Leave of Absence

Posted by Chirotus Infinitum on

I’ve been keeping up with my blogging pretty well over the past two months, and I have developed a small but steady readership during that time. I want to take the time to thank all of you who bother to visit my little corner of the web, and especially those who make the effort to comment and contribute (even if I don’t respond to your comment — I’m bad about that).

But I am going off to yet another Heartland Pagan Festival here in, well, the Heartland. And as such I will be enjoying humid heat, the amenities of my tent, and a complete lack of contact from the outside world. (Well, that assumes that there haven’t been any new cell towers built near Mclouth in the past few years since I last went, so who knows – I may pop in on the Twitter occasionally.)

But I’d like to keep some activity here on the Blacklight, so I’ve set up to advance publish a few posts. Those posts will include some links to a few of my articles and blogs posts from the past that I am particularly fond of, as well as links to other sites and blogs that I like to visit. (Unfortunately I can’t link o any interesting articles that might be written in advance, but the homepages should be enough.)

So if you are so inclined, take the time to revisit some of my older work, as well as to peruse the work of those that inspire my writing.

Salve,

Charm and Context

Posted by Chirotus Infinitum on

Morgan presents this very interesting and informative piece on Justice Charms:

These are charms from the Carmina Gadelica that have been modernized and made pagan. They can be used to help gain justice or to win in court, or to otherwise overcome legal difficulties. The person wishing to perform these charms should go before dawn to a place where three streams meet. Just as the sun is rising the person should make a cup of his hands and dip them into the water where the stream meet then wash his face with it, saying the prayer below. Afterwards he should proceed to court and when entering the building should look all around the room then say silently or quietly “Gods bless this place, from floor to roof, my word above every other and the words of all others beneath my feet.” (Carmichael, 1900).

I think that this demonstrates a few interesting considerations regarding magic.

  • It is entirely possible to translate spells or magical workings between systems, given enough preparation. Granted, it is much easier to translate between systems with similar cultural or existential beliefs and assumptions in common, and as with energy conversion, there will always be something lost. But Christianity has so much in common with classical paganism that it could easily classified as a classical pagan religion, and shifting between the two isn’t that hard. Qabalah translates pretty well into Greek. (Latin is a little trickier because the numerology doesn’t add up.)
  • There is Christian magic, and it can be very effective.
  • Christian magic is often appropriated from non-Christian sources, and that doesn’t seem to impact how well it works.
  • Magic evolves. Sometimes the cultural context of a modern practitioner will make it easier or more potent to connect to a more modern form of a ritual or spell than the older one. The primary source is not inherently better. The rite from the Stele of Jeu the Painter of Hieroglyphs is not necessarily more potent than Crowley’s version of the Invocation to the Bornless One because it is the older and “purer” version. It depends upon which version you have a better developed context for.
  • Magic for enlightenment or spiritual growth is dandy, but let’s be real: most people turn to magic because they want to make things happen in their favor, especially when odds are against them. The casual manner in which many modern magical systems in the West dismiss effects magic is a pretense, and a rather annoying one at that.
  • You can find material for building spells from interesting sources. Be on the lookout for what may inspire you.

Local Seasons

Posted by Chirotus Infinitum on

I was catching up on Pete Carroll’s blog, and in one entry he commented that he knew that spring had finally arrived because his pond had filled with frogs.

It’s nice to have little local indicators that Spring has sprung, or that other seasonal shifts and changes have occurred.

The weather patterns for Kansas have been very off this year. It has been unseasonably cold so far, and this week we are facing record highs. But there are a few seasonal indicators that we can rely upon to tell that Spring has finally arrived.

The Bradford Pear trees bloomed a while back. For anyone not familiar with these trees, in early Spring they produce beautiful white blossoms for about two weeks. Those beautiful blossoms unfortunately emit a noxious odor that closely resembles a stale trashcan filled with used condoms.

That’s normally a good indicator of Spring. This year it failed, as the pretty white blossoms were covered in a few inches of snow and were killed off.

So our major indicator of Spring in Kansas is on its way soon: Tornado Season. It has been much delayed by the unseasonable cold, but this weekend is forecast to begin a week-long deluge of daily severe thunderstorms that bring flash floods, hail, and tornadoes. (If you’re not from the Midwest, it sounds much scarier than it is.) And that is the true sign that the wheel is turning.

We have other seasonal indicators, including geese migrating to and from Canada, as well as seagulls and pigeons. During the winter we get bald eagles out here, fishing on the rivers. Most of our trees lose their foliage relatively late.

Apparently on the East Coast they have hordes of cicadae emerging, and this is a seasonal indicator up there. I know that the Northeast has exceptional color shows compliments of their forests come Autumn. I’m not too sure what other major weather patterns or migratory activities denoted seasonal change in other regions.

So if I have any readers that notice or keep track of such things, what seasonal change indicators do you look for where you live? How do those indicators and seasonal changes match up to the Wicca Wheel of the Year? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

My Path: Early Groups

Posted by Chirotus Infinitum on

To recap:

My early religious background.

My first magical experiences.

So I was with a group of people. And they all did some kind of magic. And for someone looking for validation for my own experiences and a sense of belonging, it was a dream come true. So much so that I was willing to overlook the fact that these kids were fucking weird.

There were about five in this group, not including myself. And they saw auras and talked to dragons and did simple spells. Oh, and they smoked a lot of pot and dropped a lot of acid, neither of which appealed to me.

Jack spoke of a rather elaborate cosmology. At one time, there were great dragons who were masters of the elements. They regulated and ruled the elements, and were probably indistinct from gods. In fact, Jack asserted that the elemental powers that they controlled were what the gods themselves relied upon for their own power.

Each of these elemental powers was manifest in elemental “orbs”, which were sort of elemental singularities or nexus points, and were tended to by these dragons. But the dragons, over time, became tainted by other concerns, and lost their pure devotion to their own particular element. This led to a loss of balance in the world. So the orbs themselves manifested new elemental masters, which challenged and overthrew the dragons.

The exception was the dragon of Spirit, who refused to relinquish his hold on the spirit orb, and instead shattered it. This resulted in a massive imbalance in existence, which was corrected by the splitting of reality into three planes: the physical, the astral, and the celestial.

You following so far?

Now, on its surface, it sounds pretty bizarre. If you really think about it, the notion of elemental points or orbs isn’t too horribly off from simplistic understandings of the Tree of Life, and the thought that there are elemental masters, layers of reality, and some sort of “descent” into the physical world aren’t that unusual in metaphysical and magical systems. And this can easily be interpreted in metaphorical terms as well, as many magicians understand crossing the abyss.

But there’s more. You see, Jack talked about how the spirit dragon was planning to free the other defeated dragons. And how the children of the spirit dragon would rise to challenge the current elemental masters and defeat them. And when this happened, the Children would remove a “shard” from the orbs and present them to the spirit dragon, who would reforge the Orb of Spirit.

Which would return balance to existence. By destroying the world.

If you still follow, and you really want to, you can still interpret this as metaphor. Balance of the spirit, rebirth into enlightenment, that sort of thing. Sort of like evoking the Goetic demons to get them to swear allegiance to the corresponding archangels and balance the Tree of Life within.

But Jack had none of this “metaphor’ crap. He described it literally. Oh, and guess who was the reincarnation of the dragon of spirit?

What does all of this have to do with working with magical groups?

Because that was my first introduction to doing magic with a group of people. A person who believed himself to be the embodiment of a being of power, and his chosen children, who were all going to cause the end of the world.

I was lucky. Jack never tried to convince me I was one of the Children. I was something else, and no one was sure what.

This group fell apart in fairly short order. Jack had quit his drug use, and was more interested in disciplined esotericism. And the high kids, who had mostly been humoring him, were having none of that discipline crap. So they kind of fell to the wayside, although Jack maintained that once he found the rest of the Children (there were eight) they would come back.

I didn’t buy it very much, and mostly humored Jack as well. We were doing other magical work, and were getting real results. If anything, I was more disturbed than encouraged when the dragon spirits Jack spoke of came around and referenced the elemental masters.

Then we had a second group form.

By this time, I had encountered some other folks from high school who were into witchcraft. We’ll call one of them Sarah. And through Sarah, I met Angelina, whom I began dating. And Jack, Angelina, and I formed the core of a new group, with Sarah and a few others working on the periphery.

Jack brought up his cosmology, and used it to structure a lot of the exercises we were doing. But the exercises brought results, the spirits gave us information that we confirmed separately, and the magic worked.

Sarah never believed a bit of what Jack had to say. Angelina bought in to some of it, but became more skeptical as she realized I was humoring Jack myself. What was happening was that we had a group founded upon a mythology that only one person seemed to take seriously, but which everyone else was involved in because we were getting concrete results from. We never really sought to find those same results from other sources because we were never sure what other sources there were, and the mythology Jack presented offered plenty of ideas for exercises and magical work that worked just fine outside of that mythology.

This did not create a very solid or trusting environment. At least this group did not involve extensive drug use.

Eventually that group fell apart as well. Angelina and I stopped dating, and no one else wanted to put up with Jack. The value of what he was teaching was fast being outweighed by the skepticism of those  involved.

Jack decided that these groups weren’t worth the effort (at least for a little bit), and we continued working on our Octogram studies. And we now had something else to play around with, because we had found some new sources of information.

Through the mother of one of the periphery members of Jack’s second group, Jack had encountered someone who was teaching a class on metaphysics. It covered Qabalah and tarot as well. It was taught by a person I’ll call Walter, who described himself as a wizard.

This class was an informal one, meeting at one of the student’s house. But it was rather structured. And we covered some very interesting topics and performed some interesting exercises. And unlike the questionability of some of the theories going around the earlier groups, and the inevitable skepticism and distrust, this group was open and honest.

It was what I had been hoping for. It was a group led by a serious and experience magical practitioner, and attended by serious and honest students. And it provided information that had sources that I could verify independently.

I had discovered the Qabalah. I had discovered the tarot. I had discovered ceremonial magic.

I had discovered a Mentor.

Art

Posted by Chirotus Infinitum on

I’ve never liked to call myself an artist.

When I was little, I used to play with clay. The kind that you can get from Crayola, that never dries out and is in bright colors. I would use butter knives and toothpicks to sculpt rather intricate detail into my work. My mother used to bring her friends into my room to show them my elaborate Star Trek sets, which included the entire Enterprise D bridge and crew. The figures were less than an inch tall and had recognizable details, like Worf’s sash and Geordi’s visor.

I always had a lump of clay hidden in my desk in grade school, and would sculpt space shuttles, cars, and Transformers by touch during boring lectures.

In high school, I produced ceramic bowls, plates, and vessels, as well as characters and ships from video games. I once managed to construct a two foot ceramic rat and a large Vic Viper.

Mine didn’t look that cool. I never thought to make the Options, either.

I did paper-mache on wire frames. Some rather simple designs. Oh, and a three-foot tall model of Beavis and Butthead choking each other.

Uh huh huh. It was pretty cool.

I did jewelry work in high school. I made some necklaces and rings. When I was a little older, I made my (now ex) wife’s engagement ring. I even created some pieces for magical use.

20130513_200338

You saw this briefly in my toolbox video. Penny is for scale. That is solid sterling silver.

I’ve done some woodworking. I used to make small altars for stone a candle magic. I even sold a few of them. I once build a double-cube Qabalistic altar on commission for $100.

In grade school I played the violin. And the clarinet. And the slide trombone. I still play my ocarina, and I have a guitar, although I’ve never had the time or money to take lessons. I sing all the damn time, and very frequently filk songs or make up my own random ditties. I have sang ballads to pad thai and odes to tacos.

In middle school, I once created a dummy that I could punch and beat up to release aggression. I sewed it by hand. I’ve helped my partner make period clothes for SCA events, and have constructed my own ritual clothes.

I’ve been writing stories since I was old enough to hold a pencil. I’ve written horrible poetry by the truckload, some decent and clever poetry, and most science-fiction themed short stories. I wrote a 50-page novella for a creative writing class in high school. I’m getting back into the practice, and am working on a few short stories and ideas for a few books. And I suppose designing, editing, and writing for the several websites and blogs I’ve had over the years ought to count for something.

I used to do photography. Hidden somewhere are dozens if not hundreds of pictures, of people, landscapes, unusual objects, animals, insects, buildings, vehicles, and whatever else looked interesting. I actually worked as a portrait photographer for a while. And hopefully you’ve seen some of my experiments with videos. I’ve even made some video games before. (RPG Maker FTW!)

And I cook. I cook very well, and I’ve been doing it as an occupation in some form for at least 13 years. Now I am by no means a trained chef, but I cook well, and I take pride in making food that is not only tasty but is presented in a very visually appealing manner.

In high school I was in theater. I can apply my own and other people’s stage makeup. I can set lighting, design sets, and build them. And I can assume a persona and present that to the audience.

And I am a magician. Through imagery, voice, and movement, I commune with the divine. It’s like acting, but the gods are my audience.

 

But I’ve never liked to think of myself as an artist.

A little while ago, I wrote about feeling lost. My Mentor told me that I was struggling because I have the soul of an artist, but I wasn’t making art. I said this about it:

You see, I have equated “art” with “pretension” for some time. I get very annoyed with pagans, witches, and magicians who flaunt their “artist” credentials and drone on about incorporating their art with their magic in some grand project. This has even led me to not think of valid artists as “artists” if they’re not annoying and self absorbed. In my mind, people like Lupa are highly skilled craftsmen (uhhh, craftspersons?) and technicians. Anyone who perfects a technical craft is making art. One of the most beautiful examples I have seen of this was a a cook at a Pizza Hut who flicked his wrist and flipped a 12 inch pizza straight from the pan into the box. That’s art. Bloviating for 20 minutes about your “vision” isn’t.

Art is about seeing connections between things that other may not have seen before. Art is about form and function. Art is about pride and grace. Art is about quality. Art is about creating something that someone else recognizes as valuable because it has a beauty or quality uniquely its own. It is also about capturing the beauty of objects or moments in the world and expressing them in unique or thought-provoking ways. It is all these things and more.

Anything that humans put there hands to with mindfulness, creativity, and passion is art. And I must begrudgingly admit that this includes the self-serving pretentious assholes who ejaculate on trash and present it as a political thesis.

I am an artist. I am owning that fact.

Beware.

Pagan Standard Time

Posted by Chirotus Infinitum on

I’ve been contemplating a post on PST for some time. The problem isn’t that it’s hard to address, it’s that it has been so thoroughly addressed elsewhere that I wasn’t sure what else I had to say about it.

But I decided I needed to go on record anyway.

The first essay I read blasting Pagan Standard Time was one of the shortest, yet still stands firmly on its own. It was written by a guy that called himself Obsidian many years ago:

The woefully pretentious strike again. This time, though, they show up and strike whenever they feel like it. See, I’ve been to a couple of pagan festivals here, and aside from the people I associate with now, most pagans I know aren’t very good at keeping time. One of them playfully joked that their watch was set to Pagan Standard Time, and one must thence excuse them from their deadlines written in Eastern time. And this pisses me off, see, because I do my damnedest to make sure I’m on time. But, just like meetings at work, pagan meetings never seem to commence as scheduled, because you know that some key member’s going to be at least a half hour late. Pitiful.

This, like most problems in the Wiccan World, reduce to one thing: self-importance issues. “I think I’m important enough to where it won’t matter if I’m late,” says the self-important snob. “They’ll wait for me, because they have to.” This is why your manager sets meetings for 10:00 and shows up himself at 10:18.

Okay, Obsidian had some issues with Wicca. But he starts of with a valid criticism: one of self-importance. When you run late for a ritual, and just don’t care, you assume that you are important enough that everyone will wait for you. This assumption leads to several others:

  1. No one else is on a time crunch, and has someplace else to be after the ritual.
  2. That everyone knows you’re coming and will wait for you.
  3. Further, that someone knows who else is coming, so that you won’t wait for people who aren’t showing because they might be running late.
  4. That if you show up and they’ve already started, you can be accommodated and included somehow.

That’s a lot of assuming.

I’m not sure that I whole-heartedly accept Obsidian’s premise that that showing up late is a power play, but he is correct that such behavior is usually associated with dominance. Unless the person showing up late has a vital role in the operation of the ritual or event, I am more likely to believe that they are simply inconsiderate.

And that inconsiderateness is a major player for PST. It does seem that many people regard group rituals as social gatherings rather than actual magical or devotional events. And that ruins things for the people who take these events more seriously.

I’m also inclined to think that some of the anti-authority thinking in the newage and neopagan movements accounts for PST. If you don’t think that any one person should be in charge or call the shots, then why should you respect arbitrary declarations of time? After all, doesn’t the whole concept of time enslave us? Isn’t it just an artificial social construct that maintains anxiety and keeps us beholden to someone else’s determination of when things should happen?

Or maybe I’m just biased.

And the real thing about PST that bothers me is the underlying assumption that pagans are not able to tell time. That we are unable to be prepared or organized. That somehow, by nature of being pagan, we cannot have things ready to go or be on time or get started when we say we will. I do not like the fact that by claiming your religion as an excuse, you are projecting your negative traits on your coreligionists as well.

Obsidian offers a few suggestions to curbing Pagan Standard Time:

  1. Foremost: IF YOU SCHEDULE YOUR RITUAL FOR 6:00 PM, START AT 6:00 PM! Don’t wait till 6:15 for the douchebag who decided to take his own damn time. Make him feel sorry for putting you all up by making do without him. Remember: NO ONE IS IMPORTANT ENOUGH to be excluded from a deadline everyone else has to meet. If the Gods come when invited at a specific time, then damnit, anyone and everyone else should be able to as well. If not, then the issue is something that has to be addressed by oneself and not in front of everyone else when there’s more pressing matters at hand.

  2. DON’T LET SLACKERS SLIDE. If you’re going to allow people to piss off and show up whenever, then you’re going to spend at least an half hour in neutral getting nothing done because you’re waiting for some stupid, lazy boob to show up so you can begin the grounding session (because a partially grounded circle might as well not be grounded at all), then they’re going to piss off and show up whenever. Furthermore, the later you allow people to show up before starting on without them, then the later they will show up before starting on without them.

  3. DON’T BE LATE YOURSELF. If you do, then you’re really not setting a good example if you decide to harp on other people for being late. See, if I were usually tardy, then I’d be a complete kettle trying to tell you to show up on time. However, I’m almost always punctual, and when I’m not I make damned sure the party I intend to meet (be it work, a gathering, a band practice or anything else) knows that I will be tardy and how late I will be. Why? Because I’m a responsible person and I know that I, just like anyone else, am not important enough to where a Sabbat gathering or a staff meeting or a battle of the bands will hold up just for me. And if it does, then those people seriously need to reevaluate who I am…

Really, it comes down to consideration. If you agree to start ritual at a certain time, then be ready to start at that time. Because everyone else has agreed to that as well. And because using your religion as an excuse to be inconsiderate to other people makes you an asshole.

Magical Secrets

Posted by Chirotus Infinitum on

There are several occult and magical traditions that require extensive initiations before sharing their inner secrets. There are others that openly release their rites and offer them freely to any interested.

I myself have greatly benefited from rituals and instructions that were once secret but were released to a larger audience. I have made use of information and rituals easily accessible via books and the internet, and implemented changes to those based upon suggestions and feedback from other sources. And I have contributed my own rituals and exercises to that body of open work (and am in fact working on a “rituals” section for this site).

But I’ve got some stuff I ain’t sharing, either.

In the olden days (Teh Burning Tiemz!!!!!!) pagans and magicians did not share their knowledge because doing so could put them in danger of persecution. Initiation was not just a means of training new members, but of vetting them. (And modern covens still do this, although the vetting is usually a measure of compatibility with the group.)

Other groups did not wish to reveal certain rites or rituals because they were potentially dangerous. Performing a Goetic evocation without having reached the appropriate level of training can cause some issues. A spell which can result in damage or death to another is probably not going to be shared with someone you’re not sure about, especially if you believe that you bear the responsibility for the actions of those you teach.

And sometimes … well, sometimes you just want to have a trick or two up your sleeve. Just in case.

There are plenty of rituals that are available openly, and with the appropriate warnings and cautions. Use them at your own risk. But don’t make the assumption that because you can find them, that you are capable or performing them properly (or even worse, altering them), or that you even have a right to them. We have an idea in our society that we have a right to know everything, and the bottom line is that we don’t. This is especially true in matter involving cultural appropriation, where outsiders feel entitled to consume the ritual knowledge of a particular group on the assumption that “knowledge should be free.”

Knowledge is power. And with great power comes great responsibility. So if you seek my magical knowledge (at least that which I have not made openly available) then you must prove to me that you are responsible enough to have it. You must earn it.