I’ve always been a writer and an artist. I started writing when I was a pre-teen and I started painting when I was 18. Writing and art are essential mediums of expression for me and one of the main ways I weave my magical workings.

I first became inspired to experiment with writing and art as a result of taking a class in college on the writing of William S. Burroughs. At the time I had been practicing magic for a few years and had just started learning about chaos magic. As I read his various books, I began to see the underlying occult themes and it inspired me to apply his practices to my writing and art.

What I discovered as a result is that I could create powerful magic without the usual ritual rigamarole and this allowed me to downsize my magical tool box significantly. You can do the same. And it doesn’t mean that you have to get rid of everything altogether, but you may discover a potent route for magical work that comes through your creativity.

What Burroughs really inspired me to recognize is that it is possible to cut-up reality. Reality isn’t a seamless container or experience. It offers us a rich and multi-faceted experience AND there are cracks in reality that can be explored, discovered and played with through the different mediums of expression that are available to all of us.

What might stop you from applying art and writing to magic

If you’ve ever had the thought that you’re not an artist or a writer or you’ve had a limiting belief that what you put out there isn’t artistic enough, that will get in the way of applying art and writing to magic.

And here’s the truth: You don’t have to be an award winning author or professional artist to apply your creativity to magic.

Give yourself permission to:

pick up the paint brush, crayon, colored pencil, pen, etc., and work with it as a magical tool.
treat your creative activities as sacred acts of magic that can change reality.
know that perfection isn’t the aim, but connecting with the possibilities of reality is.

Something that I learned from the class on Burroughs was that the writing didn’t have to be good (a lot of his wasn’t good); it just had to be something that could invite you in to discovering the possibilities.

Writing, art, music and other creative activities are inherently magical. They invite us into discovering both our inner potential and the possibilities that await in reality. If we treat reality as an immutable and unchangeable experience we are doing ourselves a disfavor. If, on the other hand, we use our creative imagination as an extension of our magical practice, we can create powerful magic with our artistic skills!

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One Practice you can apply today to create magical writing and art

Getting started with applying your magic to your creative pursuits isn’t too complicated. If you already have your supplies in the form of artistic materials, pen and paper, scissors, etc., you already have your magical tools. The following three practices can help get started on the actual application.

Practice 1: Create a Collage Sigil

One the aspects of Burroughs writing and magical practice that stood out to me was how he applied artistic collage techniques to writing. He would cut up a magazine page into 4 sections and then splice the sentences from one section with another section to create a new narrative.

I’ll admit I found some of that writing hard to read, but that was actually the point. What Burroughs was doing was showing how writing could be used to either program someone’s experience or break them free of conformative experience through the writing. By cutting up writing, what Burroughs doing was breaking the original message and its hold on the consciousness of the reader.

I took this practice in a different direction. I created a collage sigil using the cut-up methodology to cut away the original meanings from both words and images and then reorganizing them around a central theme of my own.

You can do the same practice:

Choose a theme to use as the base of the collage…this is the intent of the sigil.
Next, take some newspapers, magazines, mail, and other print media as well as some of your own writing cut it up with a pair of scissors. You’ll want to cut the words and images that call to you.
Grab some glue and paste the words and images together to form new messages. They don’t have to make sense or be complete sentences. They just need to be relevant to what you are creating.
Hang the collage sigil on the wall, where you can see it, so that it embeds its messages in you…that becomes the firing mechanism for the magic.

This practice combines your art and magic together. In a future post, I’ll share some other ways you can apply writing and art to your magical practice, but give this one a try and see what you come up with.

In magically perfect space and time,

Taylor

P.S. I’ve written 2 books about my magical practices for art and writing.

The Magic of Art walks you through how to turn your art into magical workings.

Get it in paperback here and e-book here.

The Magic of Writing walks you through how to turn your writing into magical workings.

Get it in paperback here and e-book here.

Each book comes with exercises and practices like the one I shared here that show you how to change reality through your writing and art.

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