More exquisite magic came in the mail yesterday . . . and the return address could not hint at it more appropriately.
Not that I'll be returning it. I will be giving this eBay seller a great review, however, since not only did he pack it so well, he relisted the item just for me, after a session-timeout hiccup prevented me from making a purchase.
Straight outta Oil City, PA, this small bottle of bona fide crude comes from the first place oil was drilled for in the lower 48 states. It's a light crude, more fluid than the Alaska Valdez sample, and thus richer in lighter (and more toxic) molecules like gasoline and kerosene. Smells like it, too. These souvenir bottles are perfect for my needs, where I wish to not only see but smell and touch the oil, yet where less than a drop will be sufficient for magickal workings under Aliria-Naphtha's guidance.
I blessed the bottle (it's plastic, but that's all right) of oil and then meditated on it. What came to focus was the longing for light that gave rise to the first great oil boom, when people found that kerosene gave a steady, reliable lamp flame. Relief, joy, coziness and greater productivity infused later and later hours of the night; of course, fires were still a risk, but so were they with candles.
We had no idea, then, what price we would eventually pay for the convenience of Naphtha's gift: It wasn't so bad just with lamps, which folks had been running on mineral oil for thousands of years, but then someone designed a machine to run on the copious "waste" left over from kerosene refining --- a product they called gasoline.
Today, 41% of every average barrel of crude goes into making gasoline. . . .
Aliria-Naphtha and her material domain on my altar, which is growing quite crowded. Mineral oil not being the gentlest on life, I plan to use minimal amounts in sacred oil potions and other blends. Aliria's magick is the most energy-dense stuff on Earth --- you really shouldn't need a lot, unless you're powering some huge machine . . . ideally, not then, either, in the future!
I'm in the process of making another polymer sculpture, which is meant to honor Gaia and Aliria in more of an indigenous aspect --- the black oil snake who moves within Mother Earth as her blood, her dark spirit-daughter with the sun's fire in her belly, and occasionally emerges naturally, bearing flame in her palms.
First, a pair of delicate little arms, waiting to be attached . . . then a solid, blocky face, placid and wise, as befitting a spirit of the land . . . It's taking longer than anticipated but should be well worth the effort.
The "Black Snake" is actually part of a less-than-pleasant prophecy of the Lakota people, namely that when a great black snake enters the land, the world will end. They've taken this to mean the Dakota Access crude-carrying pipeline or DAPL, which they are still fighting even now that construction is complete and oil is being moved through. During the protests, only money kept me from making the trip and joining in solidarity. I did write a letter and collect signatures . . . only to have Trump elected, and the effort rendered moot, since he's the sort of man-boy bastard who can barely read a well-scripted letter, much less a handwritten cursive one.
As I see it, this sculpture honors the soul of Aliria as she is unfettered, uncontained by pipeline or tank, she who has moved within the cracks of the Earth since long before the foolish age of mankind and will continue to do so long after we are gone.
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