Junk Food Magic

Something to be expanded and rewritten later for an upcoming project...

The magus goes about life in a ritualized way. This can be seen as superstition, belief in powers greater than the magician being appeased or angered by the magus' relatively insignificant actions. And this is precisely what it is. The magus is handing over some of his power to a greater force. Some people call it God, some people call it the Universe, some people call it creativity. Its name is laughably insignificant, even though millions of people have died at the hands of others who thought their name for the greater powers was better than the next guy's. Every time we dismiss someone for being "Christian" or "Jewish" or "Muslim" or "a Republican" or "a Conservative" or "a Liberal" or "a Democrat" or "a hippie" or "an artist" or "White" or "Black" or any of these other categories which completely eradicate the individual in favor of some larger un-human entity, we dismiss, too, the opportunity for anyone in earshot to benefit from living out the ideals of that entity. It's a useful form of black magic, very efficient as a banishing ritual. Recognize when it's being used, especially when it's being used against you, and even more when you're using it against yourself.

I'm undecided as to the reality of the theory of black magic revisiting itself in harmful ways upon its practitioners, but there is an undeniably real effect on a person who uses this form of banishing magic regularly, and I can't say that it is even remotely beneficial to them in the long run, even if it provides a bit of armor and a false sense of superiority in the moment. It's "junk food magic," quick and dirty, highly effective but limited in scope and unhealthy after repeated use. You can use it, sure, and you can expect to feel rotten later. Anyone with any self-awareness will at least know why they feel rotten. (Hint: It's not the fault of the maligned party.) And in reading this lesson, you've just allowed yourself a whiff of self-awareness. There's nothing you can do to wipe it out now. Alakazam.

Magic Circle, 1992

An intriguing find as I pack up the Wonderella Library of Art & Arcana: a journal entry from 2 May, 1992, when I was 17 years old, describing the construction of my first magic circle...

Today I constructed a magic circle in the woods. I had looked in some books for instructions on how to set up a permanent natural circle but couldn't find any. The only instructions I could find had to do with casting the circle -- I wanted to build a permanent place. I kind of had an idea where, but I wasn't sure. I wanted someplace deep enough in the woods where I couldn't be seen from the house or the neighbors', but still on the property. I kind of had an idea how, too, but again I wasn't sure. I left the house with a bag containing five old cow bones I got last spring in Missouri, a rock from a mountain range in Colorado, an arrow-shaped rock from school, some wind-chimes from India, and my bolline. From the garage I took a rake and a spade. Into the woods...

I found a spot that met most of my criteria. It was visible from both houses, but someone looking from either house would only see a person standing out there, not the circle. The sunlight shone through the treetops on a patch of violets and I knew that had to be the spot. The summer foliage will further conceal the circle. It was only until I was about halfway through construction (it took about an hour and a half) that I recognized the circle from a dream a few nights ago.

Construction went like this...

1. Find center point and rake outwards 4 1/2 to 5 feet, moving around center to create a 9 to 10 foot diameter circle.

2. Uproot foliage inside circle. This might have been a mistake, because of the destruction. But it can also be looked at as a process of transformation, and it gets you tuning in on the earth.

3. Locate the cardinal points. Stand in the center and face away from the sun. Since I did this in the afternoon my shadow cut the circle through the eastern cardinal point. From this point you should eyeball the other three directions.

4. Place cardinal markers. In this case, three bones and three stones. I buried the bones pointing up and down. They'll make good candle holders. The stones I pounded into a triangle formation facing north. I also laid a bone on the northernmost stone.

5. Empower cardinal points. Beginning in the east and moving clockwise, I held a long rib bone over my head in my right hand and invoked the elements through gesture. To finalize the empowering the rib was thrown on the ground and left to rest. I should probably do this more thoroughly sometime soon.

I was going to use the chimes in a sort of swinging censer type way, but thought not to because of the noise. Leaving the circle for home, I touched my bolline's tip to the center point and cast a simple protection spell: Magic circle of mud and bone, protect yourself while I am home.

The Games of Life

From Monday, December 5, 2011. I was prompted to find and type up this story after some friends of mine gave me another copy of Thomas's pamphlets and game at Pub over the weekend. Some other friends stuck around later and we played it. But that's for another post...

Ah! Nothing like the first bit of writing with the first pen from a brand new box. Because I worked at the shop yesterday I took today off, and strolled downtown to buy six months of blue notebooks and a couple boxes of pens at Alko Stationers. On my way there I stopped in at Games of Berkeley for my occasional browse through their game books. I don't think I've bought anything at a game store in almost a year, and I think the reason is (besides the fact that I don't play any games) that there just isn't anything that grabs me on all the necessary levels for it to be a compelling purchase. I'm studying all this magic theory now, and I love fantasy art and tabulation, but even though I noticed last weekend how role-playing game books were one of a few genres that still produced quality overall packages, I didn't flip through any books yesterday which just blew me away. I guess what I'm looking for anymore is a lush Guide to Life, a game which encompasses so many of the activities we do every day and turns them into an adventure. Of course I'm about to embark on one such journey soonish, and I'm sure I'll be wanting that imaginary book more than ever at that time!

What I look for is artwork and a world concept which evoke, or bring forth, true wonder, and games are only half about that, the other half of their existence being about quantifying and readying for calculation and outcome the risks the characters take in the game. The theory behind the mechanics always fascinated me, in a way,  but no more really than the idea that there could be some way to put a percentage score on one's chance for success.

So I left empty-handed and happy and strolled the block or so to Alko to buy the notebooks and pens, then retraced my steps back toward home. As I neared the intersection where Games of Berkeley is, I noticed there was a tall, bearded man standing on the sidewalk wearing a sandwich board and a hat with a sign taped to it. One thing Berkeley never runs out of is demagogues, and although I was curious to know what this fellow was proclaiming, I also wasn't in the mood to talk politics with him. Or with anyone, for that matter. I don't know if it's been the result of studying magic or just a fortunate side-effect, but my thoughts on what is or isn't "good" for humanity has been shot somewhere else -- I'd say elevated, but spirituality isn't any more important than putting dinner on the table. Both are arenas of life, and a happy situation in either realm can make for a happier existence. I'd rather discuss spirituality, though, given the choice.

Which is why I was moderately thrilled when I got close enough to the man to see that it wasn't a sandwich board at all he was wearing, but a stack of laminated posters absolutely loaded with colorful esoteric symbols. I recognized the style as being from a completely indecipherable pamphlet I'd picked up at a coffee shop or somewhere similar, maybe just found it on the sidewalk. Well, here were more, on the sidewalk no less, and wrapped around what appeared to be their publisher. I walked right up and said hello, asking him what he was selling. What followed was a ten-minute-or-so, mostly one-sided conversation with the gnomic fellow, who said his name was Thomas and who had the most optimistic outlook of anyone I'd met in a long time. His colorful, seemingly offset-printed, type-and-image dense pamphlets, posters, and cards seem to be about finding wonder in life, hidden somewhere amidst Zodiac figures, Egyptian tomb iconography, and pictures of everyday objects including Barbie dolls and G. I. Joes, other toys, food, smiley faces, and words words words words words, the sentences colored black but with words or sometimes mere sets of letters within words shaded gray or tinted red or green to draw out layered meaning. An essay about insects compares the physiology of the praying mantis to a centaur in pictures, and states among the dense text, "We may not Bee [colored brown] so differ-ant [bold black] in our True [gray] Form -- Self [grey]!"

All I can say so far, without having yet read one through or investigating the "game" Thomas said was included in the pack of pamphlets and cards and poster I bought (just five bucks!) is that this ephemera proves that there is more out there in the world than anyone truly supposes. He hinted that this very fact was what he attributed some of his positive outlook to -- the Law of Infinite Data. Who knew that not knowing everything, or knowing that there is so much you don't know, could be spiritually liberating? It does all come down to perspective, though, and I can see how the same realization could depress some people. Thomas also noted that the act of complaining is the basis for much of the world's evil, how people get so contracted and constricted focusing on the negative. He conceded that there was much to complain about, but said that it is the focus on the negative which is ultimately destructive. Another interesting topic he spoke about was how multifaceted each of our senses of self (worldviews, Bonewits would call them, or meta-patterns) is, and that this is wonderful because not only do we have to align ourselves individually with one philosophy or organization or another -- Conservative, Liberal, Episcopalian, et al -- but that as human beings we can pick and choose, making up who we are as a constantly changing and growing mosaic, not simply a monolithic belief.

I think the conversation did both of us a lot of good today. Thomas said that I'd made his day by stopping to chat, and I was glad to engage a fellow artist, publisher, and optimist, even if I left the meeting not one step closer to figuring out what in the world Thomas' enigmatic work is about.

Folded and Stapled Escape

A very rough first draft, something for my ongoing collection of childhood reminiscences of learning about magic. Currently it seems to me a mash-up of memories spanning 1986 - 1990...

Ottumwa High School's open-campus policy means that at lunch I can wander away from the school for nearly an hour, and I often spend this time walking a few blocks west of the hulking brick school, down the hill to Main Street to hang out in a few of my favorite shops. I first fell in love with Ottumwa's Main Street when I was seven, my parents bringing Kirk and me to the Capri and Capitol, two movie theatres standing side by side at the corner of South Green and Main. The theatres have merged now, and grown, and the new Capri V advertises five current films on its broad marquee, offering cool, dark respite from whatever reality the locals are living.

I find my own escape from the slow, quiet procession of days in the pages of comic books at Marge's. My friends and I never call this little shop by its real name--is it The Comics Collector?--but instead refer to it as nearly one and the same with its proprietor, the elderly, deeply tanned Marge, who crouches behind the shop's tall counter reading an endless stack of romance novels she pulls from the shelves at the back of the shop. We don't go back there, to the bodice-rippers, even though we dream they might provide a thorough and much-wanted education in the needs and desires of women. Instead we stick around up front, thumbing through the rack of this month's comic books, arranged along a broad rack with 40 or so slots. Marge has put a glass display case just inside the entrance, showing off pewter and lead figurines we can't afford. She sells role-playing games too, and these are strategically placed under the wide front window so they are visible only to those of us already inside. Marge is patient with us. She knows we don't have much money, yet we still have a desire to go to the worlds inside the comics, to know what else is out there, beyond the cornfields stretching to every horizon. So she lets us browse to our hearts' content. I usually buy something about once a week, after I'm paid for my work at the day-care center. I like Spider-Man and The Uncanny X-Men, and I have every issue so far of The Legion of Superheroes, which for a futuristic outer-space superhero book has precious little fighting and lots of intrigue and back story, along with obscure end-notes each issue which fire up my mind as I think of all the Legion of Superheroes lore that I don't yet know. The not-knowing thrills me somehow, helps me let go of the pressure of schoolwork, the mystery of girls, the uncertainty of the future. Maybe Marge knows this, maybe she was once me standing here, before she stepped behind the counter and assumed her seat, her role as guardian between the one world of superheroes and sorcery and the other world of real magic, packed wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling in the romance novels at the back of the shop.

I thumb through Blood, a short series by J. M. DeMatteis and Kent Williams purported (I'm not sure by something I read somewhere or by my own imagination) to be inked in the artist's own blood. Here too is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, aping so manically Daredevil and other comics my friends and I love. It is at Marge's that I discover the work of Jean Giraud -- Moebius -- in a mini-series published by Epic, Eric Shanower's artwork reinterpreting and, I will learn later, giving considerable solidity to the candy-colored, occasionally fluid-spattered world the Belgian Moebius has created. Some of the comics I read, others I just page back and forth through, soaking up the visuals and turns of phrase here and there. My favorite part of any comic is the material at the back, the letters page and any kind of explanatory notes or interviews with the artists. in Moebius' Elsewhere Prince his artwork is tucked away here in each issue, dessert at the end of the meal. I want to peer behind the curtain, I'm curious to see how it all works.

I scoop up the comics I must have each week, leaving others to remain unread, obscure. I grab sketchbook editions by Charles Vess and Michael Zulli, artists who have glimpsed past the mist separating our world from the land of the fairies and goblins, and these books bring new vitality -- death, sex, longing -- to the storybook worlds I somehow cannot leave behind.

Signs and Portents

The category of Signs and Portents seems to, as far as mentalism is concerned, fall under the category of synchronicity and coincidence. In aetheric theory, this is about the connection between all things and how we can trace the cause of some happening back through sometimes seemingly unrelated phenomena. I'd like to write up an activity or exercise to illustrate this point. Perhaps Jung's got something about it in his book on synchronicity.

Moments of synchronicity seem to happen more often under particular circumstances. Two of these I've recognized in my own life are times of intense study (wither for school or writing or for esoteric delving itself) and times when I am falling in love. Both of these activities involve a heightened sense of awareness. It's difficult to define what one's attention is focused on during these times. In study, one is obviously paying attention to the material, and if one is writing about the topic, then there is a good deal of mental connecting going on. The scholar is making links between established and new concepts. In esoteric study the linking is often between concepts and one's own life, or one's outlook on life. This is the creation of significance, and it's the same practice undertaken by poets and essayists, as well as by any artist who works in metaphor.

When one is falling in love, one's eyes are equally open, although the attention is on the object of one's desire and how they relate to one's self. A budding lover has his eyes open for signs and portents in everything, and he sees them often, too. This is, again, the creation of significance.

What does it mean to have a life where significance is so subjective? Can we find any truth, any objective reality in such a means of observation? I believe we can, although the findings may be a "soft objectivity" of general truths applicable to all people. Do the findings in synchronicity studies have any significance outside our own experience?

How does fortune-telling fit in? What are the considerations the mentalist should keep in mind when predicting the future?

[I wrote this on Tuesday 8 May, and paraphrased my theories on the conditions for seeing portents to a friend that night. He seemed to agree that study, especially esoteric study, and the process of falling in love were good ways to open ourselves to this kind of clairvoyance, but indicated that when falling in love we really have no idea what we're seeing.]

The Wishing Machine

Last fall I listened to a recording on Archive.org, one of William Burroughs giving a presentation at the Naropa Institute in 1986. His topic is "The Technology & Ethics of Wishing." A fascinating talk given to a roomful of people who took some warming up, intellectually, on Burroughs' part. He didn't get them asking questions until he'd shifted the subject, slightly, at the end, to the business of writing. That they understood. That some of them seemed to be wanting to do themselves. What no one else in the room wanted to talk about was the "wishing machine" Burroughs described borrowing from a friend and testing. In simplest terms, the machine seemed to provide an apparatus for effecting "wishful thinking" magic along the lines of Austin Osman Spare's methods. The machine's operator wrote what they wanted on a slip of paper and out it between two plates on the wishing machine--a technological equivalent of "dropping the desire down the memory hole."

Twentieth-century humans (and twenty-first century ones to a greater extent) are largely if not completely ignorant about machinery and the mechanics of how things work. Because of this it's feasible that a "wishing machine" really could exist. After all, when we use a microwave or a computer, the vast majority of us (myself deeply included) have no idea what we're doing. We might as well be operating the Ark of the Covenant. And those devices tend to give us what we want at an equivalent or higher rate than does the "wishing machine," which clocked in a 70% - 90% success rate for the desired effects, including the healing of warts and acne in children and some other maladies in older people, and the killing of some insects. Those are things we can't do with our personal computers, so a bit lower success rate might be okay, yes?

That the wish is formulated on paper and placed between the plates seems to be all Burroughs has to say about the "apparatus," the "technology of wishing." On the ethics he goes into a bit more detail, retelling the story of "The Monkey's Paw" and all the side-effects, you might say, of careless wishing. The wishes all come true, but there are unforeseen aspects to how the wishes come true that cause great suffering. Burroughs, who you'll remember accidentally killed his wife while performing a William Tell-style stunt, says he would never do "something so stupid as to wish for money," as he expects any gain would come at some greater expense. And as for wishing someone dead, Burroughs says he would never do this, either. It's unclear whether this is because he knows what death is, having killed his wife, or if he simply believes in the sanctity of life, or if he has been scared straight by an anecdote he tells of a man who wished his neighbor dead, but before the wish could come true the neighbor heard about it, came over with a chainsaw and killed the wisher (the magician, you could say), then himself "dropped dead of excitement." "If a wish can kill a junebug it can kill a man," he warns. So a wishing machine truly is a murder machine.

If a wishing machine is to exist, then out of fairness everyone must own one. It sells itself, really, and makes for a hell of a gun-control parable. Burroughs' only regret, it seems, is that someone can't, or hasn't yet, patented a wishing machine, as they could grow rich off its sale. A bit tongue in cheek; gallows humor. But of course he may be making it all up, this business of a wishing machine, because each of us already does possess one. It is the combination of our imagination and the innate free will given to each human being at birth. In describing it this way, though, Burroughs performs his own bit of magic, imbuing our minds with light and curiosity. We want to know where we can find a wishing machine of our own, and in our desire for one we both externalize, and therefore alienate from ourselves, something innately ours. We also gain a way to talk about our own capacity, again possessed by every person, to make a wish and to see it come to pass in reality, in whatever grim way it will.

Burroughs also outlined some good exercises for magicians and writers, exercises in consciousness such as going for a walk around a city block, thinking what thoughts as we will, and then trying to remember what we were thinking when something remarkable (in the mundane sense of the word) happens: when we see a flashy advertisement, for example, or when someone asks us for the time. This is a good exercise for the modern magus to try, and Burroughs is a stellar example of a someone who was a magician as well as a writer.

Magic Beans

Much of magic, I'm led to believe, is a willful tricking of ourselves. This can be done in a few different ways. One way is the incorporation of certain magical rules into daily life. Superstitions, they might be called. I learned a few such rules that Pythagoras and his school followed. One of them was that a magical practitioner should never eat beans. This rule is known by more people than I expected, and the response I get from some of them is that this rule doesn't have anything to do with magic or mathematics, but was observed by Pythagoras and Company because the master didn't like beans (or because beans disagreed with him). I don't follow this rule mainly because I like beans, and because beans are often the best, quickest, most affordable way for me to get a meal in. When one has little time and little money a can of beans does the trick.

But A-HA! Here is something we can learn from incorporating rules and strictures into our lives, especially seemingly arbitrary ones from long-dead philosophers. The rule was theirs for their own reasons. It may have been for purely practical or purely personal reasons -- you don't know. What you do know is your own situation/story/psychology, as well as the fact that Philosopher X seemed to be doing something right, and you'd like to have a bit of their juju working in your own life. If you understand their rule and can see valuable application of it in your own life, then you can incorporate it for that purpose.

The trouble is that this is really the only way you can incorporate it. I'm writing about the value of ignorance, or I'm about to. Because if you know why you're supposed to be doing something, it's difficult to see what else the same obedience can give you. If, however, you have no idea why Pythagoras and his crew didn't eat beans, or if you take it on as a rule simply to make your life more like Pythagoras' (a form of beside-the-point imitation that, while seeming far from genuine has practical magical application), then you can create a story of your own as to why this makes sense for you in your own life. The reasons don't have to be conscious before you take on the practice. They are perfectly capable of coming into being on their own, and sooner or later they do. Human beings are experts at rationalizing behavior. Consider disc golf.

So soon enough you will come up with your own reason as to why abstaining from beans makes you a better magician. One idea I have about why this is so is that beans are a cheap, fast food. The very reason I like them is the reason they are detrimental to my magic. If I disallow myself beans, I can't just pop open a can and wolf them down, I can't treat my body like a machine that runs on beans instead of motor oil. By not eating beans I force myself to come up with another solution to the issue of being hungry. Perhaps this solution costs more, or takes longer to prepare. I have enough sense not to eat junk food every day, so I end up making myself something healthy -- healthier, perhaps, than a can of beans. It might cost more and might take a bit more time to prepare, but this is a good motivator for me to be more profitable and efficient with my time. By eschewing beans I set up the small challenge of affording the luxury of eating a salad I prepare myself, for example, or of making a sandwich for lunch or some noodles for dinner. It's a little trick, but magic is full of tricks and we must learn to consciously play tricks on ourselves. This is part of the work of the magus.

Four Laws of Magic

Late last year I dove into the stacks at the Wonderella Library of Art and Arcana with the intent of finding books that outlined the utter basics of magic -- its history, the way it interacts with the human mind, and any rules it seems to follow. One of the books I found was my old paperback of Kathryn Paulsen's The Complete Book of Magic & Witchcraft. I bought this book as a teenager and worked through some of the demonology exercises at the time. Since then I hadn't picked it up too often, because it always seemed a little sensationalistic. But when I opened it up this past autumn I found her writing to be straightforward enough to help me get started writing about the basics. The following are some notes from November 14 on four basic laws of magic:

Scottish anthropologist James Frazer, author of The Golden Bough, cites two basic principles in the magical systems of aboriginal peoples around the world. The first is that of homeopathy or imitation. The second is contagion.

The Law of Imitation (my phrase, after Bonewits) states that there is a sympathetic relationship between like things. A doll or drawing or other representation of a person, for example, will transmit manipulations done to the representation to the person himself. From this law we gain some of the most potent imagery of magic, including the voodoo doll and the ornate sigils of ceremonial magicians.

The Law of Contagion (again, after Bonewits) states that objects retain their relationship after separation. Hair cut from a person for whom you wish to perform magic will transmit effects to that person along the same lines as in the Law of Imitation. The contagion principle may be combined with the imitation principle -- adding the hair to a doll sewn to represent the hair's original owner, for example -- and the magic will be strengthened. The vitality of the recipient is inherent in the hair, fingernail clippings, or other substance taken from their body. I am reminded of the 16th (17th?) century use of the weapon salve, which could aggravate wounds at a distance, when I think of Contagion.

Outside of Frazer's findings we discover a third principle in magical theory -- that of antipathy as described by Cornelius Agrippa in his 16th-century writings.

The Law of Antipathy -- also called Banishment -- states that some objects are magically opposed to one another. If a particular force or being (an enemy, for example) is hoped to be countered or stymied by magic, this can be done with an antipathetic object or substance. Often these associations seem arbitrary. (The example in Paulsen is that of an emerald incorporated into a charm for finding an adulterer. When you write about Antipathy for your book, go to Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy and find a separate example.

Early practitioners of sympathetic magic, it is believed, added an intangible element to their Imitative representations -- desire. Without desire, their spells would be nothing but faulty science, chemistry with cat's blood and emeralds. But each magician, sometimes on behalf of the tribe or a client, put their hopes for the outcome into the working. Because this could be expressed in verbal or written form (even if spoken or inscribed solely in the magician's imagination), we assume that the magician also believed there was someone, or something, who could receive the message. Be that recipient a god, angel, monster, devil, or Nature itself, perhaps it was the force which made the magic happen. The hairy voodoo doll was a message to that god -- "Here is my goal. Make it happen." In Egypt, the early priests had a co-equal relationship with their gods and under the right circumstances could control their actions to magical ends. In later magics, it seems the gods aren't quite so chummy, and need to be petitioned with greater deference. The intensity of the desire, or of the belief that the desire would be fulfilled, provided a greater or lesser enhancement to the magic. It is easy to see how ceremony and aesthetics were developed along these lines.

Similar to the Law of Imitation is the principle of the Macrocosm and the Microcosm, developed by the Babylonians. To paraphrase Paulsen:

The Law of the Microcosm and Macrocosm states that man himself is a representation of all of Creation, and that there are correspondences in his physical body with that of the planets in the cosmos. Later developments of this law led to correspondences being made between parts of the body and certain herbs, stones, and other natural objects, or between natural objects themselves. The Doctrine of Signatures provides one such listing. [I think so, at least. I have not researched this further.] A person's heart was thought to be directed by the gyrations of the planet Venus. Golden-colored stones and flowers were affiliated not only with the Sun, but also with every other object of solar sympathy -- the head, wealth, vitality, etc.

The Strolling Mentalist

Some thoughts on mentalism and walking.

Habits -- especially daily habits -- reinforce themselves in tangible and intangible ways. A daily practice of writing, cooking, or some other creative pursuit will not only provide you with the physical fruits of your labor -- finished pages or home-cooked meals -- but will sharpen your skills and strengthen your confidence. Unproductive habits take on lives of their own, too, with predictable results. And habits of any stripe become easier to continue the more often you perform them, especially if you've set up your life to make following them easy.

One of the best habits you can cultivate for your aetheric development is a daily walk. Modern life has a tendency to turn our attention inward, and as we focus on ourselves we lose our attention to the details of the world around us. By getting up from the desks and tables and screens that command so much of our time and attention, we heighten our perceptions of other people and the environments we live in. The act of walking increases our heart rate and quickens our breathing, bringing us a greater sense of our physical body. The walking route you choose should ideally be one which puts you into this heightened state for at least ten minutes.

Make your walk something you can easily incorporate into your daily life. If the distance of your commute to work or school is a few miles or less, you might be able to walk there instead of driving. If you go out to lunch, try walking there, too. If you find that your life simply hasn't got a half-hour or so for you to devote to walking, it may be time to reevaluate the daily habits you've already cultivated. If there are any you'd like to eliminate or change, perhaps the inclusion of a daily walk can help you with that. It can be helpful to incorporate some practical goal with your walk -- a visit to the grocery store, or your route to work, for example. This can help you feel the time spent on your walk is not "wasted" (a feeling that is peculiar to modern life). Whether or not the walk is tied to another of your day's activities, allow the time while you are actually walking to be yours alone. This means no phone conversations, no music, not even a walking companion. You will need your senses to be fully engaged with the walk itself.

While you're on your walk, take note of the people and places along the way. Walking moves you along your route much more slowly than driving, and as such you have more opportunity to notice the details. See if you can make out details of the buildings and trees you haven't noticed before. What do you see that adds depth to your mental picture of these places? Note these well, and look for them each time you pass, while at the same time keeping your eyes open for more.

As you repeat your walk the next day, and the next, pay attention to which aspects of it change, and which stay the same. If your walk happens at the same time every day, you might find that you pass the same people on their own daily walks. Maybe some of them are only on your route certain days of the weeks, taking the weekends off, for example. Is the car traffic the same every day? As the weeks turn to months, notice how the position of the sun is different when you begin and end your walks. You may get to the point where your observation of this is very specific. How does the weather change as your walking routine stretches across the seasons?

What does any of this have to do with mentalism? Even though we may think of our walk as a strongly material-world activity, it puts us into an environment of more rich and varied aether than if we were home instead, even if we were doing something intellectually stimulating there. Activities such as reading or surfing the Internet use our minds, and in a way these are actions which hint at the image-making involved in the visualization techniques of mentalism, but these worlds are largely of our own, self-directed creation. Our decisions take us where we desire to go, and the reality which results is one more or less of our own design. This is dramatically less so on one's walk. The route may be our own, as may the thoughts and impressions we receive while walking, but there are many more souls around us, especially if our walk takes us through a busy part of a city.

This outward-looking approach, as opposed to an inward-looking one, is like a multi-course feast for our aetheric selves, providing us with an ever-changing parade of sights, sounds, scents, and other sensations outside our immediate control. The fact that we follow the same route every day, at the same time, gives us a consistency by which to judge similarity or difference of these sensations. And having this sense of distinction helps us to see the finer details that make up so much of mentalism. The walk, and your collected observations from it, can be the starting point for many aetheric exercises. Think of the walk as a laboratory in which you can try different experiments, each one with a particular focus.

The accomplished clairvoyant Rudolf Steiner encouraged his students to observe the weather at the same time each day. By seeing how the clouds were shaped and colored, and noticing the temperature and the force and direction of the wind, the careful observers soon found they were engaging in a very "grounded" form of divination. The patterns observed told them much about what to expect from one day to the next, and they became relatively successful "weathermen." This close observation is at the heart of the ancient practice of divination. We now live in a time where more than ever before it is easy to disconnect from the natural rhythms which surround us. Yet if we can enter back into awareness of them, they can reveal much and give us a greater understanding of what is too easily dismissed as superstition and senseless magical thinking. The most fascinating realization we can have as we try these "silly" exercises is that we are in fact putting ourselves far more in touch with reality than the person who depends on the weatherman's daily report.

On Beginnings

Yesterday was book-ended with two experiences which mirrored one another, in a way. As I was making tea and toast in the kitchen in Bonita Hollow, Wendi walked in to begin her own morning routine. She and I often meet up like this and take the opportunity to compare notes on our respective lives, mainly centered around our creative and professional endeavors. We are regularly equally flabbergasted at the pressures and challenges that come with trying to incorporate our imaginations into any sort of gainful employment. Happily, we've both had some success at it, but this seems only to highlight a corresponding poverty, materially, and our conversation about it is often punctuated by sufficiently dark humor. (Perhaps this is the recourse of those with Germanic blood.)

This morning as she walked in I must have been looking particularly "creative," as her response to our exchange of greetings and my pointing out of the fresh-from-the-dentist Tilly (No cavities!) and a mention of the bill for her and Cheese's vet checkups -- $589.05 + $606.15 = $1195.20, or two weeks of pay, pretax -- was to point at me with a look of amused recognition and exclaim, "You're crazy!" We just laughed and laughed. I haven't had a good, freeing laugh like that in a long time.

So that was the opener. That evening around 8:30 or so, when I was finally prying myself away from my desk at Castle in the Air, I was also watching a bit of Alan Moore on the You Tube, as I am occasionally wont to do. I was trying to find his interview, an old one, from when he was just first enjoying some fame and fortune, in which he concluded with an insightful, incisive comment about his unkempt hair. I want to find the quote for use in an upcoming book project, as it has to do with Ego and artistry. I couldn't find it, but I did find his Mindscapes series and was clicking through the first twenty minutes or so when he began talking about his career shift from working with literal filth to deciding and following through on making writing his full-time career:

I was expelled from that job after a couple of weeks for smoking dope in the mess room, which really wasn't improving my career curve any. The next job I was able to get was that of a toilet cleaner at a hotel and it more or less went downhill from there until I finally ended up as a comics writer.

[Closeup on Moore's hand placing The Fool card from Aleister Crowley's Tarot deck on the table.]

Quitting my day job and starting my life as a writer was a tremendous risk. It was a fool's leap, a shot in the dark. But anything of any value in our lives, whether that be a career, a work of art, a relationship, will always start with such a leap. And in order to be able to make it, you have to put aside the fear of failing and the desire of succeeding. You have to do these things completely purely without fear, without desire. Because things we do without lust of result are the purest actions that we shall ever take.

Hearing this lit a spark of recognition in my mind, one which flashed its momentary brilliance on the bugbear of both doubt and desire lurking in my semi-consciousness. Yes, obviously I am crazy, yes obviously I am a complete fool for embarking on this journey. And therein lies both the reason for going and the means of making it. "Without fear, without desire." I'm reminded not so much of the initial move to California, which was one filled incredibly full with hope, desire, and a sense of possibility, but of my entering into the teacher training, which was a handing over of absolutely every part of myself for remodeling -- my time, my health, my worldview, my fortune. I did it with a feeling of assisted flight, really. It felt like flying and being held by a flying being at the same time. An angel, one could say. In the grasp of an angel one might feel fear or expectation, but my memory of it at the time was one of relief, of curiosity, of as much openness as I'd ever mustered in my life. Overwhelmingly it was a feeling of trust. Trust in all that was outside me to guide and carry me onward. In the end I believe that trust was rewarded, not in any recompense for the time and money, but in a better understanding of myself. I'm better off in so many ways than I was before, and although I sometimes wonder what life would have been like had I never undergone my reduction to ash and my resulting reconfiguration, I don't ever wish that none of the journey happened. Speaking from a place of Ego, I like what's become of me and I like where I am. This next step is a fool's leap into dangerous territory emotionally, financially, spiritually, artistically, physically, and in other ways too, I'm sure. Taking this step, this leap is the only way to find out what happens next. It is curiosity which guides us, and our sense of humor which protects us, which cushions the fall and, during our moments of greater levity, shields us from the light and heat of the sun.

All of this resonates with me quite strongly these days not only for its relevance to my particular situation but to the thoughts and readings I've been processing as regards The Artistic Life. Before I began writing this morning I found William Kiesel's notes on the Frankfurt Book Fair in which he wrote:

...another discovery I made was that there just is not that much going on at the Frankfurt Book Fair which fits into our approach to Esoteric Publishing. As a consequence of this the number of catalogues I passed out was shamefully lower than I had hoped, though many of the folks who did receive them were impressed by them. By day's end I was exhausted and made my way back to the home where I was staying, where I fell down on the bed fast asleep.

William has, in writing this, described a moderate initiation experience into the realm between Art and Commerce so many of us find ourselves inhabiting, especially as we gain recognition for our work. There won't be much for the book artist at Frankfurt's major commercial fair, no, because it is a conference for the book salesman. How the artist responds to this realization makes absolutely all the difference. They can throw up their hands and decry all of Western civilization. "If this is the absolute best that the book world can offer, then I want no part of it!" And maybe they don't. If the artist is secure enough in himself and his own work he will continue on with it, compelled by the same forces which brought him to where he is today. If he isn't, he might quit books altogether, or shift his art to a new vantage point, one which will "sell more books, move more units." The work of the artist is not to "move units." The artist is indeed attempting to instigate motion with his work, but "units" are not what he is attempting to move. That is the work of the salesman, the merchant. An artist who desires to make a living off something akin, remotely, to his own individualistic self-expression is in a better position than the lifelong merchant, for whom learning to be an artist is a more difficult prospect than the journey from artist to businessman. To do either has to do with shifting something inside ourselves.

With a great enough sense of self, though, none of it matters. Even an artist with "a career" defined more or less by his art is someone driven by assignment, by contract. This is how the money moves from those who have it to those who don't, each party providing something in exchange. Whether the exchange is thought of as equitable is for them to decide. Honestly, though, art is unquantifiable, incalculable by definition. People and their imaginations are not numbers. The Fool's card is not numbered one. It is numbered zero. We are all of us fools. We are fools to think we can be anything but fools. We are fools for trying, fools for failing to try, fools for choosing art, choosing money, choosing love. But we are all of us fools. In Pamela Colman's famous deck, there is a reason his head is thrown back in revelation and gobsmacked ecstasy.