Random Acts of Silence

I’m going to take a break from sigils for awhile to regroup my perspective on the topic.

For the past little while, I have been doing a study on Pisces. One of the characteristics of Pisces that caught my attention and which I later turned into a magickal routine is the indecisiveness of Pisces. As the last of the signs of the Zodiac, Pisces is the follower, the sidekick (as represented by Ron Weasley in Harry Potter). Pisces is known for its servile disposition, its inability to make decisions, and its tendency for getting lost and confused.

While all of the above may seem like weaknesses, the ability of Pisces to get lost so easily also allows it its mutable, free-flowing, artistic abilities and social nature. Much of the subconscious is raw imagination without any structure and to anal retentive control freak Cancers like myself, Pisces is a hell that I need to visit to break down my own dogmatic way of life.

Part of my inspiration for this blog was from an article titled “Beneath the Pavement, the Beast” by Stephen Grasso, published in the book Generation Hex.

In Grasso’s article, he focuses primarily on Drifting, aka, dérive. In short, Drifting involves taking long walks about the city looking for inspiration in the city landscape and textures. It is similar to magickal consciousness or the paranoiac-critical method in which random details are re-interpreted as meaningful directions, for example, graffiti, billboards, newspaper headlines, overheard conversations, radio announcements, neon signs, etc, are actually messages from the universe (151).

Drifting can be included into any type of activity. I was in a Quick Check and a liquor store today and Drifted through both, looking for snacks in the Quick Check while waiting for my sandwich and looking at the different types of beer in the liquor store. Drifting should involve a quest for new information or re-discovering old information – as I was looking through the brands of beer, I kept thinking, I remember this from college…I increased my beer repertoire along with my knowledge of snacks. Useless information, right? Not really. What are the chances of you someday getting hungry for a snack or asked what type of beer you like…?

Places of power can also be investigated. Grasso indicates that the best areas to begin a Drift are crossroads, the crossroads symbolizing an in-between area (150). Other places might include standing stones, woodlands, rivers, hospitals or other public areas, abandoned buildings, etc (154). He also uses the subways as symbols of a descent into the Underworld (153). For me, all of these are appropriate as are any new area beyond one’s familiarity.

Shamans (yes, the plural of Shaman is Shamans, not shamen) use hallucinatory drugs and visualization techniques to explore the astral realms, but Grasso differentiates Drifting from the typical Shamanic journey: “It is essentially a shamanic journey that takes places physically in real time, as opposed to an internal journey” (150). The magician wanders geographically (rather than psychically) out his or her normal sphere of comfort, awareness, and experience. For example, I once took a three hour drive up to the Catskills and at some point realized that the highway system was no longer familiar to me. In this unknown territory beyond the familiar, the magician enters an Other world.

The Australian Aborigines use a tradition similar to Drifting called the walkabout. Around the age of thirteen, an Aborigine teenager will simply leave and walk about usually for a period of around six months. During this time period, the teenager learns the lay of the land, in particularly the songlines or places of power established by their heroic ancestors and gods. The teenagers uses this time to learn or create a folklore for the land, find his totem or power animals, and develop customs to interact with his people and folklore. An Aborigine learns his or her land to the point of being able to walk it blindly.

Grasso recommends a similar ritual. The magician learns the layout of his surrounding area, learns its culture, its traditions, its power places, and its history (154). The better one knows his or her surroundings, the better one is able to communicate with the power of an area, like knowing a lover so well as to be able to almost read his or her mind. (As a side note, mindreading isn’t always about familiarity but about personality attunement – I’ve had boyfriends who I could send out on a mission to get me something from the vending machine and they’d always come back with the perfect snack because they were in tune with my personality while I’ve known guys who could never get it right no matter how much they thought they knew me).

When Drifting or doing any type of traveling (like just driving) start paying attention to the pathways. If you are walking, notice the stores around town: each of these are exits off the path. If driving, notice the exits, take some of them, get lost so you can find yourself again. What happens to me quite often is I get lost in a familiar area, off the beaten highway; I get back on track by Drifting until I find a familiar highway. The Drift inevitably helps me in the future because I always re-enter the same territory where I got lost. Actually by getting lost somewhere, I return there because I am now familiar with the area. Getting lost helps me find myself.

Knowing the lay of a land helps but the purpose of learning the land should not be about knowing the land in itself but for better improvisation. By learning the land one can create more random behavior. I once played a txt-message scavenger hunt with one of my boyfriends to plan our future dates, giving him idea by idea and asking him to write down where we could find X,Y, and Z. By knowing where to go or where to get it, improvising was easier. We knew right where to go; we knew what was out there. Otherwise reality becomes a blank canvas with nowhere to start. The magician must have options and materials; Drifting is a way of gathering these materials from the environment.

(However, the opposite can also happen: familiarity breeds contempt. Places of power can lose their power like soil that has grown too much fruit. Drifting should start in one area, expand, and develop into new areas, or add new areas while a Drift is being learned.)

Impotence comes from ignorance and inhibition which rely upon each other. If you ask me to spontaneously dance, I would respond with a simple “Fuck you.” I couldn’t improvise a dance routine because I’m not familiar with any type of dance choreography. I could make random moves and look like an idiot but I’m too uptight sometimes to do that. Creativity studies, for example, those done by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, show that creativity does not come from nowhere (was that a double negative?) but rather familiarity with a subject is first required before creative development of an idea can occur. Drifting starts out random to procure new ideas but some purpose must be set: the Drifter must learn and collect and give the Drift better form. Random does not mean without purpose.

Immersing myself in the Pisces personality, I found myself really confused. I would be sitting in the front seat of my boyfriend’s car ready for foreplay and not know what to do. I’d stand in front of a vending machine and not know what I want. I’d be ready for a night on the town and not know what I wanted to do. Indecision is the ultimate out-of-tunement, but I think that indecision comes from too much of an emphasis on logical flow and thought whereby the brain becomes paralyzed by a lack of options rather than moving with the flow. Once the mind releases and the body moves, the answers come more easily. The mind needs to get lost to escape the trap of logos and inhibition.

While drifting, the magician should interact with the environment, asking questions and looking for responses in the landscape, from a neon sign or billboard, for example. Grasso’s article focuses mainly upon divination and communing with spirits but I’m not sure if that is the direction I want to go into. The problem is, what is the difference between the internal and the external shamanic journey? I was driving when I did an experiment; I asked the universe what to do about my psycho ex-boyfriend. The first sign (literally) I saw said “No turns.” WTF does that mean? I was in FYE when I heard a song that was my song with an ex-boyfriend. Notice the ex? So then why aren’t we together anymore? Does the song mean I should be with him or shouldn’t be with him or that I should be careful of obsessively thinking about past relationships…?

I need a freaking pop tart before I write anything more. Y’see, a mind with a definitive goal that believes this goal is definitely attainable acts differently than a mind in doubt. (Pandora is playing one of my favorite songs “Train in Vain” by the Clash). While on my walkabout to find my Pop Tart, I was at ease, calm, meditative, walking in a slow meander. While I took notice of my surrounding, I paid them no attention. Looking for synchronicities and divination almost ensures that none will come. Coming to the vending machine, surprise, the pop tarts were S’mores! I hate S’mores. Suddenly the confusion comes over me: if I can’t get pop tarts, then what? My goal was reset to find out other vending machines, one near the cafeteria where I could possibly pick up something else to eat. Naturally, the cafeteria was closed and the second vending machine had some other type of chocolate pop tart. A new mission to find another vending machine, wandering the hallways down to the lower level. The vending machine found me in a Zen fashion tucked away in the basement. I had no idea that it was there, but no pop tarts. Finally, I said “fuck it, I’ll order pizza and have them deliver it to me at the college.” Of course, no pizza delivery for maybe 20 miles. Finally, I remembered I had a leftover package of Butterfingers several months old melting in my car. Mm, you ever try melted Butterfingers?

A mind in assured pursuit relaxes and strolls while a mind thwarted turns to panic, the indecisive stand at the vending machines not knowing what to do, paralyzed. In the various stages of my walkabout, I was put in paralysis but with each state shock my ability to improvise improved. The end result was no pop tarts but Butterfingers, a hunger for pizza and pop tarts, new desires to fulfill later on and a greater understanding of how to fulfill those desires. I also felt brand new like I just had an enema.

Looking for synchronicities is the surest way of NOT finding them. Messages from the universe tend to pop up sporadically and unexpectedly; that’s what makes them so interesting and scary. I don’t recommend active pareidolia. Instead I recommend white noise while engaged in other activities. For example, when I want to Drift, I usually do it while driving. I have an incredible MP3 collection that consists of roughly 6000 songs. An average MP3 disc can hold about 200 songs. I put together a disc from 200 random songs and then play the disc on shuffle while driving. Instead of driving my normal route when going somewhere, I might take a different route that I know will get me to the same location but which will bring me into new territory. Then I drive. I’m not looking for anything and often synchronicities come unexpectedly. I was Driftin n’ Drivin’ a couple days ago when I noticed a pattern in the songs. “Eternal Flame” by the Bangles finished playing followed by “Fire” by the Ohio Players. Since I’m part fire sign (Leo), I took notice. What does it mean, who knows? The random white noise of the MP3 disc was a conduit for the synchronicity. Normal radio doesn’t work for me because commercial breaks are a statebreak. Satellite radio doesn’t work because it isn’t in tune with my personality – even though my songs were random, they were chosen from MY collection. Pandora plays horrible music most of the time unless you’re into obscure B-sides. I’ve found though that PA systems in supermarkets or malls are the truest ways to receive messages from God.

Grasso recommends certain rituals before and after Drifting. Before Drifting, the magician should ask permission to enter places of power (151). Hmmn, that sounds kind of gay to me. I’m gonna have to think about that one. I understand the notions but I have woodlands areas around one of my properties and I’ve never asked permission from the nature spirits to meditate in the woods. This land is your land and this land is my land. But Grasso also recommends leaving payment behind while Drifting, for example, giving money to panhandlers while in the subway (153). I agree there (but I’ve learned not to give money to beggars while in Amsterdam): appreciation should be shown. What I often do is take spare pennies that I get from change and scatter them into a parking lot.

A gris-gris/hoodoo bag can also be made, using a small pouch to hold interesting items that you find. I’d prefer to also have a hoodoo bag of random behavior, literally pulling ideas out of a bag. To end this blog, here are some ideas that I’ve collected from random websites.

1. Rent and watch a funny movie.
2. Go to the store and read all of the humorous greeting cards.
3. Make greeting cards.
4. Write in your journal.
5. Read.
6. Make a list of 100 random things about yourself. (Books you like, clothes you wear)
7. Write a letter.
8. Write a poem.
9. Take a walk.
10. Go for a drive.
11. Bake cupcakes.
12. Do yoga.
13. Read the newspaper.
14. Write down 25 things that make you happy.
15. Paint.
16. Draw.
17. Work on a puzzle.
18. Make a things to do list.
19. Write down some goals.
20. Go somewhere busy and people-watch.
21. Write down some things you would like to save money for.
22. Crossword puzzles.
23. Word Searches.
24. Write about your dream home.
25. Find things to sell on e-Bay.
26. Answers.Yahoo.Com
27. Make a list of things to google.
28. Cook.
29. Bored.com
30. Write graffiti
31. Stack things
32. Make up or think up words that start with a random letter
33. Paint your windows
34. Tie-dye your sheets
35. Fold your earlobes
36. Read tea leaves
37. Find interesting pebbles
38. Blow bubbles
39. Set up your Christmas tree in April
40. Watch a game show...take notes
41. Make a fire
42. Sing the ABC song backwards
43. String up a room
44. Shred a newspaper
45. Sniff
46. Spell
47. Tie bows in everything
48. Skip
49. Memorize the periodic table
50. Write a book about your previous life
51. Carve you and your significant other's initials in something
52. Take apart a major appliances
53. Solve the population problem
54. Draw Venn diagrams
55. Visit the Architecture building...loudly criticize its design
56. Wallpaper without using wallpaper
57. Take bets on which character in a movie will die first.
58. Shadow puppets
59. Take shopping carts for the express purpose of filling them with odd items
60. Ride those little electronic cars at the front of department stores.
61. Re-dress mannequins as you see fit.
62. Ride a display bicycle through a store
63. Play soccer with a group of friends in a store.
64. Set up a tent in the camping department
65. Test the fishing rods and see what you can catch from other aisles.
66. Two words: Marco Polo.
67. "Re-alphabetize" the CD's.
68. Drag a lounge chair over to the magazines and relax. Go to the food court, buy a drink, and explain that you don't get out much and ask if they can put a little umbrella in it.
69. Name things!
70. The thumb game!
71. Rate passers by
72. Play useless games
73. Open houses
74. Color Easter eggs
75. Gambling
76. Spelunking
77. Wine-tasting
78. Rifle range
79. Frisbee golf
80. Carnival
81. Swing swords at a medieval faire
82. Rock, Paper, Scissors
83. Odd or Even
84. Thumb Wrestling
85. Finger Baseball
86. Matching pennies
87. Go to a CD store and listen to new music (or really old music)
88. Make new Muppets
89. Collect restaurant menus and order a dollar menu smörgåsbord
    
90. Picture booths

Leftovers

I’ve been taking notes on sigils and I have lots of little leftover details that I have been trying to incorporate into some type of blog. This entry is tying up those leftovers into some general commentaries, most particularly focused on variation in sigil media and some practical advice.

The earliest sigils were bags collecting raw natural materials such as horse teeth, weasel bones, lynx claw, serpent spine, bird windpipe, rowan twig, sulphur pebbles, coal, bronze, etc. These hoodoo bags are similar to mandala or ultrasigils.

Sigils, or at least the sigils that I’ve been focusing on, can be divided mainly by the four elementals of fire, earth, air, and water. For any n00bs, they go in the order despite what Avatar: The Last Airbender tells you. A quick summary of the symbolism behind each element can be found here.

Sigils, thus, can be made out of materials appropriate to their element.

Fire: This is the dangerous but pretty stuff. Construct your fire-based sigils out of flammable materials. Suggestions might include charcoal, ash, incense, lighter fluid, gasoline, and chemicals that create different colored flames:

• Red: any Strontium salt like Strontium carbonate, Strontium nitrate, and Strontium sulfate. It's commonly found in road flares so if you have one, gut it.
• Orange: calcium chloride. It's in laundry bleach but it's too difficult to separate out from there
• Yellow: Sodium Nitrate
• Green: Barium salts such as Barium nitrate or Barium chlorate. Chlorate works the best by far.
• Turquoise: Copper sulfate. It's found in algaecides for pools and ponds and possibly in a high enough concentration to work.
• Blue: Copper Chloride
• Purple: Potassium permanganate
• White: Magnesium Sulfate. It's found in epsom salts but I haven't gotten it to react very well myself. I've heard plain old magnesium filings works so well, the intensity can damage your eyes so you might want to try that

The sigil would burn itself out but still allow time to meditate on the flame.

Earth: Pretty easy. This is more akin to gardening but materials may include topsoil, fertilized soil (the rich black stuff), wood chips, chalk, flour, grain, mushrooms, grains, berries, roots, sand, mud, flower petals, leaves, etc. The power of the earth sigils is in their slow creation. Trees, for example, have symbolism behind them so sporadically collecting leaves is a metaphysical disaster. The earth sigil needs to be more painstakingly created similar to a mandala.

Air: I honestly haven’t a clue here. I want to say smoke. Scents could be used. Or possible wind mills, fans, wind chimes, curtains or other motion devices that can be decorated with sigils. An audio sigil might be possible creating air sounds like an oscillating fan, a vacuum cleaner, howling wind, etc.

Water: Water can be molded according to its container but I don’t know if contained water is the same as free-flowing. The cups themselves would be part of the sigil. I might also recommend different liquids, whether it be apple juice, cranberry juice, vodka, Mountain Dew, or whatever to create an arrangement. I’ve seen latte art where coffee shops use syrup to create designs in the foam of coffee and similar drinks. The following website has incredible and inspiring water art that makes you say, fuck me, I can’t do that. But looking at the designs, various liquid materials are used to create splashes that are photographed. This is a different type of sigil harnessing the spontaneity of the droplet form as the form of the sigil. Advanced shit. Water sigils then would be quick Orphic rituals of energy.

Experiencing each element is necessary to better understand the element. If you are focusing on water-based sigils, finding a park water fountain or a water fall or river is a necessity.

I’ve mentioned before that sigils can be designed more aesthetically. The shape and color of the paper can be changed. I read of a magician who created sigil cookies. Imagination is the limit.

In contemplating the hypersigil, I’ve had to adapt what I considered to be a sigil. To me, a sigil is some squiggly typographic shaped design but does a sigil need to be visual?

I’m not sure about that answer right now but some quick ideas:

Audio: how about a (hyper)sigil made of sound? Every mixed CD you make has the potential for magical experimentation. Music as an art form has a powerful influence on mood and intellectualization. Think when you compose or mix your next CD how it is choreographed, the association of each song, the effect it has. This goes hand in hand with the use of drums and other percussion in shamanic rituals.

Kinetic: I mentioned this before where I read a Master’s thesis about connecting writing and dance. The thesis mainly focused on movement and use of the body. Gestures were created to represent an individual like signing one’s name. Ideas can be translated into gestures, movement, or dance, similar to stereotypical hand or wand motions in spell-casting. Back to shamanic rituals, Orphic rituals are based upon wild movements.

Olfactory: WTF? Like I said with air sigils, can smells be used for a magical effect as sigils? I don’t know: unexplored territory.

Gustatory: Another WTF? Taste sigils? Well, kind of. There is a yin/yang to cooking where particular foods are associated with certain qualities. Eat fruit for a couple days, just fruit, and you’ll feel the unbalance in your yin/yang. Are chefs doing magic every time they cook.

Eh, a short posting. I'm waiting for my next sigil book to arrive in the mail. I'll probably cover how to put together basic rituals next week.

Mandala

A problem I’ve been having with my hypersigil is that it’s just too fucking big to ever finish. I’m trying to condense two and a half odd decades of my life into a streamlined narrative before my life is over and I have time to enjoy the success. Wow, that was positive talk.

A second problem is that I don’t think in a linear fashion: I’m more hypertextual but despite the technology of the Internet, I’ve yet to find a suitable way of visualizing the set-up of my life. I need to be able to look at everything all at once but thumbnails and hyperlinks just don’t cut it. iGoogle is somewhat helping where it offers visual packets of information but the technology just isn’t there yet. It’s too generalized. For example, iGoogle has access to YouTube but why can’t I access my YouTube account or log into my Facebook on iGoogle or my Yahoo! E-mail so I can have everything open together?

The mandala then becomes the perfect way of visually representing a magician’s life. By gathering together representations of one’s personal life together into one work of art, the magician has an object upon which to reflect and meditate.

At its simplest, a mandala is a magic circle. More complexly, a mandala is a map of the magician’s personal universe condensed into visual form. Unlike sigils which represent quick magickal intents, a mandala is like a map of the whole damn universe. It’s not something you can draw in your head while clicking the mouse or whacking off but rather a long drawn out endeavor of self-inspection and training.

Originally, Mandalas were rooms or locations consecrated to religious teaching. Monks would use sand or other media to create elaborate circles in the landscape, sectioning off the circles into units that represented aspects of the religion they were studying.

Every time you clean your room, you are creating an amateur mandala, figuring out what you need to keep handy, how to arrange and develop your personal space.

Smaller examples of mandalas include Aztec calendars, Celtic knots, and dream catchers. Scientifically, fractals are the new mandalas.

Starting exercises with mandalas should include some cheap artistic medium. High school Special Education classes typically use string or colored sand. Sand is the best original medium as many religions use sand to construct their mandalas. Colored sand can be used to represent different magickal or psychic elements, simply drawing the sand into circles that express the balance of your life.

In creating a mandala, the magician needs to gather and organize her life. This may take a long time.

Some guidelines to create a mandala are found in pre-existing mandalas.

The yin-yang is the simplest instructional mandala. This symbol represents a division of life into two basic concepts:

Yin: Soft, slow, water, cold, tranquil, gentle, night

Yang: Hard, fast, fire, hot, restless, brutal, day

To me, this is the basic set-up to dichotomy. Even though I don’t believe in duality, it is the easiest starting point in organizing one’s life.

I would consider dividing everything at first into two’s. Consider: masculine and feminine, night and day, right brain (artistic) and left brain (logical), etc.

A problem with magickal research is that is all-too-often uses too much right brain. I’ve found in my own research that too much art in magick upsets the balance of my life. Even a good Banishing doesn’t help. I’ve learned to work in pairs, logical exercises and artistic exercises, yin and yang. The mandala requires balance when being constructed, even if that balance doesn’t exist within the magician. Constructing the mandala forces the magician to find ways to balance his or her life.

A mandala starts with a square. Didn’t you say a mandala was a circle? Just hold your horses.

You add to that square a circle that fills the entirety of the square.

What you will have will be a circle in a square (duh) but also four corners created by the negative space. These corners are called gates. Typically gates had threshold guardians, symbols designed as warning signs towards entry into the squares of the mandala.

As recommended, a mandala should be cut in half to represent the yin/yang. But typically mandalas were cut into quarters in an X not a +. Although life is yin/yang, typically yin and yang are further sub-divided. For example, astrology and tarot both have yin (feminine) and yang (masculine) suits but each suit is divided into earth/pentacles and water/cups (yin feminine) and fire/wands and air/swords (yang masculine).

At the center of the initial mandala can be one of two things. In religious construction, a mandala has a chief god at the center (kind of like the Minotaur of the labyrinth) but for me, I think the center should be left blank, simply a small white or black circle symbolizing conception. Perhaps a yin/yang black and white might also work.

This central circle then forms the center for further larger concentric circles issuing out from the center. No specified amount is required; rather the magician decides.

The organization of these circles is then up to the magician creating the mandala.

In traditional religious teachings, mandala circles would include symbols of wrathful deities, peaceful deities, and in Tantra, sexual imagery.

Colors also played an important part in traditional mandalas. The five colors used were:

1. White - Vairocana: The delusion of ignorance becomes the wisdom of reality.
2. Yellow - Ratnasambhava: The delusion of pride becomes the wisdom of sameness.
3. Red - Amitabha: The delusion of attachment becomes the wisdom of discernment.
4. Green - Amoghasiddhi: The delusion of jealousy becomes the wisdom of accomplishment.
5. Blue - Akshobhya: The delusion of anger becomes the mirror like wisdom.

However, a magician could simplify and use the four basic elemental colors red, brown, white, and blue and/or use color magic:

1. Octarine – magic
2. Black – death
3. Blue – wealth
4. Red – war
5. Yellow – social
   
6. Green – love
   
7. Orange – trickery
   
8. Purple – sex

I won’t go too far into specifics because infinite variations and complications can be made. Below is a more complicated and elegant mandala:

To continue, creating a mandala next requires gathering together a list of “your life” which vaguely means a list of all items, concepts, activities, interests, hobbies, “things” that are important to you. For me, my list might include comic books, science fiction, fantasy, collecting, finances, sex, adventure, dating…Making this list is difficult. How precise does the list need to be?

These “things” then need to be prioritized. Those things that are most important go closest to the center while the least important go towards the outer rings.

In the same way that people uses pictures on their MySpace profiles to represent their interests and activities, consider how you might construct visual representations of your hobbies and interests. These visuals decorate the rings and sections of the mandala.

Below are some more elaborate mandalas:

However, an important part in constructing the mandala is the education of the magician. As you brainstorm your list of life things, you must meditate on what these things mean to you. What exactly do comic books mean to me? What is their value? In many cases, adding an item to the mandala requires an intense study of that item, so the comic book section of my mandala might require a history of comics tutorial or comic writing skills, etc.

As part of constructing your mandala, technical/artistic skills are likewise necessary to best represent a particular section. The comic book section might be drawn in comic book panels. If you do not possess the skills to do so, then you must learn! Different mediums must be used and learned to construct each section.

To make matters even more complicated, mandalas are meant to be instruction manuals. In the same way that a simple yin-yang teaches us about the balance of opposites in life, every mandala must visually instruct those strangers who view it. Can they see the balance of masculine and feminine, logical and artistic, practical, emotional, active, intellectual, can they see the organizational pattern and color co-ordination that arranges your universe into sense?

While sigils need to be created stylishly simple, mandalas are highly complex, but the magician still needs to memorize every square inch of the mandala’s construction. This represents intimate knowledge of the magician’s self.

Typically, religious mandalas took three years to create. Whelp, time to get started!

Lust for Results

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.

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:

1. Figure out your intent and put it into writing
2. Research your purpose
3. Make a realistic plan, broken down into manageable steps
4. Set a time limit
5. Gather your resources
6. Develop your skills
7. Do something, no matter how small, each day to implement your plans
8. Succeed or fail
9. Reflect
10. Repeat

Synthesis: A more complex form of analysis, synthesis is putting everything together. Scientists are trying to find a Unified Field Theory; should magic follow the same suit?

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.

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.

Summoning

Summoning, also known as Invocation, is using objects or the environment as inspiration to enhance magical rituals.

Okay, that's a really shitty definition but it's the best laymen's description for what has some complicated history behind it.

One of the more well-known types of magic is sympathetic magic (which is essential to the workings of voodoo dolls). The magician sets up a magical connection between two un-connected objects (for example, a doll and a person). Manipulation of one object produces changes in the other.

Scientists have found sympathy between atomic particles whereby scientists divided an atomic particle in half and separated the two halves, only to find that changes made in one half affected the other despite large distances.

More pseudo-scientific theories have abounded, from morphic fields to Odic force, that claim there is a physical or energy interconnection between the life force of all living creatures, and to take the idea a step forward, an interconnection between EVERYTHING, including man and natural forces.

I don't know how far I would go in believing these pseudo-scientific hippie claims but I have seen more valid models related to the Summoning concept.

First, I know from pure experience that art has an effect on the consumer if the consumer is able to make a connection with the art. After watching a movie (or actually usually during the movie), I often find myself having brainstorms of creative ideas. Similarly, while listening to a particular genre of music, I am also emotionally affected, so heavy metal might increase my anger and adrenaline while New Age relaxes me and lets me focus better.

Second, I've also seen in neuro-linguistic programming a ritual called modeling which I have seen to be effective. With modeling, the nlp-er or magician imitates the body language of a person for the purpose of creating some type of cognitive change in the nlp-er. The theory is that body language affects thought and emotional processes. Walk, talk, move, or act like a person and you begin to assume that person's personality. For example, I dated a guy who was just morbidly depressed. One day out of boredom and curiosity, I modeled his physical posture, in particularly his way of sitting. He sat stiffly and tightly with his arms tucked to his stomach like he had a stomach ache, leaning forward. Try this posture and tell me how you feel after a minute or two.

Theoretically, then, art, modeling, sympathetic magic, etc, can be used to bring about changes within the magician's behavior, personality, or life in general.

To engage in Summoning, the magician needs first to consider what results he or she is looking for. Recently, I was undergoing therapeutic magic to help deal with my constant brooding, sulky behavior. Currently, I am developing some anti-depression magic rituals.

Once a statement of intent is formulated, the magician gathers together materials that best symbolically capture the intent or final goal. These objects or materials should represent a variety of senses.

For my brooding ritual, I gathered together the following materials:

1. A video clip of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series titled "Innocence" when Buffy's vampire boyfriend Angel turns into a bad guy after they have sex.
2. A photo of Lord Byron
3. A painting depicting a scene from Lord Byron's poem "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage."
4. A copy of the poem "Childe Harolde's Pilgrimage"
5. The wikipedia entry describing traits of the Byronic hero
6. A page from James O'Barr's comic book The Crow
7. MP3 clips from Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, the Cure, and the Doors
8. A copy of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman issue 42

Each of these objects is connected to depictions of brooding behavior, but the brooding depicted in these works is utilized into an artistic form. My goal wasn't for me to stop brooding but to turn my brooding into a positive, creative trait.

Photos and paintings are used for visual appeal. Comic books combining words and pictures provide both visual and linguistic reinforcement. A video clip is audio visual while the MP3's are audio. Poetry and expository writing provide different forms of textual representation. Additional sensory information involving touch, smell, or taste could also be provided.

The purpose of the collected items is to build an immersive multi-sensory abstract persona or mood. With Summoning, we are summoning the essence of an abstract idea to possess us like a demon.

Each of the items provides a modeling ritual. For example, pages from The Crow provide body language clues to imitate, as well as a general pattern of behavior to model. Likewise with The Sandman and BtVS. The music of the Cure, the Doors, Nine Inch Nails, and Nirvana also channels audio mood-makers and psychophonic influences: listen to the Doors for a short while and notice the changes in mood. Our heads are filled with a particular language that takes over our normal style of thinking. I find that just a moment or two with someone with an accent, I begin imitating the person's accent.

Typically, these moods and models were once the gods of ancient cultures. The magicians of old created godforms that represented aspects of nature that the magician wanted to understand and control. Through ritual worship of these gods, the magicians attuned themselves with the nature of the god's symbols. Similarly, Norse Berserkers would dress in animal skins to gain the power of animals like bears or wolves in battle. Totems are a type of summoning.

Listening to Nine Inch Nails while reading The Crow is a modern type of ritualistic worship of contemporary godforms.

Grant Morrison in his “How To Chat Up Gods” section of Pop magic explains

People tend to become possessed by gods arbitrarily because they do not recognize them as such; a man can be overwhelmed with anger (the Greek god Ares), we can all be "beside ourselves" with passion (Aphrodite) or grief (Hades). In life we encounter these Big Ideas every day but we no longer use the word "god" to describe them. The magician consciously evokes these states and renames them gods in order to separate them from his or her Self, in order to study them and learn.

To summon a god, one has only to concentrate on that god to the exclusion of all other thought. Let's just say you wish to summon the Big Idea COMMUNICATION in the form of the god Hermes, so that he will grant you a silver-tongue. Hermes is the Greek personification of quick wit, art and spelling and the qualities he represents were embodied by Classical artists in the symbol of an eternally swift and naked youth, fledged with tiny wings and dressed only in streamers of air. Hermes is a condensation into pictorial form—a sigil, in fact—of an easily recognizable default state of human consciousness. When our words and minds are nimble, when we conjure laughter from others, when we make poetry, we are in the real presence of Hermes. We are, in fact, possessed by the god.

You may wish to connect with Hermes if you're beginning a novel or giving a speech or simply want to entertain a new beau with your incredible repartee.

The form the Big Idea takes depends upon your tradition or desire. The beautiful electric youth of the Greeks is a well-known image in Western cultures, having been appropriated for everything from Golden Age FLASH comics to the logo of the INTERFLORA chain of florists.

Call fervently upon Hermes. Luxuriate in his attributes. Drink coffee or Red Bull in his name or take a line of speed, depending on your levels of drug abuse. Fill your head with speedy images of jet planes, jet cars and bullet trains. Play "Ray of Light" by Madonna and call down Hermes. Surround yourself with FLASH comics and call down Hermes. Tell him how very wonderful he is in your own words, and then call him into yourself, building a bridge between your own ever-growing feelings of brilliance and the descending energies of the Big Idea.

I am mentioning Summoning during my focus on sigils because in the concept of the ultrasigil that I introduced a couple weeks back, I've found Summoning to help increase the magician's focus on a sigil. I create file folders on my computer and then load them up with paraphernalia related to my statement of intent: I fill the file folder with pictures, movie clips, music, artwork, and such so as to have these instant mood makers. I change the icon of the file folder to an appropriate sigil and work my magic from there.

The Summoning doesn't last forever and rituals are meant to temporarily harness the godforms to accomplish a specific task, like a mother's adrenaline pumping to lift up a car. Summon and worship your gods but don't forget to take a lunch break and come back to the real world.