Llewellyn's 2018 Magical Almanac: Practical Magic for Everyday Living - Team of authors 2017

A Guided Visualization through the Ring-Pass-Not: Recycling Emotional Energy by Barbara Ardinger
Water Magic

In her book The Cosmic Doctrine, originally written in 1923—24 as channeled from the Inner Planes, British occultist Dion Fortune (1890—1946) describes the Ring-Pass-Not, which is the ultimate outer limit of the universe. Fortune tells us that the Ring-Pass-Not (which was also described, but in a different way, by Madame H. P. Blavatsky) is a purely abstract ring of energy that protects our universe from the demons in other universes. Primal atoms also exist at the Ring-Pass-Not.

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I have long believed in recycling. I take copious amounts of paper, for example, to our recycling bin every week. Not long ago, I started to think about other, more abstract kinds of recycling. How, I asked myself, might we recycle emotional energy? Just as at the end of a ritual we sometimes send the energy we raised down into the earth to be recycled (I think maybe it comes back up as flowers. Or weeds.), could we also leave our emotional burdens and negative feelings at the Ring-Pass-Not? How can we carry our emotional burdens there and let them disintegrate among the primal atoms? They could regroup as, say, a breeze or a bubble of kindness and come back to our world. If we do this kind of recycling, can we also come back to the world as clearer, cleaner people? As better Pagans?

My apologies to Dion Fortune for oversimplifying her doctrine. Her book is highly cerebral and abstract, whereas my intention in this guided visualization is not thinking but feeling. I want us to be good, grounded Pagans.

When we do a magical visualization, we work at a level of reality where anything is possible. Let us therefore move into a solar system that looks like our own but is a solar system filled with magical energy. So fasten your seatbelts. Here we go.

Guided Visualization

Sit comfortably with your spine straight and take two or three deep, easy breaths. As you feel your body relaxing, know that if there’s an emergency, you can quickly return to consensual reality and deal with it. Know that as you travel magically, you are safe and your energy is safe. As you breathe deeply, your body relaxes more deeply and your mind becomes more alert.

Take two or three more deep, easy breaths and feel yourself in lift-off. Look down and see Earth as the astronauts see it, small and blue. Know that you are now outward bound in a magical starship, in the hold of which lie your emotional burdens. The hold has a transparent door. Look through it at your emotional burdens. What are they? Jealousy, prejudice, hatred—none of which you didn’t know you were carrying? Guilt for something done or not done? Fear of something or someone? What form do your emotional burdens take in “real” life? Do they keep you from doing things you like to do? Do they make you say hurtful things to people you’d rather not hurt? Look into the hold again. What do your burdens look like? Maybe they’re big, ugly, lumpy things with sharp teeth and claws. Take another deep, easy breath and make sure that door is locked. Also make sure there’s an outer door or airlock that you can open to dump those heavy burdens.

Take another deep, easy breath and imagine you have landed on the planet Venus. Remember, this magical solar system looks like our real one except that the planets are colored and you can breathe while you’re there. Venus is an emerald green planet. Go outside and stand on Venus. You are perfectly comfortable. The energy of Venus is love, pleasure, and harmony, especially the harmonies of nature—plants and trees. Feel the energy of Venus flowing into you and wrapping itself around you. You are more loving (but not overemotional) than ever before.

Take another deep, easy breath and imagine you have landed on the red planet Mars. Before the Roman god Mars was conflated with the Greek Ares (who is a berserker), he was an agricultural god who defended his people and his land. His energy is strong and assertive. It’s filled with fortitude and individuality. Go outside and stand on Mars. You are perfectly comfortable. Feel the strength of Mars flowing into you and wrapping itself around you. You are stronger and more assertive (but not aggressive) than you have been before.

Take another deep, easy breath and imagine you have landed on a huge purple planet. This is Jupiter, and the great planet’s energy promotes justice, enthusiasm, optimism, and expansion. Go outside and stand on Jupiter. You are perfectly comfortable. Feel the energy of Jupiter flowing into you and wrapping itself around you. You are more just, generous, and optimistic than you have been in the past.

Take another deep breath. Now you find yourself on another huge planet, this one as black and quiet as the night. This is Saturn, whose energy gives you your sense of duty and responsibility. It also gives you discipline and balance, the necessary balance to Jupiter’s energy. Go outside and stand on Saturn. You are perfectly comfortable. Feel the energy of Saturn flowing into you and wrapping itself around you. Now you know that there are reasonable limits. You feel more balanced than you did when you were hauling those old emotional burdens around.

Take another deep breath. Now you find yourself on an indigo planet. This is Uranus, whose energy pushes you to evolve and awaken to your freedom so you can cope with the unexpected events of life. Go outside and stand on Uranus. You are perfectly comfortable. Feel the energy of Uranus flowing into you and wrapping itself around you. Uranus’s energy is the energy of the visionary, the one who sees ahead. What can you see ahead? Can you see both expansion and reasonable limits? Can you see yourself changing and becoming freer? Are you beginning to see the edge of this magical solar system?

Take another deep breath. Now you find yourself on Neptune, an electric blue planet whose energy brings creativity and helps you understand how to dissolve the old and imagine the new. Go outside and stand on Neptune. You are perfectly comfortable. Feel the energy of Neptune flowing into you and wrapping itself around you. You’re beginning to understand how to really dissolve old things—like those ugly, negative emotional burdens—and imagine a new, freer state of being.

And now take the big leap to the very edge of the universe. Feel your starship speed up and shift into hyperdrive. You’re going where no one has gone before, past science fiction, past books with good advice, past burdens like unproductive anger (though you still know that righteous anger can be useful), past guilt, regrets, hatred, and prejudices. You’re speeding along now, faster than the speed of light, too fast for useless emotions to keep up.

And here you are! Here is the Ring-Pass-Not. What does it look like to you? Is it a waving black curtain like the aurora borealis? An endless dark wall? An impenetrable wall of light? An endless river of energy, darker and deeper than any earthly river? A black hole that looks like a huge, hungry, velvet donut?

As you gaze in wonder at the Ring-Pass-Not, you feel your starship safely entering it and flowing with it. This is where you understand that you can safely release those old, ugly, lumpen heaps of negative energy that you’ve been carrying around for so many years. You understand that you don’t need them anymore. Those negative emotions are useless. They’re harmful to you and every other person you ever meet. It’s time to let them go.

Move the lever that opens the outer door of the cargo hold. Move another lever that slowly but surely pushes those emotional burdens out the door. Move a third lever that kicks them right into the Ring-Pass-Not. Watch the Ring-Pass-Not swallow them up.

Sit quietly and watch your emotional burdens float away in the Ring-Pass-Not. Say,

. . . And so it’s time to part,

my dearest loves:

the angers and the hurts

I have cherished for so long,

fed you,

borne you,

grown comfortable with you.

I have nourished you well.

I have held you in my heart.

And when you grew too strong . . .

I hid behind you.

But now I fear you—

I fear the power you had over me.

Go! Go into the Ring, flow with the Ring,

be absorbed by the Ring.

Go now.

Be gone.

Release your useless energy.

And when you come ’round again,

come ’round as peace,

as humility,

as understanding,

as kindness.

I release you to transformation.

Sit quietly with the words of this poem in your mind. When you’re ready, let the words go, too.

Now it’s time to return to Earth and consensual reality. With another deep, easy breath, turn your starship around and drive it out of the Ring-Pass-Not. Shift into hyperdrive again and speed back home. Come home with the speed of magic and thought. Come home without those old emotional burdens.

Just before you land back in your living room (or wherever), just before you open your eyes, remind yourself that the burdens are gone. Open your eyes and look at a new day.