From: shava@hermes.oit.unc.edu (Shava Nerad Averett)
Newsgroups: alt.magick
Subject: Re: Ritual Magick Experiences
Date: 16 Apr 92 15:43:09 GMT
Organization: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

OK, so I am going to betray one of my own personal taboos, and talk about
work I've done on the net, and make claims.  In actuality, this is even
something I've sent out on the net about a year ago, but it was on a 
private list.  I beg your tolerance in my relating this fairly personal
experience since it is not an issue of any 'scientific' procedure with
controls, etc.  To some of you, this will not even qualify as ritual
magick.  Have I made enough disclaimers yet...?

About a 53 weeks ago, my mother-in-law was in the hospital dying of
liver and kidney failure, as the result of a bone marrow transplant.
My grandmother and two of the aunts and I went down to see her, what 
turned out to be the weekend before she died.  My husband's best 
friend from high school, Tim, was there.  He had been napping days,
and staying up all night with Joy.  Joy had a great deal of ammonia
in her system, and was not coherent for the most part.  Occasionally
you might think you were picking up single words or short phrases.
For instance, when she saw her mother, she said something that was
fairly reconizably 'mama.'

That night, I told Tim that I would stay up with Joy with him.  We sent
the aunts and gramama off to bed, and talked for a long time, by Joy's
bedside.  Then we went for a walk.

Tim's a pretty cool dude, and I explained to him that I might try to
do some stuff to help Joy -- which at a minimum might help me be 
more at peace with the whole process.  I asked him if he would kind of
look out for me if I sort of tranced out at the bedside -- essentially
setting him up as (am I using the right term?) a tyler -- the man at
the door with the sword -- someone to watch my back while I do work in
a public place.

It was a very difficult situation to concentrate in.  There were machines
all over making noises, and every half hour the nurses came to stick 
needles, clean Joy up, and suchlike -- often having to change sheets.
Joy's kidneys had stopped working, overloaded from trying to take the
load off her liver, and her catheter bag was empty for hours.  Unless
her kidneys started working again, she would die very soon.  If her 
kidneys started working again, there was a chance she might make it 
through the crisis and her liver would begin functioning again.

I "installed" Tim, and memorized the room, in my mind, so that I could
close my eyes and see/feel where everything in the room was.  Using Tim
as an anchor or ground I built a field of light filling the room, like
moonlight, ambient.  I spent the first part of the work trying to 
establish a rapport with Joy.

Joy didn't particularly believe in magick, but she was an externally
tolerant agnostic.  Anybody should do whatever they liked, but I always
figured she thought all this stuff was a little silly, personally.  So
I am, from my point of view, hardly going to start work on her without
permission.  I could tell she was fighting the pain, but was she fighting
the approach of death?  This was a major concern of mine.  I had to have
that in some comfortable place before I could do anything.  (I am not
a person who believes that the continuance of life is an absolute
priority...)

So I spent a while chatting with her softly about what I was going to 
try to do, if she wanted, that I was going to try to "go into" her 
body and see if I could get her kidneys back working again, and make
her more comfortable, *if she wanted*.  I didn't know how or in what
manner I could expect a response, but eventually, I got a two word,
fairly coherent phrase:  "help me."

Now, I have this sense in my hands, particularly, where I can touch an
injured area and kind of "feel into" it, and tell where something is 
hurt.  This started as an untrained talent, and I've worked on it over
time.  With the various metaphors/vocabulary I've picked up over time,
I'd say that this is related strongly to my heart chakra, since there
is a source of a feeling of energy at about that place, which I can
send down my arms, and into something, to "learn" about it.  I don't
have a clue what this is, or why it works.  I can get it to work 
*sometimes* really effectively, sometimes muddily, rarely not at all.
A good deal of this seems to have something to do with my own 
level of concentration, fatigue factors, my real feeling for the 
person/object I'm examining, what have you.  When I was younger, if
I weren't feeling particularly fey, I couldn't get it to work at all.
Now that I'm older and more experienced, I've developed a more 
"professional" attitude. 

So I put myself in a light trance, in this visualized room I had 
created in parallel to the hospital room, checked the links to Tim,
and started "feeling" around Joy.  It was overwhelming.  She was in
pain, frightened, and very very sick and damaged inside.  And angry.
It was like sticking your hand into a tornado trying to grab out a 
particular leaf, to get anything coherent out of the welter of things
that were going on, in a way that would effect anything.

So the first thing I decided I had to work on was calming her down.
This took, probably, an hour or so -- time is not very subjectively
meaningful.  We were interrupted by the nurses a couple times though.
Finally I got her to a point where I could bear to open up more to
what she was doing.  We were controlling the pain and the fear/anger.
Maybe controlling isn't right?  Maybe we were, as in meditation, causing
them to wash through without a fight.

About this time I realized palpably that this was so much worse than
anyone I'd ever tried to help before, that I didn't know where to 
start.  I mean, I give great backrubs.  I can figure out what exact
muscle someone has pulled.  I can witch a wrenched joint into behaving
itself about not pinching a nerve.  (At least, these are apparent things
I've done before).  But this woman was dying.  Her whole body felt
sludgy, if that makes any sense.  Energy couldn't move.  Impurities
were breaking down systems.  Hard to explain, but it was very difficult
to reach thru her.

So, I decided what I had to do was to get her to be able to work herself.
She had so much energy that she had been putting into the fear/anger/pain.
Surely that could get refocussed?

Now, I'm going to be honest instead of profound here.  I decided to use
a visualization which was not quite directly applicable, but seemed
appropriate to the nature of things.  This is the idea of the "blue
fire" out of Diane Duane's _Door_ series.  It's fantasy fiction.

I tried to visualize my own heart chakra energy as the blue fire, and 
then imagined I was esablishing a circuit between me and Joy, running
through her heart chakra.  I wasn't trying to fix or change anything,
just running the energy through in the hope that she (somehow) could
notice and wake up her own source of energy there.  Eventually we 
ended up (after several interruptions from the damned nurses!) tickling
her awake there, and then started to draw the blue light, like spun
sugar, further and further into the reaches of her body.  At the same
time, I was trying to visualize the "moonlight" of the room reaching
in and illuminating what I had "seen" in her body, so that she would
be better able to sense this 'internal reality.'

This was very painstaking.  The end result was, about 5am, her kidneys
started to work again.  Her heartbeat was a little stronger, and was
a little more regular.  She was exhibiting less signs of pain, and
resting easier than she had been for days.  I withdrew from trance about
6am or so, and went to a sort of monitoring-mode, and comfort-presence
until about 7am when the aunts and grandmother returned.

One thing I did not do, though, is break the link between me a Joy,
completely.  The next 5 days I was consciously almost bilocal, keeping
Joy's presence with me, sending love and support down that link.  When
I could close my eyes, I could 'be' in that room of moonlight, sitting
again by her bedside.  This did not have the feeling of actually 
travelling to Baltimore -- I was just in that defined place in my 
visualization.  I'm agnostic about the idea that I was doing anything
but moving into that visualization-prepared mental space.  Thursday
evening, I lost the link.  Sunday at sunset, Joy died.  I like to think
that the process was more comfortable for her, but how could I ever
tell?

Now, I can't say that I did a damn thing.  I can't prove anything.
I'm not trying to say that I did anything, but I am describing a highly
subjective process.  If nothing else, it kept me more at peace with 
the whole process of Joy's death.

Now, I would like to ask a favor of the net readership.  Please do not
take this account apart into little pieces and tell about how the
whole experience in unscientific (I know) and explainable in other ways
(I know) and that I am probably harmfully deluded (it won't do anything
to change anything, but it would probably be rather offensive to me
personally).  Also, please don't write me to ask me to come see your
relative who is dying of cancer.  Even with Joy, who I loved, this was
very hard to do.  I doubt if I would ever do this for someone that I 
didn't love.

If anything, take this as a positive example of a specific work of 
magick, which illustrates why science isn't easily applicable for work
of such a personal and subjective manner.  Note that there was very
little formal ceremonialism in any of this, although there were elements
of banishing/protection/sanctification and other bits of formal ritual
work that were woven in.

Also please note that at no time did I say to myself "I am doing this
work so that Joy will live."  I was doing it so that she would be more
comfortable, and so that she could more easily apply her own Will to her
crisis.  I was looking for 'the appropriate outcome.'  To me this is
part of the effective application of Will.

Hope this helps.
-- 
Shava Nerad Averett				shava_averett@unc.edu
/*  all materials (c)1992, Shava Nerad Averett, and have nothing significant
    to do with the University of North Carolina, a mostly owned subsidiary 
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