Yes, this is another Bune appreciation post. This won’t be a doom and gloom, woe is me type of post, because that’s just not how we operate, we are happy go lucky people even if our leg’s just been gnawed off by a shark (my worst nightmare) so I’ll probably relate my situation with some degree of hope and humor. But after bravely fighting tooth and nail for starting a new stable life abroad, I did recently faceplanted onto a financial rock bottom and thought, you know what, I tried everything, except for one thing…So, let’s summon a demon!
Fair warning: a long and rambling post incoming, please remember you do not need to read or finish reading. Also, a same sex relationship will be mentioned!
I've been in a relationship (now married to) with a French guy who's very much not caucasian for the past ten years, attempting to do life now in a deep countryside in progressively more and more Right wing leaning Italy, I can assure you that no matter what level of hateful sentiment might be swelling up within you right now, I have already most likely heard it from another complete stranger on the street today, so better save that energy and channel it into something more useful than an anonymous nasty online comment. I grew up as an openly queer kid in the 80s and 90s Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic) so I can assure you I've already heard it all anyway.
Here’s a little background. I was born in Czech, a typical small town genius complex, on top with what I now consider an actual disadvantage of being both quite popular and an exceptionally good at school, I sailed through studies up to a PhD like a hot knife through butter, carried on the shoulders of many privileges (except for financial ones, those were never part of my story, hopefully until now). I met my future husband in London ten years ago, 180 degrees type of different lives, both creatives with good careers, I worked in TV and advertisement, husband in fashion.
In 2019 we paused for a second - a rare feat in the always forward running river of crazy that’s life in London - and realized, hang on a minute, we were never meant to set roots in England, what the heck happened? And got to realize we surely do have some adventures left in us still. Totally against common sense and all reason, we wrapped up our London affairs and set to meet ourselves out there in the wilderness of the world. Having no savings, we only took jobs that also paid for accommodation.
From doing 80hrs work week onboard a luxurious transatlantic ocean liner for 600 dollars per month (the times people worked cruise ships for profit are long gone, my friends, if that ever was anything more than fake news), to restoration work & farm animals husbandry in a chateau in South of France. From building a barn in a remote farm in Bulgarian mountains in exchange for food and shelter, to managing luxurious villas in Mykonos, cooking for and hosting guests in mountain chalets in Swiss Alps, working as butlers - a socially acceptable term for servants - to a mafia family close to Munich, Germany. Meet ourselves out there in the world, we truly did.
As it is in life, we have different cycles flowing through us, we crave stability only to detonate that carefully erected safety scaffolding around our lives, to then again come around and dream of stability. Which is what happened. Five years in, we caught ourselves dreaming about our own home. And it seemed like it could be Italy. Many a misadventures later (I kept a diary from the month of horrors of house hunting in Italy, it’s available on my blog if anyone is into spooky reading), we found a dream home in shape of a dilapidated medieval tower literally in the middle of nowhere in Umbria. Came with two cats (which we totally manifested through magick), incredibly high rent for the region (should have specified a cheap home in my spell petition) and a few ghosts. Garden we are free to cultivate (another one of my spell petitions that came true). It felt, heck even now when we are in our second month with no hot water, gas for cooking and no heating (I can literally see my breath as I type and my fingers are frozen to the point I won’t be able to open them until after an hour under a blanket), right. The logistics of life - I don’t know, like..producing money to sustain this dream, would surely follow. After all, we know how to and are always ready to work hard.
Well, turns out finding a remote job either in Czech, French or English language - or glueing budget from different gigs available in the area - like catering weddings, cleaning AirBnBs to now part time job in an olive oil factory - yes, I realize we can hardly go more stereotype - and keep paying for life in any sustainable way is not possible. We are both creatives, so never stopped working on our own projects outside these random jobs, like yoga classes, reiki, I write astrological workbooks, produce guided meditations, do tarot readings, nothing resulted in anything lasting and we finally started falling on our mouth.
I’ve been a practicing chaos magician for a good while and called into being many splendid things, yet my workings towards sustainable financial prosperity yield little to no results. I think part of the problem might be the inability to let go. As an occult practitioner yourself, you are most likely aware that loading too much want into a magickal working actually pushes the result away, yet I find staying away from reactivity when your conditions are dire and not improving is too challenging.
As weird as it may seem, as dishonest it may sound, I truly do not and never did dream of a life of passive luxury. In the past few years we worked in private households of many different excessively rich people and it only solidified my deep held belief that we human beings were never meant for and never equipped to handle excess of power and finances.
I had to arrive at this pivotal point of change that most would call a rock bottom myself-far from trying to appease our friends and family, who keep lobbying for us to get our shit together and turn our multiple university degrees and talents into some semblance of prosperity. I’ve always been a rebel without cause and ditching the easy path ahead of me and deciding to turn my PhD from a career in academia into a distant memory tucked away somewhere deep in my prefrontal cortex as I scrub shit stains from an old German mafia millionaire’s underwear in his lakeside residence was probably also part of my ‘you say this way and I go the opposite’, now you see me now you don't type of shit. Because there’s no soul’s growth in going the easy way, right? Well, turns out there’s no financial growth in going the other way and now I’m just stuck somewhere really not life affirming. Only a few months away from being 40 and in a situation where even if there was anyone left to ask, another money loan would be at this point an opposite of helpful, I thought enough.
To be entering the ‘well fuck, I don't know that else to do’ moment is so unlike me that it scares me. I see the same reflected back to me in my husband's spirit, or lack thereof, which is even scarier. The other day he wrote a poem about this feeling of helplessness (yes, I warned you, we are the liberal left that writes poems when their hearts or minds are breaking) that really undid me and whipped me up to action. If nothing else worked, this means I need to call for help outside myself. I plunged myself into studies of Goetia.
I’m aware how controversial the notion of reactive magick and I always stayed far away from it in my own practice. So I really did go and do my research first, being an avid reader and a PhD researcher helped a lot for sure, but if you are pressed for time, your nervous system feels too fried to keep attention for too long (I’m getting there myself), I’d recommend Goetia Pathworking by Corwing Hargrove all the way. I actually based my main ritual around his suggestions with my own twist - I do have some staples in my own tradition, like a certain way of casting circle and calling in elements.
In a lead up to signing a petition with Great Lady, Duchess Bune (she did reveal herself to me in her female form the first night of establishing contact), I did three nights of invocations. I cut out all the distractions and did sort of consecration of my body to the work - yes, I mean no sex. Every night for three days I would start a fire in our kitchen hearth and invited Bune to follow the light and use the heart as a portal to enter my inner temple and my dreamtime, so that we can have a conversation and see if we could work together.
The first night I did talk to her in length. Which as you probably understand by now, was not really a problem for me. I introduced myself and spoke a bit about the situation we found ourselves in. I sat down to count my blessings. We're the type of people who’d split their last dollar (euro in our case) or piece of bread with whomever also need it and we frequently do and I think that's also why Universe sent us multiple guardian angels along our way, there is literally no reason for why we're not living out of a cardboard box under a bridge right now, and yes I frequently give thanks for our privilege as I realize there are many people who do. Also, I do acknowledge the immense privilege of being ABLE and FREE to say no to certain ways of producing money. When I say I’m tired and I’ve tried everything, I’m fully aware that I can always sell a kidney or start Only Fans. Being free to choose not to do those things is a major blessing and I fully embrace that.
I'm aware that's the same for everyone, no matter the state of our bank account, everyone feels broke and tired, it's how society needs us to feel for the whole capitalist machinery to keep going. But for the first time, I’m nearing the end of my wits in which avenue of producing money to try next in order to to face the next round of bills, rent, food and if I may be so hopeful to start paying back debts to our friends who supported us these last few months.
I also work on changing my language around this, too. I've always been the 'we're poor but happy', or 'we are healthy and in love, who needs money', even 'it always somehow works out in the end' type of person and I'm really starting to feel like I don't want the 'somehow in the end we didn't die again' type of life. Universe (or God, however you want to frame it) hears me and they be sending me the 'poor but happy' narrative so consistently I ain't making me that happy now.
In my magickal work I follow William Blake’s notion of: “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.” My spells are focused on embodying the archetype of energy or simply a type of person who can have X,Y,Z - whatever I’m trying to pull into the material level of reality. But this time around, I am just out of ideas and fuel, so I asked Bune for guidance, to reveal to me who I need to become in order to achieve lasting prosperity, which doors of opportunity to open and with which key, for wisdom to walk through the right ones.
At the end of each night's invocation, I would do offerings. I don’t drink or smoke, so I see little sense in offering booze or tobacco, rather focusing on something I myself enjoy. In our situation buying oranges is actually a big luxury, so the offering serves as a sacrifice of sorts also. I sat in front of the fire, eating a slice of orange, activating all the senses, inviting Bune to enjoy the offering through my sensory experience. I read tarot, so I invited Bune to communicate with me through that tool. I'd draw a card every night and flip it over to reveal the message the following morning. It’s been INCREDIBLY illuminating and crystal clear messages.
To fully show me her presence and power, after the first night’s invocation, I’m standing in the olive oil factory folding boxes and out of the blue, I have a download for a young adult novel. I’m not talking about an idea for a type of book I could write or a type of character or a plot twist. A fully formed novel. With names. With fully formed sentences. Something like this has never happened to me and it made me laugh maniacally as I hid in the toilets to type all of it down in my notes. I thought…okay, I see you…But I will have to specify in our contract that I’ll require financial help that’s both immediate (our rent is due in a few days and we have NOTHING, and I mean NOTHING) and long term, sustainable one. I can write a book, but it will be very hard from the toilets at olive oil factory or a frozen home with no heating and hot water with no ways to pay the next electricity bill.
Following the second night, I made a first sale of my guided meditation for Sagittarius Season (HERE) and after the third one, I've had another download about , with enough energy left after the shift in the factory to sit down, write it, record and edit it into an hour long production (HERE). I can see now that Bune truly is not messing about, She won't keep you suspended in a limbo for even a minute.
On day four I cleansed myself, changed my clothes completely and did almost a half day ritual, calling in energies of all the tarot cards that came up for, presenting and signing my petition with Bune. Imagine the cartoon scroll rolling on the floor, it was a long petition. In short I offered one of the things that Bune, as one of her aspects has to do with communication, often rejoice in - spreading a word of her greatness should she fulfill her end of our bargain, both in fictional (I’m working on writing several books, as lots of us dreamy writers do, and no, unless you are J.K. Rowling, none of us pay our bills with our writing) and factual way, so that more people can find their way to her. I have offered a significant personal change (I’ll keep that private) and the resulting experience of both pain and pleasure as an offering. Lastly, when we achieve financial stability or even prosperity, I pledged to offer sensory pleasures from treats that our new situation will allow for (like sushi! AH!) to Bune also.
My stipulation is also no immediate harm coming to people we love and care about. I know now, that in magick, like in life, you can’t always avoid negative impact on others…if magick brings you your dream job, it means someone else got rejected for the same position. I don’t like it, but I also don’t like not eating for a week. So, at the very least, I insisted on no harm or misfortune coming to those we care about and love as a result of my broke ass trying to change my circumstances and money luck through a pact with Goetian demon.
That was Monday. Tuesday rolls in and not much happens but I’m open to messages and in our usual delulu happy-go-lucky try hanging onto a belief that a miracle will manifest and we’ll be able to pay our rent at the end of the week. Then Wednesday comes and our boss in the olive oil factory says he’d advance us some money from the hours we already did. Suggested it himself, probably noticing we stay long past our evening shift to sneakily take a hot shower in the factory. We also probably don’t look our healthiest at the moment to be fair. It’s a great gesture, but just to make this completely clear - the olive oil factory part time job is three hours every now and then helping with the order load in a lead up to Christmas. They pay us 10euros GROSS pay, before tax and social security, medical insurance deduction. I was not aware how many hours we did, but I think we’d have to do like a hundred days of 3hrs shifts to even come close to paying our monthly rent. We're huddling under our blanket, sorry seven different blankets that night and a notification comes. I received 379 euros from the olive oil factory. That’s great. We are so happy. I would have never guessed we made that much together already.
And some twenty minutes later another 379euros arrive. Checking with the boss if he maybe made a mistake and sent it twice. No, he didn’t. He just sent both our payments to one account to make it easier. This is two days after signing the petition to Bune. My jaw is on the floor. I know magick takes the easiest path towards manifesting. If your current only income is from the olive oil factory, it will manifest through that channel. There is absolutely NO WAY IN HELL we should have made so much. It is exactly how much we need for this month’s rent, plus little extra which means we might also eat, even if it’s just pasta with nothing. There is NO REASON this should have happened and we broke a calculator trying to figure this out, until we just stopped ourselves and leaned into gratitude instead. The following day I made sure once again no mistake was made, this is not some sort of advance beyond the hours we already did. But no. There is no loophole. Just magick.
For now, we breathe a bit easier and I’m beyond excited to watch this collaboration blossom into something sustainable, a long term financial stability that we can build upon. I plan to come back here and praise Bune some more. That nomad near-beggar story needed to go, if the new one must start with a demonic invocation, so be it. If you read this far, I really command you. This was for Bune, but if you are still here and reading, this is for you, too. Miracles do happen. It’s all a big game, don’t lose hope and hang onto joy. I’ll be back reporting on the next big developments on our swim upwards and away from the rock bottom.
