Karma is a useful thing to be conceptually aware of, as what we accumulate and do in our lives DOES matter...buuuut it won't save you in any meaningful way.

Instead, karma is a conceptual container for cause and effect, giving us a way of framing what we can expect in the world. When we focus on the idea of what we get, lose, gain, spend, acquire, invest, we lose sight of an even bigger picture that has more to do with skillful means than any binary concept of what is good and right and moral.

This is important to consider, and I'm curious, what does this bring up for you?

I'm working on a piece for Patreon subscribers that explores this more deeply. Stay tuned!

-T

Anger's a righteous, vindictive emotion, isn't it? At its core, its a deep-seated need for validation-by-violence, and that can be its own challenge. We often want to seek change and healing by destroying the thing that either gave us a need to heal OR, more likely, that reminded us that we had this hidden wound that needed healing to begin with.

Shame, ironically, is its own extension of anger for just that reason. When its allowed to run the show, it creates a limbic response that causes us to freeze for a moment, flash back on the psychic heartwound, and then, if we are unskilled in our internal navigation, it becomes wrath-as-a-means-to-control. In essence, the person in front of us, if they've wounded us with shame, tends to then become the target of our rage as a means of taking control once more.

When someone needs to control the narrative instead of the outcome of the person's behavior and its impact on community, that desire for validation-by-violence mentioned above ends up rotting the fruit of the tree, working against your own emancipation rather than for it, because it wasn't ever actually the thing that you needed seen or corroborated. Instead, it furthers the shame by reminding the person, when they see their results, that they are a bad person...that they've sinned in some way.

--

CONVERSELY, if you are using wrath skillfully in moments of shame and hurt, its generally done after the shame and hurt has passed. When you're no longer trying to control the narrative or story being told, and you are instead working against the harm inflicted by this person and what they represent, that's the point at which you're able to wield destructive magick more skillfully.

This points us to a core tenet of Buddhist practices, Vajrayana and Dharma: wrath was never the enemy. Wielding shame like a knife was. Pristine Awareness is more about manifesting change with these emotions, that way you and the world around you can grow, too.

If you insist on growth for another while denying it for yourself, that feeds a hungry ghost and takes you to the charnel grounds of yourself as a manifestation of your own hurts. When people talk about curses coming back on oneself, that's the mechanism. Its not that harm is an issue - its mindless, skill-less harm that does more of the same. This magick is powerful, pointed, and important to recognize, and love spells follow a similar process.

More on that later, particularly for my Patreon subscribers who'll be treated to further discourse on the subject.
-Tea

That's a fantastic question and one that deserves some time and care.

In short, anger and wrath are seen as emanations of skillful means in Buddhist magick because they reflect the nature of what's awakened as clear direction in the mind and heart when it happens. You see, sadness and confusion, they represent dejected states of being....a way of being adrift, rather than being at the forefront of destiny and its functions.

Anger, wrath, rage, once awakened, become the modes and means of transformation and moving the vehicle of your world through to whatever the next stage of your existence will be...the trick is that so many people want to use this rage ahead-of-schedule, putting the cart before the horse because they're mad at the pattern rather than being committed to understanding AND changing it.

Instead, in the West & in the uninitiated mind, anger is an arrow that flies without thought, or a bullet fired without consideration. It is a weapon and a poison both...

To the skilled Vajrayanist, however, anger is a tool and a means of management; a way of transforming a situation through intentional use of that rage. Consider: if you could either demolish a person or a pattern, which would you choose? The emanation of your unskilled, unrefined subconscious made manifest as the individual you're having that painful dialogue with, or the actual machinations within you that create that continual, cyclical existence through circumstance?

That's the difference between skillful means and poisonous wrath...and this is what we learn from these wrathful, angry manifestations of the Buddhas.

Hayagriva, Dakiniten, Manjushri/Monju Bosatsu, Vajrakumara, Hachiman, and others each have means of making themselves delightfully present, and its your awakened mind directing these activities. If you do this blindly, you will destroy your life - these teachers help you to see, to understand, and to act with _intention_ in this world that the circumstances might change.

...and this is what I Tea-ch. ;)

Following the advice of my spirits, in the coming days I expect I'll be creating recordings that'll be uploaded to Patreon that are longer, more detailed, and of greater depth for those who would like to subscribe and support SorcerousEndeavors.

The blog will of course continue to be a source of information to those so dedicated, and at times I'll use this as a written-text version of what's shared on Patreon, TikTok and Instagram to better express the nuance and history of this all.

I thank you for your support and your interest, and look forward to the coming days as my system shares with each of you. - Kei, one of the aspects herein.

Namo!

Oni are demons in Japanese practices, but they're more than that in so many ways.

On the outside, they're representative of darkness and great power, wrath, and capacity for action, often shown in striking visage.:

Here, we can see Kukai (aka Kobo Daishi)praying before a giant demon, being threatened with wrath. He stands unshaken before what is essentially a natural disaster personified, and in that moment he's not flinching, just being present with it. That tendency is what makes Japanese Buddhist priests large and significant in the historical context of war magick, Vajrayanist practice, and doing meaningful spiritual work.

Its in this space where there are similarities to what Guru Padmasambhava is credited for doing in Tibet.

Where it differs, however, is that these wrathful and malicious spirits turned to protection weren't removed of their bloodthirstiness. Instead, they were accepted and conjured as such, with full understanding of their nature and the recognition that this too was dharma and an expression of nondual nature.

The trouble is that this was later intentionally sanitized by the Japanese government during a period known as the Shinbutsu Bunri. During this time, the Japanese imperial government was in full scale colonialism mode, and they essentially killed, disrobed, or otherwise converted Buddhist practitioners en masse. This was a violent show against the priests and nuns who had been these bridges between indigenous Shinto practices and Buddhism that'd come from China with Kukai.

When you start looking at this in historical retrospect, and you're confronted with images like this, it changes the way you look at the circumstance itself.:

“Watanabe’s wife with a child on her back and two severed heads at her feet” from Taiso Yoshitoshi’s Biographies of Valiant Drunken Tigers (1874), shown above, represented a concept of protective violence that was common and in fact expected of Samurai wives during the era.

So these sanitized ideas and ideals around Japanese Buddhism and Vajrayana in particular are colonialist state ideals, and it would serve us collectively to view and experience these spirits as potentially violent, wrathful and STILL helpful.

Food for thought.

-Kit & Vestige, Tea's system

In Japanese Buddhist practices, there are a series of spiritual works that can be done as a process of seeking the approval and protection of the Okami. These spirits of the land are as much a part of your ecosystem as your friends and coworkers.

To get their attention, make a small sacred space in your home and yard, and lay three types of offerings:
-sweets
-rice-based alcohol (Makgeowli, Sake, etc)
-tea

Lay these about a central fire, clap thrice, and bow your head. Make an offering of goodwill from your heart, and wait for what feels like an acknowledgement. Leave the offering out for a day or two at most, then dispose of it according to your tradition.

-do not- consume the offering until given explicit permission to do so. Its not yours, and these are the spirits you're likely just getting to know.

If you do this and build goodwill, you will have more friends at your beck & call than before.
-Hannya, of T's system

...and moving through them is an offering in the view of spirits.

What we bring into the world of the noncorporeal is a degree of awareness and brightness, darkness and texture. Just as we experience spirit as the prickling of hairs down our spine, and as we will at times feel them as a cold spot, the spirit world of Okami absolutely feels and responds to us in return.

They are, in many respects, a more aspected and at times more or less nuanced version of a thing, like a thought taken to a particular extreme or an emotion experienced with great intensity and fervor. In this, its a little bit like Uncle Iroh meeting Korra in Legend Of.

When she, as a child, meets this old man we know as a peaceful liberator of his own, she's confronted with just how much harm that could do in that space. She was, in no uncertain terms, capable of changing and redefining their world...annnnnd it turns out that spirit can do the same in return.

So as you're sitting with, feeling, moving through and using big emotions, let them transform! Use it as an offering and make a point of digging into the harmony of it all. If you do, you'll find the stilled river of the self begins to move, as it cannot help but not.

-T's system (group effort) ;)

From spirits who survived it.

...this is some of what it is to hold a legacy of oppression as a thing one's resisted historically. In my journeys, I've come to learn and realize that a venerated ancestor of mine unified Japan and became a God, enshrined a multitude of times in connection. He is venerated as an ancestral ghost in Shinto practices, and moreover seen as a source of kindness, care and support.

...and we found our way to him as a system while living in diaspora.

Living with that truth, let me speak on resisting oppression in times of war.

When nerves are frayed, that is when we are at our weakest. At our most vulnerable to dark thoughts, to fear, to worry...and ultimately, to emotional decay. To counteract this, find footing in yourself, in pleasure, and in lightness as you confront the shadow. Do not seek the light to spare yourself the dark!

Instead, confront both as living aspects of your truth, and you'll find something greater in yourself. 


Food for thought.
-Shinzo, one of the protector parts of T.

So as y'all likely well know at this point, we are a system, and pretty damned psychic as a collective. Our parts are fairly astute, aware, and since we exist in a chemical soup and spiritual landscape at all times, we are also finding that we are rather open to the emotions of others.

Usually, this lands a bit like overhearing the big feelings of someone else...and its nearly always a sensation akin to being one room over from your friend whose having a meltdown. Each time, we pick up on these massive feels, and then write them down rather than identifying with them! 

This has now happened on ten different occasions, each of which have then been verified with the persons we've been "overhearing", even mapping them to time and space.

As this happens, we've discovered the Telepathy Tapes (it was suggested by our therapist, a specialist in IFS who also happens to be a witch themselves) - that's led to a secret third conversation: boundaries around psychicism.

Veiling, it turns out, is an age old practice for this process of decreasing signal noise - it becomes a means of essentially giving you a tin foil hat for spiritual purposes, without the baked-in colonialism and spiritual judgement baked in.

If you cannot wear a veil, try a hat! Our system did this over the past weekend, and we were able to hear more of the actual details meant for me. So if you are also walking into spaces, during this great spiritual awakening, I suspect it'll help.

-whispers, speaking for T's system

One of the single most intimidating aspects of working as a ritual magickian to conjure change in your own life is the understanding that you can absolutely ask for specific things and see how they change your life. When there's resistance towards those things in Heaven or Practice, however, there's always going to be a consequence after the fact.

Its the way of things, and some experiences are mutually exclusive of one another. If so, you may sacrifice your joy on the altar of short term temptation, and that too is a choice you're empowered to make.

Keep that in mind. Its pretty easy to really thwart yourself with magick if delusion's at the helm.

-Tea