Last night’s ritual was The Kiss of Az Jahi. I enjoyed this one and found it to be a nice balance between actions and speaking. I typically don’t like wordy rituals because I feel it takes away from my personal experience, rather than enhancing it. But this one was nicely balanced and it was an experience, rather than a process, because of that.
I’ve been doing the daily prayers and could still feel Az Jahi in the area. Unfortunately, I had some time between the prayers and everyone else’s bedtime. I wanted privacy for this one and didn’t want to be interrupted. So, what does one do with some extra time? Prep work.
I’d made the Myhhr oil the other night, so I ground up some Frankincense and made that oil, too. I couldn’t remember if this was the only ritual that called for rose oil but it wasn’t going to get a lot of use. And the ritual called for dead, ground up rose petals anyhow, so I don’t know why there would be redundancy. Instead, I used a dead, but fresher rose petal and tore it into pieces when that time came. Ritual still worked.
With the bloodstone, I was going to break off a piece of raw bloodstone that I would then grind. There were two pieces she had requested of the lot I bought and I had been blooding those when doing her daily prayer. She had touched them and I considered them hers. She asked me to use part of one of those and I finally had my answer as to why she wanted two to begin with. One is to be used when bloodstone is called for in her workings. I crushed part of it up and put it in a little folded piece of paper while I waited for darkness and privacy.
Here’s a pic of my material prep while waiting. Her seal is upside down on purpose, so I’m not displaying work from the book. It’s not a publicly available one found with a simple Google search.
Note the purple candles. I couldn’t for the life of me find my red ones last night. The red one seen here was used as part of my first Invocation of the Blood Moon. While I wanted my candles to match, that just didn’t happen this time. She didn’t care, though I did ask to be polite. (I found both packs of my red candles this morning…)
When it was finally time to start the ritual, I set up a card table and arranged everything.
The stick incense was for me and not called for in the ritual. The Myhhr resin is part of the ritual, but I wanted a little more.
Making the elixir is a primary part of the ritual, so I took a few shots of some of the items going in it.
Finally, the charging of the elixir over the opened seal
This gets flicked around the area and while I felt a little self-conscious while I did it (no idea), once I got started, it became a pretty natural thing to do. I spread it all over my ritual space and the grass, since that is normally where the entities show up.
It’s at this point where the “kiss” happens. Since I had already had her in the area to begin with, she came quickly. If one is going to do this ritual, I would recommend doing her prayer as a light evocation to help this process along later when the ritual begins.
Following the kiss, there is a moment where you’re surrounded by Az Jahi and her power. It’s like a micro ritual space that basically the two of you are in together with the energies she represents. There’s some gnosis going on and one is encouraged to take note of feelings, impressions, etc…during this moment. Most of mine was personal, but I did get the impression that I should stop shying away from my darkness, that I should embrace it, use it, and stop worrying or being concerned with losing my self in the process. Not the first time I’ve been told this and it won’t be the last, I’m afraid.
The ritual was essentially done at this point. I cleaned up, finished off the wine, and called it a night. I did save some of the elixir in a container that will start smelling horribly soon, with the heat here. I don’t know why I saved it, but got the impression that I’ll be dressing a candle with it for a working I don’t yet know about. Guess we’ll see.
