So a couple of my favorite Bloggers have written about the senses and perception recently, which has me thinking and remembering.

I remember when I was getting ready to move from Anchorage, AK down here to Orlando,FL my dear friend Mark asked me “Are you enjoying your last endless Summer?” See in Anchorage the Summer nights are long… on the Summer Solstice Anchorage sees about 2 hours of dusk where the Sun sets below the mountains surrounding the city on three sides and then He starts to rise once more.

In reality, I moved from one endless summer to another. One of an eternally green and growing world. I never really appreciated how many shades of green there are until I moved to Orlando!! Then there’s the sky… there’s a lot more of it here!!

Or at least you can see a lot more of it all at once. In Anchorage, and large parts of Alaska you have mountains or trees blocking off large parts of the sky from view. Here in Florida its all wide open. I remember thinking to myself that Florida was as much “Big Sky Country” as Montana any day of the week! The cloudscapes in this town are amazing!

So in thinking about sensation and perception I also realized that I hadn’t keyed any sensory memories for future magickal use since moving down to Florida. You know, where when you’re calling the element of Water and you focus on memories of water? Swimming in the ocean in Hawaii as a kid, or that sudden fierce rainstorm that washed the world and left everything looking clean and new… including those three cars… one red sportsomething, one Yellow Cab station-wagon , and one blue VW Bug all together in traffic at the stoplight as you waited to cross the street and get out of that glorious cleansing rain…. your sensory keys may differ but now you get the idea.

I hadn’t keyed anything since moving… so in the rain last night as I walked to my car I tried to breath in and remember the experience…

I am also remembering and trying to key in a few other sensory keys from some of my other Orlando moments…. The scent of smoke and the haze and the strangely (for Orlando) dry sensation to the air from the Forrest fires earlier this year…

Swimming in the Gulf waters for the first time…

These little moments can be moments of inspiration and power if we open ourselves to them. Breathing inspiration and exhaling doubt, and remembering to truly smell, and touch, and taste, and hear, and see the roses… or whatever else the world gifts us with in the moment. Learning to do this is, I think, one of the Mysteries.

I am reminded of a quote from a poet…

“To see the world in a grain of sand, and to see heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hands, and eternity in an hour.” ~ William Blake

I am reminded too of the Eleusinian Mysteries… which ended after much ado, it is said, with the unveiling of a single grain of corn (wheat not maize) before the initiate.

I wonder, was my little Mystery some small piece of the puzzle of theirs?

I shall have to reread some Blake… and some Walt Whitman too perhaps… and perhaps a few of the other mystics and poets… hmm….

Peace,

Pax