As I said last time, I had an ah-ha moment. What I did not say was that I received that ah-ha moment just in the nick of time. I was on a really tight deadline. Since I wanted the book to be a love spell book for Gay male witches, I knew it either had to get out into the public's hands by Valentine's Day or I would have to wait another year to publish it.
Any way, the ah-ha moment was much-appreciated when it finally did arrive. I was out buying groceries for the week when the question "What is it Tarostar said about Mars and Gay men?" popped into my head.
I thought I remembered something my mentor told me, which he learned from Tarostar directly. According to the wisdom passed down to us, Mars, not Venus, is the appropriate influence for Gay men to appeal to when seeking male companionship. It was just a quick blip on my radar, but it nagged at me all throughout the rest of my shopping trip and my drive home. I actually cut my trip short just to go home and dig through my notes from my own training as an initiate in the Wolfa Coven. (If you know me and my love of food, that should tell you just how powerful this moment of enlightenment was! If you don't know me very well yet, let me just tell you I love food. In fact, I grocery shop like most other Gay guys buy clothing.)
It was this one nugget of golden truth from Tarostar that changed everything. All of a sudden my mind was a whirl with ideas where before it had been blank. I started to ask myself more questions. Some of which were: "Where does Venus actually fit in to Gay love?" or "Won't Martial energy just give us more lust?" and "Don't we already have enough of that in the Gay community?" Once those questions came up, I started to ask: "How do we use Mars to not just get hookups and sex but also transition a good sexual partner into a lasting relationship?"
Over the next couple of days, I poured through several of Tarostar's books and my private notes from my own training, looking for answers to those questions. Then, one night, sitting before my ancestral altar, I got another bout of inspiration: "What if Gay love spells worked like Tarostar talks about prosperity spells working?"
Let me explain. We all think of prosperity as a Jovial thing. When most witches consider working spells for their own prosperity, they tend to work with Jupiter. That's completely understandable, since the traditional associations of Jupiter include things like abundance, expansion, growth, etc. However, the main quality associated with Jupiter above any other is expansion, and the Jovial energies really only work for prosperity when you already have some financial stability to expand.
In fact, Jupiter's energies are indiscriminate in their expansion. If you were to use Jovial correspondences in a prosperity spell when you were eye ball deep in debt or you had no job prospects, Jupiter would only drive you deeper into debt or expand your financial burdens.
Instead what a witch who is struggling financially should do is start with Mercurial energies to open the way and change his luck from bad to good. Then after he has gotten some movement on his financial situation, he can work with Venusian and Solar energies to attract more cash and make himself look good in the eyes of people who would give him money (like bankers, customers, job interviewers, etc.). Once those three powers have begun influencing his situation appropriately and he has a fair bit of money flowing in, then (and only then) would he turn to Jupiter for financial prosperity.
Long story short, there was just something about this theory regarding the Order of Operations for Prosperity Magic that seemed to fit with the proper way for Gay men to cast our own love spells. I had no reason for believing that, but, not being one to fight my own intuition when I "get a hit," I just couldn't let it go.