How to use the energy of a holiday in your magical workings

I always find holidays to be interesting, not only for the dynamics of human behavior that come forth, but also for the presence of the holiday, the energy that courses through it and builds to a quiet but steady hum of tension. The 4th of July is no exception. The tension starts the day before as people get out of work early and start driving to visit family or to buy food or to get fire works. The day of the holiday the tension rises through the day until people celebrate the fourth with firecrackers, with parties, with all the excesses people bring to such matters. And then there is what the day means. For the 4th of July, it's a day of creation, the celebration of the birth of the U.S. It's also a celebration of the concepts of Freedom, liberation, and other assorted values that a person might associate with this holiday. And to me it makes everything that happens a ritual of sorts, not necessarily religious, but holy nonetheless to the people who celebrate it.

Typically when we think of holiday magic, we think of magic associated with religious holidays, but I don't think we should limit ourselves to any given holiday and I also think that if you are doing magic on a given holiday you can tap into the energy of that holiday. Going back to the example of the 4th of July, there is a lot of energy that goes into that holiday, a lot of emotions, a lot of tradition, in a way and so why not tap into that, if it's something you feel inclined to tap into? You could tap into the 4th of July for creative or healing magic. Alternately you could also tap into it for more destructive magic. It really depends on what you want to do with it, but the point is that the holiday brings with it something that can be tapped into.

Each holiday we celebrate has its own energy, it's own tension and associations as well. Valentine's day is a holiday about love and lust, while Christmas is a holiday of both greed and giving. Thanksgiving is a day of thanks and a day of gluttony, while Memorial day is a day of remembrance and honoring the dead. Labor day honors work and people who work, and those are just the major secular holidays. But although those major holidays are secular there is something to be drawn on. So if you want to draw on the energy of a particular holiday look to what the holiday represents, both to yourself, and to people in general. Then plan your ritual for the day of the holiday. If you were to use the 4th of July, for example, you might time the ritual to begin when the fireworks began, using the sounds of the people and the fireworks going off as part of a ritual accompaniment. With Thanksgiving, you could use both the food preparation and the serving of the meal as part of your ritual. If you want to draw on a holiday, you want to  tap into the energy of the day by integrating the actual rituals of that day into your own rituals.

I think that with specific holidays you may want to use specific types of magic. Sex magic would be useful on the 4th and Valentine's day, while candle magic might be useful on Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Memorial day. Think about what practical magic techniques you might use for a given day and ask yourself if those techniques are in character with the holiday. That can help you determine if what you'll do will help you draw on the energy of the holiday or if it'll distract from the energy of the holiday. After all if you want to draw on the energy of a holiday then you want to do activities that complement the holiday.

Movement, Stillness, and the Web of Space/Time

In Magical Identity I shared a technique I use for working with Space and Time, which is is the web if Space and Time. In this model the web is comprised of elements of space and time conjunctively connecting to manifest possibilities into reality. The strands of the web are elements of Time, while the nodes where the strands intersect each other are elements of Space. The strands of time represent possibilities and actions. I think of them as verbs. The nodes of space represent people, places, events, and things, nouns. I'm always open to improving on my techniques and my work with the element of movement gave me an insight in this technique that could be useful for developing it further.

While the strands of time denote possibilities and actions, it occurs to me that movement (and as I write this Stillness) are intrinsic elements of space and time that are not overtly recognized but that nonetheless play a role in our experience of space and time. I don't think of movement and stillness as being one and the same as time and space. And my experiences of both movement and stillness seem to bear this out. If anything it feels like stillness and movement act upon and are acted upon by space and time. For example, you might be tempted to associate stillness with space, but I'd argue that stillness isn't space. Stillness is a form of presence and awareness. It's potential and in some ways that makes it more related to time, but it isn't time either. It's a state of experience and being that can allow you to become aware of and experience space and time in different ways. When I do my practice of Zhine meditation, I am working with stillness and one of the experiences it can provide is an awareness of space and time that is different than what is experienced during the everyday experience of life. With Stillness, when I am focusing my awareness on myself and a particular object, I experience not just the object as it is, but also the possibilities for that object. I experience the space of the object, as well as the time of the object. You also might be inclined to associate movement with time, and certainly experience of time can be that of a sense one moment passing into another, but again you can also experience time via stillness.

So all that said, what I'm really interested in is how I can factor stillness and movement into the work I do with the web of space and time. I don't want to associate stillness or movement with specific aspects of the web, and I don't think I need to, but I think working with them could allow me to enhance the technique as well as integrate these elements into my life. I decided to pull out my memory box, which is the physical representation of the web and when I worked with it this time, I approached the work in terms of movement. What did I need to move to put everything into the right space and maximize the right potential of time needed. Movement wasn't just about working with the strands of time, but rather working with the web as a whole, in terms of positioning the web and the respective nodes and time strands into an alignment that would be useful for better realizing the activation of a possibility into a reality. I didn't integrate stillness into this work, so when I experiment with it again, I'll work with both stillness and movement and see how they fit together with space and time.

What I've shared above is rough and I'll work on refining it, but I'm excited to be working on something new, or in this case a variation of something else I developed.

Book Review: The Slow Fix by Carl Honore

In this book the author explores the value of the slow fix, which involves learning how to solve problems from a process perspective instead of just trying to use a quick fix. The author explores a variety of elements that are integral to the slow fix process and uses case studies to demonstrate how those elements work together to bring about useful solutions to problems. I got a lot of value from this book by applying its principles to my business and my clients. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to improve how problems are solved in general and in their organization, because what you will learn is how to examine your problem solving processes and introduce the right elements of the slow fix to help you improve on what you are already doing.

The Process of Magic Class starts this Wednesday

  Round 6 of the Process of Magic class starts this Wednesday. I apply a process methodology to magic in order to understand how magic works and what can be done to make it work better. This class explores how the process approach to magic works and shows you how to apply it to your own magical practice. Previous students who have taken the class have found that it has benefited their approach to magical work, because it teaches how to analyze what you are doing and break it down into a process that can be examined and changed as needed. If you've ever wanted to improve your magical practice or just develop a better understanding of how magic works, contact me to learn more about the class. This is a correspondence course, with 24 lessons, one sent each week. A bi-monthly teleconference is also included, as is a free e-book. The cost of the class is $100.

Elemental Balancing Ritual Movement Month 8

5-24-13 There's been this big uproar about pop culture magic going through the blogosphere. The polytheists, reconstructionists, and spirit workers feel threatened by the idea of pop culture magic and so the usual criticisms and attempts to devalue pop culture magic have begun. Fortunately there are a lot of people actually exploring and writing about pop culture magic now. I've actually come late into this particular debate, but it makes me happy to see that other people are writing about and exploring pop culture as a a means of working with magic. And I kind of find it ironic that my name really hasn't come up, because even a few years ago all that people seemed to know of me was related to pop culture magic. I'm glad other people have it made their own...I just wish the detractors would get over it instead of trying to prove why their beliefs are more valid than mine or someone else's. Compensation much?

5-30-13 The uproar has died down which is good since it wasn't very constructive. I see those kinds of arguments as being fairly futile. Neither side wants to budge, and it becomes an exercise in rhetoric as opposed to anything really meaningful. Yesterday my latest book arrived. There is, in my opinion, a very magical moment when you open a book you've written for the first time. There it is, manifest into material form, a concrete reality of the ideas you've written. Feels good to have the book written and it feels even better to see the final result.

I also got my latest tattoo today. And again there's an experience that is so unique. You are allowing someone to paint on your skin, on the canvas of your body and embody it with whatever is painted. In my case a dragon to honor the work I've done with Dragon. Not too sure how many more tats I'll get. I have a few ideas of what I might get, but at a certain point I'll be ready to leave it at that. Anything I do get is done either to mark a life change or a significant magical working with an entity and as such anything I get has to be significant enough to warrant the ink, the experience, and the recognition that the canvas has gotten smaller.

6-3-13 I presented at the first Northwest Conference of Alchemy over the weekend. I also learned quite a lot about the topic and it makes me want to get involved in practical alchemy even more than before. I also had an interesting realization. I wrote Pop Culture Magick nine years ago, and I've noticed that now it's become fairly prevalent in some practices. I've also noticed more and more interest in space/time magic, which tells me that I'm about a decade ahead of what is really interesting to people. A good place to be, because I can actually see what interests people in this lifetime and still continue pushing to the edges.

6-6-13 Since I got the dragon tattoo I've noticed more energy in my life and businesses. There's a direction, with activities happening and I feel really good about the direction of movement. I've also come up with a new experiment, which involves linking several daily workings I do together. I won't share more about it now, because it'll likely become the core of a new system, but its so exciting to feel creative to have projects to work on and to otherwise be engaged. When I was at the alchemy conference people commented on the number of books I've written and how prolific I am (a dozen books in ten years is pretty good), and when I told them that I'd actually had a few years where not much writing happened they were surprised. I'm grateful to have the writing back and to be sharing it with the people who like my work.

6-9-13 Over on Pagan Square several more of the polytheists have posted articles which have taken a somewhat militant approach to the whole pop culture magic issue. I've debated whether I should respond any further and was even in the process of writing a comment to one post, when I stopped myself and asked: "What am I really trying to get from this interaction?" The answer I got was control and I realized then that posting the comment wouldn't provide that sense of control or validation or anything else useful. I realized there was no control to be had in this situation and so I just stopped writing the comment and surrendered the needs to feel control and validation. I asked myself: "Could these people really stop me from practicing what I practice?" And the answer is no. They can state their own perspectives, but they can't really stop me or others from practicing what we practice. And the best thing we can do is to continue to practice what we practice and share it so that people who are receptive can choose to learn and experiment. Knowing how to move, when to move, where to move all of that is essential to any situation where some kind of movement is necessary. And sometimes the best move to make is to recognize what your motive is for posting something and then decide is this really worth the effort I'm making or could I put that effort somewhere else to better effect? I know I can put my efforts to better effect elsewhere.

6-14-13 I think that one of the frustrations I feel with working with movement, especially as it applies to the planetary energies is how aware I've become of how much control I don't have over situations and how vulnerable I feel at realizing this at times when I really want to have control over those situations. As someone who has bought into the illusion of control at times, its hard when that illusion is stripped away and you realize just how little control you really have. Then you must face yourself and truly see what you are and aren't. I felt that way last night when I realized how much I let my dearest one down.

6-17-13 Over the weekend Kat and I did a murder mystery party for her birthday. It was our best one yet, and perhaps what helped it was how much people were willing to step into their roles and get into the humor of the situation. I think that moving into a given role requires a suspension of disbelief but also an assumption of identity. I become the character and in that act of becoming I breathe life into the character, but the character, in turn also breathes life into me. I feel the character move me to become that character and also to take away something intangible yet powerful which speaks to the identity of the character and its impact on my own sense of self (at least for the time I am the character). I have similar experiences with a good book or a video game, where I'm drawn into the reality of the character and for a time become that character...and when I come out, I take something away, marked by the character as much as I've marked him/her. What's really marked me is the experience itself, the experience of being something else and allowing it to move me enough to have the experience.

On a different front, I got some advice about a situation today and what's interesting is how much movement fits into that advice, and how the movement shapes itself around the limitations of the situations and turns those limitations into something that can favor me as much as it seems to favor the institution. There's a lesson there...we are only as constrained as we perceive ourselves to be. How we use our limitations speaks just as much as the limitations in and of themselves.

6-20-13 The other night I had a dream, where this was tree growing from my upper left arm, where my birthmark is. The tree was abruptly cut or pulled or something, I was left with this bloody wound. I physically felt the pain of the removal of the tree from my arm to the point that I woke up and felt the pain on my arm. Eventually it faded, but when I meditated on the issue, I didn't get any answers. Then today I meditated, and the image of the tree on my arm came up again, but I ended up being directed to the area of my right kidney and as I began doing dissolving work, I felt these memories of the drive to Seattle and when I lived there come up, so I allowed myself to feel and be in those memories because I realized something needed to happen. What I felt was a recognition that 'd blocked those memories out because of what I associated with them, and so as I continued the dissolving work I left myself feel the emotions associated with those memories. I ended up crying for a bit, but I felt better afterwards. I'll continue doing the dissolving work to see what else comes up and if there's any relation to the tree.

6-21-13 In discussing the dream and dissolving meditation with Kat, she suggested that it might involve a feeling of being unrooted. So I did some further meditation and that seems to be the case, especially as it relates to the move to Seattle and the year I lived there. I felt like I did lose my roots and that I couldn't really find a place up there to settle in. And even though I later found Portland, it's really only been in the last few years that I've begun to feel rooted and to have a connection to community. Before that I felt very isolated and alone a lot of the time. I'm ready to process those emotions and I suppose my dream is a good indication of that.

6-24-13 I sometimes feel I can't escape my past and that I'm doomed to become the one person I don't want to be like. I know that feeling isn't true, but there are occasions where I feel weighed down by my past, weighed down by the example set for me by my father. There are times when all the dissolving work in the world can't undo the shame and disappointment I feel toward myself for failing the people I am closest to, as well as failing myself. I have to look carefully at what really moves me and why it moves me. Am I moving the way I really need to be moving? At the same time, I feel keenly aware of the cycles that Erik pointed out to me, cycles of influence that certainly seem to be showing up in my life in a variety of ways that are really causing me to come up against my own limits and helping me recognize those limits. It's simultaneously frustrating and enlightening, but with all of this I still have the choice to make of it whatever I can.

The Power of Limitation in Magic

In the Process of Magic course I discuss the principle of limitation to some extent in a way that challenges the perceptions of limitation as an obstacle or something is containing you. In my experience limitation is actually a very useful magical tool that can lead to many breakthroughs in your life if you know how to use it. And the fact is that you can use any limitation you encounter, because as much as it may seem to limit you, the limitation also effects other people, and it can provide you with opportunities to think and act on novel methods for dealing with the limitation. I favor using limitation in a few different ways in magical work.

1. Use Limitation against itself. Limitations are usually imposed by authorities as a way of constraining what people can do, but those same limitations can also have a similar effect on the authorities that enforce them. So why not use the limitation to your favor? For example if you choose to go to trial for a ticket, try delaying the trial for as long as possible. Aside from the fact that such delays keep the ticket in a limbo it also can work in your favor against the memory of the person who gave you the ticket. Thus you use the limitations of the legal system against it as a way of gaining leverage. You use the limitation in your favor to achieve a more favorable result.

2. Recognize that limitation defines the situation. Limitations define the parameters of situation, at least on the surface. But actually if you examine limitations you'll find that what they really do is only define the obvious parameters. A limitation is very distinct in what it define as well as what it doesn't define and you can use what isn't defined to get a different perspective or discover a way to work around the limitation.

3. Focus on discovering possibilities. Similar to number 2, recognize that limitations actually provide possibilities for you to explore. While a limitation limits you it also provides possibilities that occur as a result of having the limitation. If you cultivate the right attitude you can discover a lot of positive possibilities that come from limitations. The Book The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz is an excellent example of how to use limitations to discover possibilities of empowerment. A good example that comes to my mind about this principle is from the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion. In one episode the character is formless, able to change into anything, but unable to do anything. A horizontal line ( a limit) is provided and suddenly the character the can walk. The point is made that while the limitation limits the character's ability to be anything s/he wants, it also provides him possibilities. He can now walk, when he could not do anything before. In our own lives limitations perform a similar function, enabling us to do a lot as a result of the limitation, even as the limitation limits us in a specific way.

In magical work limitations are a useful part of your process because they help you understand what will or won't work but also challenge you to discover how to use those limitations in your favor. Additionally limitations provide you definitions for what you are doing and what you are effecting. Everything is limited but those limitations provide you empowerment because something can be changed. Without limitations no effective change could occur because we'd live in a constant entropic state. So I think limitations should be embraced as useful tools that when applied correctly can make life easier instead of harder.

Further Thoughts on Body Enhancement via magic

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

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

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

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

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

Round 6 of the Process of Magic Class starts on July 3rd

 

Round 6 of the Process of Magic class starts on July 3rd. The class costs $100, but you get the following:

• Access to an e-list that is specifically for this class, with feedback from other students (Value $5 a month).
• 24 written lessons sent out each week on Wednesday which includes exercises to help you develop and refine your process of magic (Value $400).
• Free Teleconferences every other month to discuss the material directly with me! (Value $45 per teleconference)
• Free MP3 Recordings of previous conferences (Value $45 per recording)
• A Free E-book copy of Creating Magical Entities (Value $20).
• The value of this course is around $800, but you’ll get it for the low cost of $100.
• To sign up for the class, contact me.

Whether you are just learning about magic or have been practicing for years the Process of Magic course focuses on what really matters: Learning how to use magic to proactively improve your life. This course will teach you a different perspective and approach to magic that will help you evaluate it and apply it to improve the quality of your life. Don’t take my word for it though. Below are several testimonials from one of my students:

By describing the process of magic(k) rituals, Taylor Ellwood taught me how to enhance my work. He taught me how to analyze and improve some rituals I had made, how to apply proved techniques to experimental rituals for internal magic and how pop culture can also be useful for creating pantheons more in relation to oneself. After this class my rituals have been really effective, and I started to think of magic as a means for transforming myself to get the best out of my environment. Highly recommendable class, I’m really happy I took it.

Testimonial from Ivan Marquez

I decided to take Taylor Ellwood’s Process of Magic class after many years of magical practice and study as a way to reboot my work. I’ve been involved with a few traditions but have generally been very eclectic in my approach. In my view eclecticism is a strength if you can find a way to synthesize all of those disparate takes on the magical path. Taylor has stripped away most of the window dressings associated with magic. Instead of focusing on style and aesthetics he focuses on the roots of practice and the processes underlying them. For those who are already involved in magic but are wondering how to weave together the rich variety of strands available to us in the 21st century, examining the processes that underly all magic, no matter the flavor, is an excellent place to start. For newcomers and beginners this course will help you quickly move beyond the 101 stage and help you start getting your hands dirty with practical magic.

Testimonial from Justin Patrick Moore

If you have questions or want to sign up for the class contact me.

The Ontological Reality of Deities, Spirits, and otherworld beings

 

Thanks to the polytheism vs pop culture magic debate that has been going on I've been thinking a lot about my own interactions with deities, demons, spirits, etc. Galina Krassakova posts her own views about her experiences and why she doesn't need theories to define her relationships with her deities on Pagan Square and though it might surprise her and the other polythiests, I'm actually in agreement with her argument that theory ultimately distracts from doing the actual work. Theories are at best tools, but even as tools they should be used carefully lest they overshadow the actual work.  My latest article on Pagansquare discusses theory and its role in magic further, but for this post I thought I'd focus on my experiences with Deity, spirits, and other assorted spiritual beings I've worked with. That phrase "work with" is likely where I and the polytheists differ and we'll get to why that is later.

My journey with the spirits has taken me on some interesting paths, and some of those paths have been theory oriented.  I've explored archetypal theory for example and applied it to my practice. My book Pop Culture Magick is a prime example of the application of archetypes to magical work and to be honest I still use some of that in my practice, particularly with identity magic. And working with the concepts of archetypes has lead me to some interesting conclusions about deities, demons, etc., based less on theory and moreso on observation, practice, and experience with said beings. I don't feel that these realizations take away from the reality of the spirits, so much as provide some additional forms of engagement that ultimately can lead to a more primal experience of spirit. I liken it removing a mask and uncovering what's really underneath the mask, and realizing that the mask was used in order to provide a particular space where spirit and human could meet for the comfort of the human.

Yet the removal of the mask was also the removal of theory. Instead of focusing on the attributes and behaviors, the trappings as it were, I encountered the deeper ontological reality of the spiritual beings I was and do connect with. And instead of trying to get them to fit my agenda or needs, I allowed and do allow myself to be moved by them, to fully experience them as they are instead of through an interpretation based on theory. The irony is, that by allowing myself to be so moved, I've been moved as well by the pop culture spirits I've worked with, the ones that are supposedly not real. In my article on pop culture on pagan square I mentioned how I had a long relationship with Thiede. Thiede is a character in Storm Constantine's Wraeththu series, a fantasy series, and yet for me Thiede has been and is real. Thiede is the guardian of Space, the revealer of the ley lines between planets and stars, a dehara, and so much more to me. Reading about him in a book was only the start of my connection to him, and it was a connection, from the start, that moved me deeply.

When I say the phrase "move me" I'm not talking about being emotionally moved to tears. I'm talking about encountering a spiritual force that has deeply affected me, changed me and pointed my life and spiritual practice in a different direction than it might have gone otherwise. And that experience isn't something you can just slap a theory on. It defies theory because theory is ultimately an intellectual process used to categorize and define something into a neat little box that you can store away until you need it. I've had an encounter with something fundamentally different from me and that experience has changed who I am. It has changed my identity.

And this is not an isolated incident. Each year I work with a different elemental force and part of that process involves working with a spirit guide that provides a "face" through which I can interact with that elemental force. The elemental balancing work is an intense process of change that is brought by interacting with the element. There is no theory for it, but simply the engagement of practice and the recognition that I need to work with a given elemental force in my life. The various entities I've worked with during the balancing rituals haven't been archetypes...far from it. They are collection of beings that even today are in my life. They are not something I believe in...they are something I experience. That's an important distinction to make because in my opinion belief is just another theory, another tool. The experience of them in my life is something else. To me, the spirits I work with, traditional or pop culture, are real. There is an ontological essence of being, of identity that is objective, beyond any categorization I could give it, and it is sustained not merely by my own experience, but also by the experiences of others, independent of my own.

My work with my spirits has some form of devotion and offering attached to it. Some of the tattoos on my body, for example, are devotional offerings of my skin made to a particular element as a way of recognizing the significant role the element has played in my life. I also make offerings to particular spirits in the form of writing or through painting. But the work I do with them is nonetheless geared more toward the advancement of my work with magic than anything else. They play an important role in my life, but they are not central to it, so much as they help me focus on what is central. Thus I work with them, and this likely is different from how the polytheists approach such matters.

Just because some of my spirits aren't tied to a particular religion or culture of old doesn't invalidate their existence. And while it might be said that such spirits were created by an author or artist, I'd argue that perhaps they weren't created, so much as channeled and experienced. Whether anyone agrees with me or not on that issue isn't important. What's important in the end is that I am doing the work I am called to do. I'm getting out of my own way and letting it happen, letting myself be moved and inspired, so that I can do what I need to do. And really, isn't that the point?

Is there Sacrifice in Magic?

Jack wrote an exasperated (but justified) response to the above meme, which has been circulating the magical and pagan blogs of late (evidently). The caption that is supposed to go with this picture is "All magic comes with a price, dearie!" Jack's point is that none of us are being asked to sacrifice our first born children to magic, to get what we want, which in the show is something that Rumple expects from the various people he helps. All we are ever asked to sacrifice is the time we spend learning magic, practicing it and discovering who we are in the process. To my mind that's not much of a sacrifice at all, but then I love studying and practicing magic.

But I think that Jack, and others miss perhaps a more subtle message that is implicit in that statement of magic coming at a price. It's a negative message, a negative belief about magic and what it costs. If you watch Once Upon a Time, magic is treated as this corrupting force, this power that can't really be controlled, which makes the people who practice it become complete asses to everyone. I don't buy it, don't really agree with it, but I see it as an example of mainstream culture using pop culture to comment on magic, to paint it in a very specific light (ironically in the process just making it more attractive). All magic comes with a price...and that price is the sacrifice of your child or something else you don't want to give, but that you'll willingly give for something you prize more. when magic is looked at that way it becomes both something tragic and malicious...pity the magician who has fallen sway to the forces of darkness, while recognizing all over again that magic is something a person shouldn't dabble in.

Given the source, Disney, we shouldn't really be surprised. Look at any of what's been produced and magic is always treated as some force a person can never control, something that will corrupt the person who uses it. But that belief isn't something Disney just cooked up. It's something that was cooked up by the Christians, there way of demonizing the spiritual practices of the religions that weren't Christian.

I don't think there's sacrifice in magic, unless you choose to make a sacrifice (and sometimes that can be appropriate). I think, if you're doing it right, the price is your time and effort, or whatever you agree upon. Certainly I haven't sold my soul to any capricious spirit for the dark delights of magic. Whatever agreements are made are ones that don't demand a pound of flesh or an ounce of soul. It all boils down to this: You decide what you want to give and do...but don't automatically assume there's price. There's only a price if you make it about a price.

The Role of Magic in Solving Problems

Jason made a recent post about problems and solutions and magic. I think that sometimes people buy into a myth that if you're a magician you can use magic to solve your problems and everything will be a-ok. Then they get upset when they discover that magic doesn't automatically solve problems and that sometimes it even enhances them. What isn't recognized is that magic doesn't solve problems for you. Only you can solve problems for you and while magic may be one means of solving a problem it's not always the best way to solve the problem or may be only part of the solution you employ.

I have found that if I look at the various problems in my life, there is one thing all of those problems in common: Me. So problem solving really needs to start from within, which means that a contemplative awareness of my choices and actions can help me recognize how I am contributing to a problem in my life. I may not be solely responsible for the problem, but I always have some responsibility for it and recognizing that responsibility can help me start the process of solving the problem.

If I employ magic into the mix, I do so because I feel that it will help me solve the problem by providing me access to resources I'm not otherwise getting or help me discover a solution from an unusual angle. However I also know that the responsibility of solving the problem is on me. Magic can provide possible solutions, but I have to follow through on those solutions. And I think that if more magicians recognized this then they might not even be so quick to draw on magic. What I've observed both of myself and other magicians is that a lot of magic use is reactive, done as a response to a problem to try and make it go away. And sometimes that occurs, but then the problem resurfaces in a different format, because what hasn't been resolved is the magician's place in that problem and until that is resolved the problem will continue to surface.

So I think first look to your own role and make appropriate changes, then look to magic and other means of solving the problem and employ whatever measures are necessary. And then solve it and move on. Don't let the problem define you...define it, and let it go. One example of how I solved a problem via magic was dealing with an inability to let go of anger and hurt that I felt toward certain people from my past.  I realized one day that those people didn't care and that the only getting effected by this problem was me. I took responsibility, then I developed a banishing ritual where I evoked my feelings about those people and then did a ritual to banish them and let them go. Now I don't think of those people, I'm happier, and magic has helped me solve that problem in a way that wasn't so much reactive as it was done with conscious awareness of how I could free myself from what I'd been feeling.

Book Review: The Miracle Tree by R. J. Stewart

This is a solid book on quabala that provides useful exercises to help you explore quabala from a Western esoteric tradition. I like how the author marries quabala to planetary magic and shows how the reader can use the system to do both meaningful internal work as well as connect to cosmic and underworld energies. I'd highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the topic, but don't just read the book. Do the exercises and you will get a lot from the content as it applies to your magical work and life.

Process of Magic Round 6 starting July 3

 

Round 6 of the Process of Magic class is starting on July 3rd.

Magic is a process. Regardless of what magical type of magical working you do, you are using a process to shape and define reality as well as yourself. In this 24 lesson class, we will explore what the process of magic is and how it applies to your magical work. The end result will be a dynamic reshaping of your magical practice into a personalized system that you will be able to use to consistently generate results for the betterment of your life. You will learn:

• How to develop your own definition of magic and why its important to have your own definition.
• Explore a process oriented approach to magical practices, that will help you optimize their usage in your life.
• How to personalize your magical system to improve its efficacy in your life.
• Why its important to do internal work and how that internal work can help you improve your magical work.
• Understand how to fix mistakes in your magical workings
• Achieve a new understanding of magic and its place in your life and work.

Whether you are just learning about magic or have been practicing for years the Process of Magic course focuses on what really matters: Learning how to use magic to proactively improve your life. This course will teach you a different perspective and approach to magic that will help you evaluate it and apply it to improve the quality of your life. When you take the Process of Magic Correspondence course you will get the following:

• Access to an e-list that is specifically for this class, with feedback from other students (Value $5 a month).
• 24 written lessons sent out each week on Wednesday which includes exercises to help you develop and refine your process of magic (Value $400).
• Free Teleconferences every other month to discuss the material directly with me! (Value $45 per teleconference)
• Free MP3 Recordings of previous conferences (Value $45 per recording)
• A Free E-book copy of Creating Magical Entities (Value $20).
• The value of this course is around $800, but you’ll get it for the low cost of $100.

If you’ve always wanted to develop your own personalized system for magical work or just wanted to understand how magic works and can be used to improve your life this class is for you. To sign up for this class or learn more contact me.

Magical Enhancements of your body

The other day I read an interesting post by Mr. Black on human enhancement. I've always been fascinated by how a person can enhance his/her body using magic since I first started practicing magic. In my book Inner Alchemy, I described some of my work toward that purpose, but there's a lot I also haven't shared, so below is some of the other enhancement work I've done with my body and thoughts on how you can apply this to your own work.

1. Enhance your muscles. When I was in college, one of the jobs I worked at was a package factory (similar to UPS). You'd work for four hours packing boxes (50 - 100 Ibs) onto trucks. It's hard work and you get sore quickly. It's a job that has high turn over as well, with up to 50% quitting in the first 2 weeks. When I worked there, one of my solutions was to temporarily enhance my muscles, both in terms of strength and healing. What I did before the shift was to run my hands over my legs and arms, putting energy into the muscles so that I could warm them up ahead of time, as well as help them heal. This allowed me to condition my muscles during the first couple of weeks so that I wasn't as sore as I would've been otherwise. Additionally, the work was easier because I'd enhanced my strength during that time. To this day I still use this working when I need to do physical labor. All you need to do is your own energy to your muscles. Basically you are using your chi to enhance your muscles.

2. Enhance healing by communicating with cells. When I get tattoos, I tend to heal fairly quick because what I do is communicate with my cells and direct energy toward the metabolism functions in order to improve the speed of healing. I've also used this for other injuries. While it doesn't provide instantaneous healing, I have noticed that healing occurs quicker than it normally would. With tattoos the healing time usually takes 3 weeks to a month, but I've been able to heal in a week. To do this kind of work you need to learn how to communicate with your cells, which I've covered in Inner Alchemy.

3. Eye sight enhancement. I have 20/20 vision. Neither of my parents or their parents had 20/20 vision, but I've always had it. One of the activities I do on a regular basis are eye exercises, which include bringing my sight into and out of focus as well as rolling my eyes and looking up or down or to the side for more than a second. Doing these exercises help to enhance my sight, but I've also done some inner alchemical work with the rods and cones as well as the natural chemicals in my eyes, focusing on cell regeneration, so that I can keep my eyesight at its current performance. Thus far it seems to have worked, but time will tell if what I'm doing is working.

These are just a few examples of how I've experimented with enhancement of the human body. I am continuing my exploration of the body, because I feel that learning how to work with the body is an integral key to enhancing and even prolonging life.

Money and its relationship to value and experience

I recently read a post on pagansquare where the author discussed whether or not it was ethical to charge money for magical services. He didn't really seem to take one side or another in his post and his response to my comment was equally muddled, but it did get me thinking about barter vs money. As readers of this blog know I'm writing a book on wealth magic and as such I've been doing a lot of work and thinking around money as one component of wealth. I've also done a lot of thinking about bartering, especially because, in one of my businesses, I've engaged in bartering. Here's what I've discovered about bartering: You rarely get the value you were hoping to get from the barter. I certainly haven't in my bartering situations and its because bartering isn't attached to a fixed value in the way that money is. So its much easier to be disappointed with bartering and its why I no longer barter for services or products.

Here's the magic behind money: With money you have a fixed, artificial value attached to a service or product. I say artificial because the truth is that the money you pay for anything is actually the smallest value, if the service or product is done right, but what makes money effective is that value is established to a number and that number provides reassurance on both sides of the transaction that value is being exchanged. But like I said if its done right the money paid is the least value you get from a service or product. What a service or product should do is provide an experience where the value easily exceeds the amount of money you've paid. For example when I buy a video game I'm not just buying the software. I'm also buying the enjoyment I get from the game, the hours I spend playing it and the experiences I have. As such the money I pay is a small price, if I enjoy the game. Personally I feel cheated if I haven't replayed a game at least twice before returning it...that's the least amount of value I want to get for a given game.

In my businesses, which are more service oriented, I need to continually provide value that shows my clients why investing money is worth their while. If I can't clearly establish the value of what I offer continually they'll eventually move on. So with the Process of Magic class for example, you don't just get 24 lessons, or a free pdf, but a chance to talk with via a teleconference every other month, plus a dedicated forum to interact with me and the other students. And you better believe that I make it a point to respond to emails regularly when I receive them. I want my students to feel acknowledged, taken care of and appreciated. I want to give them real value because I know that the price of the class should be the furthest thing from their mind if I'm doing it right.

See how this relates to wealth magic? If you want to do wealth magic for your business then one of the first factors you need to consider is how much wealth (value) you are bringing into the lives of your clients. After all, if you want them to bring wealth into your life, you need to be willing to give wealth (value) that justifies their choice to spend money on you. And part of giving that value involves establishing a relationship with your client where s/he feels valued and acknowledged. To do that you've got to think of ways to provide a return on investment that exceeds the artificial value of what you've been paid. You need to give in order to get. Money is the lowest value of what you get and give, but it sets up the initial value and challenges you to improve on it.

Some of my current pop culture magic workings

There's a lot of conversation going on right now about the validity of pop culture magic and spirituality in the blogosphere. If you want to see my response to it, go here. But I figure for this post I'll talk about some of my current work with pop culture magic. While my magical practice isn't as focused on pop culture anymore, it's still a significant component of how I practice magic. I'm pleased that more and more people are integrating pop culture into magic, as it is necessary for the evolution of magic. So below are a few case studies of what I've been up to.

Nathan Drake: Discoverer of lost items

At the beginning of this year I discovered the Uncharted video game series. While the first game was a bit lackluster in my opinion, the second and third game are amazing. You feel like you're in a movie. Even the musical score supports this feeling. In playing the game I felt like I got to make a connection with the main character and there were three traits I felt were useful: His ability to find artifacts that were lost (you collect them throughout the game), his problem solving abilities, and his luck. So I figured if I ever needed to I could call on his help for finding something I've lost. I've had three occasions where I've needed his help. Once was to find my phone (I'd left it in a restaurant) and the other two times were to find keys. Now I imagine that all of you know how frustrating it is to lose something and not be able to find it, especially when you need it. In each case, I started humming the theme song of Uncharted to evoke Nathan. Then I asked him to find the objects in question and show me a map of how to find them. Each time I did this, within a couple minutes I got a map that showed me where to go and each time I found the item in question.

I figure if I'm stumped about a problem I can also call on Nathan to help me discover possibilities for solving the problem. I haven't had to as of yet, but I'm sure I'll need to. And he's lucky...he's fighting scores of goons and who know's what else and he always comes out on top, so that's something else I figure I can draw on.

Kratos: Time and Time Again

If you're familiar with the God of War series then you know of Kratos. What's fascinating about Kratos isn't just the fact that he's the archetype of rage and vengeance (as well as the God of War), but the fact that in most of the games time is an element that he uses to his advantage. The most recent game, for example, allows the character to construct or deconstruct items, while in other games he is able to slow down time. Pretty nifty skills. While I already have some Time Dilation techniques I can use, I'm never one not to experiment or explore an idea that's presented in a different way. So in the case of Kratos its involved actually calling on him to slow or speed time up for me, which has been useful for reaching several business appointments. I could do it myself, but the point was to see what he could do. When he does it, he projects a cone of greenish energy that is used to either speed up or slow down time. It's projected into the environment, but doesn't effect me. And as with Nathan I hummed the theme music to evoke Kratos.

Those are examples of working with pop culture entities and I used them to show how such entities can be used to effect events as opposed to just personality traits. But I'd be remiss in not including a practical pop culture oriented technique that the magician could do him/herself.

Sharing Images

Something I've noticed with blogs is that if you include a picture its more likely to grab the attention of people and get them to go and read your blog. There's nothing inherently magical in that, but it's occurred to me that one way you can charge sigils is to simply share a picture of the sigil on social media. You can even embed the sigil into a picture if you'e got the right skills and then people can charge it up for you. Each sharing of the sigil fires it off while also charging it with the attention of the people who look at it, like it and comment on it.

So those are a few pop culture magic workings I've been working on. There's a few I haven't shared either and those will have to wait until I write the next Pop Culture Magic book. There's a lot to explore with pop culture magic if you have an open mind.

Some thoughts on Applying Process to Meditation

I've just finished reading Working on Yourself Alone By Arnold Mindell (See Review below). He takes an interesting approach to meditation, breaking it down into a process and actually showing different types of meditation processes that a person can work with. What I like best is that he shows how to achieve meditative states of awareness using different channels of experience. This is not something usually addressed in works on meditation because the focus is on teaching meditation within a specific cultural context, but the value of this kind of approach is that meditation is approached as a process with specific steps that can be followed and broken down as needed, in order to determine what works or doesn't work.

Meditation as a process isn't confined to one way of doing meditation. There are different types of meditation and different results. Pathworking, for example, doesn't work with the body in the same way that a breathing meditation would work. Perhaps what most interest me with this book is that the author claims that its not pain that motivates people to change but rather a mixture of love, self-discipline, and enlightenment. I think there's some truth to that, but I think that pain can be a good motivator toward change. Certainly it causes us to be aware of who we are and how we experience life. However, I'd say that following through on sustained change is where discipline, love, and enlightenment come into play. These keep us on track, while also informing us of the progress we've made with our work, and even in meditation there is a need to see some kind of result (though how that result manifests is something that can only be experienced as opposed to predicted or defined).

Meditation as a process does, for the most part seem to be applied around the body. What this means is that the body is an essential element of the process. The body needs to be factored in as an essential element of meditation that be examined to understand what is stopping someone from effectively meditating. I think that the mental chatter should also be included in that examination as a symptom that can be explored to discover root issues that the person needs to work on. I've used mental chatter or monkey mind in my meditations to discover or explore issues that are stopping me from being fully present in my meditation and this in turn has lead to internal work that has allowed me to process and heal from those issues. Some of that work has also involved movement, which the author touches on at some length. Movement is an overlooked component of the meditation process because of the usual stereotypes associated with meditation, but even in those stereotypes movement is a component that has relevance to meditation and its effectiveness or lack thereof.

I like to apply process to everything I do, because understanding the activity flow and components helps you understand what works or what needs to be changed. A given technique becomes much easier to change or replicate once you understand how it works and what components define it. You can strip away the non essentials and still get something significant to happen because you understand the underlying principles that inform how the process works.

Book Review: Working on Yourself Alone by Arnold Mindell

The author applies a process perspective to meditation, explaining how different meditation techniques work and how to achieve meditation by switching techniques. I found it to be a useful book, especially as he demonstrates it through his own practice. He shows how to switch to different meditation modalities and also shows how to strip the technique of cultural context. One downside of this is that he is stripping away certain contextual information that might be useful for the meditation practice. Nonetheless the author does a good job of exploring how meditation works and what can be done to more effectively meditate.

Elemental Balancing Ritual Movement month 7

4-24-13 I had a dream this morning. I was on a road trip with Jim Nadenicek, a friend I knew in my State College days. We were driving through Pittsburgh and just happened to be going by my old elementary school, so I asked him if we could stop in. We did stop and I saw a few teachers I vaguely recognized and read into a woman I knew as a kid. She gave me advice about how to conduct myself around other people. Then I went outside and Jim had this jeep. My car had broken down and we needed to go to the auto repair shop to see what was wrong. An interesting dream that I'm still processing, but I see certain themes in it that are consistent with internal work I'm doing right now. My dreams have become more vivid since I've been doing Zhine meditation regularly.

4-26-13 20 years ago in April I started practicing magic. It's hard to believe that 20 years have passed. I feel proud of myself as a magician when I look at those years and everything I've done and explored and I feel excited about the rest of my journey and I'm grateful that barring anything unexpected, I should have a long time to explore my spiritual journey and implement it in this life. How fortunate I am...

4-27-13 I've been doing some further reading of the Post Infidelity Stress Disorder book and one of the realizations I've had is that until I really explored these problems they would have continued to show up in my relationships. The author makes a good point that a person is attracted to someone who reminds them of their parents or themselves. I see that in my relationship choices. Most of the women I've been attracted to have in one way or another reminded me of the strictness of my step mom. Kat's pretty much the exception and who she is similar to is me. Recognizing these patterns of attraction helps me also see how the behavior has been set up to undermine the relationships. I feel sad about it, but in a weird kind of way also relieved because I have a much better understanding of my issues. And through understanding comes change.

4-30-13 There are days I really don't want to meditate or exercise. I feel extremely busy or like I have too much on my plate. And yet I know that if I don't exercise or meditate I am cheating myself of so much. So today was one of those days and I made myself exercise. I feel better for doing it, and I also know it reinforces the discipline I believe is essential. Keeping yourself on track isn't easy all the time, but the true test is to choose and do something when you don't feel like doing it, but know you need to.

5-01-13 I got an email from Weiser books today about the Wealth Magic book. They want to look at more chapters of the book. I'm not sure how I feel. Part of me feels happy,  vindicated, acknowledged, but another part of me isn't sure if I really want to go with a big publisher. I have mixed feelings on all of this. I feel conflicted, not sure what choice I'll make, but Kat and I will discuss it together and then I'll make a decision about where to go next.

5-02-13 I sent the rest of the manuscript in. I figure I owe myself the opportunity to see what will come of this particular opportunity. Worst they can say is no and if they do say yes, then it's bargaining time, because I definitely want some say in what happens with the book and how I can use it to promote myself to a larger audience.

5-07-13 Something I've come to recognize about myself is that I can be brittle. Kat says I like order, and there is truth in that. I like things in my life and universe to be orderly, to follow certain conventions and to be easy to find. And this is where it can lead to brittleness because sometimes I cling so much to the order that I don't adapt to what really needs to be changed. My work with movement is helping me realize this brittleness about my personality, and with some work I think I can be more flexible even when my sense of order isn't as I'd like it to be.

5-15-13 Sometimes I go through periods where I have little to write. This is one of those periods. I've learned to accept these moments when they occur as I figure it is just a period of gestation and deeper thought. You can't rush magic and you can't rush writing.

5-19-13 Movement is about boundaries as much as anything else. Today I had to tell someone my boundaries around a specific topic. It wasn't easy to do it, but I realized that I didn't need to be moved to the head space that I felt moved to when discussing the topic with that person. So setting up that boundary was really a healthy action taken. There are some memories you don't want to revisit, especially if you are an abuse survivor of any type. Those memories can put you in a space of being a victim and while it is important to work through those memories, it should be done in a way that is empowering to the person.

I've been thinking lately about my role in my household. I am not the chief bread winner. Kat is the chief bread winner of the house hold and I am comfortable with that. Nonetheless I also contribute in my own way. I clean and cook, I take care of the cats and the kids as needed. I take care of Kat and support her in what she is doing. And I do bring in some income with my businesses and that income is increasing. We both work hard to make sure our household is a stable one. I feel lucky to be with such a wonderful person who is dedicated to me and to the spiritual work we do.

5-21-13 Kat and  I got a Synastry reading over the weekend, basically an astrological comparison of her and I's chart. It was helpful and confirmed certain patterns of behavior and ongoing life changes for both of us, as well as showing each of us how we could support each other through those changes. One of the issues it reminded me of was the importance of letting go of needing to be in control and instead continuing to accept that I don't have control over everything, but I do have control over how I work with it. In April I started a particular Pluto conjunction, which is a dark night of the soul and I'd have to say that I've certainly seen evidence of it in my life in little ways, but instead of letting it control me or feeling helpless, I've chosen to roll with it, accept that I don't have control over everything, but also ask myself what I do have control over. And what I've found is that by letting go in some cases and acknowledging that I don't have control, I can actually discover choices that provide me a way to resolve the situation in my favor. And there's a key realization about movement here: Choosing to move with something you can't control allows you to find control through the movement. You accept you can't control the situation as it is, but you learn to move with the situation until you discover the options that provide opportunities for you.

A Magical Life now available

 

My newest book, a Magical Life has just been published by Immanion Press. A Magical Life is the collected blog posts of this website from 2008 to 2010, which comes out to roughly 250 pages (pretty amazing, eh?). In this book I candidly share my life journey as a magician, demonstrating that magic isn't just something you do, but something you live. You'll read about various experiments, some successful, some not, as well as the intensive personal work that I've been engaged in during those years. A Magical Life is a snapshot of the life of a magician, my mistakes and successes, and my on-going work to know myself better, so that I can become a better person. It is also an exploration of magic that shows how magic shows up in the life of a magician.

I'm pretty pleased to be putting this out, because while it is essentially a journal collection  there are a lot of ideas and experiments I worked on in this pages, including some I'd forgotten about. If you wish to order a copy, go here.

Pagan Intolerance: nothing new under the sun

I came across a couple articles decrying the rise of intolerance in the Pagan community. Joseph Nichter discusses his own experiences with intolerance in the Pagan community, while Peter Dybing notes the rise of intolerance in the Pagan community in the last few years. The sad truth is though that this intolerance has been around a lot longer than the last few years. Perhaps, if anything, the internet with its continued evolution has just made it much easier to see the not so pleasant truth of the Pagan community: there is a fair amount of intolerance when it comes to a variety of topics including the practice of one's spirituality, experimentation in magical work, whether magic is even part of Paganism anymore, as well as cultural issues surrounding how Paganism is accepted by mainstream cultures. As someone who has been labeled a fluffy bunny from well before I began professionally writing in 2003, I can tell you that Pagans can be pretty opinionated. I write that tongue in cheek, because I must come off as pretty opinionated in this blog post.

But the reality is that this isn't any different from any other religious community. Christianity has its sects as well, which disagree on matters of doctrine and culture. At least we haven't, as of yet, started calling each other heretics and engaging in more violent activities. Instead it's just online flame wars, and people getting their @$$es handed to them for expressing opinions. I'll probably get some flak for this but I'm used to it. I wish I wasn't though. I wish the Pagan community really was better and not so intolerant. But I learned in the 90's that wasn't the case. I actually went on a hiatus from the community because I was disgusted with the amount of negativity and intolerance being expressed. And in the years since it hasn't changed...This is nothing new under the sun, nothing sudden that has just occurred.

That doesn't mean we just should sit back and not do something about it. However to change it we need to explore what that change would look like. I think a better appreciation for diversity would be a good start. Instead of labeling people as fluffy bunnies or decrying what they choose to do spirituality, we need to accept that even if we don't agree with someone's spiritual choices it doesn't make him/her a fluffy bunny or anything else. Agree to disagree and leave it at that. And if you feel the need to get in a debate ask yourself exactly what that debate is supposed to accomplish. Most like its just you venting hot air because you don't like what someone is saying or doing, but do you really want to invest your time and energy in that way?

And if there are issues to debate let us debate them civilly, with agreed on rules of interaction and dialogue that foster a space of collaboration and cooperation. There are any number of resources that can be explored and used to help accomplish this. The book Dialogue Gap by Peter Nixon, is one such resource. And perhaps most important. Don't let the people who are being intolerant win. Keep doing what you know is right and keep speaking up. I once was interviewed by the Pagan Centered Podcast. Everyone on there was hostile toward my work. It was a great example of Pagan intolerance, but after the interview was over I didn't let it stop me. They could call me names, tell me I was fluffy and hand my @$$ to me, but what they couldn't do was stop me. If anything their intolerance inspired me to continue speaking because I realized that if I did stop speaking up or writing, I'd just be letting them have the final word, and in the process glorify the intolerance that they advocated for. In any given community there will always be those people who are intolerant and have a loud bark. Ignore them and keep doing what you need to do. There will always be intolerance, always be people who will sit in judgement, arguing that they and they alone know best. They are wrong, but you can't change their mind, so focus on your work and make the world a better place. Speak out against the intolerance, as needed, but don't expect to change it, unless they are willing to actually accept that there can be other perspectives in the world that are as valid as their own.

Dark Sun Radio recently posted the interview they did with me late last year. You can listen to it here.

Filtered Reality and the Importance of magical work

Lately I've noticed several acquaintances going on a media diet. They recognize that they are putting too much time into media and saturating themselves with a lot of needless information. I've gone on my own media diets in the past, and still continue to, to this day. For example I don't have Cable, and I don't ever plan on having it. I don't want to watch all the commercials just to see a show, especially when I can watch the same show on netflix without all of the commercials. But my media diet has also extended to the news for the most part. I don't get a newspaper and I don't listen to the radio for news. I do read yahoo news, but I realize I need to cut down on that. Recently I was asked the following question:

Do you think that as the world gets more crowded and people become more busy with work, entertainment, technology etc. that finding this space/time becomes more difficult than say 100 years ago? And if so does that make magical practice all the more important?

The person asked the question in relationship to a status update I made about the importance of making sacred space and time for your magical work. And my answer is that I think all the different forms of entertainment can create a filtered reality, where what is filtered out is a person's awareness of self and the need to make sacred time and space. As much as I am a proponent of pop culture magic and using media for magical purposes, I also recognize that the saturation of media provides so much information, so much other things to focus on that it can be really hard to be present with anything that isn't media related. I certainly see this to some extent with people around me. Everyone is obsessed with having the latest smart phone, tablet, ipad, etc, and most of the time their eyes are on the screen fixated on whatever they are working on or playing (the irony is that right now my eyes are fixated on this screen as I write this). People are so caught up in observing what's going on around them that they are forgetting how to act, how to be present right here and right now.

I think magical practice is more important than ever because it teaches us to act, to rip out the filters and actually explore reality instead of just observe it. Magic is about creating space and time, about engaging reality and what you want to change about reality. The magician knows that a filtered reality is just a reality that has been fed to us as a way of directing what we think and see. All the technology we have doesn't intrinsically improve our lives so much as it filters our lives, distracts us, and otherwise just causes us to ignore our own reality. While I can and do appreciate being able to check email on a phone or write a book on a tablet, I nonetheless also recognize that all the media devices provide a lot of distractions and a way for people to disengage. Magic is about engagement, about being in a specific space and time and using that space and time to interact with reality.

All of the media we have does present us with a lot of information and used just right that information can be helpful for magical work. I enjoy employing pop culture magic when its appropriate, but even then it's about getting rid of the filters and engaging reality directly. And that's really the point of magic. It brings us to the here and now, shows us what could be and allows us to mediate reality instead of just observing it go by. So get off the phone and the ipad and video games and create some sacred space and time for you. Be here now.

Astrology, Divination, and Pattern Recognition

A little while back I got a reading done by my friend Erik Roth. He does shamanic astrology, and I highly recommend his services. I've gotten my astrological reading done in the past, and each time what has struck me about the readings has been the accuracy of the description of patterns in my life. It's not so much that the person has read my future but rather has shown me some existing patterns as well as other ones to be aware of. I've found the same to be true with Tarot readings and other forms of divination. What is being read are patterns of information and behavior and from that a person can get a good idea of what s/he needs to anticipate in the future.

Pattern recognition is the recognition of certain patterns of influence in your life. Those patterns of influence originate from both within you and the environment around you. One of the reasons I'm willing to consider the validity of Astrology is that I do think we are effected by the cycles of the planets around Earth. If nothing else there is a gravitational effect of some type and who is to say that doesn't have some influence on us? Even if that isn't the case, being able to look at your life in relationship to specific patterns can be enlightening in terms of what it helps you work on. For example, I've just entered into a cycle with Pluto, which astrologically speaking is the dark night of the soul for me. The recognition of this pattern allows me to prepare for it. The Pluto cycle is about breaking things down, but this doesn't have to be a negative experience. Instead it can be a positive experience, where I plan for and use the cycle of Plutonian energy to my benefit.

The same applies to a Tarot reading. Someone does a reading for you and what it supplies you is an awareness of patterns of information. The cards don't reveal the future but they show you what to look out for. Of course the only problem with this approach is that when you are looking at specific patterns you may not be aware of others. Pattern recognition helps you to be aware patterns, but it also acts as a filter so that you may only see those patterns. This is why although getting a divinatory reading can be helpful, sometimes it can be just as helpful to leave yourself open to experience to see what happens.

I think that what I found most helpful about the astrological reading is that it gave me a general sense of what to be aware of and provided some focus on key areas of my life that may need some work. All of it was accurate and how I knew that was because even without the reading I was already working on the issues and patterns the reading described. In that sense it affirmed my current work and showed I am on the right path. Never hurts to get some confirmation...though as always keep yourself open to whatever comes your way. The obvious perspective can box you in and cause you to miss out on other opportunities.