I wasn’t expecting to cry while reading Iamblichus. What began as an exploration of theurgy became something far more personal—a recognition that I’d been walking towards this moment for years without fully realising it.
Mercury is retrograde, and it was retrograde when I was born. Over the years, I’ve noticed a pattern. While many people associate Mercury retrograde with communication mishaps and travel delays, my deepest spiritual insights often seem to arrive during these periods. They invite me to revisit old questions, rediscover forgotten wisdom and notice the threads that have quietly been weaving through my life all along.
This year, another pattern revealed itself. My reading of On the Mysteries by Iamblichus has coincided with the Three Weeks (Bein HaMetzarim), the traditional Jewish period of introspection leading to Tisha B’Av. I don’t assume that every symbolic convergence carries cosmic significance, but occasionally two streams seem to flow together in a way that feels deeply meaningful.
Mercury retrograde invites reflection, revision and return. The Three Weeks call us to self-examination and metanoia. Together, they have created the perfect inner landscape for asking deeper questions than I’ve perhaps ever asked before.
Looking back, I can’t think of a more fitting season for what has been unfolding within me. Rather than feeling delayed or blocked, I feel invited to listen more carefully than ever before. This Cancer season is taking me into deep remembering and a spiritual homecoming that has, perhaps, been waiting for me all along.
As I worked my way through The Epistle of Porphyry to Anebo, something unexpected happened. I found myself reading the very same questions I have been pondering for decades.
Question after question, I found myself thinking, Yes… exactly. That’s what I’ve been trying to understand.
Porphyry asks about ritual, divine beings, astrology, fate, free will, prayer and the relationship between the soul and the gods. He questions whether theurgy can genuinely unite us with the divine or whether philosophy alone is sufficient. They’re the very questions I’ve been carrying, in one form or another, for as long as I can remember.
I hadn’t even reached Iamblichus’ answers before I realised something else.
I have so much more to learn.
That wasn’t a discouraging realisation. Quite the opposite. It felt strangely liberating. Instead of pretending I understood more than I did, I found myself doing something I hadn’t planned. I lit incense as an offering to Hermes and read the Twenty-Eighth Orphic Hymn, asking simply for help in becoming a better student.
Not a master.
A student.
Ever since my first Saturn return, I’ve been travelling back and forth between esoteric and mystical Christianity, exoteric religion, the New Age and witchcraft. Each tradition held part of what I was searching for, but none felt like home in quite the way I hoped. They all offered gifts, yet something always remained unresolved.
Even the recent decision to lay aside the magical name Tanit and embrace Tamar now feels like part of the same process. At the time, it was an act of discernment about name meanings. In hindsight, I can see it wasn’t simply about changing a name. It was about allowing an old identity to fall away so that something more authentic could emerge.
Reading Iamblichus, I realised that what I’ve been searching for wasn’t another system.
It was a way.
Looking back, I can see that the desire has always been the same. Whether I was replacing the elemental Watchtowers with the Archangels, exploring mystical Christianity, studying angelic magic, practising Psalm magic or searching through ancient texts, the goal was never power for its own sake. The goal for me was always to use ritual to be closer to God-Source and the gods.
I wasn’t looking for a path that rejects ritual in favour of pure contemplation, nor one that mistakes elaborate ceremony for spiritual depth. I’d been searching for a path where the body, the heart and the soul all participate. Where prayer and contemplation are inseparable from symbolic action. Where correspondences aren’t tools for controlling the divine but invitations to participate more fully in divine reality. And with all my heart, I wanted to love both God-Source and the gods as they revealed themselves to me.
If I had to describe it today, I’d probably say it’s Mary Magdalene meets Iamblichus.
Or perhaps, Iamblichus read through the heart of someone whose deepest longing has always been love rather than power.
Because if this journey has taught me anything so far, it’s that the goal has always been communion.
Communion with the Divine through prayer, contemplation, study and ritual. A way of allowing both body and soul to participate in grace.
And perhaps that’s why I found myself in tears more than once this Cancer season.
Not because I’d finally found all the answers, but because I finally remembered the right questions.
Every step, every prayer, every ritual, every season of wandering had been leading me towards the same Light.
Christ, the Light on the Way.
Hekate, the Light in the Shadows.
