And what else have I been doing besides finishing Daemonic Dreams?

Well, to be honest, I’ve been having mixed feelings about this blog. To start with, I haven’t been treating it very well. I may not have posted here in over a month, but I have been seen other places, notably FaceBook, Tumblr, and Instagram. I don’t think I would ever give up having a blog for one of those places entirely—I simply like owning my own content too much—but I love their convenience compared to that of self-hosted WordPress. They make cross-posting and sharing to other forums easy and intuitive while WP does not. I’ve figured it out an everything, but I hate how much work it is, still, after all this time. It feels so damn clunky and a waste of effort if I am just spitting out a few paragraphs about my daily Domagick work.

That’s all my entries have been for months now, and it is boring the crap out of me. On the other hand, whenever I think about writing about something far more in-depth, I end up staring down at my hands on the keyboard instead, my heart hammering in my ears, hardly able to type a word at all. I am an author, mainly of occult non-fiction. When I tackle the Domagick challenge, I have to post about it in a compelling way if I want to maintain and draw more readers. People come here to read about my writing and my spiritual and magickal journey. I have to put something of myself in my entries to do that.

Yet uneasiness keeps me from doing so. I maintain an uneasy relationship with the internet. Despite the fact this is an open blog, I’m not comfortable sharing most of the details of my life. I’ve struggled for months now with how to write about my spirituality and give the writing meaning without that context. If I don’t find “laundry list entries” for the Domagick challenge interesting (i.e. “meditated for fifteen minutes, talked to Asmodeus, madean  offering), how can my readers possibly do so?

I tried to handle the problem differently in February, when I focused on love and kindness while working with the daemon Asafoetida. During that time, whenever I felt anxiety about sharing too much of my private life on my blog, I tried to extend loving kindness to the people I preferred not to read it. If I couldn’t, I tried to send loving kindness toward myself instead. While I found the process calming at the time, I do not find it helped my anxiety about my blog in the long-term—maybe because I didn’t disclose my full motivation up front. I simply said I wanted to feel better about myself, not why.

This Domagick challenge I am attacking the same problem again, from a different angle, and this is explicitly why. Some people like to be coy about why they blog, but I see no point. I am a writer, and writing helps give me joy and put money in my family’s bank account. I need to conquer my anxiety over this blog for my happiness and my financial welfare. I doubt that I will ever be a superstar, everyday-without-fail blogger, but I want to have a regular routine that I don’t dread. What I have right now is just bullshit.

So.

Today is the first of Belphegore’s rites. I had always planned on working with him during this challenge because he is the feature of my next non-fiction book, but had been vague exactly how. I am tired of letting fate shape me. As a magician, I know that I can shape myself like the iron in the forge. Therefore, each day this month I will invoke Belphegore in his role as Master of Weaponry and Armor and draw down his energy in an effort to strengthen myself,  not only emotionally but as a writer. My offering to him will be a selection of writings that I will offer to the flames at the end of his rites. During that time, I will share something in his honor each day. More than likely it will be a photograph with a brief selection of writing. That means I will more than likely be posting it on FB, Tumblr, and Instagram daily and summing up the posts here once a week.