#bridgework

We noticed this correspondences to a personal favorite line for the book of the law (if you read 359 as chapter:verse number)

Liber AL - 3:59 “As brothers fight ye!”

From Crowley’s New Comment - “There is perhaps a magical second-meaning in this verse, a reference to the Ritual of which we find hints in the legend of Cain and Abel, Esau and Jacob, Set and Osiris, et cetera. The “Elder Brother” within us, the Silent Self, must slay the younger brother, the conscious self, and he must be raised again incorruptible.”

—

I’m reminded of this when I incorporate magick into my recovery and teach others to as well. Sponsee R specifically asked to work with me because of it and because I am trauma-informed. Working with her because she’s a woman is taboo-breaking - there’s a risk of the intimacy of sponsor-sponsee relations becoming boundary breaking and sexual, this risking both out sobriety. I like challenges and to gain some of her perspective as a cishet woman. She’s hoping for a fresh perspective on recovery (she’s been in and out for 20 years) and someone to call her out on bullshit.

Sometimes as a sponsor, I feel like Mr. Miyagi in the Karate Kid - I tell people to engage in mundane tasks that feel repetitive and dumb. It builds their emotional muscles and taps them into their energetic self. Now she’s trying to stay sober while her controlling husband is demanding they go to mediation when she’s got 4 months sober. She was also given a proverbial crane kick too, like Mr. Miyagi, and she has to understand when and how to use a powerful technique at the right time. We did Bridgework, and she’s able to feel her emotions in a new way without also being overwhelmed. She was able to cry in front of him during a fight but not in a manipulative way, and she’s letting him be angry and not lying or telling him what he wants to hear.

I’m reflecting tonight on how I did my best with other people, and they relapsed and OD’d. I helped Joe’s husband clean up afterwards. How Mike was doing well, setting boundaries, making healthy career choices that were scary - then he smoked fent-laced crack.

For my part, I’ve gotten to do a gematria analysis and pick apart the sigil for what he’s assumed was his HGA but is hostile now that he’s not drinking. It added to 359 which equals to Satan, thorny, and Sacred Wind. The sigil looks like a little cartoonish angry guy trying to pick a fight.

I also got to do a healing ritual, my Bridgework process, with him that’s normally just emotionally challenging and physically draining. It normally takes 5-7 days for it to cause the change it’s going to kick off. He’s grappling with existential crisis on accepting (in part) a psychological model of magick, and he feels spirits around him constantly that he’s finally accepting as extensions of himself.