I’m debating right now what my next book will be about, but I’ve already got some good ideas percolating. No it won’t be social media magic…though that could be the name of a chapter.

Anyway, I’ve been playing around with my Facebook Timeline, adding some events to points in the past, mainly where I moved to and where I’ve lived. I wish they would let you create future events on your timeline, but it doesn’t look like they do. However the possibilities of using an FB timeline for a bit of retroactive magic does excite me, especially when you can add pictures and videos to a specific date in time. You can graphically rewrite your timeline and make it into a very creative experience.

For example I’ve added several fiction events to my timeline. I’ve done it for the sheer humor of it, but there’s nothing to say that you couldn’t go in and rewrite portions of your life with modified details, and use that as a kind of narrative that also retroactively rewrites your life. And if you can get people into participating with you via tagging, you can even come up with some clever meta events.

It’s really about having fun, but also getting creative with your life. Changing what happened on the timeline might open up some possibilities for you, or if nothing else give you closure on events in your life. It’s something I’ll keep playing with, as much for whimsy as for any magical purpose. The time line is a graphic and textual narrative of your life. It can represent where you’ve been, who you’ve met, what you’ve done…and it can part fact and part fiction. FB probably wants it to be all fact, but why make it all fact?

What about you? How would you experiment with the Facebook timeline?

Here’s my latest painting. It’s a self-Evocation painting. I do these occasionally and I use them to paint an internal landscape of my consciousness. This one is actually quite nice and feels much more peaceful compared to some of the other ones.

A self-evocation is really a snapshot of time, a way to connect with a particular moment of my life. I’ve used the paintings occasionally to interact with younger versions of myself. In a sense the paintings act as a temporal powerspot. It’s not the only method I use for accessing past versions of myself, but it is a useful method to use, and one that provides something to focus on to help you reach that past point of existence.

Now apply this to magic. Magic is about changing a space. It changes a space by turning possibility into reality. Space changes, becomes a different space when a possibility is brought into reality. Space is changed by time, with the understanding that time is what brings possibility into reality, while space provides the necessary anchor for reality to exist in.

A person is his/her own space. Space acts on space and in turn is acted on by space. The person expresses his/her space in the external space, but that same space also shapes the person’s identity. When a person performs an act of magic s/her is inviting in both time, and specific defined spaces to modify the current space s/he inhabits, both in terms of identity, and in terms of circumstances the person is in.

Lately, I’ve been experimenting with draining possibilities away, until there’s only one possibility left. The way this works is that you first determine what possibility you want to bring into existence and then you identify other possibilities that you don’t want to bring into existence. You then drain the unwanted possibilities, removing all potential of them occurring. Naturally, you can redirect what’s been drained into the possibility you want to manifest.

This technique is admittedly a variation of the one mentioned in Space/Time Magic, but I always find it useful to explore multiple approaches toward accomplishing something. It keeps the mind limber and ironically, in this case, keeps you open to possibilities.

Book Review: The Way We Think (Affiliate Link) by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner

It’s an interesting book that will challenge your thinking about you think and relate to different concepts in the world. At times, I think the authors stretch their theory, but overall I found this to be a solid book with good examples being used to illustrate what they meant by conceptual blending. I found the focus on language and metaphor to be particularly fascinating. With that said, this is a book best read slow and considered carefully. The concepts are complex and will challenge your thinking.

I watched the movie Somewhere in Time last night. It’s an interesting film because of the time travel aspect. In the film the protagonist travels back in time and to do this he hypnotizes himself to believe he is in the year 1912. To make this work, he has to remove everything from the room that would remind him of the modern era. He also dresses himself in clothes from that time period, that would fit in where he is going. He then hypnotizes himself and ends up traveling back in time. It’s an interesting idea for a technique. In the movie he had a specific day and time he was showing up. What ends up bringing him back is an encounter with something modern.

Could this be used as a technique for retroactive magic or for space/time magic work in general? I don’t see why it couldn’t be. If you were going to use this for retroactive magic, you’d need to acquire period technology, clothing etc. This would help your mind accept the idea that you were traveling back into the past.

Applying this technique to the future would be harder, as obviously you wouldn’t have access to period clothing or technology. Nonetheless I don’t think it’s impossible. It really comes down to questioning if you even need a label of the future to access a different point of time. And if you are concerned about that, the way you could get around this is to use the technique to contact your future self or a future descendent, to provide you a repository for your consciousness.

What makes this technique so interesting is that hypnosis is used to achieve an altered state of awareness that accepts the possibility of being in another time (although in the case of the movie, anchored to the same space). The anchoring of the space provides stability for the mind, in terms of accepting the temporal shift, but still having a space the mind is familiar with. I’ve used hypnosis enough to know it can be useful for hitting heavily altered states of awareness, including temporal shifts, so I think it’s possible to experiment with a concept such as this and use it with some degree of success for making changes to your past or future.

You’d need to develop a script that you could use to put your mind into a deep state of relaxation while also pointing it to a specific temporal moment you want it to inhabit. It also helps if you can describe the spatial aspects in some detail, in order to provide a grounding in the new environment you want your mind to go to. Most of all though you have to want to go there. It has to be somewhen that you want to be more than anywhere else.

My own experiences with retroactive magic have involved going back to a past version of myself and then helping the version make a different choice. I’ve found it useful to thoroughly explore the memory setting of that past version in order to fully integrate my present self into that post moment, but I’ve also used my past version as my anchor point. That past version has also provided that emotional basis for needing to be in the past. In the movie, since the character was going into a past where he didn’t yet exist, the emotional basis that caused him to need to be there was his desire to meet someone in the past that he felt an attachment to. We can’t ever underestimate the power of desire and emotion and where and when it can take us.

• How movement and space can be used to construct sacred space.
• How to manifest multiple possibilities using sigils.
• How to create a sigil web that maps your life in terms of space and time.
• How to work with your future and past selves.
• What time dilation techniques are and how to use them.
• How to work with alternate selves and learn from them.
• Free e-book version of Space/Time Magic included!
• Free Tarot Reading included, when you sign up for this class!

Space and Time are two elements that we can’t ignore if we want to really understand magic. This class will help you take your magic to the next level.

This is an eight week class starting on August 1st from 5 pm to 6 pm PST and ending on Monday September 19th. A free e-book version of Space/Time Magic is included!

The cost for this class is now discounted to $165.00 until July 31st. You can pay via check, paypal, or credit card. If paying by credit card, contact me. Payment plans are accepted.

I’ve lately been reincorporating this practice into my daily work as one of the ways I can align with the elements of space and time. The concept of zero is a place where all possibilities can exist, but no reality occurs. Reality can only occur when an action is taken that moves a possibility into an actual reality. Zero is a state of being, a way of looking at space and time and the intersections of the two elements and the possibilities that spring out of that intersection.

Actually it’s fair to say that Zero, as a concept that Gray introed to me, has been around since I first learn about it. It’s an integral part of my mythology as it applies to space and time, and emptiness. What we can learn from zero is to how cultivate a state of being that’s simultaneously removed from the present and connected to every possible moment that was and could be. The benefit is a temporal-spatial awareness that enables you to find possibilities that might otherwise be missed. It does make you somewhat non-linear…and zeroing is just the first step to hitting this state of awareness.

When I do space/time magic, I like to warm up, as it were, using time dilation techniques. they are techniques that help to push the mind out of the linear frame of thinking it is used to, while prepping it for opening the doors of consciousness to explore time from a non-linear perspective. One of my favorite exercises to use comes from Jean Houston’s Book The Possible Human (affiliate link). In this exercise you visualize time as a yard stick with past, present, and future occupying 12 inches each. Then what you do is take the past and give it 12 more inches, while having six inches off the present and future, and focus on experiencing a perception of time where most of the perception is on the past.

You can do the same exercise with the future, giving it 24 inches, and giving the past and present 6 inches each, or apply it to the present. Now you’ll note that this is still a fairly linear perception of time, but the point of the exercise is to loosen up your habitual perception of units of time.

Time dilation is the first step toward experiencing and accepting that time isn’t a constant and that we have influence on it. The usefulness of doing a time dilation exercise, whether in daily work, or just before you do a space/time working is that it’ll push you outside the digital measurements of time we’ve come to rely on so much. And learning to activate time dilation at will can actually help out in those everyday situations, as well, because it teaches you to rely less on external measurements of time and more on internal awareness. You can apply that internal awareness toward shaping time around you, like in the time sphere working I discuss in Space/Time Magic.

Time dilation frees us of the automation of time, challenges us to question the measurements and schedules of others and shows us a glimpse of what time could be, if we are open to altering our perceptions of it.

Breathing Meditation class

In this class, Taylor Ellwood will teach you Taoist breathing techniques that
you can use for meditation and for achieving closer connection to your body.
Knowing how to breath correctly can help improve your health. You will learn:

• The Fusion of the Five Elements breathing and how you can use it to help you work with negative emotions and release them
• The Taoist Water breathing technique which can help you dissolve internal blockages
• How to use your breathing to attune yourself to your body’s consciousness.

When: July 9th at 1pm at New Awakenings Bookstore
404 East Main Street, Battle Ground, WA 98604
RSVP: 360-687-7817

Space/Time Magic Course

Space and time are two elements of our lives that we live with and use every day. In the classic models of magic, these elements are not overtly included. In this class, I will show you how to integrate both of these elements into your magical work. You will learn why its important to factor time and space into your magical workings, as well as how the inclusion of these elements can radically change your understanding of magic. You will also learn:

• How movement and space can be used to construct sacred space.
• How to manifest multiple possibilities using sigils.
• How to create a sigil web that maps your life in terms of space and time.
• How to work with your future and past selves.
• How to work with alternate selves and learn from them.
• Free e-book version of Space/Time Magic included! 

Space and Time are two elements that we can’t ignore if we want to really understand magic. This class will help you take your magic to the next level.

To RSVP, go here