This is the text of my journal entry for my scrying of the 9th Aethyr, ZIP. See my previous post on scrying the aethyrs for instructions and a description of exactly what the Aethyrs are.
I actually attempted to scry this Aethyr twice. The first time, I was having extreme trouble focusing completely on it, so decided to end the attempt and try again at a later date.
January 16th, 2023.
I light a candle, say a prayer, recite the 19th call, and lay down with my eyes closed to let the vision overtake me.
There is ivy growing along a road.
The road leads to an encampment of tents striped with green and tan colors. In the center of them is a horse. I get on it and ride away.
[Here I lose focus temporarily]
I’m still in the center of the tents. I’m working out trying to learn how to ride it.
I find train tracks and follow them at an extreme speed.
I am at my childhood home, laying on a hill watching the clouds pass in the distance. It is sunset.
My childhood self is here, but he is unable to see me. He is doing the same thing.
[I again lose my focus on the vision]
I stand and look around. A familiar entrance to the nearby forest is only a few steps away: A place where the bushes and brush have grown into an arch between the trees. The forest is otherwise inaccessible from this area.
I step through and walk amongst the trees.
From behind one of them steps a woman made of stone. Her “skin” is a blue-green color, like patinated copper.
[I lose focus once again]
She greets me, and I am a goat. My horns point backwards.
She moves to hand me something.
[I lose focus on the vision and give up for the day]
January 25th, 2023
I light a candle, say a prayer, recite the 19th call, and lay down with my eyes closed to let the vision overtake me.
The Sun hangs low in the sky. Not quite sunset, but it seems like it will be within the next hour or so.
I’m seeing it from in the air above what reminds me of the Appalachian Mountains. Huge rolling hills covered with trees.
I call out, asking if this is the 9th Aethyr.
The Sun answers. It has a mouth. This is indeed the 9th Aethyr.
I ask if it is a governor of this place.
It tells me “No, I am the Sun”.
I ask which way I should go to proceed.
It tells me “Straight on”.
I fly forward through a gap in the mountains and come to a shaded, snowy little village. I land on the ground near a small cottage house. Smoke rises through the chimney and there is an yellow-orange light visible through one of the windows. It reminds me of a depiction of a “grandmother’s house” from a child’s fairytale storybook.
A black train pulled by a steam engine drives through a grey landscape. It passes dead, gnarled trees with no leaves and many gravestones and memorials.
I am on this train.
I sit in one of the seats in a middle car as a uniformed man approaches me.
He asks “Are you going to the end of the line?”
I ask if he is a governor of this Aethyr.
“No, I’m just a train conductor. This train can only take you as far as you want to go.”
I tell him yes, I want to take it to the end of the line.
He tells me “Then you should head up front, it’s a better view.”
I stand from my seat and walk through many cars to get to the front of the train. There is no driver and no controls in the engine, just a flat dash, but I can see out both sides and the headlight shining on the track before me.
The train enters a tunnel which sharply descends. Boulders and stalactites rush by as the train picks up speed. In the headlights I can see the track continuing into water.
Splash! The train levels out as we hit the water, spraying it left and right of the engine. The track is only slightly below it’s surface. We’ve entered a large cave.
The train pushes forward, and then the track in front of us descends again. We dive under the surface, but as soon as we are completely submerged its like there is no water around us anymore.
Continuing to descend, the track is now stretching out in front of the train into what seems to be a black void. It twists and turns as we go further down.
Eventually, it levels out. As we proceed, a huge gate looms out of the darkness. Two gigantic wooden doors, like the entrance to Jurassic Park.
The train slams into them and they swing open. Passing through them, I see that the track ends at a station platform.
The train pulls to a stop, and I exit.
The platform is just a concrete block floating in the void. The tracks next to it do not appear to be on any sort of solid ground. On the platform is a single bench with a single street light next to it.
At the back of the platform is an awning above a staircase leading down, which I descend.
I call out “Hello?” but receive no answer.
I walk through a small room at the bottom of the staircase and go through a door on its far end.
I’m presented with a deep pit in a large cavern, of which I cannot see the bottom. At the center of the pit a circular pillar of stone rises. A bridge leads from the door to the pillar.
On the center of the pillar is the trunk of a huge tree. It almost seems upside down, as the branches coming from the top of it dig into the ceiling of the cavern like roots.
I cross the bridge and feel the cold bark of the tree.
Looking around, but seeing no way to proceed, I cross back to the door. Opening it, I find a solid brick wall on the other side, so I return to the tree.
Behind it, carved into the sides of the pillar, is a stone staircase spiraling around it.
I see myself descending these stairs from a side view. I’m holding a lantern high as I carefully keep my hand on the wall of the pillar.
At the bottom of the stairs, I see the pillar rises from a black lake. There is a small wooden dock with a rowboat waiting in the water next to it.
I hook the lantern I’m carrying onto the end of the boat and set out across the lake.
To my right, in the distance, is a gigantic foot standing in the water. I’m not sure if it is from some sort of creature or if it is a statue. The light from my lantern only barely illuminates it.
I pull the boat up onto the shore at the opposite side of the lake. Walking onto the land here, it is rocky but seemingly otherwise featureless. I find a hole approximately 20 feet in diameter with two sets of stairs spiraling downward within it. They twist around each other.
I walk up to the closer set of stairs and begin to descend.
Following these stairs deeper and deeper underground, I see a yellow-orange light below me, as if from a fire. I continue downward, but the light never seems to get any closer.
I stop for a moment, consider my options, and then step off the stairs into the hole and begin falling.
I gently come to a landing, as if wearing a parachute, on the floor of the cave below.
The first step I take has my foot sink into the ground. The entire cave floor is made of sand, and has started sliding down a hole underneath it, as if it was a gigantic hourglass.
I am pulled down with the sand and fall through the hole, coming to rest on top of a pile of sand beneath it with more pouring down on top of me.
Moving off of this pile, I see I’m in a small room with what seems to be a house or apartment door labeled “BASEMENT”.
Removing a key from my pocket, I use it to unlock the door.
As the door swings open, I see a short wooden staircase.
Taking the few steps down I find myself in darkness, but feel the pull cord for a light. I reach up and pull it. It dimly flicks on, a dirty bulb of barely 20 watts.
I am in what I would describe as a typical suburban house basement. There are shelves full of junk lining the walls and a small blacked out window above them near the ceiling. There is a support pillar to the right of the stairs.
Walking past the pillar and into the main area of the basement, I see that in the back sits an old woman in a rocking chair. She is hunched over and her shoulders and legs are covered in a crocheted blanket.
Without looking up, she asks if I’ve come here to see her.
I tell her “I’ve intended to be scrying the 9th Aethyr, so since you are here I believe that yes, I am here to see you.”
A stool, that may or may not have been there the whole time, rests next to her chair. I go and sit with her. She places a hand into mine, and we sit and talk for a short time.
Eventually, she asks me “Did you come here expecting a present?”
I answer “Well, no. I came here because I was intending to scry the 9th Aethyr, and this is where that journey led me. When it’s done, I will remember it and write it down, and having had the experience of it is all I was looking for. So, I guess that experience itself is a gift.”
She responds “Good. You understand. Still…”
She stretches out a finger to a gift box sitting on the floor a few feet in front of us.
I stand from the stool and kneel behind the box, facing her. Removing the lid, I only see blackness inside.
I look back to the woman, who says “Well, if you can’t find what is inside then maybe you aren’t ready for it”.
I close my eyes and reach into the box.
Withdrawing my hand, I find that I am holding a set of eyeballs.
With my eyes still closed, I press these eyeballs into my head. I hear a voice say “open your eyes”.
Opening them, I see I am now in a cavern. The woman no longer looks old, but is instead a much younger woman seated on a throne. She wears a crown and holds a gold scepter with a sphere at the top of it in her left hand. She reminds me very much of the High Priestess tarot card.
Again, we speak for a short time, with me still kneeling in front of her.
She hands me a gold chalice and tells me to drink from it. I must have looked hesitant, because she tells me “Do not worry, it is your own blood.”
I take a drink.
Handing the chalice back to her, she taps me on the shoulders with her scepter and again says “open your eyes”.
Opening them, my “real” physical eyes (as my eyes in the vision were already opened), I see the ceiling of the room above the bed upon which I am laying. I also continue to see the vision superimposed over this.
She stands from her throne, and is now standing next to the bed.
She leans down and brushes my hair out of my face with her hand, and gives a gentle kiss on my forehead.
The vision ends.
Again, as for the previous few Aethyrs, I had not read the scrying of Aethyr 9 by either Duncan Barford or Crowley before scrying today. I am reading them now, and adding relevant similarities here:
- Duncan’s vision starts out with him having an appointment with a woman. My journey was specifically to go meet one.
- Duncan descends a staircase near the beginning of his vision. I went down many.
- A voice tells Duncan “There is a cave…”, and he enters one. I passed through many.
- Duncan had trouble in this one, as he originally believed he was in a lucid dream state rather than scrying, and then the whole vision did not amount to much. I had to scry it twice, due to issues with focus.
- Crowley talks of a “razor edge of light suspended over the Abyss”. This somewhat reminds me of the train tracks through the graveyard, with the train’s headlight illuminating the track in front of it.
- “This is he whose blood hath been gathered into the cup of BABALON. This is he that sitteth, a little pile of dry dust”. The first part of this is similar to the end of this Aethyr, where I am presented with a cup of my own blood. The latter is similar to the end of the previous Aethyr.
- Crowley meets a woman in a palace. In his vision she is young, like a child. I meet a woman in a basement and she is old, and then in a cave and she is a young adult.
- Crowley’s vision identifies the woman as “Persephone”, among other names. The woman in the cave definitely had a Persephone-like feeling to her.
- Crowley places this figure in the “lake of crystal, the sea of glass”. I went both under and across a lake to meet this figure.
- Crowley states “I am blind and deaf”. I was given eyes as a present.
- Crowley says his brain is so exhausted by the vision that “fatigue-images appear”. The first time I attempted to scry this Aethyr I was unable to keep focus on it, drifting off into other thoughts continuously.
If you’d like to discuss this post, you’re welcome to join the discord for this blog. If you would like to support me, please consider joining our Patreon to get access to private discord channels, Q/A sessions, and livestreams where we talk about magick and perform group rituals! This article was illustrated with AI generated images and by images created by my wife, Lux Ansata.