How to Invoke Pop Culture Characters

 

When it comes to invocation, I think the pop culture magician has a wealth of material available for crafting an invocation working that is efficacious. We have multimedia resources available that can allow us to study the various portrayals of characters, as well as multiple versions of characters to draw upon, with different characteristics emphasized depending on whatever suits our needs. All of these resources provide us lots of inspiration for invoking pop culture characters.

When I invoke a pop culture character I like to learn as much as I can about the character. I'll study the various versions of the character, what they wear, what they say, how they say it, and how they move. I'll pay close attention to what triggers them emotionally, positive or negative, and how they react to situations. I'll put myself inside their heads, getting a feel for what they are thinking. I need to know all of this if I'm going to invoke them, because part of invocation is identification. I want to become the character as best as possible.

For some people, pop culture invocation will involve getting the costume of the character and certainly that can work, but what I do is focus on movement and voice. How does this character move? How do they speak? If I can get their movement down and speak the way they would, I've already established a muscle memory I can use when invoking the character. For example, if I work with a stealthy character then, I want to be able move in a stealthy manner. I'll observe how the character moves...does s/he stay out of sight, stick to the sides, or is s/he in plain site, but unobstrusive?

I think part of an invocation is identity. Can I let my identity go and take on the identity of another being? To take on the identity of another necessarily involves shifting everything about yourself into the identity you'll become. Method acting is used by actors for that purpose, but magicians can also use it for invocation. When I invoke a pop culture character I am embodying that character in my movements, words, actions, everything I do, and also everything I am.

What the character says is also important. Does the character use big words or say very little? Is the character funny or serious? Does the character laugh and if so how does the character laugh? The laugh of Joker is very different from the laugh of Rumplestiltzkin. You might not think this is important, but its all part of the identity you are establishing. You become the character when you do what the character does.

After the invocation is done and the pop culture character has done what it needs to do, there's also the question of getting back to you. If you are wearing a costume, you could just take the costume off. If you aren't, then what you need is some other way to get out of character. What I do is use a specific anchor (an NLP technique where you use a gesture of some sorts to create a specific frame of conscious reference). In my case, the anchor is cracking my fingers. When I'm the character I won't crack them, but when I'm ready to come back, I crack them and I'm back.

How do you approach invocation of pop culture characters? What do you do to get into the role and change your identity? What do you do to get out of role and become yourself again?

Book Review: The Functions of Role-Playing Games by Sarah Lynne Bowman

In this book, the author shares her research and experiences with role playing games and explores how such games can be used to explore different identities. I found this to be an intriguing exploration of role-playing games and how people use them to explore their identities as well as how they are used by society in general for problem solving. The author does an excellent job of showing the breadth of role-playing games, and the various uses they are put to. This is an excellent book to read to understand identity alteration and how the assumption of different roles allows people to explore who they are in relationship to the characters they create and become. The author also provides some useful insights via Jungian theory on archetypes and identity that can be helpful for understanding the psychology of role playing games.

History and Visions of the Future

At Between the Worlds I had the pleasure of attending Literata's talk on modernity and visions of the future. Literata was presenting a historical perspective and explained that modernity as a historical era was a commitment to rationality, and occurred roughly between 1453 and 1945. She explored the occult movements from the Golden Dawn to Starhawk, to show how the various leaders interact with modernity as a concept and also how they had their own visions for the future. It was a fascinating talk, not the least because I started tracing some of the history of various occult authors I've been inspired by, in relationship to their own vision and the history of that vision.

For example, in examining Gray's life, I see how modernity influenced his own approach to magical work, but also how he evolved beyond it and how that in turn influenced the lives of the people who came after him and their spiritual work. I also thought about this in context to my own life and history. I have my own particular vision for occultism, which is reflected in both my writing and in the publishing we do via the press. I see how in the 12 year period that I've been publishing and writing how that vision has changed. In fact, in writing pop culture magic 2.0, this is most evident to me because of where I am now as a pop culture magician as opposed to where i was when I wrote the first book.

I think that applying a historical perspective to your practice and the people that are part of the lineage of that practice can be quite helpful in helping you situate what you are doing and why you are doing it, as well as what and why other people are doing what they do. For example, in another lecture Jason Miller examined the history of the OTO, not just in context to Crowley, but also in relationship to the original abbey of Thelema and the roots of that, which stem from the work of a medieval poet. And seeing that history and how it influences the modern current of the OTO is significant I think in really appreciating what it could be (or so I would imagine for people who are in the order).

Part of my own research of late has involved exploring my own lineage and finding out more about the lives and history of the people who have influenced my own practice of magic. At one time I wouldn't have thought that as important, but its clear to me now that it actually is important because when we exist in a void as it pertains to history, we don't necessarily appreciate the context of what we are working with and yet we may need that context to really understand our magical heritage and how we want our own visions of the future to manifest.

Narrative and Identity

  In The Functions of Role Playing Games by Sarah Bowman, the author brings up an interesting point about narratives in relationship to identity when she explains how people use narratives to define their conscious sense of self, as a way of highlighting key moments of significance and linking those moments together to create a causal logic that in turn shapes the identity of the person by describing both who the person is and how that person is changing because of the narrative they've created. While her focus is on role playing games (RPGs), you can see how narrative is used as a tool in a number of different disciplines including magic, as well as how it reinforces aspects of identity related to narrative.'

In magic, narrative shows up in the form of ritual and spells, but also in pathworking and even to some extent in meditation. I'd argue that any process of magic is essentially a narrative which is structured to express the identity of the magician in particular way that enables the magician to establish his/her identity, both before and after the narrative. The purpose of the narrative is to describe the change in identity and what type of journey the magician goes on to make that change.

Narrative describes the experiences the magician goes through, but it also structures those experiences into specific actions and categories. Thus when the magician does a ritual, the narrative created through that ritual provides an essential piece of the experience that allows it to gel into something that changes the magician. The narrative mediates the experience and provides a structure of causality for the magician to use in order to situate the desired change the ritual represents into his/her own identity.

We can use narrative as a tool for our magical work, with the understanding that what the narrative represents is an idealized version of events. It's a description of what's been done, but its not necessarily the actual experience. This is only important in the sense that we recognize that narratives simultaneously describe and explain what has changed and why and yet can also leave much of the technical detail out of the description. The narrative can never embody the experience for other people. We use narrative as a tool to tell our stories and to make sense of our experiences so that we can establish an identity we understand.

I now have a youtube channel

I now have a youtube channel for Magical Experiments, where I share answers to questions, my opinions about magic and the occasional webinar. You can subscribe to my channel here. Below is one of my videos:

The Elemental Balancing Ritual Stillness Month 3: Disinterest

12-23-14 I feel numb right now. I don't think numbness is the same as stillness, because underneath that numbness is a lot of thoughts and emotions stirring. The numbness is just a mask, a protective layer, while I figure out how to process what I'm thinking and feeling. To hear about similar experiences from the only other person in the circumstances I was in is both saddening and validating. I'm not alone in feeling this way. I'm not alone in having the experiences I had...and yet its not really a surprise. I knew I wasn't alone. But hearing it is still something different. I'll figure out what to make of all of it later.

12-24-14 Today as I was doing my stillness meditation, a thought came into my head about an ongoing situation in my life and I was able to follow that thought to several possibilities I hadn't considered before. So I let those possibilities present themselves to me and will see about implementing one., but I mention this here in relationship to stillness because one of the ways I've used stillness is to step away from everything going on in my life so that I can actually observe the possibilities available, instead of letting myself be so into a situation that I can't see the possibilities. I think working with stillness in this way will be something I continue to do to work with as a form of problem solving. I see how putting myself into stillness can be quite useful for opening the possibilities up and although I'd already been aware of that to some degree, today's working further illustrated it.

12-28-14 You can't make stillness happen. When you try to make stillness happen, it's not stillness that occurs. Stillness is something you let happen to you. You make yourself receptive to stillness. The difference is distinct in the sense that imposed stillness is not true stillness, so much as an attempt to be still, whereas genuine stillness is a state of being, an experience of consciousness that occurs to you, changing you because you are open to experiencing change.

1-7-2015 Lately I've been working with the Dehara system of magic, which is based off the Wraeththu series. In my daily meditations I've had vivid experiences of being a Hara in that universe. I feel like I'm tapping into an alternate version of myself. I feel like the stillness work has helped me to be more receptive to such experiences because I'm stilling myself and opening up to what comes my way (within reason).

1-8-2015 Today was the opposite of yesterday. I floundered at being still. It was like trying to grasp a piece of wood in a stormy ocean, with waves about to swallow you whole. So at some point I just gave up trying to be still and let myself go wherever I wanted to go. After that I became still and it was effortless because nothing was being constrained anymore. I was just letting it be.

Tonight I had a reaction. I happened to see an event coming up this weekend and I reacted to it. Part of me began thinking I should try and run my own event and after I entertained this thought for a bit, I stilled myself and asked what really motivated me and I realized it was jealousy and a sense of feeling threatened by the people running the event.  So I was creating this scenario of competition and setting myself up to lose because the motivation wasn't for anything useful and I just stopped. I don't want to go down that route. It's a route I've traveled far too often in my life and any benefit has always been short. My genuine success has come from being true to myself and my vision of what I want to accomplish. Staying on course with that is more important than letting jealousy get the better of me.

1-10-2015 Today I relaxed into the stillness work. I started Zhine, found what I'd focus on and relaxed into it and there I was...still. When I hit such states, I find that the stillness gradually deepens and eventually you no longer focus on anything. You become part of the background. Nothing and everything all there, all at once...just being.

In my Dehara work I was taken on a journey by Dahuun to Malkuth, where Aruhani is and explored Aruhani in the context of Earth and Malkuth, combining planetary and Quabalistic associations. It was a fascinating journey that helped me appreciate certain aspects of Dehara better as well as reimprinting some principles of magic through the work.

1-14-15 I'm very careful about the people I have in my life. Today I defriended someone because I noticed a lot of negativity on his page and didn't really want to read about it further. His response was over the top, but seemingly typical. It just confirmed why I don't want that drama in my life. Part of the cultivation of stillness, for myself, is cultivating the right relationships and letting the rest go. I see no need to tolerate someone just because of how they might react...that's a toxic relationship right there.

On the Dehara front, I've progressed up to Netzach with the pathworking, visiting and remediating the experience of the Sephiroth with the Dehara I've associated with them. I've found this useful for further imprinting the Sephiroth and Dehara on my consciousness and subconsciousness. I may try this with other systems of magic to see how it changes my understanding of those systems.

1-17-2015 Today in my stillness work, Zadok told me how important it is to be aware of my stillness and ask myself why I want to be moved toward a possibility. Am I moving myself there based on reaction or am I moving to that possibility for other reasons? Do I even want to move from stillness? Good questions prompted by the entertaining of a possibility while in stillness meditation and recognizing that my desire to realize that possibility was primarily because of a reaction and that such a realization wasn't necessarily the best use of my resources or time. Actually, what I recognize from this meditation today is just how easy it is to get caught up in possibility, for I do it a lot and even if I do nothing else that still can be a distraction or a benefit (or both) depending upon how I direct it.

On the Dehara front I've worked my way up to Geburah, associating Pellaz and Calanthe with Tiphareth and Geburah respectively. I'm not sure if anyone else would make those associations, but they make sense to me. I guess the real test will come when other people give this work a try on their end. It occurs to me as well that when you are working on creating or developing a pop culture magic system, you play a role in the perception and work of other people that come after. You've set the stage for them and that brings with it some type of responsibility.

1-19-15 Stillness can be chaotic. Stillness isn't about perfect harmony...it's about being present with whatever is in your life in that moment. So if there is some chaos, that's ok. The key isn't to try and change it into stillness. The key is to be with it and be still, allowing yourself to feel the chaos without necessarily becoming the chaos.

One of the books I've been reading, The Nature of Personal Reality by Seth shares some intriguing ideas about the communication in the body and in the thoughts of a person. A lot of it echoes some of my own writings and I see once again how this book has influenced my spiritual development. There are some work that won't really make an impact and others that will, but you own't realize it until years later when you look over the material again. And some just hit you over the head. I guess that's a lot like people as well. In any case, in reading over the material I'm struck by how relevant some of it is, especially to the inner alchemical work I'm doing.

1-21-15 In the last week or so I've had two different people try to draw me into their drama, in one form or another. It hasn't worked very well for them, mainly because they're a lot more invested in being right than I am in them being wrong. At a certain point in a debate, when the conversation goes around and around with no change in either stance, its wise to simply say, "Let's agree to disagree" and leave it at that. Unfortunately many people get so invested in proving their point of view, proving they are right and the other person is wrong that they try to have the last word or do their best to disprove the other person. I could care less. I know going into such situations that I likely won't prove my point of view to the other person's satisfaction because they are looking for a specific result (that they are right) and so its not worth my time to try and argue otherwise. So I take the stance of disinterest because I'm not interested in being their punching bag or agreeing with them. I know that my stance is based on my experiences and while I'm happy to entertain the possibility that they could be right, I don't necessarily feel I need to agree or validate them. I also feel that there are many ways to explain something and my explanation can be just as valid as anyone else's. That said I don't expect anyone else will agree and that's ok. They can disagree...just don't expect me to go out of my way to waste time arguing about it. I have better, more productive usage of my time in mind then arguing over who is right and who is wrong.

I see my stance of disinterest as a form of stillness, informed as it is by my desire to not engage in pointless arguments. When a conversation has a point and there is give and take, then its a worthy investment of time, but when its all about proving someone wrong or one's self right, then it becomes an exercise in futility and allowing yourself to be moved by that kind of argument takes away from your quality of life.

How symbols can be used to create pathworkings

I hold a meditation gathering for the magical experiments community each Monday. At one of the recent meetings, a question was brought up about pathworking. The person mentioned that she had trouble with narrative pathworking, because as she would start to do it, it she'd get caught up in some detail which would distract from her from the rest of the pathworking. She wondered if there was an easier way to do a pathworking that didn't involve using a narrative structure. It was a fair question to ask and consequently we decided to try an experiment out, which I'll get into more detail below.

It could be argued that part of the purpose of the narrative is to allow a person to have experiences that may be relevant to the pathworking. In other words, if a person gets focused on a detail in the narrative, it may be due to the fact that the person needs to get some message from that detail. On the other hand, it could also be argued that if your learning style isn't ideally optimized around a narrative or audio learning then it may be harder to get something from the pathworking.

I've used narratives for pathworkings before, and you'll find that in hypnosis a narrative is typically created as a way to help direct the person's imagination in the creation of the environment they'll work in. That said I've sometimes found such narratives to be cumbersome and I question how essential they are, especially if the purpose is to connect a person to a particular space/energy that already exists. If that space already exists, shouldn't the person be able to connect it to via means that are less complicated?

My personal pet theory about the astral realm is that its comprised of the superconsciousness of humanity and the spirits and is accessed through the imagination. I think the same applies to any given space a person is trying to access through such methods as pathworking. I'd also argue that if specific entities are associated with a given space they don't need the narrative of the pathworking to appear in that space. The narrative can be useful for creating an impression of the space, but there may be other ways to accomplish this as well.

The mansion of memory technique involves the use of symbols to store information, which can then be recalled when the symbol is focused on. A variant of this technique can be used with pathworking. Pick a narrative for a pathworking and pick out the key imagery and themes. Then create a symbol that is representative of the imagery and themes and use that symbol to call up the particular space and associated spirits. It's an instant pathworking without the narrative. For example, the picture above is my painting of the crossroads. I use that symbol to access the metaphysical space of the crossroads as well as connect with the spirits associated with that space.

In my meditation group we experimented with this technique. I passed the painting around and had each person look at the painting for a few moments and then we meditated on the symbol, using it as a door that would unlock the crossroads to each person. Each participant was able to access the crossroads instantly. The symbol was representative of the energy, information, and meaning of the password and that was enough to open the door for the people involved. However the people at the group were already familiar with the crossroads.

At the next meditation group night, we tried the same technique. This time there were a few people who weren't familiar with the crossroads and I didn't tell them what the painting represented. While the previous participants did go to the crossroads, using the symbol, the other participants did not. What this indicated to me was that some type of context was needed to provide a destination of sorts for the people using the technique. To test this further I showed the participants another painting and provided some contextual details about what the painting represented. When we did the pathworking technique with just the painting as the focus everyone went to the specific space it represented and several picked up on details not shared by myself.

I think the instant pathworking technique can work but participants need to know what and where they are going. Some contextual information must be provided to establish a connection. On the other hand, a full narrative is likely not needed, especially if you have a symbol you can use to represent the core concept people are seeking to connect with.

How to Build Spiritual Muscle Memory

Whenever I'm learning a new technique, one of the things I seek to do is build up the spiritual muscle memory of the technique so that it becomes something I can do without necessarily putting a lot of thought into it. The reason I do this is because I find that to truly master a skill, you need to make it part of you in a way that doesn't involve thinking about it. It's not something you do...its something you become. Developing that kind of spiritual muscle memory involves a systematic approach to learning a technique. You break the technique down into steps and focus on learning each step.

When I learn a technique, I focus on one step at a time. When I was learning the five Healing sounds of meditation, I focused on learning one sound at a time, working with that sound until I felt like I knew it and also knew what the sound was supposed to do when I meditated on it. I imprinted the sound on my consciousness, making it part of me, so I wouldn't need to think of it. Then I'd move onto the next sound, learning it and integrating it into the previous work. By scaling my learning, creating distinct steps to learn the technique I was also able to make it part of my spiritual muscle memory. Once a step is mastered, I move on to the next step. By the time I've fully learned the technique it has become part of what I do without much thought, because I don't want thinking to get in the way of doing the technique. I want it to be an immersive experience and this occurs when you have spiritual muscle memory.

Spiritual muscle memory is a form of conditioning that allows you to train your entire being to become what you do. The technique resides within you, a part of your identity that moves you and moves with you. You know the technique and your knowing of it occurs in your ability to do it without putting much thought into what you are doing. Thought gets in the way of technique...it becomes a distraction that holds you back from the experience you could have. You will think a lo when you first learn a technique, but as you imprint it and make it part of you, you won't need to think about it. You'll become it, let it infuse you with what it is and as a result make it part of your expression.

Take a given technique as a whole and break it into steps. What is the first thing you need to do. Do it until you know it...until its something you do automatically, then move onto the next step and learn it in the same way. You'll find as you initially learn the technique that it will grab the whole of your consciousness, occupying you with the effort involved in learning it. But one you've learned the steps and made them into something you do automatically, it won't grab you in the same way, and this will free you up to go in deeper with the technique, to open yourself up to the experience that only comes when you know something. It's a deeper experience that allows you to get to the heart of what you are doing and make it into something that fits with other work you are doing. It becomes more complex and yet simpler as well. Simple in the doing of it, complex in the connections you make to the other work you do. The spiritual muscle memory supports it and allows you to go deeper, work more intensely with whatever it you are working on. That's why I build spiritual muscle memory with techniques, because it leads me to more immersive work, allowing me to plumb the depths of whatever I'm focused on.

The Importance of Tracking your Results and Process

Whether you are practicing magic for practical results or for spiritual communion or a combination of the two, its important to keep track of your results, as well as keep track of the variables that potentially effect your magical working. The reason tracking this information is so important is that it can help you determine how effective your magical workings are, as well as what variables need to be accounted for. And in some situations it also helps you determine what you've missed in previous workings so that you can refine them in the future. Recently a friend shared with me some magical work he was doing. I asked him to break the working down into a process he could track, and list all the variables associated with that process. By taking such an approach, my friend was able to discover a lot about the magical workings he was doing that he hadn't accounted for or tracked. It's not enough to track your result, though that can be helpful. It's important to track every aspect of the working so that you can fully understand what is going into it. When a magical working goes unexamined, what it presents is a lack of awareness that allows variables into play that could be accounted for otherwise. Those variables will change the efficacy of the working because they aren't unaccounted for. Tracking what you do, on the other hand, enables you to anticipate and plan for those variables, even making them part of the magical working, as opposed to something that distracts you.

When you can't account for what you are doing or have done, that lack of accounting even becomes a variable that effects your magical working. What is not tracked becomes resistance or pushes your working into a different direction than what you seek out. Typically the reason a magical working goes unexamined is for one of two reasons. The first reason is the lack of discipline on the part of the magician. The magician may explain it away as letting the magic do its work, but what this explanation is a lack of rigor on the part of the magician and an unwillingness to examine their magical work to determine if its even working. The second reason is because the magician hasn't been trained to track their magical work. They don't keep a journal to examine their magical work. In either case, starting to track their magical work will help the magician learn more about magic and what is or isn't working in what they are doing.

To track your magical work, first focus on defining the result. Then define the process that will help you achieve the result. Write out each step and account for the variables that influence each step. By doing this you'll develop an understanding of what you are actually doing. You won't simply be doing a ritual, but rather you'll be doing the ritual and understanding how that ritual ought to connect to the world at large to generate the result you are seeking.

How Pop Culture becomes Mythology

In my previous post, I discussed how older mythology shows up in pop culture. However that's not the only mythology that's present in pop culture. Pop culture creates its own mythology, or rather the various people that interact with pop culture help to create new mythology, rooted in the cultural artifacts produced in this era. This mythology of the modern era is found in the stories that are told through modern media, such as comics, movies, television, radio, and the internet. What makes these stories mythological is how people interact with them, how the characters come to life and what those interactions mean to the people having them.

Pop culture creates myths for the modern time, based in contemporary culture, providing people in this culture something they can relate to because of the context to their lives, and yet nonetheless also an offering of something more. What that something more is depends on the person. For example, I find that pop culture mythology provides me a connection to the spirits of this era, and while these spirits may be birthed in Fiction, they nonetheless have a reality to them created by the needs that they embody for people. Other people will frame the mythology in terms of psychological terms and yet others will dismiss it altogether, arguing for specific standards and definitions based on their own biases about what constitutes a spirit.

In my experience of working with pop culture characters, I found that what makes them into mythology and for that matter what makes them spirits is the intent of the interaction. For example, in working with Thiede from the Wraeththu series, I found that what made him real was my recognition that in fact there is a spiritual resonance I share with the character. I could identify with the character and that identification helped to move the interaction from reading into actual spiritual work where I encountered him as a specific being within my pantheon. Continuing to work with him created a deeper relationship, which has continued to develop as I integrate him into my spiritual work. I imagine the same is true for anyone else working with a pop culture character. At some point, as continued spiritual work is done, the character becomes more than just a character. And that change shifts everything because the identification you have with that character calls for an investment on your part that allows the character to be real, regardless of what the origin of the character is.

Another example I can think of is Batman. For me, Batman is part of my mythology, moreso than Superman or some of the other heroes, in large part because what makes Batman so interesting is that he doesn't have any powers. He's rich, but his intelligence and his other skills are things he's had to hone and work with over a long period of time. More than that though is the actual calculation of the character in choosing in his fictional world to become a mythological being, utilizing the emotional responses to him as part of his way of creating such a mythology. The way the writers of the series have written about him, specifically in relationship to the mythological aspects he embodies in his fictional reality, shows a meta narrative that evokes that mythology into this reality because of the character's awareness of myth and his choice to make himself into a myth in the minds of the people who interact with him (both in the fiction world and in the mind of the readers/viewers). That kind of intention on the part of the character demonstrates to me a presence of being that moves beyond the narrow limitations and definitions humans try to impose on what is or isn't mythological.

If we open ourselves to the idea that pop culture can be mythological, then we also open ourselves to having meaningful interactions with the spirits of this time. We allow ourselves to work with those spirits, and in that process enter into a different relationship with this era and culture, one that may ultimately be more healing for us. The relationship we have with this culture and with what is important to us in it, is just as important as any relationship we have with older cultures and the spiritual forces of those cultures.

Book Review: The Secret Tradition of the Soul by Patrick Harpur

In his latest book, Harpur explores the connection of the soul to identity, daimonic reality and sacred imagination. Much like his previous works, he draws together a wide variety of sources to offer readers a multitude of perspectives on the subject area. What I enjoyed most about this book is how the author deftly explores the soul in context to the various traditions he refers to, defining in the process what the soul is and what role it plays in our lives. He also does a good job of building on his previous works while also differentiating this book from those works. If you are mystically inclined or want to understand the nature of the soul this book will be a thought-provoking read that will inspire your own spiritual work.

Book Review: Spreadable Media by Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green

This book examines the concept of viral media and argues for a different paradigm based on participatory culture and fandom, where people choose to spread ideas and their interests to other people. It's a fascinating book that presents an alternative perspective on marketing, but also on pop culture studies, bringing those studies to the 21st century by focusing on the role of social media within pop culture. If you are interested in pop culture, you'll find this book useful for understanding how pop culture spreads and if you are interested in marketing this book will provide a different perspective to the prevailing wisdom of the time.

Process of Magic round 11 starts in one week

The process of magic class, round 11, starts on November 5th. In this 24 lesson class, we will explore what the process of magic is and how it applies to you and your magical work. If you’re looking for a different perspective on magic that explores the underlying principles of how magic works, instead of focusing on the tools, ceremonies, and other optional features, this class is for you. We take apart various practices of magic and then put them back together with a deeper understanding of the mechanics of magic. Below are a couple testimonies from other people who've taken this course in the past:

Taylor Ellwood’s approach to magic looks at your life, looks at what you want to change and then uses your magic to improve the situation. If it does not work, improve your magic! Magic is a creative process that ties intimately into our lives and changes not only an outward situation but the magician itself.

In the beginning you will take a look at that process, something I have never seen discussed before. After that Taylor Ellwood supplies a large tool box for magical work. It ranges from creative techniques like using cut-ups to the creation of magical entities tailor-made for the magician’s needs. There are a lot of potential magical helpers on your way, gods and demons alike, and you will learn how to establish a healthy relationship with such beings that is mutually benefiting to you and them.

In no time you are doing magic that improves your life instead of reading about magic or pondering about what magic could do for you if only you could find the time to actually start practicing it. I can recommend this course for everyone who would like to become the active shaper of his or her live again.

Testimonial from Wolf Kaminksi

I have been reading and experimenting with magic and the occult for over five years and it seemed like I was going off in too many directions, without a map to guide me. I felt like I was spinning my wheels. This course helped me focus, without tying me into any particular Religion or belief system. If you are looking for a course that builds a foundation for your understanding and practice of Magic, this is the one!

This course has been amazing and I truly value your knowledge, experience and writing ability. I also like the fact that you are innovative and creative in your approach and take a progressive view of magic and are not mired down in some conservative tradition or other. You are on the “cutting edge” of magic and I am sincerely grateful to have the opportunity to take courses from you! Last but not least, you are ethical, conscientious and relate very well to your students.

Testimonial from G. Marlett

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Attuning the Spirit Cord through Vocalization

One of the practices I've been working with lately is the vocalization of specific sounds for the purposes of clearing the energetic body of blockages, as described in Tibetan Sound Healing. As I've been doing this work, I've also been using the vocalizations to attune my spirit cord to my internal energy, as well as doing the vocalizations to clear out any energetic vibrations that don't belong in the cord. When I've done this work with the cord, I've vocalized the sounds and connected them to the astral version of the cord to vibrate and attune it to the sounds. My reasoning on this really is to actually set it up so that the cord enhances ongoing work I'll be doing using the 5 sounds. By attuning the cord to the sounds, I set it up to enhance and amplify the later work, since the spirit is a record and resonance of the magical work you do with it.

The way the 5 warrior sounds work is as follows: You pick something you will attune to, an emotion or an experience, and then you use each sound to vibrate your chakras or internal energy fields, if you prefer. You do this to simultaneously cleanse the chakras of blockages and to attune them to the specific emotion or experience you want to manifest into your life. What's fascinating to me is that this practice can be done in conjunction with the Zhine practice of stillness, helping you to enter into a deeper state of stillness. Equally of interest is the first sound and last sound are tied together.

The first sound is A (ah) and its used to set the stage for stillness work, helping you to enter a state of mind where you are just being. The last sound Dza (Tsa) is the sound of manifestation, and yet it also ties into and connects with the A sound that the practitioner uses. Tenzin explains that Dza will not work well unless you have some sense of A. What all this really means, in my experience of it, is that you are using all of the sounds to create a path of manifestation and doing just one sound will not effectively create this path, but using all of them will because of how the prepare and focus your internal energy, aligning it to the emotion or experience you want to manifest.

I'm actually using these sounds as part of the elemental balancing work I'm doing with stillness, in conjunction with attuning the spirit cord to the sounds. By attuning the sounds to the spirit cord, I can draw on the past experiences of them stored in the cord and use that to amplify the vocalization of the sounds for the various purposes I'm applying this practice to. In the case of the stillness, work, I enter into a state of Zhine and then vocalize each sound, which puts me into an even deeper state of stillness. The Dza sound is used to manifest the element of stillness into my life directly, so that I can work with it and learn from it in the various experiences I have in the living of my life.

The vocalization has become part of my daily practice. I suspect I'll primarily use it in conjunction with the ongoing elemental work I do, but I also think it could also be used to charge and fire a sigil or for any other related purposes a magician can think of, so long as the principle of manifestation is understood.

Radio Interview: I was interviewed by Scroll of Thoth on my birthday about pop culture magic, magical identity and other topics of interest.

Book Review: Tibetan Sound Healing by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche

This book provides detailed instructions on how to work with the five warrior sounds. The accompanying cd is really useful for helping you to learn the sounds, as well as get into the meditation. I've found that combining this with zhine practice is particularly useful, but you can also do this sound work on its own. Highly recommend for anyone interested in learning more about Dzogchen and also learning how to work with sound and energy work. The exercises in this book will help you with any kind of internal work you are engaged in.

The Engagement of Books into Practical Applications

I've just finished reading and working my way through The Ladder of Lights by William G. Gray, which is a book on the Sephiroth of the Quabala. I'd read the book many years ago, but decided recently to revisit it and this time I didn't want to just read it. I wanted to experience it. So I decided that I would approach reading the book a bit differently. Instead of reading a chapter, I decided to read a section of a chapter and then work with the concepts and entities discussed in that section. The actual work consisted of meditation and pathworking as well as mediation of the forces worked with via my spirit cord.

I found that creating a program of practice around the book made the concepts within it come alive in a way reading it simply wouldn't. I've shared some of that work in my monthly postings about my elemental balancing work. The engagement with the angelic orders and the archangels was particularly useful, creating a kind of initiatory journey through each Sephiroth in order to experience and process what each Sephiroth does as a principle of manifestation.

One of my complaints sometimes about occult practices is how books don't set up the necessary engagement a person needs with the concepts shared in the books. Or the book will set it up as a cookbook recipe approach to magic, which is also less than useful, if you want to go into the depth of the work. However I think if you can approach a given book with an intention of how you can turn the content into a meaningful practice, what you'll discover is that you can get a lot from it, even if there is no practice application included in the book. You just need to be prepared to come with your own tool set, but really if you are actively practicing magic, this shouldn't be difficult. And if it is difficult, it is time to start doing the work.

I'm going to start reading and working through the Talking Tree next and I'll take a similar approach to working through the material, using both meditation and mediation to connect with the essential powers that be and the underlying concepts that create the tree of life. When you work with a book, the key is to dive deep and work with the underlying principles and processes of magic. Ultimately that's what you are trying to get to...a fundamental understanding of how magic works or why it works and then taking and applying that knowledge and information into practice to change your life. If what you are reading isn't being applied, it will never change your life or change the way you experience the world...not on a deep level and that deep level is where we want to go with our practices and with whatever we engage in.

Book Review: The Ladder of Lights by William G. Gray

By far, this is one of the best books on the Sephiroth of the Quabala. Gray does an excellent job of breaking each Sephiroth down by planet, angelic order, archangel and god name association and explaining the Sephiroth in each of these levels. You'll also find that this book is easy to adapt to whatever practice you want to use to work with the Sephiroth. If you want to learn the Quabala, this is a good book to start with.

The Spirits help those who help Themselves

Recently,  an acquaintance shared some difficulties he was having with some magic work he's been doing. One of the observations I made based on what he'd shared is that he's relying to much on spirits or magical entities to do the work for him. While working with a magical entity can be quite useful, there are limitations to its effectiveness and much like anything else, too much reliance on an entity can ultimately be a crutch to your magical practice, especially if you consider that the entities you work with have their own agendas and interests, unless its one you've created (and that has its own limitations). The truth is your average spirit doesn't want you bothering it all the time with requests. The spirits help those who help themselves.

In my work with various spirits, I always create a very specific relationship, and one aspect of that relationship is that I typically ask the spirit to do something for me that I couldn't do on my own. I don't ask it to do anything I couldn't do mundanely or magically, because doing so is a waste of the entity's talents, and is also laziness on the part of the magician. For example, if I'm looking for a place to live and decide to employ magical means to get the place, I probably won't call on an entity, because both magically and mundanely I have the necessary skills to get into a living situation that I want to be in. I know my own skills are sufficient for that task. On the other hand, I'll create an entity to help me become aware of opportunities I might otherwise ignore or miss out on, because the entity will have a perspective I don't have that can be useful for discovering opportunities. I'm employing the entity to use the skills that it has, in a manner which draws on its strength, while filling in a gap that I might not otherwise be able to address. It's better to employ an entity for a purpose that allows you to leverage its strengths for something you can't do on your own, then to waste its skills on something you can do.

Another way that I like to work with spirits involves getting the advice or knowledge on a given subject, either by asking them to point me toward the best resources, or if possible, do a direct download of information. The majority of times its a combination of the two. The reason this works so well is because the entity is providing you with something you don't have already and may not have the best skill at finding. An entity is happy to do this because it ultimately still involves you the magician doing the work. Sure the entity points you to information, but you actually have to follow up and learn it and then do something with it.

There's a theme here: Its better for you to attend to the detail work of manifesting desired possibilities into reality. Let the spirit handle the things you can't easily do or do at all. That's where the specialty of the spirit comes into play, and where it will be most useful to you. Anything you can do, plan on doing it yourself either magically, mundanely, or better yet both ways. Speaking of which: Take a multi-pronged approach and work with the spirit, but also add in your own magical work and mundane actions. It's better to implement multiple approaches to achieve your desired result, and better to take action, instead of just relying on an entity. In fact just relying on entity is the lazy magician's surest way to fail.

Space/Time Vibration Magic

In my system of space/time magic, vibration plays an integral role in the manipulation of possibility into reality. I see vibration as an integration of time into space, wherein space is the palette or medium through which time is expressed. In my magical work, I've integrated vibratory work in a lot of what I do, with the idea being that different types of vibrations can be used for specific purposes. For example, when I do my invocation of the element I'm working with, I vibrate a specific sound that is used to channel the element both inward and outward. It vibrates inward through my physical and spiritual being, attuning me to the elemental force, even as it vibrates outward, aligning the environment around me with that same energy to create a field of elemental energy that brings that element into my reality and the experiences I have with it.

I've found a similar practice in Dzogchen, albeit done for a different purpose than my own. In Tibetan Sound Healing, the author explains that vibration practices are used to clear the space of a person of the internal blockages, desire, etc that obscure the person from reaching a state of stillness. In my own experiences with Zhine, which is a stillness practice of Dzogchen, I've noticed how being still initially brings to my awareness the desires, worries, etc. that come up in my life. I've actually used Zhine as a meditation for space/time work by using what's brought up during the stillness practice as a form of possibility exploration, but in the book I mentioned above, the author also includes certain vibratory practices that are used to attune the internal energies of the practitioner to the space of stillness, while clearing out the distractions. The author explains the following:

"You connect to the clear space because the energy and emotion that you brought to consciousness has been released. When the block dissipates, you feel some space. That space is something you want to recognize. You want to recognize and abide or rest in that space without changing anything." As you can see reaching this state of awareness is really about being still and not doing anything...just being. Doing anything brings back the attachment or blockage.

To clear the space, involves the vibration of specific sounds. For example, the sound A is vibrated in order to attune the practitioner to the space and clear out blockages from your inner energy and the environment around you. I've started doing this vibratory work in conjunction with my Zhine practice and what I found is that it brought a clarity of being to the experience of Zhine, a deeper being with stillness, because the sound opened me up to that space of being. When I do the Ahh sound and infuse it with vibration it opens the mind up, deepens the state of stillness and the awareness of possibilities.

Now in my work with space/time magic, a lot of the focus has shifted to identity work. And how all that connects to this vibration work is that by opening yourself up that state of stillness, that space of being, what you also open yourself up to is the experience of possibility. The choice to become a possibility moves you from a state of 0, of being, to a state of 1, of doing, reintegrating into linear time and space with the possibility as the new reality. This approach is admittedly different from the person of abiding in a state of stillness, but if we're serious about space/time magic then I think the exploration of vibration to achieve a state of stillness, where all possibilities are experienced and then choosing one can be quite useful. What this also illustrates is how a given system of practice can be adapted and applied in ways the originators wouldn't have used it. I know that my application of Zhine and the vibratory practices doesn't align with the stated purpose of the practice in Dzogchen, so I wouldn't call what I'm doing Dzogchen, so much as a derivation I've devised that utilizes the practice as a from of space/time magic work. As I continue to learn the vibratory practices, I'll see what else develops, but I already think that the vibrations could not only help you reach a space of altered consciousness, but also use that state to sync yourself to the specific possibility you want to manifest.

Non-Anthropomorphic Pathworking Technique: Sound

In a previous post, I discussed how tactile awareness could be used for non-anthropomorphic pathworking. This time we're going to explore how sound and vibrations can be used for a similar purpose. Similar to touch, our hearing can actually help us connect with spirits, entities, and life in general in a non-anthropomorphic manner, if we train ourselves to use it for that purpose. In general, we use our hearing to help us with communication and not surprisingly part of what goes with communication is an expectation about how communication will happen. Humans use words, so we tend to expect communication to occur via words, even though that may not be the preferred communication of what we're connecting with. How often have you done a ritual working to a spirit and found yourself having a conversation with the spirit? Chances are you used words and expected words in return and perhaps the spirit accommodated you because of that expectation. How might it have communicated if words hadn't been the expectation?

We live in a world of sound. Even when we think we are in silence, we generally are still experiencing sound of some type in the world around us. Not all of that sound is used for the purpose of communication, but sound can tell us a lot about the environment around us (and within) and what might be in the same vicinity as us. If you have a pet in your life, you also know that pets can communicate with you via sound, and tat you'll interpret that sound accordingly. For example, I know the difference between the hungry meow when my cats want food and the meow when my cats want attention. There's a difference in tone and how the meow sounds. Communication is happening, but not via words, but through sound itself and my interpretation of what that sound means.

In part of the work I did with the microbial life in my body, I used sound as a way to connect with that microbial life. For example, I used the sounds of hunger and digestion to connect with the bacteria in my stomach. What I did is meditated and carefully focused my hearing on listening to the internal sounds of my body. So I'd meditate when I felt hunger and used the hunger sounds of the stomach to connect with the bacteria and then did the same with the noise of digestion after I ate. Hunger and digestion are two different sounds, so it gave me a chance to connect with the bacteria in each stage. The sounds weren't necessarily made by the bacteria, but it seemed to me that the sound was part of the experience and I used it as a way to connect.

When I do work with spirits around me or with some other type of life, I do my best to just open myself up to the sounds conveyed to me. If words are used I'll accept them, but I don't expect them because I realize there may be another way to communicate. Recently I did a working with the Chasmalim, which is the angelic order of Chesed. The way they chose to communicate with me involved changing sound frequencies in combination with light. My receptiveness to this communication helped me understand how they work and what they do in their roles of mediating the energy of Chesed.

As you can probably tell this kind of work doesn't happen with just sound or touch or sight. Usually its a combination of the senses, which is understandable because that's how we experience the world in general. What this kind of work teaches us is that the experience of non-anthropomorphic work will occur across multiple senses and we should necessarily open ourselves to using more than one sense if needed in order to have an experience with a spirit, entity, etc that we are seeking to connect with.

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I was interviewed on Pagan Musings Podcast about the difference between BNPs and leaders in the Pagan community.

Book Review: Fandom, Identities, and Communities in a mediated world edited by Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington

This is a collection of essays on pop culture studies, circa 2006, so some of the content is a bit dated, but all of it is interesting to read. However, one thing which stands out to me about this book is that many of the essays never really focused on identity in relationship to pop culture. I mention that only because I'd hoped to see more focus on that topic, and of course its in the title of the book. However what I did like about the book is that a number of essays focused on non-traditional fandom, with a focus on classical music, sports, and news fans, among other types, which made for some thought provoking reading. If you're interested in pop culture studies, or like me if you want to see what you can apply conceptually to practice based approaches to life, this book may provide some useful insights.

Non-Anthropomorphic Pathworking Techniques: Touch

In my recent post on Pagansquare I shared six anthropomorphic assumptions (and possible solutions) that can show up in your magical work. If you don't want those anthropomorphic assumptions to show up you need to develop some type of technique that allows you to get around them. The technique I've been developing, at least for working with the microbial life in my body, has involved using tactile awareness as the means through which to communicate with the microbial life. Tactile awareness refers to the sense of touch and kinesthetic awareness of feeling your body.  Approaching non-anthropomorphic work in this way has been very useful because its cut spoken language out of the equation and focused instead on experiencing sensation and using the sensations as a guide for the interactions with the microbial life.

I've also used this technique with my latest round of communion with the neurotransmitters. Just as with the microbial life, I've found that using the sense of touch as the basis for the pathworking has lead me to experience altered states of consciousness consistent with earlier experiences I've had with neurotransmitters. What's most fascinating however is how the sensations nonetheless have become symbols. In other words, the feeling of the experience will replicate itself in specific ways each time I work with a given neurotransmitter and that pattern then becomes a symbol, which can be meditated upon and used to experience the physical sensation, provided the person understands how tactile pathworking works.

Learning Tactile pathworking involves conditioning yourself to be aware of both surface and internal kinesthetic sensations. you can do this in several ways. First, I recommend learning and practicing daily some type of breathing practice, which forces you to pay attention not just to your breath, but also to how your body responds to the breath. If this practice also involves working with your internal energy, then so much the better as it'll teach you how to pay closer attention to the kinesthetic awareness of your body. As you learn how to move your kinesthetic awareness in your body, you can also try directing it to a specific part of your body and maintaining awareness of that part. What you'll discover is that your body provides you a lot of information that you normally suppress. However, suppressing that information isn't always useful and by mastering kinesthetic awareness you can learn ho to process and experience that information without the need to suppress it.

I also recommend stillness practices. Stillness practice teaches you to be still. That stillness will help you become awareness of surface feelings on your skin. It'll also help you tap into your deeper kinisthetic awareness, especially if you focus on a sensation like breath or your heartbeat. In fact, your heartbeat can be an excellent teacher for kinesthetic awareness because its something you experience all the time, but its also something you learn to ignore. You actually have to consciously focus on it to be aware of it, but if you focus your awareness on it, you can use the heart beat to create a rhythm that leads you into a meditative experience with your body.

Another practice that's useful is movement practice. Movement practice can be as simple as being mindfully aware of your body and how it moves when you are doing something, or it can be as focused as doing specific movements in a sequence and maintaining awareness of your body while doing those movements. When doing these movements, you want to pay close attention to how your body moves and how it feels as you move. For example, how do your joints feel when you move them in specific ways? By focusing on those sensations, you'll learn a lot about your body and how it feels when you are doing this tactile pathworking.

As you practice these various techniques, focus on cultivating your tactile awareness, both inwardly and outwardly. Pay attention to what your skin feels or how your fingers feel when they touch a surface. Pay attention to how you carry your body and how that makes you feel internally. When you do breathing meditation and move your internal energy, focus your awareness on how your body responds. By learning to do that, you can then focus your kinisthetic awareness inward. Then when you work with your microbial life or neurotransmitters or whatever else you'll be able to use that sense of touch for that purpose. In a future post, I'll cover how you can also apply this concept to sound.

Anthropomorphism and its affect on Perceptions of Reality

I'm in the midst of my research for Pop Culture Magic 2.0 (thankfully I'm almost finished with it). Part of that research has taken me to some interesting tangents in relationship to how people experience the otherworld and daimonic spirits. While most people wouldn't associate pop culture with daimonic spirits or the otherworld, I'm seeing a connection and it's also helping me understand the affect anthropomophism has had on people's encounter with spiritual beings. Patrick Harpur makes an intriguing point when he notes the following:

"It is to our discredit that in order to draw attention to their reality, the daimons have been compelled to become physical and fixed, like crop circles. By Masquerading as - by parodying- literal facts, they answer our modern requirement for quantifiable effects besides which everything else is deemed illusory. In other words, their way of presenting their own metaphorical, mythical reality is to appear not as literal, but as if they were literal" [Italics are his] - From Daimonic Reality

What I take away from this quote is that anthropormorphism is at the root of modern society's fixation on quantifiable reality. There are, of course, other disciplines and perspectives which also inform that fixation, but if we examine anthropomorphism carefully, what we find is that it seeks to recast experiences with Daimonic reality, and indeed with the universe at large, into human perspectives that label and categorize such experiences into neat little boxes. The resultant problem with this is that it creates a rather static experience of reality that always needs to be situated in what humans find meaningful to them, as opposed to really being open to how the experience might change their perspective of reality. This leads to the issue described above in the quote, wherein the Daimonic spirits need to appear in a specific context in order to connect and communicate with us. That specific context is filtered, sanitized, presented in a package that is ultimately limited because of the need to attribute human behaviors, meanings and values on the connection that has occurred.

This does open the floor to a question however: Why do these daimonic spirits want to connect with us so much that they are willing to limit the context of the experience to what fits us? I think there's two possible reasons. The first has to do with symbiosis, and the second has more to do with how we limit the experience and how they respond to those limitations. Lets explore both reasons in depth below.

The symbiosis reason essentially explores the possibility that daemonic entities have a symbiotic connection of sorts that requires a connection. I'd argue that the connection runs both ways. In other words, there are benefits conferred to both humans and Daemons by the nature of the connection. As a result its worth it to the daemons to continue to have contact with us, even if that contact is limited in ways that makes it more acceptable to humans. What's fascinating is that if this is the case, Daemons have nonetheless adapted quite well, and one possible theory for pop culture magic could be that what we're really connecting with are daemons that have taken on pop culture as one way to connect.

The second reason focuses on the limitations humans create in order to interact with Daemons. If we use anthropomorphism in its various forms to categorize our experiences into something that is comfortable for us, the challenge for Daemons then is how to respond to such a limitation and that may very well involve taking on the limitation and its context and using that to establish the connection and then afterwards challenging that limitation in whatever manner possible. Thus they may act as if they were literal and yet find a way to challenge that sense of literal reality by helping the person experience something that can't be categorically defined very easily.

Bringing all this back to anthropomorphism and its affect on the perceptions of reality, I think that what we'll discover is that anthropomorphism really does limit our experiences and contact with the otherworld and with the kinds of experiences we can have. It filters out what doesn't fit the comfortable human definition of reality, so that what is experienced spiritually or otherwise can be explained away and written off into convenient categories and labels that seem safe. The problem with this is that if it ultimately a filter that may cause us to miss experiences and information we need to have access to. The challenge then is to recognize anthropomorphic inclinations and determine how useful they really are for the spiritual work we are doing. Are we truly allowing ourselves the opportunity to have an experience or just turning it into a label that makes us feel safe for the sake of not challenging our perceptions of reality?

Silence and its place in Magical Work

In Western magic, one of the expressions is "to keep Silent." I never really cared for that expression, finding it to be antithetical to my craft as a writer and my desire to experiment with magic. But recently I've been reading several books and also doing a lot of work with stillness in relationship to movement and I've come to an appreciation of silence and its place in magical work. In Music Power Harmony, Stewart suggests that using silence in magic can become a foundation that realigns the consciousness and allows for deeper, more intensive internal work, while also shifting our understanding of music and the experience of it. Silence liberates us from habits because it causes us to examine and question them.

In The Fruitful Darkness by Joan Halifax, she states that stillness and silence is the foundation of our engagement with the world. It is an experience that allows us to interact with the world without necessarily acting on it. Yet what we get out of it is a different perspective and understanding of the world, based on experiencing it and becoming part of it without needing to change it. Something I've discovered over the years is that the need to act on the world diminishes as you learn how to experience the world directly. Stillness and silence teach you not to get so caught up in the drama, teach you to appreciate the nature of your connection to what's around you because you aren't so wrapped up in it, but can instead step back from all of it. We can get so caught up in the noise, so caught up in the distraction and diversion that we forget the connections, instead focusing on what will fill us up.

In the Dzogchen practice of Zhine, the person does stillness meditation, stilling everything and just being with the world, while not being attached to it. I've been doing this practice for a bit of time now and as I've done it, it's gotten easier to enter into that state of stillness and silence, though sometimes I still have challenges with it. What strikes me about doing Zhine is how much I end up hearing my own thoughts. I'm not doing anything, other than being still, so the thoughts come out, moreso for Zhine than other meditation practices I've done. Eventually all that mental noise dies down and what I'm left with is a state of being. I am here. Eventually even that fades and I just am, without attachment to space or time. In that stillness and silence I nonetheless find that I enter a state of connectedness that I'd never experienced until I did Zhine. The boundary between myself and the world around me thins, sometimes going away altogether, so that I enter a state of possibility, no longer caught up in conventional reality with all of its distractions.

I appreciate silence now because I understand its where inspiration and possibility are found. Allowing myself to be silent and still allows me to connect with the creative urge of the universe, Eros, in a way I couldn't before because I was so caught up in the noise. Now silence and stillness are part of my daily practice, part of my approach to magic and life. And through that experience the creative urge is mediated, experienced, and the heart of the world, the heart of the universe is entered. When the magician comes back from that experience, what is brought back is the impetus for meaningful change, both in the life of the magician and in the world, but done in a manner which is less about acting upon the world, and more about becoming the change you seek. By becoming that change, you change your relationship with the world and create the result you wanted to manifest instead of trying to force it into place.

Book Review: Music Power Harmony by R. J. Stewart

Music Power Harmony explores the connection between music and magic. The author also touches on concepts such as space/time magic, the power of words in shaping reality, the tree of life and its relationship to music and elemental calls of power. One thing I'd have liked to have seen more of in this book would be exercises that allowed the reader to implement the concepts. However, there is a lot of content that should inspire the magician, and this book will help you appreciate music and its relationship to magic because it is a fairly unique book in its focus. If you want to learn how to apply magic to music or learn more about the natural musical and magical abilities you have, this book will help you open that door.

Vowel Magic

In Music Power Harmony, R.J. Stewart makes an interesting observation about Vowels. He notes that the first sound that comes out of a person's mouth is always a vowel. You could say the letter Ks or Zs, but the sound of those letters is a vowel sound. The same actually applies to words. Say a given word and what you inevitably hear is a vowel sound. The vowel sound defines the rest of the words, connecting the consonants together in order to create the word. The vowel is at the heart of word magic, or as Burroughs might put it, its the nucleus of the word virus. The vowel is what we use to provide shape to the words, and in turn what gives the words the means to shape reality.

Stewart makes another intriguing point when he notes that we use sound to create a temporary pattern that expresses the fullness of the universe within the form of the word, attuning the word to universe and mediating the universe through the word. Burroughs made similar statement in some of his works on writing and the word. My own experiences with words has been one where I use words to start the path of manifesting a possibility into reality. A word turns a possibility into reality because it speaks that possibility into reality, makes it objective because it's not just in your head, but is a sound or is on paper. But the word is not just externalized. It is also internalized within the person, spoken within to align the person with the universe, even as it is sent out to the universe to align it with the person.

The sound of a word is not just a sound, but also a meaning. We invest the sound with meaning and articulate it for a variety of purposes that can ultimately be boiled down to one underlying purpose, namely the desire to change reality. Whether we are communicating, informing, educating, or expressing, what we are really seeking to do is create an experience with the words that changes something for us, both within and without. Recognizing this about words can help us appreciate their power and why we use them the way we do. The word speaks you. You speak the word. There is a relationship between the word and the person. That relationship is essential to the survival of both.

Words, by their formation, are a limitation of possibility. Words describe what reality could be, but also provide the necessary form to create that reality. For example, when I work with clients on their business, we put together a written business plan. The writing of the business plan focuses the client, turns the chaos of possibility into specific measurable actions, which in turn, lead to the manifestation of reality. I'd argue that words play the essential role of bridging possibility and reality. They provide form to possibility, while leaving enough possibility within them to let the person interpret and shape the meanings further before they become embodied into reality through the actions of the person. My own use of words is driven toward this kind of work, using them to forecast and shape the reality I'm stepping into, by providing enough focus that I can chart a path that then turns into action.

You might try the following experiment. Think of something you really want. Then write about it. Write about what you will do to achieve that result. Once the writing is done, seal it in envelope and put it away somewhere where you can find it, but don't open it until the the result manifests in your life. When it does manifest, look at the writing and compare what you wrote to what you actions you took. You'll probably find that the writing helped set the stage to manifest the desired result into reality.

Radio Interview: Go here to listen a live recording of my talk on Wealth Magic at the 2nd International Left Hand Path Conference.

Book Review: Fan CULTure: essays on Participatory Fandom in the 21st Century Edited by Kristin Barton and Jonathan Lampley

In this collection of essays, the authors share how fans interact with pop culture and corporations in order to keep their particular fan interests alive. There are three angles explored: Fan production, which shows how fans create content related to what love and how they get around potential corporate legal issues, the use of social media and how it effects fandom, and finally how fans influence the official content created by corporations. throughout all these essays, you'll get some fascinating insights into fan behavior and why fans do what they do as well as how it creates fan specific culture. Highly recommended if you are interested in pop culture studies or want to understand how fans effect pop culture production.

How to Identify identity Work you need to do

One of the most important aspects of identity work is the identification of problematic identities that you want to change. Some of these identifications are ones you will want to change entirely, while others will involve a change in perception. You'll also find that some identities can't be changed entirely, because they are part of your experiences, but what can be changed is how you choose to relate to that identity. This means that you can have a traumatic event occur which becomes part of your identity. You can't change that the traumatic event occurred...it's part of you, but what you can change is how you interact with that event, how you use it shape your identity and your place in the world. As simple as that sounds, such work can be hard, but if you are willing to do the work, the resultant changes are worth it because of you become empowered.

The identification of needed identity work involves paying close attention to those aspects of identity you'd rather avoid, or where you have tension and emotional blockages. For example, in American culture, the body is usually an identity aspect that people need to work with. The majority of Americans have unhealthy relationships with their bodies, which are not always examined from a place of identity. When identity is brought into the picture, an exploration of the body becomes a history of how you've interacted with your body, as well as what comes up for you in relationship to your body and how you've tried to change your body. All of these issues play a role in shaping your identity around your body and they can only be changed when you confront them head on and recognize them for what they are: unneeded definitions about what your body ought to be according to mainstream culture. Once you've recognized those definitions, you can then create your own definitions which speak to the identity you want to establish with your body. This typically leads to healthier interactions because you are choosing the identity instead of having it foisted on you.

One of the ways I identify identity work is through meditation. Part of the meditation work focuses on the unresolved tensions I feel within myself. As I meditate, I allow the internal energy to flow around the tension I feel, gradually dissolving it, and in that process revealing whatever is at the core of the tension. I can then work with that core and relate it to my identity to determine how it contributes to the identity formation I have. Once I understand that, I can do the necessary work of changing that core tension into something which helps my identity and the desired reality I seek to create.

In your own identity work, look for those areas of your life that bring up feelings of stress and tension. Do you dread going into work or cringe when checking your balance? Do you feel like you are walking on eggshells around people in your home? Do you find yourself doing an activity that isn't good for you, but you can't stop it? Spend some time paying close attention to your daily routines and whatever comes up for you while doing those routines. What you discover will provide you the necessary direction you need to move in, in order to start doing identity work. Embrace those areas of tension and stress, no matter how uncomfortable they might be. You can do meditation or some other magical work, but the focus of the work should be on helping you to understand how the stress/tension contributes to your identity, as well as how you can change your identity by addressing the stress and tension you feel.

Book Review: Fan Cultures by Matt Hill

The author explores fandom as a culture from the lens of religion, cult enthusiasm, and psychology. He offers an alternative perspective to the works of other pop culture studies academics. I found his insights about pop culture fandom and religion to be particularly fascinating. This book will give you a lot to consider about how fandom engages pop culture and makes it part of their lives, as well as what can be learned by exploring fandom from disciplines outside the norms of cultural studies. What I also found insightful was hit detailed exploration of the hierarchy of fan culture, which was useful for understanding how fan communities work. If you are interested in pop culture studies or pop culture in general, this is a good book to read.