In my last article on Seiðr, I made a statement that wasn’t a hot-button take, but merely just pointed out some facts that most of us ignore.

We don’t. Why? It’s honest.

Part of The Magnusson Standard is that we strive to have integrity and that means admitting when something is messy and not so clear-cut.

Here, we don’t buy extremes. We acknowledge that our sources aren’t perfect and that the reconstruction is going to look different to different people. That’s honest.

It’s a simple fact and there are two ways to handle it.

The Hard-Liners are going to react.

So are the Universalists.

We, well, we’re not saying we like that. If anything, it’s a problem for us too but there is another way to handle it and it’s simple. Just be honest. It’s less to remember and it’s easily-referenced if you ever need to.

The last article I did points out how, if you take a hot-button issue, pause, reflect, do a little bit of digging, sometimes what you find isn’t what you want but more of what you need at that time.

That’s okay. It’s one of the things you learn when you do the little daily N.M.E. entries we talked about two articles ago. I also stressed the importance of mental health when it comes to dealing with matter such as what it is we deal with (symbols, sympathetic magickal workings, visualization, astral projection, divination, etc) because, again, just being honest, lines can blur really quickly.

N.M.E. and Marcus Aurelius or any of the stoics you choose to read (and if you’re serious about doing this work) will ultimately clear your mind.

That being said, I need to be up front with you: This Banishing Ritual (N.M.E.) can be grueling and painful.

You’ll spend nights dealing with grief you shoved down just to keep going. You’ll learn what you did just to survive certain situations. You’ll see what you did right, even if you didn’t understand why it was the right thing to do and you’ll see life lessons along the way.

Let me give you an example.

You’ve seen this before. Someone drops their keys and instantly goes from Zero to Springer in under thirty seconds.

Having gone through N.M.E., I can tell that what that is. While the uninitiated may not see it and may only see someone overreacting, I now see someone who’s had a day of it and this was a straw. From here on in, all they’re asking for is a smoother day ahead. Every small pitfall along the way is going to send this person into thermal meltdown.

Put simply, a momentary loss of control causes the person to spiral out rather than go “Oops…damn…okay try again. Cool. Door opened. I won.”

The last article on Seiðr wasn’t just an article. A year ago, if I wrote the same article, might have been celebrated by some and directly opposed by others. Right now, it’s just getting views which is perfectly fine because the people who saw it and read it obviously know what I’m pointing out; The sources are clear on some things and on others, not so much.

I took a few points, use them for illustration, said my piece and walked away. This was a piece that I spent all day on. In between study sessions (Full Disclosure: Thorsson’s book Northern Magic, Chapter: Seith Magic, pg. 169 inspired the piece) I had been writing that piece while I made notes.

Another part of The Magnusson Standard: We allow experiences to shape us.

We allow experiences to shape us because whether you like it or not, they already do.

Think back to your earliest childhood memory. Are you still that person? No? Then something shaped you into who you are now.

The events themselves happened. That part is real. The real question is how you interpreted those events and how you reacted to them. What can you actually verify? Now compare the two long enough and eventually you start noticing the cracks in the structure. Took me eleven days.

In the end, I got so curious as to where some of my reactions were coming from that I began to do something some of us never do…I dug deeper.

This is where I manage expectations a bit. Here’s the thing, you and I who may engage in these practices know that a banishing is needed both before, and after any kind of magickal working when you at least start out.

A banishing ritual done for the mind, again, it’s messy.

Moments of grief will hit you at the worst possible times. Ground yourself, keep moving, then deal with it properly later. Don’t shove it down and keep trudging. If that worked, the grief, rage and shame would’ve fucked off years ago instead of festering in an overstuffed mental wastebasket.

Instead, you deal with it. That’s the real difference. Talk it out with someone. Talk to your therapist. Whatever it is you do, you need to deal with it because those traumas (even losing someone you cared about can be traumatic) however small or great, need to be analyzed, the emotions need to be felt.

Will you put that in your notebook? That’s up to you. I’d often wrote under my Discipline Wins stuff like “Held it together when…” because that is a win…now the reward is to go off somewhere and deal with the rotten affair and get it out of the way. You figure out how to use it to propel yourself forward even when the days hit you and you’re looking at it like “…ah shit…not again…”

Dealing with your thoughts and emotions, it’s not easy. In fact, it’s the hardest work you’ll do but there’s something else.

I couldn’t stop smiling and laughing through the entire process. Sounds strange, doesn’t it? It’s true. I started making decisions to have a little fun every day. Most days it works, but you’re gonna have days that don’t go so well. So what did I do when things didn’t go so well at work?

This is the part that no one will tell you about, but I will.

Self-talk is extremely important. Before, my own Shadow would say things during my walks, tell me stories, some of them were true, others were gross exaggerations of what actually happened. What they all had in common was, at the time, I believed every one of them as strongly as I believe in magick and my gods. Those claims were as real to me as Louisiana when he comes up and meows for pets.

When did I stop believing them? When I started doing my work with N.M.E. The first crack to show was that I could show up to work when scheduled. Weather didn’t mean a damn thing other than I’d have to leave a little earlier. Snow, wind, rain, heat, none of it mattered. I showed up. I said something one day in the break room just because my Shadow decided it needed to be said and, I hadn’t done work with N.M.E. yet but what I said was “I’ve eliminated everyone’s excuses.”

That was it. It was also fact. What else was fact was that I’d do things to eliminate everyone else’s excuses…now what about mine?

Nothing really came through that crack but once you see it in the structure, you can’t ignore it. It wasn’t until the next few cracks came in that it began to click. Most of the stories were bullshit. Sure, things had happened in my life, events, times, mishaps, misadventures or just me plain ol’ fuckin’ shit up.

Now, most of the stories didn’t land anymore.

Case in point, I’d gone to the grocery store to pick up a few items I needed. As I’m on my way back home, I’d noticed I didn’t have any of my amulets on. I’d done the morning opening ritual but I’d never put them on before I left. To me, okay, sucks but no biggie and that’s when I heard him.

“What are you without your precious gods?”

Your Shadow will swear it’s protecting you while leveling every weapon it has just to keep you small. Some friend, huh? Shadow can be a low mothafucka, Jack.

Doing N.M.E. had taught me things. By that time, I was two weeks in to the work, doing it every single night. I heard that in my mind and instantly went inward.

“Repeat that…” I said mentally, “What was that again?”

Nothing. Silence.

That’s what I thought.

Because it knew what I was going to say next and it was, “Nice one…yes…but what are you without me?”

Discussion over, Shadow. Shut the hell up and take a row of seats.

Remember what I said about grounding? Yes, do that. You need a few grounding techniques you can do on the fly. Carrying a small stone to squeeze or rub. Touching a counter and then noting how it feels to the touch, naming five things you can clearly see, four things you can hear and three things you can smell. I usually just do the surface, a few things I can see and a couple things I can hear clearly and then I’m good. It’s becoming easier as time goes on.

N.M.E. teaches you to clear out the stuff in the attic, letting your Hugr take the wheel again and telling Shadow that he’s taking a back seat for the duration of this trip. It’s a real-world, practical banishing that you can use every day so you can see what that is supposed to look like when you clear your spiritual space for magickal work. If you can’t think clearly, your work will either fail entirely or produce inconsistent results regardless of whether you came to it through ancestry or resonance.” The grounding teaches you to come back into the Five Sense World for awhile because this is Home Base. It’s the center of operations and you need it to be effective.

The single most important aspect to this entire process is self-talk.

This is what you tell yourself in the conversations you have in your own thoughts. You need to come up with voices of support, whether that’s music, a favorite book, whatever that looks like to you, this is something you can turn to that actively encourages you and reminds you of the stories that were fabrications to begin with.

If you have to write letters to yourself, do it. Whatever idea you come up with to begin to put it into your brain that you’re worth something, do it.

Next, what I’m going to suggest may come across as a surprise to some but this is where I came up with N.M.E.

The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli is a short book every one of you should read. What this book teaches is lessons on power.

Most people read The Prince as a handbook for controlling others. I didn’t.

I read it as a handbook on controlling the territory of the self.

My Shadow had spent years seizing power through fear, shame, memory and exaggeration. N.M.E. taught me how to challenge those claims the same way a ruler challenges bad counsel.

Before we get to the opening of The Magnusson Library on Saturday, I think it’s best if you take a little time each day to perform the banishing on the noise from your life and your mind and keep protecting your peace, your sanity and your energy before you begin taxing them into oblivion.

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