Meditation and Consciousness

For the most part we are unaware of how much of our minds are focused on processing sensory information. Our brains are filled with interconnected circuits responsible for coordinating our sensory information into a unified whole. The fact that we can catch a ball being thrown at us is a marvel when examined closely. Our eyes process a series of images that one region of the brain interprets as being a ball, other circuits determine that the ball like shape that is growing larger is actually moving towards us. Then our brain must tell our muscles (lots of them) exactly how much force needs to be applied to move our arms and open our hand to catch the ball. And we can do all this in less than a second.

So when we meditate, our consciousness isn’t tied up with this vast array of sensory networks to coordinate. This is why an activity such as running or watching tv can go by very quickly but even a few minutes sitting down in a quiet room with one’s eyes closed can be experience a taking more time. When our other senses are for the most part unoccupied, or at least not sending attention arousing signals, our entire awareness is focused on our internal thought processes. Of course, this does not happen immediately.

For me at least, there are several regular predictable stages that occur when starting to meditate. First my body spends some time shifting into a comfortable position, muscles relax and as the tension is relieved by body weight is distributed differently. As I shift into a more comfortable position, much of my attention is directed towards my vision, or lack thereof. As primates, our primary sense for orienting ourselves is vision, so naturally it is the sense our minds keep trying to use even when deprived of discernible visual input. The patterns seen when the eyes are closed are random firing of photoreceptors, the cells that detect light in our eyes. The patterns we see are the attempts our minds make to detect recognizable shapes in the chaotic weak input. After awhile the brain realizes that visual input isn’t going to occur, it shifts to the other sense, most prominent being the sense of touch. The random firing of sensory neurons across the body give rise to a whole host of sensations, from hot to cold, itching, pain and occasionally pleasant sensations as well, though they are often overlooked because the mind does not treat them with the same urgency as is provoked by sensations of pain.

If these sensations are ignored, the mind eventually stops focusing on external input and enters an interesting state, where the mind is able to experience thoughts through the senses, almost like a dream but without the lapses in memory the usually accompany dreaming. The mind is now in what some call a trance like state, able to recollect information that is usually inaccessible to the regular waking state. The mind is experienced as much more creative. It isn’t any more creative, but rather it is experienced as more because it is not occupied with having to process all the addition information that the five senses provide almost continuously during our waking lives.

This focused state is still new territory. It is well known that some people are able to accomplish incredible feats of mental calculation and others may experience near perfect recall of visual information. It seems likely that these people are more used to accessing information that is for most only available in this trance like state. It is certainly worth experiencing.

Systems of Magick, let’s start over

There are so many systems of magick to choose from it can be overwhelming for the new comer to find their way to a system which they can work with harmoniously. This problem is compounded by the fact that a system that has an underlying philosophy that be work very well for a person may not posses a magickal system that said individual can work with easily. For example, consider hermetic kabbalism, a system whose fundamental goal is individual spiritual development through the training of magickal/psychic abilities. Astral travel, evocation, energy work, and divination have been thoroughly explored from the perspective of hermetic kabbalism. Yet this very individualistic system of development is highly structured and ritualized. Strong structural elements in a magickal system can be very valuable for the right people, but can be confining to others who prefer a more free-form practice and still desire a system of development. Other systems such as neo-paganism can have a very free-form approach to magick which may be perfect for some, but it’s philosophies concerning spirituality can be seen as wishy-washy by those who want a little more of a roadmap.

In essence it can be very difficult to find a good fit. It seems like systems need to be meshed together so that an individual can have a system which suits their needs. This can be a problem when the systems have inherent conflicts or contradictions. For example, imagine someone who is focused on the spirituality of the new age global consciousness movement, what if the magick that feels right to them happens to be Lovecraftian themed rituals… seems kinda tricky to mesh those together without ripping one system apart. And people are tricky like that, we are by no means consistent. Hypocrisy and contradictions are what make up individuality. If we didn’t contradict ourselves, we’d just be stereotypes.

In lieu of trying to piece together a system of magick from where others have tread before, why not start anew? Primitive man was fortunate in not being overburdened with the multitudes of assumptions and structures placed upon the universe that we all inherited. Our progenitors were free to explore their universe with very little preconceptions.

Imagine two people meeting without language and being attracted to each other. Having no words or prior experiences to classify the effects they have on each other. They don’t know anything about each other or the sensations they are experiencing for the first time. They would experience being drawn to each other without understanding why and yet feel it as the most natural thing in the world.

This is the same approach our proto-shaman ancestors must have taken towards what we now consider the supernatural/magickal/occult and whatnot. First not being burdened with a materialistic mindset, they would not have seen “magickal” experiences as other. They would experience it as yet another wondrous facade of existence, another mystifying experience. Magickal structures came through experimentation starting with almost no preconceptions towards what was possible and what would work.

By using the magickal system of another, you assume that those who have come before you have had the same goals as you and that these methods are universal, what works for one should work for all. Most occultists have had the experience of that very first spell working out great, thus drawing them into the work of magick. But they assume the spell worked because they saw the desired results. But really, did the spell work because it was a good spell, or because we open ourselves up to the possibility that the events could be manifested, or maybe something else happened, who knows? But from then on, most people put their faith in that magickal system because it worked.

The next mistake comes in assuming that the person who wrote the spell knows more about spirituality and stuff than you do, because they can cast spells and get results (allegedly). But just because a physicist can show you how to smash atoms and release energy, that doesn’t mean you should listen to the dating advice they give you.

My suggestion, approach magick as though you were falling in love for the first time. No preconceptions, just enjoyment of the experience without knowing where you’re headed, but trusting your instincts. Don’t approach with fear, don’t approach with expectations. You don’t have those when you first fall in love, everything is new, seen through new eyes and the experience rocks your whole life for years to come. After your first love, you’re never the same. If you trust in yourself and you trust in magick, you’ll never find yourself pouring over arcane tomes looking for the lost knowledge of another when you can be obtaining better info from the source. Why go with second hand material? Unless of course pouring through forgotten tomes is how magick really manifests for you, then you’ll find all sorts of things in there. More or less, if you do what feels natural and trust you instincts, you’re way better off than following a system that may only be hindering your magickal development.

Good luck and keep up the good work,

N.

It started off as a rant, then it got interesting

The first three paragraphs here are a bit self’righteous, but if you plow through them, it gets good, I promise.

Do you remember the early 2000s? When the internet was still just starting up, before facebook and all that social crap, there were a lot of quality websites discussing the occult. Pagans, shamans, magicians and all sorts of heretics jumped to the internet as a means of finally being able to connect with each other, as well as freely discuss magick without fear of persecution. It was a time of hope and excitement for the future of modern magick.

Most of those quality sites are now gone, some live on but have not been edited in years, and a whole lot of crap sites have come up. We went from good websites with people discussing their ideas to blogs upon blogs of the holier than thou types.

These pompous self-declared adepts are insufferable. It’s bad enough that they’re so arrogant they make Crowley seem modest. But it’s even worse that I can’t read one of their “orginal posts” without recalling which book I read that “original idea” in over a decade ago. They speak with great authority of the astral planes and the properties of magickal energy, and yet they seem to avoid relating any actual experiences with magick. The ones that do usually talk about the fluffy feeling of being embraced with universal love, sure that’s a trip, but when they speak of it, it sounds like bullshit.

If they really have experienced those moments of bliss, shouldn’t they know about the counterparts? About what it’s like when you’ve drained your reserves on a magickal working, you’re laying in bed in that open pre-sleep state, you haven’t done a banishing in a few days, and something nasty sneaks under your defenses and hits you with the primordial terror. How you react to that tells you more about your magickal abilities and progress than all the adventures in astral land put together.

And how bout the synchronicities? To me there’s no greater indication that my magickal practice is having an effect on me than when I see those damn synchronicities where ever I go. Or how bout noticing things that you never saw before in a place you’re familiar with, something which would have had to have been there all along… That’s a really weird one, occam’s razor would point to the simplest explanation, being that magickal and meditative practice had lead to an increase in awareness so I now notice more in my surroundings, but hell, depending on how flexible the universe is, what if I’m waking up each morning in a slightly different universe, that’s almost identical except for some small changes. And if that’s the case, maybe it’s possible to deliberately slip between parallel universes and reach ones that are more and more different than the point of origin.

I could imagine doing this in small planned jumps. I figure in a universe of unknown amounts of parallel universes, only the ones that resemble our own the most can be reached without using some serious juice. But by jumping to one of those, you shift a little bit a now other some parallel universes that were too far to reach can be reached from this new one. A warning, this may very well be the kind of journey you can’t return from. But don’t take that too seriously, the only difference here from what everyone else does is attempting to make it more deliberate. This is just another way of applying the mechanisms through which magick affect reality.

I imagine there are others out there who practice travel magick, though they may use a different name for it. I have found sleep, walking around on psychedelics, and conversations with the right people to be the most effective ways of entering n-space. In n-space the regular laws of space-time do not apply, you may have experienced n-space in a ritual, within the magickal circle, but in a ritual n-space is confined. To me it’s that heightened state where ideas flow with the greatest of ease, a state of clarity where calm and excitement are experienced simultaneously… there’s a lot more I could say but I’d imagine it varies from person to person. Unfortunately I have yet to find a way to remain in n-space, but what occurs within n-space will affect where you come out.

Some magick you learn by hearing about and trying, and some magick that just comes to you, you live and learn it. This is magick my closest friend and I discovered. This is magick that works, I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprises, but I would love to hear of any adventures in n-space you might have. Also just leave a comment if you’re having trouble getting into n-space and I’ll be happy to give you some pointers that have worked for me.

Back to the Basics

Making progress with magick can seem difficult at times. There is very little information out there on advanced magickal techniques and most of those are lengthy hermetic rituals requiring intense memorization and oratory, not to mention some serious blacksmithing and woodworking experience. I’d like to destroy that revolting imprint that so called high magick has left on the occult community and declare once and for all that those so called advanced rites, the ones to be performed after the pentagram has been repeatedly banished and invoked, after hexagons, trapezoids, and a plethora of polygons and n-dimensional forms in non-euclidean space have been drawn down, those rituals are bullshit.

Magick is about mindset, if you think a ritual that involves complex mystical symbols in foreign languages is really powerful juju, then it will be. But if you’re trying to make some magickal progress, everything you need is in the first few chapters.

The great rituals don’t do half as much towards developing awareness and magickal abilities as do those so called beginner exercises and meditations. It’s by doing those that you improve your abilities to focus and manipulate your awareness. Take for example body awareness, by focusing on your body, you gain a greater sense of your internal state. By focusing on your emotions, you are in dialog with your subconscious, where your inner self is reacting to your experiences, those reactions manifest through your emotions if you choose to listen. And yes simple mantras and actions can do more to manifest one’s desires than importing rare incense and gemstones to appease the deities.

Ritual magick is a path yes, and it works for some, sure. But let’s be honest, it’s a path for sadists. Memorizing meaningless gibberish and assimilating volumes of lore to perform long rituals which are all seriousness and no fun is only something I would recommend if all else fails. After all, we’re not trying to be self-flagellating monks right?

So to all the ritual magicians I say that you better be having fun with what you’re doing, cause all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

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Asphalt Jungle Survival Part 1

The city is a parasite and it wants your soul.

I walk the streets of Boston and I watch those around me. I play a game with myself and I search for people who look happy. How many people can I find that walk with a lively step, a smile, and a spark in their eyes? Not many, in fact there are so few it’s shocking. This is not the way things should be, and coming from a small town I can say with some certainty that this is not normal. It amazes me how cities can have such huge populations but they are some of the most anti-social environments I have ever experienced.

Fear for their safety has put most city dwellers constantly on guard. The truth is there really are not that many people one needs to be on guard against and they inhabit small towns and cities alike. Being on guard and defensive against the world will only serve to reduce one’s quality of life. Being aware is the most effective way to insure one’s safety while living in city, town or wilderness alike without diminishing one’s experiences. Paying attention is key.

The average city dweller walks with a great mental wall erected in front of them. They don’t make eye contact and they are seldom caught smiling. They walk the streets caught up in mental constructs and they barely see those around them. They are blind.

At night and alone the city dwellers walk hastily, with short rapid steps, you can almost smell the fear coming off them. Kick a trash can and see them startle and jump. They are prey.

I walk the city with eyes open and I see just how few of us there are that are paying attention at any given moment. It saddens me because it is fear that blinds the rest. I know this from experience because in small towns like where I’m from people make eye contact with strangers, they walk with confidence and a smile. It is those very same people that city dwellers tend to look down on. But so many more of them are happy. Where I’m from, it’s the unhappy people that are the oddities, in the city, happy people are the rare freaks.

An interesting meditation

I’ve often found that in the practice of magick there are times where is seems like all one’s efforts aren’t doing much. Sometimes progress is difficult to see. And there are other times when magick likes to surprise with unexplained events or strange feats.

I just had a moment where magick made itself felt, in a gentle way (spend enough time doing magick and you’ll see, it’s not always gentle). I was meditating in an uncomfortable position and instead of changing my posture I stuck with it with some difficulty. After some time I had the most unusual experience, the pain became pleasurable. It was unusual not because I have never had that particular experience before, I have, but never while meditating. If I had to describe it, I’d say it was almost exactly like the way pain can be pleasurable during sex. To have that happen during meditation was, for lack of a better term, pretty freaking cool.

Yep, that’s right, put up with enough pain and the body releases the endogenous opiates enkephalin and endorphin. So there you have it, the science behind the magick and the magick behind the science. Like I said, pretty freaking cool.

Sorcery and Alchemy

There exist a plethora of forms of magick but for the sake of simplicity and perhaps honesty, I’ll divide the practice of magick into two, and only two categories. There is sorcery and there is alchemy.

I define sorcery as magick that is practiced for the sole purpose of causing things to materialize in the external world, and thus alchemy is defined as magick practiced to cause change to manifest in the self.

Now obviously what manifests in the self will also cause change in the external world, just as events that transpire in the material world affect the self. However what distinguishes alchemy and sorcery is intent. The true sorcerer is not interested in changing their self, rather they seek to change their environment to one which is more suiting to their ego. This could involve smiting those who the sorcerer sees as deserving of smiting, it could also involve acquiring wealth and prestige. The goal is the same, the external world is modified to better suit the magician. The sorcerer delves into the unknown for the purpose of bringing back something useful.

The alchemist on the other hand is a curious creature. They will delve into the unknown to seek truth, answers, enlightenment… whatever you call it really doesn’t matter. They practice magick for the sake of experiencing the unknown and to be changed by it. Self-transformation, communing with the HGA, realizing one’s true will or crossing the abyss are all terms to describe what the alchemist is seeking. Since what they are seeking is intangible, they explore and understand that part of them that is obscured, they seek the intangible within. This process does not involve retreating from the external world as some mistakingly do, but rather to use the external world as a tool for exploring themselves, much as the sorcerer uses the intangible to explore the external world.

Now it should be obvious that it is almost impossible to practice only one of the two forms of magick, their goals are linked. The path of a true sorcerer requires a great deal of introspection if one does not wish to self-destruct. A sorcerer is constantly assessing their desires and motivations. Since to practice magick requires deliberate intent, sorcery demands an iron will. The only way to develop that is through alchemy.

The same is true for the alchemist, the alchemist seeks to transform, but transform into what? Self-transformation  requires exploration and experimentation, this means great adventures into the self. But to really test the mental and emotional transformations the alchemist undergoes whilst venturing through the labyrinth of the self and beyond, the alchemist must jump back into the real world and experience for themself just what has changed and what hasn’t. Besides, what guides self-transformation but a desire to improve the quality of one’s existence? You can’t do that without keeping in mind that eventually the inner journey will have to sustain the body, and alleged feats of mystical monks aside, that requires getting up off your ass to get some grub.

Every human being is at times a sorcerer and at times an alchemist, unless they are a fully automated robot (don’t discount this, there actually are a few of em), but we all have our own talents and predilections that cause us to focus more on one side of the craft. But these two forms of magick are connected in strange ways. Should you be stuck in your practices, feeling that you’ve reached a glass ceiling, chances are you are being called to explore the side of magick you’ve been neglecting. Alchemists are usually the worst about this. Sorcerers tend to be a bit more aware of the importance of the internal magickal world. Alchemists have a tendency to exult the internal dimensions so much, thinking that they are exploring higher spiritual planes, that they forget that all the spirituality you need can be found in your backyard. Alchemy and Sorcery are not distinct, it is our own distinctions between our inner and outer worlds that force us to divide our magickal practices.

Secrets

If you’re new to magick, or even if you’re not, you may be wondering why there’s still so much secrecy enveloping the practice of magick. Some practitioners love to surround themselves with an aura of mystery, it makes them appear mysterious and powerful to the easily impressed. You could be a total twit who’s never even performed a proper banishing, but act secretive and you’re sure to attract a few lost souls.

Just to be clear, I’m not speaking about keeping one’s magickal practice secret from the public eye, historically that practice makes sense depending on one’s environment. I speak of secrecy among practitioners. It seems like there are those who get off on claiming great magickal knowledge and then withholding it or using it as a bargaining chip to obtain… well, it’s almost always sex or money. Those people are to be avoided, they usually haven’t learned any secrets except the secret of appearing to have secrets, which can be a powerful tool, but they are charlatans, they are seeking to use those around them, pursue them at your own risk. Also avoid the braggarts, they are pretty much the same, except instead of sex or money, they are more interested in having their egos stroked.

However the tradition of secrecy among practitioners has another purpose and it is one that is seldom spoken of to the uninitiated, and that is that acquiring a magickal secret is a true initiation. Ignore group initiations for a second, those are what cement a magickal order together, but the secrets conferred by a group initiation are not true magickal secrets because a true magickal secret cannot be given by anyone else, it must be earned by the initiate. So possessing certain magickal secrets serves a a form of recognition among those who have acquire a certain level of magickal knowledge, if everyone knew of those secrets, everyone could claim those high titles and cheapen the effort of those who had actually come to earn that knowledge. But if that was all there was too it, magickal secrets would be spread, because even if they were not earned, shouldn’t learning be passed on?

The trouble is that magickal secrets cannot be passed on. To explain why, I must resort to analogy. This is pretty much the parable of the cave so just bear with me if you know your classics. Imagine that you are blind and I want to teach you about the color red, I cannot show you red, you’re blind. I can describe the color red, but without a frame a reference, you would have no way to picture it. I could explain the emotions associated with red and you’d probably think it was a pretty sultry color, and it is. But that is merely a cultural association with the color red. The real problem is that if I told you all about red, even though you were blind, you would think that you had grasped some element of what the color red is. If you were not blind but only color blind you might even think that you had now identified the color red. And if you had your eyes closed instead of being blind, you wouldn’t learn how to open your eyes because you’d already think you knew red.

That is much the same with a magickal secret, I could tell you the words that represent the magickal secret to me, but if you had grasped the secret at least slightly, you would understand the words and only think you understood the idea behind them. A true magickal secret is world shattering, it changes the world you live in. If you posses what you think is a magickal secret, it probably isn’t one. If you have a magickal secret, you know it, you’ll know it because when you obtain it, it brings you to your knees in awe, in terror, in joy, or in sorrow, but probably in a mix that ends in laughter.

So I won’t tell you my magickal secret, because you can’t hear it, I could tell you the words but I would only be doing you a disservice and lead you to chase shadows. But when you get there, not only will you know that your magick has brought you something special, but you’ll realize you’re not the only one because you have heard the secret before. Others have spoken them but you had never realized exactly what they were saying until just now. In a way, occultists have left graffiti around for those with eyes to see, a way to say to others we may never meet that we too had realized what they had. Because having a secret you can’t share is lonely, so we try to show others the way to get there, or we hold on to them jealously, it depends on the occultist and the secret I suppose.

And that concludes this chapter on magickal secrets. They are there, or at least one of them is, that I can say for sure. I get the distinct impression there are more but I’m not there yet. Oh and don’t now waste your time scanning this article for secrets, the only secret here is the one that is plainly spoken, the secret about secrets.

NITEIP

Eulogy

I’ve been thinking for some time on this matter and I’ve come to a sad conclusion; chaos magick is dead. Chaos magick went the way of punk rock, the movement is dead but it’s influence remains. What we are left with is a few old school punks or chaos magicians intermixed with a few lost souls drawn to a movement that’s already passed it’s prime and begun to decay. For you see, chaos magick had one fatal flaw that lead to it’s downfall, it was an individualistic movement, which contained at it’s core the pure selfish drive of transforming the individual into something of their own choosing, self-determinism of the soul. You can’t be a good chaos magician without first becoming a major disruption to those people in your life which would have you behave with propriety. The path a chaos magician must take is to adopt a stance where everything is put into question, deliberately examining every aspect of human behavior and belief. To accomplish this properly the magician must perform the greatest of society’s sins, which isn’t to rebel against society, rebellion is only the strengthening and reinforcement of ideologies, granted they are ideologies that differ from the ideologies of whoever the rebellion is against, but they are none the less ideologies.

To treat ideologies as clothing, things which can be put on and tossed off at whim is the very antithesis to how most people live their lives. Most people will only go through a few ideologies, who they are as children, who they are as teenagers, who they are as young adults, and who they are as they age. Throughout most of this, a few key beliefs will be held onto for an individual’s entire life or they might make one big change and be born again, but in almost all cases, that’s the end of the line. You live as a mostly consistent person with a more or less similar way of looking at the world for your whole life. So chaos magick says to hell with that, let’s have some fun and not take all this crap so seriously, it will all be disproved in less than a few centuries anyways. So chaos magick is naturally selfish, embracing that one can see how all truths are relative. It’s cheating life by society’s standards, society which has at it’s core the message saying you should care about BLANK. BLANK can be anything, but it cannot be nothing, and to treat caring about something, believing in causes and morality is an affront to the majority whose lives are constrained within the limits of their narrow world view.

And so the chaos magicians were the great cheaters in the game of life, free to don beliefs as they suited their lives, not the other way around as the rest of the world struggles to do each day. To treat everything that is from humanity as a comical theater and pick and choose which roles one wishes to act out is the key to chaos magick. Chaos magick represented being a deliberate actor in the game of life even though everyone around you didn’t know they were on stage playing a role. Of course this created hostility, because even though those caught up in the play couldn’t see the stage, they could still tell that chaos magicians weren’t playing by the same rules, they weren’t playing along or acting like they were supposed to. Even crazy people are consistent in their own crazy ways, but chaos magicians were not. Their lives appeared chaotic to those on stage who weren’t in on the act, and they represented a threat, after all, enough people on stage goofing around and the play changes, becomes something akin to improv, and the normal actors are oh so fond of their well rehearsed scripts.

And in the end chaos magick was killed by the community current. If you follow modern philosophy you get a very good picture of how the average person is feeling within modern society. And the modern philosophic current goes something like this… Ahem, we exist in a global community where all people are interconnected. We must embrace diversity and strive towards the good of all mankind. We must look at humankind as a community and be conscious of our actions and how they affect us and our environment. We must help those less fortunate than us because growing up hearing that we were privileged and hearing about starving orphans with malaria has left us feeling guilty if we are not contributing towards the GREATER GOOD. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few and everyone belongs to everyone else… you see where this is going right?

Some of the greatest proponents of this current have been in the new age and neo-pagan movements. It was their ideology that eventually got a foothold on the magickal community of the western world and the chaos magicians got invited to less and less parties, they were social pariah after all, hell even the satanists believed in something. This is not to say that chaos magicians did not find many with curious minds, just that the winds of the prevailing belief system were against them. I suppose it was inevitable, chaos magick theory would have been a threat to just about any system of organized belief which embraces consistency.

So here we are, chaos magick was not killed because the community lovers forced them out, but rather because they were the ones to pass on their sacred principles to the next generation, something harder for chaos magicians to do what with the whole desecrating everything is good for you philosophy. The myspace/facebook/twitter generation eats up that global community shit by the mouthful. Communication majors will soon plague us like lawyers… god help us, I think I was less worried about the lawyers.

Well that’s about it for now, we live in a time of self righteous, community loving, technology obsessed, self-subjugating concerned citizens.

Welcome to my world,

I may not be much of a choas magician when it comes to sigils, I hate those damn things, but I live and breath subjectivity. Maybe that’s not enough to make me a chaos magician, but the beauty of being a chaos magician is I get to decide what makes me a chaos magician, therefore I am one.