Big announcement coming soon. Here’s a transcript of an interview I did for Welcome to Tarotdise that will be posted soon. Wanted to share it with my folks here first.
How long have you been a practicing magician?
I’ve had in interest in mythology and the occult for as long
as I can remember. It didn’t seem unusual then, but the public library where I
grew up as a kid had a copy of Crowley’s Magick
in Theory and Practice. I checked it out several times before it got
stolen. Didn’t understand a word of it then. I remember making a magick-square
talisman when I was in middle-school and doing a candle-magick love spell. A
friend of mine brought a copy of Anton LaVey’s, The Satanic Rituals to school once. We tried to summon a demon out
a drain in the boy’s locker room and ask it for magical power. Stupid kid
stuff, but who knows, maybe it actually worked.
I did some magick in my twenties when I explored neo-paganism.
But I didn’t become a serious practicing magician until 2010. I came to it
after an existential crisis with the realization that I wasn’t the person I
thought I was. I learned the self was a construct and I could be anything I
wanted, so why not a magician?
What first interested you in magick/the occult?
Dungeons & Dragons
was definitely the gateway drug for me. Looking back, it’s hysterical how we
all tried to argue in the 80s that D&D had nothing to do with the occult.
Mythology, demons from the goetia, the concept of planer travel, it’s all in
there. Gygax did his research well. It’s also interesting to note that RPGs
give you many skills useful to a magician. Invoking other personalities,
understanding how to structure a story for group participation, all the reading
involved. I’ve met many magicians that still play one RPG or another. I still
play regularly.
How would you describe your practice?
I call what I do, Emergent Animism. The Emergent part, I
just wrote an entire book on that, but I’ll try my best to sum it up here. In
Emergent Magick, the magus builds their own paradigm based on the results of
their magical work. It’s not quite shifting paradigms, like Chaos Magick, but
continuously adding to your core beliefs through magical experimentation. You
then share that paradigm with a group of magi and develop a group paradigm. The
goal is to create “tribes” of magi who use magick as their bond. We seek a
future where people once again create their own culture, instead of having it
sold to us, and have a means to create more open and equal societies.
The Animism part refers to my personal paradigm, which
involves ancestor veneration, communicating with spirits of place, such as
spirits of the land or physical objects, and alien spirits, such as demons and
gods.
What would you say your current big magickal goal is?
The big goal, something I think a lot of magicians share, is
to immanentize the eschaton. To bring about that change in human consciousness
and create a world based on acceptance, love, and freedom. But that’s a long
term goal. I don’t know if we can actually achieve that goal. Maybe the
eschaton is something that is just constantly unfolding before us. It takes
lifetimes.
My current magical motto is, “Ego Sum Legio.” Which means,
“I am Legion.” It expresses my will to build what I call a “Spirit Court.” A
group of spirit allies that I can trust and turn to when I need to get shit
done. Also, on some level, bringing upon the eschaton will require making peace
not only with ourselves but with the spirits.
What do you feel is your strongest magickal skill?
Everything comes down to writing for me. Through the word I
create. I consider all writing to be a magical act. The universe was created
with the word. When we name things, we have power over them. To me, it’s the
most human ability. Other animals dance, make music, you can even teach an
elephant to paint. But writing, as far as we know, remains unique to us talking
apes. It’s the power of our ideas that shape our world, which we express in
words. Money, nation-states, religions, all these things have no objective
reality. We just made them up with words.
Your weakest?
I’ve never had innate psychic ability. I don’t feel energy
or a magical presence without putting some effort into it. While I have always
been magically inclined, magick never came easy to me. I had to work for it.
Even now, when I do tarot, I can’t just slap some cards on a table and read
them. It always requires ritual. I need to deliberately shift my consciousness
first before I can perceive anything beyond the physical. I’m fine with that.
I’m willing to do the work. In some ways, it makes my magick more precise.
While I have had plenty of strong synchronicities and a few straight up
paranormal experiences, they only come after doing magick.
What do you consider to be your most effective working/s?
Writing the novel, My
Babylon, opened a lot of doors for me. I’ve gone back and re-read it
recently. It’s not a great book, but it’s not horrible. I had written a lot of
short stories and other things before that, but it was the first novel I
completed. It proved to me personally what I was capable of. It was the first
story I wrote that was really about me digging up my own emotions and trying to
deal with them. It’s also a personal devotion to the Red Goddess, and earned me
quite a bit of attention from Her. That has been both wonderful and terrifying,
but never boring.
Your most powerful?
For the past two years I have been given the honor of
co-writing the main ritual for the Babalon Rising Festival. This last year, I
also played a major role in the ritual. If you’ve never done ritual with 250+
thelemic pagans out in the middle of the woods at night, I highly recommend it.
Numbers do matter. Most magicians only do ritual for themselves or maybe for a
small group of people. Doing it with that many people raises it to a whole
other level. I consider myself blessed for having the opportunity and look
forward to doing it again in the future. This is why my own magical philosophy
focuses so much on group ritual. There’s really nothing else like it.
What paradigm or philosophy do you most align yourself with?
You can probably tell by now that I operate firmly in the
Spirit Model. I believe that people can change things directly through magick,
but that requires brute force. Spirits innately do things that living humans
cannot. Spirits have a perspective beyond space and linear time. That insight often
brings about results that are closer to your True Will instead of just
delivering what you think you want.
Of course, Emergent Magick is my overriding magical
philosophy. As Blake said, “I must create a system, or be enslaved by another
man’s. I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.”
Is there one that particularly interests you that you would
like to learn more about?
Shintoism, being a currently operating major religion with
strong animist roots and principles, holds great interest for me. Not that I
want to become a practicing Shinto priest. I want to take what that tradition
has learned and apply it to my own Western heritage.
Where do you find inspiration and motivation for your
practice?
Like a lot of people, I just want to make the world a better
place. I want to see and experience less suffering. I express this in all of my
magick and even in my day job.
Inspiration has never been an issue for me. The myriad
expressions of human culture have always fascinated me. That well springs
eternal. Some scientists try to convince us of our insignificance in the
universe. Nothing could be further from the truth. We hairless apes built
pyramids. The mere fact that we contemplate the nature of our universe makes us
special in a lot of ways.
The nature of our species fascinates me as well. What are we
made to do? What makes us truly happy? I read a lot on pre-history,
anthropology, primatology, and related subjects to try and grasp what it truly
means to be human.
Where do you find inspiration and motivation for your
artwork?
When my decisions and actions run contrary to what I
believe, it forces me to reexamine those beliefs. I need to know why I do the
things I do. The best way to do that for me is art. Art never turns out exactly
how you intended it. It’s always a journey. Things you see as mistakes at first
turn out to be the parts you appreciate the most. Oftentimes, the big point you
were trying to make is subsumed by the process, and you learn that maybe that
wasn’t the important part to begin with. Art is Will made manifest.
What do you find is the biggest challenge to your creations?
Writing is a lonely process. It’s an exercise in delayed
gratification. Performing artists have it easy in that respect, although they
have to practice like anyone else and are constantly subject to the approval of
others. Graphic artists put in their time, but it’s generally a much shorter
process. Writing a book means putting yourself in a chair alone, for days,
months, and sometimes years before you have anything that even looks like a
finished product. It leaves lots of room for self-doubt. The process is
sometimes so long you immediately go back and look at it and think to yourself,
“I know better now.” You never write a beautiful sentence and get applause. It
always comes later. Often much later.
What is your favorite medium, and what draws you to work
with it?
With writing you can show the process much better than other
mediums. Just like it takes a long time to create, it takes a long time to
consume. You get to explain why you did what you did. The reader gets to learn
along with you.
Stephen King once called writing genuine telepathy. I think
that’s true. I can put a thought in someone’s head across time and space. It’s
an amazing ability. You can do anything with writing. You can put a picture in
someone’s head, a sound, or even a smell. That feeling will never be exactly
what you intended as a writer, but that’s the beauty of it. It always gets
filtered through the reader’s perspective. They get to participate in the
creation of the story long after the words have been put on a page.
What do you feel like you could improve on?
Any writer that cares about the art form is always trying to
improve on their use of the language. It’s the beauty of the language that
inspires just as much as the content. There’s always a way to make language
more dynamic and interesting. Strunk & White’s first rule in the Elements of Style is, “Omit needless
words.” That’s the battle. Which words do I truly need? What best illustrates
the thoughts and feelings I want to inspire? How do I make something personal
and conversational, but also with precision? You have to make people feel
something before they will listen to you.
Which item that we’re carrying are you most proud of?
I love doing the year-long tarot readings. I treasure the
moments when the same themes keep popping up and each time provide more
clarity. Everyone I have done it for has become a personal friend of mine. You
don’t go through something like that without bonding. I’ve gotten to know some
amazing people that way.
Is there anything you would like to branch out into either
magickally or artistically?
The problem is I have too many branches already! RPGs,
magick, and cooking already take up a lot of time. Writing novels and writing
books about magick are really two separate things with much different
approaches. I would like to learn some basic musical skills. I’m almost
completely talentless in that department. I know I’ll never be great, but I
just want to know enough to make a pleasing noise every once in a while. I do
occasionally practice drawing and other graphic arts, but they are not my
forte.
Is there any advice you would like to offer from your own
personal experience?
Do the work.
Research. Do magick. Contemplate. Repeat. There is no other
way. You have to be doing magick. I would be happy if all of my customers learn
to do their own tarot. I occasionally get readings from other magicians because
another perspective can be useful. But nothing replaces being able to do it for
yourself. The most powerful magick is always the magick you do for yourself.
Know your limitations. If you know you don’t have the skills to build a magical
tool, don’t be afraid to buy it. But if you have any inkling that you can do
the work yourself, do that first.