Uncategorized | The Blog of Baphomet

We are what we eat – this is a simple truth. The food we eat not only builds our body cells, and affects our brain, but also influences our emotions and spirit. Only by fulfilling the basic need of nourishment can we move to further levels of being. The base is important and it needs to be strong, especially for people who like to climb high – right to the top of experience. Everything that grows needs a solid base. This makes a plate of food the ultimate tool for the magician.

The pop culture often pictures witches standing around a cauldron and stirring some truly disgusting mixtures using ingredients such as: the eye of a toad, the tail of a rat, topped with the blood of a bat. Ugghh… no wonder those witches have pale skin and warts on their noses. And if you think about the smell coming from this potion or sourcing for ingredients it makes this type of magical experience look really horrible. Well, it doesn’t have to look like that – I think it is about time to change this picture. I am a witch myself and do not want my own cauldron to contain dead animals and smell of cooked corpses. If my food can, on so many levels, affect me and those who I feed, I want to give the best I can. I want my cauldron to smell of exotic spices, to bubble with flavours and aromas. And most of all to be a nourishment for my body, mind and spirit.

We live in the age of fast food; the shelves in the shops are full of food like products made really tasty with artificial additives. They are presented in colourful packages and it is hard to resist them – sugar is the most popular drug of this era and it is used mostly by children. Companies such as Monsanto know that by controlling world food supplies they can control anything they want. This is all very scary, but not for the mighty magicians, who always see light in the dark tunnel.

Follow your sense of smell to get to the bright side and what you can taste there can blow up your taste buds. Having a privilege of living in the first world we can do anything in terms of food, the variety of ingredients is endless , the secret techniques of cooking can be learned from books, TV shows or culinary blogs. They all rise in popularity; chefs become new type of celebrities and home grown cookery alchemists battle on TV screens to satisfy a three headed beast which can be domesticated with a tasty plate of food or riled with a distasteful one. Candidates trying to get hold of the title of master chef must present a set of skills in order to change ordinary ingredients into an extraordinary plate of food. This involves studying ancient techniques but also applying modern methods such as molecular gastronomy, it also involves experimenting and mastering the skills – does it remind you of something? Well, yes – you are right cooking is like magic and magic is like cooking.

In this realm of endless possibilities and hidden dangers it is important to choose your own way and I choose to eat vegan. I believe that a statement made on such a basic level as food is very powerful. My veganism comes from the heart, which tells me that industrial farming is wrong and with the variety of food available in our 21st century western world, the suffering of animals either killed for meat or used to produce milk or eggs is not necessary. This is my personal choice and it does not lay in my nature to force my ideas and opinions on others in a radical way – I rather chose to inspire and share. The greatest surprise is that being vegan does not have to indicate a lack of anything, as replacements and alternatives can be easily found. This makes me really excited and bursts my imagination therefore I’ve mastered an art of preparing tofu cheesecakes.

Nomnomnom…

Do not judge it before trying – I can challenge anyone who doubts that it is delicious – you are invited to my kitchen. You can occasionally find me cooking in lovely Bonnington Café in London, where working a 13 hour shift I find true happiness. I believe in the power of this culinary magic I perform. I am full of bliss having a chance to serve beauty, love and flavour on a plate and at the same time change the way of thinking about food, which does not need to contain corpses or body fluids.

I stand in my kitchen, my alchemical laboratory – my table is full of goodness. I start with chopping garlic, onion and chilli. I put a table spoon of coconut oil into a pan – as it melts it smells sweet and exotic – I add chopped ingredients and sweetness mixes with sharp aromas – the heat releases them slowly as I add the sour lemongrass to the mixture. The next step is to add 2 grated carrots and 2 cups of red lentils – the heat needs to be low at this stage and stirring is very important so the flavours are evenly spread. After a while a can of coconut milk makes its way to the cauldron and everything gurgles gently. Being advanced in culinary magic I do not use stock or cubes but a herbal salt only. As the final form of this magical mixture is a so called soup the adequate amount of water needs to be added. Cook it all slowly, do not rush the magic, it needs time. At the end top with fresh green coriander and when ready share with loved ones, as it works best this way. Love is the law they say, so with the power of your will place it on your plate – create an eatable magic, digest it and be fabulous.

Soror Osa

For me psychogeography (or less formally, ‘going for a walk’) is a key practice. By moving through the landscape in a suitably mindful way one can use the journey to literally explore both the inner and outer landscape. I made a journey recently, walking beside the great river that forms the valley in which I live.

At the outset I’m impressed by the weather. On this occasion this is the unusual stillness of the early spring, the river forms a silver mirror to the high grey sky above. A few wading birds explore the shallows, dipping for their food and silent gulls row through the motionless air.

Turbulent river made still

As I walk my mind picks over recent events, as in a dream, processing and probing experience in order to put it in place. These events included an opportunity to explore ways in which visitors to historic sites engage with the objects in those collections. The National Trust had invited me to speak at their conference and I was pleased to find that a rather lovely sign had been produced to direct delegates to my presentation.

sign of the times

A few days later I was in the Ashmolean Museum with my Sister. This is a world class collection which contains all manner of wonderful things. As I’ve written before visiting a museum is literally a chance to enter a Shrine to the Muses. Mindful of the ethical difficulties that museum collections frequently represent (in Britain our major museums are often free, though it is often through our colonial imperialism that the objects we see found their way into those display cases), these are places in which to be inspired.

Jai Ganesha!

Walking on. Catkins stand watch as the spring rises, and gorse glows yellow gold at the edge of the wood (and tastes sweet and alive). Having walked through the outskirts of my home town, I took a turn off the path and into some woodland. Here memory gives way to the immediacy of the surroundings. A stand of pine trees rise up, creating a soft woodland floor of needles. This yielding leaf litter is punctuated by the first furled forms of Lords and Ladies.

Here I spend some time with the pine spirits. Often overlooked as being not so cool as broadleaf trees, I am captivated by their repeated fractal forms. I am deeply aware that these are living beings. Alive just as I am and, in their own tree-ish way, aware of the world just as I am.

As well as our commonality I wonder about our differences. While it’s clearly not about better or worse it does seem that my awareness is different from that of the tree. I wonder about the common religious suggestion that humans are somehow specifically created in the image of God and reflect that (aside of the obvious anthropocentrism) this is because we are deeply self-aware. The development of this egoic boundary is both our connection to the divine, as the embodiment of God, and the cause of our Fall (at least according to some paradigms).

I run my hands over the bark and collect some of the resin exuded by the trees. This locally, and freely gathered incense is perfect for the ritual of purification I’m planning to do (that is, Spring Cleaning my home).

Later, on my return, I stop to gaze at the river and my memory drifts back to the death of my Dad that happened in December of last year. At a good age, and after a brief illness, I was able to be by his side in his last days. I was blessed with a kindly, caring father and in my own way I hope that I can honour his memory by being a good parent myself and in the work that I do (much of my professional work is about teaching and supporting people to realise their own aspirations).

At the end my Dad had the best of medical care. Care that would have been beyond my means in many other nations. This puts me in mind of a conversation with a Brother who works within the National Health Service. Though the NHS isn’t some perfect panacea, it does represent a tremendous investment of care by the State and the people who provide those services, to the people of Britain. The fact that I can summon, with no cost at the point of provision, an ambulance to help someone taken ill creates a deep unconscious sense of being cherished by the people and organisations I share my island with. As an election begins to loom here in the UK I can fully understand why the NHS is seen as one of the critical services that politicians must convince us that they will support.

Once a close loved one dies something very interesting and deeply powerful may happen. As their individual narrative ends so the relationship that one still has with that person becomes a relationship with The Ancestors. My Dad has become part of that archetype of The Father and luckily for me the fact that we had a good relationship when he was alive allows me to find healthy and beautiful ways to now connect with that psychic structure. Wrathful Jehovah and his kin may be part of The Father archetype too, but my pathway to this force is now guided by the psychopomp of the kindly man whose large hand I held as the warmth evaporated from it. While there is certainly a sense of loss and of sadness, I also know his body was tired out. The spirit of the man I knew is now liberated from its outworn shell and is become part of that Great Spirit.

Turning back to home I can’t resist the temptation to again cut away from the path and ascend several hundred feet to the crest of a rolling Devonian hill. Great beech trees stand sentinel over the rising green earth, and gnarled oaks ride like Hagazussa on the dry stone walls marking the boundaries of grazing lands.

Smack my beech up

This exertion galvanises me, and I return home to work, more and better, refreshed by my walk, inspired and enthused. For me this walk is an act of magic, an everyday magic, where we use skilful means to process those things that have been rattling around in our minds. The walk, be it the pilgrimage or the situationist drift, gives us a literal new perspective, it shakes up and smooths out our psychic selves, as well as exercising our physical bodies.

It reminds us, away from our books, and screens, and other people, of all those other beings in the world; sky, birds, river, pine, gorse and more, and gives time for us to hear their teachings.