(From my blog.)
Preface
There seems to be a widespread misconception about the magical purpose and usage of blood on both ends of the spectrum: some believe that blood has no influence or worth for sorcery (it does), and some believe that details down to the color of your skin make a massive difference (not really).
I’ve even seen individuals claim that gods and spirits don’t care about blood! Which is mostly wrong.
Some people, like that, miss the mark entirely, and some people only use it as a reward for hungry spirits, or as a dense form of spiritual matter.
You are your blood.
These are all somewhat accurate, but they don’t explain the depth of power contained within blood.
There are, however, some key operating principles of blood that need to be understood in order to effectively work with your body and your timeline.
These are most easily explained in three parts:
- Bloodlines
- Genetics
- Personal Spirits
Bloodlines
Make no mistake: your ancestry, your family, and where you came from matters.
Bloodlines and ancestry are something that every human being is born into, and bloodlines tend to mix and muddle and cross. The bloodlines you are a fusion of- that of your parents- came across time to mix and make you. Generations have passed into and out of existence, struggling to survive or thriving, each a brick in your castle, the fortress of your spirit.
When you are born into this world, all you are is your blood- your foundations come first, before you come close to acquiring conscious experience.
Ancestral power can be explained as similar to Legos. The more generations that have passed, and the more power in those generations, the stronger the construction and the stronger the bloodline is. Being a sorcerer enlivens your bloodline, if only proportionally to your “share” of the blood.
That is, of course, assuming you don’t specifically work to bring them all to strength. In that case, one member of the bloodline can empower and infuse the entire line, backwards and forwards, with power.
However, birth is not the only way to access a bloodline. There are two other ways one can earn entry, one of which I’ll go over here and the other I’ll go over in the “Personal Spirits” section.
If a member, or a certain kind of member depending on the structure of the bloodline, accepts another individual as a part of their family- such as marriage, or initiation- one can become part of that bloodline. This is generally done through a ritual, as truly creating another member of the family is never an easy task, to introduce and mingle the ancestors together. This can be about spiritual ancestors, such as previous cycles of orders, which is done in initiation.
Bloodlines are the major topic of this post, as the other two categories are really only subsets of explanations on the power of bloodlines and understanding them properly.
The basic axiom is this: your blood determines everything you set out into this world with, though it does not encapsulate everything you can become.
With that, let’s move on to the genetics section, to discuss what exactly your blood gives you from a magical perspective.
Genetics
What are we born with?
This isn’t a rhetorical question. It is the one you should be asking yourself at this current time. I don’t speak of our physical capabilities, as we all know that infants of our species tend to be unable to care for themselves in any distinguishable way.
Yet, that doesn’t describe what we incarnate here with. What are our tools? How much of our spiritual prowess is determined from birth alone? Is our access to certain kinds of spirits measured by the astrological and familial circumstances of birth?
Let’s work our way backwards.
Yes, our access to certain spirits is chosen by the immediate circumstances of our birth. Our natal charts and ancestors have their own energetic frequencies, their own resonance- it is this, when mixed with our nature, that produces the “kit” we are born with and the “keys” that come with it, not-too-metaphorically speaking.
Note that I don’t mean access to all spirits is determined by this combination. Rather, there are sets of astrological and stellar entities, and sets of localized and ritualized entities, that are only fully unlocked by those who share their traits. An Aries will naturally be able to work deeply with the spirit of the constellation, a Taurus will find the most use out of its constellation’s spirit, and so on. When a family has long existed in the same location, and packs psychics (natural or trained) throughout the line, their homeland grows an affinity for them. The people become part of the landscape.
This is not the only situation in which local spirits can attach to a bloodline, however.
If a single human has enough power, and ambition, behind them, it is possible to ritualistically transform the energetic qualities of their bloodlines, in order to resonate and “click” with certain beings that the sorcerer wants to work with their line. This can be utilized in anything from a massive curse, to opening the gateways for the sorcerers of the future to have nearly endless access. With enough strength, it is even possible to set up and operate patterns that automatically indicate- or have indicators relating to birth- the presence of a sorcerer in the line.
The imagination is the limit for concepts, power is the limit for utilization of the concepts.
That brings me to my next point: how much of our spiritual prowess is determined by birth?
The simple answer is, however much of it you can think of. The more complex answer is, what we allow it to encapsulate.
See, these little bundles of frequencies and feelings we call “people” are, from birth, set out on a path. There’s an easy way to remember the exact function of this path:
Destiny is the skeleton of Fate.
Internalize that. We are all set out on a path that we cannot change- that no amount of sorcery will nudge- which is our destiny. We all have a reason for being here, and that’s what our destiny takes us to fulfill, or fail. Failure has a huge number of consequences we will not be delving into in this post. Fate, however, is the “stuff” we can change- interactions, circumstances, paths, and so on. Our fates are ever-changing, ever-intersecting oceans that we navigate with the ever-weakening ship of our bodies.
Destiny holds the power we are supposed to have. Fate holds the power we can have.
In order to know what we can have, or what we are supposed to have, we need to know what we do have.
The Netjer and associated Egyptian entities tend to refer to this as our “pots of resources”, or “rooms of resources”. This has to do with personal energy management, and is regarded as the power any one aspect of our lives has at any given moment. While there are far more individual, incredibly specific “pots”, I will give a brief explanation of the big seven:
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Health. This has to do with your physical condition, your emotional and mental health, and the measure of your life force.
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Wealth. This has to do with your physical resources, how available finances or tools are, and so on.
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Creativity. This is your artistic expression, your ability to bring things into the world.
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Summation. This is a bit of your entirety, and the full breadth of your life force.
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Senses. From physical senses to magical senses, this pot deals with the energy of your ability to perceive this world, and others. I have found that it is not linked to the Assemblage Point, rather, more geared towards projection and similar arts.
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Influence. It handles your persuasiveness and personality while dealing with your magical capability and how much power the patterns you create, pack.
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“Truth”/“Soul”. This monitors your soul’s expression through your body, and how true you are being to your, well, true self.
Josephine McCarthy’s Quareia course handles these resources in more depth, and slightly differently, if you seek further reading on them.
Back to the overall post. As you just read, we as humans have a number of different “settings” by simply existing in this world, in this moment. This is what the factors we have previously discussed, influences- this is the board to move your pieces on.
Permutations of these qualities is what we’re born with, and what changes with us over time.
Now onto our last sub-topic.
Personal Spirits
I’ve already written on the potentialities of “making” spirits join with one’s bloodline, and it isn’t mental gymnastics to understand that one can create personal spirits for their line, either.
This is about neither of those things.
Rather, I’d like to take a moment to discuss what exactly happens when a spirit, of their own volition, pledges to serve, walk with, protect, or in any other capacity work with your bloodline.
The amount of possible reasons behind such a decision is enormous. If you’ve saved a spirit, it may pledge itself, if you’ve talked to one or worked with one for long enough, it may pledge itself, if you’re stronger and have a similar purpose, it may pledge itself- and so on.
Yet you’ll notice that all of the qualifiers I mentioned have to do with you, personally, the mage. Despite the fact that only you, for hypothetical purposes, of your line is doing anything like that for the spirits in question. Why is this?
The answer can be found in understanding how occult familial relationships function. Child spirits are naturally subsets of, or younger versions of, their parent spirit- assuming they share the same energy or patterns.
Members of a bloodline may not necessarily share the same energy (though that is more prevalent in closer families), but they do share the same base patterns. Ancestry is a set of a patterns that are visible to spirits when viewed inside your body, or, they may see your ancestry from great distances, if you keep your line fed and lively.
To put it plainly: they aren’t swearing allegiance to you, as a person, they bend the knee to your pattern, which naturally includes the smaller patterns unique to your family. Your “signature(s)”, as it were.
So, although some spirits will choose to identify you by your individual patterns, most by nature associate you with the patterns of your family. Heritage, ancestry, and family- all aspects of the same concept, all qualities that matter between spirits. This can even be used to identify the pantheon a spirit comes from.
In conclusion, blood does not matter to spirits, and to our work, because of any preconceived “divine right”. We are identified by our blood, and spirits can be found and traced by theirs. Our blood is the pattern of our foundations, and these pillars are special to some spirits, inconsequential to others. Once they have your “calling card”, they can phone you. Feeding them blood, is akin to being intimate with that spirit.
So pick your friends wisely.
And your enemies, even more so.
I used this site to help me correlate why Metatron was showing me the lower half of the the tree of life and a crescent moon symbol. I ended up finding Vassago and he has heightened my divination with tarot.
