Eruption Pic
Eruption Pic
Over the next 9 months, things were relatively quiet. I did get some meditations, found a Pele tiki from a local Oahu artist, and started putting together some of the pieces for a future school. Largely, it was a lot of waiting and practicing. This changed in May. The meditation/attunement was a simpler practice than the exercise I practiced when back at Kilauea in hopes of another eruption event.
On 25MAY25, Kilauea erupted with some of the highest fountains seen in 50 years. We were watching the Kilauea cams throughout the day, checking them for signs of increased activity as we spent time in the park and near it. This paid off and we scrambled to drive the 20 miles to get back to the park when we saw a garden hose size fountain coming out. Spots fill up fast and parking is limited.
Tip - get a spot at the Pu’upua’i Trail parking lot. Take the paved 0.5 mile Devastation Trail to the typically full Devastation Trail parking lot. From there, turn right and follow the closed road to the Keanakako’i Overlook for the best viewing.
When we arrived, it had grown significantly into 2 huge fountains being blown sideways at the top of the streams. A misty rain had also begun to come with the wind, which made it cold, wet, and wonderful. After taking in the initial sight, I connected with the eruption and began cycling the energy through myself, essentially turning myself into a similar volcano. I was connected with both Pele and the plumes and enjoyed the moment.
The initial meditation/attunement uses the reaching method from Pele’s Fiery Dome, given in Pele’s Grimoire. I’ll reproduce that here for convenience. It should be practiced until it becomes comfortable and, eventually, second nature. It is the basis for many of the energetic rituals in this book.
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Erecting the Fiery Dome of Pele
Meditate in your chosen manner until you feel you have reached your magical state.
If you choose to cast a circle or do an area banishment, perform this.
Go down inside of yourself, dig deeply, dig by instinct, until you find the source of you - your power. Call upon this part of yourself. You need to grab hold of it. Take ownership and once you've done so, this part will respond to your thoughts and will, as if it's waiting to make your Will reality. This does not require excessive emotion and shouldn't.
Reach down into the Earth, to the core, where the pressure and heat have liquified the solid elements of the Earth itself. Feel the heat of it and notice the liquidity of its movements, even when slow.
From that inner part of yourself, connect it to that molten center, that lava undercurrent that is at the center of the Earth. Using your soul (not your mind), call that molten Earth upwards, through the layers, until it breaks the surface of the area where you stand.
Your mind will direct and form this Fiery essence into a protective shield that will surround the area you choose. Oversee this formation until it meets your requirements for the shape and area you wish to cover. The Mind directs, the Will sees it through.
If you wish to give additional instructions at this point in time, such as it being reactionary or to allow certain types of entities or energy through, do so at this time.
At this point, you have a choice. You can choose to leave your shield reactionary (which requires it to be flexible, like lava or as a strictly static form of protection, which involves cooling the lava to form a hard shell. This is a choice that must be made, but not one that cannot be changed. Add enough lava and older lava gets melted the same as anything else. It's not a zero-sum game in this case, if it's your energy and ward that you'd like to replenish and "re-train".
There are some key points I want to make that weren’t made in the first grimoire. You may find some helpful in other areas of your practice. The first is that one of the largest reasons for centering your mind on your “Spark” is because it helps get your conscious mind out of the way for the rest of the work. It gives our mind something to focus on while a smaller part of it (and the rest of “You” can make the work happen. It’s easy to overthink something like this and try to will it up with our minds and not our actual Will. You will expend twice as much (or more) energy trying to do it with your mind, if you can manage it. Centering your main focus on that “Spark” is a convenient way to achieve that. Truth is, I didn’t know why the instruction was there when I first got the ward. That had to come later.
Second is that this pulling up exercise is crucial for some of the internal and external cordcutting and dissolving methods we will be using. We will be using that same pull upwards, direct the energy towards the outcome, and then get out of the way so it can get the work done more efficiently.
The third point is that it helps you practice locating desired sources of energy, tapping it, and bringing it forth in a way that is transitory. It allows the magician to reduce the effects that moving larger and larger energy amounts can have on the body. If I said that I wanted to sample the energies from, say, a Civil War battlefield, but not keep them inside me, it seems like a no-brainer. It may not be so obvious if it’s the various energies from Pele’s Fiery dome and you start to show signs of lethargy, hyperactivity, or inflammation. Or a hundred other variants, since we all react to energies differently. This set of skills can also help you move it back out of yourself and reduce any toll that the working may have on you.
With these points brought up, it’s time to take these practiced skills to the next level.
The Fire and Earth Meditation and Attunement
The Fire and Earth meditation and attunement is something I use almost daily. There are a lot of really effective use cases for it, despite it being fairly simple. You’ll need to listen to your body and intuition to determine the length of it and I typically don’t do it for more than 10-20 minutes.
What is it? We’re going to go back down to those energies and pull them up into ourselves to get more used to them and perform some other actions. Cake! Done, right? Maybe. We have to set the intent to use it in this manner and once we’ve decided to do that, we can then add other things to it to make it more multi-functional.
The meditation portion is where you’re “basking” in the energies pulled up and letting it do its work. You’re focused on that aspect of it. It can be walking or stationary and I typically use a lap around the building at work as my time for doing this. The meditation portion simply involves focusing on the energies, being with them in that moment, and listening for when it’s time to send them back.
The attunement portion is where we slowly get used to this mix of energies to acclimate to it like you would sun exposure or new climates that are different from your normal one. Here, we’re looking to build a sort of tolerance to this mix of energies, which will also help reduce the effects as we gain expertise and find ourselves using larger and larger amounts of energy in our rituals more frequently. This is also what I did to gain more of a tolerance to necromantic energies until I could have an open gateway at my house linked to various graveyards I’ve visited in the past without ill effects.
The Method:
Meditate in your chosen manner until you feel you have reached your magical state.
If you choose to cast a circle or do an area banishment, perform this.
Go down inside of yourself.
Reach down into the Earth, to the core, where the pressure and heat have liquified the solid elements of the Earth itself. Feel the heat of it and notice the liquidity of its movements, even when slow.
From that inner part of yourself, connect it to that molten center, that lava undercurrent that is at the center of the Earth. Be sure to recognize this is Fire and Earth.
Pull this mixture up into yourself slowly.
Gradually let this mix of Fire and Earth build up inside you until it comes out of your crown and starts bubbling over the outside of you as more comes from below.
Let this cycle continue.
When you feel the time is right, let it recede back into the Earth from where it came.
Simple, right? Sure, but now we’re going to talk about the different ways of using it for targeted benefits. There are some important tweaks we can make that would make them into their own focused ritual, but these initial ones can all be done together to save time.