31AUG
I didn’t intend to do the ritual last night. That shouldn’t be happening for weeks still. I was simply going to work on my altar. I decided to not use my general baking stone I use for most altars. I had a several year old piece of Red Oak that I cut to 13 inches. One inch for each of the Blighted Lords and Ladies. Seemed like some nice dramatic flair, even if I’m on the fence about my opinions on them at this point.
Cernobog gave the impression that each side needed to be roughed and all the sharp edges blunted. This was a factory smoothed piece of wood and I figured he wanted me to make it my own. So, I dug through my boxes of things, found the belt sander with 80 grit sandpaper on it, and roughed up every edge, side, and angle. There wasn’t a single spot on the board that hadn’t been roughed.
Then I was told to smooth it back out.
As I turned on some paranormal story videos for shigs, I bent to the task. Hand tools only. Files and sandpaper. It took hours to smooth the sides and front face and likely couldn’t have been done on my typical weeknight. But I got to it around noon, which left time to sun dry the board after wetting it.
As I got within the last 30 minutes of having the front face ready, I was told to leave the back side of it scuffed up. It was a reminder and I had already figured out what he meant.
The purpose of this was to remind me that this process mimics the path of the magician. Things have to get roughed up a bit sometimes to bring out the new potential in the object/magician. There is a polishing process used to further refine the individual and let the inner potential out. The rough edges are blunted, if not smoothed completely. Documenting it by photo, blog, grimoire, etc… is the reminder of how far the person had come from the start.
I ended up doing the ritual later that night, at their insistence, but that’s for another post.
