@dana-varahi and I have a little ritual we perform every morning. We drink some coffee. Okay, so far so normal. However this ritual has evolved over time to mean so much more than that.

In the early days we bought our coffee ready ground, but since we got married in July of 2014, we have a Polmedia coffee grinder we got as a wedding gift from Dana's mum. The photo above is of us in the Polmedia shop in Krakow, choosing the gift. You can just make out a little bird on the counter. This was another gift. It is a water whistle! Very fun. :)

It says on it 'Kawa', the Polish word for coffee. This is pronounced kah-vah. I don't know many Polish words yet, but this one is amongst my favourites.

Agent Coffee

In 2010 we witnessed what to us remains a UFO. Perhaps we'll write more about that later. For a couple of years we lived in denial of the strangeness of our experience. We joked it off. It was a kite. It was a balloon. It was some kind of experimental drone. But one morning drinking coffee in bed after a pirate party a strange thing happened to us. Looking back I can only describe it as possession by MIB agent spirits. We abandoned all other plans for the day and became focused on finding our agent outfits. We didn't know it at the time, but these outfits would become our standard magical attire for years to come.

Once we had our outfits sorted, we went to celebrate by having what became known as the agent sacrements of coffee and donuts. I know this probably sounds a little strange, but there you are! I should probably add that donuts did not become part of our daily practise like coffee. Just as well as we would no longer fit into our agent outfits! We reserve donuts for only the most special agent occassions.

Tantric Agent Coffee

Sometimes when you have a magical guest working in a different paradigm, you need to find ways to integrate your daily practise your daily practise with each other. Dana's sister was working with Sam Webster's Tantric Thelema. To allow her to participate in the coffee ritual, we explained it as Tanric. This means every ounce of your awareness is focused on what your are doing and what you are experiencing, in the here and now. When we grind the beans we give the grinding our full awareness. When we pour the water into the press, I allow myself to listen to the sounds and experience the smells produced. When we stir the press we do so consciously. When we pour the coffee from the press into our mugs we delight in the sound this makes and the scents released. We hold the mugs up to our nose to enjoy the scent fully. And when we drink our focus is on the delightful flavour and the feeling of warmth and heat passing through our mouths.

And this became our daily practise, our morning meditation.