Out of the Broomcloset
We are now moving into the season of Pride, while for so many of us, everything we hold dear is being withdrawn, dismantled, or denigrated. While reading this column, nothing here is meant to diminish the hurt and anguish that have been inflicted on so many, but it is written in the hope that some solace can be taken from this fact: we need the support of each other.
Each of us can offer an alternative, standing resolute. None of this was on my bingo card, nor was it on yours I’m sure, but we have some work cut out for us. Don’t we always? Someday we might get to use the porch glider, but this is not that day.
So, class, it’s now time to turn to page 2025. In our lesson, and the reading to be considered (which we are indulging in, while it is still permissible to be reading), which comes from one of those Dead White Man authors: “Things fall apart; the Centre cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, / The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned; / The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity!” (William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming.”) They who have ears, let them hear!
Who would have thought that this would be the year in which every dystopian exploration in literature would all manifest themselves in our reality? Works which were meant as a cautionary thought experiment are now being used as a template for a government policy. Oh, for returns of the times when Martians in H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds were the only sort of aliens that struck fear in the populace; such is not to be the case. You may recall that that menace was defeated by microbial infection. Our Secretary of Health and Human Services appears to think that the microbes should win; we are the enemy to be subjugated. I guess he nodded off in class at Harvard and mis-heard.
This being a column addressing subjects Magickal, it seems to be the right place to include a little experiment dealing with libanomancy, omens that can be interpreted from the patterns of the smoke from burning incense. Any sort of incense you favor may be utilized in this way.
Just like some people can bet on the outcome of anything, the observed behavior of almost any phenomenon has been used for divination. This set of meanings, assigned to the appearance and qualities of the smoke from burning frankincense when placed on a heat source, comes from various Babylonian texts. The same instructions may be used with anything that is combusting.
If it burns smokily, you will triumph.
If it burns a bit, stops, then burns smokily, you will experience defeat.
If the smoke column moves to the right, you will prevail.
If the smoke column goes to the left, you will not prevail.
If the smoke blows away from you, triumph; if it envelops you, defeat.
If the smoke spreads in all directions, everyone is evenly matched, no advantage or progress.
If the smoke stays in an single growing cloud, profit.
If the smoke breaks up into separate puffs with gaps, loss.
If the column of smoke forks at the top, disarray, overturned affairs, panic and fear.
If the smoke has a top like a thundercloud, hard times may be coming.
If the smoke forms a woven pattern, beware of illness.
If the smoke forms an uninterrupted thin column with a broad top, hardships.
If the smoke stops expanding and remains compact, hard times.
If the smoke is first compact, then spreads out, you will overcome in time; the same is true if it suddenly moves toward the East.
Hope is a slender twig, holding on against all adversity. There are certainly forces that would prefer to see all of our communities wiped out. (Where do they find time to act this way? Don’t they have real jobs to go to?)
Once again, we are all called to the barricades, before all vanish in a farrago of executive orders. Standing in our truth, we can beat this tide back.
