The Desert Refuge Revisiting a Lockdown Meditation

¹The core material was originally written for and posted on May 03, 2020. Updated with introduction, new material, minor corrections, and footnotes in 2025.Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

During the COVID lockdown years, I spent some time writing a series of blog posts, short experimental meditations really, as an attempt to spread my wings in a different direction. It was a fusion of general “self-help”—which I admit is a format I really despise—and a poorly done riff on Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises dumbed down for the masses. It was also my attempt at writing for more nominal Thelemites. I can’t say it was all that successful.

I love the Spiritual Exercises, and I have a draft for a Thelemic version that needs to be cleaned up sometime in the next decade and published. Suffice it to say, this wasn’t it.

But with the rapid onset of COVID lockdowns, the conversations I was having at the time in private circles surrounded a whole lot of “now what” and “I’m alone and stuck” feelings. While so many of us were accomplished magicians and mystics, I think it was the suddenness of it all that snapped something and created this isolating bubble that affected the ability to think about just how isolated we really were at the time. Human beings are naturally social creatures. Choosingto be alone and being forced to stay away from others are two entirely different feelings.

Self-Care in the Time of Pandemic made a pretty good run, but I got bored with it, as things tend to go with me. My brain loves patterns but hates repetition, and the pattern I had designed for the meditations was becoming repetitious to write week after week. It lasted about six months and then died.

COVID was a time when people felt disconnected and pained by separation from others—an irony for such talk of self-sufficient and resilient²Much in modern occulture is about reframing trauma into a form of resilience. Resilience is an after-effect; it is a recovery mechanism. Magick—the Crowleyan kind—teaches anti-fragility, the forethought toward adversity, that leans into it and through it and arises strengthened. tough-talking Thelemites—while many looked for ways to face the uncertainty of the daily routines that were setting in. The online contingent found out very quickly that (a) video doesn’t replace community and that (b) community is vital to personal growth, psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually. Even as someone who has always enjoyed my hermitude, I felt closed in and restrained by the inability to just “be in the world-at-large” even if I wasn’t interacting with people directly.

One of my favorite verses in the Book of the Law reached back at me during COVID and became a regular mantra. “Nu is your refuge as Hadit your light; and I am the strength, force, vigour, of your arms” [AL 3.17h–j]. Honestly, I think it comes back to the word “refuge” here. Not many know this about me—and now all of you will—but I was an orphan until the age of three, when I was finally adopted. The idea of a refuge from the storm, a refuge from the chaos of life itself, a refuge from uncertainty and abandonment, is a very powerful image to me.

I’ll share this meditation with you today. It was, as it is today, originally titled:

The Desert Refuge

☉︎ in 13° Taurus : ☽︎ in 19° Virgo : Anno Vvi

To my Beloved Companion: Greeting and health.

For many, the pandemic has been a desert journey, filled with desolation and discomfort. I read the Facebook posts and see the despair just the same as you do. So many are filled with a longing to connect with others in a way they feel cannot be accomplished from their isolated moment in time. They long for a connection.

I’ve always found it fascinating that one of the most repeated lines we hear or read—those of us who either attend or study the O.T.O. Gnostic Mass—is the line from the Book of the Law that includes the phrase, “if under the night-stars in the desert.” The desert is such a lonely place, is it not? At least in our imagination: desolate and lonely—and yet just teeming with life if you look closely enough, right? Because of the heat, plenty of plants and animals are only active at night. “if under the night-stars in the desert,” indeed.

Being cooped up at home in the middle of a pandemic is much like being in the middle of a desert, eh? It can feel very desolate, isolated, and lonely, yet it really is filled with life if you know where (and how) to look.

What does the Book of the Law say again? “Nu is your refuge as Hadit your light; and I am the strength, force, vigour, of your arms.”

Keep in mind these are mere symbols—replace them with whatever terms or names you see fit.

Nu (Nuit, the representation of all there is as a whole, a goddess if you need that particular iconography) is your refuge. That conjures up an awesome image, does it not? A refuge. We are told to shelter-in-place right now. No matter how you feel about the term itself, it’s a respectable term. Shelter-in-place. But more importantly, find refuge. Find your space.

Next, Hadit—the representation of each individual aspect of all there is—is your light. This is no fluffy, television “Charmed” whitelighter nonsense. This is the Light of the World, however you wish to define that. This is that which shines from you to light the way itself for others to see in the darkness. It is the lighthouse on the shoreline. It is the beacon of smoke and fire in the desert. And, yet, you need that Light yourself too. You need to see it, hold on to it. It is the center of the refuge.

Finally, Ra is the voice personified of the quote itself, the voice of the strength, force, vigour, of your arms. Ra, in this context, is a god of war. Make no mistake, this is a war. It’s a war for your peace. It’s a war for your sanity. It’s a war for your time. It’s a war for your friendships. It’s a war for your space. It’s a war for your relationships. It’s a war for your tolerance. It’s a war for your patience.

This. Is. War.

But you have the strength to carry on. You have the force and vigour to win this war.

Meditation Text: “Nu is your refuge as Hadit your light; and I am the strength, force, vigour, of your arms.”

Repeat these three phrases to yourself as necessary, as a mantra of sorts, to remind yourself of each step of the path.

1. Refuge. I find Refuge where I am.

This is your home, most likely right now, but it could be someone else’s home, your church, or temple space, wherever that may be. But notice that it is an affirmation of yourself. “Where I am.” You first must acknowledge the desert and realize that this is the reality around you.

2. Light. I find Light where I am.

Slowly, even prayerfully if you are so inclined, read the meditational text again and again. Find your center. Find your refuge. Center that Light, not so that it fills up the space, but so that it rests solely on you. You are the beacon of this space. You are the center, the fulcrum of your universe. Acknowledge that Light in yourself and as yourself.

3. Strength. I find the Strength where I am.

Find the peace, the strength to stand firm in and as that Light you just acknowledged. Breathe it in. Hold it. Breathe it out. Do that again. Let go of the anxiety³The psychological shorthand of standard depression and anxiety [not clinical, those are similar but slightly different beasts] is that depression is fear of letting go of memory (or experience), and anxiety is fear of anticipation (or expectation). In this moment, we are letting go of that fear of “what’s next,” of what is around the bend ahead, and spending time just in this exact moment. and stay in the moment. Build in the strength of power. Know that you are armored against the onslaught that is all around you, fighting against all that you wish to keep secure.

In the end, give thanks. You don’t have to give thanks to anything or anyone in particular. Just be thankful for the moment. In that moment, though, consider two things: first, if possible, how can I connect with someone else on this desert journey in order to ease their anxiety, if only a little; and second, is there anyone that I could pass along this same exercise?

I look forward to continuing this journey with you, if you choose to continue, and seeing where it takes us.

Eh, I know, it’s a bit self-helpish, and I’m very much not fond of them. I certainly wouldn’t go back to writing these in the future. At the same time, to be fair, this one is my favorite of the batch. I come back to it from time to time in my head, mainly because of the verse itself. There is something powerful about it (for me), about Nuit as refuge; and when taken as the whole, as unity, as the element of love, and put back into the formula of love under will, I can’t help but think there is a center of gravity that pulls me in some way to this refuge that feels comforting.

Love is the law, love under will.