I’ll do my level best to make this post worthwhile enough to stand on its own, but full understanding of this post probably comes best after having read a few other posts here. At a bare minimum, Broken Homes Build Towers. This post is the post that I referred to in Broken Homes as one I would be writing in the future that would refer back to it. I also highly recommend Stomping Grounds.
Specifically, this post will do a great deal to fill in an empty gap of meaning in between the December 8th “drift” I took, and the subsequent January 1st drift when I actually got my brick from the house. Incidentally, for those following along a bit more closely, the featured photo for my previous post was a visual nod to this (the “get your bricks on Route 66” slogan for a local hobby shop on Ogden Ave.). By the end of this post, the significance of what I was doing magic(k)ally on January 1st by virtue of everything that was going on in my head should be more apparent. Since I did not work with a magic(k)al “circle” for that operation, I could point out that roughly, what happens on a “drift” goes by similar rules in my personal symbol-logic, so the “brick ceremony” on New Year’s happened “in-circle,” from a certain point of view. Those who insist upon formally casting magic(k)al circles may disagree with me, but I’ll fight ‘em on it.
In Broken Homes, I mentioned that I did a little A.I. experiment; I also said that on these trips to that little “power spot” at the very edge of a wooded path leading to the footbridge crossing into Riverside (Stomping Grounds is your best bet to understand that place), I always go back home with something I didn’t have before I left; my “reward” on this journey to my power spot was the idea.
Basically, after having hemmed and hawed for a while about the ethics of doing so, I decided to go ahead and use a free MidJourney trial just to see what came of it if I were to enter simply the word, “Hermekate.” I had a reason: At the time I did that, there were very few places online where that specific word might even show up; any sites that might have the text for a specific spell from the Greek Magical Papyri might show up, but near the top of the list would have been a handful of sites:
Obscure Gods: Hermekate at Singing For Her would probably have been near the top of the list.
Hermekate at Crossroads Witch, which I actually incorporated into the visual symbolism of my work intentionally many years ago in ways I will explain in a sec.
My own blog, Hermekate, which lived at its own domain name at one time, “Hermekate.com.”
To be completely honest (though it could just be projection and/or wishful thinking), I do think my site banner showed prominently in MidJourney’s output and that was one of the main things I was curious about; I wanted the “DNA” of my former blog to be a part of the images I was generating, thereby forging a strong magic(k)al link. Here is the banner, and then I will explain a bit about it and how it incorporated the feedback from the article at Crossroads Witch. This is part of how Hermekate is representative of a “Song” (see Song of Hermekate), because ideas from that post have been incubating quietly as a part of my work all along, expressed only visually and in other allusions known only to me, but only now being explicitly revealed. Here is the banner:
A couple elements to explain (incidentally, I just now realize this post will also explain the “symbol-logical” leap I took in associating “Hermekate” with my personal sigil, The VSigil, which, I just now realize, is a very important detail to anyone following my work who might be interested in Words and such):
The logo was something The Priestess took it upon herself to do; she hired graphic designer Nicole Grandinetti to make some different logos, but I ended up choosing this one, which was part of this banner that I kept for quite a while, I think the first two separate “versions” or “incarnations” of the blog. The association between the VSigil (my Personal Sigil) and Hermekate was essentially that I wanted to protect myself from a potential future lawsuit from The Priestess. Using my own personal sigil was a way of defying inbuilt trauma responses and all of the “thou-shalt-not!” attached to the idea by intentionally making it personal. It was a “territorial pissing” of sorts. In more positive framing, a “reclaiming.” Anyway, as those familiar with Hermes and Hekate can see, the former logo is a very clever combination of a caduceus (Hermes) with a Strophalos up top (Hekate). I really loved it, and I was sad ditching it. Nicole did awesome work here.
Just under the first leg of the letter “M” in the name is a pole in the middle of the pathway into the woods. This pole is hinged and can fold down (that is much more visible in a photo I added to the post Broken Homes Build Towers). That’s where the post at Crossroads Witch comes in: It talks about a specific type of statue of Hermes called a Hermas, and I have ever since thought of that post every time I think of that pole on the path. That thing is my little “Hermas” for Hermekate.
So, all of this would fit together meaningfully in my head and has always been part of my visual artwork in different ways.
Let’s see what MidJourney made of it:
This was the output of my first query, which was simply the word, “Hermekate.” These are four separate images. I find it very interesting that MidJourney at least “seemed” to give me back Triple Goddess output; three images that are basically portraits (that do seem feminine to me, anyway; given deeper meanings of Hermekate, we could just as well call them nonbinary beings, but I am about to explain why I ended up leaning toward “goddesses” since these would definitely be “femme-passing” people in any case), and one image that is basically a landscape. I will note that this image did immediately make me think of my banner for Hermekate.
When I did this, I had not yet begun my ceremonial, “Initiatory” playthrough of Breath of the Wild; however, those following my blog closely will possibly already have picked up the association to be made between the January 1st drift in Broken Homes Build Towers and that in-game, digital Initiation ceremony (which is still ongoing, I’ll add), because they happened on the same day. That was intentional, in order to link that playthrough to the physical brick fragment I took from the house in the woods.
This output from MidJourney explains the associations in my head, because the “triple goddess” I ended up connecting this all with comes from the game The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time. In that game, the world of Hyrule (represented by the landscape image of what appears to be a wooded path) was created by three goddesses (the female portraits): Din, Nayru, and Farore. These goddesses correlate neatly with the three Dragons in Breath of the Wild, and with the three aspects of the Triforce (which are essential elements in the image I am using for my avatar, below, to be explained in a future post).
Anyway, next I asked MidJourney to generate another set of images from the “odd duck,” the landscape image. The pattern of “triple goddess” continued, with three images featuring clear femme-passing human figures (matching the relative positions of the three from the first set, as well), and one “odd duck.” This one does have a weird shadow that looks like an artifact [“hallucination?”] that could have a similar root to the other figures, maybe one that got half-expressed. I can read it as a dog’s shadow, so here’s another Hekate resonance, for me.
In this “odd duck” photo, we see what start to maybe look, to me, like buildings. Steeples or turrets or something. In the other images these clearly seem like trees.
The above two shots are detailed images I generated from one of the clear “goddess” images above, I forget which one. They immediately made me think of Little Red Riding Hood, as well as Breath of the Wild. I liked them because they also made me think of an article at Aeon entitled The good guy/bad guy myth, which refers back to that story, Little Red Riding Hood, to examine the morals many modern people uncritically take for granted as an absolute framework simply because it now permeates so many of our stories.
I also think a couple of other things are cool: The first one is “wild” (Breath of the Wild) and the second one shows what appear to be walls, more reflective of Tears of the Kingdom, BotW’s sequel. Hmmm. Also, the figure in the first is clearly clad in black, the second in crimson. The one in the second image looks like it might be on a steed.
I have already applied all of these ideas very consciously to my work since beginning that Self-Initiation inside of Breath of the Wild, and it’s one of the reasons I intentionally included screenshots of Link wearing a red Hylian Hood in some of my screenshots here.
The ideas in that Aeon article were foundational in the way I have since woven the meanings of trauma recovery into my work with Breath of the Wild. Check out any of the posts here from December of 2022 to follow this, but especially Sifting Through The Past. My inclusion of this element is how I “defused” the “good guy/bad guy” myth’s hold on the story in the game. That is important, too, in my recovery from being with The Priestess.
All of this does play into my current work, and my announcement in my previous post that I’ve begun my practice again. I mentioned changing habits, some that need to go and some that need to be added; another habit I need to resume is magic(k)al journaling, which I stopped doing when I realized The Priestess was reading my dream journals. At that point, I stopped journaling and largely compensated by oversharing publicly. That’s part of what this post and that post are about, and I need to re-establish my private journaling practice next. I need to do that before I get back into serious daily ritual work because I need to start taking the time to document it well.
In the meantime, I’ve cleared my dresser and set up a little tableau of sorts that will be the center of a new daily practice. The brick from the January 1st working is included and by now, it is clear that this brick links me to the Hermas in the woods in Riverside through a series of associative “keys.”
I will write in greater detail about the objects sitting on the brick, but the short story for now is that they will all be made into talismans.