My brain hasn’t quit churning since the day Andrieh Vitimus announced his domagick challenge. I knew right away that I wanted to take part, but exactly how I would transform myself in March remained elusive. What spirits would I speak to in those thirty days? What realm of my life should I concentrate on, knowing I’d share my work here, on the internet?
Unfortunately, no one could answer those questions for me, though I certainly pestered friends and family for advice. Fates bless them, they suffered me patiently enough. So did Seere, the daemon I worked with this week, when I sought her help to see the matter more clearly. I admit that the cards I turned over this week didn’t seem to make much sense at first, but I’ve frequently had trouble doing divination for myself in the past. It’s not that cards don’t read true, but that I can’t understand what they mean because I am too close to the situation at hand.
I kept asking Seere, “Do you mean I should be doing this? Or that?” I was asking for specifics, to be spoon-fed… and daemons don’t work that way, at least not in my experience.
First off, there’s the language barrier. When we ask spirits concretely worded questions, we general get Tarot card type answers in reply: images, symbols, a few keywords. Except in books, I haven’t heard of too many psychics who receive complete sentences when communicating with spirits, daemonic or otherwise. Maybe our brains are too small to catch more than a glimpse of what spirits are trying to show us, or perhaps they just don’t speak human.
More importantly, spirits have their own drives and motives. Sometimes it behooves them to be a tad reticent when doling out information. My patron is notorious for wanting me to come to conclusions on my own, and I’m beginning to suspect he’s gone to every other spirit in the universe and said, “Don’t tell that one jack shit. Make him figure it all out on his own. It’s the only way he learns.”
My favorite name for him at this point is King of the Red Herrings. Last month, during one of those rare moments of truly crystal clear communication, he suggested I could do something—if I wanted. Of course, I immediately did what I was told, thinking it was in my best interest, without even stopping to consider what my best interest actually was. Only afterward did I begin to regret the action and brood about it, wondering why he’d made me do such a thing.
Again, daemons don’t work like that. If a daemon is telling you to do anything against your own will, it isn’t a daemon talking. If anything, it’s most likely an internal need to self-sabotage. And, oh, how I love to sabotage myself! I follow paths of action on a regular basis that I know damn well aren’t good for me, usually in the hopes of receiving outside approval. I’m rarely satisfied when that approval comes, if it ever does. By then my martyrdom tastes bittersweet. I know I only have myself to blame, but I often end up subliminally resenting whoever I put myself in that position for in the first place. I’m only human, and as the video I posted above points out, humans make very little sense sometimes.
With Seere’s help, this time my hindsight was truly 20/20. I finally understood the lesson my patron had specifically set up for me and how easily I’d taken the bait. I’ve created a heap of extra work for myself by doing so too. I haven’t wrecked anything irreparable, but I definitely have to go back to square one without collecting my $200 dollars.
Strangely enough, as soon as I realized this, the confusion I’d felt concerning the #domagick challenge cleared up. I saw a pattern in the spirits I’d been considering that I missed before. I began to intuit how I could work with them to transform my writing, the area I’d wanted to work on most. I can’t say I know the entire shape of my March work yet, but that’s what the rest of February is for, isn’t it?
Hail Seere, she who helped me see clearly! And hail my patron, who keeps me on my toes! May I continue to learn from them both.
-Will