Thanks to NIASKOTL for this idea. 

I cast a magic circle and burnt my own particular blend of herbs and incense, summoned my usual patron forces.

Then I sat holding a black scrying mirror I bought years and years ago and tried to see things similar to those NIASKOTL described in his recent blog entry.

I felt an intense grounding of energy and this has been one of the more dramatic magical workings I have ever done.  I am still in a state of magical excitation as I’m writing this.  It’s an experiment in working with the forces I have brought to bear.

For twenty years I have been working with my visual imagination in a shamanic way.  Over that time I’ve developed quite a bit but I have always had difficulty with “groundedness”.  I get lost in my inner states.  They do make changes, I’ve had ample evidence that they are powerful, but there’s been some kind of dark blockage between the highest states and my day-to-day life.  I’ve very often referred to it as “the darkness in my fifth chakra”.  I won’t go in to the years of work I’ve done on this here.  However what I found was that looking into the black mirror managed to ground this darkness. I could see the outline of my reflection.  Instead of visual images “in” the mirror, in my inner eye I saw dozens of black birds flying around me, and then my telepathic awareness expanded.  The energy I’ve always experienced in states of deep imagination came into my world as I could see myself in the mirror and be aware of myself in the room. 

I felt a sense of tremendous energy being released.  A lot of it I can’t remember but I feel much closer to full trance channeling than I ever have.  And I sense that I can use this tool to bring those forces of my imagination into the physical world. 

After I did the original meditation I went back a played a song on my iPod while doing it again. I have a few dozen songs that I’ve listened to ritualistically for years.  They evoke magical dream states for me.  As I listened to this particular song while looking at my reflection I could feel the power shifting into my life.  Especially interesting was a new insight I gained on telepathic states I’ve experienced in the past.  They suddenly made a lot more sense as I could “correct for” the drift between my physical body and my astral body.

So this seems like a very powerful tool for me to use in the future.  I look forward to further experiments.