Finding your Way

October 1st - 7th: May the Road Rise up to Meet You

For this week I want to highlight an excellent day for a class of magic that we typically refer to as ‘road opening.’ In my practice, there are actually several related kinds of enchantment with different nuances and influences that come under this general heading. As with everything in magic, these are my definitions and perceptions only — there isn’t one right way (though there are wrong ones). While the planner will typically say something like ‘road opening or wayfinding’ as it does for this coming Tuesday, you can interpret that along a number of different lines depending on your needs and goals…

Road opening / Way opening: When you feel like there’s no path forward, that options or doors are closed to you, or that you are stuck. Abre camino (which literally means ‘Open the Way’) is the ultimate herb for this and you can buy a whole live plant, ensuring that your abre camino is harvested with respect from your own yard or windowsill. It’s also included in S+S’s Mercury in Gemini and Exalted Mercury series, which makes sense as this is a very Mercurial activity. Work for optionality and avenues opening up to get you unmired or unstuck. Abre camino is frequently burned or used in a bath or wash, but google ‘road opening’ and you will have hundreds of magical options to choose from.

Lock picking: There’s a variant of road opening that’s less “open the door” and more “I’ll sneak in anyway.” This is also Mercurial, but in line with their duality, it’s the trickster side of their nature. This is Mercury as patron of thieves and you know I’m going to point to S+S’s Door Key subset. This kind of working really embodies the maxim that it’s better to “ask forgiveness, not permission” (Admiral Grace Hopper). I have a bag of old orphan keys of all shapes and sizes (from tiny luggage keys to giant iron ones) and they are some of my most useful magical tools.

Wayfinding / Navigating / Map Making: It’s hard to open roads when you don’t even know which way to go. In this case you need to do some wayfinding. Imagine you are an explorer with a compass and an incomplete map navigating your way through a thick jungle. You climb a tree, site on a particular landmark, get a bearing, and head in that direction. Of course then you hit a ravine or wild river or hungry panther and have to change course, finding a new way forward. This is more strategic and Jupitarian in terms of its expansiveness and includes a farseeing component of getting perspective on your situation (Jupiter's Empyreal Vantage comes to mind). As a magical operation, you can combine magical journeying, divination, and enchantment (not to mention strategy planning and goal setting, which I certainly think are magical).

Connecting / Networking: When your progress depends on building community, leveraging social capital, or finding networks for mutual thriving, you need magic for connection. This puts us right in classic sugar/honey jar territory and is very Venusian. Different from the kind of working that makes our boss love us or gets us out of legal trouble though, this kind of road opening is about lucky encounters, prosperous partnerships, and social engagement (Venus' Aerial Delight and particularly the incredible Eirene subset are personal favorites of mine).

Note: There’s also an ancestral version of connection magic that’s about opening the ways of the dead, necromancy or psychopomp work, and engaging with and healing ancestral lines. But we’ll get into that later in the month.

Unblocking / Uncrossing: If road opening is “open the way” then unblocking is “get out of my way.” When road opening finds a way around the road closed sign, unblocking gets out of the car and moves the boulder. If you guessed that this might be a Martial activity (that you might use Antares for), yeah it can be. But it can also be Mercurial if it’s a creative block (Quicksilver Tongue) or Sol if it’s a block caused by a lack of heart power (Exalted Sol).

This is at the edge of this category of enchantment. From here we move into banishing and protection on the one hand and offensive magics and hex breaking on the other.

This week also includes a couple of days for protection, two lunar mansion elections, and a day for enchanting for freedom. Which is great because next week is TERRIBLE.