Tag: magick

Magick Working Journal

10/17-10/21

Yeah, I’ve been that lazy. I have not made a journal entry in almost a week. To my credit I have taken on a new task. I find myself constantly returning to the works of Bill Whitcomb. A magician I respect for his open approach, his belief in discipline and acquisition of knowledge, and his advice to make things your own. In his book, The Magician’s Companion, he outlines a course of study for serious practitioners.

Partly because I want to test my Will, and partly to fill gaps in knowledge I know I have, I decided to partake in his long list of recommended reading. For too long I have been distracted from purposes and not finished them. I have a hard time finishing books, and I consider myself a writer.

So I’ve replaced meditation and journal time with reading and have had some success. I have finished the first couple of works on the list. One, a short by William S. Burroughs, and the first of the Carlos Castaneda books.

So during the time I would otherwise meditate, I light the candles and incense in my temple and read. Despite my lack of meditation, or perhaps because I treat my reading as a meditation, my banishing has become more intense. I find myself stuck in my visualizations for longer periods of time with more clarity.

I also attempted this week to add inscriptions to my new magick circle with dismal results. The paint bled out from the stencil and failed to produce anything close to the desired effect. Luckily, I repainted over the mistake and my circle suffered minimal damage. I am going to try using a large sharpie or a paint marker. Something that will not bleed. Unfortunately, the texture of the painted carpet makes it difficult to use anything over it.

Magick Working Journal

10/17/11

Getting back into the swing of things with meditation and banishing now that my circle is complete. The space definitely feels warmer and more secure. The downside being that I am now constricting myself to a 5-foot circle during banishing. Since I am using a 4-foot sword that doesn’t leave much room to manoeuvre. I am sure I will get used to it.

Meditation did not yield anything specific, but once again, it just felt good to do it.

This weekend, I brought my wife with me to my class on ceremonial magick. She mentioned to the owner how I have performed banishing rituals for others to help them ward off negative influences. The store owner now wants me to offer this service to customers. I’m not sure how I feel about it. On one hand, I don’t like the idea of performing magick for money. Besides any other considerations I don’t know how effective it would be for the person. On the other hand, I don’t mind helping people. And the end of my unemployment money is looming up on the horizon.

Magick Working Journal

10/13/11

The paint was dry enough to take the tape off, I’m pretty satisfied with the results. There’s some bleed around the edges, however, so I probably will give it a black outline later. Cleaned out the temple some and I am now ready to dedicate it tomorrow.

On the Occasion of One Aleister Crowley’s Birthday

Dear Thelemite Friends,

I love you people. I mean that sincerely. You are a groovy bunch of folks who know how to be intellectual and throw a party. I am asking in all sincerity, why do you follow this shit head?

I am told I need to separate the work from the man. Someone should have told him that. I quote:

“The First Gesture: The Oath of the Enchantment, which is called the Elevenfold Seal.

The Animadversion Towards the Aeon

Let the Magician, robed and armed as he may deem to be fit, turn his face towards Boleskine that is the House of The Beast 666.”

What the fuck? I am supposed to face towards this self-important prick’s house? This is his work, not his personal life I’m on about. Seriously, can someone explain to me why this is magick worth pursuing? I’m waiting.

Magick Working Journal

10/11
 
So while it may appear I’ve been a lazy fucker, I have been working on magick. Not as much as I should be, but I’ve got my reasons.
 
My temple now resides in my garage. Hence the need to pick up a carpet, as I like to perform most of my work barefoot. So I finally picked it up and set to work inscribing a circle on it. I hate half-assing things and by Thoth I would not half-ass this. Needless to say, it’s taken a bit longer than I thought.
 
My plan was to masking tape the carpet, attach a string to a marker and use that to trace out a nearly perfect circle. Then cut the circle out and spray paint. Lift up the tape, maybe do a little touch up by hand. Afterwards I would add sigils and words of power.
 
The tape down went smoothly, except I thought jeans would protect my knees from damage. I now have several scrapes and bruises to prove that assumption wrong. I have since used knee pads. The first stumbling block came with the realization that a tack would not hold my string in place in the center of the circle. No matter how gentle I pulled, it came right out. It took some time to think of an alternate center pole for the string. Arts and crafts not being one of my true talents it left me at a loss until I indulged in something I am good at – cooking. Later in the evening I spied my meat thermometer, and realized I could tape that down in the center and tie the string to it. That problem solved.


Tracing the circle went fairly well. It fell short of the perfection I desired, but in the realm of acceptability. The tape came up easier than I thought, making a nice pattern.


Second big problem. I went cheap on the paint. After reading some websites on how to paint carpet I went to the hardware store. All of it seemed way too pricey for just painting a white line, so I said fuck it, spray paint. After five minutes of applying the cheap spray, I knew it would never give me the coverage I needed. You’ll notice on the top right of the second photo if you look close how well the spray paint worked.
 
I can’t find the website now, but one recommended mixing ⅓ paint conditioner (a substance that makes the paint thinner so it soaks into the fibers, but also takes longer to dry) to ⅔ paint. I bit back my pride and went to the fucking Wal-Mart where shit is cheap and blew another $20 on paint, and $20 for equipment at Harbor Freight.
 
This went much better than the spray paint, but still has failed to produce the desired effect. Color me dumb, I didn’t realize how hard it would be to cover a dark color with white paint. So tomorrow, after it dries, I buy another gallon of paint and apply another coat.


Of course this means my temple is out of commission for the duration. I may forgo banishing and meditation until I complete the project, or at least try to do some meditation in the evening.

Magick Working Journal

10/06/11

I usually keep my eyes closed when I meditate. Today, a few minutes in, I smelled something burning that wasn’t incense, so I opened my eyes. I noticed nothing amiss but kept my eyes open anyway and fixated on my bust of Loki. He always looks ominous in the smoke and flickering candle light. Turns out he had some advice for me on how to be a good trickster.

One, if you’re going to steal something, steal an item that person would be better off not having anyway. For example, if you know a guy who only uses his TV for Fox News and football, jank his TV.

Second, if you steal something, always give a little to people less fortunate than you. Using the above example, sell the TV at a cut-rate price to some guys who just need it to play games on their Xbox.

Third, if you attack someone, attack their pride, it’s the most vulnerable point.

After meditation I noticed one of my candles was close to the end, so I got out a new one and placed it on my altar. Then I started my banishing ritual. I keep my eyes closed for the first few minutes for better visulization. When I opened my eyes it was the Shit Is On Fire Show, starring my altar. The new candle had leaned over and caught the black backdrop. So much for ritual, I blew it out for the most part and then got a spray bottle from the kitchen to squelch the smoldering embers.

Since I have been pontificating lately on my skills as a magus, I’m counting this as an example of lesson three.

Magick Working Journal

10/04

Yesterday’s meditation and ritual were crap. Right before meditating I had spent a couple of hours putting up my Halloween decorations outside. Sadly, this constitutes strenuous activity for me. So when I sat down to meditate I thought being slightly out of breath would help my brain reach some altered states. As I willfully controlled my breathing, my mind did experience that weird expanding of time. This lasted for about two minutes.

After that, complete chaos. I couldn’t focus on a damn thing, or focus on nothing. My brain became a shitstorm of idiocy, and I stumbled through my banishing ritual.

Only interesting thing on a magickal note would be a conversation I had with my wife later. Now I’m not one to talk about occult conspiracies. I generally look for natural mundane causes for most everything in life. I am certainly not a fan of “The Devil made me do it.” We were watching an episode of Ghost Hunters. They were investigating a prison where Charles Manson had once stayed, and were getting some interesting evidence. I mentioned to my wife that from what I have read and the interviews of Manson I have watched, I believe that he may have been influenced by a powerful outside entity. I believe Trent Reznor caught a wiff of it when he recorded The Downward Spiral in the Tate murder house. And I would not be surprised if a bit of it was left behind in that prison.

After our talk I thought about how it might be interesting as a lark to write Manson in prison and ask him about his experiences. He has to have a lot of time on his hands. It took two minutes for me to realize what bad fucking idea this is. Let’s just say I’m not crazy for a second and I’m right about this entity. The last thing I need to do is attract it’s attention. Or maybe I do? Do I have the cojones to put the thing in it’s place?

When doing a little further research on Manson I learned he spent some time here in Indianapolis. I don’t think I’m ready to follow this trail. I’m about to go do today’s meditation and banishing. Here’s to keeping the fucker out.