Past experiences in my life I can't easily explain away
How many times in your life have strange and otherworldly events happened that you simply can't explain within the definition of the physical world? Events that seem to defy the laws of physics and seem to be totally illogical to the reality you think you know, but happened nonetheless. It is easy to ignore those moments in time, so we go straight past them, we hold no credence to them until eventually, they fade into the ether of faint memory, that can sometimes re-emerge in a dream or sometimes as a flash of waking consciousness that we again quickly forget, it is easy to do.
I bet everyone has a couple of events that stay with them through life that are inexplicable, and unforgettable. Perhaps it was in the form of lights in the sky, or a vision that seemed to tell you the future. Maybe it was something that went bump in the night, an apparition or a coincidence that was just too odd to actually be a mere coincidence. Whatever it was, there is no doubt that those moments happen more times than I think most people realise, rationalize or care to even acknowledge as they bound through life at a hundred miles an hour. But more often than not those times are important and defining. This is what I want to explore.
While I have been told about occurrences of odd moments my very younger ones have been a part of my life. One of my earliest memories is this; my family had A birdbath in the garden made out of concrete that my grandfather made by using a metal dustbin lid as a mould. In the garden, my grandfather also had a wonderful rose garden among many other flowers and food patches such as rhubarb, spring bean and tomatoes, mint and herbs like basil, rosemary and sage. The birdbath obviously served me and my cousin as a good item to play with water, and ice (in winter), as I am sure it would any children who have access to such A thing. But... it was more than just A toy to abuse to us both. We would use the birdbath as, what I can only describe as an altar to perform rituals in an effort to create weather events above us. We would collect petals and various other botanic ingredients from the garden, such as the aforementioned roses and lilies, dahlias and hibiscus. we also picked herbs such as sage, remarry and thyme, lavender and the like. With the various ingredients we collected, which we bathed into the water on the birdbath/altar, we (just myself when my cousin wasn't visiting) would chant, ask, pray, beg, WILL the sky above us show us a change in the weather. We must only have been about 9 or 10 years old at the time, and this wasn't what I would call children playing. We would stare intently upwards and persist until we got the effect we were asking for. If it was cloudy we would ask for the sun, if it was sunny we would ask for the clouds and thunderstorms, if it was hot we would ask for cold, and if it was hot we would ask for cooler climates. You get the idea, we would ask and pray and chant and WILL for dramatic changes all while thoroughly believing in what we were doing. I still have no clue where we got the idea or knowledge to perform such rituals and at such an early age. But I remember vividly the effects of what we were doing. It worked, it actually worked. The more dramatic the result the harder and more often we would perform the act of our rituals. Rain, thunder, snow, heat, you name it, and it happened, time and time again until I moved house and left the birdbath and garden ingredients to a different family when I was around 12 years old.
This is an event that has always stuck with me, seared into my memory. Truly unforgettable, but also unexplainable, was it even really real? So far into my journey, I have only read one book of the esoteric kind so far, The Essential Golden Dawn: An Introduction to High Magic, which I reviewed in my last post. Within its pages is A very brief description of the various grades, initiation ceremonies and rituals with which I see that some of the key ingredients required are all there, and were there back in that garden. Rose petals, water (fresh rain), herbs such as sage and even candles in the form of garden torches. And me, I was there with the other none material, none physical ingredients, like prayer, the chant, imagination, belief, and WILL. Even wands, via sticks used to stir the concoction of ingredients swimming within the birdbath, our altar. Literally everything, according to what I have read, that should be required to perform such rituals and magick was all there. Was it just all a strange coincidence? Or something that I only think happened? Or were me, and my cousin dialled into a mystical realm of universal collective consciousness?
What I know is only that of the effects of our rituals in the birdbath, and my solid memory of the process I have described here, and the purity of the intentions with which we performed. And what I now know after reading my first magickal book recently. I am finding A lot of what is described in the literature, is relatable based on experiences from my life that to this point are unexplainable.
