Trench Coat Magic

 

The other day I needed to get a new trench coat. I've had my old one for over ten years, and its well worn, well loved, and even has a hole or two in it. In short its time to retire it. So the other day I went to Burlington coat factory and found a very nice replacement. As soon as I put it on, I felt like I was settling into this warm, comfortable garment that served to not only protect my body from the cold but also, in its own way, became a magical robe of sorts. I've actually felt that way about all of my trench coats.

For me a trench coat is a magical garment. It's a lot like a robe, really. It's got nice long sleeves, and it flows most of the way down your body, plus it wraps around you to cover your entire body. When I'm wearing a trench coat I feel like I'm wrapped not only in the cloth, but also magic itself. Perhaps part of what I like about a trench coat is that it is just a bit formless. When you put it on, you can't tell that much about the person's body or what s/he is concealing underneath the coat. As someone who's grown up with some street smarts, I can tell you that anything which is concealing in that way is quite useful as a posturing tool of sorts.

A trench coat is warm. The lining does an excellent job of keeping your body heat. That warmth reminds me just a bit of the description of Raistlin and his body heat. When I put the coat on, and I feel the heat as a result, I also feel like the magic is surrounding me. I've done enough rituals out in the winter cold to appreciate a good trench coat and how marvelous it can be for keeping me warm, but also how it feels as I move around and the garment presses against me, or flows around me, much like a magician's robe might.

I don't know that there is any inherent magic to a trench coat or any other garment, but I think what it evokes for me is what makes the coat special. It's how I feel as a result of wearing it that really matters. That experience is magical and in turn it makes the coat magical.

Further Thoughts on Body Enhancement via magic

I read an interesting post by Chirotus Infinitum that was a response to my recent post about body enhancement via magic. He made reference to the Deathgate Cycle by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, and much like him I have found that particular series of books to be foundational both in my body modification work and in other magical work I've done. In fact, it's fair to say that reading that series inspired at least some of my thoughts on how I might modify my body with magic as well as how to use those modifications to enhance my magical work.

Something I didn't mention in my previous post was how I've used my tattoos in my body enhancement work. While one of the purposes of my tattoos is devotional, used as an offering to the various elements I've worked with, another purpose is also to enhance my channeling of that elemental energy. The act of getting the tattoo allows me to fully embed the energy into my essence. Each tattoo represents a different energy (or energies) that I can access. For example the the hourglass - web tattoo is connected to the elemental energies of space and time, while my blue dragon is connected to the elemental energies of water. The current tattoo I'm getting, another dragon, is being used to connect with the elemental energies of fire and movement. I have plans to get more tattoos down the line, but undoubtedly some of that will also be influenced by what I work with and how I want to dedicate myself to that energy.

There's not a lot of work written about working with the body. My book Inner Alchemy discusses some of my work and I am continuing in some of those directions, but I think that the body is an untapped resource, especially in Western Culture. Eastern cultures emphasize a connection and cultivation of the body's resources that simply isn't found in Western culture because of the spiritual disconnect from the body that both Christianity and Western Science are responsible for. That spiritual disconnect has fostered perspectives about the body that are unhealthy and don't fully enable people to feel empowered to embrace or work with their bodies. Sadly Western occultism continues to foster similar perspectives. For example, Robert Anton Wilson refers to the body as a robot and seems intent on trying to escape it (not surprising given his encounter with Polio).

I was fortunate to avoid a lot of such limiting beliefs in regards to my body because I wasn't raised in overly religious household and had a natural curiosity about my body that I chose to explore so I could better understand it. I grew up sleeping naked in bed instead of having pajamas on (and I can't understand why anyone would want to wear pajamas) and I have always loved my body and appreciated its curves and the various sensations I can feel. I've also had my own experiences of body hate, such as when I was anorexic, but overall I was fortunate to embrace my body in a way that I observe many people don't. I honestly feel that one of the reasons people are so dysfunctional about sex comes right to the fact that Western culture overall has such a dysfunctional relationship with the body.

There is a lot to be explored in terms of enhancing the body with magic, but also in really understanding the body as a universe of its own, with hidden wonders to experience and explore if we are willing to set aside our all too limited perspectives and cultural biases about the body. This work can only occur if more people are willing to explore the body as a universe and allow themselves to be open to whatever experiences are encountered. Certainly I will keep writing about my own work because I realize more than ever how important it is to continue cultivating perspectives and experiences that run counter to the dysfunctional values that mainstream culture embodies.

Exercise as a meditative and magical state of being

In the last month I've taken up Tae Bo as a cardio exercise. It's been a wonderful way to get my body into shape while losing weight, but it's also been useful as a way of exploring exercise to achieve a meditative state. While I am able to still my min through breathing techniques, I've also found that exercising really forces you to focus your mind, and in the process blocks out the chatter of the monkey mind.

I do some pushups and stomach crunches before doing my morning meditation and I reserve my evening for the Tai Bo exercise. It's a great way to ground myself at the end of the day and it becomes a meditation where I focus solely on my body and the movements. However this stillness of mind is also useful for magical purposes.

For the last couple of exercise sessions I have charged and fired sigils. I have visualized the sigils while exercising and used the movement to charge them. Every exercise movement becomes fuel for the sigil, and when I am finished with the exercise, I launch the sigil. It's not all that different from playing a video game and using it to launch a sigil.

Another way I've been using exercise for magic has actually been for the sculpting of my body. I was inspired to do this through the work that Zac Walters did with exercise magic. He talks about his work in the Magic on the Edge Anthology. I haven't applied his exact methodology to my own exercise work, but what I have done is visualized how I want my body to change as I exercise. When I am exercising I do this visualization where I sculpt my body, particularly the areas I want to change such as my belly and my face. I've noticed that the way my body appears is conforming more and more to the visualized body I have in place in my mind when I exercise.

Finally I've used the exercise to also get in touch with the consciousness of my body and work with it to enhance the metabolism and speed up the purging of toxins and bad fat from my body. I've noticed that I'm continuing to lose weight at a decent recent, in part thanks to the diet I am on and the exercise, but also because I am using the exercise to communicate with my body and help it purge the toxins. The result has been a sense of greater health and energy than I've had in a long while, as well as a closer connection to my body. There are probably other ways that exercise can be applied to magic, but these the ways I am currently using it for myself.

Questions of the Week Answers 1-2-12

Each week, on Facebook and Google plus I will ask people if they have questions and if they do I will post answers on my blog during the following week. I was asked two questions this week. The first one is: Are there any effects from yoga practice upon the magic development? I think with any form of physical exercise or activity there is the potential for it to apply to magical development. In the case of Yoga, it can certainly help you improve breathing, body posture, etc., as well as help you learn how to meditate using different poses. In fact, I'd say one of the chief benefits of Yoga is that it gets you out of your head and into experience of the moment. It can be hard to think of lots of other things, when you need to focus your attention on holding a pose. A deeper exploration of Yoga can also reveal spiritual benefits in terms of allowing you to access internal energy reserves as well as build up those energy reserves. I think the same applies for Eastern Martial arts, but also any form of exercise you do consistently. Exercising requires you to focus on your body, and it can consequently reveal internal reserves, as well as places of tension and stress.

The Second question was: What do you think on psychedelic drugs in use of magic? Do they help for growing up"?

I think of psychedelic drugs or entheogens as crutch, as opposed to being useful for magical or spiritual development. I think there are exceptions, so for example the use Ayahuasuca in South America for Shamanic rituals could be seen as a genuine practice that contributes to the development of a person's spiritual power, but in that case, that kind of spiritual work has been done for a long time under very specific conditions and with specific practices. From what I've observed in general about the use of entheogens, its an exception, rather than a rule that entheogens will help with the use of magic or growing up. In my opinion, its better to learn how to meditate and do all the other work without relying entheogens to get you there. If you are going to use entheogens, bear in mind that you aren't really in control of the experience, and that makes it harder to do magic.

Archetypes, movement, and getting into the role

I've been reading Acting and Singing with the Archetypes (affiliate link) and trying out some of the exercises. My main draw for picking up the book was because of my ongoing interest in integrating movement, dance, and space into my magical work and I thought the book might prove useful for that purpose.

It reminds me a bit of Antero's Paratheatre techniques, and I find that with the archetypes I need to get into a state of mind and body that allows me to channel them. It's not all that different from doing an invocation, but what stands out most is how mutable a given archetype is...or rather I find that it is much easier for me to draw on a variety of pop culture sources as well as more traditional sources. The various archetypal labels of Child, Devil, Trickster, etc. are useful, but in a way I wonder if we confine ourselves to much to those labels? Is the space pirate an archetype in its own right or just a variation of an existing one?

The process of orienting yourself into invoking a particular archetype requires two essential behaviors. The first behavior is an ability to let go of your ego or sense of self. You empty that awareness. The second behavior is the ability to embody the archetypal awareness and characteristics and traits. There's different tools you can use. I've seen people use masks for example, which can be a lot of fun, but your body is the ultimate tool. The change in posture, facial patterns, voice, and even a change in clothing and accoutrements can be quite useful. It's also a change in emotions, and energy. What are the emotions the archetype feels? How does that translate into space and movement? What are the functions it embodies and how does that change the space and movement of the body?

Getting into the role is getting out of the way and allowing the archetype, spirit, etc fill me. I allow my body to become a vessel for the divine force I am working with. I open myself to the experience and let the experience define the space.

Book review: Acting and Singing with the Archetypes (affiliate link) By Janet Rodgers and Frankie Armstrong.

This book was written for an audience of actors, but as someone who is not an actor, but nonetheless does work with archetypes I found it to be a valuable read, with useful exercises that can be applied to more than just acting. I like that the authors drew on perspectives of movement such as Laban's work, but also that they made their work very accessible. This is a book I'd recommend to a counselor, actor, artist, or the magician who wants to take a different approach to his/her magical workings.

How I do healing work

My approach to healing is multi-layered. When I am working on a person I am working on the physical body, as well as the energetic equivalent, and on the emotional level as well. But more specifically I am working on the area of the body that needs healing.

I'm a reiki master (something I don't discuss much), but one of the problems that I've always had with Reiki is that its energy that is channeled through you and its not necessarily a precise experience. Its useful in its own way, but my approach to healing is about precision.

When I heal I work with what I might consider to be lines of force with the person. Some might call this meridians and that would be accurate as well. Some of the healing work involves pulling negative energy out of the person. I'll feel a string of negative energy and I'll start pulling it out and away from the person. Then afterwards I'll replace it with healing energy. While I'm doing all of that, I'll also communicate with the cells of the affected area, so that on a physiological level healing is also occurring. There may not even be a real difference beyond that of perception. One thing I would acknowledge is that my approach to healing is based in part on framing the healing work in a way that is conceptually sound to me. In fact, with healing and magic in general, I think this is true. We draw on a model or conceptual framework that allows us to understand what we are working with and develop a process around it.

With all that said, whenever I do healing work on someone I check in to see if their experiences match what I'm doing. I'll share intuitive insights that come up in regards to emotional issues around the healing I'm doing and see if what I'm getting is accurate to what the person has experienced. The verification that people provide is what tells me the healing is working and that its not all in my head. Their experience and resolution is the result that I'm working toward with the healing.

I do find that approaching healing work as just a physiological issue or an energetic issue isn't the best approach. Incorporating an understanding of emotional stress and trauma seems to be an important part of the healing, so that even if I'm healing a physiological issue, checking in on the emotional level can actually be conducive to helping with the healing of the physiological issue. I think the reason this is the case is because the experience of a health issue brings with it not just the physical symptoms or energetic issues, but also emotional patterns that may need to be explored in order for a person to fully heal.

Healing experiment update

I posted a little while back on a healing experiment I've been doing with a patient. Since then I've continued the work on this patient's neck, with some interesting developments. One of those developments has involved working with past life memories that s/he has, which are embodied in hir neck. For example, one of the healings involved removing the sensation of a noose around hir neck, as well as helping hir work through the associated past life memories. Most recently we're working with another past life that has "come out" now that the noose has been removed.

Now I'll admit, I'm actually fairly skeptical about past life memories. Or rather while I think its certainly possible that a person's identity or soul has experienced multiple iterations of life, I'm not always convinced whether the current sense of self has access to those past lives. But in doing this healing work with this patient, I admit that I'm more open to the possibility of past life regression and experiences than before. It's been clear that I'm working with hir on an energetic and physical level, but also on a memory level. Resolving those memories has healed hir neck quite a bit. It's not nearly as sore and she has more mobility with as well as more energy in general. It's definitely layered work, in terms of the emotions that come up, but this isn't a surprise. I think that most, if not all tension, has some emotional attachments included. Working through those emotional attachments can be just as healing as resolving the physical pain.

Movement class video segments

If you missed Pantheacon, you missed out on some great workshops, including mine. However Kat took some videos of the workshop I taught, and I've included a couple here. You can view all of them on my youtube channel or on my Facebook page.

Here's the second video

Dream Yoga work

I've recently been integrating into my dream work, dream yoga techniques from Tibetan Buddhism. What I've mainly done for the moment is breathing techniques that you do right before you go to sleep. I like to integrate steps of a new practice gradually. Kat's also doing this practice. Even though we've just started with this first step, we've already noticed that we've been sleeping a lot deeper and that the sleep is more restful.I've also noticed better dream recall and more awareness of the dream. I'll post further reports as I continue to integrate more steps in, but it always fascinates me to see how even doing one step of a process can produce changes, provided you're consistent about doing it. I think that consistency is what makes anything you do effective. You can be a really powerful magician, but if you don't exercise the magical muscle, it won't mean as much as the person who diligently practices and follows through.

Book Review: The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche

This book provides what I would consider to be the best practices of lucid dreaming and dream practice. The author doesn't focus on the psychology of dreams, though he does provide some insights on what dreams can reveal about issues you're working on. Instead the focus of this book is on how the techniques can be used to help you release attachment to those issues and achieve a state of connection with the universe, without being drawn back to samsaric existence. It's a very good book to read, but an even better one to do the practices. I've started doing them and already noticed some positive results. I'd recommend this book for anyone interested in learning more about Dzogchen and for anyone who wants to use dream yoga for spiritual and physical well being. You can purchase it at Amazon (Affiliate link) or Powells (Affiliate link)

Why the body is a pathway to the divine

I came across this article where a Baptist preacher has argued that doing Yoga goes against the Christian faith because it teaches that a person can experience the divine through the body. This isn't surprising because so much of Christianity is about damning the body as a portal to sin instead of celebrating it as a gift of manifestation. My own philosophy and spiritual beliefs about the body run counter to the Baptist preacher's perspective. To me the body is a gateway to the mysteries of the universe, and a way of accessing the divine. Yoga and other physical exercises are part of the key to accessing the spiritual realities the body can reveal to us, though they are not the only part of the key. Learning to commune with the body and the different levels of consciousness it provides us access to can also reveal a lot about not just the body, but our connection to the world and universe.

When we deny one level of existence or favor one over the other we create imbalance. The body is not something that should be denied, but rather is a part of us we need to embrace as part of our given approach to spiritual living. By making peace with the body we also make peace with our desires and pains, and from that begin to experience the divine within ourselves.

Melatonin and Tryptophan

Melatonin always appears as a dark skinned woman. she's the polar opposite of serotonin, but also  does similar activities in terms of balancing the neurochemistry of the body as well as a person's emotional moods. She's also helpful in cases of insomnia. She and serotonin can be worked with simultaneously in order to help with situations such as insomnia, where there might be too much serotonin and not enough melatonin or in cases of waking up, where serotonin can be upped while melatonin is decreased.

Tryptophan appears to me as a pregnant sleeping Empress. She aids in Digestion and is consequently a force for change in neurochemistry. People may wish to work with her to get help with digestion issues or sleep issues.

Book Review: The Sorcerer's Secrets by Jason Miller

In this book, the author presents practical ideas and strategies for people who are just starting out in their magical practice. This isn't a 101 book, but its safe to say it's a 102 book that also offers some insights to magicians with more experience. What I appreciate the most is that the author takes the time to focus on considerations such as finances and explains that while magic can help, it's also important to learn practical mundane skills.

I also appreciate the author's choice to draw on a wide variety of sources that fall outside the traditional bibliography usually found in books. The author illustrates the importance of developing a well-rounded strategy by exposing readers to alternative sources.

There are two reasons this book gets a four instead of a five, however. One reason is because the author doesn't address the value of doing internal work as a practical and strategic solution. while knowing how to do practical magic to solve a problem is important, being able to identify your participation in the problem and making changes is even more important, and more practical. The other reason is that while the author does draw on non-traditional sources, he doesn't address the topic of innovation and how it can be used to develop practical magic.

All that said, this is an excellent book to read, and one I'd recommend to someone just starting out.

Amazon link

Powells link

A definition of embodiment magic

Understanding the relationship of the body with the communication with the subconscious is important to realizing how the body can be worked with successfully. Learning how to embody an emotion or concept can be a useful way to understand the effect the emotion or concept has on your life.

Some further thoughts on embodiment work

When I first learned about the paratheatre technique, one problem I had with it was that I felt there was something missing from the explanation of the embodied space. Well more than something...a number of things actually. First what was missing was a concrete explanation of how we move through space. It seems to me that most people take movement for granted and consequently move in a very unconscious manner. I've observed as well that people, in American culture move in a very linear line like manner, 2D movement really. We aren't taught to recognize how our bodies could move. I had to turn to Laban's work on movement to find a comprehensive manual that explored movement and showed possible ways to move that I hadn't considered before. Learning this kind of movement has proven useful for fully doing internal work with my body as an active component of that internal work (i.e. dance and performance art movements).

Second what was missing was understanding space from a social perspective. In general when the word space is brought up it usually makes one think of the darkness of space. But anthropologist Edward T. Hall explored the concept of social spaces and how people interact in them with each other and with objects in the room. As a result of reading his work I came to really understand how much we even embody objects with personification as a way of filling up space. The way a given culture sets up a physical space is indicative of how that culture processes space from an emotional/intellectual perspective, and also how people define themselves within given spaces.

With these two considerations of space in hand, it's been much easier to integrate paratheatre to my meditation work, because I now can consider how I move and how that movement expresses and changes an embodied space I've created, while also recognizing the cultural influences that shape my understanding of that space. Finally, and perhaps most important, I can be much more aware of how my body feels when I move, how it expresses the concept I'm working with through movement, and how that concept is or isn't expressed in my environment everyday.

Doing this work is creating some interesting realizations. I like where its taking me, as well as what I can learn about my body and the relationship I have with it and the environment around me, and how my body expresses the subconscious with its movement and interaction with space.

Embodiment magic

A while back I'd written about some of my experiences with Laban, a form of physical movement. My main purpose for studying Laban was to learn more about the spatial realities of the body as well as how it moves through space, something I considered essential for really getting the methodology of paratheatre, which Antero Alli writes about quite a bit. Since I don't have access to Mr. Alli's classes on paratheatre, utilizing Laban, which admittedly provides a much better explanation of physical movement through space, proved essential for being able to integrate paratheatre into my magical practice. Recently I decided to try out my first paratheatre ritual. I've recently been doing some internal work around intimacy and my issues with being intimate and also being in relationships (friendship or otherwise) where there wasn't much intimacy. I thought it might be useful to embody intimacy or at least try to, using paratheatre. I felt that integrating my body fully into the embodiment was essential for really communicating with my subconscious about intimacy and the issues surrounding it.

I felt very vulnerable when I invoked intimacy into my state of no-form and began to move. In a sense I felt like a child, innocent and unsure of myself, experiencing something for myself that I wasn't really certain of. Intimacy for me involved opening up and so I initially started out very shielded in how I positioned my arms and legs and gradually I began to loosen them and from that loosened my body up further, gradually allowing myself to feel a state of what I would consider to be gentle warmth. Sometimes I would hug myself or gently touch my shoulder or leg. I wasn't striving to be sensual, and I didn't feel that way. But I did feel intimate with myself in a manner that invited myself to be gentle and loving.

As I experienced this feeling of intimacy I paid attention to thoughts, feelings, and whatever else came to my experience that would help me communicate with my issues around intimacy. I learned quite a bit about how I sometimes make it hard to accept what someone wants to give, but also how much I've picked relationships with people (friends and lovers) that didn't necessarily invite intimacy into my life.

When I was ready, I put myself back into no-form and grounded the sensation and feeling of intimacy...but after the working I also felt more comfortable when my partner offered it to me, and also was more aware of what has informed my tendency to fantasize about intimacy. I'll definitely be using paratheatre in the future for some of my internal work, and I have to say that learning about Laban really did help with integrating paratheatre into my magical practice.

Working with the monkey mind

One the issues that comes up in mediation is what Buddhists call Monkey Mind. It's that troublesome voice that starts saying random messages to you and distracts you from meditating. For people who are trying to achieve a state of no mind, the monkey mind is particularly troublesome because its a reminder that your mind isn't in a place of no-mind. What sometimes occur is that people will attempt to repress the monkey mind, but this usually makes it come back swinging. There's a reason for that: It's trying to tell you something. Instead of repressing the monkey mind, which is ultimately a futile effort, it's better to work with it. And by that I mean it's better to start a dialogue with it. When it brings up a random issue, ask it why it brought up and start exploring it mentally. You'll usually find that it leads you to a source of stress and concern in your life. So you can continue to try and ignore that source of stress or you can work with the monkey mind to resolve the source of stress. Mind you, the monkey mind will raise lots of questions and concerns, but that's why it's there. It's a filter, an agitator, and it won't go away until you've addressed its concerns.

When I work with my monkey mind, I use it as a detector of issues that are bothering me. Sometimes its helped me discover some really deep issues, such as my fear of emptiness and most recently a tendency to fantasize in order to fulfill intimacy needs. And that's what makes the monkey mind so useful. It challenges me to be aware of my issues instead of trying to ignore them.  I like that because then I can proactively work on those issues via meditation instead of letting them build up and be acted out in my life. So the monkey mind is actually your friend, not your enemy. Make friends with it and find out what it can teach you.

Cell communication

In developing a system of magic that is focused specifically on the body, one of the challenges has always been how do you actually communicate with the medium you are working with. Since the human body is the medium, it's not enough to recognize you have a body, which anyone can do. To work with the medium of the body necessarily involves first being able to experience it on all the levels of the medium and second being able to communicate on all the levels. In Hands of Light, by Barbara Ann Brennan, she presents a technique where you can experience your body on a cellular level. You meditate and narrow your consciousness down to the level of a cell and then travel throughout the body as the cell, experiencing the different organs of the body as a result. The process works and its a useful way to experience the body.

The next level then is to actually communicate with the body. There are some Taoist breathing techniques that focus on helping a person remove negative emotional energy from organs. That's a step toward communication, but still not quite what we want.

My own approach toward this particular issue has involved syncing with the bio-photonic energy emitted by a cell and then using that sync to communicate with other cells. I'm not communicating with words, or even emotions. I'm communicating with impressions, specifically impressions that the cells are providing to me. It's not the same as verbal communication...it's much more subtle, and yet it can tell you a lot about your body. For example, what you might learn is not just where emotional tension is, but also if there are physical health issues (usually the two are linked). Consequently using these impressions can help you deal with health situations preemptively. The trick is to actually trust the impressions enough to get them checked on (via medical services), as well as developing processes (magical) that allow you to go in and begin healing yourself. The impressions you receive can also be used to help you do preventative health measures.

Seems to me that communication with the body is one of the frontiers that we still have, one that's mostly ignored because humans take it for granted that having a body is enough, and yet there are so many processes that for the most part remain unknown. To me, communicating with the body, with the cellsi n the body is the first step to exploring that frontier.