I have no more excuses. My boarders have moved out. I have no child to wake up or people to offend. Though I will have a new boarder in November, it is with the understanding that I will occasionally scream prayers to my alien gods in the middle of the night. He will just have to deal with it.
I have been longing for some time to start a new long-term magical operation, something to keep me in daily practice. My initiation into The Pact seemed a great way-marker to start my journey. Now, a few weeks later with a newly cleaned temple and a lack of prying eyes, it’s time to go.
My only problem now is what to do. I narrowed it down between two courses of study. One, Liber KKK (note to readers in the US, it has nothing to do with racist men in white sheets), a classic chaos magick track, oftentimes compared to the ceremonial magician’s search for a Holy Guardian Angel. Or two, to undertake the newest chaos magick system created by Peter J. Carroll – the Chaoballah. Presented in The EPoCh, the Chaoballah is a series of evocations and invocations touching on the elements, various divinities with planetary associations, and finally contacting Lovecraftian entities.
It was a tough decision, but recent examination of my magick has made the path clear.
I recently performed an operation with a group where we created a servitor to help keep us safe while traveling, and to help keep our vehicles in good repair. Two days after I actually placed the representation of the servitor in my car, it went kaput. My mechanic told me that going nearly 100,000 miles without a tune-up was a bad thing. All of the spark plugs were completely black. Because you have to nearly take the engine apart to replace the back two plugs, the tune-up cost me almost $400.
Essentially, my magick went FUBAR. I got exactly opposite of what I wanted.
I presented my results on the IOT Facebook page and received plentiful advice, much of it along the lines of, “You got what you asked for, your car is now repaired.”
I think this line of reasoning is partially bull shit. Is magick really just a monkey’s paw where it will find a way to screw you by twisting your intent? If that was true, why would anyone do magick? I will admit that I think part of the reason for my spectacular failure was a not so sub-conscious desire for a new car.
When I meditated on my failure and where to go next with my magick (while using some chemognosis, something else I couldn’t do with my boarders around), I had my epiphany.
The majority of my magical failures have come from building a one-shot ritual for a specific purpose. It almost never works out. I don’t know if magick works poorly under a pass/fail criteria, or if these operations never produce the needed sustained gnosis.
My magical successes have almost all come while I was working my daily practice, but when I come across an obstacle I want to overcome or influence, I perform a short ritual gesture, such as projecting color magick, waving a wand, or just a statement of intent.
By working a daily practice I mean performing meditation and rituals on a daily basis, and those rituals having no set purpose other than to be doing magick, or for self-realization.
Chaos magicians often eschew illumination, denigrating the idea of doing magick for the purpose of magick, and prefer all operations to be results oriented. I have always suspected that a balance between the two is what is most desirable. Now I have my proof.
When I am performing regular ritual for the purpose of illumination – just being a magician – I have more magical “mojo” to produce results when I need them.
So I have chosen the Chaoballah. I believe it will give me what I want, a thorough examination of myself as a magical being. Because good things happen not to those who just do magick, but to those who are magicians.