him, shyness overcame me and I didn’t. On the very last day, I was resolute and determined to to speak to him after class. I had to do a small presentation for the class but ended up running late and missing the entire thing. When our seminar speaker reconvened, it was already late into the evening. Minutes before we were about to be dismissed, I saw my colleague and his brother excuse themselves from the room. When the seminar ended, they had long left and were no where to be found. I was alone in the dark, near-empty school. I followed two chatty schoolgirls down a staircase that led into a dark and eerie basement. I ran back to them and asked where the exit was, but before they could answer, another girl pushed open the door that led out. We were about to step out when a teacher came around and told us to wait for a vast crowd of people to congregate first. I was desperate to get home but we waited politely. When the teacher finally conceded us to leave, a few of us began marching down the street until we realised that the congregation of people was actually the starting line for a sprint. Next thing we knew, pedestrians were trampled and pushed over by the athletes. Before we could make another run for it, a new wave of racers sprinted down the street again like a stampede. I began to worry that I would never get home.

Being late and not being able to get home is a recurring theme in my dreams. For 10-12 years consecutively, I used to start every school year from primary school through to university, dreaming the night before the first day that I slept in and missed my entire day through a series of frustrating delays and found myself at the school/campus at 10pm at night.

Symbols

The high school: The place of perpetual torment. Every time I am in high school I feel small. Situating the dream here uncovers all my weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

The colleague: Oddly enough, we originally became acquainted because I fought my shyness and went out on a limb to approach him. Although this dream reminded me that I have neglected to write to him since I left my old workplace, in this scenario, he represents my desires, objectives and goals that I am not yet brave enough to grasp.

Running late: Quite simply, this is my anxiety.  I ran late for my individual presentation because I was anxious about everything else going on.

Dark basement: My fear.

Waiting for the crowd to congregate: My tendency to allow myself to be extremely inconvenienced at fear of being impolite.

Pedestrians being pushed over and trampled: While I personally wasn’t injured, I think it is telling me that I am quite literally, a push-over.

Unfortunately, I need to get to some work now, but I will follow with a Stage Two later in the afternoon.

Magic as a Process

After my post last Monday on the seemingly short-lived effects of my magic, I received some pearls of wisdom that helped me to see things in a more sophisticated way. Since then, I have increasingly begun to acknowledge magic as a continuous process, a journey where the short-term outcomes such as the monetary gains I received as a result of raising my wealth entity are simply road signs that remind me that I am travelling in the right direction. Furthermore, I had some technical difficulties with my entities such as not making it explicitly clear what I wished them to do after they had manifested some results for me. After considering these issues, I rectified my mistake with my wealth and PhD entities by calling upon them and asserting that I would like them to sustain their efforts. Additionally, I emphasised that the processes of magic should have a self-transformational role to play and reaffirmed my own commitment to generosity as a result of the wealth work and the open and honest sharing of all my knowledge as a result of the PhD/life-long learning work. The road signs have once more become apparent.

Too Much Magic

… Not enough time in the day to write about it!