When I was seven years old (maybe eight,) my elder sister came home one day with, what was at that time a nascent piece of technological equipment. It’s such a common thing now that it has been replaced by something that does the same job better even if its smaller. But at that time, it was very new, and rare to see in a household. A USB stick.
She had a friend, who had a friend, who had downloaded pirated movies of and saved them on this USB stick. Whatever space he had left on it, had been filled with eBooks (sometimes even photographed/photo scanned copies), and for some reason it was mostly esoteric books. Maybe that was the moment I should have realised that its going to be a theme in my life. Call it Serendipity, Synchronicity, or just plain old Optimum Trajectory, the floating freeform complex had definitely “got me!” then and there.
You must understand that for the time and the place I was living in, it was rare for anyone to be introduced concepts of Western and Eastern Esotericism, at that age. Consequently, neither did I understand them or could talk to anyone else to extract an understanding about them.
Even though I had been initially disappointed upon finding out that these books had nothing to with the magic I wanted to learn at the moment (card and coin tricks), I kept returning to these books from time to time.
As I got older, and my comprehension of the books increased, I became a sceptic. Surely, this was a con!
Years later, I would have an experience under the influence of an entheogen, a trance state and see a manifestation of what I believe, was an Archonic force.
She would state that I would be provided for, but it would come at the cost of my mental peace. Her parting advice was that I should prepare for it.
But I am getting ahead of myself. I have already written about this experience already, if anyone wants to read it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/chaosmagick/s/sWPZzZiWLw
Before I continue with the story though, I am writing this post after getting inspired from u/UnkleGuidoV to share my journey in the realm of magick, and why I continue the practice.
A little sign post here, for those who want to know what they are getting into:
I will try to articulately report some details of my journey in chronological order.
If you would like to do so, after that you have the right to infer it in whatever way you want.
Two years after the Archonic visitation, I was being asked to leave Germany because I hadn’t been able to extend my work Visa. For context, I had gone every single day to the immigration office, to stand in a queue of countless people, at 6 in the morning, but for some reason or other, I would never reach the front of the queue. Weirdest of these reasons? A case worker (at the immigration centre) refused to talk to me because my German wasn’t good enough. Another day, one of the people in the queue started screaming “Bomb! Bomb!”, and we’d all be asked to leave. Every single day I went there, either the queue wouldn’t move enough to get me to the front, the days that it did, something like the fake bomb scare incident would happen, and I’d be back to square one.
My master's degree, for which I had been in Europe, had, by then, zero value in Europe, and in my country, it would be good, but I would not get paid a fair wage.
Until this point in my life, by the way, I wasn't practising magick at all. I had maybe even forgotten all the random things I had learnt from those books in some recess of my mind that had gone dark.
So, it was 2017 and I found myself grinding at my then low-paying, unfulfilling job.
My parents had moved from my home town to a place called Kerala, and I was working nearby in a city called Mysore. The first chance I got to take a holiday, off was I, to Kerala- God’s Own Country. I have added some pictures for context on how beautiful this place is.
My partner came along.
We were in a small town that's close to a lot of national wildlife reserves and other forests. There was a place that boasted elephant rides, and my partner and I, like the naïve tourists we were, ended up there.
However, the moment we got in and saw the first elephant, my partner started crying!
The elephant had wounds all around the big seat-type saddle that had been tied to its back. These were superficial wounds, only surface level, but wounds nonetheless. However, it felt like no one else noticed.
As unnoticed as the Elephant’s wounds were, my partner’s crying by then had become just as visible. She has also, always been very vocal, so she had already started complaining loudly at that point. When the people around us heard what she was talking about, they started laughing; saying it's fine, elephants have tough skin. Horrified, we wanted to leave. Damn the money lost.
For context that would be important later, the town has developed around, specifically animal tourism.
I was not aware of it until it happened but a younger Elephant had appeared from somewhere. Now this one had spunk, moxie, the X factor, je ne sais quoi, or whatever you call it.
It was mocking all the mahouts (elephant controllers). It was prank-scaring the people riding it. It would stop and demand food and wouldn't move an inch until it was given some. They hit it with a stick; it just took the stick away with one swift motion of its tiny trunk. When we were about to leave, this young elephant ran to my partner and did what was unmistakably a play bow, and wouldn't move an inch. The people who were riding it got frustrated and climbed down.
It just stayed in front of her. And that just made my partner cry more.
By now, other people who had not been not very sympathetic to our anger were gradually starting to turn.
See India is a country where gods are important; and more importantly, if you have a God with the head of an elephant in your mythos, the desensitised crowd will only go along with your abuse for a while; But inexorably, there will be the right elephant at the right moment that becomes an Egregorial God, just by doing something atypical.
So it was somewhat satisfying, amusing, and not very surprising when a few of the tourists started bowing (not play-bowing), to this young elephant. Some even touched its feet and put money on the ground (already starting to try and bribe their way into salvation).
The owners of the establishment came running and had started to plead their case: "We are poor, we don't hurt the animals, please don't report us. It's our livelihood." We didn't say anything. We were still, just watching the elephant, who had sort of locked onto my partner and wanted her to play. And she was locked onto him, tears still streaming from her eyes. The owners offered us a chance to help bathe the elephant. We took it.
The young elephant came with us. He lay down and we took up brushes and started bathing him. A calm fell on us, or at least on me. The elephant seemed to be enjoying the scratches from the coconut husk brush we were given.
It made strange, comical noises and threw water at us with its trunk. While my partner was brushing its hind legs, I went near his ears and started brushing the back of them. His wide eyes turned and looked into mine, and it was as if I was thrown backwards into the air.
For a moment I thought I really had been hit by the elephant and was flying through the air, because the rushing noises and the blurry images whooshing past my peripheral vision made it look that way.
But then I landed, quiet softly, on a street that looked familiar. I had no idea why it looked familiar, until I saw a very young version of my mother, holding baby me in her arms, standing on the first-floor balcony of the house I was born in. A few nomadic, travelling mahouts were going through our town on their elephants. One of the big elephants turned slowly towards our balcony and strolled to it.
Within seconds its head was right in my mother's and my (baby me) face. It extended its trunk and tapped my head lightly and made a strange call that the other elephants travelling with it, echoed.
The Elephant turned slowly towards me (‘me’ me) looking at the whole scene unfolding and its eyes, met mine.
Off I was blown, back through the blurry tunnel of images whooshing past me. The next second, I looked down, brush in hand, the young elephant still looking at me with an odd gaze.
We spent that entire afternoon with the elephant. Sadly, even if we had tried, the abuse they endure cannot be stopped. It's a big industry that they guard ferociously because it runs their town.
My overt scepticism however, was being ground down gradually.
A few years down the line, I took a trip to Cambodia with my partner, where at Angkor Wat, she had an experience.
It’s common to see a lot of beheaded Buddha statues in the ruins of the old Cambodian temples. Some king ordered these statue beheadings to show his dominion over all, as well as "erase Buddha's myth".
Ironically, the king is long gone, but the smiling face of the beheaded Buddha is still there, just chilling.
It surely does something to the psyche, when a person looks upon this sight. My partner was struck dumb. She stayed quiet the entire day, which was very unusual. She also wrote a lot in her journal; before that day, she had never made a single entry in that journal, even though she had been carrying it everywhere for the past five years since I gifted it to her.
The next day, without telling me, she booked rooms at a resort on an isolated island for the next three days.
Off we went, ferrying across to this beautiful, uncrowded beachside resort. There were hardly three more people in the entire resort and maybe fifty people on the entire island.
As soon as we reached the island, without waiting to relax and pause at the beautiful beach, my partner hired a Vespa from the resort and asked me to take her to the northernmost part of the island. We must have gone past everything on the island to reach the north, a small tourist marketplace, three other resorts, some small residential houses, a shop here or there, a small slum, and a military barracks.
Past the military barracks was a rocky hill which we climbed on foot, my partner refusing to speak, especially about why she was taking me there.
When we finally reached the top, I saw a small temple carved into the hill, slightly hidden by rocks. Inside was a whole stone statue of Buddha, its head, fully intact. My partner seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. I actually saw her smile. We stayed there for a while and then left.
This is the point where I jumped into the practice and maintained it. After I returned from my trip, I received what I call a "download from the field," which I noted down as raw manuscript over the next two weeks and then collated into systems over the next few years.
I am not sure how to end this story. I have no lesson for you. No updates either.
Maybe a question? What has been the most potent experiences in your life, the ones that shattered the foundations of your psyche and somehow changed you into a better person?
