A Practical Guide to Not Seriously Fucking Up Magically, part 1 of ?

nalidoll was moved to make an entry on how some things that some people discuss as if they're harmless can actually be Really Serious if done wrong by someone with actual talent.

I was moved to share two stories of mine.

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First, I seem to have collected a Junior. I wouldn't say that it's a Teacher/Student thing, because I'm learning as much from her as she is from me, but I, for now, am the Senior, because I've been around this stuff and have been safely handling it for somewhat longer.

When we first met, she described to me some things that had been happening with her, which sounded an awful lot to me like the descriptions I'd read of chakras getting overloaded and randomly and somewhat dangerously firing off. This had been happening for quite some time; I knew that she needed someone to alert her to where some of the information she needed was, and someone to make sure she didn't freak out when more things started happening, and get her started handling her own energy safely, rather than having her energy handle her.

I told her, in no uncertain terms, that before she began mucking with her energy, that what she was considering embarking on was potentially dangerous, and playing with the body's energy had the potential to help her deal better, yes, but also the potential to really fuck her up, perhaps even stop her heart. I cautioned that if she ever found herself getting funny feelings, of the bad sort, and have dangerous things happening to the heart rate, that she was to get help RIGHT THEN. I suggested that until she got used to doing stuff with energy, that she should have a spotter around, someone who would be able to keep an eye on her to make sure she was doing all right.

She did get more than somewhat terrified of the concept, which may not have been strictly necessary, but better safe than very, very sorry, or too dead to be sorry.

Having gained some practice, hopefully with a spotter at first, she is now far more confident in knowing her body's energy, and what to, and what not to, do with it.

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The second incident that I was moved to share was something that I did.

I had a colleague who was very drastically in need of healing. So, I did the rite for the healing, and gave him the resulting charged can of Mountain Dew. He responded appropriately, with body, attitude, and energy fields snapping back to normal.

I fell into an exhausted stupor for the next week. I missed work, was barely awake to baby-sit, took more naps than the four-year-old, was groggy in class, and finally went out into the courtyard at school between classes, and fell asleep in the sunlight on the tiles, with no one watching my back.

My Senior came out, chewed my ass out up one side and down the other, and told me that if I did not fix this NOW, she was dragging my sorry ass to the hospital.

Turned out that I'd left the energy link to my colleague WIDE open. Furthermore, my senses do not work at their full efficiency when I'm tired and draining, so I had no way of noticing in my normal activities. This could have very easily hospitalized or killed me. I'm lucky it didn't.


Moral to the story: You think your friends list gets mad at you when the HTML for that quiz of yours has some tags that didn't get closed? That's nothing compared to what can happen if you don't close up all your links and clean up after yourself in energy work and/or rites.

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Part 2

A Practical Guide to Not Seriously Fucking Up Magically, part 2 of ?: Sex and the Mage

Sex magic (magick, however you want to spell it) is seriously powerful.

First off, we're dealing with emotions and hormones. You better believe that those are going on when mages are fucking. Something like sex is guaranteed to make sure that a rather lot of power gets raised and is all around and in the bodies of those who are doing the fucking, and possibly innocent bystanders.

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The Innocent Bystander

I was a somewhat unintentional witness to two mages getting it on one time. Two of my friends had just hooked up, and as we were all colleagues in addition to being friends, we had some fun bond things going on. My one colleague could feel my overactive energy from a good twenty miles away.

I happened to be in the living room while they were in the bedroom getting busy. I got to overhear probably more than I would have been hearing if things had been coming through via my ears alone. Noooo privacy. None. I could bloody near feel what was going on; I definitely got a shmackload of the resulting happybounce energy. Not only were they walking around for the next three days with that freshly-laid smirk on their faces, but I was too.

Confused the hell out of a couple people...

We are certainly lucky, in this instance, that no one had emotional/energetic overload happening. All three of us would have gotten zapped in one way or another.

Also, in multi-person working partnerships where some of the team members are romantically involved, and some are not, do remember to "include" the non-romantic team members in some of the hugs and energy, because if you do not include them, they will start to feel left out, and this will royally fuck up the partnership. (I was lucky in that my colleagues always made an effort to make sure that I still felt like part of the group, even though neither of them were getting it on with me.)

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Holy Fucking Shit

I chanced to have sex with a very powerful, and very not-trained-yet, mage. Mindblowing orgasms were had.

He started getting tingling and numbness, starting in the face and working its way down through his body.

He freaked out.

Fortunately, I was able to grab onto him, and get him grounded out before something that I don't even want to think about happened. He'd gotten overcharged with something that looked the exact green/purple color you get when you stare at the sun and then look away and have that spot in the middle of your vision.

Sex is not safe, even if you're using a condom. Even if you're not actually having sex. He was still technically a virgin at this point.

After he'd gotten grounded out, he had an emotional collapse for no apparent reason. He broke down in sobs, and I held him for an hour, soothing him, before he finally calmed down enough to feel like seeing the outside world again.

...So. Yeah. When Anne McCaffrey mentioned in one of her books that Damia (partially-trained T1, paired with a lesser Talent) should have been shielding when she was fucking? She wasn't fucking kidding.

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Part 1

By Request: Azure's Method to Get Everything Done.

Requested by powerhand:
You seem to live very active life. It would be nice to read about how you organize your timetables or do you perhaps take things as it comes? one gets often an impression that you are improvising most of the time and yet you have been a very succesful student and so on.

I tend to mix Very Structured with wild-ass improvization. Recently, I learned that my ideal organizational structure was to harness the power of procrastination.

I am a horrible procrastinator. When there's something I need to do and I don't want to do it, I will do anything and everything that's not that in order to avoid doing it.

I've therefore learned to harness the power of my procrastination. If I don't want to do my database homework, I look at my list of things I need to get done, and do my laundry, the dishes, sweep the floor, vacuum, change out the air fresheners, and scoop the catbox.

I have just put off doing my homework for another two hours. The house looks and smells great. (I may have been procrastinating on those things.) Suddenly, I realize that the next task that would have to be done is cleaning out the refrigerator.

Oh no!! The refrigerator! The scary refrigerator of doom with THINGS in the corners!

Hmm. Now, what was that database homework?


Practically speaking, schoolwork is a special case. I have been blessed with an extraordinary memory, and am generally good with computers and writing. Since the majority of my schoolwork is memorizing, and knowing how to look things up in manuals, and then writing with computers, I have it made. I'm especially lucky in that my father taught me how to think like a computer. This gets me through my classes without too much extraordinary effort on my part. Give me some simple SQL statements to code, and I'm a satisfied woman.


I harness my distractibility. Since I can't be relied upon to remember what I need to do at any given moment, I have my palmtop set to remind me not only where and when my classes are, but where and when I need to do other things, including brush my teeth... Inanna's also set to remind me about things like laundry, other housework, and when Bitchy Witchy Week is due.

There are days when I slack off: I collapse, usually from having done too much the day before. But, for the most part, I procrastinate, and things happen.

Teething Squirrel Strikes Again!

This time, Teething Squirrel (shammash) was joined in his nefarious efforts by his new sidekick/mastermind, The Goddess of Chewing Sh*t Up (eris_raven). Together, they shredded the bag of cat food I'd just gotten, and got it all over the kitchen floor.

Way to go, guys. I can't leave you two unsupervised for twenty minutes? God Damn.

Those cats.

Eris's journal
Shammash's journal

Silly furballs.

Bookmark: Underwater Light (WIP) Draco/Harry

http://www.schnoogle.com/authors/maya/UL12.html

Meh.

Blondie has the 10-8 shift at work today and tomorrow. His mother helpfully informed me of this. That means he leaves around 8:30, she said, and wished that I have a good weekend.

I'm still tripping on the idea that his parents like me.

Relatively spoiler-free, but just in case you haven't seen any of the actual trailers...

Keep in mind that I haven't seen it yet, and haven't even seen much in the way of trailers for it, and even I know the spoilers contained within this.

( What spoilers lie within )

Fabulous trailer!! http://www.liquidgeneration.com/poptoons/gaytrix_reloaded.asp

Kim had good idea. (crossposted to technopaganism)

Joo Janta, maker of peril-sensitive sunglasses. (Everyone recognizes the source, right?)

Peril-sensitive shielding. Goes solid/opaque/whatever when you're in danger, both alerting and protecting.

To do:

More discussion of the multiples, both historically and currently, at the request of mnfiddledragon.

Off--

headed out. Job/interview.

w00t

Working.

The whole website is too 1337 for me, but I'm going to get started with some very nice templates, done by hand, and we're going to see whazzup. I'm going to make this frickin' EASY to maintain.

Thanks...

...to everyone who wished me good luck with the job thing.

Yarr-rargh.

Have been working on coding html for the happy site. I am a tables freak; I am also a freak for pretty content & so forth.

That is, pretty in the source code as well as the other shit.

I'm aiming to make this site easy to update and maintain by just pulling down the source code and seeing the comments making it fiendishly clear where shit goes.

Also, going to be making templates where all you have to do is fill in the shit and then it'll be good to go.

Asses kicked, one cheek at a time

Getting a handle on the bits and parts of this site.

Figuring out how to do styles. Chonch's wife has a very nice look already; it's up to me (and so forth) to make it not only the way she wants it, but also easy to do. .css is my FRIEND. Seriously. She has lots of style, and she will be delighted once I get it in very easy to use style sheets.

Mmmm, gotta love 'em.

And I don't know what the merry hell she has going on with the frames, but I had to go through, like, three sets before I got to the actual content of the page, which is somewhat scary, though I suppose good for security. I'm designing it in tables which are designed to be nested, but I am doing up the templates so that they can be applied as frames also.

Well, this was a fun day.

Sat and coded. Chonch's wife actually didn't want me to duplicate what she had already; she wanted something more professional, which was why she hired a web designer.

I went and had fun with my tables. Good for me!

The site looks pretty damn cool. It's not up yet.

N% came out, but she's subtle enough now that we can almost pass.