An Import of my Tumblr Blog
I believe that Magic is Art and Art whether it be music, writing, sculpture or any other, is literally magic. Art, like any magic, the science of manipulating symbols, words or images, to achieve changes in consciousness… Indeed to cast a spell is simply to manipulate words, to change people’s consciousness, and this is why I believe that an artist or a writer is the closest thing in the contemporary world to a Shaman.
I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
As Americans, we have this naïve assumption that people all over the world are struggling and way behind us. They’re not. Sweden and South Korea have more advanced high speed internet networks. Japan has the most advanced trains and transportation systems. Norwegians make more money. The biggest and most advanced plane in the world is flown out of Singapore. The tallest buildings in the world are now in Dubai and Shanghai. Meanwhile, the US has the highest incarceration rate in the world.
10 Things Most Americans Don’t Know About America http://bananenplanet.wordpress.com/2012/07/17/10-things-most-americans-dont-know-about-america/ (via curlycherie)
There are two areas where the USA is way out in front of the rest of the world: war and prison. The technology of killing is the main investment of US national energy, and of course the semi-public semi-private incarceration economy is flourishing while schools and roads crumble. In many other quality-of-life terms — housing, healthcare, public transportation, public access to technology, mental health support, support for people with disabilities, childcare, primary education, maternity support, social safety net — I think a lot of US Americans personally know that things are not exactly rosy but see no options for fixing it.
(via zuky)
I am the daughter of Fortitude, and ravished every hour from my youth. For behold I am Understanding and science dwelleth in me; and the heavens oppress me. They cover and desire me with infinite appetite; for none that are earthly have embraced me, for I am shadowed with the Circle of the Stars and covered with the morning clouds.
Did you listen when I called on the things that do not fear the dark? That come from the dark? Did you listen when I called forth the things lurking in the pit of my mind and gave them form? Those things that you call demons, that even ones who claim to have thrown off the didactic shackles of their Christian upbringing still call anathema, did you hear me speaking with them?
Last one today, no need to unfollow me 😉
Looking over the serene field of snow-covered tombstones, I worked simple magick. The cemetery gates would be my portal to another dimension. Some quantum theorists believe that every time we make a decision, we make a new time line. All of these alternate time lines exist. Somewhere there’s a world where you turned left instead of right. You said no instead of yes. You never failed that test. You never fell in love.
He was naked. In perfect posture, back straight, his muscles taunt but not trembling, he looked amazing in the morning sunlight. The clarity and power he put into the words invoked admiration. I knew those words. This was the Star Ruby ritual. An exercise magicians practice, a form of meditation designed to increase concentration and open the spirit. Besides a few Youtube videos, I had never seen magick performed by another. Despite years of solitary practice, I never found the need to seek out others. The majesty of it floored me. Pangs of jealousy crept up, as I believed my own stumbling rituals could never inspire such awe. He seemed perfectly in the moment of it, in ecstasy.
In my temple, from sundown to sunup, I chanted the invocations, made sacrifices of great clouds of incense, wrote scrolls worth of prayers, collected and kept sacred beetles, and subjugated myself before Thoth’s image. After a week of this, things began to happen.
That’s the American Dream: to make your life into something you can sell.
Your sacred space is where you can find yourself over and over again.