There she goes again! ~ Crude Magick

Ye be warned! When I move into your home, strange statues may appear on the desk, and strange little parcels may begin to arrive in the mail!

Well, I'm at it again. I haven't ordered so many items on eBay since, I think, my interest in Reddy Kilowatt in my college days. But branching out into my goddess's realm of mastery and exploring what may easily become a new field of magical working for me has entailed purchase of some, ah . . . unusual witch supplies; namely, some types of oil that aren't on Moonshadow's oil shelves.

Yup --- there I go again with the crude oil!

A couple weeks ago while at work, I scored a Coloradoan sweet crude off eBay, with two more purchases to follow shortly: one, a sour crude from the Viola formation in Kansas, and the other a sweet crude from Oklahoma that somehow made its way clear to England via some bloke's geologist granddad. Last Saturday the large sample from Colorado arrived in a box, and just this afternoon, the little phial from Kansas arrived in a padded envelope with a cute hockey-puckish tin inside, bearing a rank, sulfurous-smelling liquid. The England item, well . . . it's got a bit further to go.

So, what the heck is this thing with me and oil, which is rather quickly causing a family cluster of small bottles to accumulate on my Earth altar (as if Snape's and Circe's section of altar wasn't bottle-laden enough!), and leaving my hands smelling of motor fuel after half my magick workings lately?! What are my plans here?

Clearly, what is happening is that I am gathering a selection of various Earth oils from as many places on the globe as possible (some are too pricey, in the only forms I've found them so far). Alaska, Kansas, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Texas, California, Russia, Azerbaijan. . . . Because here's the thing, one of the things that fascinates me: Every stash of natural oil found in the Earth is unique. Each body of crude is distinct from any other, as much as though it was fingerprinted. Each source of oil was formed from a different overall composition of life forms or entire prehistoric communities, each under different conditions . . . and each basically has a unique story to tell.

Stinky fluids my samples may look like to the average person, but this is the miracle I see when I look at a bottle of what our species so dismissively labels "crude": a substance we seem to deem worthless for its own sake, until we refine it, divide it, alter it for our, well, consumption. (Is it any wonder she's killing us?) But I feel close to the sacredness of oil for itself, even more than its end products.

My hope is to use energy techniques to divine the strong points of each sample's possible applications in magick, spells or spiritual work, and perhaps, if I'm unusually diligent or perceptive that day, the story of each as well. Because they are different: What magicks is a sweet or low-sulfur crude best for, compared to a sour one? A runny one versus a thick, tarry one? What are the human stories and Earth stories of each? The Coloradoan sample was, regrettably, fracked --- does this change its energy, and how?

It's exciting, but a little wildly intimidating as well, because I'm on my own here: I don't know many (if any) other geologist witches, though herb-witches come by the bushel, and I can scour the entire fucking Internet and not find a single other person who's exploring this kind of magickal work with crude oil!! (And why would they? I mean, gosh, essential oils are just sooo much more healing and nice-smelling and crystals and fossils so much prettier, and besides, fossil fuels are like the taboo, non-green, non-Earth-witchy thing right now, I mean like, gross. Okay so, I choose to embrace Mother Earth's stinky underbelly dark side. Like, bite me, okay.) What I need is a good long exploration and meditation session in which to invoke Aliria-Naphtha and tune into those various energies. (Like, have at your "good vibes", bitches.)

However, despite my magical "experiments", many aspects of my oil samples, and how precisely Earth went about forming them, will undoubtedly remain a mystery to me. She's curious like that, Earth is!