project null

Ow. That Was A Wall

Satyr Magos23/09/2012

I got nothing done for Project Null this week: Tuesday through Friday were a complete wash. In a small part, that can be blamed on my frustration with the unsatisfying results of the sigil shoal I launched a couple weeks ago. Mostly, though, it was because I spent all my time and energy on my anthropology of gender class. In related news, I am now ill, but on the plus side I got a lot of great material for my Feminism as Chaos Magick essay (and narrowly avoided a tumblr fight in the process).

The Sorcerer’s Secrets finally shipped Thursday. Friday morning, the lost keys I was looking for did finally appear in a pocket of my backpack that I’m fairly sure I checked. I have found about a dollar’s worth of change on the ground. So: it seems like these things took about ten days to manifest. Perhaps I phrased my intent poorly, or chose targets that were problematic for reasons I don’t understand. Perhaps the sigil designs were somehow inadequate. Perhaps the launch technique was inadequate. Or maybe it just takes that long, even when a shorter time table is encoded in the sigil. For lack of adequate data, I’m going to assume a combination of all of the above was at fault and mark the experiment as “mixed results”

I did get my act back together yesterday morning and today: doing my meditations, making my weekend offerings, and firing a shoal of sigils each morning using a simpler charging technique: still charged from my morning rituals, I arranged the sigils on my Chaos Altar, lit a candle each for Death and Desire, held the sigils up to the sunrise, and chanted “It is my will” until I felt something shift. When each of the sigils was so charged, I lit a third candle, again chanting “It is my will” until I felt a shift. The first shoal was socially oriented: knowing who wants to fuck me, who I can trust, and that sort of thing. The second was more academic: improved comprehension, reading speed, and recall.

Because I seem to be much better at actually doing my meditation first thing in the morning, I am going to add that to my morning routine, as well as try for a second 5 minutes at night.

In witchcraft

Project Null: Settling Into the Groove

Satyr Magos16/09/2012

I have just completed the third week of my Project Null experiment. Some things have been settling down, others have been rearing their heads.

I’ve been escalating my daily banishing ritual a little bit, and doing better about my meditation, which has had a positive effect on the paranoia. Perfecting my sleeping tea and being ruthless about bedtime (“ruthless”, because my homework is suffering) have helped with the insomnia and the nightmares.

My patience with various frustrations is at a distinct low point. A class that I had hoped would be a fun challenge has, so far, turned out to be neither fun nor challenging, and another that should have been a coast-through is giving me trouble because the teacher seems to be suffering from part-timer syndrome. These are legitimate frustrations. My desire to set something on fire over them are just a little bit out of proportion. With that said: I’ve suffered from rage issues for my whole life, so this is nothing new to me. Stress makes me angry. This is probably related to the Chaos experiment only insomuch as my meditation practice is making it impossible to deny or sublimate the rage.

Over the course of the week, I pushed a little further in Stephen Mace, restarted reading Hine’s Condensed Chaos, read Carol’s Liber KKK, and re-read Gordon’s Sigils Reboot.

Meditation

For most of the week, my meditation practice was the best it had ever been. I was making five minutes or more at least once a day. I wasn’t necessarily having great insights—really, just the Abrasax thing—but my mind was getting less and less unruly. Then, Thursday, I fell off the horse for no reason. No meditation Thursday or Friday.

This morning and yesterday, it’s distraction city all over again. With the noted addition of a distinct buzz at the end of every meditation session, which is interesting and might be good or bad.

Magic

At the beginning of this experiment, I took a bit of a hiatus from active magical practice. I have begun re-incorporating magic into my practice, and the results have been decidedly mixed. I dove back in to magic head-first Monday, with the Mercury Cazimi election just before dawn followed by the Mass of Chaos B that afternoon to fire off some sigils. The first was a success; the second, not so much.

I made use of the Mercury election to recharge all my various Mercury talismans and to create a new language-learning talisman. Although the raw power of that election made it very easy for me to feel the dissonance between my retrograde natal Mercury and the planetary power, the enchantments went well. I have felt a distinct improvement in my ability to communicate with other humans (except over electronic media, which seems to be suffering an increased confusion, but there are a LOT of confounding factors making that correlation pretty blurry), and my comprehension of Greek and Latin does seem to be improving at a slightly swifter rate.

The Mass of Chaos B sigil launch was a qualified disaster. I had three desires: to have a lost set of keys returned to me by Thursday, to have an Amazon package that has been waiting in the dock for (I though) no good reason shipped that day, and to find money on the ground. The keys have still not been returned to me; Amazon has finally deigned to tell me that the reason my package didn’t ship is that The Sorcerer’s Secrets is currently out of stock; and I found a grand total of $0.06 on the ground this week.

So … I think I’m going to back up with my sigils. Try launch techniques which are a little more traditional. And hopefully aim my intentions a little better.

Meanwhile, the changes to my morning banishing rites have definitely left me feeling much more powerful. I’ve yet to see that improved sense of power translate into actual results, though.

Dreaming

The tea I’ve been using to help regulate my sleep schedule has really fucked my dream journaling. While on the one hand, my dreams have been vivid and interesting, on the other hand, I have been consistently woken up by the alarm which drives whatever I’ve been dreaming out of my head pretty much every time.

Have I mentioned before that dreamwork is not a native talent of mine?

Hopefully, the next batch of dream tea will cause me fewer problems: 2 tbs valerian; 1 tbs each white willow, chamomile; 2 tsp mugwort; 1 tsp spearmint. I will be brewing does of 1 tbs in 2 cups filtered water.

In witchcraft

Dissonance and Resonance

Satyr Magos09/09/2012

I have been practicing magic for just shy of sixteen years. I’ve seen some whack-ass shit—some of it way back in the day, some of it a little more recently. I even burned out the circuitry in my own brain on one occasion, a psychic injury from which I have only fully recovered in the last two years. Fuck: I spent the first five or eight years of my magical practice with no other goal than to get some sort of hold on what currently passes for my sanity. So when Peter Carroll tells me that Chaos Magick can lead to paranoia and obsession and outright madness, my first reaction is, “Been there. Done that.”

Oops. Stultus sum.

I have spent the last week struggling with depression and paranoia far out of line with my circumstances. Also, a round of insomnia which has driven me to work on perfecting my sleeping tea and which has rendered me almost incapable of focusing on my studies. Small noises in and outside my apartment have sent me into fits, searching for the source. I have heard things scratching at the doors and walls. In the moments between sleep and waking, I am haunted by delusions that someone or something is trying to break into the apartment. My dreams have been haunted by fear, death, and betrayal.

Yes, I have things to be depressed about. I have abandoned one lover, for a second time, in a far-away city; I have stayed in place as another moves on to bigger and better things. That these things are inevitable, and the only path to each of us furthering our ambitions, is little consolation: I miss them. Beyond that, finances are tight. I didn’t make enough money over the summer, leaving with debt at the beginning and my costs have risen. I’ve secured a TA position, which will provide me more hours than my post office position last year, but it’s still minimum-wage work-study.

There’s also stress. I’m studying two dead languages at once, which is a kind of mind fuck. I’m learning to weave, which is relatively straightforward on the one hand, but hugely time consuming. And I’m taking an upper-level class outside my field: Gender Studies, as a point of fact, which while somewhat familiar territory as a queer feminist, is rightly known as a field of particularly difficult-to-read theory.

But these very real factors are not sufficient to account for the degree of madness I’ve been struggling against, or the perfect (if short-lived) efficacy of banishing and/or meditation as a method of managing it.

All this, and I haven’t even performed my initiation in to the Chaos Current, yet, or the Mass of Chaos B for a second time?

Fuck. Me. Running.

I just hope that if I do go off the deep end, there’ll be someone left in my life to send in a rescue party.

Meditation

My meditation has been going fabulously. I have missed only one day this week—Monday—and I have meditated in excess of 30 minutes on two occasions: almost exactly half an hour Tuesday night, before sleep; and a somewhat harder to quantify amount Friday afternoon at the loom, made up of uncounted three to eight minute intervals as I lost myself in the rhythm of the shuttle and reed.

Which is fucking good, because, as I said above, it’s been the front line of defense against the hordes of my internal demons.

Magic

I have been banishing and refining my Q-Cross every day, but done little other active magic this week. What I have done is dwell upon Chaos Magick, its paradigms, and Project Null. Having produced the first half-dozen glyphs of my Sacred Alphabet, I must now begin to conceive of how it will grow. I have also been preparing for Monday morning’s Mercury Cazimi election.

And, of course, as is my custom, I spend Friday night cleaning and smudging my apartment. I also performed a couple banishings..

The most concrete product of these musings and meditations can be seen in the image at the top: a syncretic chaosphere for Aradia, myself, and anyone else who chooses to join in with Project Null. An image, a sigil if you will, to help unite and power our efforts. Our own little runoff stream of the Chaos current.

Dream

Although my dreams have been consistently violent, they have only been clear enough to record after waking about every other day. I’m always vague in the mornings; it’s twice as bad when I actually wake up with the alarm, rather than before, and that is always the case when I have to dose myself in order to sleep.

For the curious: the tea I’ve been drinking has been valerian, mugwort, and white willow at at 2:1:1 ratio. Last night I added 1/2 part mint and reduced the dose from 4 tsp to 3, which has produced the best results so far. Mugwort tea gave me nightmares as a teen, too, but almost never since.

In witchcraft

Reining In and Cutting Loose: My Unruly Mind vs. Project Null

Satyr Magos02/09/2012

Project Null officially kicked off a week ago today. This is the first of what I hope to be weakly updates on my progress through the project. This week has been more theory than practice, but both aspects have been solid.

Despite classes, my reading has been progressing swiftly. I have finished Carroll’s Liber Null and Psychonaut. I have re-read the Simon Necronomicon. I have read most of Frater U.D.’s Practical Sigil Magic, and the first half of Stephen Mace’s Stealing the Fire from Heaven. The last two are particularly exciting, because between U.D. and Mace, I have what I feel is an adequate grasp of A.O. Spare’s sigil methods. I’m waiting on Amazon to get around to shipping Jason Miller’s Sorcerer’s Secrets, and I’m really looking forward to reading that, too, though I don’t yet know if it’s “Chaos” enough to qualify for this project.

Mind Control

Outside of my constant struggle to recall and master my dreams, I have never encountered the Psychic Censor in quite the way Peter Carroll describes it. Perhaps I struggled against the very perception of the supernatural when I was younger—I did, after all, begin practicing magic at the age of sixteen—but I cannot now recall.

For me, much of my struggle is against what I have often described as my “unruly mind”. Owing to my overwhelming (and largely irrational) fear of medicine in general and psychiatry in particular, I have never been diagnosed with anything. But when people complain of their struggles with ADD/ADHD … well, the Rotten Card above is a familiar experience to me. Outside of my magical practice, I rarely work on only one thing at a time: music or television plays in the background while I study or do housework; rather than see either task to completion before moving on to the other, I will often do laundry and another cyclical chore, such as the dishes, in tandem to create a natural flow of breaks.

Beyond that, I often struggle against the vestigial remains of the protestant work ethic which was instilled in me as a child: the idea that one must, at all times, be productive, and that even in moments of leisure (earned only by suffering) one must still be doing something. Working on my art does not rouse this nagging voice; even smoking weed and watching television—the most useless and slothful activity in which I engage—does not bring the restless, almost painful feeling that comes from inactivity. But meditation? Simply sitting in the quiet of my own presence and listening to my breathing? That drives my inner Puritan into a mad frenzy.

Since beginning the meditative practice called for in Liber MMM approximately ten days ago, I have rarely managed to perform my meditations two days in a row. When I have, it was over the weekend. Around half of each meditation session—which has averaged five minutes, went as far as six once, and as little as three—is spent thinking about journaling or blogging about the experience. During the first several sessions, my mind was awash with a riot of images. Counting my breathing has helped with that, but not eradicated it completely. Regardless of the position I sit in—and I have tried several—my body almost always grows restless, and on two occasions this actually manifested as physical pain.

On the plus side, there have been several days where I was able to carve out small blocks of time to sit and trance, without a timer, in the sun around campus. Those sessions were actually more fruitful, in some ways, than my planned meditation sessions.

One interesting thing that’s come up while I’ve been doing these meditations is the relization that my aura is loosing its differentiation again: without doing chakra-specific meditations, I’ve dropped down from the “usual” seven to four: a crown above my head which somehow includes my third eye, a point at my heart, one at my loins, and one below my feet. Also of interest is that, though it’s better now than it was a week ago, my crown feels tightly congested. (And that was before hayfever season kicked in to high gear three days ago.)

Magic

I have not actually launched any sigils, yet, though I have done a bit of work recharging sigils I have previously fired. There’s not actually anything new that I want right now.

What I have been doing is daily banishing. I’ve actually only fucked that up twice, and was on one of those occasions able to go home, do my banishing and card-of-the-day, and put things right. I’ve been keeping it simple with a banishing pentagram and the Qabalistic Cross, but that seems to be doing me a fair bit of good.

Thursday night, for the full moon, I busted out with the full Pentagram Rite for the Stele of Jeu. It was fucking incredible, and deserves a post all its own.

More interesting than any of that, though, are my experiments with creating my own Alphabet of Desire. Which also deserves a post of its own, but will have to wait until I’ve made it a little further along that road. For now, suffice to say that I’ve had some interesting and positive results with producing personal sigils by automatic drawing, but because of the nature of some of the work, I am uncertain of what about half of the characters mean.

Dreaming

I have been doing better at recording my dreams on waking than I have done with my daily meditations, but there have still been a number of days where, for one reason or another, I didn’t write down my dreams. In one instance, it was because the nightmares were so terrible that I was afraid attempting to record them would draw me back down into them. In at least one other, it was just that I’m a fucking idiot first thing in the morning, and have no idea what’s going on (why, yes, that was one of they days I didn’t do my morning banishing).

So far, though, nothing interesting or significant to report in the dream arena.

In witchcraft

Opening Liber MMM

Satyr Magos29/08/2012

As I described in the launch post for my chaos magic experiment, I am beginning with Liber MMM: mind control, magic, and dreaming*.

Mind Control

Except for the emotional auditing, Peter Carroll’s “mind control” is basically meditation, and I’ve been starting simple with sitting motionless and breathing concentration. The hardest thing about five minutes a day of meditation isn’t the meditation, itself: it’s sitting down to do it. So far I’ve been managing about every other day.

I’ve experimented with three different positions to date. Sitting cross-legged on my bed, with my arms extended and my elbows resting on my knees. Laying flat on my back on the bed, arms limp at my sides. And sitting in one of those mini-papasan chairs that they sell for dorm rooms, facing my altar, with my hands in my lap. I’ve had mixed results with all three. I have done my meditation in the morning, promptly upon waking, and at night, shortly before going to sleep. Again, the results have been mixed.

Sitting still for five minutes was, in fact, physically painful the first time I did it as a part of this experiment. And, for whatever reason, flatly impossible yesterday morning. I’m not sure why: it’s not like I don’t sit motionless for a lot of my magical workings. Maybe it’s because I’m not focused on anything in particular. Ironically, I think this will get easier as I progress, not because of the practice, itself—though that will absolutely help a lot–because shape and object visualization are things I do more often as a part of my visionary practice.

Magic

Coming back to the Sunrise Temple has made it easy to get back into my practice of daily banishing. For the last week I have begun my day with a banishing pentagram and a Qabalistic Cross. Except for today, which got off to a fuckered start when I woke from some fairly disturbing nightmares that pretty much threw off my whole morning game.

I have also been working on designing a few sigils, and researching different methods of designing and launching them. In addition to Liber Null, I have ploughed through most of Frater U.D.’s Practical Sigil Magic, and am delighted to finally have some grasp of AO Spare’s original Alphabet of Desire/Sacred Language. As someone who has dabbled in conlang, and envies the utility of verbs in inflected languages such as Attic Greek and Classical Latin, I’m really, really, really excited to start developing my own personal magical grammar for complex sigils. I have some really interesting ideas about how to combine this technique with Hellenistic curse tablets and my own theories of art as an act of magic that I can’t wait to try out.

I have finally designed, but not actually enchanted, a set of talismans to give to my friends and colleagues by which they may offer me magical aid, or call upon me for the same. Look forward to further reports in that arena, too.

Dreaming

Like meditation, getting back into the habit of keeping a dream journal has been hit-and-miss. I’m still at a point where, often, I literally cannot remember my dreams even moments after waking. And then there’s shit like today, where the imagery is so disturbing that I just can’t bring myself to write it down in the first moments of my day.

Magical dreaming has always eluded me, in part because I am so violently dysfunctional upon first waking, and this is going to be a major area of struggle for me, personally.

* – Where’s that third M come from? “Morpheus”?

In scholarship, witchcraft

Satyr Magos23/08/2012

Closing one project makes way to begin another. The next major project in my cue is a study of Chaos Magick. At Aradia’s suggestion, I have decided to call these experiments Project Null, and tag related blog posts accordingly. (The Squirrel has pointed out to me that this is somewhat grandios and rediculous, to which I could only respond, “Yes. And?”

One of the things I learned during the last experiment was that I needed to set more concrete goals. Here, then, are lists of the sources and resources I am planning to make use of so far. The reading list will grow longer, and I can only ask for your help with this dear readers: who/what else should I be reading? Is Frater U.D. worth my time? Who else was/is iconic and revolutionary in the Chaos Magick movement that I clearly haven’t heard of and simply shouldn’t ignore?

(RE)SOURCES

Carroll, Peter. Liber Null & Psychonaut.

–. Liber Chaos.

Hine, Phil. Condensed Chaos.

Mace, Stephen. Stealing the Fire From Heaven.

Miller, Jason. Strategic Sorcery. Blog.

–. Sorcerer’s Secrets.

Moore, Alan. Promethea.

Morrison, Grant. The Invisibles.

–. The Disinformation Speech.

White, Gordon. Rune Soup. Blog.

ROADMAP AND GOALS

1) Liber Null. I’ve gotta start somewhere, and given the contents of my library and Aradia’s, this seems like the best place. With a little bit of dedication, I should qualify for initiation into the IOT by the time I’m done.

1.1) Liber MMM. Particularly the meditation and the sigils. These experiments will continue throughout the project and hopefully beyond. The first weeks of Project Null will be devoted exclusively to developing a meditation practice—something I’ve never done—and reestablishing my daily banishing practice.

1.1.1) Mind Control. I will begin by setting aside 5 minutes a day for these mindfulness exercises. By the end of the year, I want to be capable of minutes of visualization and/or object concentration for 15 or 20 at a stretch three times a week. This may seem like a low bar. If it turns out to be, I’ll raise it.

1.1.2) Magic: Banishing and Sigils. In terms of banishing, I will continue experimenting with daily banishing rituals until I perfect one for my own purposes. As for sigils, I will begin by firing off at least one shoal of 3-5 sigils every week. I’m a greedy bastard: there’s at least that much I want in the world. (And if I run out of things I want, I can always start working for others.)

1.1.3) Dreaming. This art has eluded me for years. As such I will simply set pursuing it as a goal. In addition to Carroll, I intend to make use of Frater Acher’s recommendations on the subject.

1.2) Liber Lux, Liber Nox. Oh, yeah: y’all know I go both ways. The second and third books of Liber Null are as much theory as practice, and not all of the practice is relevant to me, but I will commit to studying each section and writing about them, and explaining my decisions for those exercises which I choose not to work through. I intend to have completed my first run through Liber Lux and Liber Nox by the end of October.

1.3) Liber AOM. This shit is just whak, and much of it irrelevant as someone working reasonably hard to not die any time in the near future. Still, I’ll spend some time in October and November (assuming I’m on track) exploring these concepts.

2) Psychonaut. As I work my way through Liber Null, it is my intention to simultaneously work through Psychonaut. I have already performed the Mass of Chaos, adapting it to dedicate my Chaos altar. I hope to incorporate the suggestions and contexts provided by Psychonaut to the work of Liber Null. As such, I intend to post musings on the subjects contained therein, as well as develop my own experiments based on them. I aim to complete this stage of the work by the end of November. As with Libri Lux, Nox, and AOM, I will discuss each section, weather it offers me a particular exercise or not.

3. Servitor Creation. The creation and maintenance of servitors is one of the most visible and iconic portions of Chaos Magick. I cannot claim to study the field without at least one experiment in that area. I intend to start with creating a protector-spirit to accompany my house-wards, and to have it “up and running” by the end of November.

4. Analysis and Check-In. By the end of November, I hope to have made it at least halfway through the above reading list, and added at least as many more to the cue. From that position of (relatively) greater knowledge, I intend to have a better idea of how to progress specifically.

5. Lovecraftian Magic. I’ve told you all before about how the first occult book I ever purchased was the “Simon” Necronomicon. For years I’ve been hearing about Chaos magicians performing invocations of Lovecraftian horrors … hell, once upon a time, it was one of the things that kept me from away from Chaos Magick. So … now I want to try it. I don’t know if I’m going to use the Simon or the Donald Tyson version, or play with some weird shit I dig up on the internet. But there will be Eldrich Horrors. And I plan to sick them on some senators.

6. Feminism as Chaos Magick. I first mentioned this project over on G+ and Tumblr. I want the initiatory essay completed by the end of the semester, and have the project in motion by the beginning of the next semester.

CAVEAT

I’m excited about this project. I’ve been looking forward to it since the idea first occurred to me. But I try to be vigilant, and to be wary of my own motivations. And after a certain amount of soul-searching, I have come to the conclusion that while the ceremonial magic project was good for me, it also gave me a rock-solid excuse to let my personal spiritual practice slide.

When was the last time I encountered Dionysus or his messengers in my journeys? I have seen Rhea once in the last year. Even Tsu and ZG don’t show up as often as I’d like. I’ve thought a lot about the potential implications of conjuring my Natal Genius and Demon, but I haven’t done any magic or divination to explore it.

Project Null has the potential to be the same. So to help keep myself honest, I’m going to try to post at least once about my personal practice for every two posts about Project Null, not including posts serving double duty.

INVITATION

Aradia and I intend to work through this project together, scheduling our reports to post simultaneously so as to avoid cross-contamination of our experiments. We cordially invite any interested parties to join in with the Project Null experiment. If any such parties have blogs of your own, we would love to share the #ProjectNull tag with you.

I can be reached through the comments section of this blog, the ask box at my Tumblr, or even my G+ account. Aradia can be reached through her blog.

Although I have already begun working with Liber MMM—banishings, motionlessness, and breathing concentration–the official kickoff for the project is Sunday.

Obviously, there must be some uniformity in order for it to really count as a group project: for this first section, that’s working through Liber Null and Psychonaut. Your own personal goals and interests within that sphere, however, will vary. Maybe you want to shoot for an hour a day of motionless, thoughtless meditation. Aradia has no personal interest in Lovecraftian magic. Some of you (though it breaks my heart to know this) will not care about the Feminism as Chaos Magick project. As we approach the end of November, we can plot our course for the second “half” of the project together.

This is short notice. Whatever. Anyone can joint the project at any time. If you can’t keep up with the pace we set, or if you think everyone else is moving too slow: go at your own speed.