DKMU Pennsylvania Meet-Up 2016

[Roni Jean]

Alright Folks here is my written account of the Pennsylvania DKMU Meet:
Friday 10-21-16
The Pennsylvania meetup was at a Koa campground. Five of us showed: myself (Roni Jean), Alysyrose, Vincent, Jay Oni, and Ailura Ringtail - with one additional individual (Jay's brother). Vincent and Alysy got a cabin since it was raining pretty regularly. The cabin was down the last road around the lake in a mildly secluded section of the campground (especially with the few sites prior to the cabin empty).
Near where the road curved round to head toward the cabins there was a space under development, with equipment sitting in it, and a mound of dirt central, it overlooked a drop-off, and was devoid of trees. It made a nice space, nearby but out of the way, and open to the sky. I took the opportunity to create a soft spot to assist in locating the site of our activities remotely for folks who were interested (namely miss Philly Abe), to allow easier access out for our efforts, and access in for anything that decided to assist. I essentially created a small nexus with open ports, and verified it's placement through Philly successfully finding it.
A short while after, when we were congregated in the cabin, I noted some activity at the nexus - it seemed some things had found their way through. The next activity I noticed was during some generalized conversation about how to focus the ritual - the Godforms had begun circling in. We would need to incorporate all of them since they were present and interested. This seemed like a good sign that we were in the right place at the right time (along with some of my own touchpoints of very familiar seeming moments).
Saturday 10-22-16
Ailura, Vincent, Alysy, and I spent some time in the cabin while the others ran out for a bit Saturday morning. We took the time to talk some more about what we wanted to focus on with the ritual. We wanted to encourage more meet-ups like this, and Ailura suggested that we try to take out the obstacles that keep people from coming. This sort of clarified what we were after. I started to build my tool kit for the ritual, including the preparation of slips of note card with roughly mirrored LS sigils. These were set to facilitate bringing us together, drawn up with the left end of the S from two LS sigils meeting one another. I set these aside to place further intent upon later. I also got five spiraled bone beads and three spherical carnelian around. I charged the carnelian as anchoring points to hold things "here," I charged the bone beads to filter threads, primarily ones related to gatherings and the obstacles that occur.
Additional items collected included: a twig from an important tree at my home (which traveled to caldera fest and back with me in the spring); three hornet carcasses from my window sill (in a bag with shards of citrine, for which I bled to remove from their cluster at eh end of last winter - in order to take them to retreat with the druids); a leaf from the autumn olive bushes that abound on my property (a plant which is anti-bacterial, anti-viral, and anti-microbial, but is often ignored because it is invasive and prolific - I used it for all of these properties, but geared toward maintaining the health of people's intent to work together); a chunk of a branch from the back woods of my property (the back 2/3 of my land is a set up as a sanctuary for things in need from other places, the back section of woods is the heart of where the wilder, or scarier, things congregate).
Final Preparations
Once we were all gathered at the cabin again, Vincent suggested we go to the aquarium in Pittsburgh, and on our way we went. We took two cars, and got there in two groups. I was with Jay and his brother, and we wandered through a bit more of the zoo portion of the park on the way in than I think the other three did. I found the Halloween decorations terribly appropriate, especially early on where we walked under a large bridge they had covered with webbing and giant spiders. Overall, it was good but kind of heartbreaking to see the animals, a very keen reminder of what this world has a tendency to do. Vincent was spot on with his post " We just got to the animal penitentiary, we're making our way to the fish prison." In retrospect, it likely aided in helping me focus appropriately on what to try to counter during our ritual.
It is worth noting that I use sound for magickal purposes on a regular basis: to communicate, to hold space, and often to alter it in some way. I tend to soften the boundaries of the world and bring it closer to the in-betweens. Primarily this is because the mundane hurts when it gets too thick, so I shift the space around me to be a bit more conducive to my existence. I employed this throughout our visit, starting by humming to most of the animals we stopped at. The elephants reacted the most noticeably in my opinion, but apparently it drew attention otherwise - to the extent that Jay commented later about the responsiveness of the animals.
As we went along I decided some tagging was in order(as per usual, I was carrying note cards and markers for just such things). I started with some general tags leading up to the aquarium. Once we got into the aquarium I found myself far more focused, and my intention became increasingly specific. I was pleasantly surprised to find a lovely acoustic nature to the space. I specifically continued the humming to increase the potency of the tagging I was doing, and I intentionally filtered the tags to beneficial ends which also seemed appropriate to the water environments presented and their inhabitants. I placed four tags like this within the aquarium, and one outside the building along the path back into the zoo proper. The tags were the LS on one side (of course) and the filter on the other.
They were as follows:
-Facilitate Flow
-Illuminate Options
-Erode Obstacles
-Inspire Solutions
-Resist Entropy
I finished the trip with a couple more generalized tags, the LS and my own, on leaves and such.
Next we went to eat before heading back to the campground. I got out the slips of note card I had prepared at the cabin earlier to start filtering their intention. Turns out I had six prepared with the mirrored sigils. Five of them mirrored the five tags from the aquarium, by writing the above intentions again on the back of these new sigils. The sixth carried them all. I had another slip that I had been drawing on since my arrival the night before, that was its own free form capturing of the event in a mixed sigil format. Having prepared these, and with our meals consumed, we headed back. We put together the rest of the ritual back at the cabin.
Once there we settled in to hang out, have some drinks, and finalize the rest of the ritual plan. On the eighth slip of note card Ailura and I decided to draw a brick wall. I wanted to add a component of breaking through to this world from Elsewhere, of bringing in a bit of ourselves from outside this paradigm, of crossing the barrier/piercing the veil, etc. The idea was to pierce the card, and drop the hornets and citrine shards into the fire through the hole in the brick wall. This was going to happen via a porcupine quill I had stuck in my hair.
The hornets were significant in a couple of ways. Not only are they winged things and thus magickal in my mind, I have also developed a number of minute servitor-like creatures that I implement for various tasks, and some of those are bees/hornets. The original form are silver mechanical spiders with a glowing purple facet on their backs. At one point I needed an aerial form, and from that need they morphed into silver flying hornet-like creatures. Having put the tiny corpses in with the blood exposed citrine stones from earlier in the year definitely swayed them toward the servitor version for this working. So these little creatures (which lived here, are now dead, had been infused with blood magick and essence from here, and were now attuned to - in similar form, even - to servitors that work mostly Elsewhere) were the perfect choice to have cross the barrier between worlds.
As a group we gathered herbs and such to put in the fire, Jay and Ailura brought a number of things that we utilized for that. These things purified, amplified, and connected our work to the world. I used the bits from my property in this way as well. Meanwhile, Alyse offered an amethyst cluster for us to use, so I had it hold and emit a steady mix of our collective intent, and amplify the overall process. As everything was gathered, Jay started the fire and got it going well enough to have a bed of coals to pull from for incense. Our intention was to work the ritual upon ourselves, to facilitate within our own lives, and to send it Out as far as it would reach to do the same on large scale among those who utilize the LS web.
Ritual
The guys gathered around the fire, adding to the ritual as they saw fit, while Ailura and I worked our magick. Alysy chanted, courting the Godforms and opening the fire to their presence. Jay supported the structure we were building and encouraged amplification of it's reach.
The incense, herbs, leaf, and tobacco went onto the coals and fire to soften the space and set the stage. Ailura had prepped the small black plastic spiders she'd brought by infusing the LS resonance - marking the lot of them with the sigil written in the air above them as she did so. She put them in a bowl, covering them with red glitter. We added the slips of card with our sigils and intent to the bowl where they were shaken with the rest and set to be disbursed. We took the eight beads I had prepped (five spiraling bone and three carnelian)and buried them out in eight directions, like spokes, from the fire. This was the base of our structure. Eight spokes, for eight godforms, a khaos star, for the base to our web upon which the spiders would weave connections. Connections to clear obstacles from our way, as well as create an easement of sorts for facilitating future gatherings and cooperative workings. This would be the work of the spiders, and thus they were liberally spread across the spokes radiating out around the fire. Spiders and red glitter and sigils would remain in the space long after the ritual, to be found as they may.
Ailura had brought a chime, which she rang with the pen I'd used to draw the sigils, as she spoke to the DKMU Godforms. We circled the fire, Ailura calling to each of the Godforms, and I acted as a conduit for their entry into the ritual. I facilitated by allowing each of them to flow through me into the space we had created. The process was interesting, and rather visceral. I was pleased that several of them seemed to set themselves up as sentries at the anchor points (the buried carnelian), and I felt the structure respond by digging into this plane a bit more heartily. The other Godforms seemed to move freely through the fire and the structure. This set things moving more distinctly, triggering the brightly glittering spiders into spinning the web of intent upon the structural spokes we'd set in place.
As we moved back to the fire and I made offerings of a number of the other burnable items (twig, branch, etc). I ran connections out from our forming web, priming the way for the expansion of the structure to occur. Here I set some of my tiny spidery servitors to work as well, interconnecting layers and reinforcing the weaving. All the while keeping a steady flow of intent infusing the ritual space and thus everything occurring therein. At this point I burned the cards I had, Ailura reminding me that many were disbursed among the spokes and spiders, and was left with just our representation of the veil, the brick wall card. Having lost the porcupine quill from my hair, I pulled out the the knife I was carrying and used that instead. Amid weaving facilitation and swirling Godforms, I used my knife to carve a hole in the veil. Holding it above the flames, I pulled out the tiny bag of citrine and hornets. In the dark and Khaos I managed to hold onto one of each, and successfully passed the hornet (an incarnation of melded planes) and one of the citrine stones (carrying ties to my own links as a Threadworker and Planeswalker) through the veil and into the fire to be consumed and infused into the working as a whole, throwing the brick wall into the flames after to temporally seal the occurrence. Our set goals accomplished, we sat round the fire, enjoying drinks and good company. Ailura and I sharing my bourbon with the fire in thanks.
This was our ritual, to change and facilitate within our own lives, reflected and amplified out as our gift to you, DKMU.
Eroding obstacles/thinning and breaking through the veil/breaking down the roadblocks to our own manifestation into manageable fragments.
Facilitating flow/letting Elsewhere flow through/letting our goals present fluidly throughout the many aspects of our lives to properly gain and maintain momentum.
Inspire solutions/working the magick that the moment demands/working in real time with confidence in our own abilities and instincts.
Illuminate options/brightly woven connections show us the myriad potentials which are ever present/brightly shining moments are indicative of the solutions we seek.
Resist entropy/we are stronger when we work together/we are more resilient than we seem.