Why I think there isn't more experimentation in magic

In response to this post I wrote, another post was written which commented on the lack of experimentation. I think the author was dead on in his assessment, but it also prompted some further thoughts on my part on this subject.  I agree with the author that magic is a highly personal journey in some ways. I've certainly seen that with how people have taken some of my techniques and personalized them. I advocate for such personalization and my point that people should be able to explain how magic works really comes down to being able to explain to other people how they approach magic, with an understanding that is developed based off experience and a willingness to explore the mechanics of magic as it applies to their use of it. Will I get the same result as someone else does if I copy his/her technique? Maybe yes and maybe no. What I know is that if I take a person's technique apart and reassemble it into a process that I understand, I will get results. That's how its always worked for me, and in my books I have advocated for a similar approach on the part of my readers. I'll provide you exercises you can do, exercises that have been tested by myself and other people, but I've always urged people to make any such techniques their own, to personalize and experiment and tinker with the techniques until they have a thorough understanding of the technique from personal experience, which also fits their definition of magic. I don't know that there is a universal theory of magic. I do know that I find certain models of magic don't work for me because they seem counter-intuitive to my understanding of the world, but those same models work for other people just fine. What I object to however is the tendency of many occultists to not critically examine their process of magic. One of the reasons I think experimentation doesn't occur as much as that there's this focus on obtaining results, with an attitude of, "If I got it, why should I care about my process". We see this attitude echoed in the works of occultists such as Grant Morrison and Patrick Dunn, both of who have stated it doesn't matter if you don't know why or how magic works, as long as you get a result. We've seen it echoed in chaos magic, where it's all about results. If it doesn't matter, then why even examine your process?

However it DOES matter, and the magician who aspires to do more than just get results cares enough to explore his/her process in order to understand and cultivate their magical work more effectively, as well as to pass it onto other people. If the magician understands his/her process and can take the time to explain it and provide opportunities to both try the techniques as well as personalize them, there should be no problem in passing on the how and why of magic.

Another reason few occultists share their experiments is because there has been and is a tendency for many occultists and pagans to be judgmental of the people sharing their experiments. Since the late 90's I've experimented and shared my ideas, and for the majority of that time, I received more contempt and insults than people actually interested in what I had to offer. Even with that kind of obstacle, I persisted and found people to experiment with in groups, in order to try my concepts out. Even now, I have a small group I work with and in that group everyone is encouraged to share ideas and experiments so all of us can try them. But finding such a group is rare. I've had people call me too open-minded, fluffy, etc. I've also had people react because they feel if magic isn't done a particular way, it's not real magic. Obviously such infantile behavior has never stopped me in my work or in publishing it. In fact, one of the reasons I founded the non-fiction line of Immanion Press was to make sure that books that didn't fit conventional or traditional ideas of magic would have a chance to be published. Such traditionalism isn't confined to occultism. I've also seen it in academia. The reality is that in any given field of study there are few pioneers and many people sticking with what's tried and true. The pioneers have to be willing to take risks, and try and find like minded people who are willing to advance the evolution of magic by thinking beyond what has already been presented to them.

Recently, I had a conversation with the editor of a Pagan magazine. We were trying to figure out which themed issue we could do an interview of me. She mentioned that her readers wanted material that was grounded and practical, essentially material that fit what they knew. We came to the understanding that I didn't really fit her magazine in a conventional sense, and we decided we'd have the interview for the spell casting theme issue. I remember writing her and explaining that I'm out there on the edge, experimenting with magic, trying ideas out, fitting other disciplines to magical theory and practice. I am out here on the edge and there aren't many of us here, because to be on the edge is to go where the dragons roam and the angels fear to tread. It's to experiment beyond the tried and true, to defy what is considered known in order to bring the unknown into manifestation. And really, truly, I've been out here on the edge for most of my magical practice, experimenting on magic, trying things out, going with ideas that might seemed half baked and talking about them, because I don't care if its heresay...it won't become more than that if we don't share, if we don't publish, if we don't challenge what's known in favor of exploring the unknown.

I'm out here on the edge. Won't you join me?

Shunning as Banishment

I've been thinking a bit about shunning as a form of magical banishment. In my own experience, when I've decided to cut a person out of my life, I essentially end up shunning them, but shunning for me works on a magical level as well, because part of that process involves systematically getting rid of everything that connects me to the person and using the process of destroying such connections to build the banishment up and create a field of shun (as it were) that keeps the person from connecting with me as much as possible. I use a shunning banishment when I recognize that I will still encounter the person in my life, but I want to minimize those encounters to as few and far between as possible. The field of shunning essentially keeps the person away and interactions to a minimum.

My reasons for taking this kind of action is based on a fundamental recognition that a person brings with him/her a level of chaos and dysfunction that is no longer considered acceptable, or considered to match up with where I'm at. The person and I no longer fit and the relationship has become toxic enough that its no longer sustainable. Under such circumstances, creating a banishment of shunning can be useful for insuring that the person's presence intersects with you only on rare occasions if at all. It insures that you can move on with your life, without having to put energy or effort into a relationship that you no longer want to have. Such relationships take up more time and energy than you want, and you may find, as I have, that the best way to move on and heal is to simply move on, and see as little of the person as possible.

Some might argue that shunning seems a bit extreme, but to my mind, why allow more drama and toxicity in your life than you need? It's as simple as that: I value my sense of well-being and happiness over putting up with people I'd rather have nothing to do with. Instead of trying to sustain a relationship with those people, I feel its better to focus on the relationships which do matter to me, with people that I have confidence in.

It is possible to keep certain things that you might associate with the person and still set up a shunning field. While I normally will get rid of everything I have that connects me to a person, I have on occasion kept a couple things, after disassociating the person from those things. This can be accomplished through purification workings.

I don't recommend doing shunning for every situation in life. You have to be willing to invest in the relationships you have in your life, instead of giving them up at the first sign of trouble, but shunning works in cases where such a relationship has become unsustainable because the amount of toxic interaction exceeds any positives the relationship might bring with it.

Book Review: Rhythms of the Brain (Affiliate Link) by Gyorgy Buzsaki

This book was a hard read. Thanks to reading a variety of other books on neuroscience, I was able to understand what the author was explaining, but I wouldn't recommend this book to someone who hasn't read any books on neuroscience. The author discusses oscillation theory and although he does his best to make the concept approachable, it still ends up being fairly esoteric in content because of the technical information he provides. It is a good book, and one I'd recommend. Just make sure you've grounded yourself in other books on neuroscience.

4 out of 5

Book Review: Buddha's Brain (affiliate link) by Rick Hanson

This is a good 101 introduction to your brain and how it works, as well as providing instructions on how you can consciously work with your brain through meditation. I'd recommend this book to someone that wants to do inner alchemical work or internal work with their body, as it provides some well-rounded information on the brain and how changes can effect you. The authors provide some useful stories and metaphors to explain their concepts and I like the exercises because it provides a practical component to the book.

5 out of 5

The disappointment of magic

I came across an intriguing blog where the author discusses why chaos magic disappoints him, as well as why that disappointment is good. As I read his posts I found myself nodding in agreement, seeing some of my own frustrations expressed. Like me, he recognized that there has been a distinct lack of inquiry into why and how magic works in favor of simply shrugging off that it does work. It's the lack of questioning and critical inquiry that bothers me, and not just in chaos magic, but really in just about any system of magic that's currently out there. What I want to know, and what he doesn't really discuss, is why there isn't more experimentation with magic? And let me be clear: I don't think of chaos magic as a form of experimental magic at this point and I don't think it's been that way for quite a while. Ok you can borrow from other systems and put together a ritual that's a combination of those systems or you can create an entity or do a sigil. But that's the extent of it, and the extent is focused on obtaining a result. Being a process oriented magician, I think of a result as an indicator about the process, and useful in its benefits to my life, but I want more...I want a process I can use to achieve consistent results, and where if something doesn't occur, I can go in and fix it.

The process is more than just that. It's coming up with an idea and then testing that idea by developing a process to support the implementation of it into your life. It's experimenting with the idea, testing the idea and the process, until you are satisfied you've gotten everything out of it that you can achieve.

I see a lot of contemporary work that I'd label as experimental magic, which others would label as chaos magic. And I've been labeled a chaos magician even though its not a label I hold to. I think the difference comes down to an orientation on process. I care about the result, but it's not the only reason I'm practicing magic.

Switching to Elemental Fire

Every year on my birthday I switch to a new element. This year, it felt like a good idea to switch to the element of fire. I feel like I'm ready to work with fire, to find my balance with it and through all of that come to know it in a different way than I had before. I first did the closing ritual to the elements of Space and Time. I evoked the spirits for those elements, thanked them for their transformative work and promised to keep the lessons I'd learned embodied in my actions and life, and that I'd continue to work with them.

Then I pulled into the circle a dragon statue I have. I placed my hands on it, and called to the spirit of the Fire Dragon. I was born in the year of the Fire Dragon and this coming year will be a year of the dragon, albeit, ironically the year of the Water Dragon. Nonetheless I felt it was auspicious to work with this entity for the element of fire.

I invoked the dragon into me, and began to do bellows breathing, focusing on a rhythm that would allow me to simulate the feeding of fire by a bellows. Once I'd gotten to a point where I felt connected to the element of fire, I explained my desire to connect with it, and invoke it into my life for the next year, as part of my balancing work. I also explained that while all they ears of my elemental balancing work had helped me manifest many changes, I felt my fire had become banked and I wanted to develop a healthier relationship with it.

I felt this warmth go into my hands from the statue. My hands felt very warm, felt very much on fire and that warmth then spread into the rest of me. As it did, I heard the dragon speak about fire as both a creative and destructive force. It inspires, but also destroys. It burns, but from the ashes growth can come. It can warm you, but it can also hurt you with that warmth. All of these things and more said to me and I realized that fire, both as a literal and metaphoric force has many sides to it.

I'm looking forward to this year's work. Since fire is an element I already resonate with, I think this work will help me channel that element in many useful directions.

Black magic reputation

When I first moved up to State college, I had a reputation as a "black magician" This was admittedly part of my own branding that I'd done in high school to get people to leave me alone, but it surprised that this branding followed me to a place, where I knew almost no one. You have to remember that this was 1996, so even the internet was being used, it wasn't the same as it is today or will be in the future. But there was a lot of e-listservs, basically email newsgroups. Regardless of how that particular bit of branding got spread, the reality was that when I came to State College, I had to deal with it, both when I encountered the College pagan group and when I encountered the locals. I remember with the locals that there were a couple of guys my age who wanted to learn how to practice magic. They were part of the music scene and what you could think of as hippies, or rainbows. There was this woman they both knew. She was a Dianic Wiccan and she told them men couldn't practice magic. So when I came around and they found out I did, she promptly labeled me as a black magician, because she didn't want men practicing magic. It struck me as juvenile, but it was telling just how influential she was because then some of the locals either avoided me or started acting rather careful around me.

I never had a good relationship with the locals as a result, and similarly my relationship with the pagans at the collage group was not a good one. Some of it was me...I was young and brash, and lacked a lot in those essential social skills that can make life much easier. And some of it was them. So it goes. I also found I didn't have a lot in common. Most pagans or magic practitioners I encountered weren't doing hermetic magic or experimenting. There wasn't a lot to talk about.

So I turned more toward the internet, joining e-lists including the infamous Zee-list, as well as lists about Demonolatry and ceremonial magic. I have and had an insatiable hunger for learning and I wanted to learn as much as I could. I also wanted to share ideas with people and I hoped I'd find a more receptive audience online than I'd found in person.

Even with that said, I did find a few people to work with in person. They were people who were just as interested in experimenting as I was. We would get together and share ideas and then try experiments out and talk about results. Then I'd share those experiments with the different e-lists online and see what others had to say. I did this from the late nineties to the early 2000s and it was a period of my life where I really stretched my wings, and began to look outside hermeticism, Golden Dawn ceremony, and neoshamanism to other forms of ceremonial magic and to Tantra and chaos magic, while also beginning to explore themes of pop culture and different applications of hard science to magical work.

Those years were interesting years in other ways. I lived with a drug dealer for the better part of a year (I didn't find out he was a drug dealer until a couple of months in), then lived in a sober house for a year (Not because I drank, but because I was straight edge back then and wanted to be in an environment where others felt the same way), and then lived with friends, before finally moving on to a Masters degree at Clarion University. Those years taught me a lot about magic, people, and how I interacted with all of it. I learned some hard lessons, but I the most important lesson I learned was to never let anyone discourage my creativity or belief in myself. It's a lesson I've held to every single day since those times and its served me in good stead.

Why and when I first started Experimenting with Magic

I've told this story a couple of times, but its one that's pivotal to my magical practice and life. I was 18, when I was diagnosed with bipolar 2 depression, otherwise known as manic depression. My family on my mother's side had a predisposition toward depression and I had spent a good part of my life depressed, as much by life circumstances as by genetic predisposition. I knew that such a disorder usually brought with it medication and I was very reluctant to use medication because I didn't want to deal with the said effects. I decided to look toward magic for a solution. I already did daily practice, which included some form of meditation, so that helped quite a bit. Even to this day I still meditate every day, in part because of the mental health, but those benefits alone weren't enough.

It wasn't until I was 20, and now living in State College, Pa, while attending college that I found the solution to my problem. I was reading Hands of Light by Barbara Ann Brennan and Programming the Human Bo-Computer by John Lilly. Brennan talked about Lilly's concepts at length and included an exercise where you could travel into your body as a cell. I thought it intriguing and used the technique to travel to my brain. I then made some adjustments to the reuptake cycle for my serotonin production. This adjustment slowed down the absorption of serotonin, which in turn stabilized the electro-chemistry of my brain. This experiment also started my fascination with neuroscience and magic, which I still pursue to this day.

That experiment taught me to look beyond the conventional perspectives that were available in magical works, but also to look beyond such perspectives within any discipline or tradition. I realized that conventional thinking would always blind people to alternative routes and possible solutions, and that sticking with it would have had me on medication for something that I ultimately could treat through my own methods. I've continued to refine and develop techniques based off that initial working, in large part because I don't believe people should have to suffer because of a biological or genetic predisposition. I do think its important people consult with a doctor or psychiatrist, but I also think there's nothing wrong with trying to find your own answer to the problem, so long as that answer doesn't harm anyone else.

That initial experiment inspired me to start exploring other aspects of magic with an eye toward meshing that magical work with other disciplines. I explored elemental magic with an eye toward applying it to DNA, as an example. Nothing was too outlandish or impossible for me...and even to this day that's still the case. Some people have and likely always will dismiss this as being too open or being flaky, but I think the profound results to the quality of my life speaks much more eloquently than anything else. It's better to pursue your ideas, and your path, than let others tell you how to do it.

Music and magic meditations

At the most recent magical experiments night, we decided to do three meditation exercises with music out of the book Arcana V (affiliate link). I was intrigued by the exercises, partially because of the focus on space, sound, and silence, and partially because it reminded me of my own experiments with music and magic in my early 20's. The first experiment involved a minimalistic approach to sound. The goal was to focus on the silence that occurred between sounds being made. I chose to ring a bell for this exercise. I'd ring the bell and as the sound faded, we focused on paying attention to the silence. What we all agreed on was how little silence there was! Whether it was the bark of a dog, the hum of the refrigerator or the sound of a lawn mower, all we heard was sounds. I personally think that silence is an artificial construct, as opposed to an actual experience. There is always sound around you...you can't get away from it...at least not on this planet.

The second experiment involved listening to music that could be defined as sensory overload music...in other words white noise. I picked Merzbow for this experiment. The goal of the exercise was to meditate and in the process ignore or block out the sounds. Everyone had varying degrees of success. We noted that when vocals were included it was a bit harder to ignore the sounds.

The third experiment involved listening to layered music, or music with multiple sounds themes (but not white noise). The goal was meditative absorption...absorbing the music without dwelling on a particular theme or noise or word. We listened to Tangerine Dream's Atem, which is richly layered music. I found that relaxing into the music allowed me to be with it. This was the easiest exercise, probably because I listen to music all the time, when writing or working, and actually just absorb it as a way of keeping me focused.

All three of these experiments were fun to do and brought to mind the early experiments I did, where I would use selected albums to create sonic soundscapes for ritual purposes. We'd put the music on in the background, while doing our ritual, using the music itself to create the sacred space as well as any defenses we felt we needed, while we were doing magical work. I particularly liked using Coil's music for that purpose, but have also used Rapoon, Scorn, Current 93, and other such bands to produce sacred space and altered states of mind for doing ritual work.

The other experiments this reminded me of were experiments I did with my voice. I created sound sigils, which I would activate through vibratory vocalization of the sigil, or through whistling specific sounds at specific tones to activate the sigil. I also experimented with using vibratory vocalizations for invocation and evocation work. I still do use these techniques now, but using them now is not so much of an experiment for me anymore, though I suppose it could be an experiment for others. It is something I will write more about for an occult journal or two.

The Sacred Cow of Science

I've written before about the tendency for some occultists to value science over magic and their attempts to apply the scientific method to magic, to the point, where they end up disillusioned with magic, because it doesn't really conform to science (nor was it ever meant to). This passage, I think explains part of the problem as well:

An all too common perception of science is that it deals in authoritative facts - truths that are immutably recorded in peer-reviewed journals and blessed by academia. In actuality, science is a method of inquiry that generates theories. Theories are forms of metaphors that explain a body of data, although scientists often may shy away from admitting the metaphoric quality. Metaphors are rarely perfect and almost always leave a lot of room for interpretation. theories are updated, hopefully on a regular basis, to best fit the map of the world we operate from.

From Brain Magick (Affiliate link) by Phil Farber

There is a perception that science deals in authoritative facts, because of how the scientific method works, but what people forget is that the method accepts that there is no fact...it's all theory, which means it could be changed down the line with new discoveries. As Farber puts it theories are used to explain and interpret data. And that's really what science boils down to...a way to explain data based on repeated practices that seem to verify a consistent outcome.

Magic doesn't work that way. I can give you a technique I've done and you can do it and get consistent results, but you can also modify that technique to get better results that fit your personality, nature, etc. Magic is personalized, and that's what makes it work. We have techniques, we have foundational principles, but when it comes down to it, magic is much more of a personal experience.

Trying to fit magic into science doesn't work so well because of that personalization. I favor the opposite. Take scientific principles and concepts and fit them into your magical work, without trying to make magic fit those scientific principles and concepts. Science is about laws, rules, and until proven otherwise those laws and rules are what people rely upon to understand the world. Magic is about breaking and bending rules. It's about making possibilities happen even if those possibilities don't exactly align with scientific principles.

There's nothing wrong with drawing inspiration from scientific principles and practices, but the magician should never allow those principles and practices to dictate how s/he practices magic. Keep yourself open to the possibilities and use that to create opportunities!

My Experiences with Persecution

When I was 18, and still in high school, I dealt with my first experience of being persecuted for my spiritual beliefs. I'd been careful about hiding what I believed from my mom, and from most others, but I had a few friends and one of those friends had fundamentalist Christians for parents. They found a book I'd let him borrow and he told them it was mine. They contacted my mother, who was furious. She is a hardcore Christian herself. My friend told me that they had told her about my beliefs and I remember going home, dreading what would happen. She didn't bring it up. She'd been acting weird the last couple of days, and I realize she must have known and been chewing on it. I actually wrote her a letter, explaining my choices and why I'd chosen not to tell her...when I got home, I was greeted to an ultimatum. I had a half hour to choose. I could choose to move out, and no longer live with my mom, or I could choose to burn my books. This was a hard choice, because I didn't have a job at the time and I had no way of knowing if she'd even let me take the car I usually drove. I made the most practical choice, and allowed her to burn my books (most of them anyway). There were a few books I was working my way through or hadn't read, so I hid them carefully, and the ones I burned were ones where I'd already mastered the exercises. When I told her my decision she searched my room carefully, and even made me burn The Books of Magic comics. It was a shameful experience and one I've never forgotten. She grounded me for a week and several days into it, I told her if she ever made an ultimatum like that again I would disown her for the rest of my life.

Why did I do it? I did it because I didn't have much money or a place to live. I was still in high school and I wanted to graduate. I wasn't about to ask one of my friends for a place to stay. I did it because it was the practical choice, but making that choice forced me to evaluate why I was hiding my beliefs. My mom burned my books because she was a Christian and had been taught ignorance through her own beliefs. Even to this day, I don't talk my spirituality with her, because she judges me for it. She knows I've written books, knows I don't believe in her God or the values she ascribes to. She doesn't approve of my choices. Then again I don't approve of her being Christian and I've made it clear I don't want to hear about her beliefs. Most of the time she honors that request...and occasionally she doesn't.

My second experience with persecution occurred later that year. The father and step-father of my friend decided that they should kill me for my beliefs. My friend's father called me once on the hour, every hour, telling me how he was going to kill me, and how I was going to hell. I told him I had a cross bow bolt just for him, and I called the police. He didn't call after that, and my friend later told me that his father had called me, and that his step-father was in on it. Nothing else ever happened, but I still remember those calls.

That experience convinced me that hiding my beliefs was wrong. If people were going to judge me for those beliefs and possibly harm me, it was better to be completely in the open about my choices. It was better to come out of the closet. I went public from the late 1990's and on.

Currently I have somewhat different feelings about that choice. I'm still open about my beliefs, but I don't go out of my way to talk about them. If you Googled my name, you'd find out quickly what my beliefs are, but I've found most people don't go out of their way to do so. I think most people aren't that curious, unless its for a job search. Good thing I've chosen to go self-employed, as I'm willing to bet that many companies would hesitate to hire me on the basis of my spiritual choices. Occasionally I do have people Google me and it always prompts some interesting conversations, but I notice that people seem to be more tolerant and accepting. I factor it in large part to where I live. I know in other parts of the country people are less accepting and willing to tolerate beliefs that run counter to the mainstream religions.

Even to this day I am wary of Christians. I have seen too much of their fanaticism and willingness to forcibly convert people to their beliefs. I know some who don't act that way, but my experiences with the religion, both in growing up, and in the recent past and present has shaped my perspective. I can accept their choice to believe what they want, but I want them to leave me alone and allow me to follow my beliefs.

Researching the brain

Although I've already written the first draft of my new book, I'm still continuing to do research on the neuroscience of the brain (one of the books I've recently read is reviewed below). It's a fascinating subject for me, even without writing a book, but writing a book does shape a lot of the reading and experimentation I'm doing. What interests me the most is how much a person's sense of self is wrapped up in the brain and how easily that can be changed by an accident, stroke etc. It demonstrates just how fragile a personality is...its based on biological realities as much as on any metaphysical sense we attribute to it. A lot of my work with the brain has involved being able to go in and interact with the neuro-chemistry in order to effect desired changes in personality. For example, no longer having to suffer a mental disease such as depression involves making changes to the biological aspects of depression. Some people accomplish this through drugs...my preference has been targeted meditation work with neurotransmitters.

The brain is adaptive enough when it comes to doing such work, because it naturally has the capability to change, thanks to neuro-plasticity. Nonetheless making such changes has to be done carefully and one of the reasons I've read up so much on neuroscience, is to understand the mechanisms of change that are already incorporated in the brain. Even knowing that information, I think its important to carefully experiment with desired changes you want to bring to your brain.

It's also important to recognize that what we know about the brain is still not entirely accurate. Not so long ago, there was a belief that the functions of the brain could be mapped to specific parts...while there's some truth to that, there's also a lot of truth that functions don't solely belong to a specific area, but are shared in part by the neural network and specifically how it shares information across the network. Experimentation needs to be done cautiously, with a recognition that in someways all we have is an idea of how the brain works. We can test that idea...we can experiment with it, but we also need to acknowledge its limitations and recognize that experimentation will take us off the charted edge to the unknown space, with all of its mysteries.

Experimentation should challenge us to go into the unknown, while research grounds us in information we can use to push ourselves toward that unknown space. What we bring back from the unknown space is more information, to provide further grounding and a better sense of what we can do with what we have. I recognize my magical work with my brain will likely never be perceived as scientific or as valid as what actual neuroscientists do in their studies, yet I also know it has brought desirable changes into my life, improving the quality of my circumstances, and that others who have followed my work have also benefited. That's the real test for the magician...not if something fits acceptable scientific paradigms and knowledge, but rather if you can take it, obtain a result, and then share it and help others achieve similar results. Sometimes magicians forget that in their fervor to "scientifically" fit-in with the dominant paradigms of acceptable thought. To them and all others I urge: Take what you can from the system, but don't restrict yourself to what others have told you...try it out yourself, test through your own experience and let that be your record and great work.

Book Review: The Tell-Tale Brain (Affiliate Link) by V. S. Ramachandran

In this book, the author explains what mirror neurons are and presents a variety of case studies on them as well as discussing various neurological diseases and what causes those diseases. He also discusses the connection between linguistics, art, and neuroscience. This book is fascinating and the author presents compelling cases. More importantly, he helps the reader understand some of the science in neuroscience with stories and examples that provide context to the science he is explaining Overall a really good book on a fascinating topic.

My high school years

I practiced magic for the majority of my high school years. I've already touched on how I first began studying magic and my first teacher. After what happened with him, I realized that I needed to look toward books and my own experiences to teach myself magic. I had a couple of friends who practiced, but all of them were in the same place I was...little to no experience. And I was the most focused of the bunch. I hungered for magic in a way the others did not, because for me magic was about empowerment, whereas for them it was more of a novel interest. In high school, I was one of the weird, unpopular kids, and that brought with it all the bullying and negative attention that arises. It probably didn't help that I purposely chose to stand out, but it also didn't help that I was a relative newcomer and as such didn't fit in with already well-established cliques. For me, magic was a way to empower myself, both in terms of doing an activity I was really good at, and in terms of doing an activity that intimidated others and sometimes caused them to back away from me. I was labeled a black magician and I'll admit I purposely chose to embrace that label. Ironically it was a label that would follow me into college.

I never got into Wicca. It was popular, and a lot of people practiced it, but I didn't care for it or the practices or the Wiccan rede. In truth, I felt it was too popular. I wanted to explore the more obscure practices and techniques (which still holds true to this day). What I found in the books on Wicca and encountered in the people who labeled themselves as such was more of a religious focus. I didn't want religion, already getting more than enough of it from my mother. I also didn't care for what I thought of as a narrowness in the Wiccans I met. I heard too much about what you couldn't do and I found that when such naysaying was going on, it was happening because people didn't want you looking into something. So I looked into what they didn't want me to look into.

In those years, I didn't experiment with magic for the most part. Instead I read the books and did the exercises faithfully, just trying to learn them. My studies focused on a combination of neoshamanism, elemental hermeticism, and Golden Dawn Ceremonial Magic, along with Crowley's Thelemic works. (yes you read that). I hadn't heard of chaos magic, or of the works of other magicians. For the most part, I understood magic to be a very formal, ritualistic activity. I knew I didn't have most of the tools, so I made do with what I had, but I did my best to faithfully replicate ceremonies and rituals. The neoshamanism was what taught me flexibility and a very practical, technique oriented approach to magic. It also introduced me to a lot of visualization exercises. The ceremonial work introduced me to discipline, vocalization, and planted the seed of my process oriented approach to magic (Ceremonial magic is very much a process).

There was one experiment I did however, and it was done because I knew it could work and that the benefits would outrank any consequences attached to it. Also I took and still take a very traditional perspective on body fluids, understanding them to be a conveyance of the power of the person. And also understanding that the land has power.

I lived in York, Pa at the time and there was this place called Reymeyer's Hollow. It was a cursed place, cursed by the magician who was murdered by another magician. It's a place where the air seems to stand still, where there's always something menacing...visiting it at night brings this sense of menace out even more and people will tell you they can see spirits there. It's a nexus of power.

One night I traveled there with a friend and I did an evocation of each of the four elements of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, and an evocation of spirit. I had a knife I used for ceremonial work and I took that knife and cut my right upper arm. It was a deep cut. I gave each of the elementals my blood in exchange for their essence and swore a pact of alliance with them. I'll admit, I got the idea from reading the Elric series by Michael Moorcock, but I also got it in part from some of the books on elemental hermeticism. From the beginning I understood that working with the spirits was best done as a collaboration. My reason for doing this working was that I wanted direct access to the elemental energies. I got that direct access with the ritual I did. It changed me profoundly, and changed my understanding of magic as well. It's fair to say that my concept of the elemental balancing ritual came in part from doing this working. It changed how I experienced the world and how I experienced magic. It changed how I interacted with the land.

It wasn't until College that I began to really experiment with magic, but that first experience taught me I could and inspired me to start thinking outside what the books were telling me.

My first experience with a teacher

I've only worked with a couple of people as teachers during my magical practice. None of the experiences were positive enough for me to keep looking and I came to the conclusion that I was better suited to teach myself and better suited to understand what I needed to learn. I still feel that way to this day. My first teacher was a fellow student in my high school. He was learning Shamanism (whether self-taught or taught by someone else I can't recall). He was half native American, but he didn't seem to mind that I wanted to learn. I'd met him shortly after I started practicing. Our student-teacher relationship didn't last long...perhaps a week or two. He recommended a few books and taught me a couple of exercises. I diligently reported back to him and then...

He called me up one day and told me he couldn't teach me magic and I shouldn't practice magic at all. When I asked why, he told me (drum rolls please): You have no soul! I'm not making this up and to this day it still amuses me because it was such a teenager thing to say. At the time, I was stunned, and hung up and momentarily thought about giving up the magic. Then I came to the conclusion that he feel threatened by me, and that inspired me. If he felt so threatened, I'd just have to show him there was good reason for it. Plus anytime someone has told me not to do something I want to do, it just makes me determined to prove the person wrong. This was no exception. I also figured I still had a soul.

I began reading even more books and doing the exercises in them and just practicing everyday, determined to prove to this person I could do magic better than he. It was admittedly a juvenile reason to practice magic, but I was a teenager and that's what motivated me then. And before long I felt I had surpassed him. I was diligent in my studies and I did everything I could to apply magic to my life. He and I never talked about what he'd said, but I could tell he knew I was still practicing.

I learned a really important lesson from him. Don't believe what anyone tells you about yourself or your fitness to do anything, until you've tested it yourself. To this day, its still a lesson I live by and one I try to pass on to my readers and the occasional person I take on as a student.

Why its not a good idea to destroy part of yourself

The other day I decided to do a meditation technique to work with a part of myself that I thought I wanted to change. I did the meditation technique and basically I ended up poking a part of myself that didn't care for what I was doing and responded with quite a reaction, which showed up both internally and also in my life around me. Fortunately, I was able to sort matters out in my life, but I realized that what I'd tried to do, which essentially was to get rid of a part of myself, wasn't really a good idea. At times, in our lives, there can be a temptation to try and get rid of part of yourself or change it or try to fit it some standard of behavior that doesn't really apply to it. Inevitably, what ends up happening is that the part you try to change defends itself quite vigorously and you realize that it wasn't such a good idea.

This isn't to say you can't change behavior. You certainly can, but trying to do a radical change is never advised, and doesn't make you happy. Instead such changes need to occur gradually, being worked through, and even when such changes are made, they usually focus on behavior, as opposed to identity, which is essentially how you define yourself. You can change behavior, but changing identity can be a lot harder and you genuinely have to no longer want to identify yourself in a particular way to make the change successful. This means you need to work with the values and beliefs that represent that part of your identity and determine if they no longer relevant to your life.

My main point is this: Don't try and get rid of part of yourself for anyone or anything. Better to do the internal work and determine how it really fits into your life. Accepting who you is the greatest liberation you can give yourself.

Book and Video Review: The Lost Secret of Immortality (Affiliate Link) by Barclay Powers

The video is well done and presents a lot of ideas on internal alchemy as its done in both the the East and West. I'd particularly recommend it to anyone just starting out as it has a wealth of information, but even more seasoned practitioners will find it useful. The book serves as a useful complement to the video, providing further information on concepts discussed in the video. I'd have liked to have seen some exercises included in the book, but the author does a good job of pointing to additional sources. Overall a a useful resource guide.

Call For Papers for Magic on The Edge 2.0

Magic on the Edge 2.0 is an anthology of experimental occultism, testing the cutting edges of magical practice to reveal intriguing experiments and new ideas, to push the future of magical practice forward and provide further inspiration for other practitioners. It is edited by Taylor Ellwood. We are looking for articles 3k to 6k words in length on topics that can include the following:

• Innovative explorations of magical traditions
• Experimental techniques with contemporary disciplines such as space/time magic, internal alchemy, laboratory alchemy, etc.,
• Creative meditation practices
• Got an idea? Run it by me and I'll give you feedback (see contact info below).

The deadline for the first draft is December 15th

For more information or questions contact me.

Please share this with anyone you know who might be interested in participating in this anthology.

My first experience of Magic

When I was 7 years old I had my first near death experience and what I'd consider to be my first genuine experience with magic. I was drowned by an older kid, held down underneath an intertube in the ocean. I was, fortunately, pulled out in time. That older kid was yelled at, but nothing else was done. But what I remember the most was a sensation of blacking out and finding myself in a space with an entity, which asked if I wanted to live. I remember that experience vividly to this day and it is after that experience that I began to show an interest in magic. I became a voracious reader, and while I enjoyed reading a lot history, I also read a lot of fantasy and found myself wanting to be the magician. I figured the magician was the coolest person to be, and I think I'm still right about that one. I wanted magic to be real and in the years between 7 and 16, I did look for it, but I wasn't really sure where to look or who to talk to. What I had access to were fantasy books, and while they were fun to read, they didn't encompass what magic was. I knew what they presented wasn't something that seemed possible. I mean as much as I liked the idea of being able to conjure a fireball, I didn't think it was really possible, and to this day I have yet to conjure one up or see anyone else do it. But still, I knew magic existed and was real. I knew it on a fundamental level. I knew it as something essential to who I am...

It wasn't until I was 16 that I found magic. I was reading one of my fantasy books and this one kid thought he'd freak me out by telling me about an experience where he astral projected and encountered a demon. Far from freaking me out, I wanted to know more. I felt tense excitement, thinking to myself that at last I'd found something more tangible than a fantasy book. I plied him with question after question and made him promise me that he'd bring me books to look at the next day.

The next day arrived and he gave me a couple of pamphlets on astral projection and Shamanism. I devoured them that night, trying out the exercises and experiencing something. Here at last was the magic I'd been looking for and if it didn't allow me to conjure a fireball, it did allow me to do something I'd been longing to do since I was 7. That kid became my friend and he showed me a shop where you could get more books. I remember buying a couple on Shamanism and hermetic magic. I read them religiously and did the exercises just as fervently, determined to master this strange new force in my life. Shortly after that I encountered my first "teacher." But that's a story for another blog entry.

Book Review: Magick Works (affiliate link) by Julian Vayne

Part memoir and part grimoire, this book is an excellent guide to how magic works. I like how the author weaves in personal narratives from his life to explore and explain how magic has worked for him. I think some of the best essays are on identity and space, but all of them are good and this is a valuable book to have because it makes you think about magic from a different perspective.

5 out of 5

Communicating with the Land

I've always communicating with the genius loci or the spirits of the land. Communication with the land is not something verbal, so much as kinisthetic. It is a feeling, but it is even more than that. It's a relationship. Communicating with the land also differs from place to place. In my recent trip to Seattle, I was reminded of why I dislike living there, and indeed why I needed to move from there. The connection I have with the land in Seattle is a connection where that land speaks of how unhappy it is. The entire state of Washington is always a place that prompts a negative reaction on my part. I know when I've left Oregon, because I can feel a shift in my connection with the land. Communicating with the land in that sate and/or city is a communication that speaks to what the land is feeling and how it is shaped and is shaping what lives on it. Oregon, as a contrast, feels like home. There's something about the land that fits me, that fits together with who I am. Whenever I leave this state and go somewhere else, I feel a shift. I know I am not home.

I have no doubt that for people who live in Washington and/or Seattle, that those places are just as much home for them and that there is a connection that is fundamentally as deep for them as Oregon is for me. I know some people have told me that in Oregon they don't feel comfortable. It makes sense to me that the relationship any person has with the land is going to be unique to some degree, shaped in part by personality and in part by the land itself, and how it fits that person.

My connection to the land is an elemental connection. I do a lot of work with elemental spirits and bonding with the land has always been part of my work. The exchange of essence is an exchange of trust, and an acceptance of a close relationship with the land. I don't think of the land as a place or thing, but as something living, with its own input and feedback. It may not communicate that message through means most of us are aware of, but the land speaks, if you know how to hear and feel it.

Further thoughts on the psychologizing of magic

I'm really hard on Crowley sometimes. Actually make that all the time. Readers of this blog know by now that I have an avid dislike for his legacy. One of the things I come down hard on him is in regards to the psychologizing of magic. In the radio show I did on Friday, I commented on that in regards to his treatment of the Goetia. One of my listeners took the time to write a response and I really appreciated the critique in the spirit it was offered in:

While it is true that Crowley said "the demons of the Goetia are parts of the brain" and thus the psychologizing of magick can be traced at least as far back as him, but I think it is a mistake to assert that this is the only way he saw them. He also endorsed the preaterhuman existance of Aiwaz, Abuldiz, the Wizard of Almalantra and others. It's ok if you have a real issue with Crowley (welcome to the club!), but I have a real issue with your misrepresentation of the facts! You might be able to trace the psychologizing of our Art to some of his remarks but it was people after him that contributed most to this trend. All in all, though, I liked your talk and I must agree with you: Sprits Are Real! (I also like Lon Milo Duquette's "It is all in your head--you just don't know how big your head really is!")

This is a fair critique. Crowley isn't wholly responsible for the psychologizing of magic. Yes, I really wrote that. I actually will admit that I was a bit unfair to him (I bet some of you never thought you'd see this day). But (and you knew there was one of those), his effect on occult thought and theory is substantial enough that it doesn't take him off the hook entirely. A lot of contemporary occult theory is based off his ideas, so when he made that remark about the Goetia, for better or for worse, he did promote the psychologizing of magic (and IMO, it was for the worse). And unfortunately what I've noted is that people don't focus on his alternate perspectives about spirits nearly as much as they focus on that remark about the Goetia (I'm guilty of this).

With that said, this trend of thought and theory about magic has been around for a while and has had other people advocate for it. We see it in chaos magic, most notably, but I've also seen it espoused in ceremonial magic as well. It's something which a lot of contemporary magicians draw on as a way of explaining how magic works.

I don't care for the psychological model of magic. While I recognize that psychology has some useful concepts that can be drawn on, I'm leery of assigning magic as a psychological phenomenon that's all in your head. The reason magic is labeled in this way comes down a valuation of empirical methods of knowing and experiencing the world over other ways of knowing and experiencing the world. While I won't deny that magic is a subjective experience, I don't think it makes magic inferior or that it makes me a superstitious loon that I believe in the objective existence of spirits.

By the same token I realize that for some people the psychologizing of magic is how they best understand and explore it within their lives. I can respect that, but I don't agree with it, just as they don't agree with me.

Using sleep deprivation as an altered state of consciousness

Whenever I don't get enough sleep I can feel it through out the day. My response time is a bit off, and my thought process just isn't as focused. I don't normally go out of my way to get into a state of sleep deprivation, but I recognize that it is an altered state of consciousness, albeit one that is less than pleasant to experience. The feeling of fogginess is a state that can be worked with in a magical context. Sleep deprivation causes a blurring, not quite in control feeling. That feeling is useful for doing magical work where you are raising magic through activity, such as exercise or ecstatic dance. The reason its useful is because you're pushing your current state of sleep deprivation through activity to a point of exhaustion which in turn creates an altered state of no-mind, which can then be used to focus on the goal the person wants to achieve.

Ideally what will happen is that a person will use a state of sleep deprivation in tandem with an activity such as dance. S/he will either create a sigil or will develop some other magical technique that s/he will employ while dancing. For the sake of example, we'll just say the person will focus on the sigil while dancing. Eventually when the person is truly exhausted, s/he will stop dancing, but will continue to focus on the sigil, using the exhaustion as a way to focus every last bit of awareness on it. Then when the person can't keep awake any further s/he will go to sleep, continuing as best as possible to focus on the sigil, so that s/he can charge it in his/her sleep.

When a person has been sleep deprived and goes to sleep exhausted the sleep can be much, much deeper, so this is useful because as the person sleeps s/he allows the sigil to germinate.

Now if the person has thought ahead, s/he will have the sigil positioned in such a way that when s/he awakes, s/he will see the sigil, and recall the activities of the other night, and in that process, fire the sigil. It's a long build-up, but its effective, because you combine a variety of states of awareness into the working and when it fires, all of that effort contributes to the realization of the possibility you want to bring into reality.

Explore related entries in the Library

• Sleeping Beauty in the Castle

Are spirits real?

I asked this question yesterday on my social networks and it looked like I had an even distribution of people who argued they are real vs people who are argued that they are just psychological. I present my own take in my radio show, but the gist of my take is I think entities are real.

Listen to internet radio with Experimental Magic on Blog Talk Radio

My inspiration for my magical systems

I was recently asked where I got my inspiration for the Sigil web technique in Space/Time Magic. But the person who asked also noted that he felt my work was writing was far enough away from the sources I cited that he was curious in general. It's a good question to ask. Where do I get my ideas for my magical work? If you look at the bibliography of any of my books, you'll probably note that one third to one half of the titles cited have nothing to do with magic. Or rather, they only have something to do with magic, because I saw something in the material that I knew I could apply magic to. The rest of the sources are books on magic...some traditional, some less so, all interesting to me, only so much in how I can take the content and experiment with it, in order to adapt it to my needs and circumstances. That's really how I approach anything I read: "What's in this book that is insightful and useful and how can I take it and experiment with it, both for my own needs, and also for curiosity's sake?" But that's just the surface. I'm an insatiable reader. I'm usually working on about six books at a given time, and all of it is very interesting, but that's only part of my inspiration.

I'm really motivated by curiosity more than anything else. I'm insatiably curious. I want to know what I can do...I want to test my limits, and I want to know how I can take all of my interests and apply them to magic. There's no tradition for me, no specific way of doing things. I get that for some people, a lot of people, that works...but not me. I want to know and explore and try things out. I want to be on the edge.

I'm inspired by resistance as well. Every person who's told me, "You can't do that", or "It's reinventing the wheel" has inspired me. I can't thank enough those people.

And I'm creative. I've always looked at the world differently. I see how things fit together and I run with it and play with it, and experiment...and so on.

My inspiration for how I approach magic, how I approach everything I do comes down to this: "It's always better to play by your own rules than someone elses" That's why I do magic the way I do it...because anyone else's rules for doing magic only interest me insofar as I can take it apart and put it back into something that fits my style, life, and needs.