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.