Journey Through The Obsidian Dream

My tech skills are insufficient to “blackout” my page today.  Let this suffice instead:

To all who would bind my speech, to those who would silence those they disagree with: you are worthless.

To all who would keep people ignorant, to all those who put profit before people: you are monsters.

For those who fail to see the connections between those who would silence women, those who would bar full citizenship to queers, and those who seek to control the flow of information on the internet: you are ignorant.

May you worthless knaves find wisdom and the strength to stand for what you believe in even in the presence of those who dissent.

May you monsters be undone by your own bloodthirsty pursuit of power.

May you ignorant fools find sight and discernment, and make your allegiances more carefully.

So mote it be.

When I was but a wee faun, new to the madness-inducing arts and sciences of magic and sorcery, I suffered from a number of very strange ideas, most of which I cannot really tell you where they came from.  One of those ideas which seems particularly strange in retrospect was a strong taboo against “summoning” spirits in any way shape or form.  In all probability, this idea was probably rooted in the fears of the overculture: in the image of doomed, demon-haunted madman who could not banish what he summoned; in stories of spirits enslaved, and the vengeance the wreak upon escape; in horrific stories of possession.

I think, perhaps, that I was also a victim of the neo-Pagan “it’s okay, really, we’re not Satanists” propaganda machine.  You see, I discovered magic in 1993, and was an openly practicing Pagan in 1996.  Those of you who were of an age and inclination to follow the news may remember that period as the years when the Satanic Panic was beginning to decline.  Police and other authorities seemed unable to tell the difference between Wiccans, Vampire LARPers, and actual serial killers.  I seem to remember the websites I found and the books I read all admonishing the neophyte to stay away from anything as dangerous and immoral as conjuration and evocation.  I wish I could cite a source for this, but few of the books I was reading in that era remain in my possession and none of them have come to Indiana with me. 

But however I came to the idea, in my own mind it was an inviolable taboo.  “Summoning” was so wicked that, at a time in my life when I absolutely refused to speak any lie whatsoever, I put off a close friend who wanted to conjure an elemental: promising to aid him as soon as I did “more research”.  All the while, I was hoping that he would figure out on his own how bad an idea it was, knowing that he wouldn’t listen to my warnings and that if I didn’t “help” him, he would find someone else who would.  Part of what reassures me that this idea was not wholly my own is the fact that, sooner rather than later, he came to the desired conclusion: that it was too dangerous an operation to perform.  I would add “at our level of experience”, except that I remember how arrogant we were in our ignorance at seventeen years old.

Although I no longer believe that conjuring spirits is inherently immoral or mortally dangerous.  Certainly conjuration and evocation pose no greater risk to one’s sanity than any other transcendent experience, and are no more dangerous (possibly less so) than spirit-journeys of an astral or shamanic nature.  And I am increasingly skeptical of the idea that a mere magician could force an Archangel or a real demon to do anything it didn’t feel like doing—though the moral concerns of pressing lesser spirits probably still apply.  (And let’s just not get started on the moral ambiguity of creating “elementals” and “servitors”.  That’s too sticky a wicket for my amateur philosophy.  No offense intended to anyone.)

Still, that taboo has lived in my brain for too long: unexamined, not even re-shelved for deconstruction.  It’s left a mark that may well affect my relationship to the spirit-world for the rest of my life.

Has anyone else been exposed to this meme?  The taboo against “summoning”?  If so, have you overcome it?  How?  (Besides simply doing the work.)

[Warning: This gets awfully personal.]

When I chose the name Satyr Magos, it was as a literary convention.  The name was a sort of joke, a ribald recognition of the sensuality which separates me from so many people who call themselves “magicians”.  It was a subtle warning that there was going to be some serious talk about sex and drugs on this blog, in addition to and as a part of the magic (and while there hasn’t been as much of that as I originally intended, there has been enough and there will be more).  It was an excuse to draw a mythic caricature of myself.

I knew that it was bad Greek, even though I hadn’t studied any Greek yet.  It didn’t matter. I already had two (secret) magical names—one I took at the age of 16 (and later made several unsuccessful attempts to get rid of), and one that I took upon my initiation—and while I intended to take a magical (and public) motto in the Lodge style upon my next initiation, I planned on dabbling a lot with languages and ideas and ceremonial magic before doing so.  Rendered into actual Attic Greek, Satyr Magos becomes σάτυρος ὀ μάγος (saturos ho magos), which can be translated as “the satyr is a magician” or “the magician is a satyr” with approximately equal accuracy. 

The definition of μάγος was just as sketchy in ancient Greek as “magician” or “sorcerer” (both of which are valid translations are in modern English) and, to the best of my ability to determine (albeit through the limited sources so far available to me), covers approximately the same range of activities and specialties.  The most noteworthy difference is that, at least according to Pope’s essay in Witchcraft and Magic of Europe: Ancient Greece and Rome, the word μάγος bore strong connotations of services for sale.  And does anybody else remember what it means to be a satyr?

Maybe I just didn’t think it through. I have been blogging under the name Satyr Magos for less than six months, but it’s already seeping into my meatspace identity—both magically and in my “mortal” life.  Although I’m not going back to partying like I did a decade ago, I’m feeling a powerful urge to escalate some from where I’m at now, and I’m absolutely running out of patience with people who disapprove of the way I do things now.  While I have practiced the socially expected form of serial monogamy for my entire previous adult life, I find I simply have no patience for the dynamics and assumptions it entails.  My sense of humor is getting more ribald, and a little bit more cruel.  My libido—for both men and women—is through the roof … and my loves and lusts are well reciprocated.  When I tried invoking the sexless servants of the God of Abraham, I didn’t run into any of the trouble I expected, but I was completely short-circuited physically (TW: semi-graphic contents which may be particularly upsetting to people who know me IRL).  Spirits have started making some pretty wild demands of me that I’m still not sure how to process, much less how to talk about without sounding even crazier than I already do.  And I have been feeling an urge to go into business, magically speaking, which I had never felt before taking the “name”.

By and large, I’m comfortable with these changes.  Many of them are also in line with the things I have been  working on deliberately, and/or are also in line with the Name I took at my last initiation.  Some of them may just be the product of advancing age and sharpening radicalism.  Some of them are freaking me the fuck out, but that’s part of transformative magic.  And that, more than anything else, is what I’m in this game for.

So it seems I have undergone a dedication without realizing it, and took a motto almost by accident.  Well, so be it.  Σάτυρος ὀ Μάγος it is, at least until I’ve worked my way through this stage of life.  But, please: no one address me as Frater S.M.?  I’d take it as a kindness.

Yesterday Shakesville, one of my favorite sources of news and criticism, pointed me to an amusing online tool: the Gender Analyzer.  This idiot website reads a website and somehow comes to a conclusion on the gender of the writer.  Yesterday, it was 62% certain that I am a woman.  Today it is even more certain (65%).  Who knows what it will say when I update again?

I am unspeakably amused by this.  Doubly so as the guy who that he can walk into a gay bar wearing a skirt, nails painted red, and more jewelry than anyone else there … and be mistaken for straight.

Now, the reality of the matter is somewhat more complicated than that.  I am male bodied, and generally pass as cisgendered.  I don’t actually identify as male, I just let people assume that when explaining that I’m third-gender/genderqueer in a magical-transgressive-shamanic-liminal-brainfuck sense is just way too much work … which, admittedly, is most of the time.  In the simplest terms my gender identity is not so much “male” as “witch”.  Of course that’s too much for most people to people to parse, let alone a program trained on a measly 2000 cherry-picked blogs.

Further, as Melissa points out, a legit AI experiment would explain more about the rubrics in play.  As it is, it reads to me as some sort of bizarre internet gender-shaming devise.  It’s also pretty damn clueless.  For reference, as I was composing this digression I checked out how several of my favorite bloggers rate:

* Rufus Opus is “quite gender neutral” but also probably (52%) a woman.  Which is odd, because he always struck me as fairly butch.

* Scylla rates almost identically (51%) to RO.  Right this time, though only barely.

* The Wild Hunt is also identified correctly, though they’re only 65% sure.

* The Tiger Beatdown is probably a man, but also “quite gender neutral” … despite the majority of contributors to the front page being women.

* Deborah is also correctly identified, and they’re somehow much more certain about her (75%)

Food for thought, y’all.

I am embarrassingly grateful for Deb’s permission to take the week off.  There are problems with making use of it, of course: I’m already behind on some of my goals, and there’s a lot of work to do this year in many, many senses of the word. But it’s the last week of my winter break, and there are things here in the mortal Now which need to be tended to. 

Too much of my break already consumed by work.  I spent my New Year only a little better off than good master Jow: my food poisoning struck Thursday, but I was still too weak to do much of anything on Saturday.  Far too little of my break has been spent with my family and closest friends.  Schedules just haven’t lined up.  Things have come up which have prevented me from spending more than a cursory amount of time with several people who really deserve my undivided attention.  Yesterday was spent trying to correct that: breakfast with my mother, a free haircut from my stylist sister, a long lunch catching up with D after way too long, meeting my old boss (the man who taught me jewelry in the first place) for coffee, dinner with another friend, and finally catching up up with my tattoo artist/writing buddy to get a piercing redone and for a long overdue game of “so what have you been doing”?  Today and tomorrow are shopping and packing and trying to catch up with people in a last-minute fashion. 

That said, I have gotten a lot done.  Aradia and I made the safe travel talismans which I still need to blog about.  I have come up with a new name for my “BoS”: Book of the Labyrinth (βιβλιου ὀ λαβύρινθος).  I have made good progress on Sannafrid’s natal chart, though not as much as I want; in my defense, she’s got a lot going on.  I did write up my Dark Moon rites (most of them), and I have been keeping up with the New Year, New You prompts.

And catching up with all my people has been an adventure, too.  Aradia has started a blog of her own, largely (but not exclusively) talking about Tarot.  Two friends of mine (that I don’t often talk about here because we haven’t practiced magic together in years) have started a daily Tarot practice, engineered themselves into a better apartment, and one of them has managed to put herself back in school.  Pasiphae has escalated her magical practice since I left, is talking to gods, and has started selling incenses and blends.  D, who has been in business for herself for a while, has found two brick-and-mortar outlets for her teas.  Whytar has gone from Forever Alone to engaged to a woman from his (relative) youth in a matter of months.  My sister has (wisely, finally) given up on Texas and moved back closer to the family. 

It’s been a hell of a year for the blog and I. 

I graduated from my community college with honors.  I applied to real colleges and went on a road trip to see them.  In the process I made my first forays into practical divination, exploring the options using Tarot.  At the conclusion of which, I pulled a Tower and a Hanged man at the same time, moving from the Westernmost end of Missouri to the Easternmost point of Indiana for said college. 

I performed my first wedding and conjured gods I’d never even heard of before.  I started my experiments in Western Ceremonial Magic. I did so much magic that I couldn’t even write about it all.  I did so much research I don’t even know where to start writing.  Even so, I wrote a hundred and one posts in 2011, just over four times the previous two years combined.

My followers have doubled over the last year—many of them people I don’t know in the physical world!—and my hitcount has skyrocketed over the last months in particular.  There as that post I pimped out on /r/occult back in September.  And participating in Deborah Castellano’s New Year, New You project has definitely gleaned me a few hits.  Several times, I’ve actually gotten as may as sixty or seventy hits a day.  I have had readers from Russia, the UK, Malaysa, Canada, Germany, Australia … just to name a few.

This is kind of a big deal.  Thank you all for being along for the ride.  I hope to see more of you all soon.