The last one before me of this Deep Self IT IS NOT A STRAIGHT LINE was a middle-class Austrian woman who had a passion for seances. Her mystical bent is not surprising with the resonance of nine lifetimes as an African slave doing wonderful death wizarding–and dying very solid afterward–with a bejesus amount of crap on us. I had been planning to investigate the seance for her sake, but for some reason it was only on my way to work this particular day that I took out my smart phone and found one. Those wonderful old beings in the South had evidently spelled out the situation with seances and got me on track. I’ll never know. I am not all that clear about what goes on in my sleep. I made a deal, as the Zydeco Healer had taught me: if they get me the $20 for the seance, I will attend.

As I sat in mass, I saw her, the Austrian Spiritualist. She was as powerful as the Queen of Wands. I usually only see her when I am knitting or baking one of my perfect delicate coffee cakes, her works, she grudgingly admits. AFTER THE ABRAMELIN IT WAS CAKE CAKE CAKE. The Zydeco Healer himself came to me–I always defer to his judgement on matters of magic, because he just knows what to do–and urged me to go to the seance anyway and have faith that the money will come in. The Norse contingent is very good with money when I stay in one place–powers congeal where you live–and since I have no intention to leave my current dwelling, I am trusting that the budget will hold, at least for $20. HA HA HA.

I’ve heard that she died in 1913; I was born in 1963. Fifty years exactly. THERE IS NO DIRECT LINE BUT SOME CORRELATION IN THE LIVES “DESTINED” TO BE WORKERS. When a new one comes in THAT IS FOUND, the chthonically stable old ones are discombobulated like crazy and not really the same afterwards for some time. The Christians usually don’t have the birth wizarding to investigate the new life down to minutiae, and have to trust the gods within the energy band of the earth. It’s okay, and we are grateful for this life, but it is not an exact science. I was born on a marker for a great wizard life. The fey folk put in leanings that the earth powers leaned with, and evidently everyone had a different opinion about what the new one should be–black, white, male, female, rich, poor–but for a variety of reasons they got a middle-class Mexican-American/Anglo female in California, something we have never been! Sounds like a committee decision. Thank God for the Catholic and Jewish stuff in the ancestors, or we would be . . . lost.

So we sat in mass, she assuring me that if she had her work she would be able to find things in the underworld. That is a big thing, finding things in the underworld. It is the reason most Hermetists–Thelemites they are called in the underworld (everyone is a Thelemite–a word to the wise)–can’t function except in lodges, unconscious slaves as they are to the Masons who have no intention of the living finding anything in the underworld. But I have ancestors/family here with me in conjure and the Art and old fey folk in the Norse work, so I have a shot at finding something. But Hermetists use a lot of ancient symbolism, something most modern ghosts can’t really get a handle on. The seance people assure me that most ghosts are able to deal with a “normal” psychic of this era.

I am not a normal psychic. I am an artificial psychic, opened by extensive work in Hermetic Cabala, so I am not a member of your elite PSYCHIC club.

But I am psychic enough for government work, and that is what we are counting on.

Every magic is a portal and ghosts pull themselves together according to the structure of the portal. Gramma herself wants to come into Spiritualism because it is something she would recognize. She informs me that if you are to get past the tricks of the astral, you need to do something your ancestors would recognize, and she had been to a seance and knew what it was: a scam. Now that she is a ghost herself, maybe not so much. We’ll see.

Seances are a scam–if you are not willing to call it on an off night. My old one says she got very good at spotting things. (She is recent enough to be a newbie and is human only south-southwest having been MADE by the demons of us. We needed to get that coffee cake situation under control or I’d be BOUND IN MARRIAGE again.) My late father is able to make a candle flame leap into the air, so as a last resort, I can call out, “Daddy!” and the seance will be saved, but I don’t think that’s a good idea. It always gets the government involved. (One of the old ones agrees, having gotten the government involved.)

My old one says she witnessed a lot, and got eaten by ghosts, but ultimately she remained in the system, which never fell apart, and now she gets to have a crack at it again, along with a bunch of old Vikings, some Confucians, a great wing of African slaves, and me. That’s what you get for building a new system–it takes a long time to stabilize, and World War I caused problems for the magic she needed to stay real.

I am a ceremonial magician, which allows very OLD ghosts to come in. Ceremonial magic brings in old animal- or plant-human ghost hybrids a.k.a. fey folk to function as a team in a contemporary human akasha (why I am still alive, having broken the world. I am useful to some very powerful old ghosts). This is the reason for the therianthropic animal images of the ancient world and Middle Ages. A sphinx is really an old “maker.” See Ezekiel 1.

So the local underworld is theoretically interested in me attending the seances, in a polite and ladylike fashion AND NOT LIKE VOODOO THANK YOU, which is always my style anyway, being one lifetime away from a German haute bourgeoise and lots of Victorian ancestors. You could eat off my floors. Really.

Not really.