The Art of Spell-Casting, Part II
On Reflection, the second principle of the oscillation of magic
The mermaid swims toward the dark hulk of a ship rising out of the sea like a mountain. It is her first time on the surface. She has never come so close to the source of light before.
The light that has drawn her to the surface is a tubular beam, the shape of a porthole. Since she has never seen a window, she has no idea it comes from twelve candles on a candelabra dripping wax onto the remnants of a Prince’s uneaten feast.
From below, the one beam she swims toward had broken into many shafts that couldn’t quite reach the darkness where she’d been born, a place where she could have been happy if she hadn’t swum up just a little too far.
Underwater, she can’t see her reflection. Reflections don’t exist beneath the surface, which is why mermaids love mirrors so much. The intoxication of seeing themselves that first time is such a powerful enchantment, a spell becomes a curse. They become lost in their own reflections. This is not vanity, but isolation of the heart.
But this mermaid we are speaking of is not yet lost. She hesitates when she reaches the beam of light, stays just beyond its circumference as it shifts with the waves. She doesn’t realize it’s a steady beam, that fire in all forms is the unbroken sun.
Light is not a word yet for her, or a thing, it’s an unknown territory. She looks down and sees plankton swirling around the tip of her tail she never would have seen below in the pure dark where she was born.
Beneath the surface she can swim through light beams without being hurt, or hurting them in return. They simply pass through each other. What will happen here, above the surface, if she steps into the light? Will it swallow her up?
As the ship rocks, the light shifts. The candles on the prince’s table flicker and the beam channeled through the porthole blinks like a code. The fire is calling.
Come closer.
Slumped in the ruins of a feast he ate alone, the prince weeps. The mermaid hears him and longs for legs.
The prince hears the mermaid’s longing. He rises from the table, picks up the candelabra and walks toward the porthole and extends it out the window.
Hello? he calls back to the longing.
Twelve candles drip one drop of wax each. The ocean around the mermaid sizzles.
Desire. This is what drew her to the surface. Finally.
The prince hears the hissing water and a sob.
Hello?
He sticks his head out the porthole.
Does someone need help?
The mermaid bobs right beneath him. The light from his candelabra is scattered by the waves.
Who’s there? the prince shouts to his own reflection.
The light from his candle bounces off and changes direction. He misses the mermaid.
Many of you are probably familiar with the origin of my riff on this story, The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen. If you only know it from Disney I exhort you to go read the original. The Little Mermaid is far more than a Disney princess.
What would have happened if the Little Mermaid had swum into the light, scooped it up in her hands like water and called out to the prince when she heard him sob? Hans Christian Andersen wouldn’t have had a story to write.
This is a story of reflection, the second principle of the oscillation of magic. If I haven’t mentioned it yet, the nine principles of oscillation mirror the seven known properties of light. Known to science that is. Mystics know the numbers correspond exactly. We’ll get to why science has been unable to include the first and last in their understanding of light by the end of the series.
In the meantime, I’ll ask you this since you’ve read about the first principle, revelation, last week. What are we missing in our understanding of the world by leaving out revelation from our understanding of light? And who benefits from this omission?
According to science, reflection, not revelation, is the first property of light. The mechanics of reflection are this—light travels through one material and bounces off a different material. The reflected light continues to travel in a straight line, but in a different direction.
Waves bounce off a barrier, change direction, the trajectory stays the same.
In reflection, we think we are seeing an image of ourself, when we are really seeing so much more, for that image we see reflected goes on and on in the dark. It may look like light goes out when it hits a solid object, but it extends into the subatomic. It never ends. When you look at your reflection you are looking into infinite.
Heka makes the principle poetic and practical. Reflection is one’s vulnerability—one’s ability to be exposed.
This does not mean you have to confess every secret to everyone. Public confession is not always necessary. You are allowed to protect your soul. Exposure does not have to include all the dirty details. It can be subtle like a blackberry blossom opening itself on a windswept beach. That flower knows the wind is going to tear it off, but it blooms anyway.
Being exposed is an ability? I hear some of you comment. More like a liability, others chime in.
Yes, being exposed is an ability, an important one for poets who want their words to cast spells.
Why would a poet want to do that?
Because it’s a sacred duty. We are here to take risks. Get our hearts ripped out by a god.
In Part I of this series, I didn’t make the meaning of revelation, the first principle of the oscillation of magic, explicit. I went for the show and tell, banishing dishonesty, not through confession, but by getting my own personal rhythm, my innate structure shaped by my holy flesh and spirit, onto the page.
I didn’t plan that, by the way. I sat down to write out of obligation and expectation. I’ve been planning this series in my head for months and have had difficulty starting it, both excited and bored at the prospect of sharing what I’ve learned from Heka with other poets.
Why would I be bored, you ask?
I alluded to this in the last essay. I don’t want to write an instruction manual, and even more, Heka doesn’t want to be expressed that way, at least not by me. Since I wrote the last essay, I realized why I’ve been having a hard time starting this series. My intention was coming from ego, which really means it was coming from fear, not love. Constantly stressed about my finances, I was trying to think of something special to offer my paid subscribers, and hopefully entice more, so I decided to create something I thought might have some practical value for my readers, many of whom are poets.
What I realized after writing Part I last week, after I just sat down and wrote what felt good and right and interesting, not worrying how it fit the plan I had outlines in my proposal to you readers about creating a poetry manual based on the nine principles of the oscillation of magic, is that my loyalty is to the work of art, not its prospects as a commodity.
(Having exposed that, my gut is telling me to send this out to all subscribers. You are all special, not just the paid ones! However, if any are feeling called to support my work I do appreciate your paid subscriptions, which cost less than one oat milk latte a month, my own particular indulgence.)
I’ve always known this. I could have pursued a professional writing career, writing for magazines or academia, but every time I tried all the worlds that wanted me to write about them pulled me back into them and told me that if I chose that path they would abandon me. Not that they didn’t want me to be successful, they just knew my access to them—the place where my imagination itself was born—would evaporate. The portal would close and I would be left writing about things I didn’t care about to sell someone else’s vision of the world.
It’s a huge relief to write this. I’ve wasted so much energy trying to be successful, imitating other people who have made it in ways that seemed appealing to me.
In other words, I’m not going to write a poetry manual. I hope you’re not disappointed!
But for those who are willing to enter my world, this one I’m creating here in this series—and who knows, maybe there will be many worlds!l This series may be a manual of a different sort. A key to your own imagination, which as I mentioned in Part I is the goal of The Corpus Callosum Chronicles.
Heka tells us a spell is administered by oscillation. It’s what keeps a spell spinning. If the spell falters or drops from the sky, the witch suffers, worlds implode, we end up living on a planet where no one believes in magic anymore and tattered polar bears have to swim thousands of miles through open ocean because the ice caps have melted.
How do we make reflection practical as poets? Allow science and the mystical to interpenetrate our cells?
Simple. Go look in a mirror. Look long enough until you disappear. That’s what happens to the light when it hits an object—it disappears. To the human eye, that is. The light, as science tell us, never disappears. It penetrates the object and goes on in the same trajectory. That reflection you see in the mirror—it’s an illusion and the truth.
Somehow the light has passed through you. What did it gain from its journey through your bloods’ tributaries? Write about that. What did it hear when your heart skipped a beat? Write about that. Where else has this light been that knows you so intimately, touching your organs in the dark? What does this light know about you, that you don’t? Write about that.
Where does the light go after it passes through the veil of your skin?
There’s no way to know. It’s a mystery, yet here we are appearing and disappearing like breaking waves, trying to touch the ephemeral with solid hands that long to hold onto time that can’t help but spin itself out.
The Little Mermaid is a riddle. So is the prince. Heroes and martyrs figure them out in their own ways, neither is better than the other.
Once a mermaid swam toward the dark hull of a ship.
In one version of her story, she stops herself from killing the prince’s bride at the last second, throws herself out a window into the sea, turns into seafoam, for that is the fate of merfolk, and is given a soul by angels for doing the right thing. In the Disney version, she gets everything she ever wanted—her voice, legs to walk on land, and the prince.
Which ending would you choose?
Nothing risked, nothing gained.
I want to know…
Who are you when the light breaks?
In revelation, the truth has been reclaimed. In reflection, the light breaks but continues on with its story.
Expose yourself.
Kō aloha lā ea
Concentrate on love by way of the light
She was born in the pure dark of the deep sea. No mermaid or merman rose in the sea, to find out what might be above where they were now. Now she had. And there was something different now, a big thing rocking on the waves, not in them. And from that big thing came a shining, like a billion plankton coalesced into a … single stream. She played with it, swishing her tail. She could swim through it without being hurt, or hurting it. What would happen if she swam up into the light?
In the ship the candles on the prince’s table flicker and the beam channels through the porthole. Slumped in the ruins of a feast he ate alone, the prince weeps. He is so tired of living. All day, every day, the same Role. Never a non-prince person.
The mermaid feels the water seeping from his eyes. She breaks the surface.
He hears the splash – what could be out there? He rises from the table, lights the large all-night candle and extends it through the porthole.
She sees a merman without a tail. Even so she splashes her tail, does a flip of greeting.
He sees her. He sees her surface again. A woman from the deep sea, with a tail. “Hello,” he says. He tries to hand signal her to wait. She understands. After a few minutes a part of the big rocking thing breaks off, comes down towards her. Ready to dive, she waits. The merman without a tail is in it! She swims towards him.
It was the beginning of a soul friendship. It was difficult to learn each other’s language. He didn’t have a tail (he made a small, stuffed merman doll whose tail he worked with strings). She had trouble forming her mouth and breathing out of it to make words (she learned sound forms made with lips and tongue). He used his power as a prince to protect the mer-peoples who began to show themselves along the shores. She taught the fishing fleets to follow the mer-people to the best catches. Their test for a marriage partner involved being able to respect, accept, support, even join, in their friendship.
Ooooh! This series continues to intrigue. Revelation feels SO imperative to me, the gateway INTO the next depth of perception attunement with the souls harmonics. A revealing of perspective, of knowing, of truth. Without revelation, we cannot know the teacher of our learning. Without revelation, we cannot SEE the path we are walking. Reflection arrives in all directions, to invite the revelation to penetrate our Wholeness from all angles. Reflection is the intersection of our truth and the revealing truth we are integrating INTO. I love what you are sharing!