Large Fierce Mammal

Storm…., by Dinosz (Click to enlarge. Source: Deviantart)

” … The novice sorcerer is shaped (formed) through working with the wind. Sky arts of various kinds. Getting in touch with the wind and allowing it to know you is important. Just be there. Clarification: There is the wind as an element of weather. Then there is the wind as we speak of. A wild animal found only in wild places. Invisible to the eye this animal is, it seems to be ‘wind’, but it is not. It feels different. Yes, you feel it. This is the WIND that you SEEK on your quest for power. This wind carries immense amount of power and once you learn to work with it the effects are immediate. The thunder beings are related to this wind. They too will witness your schooling in the wild places. You will not always have a guide-teacher. Get used to being alone in body and mind.  The path you seek leaves the weak worries of the common man and of mankind itself far behind ….” ~ Places, Power, and MAAJAK; Chapter 13 — Warriors, Wind and Time; by James A. Keating

Thus spake the Esteemed Master At Arms James Albert Keating in his latest book, Places, Power, and MAAJAK (MAAJAK pronounced “Magick”). I will offer up a full review of that Truly magickal romp in due course, but it is Chapter 13, titled Warriors, Wind and Time, and most particularly its subsection dealing with The Wind to which I will direct my, and your, attentions today. While it certainly isn’t my intention to steal the wind from Jim’s sails, his words brought to mind some experiences of my own that I feel inspired to relate.

To be Truly prepared to Live in the world is to understand and accept complete exposure to it in all its manifestations. No species in Nature, and you may be surprised to learn this includes our own, is naturally predisposed to “master” the elements, nor holds entitlement to live apart from them. Rather, to Thrive is to take your place as a part of them, and to do otherwise as our own species tends to do is an expression of ill advised and contemptuously destructive preference.

Even as a “mere” element of weather, wind is undeniably that most indomitable and capricious of Elements, manifesting moods diverse as soother, mover, overturner, and destroyer of dreams, all rolled into one. With complexions ranging from beautiful to terrible, learning to know it thus will highlight the difference when the Other comes to you.

Yes, to you, because to experience such a thing is to have been noticed. Singled out for attention, however that may come to pass.

“A wild animal found only in wild places. Invisible to the eye this animal is, it seems to be ‘wind’, but it is not. It feels different. Yes, you feel it ….”

My experience with the Other mirrors this, with but a few slight divergences in manifestation as might be expected from the lived realities of two Men a continent apart, but of convergent sensibilities nonetheless.

In my case, and while none of it was forced upon me by any sort of rough handling in my rearing that wasn’t self-inflicted, I had gotten used to, “… being alone in body and mind …” from a very early age, and progressed for quite a while absent any guide or teacher in these matters that I was as yet attuned enough to be aware of.

Growing up in the seaport town of Lunenburg on the south shore of Nova Scotia, I absorbed an awareness of wind as an element of the Natural world that could as easily make a Man’s fortune as his Wife a widow. In the Lunenburg of my youth, it was a rare family that didn’t wear the scars left by the August Gales of 1926 and 1927 that took the lives of 138 Mariners, and still today people telling stories of family lore around Lunenburg County kitchen tables are as likely to refer to a departed loved (or even not so loved) one as “lost in the August gales” as that one of the wars took them, and heads still nod in sympathetic understanding. “Hurricane season” has a special meaning to folks with loved ones at sea.

Soul inspiring, deadly, not to be trifled with — all these describe the Natural element called “wind” as Men have come to know it. Capricious? It may appear so. Untrustworthy? Naturally! These can as well be used to describe wind as any other Force of Nature, but most often spring to lip when outcomes fail to match expectations. This is very wrong headed because as creatures of Nature, we can only expect that She will provide what is needed while caring nothing for what is wanted, and none of it has anything to do with any one of us personally beyond what we ourselves do to better or worsen our chances.

All of this blows off the table when the Other comes, and it becomes all about you. We’ll delve deeper into wind, and not wind, when next we convene.