Barbelith Advice part last

To review from last week’s posting,

1. Have goals in your writing and life
2. Study literary conventions to help increase the symbolic power of your hypersigil
3. Study cognitive psychology to get an understanding of how cognition and narration interact
4. Do preparatory work: find your influences, bind your demons, etc, before you start your hypersigil
5. Focus on a realistic fiction suit rather than an impractical fantasy suit
6. Focus on your negative aspects, your demons, and personify them as your enemies
7. Focus on your positive aspects and summarize them into your hero
8. Work your writing into smaller steps of accomplishment
9. Expect consequences and imbalance in your life at each stage

Today I’m finishing off a review of advice from Barbelith.

RiffRaff advices

Don't use generic characters,

I’m not quite sure what generic characters mean. Perhaps he means stock characters, don’t use stock characters, instead using characters based upon people important in the life of the hypersigil writer or perhaps focusing on characters that the writer wants to meet. The characters have to have some type of personal meaning or motive.

and don't do bad things to characters based in any way on yourself or people you like.

Another point of contemplation: magic is continuously about self-destruction, it seems. Grant Morrison’s experience with his King Mob torture scene related illness is an example of what can go wrong in writing a hypersigil. The Shamanic illness, whereby a magician is torn apart and reconstructed and enhanced is a traditional theme of magic. Stories themselves are based upon conflict so bad things happening to the hero is almost impossible to avoid. A good writer should do the worst to the hero, kill and destroy everything he loves!

However, looking at my own writing and the Mary Sue writing of many beginning authors, I can see that some writing is psychoanalytically self-destructive. This self-destruct may be a defense mechanism within the writer that will only come out during the writing process.

How then does one promote conflict but not self-destruction?

If you must write a greek tragedy, base the hero on someone you hate.

I had never thought about that. I tend to get obsessed with ex-boyfriends and write stories about them. A friend asked me recently if I have every cursed anyone. Even though I am a volatile, spiteful, vengeful person, I’ve never focused my magic to hurt anyone. The thought simply isn’t there. I’m more concerned with destroying myself or improving myself rather than hurting other. Hmmn, some insight there about me.

You could also, perhaps, create servitors of recurring characters, and then whatever you write about would be directed at the servitor instead of yourself or whoever the character was based on.

Self-destructive hypersigils directed at a fake fiction suit does seem interesting. It is the classic scapegoat, sin-eater style of magic. This is something I will need to mope on, but since stories often have a rival to the hero, and since all characters in a story are reflections of the unconscious of the writer or main character, a good scapegoat in a hypersigil story might be a rival or enemy.

Mordant Carnival refers to the Nine Muses

I'm thinking of chumming up to one or other of the Nine Muses on this- not sure which one though. Calliope, maybe. (Although... how epic do I really want my life to get?)

As mentioned before, becoming aware and attuned with godforms of communication is an important step of magic. In addition to Thoth, Mercury/Hermes, and Odin, the Nine Muses of classical mythology can act as inspirational figures. The Nine Muses and their reflective spheres of influence are:

1. Calliope: muse of epic poetry
2. Clio: muse of history
3. Erato: muse of love poetry
4. Euterpe: muse of music
5. Melpomene: muse of tragedy
6. Polyhymnia: muse of sacred song
7. Terpsichore: muse of dance
8. Thalia: muse of comedy
9. Urania: muse of astronomy

In addition, other figures like Orpheus or Morpheus may be added to the list of magical godforms.

Next week, hopefully, I start going over the basics behind sigils themselves. Start from the bottom and work our way up.