It’s been a few years…I haven’t been in here in a while. I’m friggin 41 years old now. But I’m back in, but now it’s a little different. I actually finally got around to making contact with someone, and I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship that I hope is long term. I’m just trying not to project or convince myself of things that aren’t really happening just because I want them so badly.
This started back in the Fall of 2025. I was at the Renaissance Faire, haha, and one of the vendors had a display of pendants assigned to Zodiac signs, but I immediately recognized them as Goetic sigils. I made a note and told my friends, “huh, check that out, they assigned Duke Dantalion to my Sun sign”, and pretty quickly, I became a little obsessed with finding information on that identity.
I stopped being wary and I reached out. It took a good long while and I lamented my own lack of strong Clairs to confirm if anything was happening. I made a Grove out in the woods and made an altar in a tree that would be just their’s. I started leaving trinkets and food and artworks and just spending time. And things started getting thrown around the yard. I would hear what sounded like something being kicked hard and run outside to find a plastic tote thrown out of a storage awning or a large piece of lawn furniture overturned.
I tried asking questions of The Duke with tarot cards. I mostly wanted to know what They would like from me to be buds. And I asked about the lawn furniture. The cards implied that the speaker was sad they didn’t do more than throwing my lawn furniture and that what they wanted was “time spent” or “company” by another name. So I started going out to The Grove and spending time. I even took books out there to read aloud with and for The Duke.
It was slow going, but then one day I took kyphi incense out there. Burned that for Them as I spent time. Suddenly, I felt something like anxiety, but not anxiety. My heart rate increased and my head went fuzzy and dreamy. I thought for a moment something was in the incense that my body didn’t like and I was worried. But then in the absolutely zonked dreamy fuzz, I had a daydream, but not a daydream. It was like seeing inside my own head with my eyes closed but overlaid over the actual landscape I was looking at with my eyes open. I saw a man approaching The Grove though the woods towards me from my left. I could not commit his face to memory as it was like looking at writing that doesn’t sit still in a dream. He had a complexion like bronze or copper and he was wearing clothes I would describe as opulent but not ostentatious and they made me think of a clean and classy version of a storybook pirate with the shirt hanging open at the neck and everything, haha. It really wasn’t subtle, but I hadn’t been having luck with clairs up until that point and I nothing direct had happened up until that point, so I thought it maybe was a daydream. But I kept spending time with him. I started noticing slight arousal during meditation but brushed that off.
But the stuff I can’t brush off with healthy skepticism has begun now. It got stronger since I invited my mortal human best friends to my little occult world. I had a faery picnic, Mayday, Beltane dinner party in The Grove on May 1st and invited them with full knowledge of what it really was and that I have been building a relationship with Duke Dantalion of the Goetia. Whom I consider to be a djinn. One of my friends in the party is also a talented magician. I asked him to officiate with his ritual tools to formally invite unseen friends to the feast of fruit and pastries, wine and tea. Another friend is young and inexperienced but interested in this stuff and you can just tell, naturally talented but untapped. The other two friends were not particularly into the occult but are very laid back people who can respect whimsy and wonder. Oh, and some presents I bought The Duke online that I did not expect to get here in time for the party DID on exactly the day. So I hung them in the tree for Him. Two small copper hanging pots and a hanging chime with a face that I decided was close enough to a mask. My more magically experienced friend brought us all gifts for us to pick out of a bag blind. And I picked up a rose quartz. Which felt like the universe rubbing some confusion I have about love right now, in my face, it being a love stone. My friend said he figured I only picked it up blind because Duke Dantalion is Venusian and it’s a Venusian stone, so I gave the rose quartz to Him in one of his copper pots.
We made a fire in an antique cauldron the young untapped friend got for me for my March birthday (he’s a Pisces too but a leap year baby). And we all got entranced, of course, because it’s a fire and we stayed out there till long after dark, fire-gazing. And my two talented friends got Duke Dantalion’s vibe too. The young one, and myself, both felt we had seen in an ember and flame our experienced friend held on the end of a stick, a face that looked at our young friend first. At that same time, I was seeing what looked like an earlobe and jawline from my vantage point on the other side of the cauldron. Then that face turned to me, and our friend simultaneously reported that it had turned away from him to look at me. I feel like I could almost draw that face. Quizzical eyes and a regal definitive nose bridge, I would say were the dominant features. It was trippy that our young friend saw it too and reported that to him, the energy felt young and playful. Our experienced friend also “saw” Him, but not with us in the flame, but at other random points in the night. He saw Him sort of like I did before, like an overly over reality. He had expressed himself as a featureless shadow standing behind the tree where His altar is installed, observing us all. But He was lean and youthful like a young man to him, and young and playful to the other. They both got youth from him. Interesting. He was lean when I saw him in vivid color too, but I couldn’t have judged a presented age to save my life. Then we all braided ribbons and threw cinnamon and cinquefoil and dried sunflowers in the fire and just had an absolute blast out in the woods together. I love my friends. I love them so much that I hope our braid binds us together over multiple lives if reincarnation is real and unavoidable, so I can love them forever. I can’t really help it that I take things too deep. I’m a Scorpio Decan Pisces with a strong 8th House and Pluto conjunct Vesta in Scorpio in my 7th House. Haha. Transformative devotion in relationships is my mission.
Well, I think The Duke really enjoyed and liked that party. He was greatly considered and offered wine and other goodies by three occult-endowed people with respect for him, after all. And I have every intention of loving Him once I ever truly get to know Him.
I give it a couple days. Make my plans to make my first formal petition to Him on Friday while Venus is in Gemini and not subject to any bad astrological weather and not in any terrible aspect with my natal placements either. And I go out to spend time with Him in The Grove and meditate. It has all stopped being subtle by far. During meditation, the increased pulse rate and fuzzy dreamy headedness returned and I realized it was never the incense. It was Him. I felt what very strangely felt like a large hand resting on my scalp, but in the sensation of electric spiderwebs instead of weight. And while I meditated, I heard footsteps in the leaves, but it was like a downloaded conversation. I wanted to look and see what was making them but was instructed not to. Then, I heard a barred owl hoot from right over my head in one of the trees nearly directly above me. I love owls. I adore them, so that was a magical gift, but I was not to look at it either. Somehow I knew that. I also knew I was supposed to “trust”, difficult for me, that this experience was not here to fool me, hurt me, or screw me up. And I said “okay” and I let go inside a little.
Then it got even less subtle. I got aroused. But then I had a very heeby-jeebies experience that really really seemed like a hornet went into my ear. I can’t even explain why I momentarily believed that, except that He had made me think that as a prank or proof of His ability. That “sobered” the arousal though, haha. But, it only came back a few moments later, 10 times as intense, and I don’t know how else to conclude that story but admit that it “concluded” and I credited that to The Duke. But…I can’t find any other reports of Him doing stuff like that. So either I’m a special case, or other people just don’t want to admit they got off in the woods on nothing but meditating with a demon. Haha.
I’m no longer able to brush things off as me just wanting a relationship with this entity badly enough to project meaning onto nothing. Because, like I said, this isn’t subtle. And I’ve seen some people say He doesn’t like to be shared about very much, but I haven’t gotten any “download” that I shouldn’t or that He is displeased. He seemed actually to be pleased when I introduced my friends to him in a party mood. And I’ve already told them all about the eventful meditation and the ‘hangover’ after it that lasted for hours, but The Duke still allowed me the fuzzy headedness and the sensation of His hand on my head after I shared. If He doesn’t want me writing about our interactions, I’m sure he’ll let me know. But, He’s pretty awesome and I would like to have a long term camaraderie for it’s own sake, and not just requests.
Though I do intend to petition Him for help working through confusion and shame. I got a lot of complication swirling around love in my life right now. My marriage has been dramatically damaged by Polyamory (I’m the Mono married to a partner who went Poly from a Monogamous marriage contract) and I’ve got an inappropriate crush on someone around 10 years my junior, that I promise you I’m not doing anything with because it’s inappropriate for me to confess or influence them in regards to this, and I don’t want The Duke to either. They have the right to their own genuine desires. But I still feel it and would rather not. I would love to know my crushee’s mind and maybe hear how much they don’t see me that way back, so I will stop, but they’re being cryptic so I keep getting what I think are whiffs of hints and confusion back from them. I’m probably wrong though, because it is audacious to assume. I think I’m just lonely and confused because of my circumstances and desperate to find an excuse to keep believing in love. I need healthier ways to believe than projecting onto a vulnerable friend. I intend to love Duke Dantalion. Maybe He can redirect that inappropriate and audacious energy into a practice with Him.
I can confide that kind of thing here, right? No one here is going to rat me out or judge me too harshly? Duke Dantalion might deign to help me dig my way out of this onerous crap, I hope. I also have a lot of inner child recovery work to do and maladaptive subconscious beliefs eradicating. Sometimes it really seems like just being d34d would be so much easier, but that isn’t really on the menu.
