My new podcast and a couple of Book Reviews

I'm starting up a new podcast, through the Pagan Musings Podcast Channel. I'll be doing a show every Monday at 6pm PST. The first one will be on May 11th and will feature Bill Duvendack and I discussing his new book Vocal Magick and the topic of thought forms and magical entities. Most of my writing is focused on Pop Culture Magic 2.0 right now, so this blog post is just a couple book reviews, though I discuss a bit of my work in context to one of the books.

Book Review: The Talking Tree by William G. Gray

Part of my ongoing daily work involves working through The Talking Tree by William G. Gray, which is the companion book to the Ladder of Lights. In the The Talking Tree, Gray focuses on working with the paths in between the Sephiroth and showing how those paths connect the energies of the respective Sephiroth together. Each day, in the midst of my daily meditations, I've been reading a section of the book and then working with the respective forces described in that section by meditating those forces. This is similar to the work I did with the Ladder of Lights, and in fact builds off the work done in the Ladder of Lights, since you've already established contact with the respective forces you are working with.

Just as with the Ladder of Lights mediations, I used the spirit to mediate the force. I read a section and then do a meditation where I connect with the particular forces in order to mediate them into my life and through my spiritual work. Gray associates these paths with the Tarot and that makes for some useful imagery to work with, along with the correspondences he provides. For me the work has been mostly focused on internalizing each path in order to then manifest it in my life and I've found that with each path I've had relevant events come up that have allowed me to integrate the work I'm doing in a meaningful way with the experiences I'm having.

What's been most interesting about this work is the focus on the paths between the Sephiroth. The majority of books on the Tree of life have typically not covered these paths or if the material was covered, it was only lightly touched on. That makes this book invaluable for anyone who is serious about working with the tree of life and Quabala in general.

My only complaint about the book is that the sections aren't clearly laid out, like it was for the Ladder of Lights. That said I have an older version of the book and the newer version might be laid out in a way that's easier to access the different layers of each path.

Book Review: The Nature of Personal Reality by Jane Roberts

This book is thought-provoking in terms of how the material on space/time and working with the cells of the body is presented. There are lots of ideas in this book, which can be worked with if the reader is open to exploring them. What is overtly lacking are concrete exercises to explore these ideas, but if you have some experience, you can likely derive your own. Another issue I have with the book is that at times the message is very law of attraction oriented. While its important to recognize how your thoughts can set up the experiences you have, I think its equally important to note that some factors aren't dictated by your thoughts, and that isn't presented in this book. With that said, its an intriguing book that is far ahead of the time it was written, and worth a read through to see what ideas you can glean from it.

Tsa Lung Experiences

In Awakening the Sacred Body, The five Tsa Lung exercises are shared. these are exercises where the practitioner takes a deep breath, then inhales again and holds the breath while doing physical movements that are designed to help the practitioner work through internal blockages and connect with their internal energy. The breath is then exhaled, and the exercise is repeated. I've been learning these practices and integrating them into my daily meditation work. I've found that they've helped lead me to a deeper place of stillness, especially combined with other Dzogchen practices.

Doing the Tsa Lung exercises are interesting, especially because you are doing them while holding your breath. I find that when I holding my breath and doing these exercises, it clears my mind of any thought. I am just present with the actions, allowing myself to do them and hold space with them. When I exhale, its like I let out whatever blockages were there, letting the attachment to them go with the release of breath. The author, at one point, notes that as you do these exercises you need to pay attention to the space that occurs as a result. When I check in with that space I find that stillness in me. Sometimes it brings up close to deeper issues (especially of late), but sometimes all that is there is space.

Doing this work has illustrated even further the connection between stillness and movement. One leads into the other and vice versa. Stillness can be found through movement and movement can stir in stillness. It's an integral relationship that I'm finding to be quite profound in other areas of my spiritual work.

Radio Interview: Recently Pagan Musings Podcast interviewed the editors and contributors of Bringing Race to the Table. Here is the interview.

What Pop Culture teaches us about Objects of Power

I recently finished playing the DLC for Shadow of Mordor. In one of the DLC's you get to play as the Elf Lord Celebrimbor, who according to the mythology of Lord of the Rings, forged the rings of power, and helped Sauron forge his Ring. Celebrimbor gets the Ring of Power at one point and is able to use it for a time., but eventually loses it when it leaves him. Playing the game got me to thinking about objects of power and how such objects might take on their own personality. According to LOTR lore, Sauron invests a significant amount of his own power into the ring, which ultimately leads to his downfall when the ring is destroyed, but in thinking about how the Ring is treated in the books and in Shadows of Mordor, I began thinking that the ring is its own entity.

The reason I think of the ring as its own entity is because of how it seeks to protect itself. It may find various people to wield it, but inevitably it leaves those people when their value is used up. According to the mythology, the ring is trying to get back to Sauron, but nonetheless I think in giving so much power over to the Ring, what Sauron also gave it was its own identity, desire, etc. And you might wonder what all this conjecture has to do with magic, here's my take: Investing a lot of your own power, personality, etc., into an object is a mistake that will come back to bite you, because it becomes its own being.

In another pop culture mythology, Once Upon a Time, Rumpelstiltskin, is the Dark One because he possesses a dagger that transfers the power to him, after he kills the previous dark one. Whoever holds the dagger can control the dark one or become the next dark one, but there is nothing about the person that indicates that they inherently have the power. Instead the power resides in the dagger, which makes me think that the dagger is ultimately its own being, perhaps the original dark one transformed into a dagger. But regardless of that you see a similar lesson in this mythology, namely that the power residing in the object, as opposed to the person, makes the person vulnerable.

Back when I started practicing magic, I had necklaces, rings, and a variety of tools that I used for magic, but something I learned along the way is that the power in those tools is at least partially derived from what people put into those tools. What that means is that you invest part of yourself in a given tool. You might think of it in terms of the meaning you derive from working with the tool, or something else to that effect. There might be something inherent to the tool, but a lot of what makes a tool useful in magical work is the meaning you put into it, the relationship you create with it. And by extension some of that can be taken and applied to yourself. William G. Gray talks about doing just that by recognizing what a magical tool represents and bringing it into yourself to make it part of who you are as a magician.

I think tools can be useful, but it is wise to consider what you invest in a tool and ask yourself if that's really where you want your magic to go or where you'll find it. You might discover that the best investment you could make involves recognizing and working with the magic within you. It's always part of you...and with that said, knowing wen to use a tool can also be as important as knowing not to overly rely upon it.

Podcast Interviews

Shauna Aura Knight and I were recently interviewed on Green Egg Radio about the Pagan Leadership anthology Immanion Press is publishing and Pagan Leadership.

I was also interviewed on the Pagan Variety Show about Inner Alchemy and internal work (you'll need to go in about an hour, in order to listen to that interview).

The Process of Magic round 13 starts on May 13th

The Process of Magic class starts round 13 on May 13th!

Magic is a process that changes you and your relationship with the world, if you understand how the process works.

In this 24 lesson class, we will explore what the process of magic is and how it applies to you and your magical work. If you're looking for a different perspective on magic that explores the underlying principles of how magic works, instead of focusing on the tools, ceremonies, and other optional features, this class is for you.

Here's what several former students have to share about this class and how it helped them with their magical work:

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

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

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

Testimonial from Wolf Kaminksi

I'm really enjoying your class.  Especially helpful was how you showed the Tarot as offering up possibilities instead of viewing the cards in a rigid way.  I'm also working with the element of Earth for a year.  What I'm really finding from your class is that magic works.  You can't believe how many doors have started opening up for me that were right under my nose.

Testimonial from T. Vorster

If you want to learn more or sign-up, visit the class page for the Process of Magic.

Elemental Balancing Ritual Stillness Month 6: Suffering

3-25-15 I'm feeling depressed or maybe derailed is more accurate. I had to take a bunch of images down from my sites..a lot of work which wasn't productive and it really just hit me hard. But it's also the last month and I'm just working through some tough issues. And so on and so forth. You get derailed and it can be hard to get back on track...especially if you wonder sometimes if there's a point to even being on track. Sometimes I wonder if there is because even with everything I do there is this sense of incompleteness. It's been there all my life, likely always will be and I think I kid myself as to whether I can ever really come to any peace with it. I live with it everyday and its what drives me but its also what haunts me. I'm feeling really haunted by it right now.

3-26-15 Having a confidant in one's life is a gift. Being able to tell someone what you feel, what you need, how your hurting...its precious. I've been working on doing that more with Kat. It doesn't come easily to me, because I've had a lifetime of learning not to tell people what I'm feeling and yet I think if I'd been better at communicating earlier in my life I might have been a better partner for people I used to be with. I can't change that, but I am working on changing it with who I'm with now.

On a somewhat related note I'm reading Awakening the Sacred Body and learning the Tsa Lung exercises. In one section, the author talks about gossip and the attachment people have to it. I had a reaction of sorts, because I do believe in informing people of predators and predator behavior, but I also recognize how it could be perceived as gossip. It's a fine balancing act, because you can get caught up in bitching about someone and that's gossip as opposed to informing someone about behavior that has been harmful to other people and could be harmful to more people if its not recognized for what it is. At the same time I know why I'm having that reaction...because its very easy to complain and let that complaint govern the experience of your life...taking up valuable energy and time that could be directed toward more productive pursuits.

3-31-15 In Awakening the Sacred Body, the author writes the following: "There is one tendency of mind that is important to notice, because it can undermine the positive effects of meditation, and that is our habit of moving from problem to problem. Without realizing it, we are addicted to our to do lists or so much more familiar with our problems that we tend to dwell on them, even when we recognize that doing so doesn't solve them." I was struck by that statement because I know it applies to me. I sometimes have treated my meditation as a to do list item, the work I'm doing as something to do and also as something I end up obsessing over. Part of what made last month hard is that I realized I needed to stop thinking so much and start experiencing more of what I was feeling. Reading that passage reinforced for me how essential it is and how you can only experience a certain level of meditation if you are stuck thinking about problems, and letting that thinking occupy your space.

4-6-15 Some tough work this last week, especially as I recognize patterns repeating themselves and producing the same results for me and in how I affect other people. My work with stillness has fittingly enough brought me back to emptiness, with all of its issues, and yet with an awareness of myself I previously lacked when I worked with it and I see so clearly how my relationship with it just leads to pain if I focus on trying to fill myself up, instead of just being with it and being open about it. I find when I am open about my misery, about what I'm feeling when I feel empty, it actually does serve to provide some relief and maybe I just need to accept that there is some part of me that is just deeply miserable and allowing myself to be that way without trying to change it, might be better for me. I've never done that, but its worth trying.

4-8-15 My suffering has defined a lot of who I am and a lot of the way I've related to other people. I've caused other people to suffer because of the pain I'm in and how I've handled that pain. In Awakening the Sacred Body, the author talks about how we hold on to the pain we feel because it is familiar to us. We become attached to it because we know it. To get past that involves learning how to open yourself to being in a place where that pain isn't there. I'm doing the TSA Lung exercises and as I do them and hold space with what I'm feeling I also consider that it could be possible to let go of the suffering I've felt and my attachment to it as a form of identity.

4-9-15 It fascinates me to encounter people who I recognize have similar traits as I do when it comes to how they measure social behavior and then respond. I talked with two such people today and could recognize how they calculated situations and also recognized the same tendency in me. I approach most situations with an a recognition that studying how people act can help me determine how I should respond, dependent on what I hope the situation will result in. I don't mind admitting that because the truth is I was a socially awkward person for a long time and it took me a while to figure out how to connect and relate to people. I did and do that partially by studying behavior and it makes easier to connect on a deeper level.

4-13-15 This weekend I helped put together a lot of furniture with Kat and the kids. It was a bonding experience and I felt a comfortable sense of work as I got into putting everything together. An experience of flow, which in a way can be a form of stillness because it becomes a moment that stretches beyond the usual experience of time. I've also been reflecting on how characters in books can reflect your own journey and be teachers in their own right. Nothing new in that reflection, but a renewed appreciation of lessons that can be learned if you are willing to see yourself in the character's journey.

4-15-15 Part of my suffering occurs with my creativity. I find it harder to write now than I used to. There will be occasions where the writing just flows and on those situations I write until I can't write anymore. Most of the time writing, for me happens in stops and starts and that's hard. It wasn't always that way and obviously despite my issues with my writing I still manage to put out a lot of writing, both in terms of books and blog entries, but I think I've worked harder for this writing in the last 5 years than I used to...then again, writing came a lot easier to me before I ended up in a long term situation that was fairly traumatic for me. And although its been a while since I've been in that situation, I think part of me is still just healing, and that includes the writer in me.

4-16-15 More and more I am seeing how my suffering internally leads to suffering for other people, when I act on that suffering, specifically when I try and find some way not to be present with it, but instead distract myself. Those distractions are really focused on my desires or my needs, as opposed to really being with someone. And when I see the result...a person hurt so deeply because of how I've handled my suffering, I realize that I have traumatized that person with my damage. It's a horrible feeling that deepens the very suffering I'm feeling because I now recognize how it's extended to someone else. I know I'm not the only one who's ever acted this way, but I also know I am the one person I can take responsibility for and that includes taking responsibility for my suffering and damage in a way that doesn't harm other people or myself. Doing that involves shifting from reaction to a place of proactive awareness, where I can recognize what motivates a given action and also acknowledge the potential effects that action could have on me and other people. Then its a matter of making a decision, the right decision, as opposed to continuing to react to my suffering.

4-17-15 One of my problems is I'm impulsive. I see something I want and I go after it without weighing all the factors. This does't always occur and happens less frequently now than it used to, but its still an issue. What I need to do is step back and really examine what the possible results will be. Not easy in the heat of the moment, but I've done it before and I can do it again.

4-20-15 This weekend I finally finished writing chapter of the pop culture magic book...a chapter I started at the end of February. It doesn't escape me my attention that when I get distracted by internal conflict, my writing suffers. Beyond that though, in working with stillness, I've come to see how much it calls up all the issues in my life and forces me to face them. In being present with myself, I am also present with everything going on that I've either buried away or tried to get away from...and I know I can't get away or bury it away. At some point it catches up and gets me...What I do about that though is up to me.

How Spiritual Transmission shows up in Writing

I'm reading Ensouling Language by Stephen Buhner, which is a book about the craft of writing, with some interesting perspectives. In one of the perspectives he shares he discusses something akin to the concept of spiritual transmission, wherein something is passed from one writer to another. Here's what he shares:

In that moment of transference, the real secret that all beginning writers want to know begins to be revealed, slow as that revelation will be...In that moment something begins to be transferred from the older writer to the younger, some invisible that is at the heart of the craft, some feeling sense of state of mind that is essential to the work. And it is that something that is at the core of what it means to be a writer, someone who desires to be more than a typist of words.

I have had this experience of transference as a writer a number of times through my career. It first happened in my early twenties when I was going to a writer's group and sharing my stories in the hopes of improving them. One of the other writers, a fellow by the name of Matthew made quite an impression on me as a writer and it had nothing to do with technique, so much as had it to do with the essence and identity of being a writer. He helped me decondition myself from all the writing classes I'd taken while in high school and college which had filled me with a lot of nonsense about writing.

Later, when I was pursuing my doctorate at Kent State University, I'd go through another spiritual transmission in regards to writing...an awkward and hard stage of learning how to write like an academic. I learned a lot about technique, but what the transmission provided me was something deeper that caused me to become much more of a researcher than I'd ever been. To this day I still do a ton of research before writing. I ended up not getting the doctorate. I wasn't a good fit for academia and vice versa, and I moved onto technical writing, where I received another transmission of sorts at my first contract with Boeing, where I learned how to write process. I eventually took all these experiences and developed my own writing style.

I forgot to mention as well that this kind of transmission, for writers, also occurs through reading the works of other writers. You may never meet the person, but as you read a book with the eye of a writer, you get hit with this awareness about your own writing and suddenly your trying some ideas out about writing to see what occurs. I went through my William S. Burroughs stage for a while doing cutup as a result of such a transmission. Likewise William G. Gray made quite an impression on my writing, with a kind of heavy handedness that found its way into my writing and is still there to some degree. As a writer, you are always picking up the words of other writers and with some of them you experience a transmission that speaks to how you could write and then you find yourself writing differently, your style mutated by this transmission you've experienced.

As for how all this applies to magic...for me, writing is part of my magical work, one of the ways I turn possibility into reality. And I feel that this concept of transmission in writing does extend to more than just other writers. The writer is transmitting the expertise of the subject to readers and its not just a matter of reading words, but also a matter of having an experience that moves you. You read and then you do something with it...you turn what you've read into a reality of your own that has meaning to it. That's how writing becomes a spiritual transmission for the reader who isn't a writer.

The Present is the Point of Power

 

I'm re-reading The Nature of Personal Reality by Jane Roberts and the spirit of Seth, which she channeled. I don't recall when I read the original book, only that it was sometime back in the 2000s. In reading the book now I'm struck by how much it focuses on two areas of interests I have, working with the body as a magical tool and space/time magic. I'm going to focus on the latter and specifically on a statement made in the book, "The Present is the Point of Power." It's worth spending some time considering that statement as it relates to space/time magic, but also how we conceive of the present.

The present is the moment we are experiencing, in a linear sense, as a sense of "now", but the present is also comprised of all your past experiences, beliefs, attitudes etc., and yet it is also what enables us to change what we gain from the past. Seth points out that what you believe about your past is what you get from it and what contributes to what you make of the present. While this might seem like self-evident advice, I think its a useful point to consider in relationship to retroactive magic and space/time magic in general.

Memories are shaped by belief. If you have a negative belief about yourself, then you'll find memories to justify that belief. Likewise if you have a positive belief, you'll find memories to support that belief. If you want to change memories, part of what you need to change about them is the underlying attitude and belief that you've invested in yourself. Your present sense of self is shaped by your memories and what you tell yourself about who you are. Conversely your present shapes your memories as well, so that if we want to change the sense of self and what we identify with, then we should look toward changing the memories we pick or creating entirely new ones and inserting them into the past as events that have actually happened.

Memory is part of imagination and so it is not impossible to create a memory. We imagine memories all the time. We might call them fantasies or daydreams or whatever else, but they can be memories. Imagine yourself as a younger person doing an activity, or spending time with someone, and in that memory insert the new beliefs and values you wish to have. Then insert that memory into your past among other memories, allowing it to spread the beliefs and values into the other memories, changing what occurred so that the present and your sense of self is also changed.

Our sense of time is static, but the actual experience of time is fluid and if we know this then the present does become the point of power because we aren't constrained by false linearity, but rather recognize that any given moment can become the present through the use of imagination and memory. When we insert a memory into the past or change an existing one, what is being changed is the identity of the person. You may discover new possibilities in the present as a result or look at your experiences with a new perspective about yourself and others that helps you navigate situations you are in. When we take charge of the present and use it to change the past, when we recognize that our experiences aren't set in stone, but can be shaped by what we invest in them, we unlock the potential of imagination and memory to be more than just something that we fantasize or remember. We become what we identify with and use that to discover what we can become.

How to Invoke Pop Culture Characters

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Want to actually do this, not just read about it?

Pop Culture Magic 2.0 is where I teach how to build a magic system out of the culture you already live in. Get the book →

Not ready to buy anything? Why Your Spells Don't Stick is a free guide to the most common reasons a working stalls, and where to start fixing it.

If you want help with a specific situation, work with me one to one.

Elemental Balancing Ritual Stillness Month 5: Stagnation

2-27-15 I'm feeling pretty fried from all the travel I've done, plus the jet lag I'm feeling. I'm leaving on yet another trip in a few days and then after that, I'm done for a while. In all of that I've tried to maintain my connection to stillness and sometimes I have and sometimes I haven't. I don't stress myself too much about it, because it just is part of this time of year and also an opportunity to find stillness within movement. The two lead into each other and create each other.

3-2-15 I had a breakthrough realization about my meditation and actually about some issues in my life. I'm analyzing them too much...not engaging them on an experiential level. I know what you're thinking is...isn't that what you are writing about and doing a lot of and yes I am, but I can attest to the fact that some times you have to learn some thing multiple times, in multiple ways in order to get it. You realize it on one level and then go deeper and realize it all over again in a different way.

3-4-15 There are occasions where I feel a sense of destiny, a recognition that something significant will happen. I felt that way today, going into a business meeting and I'm feeling about my trip to the Between the Worlds Conference. The key, when you feel that way, is to still yourself, let the event unfold and know what you want from it, so that when the opportunity occurs you can take the right action to produce the desired result.

3-8-15 It's been quite a weekend at the Between the Worlds conference. I had several experiences that in their respective ways have brought about some deep realizations for me. I had a chance to meet with Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki for about 2o minutes, to discuss her books and the possibility of her publishing her books through Immanion Press. We chatted for a bit about western esotericism and people such as W. G. Gray as well as discussing publishing and I'm hopeful she'll publish books with us...but I also had an experience with her that I've never really had before...or if I have it hasn't stood out in quite the way it did this time. She did a spiritual transmission with me. I felt this wave of energy pass from her to me. The hair on my arms and legs and head stood on end and I could feel this heat pass through my body. It lasted for a quite a while after and I knew it was from her. I also know its one of those things, where it will manifest itself as needed, when its time for it to manifest.

And I felt like it already has manifested a bit, because I came away with another realization this weekend, more on the shadow side of things. Basically I came to recognize on how selfish I can be and how that selfishness has hurt people in my life in the past and in the present. I have a tendency to get really fixated on something I want, to the exclusion of thinking anything or anyone else...and sometimes that can be good, like when working on a creative project, and sometimes it can be bad such as when I place my own desires over anything else in my life. I'm really sitting with that and recognizing how its a pattern that's shown up multiple times in my life. I know I can change it...I also know I need to own it.

3-11-15 The last few days have been rough. I've really had to come face to face with my own selfishness and what motivates that selfishness. My conclusion, at least as it applies to relationships, is that its a defense mechanism in order to not let people get to close. The selfish part of me doesn't want the experience of love, so much as it wants whatever sensations it can have access to in order to distract it from itself. It's always been an issue for me that has played out in my relationships as well. It's a cold, calculating aspect of myself, my survivor really, but it's not helping me when it comes to my important relationships. It's focus is on taking care of itself to the exclusion of taking care of the people in my life and it really sucks.

3-13-15 Feeling something, instead of thinking about it, is hard. It calls for a level of vulnerability that doesn't come easily to me. And so much of what I feel is wrapped around this core part of myself that is trying to escape what its feeling. I know this is a recurring theme for me, but its a theme that nonetheless is profound for me because of how much it motivates my choices. Am I doing something to escape what I'm feeling inside or am I doing it because I genuinely want it? I don't know because the two are so entangled.

3-14-15 A friend of mine sent me a link to an article on what self-loving people do for themselves. As I read through it, I realized what behaviors I was doing and what behaviors I wasn't doing. I'm learning to listen to my emotions. This seems like a long journey for me, but compared to where I was years ago, I'm actually getting better at feeling emotions. I'm pretty good at taking responsibility, but I'll admit I still sometimes slip into blame mode, more often than not with myself and I do feel there is a difference between taking responsibility and blaming yourself. I definitely feed my passions and creativity and I enjoy spending time alone. I'm getting better at weighing long term choices over instant gratification, but I have a ways to go as well. For me, instant gratification has often been a way to just tune out, instead of really being present. Setting boundaries is a skill I've had to work hard at and being aware of the boundaries of others is another skill I've had to work at. Both are skills I'm still working with, and it goes right back to the instant gratification over weighing long term goals. As for admitting mistakes...in some ways that's the easiest skill, though it does venture into self-blaming. Still reading that article does indicate I'm getting better at self-love, slowly, but surely.

3-15-15 Feeling without labeling is a part of stillness work. I found myself trying to label today, to judge really, and I just called myself on it and went back to feeling. I feel that the Spiritual Transmission that Dolores gave me has helped me with some of this work. It's blown up some blockages and allowed me to do some integration work within myself.

3-18-15 The last few days I've had a cold, which has made doing any work much harder than it normally would be. There is just enough fuzziness there that it becomes an exercise to do anything. Feels a lot like stagnation and I realize that's the shadow side of stillness...where everything grinds to a halt. This month has felt a lot like that for me.

3-19-15 To experience an element, you necessarily need to encounter the shadow aspects of it. If you can't do that, then the work involved isn't for you. In some ways I think the shadow work is the most essential part of finding balance with an element. It calls on you to be vulnerable and open to changing yourself, especially aspects that you may not have examined. Ignorance is stripped away and what is left reveals who you are becoming as you do this work.

3-23-15 This month has been the hardest one with the stillness work. I feel I've come face to face with the shadow side of stillness and it is not easy to deal with. Nonetheless I also feel I've gained a lot from working with it...deeper insight into myself and my issues that allows me to see a history in my relationships that I hadn't previously acknowledged. It's hard and necessary work, but its work that keeps me going because ultimately I feel better for doing it. I feel stagnant, but actually i'm really not...I'm just encountering that feeling of stagnant as it shows up in my life.

Pop Culture Grimoire 2.0 Deadline extended to April 15th

The deadline for submissions for the Pop Culture Grimoire 2.0 has been extended to April 15th. So far Emily and I have 13 submissions . If you have an interesting idea, we need you to submit a first draft by April 15th. Look below to see some guidelines on possible submissions.

Email for inquiries and submissions: Taylor Ellwood

Megalithica Books, an imprint of Immanion Press (Stafford, U.K./Portland, OR, U.S.A) is seeking submissions for The Pop Culture Grimoire 2.0.

This anthology explores pop culture magic and Paganism in the 21^st Century. We invite you to share your pop culture magic practice, pop culture Pagan spirituality, and your experiments, spells, and other workings that have integrated pop culture into your spiritual practice.

Here are some suggested topics to give you an idea of the focus of this anthology:

• Pop culture spells
• Your experiences with a particular fandom
• Magic at conventions
• Cosplay magic
• Social media magic
• Blending older mythology with pop culture
• Your experiences sharing pop culture magic
• Video Game magic
• Pop culture art and magic
• Your systems of pop culture magic
• Role playing and pop culture magic

Rough drafts are due April 15, 2015. These drafts will be edited in a back-and-forth process with the editors. Essays should be 1500-4000 words, although if your work falls outside those limits, do submit it – we can discuss this during the editing process. Drop us an email if you are unsure whether your idea fits into the content. The sooner you start the communication process the better, as after the deadline we won’t be considering additional ideas.

Essay requirements:

• Citations for all quoted, paraphrased, or otherwise unoriginal material • Bibliography of works cited • Prefer APA format

Write in your voice! If you’re academically inclined or trained, feel free to be as intelligent and technical as you like. If your work entirely talks in the first person about your own experience, please include this also. There is a wide range of voices, and we are interested in being as inclusive of style as possible.

Accepted contributors will receive a free copy of the anthology when it is published and additional copies sold at 40% off the cover price to contributors. All contributors will be provided with a contract upon final acceptance of their essays, not when they are accepted for editing. If your essay is not accepted for the anthology, we will tell you after the first round of edits.

The anthology will be edited by Taylor Ellwood and Emily Carlin.

Taylor Ellwood is the author of Pop Culture Magick, Magical Identity, and other books on magic. He is also the managing non-fiction editor of Immanion Press. He can be found online at http://magicalexperiments.com

Emily Carlin, author of Defense Against The Dark, is a Wellesley grad, lawyer, geek and specialist in Seattle haunted lore.  She presents regularly at PantheaCon, and teaches defensive and shadow magick at http://www.shadowkrafting.com

Relaxing into Non-Conceptual Awareness

In Awakening the Sacred Body, the author does an excellent job of defining conceptual and non conceptual awareness. Conceptual thinking is a distraction from stillness. It is thinking about the meditation or the focus of the meditation as opposed to really opening yourself to presence. It is judging what you experience instead of actually allowing yourself to have the experience. Non-conceptual awareness, on the other hand, is allowing yourself to be present with the experience, to let it happen to you without having to interpret or categorize it. As you might imagine, it is not always easy for people to experience non-conceptual awareness.

When I do meditation, I find that the experience of non-conceptual awareness is an experience of relaxing into it. If I try to force it, what happens is that I move further away from it. Stillness isn't something you can force...it's something to be relaxed into as an experience.  So when I meditate, I just allow myself to be where I'm at, and it happens to be in a place of lots of thoughts, then I let that thinking occur, instead of trying to quash it down. By opening myself to that experience, eventually what occurs is I enter to a place where the thoughts go away and I'm just present. And if a thought does occur, I know what it is and I let it go. It's a kind of silence really that is actually quite relaxing and puts me into an altered state of consciousness. The key is to accept that in order for this experience to happen, you let go of trying to control it and just let it happen to you and move you to a place of stillness.

The reason people get stuck in conceptual thinking is because we have a tendency to analyze and critique and judge and get caught up in lots and lots of thinking. The problem with the conceptual thinking is that it distracts you from feeling. So if you feel uncomfortable, but get caught up in analyzing that discomfort, you still aren't dealing with the discomfort. You are thinking about it, but you aren't experiencing it. The experience of discomfort in your body and in your state of awareness is very different from thinking about it. It forces you to get real with what you are feeling. And when you do that...when you stop making it into a concept and just experience it, then you end up achieving a liberation of sorts, because you are allowing yourself to just feel it, and in the feeling of it, enabling yourself to really be present with it. Non-conceptual awareness opens you to a place of vulnerability. That place of vulnerability can be frightening, but if you are willing to engage it, what it provides you is the experience and that experience allows you to let go of the feeling ultimately.

In the past I've had a tendency to spend to much time in my head, over thinking what I'm experiencing. It's resulted in less than genuine work because I haven't been present with it in the way I needed to be. What non-conceptual awareness has helped me do is stop being in my head so much, so that I can be present with what I'm feeling. It's not easy work, but its the kind of internal work that can ground you into your body and into being more present with what you are doing in your life.

*****

I was recently interviewed on the Donna Philisophica Show.You can download the show and listen to it by clicking the link and finding it on her list of interviews.

Want to actually do this, not just read about it?

How Magic Works is where I teach how to take a desire from intent to an actual result, step by step. Start the class →

Not ready to buy anything? Why Your Spells Don't Stick is a free guide to the most common reasons a working stalls, and where to start fixing it.

If you want help with a specific situation, work with me one to one.

History and Visions of the Future

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

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

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

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

Space/Time Magic Foundations Round 2 Starts April 1st

Round 2 of the Space/Time Magic Foundations class starts on April 1st

Space/Time Magic is the expression of possibility upon reality, the shaping of linear space and time through non-linear means, if you know how to work with space and time as elements of magic.

In this 24 lesson class, we will explore the fundamentals of space/time magic, specifically how space and time can be integrated into your magical process as distinct principles and elements. If you are looking for a different approach to magical work that integrates the elements of space and time into magical practice, then this class is for you.

Here is a Testimonial from one of the students currently taking the course:

The Space/Time Correspondence Course extends our perception to see Time and Space as essential elements in magical works. It provides us wide variety of practical techniques and ideas, all of them will be great aids for our own experiments. The whole course is like a fascinating tool-box for anyone interested in the Magic of Space and Time. -- Yutaka Furuki

To learn more and sign up for this class, go here.

My work with the Nine Purification Breaths

 

Lately I've been working with the Nine Purification Breaths technique, which is shared in Awakening the Sacred Body by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche.  This is a useful technique to work with before you start meditating as its purpose is to clear our your energetic channels of emotional attachments. I've started using it at the beginning of my meditation practice, and its helped to deepen the state of my stillness work. I'm still figuring it out. It's a seemingly simple technique that nonetheless calls on you to really be aware and present in your body to get the full benefits.

The way it works is that you start with closing your right nostril off with a finger and inhaling with your left nostril. Then you close your left nostril and breathe out your right nostril. Do this again two more times. As you inhale you are drawing the prana in through the left nostril and then cycling it to the right nostril to clear out any anger you feel. After you have done this breath three or more times, you switch and close your left nostril and breath in through your right, then close your right nostril and breathe out through your left. You do this at least two more times and this time the purpose is to clear out any attachments you have. The final three breaths involve inhaling with both nostrils and then exhaling with both nostrils. This time you breathe out the doubt and ignorance you have.

The entire process can go fairly quick, but I would urge you to take your time with it. Be present with the breathing and more importantly with what you are seeking to clear out of yourself. For example, when I breathe out the anger emotions, inevitably some associations will come up and this can be useful for helping me to see if I need to address something with someone or if I just need to let it go. By taking your time, you allow yourself to be present with what you feel and let it go fully with each breath. And if you need to do some of this breathing more than three times, allow yourself to do that.

I also think there could be some applications to banishing with this technique or other forms of magical work. For example, you might want to breathe in specific emotions such as love or compassion. Or you might use the breathing to clear yourself of any conflicting emotions or attachments before and after you do a magical working. I've used it with my meditation practice and it has helped me reach a place of stillness with less effort involved because I'm clearing out what my other wise be a distraction. And at the same time it helps me open myself to my body, which is the first step toward embracing stillness (or movement for that matter). As with anything, what makes a technique like this useful is your willingness to engage it as a consistent practice in your life.

Want to actually do this, not just read about it?

How Magic Works is where I teach how to take a desire from intent to an actual result, step by step. Start the class →

Not ready to buy anything? Why Your Spells Don't Stick is a free guide to the most common reasons a working stalls, and where to start fixing it.

If you want help with a specific situation, work with me one to one.

Elemental Balancing Ritual Stillness Month 4: Strategy

1-23-2015 Sometimes when you play games, its useful not to play to win, but instead play to observe. When you play to observe you do so to better understand how someone else plays. You also play to observes so that you can observe your own responses. What this teaches you is how to be aware of your own responses and ask what's moving me in this situation. You can apply this same idea to any situation in life. If you find yourself in a place of reaction, still yourself and observe your reactions. Observe what other people are doing. Relax and let go of your attachment to the situation. You'll discover strategy in your stillness, by allowing yourself to observe and freeing yourself from the expectations involved in the situation.

1-31-15 As I've been working with stillness this week, I've been stepping back and observing my responses to various situations and seeing how I can be still in those situations instead. I'm finding it instructive to be still in those moments and compare how I might respond otherwise. Would the response really be the right one to make? It's not a second guess kind of thing, so much as its an appreciation for how being still can provide me some perspective about my choices and help me make more informed responses.

2-4-15 I've been feeling anxious the last couple days. I know why. I'm getting ready to do a lot of traveling starting next week...basically three trips in one month's time, and being around a lot of people. I know once it happens I'll be fine. I'm sitting with that anxiety and really watching how it shows up in my behavior and actions. For example, I didn't go to a networking meeting today and the reason is because I don't want to be around other people. I want to just be at home and I know that's a response to the travel, knowing I won't be at home. It surprises me how strong this feeling is and how much it motivates me to not do things in my regular routine, even though those things are important. I really need to be still with this feeling and work with it so that I can acknowledge it, but not let it stop me from doing what I need to do for my businesses.

2-6-15 Stillness, when embraced, leads to openness of presence. Openness of presence leads to awareness of possibility, and to the discovery that it was really there all along. You just didn't realize it because you were caught up in the cacophony of your life and forgot how to let yourself relax, let go, and discover everything within you that had been drowned out by whatever grabbed your attention. Bring yourself back to center. Still yourself, and be present with whatever comes up. Sit with whatever you feel, think, etc., with no judgement. It just is and you just are, but if you can accept it, it changes and so do you. What will you change into? No one knows the answer until the answer happens to you.

2-11-15 Sometimes the hardest part of working with stillness is what comes up when you are trying to be still. Your inner demons can rear their heads and come out in force. Of course, you can switch to a different meditation to work through those demons, such as using water breathing to dissolve the demons, but it can also be instructive to just be still with your inner demons and attentive to what you are getting from them. there is always an underlying message waiting to be found and learning to be still with yourself, when you actually don't want to be still can be a useful experience as well. I've been sitting with some of my demons this week and while its hard going, it's also rewarding in terms of the insights I'm getting from being as still as I can be with them.

2-13-15 In Awakening the Sacred Body, the author explains that when you are still and open to presence you can feel emotions come up such as anger. The reason this occurs is because we aren't distancing ourselves from the emotions, but instead are opening to them through the stillness. The key at that point is to just experience the emotion, without trying to analyze it or think about it or contextualize it. Then you just breathe it out, and release it. I struggle with this some because I'm so used to holding on to anger and I see how even analyzing it and thinking about it is still holding onto it.

A related challenge, which I've written about before is that sometimes I find myself trying to force the stillness...I did that today and I just stopped because I knew I couldn't force it. Then later my inner contact told me that I couldn't force a connection...I had to open to it. So I just accepted that and let myself acknowledge that my forcing it is really born out of desire and is not allowing me to authentically connect. I'm conceptualizing but not opening up to the stillness.

2-16-15 The last few days have been interesting experiences. Pantheacon is always a crucible of sorts. This year, moreso than any other year, I felt accepted and managed to connect with lots of wonderful people, some new acquaintances and some dear friends I always enjoy seeing. Each day I did my stillness work and instead of focusing on anything I just allowed myself to be still when the moments were perfect. This morning in teaching the elemental balancing ritual, I also felt myself connect with the next element I may work with. It gives me a lot to consider, but as always I know this work will be rewarding.

2-17-15 Last night Kat and I had a hard conversation about some communication problems I bring to our relationship. I've always had a tendency to go off and make my own plans without consulting my significant other. This has occurred because I've typically identified my S. O. as an authority figure in my life and therefore someone to work around instead of work with. I know where that originates from, but I also see how it has hurt my relationships in the past and present. I need to bring my partner in with me when I make plans, instead of making plans and then informing her after the fact. I know she'll back me up and help me and I need to trust that instead of creating a power dynamic that really isn't there.

2-18-15 As I can reading the Nature of Personal Reality by Jane Roberts, I am struck simultaneously by how there is at times a fair amount of law of attraction language, which I typically don't agree with and a lot of content focused on working with the consciousness or working through emotions, which shows me how this work has inspired my magical practice despite how long its been since I read it. A lot of what's written does apply to my stillness work as well, especially as it relates to opening to being.

2-19-15 I was reading more of The Nature of Personal Reality by Jane Roberts and there was something very insightful offered about aging that really made me pay attention. Seth, the spirit Roberts channeled, noted that people who are desperate to stay young, do so in order to negate their beliefs feelings about aging, and consequently reject part of themselves. This really resonated with me. I've noticed, this year, more so than the past my own aging and it has made me feel uneasy. I don't like that I have a slower metabolism, that some of my joints ache and need some warming up and that my forehead has less hair than it used to. I see these signs of aging and part of me wants to resist it. Reading what Seth shared helped me recognize this and I'm just sitting with it. I am aging and it is part of the process of living life.

2-22-15 the wrap up of a convention is always an interesting process. The people leave and the convention reaches a place of stillness, but its only temporary. It will all start up again at some point. Not everyone will be there for the next iteration. New people will come, others will go...but the spirit of it lasts.

On a different note, I've been thinking about my own lessons to learn and realizing that sometimes I put myself through a lot because I don't always learn what I need to learn right away. Hard lessons...but once I learn them, my life gets better.

Pop Culture Grimoire 2.0 deadline coming up soon!!

The deadline for submissions for the Pop Culture Grimoire 2.0 is coming up soon. So far Emily and I have 4 submissions and a couple people who've expressed interest. If you have an interesting idea, we need you to submit a first draft by March 15th.

Email for inquiries and submissions: Taylor Ellwood

Megalithica Books, an imprint of Immanion Press (Stafford, U.K./Portland, OR, U.S.A) is seeking submissions for The Pop Culture Grimoire 2.0.

This anthology explores pop culture magic and Paganism in the 21^st Century. We invite you to share your pop culture magic practice, pop culture Pagan spirituality, and your experiments, spells, and other workings that have integrated pop culture into your spiritual practice.

Here are some suggested topics to give you an idea of the focus of this anthology:

• What is pop culture magic?
• What is pop culture Paganism?
• Pop culture spells
• Your experiences with a particular fandom
• Magic at conventions
• Cosplay magic
• Social media magic
• Blending older mythology with pop culture
• Your experiences sharing pop culture magic
• Video Game magic
• Pop culture music and magic
• Pop culture art and magic

Rough drafts are due March 15, 2015. These drafts will be edited in a back-and-forth process with the editors. Essays should be 1500-4000 words, although if your work falls outside those limits, do submit it – we can discuss this during the editing process. Drop us an email if you are unsure whether your idea fits into the content. The sooner you start the communication process the better, as after the deadline we won’t be considering additional ideas.

Essay requirements:

• Citations for all quoted, paraphrased, or otherwise unoriginal material • Bibliography of works cited • Prefer APA format

Write in your voice! If you’re academically inclined or trained, feel free to be as intelligent and technical as you like. If your work entirely talks in the first person about your own experience, please include this also. There is a wide range of voices, and we are interested in being as inclusive of style as possible.

Accepted contributors will receive a free copy of the anthology when it is published and additional copies sold at 40% off the cover price to contributors. All contributors will be provided with a contract upon final acceptance of their essays, not when they are accepted for editing. If your essay is not accepted for the anthology, we will tell you after the first round of edits.

The anthology will be edited by Taylor Ellwood and Emily Carlin.

Taylor Ellwood is the author of Pop Culture Magick, Magical Identity, and other books on magic. He is also the managing non-fiction editor of Immanion Press. He can be found online at http://magicalexperiments.com

Emily Carlin, author of Defense Against The Dark, is a Wellesley grad, lawyer, geek and specialist in Seattle haunted lore.  She presents regularly at PantheaCon, and teaches defensive and shadow magick at http://www.shadowkrafting.com

Immanion Press is a small independent press based in the United Kingdom. Founded by author Storm Constantine, it expanded into occult nonfiction in 2004 with the publication of Taylor Ellwood’s Pop Culture Magick. Today, Immanion’s nonfiction line, under the Megalithica Books imprint, has a growing reputation for edgy, experimental texts on primarily intermediate and advanced pagan and occult topics. Find out more at http://www.immanion-press.com.

Pantheacon, Bringing Race to the Table, and Racism

Note: I'm cross posting this blog entry to the Immanion Press Blog, as well as on this blog.

I've just gotten back from Pantheacon. It's been a transformative weekend, with new acquaintances made, friendships deepened, and good conversation and spiritual work done. One of the events I was proud to be part of was the Bringing Race to the Table Panel, where we discussed the recent anthology Bringing Race to the Table. Unfortunately, before the panel even began, a situation occurred where a racist joke was released in a satirical newsletter. The newsletter wasn't an official pantheacon newsletter, but something done by individuals as a way to humorously comment on the proceedings of the convention (Its the Pantycon newsletter). In this case however, there was nothing funny about what was written. If anything, it highlighted exactly what people of color deal with everyday, and the fact that this occurred at a Pagan convention shows that racism is a reality no matter where you go. The joke in question was a fake workshop:

“Ignoring Racism: A Workshop for White Pagans Large Umbrella Pagan Group

Isn’t all this talk of social justice and racism just tiring? Don’t you wish you could just ignore it and put out meaningless statements of pure pablum? We’ll discuss how to ignore requests for consideration by pagans of color, cover up racist actions of high-ranking members, and pretend that you don’t understand the resulting outrage. Remember, #AllLivesMatter, except  when it’s uncomfortabe or inconvenient. Large Umbrella Pagan Group has been around for long enough that they think they can get away with this stuff.”

This joke is tasteless. Regardless of what the intention of the person or people writing it was, the result was that people of color felt triggered once again. This joke was a form of harassment (to put it mildly) and of racism.

Pantheacon has an anti-harassment policy. The head of programming showed up to the panel and made it clear that Pantheacon didn't endorse or approve of what had been written. Additionally they had a cancelled workshop on Monday and made sure a follow-up session was made available of Pagans of Color and other people interested to discuss what happened and what could be done to make conventions safe. I was unfortunately not able to attend because I had to catch my flight back.

At the end of the Bringing the Race to the Table Panel, one of the attendees, Luna Pantera, who has contributed to Shades of Faith and Shades of Ritual got up and expressed how she was triggered by what had been written in that newsletter. The pain in her voice, the rage, the hurt, the fear is something that I as a white person have never had to experience. Then she asked all of us what we were going to do to take action, to make change, to stop letting this be an everyday reality.

What she expressed struck me to my core. It reminded me of the privilege I have, the white bubble I live in everyday. I take it for granted. But a person of color can't take it for granted anywhere. In Shauna Aura Knight's post she shares how an escort system was set up s0 Pagans of Color could feel safe and how people would walk by the POC hospitality Suite and yell Racist because the Pagans of Color wanted a safe space.

On Sunday night, after I'd finished up with the Immanion Press panel, I walked by the POC hospitality suite. They were going to have a closed door meeting, just available for them and what I noticed is that they were redirecting people coming to it, to go to another location. I didn't follow because it wasn't my business to, but it struck me how a space that was supposed to be safe no longer was because of racism.

Luna asked all of us what we were going to do to change this. I can't answer for anyone else, but my own answer is to continue to call racism out, continue to take action to support people of color and to support causes that perform a similar function. We can only stop racism if we don't allow it to flourish in any form, but instead recognize how it causes inequity, how it reinforces a system of oppression and how it diminishes all of us. What will you do to take action?

Want to actually do this, not just read about it?

How Magic Works is where I teach how to take a desire from intent to an actual result, step by step. Start the class →

Not ready to buy anything? Why Your Spells Don't Stick is a free guide to the most common reasons a working stalls, and where to start fixing it.

If you want help with a specific situation, work with me one to one.

Narrative and Identity

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

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

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

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

How Stillness leads to Openness to Being

In the last year or so, my daily practice has shifted toward doing a lot of work with stillness practices. What's fascinated me the most about these practices is how stillness is cultivated for the purpose of cultivating a state of openness to being. You still yourself, still all the activities and thoughts and open yourself to the experience as it is. Anything else that comes along is a distraction, so if you find yourself thinking or day dreaming or whatever else, you basically are no longer still. You are moving once again.

One of the reasons I did the elemental balancing work with movement and then stillness was to get a better appreciation of how these two states of being interact with each other. I feel that the stillness practices are giving me some insights that will be useful for other work I have gestating at the moment, but in and of itself, its been good for me to just work with stillness and observe my own experiences with it, some of which I've been sharing in my monthly elemental balancing ritual report. What I find is that some days its easier to cultivate stillness and other days its harder to cultivate stillness. A big part of it is how easily the mind gets distracted by possibilities or thoughts versus maintaining a very specific state of awareness where everything just is. It's far easier to wander into the realm of possibilities and random thoughts, but I think the beneficial effects of cultivating an actual state of stillness is that your awareness of being is honed. You truly open yourself to being present with yourself and your environment without filtering that awareness with your thoughts or possibilities. You just are and that's something which is distinctly different from everyday consciousness.

Interestingly enough the closest state of altered consciousness I've found that is somewhat similar to the state of stillness is the state that occurs when a person watches TV or plays a video game, in the sense that the person's attention is engaged by what s/he is interacting. However there is a distinct difference because the person isn't still. They are still interacting in some way or form with their environment, as opposed to just being in it. The monkey mind may be quiet, but they haven't really achieved a state of stillness. The state of stillness is distinct in that nothing is actually occurring. You are just still. You open yourself to the world and you enter a state of being which is not interactive so much as ontological.

Stillness leads to openness to being because it takes away all the distractions, movement, thoughts that are more about doing than being. When you are still, you just are and that's the only thing which matters. Inevitably though we come back from stillness, move away from being into doing because that's part of living life, but what stillness gives us, in opening up to being, is a chance to simplify, to get clarity in not doing anything at all. The stillness work I do each day is a pause in everything else and yet brings with it a clarity of focus that allows me to find that sense of presence in everything, because while doing may distract from being, being is nonetheless always there until it isn't at all and neither is doing at that point.

I now have a youtube channel

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