Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Break the virus: Paganism needs magic.

First, this is a draft article so I meet my self promise of getting a blog out every Monday( will correct it over the week).  Next week, I have a final, so no posting.  Second, I know this will generate extreme opinions, but do keep the comments civil.

I will probably say things that will offend some people in this posts, in fact, probably lots of people. I need to specify that this is just my opinion and that this is the opinion of a rather practical magician looking in. I believe the continuous drive to remove magic from Wicca and Paganism in general is one of the worst tendencies I have encountered. This is even more confusing when witchcraft is presented as devoid of magic. I have said something similar for 15 years, and will take it a step further and say something even more controversial here. Rituals for community building (as is “popular” right now), is mostly a bunch of bullshit. No punches pulled. If you have a guttural reaction to what I just said, realize that you are reacting to something that you identify with. I get it. Hear me out though. Read through the whole article. The tendency to divorce magic from Wicca and Paganism in general stems from a greater cultural process of the demystification and mass production of, well, everything. If we look to business-thought leaders such as Weber and Benjamin, we can see a disturbing pattern. Art’s connection to ritual, Benjamin asserts, gave it what he calls an “aura,” or a certain authenticity given by its particular creation in history and space. But new technologies such as film and photography lend to mass reproduction of art and thereby a demystification of the process of art’s creation. Benjamin writes: “that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art.” Even now, the technologies have advanced so we can now have instant replication, and thus instant demystification of art. How does this apply to ritual? Weber noted that as art itself removed itself from ritual, that art became commoditized. It should be no secret that ritual itself should be commoditized. Defanging Witchcraft is the clear result of that commoditization. The ART of ritual becomes simply another mechanical reproduction. Using the addictive energy of “Ritual Lite” to create community bonds is a sign of that commoditization. First, ritual lacking in any real substantial energetic power and presence is simply shared hypnosis based on well-known and well-conceived psychological processes involving shared belief states. Really, this is just the natural synching of emotion and intention that happens as a result of our mirror neurons. No, I do not believe all magic is “just” this at all, but 95% of public rituals, and 99.9999999% of all rituals used to “create community bonds” certainly are. Why? Why has this commoditization happened? Before anyone thinks I am pointing to the pagan community and saying, “look how bad this sucks”, it is not a pagan or occult issue. It is a cultural issue of the west, in its full scope. Do Mega Stadium churches really allow for an experience of the divine in a personal way? Of course not, nor is that the purpose. The purpose is control and conformity. Rituals which use cookie cutter forms with experts who are filling the role of priest or priestess but who have no belief in the supernatural whatsoever. Many of these individuals even openly display contempt for the concept of spiritual transformation. Those that use standardized ritual forms to make people “feel good” in a psychological sense, but do not allow the participants to reach psychological states where real transformation is possible, are just another mechanized control structure. They are simulations of real experience, just as the internet fills our lives with the ability to live vicariously in simulation. The infecting virus is the same. Of course, one objection to what I am saying is that, well, you can be “spiritual” without magic. This is true in a way, if you define magic as primarily selfish. The techniques of genuine spiritual transformation and results-oriented magic are unbelievably similar. In fact, no real spiritual transformation can occur without changes in your life, so the separation becomes even thinner. Real spiritual work as real magical work has real consequences. If you have a profound spiritual experience, you will find you must change your life. It is that simple. What the simulacra allows, is the belief you had a real experience, with none of the profound after effects. The feel good, without the transformation. Transformation means risk. Pain. Suffering. Growth. Real spiritual encounters, whether internal or external, causes these. Often those community rituals do, in fact, fit all the criteria of a drug without substance that is used to control and prevent any deeper level transformation. Justifying this under the flag of community building is even more onerous and self-serving. A community does not get built by a “community building” ritual or pandering to say what people want to hear about it. Community gets built by people GIVING A SHIT about each other. Authentically. Not via some self-serving causes a leader is pushing for. However, saying what people want to hear with the “feel good party” is enough for most people to buy in. Shit, I know my rituals beat the llama’s ass, but they aren’t feel good drugs, they are effective and they get results. Experts peddling these superficial “feel good” rituals and lines of thinking should be ashamed, but I know they won’t be. Historically, we have to look both back at Jung and then at Joseph Campbell for part of the reduction of the mysterious to explainable forms. Ideally, the people using these forms might most honestly refer to themselves as secular humanists but that removes a whole sense of the romantic. It takes the luster away, and thus decreases some profit margins. I, who have studied psychology, NLP, and hypnosis in depth know that those tools ARE insanely useful and wonderful. I just wouldn’t try to package it as a religion. As L. Ron Hubbard said, “science fiction gets cents per world, religions make hundreds of dollars per word”. This is the natural tendency of our culture and those “educators” to fill that role and by doing so, to fit within the greater cultural tendency so as to reap the profit. Wicca and Paganism without Magic is very profitable, as is sanitized Christianity. It is what people want to hear. No-effort community building and spiritual thrill-rides. Have all the fun you want, don’t worry, you do not have to risk anything. It is also very far from what any of our ancestors believed. That profit-motivation, is the white elephant in the room. Don’t get me wrong- I love money and money loves me, but I make sure my rituals are transformative, and that the techniques presented work. I also am quite honest about the fact I believe authors and presenters should be paid. The masking of this motivation under the guise of “communit”, while people are making money, well- it’s what B.T Barnum said- sell an idealized view of things, mask the real intention, and give people the “idea” of what they want. That is what is being offered. Simulation. Real spirituality and real people are messy, better to have a nice commoditized brand of a person. Why do I care? I want to see a more magical world. I want to see and experience a world where I get to go to Wiccan and Pagan rituals and have the divine, as people understand them, connect through the people. I want to see communities where people do the hard work of giving a shit. Let’s not cheapen magic or community, and instead rebel against the flawed virus that passes as cheap control mechanisms. Let’s stop and think. Let’s make a fucking mess. When I hear the tendency and drive of people to divorce magic from Paganism to a greater degree, it saddens me. Even some people trying to divorce the occult from witchcraft and Wicca. Sorry, Wicca is a derivative of the Golden Dawn via the OTO. It is steeped in occult history and lore. The original pioneers of Wicca that I have had the pleasure to have met have been deeply spiritual people. I could understand some of the logic around a lot of the rules and structure. Not everyone was meant to be the priest or priestess (nor should they be). The problem with this commoditization is context. More correctly, the contextual meanings of a ritual/art/creation become removed and interchangeable, like parts on the assembly line, and are treated as similar things. Real community becomes a thing that develops via community building rituals where the individuals in that community are really interchangeable consumers of the festival culture. Is this “real” or simulation? Like Weber would say, we become the imprisoned in the machine of the bureaucracy we create, where everything seems devoid of actual life. Fuck that, let's make things MESSY. Messy rituals where people have a real contact. Messy communities where we are fucking individuals who fight and piss and have personal issues and flaws and we fight to overcome them- sometimes failing, sometimes crying, but always owning our shit- not just grandstanding social issues divorced from our own problems. Most of all let’s GIVE A SHIT, not a cursory “I support you” lip service nod to “community”. I dare you to ENGAGE. I dare you to GIVE A SHIT. The funny thing about a drug is that the people on the drug are fast to protect their dealers. Certainly, I have heard some specific critiques mentioned about some presenters for the reasons that really get down to the lack of “spiritual” impact. Immediately, the loud voices drown the person out. It is not surprising really. I am sure I have people who will defend me too, although I am far more complicated and nuanced to really defend in that fashion. I am just a difficult snowflake and I am ok with that. For the record, I have been saying shit like this for 15 years. If anyone thinks I haven’t, ask anyone who knows me. I have been basically promoting people DOING MAGIC, as opposed to service to the “community” for a long while. The reason is simple. Real magic forces you to further engage with reality. Almost always, the service to the “community” when divorced from the magic, engages an idea and a type of thought form that, in itself, often leads nowhere. The simulation breaks down and ultimately reveals itself as hollow, usually at the point people who have been supporting the idea of “community” in pagan or occult circles have trouble paying rent or need to stay in the hospital for a while. Then it gets messy and inconvenient for people, and people move to the next voice that will “support” the idea of community because it is a pleasant fantasy to stay in. At some point people have to get their hands dirty BUILDING shit. Protecting each other, reaching out to extend some practical help and support, not just pretty words with no useful action behind them. Things like sharing meals, offering to watch each other’s kids, going to visit each other in the hospital, helping out those in need who may be short on rent or going through hard times. Those people who tend to engage in magical pursuits and spiritual transformation, they might not have all of the answers, but they do tend to get their hands dirty as they tend to at least try to break free of this type of social control. Not saying every time, but more often than not, that is what I have seen. Diving into the magic starts to rebel against the prison of the simulation, and thus relationships become more authentic, choices become more authentic, life becomes messy and thus so much richer.


Monday, April 20, 2015

Magic is a experimental Contact Sport

So I almost got suckered into buying a 300 occultly kit of magic goodness.  Primal hot.. it was great marketing, which I should use ( and the truth is 300 I thought, I don't really want someone else activating my herbs for me).   I probably will buy it, cause I am a faustian whore, and really buying occult classes and kits is perfectly ok.  

In fact I have a few, please buy MINE.....in August the shapeshifting course will start again.  It will be primal and rough.   The truth is, I do my best with stuff like http://magical30.com to get you involved, if you buy something from me...... because no you, means really that regardless of the paradigm, regardless of the "info", it is just a book on the shelf.   I want to see and live in a transformed world.


but there is a missing ingredient in everyone of those occult classes and kits, even mine are missing this key ingredient.

YOU.

It isn't that the information in those kits and the information in the books is not useful.  Certainly, I try in my classes to make them useful.  Other people do too.

The effectiveness and thus real value however comes from you.   No amount of appeals to ancient secrets, no amount of elitism, no amount of salesmanship makes any of it worthwhile.

The so-called secret arts are bullshit.  What really matters is the experience of those systems and your investment of time.   No amount of book knowledge is the same as experiential knowledge and no amount of book knowledge will prepare you for the experience of any occult or supernatural thing.  No, you have to do it and it will consume you, transform form and rebirth you.  

Really, there is no spiritual or magical power without "Experiencing" it firsthand.  It must be part of you.  Empower the runes, well you have to live them.  Connect with ancestors, you have to live it.  Tremendous transformation with Ganesh or Yoga, again have to actually live it.  Then it has power.   Before that, words, garbage symbols, and a mismash of ideas.

You have to invest You in that process, and the process will destroy you.. you will be a different you.   Seems a ranty blog but its not.  Thats probably the first secret of all esoteric thought.  Of course, you can get talismans, you can get XYZ and some will work, but those only get you so far.   The sick marketing reveals the one secret, you are still the missing ingredient.  You are the lever point which invests and becomes or not.

It is the experience, the internalization of the system, which is the doorway to real power with the system.  Sure people will argue that they have the most secret and awesome system, but really, the internalization and thus ability to congeal intention to the system that becomes most important.

Aka the system is only worth the time and effort you put into it.   Of course, in the marketing people might say stuff is "spiritually instead of ritually empowered" but this is all gimmicky pitch of sales told for certain reasons that appeal to the basic idea of elitism.  Elitism is not real power either magically or spiritually.



Even if there are spirits backing something, there is still a period of time to acclimate to those spirits.  Even if a system is the most awesome system ever, it has to be internalized.   Essentially there are no shortcuts, you must integrate with the new energies or symbols sets.

Really this sums it up.


When some wild-eyed, eight-foot-tall maniac grabs your neck, taps the back of your favorite head up against the barroom wall, and he looks you crooked in the eye and he asks you if ya paid your dues, you just stare that big sucker right back in the eye, and you remember what ol' Jack Burton always says at a time like that: "Have ya paid your dues, Jack?" "Yessir, the check is in the mail."

THOSE DUES, ARE almost always dealing with change and the acceptance of change.  Success in magic and any spiritual pursuit changes you.  It change your environment and forces you to adapt.
Many businessness do sell you products, and I bet still the information is awesome, but its still only as useful as the amount you can practice it.  Unfortunately, that includes my materials at well, but I will certainly JOIN you in experiential learning, if you invest you.

That always means time.  Time Spent working the system.  Time Spent integrating to the system.  Time to get into the system.  Time to make magic a contact sport. 

So I didn’t buy the super course and book set, but it still looks interesting and I  might buy it when I have time to invest and study it.    To make it part of me not just, just a book the time.  That’s the real secret, is to give things time to make them part of you to grow you as they grow in you.

You will always be the missing element and the most important. 

You.

Spend the time.  Really dive in.. It will be worth it.

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Why Certain Love Spells are usually a bad bet

So I still haven't had time to write what I want on mirror magic, which it is what it is.

So every spring, I get a million requests to do love spells.  I love doing love spells to bring new love into everyones life.  It adds to the upward spiral.   Unfortunately, usually what people want is to get a specific person back.   Sure, sure, sure the magic can work, but often there should be a whole bunch of questions about why.  I am still time crunched.

Before we start, I know many pagans and occultists would classify such magic as strictly black magic.  I don't really believe in white or black magic, but it is certainly coercive and it is usually an uphill battle. Why?

Well why did the relationship end?  People sometimes know this answer, but often, it is the belief that "DARK MAGIC" casters will get you instant success.  That's bullshit.  These types of spells are difficult, and for the most part fleeting.    The question MUST be asked....

Seriously, why did it end?   Relationships rarely just end, do they.  Rarely do people just decide, oh man, fuck it with no reason.   It comes down to what needs were unmet, what was unsaid, how did they feel or not feel?

It comes down to the experience of you and the story of the relationship.  Realize, that does not mean one person is right or wrong, or that there is any correctness to the perception, but Stories and the story a person holds of a relationship, is VERY Powerful.

The stronger the story, and the more emotive it is, the more the resistance.

Here's the full disclosure.  Have I done ritual magic and succeeded at getting people back together.  Yes for a while, and it always requires maintenance work (AKA boosting).  Constant bleeding in of energy.   Now, have I done this type of magic for myself. NO.  Simply put, if someone does not want to be with me: FUCK THEM (I am happily with a person who I do love).    But seriously, as you do more and more self-esteem work, really, shouldn't this be the answer even if it is an amicable split?  Now that isn't to say there aren't relationships where I was in the wrong, but even the concept of right and wrong does not matter.  It's how well you can stay connected.   Once severed, what comes back often looks like a frankenstein echo of the past.

When people come to me and say, I don't know why it ended or why the other person left, do I believe them?    Let's all start with honesty, a relationship probably ended for a good reason(s).   Those reasons were there before any "bring them back" spell.  The anger or frustration or unmet needs will still be there, regardless of whether or not a "bring back" spell is cast.

So you hire someone to get the person back, but does that release all the negative emotions acquired along the way?  And a spell like that might last only until there is a reminder of why the breakup occurred.  Most of the time the reminder occurs well before the person actually gets back together with a person, it's in that phase when they start thinking, you know, I had a lot of good times with this person and then boom, a person says something or does something that really reminds the other person of the whole spiral of why it ended.....  

Why does this happen?  Well, the person requesting the service hasn't changed.  What is a better way to start?


  1. Healing work on yourself.     No seriously, on both you and the other person (if that is even possible).
  2. Detachment and Perspective:   Detachment.... WHAT really Andrieh?  But ..."love" this person.  Love is a funny thing, isn't it.  Feelings can be quite intense.   Detachment allows you to ask the serious questions needed to go forward with this type of work


Do I love the person, or do I love the feeling... More so, does this person represent something I love (security, care-giving, material support)  or that I would really, really like to avoid (loneliness,  isolation, etc).       The feelings are powerful and tremendously moving, but detachment, that really lets you distill down what is the need that is getting expressed by the desire to get back with the person.    I believe it is absolutely critical to understand that need.  If it is a self-esteem issue, then let's work on the self-esteem issue, because a relationship based on those kinds of needs usually does have problems.


Some fast Detachment techniques:
Look at the situation with you and the other person from 500 ft up (literally imagine that).  Visualize the timeline of  how things happened through the relationship from the 3rd person 500 ft perspective and write down the details.  Try to do this without emotion, just to see what insights you might get.

Also try to Meditate, allowing the intense feelings to wash over you and fade so you can see what is underneath... That is easier said then done, but often when you meditate, letting the intense emotions drip out into the ground, more intense emotions that get to the root of the need pop up.  (I could write on this on and on and on ... and will).    Just see, feel, and hear the intense emotions draining down into the earth. Use a divination to get further, and often uncomfortable insights about the situation.  Meditate on those insights.

If you're into the macabre, try this Buddhist one from a friend:
imagine your flesh falling off..ur a skeleton- imagine it white/glowing then imagine it turn to dust...
Well yeah that definitely promotes detachment.


Now if it is truly, there is a connection, before any magic we must ask:

What went terribly wrong, if it is not a need based reaction, what happened?

Sometimes the answer from that detached point of view is in fact external events.  Things like death in the family, job loss or other life altering situations, can really fuck with the psychology of the person.   Things spiral and the relationship ends, or it just so shakes them up that it ends.

Sometimes the realization is that the person was never the person you imagined them to be, sometimes well they were just not so attached... There are lots of variations, but the greater detachment allows for clarity and healing.    Again, I mostly believe that is a first step.  Sure, sure sure, I can do magic and many people will claim it is permanent when they do a "get back together" spell (those spell casters are totally fucking lying, the permanence depends on you), but the truth is that magic is just a push.  It gets in the subconscious mind of the people and mixes up the energies and potentially memory weighting of the person to favor the connection.    That does not mean the original problems go away either.  Oh sure, you can get with the person.

If you keep doing love spells on the person, it becomes like a binding.  In reality,  it's more like an artificially created emotional response.   They become something like a shell.

That's right a shell.

You get what you want, they react appropriately, and all is good right?     Kinda like a robot or android.  Sounds kinda empty, and that again points to why the self-work and healing is needed before the decision to do a "get back together" spell.  9.99/10 I would bet most people would do the self-healing and say, F@#@ getting back together and instead, as I recommend, opt for drawing new love to their life.

After all that, perhaps spellwork of this type is the right answer, but usually not.




Monday, April 6, 2015

Well, this week MIDTERM

Well this week, in my year long oath to have a blog every Monday except Mondays I have a midterm for year.

Guess who has a midterm today., I could post all the practice problems in Finance but I think that would be a little boring....

So no blog... but here's an interview I did with Kia Dragon, to keep you entertained.

http://paganchaosmagic.libsyn.com/pagan_chaos_magic_episode_19
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