Inspiring Blogger

Although it has been a whole month, just about to the day, since this happened, I've been meaning to post about it.

Skyllaros from The Crossroads Companion tapped yours truly as a Very Inspiring Blogger!  I totally didn't expect this, and am honoured, flattered and a bit humbled by it.  :)

There are certain rules to the Very Inspiring Blogger Award which I'll go ahead and run through before I continue:

1. Display the award certificate on your website.
2. Announce your win with a post and include a link to whomever presented your award.
3. Present seven awards to deserving bloggers.  Create a post linking to them and drop them a comment to tip them off.
4. Post seven interesting facts about yourself.

Thems the rules!  I've covered rules 1 and 2 already, so on to the rest!

Now, the problem with listing seven inspiring bloggers is that, in the case of the ones I have in mind, at least three of them have already gotten this award!  Off the top of my head, they are:

1. polyphanes at The Digital Ambler - A student of Rufus Opus, going through his blog it is obvious he approaches the Art with creativity, intelligence, and quite a bit of scholarly bent.  Highly recommended (of course, that's why he's in the blogroll to the right)!
2. Kalagni from Blue Flame Magick - Hey!  Hey!  Whaddya get when you cross a Tibetan Buddhist with a Ceremonial Magician???  Actually, you get a smart, nuanced and interesting practitioner going by Kalagni who presents some pretty awesome material on his blog.
3. Skyllaros from The Crossroads Companion - If you hear the call of Hekate, you will be led to Her devotees, and you will see and read some interesting stuff!  It's been fascinating seeing Skyllaros' journey from a very Chthonic path to one more Ouranic, and back to a balance between the two.  We sometimes seem to overlap, so I've found his material very interesting and inspiring (!) as well!

Those aside, here are my seven picks as Very Inspiring Bloggers:

1. Jason Miller at Strategic Sorcery - How could I not include this?  Jason's work has been the main influence responsible for completely reforming my magical practice from an inept and lost pseudo-magician to a practiced and solid sorcerer who gets results.
2. Rufus Opus at Head For The Red - If you read through Frater RO's blog from the first post to the latest, you're going to learn so much about Hermeticism and Neo-platonic influence in magical practice.  And that's aside from his e-books and courses!
3. Brother Moloch from Eye of the Sorcerer - Although he rarely posts, Brother Moloch was one of the influences that began the reformation of magical practice and led me to Jason.
4. de heer Balthazar at Conjure Gnosis - As I draw some of the more technical elements from Conjure, Balthazar has been an inspiration for techniques that I have used.
5. Gordon White at Rune Soup - Because, seriously?  Gordon's blog belongs on any inspiring blogger list.  Going through his blog posts, you'll find so much information.  Not just magical information, but more like things that can fill out, inform, and inspire magical knowledge.  And his sigil shoaling technique?  Fantastic.
6. Frater Acher at My Occult Circle - A fantastic blog from a magician who is knowledgeable and practiced.  His explorations of magical topics in his blog are in-depth and informative.  Two highlights to me were his series of Arbatel conjurations and his Everyday Path To The HGA posts.
7. Scott Foster from Exploring Thaumaturgy - I often find it interesting and inspiring when I see a magician who is forging their own system, especially when they have a solid foundation to build it from.  That's what I see with this blog, and while I naturally don't always agree with Scott's material, I do also find it interesting from a spellcrafting standpoint.

With that said, in accord with the rules, here are some things about me:

1. I'm very tall (6'7"), but when I'm standing a distance away, I don't *seem* that tall.  It could be caused by me being overweight, but I've always noticed the same thing with my dad, and he's less overweight than me.
2. Males along the paternal line of my family have all had a natural talent with dowsing.  My dad has it, as did his father, and his father, etc.  Dad claims that he's always used L-shaped rods for it, but I think he can do it without tools, and there's a reason I think this.  All my life he has hunted Native American artifacts.  He has display case after display case full of arrowheads, cabinets showcasing axe and hatchet heads, and flint chisels.  He would literally go out into freshly-plowed fields and find these things, left by Native American tribes hundreds of years ago!  I always found his accuracy and luck with this uncanny.  When going out with him, me and my stepsister rarely found anything.  But he always did!  Despite his claims to using tools, there was one time he mentioned using his hands, and I think his ability helped him find those artifacts.
3. I don't know if it's a defect with my vision (despite my vision being very good), but I've always noticed this *thing* pervading everything.  The best way I have of describing the way it looks to me is like a transparent television static with smaller pixels, that flows along all things and just so happens to match flows of energy I've heard psychically sensitive friends of mine describe.  It's not dust, either, because dust looks different than this, and dust doesn't flow like this stuff does.  I've never known what to call it or think of it.
4. When I was a kid, my eyes were a rich brown, and ever since my late teens my eyes have changed to become more hazel.  I've repeatedly had people tell me that my eyes are pretty.
5. This is not something I often admit, but in my early days as a Wiccan, I was an almost classic "fluffy bunny".  I'm not proud of this, but it is something I've been reframing to see as just part of my development.
6. When I was a kid, up to age 7 or 8, there was a period of years where I had these nightmares involving me owning a mansion that gets invaded by monsters.  It always ended with me running from them.  When I was 7 or 8, I had the nightmare again, but this time I reached the end of it.  While running I tripped, fell, and the monsters caught me.  Oddly enough they were spiders of various (and I mean various) sizes who howled like wolves.  Meanwhile, in real life, I started screaming bloody murder, sat up in bed with eyes wide open clawing at myself, screaming to get them off me!  It was strange waking up beside my mother the next morning, as she wasn't there when I went to sleep!  But she reported what happened; apparently she had to wrestle me back down onto the bed, because I was totally losing my shit.  With my fascination with lucid dreaming, I've always wanted to enter a lucid dream and find a way back into that mansion, just to see what I find.
7. I've been in IT since 2006, but before that I tried to go into nursing, and before that I was in a major art school here in Indianapolis, IN.  Currently, I've been considering my options for going back to school for something non-IT (because, frankly, unless you're a software developer, IT tends to suck ass).

Thank you, Skyllaros, for the award!