#summer solstice 2023 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

thegodthief · 1 year ago

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"Right. Sola Busca. Here it is. Now what?"

I had summoned Adiutor with closed eyes so that I could see her clearly. She presented herself in the small doll body that was made for her. She sat on the table overlooking the tray where the tarot deck box was resting closed.

"Now, you open it up, and start using it, Master."

Here we go in circles again. Adiutor insists that I have the capacity to use the Sola Busca beyond tarocchi and divination. But after having read "The Game of Saturn" by Peter Mark Adams, I don't feel capable of being anything other than giving it away.

"These images were made for initiates to understand and the rest of us ignoramuses to gawk at. Why do I feel like I have something stolen from a museum?"

"Because you were taught that if it's something worthwhile, you're not worthy of having it, Master. A sentiment that ill suits you, Master."

I glanced from the box to her. I know she's throwing barbs to keep me from trying to back out, but bloody hell, does she throw them so well!

She reminds me of how I came to have the deck in the first place, even though its arrival preceded hers by several years. She reminds me that this was something that other minds were intent on placing in my hands, even though it was known that I wouldn't be able to take advantage of it immediately, much less soon, for whatever values "soon" would take. She reminds me of others that took hold of the deck when it first appeared and how well they had proceeded to work with it in their practices, even though they were as much of a non-initiate in the deck's mysteries as I.

When I retorted that wizardry is their full time job and I am but a wanderer still seeking asylum, she asked me about the migration patterns of sparrows, and for a hot second, I was ready to throw her to the first flame I could find or create.

If I hadn't publicly committed to making some observance of the summer solstice this year (2023) using the Sola Busca, I would have put everything back in the drawer and avoided the matter for another six months. But I had done just that, and here I am on the night before the solstice point trying to figure out what to do next.

The premise of "The Game of Saturn" is that the deck is really a grimoire in card form. That the images and names are made in a way that details and informs potentially malefic rituals for the purpose of gaining and keeping power in the hands of certain elite families. The book makes a strong case that I will leave to far more learned individuals than I to confirm or deny.

What is relevant is that the deck precedes "modern western occultism" by a few centuries at least. It is not the Rider-Waite-Smith. It is not expounded upon by Etteilla. It is its own thing, and right now, it is being as obtuse as the cardstock it is printed on, just as it has been from the start.

I could go on about how I have made no ingress into the understanding of the images on the cards or how Adams's book's well written chapters only made me feel less adequate to do anything more than look at pretty pictures. But then I would just be doing what I had been doing for the past several years: Stalling by claiming my ignorance was greater than my curiosity.

"Fine. Adiutor, since you are so bloody sure that I can do something with this deck tonight, how about you take the lead and walk me through something to do."

She hopped off the table to the tray and lifted the box lid. Even though the deck is larger than her, she started lifting cards out of the black well with ease. "Well, it is known that some of the cards are likely references to certain astrological events, such as the solstices, yes? Let's start with the card that references [the summer solstice]. It's not like you have been tasked to create a ritual that includes other people. You haven't been tasked to create a ritual at all. You've only been tasked to use the Sola Busca in something that involves the summer solstice. Ah. Here it is."

She pulls the card free from the deck and props it against the box. "This card is supposed to be the summer solstice. Since you have such an active imagination (thank you), why not make this card into a key? Why not attune this physical card in the deck with the moment of the solstice and see what comes through? It's not like you're going to pull something down or raise something up. Think of it as taking an observational reading of a moment at the intersection of space and time. Use the card as a sensor and see how the solstice feels through it."

Sounds simple enough. What's the catch? She laughed and said the catch is that I run the risk of finding out something about myself that I never wanted to face.

I still reserve the right to throw her to the flames.

But her idea is something, and it would be a helluva lot more than I had done with the deck at all, and it does sound like a reasonable first step, and taking that idea with the other cards in the deck means finding interpretations and uses that would be uniquely mine instead of feeling like I'm rummaging through someone else's workbooks again.

Okay. I'll do it. And after dismissing her and returning to full awareness, I did just that. I sifted through the deck until I found the card that Adams claimed represented the summer solstice. And later on in that night, I used that card as a focus to engage the matter of the summer solstice.

The feedback I received by doing this non-ritual was a vision that I was approaching a door in the middle of a very long hall. If I did nothing, if I just went about my day and go to work and come back home and do the things I usually do, that I would never even have known there was a door in the first place much less consider seeing what's on the other side of it.

I realized the hall was the passage of time, and that the door was an opportunity presented by the summer solstice. In the vision, I stopped at the door and turned to face it. I realized that Adiutor was accompanying me in the vision, riding my shoulder in her diminutive doll form. In my left hand, I held the card from the Sola Busca. I knew that if I used the card as a pass to open the door, in my mind it would be irrevocably marked by whatever could be behind it.

I held the card to the door. It unlocked and swung away from me as it opened.

Inside was a passageway hewn into granite. I was able to see into it just enough to note that it angled slightly down. The only light available was from the ambient light behind me. I looked at Adiutor sitting quietly on my shoulder.

"Since this is a vision, I could just, like, make light. Though that actually sounds too easy."

She shrugged. "And then you would only see what you expect to see. Or you could trust that the vision will reveal what you need to see. But, as it is, I serve you, Master, so you're going to have to make the decisions here."

I held my retort and entered the passageway. The tarot card glowed and became a substantial light source that I was able to see my immediate surroundings with. The door behind me remained open but it was only a few steps into the passageway that I lost sight of the hall. I continued down the unremarkable tunnel for a time that was unbearably long while also being surprisingly short.

The tunnel descended into a small cavern. The light from the card was enough for me to see there were carvings on the roof of the cavern, but not enough for me to see what those carvings were. The walls and the floor of the cavern were also engraved with markings and shapes, but less clearly so. The circular cavern looked like it had been roughly circular in shape naturally, but then worked by hand to be truly round. In the middle of the cavern was a stone worked into the shape of a cube.

If I tilted my head one way, the cube was black. If I tilted my head the other way, the cube was white. Was it granite or marble? In this place that likely never existed, did it matter at the moment?

"Why am I underground for the summer solstice?"

"Why would you expect otherwise, Master?"

Adiutor's question stumped me. Why would I? What was I expecting?

"Okay. Now what?"

"What feels right for you to do next, Master?"

If this was a high-ritual, there would be words to say, I suppose. Maybe offerings at the entrance or libations to pour on the stone. But this wasn't a ritual, and I felt very self-conscious of being here. Well, since I'm here, might as well make the most of it.

In Adams's book, the summer solstice represented the gate through which souls would enter our world to be incarnated. Those initiated into the mysteries of the elite would know how to use that gate to guide their next incarnation or the incarnation of their peers.

I'm not initiated into those mysteries. What would this gate mean to me, then? As I contemplated what I would want from that beyond, I felt words begin to coagulate on my tongue.

I laid the glowing card on the stone, face up. I held my left hand over it. "Let the Gate-On-High be opened. Let that which is of me above be granted passage to unite with that which is of me now. Let the way be made clear, that I may be more whole than I was before."

The words didn't make sense as I spoke them, and yet they made perfect sense as I heard them. Adiutor offered no comment in the accepting silence. Even though I knew I was in full vision, I still felt like a stupid shit when nothing immediately happened.

And then the card stopped glowing.

Just as I adjusted to the pitch-black darkness, which is to say, just as I realized that I wasn't able to see a single damn thing, a thin beam of light burst into being between the card and the peak of the cavern's roof. I flinched and held up my arms as if to shield my face from the blinding light. The light detached itself from the peak of the cavern and bent into a whipping spiral that wrapped itself around my left arm from wrist to shoulder.

And I remembered.

I remembered by whose machinations the Sola Busca came into my possession in the first place.

I remembered what other items came into my possession by prompting of the same entity before and after the deck's arrival.

I remembered what came from those items to mark my spirit body with entitlements, reminders, and obligations.

And I watched as the sinuous light from the card fused itself with those markings on my left arm, energizing them and bringing them to the surface of my memory and observation.

The light detached from the card as the glowing markings on my arm pulled in every mote until the markings were the sole source of light in the cavern. But by that light, some of the cavern marking became clear.

I recognized concentric rings on the ceiling, with the now recognizable zodiac being only one series occupying them. I wanted to study the others, but my left arm was suddenly an unbearable weight that pulled me down to my knees. Adiutor held on as I staggered into a new position.

"Did... did you know this was going to happen, Adiutor?"

"I knew there would be a connection, Master, to what you had forgotten. But I did not know it would happen in this way."

I wanted to say something else to her, but the weight of my arm pulled on more than my body. Something was pulling on my mind as well. As I had begun this not-ritual seated at a table, I was concerned that if my body passed out, I was going to hit something on the way down.

I leaned forward and found my movement stopped by the cube. I leaned against it instead as I struggled to stay present in the vision. Adiutor jumped from my shoulder to the smooth rock.

"Master? Do you trust yourself?"

"... What?"

"Do you trust yourself? Do you trust yourself to take care of the things that you do not need to be always mentally present for?"

"... Why?"

"Because you're going to be in here for a while, but there are physical things you need to do as well. The world will not stop for a magician no matter how involved they may be in what they are doing. Split your awareness, and let the mundane part of you take care of the mundane. When you need to find yourself, you will. You have a regular habit of that anyway."

"And what are you going to be doing?"

"Keeping watch here."

Keeping my paycheck on the regular would be a good idea. "Fine. it's been a while, so I'm rusty, but I'll try."

I slumped against the cube, utterly bound and no longer able to hold myself up.

I stand at the entrance to the tunnel, watching a dimming light settle into the left arm of the prone figure by the cube. I want to help them, but that is not my task.

A little figure sits on the edge of the cube above them. They look at me and tell me to go. They say that when it is time to unite with myself, they will come get me and guide me back here.

I accept my task and leave.

I open my eyes at the table, unusually exhausted and bone-tired. My left arm feels like something is wrapped around it. I half-remember the cavern and what happened in it, but it feels like someone else's memory. I take care of myself and go to bed.

The next day is the summer solstice itself. Because of how the planet is turned, my actual solstice moment happens during the day. At work, I mark it by running my right hand over my exposed left arm and wondering (1) why I don't feel anything on it and (2) why was I expecting to feel something there in the first place.

There are many reminders that when I get home and get settled, there is something that I have to reconnect with, that there is some job still left incomplete. But the mundane world is overwhelming with its mundaneness and I think nothing of it until after sunset.

From the moment I got home, I kept moving the Sola Busca tarot box off the table to the side because it was in the way of everything else, but then moving the box back to the table because there was something I needed to do with it. But I couldn't remember. Just as I couldn't remember why my left arm kept itching so much as if I had been tattooed from shoulder to wrist.

And then I opened the box and saw what card was laying face up.

And I remembered.

"Good. It's time, Master. Let me take you back to the cavern." Adiutor stood on the desk just off to the side of the box. I placed myself into position, closed my eyes, and followed her lead.

"Aww, fuck me." I opened my eyes to find myself on the floor of the cavern. The markings on the roof were indistinct and unintelligible again. My left arm had ceased glowing, but the recovered markings were now clearly visible and remained in place as I tested them. "Not fair that I have a headache in this place."

Adiutor leaned over the edge from her perch. She was backlit with a soft light that was either on the surface of the cube or just on the other side of it.

"Hello, Master. I am happy to report that you did not defile this place by snoring."

What I wanted to say was that one of these days, I'm going to find out what part of her doll body's stuffing is responsible for being such an intolerable snotty upstart and I'm going to rip it out. I kept silent instead.

I forced myself to stand, using the cube to steady myself as I ascended. The tarot card still on the cube's surface was indeed the source of the soft light filling the cavern. Above me, the roof remained as I had initially encountered it. Around me, nothing had changed.

Within me, something had changed. It was more than just the memories that had been unlocked, but I lacked the context and experience to describe or understand what had happened. What was the potential to become was now a mark recording history, but I still lacked the ability to read it.

But what I did have was an understanding that it was time to leave the cavern, for now. Wordlessly, I held a hand out to Adiutor. She jumped into my palm and lightly scrambled up my right arm to cross behind my neck and perch on my left shoulder. I picked up the tarot card and used it as a light before me to find and exit the tunnel.

I was expecting a walk up the tunnel to the hall that represented the regular world. Instead, the moment my feet left the cavern, I was back in my room. My eyes were still closed, though. As such, I could see Adiutor sitting on the table next to the box.

"Well, then, Master. That was a pleasant outing we had, to be sure! And to think you thought this deck had nothing for you."

"Okay, you little shit, I charge you to answer my questions without lie nor guile, to withhold nothing and to offer everything you know to the best of your ability!" She held her hands to her chest in obedience, though I was not completely sure the gesture wasn't meant to mock me. "I have not forgotten the lineage between you and [the entity that made the Sola Busca a part of my life]. What is your part in this?!"

She lowered her hands. "To serve you, Master. Not to bind you. Not to tempt you. Not to twist you into becoming something you are not and that you will never be capable of being. Not to promise you things that cannot be or to help you break yourself by trying that yourself. My part in your involvement with the Sola Busca is what you want my part to be. You asked me to help you find a way to work with the deck, and I did. Nothing more, Master."

Nothing more, indeed. My left arm itched. I look at it with spirit-sight and see the markings I had forgotten about now engraved in my skin. I had agreed to them, then. Sorta. It's complicated.

"Very well, then. What's next?"

"What do you want to do next, Master?"

"I think I want to take some time to let this... soak in... more. I have to reconcile what I have remembered with what I am now. And with [the cistern denizens] increasingly more active, I can't drop them to deal with this, or vice versa. I have to figure out how I'm going to be these two contradictory beings. Three, once [another entity] finds about about this and decides to light a fire about it. Four, once [mentor] weighs in."

I prop my elbows on the table and rest my face on my hands. "Why the fuck does magic have to be so goddamn complicated!"

She laughed, bright and spry and bitter and harsh. "HUMANS ARE COMPLICATED! You should really do more self-examination sometime, Master. You aren't exactly a simple sample of your species."

I picked up the tarot card, forgetting that I was still in vision at first. The card glowed faintly in my hand. "Is the door closed and barred, then? We're on the other side of the solstice, after all."

"We're on the other side of the summer solstice, this year, Master. But we never left this side of the Gate. May I suggest saving further investigation into this matter until after you have rested up from this endeavor, Master?"

I put the card in the box with the others. "That's a good idea. I'll set myself on fire tomorrow, then." She gave no response, physical or otherwise, to the poorly cut bait.

I closed the box in the vision and in doing so, left the vision. All items were put away and the week went on as time does.

So now, it is almost a week later and I am finishing up the public rendition of what happened the night prior and after the moment of the 2023 Summer Solstice.

Of the still unfolding consequences, what I am willing to say is that freedom comes with restraints and not all that is dead stays buried. The hardest part of the multilayered reconciliation is unlearning the myths I was taught, accepting the myths I am living, and finding how I can be all these things simultaneously.

Adiutor's "lineage" is one that I have endured many a beating as a child and young adult to prevent, and yet that mistreatment directly led me to magic as a way to save myself. Hexennacht shattered the cistern lid and I'm still learning how to deal with something I apparently always have been but never learned how to be. And in all of this, I still have the regular business of work and taxes and living to deal with and all the hell that is other people.

There is much that I could muse upon, but this post is already long enough as it is.

Make of that, what you may.

#Solstice Squad 2023 #Summer Solstice 2023 #LONG POST #OMG so very long post #plurima verba in volumine sunt #Get a glass of water before you start reading okay.

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