Month: November 2018

emergentanimism:

I have not read “Six Ways.” I did a quick search on it and it certainly looks right up my alley. I just put it on my list of books to buy.

The Shinto question is a little more complicated. If you are approaching Shintoism as a way to study an advanced and long-standing animistic system, yes, absolutely Shintoism can be a good example. While Shintoism does not require initiation, it is extremely Japanese-centric, to the point where Shintoism considers Japan as the “holy land” of their religion. Some would say you can’t really practice Shintoism outside of Japan, though that’s a conservative attitude. One can also say of Shintoism, like other animist based faiths, that it is highly accepting of other religions and doesn’t require its followers to adhere to one set of beliefs and practices. I would even say that the Japanese word “Kami” is closest to how I use the term “spirit” in that it encompasses a range of beings from gods to land spirits. 

Thanks for the questions. They really got me thinking. I haven’t studied Japanese religions since college and now I want to go back to that material.

she-initiates:

“In the Thoth, Strength is actually called Lust. Some interpretations say it’s the taming of desire, but I would say it’s more like mastery over desire. Taming connotes that there is too much desire and you need to control it. In this context, I see her as the master of her desire in a world that denies her that power. Your desire becomes sacred fuel the moment you master it.”

– Alessandra Calderin, Spread ‘Em: Sex Tarot 101 | the-numinous.com

Ave Babalon

holy-mountaineering:

Okay, now you’ve got my complete attention.

So, what do you like about being stoned? Do you like feeling body high and a bit slower or do you wanna think crazy shit and be a bit on the wired end?

I like feeling high as hell and slowing everything down, that’s an indica thing. I have generalized and pretty fucking specific anxiety disorder, so, it helps. I’m partial to Girlscout Cookies (both the weed and actual fuckin’ girlscout cookies) and Forbidden Fruit strains right now. I usually want to slow way, way down so I smoke hash oils that are a bit more refined than the keef, pressed or bubble hash you’d have smoked in high school, if that was your scene. Some of these are 50-90% THC and will absolutely ruin your night and well into your next day (or two) if you’re not prepared for that kinda weed fueled astro-travelling.

I also make pot butter. It’s easy as shit, crockpot on warm or low pound a weed ounce of shake, leave that on low for about 2 days and BAM wheed butter at a truly medical level. You can usually buy shake pretty cheap from a club and if they don’t have it listed on their menu ask the budtender (I clearly live in California, G-D help me) about buying some shake. Just straight up ask, “Y’all ever have shake for me to make pot butter out of?” 

Well, as a guy who’s smoke a joint and eaten a delicious brownie thing with white chocolate bits in it (homemade!) enjoy your medical marijuana!

As someone who lives in a state where you smoke what they got, I appreciate this post. It lets me live vicariously through you. One day we will have legal weed here. One day…. Fuck it. I should move back to Michigan.

emergentanimism:

“Crow Seidr” Trollwood Art, Nov 2016

You may have figured out that I am a huge fan of history.
That obsession with learning stories of our past has been with me my entire
life. In the past fifteen years much of that research has been pre-history.

Let me throw at you an impressive set of numbers. By conservative
estimates, Homo sapiens have been around for about 315,000 years. The Home
genus has been on this planet at least .5 million years, and some say up to 2.5
million years. Some of the oldest indication of any type of spiritual practice
is 300,000 years old, being grave goods buried with a Neanderthal. So our
species started all this before we even evolved into our current iteration and
the first known practice was some form of belief that life continues after
death. By comparison, the first civilization started 5,000 years ago. That’s
310,000 years of human existing on this planet before cities. As the Oracle at
Delphi says, “Know Thyself,” and to really know who we are as a species we need
to have some understanding of how we lived for the majority of our time here.
Evidence shows that we believed in some kind of life after death, and we were
animists. We believed in and had dealings with spirits.

People debate endlessly whether or not our species took a “wrong
turn.” Whether agriculture, or domestication, or if you believe Socrates, even
writing itself were bad ideas. I have my own opinions. But outside of that we
still must accept that knowledge does indeed get lost. While most scholars don’t
even like the term Dark Ages anymore, all will admit that some knowledge was
lost in the West. We lost the recipe for Roman concrete. We lost the recipe for
Greek Fire. Judging by how people seem to feel strongly about spiritual
practice, you can bet that much of what was discovered on that topic has been
destroyed. Think about what must have been lost in those 300,000 years? The
voices of those elders lost to time. I truly hope that Babbage was right and
with enough computing power we can go back reconstruct every vibration that
ever occurred in our atmosphere.

Another point, why do we even care? Certainly our species
has made great advances in the creation and retention of knowledge. Haven’t we
gone well past what our ancestors knew? Maybe, maybe not. One thing that I
think can be said is that the focus of that knowledge, and the uses for the
intellectual capacity of our civilization, has changed. Spiritual matters take
a back-seat to science and economics. Not that those are bad things. But what
does that say about magick? Has the art of magick advanced?

Yes, yes it has. Albeit at a much slower rate and with much
fewer resources. Many ancient cultures believed magick to be the highest form
of learning. All of the intellectual, economic, political, and temporal
capacity went towards the study of magick in a big way. Why am I obsessed with
the Ancient Egyptians? One need only look at the Pyramids and know that their
culture spent a lot of its time thinking about magick. The huge portion of the cultural
records that survive focus on preparing for one’s death.

The point of all this, besides raising some even more
interesting questions, is how it effects our relationship with the spirits. One
question you have to answer for yourself is, are spirits immortal? Many of them
claim to be, and I have no reason not to take them at their word. One can
research the names of many spirits through the gimoires and all the way back to
ancient cultures. Are these the same spirits? Maybe, but at the very least the
spirits seem to have knowledge of those ancient names. So even if the spirits
are not immortal they certainly know their history and the history of their
interaction with us.

What did that interaction look like for the vast majority of
our time on this planet? It seems to have involved a lot of drugs and
journeying through trance states. It certainly didn’t involve brass seals and
contracts written on virgin paper, because we didn’t have any of those things
through the majority of our history. Although maybe those methods are a
refinement of the communication process, a sort of updated technology. But this
does prove that those methods are not absolutely necessary. That the spirits
can be contacted by other means. So while grimoire purists may be advancing the
art, it may not be the only way or even the best way to contact those spirits.

In the end, it is best to remember the magick of your
ancestors. The spirits certainly remember, and what has been said and done to
them in the past will reflect on how they interact with us today.

tipsie-tarot:

Tumblr is the weirdest shot show I’ve ever seen. But, drunk me is deciding to post something that sober me has been thinking about for a minute.

I follow mostly trad witches and ceremonials. And I’ve noticed something from the ceremonials that I just want to throw out there.

Those mother fuckers work hard. They know their shit and are trying and experimenting with different shit, sharing it with each other, providing feedback, honestly throwing out if something is working or not working for them and dialoging about it.

I’m really tired of people saying that they’re gate keepers. They’re going to call out bullshit magic, because Jesus Christ, a spell jar with random shit thrown in it and a fucking Goetic summoning are not the same god damn thing. They’re mad in the same way a musician who studies and practices scales and music theory for years can be compared to a freshman in college playing wonderwall.

Like, I’m not a ceremonial, I read some books about it, but I realize I’ve got lengths to go in my own practice and in my own tradition to even think about actually practicing that kind of ish. I ain’t bitter at them for being bad asses and having really beautiful dialogue among themselves.

Just be. Fucking. Honest. About where you are in your practice. And bow down when someone knows the system they practice in better than a weird Tumblr post you read.

I turned to animism and drugs because I couldn’t hack it. Those folks work their asses off.

emergentanimism:

The number one complaint I hear from people when I tell them
to work with their ancestors is that their family is just awful. That they can
never work with their ancestors for X Y Z reasons. I would never belittle
someone’s trauma. I am certain there are a lot of people out there whose
feelings on this are legitimate. I would never tell someone to work with an
ancestor that abused them, or with ancestors that have proven beyond a shadow
of a doubt that they were fucking assholes. I would ask, that if your ancestors
don’t fit in that category you consider a couple of things. And, I have some
work-arounds.

One, work on forgiveness. Forgiveness is as much of a
blessing for you as it is for them. I’m not going to sit here and outline all
the benefits of forgiveness, because it’s something you have to come to on your
own or it doesn’t really work. Just think about it. Maybe take a couple of days
to meditate on the concept of forgiveness.

Two, you may think that all your ancestors were hard-core Pentecostal/Jewish/Muslim/Catholic/etc.,
and they would NEVER understand what you practice. That may be true. Some
spirits hold onto that shit tight. Most learn it’s an anchor for them in the
afterlife. Most spirits of the dead realize almost immediately after they cross
over that the cosmos contains so much more than they ever dreamed of. They know
that us humans have an extremely limited perspective on the nature of reality.
That includes you and I as magi my friends. The only way you will know if any
given spirit is open to your current beliefs is to talk to them. So give it a
try and find out.

But if you really just can’t, you still have options. You
can flat-out adopt some ancestors. Looking to people within your own culture
would be a good start. We all come from Africa. We all come from the same
source. We are all siblings on this little mud-ball we call Earth. If you pick
someone with the same ethnicity, chances are you are related in some way. Do
some genealogy if you really want to know. Certainly you can at least come up
with a picture or something to symbolize what they were known for to have on
your ancestor altar.

You can also have magical ancestors. Not just ones from your
own particular magical tribe. I have talked with the spirits of Jack Parsons and
Hunter S. Thompson. I consider them ancestors of my craft.

If none of that seems right to you, you could go looking for
your ancestors astrally. A couple of years ago at the Babalon Rising Festival,
I led a guided meditation that had people meet their most distant ancestors and
learn about them. I’m proud to say that a version of that guided meditation has
made the rounds in several magical groups. You absolutely can go back as far as
you want. If you want a magical ancestor, why not use magick to find them? If I
get some requests, I would be happy to make an audio recording of that guided
meditation and post it here.

So if you want to work with ancestors you have no excuses.
It may be more work for you, but nothing good comes easy.