Taylor Ellwood

What's your magical language?

What's your magical language? What terms do you use to describe and define your magical workings? This post is prompted by Mike Sententia's writings about etheric software. What I've recognized is that he's drawn on software programming terminology to help describe his approach to magic. I've seen him draw on some other discourses as well, most notably from the medical community. For that matter I also draw on different terminology that's not traditionally occult oriented to help explain my approaches to magic. Whether its linguistics or culture studies or something else, the different discourses I've had access to influence my explanations about magic to other people, as well as how I construct magical workings.

What disciplines do you draw on? What terminology do you use to explain and define magic, both for yourself, and others? It's a good idea to look at those questions and do some work with them. The language we use can simultaneously open us to possibilities we hadn't considered, even as it also limits us by nature of how it frames our model and application of magic.

One of the reasons I've diversified my reading and exposure to a variety of disciplines is to keep myself open to new ideas and challenge the models I rely on. While a model can provide a useful explanation, it also creates tunnel vision that funnels our acceptance of a given situation into specific lines of inquiry that rule out anything that doesn't fit the model. The terminology we use needs to be carefully examined for not only what it allows us to explains, but also how it can limit our explanations.

Language is powerful, and often times we don't realize how powerful it can truly be. The reason a person can nitpick a definition speaks to the power of language, because a definition defines a person's perception of reality about what its defining. Testing your terminology makes you aware of how it can help you and allows you to critically examine where its failing you.

Book Review: The Wealth Magick Workbook (Affiliate Link) by Dave Lee

This is probably the best book on wealth magic I've found, mainly because the author does such a good job of differentiating between what wealth is and what money is. His approach, consequently shows the shortcomings of enchanting for money without really understanding how that money will apply to your overall sense of wealth. He provides some excellent exercises, which I highly recommend doing. I only wish the wealth section of the book preceded the money magic section, but overall its an excellent book for anyone who wants to do wealth magic.

5 out of 5

Riding the Dragon

It's officially the year of the Dragon, and according to the Chinese Zodiac, it's a Water Dragon Year. I was born in the year of the Dragon and although I am not Chinese, I have always identified heavily with Draconic energy and with the attributes associated with people born in the year of the Dragon. The motto for the Dragon is "I Reign." On Sunday night, I put together a ritual where I invoked the spirit of the Dragon and let it ride my body. My partner Kat witnessed the ritual and ended up speaking with Dragon as well. The initial part of the ritual involved the prep work.

Prep work

I decided that a Green Tea offering and Rice would be appropriate. While that was being made, I also decided I would paint my body, in order to invoke the spirit of the dragon.Here's a picture of the ritual tools: Brushes and Q-tips for the painting as well as Body Paints:

I've always liked using body paints for ritual work. There's something powerful about painting symbols onto your body, as a way to shift your presence into a ritual space. You Embody what you work, even as you create to embody the sacredness of the ritual. First I painted Talons on my legs:

 

 

I chose Blue talons for the Water Element. I then painted the Arm talons in Orange to acknowledge the element of Fire (since I was born in the year of the Fire Dragon).

 

 

 

 

Finally I finished up by painting my chest, stomach and Face with a design that I felt embodied the energy of the Dragon.

 

 

 

After the body paint was applied, the offerings were brought into the ritual room. Additionally a Hot bath was started up with a Green Tea Fizz added in for scent and ambiance. Both the doors of the ritual room and the bath room were closed.

To invoke the Dragon, I first presented the offering to a statue of Dragon. It's a statue of a Western Dragon, but the spirit of Dragon was not offended.

The offering was a bowl of Rice and Green Tea. The bowls there offering was served in actually have enameled blue dragons and phoenixes on them.

I danced, allowing Dragon to take over my movements. At first he was on the floor moving on all fours. but gradually he climbed up until he was on two feet, and then continued to dance with angular movements. He had a low hiss according to Kat. After he'd danced for a bit, he drank some Tea, ate some Rice, and then drank some further Tea. He danced a bit longer. Then he walked to Kat and beckoned her to stand. He placed his mouth against her throat, and breathed into it, from three different directions. Kat said her neck felt different afterwards, that energy had been breathed into it.

Next he spoke with her about my desire to channel the energy of the Dragon for the Year. He told her he knew my desire to channel it toward business prosperity and Creativity for my writing and art. He also told her that it was important for us to continue our ongoing work together as it pertained to finances and love. The momentum of this year would really help with that work. Finally he told her that each week he wanted an offering made to him in the bowls that we'd used that night and once a month he wanted a full invocation/possession ritual. Kat was asked to relay that message to me.

After that he walked to the door of the ritual room. He explained that when he opened the door he would be opening it to financial and relationship success for both of us. After he opened that door, he opened the door to the bathing room, again explaining that he was also opening it to prosperity and creativity for my business and writing/artistic endeavors.

The bath was used to wrap up the invocation. He went into the water, and Kat bathed the body, and afterwards I emerged as the paints were removed. She told me the conditions he'd asked for and I felt them reasonable.

This was a powerful experience for me, both in terms of the ritual itself, and in terms of reclaiming my artistic approach to magic. I haven't used body paints in a long time and my choice to use them was part of my reclaiming and celebrating of my artistry and its place in my magical practice.

Book Review: The War of Art (Affiliate Link) by Stephen Pressfield

This is the kind of book you need to read whether you're an artist, writer, musician, or a business owner. In this book, the author explores the feeling of resistance and how it shows up to impede your work as well as presenting strategies to help you overcome that resistance. He also discusses metaphysical aspects of inspiration. I found his advice useful and to the point. It helped me identify places where resistance had shown up to impede my own work. This book is essential because it provides a different perspective on resistance, while helping you find ways around and through it. Pick it up today!

 

Secrecy and Magic

Mike posted some excellent thoughts about how secrecy destroys knowledge. I agree with him. I've always found the culture of secrecy within the occult to be problematic. I get that, at least as it pertains to magical orders, that the secrets of those orders are maintained to determine who gets into the magical clubhouse and also to demonstrate proficiency in that order. But the dare to be silent aspect of magic has always struck as a form of false modesty, inspired by a desire to posture and smile cryptically, knowing that you are special because you reveal no secrets.

That's a bit exaggerated, but I've never bought into the dare to be silent schtick. Certainly Crowley, one of the proponents of that rule had no problem being anything but silent when it came to his practices. I say dare to be vocal, dare to share your ideas. Dare to share your experiences so others can learn and in turn share their own.

I was reading recently about a scientist in the mid 16th or 17th century. He'd developed this microscope, one of a kind, that provided a level of accuracy that had previously been missing. He wouldn't share the design. He wanted to keep it secret. To this day no one has any idea how he built his microscope. Since then better microscopes have been developed, but what a waste of knowledge, because of need to keep the technology secret.

One of the reasons I write this blog is to share my ideas and current projects. I realize that some reader or another could take the idea and do something with it. I want them to actually. Same for the reason I write my books. Secrecy does destroy knowledge.

What's so special about secrecy anyway? I've never seen the point, which is probably why I never joined a magical order either. It would be too hard for me to keep secrets that, imo, shouldn't be kept. I'd make a bad lodge member.

What's your take on secrecy in the occult?

My altar redone and claimed

Recently Kat and I captured a few wild kittens and tamed them. During that process we allowed them to use my altar as a den of sorts, so for a little while it wasn't an altar so much as home. Now the kitten are relatively tame and enjoy the exploration of our entire home. As such I've reclaimed my altar, but I decided to play with it just a bit. I usually have the chess set arranged in the pre-game pattern but this time I decided to set it up as if a game was already being played. I'm not entirely sure how I'll experiment with this as yet, but I do have some ideas, as it pertains to wealth magic, and even magic for my life. I could associate different pieces with people or events happening in my life (or that I want to happen) and then use the chess board to "play" the possibility field into my favor.

I've added some modeling clays and also a bag of body paints, a reminder of how important art is to my magical workings, and the need to re-integrate it into my work. Now that I'm feeling back to my creative genius, the need to express it is something I'm planning already for a ritual next weekend.

Elephant also has a prominent role on the altar. He has for a while, but I think he'll have an even more active role soon. The Memory box is in its usual space, as our the dual Tarot decks I use in my readings. It's good to have my altar back. It's going to be seeing a lot of activity in the coming months!

Symbols, Archetypes, and Reality in Once Upon a Time

I love the new show Once Upon a Time. It's an intriguing mix of Faerie Tale with Modern world. Hopefully it'll last more than one or two seasons. Perhaps what I love most about is the intersection of symbolism, character archetypes, and reality. In one sense, the show is depicting two alternate lives for each character, and yet in another sense its depicting how people in a small town end up trying to embody and act out faerie tale roles they've been assigned by a child trying to find meaning in his life. You can interpret it a variety of ways I suppose, and that's where I see the show as a kind of magical act/metaphor of reality.

What makes it so evocative is the ability to portray two different realities and while it can be argued that the faerie tale reality is the "past life" of the characters, it's also their future and present, because they are stories constantly retold and relived in the imagination of the people telling them.

At the same time, this show also explores the modern "real" world as a faerie tale world in its own right, something not real, but just as made up and surreal as the faerie tale world...and why not. It makes perfect sense to treat the modern world as just another faerie tale, but what I find so fascinating is how in one degree or another the characters are playing out the themes of their lives, becoming the archetypes or at least trying to as some part of themselves rebels against the curse.

I have no doubt I'll have further analysis of this really fascinating show. I'm admittedly geeking out a bit, but this kind of analysis and research is part of how I create effective pop culture magic workings. The more enthusiasm you invest the more real it becomes, and that's part of what makes pop culture magic viable...Plus in this case it also is combined with my interest in how pop culture reinvent and retells older mythology in modern contexts!

Safety and Magic

This post is prompted in part by Rowan Pendragon's post about Safety in Wicca and in part by the latest episode of Once Upon a Time, where Rumpelstiltskin learns that magic always has a price.  My whole approach to magic is focused on experimentation, which necessarily involves experimenting with magic in ways that aren't necessarily tested or true at the time. There's a bit of risk involved.

I also hold a traditional view of magic, I suppose, in that I think that magic comes with a price. I know its not fashionable to look at magic in that way, but in my experiences there is always a payment. Magic never comes free, nor should it. If you desire a result, you have to put something into attaining it and if you choose to work with an entity, then you need to be prepared to offer something in return.

When I did my ritual where I gave my blood to the elemental spirits in return for some of their power, I wasn't going for a safe version of magic. I was offering something of value, something that had meaning in return for something of equal value from the elemental spirits. I knew I had to offer something of value and the fact that I gave blood, which might be considered scary to some didn't bother me at all.

Magic isn't meant to be sanitized or safe. Truth to tell, spirituality in general isn't meant to be safe or sanitized. It challenges you to grow as a person and puts you in some uncomfortable places. If it doesn't, you're doing it wrong.

Part of the thrill of magic, part of the experience is the willingness to go places where angels fear to walk, where there be dragons and the unknown. What's the point, if you don't challenge yourself?

Multiversal Tone

The hypnotic movement of the music,the sashay that calls for a steady shuffle as you and I move in time we create this altered reality a place of eyes, your eyes staring into mine mine staring into yours Your soul baring its truth to me showing all your possible timelines realities unfolding as you say, "Here I am in all my multiversal glory." You are everything and nothing Your eyes are eight arrowed stars that portray entropy The music swirls, stings, rattles its not just a sound its an experience shaking the very boundaries of the bodies engaged in this dance of robotic, synchronized movements back and forth, back and forth all is bliss, all is bliss Reveal yourself to me and I'll show you a new reality in my own eyes as I unveil my secret self displaying the glories of my true nature the celestial nature of my tone I bring to the universe perfect sound joining other perfect sounds we create this harmony gears in clocks, the ticking of time the movement of space Here we are you and I.

How do you define wealth?

One of the questions I'm asking and answering as I start work on the wealth magic book is how I define wealth. Do I define it as money? The answer is yes and no. I think money is an essential characteristic of wealth, but doesn't solely represent wealth. Actually I'd argue that money can represent wealth, but it can also represent poverty and a whole host of other meanings. Money as a symbol is...quite diverse in meaning.

Wealth, on the other hand, isn't necessarily so diverse, but certainly it can be illusive. What is wealth? What does it really mean to be wealthy? The definition of wealth is something that seems to tease people. And what one person defines as wealth another person disagrees with...not that it really matters. The real question is: Can I embody my definition of wealth in a way that is maintainable?

Speaking from experience, its taken me a while to embody wealth in my life, and maintain it. I'm still learning how to do it, although I seem to be getting better at it each day. Persistence is another ingredient of wealth. You have to be persistent and focused on it, in order to attain it. That's actually true of anything you want in life. If you really want it, you'll find a way (maybe even an A).

Magic is one means toward that end, and when you combine multiple means (like creating multiple income streams) it makes it much easier to achieve the desired result. My own quest toward wealth has focused on using multiple means to that end, and its a continual project, one I enjoy thoroughly. If you don't enjoy it, I advise not seeking it.

My definition of wealth is simple. I love to live by my own rules. Life on my terms is wealth. This isn't to say I'm in control of everything, but rather that I am doing what I love to do, at my leisure, and maintaining and improving it, while also being able to enjoy everything that brings pleasure to me, and allows me to continue to work on the projects I value most. That's my definition of wealth.

What's yours?

A Vision of Tomorrow

Each year I do a cut-up collage, which essentially serves as a magical enchantment for the next year. This particular magical working is inspired by William S. Burroughs, and I always make a point to listen to Burroughs when doing this working. This year's collage was dedicated to Bune as both an evocation of him for Wealth Magic purposes and also as a way of praising and raising attention about him.

At the same time this collage and the other one are magical workings for my businesses, or vision boards if you like. I'm in the process of rebranding for my main business, as well as working on the social media presence for Immanion Press, and I'm even doing some refining of magical experiments. It's a lot of work, but its also a lot of fun.

How this works is twofold. Your scissors is the tool of cutting. You cut any previosu meanings away when you cut the words and images out. Then when you put the collage together, you glue your meanings into the words and images, imprinting them with your desires. The glue is the imprint of meaning on the blank void of paper, bringing meaning with image and word to create an enchantment (or evocation) of the desired reality. You can fire the enchantment off a variety of ways, whether its via sex magic, or using your creativity as the firing mechanism, or showing it in a public space, with people sharing it as the firing mechanism.

 

Pre-makes: an example of retro pop culture

I've started doing some research for my new Pop Culture Magic book. Bill Whitcomb recently told me about Pre-makes, which are little video previews of current movies remade as if they had originally been shot in the early fifties. The one above is a pre-make version of Ghostbusters. Aside from the charming use of older footage, these premakes grabbed my attention because of how it combined retro pop culture with modern versions of pop culture.

I think, with the right video skills, it'd be easy to make any of these premakes into an audio-visual enchantment or evocation of some kind that could be charged by the views, and even social media activity that people created around the videos. You could even set it up that every time the video was shared it was fired again. These kinds of videos can provide an infinite variety of opportunities for the enterprising magician who has time and expertise in making them.

Looking at this video, what I was most struck by, however, was how the person who created it was able to take themes from a later movie and apply them to a collage of images from older movies and "re-make" the story or at least a trailer of the story. It illustrates how themes can be re-appropriated into different media, and also how no story is so original that there isn't some basis for it in the past.

What do you think?

The requisite new year post

It's 2012. When you look back on 2011, you might be thinking of everything you accomplished or everything you didn't do. Maybe you're also thinking of new year resolutions or how you'll do what you didn't get to in 2012.

Stop. Just stop for a moment. Those are all such automatic thoughts, such cultural promptings that its worthwhile to consider a different tact and step out of the automatic grind that is New Years.

Every day of the year signals a new year that is starting, because one year ago that day started and ended. But we only think of the new year a couple times out of the year. We think of it in January and you might think of it also around your birthday or around Samhain, if that's your thing, but in general people don't consider that a year can end on any day, and begin on any other day. It's all arbitrary.

So 2012 is here. What has really changed from yesterday or the day before? Nothing but numbers. Nothing but an arbitrary measurement of what time it is. Take that new year fervor you feel, that burning passion that you will make changes and ask yourself: "How can I sustain this each day of the year, every year, so I actually make the changes I want to make?"

Each day provides you an opportunity to change, to make a difference in your life or someone else's. Sustaining the momentum is what the real challenge is. People start out with resolutions and then they are ground away. Nothing feels new, everything lacks a certain luster. Sound familiar?

If you want a new you...if you want to keep those resolutions, develop a long term sustainable plan that you can hold yourself to, and if possible get some help with accountability by partnering up with someone else who wants to make changes.

Successful long term magical work is based on a systematic approach to what you are working on. Thus, for example, I have my year long elemental balancing rituals, which serve to focus my internal work on specific themes that I can use to measure my change or lack thereof over the course of the year.

I'm developing an online correspondence course for people who want to learn my approach to magic. It seem to be quite the rage right now...actually I think its been that way for a while. What sustains my approach to this particular project is the idea that once its completed, it'll be very easy to add changes onto it, while providing anyone who takes it a chance to experiment with my approach to magic. But the only way such a program will work is if the people taking the class actually have a sustainable model for integrating what they are learning into their daily lives.

It's 2012. What will you do to develop a sustainable process that you can use to create effective change in your life and maintain that change?

Latest Radio Interview

Here's the archived version of the recent interview I did about my new book Magical Identity with Justin from Sothis Media. If you didn't get to listen to interview, or just want to listen to it again, click this link!

Book Review Self Comes to Mind by Antonio Damasio

This is an interesting book that presents what I'd consider to be an ontological perspective on neuroscience, identity, and consciousness. The author presents some intriguing ideas about the intersection of these concepts, particularly where consciousness originates from. I'd highly recommend this book as one that will get you to think about your brain and body in a new way, as well as provide new perspectives on what self is and where consciousness fits into it all.

Social Media Magic

I'm debating right now what my next book will be about, but I've already got some good ideas percolating. No it won't be social media magic...though that could be the name of a chapter.

Anyway, I've been playing around with my Facebook Timeline, adding some events to points in the past, mainly where I moved to and where I've lived. I wish they would let you create future events on your timeline, but it doesn't look like they do. However the possibilities of using an FB timeline for a bit of retroactive magic does excite me, especially when you can add pictures and videos to a specific date in time. You can graphically rewrite your timeline and make it into a very creative experience.

For example I've added several fiction events to my timeline. I've done it for the sheer humor of it, but there's nothing to say that you couldn't go in and rewrite portions of your life with modified details, and use that as a kind of narrative that also retroactively rewrites your life. And if you can get people into participating with you via tagging, you can even come up with some clever meta events.

It's really about having fun, but also getting creative with your life. Changing what happened on the timeline might open up some possibilities for you, or if nothing else give you closure on events in your life. It's something I'll keep playing with, as much for whimsy as for any magical purpose. The time line is a graphic and textual narrative of your life. It can represent where you've been, who you've met, what you've done...and it can part fact and part fiction. FB probably wants it to be all fact, but why make it all fact?

What about you? How would you experiment with the Facebook timeline?

Archetypal actions

I've been watching Nikita lately, which is the newest rendition of La Femme Nikita. In one of the episodes, the actress playing Nikita does the famous action of diving into the laundry chute to avoid being incinerated by the missile. You know the action I'm talking about. It's the action that occurred in both movies and likely occurred in the other La Femme Nikita series as well. It's what I call an archetypal action, an action that defines and embodies the archetype or character. It makes you think of all the iterations of that character. It brings that character to life for you.

If you're an actor, or a magician doing that action can also make for an effective invocation, though I'd recommend against diving down chutes to avoid being incinerated. My point being however that if you look at pop culture and mythology in general you will likely find specific actions or activities that a given character, god, etc did and those actions are part of the archetypal consciousness of that being. You may even find that there are actions that repeat across different cultures, with the result being that the action taps into something deeper than the faces that happen to display the action. You tap into the essence of the archetype, something faceless, that nonetheless represents what it is you want access to. An archetype isn't just the face, after all...it's the actions that embody the concept.

Part of my work with identity has involved using space and movement to shift identity. Archetypal actions can be a part of that work, particularly when you want to invoke a spirit by embodying it. Actions allow the spirit to take over, to possess and become part of your experience even as you enter into its experience. I've done such actions in my work with Elephant and Dragon for example, but also with various characters I've worked with. By mimicking the movements and actions, a person invites a different body awareness, and can use that awareness to call to the entity of choice that s/he wants to work with.

 

Spatial Dynamics and Magic

Space is one of those elements that continues to fascinate me, especially when I look at how people use space to situate and express their own identity. I came to this perspective through the anthropological of Edward T. Hall and Alexander Laban's perspectives on space and movement. The occupation of space whether with objects or with politics or spirituality. The application of space in a person's sense of identity via home, work, car, etc. Now apply this to magic. Magic is about changing a space. It changes a space by turning possibility into reality. Space changes, becomes a different space when a possibility is brought into reality. Space is changed by time, with the understanding that time is what brings possibility into reality, while space provides the necessary anchor for reality to exist in.

A person is his/her own space. Space acts on space and in turn is acted on by space. The person expresses his/her space in the external space, but that same space also shapes the person's identity. When a person performs an act of magic s/her is inviting in both time, and specific defined spaces to modify the current space s/he inhabits, both in terms of identity, and in terms of circumstances the person is in.

 

Tarot Readings and spontaneous spreads

 

I was doing dual deck tarot readings at the local yule fair last week and what stood out to me was how people would create their own spreads, which didn't necessarily look like anything I'd create, but nonetheless made perfect sense for those people. What I liked about that realization is that it proves that fixed spreads are not a necessary part of Tarot reading. In fact, I'd argue that the spontaneous creation of new spreads made the reading more effective because the layout of the cards demonstrated the mental "space" of the person, and how the different cards were situated in that space.

Space, mental and physical, is part of how a person defines his/her identity. The manipulation of space via placement of objects is part of that identification process and it can tell a lot about what obstacles a person is encountered. A spread that is chaotic with elements all over the place still has an order to it, even if its an order that only the person who created the spread understands. A reading I recently did initially looked very chaotic. It took asking some questions to really get to the central issue, but once those questions were asked the spread made complete sense and fit the issue rather well.

What makes this approach dynamic however is that if you use a tarot reading as an act of enchantment, you can make the person's ability to change the spread, to reorganize it an essential part of the reading. In other words, the person changes the spatial identity s/he inhabits by changing how the cards are spatially organized, as well as how s/he understands the underlying message of the card. The result is a different reading, one that plots how the person will make changes to the existing pattern in order to resolve whatever issues are represented.

Here's a podcast episode where I talk about some of my initial experiments with Tarot.

An update on My New Book, Magical Identity

 

Here's a picture of the cover, done by Kat Lunoe. Doesn't it look great? Magical Identity is currently being edited. I had to switch editors, which pushed the book release date back to March of 2012. However I'm not presenting at Pantheacon this year, so it actually works out that the book will be out a bit later. It gives me time to finish revisions and add in some more content that I've developed since I finished the first draft.

I'm reading the very last book I need to read for research. I've actually taken a little break from it, because I've spent the last couple months reading books I'd found out about that could be relevant to the book. All that reading reminds me of graduate school, where I'd literally spend up to 12 hours reading (they'd have preferred 16 but I believed in having fun time...it's not an approved academic activity however).

I'm really excited about almost having this book done. I'll be doing radio interviews soon about it and just knowing that finally, after so many years I've got another book on magic coming out...That has me pumped.It might be the last book for a little while as well. I have ideas for other books, but I'm very much at a pre-research phase with those books. However, I think Magical Identity will be my best book yet, especially because it deals with themes of space and time as well as neuroscience.

Changing your Identity by Shifting your Balance

Every year I do an elemental balancing ritual. The purpose of this ritual is to create balance in my life by working on aspects of myself that need to be balanced. Really what I'm doing it changing my overall identity by shifting the balance using an intensive working to generate a specific direction for my internal work. I think its worked well to help me make conscious changes to who I am in a positive manner. Internal work isn't something that can be done in one moment. It takes dedication and focus. I figure that by shifting my balance using elemental energy each year, I can actually put dedicated time into internal work that focuses on particular themes I need to work on. I put a year's time into each elemental theme and a years work does provide enough time to make substantive changes to a person's identity. It's not easy work, but it is work that makes your life easier.

Shifting your identity, your state of being, if you will, necessarily changes the relationships that you are in. I've had friendships fall away, a marriage end, and and started new relationships in large part because of the elemental balance work I've done. Shifting your identity also shifts the connections you have with people. You have to decide if that is worth it. I think it is worth it, because even though some relationships have changed, what has changed even more, on a fundamental level is my relationship with myself and how I live in the world. And I find the changes to be satisfying. I like who I am as a result of doing the work.

I've always said that you can't please everyone and I mention that because when you engage in internal work you necessarily have to accept that the changes you make won't please everyone. That's part of the price of doing internal work. You confront who you are, you make changes to your identity and those changes manifest in how you interact with the world.

Changing your balance changes your place in the universe and your awareness of that place. You start asking hard questions of yourself and others and you look at what you can change and you make those changes because you want to shift your balance, want to shift to a new place. That's what internal work does. It spurs you on, pushes you to make changes, demands the best from you, refines you alchemically, and when you do all of that the result is a changed person, someone different from before. And everything that doesn't fit, falls away.

 

Book Review: On Desire (Affiliate Link) by William Irvine

On Desire is a fascinating book that looks at how we interact with desire. The author comes off as a little prudish, advocating more of an approach of ignoring desires, but even with that tone, the book provides a look at what desire is, what the neurological basis of it is, as well as how different cultures and communities deal with desire. I would have liked to have seen exercises in this book from the author. It is more of a philosophical treatise than anything else, but still worth a read.

Elemental Fire Month 1

10-22-2011 I've been staying very mindful of the element of fire in my life. I attended a divination party tonight, where you could offer readings or get readings. I did five readings for different people and told them about the magical experimenters meeting. And while doing their readings, while talking with them, I had a sense of seeking, a sense of fire as seeking, discovering, but also a sense of fire as a qualifier. Intuitively I knew that the people that needed the invitation would follow up on it because it was the right invitation for them and they'd fit the group as well. 10-25-2011 The last few days has involved a dialogue between Dragon and myself about Fire, passion, and consumption. What stands out most is the focus on fire as a metaphor for passion and why that's not such a good thing. Dragon points out that fire ultimately consumes, and if passion is fire, than its more about consumption than anything else. If fire is a metaphor for passion, there can be danger in that metaphor, in terms of how people approach passion. And I think he's right. My experiences with passion, in part, has been more about trying to experience a sensation that I might think of as fire, but in the process I've gotten burned a lot, because it's not something which is sustainable. Dragon pointed out that fires eventually consume themselves, until there's nothing left to give...Some interesting thoughts come to mind about American Culture and its focus on consumption. What does that teach us, about ourselves, others etc? Is it all something to be consumed, or can we really experience it?

10-31-2011 Fire just is. The association of doing and activity is meaning attributed to fire, but dragon asked me what it would be like to just contemplate fire as it is, instead of contemplating fire as doing something.

11-07-11 Dragon brought up something that really grabbed my attention. He said what a person fixates on or desires or obsesses over can burn him/her and the people in his/her life, because f how it consumes them. But if a person can consume and let go of what s/he desires, then it no longer takes up his/her energy in quite the same way. Now this is nothing new...you find this advice in meditation, but looking at it from the perspective of fire, and consuming something so it turns to smoke and then is wafted away...that's what grabbed my attention. And I have to admit that I'm in this process of consuming instead of being consumed. Not an easy process, but it is freeing up a lot of energy.

11-16-11 I haven't been as good about updating this entry as I'd like, but a lot's happened. Kat and I noticed that the stray black cat that lives near our house had kittens. It's getting really cold out, and this summer we'd actually found a dead kitten. It was pretty upsetting. So we decided to catch the mama cat (to neuter it) and catch the kittens as well. We managed to catch two of the kittens. The other one is gone, may be dead or alive, and the mama cat hasn't shown up lately. I took the trap back today, but I'll deploy it if she comes back. What does all this have to do with fire?

Dragon brought up a very important point. When you create a spark, you are responsible for nurturing it and using it wisely. When I think about the mama cat, I remember that my ex-wife chose to feed her. I don't know if it would've stuck around anyway, but I do know that feeding it encouraged it to stay in the neighborhood. I realized that I should've tried to catch that mama cat much earlier than now. More importantly, in catching these two kittens I felt that I had chosen to take on the responsibility of doing something with them. The animal control shelter told me if they weren't tame enough, they'd be euthanized, and that they might be euthanized anyway because of how many cats they have. There's no way I'd let two cats be euthanized simply because they'd been caught. I've learned about another place, the Cat Adoption Team, where they don't euthanize cats, but we have had these kittens for a week and we've all gotten attached to them. They seem to feel the same. And the point here is this: You always have a responsibility to see through what you take on. I've taken on those two kittens. They're part of my responsibility, that spark of life I've nurtured by capturing them and taming them.

11-18-2011 Sometimes I wonder if I've left my passion for all things occult somewhere else. Actually I sometimes wonder if I've left my passion for lots of things somewhere else. And I guess that's a reason I'm doing this work with the element of fire. I want to get in touch with that passion, and yet ironically I think I am in touch with that passion...it's just a slow process of rekindling it. I let it get banked by personal circumstances, by my choices to try and make myself into something I wasn't. Never again. Never again will I give my fire, my passion, my intensity away or push it down. That kind of give away can hurt you so much and it hurts your creativity as much as it hurts in other ways. I feel like my creativity is finally coming back because my passion has a safe place to be.

11-21-11 There is nothing worse than feeling that you failed yourself or someone else. And yet failure prompts growth and change. It forces you to reassess what's truly important and then claim that importance through the actions you take to bring change to your life. The ashes of defeat are also the loam that prompts growth. What you hold dearest can fall away in a moment and yet when it falls away it reveals who you are through how you respond. Do you rail against it? Do you accept it and learn from it? Do you burn yourself or do you warm yourself? It's a fine balance to walk. I choose to cultivate a warm fire instead of a vengeful fire. Where that takes me as a result is hopefully to a better place in my healing as well as in my passion.

 

What makes effective experimentation in magic

When I think about effective experimentation in magic, I think that its essential to have a group of people who are willing to test your experiment. These people don't even need to know each other, but they need to be people who are willing  to give your experiment a try and provide honest feedback. Anyone can come up with an idea, and an idea can even be developed into a process that the person extensively works on and fine tunes. But until that person has shared the the process with other people, so that they can test it, its fair to say it's not an effective experiment. Effective experimentation calls for feedback and input from other people that aren't familiar with the technique and are willing to test it with the appropriate balance of skepticism and open mindedness that is needed for effective experimentation. As an example, when I experimented with a technique to contact neurotransmitters, I knew that to truly test its effectiveness, I needed to find other people who could verify if the technique worked. I ended up having a variety of people experiment with the technique. Some were from the U.K. and some were from the states, so they didn't all know each other. The consistent results that they achieved was what verified the technique and made an effective experiment.

You also need to be able to explain how your process works, so that other people can duplicate it. If a reader just gets lots of vague theories about how it works, but there isn't any practical instructions then what you have is more of an armchair approach to magic. Sounds great in theory, but can I implement it?

Perhaps what is most vital to effective experimentation is curiosity. You have to be curious and open to exploring what's around you. My curiosity is what has motivated my exploration of magic. I've always wanted to know what the real limits of magic are, as well as what my limits are. So if I can test something out, I will, in order to see what I can do, but then I'll bring it to other people and ask them to test it, to see what they can do. Naturally the people I look for are curious as well.

Effective experimentation is about developing a consistent process that can be done again and again and again, with the achievement of consistent results. Its as simple as that, and yet that simplicity demands careful attention to detail, to ensure your process does work.

 

image and reality

I always find it fascinating to study people considered famous within a given subculture. I wonder what makes them famous, what makes people want to follow after them, what is the glamour that draws them so? And yet I know what it is. It's an ability to create an image that glosses over the reality. That probably sounds cynical, but there's an element of truth to it as well. Do we really know anything about that actor, singer, or author, beyond what the tabloids gossip about or the marketing facade that is built by the person?There's a false kind of intimacy that is created with marketing. We look at pictures of this person, look at how the person portrays this rosy kind of image that is merely a gilded picture, and yet is so captivating because the person has spun a glamour that doesn't even hint at the realities underlying the gilded picture.

I've never really bought into the glamour. Maybe it's because I'm an occult author. Maybe it's because I've actually made it a point to talk with people as myself, instead of trying to trade off on the fact that I've written books. I remember one time a person said to me that he was amazed I'd spend time talking with him, because I was an author. I told him that writing was something I did, but that it didn't define my reality or how I would treat him. That's always been my approach. I don't want people to fall in love with an image, or buy into some presentation. If you want to get to know me, then get to know me for who I am, warts and all.

At the same time, from a magical perspective, there's a lot to be learned from such glamour tactics. Knowing how to present only what you want people to see can be quite useful in job interviews, as well as in other situations that call for a different appearance beyond what is usually present. Of course you run the risk that if people see through it or discover that you weren't authentic, they may feel deceived or betrayed.

There is something to be said for being humble enough to be honest. And there is a strength in that reality, magically and mundanely that goes beyond any glamour that is put together. It's when we can take the mask off, step outside of the illusion that we then discover the reality behind the image.