Midnight Sun July 2023

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Welcome to the July 2023 edition of The Midnight Sun!

Hello, friends!

How are you? I know I’m still reeling from Gather, and floored that it’s already over. Remembering self-care is important for body mind and spirit, I hope that in these hot summer days and nights, you are listening to your body and heart and not overdoing it. It’s summer after all! Get in all the vacation and relaxation time you can!

After the long haul and final sprint to and through Gather, we here in the House have been enjoying a wee bit of a break. Clearly, reading this, there are still some things afoot, but by and large, we’re taking the month of July to sit back, catch our collected breaths and rest. In this month’s newsletter, we are back full force with good info and articles from Stef, Hex, M. Belanger, Izzy, and yours truly. Buck has a Tarot pull for us, and we have some HK Jams for your Chill Vibes to stay cool here in July!

If you joined us at Gather, be it in person or online, Thank You. From all of us, for such a wonderful, supportive, and invested community.

I know by the time this comes out, I will be just back from a family vacation, and I hope wherever your summer travels take you, be it a destination vacation or just to your front porch with a frosty beverage, that you’re well.

~Miranda (Frick)
Curator and Editor of TMS

JULy HK Jams

Unwind under the sun and chill out!

The delicate dance of practicing self-care around mental health when mental health is self-care.

Balance. How often do we hear, “You should find a balance”? There’s work-life balance, mundane-magical balance, physical exercise and rest, balance in the foods we eat, and many other things to balance. But we don’t discuss the balance between shadow work and self-care, which can be a puzzle since shadow work is self-care and self-care is shadow work. 

Starting your shadow work is not always easy, and for many of us, looking deep into the crevices of ourselves is one of the hardest things we will ever do. But once that journey starts, we often find ourselves “leveling up” (as my friends say) and digging deeper into the work. In my experience, it’s near impossible to stop the introspective work once it’s started; overall, that is a good thing. But just because shadow work is a never-ending journey doesn’t mean you can’t take a break. Arguably You SHOULD take breaks because it is ongoing. Remember, this work is a marathon, not a sprint. So how do you take a break from the work often happening inside your head? Honestly, I don’t have a direct answer for you, mainly because everyone is different, and all journeys look different. Still, I compiled a few reasons why taking a breather during your journey is essential. 

1. How we approach recovery from a physical injury and mental health are, for the most part, drastically different. Most of us can list what happens when you have an injury. Let’s use a broken ankle as an example. Stabilizing the ankle, assessing the damage, getting medication to manage the pain, and physical therapy are standard ways to treat a broken ankle. Is anyone judged for using pain meds? Do people ask, “Why aren’t you doing more PT”? No one judges someone for getting help for a break and expects anyone to do PT non-stop. It’s okay to rest with your shadow work as well. If you never take a rest day during your recovery, then you risk reinjury; the same applies to mental health. 

2. In the journey to find balance, you can inadvertently become unbalanced. It is not always about the pendulum swinging from one side to the other. It’s about finding a balance within yourself that feels good and is healthy. When just starting this journey, we tend to want to overcorrect and suddenly find ourselves on the opposite side of where we were. 

3. Time. It takes time to do this type of work. You didn’t learn the patterns or experience the trauma overnight, so why expect you to recover and relearn overnight? You could talk about the same topic in therapy for weeks, and each appointment would be different because you could walk away with additional insight into the issue. Therapy can be compared to school. You go, not always because you want to but because you know it will be good. You talk things through and develop plans and strategies for situations you struggle with; it is a safe place to learn. Your life outside of therapy can be compared to a career. It takes years of schooling or on-the-job training to learn how to do some jobs. You’re not expected to know everything your first day, but you learn as you go. The passing of time allows you to interact with different people in different settings, and it’s there that you can apply what you’ve learned. Don’t expect to leave therapy and be confronted with the situation you just talked through. Time is why people in the 12-step program don’t start with apologies. It takes time to show people you are doing the work and changing past behaviors.

Taking a break or a rest is less about putting the work aside or ignoring it. It’s about putting it down. You can’t be on your cell phone non-stop; you have to charge it at some point. You can’t drive your car without stopping for gas. You can’t heal an injury without resting it. It’s okay to cancel a therapy appointment. It’s okay to tell your therapist that you don’t want to talk about hard things that day. It’s okay to pick up a book that doesn’t focus on self-help, anxiety, ADHD, or depression. Finding balance is a delicate dance that varies for each of us. No one will be on the same journey, but our journeys will intersect, so remember that you are not alone in this. Each person that you have pulled into your close circle are people who can help you find this balance. 

July 2023 - The World

Card pull for July is… THE WORLD

…. I CAN SHOW YOU THE WOOOORLD… SHINNING… SHIMMERING...

Okay, okay serious time though. What a perfect card to pull hot off the heels of Gather!! Unity and wholeness, we all came as single people to join a whole of like-minded people to learn and grow.

Hopefully, everyone made some new friends! But what I’m getting with my great and amazing Buck tarot-tingling senses is… You.. come here.. come closer… okay listen.. WHATEVER YOU ARE DOING… KEEP GOING!! WOO!! It’s paying off! You may have completed something or seen some success from whatever you are doing..

DON’T STOP! PLEEEASE DON’T STOP!! Keep going!! Whatever it is, you’re getting closer with every step. You got this!! Keep working hard but remember to take time to rest! Drink water! You got this, you frickin BADASS!!!

House Kheperu Member Spotlight

izlude

"Memory gives moments immortality, but forgetfulness promotes a healthy mind." - Hannibal Lecter. 

What interests you about energy work? 

Studying energy, and the occult in general, gives insight into the "supernatural" forces that effect us. With enough practice, one becomes able to have some say in those effects. It is both psychological and spiritual, as there are many layers of Self. The more you broaden your horizons, the more you may explore. It is never-ending, and that's what I find most interesting. 

What is one of your favorite movies? 

Gladiator with Russel Crowe

Learned Helplessness; an imbalance

Have you ever gone through an entire process of trying to do something, being met with an obstacle or issue, researched, tried to resolve or fix, it didn’t work and eventually you were like, “Well crap, now I have to ask somebody cause I’m at a loss.” Only to then ask someone and have them treat you like you’re an incapable Neanderthal and ask you if you’d done everything you’ve already done? It feels insulting, like they expect you to be incapable or ignorant and that you’re coming to them as the first step when in reality they are your last option, are already frustrated and it does nothing to help your situation wasting time.

And while person to person the reasons for those types of responses can change, my experience has taught me that there is one particular shared human behavior that tends to inspire that response in people; the exposure to Learned Helplessness.

Definitions from Oxford Languages

learned help·less·ness
Noun PSYCHIATRY

• a condition in which a person has a sense of powerlessness, arising from a traumatic event or persistent failure to succeed. It is thought to be one of the underlying causes of depression.

So that’s the condition, but what does that look like? Learned Helplessness is a term applied when a person is unable to find resolutions to “difficult situations” even when a resolution is accessible. It can be a fairly extreme experience in cases of trauma - and much like everything, there is a spectrum. Day to day it can be as simple as asking for an answer that can be easily accessed, or found. In more extreme cases it can cause feelings of fear around having to ask for help, and a triggered response if what you ask for isn’t immediately resolved by someone else. As a traumatic response, it’s the kind of thing that can be unlearned with time and takes a lot of personal awareness and responsibility to undo. It’s a journey, and rarely an easy one.

But how does this apply to our opening example? Well, I’m glad you asked. 

There’s another form of learned helplessness that our society has a way of teaching and reinforcing, that is deeply detrimental to us as individuals, witches, vampires, energy workers, and humans living together on this floating rock, as well as more directly to the people around us. It’s a mixture of drama and capitalistic practices, where nothing you ever do is good enough, or your failures are exploited and focused on without balance or proper recognition of your successes (which let’s be real, is its own kind of trauma). It’s made more prevalent by Legacy Burden and Generational Traumas to the tune of “Don’t brag”, “Nobody likes a show-off/know it all”, and other Generational/Cultural biases, bigotries, and systemic problems inherent to our culture. 

There are a few magnified places within subcultures where this historically has been even more pronounced by gatekeeping, spiritual hierarchy, and systemic abuse as well. And if you are at a terminus of one or more of these subcultures, the effects can be intense and insidious. It undermines confidence, and the ability to express boundaries and needs, shackles personal power, and stalls or halts personal growth and awareness in ways that can be difficult to undo, even once the subconscious compulsions are brought into the conscious mind. 

In many cases, like most things, it’s not the person’s fault that they have ended up in these patterns. And it is unfortunate that it is their burden to fix it, but makes it no less the individual’s responsibility to work on and undo within themselves.

But there’s more. The original example is not only of a situation where the person approached has trained responses to dealing with others in the grips of learned helplessness, but also perpetuating the cycle by running through all the possibilities that need to be done - therefore, potentially giving the answer without the seeker having to put in any effort. 

SO GUESS WHAT. It’s not only the responsibility of the persons with the learned helplessness to not continue to engage in the harmful cycles, but the responsibility of the person on the receiving end to not perpetuate those cycles as well. 

That does not mean be an asshole, intolerant, or don’t have compassion for where this may be coming from. It can be as simple as, rather than running through a list of things that are expected, asking, “What have you tried already?” and then if they haven’t tried anything, directing them to where they can find the information for themselves politely. If it’s a repeated pattern, then maybe having a conversation with them about whether or not they are aware of this pattern can be helpful. And people coming to others for help should not be discouraged at any stage. If we are to create an understanding, inclusive, brave space in this world (that is preferably one day the whole of the world), we have to be able to help each other with compassion. We have to have personal autonomy to make mistakes without unnecessarily harmful social and emotional recourse, and the space to learn personal responsibility to learn and do better. We also have to be able to step outside ourselves to find that compassion for the person to learn.

Not to get frustrated, fed up, and fall into patterns that perpetuate the cycles that caused the frustration to begin with.

So next time someone asks you for assistance on something or brings you a question, topic, issue, or content that implies you do most of the work for them, focus that frustration into something productive, like asking what they’ve done before assuming and enabling them to continue to not learn for themselves, or say “No, that doesn’t work for me, I need you to provide <insert change request here>” rather than doing for them and being mad about it. Then maybe sit down and be really analytical and objective about whether you’ve done the same. 

And if you’re reading this and thinking; “Well everyone I always go to seems to be annoyed when I ask for help anyway”... maybe consider why that is. Sit with it, and see what part of the Learned Helplessness cycle you might be engaging in that you didn’t know existed until it was named.

Break the cycles. Bring the subconscious into the conscious. And as always, keep it Honest, my friends.
~Frick

July edition - Walking the Twilight Path: Balancing Light and Dark

Sunday, July 9, 2023 - 9:25 PM

Hello friends, and welcome back to Tea with Hex! This month I want to spill the tea on a topic that pops up in cycles every few years in witchcraft and paganism, and add my own spicy take. This month we're talking about balance, what that means, and why it matters.

Picture it. Indiana, 1999. I had just bought my first deck of tarot cards, and started reading the first book about witchcraft that I had not borrowed from the library and amassed late fees for. I was in high school, and figuring out who I was in virtually every sense of the concept. Most of the literature available at the time was Wiccan in flavor, and suffused with admonishments about what kinds of magic witches were supposed to practice and which ones they weren't. I had grown up in Catholicism, and was trying to distance myself from any semblance of "thou shalt not"-ism dictating how to live my life. It seemed very backward to me that witches shouldn't be permitted to use magic to strike back at people who harmed us. As the only out gay kid in a farming community high school, I took a lot of grief, and magic seemed to be one of the only methods available to me of getting satisfaction from my abusers with impunity.

This began a period of my life that included many chapters I'd rather weren't read aloud. Throughout high school I began a lengthy study of hexes, curses, crossing powders, manipulative magic, and all manner of things nice boys and girls don't do. Every slight, no matter how small, became an excuse to smear a sigil all over somebody's car in the parking lot or obtain a hair sample from the locker room. Looking back on myself at the time, I don't think present-me would have gotten along with him very well. That guy was hellbent on teaching the world a lesson, one football player at a time. Hiding all of this from my grandmother in her own home was no small task, either; I had to invest in a padlock to put on a footlocker where all of my accoutrement went when I wasn't using it. Most of my tools and materia I either harvested myself, or picked up as mundane items at yard sales or flea markets and figured out how to make them work. I was nothing if not committed.

Eventually I graduated high school and went on to college, where I met a lot more folks like myself through things like the student pagan network, queer student union, and other organizations. I even helped form a "teaching circle" with the pagan students, and this was where things got complicated in my brain pan. One of the students had a very sick sister, and asked the circle to perform a healing ritual for her. It was in that moment that I realized I had a very serious gap in my magical education. I had no idea how to perform a healing ritual.

I'd spent so much time and energy on learning how to erode somebody metaphysically that I never bothered learning how to help somebody who needed it. And now that my brain was mostly developed, I understood why that was a problem.

I spent many years correcting this on the other side of the scales. Eventually I started encountering terms like "Right Hand Path" and "Left Hand Path" in terms of personal paths and workings, met more practitioners, and found myself in a hotbed of debate surrounding whether it was morally acceptable to perform workings against other people at all, under what circumstances, using which tools or spells, and whether somebody had asked us to or if it was personal. I had never seen such intense discussion and debate. Some notions bore merit, while others were simply ridiculous in my mind (spoiler alert: karma isn't something that happens to you in this life when you do something shitty, and I guarantee you the witches of Pendle Hill didn't know what karma was, nor would they have given two juicy squirts about it if they did).

(Spoiler alert #2: being a "Left-Hand Path practitioner" isn't as spoopy and edgy as you think it is if you can't even describe to me what that means for you. Put down WitchTok for a couple days and read a book. I don't even care which one.)

After much reading, attending many discussion groups, and eventually teaching workshops all over the place and covering many different types of material, I have arrived at a few conclusions.

More important than any supposed strictures against working baneful magic is your belief in what will happen if you do. If you believe the Universe will retaliate against you for doing so, it will. We attract what we focus on, plain and simple.

Witches do, in fact, use a variety of different kinds of magic, including hexes and curses. Anybody who tells you "Real Witches™ Don't [insert X thing here]" is absolutely not an authority on what is real or what isn't, I assure you. Nobody can define what your path consists of but you. Seek your own truth, and bugger anybody who tries to tell you it's wrong.

Denying yourself a whole half of your power doesn't do anybody any favors, least of all yourself. You are a whole person, and you're allowed to be a complex one at that.

We don't need to keep a ledger or a checkbook to make sure we're keeping our magic (or ourselves) in balance. We simply need to live honestly, and with integrity, and with authenticity. Don't try to be somebody you're not, and don't pigeonhole yourself into one role, either.

I refer to witchcraft, in general, as "the Twilight Path" (sparkling vampires notwithstanding) these days. We are a microcosm of the world and spheres of existence, which keep a balance of their own. To be fully actualized people, I think it is necessary that we understand that balance, insofar as we are able, and to similarly walk in balance in our lives. A wise friend once told me, "It's important to spend quality time with your darkness, or it gets jealous and starts plotting against you." I find this to be absolutely true.

Your mileage may vary. I am but a humble Hex, with some hard-earned lessons that I hope serve you well.

Finding the Occult in the Mundane – Freedom from Occult Bondage

Hello, reader! How’s your month? Taking some time to read through our monthly newsletter I see~ Happy that you’re here, and I hope the Sun hasn’t scorched too much of your skin off. It’s HOT out there! We’re riding the good vibes and high energy post-Gather. Fantastic weekend full of wonderful conversations, intriguing workshops, and fantastic people. I highly recommend planning for next year’s Gather, you won’t be disappointed!

This month’s contemplation is about finding the spiritual within the mundane world all around us. As we return to our daily lives and allow all that good energy to settle in as we return to our adulting, I notice a shift. There is calm, a sense of still certainty, and a charge of energy that is enabling better insights into the most mundane things. The Occult is all around us, have you ever looked at a dollar bill?

“Annuit Coeptis.” means “He favors our undertakings.” And “Novus ordo seclorum” means “A new order of the ages (is born)”. Would ya look at that?~ Have you ever thought of the Pledge of Allegiance, and the oath that you swear each time that you repeat it? They knew what they were doing when they wrote that! They constructed a vast egregore known as the USA, and each pledge of allegiance, each tax dollar you pay, and every drop of blood spilled in its name grows its power. The Allegiance Pledge was something most of us did every morning in elementary school in this country, without a second thought, without understanding what we were swearing to or why. As you learn the mysteries, you start to see that the world is intensely magical, and that some of the most mundane things you do every single day carry a vast weight behind them, even if you don’t realize it.

Have you ever pledged allegiance to yourself? To swear that you will endure the pain of growth, the uncanny transformation that occurs when you swear to abide by your own law, your own truth, and to guide yourself and your family by that oath? How much of that weight, once shed, will release the binding energy of all those pledges, all those agreements to which you didn’t even know you’d acknowledged? Each of us is on the path of figuring ourselves out, and the deck was stacked with magick set in place upon you long before you were even born. This isn’t a warning to watch out for the magical boogeymen, this is a reminder that you have the power to release yourself from bonds and reclaim your freedom, magically, physically, and spiritually.

Reclaim all that you are and release all that you are not!

Have a blessed week. Seek your own Truth!
-Izzy

by M. Belanger

Our animal companions are great boons in our lives: they provide us company in our darkest moods without judgment and teach valuable lessons, like the cherished importance of unconditional love. Each companion brings something different to the table, and each species has their own suite of gifts. While dogs tend to model lessons of devotion and loyalty, cats are more aloof. They teach us about holding boundaries, the importance of asking consent before interactions, and - of particular value of a workaholic like me - how to step back and live in the moment. I can be a stubborn student, but I have always cherished these lessons - as well as the little lives so patiently passing them on to me.

So, allow me to share. Here are five lessons in mindfulness my beloved feline companions have taught me over the years:

Be still

In a word, I’m not. I’m restless. I shift, I fidget. Even when I’m parked beneath my laptop furiously typing, some part of me is in constant motion. Then along comes the cat. Little Bliss, the current queen who claims me as her person, cannot bear to be picked up and dandled. If she wants snuggles, she graces my lap strictly on her own terms - and stays only so long as I am reasonably still. And if I allow myself to set aside the constant, rapid-fire din of my thoughts, I can be, if only for a little while. And those precious moments are enough - both to appease the cat and to remind me that stillness is possible and also soothing.

Be present

Learning to be present in the moment is the only way my busy brain ever achieves stillness. But, let me be clear: stillness is not a state of doing nothing. Being present in the moment involves being still enough to appreciate that present moment. I can’t always do that for myself, but when a tiny, purring life trusts me to cradle her entire body as she stretches languorously upon me, I can be both still and present for the moments that we share. The computer gets set aside, the phone put down, and we simply exist as two beings enjoying the company of the other. It heals something inside me I often have no name for, and might not have noticed was wounded without intervention from the cat.

Just breathe

I’ve often said that the simplest meditation is to take three intentional breaths. Three breaths. That’s it. For human-shaped beings, however, a state of meditation can be wisdom hard-won. But for a cat, it’s as instinctive as purring. It’s soporific simply listening to them, but also immersively tactile - the sound, the soothing warmth, the gentle thrumming deep within their bodies, always a little louder on the exhale, as if our cats project their entire beings into that experience of relaxed contentedness. When Bliss curls against me and purrs, I lay my hand along her flank and breathe with her: content in the moment, replete with the contact, present and blissfully still (there’s a reason she bears that particular name, after all - her essence, her calling. Bliss).

Indulge sensation

This lesson is threaded throughout the three above, but if one cannot release enough of their distractions to be present and to be still, indulgence can be elusive. Not for cats, though. Never for cats. Cats are some of the most self-indulgent creatures to live among us. It’s a trait some people find off-putting, but I appreciate the wisdom of knowing what feeds you in body and soul and feeling no shame when meeting those needs. One must only observe a cat as they stretch to see how completely they inhabit their body, how easily they allow themselves to enjoy their unique configuration as beings of muscle and fur and claw. When a cat enjoys a sensation, they inhabit that sensation from quivering whisker to trembling tail-tip. They indulge as they love: unconditionally. Admittedly, coming as I do from an upbringing of scarcity, conditioned by a society to feel guilt for practically everything, this was a challenging lesson to learn. But my feline companions have been patient with me, and I’m getting there, particularly with Bliss.

Work can wait

This is the hardest one for me, but arguably the most valuable. In an era where everything is content, everything’s a hustle, a false urgency emerges where we feel driven to pack every waking moment with productive work (never mind valuing ourselves based only on the profit of that work). That’s a guaranteed path to misery and burnout. When little Bliss shoves herself unceremoniously between me and my laptop - especially when I’m on a deadline, my initial impulse is to get annoyed and push her away. And then I remember how brief and precious is her little life - and how five minutes of my time is SO MUCH to her. So, work can wait. Five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes - these benefit the both of us when I carve out some space to sit quietly, immerse myself in the experience of being, and commune with this vibrant soul whom I cherish. And I always feel better afterwards. Work is supposed to support our lives, after all. What’s the use of it if we forget to take some time to actually *live* ?

Midnight Sun June 2023

SCROLL FROM THE EDITOR

Welcome to the June 2023 edition of The Midnight Sun!

June is the best month! Why? BECAUSE IT”S PRIDE MONTH AND GATHER IS HAPPENING! (And it’s my birthday month so I’m even more biased, wooo!)

In just less than two weeks, Gather will be returning to in-person! Do you have your tickets? Are you planning to go? Check out the Gather 2023 Page if you’re still in the last-minute deciding stage for all the information you need to come to join us! I really look forward to seeing everyone there! And if you’ve not yet seen, we have a one-day Virtual content ticket available as well!!! This is the first time in Gather history that we have been able to present a hybrid event that has both in-person and online scheduling! Some of it is shared; so even if you can’t travel you can watch many of our classes and panels that are going on as they happen on-site, AND there will be exclusive content for the virtual experience, including a connection ritual with our founder, M. Belanger! Check out the virtual schedule here, and if you want to purchase this exclusive first-time, hybrid ticket and be one of the cool kids, you can get your ticket here!

We have a Gather packed edition of the Newsletter for you this month, as well as a few of our staple columns, all in preparation for a wonderful second half to June, lead up to Gather and all the excitement and love we can pour into our beloved month of PRIDE!

Regardless of how you’re attending, or if you’re unable to this year but maybe next year, I hope that June 2023 is a wonderful month for you, filled with things that feed your mind, body, and soul. Happy Pride, and we’ll catch you next month!

~Miranda (Frick)
Curator and Editor of TMS

House Kheperu’s Gather 2023 is back and better than ever! We have a new home at the Four Points by Sheraton Cleveland Airport hotel and a range of tickets with exclusive perks and access than ever before.

AND A ONE DAY DIGITAL TICKET HAS BEEN ANNOUNCED!

House Kheperu Gather 2023 is going hybrid! What does that mean? You can now purchase a virtual ticket for Gather this year and catch live-streamed classes from the event in Cleveland, OH along with exclusive, virtual-only classes including a ritual by our founder, M. Belanger! We believe in broadening accessibility and this virtual ticket moves us towards bringing our community, no matter where they live, together.

Check out the Gather Schedule here!

DO YOU HAVE YOUR TICKETS YET?

For all tickets, including weekend, Sat/Sun only, and digital tickets, Click Here to learn more!

We look forward to seeing you there, be it in person or online at this very special celebration of reconnection and community!

HK JAMS - Electric Rainbow

Happy PRIDE MONTH! It’s a reason to celebrate and how better with a mishmash of the digital and vampiric rainbow of party songs ready for your ear holes. Crank up these tunes and let HK keep you guessing with this list. Grab a goblet of your finest AB positive blood (or merlot) and enjoy!

The Energy of Pain

An Understanding of Pain’s Lessons

Hullo, folks~ I’ve missed ya! This time of year always seems to become exceptionally busy. So many comings and goings, wheeling and dealing. The warmth of summer has already set in, bringing much-needed energy to the goings-on of life. The days are long and warm and breezy, so now is the time for such things. In our busy schedules, it is always good to make a little time to settle in and rest. Don’t forget that you grow stronger not when you’re exercising, but when you are resting.

Now, don’t be intimidated by the title of the article! I am not bringing you a message intended to drag you down; this is one of realization.

There is a lot of suffering in the world, one does not have to look far to find it. We have all felt pain, of all kinds, and some more so than others. The kind that brings you to the floor and makes you crawl like a dog (looking at you, kidney stones!). Pain that settles in like a dull ache that can’t be ignored. There is a simplicity to being in pain, when all one craves is relief from the suffering. One researches their ailment and harnesses their recourses to this pursuit. Relief is pursued at all costs, it becomes the forefront of all things on your mind, and every plan is made with this pain in mind. That is because pain is a focus.

We can carry pain for many years, even lifetimes. It hardens us, scars us, can twist, and deform in a struggling fury of twisted limbs and nightsweats. But, at its core, pain is simply a call to focus on that which is causing dis-ease. Sometimes it is ignorable, sometimes it is all-consuming. What is your pain demanding you to focus on? For those of you living in chronic pain, whether mental, physical, or spiritual (bless you <3), what could possibly be the meaning of this constant signal?

I have found a deeper meaning to my own pain, and it has to do with connection and understanding. One does not truly understand another person until they have felt their pain for themselves. If you can feel another’s pain, you can glean insight into everything about them. Why they talk like they talk, act like they act. Why they are so defensive. Why they are so sensitive to certain topics. Why their moods shift the way they do. Why they seem so selfish. It is pain. It is their focus. That is its nature.

You are in so much pain because you are so very capable of this understanding. You can understand the world, for its pain is yours, and your pain is in the world as well, for you are a part of it. You are not blind to its suffering, even if it feels like the world is blind to yours at times. I see you. I understand. My hope for you is that you can see yourself as the lovely and powerful soul that you have become through pain’s crucible, and that you are so much more than your pain, and that you are not alone.

Be kind to yourself, reader. You have endured to this moment, and what I want for you is to treat yourself! Plan a good meal, watch your favorite shows. Try and change your focus when you can to the sweet and savory things that life offers. It is not all pain, unless you enjoy hot wings like I do. Some pain is delicious and fun, but one’s tastes may not be as peculiar as my own! Hahaha!

See you again next month, reader~

-Izzy

The Spectrum of Energy

by Miranda Harrell

(Happy Pride 2023!!)

House Kheperu Member Spotlight

Miranda (Frick)

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

"They're not the same at all!"

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"

MY POINT EXACTLY.”
― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

What interests you most about Energy work?

Correspondence. Connection. How everything is tied together; temporarily, or more permanently - Some that will last hours, days, even for a lifetime - and more deeply the ties that surpass death into reincarnation if you are so inclined to believe. Through these sympathetic ties to one another, places, animals, and even things, what is possible? A more abstract example is Healing Through Music; the emotions we feel forge a connection with that song and our ideas and thoughts and feelings around it. Shared experience, friendship, love - all ties that can grow, strengthen, fade, be damaged, broken, and reforge over time. How the world in its entirety is interconnected from the abstract to the tangible, from the living to the inanimate and the dead, as well as what we can achieve through those connections is one of the most fascinating aspects of our energetic world to me. The study of those truths and possibilities is my favorite part.

What is one of your favorite movies?

Dammit, I made these questions and I can’t pick just one. If you want the Real Tea, I wrote about “The Four Ls” as my mom named them - the movies I would always ask to rent from the video store. It will unlock an achievement if you go find those in the May 2023 Newsletter (feel free to leave a comment! LOL)! But I will list one of my other top 5 favorite movies of all time that I could watch on repeat and never get tired of; Hogfather. It’s a favorite book and a favorite movie for all of the reasons. Much like American Gods it looks at belief in a different light, and through the sardonic and comical lens of Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld. It’s like a comfort blanket, and at my house, we also Celebrate Hogswatch in the Yule season!

Curious to know more?

Check it out!

The Mystery of Queerness

It's Pride Month, and I want to speak on the topic of Queer Mysteries.

What do I mean by "queer mysteries"? No, I'm not talking about Nancy Drew. Mysteries are events or concepts that are difficult, if not impossible, to explain to somebody who has not also experienced them. In the ancient world, there were entire spiritual groups dedicated to understanding secret religious rites of mysterious origin, such as the Eleusinian Mysteries (initiations into the cult of Persephone and Demeter centered around Persephone's abduction by Hades). No one knew what took place during the initiations except the initiates themselves and the priestesses who performed them. There are some mysteries we all experience, such as adolescence, aging, and death, but one could not adequately explain the experience to somebody who has not lived it.

Others are unique to certain peoples; I will never experience the mystery of pregnancy or childbirth, but many people will, and I could not hope to understand it without actually experiencing it. I have experienced the mystery of falling in love, but some do not. And by the same token, the experience of coming out, from the first moment you understand there is something different about you, to when you decide what to do about that, is something heteronormative people will never experience. Those moments, and everything in between and beyond, are what I am referring to when I say "queer mysteries".

One of the cornerstones of many modern queer pagan movements is that there existed in many ancient societies people who were 1. spiritual experts or leaders, and 2. in some way queer in regard to gender or sexual orientation (although we need to unpack some things here, which we'll get to). There is a reason for this. There is something unique about living as a queer person touched by the spirit realm, an "otherness" on multiple levels, that particularly lends itself to an understanding of liminality and "other". We find this phenomenon in the Galli of Cybele, who made their way to Rome from Phrygia, many First Peoples' cultures as Two-Spirit People (although this is a very modern term for a very old designation), and even some functionaries in Hindu religion. The level and description of queerness can range broadly in these examples, from ritual transvestism to transgender and transsexual identities, or merely the acceptance that gender is not binary and many possibilities exist along that spectrum.

This is not without complication, however. Even within these roles, there was frequently some degree of social marginality or scorn in adopting these identities which is often left out of our modern reimagination and integration into queer spiritual or pagan movements. This is part of what made these people inherently queer. Queerness ceases to exist when a society fully accepts and embraces such an identity, so in cases where nonbinary gender or fluid sexuality exist in a society without judgment, "queerness" could be a highly problematic term. Furthermore, one of the details frequently left out of the descriptions of these practitioners is what their actual sexual identities were.  It is easy for us, two thousand years later, to examine notable people of their age and deem them "gay" or "bisexual", but we must also remember that sexuality was not discussed as broadly in these cultures as it is today; sexuality was mostly a function of one's gender identity or presentation, and the way one interacted with either men or women. People who did not fit into heteronormative roles were simply "other".

This is important because, in some cultures, the gender identity and sexual orientation of these individuals are what determined the level of marginalization they faced, not simply the fact that they did not adhere to heteronormativity. In Greece and Rome, for example, there were extremely well-defined guidelines on the acceptable ages and relationships of same-sex people engaging in sexual activity; the societal norms were not at all as wide open as we imagine them to be in queer spirituality. Female homoeroticism and sexuality were never as acceptable as male varieties either, due largely to a heavy subtext of misogyny in those societies. Yes, it is possible (and even common) for a culture that worships many different goddesses to also be misogynistic.

The ease with which gender variance, non-heteronormative sexuality, and polytheism have been conflated and subsumed under one narrative does a grave disservice to the people who existed within these cultures. The experience of queer people is highly individual and specific to them, and their gender and sexual identities, and they exist within a broad spectrum of possibilities. Their multitude of identities, and the Mystery of their experience as our ancestors in Queer Spirit, should be honored and celebrated within the accurate context of their cultures and who they were. Their lives and stories matter, and so do yours.

Happy Pride Month, everyone, and enjoy your tea.

~Hex

Vampire Tea - Good For The Soul!

(The vampire’s soul, usually….)

The Daily Ritual

By Kelly

An enchantment for your drinking water:

Will your energy to move toward the palms of your hands, and let it accumulate for a few seconds. You may feel some heat or tingling as the power gathers.

Then place your palms against your glass or water bottle. Speak these words, either aloud or in your mind, as you send the energy into your water.

Precious substance of the rains, of the streams, and sacred springs
Grateful, I receive you. Gracious, you replenish me.
Nourish now every cell of my being.
Move within and through me,
That I may move within and through the world with radiant vitality.

Sip the water with particular attention to how it feels. Notice the texture and temperature. Notice the different sensations as it moves from your mouth, through your throat, and down into your belly. Know that every step of the way it is blessing your body its inherent magic united with yours.

~ Forest Nui Cobalt
Nuicobaltdesigns.com
TikTok: @nui_cobalt

Do you find yourself struggling to fit ritual work into your everyday life? We are busy creatures by habit, and even our most important practices can fall to the wayside when we are crunched for time. There are many ways you can use everyday tasks and turn them into ritual work. The following are a few ways you can do this.

Your shower or bath can be used to wash away collected gunk and energy you accumulate through the day or night. If you bathe in the mornings it is an excellent way to wash the leftovers from dream space off before the start of your day. For some, the water can be a grounding and centering tool. Bathing at night can help wash away the accumulated energetic buildup of the day. You can wash it all down the drain and far away. If you choose to add these items to your bath, sugar, salt, and herbs can add their magical properties to your daily bathing ritual. Making your daily coffee or tea can become a meditative moment and with that, you can lay your intention for the day into the beverage.

You can even enchant the water that you are using to make the caffeine delivery system of your choice. If you use numbers in your daily practice, maybe stir your drink a specific number of times. If you use tinctures or edible additives, they could be placed into your beverage to benefit from their properties. Cooking meals for yourself, your friends and your family is another way to make the mundane magical. Everyone needs to eat! The use of spices and herbs in the preparation of the meal can add magical properties to the food. Layering in intent can be as simple as making a PB&J sandwich of happiness or as complicated and multilayered as a multi-course meal where every dish is its own magical moment. My personal favorite way to bring magic into my daily life is by using my appearance to set the tone and intent for the day. Jewelry, hairstyle and color, wardrobe, and makeup choices are some of the easiest ways to keep your magic with you on the daily.

I use most of these regularly to help with my confidence, how I want to appear to others, and in some cases, a way to hold my shields in place. This is a brief overview of some of the ways to bring magic and ritual into your mundane daily tasks. We all have to eat, bathe and dress! As always, if any of your daily ritual work might impact someone other than yourself, remember to always have consent from the ones it will impact. Forest Nui Cobalt of Nuicobaltdesigns.com was gracious enough to share an enchantment for your drinking water with me to include here. An enchantment for your drinking water: Will your energy to move toward the palms of your hands, and let it accumulate for a few seconds. You may feel some heat or tingling as the power gathers. Then place your palms against your glass or water bottle.

Speak these words, either aloud or in your mind, as you send the energy into your water. The precious substance of the rains, of the streams, and sacred springs Grateful, I receive you. Gracious, you replenish me. Nourish now every cell of my being. Move within and through me, That I may move within and through the world with radiant vitality. Sip the water with particular attention to how it feels. Notice the texture and temperature. Notice the different sensations as it moves from your mouth, through your throat, and down into your belly. Know that every step of the way it is blessing your body its inherent magic united with yours.

May this information find you well and exactly when you need it.

NEW TO GATHER THIS YEAR

Divination Sessions with House Kheperu

House Kheperu will be offering Divination Sessions with some of our house members over the course of Gather 2023.

These sessions with be conducted by members of House Kheperu experienced in different forms of divination, and below you will find information on who is available and what talents they are offering this year. These exclusive sessions are limited, and selections for who is available are on a first come first served basis with the purchase of your Gather ticket. You may choose to purchase one of these Divination Sessions with your ticket here.

An Introduction

Hello friends. Friendly neighborhood Frick here, bringing you a new addition to our ever-growing library of recurring columns like Stef’s Shadow-Work Slow-Dance, Tea With Hex, and our other lovely Columnists’ pieces. Before we start pulling out soap boxes, I wanted to give you an introduction to the idea. If you’re familiar with our Newsletter, you’ve seen me and my articles before. If you’re familiar with our Tiktok [@HouseKheperu] then you probably know your girl here has opinions. Generally, I am a polite, professional, and deeply passionate Southern Fried Vampire Lady who likes to facilitate connection, communication, and education to any who wish to seek it.

But also…

There are times when a topic, or conversation will trigger my trap card! Be it an interest, a pain point, or an ‘Um, Actually…’ complete with glasses being pushed up on the nose, if it meets my conditional activated ability (Magic the Gathering reference), I will activate and pull out my soap box. 

And that, dear friends, is what this column aims to be.

There are a few I’ve spoken to on our Discord, a few that have made it to Tiktok, and I plan to cover some of those in a more long-form format here in this column. I’ll aggregate and refine them in the process, and then present the topic, to share my hot-takes. All of my opinions always come from a place of willingness to hear, learn and grow - not a single one comes ironclad or with closed doors. And I very much operate through the filter of respect, though in some cases it will be more of a “Respectfully, no.” Not a closed door or mind in the cases of the “no’s” either - no one can Seek Your Truth but you. We can agree to disagree and acknowledge in those cases that perhaps my truth is not yours, and that yours is not mine - and that’s fine.

It’s literally just an opinion, and you know what they say about opinions… Everybody’s got them.

So what you can look forward to here is some good ole fashion gentle ranting, shade, side-eye, sass, other phrases that start with “s”, as much education as I can cram into a column, and hope - Hope that together we can learn not to yuck each other’s yum through civil discourse and learn something along the way. You don’t have to agree - no skin off my nose. My only request is that if you find something that you disagree with, is that you remember the human experience is different for everyone and we all have our own Truths. And that those Truths CAN, and SHOULD coexist, because it’s something that makes this life, this experience, this world in which we exist so fascinating. 

Keep it Honest.
~Frick

Projects we’re excited about

Check out the newest project featuring House Kheperu’s founder, M. Belanger on Kickstarter - NEW BLOOD TV!

House Kheperu Gather 2023

Get your tickets while there’s still time!

Midnight Sun May 2023

SCROLL FROM THE EDITOR

Welcome to the May 2023 edition of The Midnight Sun!

Hello and welcome to a very special themed edition of The Midnight Sun.

Shadies and Gentlememes, I am so excited and pleased to present to you, VAMPIRE APPRECIATION MONTH! We have themed, collected, and curated a Vampire Experience for your reading and viewing pleasure. From Articles on Vampiric Healing and a look at the different Types of Vampires by Abri to The Empowerment of Fangs and What if the Villain Was Right? by yours truly, to a Vampire themed playlist that House Kheperu members all contributed songs to, we’ve got a good one this month. Below you’ll find more information about our upcoming return to in-person Gather, the month’s articles, and some fun, inclusive art. And remember next month? GATHER WILL BE NEARLY HERE! * Jazz hands *

I hope you enjoy, this month friends, and next month look for our newsletter at the normal time… but I also hope that maybe, just maybe, we will see you at Gather. I leave you with one of my favorite quotes, from The Vampire Lestat by the late Anne Rice;

“In spite of all the refinements of civilization that conspired to make art--the dizzying perfection of the string quartet or the sprawling grandeur of Fragonard's canvases--beauty was savage. It was as dangerous and lawless as the earth had been eons before man had one single coherent thought in his head or wrote codes of conduct on tablets of clay. Beauty was a Savage Garden.”

Miranda (Frick)
Curator and Editor of TMS

Are you attending the 2023 House Kheperu Gather, and wondering if there’s something you can do to help out? OR, are you unable to attend this year, but still wanting to contribute?

Excellent news! The Hospitality Crew got together and compiled a wishlist of things that folks have talked about or requested or batted about as good to have in a Hosp Suite for the event, and we are bringing it to you live!

You can find the 2023 House Kheperu Hospitality Wishlist here!

Help make Gather 2023 a phenomenal experience! House Kheperu is accepting donations via our Amazon Wishlist for the event. Your contribution will help us provide an unforgettable gathering for our community. Donate now and be a part of something amazing! If you see something you want to make sure is there, or that there is plenty of, or you’re just wanting to contribute and have the means to do so, it’s often the little things that can take something from good to great, and great to stellar!

House Kheperu Member Spotlight

Abri

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain." ~ Frank Herbert, Dune

What interests you about energy work?

Anatomy. Our physical anatomy is already so interesting and unique from person to person. In the energetic space? The anatomy is far more fluid. The variety is immense. The shapes, connections, energy centers, flow, and structures are all complex and ever changing. I think that is what interests me the most- the constant change. There is always something new to discover or observe, and it isn't just the anatomy of the body. Oh, no. It is the anatomy of energetic spaces. The anatomy of rituals. The anatomy of nature and the interconnectedness of it. It is the webworkings that stretch out beyond our tiny blue dot in an expansive universe. It is so big, so small, and all happening at the same time. I love it. 

What is one of your favorite movies?

So... My favorite movie isn't a movie of quality. This movie is my favorite movie because it is terrible. It makes me laugh at the sheer rushed audacity and terrible voice acting. That movie? Lady Death animated movie from 2004. It is a piece of cinematic tragedy that is so bad it shifts to hilarious and I adore it.

HK JAMS - May I Come In?

HK was tempted to just link the Queen of the Damned movie soundtrack (great soundtrack but that’s the extent to which we agree.) We didn’t! Instead, this month’s HK Jams are all those songs that speak to our vampire side. Enjoy the broody, moody, dance room vibes of this May playlist and enjoy!

Vampiric Healing

Psychic Vampirism and Energy Healing

by Cat Rogers

Psychic vampires and vampirism have long been maligned within fiction, magick, and occult spaces. Dion Fortune’s work Psychic Self-Defense and even Anton Lavey, most known for founding the Church of Satan, attributed psychic vampirism as a psychological or parasitic pathology that held no innate value beyond that of harm. Many have failed to consider that energetic vampirism can be a powerful healing practice and those who identify and practice ethical and consent-based vampirism can wield it. 

It is far more common to come into contact with article after article, book after book, and opinion pieces by the hundreds that continue to marginalize and demonize psychic vampirism. With such little awareness regarding psychic vampirism and the ethical means of engaging with the energic need, the communities that intersect with energy work have little resources or awareness of how psychic vampirism is more than a parasitic state. Psychic vampirism is a state of being. It comes with a spectrum of powerful abilities that require one to supplement their system with additional vital energy. These abilities are capable of so much more than the maligned nature of predation so often attributed to all psychic vampires.

The average psychic vampire is a being of deep energetic awareness. They have to be. Supplementing their lack of energy generation within their bodies by taking in vital energy from a donor means that psychic vampires often focus on those around them who generate ample energy. They also often are keenly aware of protections or other constructs meant to shield or keep them out or away from people or spaces. This means the average psychic vampire has a far more instinctual and complex view of the energetic world around them at any given time. This awareness means that ethical psychic vampires have an advantage in developing methods, techniques, and skills that can serve the community rather than merely feed upon it.

When it comes to subtle anatomy and energetic awareness of individuals, the psychic vampire excels in identifying weak points, strengths, flow, energy channels, energy centers, and how to navigate towards and through these areas. The psychic vampire requires these skills to carefully extract the energies they need when doing a direct or deep feed. Many psychic vampires rely on tendrils or innocuous cords of energy that can burrow into an individual and draw the energy they require from a donor. This further internal awareness means that psychic vampires are skilled at identifying blockages, scars, wounds, and other ailments of the subtle anatomy. It also means that they can target blockages to clear them, help increase energy in areas that need healing, decrease an abundance of energy in a subtly inflamed area, and so much more.

How then does a psychic vampire learn the positive applications of their skills? Unfortunately, not much literature exists that positively affirms the psychic vampire’s existence. There is a proliferation of material that claims various methods to ‘heal’ or ‘cure’ psychic vampirism. The topic of what makes a psychic vampire vampiric is a complex one. Some individuals are vampiric due to subtle body damage that, with time, can be healed and the vampiric condition rectified. This does not apply universally to psychic vampirism. Whether by the base nature of the subtle form, a choice, or subtle alteration, some are beyond the cures of well-intentioned but often ignorant practitioners.

Learning to heal yourself and others as a psychic vampire is best approached by understanding subtle anatomy, how energy exchange works, how the energy is transformed or transmuted, and how energies can be manipulated. Some of these skills are innate within the psychic vampire and may require careful self-observation to gain a deeper sense of control and awareness outside of instinct. This is good practice, in general, to allow the energy vampire greater finesse, control, and sensory awareness. Understanding various healing traditions becomes integral to building the knowledge base one may need to begin actively offering one’s skills to aid and the techniques of the psychic vampire are not limited to them. Anyone can learn the skills and techniques. Psychic vampires who lean into their innate abilities are simply more proficient at the methods that utilize their strengths.

House Kheperu’s founder, M. Belanger, spearheaded the development of energy work practices from a psychic vampire perspective. Their book The Psychic Energy Codex is a text that I cannot recommend enough as it functions as a workbook while imparting valuable knowledge and skills while their work The Psychic Vampire Codex delves into psychic vampirism more specifically. The Psychic Vampire Codex, while a beloved text by many, does include dated language and perspectives, often pushed by the publishing company that altered or shifted the original intent of its writer by including gendered language and odd physical associations with some of the content. 

Despite these fragments of a time past, the content of the work reveals the techniques of psychic vampirism, feeding, awakening, and ethics as a foundational book for those striving to learn more about their psychic vampirism. I intend to further expand upon that work by bringing deeper insights into the application of techniques and methods that I have developed while learning from M. Belanger over the years. Through that study, I have expanded my understanding, developed my practice, and honed my psychic vampirism in such a manner that I can achieve significant and effective energetic observation and healing for those that require such intervention and I intend on sharing that knowledge.

Psychic vampirism is a powerful state of being and if you are a psychic vampire as well, I hope that I can affirm your experience, assist in honing your skills, and impart the necessary ethics and boundaries needed to engage in your communities. My goal is to help guide you toward changing the view of psychic vampirism one positive interaction at a time. Psychic vampirism deserves to be acknowledged from a neutral viewpoint, similar to witchcraft or other occult practices. It is the quality of our character and our actions individually that should be the metric by which to judge us and not the heaps of literary misinformation that encourages deterrent practices that I assure you fail to work in most cases.

Stay tuned in the coming months as I further expand on the techniques and methods that psychic vampires and energy workers alike can use to expand their energetic skills for healing and improvement. Feel free to check out my work and methods at AetherBody.

Vampire Rituals for Daily Health

The AetherStore closes tonight at midnight so be sure to grab your last-minute House Kheperu shirt, hoodie, and/or wall scroll with this year’s design on it.

The Empowerment of Fangs

In 1994, as a wee young adult babby in a Waldenbooks, with earned yard work money to burn, I found a few books about Vampires. As it was barely the 90s, and TV ratings were not a thing yet, I’d already seen Lost Boys and had it listed in what my mother called “The Four L’s”, in reference to the four movies I would want to rent from the Video Store (Lost Boys, Labyrinth, Legend and Ladyhawke). But these were new Vampire stories in the Young Adult Section, and therefore how could my mom say no? She’d told me no to reading Anne Rice, and said that despite my elevated reading level it was not age-appropriate, much to my dismay. The Interview With The Vampire movie had just come out, and I was not allowed to see it either - for the same reasons.

But these books were in the Young Adult Section, and she approved them.

I devoured them within days. Luckily they were books in a series, so I just started saving money to buy them whenever I could and started collecting them over the next few years. One of the series, Nightworld by LJ Smith, was still actively being published. And I lived for it.

There was a draw to the idea of the vampire that I didn’t understand in full detail as a kid. I just knew that the idea of telepathy, healing powers, the ability to sway minds with a gaze, turn into animals, be faster, stronger than a ‘human’ - that stuff was all super cool and I would be willing to never see the sun again in trade.

Retrospectively, I realize that even to my young self, the concept of becoming a vampire was empowering; liberating. Through a transformation of the body, one could become more. To shed the restraints tying them down to achieve not only a freedom of self in the physical, but an opportunity to gather resources, allies, and knowledge. To travel the world and choose whether or not you were the villain, or a dark angel working from the shadows to preserve mortal life.

Autonomy. Choice. Freedom.

I swore up and down from that day that I would make a good candidate for vampirism. That I would miss all my friends and family once they passed on - the few that didn’t accept my offer to become one too, once I was embraced - and that I would spend my eternity learning languages and all the things there was to know. Because, of course, if you never stop learning, you never grow stagnant.

I was ten years old.

Here, almost three decades later, I have a much better understanding of why these themes and ideas were appealing. In addition to the struggles of just being a tween, into full-on teen (I never stopped reading the literature, though Rice’s Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis made me side-eye that truth for a minute…), I had some pretty tough situations in which I found myself. The child of divorcing parents, starting the workforce young due to financial struggles at home, and a few other things that the autonomy, choice, and freedom of the vampire embodied, and appealed greatly to me. Hell, they STILL do.

One way it worked against me, in my early 20s though, was when a psychic friend first noticed I was, to their senses, a psychic vampire. They asked me if I knew that, and I deflected and minimized my response because everyone knew I was into and encyclopedic on all things vampire. The insecurities of youth took the driver’s seat and I dismissed that idea entirely. How would it appear to the rest of the world, if the vampire girl started claiming to be a real vampire? Surely they’d think I was nuts and lock me up. That was the last thing I needed.

But it poked something that had started waking up in me. A truth my Higher Self, who was still not yet fully online or through the mortal language barrier, could yet explain. Why it was the themes of energetic (blood in the books) exchange, transformation, self-evolution, and all the things that I then consciously had some recognition of the calling to, impacted me as they did.

Spoiler alert; I was, in fact, a psychic vampire.

My aversion to that idea began to dissolve after some long, hard conversations with a best friend who was a practitioner. We did what we call “went through witchy puberty” together. He was a safe space to discuss these things, and we ran experiments, tried things out, and looked at what little literature there was. From day one he was a huge advocate that “No, you are not a bad person for being this. This is for people who violate others without consent. I have never known you to do that.” Even unaware, on the occasion it did happen, we noticed that patterns showed I would just do more things that allowed me to ambiently feed more than anything, and he was able to help me work through my fears and concerns to stand up and fully embrace the idea that yeah… yeah I was this thing, and I would learn to be an ethical, effective version.

That I was, in fact, a vampire.

It wasn’t the same as I’d always read it. There was no direct mind reading for me, nor could I fly, I wasn’t super fast or strong… But even just owning the little things, even being partially this concept that had helped me navigate my life to that point, was powerful.

Then in 2010, that same friend found The Psychic Vampire Codex by Michelle Belanger and bought it for me. It was the first literature either of us had found that didn’t talk about Psy Vamps as monsters, or things to be protected from. Instead, the approach was a guide and something to help people learn how to engage in healthy, ethical ways.

And everything changed.

Since then, and through my journey, I have found that my inner child, who so desperately loved and longed for the feelings of self-empowerment, autonomy, and freedom, (and maybe to turn into a bat) was more honest in her search than 21 year old me was when I shied away from embracing (heh) myself as a Psy Vamp. The ten-year-old knew what she recognized, what she wanted, and didn’t let the fear of judgment or rejection guide her actions. No, she just did all the yard work to get all the money to buy all the books and learn more.

In the world today, everywhere you look there is someone or something trying to tell you how to feel about yourself, what you should think, what you shouldn’t think, do, or say, how to dress, what it looks like to be pretty (and if you don’t look like that you’re NOT pretty), how to feel, how to act, what to buy. The idea of being a vampire, transcending social expectation and only engaging when you choose, transcending weakness and mortality, to shed the chains of the mortal world that tries to shape us into a narrative that few of us find comfortable, calls to those of us who recognize that discomfort within. While my journey and truth are mine, I see value in sharing to present a perspective; The Vampire is a deeply empowering concept on a fundamental level in many ways.

If you have lifetimes to accumulate wealth, invest, steal, and or save money - then in perspective as an immortal being in fairly short order, you don’t have to worry about money.

If you have lifetimes to learn, you can learn anything and everything you want to.

If you have lifetimes to travel, you can go anywhere you want to, and if you’re faster, stronger, and have the ability to manipulate minds, then there is little to no danger in so doing.

And yes, there are sacrifices, but when aren’t there?

The Vampire is transformative. It is the idea that embracing a fundamental change and a dedication to learning and surviving will open a path to eschewing the things that you perceive hold you back, or even imprison you. It is the face and embodiment of seizing a moment of choice and evolving to become something more. In most cases, becoming more authentically yourself. It is a freedom born of autonomy, being in control of one’s own self to the totality of that truth under the sway of no one but your own mind, heart, and desires. Whether that makes you a villain, or a dark angel is fully up to you, and not some outdated social construct that your spark will outlive to see crumble and fade to dust with the ever-flowing passage of time.

And there is great power in that.

I’m glad I listened to ten-year-old me. Even if she didn’t fully grasp the magnitude at the time, she was right. We do make a pretty darn good vampire.

A note from your 2023 Gather con chair!

Gather 2023 is fast approaching! After holding virtual Gathers for a few years we are ready to get back in person and the members of House Kheperu are excited to see everyone. We’ve included a few new and exciting activities to gather this year.

The first is we are holding an exclusive event on Thursday evening. Tea with Kheprians gives attendees a chance to mingle and chat with House members in a more intimate setting. Gather is always chaotic for everyone and House members rarely get time to have quality chats with attendees, so we have set aside time to mingle.

The second addition to Gather this year is divination sessions. Members of House Kheperu have various talents and this year we wanted to highlight those who practice divination. This year attendees can choose from Abri, Ges, Hex, Miranda, or Seo to get a one-on-one session that is included in the Deluxe ticket.

If you haven’t already, grab your ticket and join us!

We take Covid-19 safety very seriously and want everyone to have a safe and fun Gather.

We look forward to seeing you in June!

House Kheperu Gather Con Chair, Stefanie (RogerDoger#0596 Discord)

Types of Vampires

From Energy to Blood

by Cat Rogers

The world of vampires is broad and diverse, filled with those from all cultural backgrounds, body types, degrees of melanin, languages, and many spiritual practices, faiths, and religions. Even amongst those who identify as vampires, diversity is ever present. Diversity in any community is an enriching and necessary element that assists in empowering each other, supporting each other, and allowing us to bring our varied skills and strengths to play. This interlocking weave creates the tapestry of community and within that specifically of the vampire, there are many bold threads. The following is a list, subject to development and change, of the known and identified types of vampires in the world.

Archetype Vampires

These are people who identify with the vampire aesthetic. They use the vampire archetype as a tool of empowerment to build their confidence, feel good about their body, wear the clothes and styles they enjoy, and wrap themselves up in the appearance of the vampire. They don’t require energy or blood for their survival and can pick up and put down this identity as needed.

Psychic Vampires (Energy Vampires)

These individuals require human vital energy or other specific types of energy to survive. Their bodies do not produce enough energy to sustain them and the lack of energy results in impacts on their mental, physical, and emotional health. Ethical psychic and energy vampires feed via donors (informed consent-based energy exchange)  or ambient feeding practices (taking free floating and released ambient energies that are no longer attached to an individual.) There are several other feeding methods as well, but these are the two most common methods.

Sanguine Vampires

Individuals who ingest small amounts of human or animal blood are considered Sanguine vampires. These individuals, like psychic vampires, require this exchange for continued maintenance of their physical, mental, and emotional state. Due to the risk factor for blood-born pathogens, most sangs (sanguine vampires) practice strict and thorough safety practices. The sanguine vampire must be tested and their donors tested rigorously and often for any transmissible diseases in order to protect both vampire and donor. Methods of extracting blood from donors are often well-researched, with the amount taken small, and aftercare provided for optimum wound healing. 

Carnalis Vampires

Often mistaken for succubi/incubi, these folx get their energy via erotic or sexual exchange and the energy they take is necessary for their physical, mental, and emotional health. Similar to sanguine vampires, carnalis vampires often pay special attention to being tested often and frequently along with their donors to assure they remain safe. Safe sex practices are critical to the carnalis vampire, although not all participate in the exchange of body fluids. Some find the energy they need merely in their donor’s release, which can often blur the line between psychic/energy vampires and carnalis vampires. Carnalis vampires differ in that the exchange almost always requires an element of eroticism, sexual exchange, or orgasmic release.

Cultus Vampires

These individuals serve a vampiric deity, but they themselves are not vampiric in nature. They take energy like other vampire types but pass it along to their vampiric god form. These individuals often act more as a proxy for their deity and work within the spiritual belief structure. As such, it is a religion or faith-based practice. Some practice consent and ethical vampirism as they pass along energy to their deity. Other cultus vampires do not practice safe, ethical, and consent-based exchanges and we do not condone them.

Member Art Gallery

May 2023 - Vampire Edition

“Invitation” by Miranda Harrell

“Passing Through” by Miranda Harrell
For all my Vampire the Masquerade players out there ♥

“Fuck You Stephenie Meyer” by Cat Rogers: In my world, vampires are diverse and more beautiful for it. I don’t give AF about your sparkles.

What If The Villian Was Right?

The Positive Lessons of The Vampire Throughout Time

by Miranda Harrell

Encyclopedia Britannica says about the modern interpretation of Vampires; 

“The first prose vampire story published in English is believed to be John Polidori's “The Vampyre” (1819), about a mysterious aristocrat named Lord Ruthven who seduces young women only to drain their blood and disappear.”

Before that, there were stories in ancient Greece of vampire-like creatures that would appear under the cloak of night and drain a person of bodily fluids. Stories of similar beings thrived in medieval times, draining the blood of the living. Most of these proved to be hysteria that grew around a misinterpretation of disease symptoms surrounding sun sensitivities and tuberculosis, concluded by research done in the 20th and 21st centuries. You’d be hard-pressed here in 2023 to find someone that hasn’t heard of vampires. Be it through the lens of books, comics, movies, or television, the Vampire has persisted as an intriguing fixture in Urban Fantasy, Horror, and even Dark Classic Fantasy for centuries. 

More often than not, Vampires are presented as monsters of some kind - the sad boi love interest turned into a vampire against his will, or a villain straight out the gate, or mindless blood-hungering parasites brought on by curses, diseases, or something equally tragic befalling them. In modern media, there has been a swerve into Vampires as love interests or heroes as well, but it’s a relatively newer addition to Vampires as a genre. 

Yes, the 1980s is “relatively newer” when you think about some of the origins being Ancient Greece. 

When you look even at the evolution of Vampire stories from Bram Stoker’s famous novel Dracula to the artsy and deeply modern interpretation of the Vampire in Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive, it’s an interesting transformation. What started as a creature borne of fear, misunderstanding, and folklore has been shaped by stories, words, studies, and the imagination into something so much more intricate, sometimes horrifying, sometimes beautiful, and desirable. From Nosferatu to Queen of the Damned, the intrigue and draw of immortal beings possessed of eternal youth, undying, though predatory - having to feed on the life force of others to sustain themselves - has captivated us. 

There’s something to be said about an innate fear of mortality and dying that the vampire brings the promise that perhaps such truths might be avoided. As a monster or villain, the idea that something preying on “us” can be defeated despite its immortality holds a different, if equal appeal. To me, there’s something more that adds to the concept of the vampire that carries a deeply positive message; how to live authentically and how to Find Your Devil. 

Finding your Devil is a new idea to me, though applicable to things I’ve understood throughout my life as I am learning. It’s a conversation my partner and I were having about leaning into understanding what drives you, where your passions and desires lay, advocating for yourself and those desires, and learning to be comfortable in taking up that space. Any space. I may write more about this in a future article, as it’s still a new idea for me, but this is the basics that are applicable to this article. 

At a very high level, The Vampire is a creature of driven desire; be it the mindless vampire monsters hunting for blood and seeking their base needs, or the more refined, sophisticated vampires of Laurel K. Hamilton’s novels with individual desires, motives, histories, and methods to achieve much the same. Vampires don’t have to worry (in most cases) about diseases, very few things can kill them, and they have all the time in the world if they are careful, to do… well, whatever they want. In many of the stories, the vampires that lose their passion, drive, or reasons for ‘living’, are the ones that don’t make it. They have powers of the mind to sway thoughts, and physical prowess to back up their bite and stand their ground when they say or do something controversial or defend what’s theirs and their space. They can say, and do what they need to, and many do so in order to protect their immortality, or just up and leave if things get too dangerous. 

Y’know, the way that every ‘good mental health practice’ course and video tells us all we should be nourishing ourselves and our peace?

And there are exceptions - just as there are in any genre, there is bad writing, racism, and disgusting personal beliefs of the author being revealed through fiction - but we don’t stan those… sparkles need not apply. Overall, the ideals, message, and questions the vampire inspires us to ask, bring us a little closer to our own truths. 

“What Drives You?”

“What are you passionate about?”

“What feeds your soul?”

“What would you do with yourself, if you didn’t have to worry about day-to-day life?

“What do you want? And what are you willing to do to achieve it?”

Villain, antihero, dark lover, a normal person gifted with immortality obsessed with memorizing every scientific name for the natural world, or mindless hunger - we all have little pieces of these concepts inside of us that the composite ideal of Vampires calls to.

Maybe, if we all listened to that call, and leaned in a little more, we could find a place where we all live like truly immortal vampires, driven by passion, leaving others to their passions, doing things that feed our bodies and souls, thus our legacies reaching immortality, even if our bodies don’t. Because aren’t we all sometimes horrifying, sometimes beautiful and desirable?

Lean in.

Midnight Sun April 2023

SCROLL FROM THE EDITOR

Welcome to the April 2023 edition of The Midnight Sun!

Happy April, everyone!

However you celebrate Spring holidays or Equinox, I hope that the weather is kind, the allergies are leaving you alone, and that you are having a lovely Spring-y experience in life right now. Because [Content Warning; Dad Joke] Hope SPRINGS Eternal! (I’ll see myself out…)

In any event, some days can feel harder than others, and there are a lot of things to have hard days over it feels like right now. I’m not going to get into specifics, but we’re all aware. We know. We have eyes and the internet. So I also have hugs for anyone that wants them or needs one but is afraid to ask. It’s okay to have struggle days too… even when the weather is nice.

BUT! Hopefully, we have some good news, good content, and a pleasant and welcome intermission to your day here in the form of The Midnight Sun. This month we have articles from Hex, Izzy, myself, and Abri. Meghan is our Member spotlight this month, we have a member-submitted art piece, photo gallery, and comic strip, and of course, we have a Spring playlist, for you to check out!

The Road to Gather is ever before us, and I am starting to get excited! Are you gonna be there? Do you have questions? Check out our Discord, come join the community, and join the conversations and Pre-Gather hype!

With or without allergies, whether Spring Break plans have come and gone, as graduations and summer vacations approach (so close, but feel so far away!), I hope this month’s newsletter finds you and yours well!

Enjoy, and we will see you again next month, friends!

Miranda (Frick)
Curator and Editor of TMS

Join us Sunday, April 16th for a free meditation presented by Cat Rogers on House Kheperu's Discord. Beyond the Flesh is a meditation that explores the unique power of the self that inhabits each of us. This meditation is intense. Participant discretion is advised. Content includes death, decay, and body horror. Group aftercare will be provided if needed. Are you interested?

HK Jams - Toxic Blooms

Spring be sprungin’ and HK is prepared with antihistamines and creative energies. Check out this month’s playlist and submerge yourself in the tunes that are keeping our members moving. Whether that be toe tappin’ or shaking your fist at having to resort to a roll of toilet paper once the allergies tapped you out of tissues.

A Guided Meditation

Something different today, readers. Won’t ya join me for a little guided meditation? A little reset? It’s Spring where I live, so the land is flush with green buds and a crisp breeze. Let’s use that to reset ourselves.

Sit back. Lay down. Get comfy. We’re finding our center today. (Can’t exactly tell you to close your eyes, how would ya read? Haha)

Breathe. In through the nose, feeling the rush entering your body. That is life. That is new beginning. That is an opportunity. Every breath is a new moment for change, a new cycle that keeps your heart pumping, your mind working, and your blood rich. Every breath is only a moment, and every second is an opportunity. If it takes a few breaths before you feel it, that’s fine. Keep breathing slowly until you feel it. Inhale… One. Two. Three. Four.

Hold that breath within. Where did it go? It went into you, your center. Your body is absorbing that life, that energy, this moment together. Count slowly.  One. Two. Three. Four.

Exhale through your mouth. You are ridding waste, back into the universe to be reused. With it goes your stress, your illness, and your uncertainty. With this exhale, you release everything that isn’t you. One. Two. Three. Four.

Pause. Empty of breath. Stillness. This is the silence, a time for processing, of rest. You are flush with new breath, with new life. You are freed from what you held within for so long. Sit in this stillness for just a moment. One. Two. Three. Four.

The best part about breathing is that we do it our whole lives, and we get so good at it that it becomes a subconscious process. Your breath is a gift, and paying attention to it can give you insight into your current state of being. You can use this technique for a reset, anytime. Be blessed~ <3

-Izzy

House Kheperu Member Spotlight

Meghan

 “It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life.” -Captain Jean Luc Picard

What interests you about energy work?

I love the discovery and mystery of it all; finding new ways to interact with the energy around me and observing the impact that it can have on the body, mind, and spirit. I’m always experimenting with different methods of energy working and thinking about the ways that it can be applied to various aspects of life. 

What is one of your favorite movies?

The Lord of the Rings trilogy has shaped every part of my being.

The Villain Era

or Fuck Agreeability

Hello friends, and welcome to Tea With Hex!

This month, we're going to talk about taking your power back, in a very specific way. That's right, we're talking about your Villain Era, what that means, why it rocks, and why people are doing it. Make sure that tea is nice and hot this time. I recommend a spicy chai, as well, because that's the flavor profile of this article.

Let's get into it.

So what is a "villain era"? There have been all kinds of discussions about people, especially women, entering their villain era throughout the pandemic, right up through the present day. Spoiler alert: it doesn't actually have anything to do with committing crimes, or taking over the world. Well, maybe a little bit of taking back your own *personal* world. Pop culture is rife with imagery and obsession with archetypal "bad guys"; just look at how many people stan DC Comics' Joker. Although personally, I vibe much more strongly with Poison Ivy, who's just trying to take the world back from the nature-destroying capitalist patriarchy (and also protect her girlfriend from the aforementioned clown-painted abusive narcissist).

I remember as a child the first Disney villain I saw was Ursula the Sea Witch, and for no reason, I could pin down at the age of eight, I was immediately captivated. She was sassy, and strong, she had magic (a little foreshadowing, eh?), she didn't take any crap, and she was all the things. Of course, eight years later, as I was coming out and learning about gay culture and drag queens, I realized why Ursula spoke to me the way she had. Her dramatic demeanor, the way her burlesque background music merged with her movements, everything. Ursula was powerful, self-possessed, goal-oriented, and absolutely in charge.

The "villain era" trend is about tapping into the less agreeable parts of ourselves in a galling display of boundary-setting and self-advocacy that makes jaws drop and the narcissists in our lives shiver in their timbers. It is the antithesis of people-pleasing behavior. But why is putting yourself first considered villainous behavior? In an age of patriarchal oppression, it has become expected for marginalized groups to adopt agreeability so as not to ruffle the feathers of the regime in power. The very act of reclaiming our power becomes a rejection of agreeability. Rebellion against the status quo becomes a villainous act, from the perspective of our oppressors.

But it is also more than that. Entering your villain era is the next level of rejecting societal standards. People are in a renaissance of the self that embraces radical truth, owning your power, honoring your anger and your shadow, and becoming wiser in ways that enrich our relationships. We're not making the terrible judgment calls that we would normally make when we move with all emotion and no logic, and we're rescuing ourselves from low self-esteem. We know our worth, and we're not accepting anything less than what we deserve.

In order to keep a positive trajectory with this era, we need to set out with intention and an understanding of what we're trying to achieve in the long run; it wouldn't do for us to become actual villains in our quest for personal liberation. So let us embrace this radical attitude shift and reimagine a world where we don't need to be liked by everyone at all times. Set those boundaries. Learn the power of "no". Make better choices for yourself. Exist unapologetically. Take yourself on dates. You do not exist to please any of these assholes.

May First - Yes, I know it’s April. But seeing as the Newsletter comes out on the 14th of the month, Beltane will have come and gone before we chat again! And, if you’re up for it, I have a challenge for you. It takes a little explanation, though.

Celebrated as the first day of Summer in Ireland, May Day in many traditional circles and Pagan practices is called by a version of its original name, most commonly "Beltane". I have also seen it named Beltaine or Bealtaine, and a few other anglicized versions, but the original Scottish "Latha Buidhe Bealltainn" or in Irish, "Lá Buidhe Bealtaine" means 'the bright or yellow day of Beltane', means the first of May.

Traditionally celebrated on May 1st as the first day of ‘Summer’, I have no shame in admitting this used to mess me up as a kid! Why? Well, if May 1st was the first day of Summer (as even the Modern celebrations indicate), then why was Summer Solstice ALSO when "Summer officially started" in late June?!

But Frick, you say, May Day / Beltane isn't a recognized US holiday! This is true. But as the descendant of many different immigrant families including German, Irish, Scottish, and English in origin, there were some interesting (and in my opinion very cool) little tidbits of that heritage that came through in my upbringing.

In many countries outside of the U.S. and Canada, May Day is celebrated as International Labor Day - more a day off, worker appreciation day like our Labor Day in September, but obviously possessed of far fewer flowers, ribbons, and Maypole dancing than the ancient traditions. However, I suspect only slightly less drinking may be involved. As to why May Day or Beltane isn't recognized in the U.S. is quite a history. Resistance to promoting working-class unity, Puritanical persecution - y'know, the usual.

"The ruling class did not want to have a very active labor force connected internationally," said Peter Linebaugh, author of The Incomplete, True, Authentic, and Wonderful History of May Day. "The principle of national patriotism was used against the principle of working-class unity or trade union unity."

Surprised? Naw. Not me. But the knowledge can certainly make my personal and shared Beltane celebrations all that much more meaningful. To acknowledge and participate in a vibrant and historied celebration of life across the globe, to ride the natural energetic wave of "coming back to life" with the Northern Hemisphere after winter, and maybe a little biting of the thumb at the various forms of oppression and control that impacted the holiday to begin with, just add to the joy of the festivities.

Beltane traditions were tied to the waxing of the sun, the turnover of livestock to the summer fields, and protecting that resource, as well as beliefs that the Fae were more active at this time (as well as Samhain, the first day of Winter). Ritual and symbolic use of fire were (and are used) symbolically, as well as fertility practices. It's not hard to draw some conclusions about The May Queen and the Maypole... [clears throat]. I don't personally have any solid traditions, but I observe the changing of the season, the changing of the natural energies of the world, and what that means not only for me and my possible energetic endeavors but how that affects the world and people around me.

So, if you want that little challenge I mentioned, I'll leave you with this experiment in potentia;

As full Summer approaches, and the modern energetic tides turn to warmer weather, storms, school getting out, vacations, and the like - Does the world feel changed for you? What energies can you notice shifting?

There's a lot happening in the world right now, and there may be other more prevalent energies that shout the natural order down. Don't be discouraged by that, but acknowledge that you might have to really still, quiet, dig deep, and pay very close attention. Because the beauty of nature, and more acutely May Day, is that regardless of our actions as people, how we choose to define what a specific day or date means in a given decade or country... nature still turns. Weather happens and continues to change and react to us, and we continue to change and react to weather and nature, even if we're not conscious of that reaction in the moment.

So give Beltane / May Day a little mindfulness this year. Write it down. See what you can see, hear, or sense... and see what you might be able to lean into that helps fuel your goals, workings, aspirations, or even just your personal peace and celebration.

You might be surprised by what you'll find.

Call to the Blood

Our personal heritage refers to the cultural and traditional practices that have been passed down to us from our ancestors. These practices and beliefs are deeply rooted in our identity and can be a powerful tool for discovering paths of spiritual development. But what happens when we have lost contact with our heritage? In a time and place where we are becoming more aware of cultural appropriation and how it impacts us, it can be challenging to find a practice that feels right. 

For mostly Eurocentric and white American cultures, the loss of our ancestral roots stretches back to the spread of Catholicism and Christianity. The same can be said for Black Americans or even Asian Americans who immigrated here or were brought here against their will via enslavement. Many of our recent ancestors felt the need to integrate into American culture, which meant abandoning our ancestral roots. Some did their best to preserve the family traditions and heritage via obfuscating aspects of the prevailing and dominating religious and cultural practices at the time. They are not to blame as they did the best they could for survival at the time. These more recent ancestors deserve our love, support, and respect for the hardships they faced, for many did not have that choice.

American culture is one dominated by Christianity. For some, Christianity is a spiritual path or practice that works for them, but what happens when it doesn’t or there is still a craving for something more? How can we supplement our current spirituality to achieve something that feels better for us on an individual level? What do we do to honor that empty space where something empowering should be? For those who are interested in searching, the answer may lie in our blood; our heritage. A reclamation of our ancestral roots may be the very thing we are craving. But how do we even begin? How do we reach back in time and connect with what feels at the moment like a chasm of loss?

Spirituality is a personal journey that involves exploring our inner selves and connecting with a higher power or divine presence. Many people find that reconnecting with their cultural heritage can provide a foundation for this exploration. How far back do we go? That depends on the person. It is tempting to appropriate various practices and traditions that are appealing from other cultures who have maintained the rich history and traditions of their belief over the generations. This practice might feel vibrant and rich, and our curiosity coaxes us to try it on for size. There is nothing wrong with resonating or practicing those traditions should they speak to you. Exploration and understanding are critical in our spiritual growth as we learn more about what does and doesn’t work for us. Taking someone’s cultural practice in pieces and parts without understanding the whole of the practice can be disrespectful. However, remembering that our roots provide us with a deep connection to our ancestors is a bold and respectful first step.

A quiet place to begin may be to make an ancestor altar to honor your familial dead. This altar doesn’t need to look any particular way or follow any particular practice. The ancestor space you create can just be a simple memorial space, especially if creating altars feels a step too far for you. The intention of opening the door to invite their presence into your life is a great place to begin, especially for those ancestors of countless generations back. Your instinct and intuition will be your first and most powerful driving force and when you are uncertain, trust in the power of the blood in your veins. It is also important to acknowledge that this practice doesn’t exclude any faith or spiritual practice as it is a practice of working with and honoring those before. It is not a practice of deification of your ancestors but one of acknowledgment and listening.

One way to use your personal heritage to discover paths of spiritual development is to explore the rituals and practices that were important to your ancestors. For example, if your ancestors were Greek, you might explore the significance of offerings to deities or charms and amulets meant to assist and empower you. If your ancestors were from a particular religious tradition, you might delve into the teachings and practices of that faith. This latter part may be difficult, especially for traditions lost to time. In this case, the relationship you build with your ancestors becomes your guide on how to engage with the innate spirituality within you. Do the research and be aware while you are exploring to respect the cultures and traditions. Be open and gentle in your learning by coming from a place of respect and reclamation.

Another way to connect with your heritage is through storytelling. Listening to the stories of your ancestors can provide insight into their values and beliefs, and help you understand how those values and beliefs have been passed down through the generations. This can be a powerful way to connect with your own spirituality. Are there odd traditions your family still performs or participates in? Are there quirks of superstition or charms of good or bad luck that have interlaced into your family? These are excellent points of reference to begin to build the story of your family and come to understand where they came from. 

All the while, continue to cultivate your ancestor altar. Allow it to grow. Experiment with it. Does an ancestral grandmother want clean and clear water in a cup? Perhaps some distant relation enjoyed collecting pretty pebbles and stones? Do you have the urge to lay seasonal flowers on the altar or small bits of sweets like cookies or candy? Follow your instincts and meditate with your altar space. Listen to their desires and develop a relationship with them. With time, they may communicate in other ways such as bringing your attention to the practices of your blood.

Finally, incorporating elements of your cultural heritage into your daily life can be a way to deepen your spiritual practice. For example, if your ancestors were from a particular country, you might explore the traditional cuisine or music of that culture. Or you might incorporate elements of your cultural heritage into your meditation or prayer practice. This can be an area of expansion. You may find yourself running into the challenge of not being aware of where your family is from. Modern DNA tests can provide some clues into the cultures that build the unique mix of blood within you. At the very least, it can indicate a direction to begin research if you are deeply uncertain. Feel free to experiment, develop, rebuild, and reclaim aspects that feel correct for you. Honor the cultures you draw from. Forge the practice that speaks most deeply to you. Do not fear the mixing of cultures and also be prepared for there to possibly be a clash of cultures that experience will give you clarity on. 

Ultimately, using your personal heritage to discover paths of spiritual development is about exploring the deep connections between your own identity, your ancestors, and the divine. By embracing and honoring your cultural heritage, you can deepen your spiritual practice and gain a deeper understanding of yourself and the world around you. Remember that in the exploration and discovery be respectful, be mindful of cultural appropriation, and know that your spirituality is your own. Just listen to your blood.

Spirit of Spring

by Miranda Harrell 2023

“Spring”

by M. Rutledge

Midnight Sun March 2023

SCROLL FROM THE EDITOR

Welcome to the March 2023 edition of The Midnight Sun!

It’s March! Pisces season, March 7th is a Super Moon, Saturn leaves Aquarius for the first time in two and half years moving into Pisces to bring in some hopefully new vibes, and we are all still building up to the excitement of Gather in June!

If you haven’t seen the updates on the House Kheperu Gather, you can find them here; We’ve released the schedule! Check it out!

In theme and vibe with the shifts in Saturnal energies, we have a fun installments for you this month! Suz brings some tips on how to Spark Positive Change in your life, Kelly writes about the energetic shift in seasons, Izlude brings us a new Contemplation, and Stef talks about what happens when the song changes in the Shadow-work Slow-Dance. We have an observance of the shift into the Lightside of the year from House member Jax, Hex bringing us a fresh cup of Tea, reflections on Inu Zalla and The Time of Dawn for House Kheperu by Abri in the Tome of Darkside Ritualist, and an intro to Celtic Mythology by yours truly!

Of course one of MY favorite bits, there is a new HK Jams playlist - Spring Fever!

We’ve also started up monthly meditations on our community discord! We would love for you to join us both in the community and for our meditations if you have an interest!

Spring officially starts on the 20th, and in the last week, Winter has reminded us via weather that it is not yet gone. And still, there is anticipation in the air, for the season in the world around us.

I hope your March brings the changes you hope for, and am glad you’re joining us this month! There’s always more to learn!

Miranda (Frick)
Curator and Editor of TMS

Join us Wednesday, March 22nd at 9pm EST on HK’s Discord for a meditation led by Hex which will focus on building your own, personal mind palace. This meditation is great for both beginners and advanced practitioners alike. You can join our Discord here:

Big change can start with small steps.

If you try to adopt all of these sugestions now, it could stress you out. It’s best to break down change into small chunks. That way you can reduce stress and keep advancing one small step at a time. Choose just one new change to spark some positive momentum in your life.

These small changes are not life goals — they are the lifestyle adjustments that will help you achieve your goals. Choose one that speaks to you and jump on it with both feet.

1. Do One Thing At a Time- Concentrate fully on each thing you do. If you’re writing an email, give it your full attention. Make a strong connection and feel proud and satisfied that you’ve provided its reader with real value. Find your flow state, and go through your tasks like a bullet train. When you do stop just breathe deeply and fully and enjoy the moment.

2. Schedule Some Down Time Into Your Life Alternate deep work with shallow work and essential breaks. Have a short conversation, walk around to increase blood circulation and oxygen to the brain, then go back to work refreshed after your mini-break. Use that Fitness app on your phone, telling you to stand up once an hour. Or use one of the Remindme Apps and set small timers throughout your day. Too often we forget to take a moment and decompress, then we end up with our shoulders in our ears. Put some time in your daily schedule for short breaks and/or small meditations. Remember to breathe deeply with purpose. If you rush through your day, you are inviting burnout and lower productivity.

3. Clean As You Go At work or at home if you tidy up as you go you will be surprised at what a difference it can make in your overall mood and well being. If you are at work, take the time to organize papers and clear off your desk between projects. At home, if you are cooking, rinse the dishes as you use them so that you can easily load the dishwasher when you are done. Wipe off surfaces behind you as you go. Take that few extra moments to make the bed in the morning. I know, I know! You are just going to get back in it tonight but do it! See if you notice a difference in how coming home to a tidy bed makes you feel. When you finish working at your desk, close your computer, and put away your books, notebooks, notes, pencils, and pens. They say your state of mind reflects your home environment? Or is it the condition of your home reflects your state of mind? Either way try it for a week and you will see it can make a big difference in mood and productivity.

4. Bring Full Appreciation To Everything You Do Pay careful attention to everything you do. Don’t just toss your coat on the back of the sofa or a chair as you pass through the door. Find a place and add a hook so it has a home. Put your shoes in the closet or on a shoe rack. Show respect for all the things you use daily, and don’t take what you have for granted.

5. Do One Mindfulness Practice Every Day. Mindfulness is a skill that takes practice. Meditation is a practice that has been in development for thousands of years. You cannot expect to be able to maintain an hour of meditation without practice. You will soon be snoring out of sheer exhaustion or if you are like me, going over the endless lists you keep running in the background of your mind. Start with three minutes. Set that phone timer, get comfortable, and just breathe deeply, in and out for three minutes. Focus on the breath and its rhythm. Work up to that 20 or 30-minute goal slowly. Nothing worth learning or doing is done in one go.

6. Do Things That Simply Cut through the excesses in your life. There is a lot to be said about minimalism in your clothing, home furnishings, and lifestyle choices. Throw away those old toothbrushes. You only need one for cleaning your teeth, the rest are just hanging around. Be straightforward in your communications — say what you want simply and directly. Don’t add extra meaning to things or additional layers of complexity. You do not have to explain yourself to anyone. Live simply in every aspect of your life. Show up for your life every day and be yourself!

7. Set Aside Time For Deep Work It’s hard to do anything well when you’re distracted. Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. Simply scheduling time for solitary undistracted work gives you the advantage of focus. Whether you are working on a big project for your career, you are writing a blog, or if you are an artist workin on a project or piece, setting aside time to do deep work means closing that door and leaving all the other things on your mind outside till the allotted time has past or the work is done. Use that timer on that phone! It's not just for excercise you know!

8. Go outside! Step outside for at least a few minutes a day. Breathe deeply, take a short walk and soak up the spring sun! I am not saying you have to become a nature lover, but contrary to popular belief, you are a living breathing thing and those tend to need some sunlight! Suck it up my night loving friends, risk that sunlight for five mintes a day. Depression can be directly linked to a lack of Vitamin D! So do yourself a favor and put those dark sunglasses on, brave the outdoors for a few and let the sunlight burn the cobwebs from your mind.

Final Thoughts: A small change can have a significant effect. Adding a new habit to your life will spark other changes and new ideas. Stay curious and look for new ways of working and enjoying your life. Life is too short to be boring and routine. Embrace change and enjoy!

Counselor energy is an ever shifting, growing entity that fluxes and flows with the change of the seasons. As we move into the light side of the year, connections grow stronger and the pull to the corporal becomes more apparent. It is the time of life and the green growing things. 

As the season shifts towards the time of light and spring, the feeling of Connection to the green and growing things intensifies. The vital energy flows in a more available pattern as the days become longer and the world seems to become more alive. Sunlight is an amazing mood and energy booster that can bring joy and inspiration to your daily life.

For myself, this time of year brings a renewed  need to connect with those I care about. I seek out more social interactions and I become much less introspective. My connection to the dead and disembodied wanes a bit but is still present. It just takes a tad more oomph for me to communicate with them. My connections to the living are at the forefront of my daily life during this time.  This also means I am much more aware of the creatures of the wood, land and elements. I still need to exchange energy with the human creatures, but I can also use the natural energy that abounds this time of year.  

So how does this all translate from my experience into something you can use? Take time to notice how your own energy is changing. Are you feeling more awake and engaged or are you feeling sluggish and slow? The shift in seasons is also a good time to take stock of your mental and physical health as well as your energetic health. Meditation, physical activity, cleansing your physical and energetic space and enjoying nature can all be ways to expand and adjust to the changing energy of the light side of the year. May this shift treat you well and may you pull from it what you need.

House Kheperu Member Spotlight

Suz

“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

What interests you most about energy work?

Everything is made up of energy. If we accept that concept, we are limitless in what we can do and achieve. 

What is one of your favorite movies?

The original Blithe Spirit from 1945. Love the subtle and not so subtle humor of it. One of the first ghost movies I ever saw as a kid. 

HK Jams - Spring Fever

The seasons are changing and HK is ready to roll the windows down and crank up the music. March’s playlist are all songs to drive to, ride to, or walk to. We hope you enjoy this month’s selection and let us know over on our Discord.

The Power of Observation

It’s time again for the Midnight Sun’s monthly newsletter! I do hope that winter wasn’t too harsh for you, and if it was my dear reader, we at least have Spring to look forward to. As I write this, the days have shifted forward one hour, a bit more light in my day has done wonders for my mood.

On the magickal side of things, it has been an interesting month! With Venus moving into Aries, I’ve seen new opportunities and have met some interesting new people. Mars entering Gemini has brought some interesting challenges and revealed some potential adversity in the workplace that is being handled. Have you checked your horoscope lately? Now may be a good time. I don’t know about you, but I have been keen on a change in life patterns, and oh boy is change coming!

I’ve been pondering the nature of Deities. There is a theme amongst the worldwide pantheons, as the Gods and Goddesses took on the various forms and functions of nature. This makes sense to me, as ancient people needed an explanation for the natural world and had limited scientific understanding of the world around them, so of course their deities could be similar even across the oceans. The best way to understand something from a human perspective is to humanize/anthropomorphize those forces into a (near)human form, so as to better understand the chaotic experiences in our lives and to come to terms with the traumas that life can bring.

When we reach out with our desire, what answers that longing, that Call? Were those forces already there out in the cosmos, waiting to be called, or was it humankind’s desire for understanding and longing for connection that willed these deities into being? Perhaps a combination of the two? Your Lillith, your Zeus, your Hachiman, your Deity, is that the same as mine? Do our perspectives and life experiences mold and shape the form and determine the manifestation of these beings, or is it our perspective as observers that changes what is perceived in the first place? It would make sense to me. Is the blue hue you see the same blue as me too?~

Perhaps I see turquoise, but either way, you’re probably now thinking of “your” blue, so that is the point. Where your attention is, where your passions lie, determines what manifests. That is our power, what allows us to glean meaning from infinite chaos and what can be a boring, painful, objective reality. We are the observer, and in each of us is a unique perspective from which the Universe perhaps finds its own meaning, too.

What you seek in the first place determines what you will find. Seek your own truth and have a blessed month!

Neverending

My original goal of Slow Dancing with Shadow Work was to share my experiences around my personal shadow work journey and the knowledge I acquired through that process, but as of late I have been experiencing some major imposter syndrome, especially around shadow work. I spent the last three years delving deep into myself, looking at who I was and who I wanted to be. Along with that came a lot of changes. I got a divorce, I moved states, bought a house, went back to school, and spent hours in therapy. I fell into the pit of “I’ve got this… I know what I’m doing” and I did have it, I still do have this. 

The reason I named this series “Slow dancing with Shadow work” is  because that is exactly what self work is. You take two steps forward, two steps back, you move to the side, you twirl, you are bent over backward, and your feet are stepped on. But you keep moving, and even if you feel that you end in the same place you started you are a different person. Somehow changed by the music and the movement. 

I have imposter syndrome because the music of my shadow work has changed. Maybe you’re in a similar place? We learned the beat, the pace, and the steps to the previous song. We knew who the partner was and we could anticipate their moves. All this gave us comfort in the process and we feel confident in our skills to do the shadow work. But now the song has changed, how long has it been that there was a new song? New lyrics, new steps, a new partner?

Taking off that “It’s fine, everything is fine” mask is difficult to say the least. I am not writing this article from some tower in the sky as someone who has it all figured out. I don’t. I am in the process of learning a new song and with that comes taking off a new mask. 

We look up at the stars allowing ourselves to marvel at the brilliance of light overhead. A light emitted billions of miles away that somehow touches our spectrum of vision through the vast quiet of space. The night sky fades as a variety of hues begin to take shape with the dawning of our sun awakening us into the reality of our physical world. This correspondence to our senses, to the colours, shapes, smells, and sounds that make up our world, begins to inform us of our tactile reality and we leave the night behind.

When we talk about the light and dark side of the year, we often think of the periods of fall and winter moving into the spring and summer seasonal changes. As physical beings, we take notice of the temperature, the decay and growth all around us, and the activity outside our homes as birds migrate back and forth toward the warmer weather. We, too, as human beings begin to change our patterns of behaviour accordingly, taking refuge inside or preparing to venture out into our beautiful world to reap its benefits as the rotation of life continues merrily on. This transition, however, can become upset or delayed in ourselves as often we can find ourselves clinging to the comfort of the darkness and the quietness of the stars.

The light side of the year is often thought of as the time of action, to effectuate our goals and accomplish what we must do in the physical plane to achieve them. When so many, however, have been in a place of the long darkness, cut off from a sense of community, from achievement, from purpose, emerging into a new dawn blinking and trembling from the brightness of that new day, can bring us to pause.  We struggle to find meaning, to find direction, and we look internally for the answers to questions a new world poses to us now. It is now that we find it the most tempting to regress and long for the night sky once again.

Our transition is both internal and eternal. We are beings of change and the points where we find ourselves reaching out for growth while still grasping to what is familiar is one of the most difficult points to address within ourselves. We ask ourselves the important questions of “why do I do this”, “what is it that I want”, and, ultimately, “who am I?” Stripping away the layers to find the answer is not on a deadline. We who rely so much on the ticking away of a clock, who feel as if we should have accomplished more than we have by now, often forget this important whisper we hear from that darkness.

You are on your own time. You don’t have to have it all figured out yet.  You are a being of change and this, too, is a part of you. The transition into the many different versions you have been, are, and will be, happen as you learn who it is you are. Your sun and stars rise and fall within you, when you need them, and when you are ready. Forgive yourself for not knowing who you are meant to be.

So as the light side of the year approaches, as we begin to come into a more active period of the year, take time to remember this journey is for yourself. Progress forward with becoming the person you want to be, build a life for them, nurture them, get to know them, and do it on your own time. There is no progress bar in this life, it is made for you. Should you need to stop along the way to enjoy the stars overhead and take a moment’s rest and touch base with yourself, do so carrying the sun inside you looking forward to a new dawn.

Hello friends, and welcome to Tea with Hex!

March is an exciting time of year for many reasons. We begin to see the glimmers of Spring around the corner, you may be getting a tax refund, and for Kheprians, we celebrate the turning of the year from the Dark side (a time of introspection, self-work, and spiritual concerns) to the Light side (focusing on the lower or physical self, community, and the external world). It also puts us one month closer to Gather, the annual public event we host for the metaphysical community! For more information, check out https://kheperu.org/gather2023.

Transitions are a liminal time, and as a Counselor in our tradition, liminal spaces and energy are my bread and butter. Dawn and dusk, the Otherworld or spirit realm, the offstage wings of a theater, dimly lit dance floors, these are a few of my favorite things, as Maria once sang. Depending on where you fall on the continuum of occultism and esoteric study, the concept of spirit work may either be very foreign to you, or you may have some degree of experience with it. I practice forms of witchcraft that embrace and emphasize working with spirits, and this month I'd like to share some of my musings on that subject, as well as a review of a book that helped advance my witchcraft in that direction.

Newcomers to various iterations of paganism or occultism often inquire about working with deities from various pantheons throughout antiquity and regions of the world. There is much talk of practitioners feeling called to work with any number of gods, and when that isn't the experience of other practitioners, they often wonder why, and how one identifies what god(s) they should work with.

I'll let you in on a little secret, dear readers. Are you ready? No, but are you though? Well.

That might be because you don't need one.

Drink something.

The attraction to working with deities from any number of supplanted cultures or religions throughout the world is understandable, from Greek to Norse to Egyptian gods. Studying the ritual practices and methods of honoring the divine that are written down somewhere makes those practices accessible and easy to understand and emulate. We have a sort of manual describing how we might identify synchronicities and omens that could signify the presence or influence of such a being. However, gods from ancient cultures are not the be-all, end-all of spiritual experience and messages from the Otherworld.

In Traditional Witchcraft, we talk about working with what we call a "court of spirits", incorporeal beings we have passively attracted or deliberately called to us, who offer varying degrees of companionship, service, and knowledge of how to interact with the spirit realm. The concept of a "familiar spirit" may be familiar (heh) to you, or a "witch's familiar". This is one type of relationship one could have with such a being. There are many accounts throughout European and American history (many of them obtained under duress, and while this is terrible, it does not invalidate them) of accused witches describing such an entity they worked with to some extent.

In Kelden Mercury's book, "The Crooked Path: An Introduction to Traditional Witchcraft", he describes working with the Otherworld and spirits in this tradition. In addition to familiar spirits, an important aspect of Traditional Witchcraft is learning to connect with the spirits of place, or genii locorum. The physical world around us is suffused with the essence of the Otherworld as well; we're practically swimming in it, with spirits surrounding us constantly. However, as Kelden elaborates on, working with spirits takes time, reverence, and dedication. The relationships one can form with these spirits are deep and personal, and the ways to achieve this are not already proscribed for us in a book or a website somewhere. Each of them is unique, with a distinct personality, and you must open your mind to them and earn their trust. This is a very different practice than announcing your devotion to a Celtic deity and calling upon them in ritual from that point forward.

Kelden goes on to describe methods of communing with the Fair Folk, as well as the land wights that inhabit individual plants, stones, and animals; Traditional Witchcraft is a fairly animist tradition, which is evident from the amount of spirit work we perform. The entire book is an extremely accessible and digestible read, and I highly recommend it not only as an introductory manual to Traditional Witchcraft, but also an excellent resource on spirit and energy work. It absolutely helped me elevate my own personal practice, and added nuance to my approach to the Otherworld and its denizens.

Spirit work can be just as important, if not more so, as choosing a divine entity to approach and work with. Gods (in most traditions) are lofty beings that exist in some far-flung realm that we pray to for guidance and favor. Spirits are here, all around us, existing beside and behind every door, tree, rock, and lake we see. They hear and see us, and often respond to our thoughts and words without us even asking, perhaps hoping that we will see their influence and acknowledge them. I would posit that in many cases, when we think we see the hand of a divine being at work, perhaps it is simply a spirit, helping manifest our desires or providing us a measure of protection. Open your mind to the Otherworld, see and listen with your subtle senses, and you may be surprised at what is waiting for you.  

Enu Zalla

Time of Dawn

EXCERPT FROM THE TOME OF THE DARKSIDE RITUALIST

It is time for the Darkside to step back. The days grow longer, the weather begins to shift, and winter claws on but spring is winning once more. It is in this time that the Darkside curls up to rest for the bright, summer days of the Lightside of the year. This does not mean that the Darkside is gone, hibernating, untouchable, and inaccessible. Far from it. Where there is the brightest light, there is also the deepest shadow.

Transitions are often difficult or they may take preparation in order to move through them more smoothly. Within the Kheprian cycle of the year, we exchange ritualists. We shift our focus. We bring our minds to the present and look forward instead of focusing within and to the past. It can feel jarring at times to transition and other times, we are ready and anticipating the shift.

This year feels like a shift we are ready for.

In my time as House Kheperu’s Darkside Ritualist, I have experienced the weight of the Darkside as its custodian but also the deep, winding paths towards healing, shadow work, self improvement, and memories. The Darkside can feel heavy at times and my time as ritualist concludes with me ready to pass the torch to those who will carry it forward, guiding us. I have hope for the future, despite the press of what can feel like a bleak present. I have trust and enthusiasm to see what comes next. A curiosity that buds to see the warming, spring light and bloom to new opportunities and possibilities.

“I have trust and enthusiasm to see what comes next.”

— Cat 'Abri' Rogers

And yet- I will miss the Darkside. I will miss the long nights for deep conversations, pondering the meanings of things, and exploring corners of my mind. The Lightside does not mean these things will stop, but I do feel like life brings our focus to elsewhere. And that’s okay. If anything? It is necessary.

To those who take my place as Ritualist for House Kheperu, know that I am excited to see what paths you forge as you guide through 2023. Know that I am here, amusingly in the shadows, should you need the introspective energies of the Darkside. And may we all find strength and empowerment in the brighter, lighter times of the year.

Farewell. For now.

— Cat ‘Abri’ Rogers

Darkside Ritualist, House Kheperu

So a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away… I had a YouTube series for like two seconds. I introduced folks to Mythologies of all kinds and did an overview of popular tales from each if the different mythos’, as well as origins for certain practices, superstitions or lore that stemmed from mythological sources.

It seemed appropriate to resurrect one such discussion for this month. So I pulled it out, dusted it off, and gave a little polish to some things that I have learned since then. I give you;

The Tuatha De Danaan

It was in a mist the Tuatha de Danaan, the people of the gods of Dana, or as some called them, the Men of Dea, came through the air and the high air to Ireland.

From the book Gods and Fighting Men by Lady Gregory in 1904, it is said that the Tuatha came from the North, bringing four great treasures with them from the four great cities of the Tuatha. First of the treasures was Lia Fail, the Stone of Destiny from their city of Falias, second was the Sword of Light from Gorias, wielded by the then Tuatha King Nuada Airgetlam, The Spear of Victory from Finias, most widely associated with Lugh, and The Cauldron from Murias, which is rumored to be the Cauldron of Dagda. It is the reason for the celebration of Beltane, as it is said Beltane is the day the Tuatha arrived in Ireland.

Upon their arrival, The Tuatha send their Hero Bres, to meet with the current rulers Heros- the Fir Bolgs -  who send Sreng. They chat, and exchange Spear notes, and despite this cordial discourse, by Midsummer, the Tuatha and Fir Bolgs are at war. The Tuatha win after a four-day battle, and thus the Gods of Ireland take power.

This change heralded the Fifth Taking of Ireland. According to the record, there are six all told as per the Lebor Gabala, and the Tuatha was the last before what was called the Milesians - They are named after the character Míl Espáine, which is the Irish form of the Latin Miles Hispaniae ("Soldier of Hispania" - Carey, John. The Irish National Origin-Legend: Synthetic Pseudohistory. University of Cambridge, 1994. pp.1–4). Scholars believe that the tale is mostly an invention of medieval Christian writers. However, the Lebor Gabála Érenn translates to The Book of Takings of Ireland, and contains a collection of prose and poems outlining what at the time was believed to be the origins of Ireland. Widely regarded as Myth rather than history in modern times, the first known recording in written text is from an anonymous author in the 11th century. There are many versions that have been discovered over the years, and it seems that while much of it was Christianized once things started being written down from oral tradition, some were not.

But the Milasians is the name used in the Lebor Gabala. The name by which they are more commonly known as The Gaels. 

But when they were established, who were the Tuatha de Danaan? While a few names and descriptions probably come to mind immediately for those who are passingly familiar with Celtic Mythology, I find that knowledge of the Tuatha is far less prolific than Greco-Roman or Norse in modern culture. So, we’ll start from the top.

Tuatha de Danaan translates to “The Children of Dana” or “The children of Danu”. Not hard to assume that Danu is the progenitor of the pantheon. She is associated with Fertility, wisdom, and water - rivers, wells, prosperity, and plenty. In some recountings, Bile or Belenus is her consort and the father of the gods. In others, she is the wife of Dagda. Hello, pitfalls of ancient oral traditions written down by many scribes from different orators over a long period of time!

Bel, or Bile, also called Belenas was a sun and fire god, whose name meant Shining One. While his role alongside Danu is unclear, in the stories where he is her consort, he is the father of Dagda. Then of course there’s The Dagda with his dual-headed club and Cauldron of Plenty that supposedly could bring the dead back to life, except! It was without their voices. This was believed to be so that they did not speak about the afterlife.

Lugh, the warrior god, was also associated with the sun and was far more pervasive in the surviving Myths. He is considered a later arriver to the pantheon, he was the son of Cian and Ethlinn, making him grandson to Danu/Dian Cecht, and Balor himself, the king of the Fomorians.

Dian Cecht was a healing god. He was basically God Doctor. Originally, when the Tuatha arrived to take Ireland, Nuada was their king. But according to legend a King must be perfect in mind and body, so when Nuada lost his hand in the battle to take Ireland, their hero Bres took the throne. When Bres became oppressive and tyrannical, Dian Cecht made Nuada a hand of purest silver, so that he could be perfect and rule once more.

There’s also Brighid, the goddess of Fire and metalworking, as well as a healing goddess. She was a great warrior, and now it is debated as to whether or not Saint Brigid of Kildare is actually an evolution of the same goddess.

Ogma was the god of language, writing, eloquence, and poetry and created the written language of Ireland, shown by the fact it was named for him.

Angud Og was the god of love and youth,

Bres was the god of agriculture.

Credne was the master artificer and Luchta a master carpenter.

Goibhniu was the god of smiths, his brother Cian, and Nuada of the Silver hand.

There are many Celtic Gods, even outside of the Tuatha. Those who are the children of the Tuatha and a Fomorian, and others. 

But I’ve saved one Goddess for last as I think she is probably chief amongst the familiar deities from Celtic Mythology - The Morrigan. Her name meaning is a subject of debate, but generally, she is referred to as The Phantom Queen, or The Great Queen though the etymology suggests that perhaps there is more to it, sharing a similar origin as the word “nightmare”. Aka, she’s not cute nor fluffy, nor to be messed with - and Probably the one you could name before reading this. The Morrigan is a Goddess associated with Magic, Sovereignty, Death, War, Vengeance, and Conflict. Popular in neo-pagan culture, she is also personified in Keiron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie’s The Wicked and The Divine from Image comics, represented in her three most well-known facets - Badb, Macha (or Macca), and Nemain.

If you have further interest in learning more about the Tuatha De and Celtic Mythology, I highly recommend grabbing a copy of the Lebor Gabala which is fairly easy to find, as well as if you’re a REAL big book lover, Morpheus Ravenna’s The Book of The Great Queen. While it is a book about the history and modern worship of the Morrigan, the first chunk of the book covers all historical references (to Morrigan specifically BUT) and has a wonderful bibliography that I use whenever I’m looking for a new book specifically for Irish Mythology.

If you made it to the end, thank you for reading, and we will see you next month!

Midnight Sun February 2023

scroll from the editor

Welcome to the February 2023 edition of The Midnight Sun!

Personally, I am not sure where January went. I don’t know about you, but 2023 has swept in and tap-danced right by so far. Between the bananas weather across the country (and other places in the world), and personal experiences thus far, allow me to take a moment and say that I hope you are safe, well, and taking care of yourself.

We have some lovely articles this month! Buck Tarot is all self love-themed, Suz has given some advice on how to Stop Giving Your Love Away, and there’s an article by yours truly titled My Chemical Romance; Romance as a Spectrum, Stef talks about Self Love in What’s Love Got To Do With It?, Tea, With Hex is SPICY this month, and Hex is actually our member spotlight as well! You will also find a new Contemplations by Izlude, a new excerpt from the Tome of the Dark Side Ritualist by Abri, and Meghan brings us to Ancient times with The World’s Oldest Love song.

In some very exciting news, we are introducing the House Kheperu Resource Hub, where techno-necromancy resurrects articles from the past written by house members, that were on the verge of being lost to the internet ages! This is an ongoing project you can look forward to growing as the weeks (and newsletters) come!

Of course, our playlist this month HAD to be love themed.

So scroll on, and enjoy!

Whatever shape, plans, self love, shared time, partnerships or magic your February is geared up to hold, from our House to yours, I hope you have a safe, lovely and satisfying month, friends.

There’s always more to learn!

Miranda (Frick)
Curator and Editor of TMS

Stop giving your love away on Valentine's day! Reclaim it!

By Suz

Valentine's Day is no longer just about expressing love for another person - it's about expressing love for yourself! Let’s reclaim the day and forge new meaning into the old cliche!

1. Meditation- Me time! Give yourself permission to take five or ten minutes just for you and center yourself. Sit with your back supported and clear your mind. Close your eyes and move through each of your senses, noticing what you hear, feel, see, taste, and smell. Tapping into your senses is a great way to ground yourself in your body and the present moment. Just five minutes in the morning before you get out of bed. Five minutes at the office when you can take a moment and breathe! You will be amazed at the difference it can make!

2. Plan a play date with a friend, or go shopping. Go have that lunch or try that new bakery down the street you keep passing by. Connection is important, even if it’s virtual. Sit down on Zoom or Facetime and share a sandwich with someone you miss. Laughter releases endorphins (a.k.a. feel-good hormones) so benefit from those giggles and strengthen those relationships!

3. Get some natural vitamin D- Take a walk. Getting some exercise is obviously beneficial, but exposure to sunlight and the world outside may also help regulate your circadian rhythm and help with exhaustion. Not into exercise? Find a nice spot to sit and soak up some sun. Turn your face up to the sky and drink it in like a flower in bloom!

4. Indulge in a long hot shower or bath before bed. Water is a way to ground the stress and negativity of the day. Wash that crappy day away and uncoil those tired muscles for a better night’s sleep! This is also a great way to incorporate number 5.

5. Aromatherapy- Light that scented candle, get out your favorite essential oil or light that incense or Kyphi you've been saving. You are the special occasion! Aromatherapy reduces stress, agitation, and anxiety and can improve sleep quality.

6. Plant something! Research shows that people who get their hands in dirt are generally happier and healthier. You don't have to spend a lot of money to do it, cut the end off that celery stalk and see if the rumors are true! Plant that baby in some dirt and reconnect with the earth and your food sources on an energetic level! No green thumb? Who says? Get that cactus you've been eyeing at the grocery store, they've survived more harrowing things than you!

7. Give yourself permission to make ugly art! Creativity stimulates the brain in ways we haven't allowed ourselves since childhood. Cut, paste, and glue pictures out of those magazines you cannot bring yourself to throw away into a spiral notebook. Choose the pictures and colors that catch your eye! Color in that fancy grown-up coloring book you got two years ago. Fingerpaint! Enjoy the process and spark some joy! You don't have to be Picasso to enjoy the time to play! "But Suz, I cannot just DO things without purpose, that’s wasting time!"

8. Volunteer some time at the local food bank, or make it a point to make friends with an Elder in your neighborhood. Make them a card, or take them a bouquet of flowers. Loneliness is universal and all too often they are forgotten, especially around the holidays.

9. Pamper yourself- Who doesn't love a good facemask? Schedule a day for home-done manicures and pedicures with your bestie or partner. Everybody could use a day for paws and claws! Watch a movie and take some silly selfies. It is the smile and relaxation of the company that matters. (Even over Zoom) "But Suz, I don't have any friends." Then do it for yourself, soul! You are worthy of your own time and attention.

10. Take yourself out for an expensive meal- Save up for it and splurge on yourself or go with a friend. Don't count those calories or macros and just reward yourself for getting up every single day and continuing along your path. Not into going out yet? Order that steak and cook it at home, or make that vegan dish you love so much. Youtube is your friend when it comes to those recipes you love but have yet to dare try!

Sometimes, we don't need to add new activities to get more pleasure. We just need to soak up the joy in the ones we already have. Trying to be optimistic doesn't mean ignoring the uglier side of life. It just means we choose to focus on the positive as much as possible. “What lies before us and what lies behind us are small matters compared to what lies within us. And when you bring what is within out into the world, miracles happen.” - Henry David Thoreau. Happy Valentine's Day soul! We see you!

House Kheperu Resource Hub

House Kheperu has been around since 1996 and has maintained an online presence in various forms over the years. Our old website, circa the early 2000s, was a wealth of articles and knowledge, free to the public, and accessible to anyone with an internet connection. When we moved platforms, much of that information was no longer easily accessible and arguably lost to the flickering pixel chasm of time. It was important to us to revive those articles, many written by our founder M. Belanger, in an act of literary necromancy.

HK is proud to present our new Resource Hub. Every month we will post articles that have been lovingly reanimated once again, providing more House Kheperu content that should have never been swept into the great data static of forgotten pages.

This month you can find the articles:

• The Egyptian Cult of the Dead - M. Belanger

• The Flesh and the Spirit - M. Belanger

• Animals and Divinity in Ancient Egyptian Myth - M. Belanger

• Who We Are - M. Belanger

• Finding a Spiritual Mothertongue - M. Belanger

House Kheperu Member Spotlight

Hex

"Getting what you want isn't the hard part. It's knowing what you want."

What interests you most about energy work?

“My favorite aspect of energy work is interacting with my personal court of spirits. They have become valuable friends and allies, and I know that when I call on them, the situation is handled.

What is one of your favorite movies?

Thirteen Ghosts. It's so cheesy, but so entertaining.

SELF LOVE FEBRUARY

by Buck

We drew TEMPERANCE! I love this card! It’s so pretty! Reminds me of Hermes! Pretty flowers, pretty sun!

OKAY! This person looking real chill… but they are pouring wine from one cup to another.. are you putting too much of yourself into other people? It is easier sometimes to try and take care of other people’s problems and ignore your own..

Guilty myself! Heh sooo please don’t stop caring about others! I love that! But maybe pour a little back into yourself. Find the healthy balance, be patient with yourself and take care of yourself!!! This card screams self love!

SO DO IT! LOVE YOURSELF GOSH DANGIT! YOU’RE AMAZIING!!

by Miranda

ro·mance
/rōˈmans,ˈrōˌmans/
noun

1. 1.

   a feeling of excitement and mystery associated with love. "in search of romance"

2. 2.

   a quality or feeling of mystery, excitement, and remoteness from everyday life.

   "the beauty and romance of the night"

It seems fairly clear cut and dry to read the dictionary definition of a word. And yet, for something so simple it can be so different and multi-hued from person to person. Like most things, romance is a spectrum - how you experience it, how you long (or don’t) for it, what you want it to be, and what it actually is for you.

Like all things, romance is a spectrum. What is romantic and heartwarming to one person can feel trite, unimaginative, or constricting to another. Some folks have no desire for romance, leaning more toward a practical application and investment of time and affection in their partnerships. Others eschew romance in their lives for a myriad of reasons but indulge in fantasy such as reading or roleplay. 

I personally am a hopeless romantic. 

Dirty Bohemian, Moulin Rouge style, baby!

Lay your judgment upon me all you like, your opinions affect me not. 

There is nothing in the world that will strike me more deeply, more immediately, or more powerfully than Romance. 

And I don’t just mean in movies or literature. I’m actually not a huge fan of RomComs or Valentine’s day as to me, those are industry/company and money-driven means of trying to hail the all mighty dollar and telling people “how they should engage romance”. Not here for that. 

Instead, the romance that floors me in the best way, leaving me breathless on the floor with heart eyes on my UwU face, are genuine acts of romance. 

• The partner that drives all night to surprise their beloved

• The flowers you didn’t ask for on a bad day

• The clearing of the schedule for an evening of quality one-on-one time

Sure in places like books or stories, the stakes are raised; those can get me too but certainly more in literature than anything. 

• The Tale of Orpheus

• Isis and Osiris (it’s a little weird, but the love is there.)

• Penelope’s devotion to Odysseus 

• The Princess Bride

• Pride and Prejudice 

• Ladyhawk (movie - greatest love story ever. Fight me.)

Yes, most of those are mythology as the ‘off the top of my head’ ones, but there are so many more and the list I could make would be so long you’d get real bored before the end. Tales of love, loss, sacrifice, and love regained will forever have me captivated and sighing. 

Hilariously, my primary partner does not care for romance. Finds it to be trite, and thinks that the occasional gesture should mean more if it’s only indulged occasionally. Those have been conversations on and off over the last 22 years, but I’d like to think that we’re living proof that two people who view romance very differently can still have a lovely, healthy relationship. They also know, if I’m down and out for whatever reason, a little act of romance will help me pull myself up by the bootstraps and reinvigorate my heart and mind. 

My thought to you is not one of promoting Romance, nor mainstream Valentine’s malarky, nor why you should love it if you don’t. My thought to you here is if you DO find romance pulls at you; how does it pull? Why? For me, it’s the idea that someone loves someone else so very much, they will work, do the hard things, have the hard talks, make the other soul a higher priority in their lives, and find out little things to make them smile or help them keep going out of a force of love so deep that it is not a drain on their existence, but instead nourishes them to do so. Nothing is frightening in the face of that love. Even if hard, nothing is impossible. Your mileage may vary greatly, this is just my hopeless two cents. 

And, if romance is NOT for you, what inspires that same drive, initiative, and joy in your heart? Freedom? Accomplishment? Adventure? 

Whatever it is, I hope that you will make some time to indulge in it this month. Love is different than Romance, though one can inspire the other, and the two are frequently synonymous. But if they are not for you, do something you love. Spend time with someone you love - not for the romance, just for the love of them. 

Love is a many splendored thing
Love lifts us up where we belong
All you need is love! ~Ewan McGregor, “Moulin Rouge”

What’s Love Go To do With It?

by Stef

Welcome back! Before we really dive deep into taking off our masks on this shadow work journey I want to pause and make space for self-love. If you caught last month's newsletter, you might remember “masking” and how we all morph ourselves in small ways to conform to societies and environments we reside in, and to be clear not all of the morphing we do is bad.

There is a link between shadow work and changing or working on the ‘bad/negative/toxic’ aspects of yourself, but Shadow work is not always about finding all the bits and pieces that you hate. It can be about re-acquainting yourself with the bits you love about yourself. So let’s start with a reminder to love yourself. 

“Be very very very gentle with yourself. The world is very very hard on you”
-Srividya Srinivasan. 

You are going to fuck up while on this journey, there is no way around that. Believe me when I say that is not only hard to write out but also hard to hear, I am a perfectionist in some of the worst ways, and learning there is no ‘right way’ to do shadow work was one of my biggest lessons. People have ascribed labels and expectations on you your whole life, but those expectations are rooted in their own abilities and the expectations they have set for themselves.

This is why shadow work is not straightforward, nor is there one single way to do it. The only thing I have found similar between my journey and others is the need for self-care.

My self-love looks like: baking cookies, taking long showers, getting a massage, going for a walk, or sleeping in. Yours might look similar or it might look completely different and that's the awesome thing about self-love- it’s designed with you in mind. So schedule time for you through this journey. Take yourself out on a date, don’t set an alarm on a morning you can sleep in, stay up all night gaming with friends, and spend all day in your favorite spot reading or creating art. 

HK Jams - Love Bites

House Kheperu has curated a lovely little list of heart-shaped songs for February. Here are some of the members’ favorite love-themed songs. Not everything is sweet and sometimes love bites back. Be sure to let us know what you think about this month’s playlist and tag us on your favorite social media platform.

Ethical Interactions and Vampirism

by Hex

Hello friends, and welcome to "Tea with Hex"! As I write this, I'm listening to Florence + The Machine, and sipping some delightful lemon and ginger-infused black tea. As light returns to the world, I find citrus and spiced flavors wake me up a bit more than usual. That extra little zing is so refreshing.

Speaking of spicy, we're gonna go there this month, for a discussion on consent, vampirism, power, and healthy boundaries. Drink something, and let's get into it because I have a lot to say (surprising absolutely no one).

This is a big subject, but let's tackle it. I field a lot of questions from folks about vampirism and feeding, but these questions are frequently less about metaphysical mechanics and more about ethics and behavior before, during, and after feeding. What's okay and what's not. It's healthy to check oneself like this; most people have the capacity for self-analysis and do this frequently.

So if you've ever wondered what the ethics of psychic vampirism may include, consider the following. Some of this may even be familiar to you, if you've come from an adjacent community that also has rules about ethics and consent.

1. Good communication. In the BDSM (bondage, domination/discipline, sadism, and masochism) community, we refer to a "negotiation" phase where participants in a scene have very frank conversations about what they want to happen, what they might be okay with happening, and what they absolutely do not want to allow. This preliminary conversation forms the cornerstone of a healthy vampire/donor relationship, and should ideally happen before every feeding session. If you're familiar with BDSM, treat it just like a scene. It can even *be* a scene, if that's something all parties involved want. The exchange can be steered in whatever direction everyone is comfortable with. If you don't want it to be sexual, make that rule.

If, at the end of this conversation, any party does not want to proceed, that should be respected. Period. 

2. Revocable consent. Consent is fluid, and once given, can be revoked at any point, by either the donor or the vampire. Part of what should happen during your negotiation should be a discussion about "safe words" that, once uttered, should put the brakes on the interaction immediately. It is a guarantee that everything will cease immediately, and no one should get upset if this happens. This can also involve gestures, in case any party involved can't or doesn't want to speak. The physical and emotional safety of everyone involved should be the paramount concern, and if either of those are in jeopardy, that is the appropriate time to safe word. If somebody pushes a boundary, safe word, and deal with it however you choose from there.

Alternatively, some folks use "Green/Yellow/Red" as a system to moderate how close they are to *needing* to safe word, so everyone knows how close they are to a limit.

3. Checking in. Once the activity proceeds, you should ask things like "Are you doing okay?" or "Do you want to keep going?" Constant, ongoing communication is healthy to ensure that the interaction is proceeding in a manner that everyone is enjoying, and to determine if anything needs to change.

4. Aftercare. This is something largely associated with the BDSM community, but as with many of the concepts above, can easily be incorporated into vampiric feeding. We love to see it. Once the interaction has concluded, you shouldn't just get up and walk away. Check in with each other. Hydrate. Get a blanket for anybody who looks cold. Have some actual food on hand for anybody who's hungry.

Practitioners of metaphysics will recognize these things as grounding behaviors. They help transition the participants out of the headspace they're in and back to occupying meatsuits. Aftercare and grounding also allow everyone to check in with *themselves*, as well as everybody else, their emotions, and to initiate any conversations that may be necessary about the experience. Did something go wrong and you need to talk about it? Now's the time. Are you having feels you need to unpack? You can start doing that here, and if you don't get them all unpacked right now, that's absolutely fine. In either case, all parties should hold space for this for each other.

5. People and situations are complex, especially when mingling energy work, physical bodies, etheric bodies, and emotional intensity. It is a heady combination, and depending on what other practices are incorporated into the interaction, this can increase tenfold. We cannot always predict how we, or anybody else, will respond to various stimuli. This makes good communication absolutely imperative, but if you screw up, or something feels weird, don't remain silent. Ask questions. Speak on it. Behavior cannot be corrected or adjusted if nobody knows it wasn't okay. Hold space for these tough conversations, and allow for changed behavior and growth if it's necessary. And anybody who isn't open to these guidelines is probably not a healthy person for you to interact with in this way.

As always, thank you for reading, and I hope that this gives you, dear reader, some insight into healthy vampiric interactions. Happy consensual feeding!

February is usually the season when Seasonal Affective Disorder seems to hit me the strongest, and depression can easily take hold. It’s as if most of the holidays fall in the darkest times of the year, and our ancestors knew that we all needed a boost in these times. Even in the darkest of times, there can be something found to celebrate. That leads me to my contemplation for this month – The Value of Perspective.

Before I get into the revelation that came to me this month, I want to discuss Valentine’s Day. In Roman times it was called Lupercalia, and around February 15th the pagan priests would celebrate and invite Fertility into young women’s lives by sacrificing animals, removing their tails, and using those tails to whip the young women in a playful manner.

Oh my~ I suppose that’s one way to get folks in the mood! So, no matter what you and your loved ones get up to, I think the Romans have one up on us all in oddity. Take the time to celebrate what makes your relationships unique, indulge in each other’s passions, and enjoy all the flavors that love can bring in this season.

So, weird tangent over, I want to touch on the Value of Perspective, and how our attitudes affect our perspective, and our perspective affects our worldview.

I watched an interesting video on YouTube earlier this week, (A Blind Person Describes What the World Looks Like) and found myself contemplating the message. Lou, the blind person in this story, described a fascinating metaphor that really resonated with me. How spirituality often turns people within to find the answers, and yet how Lou’s perspective of the world led him to often find the same nothingness within that he sees with his waking eyes.

That hit home for me, as I often see the same vast emptiness within myself. Lou said that other people’s perspective was where he found meaning in the world that he cannot see. I realized that I have been looking within for so long that I’d neglected to step outside myself and take in other’s perspectives, not just about the world but also about myself.

That was the realization, that my own perspective of myself and the world I live in is not enough to glean the meanings that I seek.  Too often we get focused on how we feel that we can become lost in ourselves, as the Universe within is just as vast as the Universe around us. We need each other, not only for perspective but for comfort, love, and guidance. Nobody has infinite energy, we all have limited perspectives, and only through coming together with open hearts and minds can we find the answers that we all seek.

The Fading Night

Lingering Winter

EXCERPT FROM THE TOME OF THE DARKSIDE RITUALIST

The Kheprian Wheel of the Year continues to turn and we head towards the liminal space of the Spring Equinox. We aren’t quite there yet, but we know it will come. This time and place can feel chaotic during this period before Spring. The weather can never seem to make up its mind if it is hot or cold, there is a growing restlessness so people may feel quick to anger or frustration, and the world is certainly not holding the punches with train derailments, objects in the sky, terrifying and tragic earthquakes, and so much more. It can feel like a lot.

It is a lot. 

The chaotic static of so much restless energy can feel overwhelming and it can be difficult to wrangle it, if at all. There are historical celebrations within other spiritualities and cultures that seem to best utilize this energetic shift to their advantage.

The celebration of Lupercalia in Ancient Rome harnessed the energies of late winter to cleanse and purify the city while also sewing seeds for a fertile and healthy harvest both of the ground and of the flesh.

Parinirvana Day, or Nirvana Day which is a Mahayana Buddhist holiday, is a day honoring when the Buddha achieved Parinirvana upon the death of his physical body and is honored with meditations and contemplations.

The Lupercalian Festival in Rome (ca. 1578–1610), drawing by the circle of Adam Elsheimer, showing the Luperci dressed as dogs and goats, with Cupid and personifications of fertility

In Islam, the celebration of The Prophet’s Ascension, or Isra and Miraj, is celebrated by sharing the story of Muhammad’s journey, ascending to heaven to receive special instructions on proper prayers from Allah.

Mahashivaratri is observed at night, usually in lighted temples or specially prepared prabha. Sivaratri Celbrations in Kotappakonda. Photo by Pavuluri Satish Babu.

There is also Maha Shivaratri, a Hindu festival honoring the God Shiva, where those participating observe a complete fast, stay awake through the night holding vigil, and sing the divine glories and chant the mantras of the Lord. The night is one to abstain from distractions and indulgences.

Lastly, this is the season of Mardi Gras, the last big celebration before Lent in Catholicism. Although not a Catholic holiday, the pagan roots of bacchanalian revelries made their way into various Romanized Catholic’s practices, preserving aspects of their culture. Mardi Gras is then an extension of some of these practices, despite the Feast of Bacchus being in September (or March, October, November…I suspect folx looked for amusing reasons to party…)  Mardi Gras is the last enthusiastic blowout celebration with drinking, dancing, music, parades, and more.

With all of these various celebrations which harness the energy of this time of the year, consider how you will choose to engage that liminal and chaotic energy. Will you take the energy of celebration like Lupercalia and Mardi Gras? Will you find yourself raucously chasing away the ghosts of winter with joy and a good party? Will you take inspiration from Parinirvana, transmuting the chaotic energy into contemplation and meditation? Perhaps you might find yourself pondering on the divine and communication with it such as Muhammad. Will you take the energies of this time and place and direct them towards vigilance and preparation in the last days of winter, taking guidance from Maha Shivaratri?

No matter what you celebrate, how you celebrate, or how you transmute the energies around you, this is a time period of great possibility. Despite the buzz of chaos and the stress of the unknown, we are all capable of great change should we choose to put our power there.

What will you choose?

— Cat ‘Abri’ Rogers

Darkside Ritualist, House Kheperu

The World’s oldest love song

by Meghan

Love, sex, and intimacy have always been the beating heart of human existence, infused with a mystical and transcendent energy that permeates cultures and religions across the world. From the exchange of Valentine's gifts to weddings, to ancient love spells, these concepts have always been celebrated through the most significant of rituals. And perhaps unsurprisingly, humanity’s oldest known love song has roots in an ancient ritual from over 4000 years ago.

Enter the Ballad of Shu-Sin, an ancient ode to love that predates even the "Song of Solomon," long regarded as the oldest love poem. This mystical and alluring piece of literature was discovered by Austen Henry Layard during excavations at Kalhu in 1845, and remained untranslated for decades until Samuel Noah Kramer rediscovered it in 1951.

As Kramer described it, "When I first laid eyes on it, its most attractive feature was its state of preservation. I soon realized that I was reading a poem, divided into a number of stanzas, which celebrated beauty and love, a joyous bride and a king named Shu Shin… As I read it again and yet again, there was no mistaking its content. What I held in my hand was one of the oldest love songs written down by the hand of man." The poem tells the tale of King Shu-Sin and his bride, the goddess Inanna, and their deep love and physical passion.

Inanna (Or Ishtar) was the goddess of love, fertility, and war in Sumerian mythology and was widely worshiped throughout Mesopotamia. As the embodiment of femininity and sexuality, Inanna was seen as a powerful and divine force, and her priestesses were believed to be her earthly representatives.

The couple's love was celebrated through a divine marriage ceremony, a lavish ritual that included feasting, dancing, and recitations of love poems. An honored priestess of Inanna, acting as the goddess herself, was adorned in her finest garments, jewelry, and flowers, while the king presented her with gifts symbolizing his love and devotion. The wedding culminated in a sacred sexual union, seen as a symbolic act of union between the earthly and divine realms, ensuring fertility and prosperity for the land. Additionally, the ritual is said to have appeased Enlil, Inanna’s father, who would send gentle rains to the parched earth of Mesopotamia rather than destructive storms. At the time, this act was viewed as the ultimate representation of the love between a monarch and his goddess.

Mysteriously, the Ballad of Shu-Sin is narrated from the perspective of Inanna, potentially authored by one of her priestesses who stood in as the goddess's surrogate during the divine marriage. Not only did the marriage fulfill a religious and societal purpose by ensuring abundance, but the resulting song is a remarkably intimate and sentimental piece, delivered from a feminine perspective, expressing adoration and passion for the beloved.

This ancient love ritual is a powerful reminder of the mystical and transformative power of love, as well as its divine and transcendent nature. As modern-day energy workers, we can draw inspiration from these ancient rituals and perhaps even conduct our own. Let us embrace the energy of love this Valentine's Day, and celebrate the sacred and mystical union between souls.

Bridegroom, dear to my heart,
Goodly is your beauty, honeysweet,
Lion, dear to my heart,
Goodly is your beauty, honeysweet.

You have captivated me, let me stand tremblingly before you.
Bridegroom, I would be taken by you to the bedchamber,
You have captivated me, let me stand tremblingly before you.
Lion, I would be taken by you to the bedchamber.

Bridegroom, let me caress you,
My precious caress is more savory than honey,
In the bedchamber, honey-filled,
Let me enjoy your goodly beauty,
Lion, let me caress you,
My precious caress is more savory than honey.

Bridegroom, you have taken your pleasure of me,
Tell my mother, she will give you delicacies,
My father, he will give you gifts.

Your spirit, I know where to cheer your spirit,
Bridegroom, sleep in our house until dawn,
Your heart, I know where to gladden your heart,
Lion, sleep in our house until dawn.

You, because you love me,
Give me pray of your caresses,
My lord god, my lord protector,
My Shu-Sin, who gladdens Enlil's heart,
Give my pray of your caresses.
Your place goodly as honey, pray lay your hand on it,
Bring your hand over like a gishban-garment,
Cup your hand over it like a gishban-sikin-garment