witchcraft – Page 19 – Journey Through The Obsidian Dream

Project Null: What Am I Doing Again?

Satyr Magos04/11/2012

Much like the ceremonial experiment, I started Project Null thinking that I knew what it was I would be studying, and turning out to me more than a little bit wrong. There are certain key techniques of Chaos Magick: fewer and, in some cases, easier to define than those of traditional Western ceremonialism. As the Ptolmaic, enspirited paradigm centers and frames the Hermetic magician’s practice, so, too, do certain beliefs and attitudes make up the base and superstructure of the Chaos Magickian. So early in my studies, I am no more qualified to pontificate on the latter than the former. Still, I think I have reached a point where I might make a few observations. What follows below are just that: my observations and half-researched opinions, and if any of the self-identified Chaos Magicians who read this blog take my statements amiss, I apologize in advance and ask that they correct me.

Most central to Chaos Magic as I have studied it so far are one tenant and one strategy: first, the belief there is no fundamental truth, and the corollary that belief itself is a tool; and a dedication to experimentation in search of measurable results.

“Nothing is true, everything is permitted.” I see this mantra everywhere in the Chaos theory I study, and it is here that Chaos Magick’s roots in the 1980s and 90s are most evident. There is wisdom in it, but also hubris: a fool’s absolutist misinterpretation of cognitive relativism and and postmodern thought. I like the newer version better: “Everything is true, everything is permitted.” The variation seems less open to materialistic nihilism, a trait I have observed in many of the Chaotes and former CM practitioners I have known in the physical world.

Much more valuable, and arguably even more iconic of the CM paradigm, is the second point. Experimentation is hardly unique to Chaos Magick, but—to the best of my ability to determine—Chaos Magick is unique in the way in which pseudo-scientific experimentation and the incorporation of scientific theory to achieve reliable, demonstrable results is central to its self-identity. And it is this point which I find most appealing about the paradigm.

After these things, what Chaos Magick seems to be best known for is sigils, which seems to be the central technique of the Chaote as spirit evocation is to grimoire ceremonial magic.

I had a plan when all this madness started. I knew what books I was going to read and had a pretty solid idea of what experiments I was going to perform. Things have already gone a bit off the rails, though. The results of my previous experiments weren’t done moving through the pipeline—a fact clearly demonstrated by the various spiritwork and visionary experiences that have devoured my last couple weeks.

Chaos Magick is results magic, first and foremost, and my experiments in Chaos Magick have turned into an engine for synthesizing the ongoing results from the ceremonial experiment into my larger personal practice. I thought about ignoring those results in favor of the original plan, but only for a moment. That dumb shit would blow up in my face so fast it would actually be be funny, and it would fly in the face of the spirit of Chaos Magick besides.

Chaos Magick is results magic, and by all the gods: I’m getting damn results. I’m hearing spirits more clearly, and they’re damn sure hearing me. I’m seeing auras again AND suffering less from the effects of psychic weather. I’m having legit gnostic experiences—one after another, each more brain-borking than the last—which is … well, short of my ongoing relationships with Aradia and Sannafrid, pretty much the most awesome thing to happen to me. Ever.

Here’s to magic, y’all. Here’s to breaking ourselves, breaking the world, and putting it all back together so that it’s more interesting than it was before.

Here’s to forging ahead even when it’s terrifying.

Here’s to Chaos.

In witchcraft

A Crash Course In Planetary Power

Satyr Magos03/11/2012

As I mentioned a bit ago, I’ve been participating in Rufus Opus mad (awesome) experiment Seven Spheres in Seven Days. Although the group has officially been on hiatus since the completion of Wednesday’s ritual, I have been continuing with daily invocations in accordance with the imperative laid upon me by my spirit-allies before RO posted his challenge. Also, the part where it’s just been too awesome to quit.

Because of the particular way in which Phase One of the Seven Sphres in Seven Days project cut across my own planetary practice, it has comprised two weeks of daily rituals for me. The whole series of rites have been mind-blowing, but yesterday’s Venus ritual and this morning’s Saturn rite were particularly impressive.

I had not attempted to reach the Sphere of Venus before this week. I did not make it so far up the Ladder of the Heavens before my patience with the phallic paradigms of my year dedicated to the study of Hermeticism came to an end.

The cold front that hit last week has robbed me of much (read: all) of my morning spunk and verve. It was all I could do to achieve consciousness in time for the dawn Hour of Venus. I printed and cut out the seals and talismans of the planet and its daimones; half-conscious, my work was sloppy, and will need to be redone more elegantly. Still, lighting candle and incense, reciting the Orphic Hymn to Aphrodite (8: the Natural Law of Harmony), and visualizing the planetary seal, I was granted a vision of the Realm. A verdant green landscape opened up before me, which I unfortunately had to leave leave quickly, as I did not have time for intense journeywork before class.

Unlike last Friday, when the lingering influence of Venus made it almost impossible to think over the maniacal screaming of my libido, my lust—though great—was secondary to an overwhelming sense of peace. My customary misanthropy, although far from silent, lost much of its bitter edge, and people who have been cold to me in the past warmed to my presence.

Last week’s Saturn ritual provided me a template to apply to my planetary conjurations which would provide me with better access to the Seven Spheres in Seven Days group current, which you can see in some of the images to the left. The conjuration employed the Talisman and Grand Seal at the center of the triangle formed by the seals of the Olympic spirit and planetary spirit and intelligence, and the lamen of the planetary angel on the altar. With all these things in place, candle and incense lit, Orphic hymn read and libation poured, I asked the angels of the planets to lead me to their planetary realms.

This morning’s ritual provided me with further and clearer instructions for my planetary magic: a double triangle, with the inner triangle pointing toward me, with the angelic lamen at the near point and candles on the back two; the outer triangle having the sigils of the Olypic spirit, the Spirit, and the Intelligence of the planet in the configuration I have been using so far, and the Grand Seal of the planet in the middle as I have been doing.

I got my printable seals and glyphs from a number of places, but in particular I want to credit Polyphanes with the lamen designs and Asterion with the Olympic seals.

The images to the left, obviously, are a photojournal of my daily altars. Unfortunately, some technical difficulties with my phone and data uploading to both the internet and the computer ate more than half my photos. Below is the Circle of Art as provided to me by the forces of Saturn this morning.

I would love any input that the more traditional ceremonial magic who read my blog might have on this evolving aspect of my practice.

In witchcraft

Good Problems To Have

Satyr Magos31/10/2012

There is a theory which argues that “complaints” of being busy is actually a distinctly modern form of bragging. I don’t think that’s always the case, but it definitely is, here. Since my last full moon post, I have suffered a problem that probably every magical blogger is happy to have: I have been too busy doing magic to write about it.

I did two more nights of full moon magic after the first. The results were … not what I expected, but solid. Sunday night I went on a second visionary journey, and Monday I performed a series of offerings and fired a shoal of sigils.

The Seven Spheres in Seven Days group-work has gotten spectacular results. I’ve had time in the last two days to implement the instructions presented to me during my Saturn rite, brining my rituals that much closer to the ideal form of the Gates Rites. As such, I have completed my first Mars ritual and my most successful Mercury ritual to date. I’m very, very excited to start the second week tomorrow.

Last night, tonight, and tomorrow will be dedicated to Samhain. Last night’s visionary work was … potent, if not fruitful, and I did my divination for the coming year. Tonight will be offerings and a Bacchanal. Tomorrow will be more visionary work.

I will tell all these stories in good time, but ….

Tomorrow is also the start of National Novel Writing Month, which will devour every moment of my spare time. Accordingly, posts of substance may see a sharp decrease. Conversely, however, I’m going to try dabbling in hypersigils—my NaNo is going to be a combination pseudo-grimoire in the tradition of the Simonomicon, a magical narrative in the tradition of the Invisibles, and a weed-and-absinthe soaked memoire—and the results (both creative and material) may appear here.

In witchcraft

Listening to Spirits II: Full Moon Visions of the Cosmos I

Satyr Magos29/10/2012

Although things haven’t quite gone according to plan over this full moon at the cusp of Aries and Taurus, it’s been pretty epic. I hesitate to say that I’m “back on top of” my visionary practice, because every time I say that, I fall back off. Instead I’ll just say that I’ve been doing a good job of keeping up with in over the last few Esbats, and that I’ve been having really powerful experiences as a result.

As I mentioned yesterday, the spirits on my altar have had a lot to say to me in the last week during my meditations and daily rituals. One such spirit, which has housed itself in a Cycladic figure that I have been using along with my Kouros figure to meditate on my relationship with the archetypes of the divine feminine and masculine respectively[1], informed me that it was time for us to have a sit-down.

Trying to make room for a full three-night Esbat and still leave room for both Samhain and homework, I started my Full Moon rituals Saturday night. I opened with the Titan’s Cross and Pentagram Rite, performed the Stele of Jeu, then made offerings from my new bottle of absinthe to Dionysus and the as-yet-unnamed Cycladic figure. I louched the absinth, put on Michael Harner’s Drums, and began my descent.

From the beginning, my vision was off-script. Stepping out into the void where I usually find the World Tree manifesting as a crystalline spire which rises into the “sky”. Instead, the world tree appeared as the intertwined bodies of an opposite-sex pair—an image I wear around my neck and have used in art as one way of conceptualizing certain Mysteries, but which I have never used magically—emerging from the void about their thighs and with light streaming upwards past their heads. The male figure was … blurry and passive, but the female figure beckoned me forward.

At first I attempted to enter the world tree as I usually do: stepping inside and descending as light moves through fiberoptics. I passed through her thigh and descended … but rather than landing at my Inner Temple, as I had intended, I was confronted by images I could neither comprehend nor describe and landed back in my body.

On my second attempt, I climbed into her outstretched hand and she swallowed me whole. I was briefly suspended in a dark, watery void, before falling down through more indescribable visions to land at the outer reaches of my inner temple.

The grounds surrounding my Temple were overgrown, and my Natal Demon, SKM, was standing on the parapets—grotesque, gothic fortifications which my Inner Temple did not used to possess and which it may or may not possess when next I descend. I entered the front gate and knelt at the base of the vast Cycladic statue just to the right of the entrance, opposite her consort Kouros to the left. In between them is a door that sometimes leads to the basement and sometimes leads to Mysteries; that night it led to the basement, where I sat down cross legged and waited.

Soon, a slender female figure descended and sat opposite me in the circle on the floor. I could not discern her face. I greeted her warmly and asked what I should call her.

“Witchmother,” she told me.

I asked her what her nature was, and she showed me a vision of deep forests and swamps and caverns, and flashes of secret rites taking place therein. I asked what she would ask of me in terms of rites and offerings, and she didn’t quite answer. I was left with a strong impression of “we’ll see where this goes,” but told me to continue the offerings I was already giving. Finally, I asked if she had anything else to show me, and tat’s when things got really strange.

She turned and went back up the stairs. I followed, and she led me past a series of places I half-recognized. Finally, we passed through a network of interwoven webs or light and glass-like two-dimensional planes which intersected at odd angles. I recognized the webs of light as relationships: when I’m at the top of my game, I can see those webs stretching between people and places and ideas: more intricate than any lace ever imagined. We crossed into a dark void. Up and up we went, vast nothing stretching above and behind us. Then she turned me around, and I saw the vast mass of webs and planes below, so distant as to appear small: the earth, and the worlds and relationships that make up all the people who live there.

Having shown me this, the Witchmother vanished, and I fell back to my body.

1 – I know I’ve talked about this before somewhere, but can’t find the posts.

In witchcraft

Listening to the Voices: Planetary Shenanigans

Satyr Magos28/10/2012

Since I escalated my devotional/spirit-work practice by incorporating Jason Miller’s Rite of General Offering and getting back on top of my meditation practice, the spirits who hang around my life have had a lot to say to me. “Do this with your altar.” “Do that.” “That looks like a tasty offering.” Nothing mind-blowing, but definitely more than I used to get. My astral “hearing” is still pretty sketchy—everything comes to me as a sort of knowing, rather than something my language-centers process—but it’s getting better. Most interesting and timely of the various instructions I have received was the Sunday-morning admonition to add a daily component to my seasonal altar.

I did so faithfully Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. It was pretty neat, the talismans that made up most of my daily altar definitely got a boost, and Wednessday my memory and linguistic abilities were through the fucking roof.

Thursday, though, was a perfect storm of insomnia, oversleeping, and discouragement. It was the second night that week that my sleep was insufficient and marked by bizarre dreams that I could not remember in the morning. I came across RO’s fabulous challenge/invitation … and was (oddly, in retrospect) so bummed that I hadn’t seen it the day before that A) spaced out that there were going to be more Jupiter hours that day, and B) almost gave up on the daily planetary magic altogether. Which is silly in all sorts of ways. I should have taken it as encouragement/an omen to get back on track, with everyone else doing the deal. I don’t have the Gates Rites (and missed the part about how to go about it without them in the second post), but fuck: I’d already been told to do the damn thing.

Then something happened that never happens: the clue phone rang AGAIN. Literally, this time. My friend Sthenno, whom I had thought I had somehow offended when she stopped returning my calls over the summer, called me up out of the blue, thirty minutes short of the (Nightly) Hour of Jupiter, to ask if I were doing the RO rites. “I am, now,” I said.

The ritual got me high. It was amazing. Even the election when I first charged my Jupiter talisman wasn’t that awesome in terms of visceral experience.

Friday morning I was back on track. Again, the ritual—consisting of no more than the arrangement of my altar, the lighting of a candle and stick of incense, and the pouring of a libation—got me super high … which was a bit of a problem, as I used the dawn Hour, and had to go to class. What was even more of a problem was the potent influence of Venus. Prior to that invocation, I had almost managed to put a lid on my haven’t-been-fucked-in-two-months libido. Ooops, there’s that out the window: all day Friday I was too horny to think. And I dropped a Venusian glamour bomb on some poor fellow students in the English office outside my Latin class, because I was too high on Venusian power not to pore breathe it into the atmosphere around me.

Despite the fact that I still hadn’t found the for-non-Gates-Rites-participants instructions, I was definitely tapped into the current. I could feel it. Can feel it still, for that matter.

Saturday morning, I was a little nervous about. I didn’t get to Saturnine work in last year’s ceremonial experiment, but I know that Saturn in Scorpio is fucking with many of my dearest loves in a pretty hardcore fashion. And while the ritual got me high, it definitely wasn’t the kind of fun the previous two rituals had produced. As a matter of fact, I was pretty reserved for the rest of the day, despite my attempt to turn a party I went to into a Bacchanal. But that was later: something much more interesting happened first. I didn’t just tap into the current of the ritual group: I saw it, stretching across the sky in a dark rainbow moving west to east. And it showed me what I need to do to tap into the current and participate more fully.

Let me say that again: the magical current Rufus Opus has set up for these weeks of planetary invocations showed me how to make more effective use of itself.

Unfortunately, because of homework and my Full Moon obligations (night two of three will start as soon as I finish this post), I was not able to fully implement the instructions I was given. At this point in the week, I will probably not do so before Thursday starts the second week cycle (for the sake of symmetry). But I have the Circles I’m going to use for the invocations. They’ve been stamped in my brain.

This morning was not quite as impressive, but damn that Solar high was nice. And today has been super, super productive in its wake.

This week’s rituals have definitely helped me level out some of the instability I’ve incurred by my interaction with the Chaos Current. In turn, I feel absolutely certain that without my Chaos Magick work I would not have gotten as much out of these planetary rites as I have. I certainly wouldn’t have been able to see the current of the workgroup the way I have.

For clarity’s sake: all my rites have been at the dawn hour, excepting the Jupiter Rite which I did at an hour of night. They have involved the construction of a mini-altar consisting mostly of talismans charged on previous occasions, the recitation of the appropriate Orphic Hymn from my Book of Art (which is picking up quite a charge of its own), and offerings of candle, port, and sandalwood incense. The summoning circle I was shown and the contemplation of the Seal will be added Thursday … hopefully I’ll have time to actually make those in the near future.

So let’s take that lesson to heart, folks: when the spirits talk, listen. Don’t be my fool ass and make them call you back twice. And if they actually bother to do so, be fucking grateful.

In scholarship, witchcraft

Liber Lux: Kia: Addendum

Satyr Magos25/10/2012

Kia: The absolute freedom which being free is mighty enough to be “reality” and free at any time: therefore is not potential or manifest (except as it’s instant possibility) by ideas of freedom or “means,” but by the Ego being free to receive it, by being free of ideas about it and by not believing. The less said of it (Kia) the less obscure is it. Remember evolution teaches by terrible punishments-that conception is ultimate reality but not
ultimate freedom from evolution.

Spare, Austin Osman. The Book of Pleasure.

For Mr. Jack Faust. Very belated, with apologies.

Because Kia did not begin with Peter Carroll.

In witchcraft

This is My Brain on Chaos Magick

Satyr Magos21/10/2012

I was an arrogant, ignorant ass way back in the day. At seventeen I was already trying to write manuals of what little I knew about magic. I didn’t know shit, not that I could put into words, but I tried anyway. But I was also a little precocious: the very first book was subtitled “A Path to Madness”. Yeah. I was also pompous … even more than I am today. That said, however, there does seem to be a strong correlation between the practice of magic and the appearance or experience of insanity.

For myself, that correlation predates my study and practice of the occult. Although many, even in the United States, had it much worse than I, my childhood was far from idyllic. The living hell that most people experience in Junior High was my experience of elementary school; in retrospect, I was always a little queer, and I imagine that the other children knew before I did that I was Other than they. As I’ve mentioned before, some years of my magical practice—age twenty-one through twenty-five, in particular—revolved around getting a grasp on my sanity more than anything else, but the more Project Null brings my early experiments back to conscious recollection, the more I wonder if the first two or three years of my practice didn’t destabilize me more than I realize.

Although I cannot help but think that there is a certain amount of self-aggrandizement in the framing of it, Chaos Magick, in particular, has a reputation for shaking the foundations of one’s sanity. Stephen Mace, Peter Carroll, and Phill Hine all mention it[1]. The good master Jack Faust had some things to say about it, as well, which resonated with me deeply[2].

I’ve mentioned in greater and lesser detail that over the last few weeks, my paranoia and social anxiety have been off the rails. I’ve been so out of sorts that I dedicated the Dark Moon to banishing more than anything else: performing the Stele of Jeu two days in a row, and three days in a row of my LBRP variant. I felt fabulous … until I encountered people. There’s a lot of astrological garbage going on right now, but a lot of it’s kinda where I live, anyway, and it doesn’t seem to be affecting everyone else as badly. You, my readers, are clever people: you already see where this is going.

Somewhere last week, I started entertaining the idea that I might be under magical attack. And yesterday I was almost certain that was what was going on.

Now, it fifteen years of magical practice, I’ve been attacked (not counting the whole B situation) maybe three times, tops. Probably only twice. But shit’s been exploding in my brain for almost a month, now. Still, I exercised appropriate caution with that idea. I asked ZG about it during my Dark Moon journeywork … unfortunately, her answer was unintelligible. Yesterday, when I was about ready to unleash the hounds on whoever or whatever was coming after me … I sat down with my tarot deck, got a little gnostic with my pipe and my porto, and laid down some cards.

Hahah. Oops.

No. I’m not under attack. I’m short-circuiting myself and suffering from psychic weather. College campuses are not healthy places, psychically speaking, and my shields aren’t strong enough for my increasing sensitivity. There may or may not be a particular person or persons who are exacerbating the problem (Immediate trigger: Princesss of Disks), but the root cause is my own magical work (Early cause: 2W)—possibly my get-laid enchantment, or even the Chaos Magick project as a whole. Interestingly, the solution seems to be blazing forward at full tilt boogie (Conclusion: Queen of Wands) until I achieve some sort of balance (Next step, surprising experiences: VI the Lovers, XIV Art). Sadly, the result (8D) will not be as epic as the process. The spread, for those unfamiliar with it, is the Ankh layout from Hajo Banzhaf and Brigitte Theler’s Keywords for the Crowley Tarot[3].

So, in the spirit of charging ahead, I finished up the first of several talismanic enchantments I have in the works: turning my bi-pride triangles into a protective talisman which doubles as a giant neon-flashing sign, “Hey, I’m fucking queer,” since so many people seem to miss the point. In the next weeks, I plan to lay some sort of sigilized enchantment on every piece of jewelry I wear on a regular basis.

I’m also escalating my meditative practice and my daily devotionals. This morning it was suggested to me, as I performed the Rite of General Offering, that I add a small daily shrine to my seasonal altar. That seems like a good place to start.

1 – Mace in Stealing the Fire From Heaven; Carroll in Liber Null and Psychonaut; Hine in Condensed Chaos. Probably more people elsewhere, as well.

2 – Yeah, Jack: I been creeping’ yer blog, cruizin’ yer archives.

3 – pp.35-6

In witchcraft

Liber Lux: Kia

Satyr Magos17/10/2012

One of the more interesting ideas contained in Peter Carroll’s Liber Null and Psychonaut is the idea of Kia[1]: that ineffable, unnamable thing which experiences consciousness. While I’m a little (read: a lot) bothered by Carroll’s anthropocentricism–“Chaos … is the force which has caused life to evolve itself out of the dust, and it is currently most concentratedly manifest in the human life force, or Kia, where it is the source of consciousness.”[2]—the idea of mortal sensation, experience, and consciousness as a material manifestation of primordial Chaos … well, it’s almost poetic.

The “soul” (here “Kia”), as a manifest point of primordial, cosmic ur-substance (“Chaos”) provides us with the mechanic to which Carroll attributes the efficacy of magick: “…[A]s centers of Kia or Chaos, ourselves, we can sometimes call very unlikely coincidences or unexpected events into existence by manipulating the aether.”[3] Aether, of course, being the astral sea of half-formed matter which corresponds to the entirety of the trans-lunar realms of Kabbalistic and Hermetic cosmology, and of which Carroll says, “Thought gives it shape and Kia gives it power.”[4]

Although basically a stripped-out version of the Hermetic Spheres or the Qabalistic Sephiroth, I find this cosmology much more emotionally satisfying. Something about the impersonal nature of Chaos helps undermine the implicit anthropocentricism, where the more traditional cosmologies double-down by attributing their personal ideals of masculine rulership (generally in monarchist frame) to the Source. Despite protestations to the contrary—that the masculine language is purely metaphoric—this Source/Father/God King ends up looking suspiciously like the hegemonic, patriarchal masculine ideal against which I have been struggling for my entire life.[5] This is not intended as a dig at those Hermeticists I know and respect, and I apologize if it reads that way: anthropomorphizing cosmic forces is our only way to relate to them, and I think y’all understand the problems inherent in naturalizing male dominance through your cosmology.[6]

Unfortunately, in between these points, there’s the part where Carroll dives face-first into a steaming pile of Orientalist dualism/non-dualism claptrap.[7] That pretty much breaks if for me. Again, don’t get me wrong: I’m not hating on everyone who subscribes to or has an interest in Buddhist thought. What I’m raving against is the way in which Carroll uncritically reproduces the colonialist racism of his Golden Dawn predecessors, whom he otherwise so loves to hate. But I’ll leave the in-depth deconstruction of Carroll’s wannabe-zen-thing to someone more well versed in the actual details of the philosophies he’s pillaging.

So, despite the romantic appeal on the one hand, the critical flaws in Carroll’s Chaos-and-Kia cosmology make it impossible for me to actually adopt it. The anthropocentricism of Kia undermines all the reasons for and advantages of conceptualizing the cosmic ur-substance as Chaos: it leaves the door open for a hierarchal evaluation of life-forms by the degree to which one credits them with Kia manifestation, and thereby within human kind by more subtle margins. The Orientalist frame within which Carroll articulates his theories—and, even more, his of the fetishization of “Shamanism”, which will get a post of its own—basically takes these potential problems and runs with them to some of the worst possible places, where he—the enlightened white magician—can recreate the marvelous works of the noble savage, synthesize them with the ideas of the brown people his empire subjugated, and produce an ars magicae which is “superior” to either.

Fortunately, it’s not actually necessary to adopt Carroll’s cosmology in order to use the core techniques of Chaos Magick.

1 – Carroll almost certainly got the word from the grandfather of Chaos, Austin Osman Spare–Zos Kia Cultus was published in XXXX–I don’t know how much their ideas overlap.

2 – Carroll, Peter. Liber Null and Psychonaut. San Francisco: Weiser (1987) . p.28

3 – Ibid. 29

4 – Ibid.

5 – Of course, there’s the whole problem where Carroll takes the feminine figure of Khaos, renders her first neuter, and then quasi-masculinizes her via the anthropomorphic figure of Baphomet … but that’s a post all its own.

6 – If not, then this IS a dig at you, and you should answer the clue phone and own your fucking privilege.

7 – Carroll, 29. For the context to which I refer, cf. Orientalism, especially as conceptualized by Edward Said and those who follow him.

In witchcraft

Project Null is Going Off The Rails

Satyr Magos14/10/2012

It’s amazing how productive you can be while not sticking to the plan. My formal daily practice has basically fallen apart in the last weeks, even as my various experiments have increased in breadth and depth.

I have been re-re-reading Liber Lux and am working on several write-ups therefrom. I have almost finished Jason Miller’s Sorcerer’s Secrets and am in the process of incorporating some of his excellent suggestions into my practice. Mr. Miller might be slightly annoyed to see him work included in my Chaos experiment—that’s not how he self-identifies—but, really, where is the line between innovative syncretism and Chaos Magick?

Meditation and Dreaming

As I mentioned above, my formal meditation and dream work have basically fallen apart.

Although I have not sat down to meditate deliberately in over a week, I have actually spent hours in trance. Sitting outside in the cold one day, waiting for a friend, as a trance settled lazily over me for nearly thirty minutes. I spent five hours at the loom the following day, not even half of which I can remember. These meditations certainly don’t qualify as the concentrations Peter Carroll (and many other occultists like him) prescribe, but I refuse to concede that they don’t count. I actually have a whole rant about this planned for the near future.

While my sleep schedule has been restored to the point where I no longer drug myself with chamomile and valerian at 10 o’clock every night, my ability to recall my dreams in the morning is spotty at best. This is something I have always struggled with, and will probably continue to struggle with for years to come. Most of my dreams, though—what little I can recall of them—have been clearly mundane: fragmentary remains of my bout with super-hero obsession a couple weeks ago, and my increasing state of holy-fuck-i-need-someone-to-sit-on-my-face.

Shielding

My shielding experiments continue, and I’m fine-tuning a protection talisman. At the suggestion of Chirotus Infinitum in the comments to my last shielding post, I attempted to use the image of a ladybug as shield. The visceral experience was indescribable. And it brought back a series of shape-shifting experiments from my high-school days that I’m in the middle of writing up, and will probably share after I have finished my write-up of Peter Carroll’s chapters on Evocation and Invocation, because they’re highly relevant.

Manifesting My Desires.

While none of last week’s sigils have quite manifested, my experience so far says to wait two weeks before getting antsy. Also, those are socially complex endeavors, and while I haven’t actually found any new lovers, yet, the value of my social capital (to abuse a metaphor) seems to be rising.

I have another batch, this time aimed just at boosting my social situation, in the works to fire off this afternoon.

In the mean time, I have also been tinkering with my Web of Influence, again: drifting into a trance to tend the threads and make certain that things are moving down the pipeline (to deploy a cliché). Interestingly, though I had not yet consciously begun to incorporate my Web of Influence into my sigil work, I could see my manifesting sigils on the web as glittering lights.

Visionary Practice

I went on a pair of highly fruitful visionary journeys at the Dark and Full Moons that I still haven’t quite parsed. In the first, I re-established contact with my my chief familiar spirits and discovered, as I had discovered when I was doing some of my work with Elemental Fire, that a portal to Chaos had opened in my Inner Temple. I didn’t have the nerve to explore it the first night, but I did the second. Beyond the door was a vast void: not the swirling mass of potentiality I had assumed the Chaos current would appear to me as, but the gaping void of Χαος. I could barely sense an intelligence to it, it was so vast and alien, but it was definitely aware.

At first, there was nothing there that I could perceive, an I thought that I was walking through a black void like the astral fragment I use to access the Otherworlds. Slowly, though, the vastness of the space in which I was moving began to dawn on me. I began to perceive fling things moving through the void at almost unimaginable speed. There were countless multitudes of them, but the scale Chaos made them seem few and far between. At that point, Sue, ZG, and SKM joined me, forming a protective triangle, and helping me keep track of where I had come from for when the time came to leave.

We drifted until we came to a lone floating chunk of rock, which we landed on essentially out of my mortal, terrestrial instincts. Faster than I could think, an insect/crustacean-like creature (I never saw the whole of it), whipped around from the other side of the boulder and impaled me through the heart with a many-jointed limb. Although we were able to overpower it and reclaim the “blood” that had stuck to its talon, we took that moment to flee back to the Inner Temple.

Gods and Spirits

Since the conclusion of the ceremonial experiment and the Invocation of Baphomet, I now have ten gods and spirits living on my altar. I speak to fewer than half of them on a regular basis, and I don’t think that’s appropriate.

A few weeks ago, even the gods on my altar demanded a portion of my weekend coffee offerings. I was happy to oblige, of course: I had only not included them because they had not asked, before, and coffee is such a non-traditional offering that I didn’t wish to offend. Yesterday, I began incorporating Jason Miller’s Rite of General Offering* into the ritual, and today I will bring back fruit from the cafeteria to add to the offering.

So far, I have rarely asked the spirits I work with for much in the way of manifesting the world I desire. When I have, though, the results have been spectacular. When one friend was at risk of being evicted, I got Sue to change the landlord’s mind. When another needed a specific job, I asked Sue to make sure it happened. When I was wallowing in a crushing pit of despair last week, I dedicated an evening’s festivities to Dionysus, asking him to purge me of the negativity and obsessive behaviors in which I was engaging; I have since heard that it was the best such party in some time for everyone else there, and I have been pulling out of my emotional morass much more quickly than usual, and am now struggling against a new, but less self-destructive so far, set of obsessive behaviors.

Although I do still intent to built my home defense servitor, and ideally do so before the end of the semester, I think it best that I tend to these relationships before adding anyone or anything else to my altar.

a Change in Plans

Although it might not seem so from my previous weekly reports, my experiment in Chaos Magick has been more productive that I would have anticipated at this early stage. It has also been productive in ways I ever could have imagined, many of which are exceptionally difficult to articulate—a dilemma with which I imagine all my mage-blogging peers can identify. Some of them have come to light today, some I may never be able to talk about.

I originally conceptualized Project Null as a simple follow-up to the ceremonial experiment: a way of continuing my formal study of the Western magical tradition and of not loosing the momentum I had built up over the course of the previous year. I set the time frame for the ceremonial experiment at a year because I was originally using Penczak’s year-and-a-day system as a map. I set a year time frame for Project Null because that was how long the ceremonial experiment had lasted.

It seems, however, that Chaos Magick is even less suited for such a survey than ceremonial magic was. And I haven’t finished processing or internalizing a number of the lessons from that experiment yet. And this semester is much, much busier than I had anticipated. And Project Null is digging things up from my youth that I haven’t though of in a decade or more. And each and every one of these things deserves my full attention.

Project Null is not being cancelled. But the deadlines are. This shit is way too interesting to not let the phenomenal organic growth I’m experiencing progress at its own rate. Hopefully y’all will understand that this is a carefully considered tactical decision, not just a drunken satyr flaking out.

——

* – Miller, Jason. The Sorcerer’s Secrets. Pompton Plains, NJ: New Page Books (2009). pp53-5

ETA: Jason Miller reference clarified and cited properly.

In witchcraft

Shaping and Shielding III: New Experiments

Satyr Magos08/10/2012

Much like my ability to see/perceive auras, this propensity has always ebbed and flowed with my practice. With my magical practice escalating over the last couple years, so too have these psychic senses grown. the last months, apparently, my senses have reached a point where school is getting toxic. I know most of the things I want to know—and sometimes more—but the headaches and the vicarious mood swings are starting to become a little too apparent.

Since recovering from my burnout, my primary shielding technique—when I chose to employ one—has revolved around different ideas of compression and displacement. My long-time favorite technique basically involves treating my aura like a Hoberman Sphere. It’s simple, effective against a surprising number of psychic “weather” conditions, and has few, if any, unintended consequences—chiefly, it can put off a bit of a “not worth your notice” vibe. The downside is that it offers little in the way of direct defense and none in the way of preemptive offence, and it’s rather easy to forget about—left closed too long, I sometimes get the psychic equivalent of muscle cramps.

Most recently, I’ve been experimenting with layers. A layer of windows, as discussed before, as armor against psychic weather and the evil eye. Another layer, a bit deeper into the astral, of sensitive psuedopods to keep me aware of what’s going on. It’s been mostly effective, but oddly leaves me feeling more cut-off from the rest of the world than I actually am, as well as seeming to put off a bit of an aloof and unapproachable air. I’m trying to come up with a visualization that’s produces a warmer and friendlier sort of charismatic aura, maybe even incorporating that as its own layer “outside” or “in front of” the glass panes. I’m also trying to figure out what it is about those particular visualizations that leave me feeling so cut off.

Recalling my youthful experiments, I’ve also tried reproducing my bad-anime-armor-style shields. They make me feel like a badass … and ramp up my aggression by about ten percent. They also have the interesting effect of limiting the field of view in my astral sight in accordance with the shape of the helmet I visualize.

The astute reader will have noticed a consistent pattern to my shielding strategy: they are all rooted in visualization and imagery. Although I understand that other magicians code instructions into their shields, keeping out “negative” or “unwanted” energies … in this, at least, I cannot form anything for which I cannot picture a shape, color, and texture. I can’t form an image of a net that knows what I want to keep away and what to let through: I don’t know what that looks like. Aradia can do it—you should see the mad shit she can code into personal or house wards—but I don’t have the knack. There are, of course, those who say that this limit is self-imposed. I won’t even argue. Self-imposed limits are just as real as those imposed from the outside. I’ll overcome it eventually: it’s really just a matter of creativity, which is one thing I have no shortage of … just occasional bouts of (sometimes long-running) blockage.

In the meantime, I’m also looking to experiment with sigilizing personal wards and charging talismans. For a long time, I disdained that absurdly obvious and effective tactic as “too easy” or “a crutch”. (Y’all may have picked up that I have had, and still struggle against, a tendency to be an unmitigated arrogant ass.) This is bullshit. I’m a goddamn tool using monkey! Let’s use some goddamn tools.

It’s been a couple years since I’ve been inspired to go so far back to basics.