When do we want it? We want it now! Instantaneous gratification is the key to bargaining power and shopper fulfillment. Why should magick be different?
The past month some of my magick spells have born fruit: two old flames from years ago (literally years) contacted me out of the blue. The one I eventually had to reject, guilt-ridden because I wanted him so much, but this love's demise told me how to handle the second.
I became interested today in tying up other loose ends, lovers that I never really pursued to a satisfying end. Of course, sifting through the ashes of the past never works and only ends up with heartache, but unconsummated lustful misery is the artist's muse.
I contacted an old lover who popped into my head just to see how he was doing and right now, I'm still waiting to hear back from him. It's only been a few hours and my heart is breaking. I want to hear from him NOW!
Magick works best when the magician casts his spell and then forgets about the results. Lingering over a spell is excrutiating and counter-productive like watching water boil or a garden grow. Let the magick do its job. Don't interrupt its job by looking over its shoulder.
The minute you forget about something, the more likely it is to happen, but the reality is that when you want something badly, it's next to impossible to forget about it.
This is called lust for results.
How do we deal with lust for results and let the magick work?
My first negative kvetching is to give a middle finger to all of the magicians out there that tell us not to lust for results but never tell us how not to do that.
The first advice that I was given was simply to be involved in multiple projects at once. When creating sigils, create a lot at once so that after creating one sigil, you create another to distract you from the lust for results.
This doesn't always work for me because I often find myself just stuck in a mental loop trying to figure things out about a particular topic. I know I have other thoughts to think, more important thoughts, but I just need to figure this out before I can move on.
I've also seen references to quantum probability shit. When casting spells, increasing the probability of the results working is important. I've worked with probability management with great effect but also find myself in tired moments, too exhausted to manipulate probability. Trained as a teacher, I know the value of a lesson plan but I also know the value of spontaneity. I must ask, when results occur, do they occur because they were going to occur anyhow or do they occur because of probability management? Putting hours into a lesson plan is often inefficient because of the probability of changing variables and static thinking. Do I have to plan for three months every time I want something?
I think often of Schrodinger's Cat on bad days. Some days I won't open an e-mail just because it's a bad day. If I check my e-mail tomorrow, any bad messages will suddenly be good ones.
Lust for results is greatly created by the limitation of options. One thing has to happen and if it doesn't, then the entire foundation of your plans comes crumbling down. What other options are involved? Lust for results can be managed by immediately instituting back up plans, both to relieve anxiety or to keep the momentum moving.
Neuro-linguistic programming also gives advice on how to reframe experiences from negative anxiety to positive movement. With Reframing, the magician makes the best of a situation, looking at the positive results rather than focusing on the negatives. If a relationship doesn't happen, it was for the best. But I hate that shit: how about, I want it even if it destroys me. Rationalization is a hollow life.
I've been advised that lust for results is also a corruption of a magician's ethos. Magician's should work on some type of spiritual level and lust for results is the result of selfish application of magick. This selfish desire corrupts the intent. If you use magick for sex, you risk running into psychic vampirism.
The one flame I rejected I rejected because of the negative energy he was projecting into my life. It made a relationship impossible because I had to control his controling behavior. With my second flame, instead of controling, I simply fed his ego and then let him go, praised the poetry he wanted to show me instead of critiquing it (and it wasn't very good poetry) and then let go of the relationship rather than bringing the moment to a crisis crossroad.
I've been told not to rescue people but that doesn't mean not re-vitalize their faltering energy (as long as it doesn't lead to vampirism).
Lust for results is lust, one of the seven deadly sins. I don't believe in that Catholic gult trip shit but I do acknowledge how people can go astray.
By lusting for results, we end of projecting our own mental states onto external objects. Even positive projections are dangerous: projecting a virginal illusion on a whore is just as clouding as secretly fearing and despising someone as an enemy who has no ill intentions towards you. Lust for results becomes a form of fixation in which we become attached to objects for thir value but this attachment becomes a ball and chain.
How then can the results be reframed to give energy rather than taking it? Once the lust is reframed, the results become less vital because you are giving something rather than taking.
The magician must practice at every opportunity, at times indiscriminately spreading his energy instead of focusing on the final outcome of one focused task. I'm not saying not have any focused tasks but rather to maintain your lifestyle in a way that random and focused tasks are one and the same. Improve the quality of other people's lives rather than selfishly magicking for a quick lay. Develop a stable and constant energy source rather than lust in flux.
In lusting for results, we often miss the magic that is happening around us and set up our own downfalls.
Four years it took to get a hot guy to e-mail me. Of those four years, our interaction was only for a few months, but it set up a seed that bore fruit years later. And of course, I threw it away.
It happens.
Cast your magick.
Don't test the waters.
Don't worry about what will happen. I mean, you're using magick which is pretty stupid: do you think that wishing will give you what you want? So why are you disappointed when wishing doesn't work? Magick is just an x-factor: don't put your faith in witch doctors, just learn to believe in magick and then see a real doctor.
Don't feel like a failure if it didn't work. We learn by failure and often we may surprise ourselves by counting our successes as failures. We succeed when we think we fail. That's why I always say, don't burn bridges. I had this one guy call me a slut and then months later come back and tell me what a positive influence I had on his life.
My midnight deadline is almost here so I'm going to check my e-mail to see if that guy has e-mailed me back yet and then plan for tomorrow.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Quit's Taxonomy of Magical Training
A friend of mine asked my recommendation on getting started with practicing magic. The first thought that came to mind was in recollection of an educational tool known as Bloom’s taxonomy.
Bloom’s taxonomy structuralizes learning into eight levels, the highest of the levels the most difficult level of competent thought. This taxonomy isn’t rigid and more or less just a general overview of the difficulty of certain types of thought processes.
My own taxonomy isn’t meant to be anything spectacular but rather a general overview of how to initiate one’s self into a study of magic.
Knowledge: A magician should
a) first learn about basic system of magic, at least the existence of these basic systems. The general level of study should be to learn what magical beliefs are out there, so that if someone mentions Discordianism, you can say, oh, yeah, I’ve heard of that. The goal here isn’t to know everything about all magic but to be exposed to a basic acknowledgment of what is out there. You want breadth over depth.
Make a list of at least two dozen magical concepts to help develop your basic knowledge. Take your list and summarize each magical concept on you’re a) list into one sentence like you were pitching a movie concept.
b) After acknowledgement should be introspection and decisions on different magical paradigms. This is pretty much Wikipedia research, browsing through the breadth of magical topics to get a better understanding of them. At this point you are looking for familiarity, not necessarily depth, but a deeper understanding of important magical principles. You are also looking for what interests you to focus on deeper knowledge.
Take your a) list and develop each summary with greater detail, at least 100 – 300 words per list item.
c) Penultimately, you want to focus on particular areas of knowledge. This is the second to last level of knowledge because at this level there are certain areas of magical theory that you should at least develop a deep understanding. My recommendations would be Western Astrology, Tarot, Chaos magick, and possibly Shamanism and Kabbalah, along with an understanding of the Hero’s myth and important mythologies. You can add in your own interests as well. You should take the time to read important magical texts, including the works of Joseph Campbell, Aleister Crowley, William Frazier, and others as selected by your research.
d) Generally, the ultimate step of the knowledge level would be the equivalent of dissertation work: an extensive in-depth study of a particular area of magic. I don’t agree with this. As Robert Anton Wilson commented, specialization is for insects. Magical paradigms are useful only in their ability to be effective, so your chosen path of magical pursuit should be malleable and fluid, changing as necessary to fit your needs. You use a screwdriver for a screw, a hammer for a nail.
Knowledge should be constantly updating and will snowball and adapt as your improve your Knowledge. In making my lists, I dropped some concepts, changed others (affirmation magick into Neuro-Linguistic Programming), and added new concepts (Thanatology).
Reception and Perception: The magician must be willing to open herself up to the universal phenomena of magic. Part of this experience is belief but part of this is also non-belief. Too much belief creates a naïve fool; too little belief creates a hopeless dreamer.
The active steps of the reception stage must be practiced because they are not inherent in many individuals. A magician must learn to listen to others with respect even if initially disagreeing with the speaker’s statements. This active listening also means paying respect to others, remembering important details as if they were a lover. How can one know the universe if he can’t even remember his mother-in-law’s birthday?
Part of reception also means being open to communication from non-human means. Dreams, synchronicities, and symbols are all messages from the universe that the magician must learn to pay attention to. The devil is in the details.
A magician should keep an active log of any synchronicities or unusual events.
This log should also include artistic sensory details that impress the magician.
Lastly, this log should function as a dream diary.
Working back to knowledge, the magician is responsible for understanding basic semiotics and dream interpretation. Dream interpretation, psychological archetypes, mystic symbols and the like should be intimately known.
Similarly, human communication involves a variety of often ignored values. Communication is typically associated with the air signs of Libra, Aquarius, and Gemini. These signs focus on socialization, verbal expression, artifactual communication (clothing-based), and storytelling. However, water signs rule non-verbal communication, particularly body language, while fire signs master anti-social forms of communication (force and politics). Both of these elements communicate in alternate ways. Technically, although water signs are non-verbal communicators known for their secrecy and passive-aggression, 70% of communication is non-verbal. Considering differences in communication styles, understanding the taxonomy of communication is important.
Consider creating a section of your magical journal specifically for communication skills, including research on non-verbal communication, political theory, and “social skills.” The Sixth Sense and the works of HP Lovecraft are good sources on magical communication.
Comprehension: Similar to Knowledge, Comprehension involves not only an understanding of magic but rather a personal understanding and relationship with magic.
My goals in studying magic are partly intellectual, me wanting to have a greater understanding of my role in the universe or how to conduct my life. Magic is part philosophy and part practice. The philosophical parts are designed to set up the magician with a proper mindset in order to work the magic. Magic is not for everyone.
When you c) above, you are looking for magical paradigms that help you understand yourself existentially. We often call these epiphanies, sudden insights into who you are and what you are supposed to do. For example, I got into astrology after a horribly traumatic relationship which I could not explain or come to terms with through any mundane means. Looking at his sign (Aries/Taurus cusp) and my sign (Cancer/Leo cusp), I immediately saw reflections of both him and me. I understood what happened in our relationship! On my third reading of Joseph Campbell’s Hero of 1000 Faces, I finally understood the hero’s journey and mythology as a psychological metaphor for the individual’s journey in life. There’s a psychology behind mythology that I could apply to my personal life. Studying Chaos magick showed me how my sense of self is an illusion, fragmented and mutable; my beliefs, my identity are tools to be changed according to circumstances and my desires. You use a screwdriver for a screw, a hammer for a nail. Aleister Crowley’s metaphor of the imaginary mongoose in itself was an indescribable epiphany which I am still trying to reconcile.
At the Comprehension level, take the time to make connection between what you have studied in the Knowledge level to your own personal life. Too many religions and belief systems force beliefs on the individual that are not compatible with the individual’s life, or human existence at all. Magic is about your life.
Write down any epiphanies that you might have during your lower level exploration of magic. Seek out epiphanies by writing about any connection between your magical Knowledge and your personal life. Consider this an autobiography of the magical you. For example, in Knowledge c) you explored Astrology, Tarot, Chaos magick, mythology, and other systems. Consider, for example, writing about your personal experience with different zodiac sign personalities and specific people in your life and the psychology of their signs. Ask yourself, how exactly does tarot play a role in your life. Do you use it just to tell the future or does the archetype semiotics have any greater meaning? What gods are important in your life, present or missing? How might you connect yourself better with the divine? If you’re interested in Shamanism, do you live near the wilderness or are you stuck in the city? Is there such thing as urban Shamanism? Etc…
As part of Comprehension, you might also want to balance personal and professional knowledge. Ask yourself: is the information you put together in earlier research actually researched information or simply philosophical musings? If you are contemplating black magic, are you simply rambling self-centered philosophies or embarking upon a valid authoritative authentic Thanatological study? BS or knowledge?
Response, Adjustment, and Set: I grouped these three ideas together because of their similarity. At the response stage, the magician begins to respond to received and perceived stimulus.
Instead of passively taking in information, the magician interacts with external stimuli making changes in the environment. Part of the RAS stage is to begin anticipating reception and perception. For example, a magician who is engaging in reception of synchronicities should begin noting patterns and scheduling of synchronicities; RAS anticipates these opportunities by noticing patterns even in chaotic events.
Part of RAS, however, is to anticipate and respond to events.
For example, the duration of my sigils rarely extends beyond three days. If I cast a spell on a Sunday, by Wednesday, the magic begins to wear off. In response, I had to re-organize my sigils into three day patterns, for example, sigiling for success in a new work out plan focused on a three day work out plan anticipating the wearing down of the sigil and instituting a “recovery sigil” afterwards.
I have also noticed a particular pattern in my occupations: I generally change jobs every 18 months or at least a threatening presence occurs within a predictable period. Last year, when I had become settled into a job, I felt the 18 month threat approaching and was able to nip it in the bud, i.e., lie through my teeth and get someone else fired in my place.
Similarly, if you are studying astrology, a predictive understanding of zodiac psychology is important. A magician can spend a lifetime studying the behavioral patterns of a particular sign but these behavioral patterns must eventually be applied. For example, if you are dating a Cancer, you need to be on guard for the Cancer shit test (especially the second and third rounds); if you are dating an Aries, you need to predict and manage the Arian temper tantrum.
Perception is a call to action that requires participation on the part of the magician. When a synchronicity occurs, what is the universe communicating and how is the magician to respond/act? What plans do you make when the chaos of the universe aligns in your favor? Will you be prepared?
A life diary is important, even if it simply means making a record of your daily experiences. Writing in reverse chronological order the days events before going to bed will help develop your self-reflection as well as give your material for any artistic endeavors. Take notice of patterns, magical and otherwise and begin projects on dealing with noticeable events. Create magic files: for example, when I go on a job interview, I have my resume, my background info, a void check, phone numbers, a multi-media CD presentation, mints, deodorant, and a whole bunch of stuff prepared from my bad and good interview experiences. This is my interview file. Create project files for synchronicities, zodiac dating secrets, etc…
Organization: Once the magician begins delving into various systems of magic, he or she will find him or herself with just a whole shit load of information, useless facts and trivia and all-important transcendental knowledge; however, what the hell does the magician do with all of this information?
Sorting through learned information to ascertain the quality of ideas is important before a magician more deeply analyzes and applies her magic. The magician is creating a value system, eliminating the useless, recycling the still usable, and keeping what works. But it is possible for a magician to get stuck in hordes of useless items. I was that way, having amassed over a dozen boxes of comic books, literally thousands of CDs, and hundreds of DVDs all in some self-indulgent collection. My computer files had hundreds of pages of notes with which I never did anything.
Magic can quickly lead to obsession and even ritualistic lust for results can turn magic in madness. Many an orgasmic sigil can lead to a sex addiction ,or lust for results turn into frustrated impotence, or magical consciousness into paranoia.
The magician must get organized. Organization will typically follow into three suits:
a) Balance: balancing the freedom of the magical world versus the responsibility a magician should have in using magic. A magician shouldn’t have an Enron scandal. A magician should develop an ethical system and abide by these rules. Also, a magician should learn to balance the magical world versus the real world. Banishing rituals should be emphasized and practiced.
b) Systematic planning: A magician should set magical goals and routines to implement and use learned knowledge. What are you using your magic for, whether it is developing artistic ability, financial gain, social gain, etc. Color magic is good for guiding a magician into different routines. One color, at a time, however, is recommended to avoid dilution of effect. Make a list of 8-10 goals, starting generally and moving into more specifics with time tables and break downs of plans and methods. Systematic planning is a whole new ball park in itself so I will outline it in more detail at another time.
c) Taxonomy and philosophy: At some point, every magician has to put together a philosophical text on her experiences. This is an explanation of how the world works according to the magician.
Analysis: This is the heavy shit. Part if not all of magic is about placing doubt in the minds of people about reality itself. The magician must initiate her own musings and analysis of what reality means.
The Analysis stage partially incorporates lower levels in the taxonomy. The magician must make an orderly or rather organized system of reality around her. This involves looking at the basic components of reality and understanding their form and function. How does the universe function is as important question as why it functions the way it does.
The important first step in Analysis is for the magician to understand what is true and what is fiction and how to set up boundaries between the two. While nothing may be true, that doesn’t mean that everything may be permitted and that every function will perform.
The magician must look for cracks and flaws in any system important to her. For example, the educational system is important to me, as are mating and marriage rituals. This could likewise apply to any magical concept that you have studied. The purpose is to create cracks to seal them up, like breaking a bone for it to heal stronger. A magician who creates too many cracks will find herself drowning when the dam bursts.
Analysis is part of Application below and Comprehension. The magician tests her theories and in amending her theories to reality, formulates new theories. Analysis comes from experimenting and gathering the results into old theorems or a new postulation. With each experiment, new tasks and applications are put together.
Consider your focus: Education, government, sociology, psychology, relationships, art, etc. Create a list of bugs within the system. Consider yourself as the primary target and study your own flaws. Consider the flaws within your magical studies and muse on your failings. Implement new plans of action to fix these bugs. Do your analysis on paper or in some tangible form, whether a poem, a blog, or a sigil you bury in your garden.
Application: This is the level that people always want to skip straight to. The results will always be more disastrous than fascinating.
In my early experiments with magic, I went crazy. I was entering another world sink or swim with no real understanding of how to swim at all nor of the rules involved in navigating the other world.
In the Application stage, the time has come to first look over your knowledge gained from the previous levels and to plot out how to use and apply that knowledge. How is the knowledge gained applicable or useful? All too often philosophy is impractical with no real world applications.
You might think Application should be the first step, but no. In some ways, you have already applied your knowledge in smaller does of Comprehension and Response. Now you are going back to the original desires and intents that brought you into magic and asking yourself, how will the knowledge learned help you implement your goals and desires. You may need to re-evaluate the knowledge you learned. The Organization stage is important for developing Application.
As part of Application, you pick your tools and study them. You analyze the need for rituals and test what rituals work the best effect. You learn the capability of your medium and what mediums have the best capabilities for your intent. Are you a poet, a film-maker, a teacher, a dancer, etc. Experimentation is important: some tools like Tarot or wands and athame are standard (I don’t use the later two) while learning new tools may help develop repressed parts of your personality. I’ve recently taken up charcoal drawing just to help visualize my goals better and created a new bedtime ritual to focus my creative writing.
As part of Application, you construct your tools but also modify the tools or philosophies of other in connection to the practice you conduct.
For example, I use sigils as a total health overhaul where I am working on a step-by-step process of binding my demons – working on my emotional flaws – as well as focusing on other detrimental parts of myself. I use summoning to enhance my creative writing skills. I use astrology particularly as a platform for my dating adventures.
Magic should not be useless.
How should you plan your Application stage? Look back at your Organization stage and your systematic planning. As mentioned there, systematic planning is too big to summarize in this blog and tangential to the purpose here, but in quick steps:
I have had a couple people ask me what my religious denomination – Syncretic – means. Syncretic means that one religion doesn’t work for me. My religious beliefs are a hodgepodge of beliefs from different religions all blended together to fill in those cracks in any one particular belief. My religion takes in beliefs from Catholicism, Chaotes, paganism and wiccan, Taoism, Buddhism, and others I have picked up along the way.
The magician has a responsibility to create a blend of beliefs systems; otherwise the overuse of any one tool will wear down that system and render it inapplicable. Catholicism simply cannot provide all of the answers or fulfill the necessary emotional needs but neither can Chaos magick or Discordianism ever be a widely accepted belief system because they are too inherently ludicrous.
Thus a magician must select multiple systems of beliefs, multiple magical paradigms. These systems could be blended into one syncretic belief or be used as appropriately to circumstances. There are never any contradictions in beliefs, any more than a hammer contradicts a screwdriver.
Origination: The most advanced form of synthesis, Origination occurs when the magician creates a new system that is recognizable as more than the sum of its parts. Most magical and religious systems have origins in earlier systems but evolve beyond their roots. Christianity in general is an Origination, as are its various sub-sects like Protestantism. Chaos magick and Discordianism are their own Originations and all the other Transmetropolitan religions that pop up. Name it, brand it, sell it, worship it, in some type of order. Origination most often occurs as an adaptation in order to fit pre-existing systems into new cultures.
Bloom’s taxonomy structuralizes learning into eight levels, the highest of the levels the most difficult level of competent thought. This taxonomy isn’t rigid and more or less just a general overview of the difficulty of certain types of thought processes.
My own taxonomy isn’t meant to be anything spectacular but rather a general overview of how to initiate one’s self into a study of magic.
Knowledge: A magician should
a) first learn about basic system of magic, at least the existence of these basic systems. The general level of study should be to learn what magical beliefs are out there, so that if someone mentions Discordianism, you can say, oh, yeah, I’ve heard of that. The goal here isn’t to know everything about all magic but to be exposed to a basic acknowledgment of what is out there. You want breadth over depth.
Make a list of at least two dozen magical concepts to help develop your basic knowledge. Take your list and summarize each magical concept on you’re a) list into one sentence like you were pitching a movie concept.
b) After acknowledgement should be introspection and decisions on different magical paradigms. This is pretty much Wikipedia research, browsing through the breadth of magical topics to get a better understanding of them. At this point you are looking for familiarity, not necessarily depth, but a deeper understanding of important magical principles. You are also looking for what interests you to focus on deeper knowledge.
Take your a) list and develop each summary with greater detail, at least 100 – 300 words per list item.
c) Penultimately, you want to focus on particular areas of knowledge. This is the second to last level of knowledge because at this level there are certain areas of magical theory that you should at least develop a deep understanding. My recommendations would be Western Astrology, Tarot, Chaos magick, and possibly Shamanism and Kabbalah, along with an understanding of the Hero’s myth and important mythologies. You can add in your own interests as well. You should take the time to read important magical texts, including the works of Joseph Campbell, Aleister Crowley, William Frazier, and others as selected by your research.
d) Generally, the ultimate step of the knowledge level would be the equivalent of dissertation work: an extensive in-depth study of a particular area of magic. I don’t agree with this. As Robert Anton Wilson commented, specialization is for insects. Magical paradigms are useful only in their ability to be effective, so your chosen path of magical pursuit should be malleable and fluid, changing as necessary to fit your needs. You use a screwdriver for a screw, a hammer for a nail.
Knowledge should be constantly updating and will snowball and adapt as your improve your Knowledge. In making my lists, I dropped some concepts, changed others (affirmation magick into Neuro-Linguistic Programming), and added new concepts (Thanatology).
Reception and Perception: The magician must be willing to open herself up to the universal phenomena of magic. Part of this experience is belief but part of this is also non-belief. Too much belief creates a naïve fool; too little belief creates a hopeless dreamer.
The active steps of the reception stage must be practiced because they are not inherent in many individuals. A magician must learn to listen to others with respect even if initially disagreeing with the speaker’s statements. This active listening also means paying respect to others, remembering important details as if they were a lover. How can one know the universe if he can’t even remember his mother-in-law’s birthday?
Part of reception also means being open to communication from non-human means. Dreams, synchronicities, and symbols are all messages from the universe that the magician must learn to pay attention to. The devil is in the details.
A magician should keep an active log of any synchronicities or unusual events.
This log should also include artistic sensory details that impress the magician.
Lastly, this log should function as a dream diary.
Working back to knowledge, the magician is responsible for understanding basic semiotics and dream interpretation. Dream interpretation, psychological archetypes, mystic symbols and the like should be intimately known.
Similarly, human communication involves a variety of often ignored values. Communication is typically associated with the air signs of Libra, Aquarius, and Gemini. These signs focus on socialization, verbal expression, artifactual communication (clothing-based), and storytelling. However, water signs rule non-verbal communication, particularly body language, while fire signs master anti-social forms of communication (force and politics). Both of these elements communicate in alternate ways. Technically, although water signs are non-verbal communicators known for their secrecy and passive-aggression, 70% of communication is non-verbal. Considering differences in communication styles, understanding the taxonomy of communication is important.
Consider creating a section of your magical journal specifically for communication skills, including research on non-verbal communication, political theory, and “social skills.” The Sixth Sense and the works of HP Lovecraft are good sources on magical communication.
Comprehension: Similar to Knowledge, Comprehension involves not only an understanding of magic but rather a personal understanding and relationship with magic.
My goals in studying magic are partly intellectual, me wanting to have a greater understanding of my role in the universe or how to conduct my life. Magic is part philosophy and part practice. The philosophical parts are designed to set up the magician with a proper mindset in order to work the magic. Magic is not for everyone.
When you c) above, you are looking for magical paradigms that help you understand yourself existentially. We often call these epiphanies, sudden insights into who you are and what you are supposed to do. For example, I got into astrology after a horribly traumatic relationship which I could not explain or come to terms with through any mundane means. Looking at his sign (Aries/Taurus cusp) and my sign (Cancer/Leo cusp), I immediately saw reflections of both him and me. I understood what happened in our relationship! On my third reading of Joseph Campbell’s Hero of 1000 Faces, I finally understood the hero’s journey and mythology as a psychological metaphor for the individual’s journey in life. There’s a psychology behind mythology that I could apply to my personal life. Studying Chaos magick showed me how my sense of self is an illusion, fragmented and mutable; my beliefs, my identity are tools to be changed according to circumstances and my desires. You use a screwdriver for a screw, a hammer for a nail. Aleister Crowley’s metaphor of the imaginary mongoose in itself was an indescribable epiphany which I am still trying to reconcile.
At the Comprehension level, take the time to make connection between what you have studied in the Knowledge level to your own personal life. Too many religions and belief systems force beliefs on the individual that are not compatible with the individual’s life, or human existence at all. Magic is about your life.
Write down any epiphanies that you might have during your lower level exploration of magic. Seek out epiphanies by writing about any connection between your magical Knowledge and your personal life. Consider this an autobiography of the magical you. For example, in Knowledge c) you explored Astrology, Tarot, Chaos magick, mythology, and other systems. Consider, for example, writing about your personal experience with different zodiac sign personalities and specific people in your life and the psychology of their signs. Ask yourself, how exactly does tarot play a role in your life. Do you use it just to tell the future or does the archetype semiotics have any greater meaning? What gods are important in your life, present or missing? How might you connect yourself better with the divine? If you’re interested in Shamanism, do you live near the wilderness or are you stuck in the city? Is there such thing as urban Shamanism? Etc…
As part of Comprehension, you might also want to balance personal and professional knowledge. Ask yourself: is the information you put together in earlier research actually researched information or simply philosophical musings? If you are contemplating black magic, are you simply rambling self-centered philosophies or embarking upon a valid authoritative authentic Thanatological study? BS or knowledge?
Response, Adjustment, and Set: I grouped these three ideas together because of their similarity. At the response stage, the magician begins to respond to received and perceived stimulus.
Instead of passively taking in information, the magician interacts with external stimuli making changes in the environment. Part of the RAS stage is to begin anticipating reception and perception. For example, a magician who is engaging in reception of synchronicities should begin noting patterns and scheduling of synchronicities; RAS anticipates these opportunities by noticing patterns even in chaotic events.
Part of RAS, however, is to anticipate and respond to events.
For example, the duration of my sigils rarely extends beyond three days. If I cast a spell on a Sunday, by Wednesday, the magic begins to wear off. In response, I had to re-organize my sigils into three day patterns, for example, sigiling for success in a new work out plan focused on a three day work out plan anticipating the wearing down of the sigil and instituting a “recovery sigil” afterwards.
I have also noticed a particular pattern in my occupations: I generally change jobs every 18 months or at least a threatening presence occurs within a predictable period. Last year, when I had become settled into a job, I felt the 18 month threat approaching and was able to nip it in the bud, i.e., lie through my teeth and get someone else fired in my place.
Similarly, if you are studying astrology, a predictive understanding of zodiac psychology is important. A magician can spend a lifetime studying the behavioral patterns of a particular sign but these behavioral patterns must eventually be applied. For example, if you are dating a Cancer, you need to be on guard for the Cancer shit test (especially the second and third rounds); if you are dating an Aries, you need to predict and manage the Arian temper tantrum.
Perception is a call to action that requires participation on the part of the magician. When a synchronicity occurs, what is the universe communicating and how is the magician to respond/act? What plans do you make when the chaos of the universe aligns in your favor? Will you be prepared?
A life diary is important, even if it simply means making a record of your daily experiences. Writing in reverse chronological order the days events before going to bed will help develop your self-reflection as well as give your material for any artistic endeavors. Take notice of patterns, magical and otherwise and begin projects on dealing with noticeable events. Create magic files: for example, when I go on a job interview, I have my resume, my background info, a void check, phone numbers, a multi-media CD presentation, mints, deodorant, and a whole bunch of stuff prepared from my bad and good interview experiences. This is my interview file. Create project files for synchronicities, zodiac dating secrets, etc…
Organization: Once the magician begins delving into various systems of magic, he or she will find him or herself with just a whole shit load of information, useless facts and trivia and all-important transcendental knowledge; however, what the hell does the magician do with all of this information?
Sorting through learned information to ascertain the quality of ideas is important before a magician more deeply analyzes and applies her magic. The magician is creating a value system, eliminating the useless, recycling the still usable, and keeping what works. But it is possible for a magician to get stuck in hordes of useless items. I was that way, having amassed over a dozen boxes of comic books, literally thousands of CDs, and hundreds of DVDs all in some self-indulgent collection. My computer files had hundreds of pages of notes with which I never did anything.
Magic can quickly lead to obsession and even ritualistic lust for results can turn magic in madness. Many an orgasmic sigil can lead to a sex addiction ,or lust for results turn into frustrated impotence, or magical consciousness into paranoia.
The magician must get organized. Organization will typically follow into three suits:
a) Balance: balancing the freedom of the magical world versus the responsibility a magician should have in using magic. A magician shouldn’t have an Enron scandal. A magician should develop an ethical system and abide by these rules. Also, a magician should learn to balance the magical world versus the real world. Banishing rituals should be emphasized and practiced.
b) Systematic planning: A magician should set magical goals and routines to implement and use learned knowledge. What are you using your magic for, whether it is developing artistic ability, financial gain, social gain, etc. Color magic is good for guiding a magician into different routines. One color, at a time, however, is recommended to avoid dilution of effect. Make a list of 8-10 goals, starting generally and moving into more specifics with time tables and break downs of plans and methods. Systematic planning is a whole new ball park in itself so I will outline it in more detail at another time.
c) Taxonomy and philosophy: At some point, every magician has to put together a philosophical text on her experiences. This is an explanation of how the world works according to the magician.
Analysis: This is the heavy shit. Part if not all of magic is about placing doubt in the minds of people about reality itself. The magician must initiate her own musings and analysis of what reality means.
The Analysis stage partially incorporates lower levels in the taxonomy. The magician must make an orderly or rather organized system of reality around her. This involves looking at the basic components of reality and understanding their form and function. How does the universe function is as important question as why it functions the way it does.
The important first step in Analysis is for the magician to understand what is true and what is fiction and how to set up boundaries between the two. While nothing may be true, that doesn’t mean that everything may be permitted and that every function will perform.
The magician must look for cracks and flaws in any system important to her. For example, the educational system is important to me, as are mating and marriage rituals. This could likewise apply to any magical concept that you have studied. The purpose is to create cracks to seal them up, like breaking a bone for it to heal stronger. A magician who creates too many cracks will find herself drowning when the dam bursts.
Analysis is part of Application below and Comprehension. The magician tests her theories and in amending her theories to reality, formulates new theories. Analysis comes from experimenting and gathering the results into old theorems or a new postulation. With each experiment, new tasks and applications are put together.
Consider your focus: Education, government, sociology, psychology, relationships, art, etc. Create a list of bugs within the system. Consider yourself as the primary target and study your own flaws. Consider the flaws within your magical studies and muse on your failings. Implement new plans of action to fix these bugs. Do your analysis on paper or in some tangible form, whether a poem, a blog, or a sigil you bury in your garden.
Application: This is the level that people always want to skip straight to. The results will always be more disastrous than fascinating.
In my early experiments with magic, I went crazy. I was entering another world sink or swim with no real understanding of how to swim at all nor of the rules involved in navigating the other world.
In the Application stage, the time has come to first look over your knowledge gained from the previous levels and to plot out how to use and apply that knowledge. How is the knowledge gained applicable or useful? All too often philosophy is impractical with no real world applications.
You might think Application should be the first step, but no. In some ways, you have already applied your knowledge in smaller does of Comprehension and Response. Now you are going back to the original desires and intents that brought you into magic and asking yourself, how will the knowledge learned help you implement your goals and desires. You may need to re-evaluate the knowledge you learned. The Organization stage is important for developing Application.
As part of Application, you pick your tools and study them. You analyze the need for rituals and test what rituals work the best effect. You learn the capability of your medium and what mediums have the best capabilities for your intent. Are you a poet, a film-maker, a teacher, a dancer, etc. Experimentation is important: some tools like Tarot or wands and athame are standard (I don’t use the later two) while learning new tools may help develop repressed parts of your personality. I’ve recently taken up charcoal drawing just to help visualize my goals better and created a new bedtime ritual to focus my creative writing.
As part of Application, you construct your tools but also modify the tools or philosophies of other in connection to the practice you conduct.
For example, I use sigils as a total health overhaul where I am working on a step-by-step process of binding my demons – working on my emotional flaws – as well as focusing on other detrimental parts of myself. I use summoning to enhance my creative writing skills. I use astrology particularly as a platform for my dating adventures.
Magic should not be useless.
How should you plan your Application stage? Look back at your Organization stage and your systematic planning. As mentioned there, systematic planning is too big to summarize in this blog and tangential to the purpose here, but in quick steps:
- Figure out your intent and put it into writing
- Research your purpose
- Make a realistic plan, broken down into manageable steps
- Set a time limit
- Gather your resources
- Develop your skills
- Do something, no matter how small, each day to implement your plans
- Succeed or fail
- Reflect
- Repeat
I have had a couple people ask me what my religious denomination – Syncretic – means. Syncretic means that one religion doesn’t work for me. My religious beliefs are a hodgepodge of beliefs from different religions all blended together to fill in those cracks in any one particular belief. My religion takes in beliefs from Catholicism, Chaotes, paganism and wiccan, Taoism, Buddhism, and others I have picked up along the way.
The magician has a responsibility to create a blend of beliefs systems; otherwise the overuse of any one tool will wear down that system and render it inapplicable. Catholicism simply cannot provide all of the answers or fulfill the necessary emotional needs but neither can Chaos magick or Discordianism ever be a widely accepted belief system because they are too inherently ludicrous.
Thus a magician must select multiple systems of beliefs, multiple magical paradigms. These systems could be blended into one syncretic belief or be used as appropriately to circumstances. There are never any contradictions in beliefs, any more than a hammer contradicts a screwdriver.
Origination: The most advanced form of synthesis, Origination occurs when the magician creates a new system that is recognizable as more than the sum of its parts. Most magical and religious systems have origins in earlier systems but evolve beyond their roots. Christianity in general is an Origination, as are its various sub-sects like Protestantism. Chaos magick and Discordianism are their own Originations and all the other Transmetropolitan religions that pop up. Name it, brand it, sell it, worship it, in some type of order. Origination most often occurs as an adaptation in order to fit pre-existing systems into new cultures.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
The Living Seed
The joke is on me. As I’ve been studying sigils, I was under the impression that the term sigil had some connection to the word seed; after all they both start with the letter S. Ha ha!
Actually sigil comes from the Latin meaning seal. There’s three years of Latin and toga parties down the drain.
But for the sake of metaphor, imagine a sigil as a seed, either semen (hey, we’re adults here) or as the type of seed you would plant in a garden. The difference is biological.
I was watching an episode of Family Guy to receive my daily intellectual molestation and Peter Griffen makes a comment that theater is a living thing. The synchronicity is interesting because that was the idea in my head about magic and art.
The seed is planted, tended to, and allowed to grow on its own. This is a basic attitude towards life. Plant want you want to reap, tend to it, and reap what you have sown. The pessimist in me wonders at times what I have sown.
Is art alive? For the sake of argument and philosophy, yes.
Your sigil, your poem, your song, your film, your dance -- they're all living growing things.
Art is alive and I haven’t a clue what that means!
I’ve heard Simon and Garfunkel ask, is the theater really dead? That makes sense to me at a poetic level. The hopes and investment and interest and belief in the power of art has worn off. We no longer give our attention to the theater and have replaced it with the consumer culture of the movie theater, but isn’t film just the theaters latest incarnation?
If something dies, then was it alive, and how?
I’ve heard of stories where characters take over the story; the writer loses control over the plot because the characterization takes over. Spider-Man would never do that!
I once found myself wondering if Harry Potter minded all of the ridiculous fan ficton being written about him, the bad fan fiction having him do stupid things or the badly written cross-overs. Harry Potter leads a busy life, never has time to rest with all of the adventures he goes on inside people's heads and on their websites.
At times I’ve developed a certain reverence for characters I’ve created, a feeling of love or attachment to them. I’ve heard of authors who have cried because they killed a character or ended a septology.
But characters we love personally don’t always attract a faithful audience. Is there any writer here who hasn’t had a character or concept justly killed by a critic? The character may seem alive inside our imagination but can’t carry over to someone else’s head.
Back to sigils as living things, let me make a slight tangent. I’m exploring this living seed concept rather than just writing an expository essay.
As a little girl I was particularly fond of the Frankenstein story, of the obsessed scientist who creates life by sewing together dead body parts. The Frankenstein myth has other forms. Pygmalion and Galatea are the more artistic aesthetic pair, the enamored artist who sculpts the perfect woman, only to fall in love with her. The goddess of love and beauty Venus Aphrodite turns Galatea into a real woman in the same way the Blue Fairy turns Pinocchio into a real boy. The Jews have their golems, created from clay and breathed life with a single word written on their forehead. Alchemists have their homunculi, little men originally thought to be the substance of sperm, a model of a human in miniature.
When we create characters, we create golems, galateas, homunculi. Traditionally these creations in magic served to attract success, protect the magician, and act as a conduit and reservoir for magical power. The Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game had various types of homunculi and golems made of all types of substances and functions: homunculi made of circuitry, golems of wood or glass or car gears, etc.
You need to give body to your emotions and ideas, both the horrors and pleasures, so that you may heal your hurt and be inspired by your pleasure.
One of the magician’s initial responsibilities is to create such an entity, a voodoo doll through whatever medium is preferred. I would ask though how a dancer or musician might create their golems. Perhaps a song or dance titled with a name or an album of phonic names.
This artistic homunculus – I should come up with a name – homo artis – needs to be as real as possible. Should it be confined to one dimension? Should a musician limit her homunculi to just a collection of songs? The magician should strive to add new dimensions constantly: create a MySpace music profile to the homunculus, add artwork or album covers, let the identity of the homunculus take over as a stage name.
Writing homunculi is similar to creating and using fiction suits. Create a character and explore the dream worlds through that character.
Over the past few years, my Galatea has been a character I named Bradbury, originally a male character based upon a reoccurring male figure in my life, but I’ve since recreated Bradbury into my own image, an androgynous female character. Only recently have I realized how flat she was. I’ve had to focus my energies on drawing her, fleshing out how she would respond in certain situations, giving her a lover to interact with and a mission in life.
The homunculi starts out as a sigil. My initial experiments with sigils have them in abstract typographical form but the more I look into a concept, a sigil simply needs to be a sensory image symbolizing a desire: this could be a picture or sound or heck, why not, a taste. The ultrasigil adds in multi-media (sound, visuals, modeling, intertextuality) while the hypersigil develops the sigil across the four dimensions, providing personality, plot, and time span. How much needs to be added to make the homunculi real?
What we are creating is our own godform in a different form (perhaps). I need to write more about godforms at some point (another blog, perhaps) but to summarize the casual touching comments I’ve made about them, godforms are living stories, sigils in divine personification. Zeus is the lightning sigil, Mercury a communication sigil, Athena a war sigil. We worship these godform sigils to gain access to the power of the lightning, of communication, of military strategy. A magician should choose his pantheon (collection of godforms) and study them, study the art devoted to these godforms and the stories devoted to them.
Your homo artis then needs his or her own artwork and stories.
What then is the purpose of creating these homunculi? Success, protection, power? These old school concepts don’t really translate practically in today’s magic sphere.
The homunculi is often used (or was) as a model of consciousness. Imagine that inside your head was this little man who was driving you around like a robot. The Eddie Murphy movie Meet Dave uses this plot. This homunculus is you but if we remold the concept, imagine that like the Pink Floyd song goes, there’s someone in your head who isn’t you, a secondary self.
You are your conscious mind while this homunculi is a subconscious self. Some psycho-historians have speculated that our interior monologue thoughts were once separate from us, so that muses and gods were whispers in our heads rather than our thoughts. This would explain schizophrenia.
The homo artis represents your artistic self, your magical self, that may be in conflict with your conscious self. Your goal should be to bring harmony with your conscious and subconscious selves.
Perhaps you’ve heard of right brain/left brain theories. The left side of the brain is supposedly responsible for logical orderly processing while the right side is for creative pursuits. I’ve seen this because many people who I know as artists are highly disorganized while highly organized people tend to be artistically stunted. A general observation with many holes in it.
Often our conscious and subconscious selves are in conflict with each other. It’s our fault. We try to tell our subconscious what to do like we were in a doctor’s office telling the doctor the diagnosis.
The orderly brain is critical of the artistic side and then we wonder why the artistic side doesn’t want to talk to us anymore. How about we let our brains do what they’re supposed to?
The artistic side needs daydreaming, fantasy, chaos, lack of restriction, and party time to thrive. It produces but creativity also needs organization. I’ve noticed that with the soft copy scans of my comic books I download that the files are done by partners, one scanning and the other editing. Your subconscious mind creates the art, your conscious mind organizes it.
Your homo artis should be the first person to talk to in any artistic endeavors. The simplest way is to either talk outloud to yourself. With today’s cell phone craze, do we really pay attention to people talking to themselves? (When I was in middle school, one of the popular girls made fun of me because I was always talking to myself!)
This Question and Answer session can dig through ideas. The creative process needs verbalization, the expression of ideas to stew. Part of creativity is expressing ideas, often crappy ideas, to build into better ideas.
Talk to your gods. Talk to your homunculi.
Or write your conversations down:
K: what do we want to write about today, Bradbury?
B: I don’t know. Give me a second to think. I think you need to write more pornography, or at least a good love story. You’ve been heartbroken and never really had a chance to express what it’s like to be in love. You just stare at pictures of your old boyfriends and feel hurt. You also want a buffalo chicken pizza but remember your diet.
K: OK, then, how do I get this love story started?
B: From the beginning. Two lovers meet. Think about that fish tank scene in Romeo and Juliet, Claire Danes is hot, er, I mean Leonardo DiCaprio is hot in that scene.
K: How do you want to be seduced, B?
Your homunculi is your Oracle.
Back to my original question, how is art alive? You create something that takes on a life of it’s own.
But I keep thinking back to Alan Moore’s Promethea, whom Moore refers to as a living story.
How can a story be alive, my left brain asks? A character I can see, but a story?
Tangent: when I set up my MySpace profile (back before I moved to Facebook), the profile had this sense of uncontrollable growth. My first couple days were just entering in information about myself, posting pictures, uploading music, and doing design work. Suddenly I had thirty friends within one day and comments posted all over the place.
A story in itself, the more memetic it is, can become alive by being passed down through generation to generation, from author to fan, from book to film. The art lives beyond the artist. Promethea is not one person but rather a series of characters appearing through different authors: more ontologically unsound, Promethea is a story rather than a character. The fictional character of Promethea actualizes in the real world through the writing of stories. G’ah, I need to dissect the ontology of Promethea more. (As I'm putting titles in their proper italics, I keep wondering if I should put Promethea in italics. Is Promethea the book or the character?)
I’m also thinking about Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles and the comics letter column which like with any fan interaction gets a life of its own.
I read one commentary on e-mail correspondence between lovers which commented that the e-mails are the relationship. Traditionally our sense of self, our identity is shaped by verbal/social communication but in the digital age, we are investing ourselves into soft copy transcripts of our identities. Our IMs and txts become representations of ourselves. So do our stories.
Like with MySpace or the Promethea meme or the Invisibles forum or any fan fiction, there’s life and energy.
I haven't completed my thought or found resolution to my idea of the sigil as a living thing, but I need to Banish, take a bath, and prepare for a midnight preview of The Incredible Hulk.
Actually sigil comes from the Latin meaning seal. There’s three years of Latin and toga parties down the drain.
But for the sake of metaphor, imagine a sigil as a seed, either semen (hey, we’re adults here) or as the type of seed you would plant in a garden. The difference is biological.
I was watching an episode of Family Guy to receive my daily intellectual molestation and Peter Griffen makes a comment that theater is a living thing. The synchronicity is interesting because that was the idea in my head about magic and art.
The seed is planted, tended to, and allowed to grow on its own. This is a basic attitude towards life. Plant want you want to reap, tend to it, and reap what you have sown. The pessimist in me wonders at times what I have sown.
Is art alive? For the sake of argument and philosophy, yes.
Your sigil, your poem, your song, your film, your dance -- they're all living growing things.
Art is alive and I haven’t a clue what that means!
I’ve heard Simon and Garfunkel ask, is the theater really dead? That makes sense to me at a poetic level. The hopes and investment and interest and belief in the power of art has worn off. We no longer give our attention to the theater and have replaced it with the consumer culture of the movie theater, but isn’t film just the theaters latest incarnation?
If something dies, then was it alive, and how?
I’ve heard of stories where characters take over the story; the writer loses control over the plot because the characterization takes over. Spider-Man would never do that!
I once found myself wondering if Harry Potter minded all of the ridiculous fan ficton being written about him, the bad fan fiction having him do stupid things or the badly written cross-overs. Harry Potter leads a busy life, never has time to rest with all of the adventures he goes on inside people's heads and on their websites.
At times I’ve developed a certain reverence for characters I’ve created, a feeling of love or attachment to them. I’ve heard of authors who have cried because they killed a character or ended a septology.
But characters we love personally don’t always attract a faithful audience. Is there any writer here who hasn’t had a character or concept justly killed by a critic? The character may seem alive inside our imagination but can’t carry over to someone else’s head.
Back to sigils as living things, let me make a slight tangent. I’m exploring this living seed concept rather than just writing an expository essay.
As a little girl I was particularly fond of the Frankenstein story, of the obsessed scientist who creates life by sewing together dead body parts. The Frankenstein myth has other forms. Pygmalion and Galatea are the more artistic aesthetic pair, the enamored artist who sculpts the perfect woman, only to fall in love with her. The goddess of love and beauty Venus Aphrodite turns Galatea into a real woman in the same way the Blue Fairy turns Pinocchio into a real boy. The Jews have their golems, created from clay and breathed life with a single word written on their forehead. Alchemists have their homunculi, little men originally thought to be the substance of sperm, a model of a human in miniature.
When we create characters, we create golems, galateas, homunculi. Traditionally these creations in magic served to attract success, protect the magician, and act as a conduit and reservoir for magical power. The Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game had various types of homunculi and golems made of all types of substances and functions: homunculi made of circuitry, golems of wood or glass or car gears, etc.
You need to give body to your emotions and ideas, both the horrors and pleasures, so that you may heal your hurt and be inspired by your pleasure.
One of the magician’s initial responsibilities is to create such an entity, a voodoo doll through whatever medium is preferred. I would ask though how a dancer or musician might create their golems. Perhaps a song or dance titled with a name or an album of phonic names.
This artistic homunculus – I should come up with a name – homo artis – needs to be as real as possible. Should it be confined to one dimension? Should a musician limit her homunculi to just a collection of songs? The magician should strive to add new dimensions constantly: create a MySpace music profile to the homunculus, add artwork or album covers, let the identity of the homunculus take over as a stage name.
Writing homunculi is similar to creating and using fiction suits. Create a character and explore the dream worlds through that character.
Over the past few years, my Galatea has been a character I named Bradbury, originally a male character based upon a reoccurring male figure in my life, but I’ve since recreated Bradbury into my own image, an androgynous female character. Only recently have I realized how flat she was. I’ve had to focus my energies on drawing her, fleshing out how she would respond in certain situations, giving her a lover to interact with and a mission in life.
The homunculi starts out as a sigil. My initial experiments with sigils have them in abstract typographical form but the more I look into a concept, a sigil simply needs to be a sensory image symbolizing a desire: this could be a picture or sound or heck, why not, a taste. The ultrasigil adds in multi-media (sound, visuals, modeling, intertextuality) while the hypersigil develops the sigil across the four dimensions, providing personality, plot, and time span. How much needs to be added to make the homunculi real?
What we are creating is our own godform in a different form (perhaps). I need to write more about godforms at some point (another blog, perhaps) but to summarize the casual touching comments I’ve made about them, godforms are living stories, sigils in divine personification. Zeus is the lightning sigil, Mercury a communication sigil, Athena a war sigil. We worship these godform sigils to gain access to the power of the lightning, of communication, of military strategy. A magician should choose his pantheon (collection of godforms) and study them, study the art devoted to these godforms and the stories devoted to them.
Your homo artis then needs his or her own artwork and stories.
What then is the purpose of creating these homunculi? Success, protection, power? These old school concepts don’t really translate practically in today’s magic sphere.
The homunculi is often used (or was) as a model of consciousness. Imagine that inside your head was this little man who was driving you around like a robot. The Eddie Murphy movie Meet Dave uses this plot. This homunculus is you but if we remold the concept, imagine that like the Pink Floyd song goes, there’s someone in your head who isn’t you, a secondary self.
You are your conscious mind while this homunculi is a subconscious self. Some psycho-historians have speculated that our interior monologue thoughts were once separate from us, so that muses and gods were whispers in our heads rather than our thoughts. This would explain schizophrenia.
The homo artis represents your artistic self, your magical self, that may be in conflict with your conscious self. Your goal should be to bring harmony with your conscious and subconscious selves.
Perhaps you’ve heard of right brain/left brain theories. The left side of the brain is supposedly responsible for logical orderly processing while the right side is for creative pursuits. I’ve seen this because many people who I know as artists are highly disorganized while highly organized people tend to be artistically stunted. A general observation with many holes in it.
Often our conscious and subconscious selves are in conflict with each other. It’s our fault. We try to tell our subconscious what to do like we were in a doctor’s office telling the doctor the diagnosis.
The orderly brain is critical of the artistic side and then we wonder why the artistic side doesn’t want to talk to us anymore. How about we let our brains do what they’re supposed to?
The artistic side needs daydreaming, fantasy, chaos, lack of restriction, and party time to thrive. It produces but creativity also needs organization. I’ve noticed that with the soft copy scans of my comic books I download that the files are done by partners, one scanning and the other editing. Your subconscious mind creates the art, your conscious mind organizes it.
Your homo artis should be the first person to talk to in any artistic endeavors. The simplest way is to either talk outloud to yourself. With today’s cell phone craze, do we really pay attention to people talking to themselves? (When I was in middle school, one of the popular girls made fun of me because I was always talking to myself!)
This Question and Answer session can dig through ideas. The creative process needs verbalization, the expression of ideas to stew. Part of creativity is expressing ideas, often crappy ideas, to build into better ideas.
Talk to your gods. Talk to your homunculi.
Or write your conversations down:
K: what do we want to write about today, Bradbury?
B: I don’t know. Give me a second to think. I think you need to write more pornography, or at least a good love story. You’ve been heartbroken and never really had a chance to express what it’s like to be in love. You just stare at pictures of your old boyfriends and feel hurt. You also want a buffalo chicken pizza but remember your diet.
K: OK, then, how do I get this love story started?
B: From the beginning. Two lovers meet. Think about that fish tank scene in Romeo and Juliet, Claire Danes is hot, er, I mean Leonardo DiCaprio is hot in that scene.
K: How do you want to be seduced, B?
Your homunculi is your Oracle.
Back to my original question, how is art alive? You create something that takes on a life of it’s own.
But I keep thinking back to Alan Moore’s Promethea, whom Moore refers to as a living story.
How can a story be alive, my left brain asks? A character I can see, but a story?
Tangent: when I set up my MySpace profile (back before I moved to Facebook), the profile had this sense of uncontrollable growth. My first couple days were just entering in information about myself, posting pictures, uploading music, and doing design work. Suddenly I had thirty friends within one day and comments posted all over the place.
A story in itself, the more memetic it is, can become alive by being passed down through generation to generation, from author to fan, from book to film. The art lives beyond the artist. Promethea is not one person but rather a series of characters appearing through different authors: more ontologically unsound, Promethea is a story rather than a character. The fictional character of Promethea actualizes in the real world through the writing of stories. G’ah, I need to dissect the ontology of Promethea more. (As I'm putting titles in their proper italics, I keep wondering if I should put Promethea in italics. Is Promethea the book or the character?)
I’m also thinking about Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles and the comics letter column which like with any fan interaction gets a life of its own.
I read one commentary on e-mail correspondence between lovers which commented that the e-mails are the relationship. Traditionally our sense of self, our identity is shaped by verbal/social communication but in the digital age, we are investing ourselves into soft copy transcripts of our identities. Our IMs and txts become representations of ourselves. So do our stories.
Like with MySpace or the Promethea meme or the Invisibles forum or any fan fiction, there’s life and energy.
I haven't completed my thought or found resolution to my idea of the sigil as a living thing, but I need to Banish, take a bath, and prepare for a midnight preview of The Incredible Hulk.
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