Are pop culture entities real?

In a recent blog post Jason wrote about Post Chaos Magic (sounds like Post modernism) he argues that fictional or pop culture entities don't have the same effect as more traditional gods, demons, entities, etc. He notes the following:

Some chaos magicians have claimed that in the modern, largely secular world, a figure like Superman receives more collective belief than a pagan deity like Mars, thus making comic book or pop culture characters even more viable for magic than traditional gods and spirits. Even if we accept that it is belief, rather than the object of belief, that holds the power to magic, this thinking confuses attention with belief. Attention and belief are not the same thing, there is a different quality to the experience all around.

Now I want to first issue a caveat. I have not ever identified as a chaos magician. I've always identified as an experimental magician (which is its own path).  I mention that because in my book Pop Culture Magick I made similar arguments to what is mentioned above. I have, however, distinguished between attention and belief. In my book, I acknowledged that attention was not the same as belief and that while a pop culture entity might get lots of attention what made it an effective force was the actual belief the practitioner had in its existence and abilities. And not just belief in the entity for the course of a ritual, but actual, honest to goodness belief that lasts longer than a moment.

Back in the late 1990s I had the privilege of connecting with Storm Constantine, author of the Wraeththu series. We've continued our contact over the years (In fact I co-run Immanion Press with her). We both worked on the Dehara system, which is a system of magic based on contact with "fictional" entities from the Wraeththu series. As we developed this system, other people got involved and what stood out to me was that none of us treated the entities as fictional entities, but rather as genuine spirits we'd contacted. To this day I continue to work with the Dehara as do other people who've chosen to believe in them and form a relationship with them. The impact the Dehara have had on my life has been just as real as the impact my work with with the Goetia or other more traditional entities has been.

Jason rightly points out that one of the core issues of Chaos Magic (and for that matter some forms of ceremonial magic) is a tendency to treat spiritual entities as psychological extensions of ourselves. But to me what has always made pop culture magic a viable magic is the ability to genuinely believe and interact with entities that may not date back to Ancient Greek or Celtic cultures, but nonetheless have a real and viable presence, provided the magician is willing to explore that presence. I think that what has stopped many magicians from doing so is a combination of the psychological model of magic and embarrassment about considering the possibility of forming a spiritual relationship with a pop culture entity. After all the Pagan/occult community can be fairly harsh with those people deemed fluffy, as I can attest to from my own experiences. Yet as someone who unashamedly does work with pop culture entities from a spiritual perspective, all I can really say is: Such relationships really can be as effective provided you invest them in as equally as you expect the entity to.

I will note that there is a difference when you're working with a pop culture entity in a manner that is driven more by getting a specific result as opposed to forming an ongoing relationship with it. I've certainly done that kind of work as well and while useful it's not quite the same as when you develop an ongoing spiritual relationship with an entity.

Why the Categorization of Elementals is flawed

I'm reading The Well of Light by R. J. Stewart right now (amongst other things). He makes an interesting point when he argues that the categorization of elemental spirits into Earth, Air, fire, and Water (and spirit) isn't necessarily accurate. He points out the following:

If we think about Elementals as small components of 'pure' Air, Fire, Water, and Earth with some sort of limited consciousness, we are making them too abstract and too small...they are large conglomerate beings of one primary Element, but with the other three also present...elementals are perceived and encountered during a gathering of forces into undeniable, visible, tangible patterns: the forest fire, the volcanic interruption, the tornado, and the earthquake.

My own experience with the primary elementals has always been a recognition that to one degree or another the elements are interacting with each other. Think of a cloud in the sky. Sure there's Air, but there's also Water. But even leaving out the periodic table (which is a scientific analysis of the physical elements), I've never really been satisfied with the four or five elemental approach to magic. In the Strategic Sorcery course, Jason also discusses the elementals from the perspective of the five core elements and his approach to the elements is reminiscent of my early delving into hermeticism right down to the kings of the elementals. I've worked with them in the way Jason describes and I've also experienced them the way R. J. describes. In fact, my experience of elementals shifted to how R. J. describes them after my the working I did when I was eighteen where I exchanged some of my life essence for the life essence of the elemental spirits. And reading R. J.'s description made me appreciate that distinction he makes.

But as I said above, even the four or five elemental model never really worked. When I first started doing the elemental balancing work I realized that drawing on a traditional model for the elements was very limiting. An elemental force such as Gravity wasn't included, nor sound, nor even emotional forces that I'd consider elemental such as love or emptiness. So I started including them because I liked the concept of elemental spirits and could certainly attest to my own experiences with them, but I felt that there were more out there than what was readily available. I still hold to this perspective, so that even though I am working with Fire this year, I could just as easily be working with Gravity another year and find that it has much to offer from a spiritual perspective as what fire offers.

What do you think? Do you stick to a traditional perspective on elementals, or have you tried my approach and worked with an elemental that wasn't traditional?

Can spirits evolve?

In reading Mike's Blog as well as R J Stewart's books, one question that has come up for me is, Can spirits evolve? Mike seems to argue that spirits don't evolve and that the ethereal software they create is based off their understanding of the world and needs to be updated by people to understand contemporary concepts. R. J. Stewart discusses them in context of what they do and the sense that I get is that they might not evolve in a way that we understand, but that doesn't mean they don't evolve. That and applying a human centric perspective to the spirits is limiting because it is human centric.

My various experiences with the Goetia, elemental spirits, and even pop culture spirits is one that leads me to think that spirits are defined by function, but that the function can evolve. To argue that a spirit doesn't really understand modern day concepts could be accurate, but it might be even better to ask if it cares or if those concepts are relevant to its function. It might also be useful to ask how relevant humans are to its function?

When I've worked with Purson or Bune the experience I've had with them is one where they seem very up to date with the times. When I've worked with elemental spirits, that hasn't been the case from a human centric perspective, but the kind of information they provide me from an elemental perspective about technology and the environment suggests they have evolved as a result of changes brought about by people.

I think spirits can evolve, but that their evolution is defined by their function, and the domain that function operates in. I say that with a caveat, because I'm applying my own human centric perspective to this question, but based on my experiences I don't think of spirits as static or out of touch with the changing times and concepts...it just might be a question of what's really relevant.

Web of Time and Space Tattoo

On Tuesday I got my latest tattoo. It's an hourglass surrounded by a web and it represents the web of space and time, as well as being dedicated to the Spider Queen of Time, Purson, Thiede, and Elephant. I'd promised them and myself that when Magical Identity was published, I'd get this tattoo as a way to honor their contribution and as an affirmation of my work with space and time.

Shortly into getting the tattoo I felt the endorphins hit and I entered into a light altered state of consciousness, where I then evoked the aforementioned entities. My offering wasn't just the tattoo, but also the experience, and at the same time as I experienced it, they didn't just come for the offering, but also took me to the web of space/time and continued to instruct me in it, and in possible avenues to take it further. I'll just say for now a lot of it has to do with movement as a form of being, but it's given a me a lot of food for thought on how to take Magical Identity into new directions.

The Obsession with Banishments

Both Jason Miller and RJ Stewart discuss the obsession with banishment that is prevalent in Western Occultism. RJ notes that you can't really exclude anything from your circle as long as you have some trace of it or fear of it within you, which makes sense, because holding onto any such feeling is essentially an invitation in. I do banishing, but I don't do it as an everyday magical activity. There's a specific time and place for banishing and knowing what to banish is equally as important as when to banish.

For example, I have done banishing rituals for people I wanted to move on from in my life. They weren't in my life any more, but I was holding onto the memories, which wasn't healthy. In most cases, I was holding onto a lot of pain and anger toward those people and I didn't feel there was any other resolution. So the banishing served as a way for me to resolve those feelings and let go of the memories I was holding on to justify the feelings. Since doing the banishment I haven't really thought of those people or the memories.

When I clean my house, I use the cleaning activity as a banishment ritual, but in my daily work I want to connect with the various spiritual allies I work and since I've developed a relationship of trust with them its important to me that they are present in my space. They are as much a part of my life as anything else and to banish everyday would be to tell them they are not welcome.

Being Magic vs doing magic

I'm reading the Sphere of Art by R. J. Stewart. It's a fascinating book and I can see William Gray's influence in both the writing and in how Stewart explains the magical concepts he's working with. Initial experimentation with the technique, on my part, has built off of Gray's Omnil technique and the Sphere fits the Omnil technique like a well crafted glove fits a hand. There's a point that Stewart makes about magic which I really like because it hits on the difference between an ontological approach to magic and an approach that's focused on doing magic.

Most powerful magic involves not willing things to be but allowing them to be what they already are. This process of allowing is not easily understood, for if it is assessed by the mind alone, it creates a minor paradox. The mind has to be stilled, the will set at peace, within conditions of attuned energy. Not as a meditative process alone, for this merely preliminary training, but as a sacromagical process that uplifts our manifest creation into another octave of being. Only when we allow this do we discover that there is no paradox and that the other octave of being has always resonated and interleaved with our manifest nature.

My own work in Magical Identity involved learning how to let go of doing magic and focus on allowing situations, circumstances, etc.,  to be what they are, while aligning my ontological state of being to the desired state of being that I wanted to have access to. By taking such an approach and embodying the desired reality I learned how to enter into the right time and space that fit the desired state of being I wanted to access. So instead of trying to will something to change externally, I allowed myself to change to fit what I needed. It's a different approach to magic because its based on an internal approach to magic. This isn't to say that I've stopped creating sigils or entities or doing other forms of magical work, but the need to do that type of work has diminished by applying an ontological perspective to magic and myself.

An ontological approach to magic enables you to enter into a receptive awareness of possibilities that allows you to form a specialized state of being (sacromagical perhaps) with the desired possibility. This state of being initially involves emptying yourself of everything and then inviting into your magical space the specific possibility you want to manifest into your life. You become that possibility, and give yourself over to the expression of it, allowing it to express itself in your life and actions. Instead of trying to force it, you become the possibility, letting it guide your choices, until it is realized. It's not a passive approach to magic, but instead is an approach that involves shifting your entire state of being into the preferred space/time you want to embody.  It recognizes that magic is an integral part of your being as opposed to an activity you do.

The role of concepts in magical works

Another interesting post from Mike on the word concepts. The more I read about his system, the more I understand it both in terms of entity work and in terms of using language for magical purposes. He explains the following with concepts:

Communication is actually about concepts, not words. You wouldn’t have a problem sending the concept of “computer” to a modern Frenchman, but it would be incredibly difficult to send it to someone from the 1700s.

I think that's an accurate description of communication, as well as the limitations of communication, which is probably why I remove the Ethereal Software (What I'd describe as entities) out of the equation for the majority of my workings. I create entities on occasion and the process that Mike describes for ethereal software is similar enough that I'd call it entity work. He'll likely disagree, which is fine, but that's my interpretation of his concepts based on his descriptions of the processes he uses to work with ethereal software. And when I create an entity I program it. I define it both in terms of concept and words used to describe the content and when I need to fine tune the entity its usually for the same reason: It didn't get the concept and the language used to convey the concept was imprecise. Further programming and fine tuning is needed to make it perform up to specs. Or as I like to put it, a more specialized definition is needed in order to insure an accurate understanding of the task that needs to be performed.

In general, people use language to convey concepts to each other. Sometimes ala William S. Burroughs cutup technique they use language to disrupt or attack concepts, while creating new concepts. Language is a useful tool for magical work because it provides a structure of limitation that can be used to sharply define and explore concepts, and then re-present them to the magician and/or entity (ethereal software). You even see this utilized with sigils, which start out as words (in some techniques) and end up as symbols that nonetheless embody a concept. And you see it with symbols that aren't sigils but nonetheless are used to convey a concept.

Concepts are constructs. They present an initial framework that is used to convey the experience of the concept. Words define concepts, give form to the frame, ground it in ink and white space and verbalized sound waves. Manifestation takes words and turns them into actions performed to achieve outcomes. Outcomes turn into experiences and then concepts...the whole cycle starts again.

When I don't work with entities, when I do a magical working directly the experience is different. The conveyance of the concept is to the magic itself. It's a direct experience, no mediator required. Maybe the magic, in Mike's system is the meta ethereal software, the force that channels all the other forces. In my system, and in the various methodologies I've developed over the years, magic is reaching in and pulling out the possibilities and melding them with reality, melding them with my reality. So when I do a magical working and I'm not using language or entities, but instead I am using movement or meditation or some other process less overt when it comes to communication the focus is on embodying the concept, making it a part of me, of reality as it is mediated and experienced through me. Actually even my approach to word magic is really about embodiment. No doubt a result of Burroughs influence, because the cutup method is really about disrupting the message while imprinting your message into the body of the word so that the word embodies your concept. The embodied experience of being as opposed to doing...doing is an echo of being, a way to move through the motions, but not really letting the motions move you to the space you want to reach. When you become the motions, embody them, you let them move you to the conceptual space and time you want to occupy. You become that space and time and in doing so you allow yourself to fully be present with a manifested result that is as much an extension of you as it is an effect on the environment around you.

Doubt and magical workings

Mike has posted some interesting thoughts about doubt in magical works. You can find them here and here. When I think about doubt and magical workings, I think that if doubt is entering into the picture, it's better to not do the magical working and instead really examine your doubts and why they are coming up. When I do a practical magic working I don't want doubt to be in the picture, and for me it isn't. I know what I want, I understand the consequences around getting it and I'm ready to handle the reality of achieving it. Doubt is a sabotager...its that little voice that says, "You don't deserve this." And if you hear that voice, then you haven't done your due diligence.

What is due diligence? It's doing the internal work necessary to ensure that the desired result (or manifestation) is something you truly want with all of your being. It's addressing the doubts and resolving them before you even do your magical work.

It doesn't surprise me that some magicians experience doubt and have it sabotage their workings. I think this is due to the fact that they haven't done that necessary level of internal work that's needed to make sure everything is in alignment with the desired outcome. Without a process for doing dedicated internal work to address doubt and other sabotage emotions, those emotions will present themselves in your working and undermine your results. But with a dedicated process for internal work, its easy to deal directly with any doubts or other emotions and resolve them in your favor. Then do the magical working and you'll get consistent results.

This actually applies to decisions you make in general. For example, when I decided to rebrand my one business, I had already gone in and done the internal work to deal with any doubt or fear I may have felt. Once that was cleared out of the way, I started my rebranding and pursued it wholeheartedly. I didn't leave myself room for doubt, because it would've slowed me down. I knew what I wanted and I knew I could do it. The business is rebranded in terms of content and message (The visual design is still being reworked) and the previous services have been let go of.

If we look at this from a process approach what we get is assess the change you want to make. Determine if there is internal resistance (i.e. doubt). Resolve the internal resistance or make a different choice (sometimes there are good reasons not to do a magical working or life change). Do the magical working and any other actions needed to manifest the desired result. Simple, effective...and the doubt is dealt without having to continue entertaining it. There should be no room for doubt if you really want to manifest a desired result.

A Meditation on Freedom and Responsibility

In the Fire Starter Sessions by Danielle LaPorte she says the following about Freedom: "In seeking our freedom, we liberate our potential to accomplish incredible things". John Parsons in Freedom is a Two-Edged Sword notes: "Freedom is a two-edged sword of which one edge is liberty and the other responsibility, on which both edges are exceedingly sharp; and which is not easily handled by casual, cowardly, or treacherous hands" He further goes onto argue that to truly be free we first need to master our inner impulses, passions, fears, etc.

Both perspective are valid. I agree with Parsons that true freedom is held by being able to take responsibility for handling it. That responsibility is gained by doing internal work to master yourself, your emotions, desires, beliefs, and values, and to put them to work toward truly experiencing freedom. The experience of freedom is as LaPorte puts it: Its the liberation of our potential to accomplish amazing things. That liberation can only be experienced when we master ourselves and truly identify what it is we want.

Freedom isn't necessarily about doing anything you want, which is a rather vague statement, but rather is about identifying what truly brings you alive and then choosing to do it, with an understanding that you must take responsibility for doing it and for the consequences of seeking it. And this applies to magic as a methodology used to help achieve that freedom. If we want to experience liberation, then we need to know what tools to use that will get us that liberation.

Liberation is the choice to do what you love, and freedom is the experience of embodying what you love as an active and passive principle of your life. Responsibility is holding yourself accountable to continue to do and be what you love, even and especially in the face of resistance.

I value liberation above all else because it is the realization of potential, and the empowerment that comes with it is unlike any other experience out there. To truly be liberated is, in my opinion, to experience fulfillment and happiness. It's not always an easy road, but its a road that embodies the best of yourself and the realization that what you truly want can be experienced and achieved if you are willing to take the risks and truly give your liberation what it deserves: Your full and undivided attention.

Value and Wealth

Jason recently posted a blog about value and wealth. He basically did an exercise that looked at the value of what he wanted to buy vs the price of what he wanted to buy vs the value of what he could put that money toward. It's a good exercise to do and its something I'm familiar with from Your Money or Your Life (affiliate link).  In that book, one of the exercises has you look at the real value of what you are purchasing vs the amount of money and the amount of time spent earning that money. And much like Jason's exercise, what it really does is force you to look closely at your relationship with money and how you are spending it.

So you might wonder why I'm writing about that on here. Wealth magic is an ongoing interest of mine, and I think to really apply magic to wealth in any substantial way you really have to understand money and its relationship with your life, as well as the value you ascribe to a given purchase. An unexamined relationship with money will find people buying anything that catches their interest, while also accruing a mountain of debt. If you want to do magic for a specific result, you've got to understand what that result will really look like in your life, and be prepared to handle any consequences that are associated with it.

This is why people who win the lottery typically end up spending their way through the money they won. They played to win, but they weren't prepared for the consequences of winning and likely they didn't really examine their relationship with money. So they win the money and they get deluged by relatives and friends who suddenly care (as long as the money flows) and they also have vague ideas on how to spend the money. I'll buy that Porsche I always wanted or pay off the house, or whatever else. Rarely do I see anything about investing the money when I hear stories about someone winning the lottery.

Money magic tends to have a similar effect. the focus is on getting the money, but once you have the money what do you do? Doing magic to get money may work, but having it is another reality and one that most people seem ill-prepared for. The question then is this: What is my relationship with money and what do I want to do with it, both now and in the future? Knowing the answer can help you figure out if you can really handle more money and if you really understand the value of what you are trying to get with that money.

An important part of magical work is the relationship. Looking at your relationship with money and knowing what you want to change with it can help you do wealth magic more effectively than just trying to get money. It's that internal ingredient that is needed to effectively integrate a force into your life, whether that force is money, love, power, or something else altogether. Can you handle the consequences? Is the value worth it and do you know what you'll do with the result, once you've got it.

A Commentary on Witch Hunts in Africa

I was pointed to this documentary video about witch hunts in Africa. And if you go to this link you'll see an article that discusses how witch hunting is alive and well in Africa.

This is sickening  because these children aren't identifying as witches. Instead they have been labeled as such in order by people who are choosing to use those labels to get rid of children they don't want, or because some Christian pastor has decided to demonize them. The end result isn't just intolerance...its death. It's people being persecuted for beliefs and practices that they don't even do.

It makes me realize how fortunate I am. I've experienced some discrimination for my beliefs, but I don't face it on a daily basis, and I'm not being accused of something I don't actually believe in. Any of us are lucky to be able to practice our beliefs. Whatever discrimination we might face, its nothing like this. These are people who are killed for superstitious beliefs. When you watch the videos for the documentary you'll see such ignorance displayed it will sicken you as well it should.

It is important to raise awareness of this issue. I'm also looking into how to donate to this cause and will post details in a later post.

Embodied spirituality and liberation

I posted this recently via my various social media accounts:

An embodied spirituality recognizes the value of the material world and celebrates it and experiences as an inherent part of a person's spiritual evolution. When the body is discarded as dirty or something to be left behind, and desires are perceived as unacceptable or attachments that hold us back, the person loses an essential perspective that is necessary for genuine transformation. The body, desires, etc, ground us and provide a way to experience the immediacy of a situation and learn from it. The body is not a shackle...it is part of our liberation.

Recent conversations I've had around enlightenment as well as a continued practice of Tantric philosophy and spirituality prompted this observation. I genuinely believe that the body is an essential part of human spirituality and that the denial of it is a dysfunction brought about for reasons that are related to either over population or to a fixation on an ultimate reward that involves transcending the body.

A better approach would be to recognize the role of the body as a mediator of physical existence and spiritual identity. Additionally, people who take this perspective would also carefully consider the consequences their choices have on the environment and each other and thus would question consumerism and explore what it means to have enough vs what it means to live in excess.

True liberation isn't found in deprivation or excess but in a balanced perspective that celebrates the glory of life while also cultivating it for future generations. Thus tending your own garden where you grow food is a spiritual and practical activity. It teaches you the value of cultivating life, the recognition of death as a transformative agent that is also part of evolution, and the necessity of using resources wisely instead of wasting them.

Your body is part of your liberation, and the sensual experiences it provides is a part of that process, but equally as important is learning how to take care of yourself. Thus exercise is just as liberating as any other activity, and eating a healthy diet is important for cultivating your life. These activities can be just as spiritual as meditation provided we apply a mindful awareness to them.

A desire can be liberating both for the experience of it and the choice to not experience it. Longing is as much a celebration of desire as is the experience of the desire, and longing can teach patience but also liberation in terms of recognizing the true value of a given desire. The experience of desire can be a liberating experience provided we know how to enjoy it without allowing it to enslave us. Thus the need for balance and consideration of the body as a spiritual teacher which allows us to embody our desires but also uses them to teach us from experience how best to truly find liberation in our experiences and in our choices to sometimes delay having the experience to know its true value.

Magic as a Transformative Process

If there's one description I'd use about Magical Identity is that its really an exploration of magic as a transformative process. So what does that mean? When I think about western magical practices mostly what I think of is a fixation on achieving measurable results, but I think that's what missing is an exploration of transformation and the role magic can play in the transformation of your life. I'd argue that any result you achieve isn't merely a change in the external environment that happens to suit you, but is also a transformation of you as both a person and magician. That this transformation isn't considered is always a cause for concern, because its something that shouldn't be ignored.

If we look at the anatomy of a magical act, there is a focus on change. Something needs to be changed in order to bring the world back into balance for the magician. But assuming that the change only occurs in the external environment is a mistake. The magician is also changing his/her internal reality in order to align it with the desired external result. And if s/he can't change the internal reality, the external result may manifest, but it won't last. At a recent talk I asked attendees how many had manifested a desired result only to have it go away without bringing the desired change they wanted. Most nodded their heads and the reason for that is simple. Their internal reality didn't align with the desired external reality they wanted.

Effective transformation calls on the magician to be in touch with his/her internal reality so that s/he can truly determine if a desired result is in alignment with his/her life. The magical act is a transformation of the life of the magician as well as the environment. The two aren't separate, and whatever separation we assign is a convenient illusion used to avoid understanding the act of transformation.

This doesn't mean magic involves the law of attraction or other newagey concepts. Rather what it means is that achieving a result involves a level of internal work that complements any external work that is done to achieve the result. The recognition that magic is a transformative process is a recognition that a given magical act occurs on an ontological level and involves a recognition of embodiment as a principle for manifestation. The result you desire is something that you need to embody in your existence, write it in your code to use a technology metaphor.

Archetypes, movement, and getting into the role

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

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

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

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

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

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

Updates on current projects

Here's a few updates on various projects I am working on. Magic on the Edge 2.0

I've just finished first round editing of all the essays I received. I have about nine essays. I could use more and I have two people working on essays. If you would like to write an essay for Magic on the Edge 2.0, check this post out, and contact me. I am pleased with what I've gotten so far and I plan on publishing this anthology by fall of this year.

The Book of Good Practices

Bill Whitcomb and I have a project we are working on, the title of which is marked in bold. It admittedly feel to the wayside while I worked on Magical Identity, but now that MI is finished I've started to focus more time on this project. I'll have more details in the future.

Wealth Magic book

Yes I am writing or rather researching for a book on wealth magic. I've got a decent outline and also some practical experiments that I'm currently running, which seem to bearing fruit as it were. I hope to finish the first draft of the first chapter by tax day of this year (how apropos).

Process of Magic Correspondence Course

This hasn't been forgotten. In fact, I and another person are in the process of getting this website ready for a change that will practically support the ability to do a correspondence course. I already have some of the lessons for this course written and I have a better idea of how such a course should ideally work, so my plan is to fully manifest this course by Memorial Day Weekend. It will be the first of a number of courses on magic experiments ala Taylor Ellwood's style of doing magical experiments.

Current magical experiments

I'm also engaged in a few experiments as well as regular workings.

The regular workings include the year long invocation of the element of Fire (I post about that work once a month) and daily meditation practices. A weekly offering to Dragon has also been added to the mix.

Experiments include working with Bune on my businesses (This is a long term working and it has worked marvelously with all three of my businesses). I'll be writing about this experiment in the wealth magic book in a lot of detail.

Another experiment has involved improving healing work, with an eye toward exploring past life regression as part of the healing experiment. I've posted occasional updates and it is fascinating work. It also convinces me further that there needs to be an emotional component factored into healing (that and my internal work experiences).

There's more in the works as it were, but I don't share anything until its the right time to share it.

Strategic Sorcery Course

I am taking Jason's Strategic Sorcery course. It's proven to be an interesting course, in terms of getting a different perspective on how someone approaches magic. It reminds me of my traditional roots in magic (which is good) and I'm definitely getting a lot from the course.

That's it for updates on current projects.

How I do healing work

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

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

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

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

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

Elemental Balancing Ritual Fire Month 5

2-23-12 There are times I feel broken, times I realize how profoundly the abuse I experienced has affected me. I look back at a history of my life and I see patterns in different ways than I had before, and while I recognize that I've healed from a lot of it, I also see how much it still affects me. I've been thinking lately as well of my early sexual encounters with women who were much older than me, and how naive I was, and how much I didn't realize how those encounters affected my perspective on relationships, love, lust, and what would be considered acceptable. Until recently, I believed love was always conditional as a result of those early experiences. Now I realize it doesn't have to be conditional, but that belief about love came about because of circumstances that shaped what I thought love and commitment was. Understanding that history has helped me look closely at my choices, both past and present, and with the present choices, make them from a place that's less reactionary. That's the whole point of doing internal work. It challenges you to explore and understand the underlying causes of your choices, so that you know why you are making, and can ideally make them from a place of health as opposed to dysfunction. It challenges you to take responsibility for your choices, instead of trying to blame everyone else for your problems.

2-29-12 When I meditate with fire each day, what strikes me is how people have created such a mythology around such a primal force of life. The various stories about how fire was discovered or given as a gift, the focus on the creative or destructive nature of fire. This raw, primal force has been made into so much by how people try to negotiate and understand it. I don't think many people, even now, really look at fire as a wholly physical phenomenon, but even if they do, they still have to acknowledge its a force that can have an effect on our lives. A burning house is a prime example, as is a campfire that people huddle around to keep warm.

3-1-12 I've been feeling a bit nostalgic lately, prompted partially by listening to music I haven't listened to in a long time that reminds me of later teenage years spent trying to find myself. The right sound, the right sight, and you can get taken to a different time, a different awareness, then as now. And suddenly you have two temporal experiences, and you reconcile the memory with the place you're at now. My memories of my teenage years are bittersweet (but who's isn't?), mostly bitter, and yet listening to this music touches a place of naivety, of hope that's not quite gone. There's a sense of longing, and sadness, and experience as I listen to this song. There's a sense of change, and the appreciation of that change. We are not static. We are changeable and the changes are for the best. The right experience will trigger a doorway to the past, to an intersection with a you from before and the you of now. Two moments merge into one and both variants influence each other. It's fairly amazing when you allow yourself to fully open up and experience the merging of past memory with present experience, and sometimes even future dream.

3-5-12 Knowing when to take a break from actively being creative is important. I haven't done much writing since I wrapped up Magical Identity. I'm glad I took the time off, because now I'm feeling primed again and looking forward to writing. The days of pushing myself to write are over. I'd rather honor my creative genius by giving it the time to recharge so I can write with focus and verve.

3-7-12 I've been reading about and considering the emotions of jealousy and compassion. I think jealousy gets a bad wrap, but that if you consider it in the right context, it can actually be a warning system of potential problems with the connection (or lack thereof) that you have with a person. Sometimes jealousy is overblown, but sometimes it isn't. Sometimes it indicates real problems that need to be addressed. If I were to map jealousy to an element, it would be fire, because of how it feels and the associations it has with other emotions like love. I'd also map compassion to fire, because of the feeling of warmth it can convey.Compassion is the comprehension of another person's pain, and the ability to reach out to that person with genuine understanding. It's a very giving emotion, whereas jealousy is a very protective emotion.

3-10-12 I look back at the first entry of this post and I find it ironic today because when you learn something about yourself that you hadn't faced, it forces you to see patterns in your life in different ways than you'd acknowledged. Its good, even if its not pleasant to face. Maybe in a way that's why its good. It forces you to see what you've kept hidden from yourself. It's in facing yourself that you bring healing to yourself, but facing yourself means acknowledging not just how other people hurt you, but also acknowledging how you hurt other people and doing your best to learn from it and be a better person.

3-16-12 I'd never wish any of my past experiences of abuse on anyone, even my worst enemy. Experiences like that, where you are a victim, they make you protective of the people in your life, because you know you don't want them to ever have such painful and disempowering experiences. At the same time, as you get to know people you realize on some level or another everyone is dysfunctional, carrying wounds with them that define their lives. I think its a shame, because when a wound defines your life you can't move past it. It holds you back and keeps you in a restricted pattern that hurts you more than it does anything else. I've managed to let go of some of the wounds that previously defined me. I've learned my lessons from them, but I don't hold onto them anymore. Some of them I'm still holding on to, figuring out how to let them go and how to redefine myself in the process. Again that's part of internal work. It's not an overnight cure-all. It's doing the work so you can let go, heal yourself and move on.

3-22-12 - Magical Identity arrived today. It feels strange to realize that the journey to write this book is finally over. There's nothing more to do beyond selling it and talking about it (very important activities). It's created, birthed, realized, manifested. It exists...a part of my thoughts, ideas, life, etc., expressed into written form. I'm glad its published, and yet I find myself facing this curious feeling of "What next?" I actually know what's next, but it doesn't change the fact that I feel this feeling. I feel it anytime I finish any project. It' that realization of separation. This is no longer just mine. Now it's something that belongs to whoever chooses to adopt it and use it. It belongs to all of you as much as it belongs to me.

The fire doesn't burn out when somethings created, if you know how to cultivate it. It's alive. I'm a live. And that next project is beckoning.

Is Magic a luxury of modern times?

Mike posted a thought provoking entry recently on the luxury of energy, noting that the fact that so many people can study magic is a luxury of time that we have access to, that previous generations didn't have. I agree with him. If you look at the people who were in the Golden Dawn in the late Nineteenth century, all of them were very well off and had the time to study magic. You didn't see people working at factories having time to study magic (and probably didn't even know about it, beyond superstitious beliefs).

We do have the gift of free time, but its not just the luxury of time, it's also the luxury of education and information. We have a level of access to education and information that makes it much easier to find information out on just about any subject out there. The real challenge is sifting through the information to find what's really useful.

Nick Farrell also made an intriguing point when he notes that the best time to be involved in magic isn't in centuries past, but in the present. There's definitely some truth to that, when you consider that the level of information and collaboration that's available is much higher than it likely would have been in the past. The fact is most modern magicians are fortunate because we have an availability of time and energy we'd likely not have if we lived one hundred years in the past. The immediate needs of survival are much easier to meet when everything that's needed for survival is easy to access.

So yeah I think a magic is a luxury of modern times. And I have no problem with that because having that luxury is something I enjoy immensely. It's a significant part of my life and having the time to study and experiment has enriched the quality of life beyond measure.

My books are now available on Kindle and newest radio interview

I'm pleased to announce that my books are now available on Amazon Kindle. We recently were able to work out a deal where we could get them  placed on Kindle. We'll also be converting other Immanion Press books into Kindle files as well, so be on the look out for those in the near future. My latest book, Magical Identity, is now available in print, on smashwords, and Kindle.

In other recent publishing news, I was pleased to hear that smashwords was able to come to an agreement with Paypal where paypal will continue to accept payments on books published on smashwords. It's definitely a victory for free speech.

I was recently interviewed on The Infinite Beyond radio show about my newest book Magical Identity. Take a listen. It was a fun show to be interviewed on, and we got into some interesting discussions about identity and magic.

The magical effects of what you wear

Bill Whitcomb pointed me to an article about how wearing lab coats make people smarter. It was also found that when volunteers wore other coats they didn't do as well as on the tests. It was only when they were told that they were wearing lab coats that they performed better. So does this mean there's something magical about lab coats?

Not at all. If anything what it really demonstrates is that people read meaning into items of clothing and associate specific behaviors with those items, which causes them to then embody those behaviors when they wear the clothing. In other words, there's nothing inherent to a lab coat that makes a person smarter. It's the person's perception about the lab coat and what it imbues them with that causes them to associate intelligence with it. Scientists and doctors wear lab coats and generally we think those types of professions are populated by intelligent people. So a person puts on a lab coat and performs better, but the coat has nothing to do with it. That person could focus just as intently without the coat.But the perception associated with the coat is what makes all the difference. I put on the lab coat and because I associate specific attributes with it, suddenly I have access to those attributes.

Perception is a powerful tool, both in every day life and in magical workings. I've discussed using clothing to invoke specific traits or behaviors and this is a prime example of how this principle works. It's similar, in my experience, to putting on a suit. You feel a sense of change, both in terms of how you perceive yourself and how other people perceive you. It's magical in its own right, but its also perception. Understanding that distinction helps you also understand how to use perception as tool in its own right. That's when you get into some interesting experimentation with perception and clothing, specifically in terms of how you can manipulate your own perception or even the perception of others based on how you present yourself.

One of the reasons I wear a hat with a multicolored feather is because when I go out in my professional clothing it sticks out. It's an anomaly compared to everything else I'm wearing. It allows me to show my personality while also invoking the professional persona I've chosen to adopt. It's fun for me, and I've experimented with it further just in terms of letting my "true" self shine through with people in professional settings. I actually think its helped business a bit. So I think if you experiment with clothing and your perception of it you'll likely see similar results with what was discovered with the lab coats. Give it a try and let me know!

Book Review: Thinking, Fast and Slow (Affiliate Link) by Daniel Kahneman

In this book, the author explores intuition and rational thinking, in particular focusing on both the strengths and flaws of intuition. The author does a good job of presenting his research and reinforcing it with case studies. He makes it easy to understand the concepts. What I found most fascinating was how much we take for granted intuition in terms of what it tells even though it can be wrong. We don't really question that and he explains why we don't question it. This is a great book to read if you are interested in psychology or social behavior.