Okay, the truth is at this point I would have long loved to give you an update on the third Arbatel ritual on Hagith, the Olympic Spirit of Venus. Fact is, however, it hasn't happened yet as February turned out to be much more busy than expected. At first thought that left me without anything to say - as my ritual work is on pause. Yet, on second thought I realized that my whole intention for this blog was to bring life inside and outside of the temple together. So if you allow, let me share a thought that stems from outside the temple...

Today I heard the sad story of a friend whose relationship broke after 23 years of marriage and four kids, all in teenage years. While the marriage ended five years ago already and my friend  is fine now, it still reminded me of the fragileness of life: How little it takes to bereave us of what we cared about most once? How little it takes to make us turn from what seemed to be the largest 'X' on the treasure map of our lives a few years before. What a sad thing to consider, what a horrible thing to experience.

When I came home tonight I shared the story of my friend with my wife. We are a couple since 13 years and while I can say we are deeply in love still, it is stories like this that even create an uncertain feeling of angst and tremor for us... Yet, tonight was also a wonderful reminder how much I can take responsibility for my own little actions - step by step and day by day. It reminded me of a truth another friend told me years ago based on her job as a therapist. She said in her long career she has seen very few examples for why splitting up has to do something with the people we leave behind. Yet she has seen countless examples for why splitting up often is the easy way out from who we have become ourselves.

On recalling this long lived advice, it suddenly dawned on me how important magick is for the health of my relationship. And this is the actual thought I want to share with you...

In my life - as I guess in yours as well - magick provides a deep, powerful and inexhaustible source of meaning. It enriches my life to an extend that I constantly feel blessed and thankful for the experiences and encounters I am allowed to make. It truly is my fountain of youth, if we follow Gustav Meyrink's saying:

The secret of eternal youth is not to look at constantly new things with our old eyes, but to look at the same things with constantly new eyes.

Magick renews the sight of my eyes - in a rhythm which I rather need to slow down than to increase. And each time my eyes are renewed a part of myself is reborn; I become a different man. It is from these moments that everything derives meaning in my life - and the wonders in the world around me start to matter more to myself than I do. 

To me this is the biggest, unshared secret of love: to be to yourself what you expect from love to bring to you. I actually never dared to say this, but here is what I think: What makes you ready for true love, is to be free from concerns about yourself. To look at another person, at the world around you, in a state of wonder and awe, without any intent. 

So it is because magick fills my life with meaning, that I can love my wife without intent. She doesn't have to be 'meaningful' to be as beautiful as she is. And she is beautiful because of everything she is to herself, because of how free she is from me, because of her honesty, her integrity, her foolishness and curiosity. She has a kind of beauty that has become more blinding over the years - because she has become more and more herself. And hopefully my love is no boundary to who she needs to become... We accompany each other on our separate ways, we share our experiences, we love - and we are free to discover different sources of meaning.

The husband in the story of my friend left her for another woman right when midlife crisis hit him. Four kids at home, the usual story we all know. The usual story that leaves a scar that never heals... By no means is our love unattainable for strikes like this. My sense of reality has matured enough through encounters with people and spirits to teach me we should never consider ourselves out of reach for pretty much anything... Yet, what I do know is that I am immune to ending a relationship because of the desire to reinvent myself. Because of the desire to be more meaningful as a different person. 

I have learned what magick and love can do if I treat both with respect and tenderness. And I learned not to mistake the talents of one for the talents of the other. The temple was destroyed only when Samson aspired to bring the two pillars of Jakin and Bohaz together...

The biggest gift of my wife to me is to allow me to become whoever I need to be. To not have any fantasies about who I should be - except for true to myself - in order to deserve her love. It's only now that I see this: Her love sets me free, it's magick that binds me.

Well, in the end it still feels like Hagith is approaching?