@mercurialblonde

I Would Prefer To Not Be Disfigured

2009-05-27T05:21:00.000-07:00

Penelope Tree, From Wiki:

"John Lennon, asked to encapsulate Tree in three words, called her, "Hot, Hot, Hot, Smart, Smart, Smart!" She has been extensively compared to The Beatles for inspiring the swinging 60's movement and for galvanizing a generation of young American females. Scars from late-onset acne ended her career in the early 1970s: "I went from being sought-after to being shunned because nobody could bear to talk about the way I looked."^[2]"

^{Penelope Tree is kind of a decent starter gun for this topic. At least as good as any. Relevant in as much as she was the muse for my Fashion Pirate piece of artwork. In a lot of ways, she sort of incapuslates in her biography, why I am personally so drawn to beauty in my work. It's something I think about from time to time, beyond my comics and into my life, because it does come up. Both in terms of how I feel about myself, and how I feel about others-- And really how I sort of asymetrically stack my weirdo queerdo values.}

^{What stands out to me about Tree, beyond her otherworldy beauty, is the fleeting nature of that beauty. There's a horror in her story that mixes with the intoxicating high of her aesthetics, that fully reasonates with me. This notion of disfigurement leading to isolation and abandonment, and almost a horrific loss of status--is definitely a leading phobia in my life, and in some ways my work. I feel like beauty is intrinsically horrific, mean-spirited, and destructive. But it's also defiant. It struggles up against time and incidence, and tries to latch on for as long as possible. But it does leave. Even if nothing happens. One minute you're Farah Fawcett, the next minute you look like my grandma. And with that comes a resignation and re-evaluation of worth. A delusion that comes by way of survival.

I think it's no shock that when you see someone beautiful, you're reaction is the same as if you bumped into a frankenstein monster. You gasp. You lose some measure of courage. And the part of you that wants to keep moving is losing the battle to the part of you that keeps looking back. I think this is one of the reasons why more often than in any genre, horror relies on an attractive lead. It's also no suprise that the Italians knew this best in their Giallo films. I don't know if that's a simplistic read on it or not. But it probably works okayish for this point.}

^{As for me personally, in my work, I think my views on beauty also are influenced by the aesthetics of beauty that most appeal to me, which do tend to be largely eccentric alien looking actors or models. Or it's vice versa, and the aesthetics I'm drawn to have to do with an overarching sense of detatchment and weirdness. I'm kind of rambling now, because I'm hungry on food. So I might come back to this and try to tease out what I'm talking about.

This all came from some thought I had in a car about beauty being horrifying, and how I fear getting old or disfigured, or ugly, and being shunned, and that the Penelope Tree bio sort of has a lot of elements of my worst fears in it. And I think a lot of my conceptions of beauty, and projections of it, have to do with those fears. Beauty that is either internally or externally disfiguring into isolation. Yeah. I'd say that's a decently large theme in most of my comic work I've been doing the last several years.

So yeah.}

Fashion Pirate: "Josephine' arty farty

2009-04-20T14:11:00.000-07:00

Some art I did today.

An Interview with Moi

2009-04-14T15:50:00.000-07:00

Someone decided they wanted to interview me, which I know must seem like a completely mad prospect. The results of this debacle are here:

Aris Asks: Aris Asks Sarah Horrocks

If you ever wanted to see someone gush about Jamie Mckelvie and David Lafuente art, this is the interview for you.

I also touch on why in the world I'm into superheroes, which is actually a longer tangent I need to throw in this blog, because it's something I've thought a lot about, and I think it explains why superheroes matter.

Also I talk about your mother.

Excerpt:

26. So what's next?

Like I said, this year I've got about three major things on my agenda. Right now I'm just doing the writing, and then from June until December,I'll be locking myself in somewhere and doing the art for said books. Oneof them is a book about Western-Bondage. Another is about Ghosts, Zombies,and a boy with a Lampshade on his head in the future. Both of those aregoing to be between 3-5 issues that I'll put out somewhere, some way. Sothey are quite long all things considered. I'm also doing another webcomicthis year which will be much shorter than Ophelia, the idea right now is todo it in a series of pods that are small and self-contained, but combine atthe beginning and end, like how Morrison did Seven Soldiers. But muchsmaller. Probably 30 pages total for the whole thing. And much moreconducive to being read in short bites on the web. Those are the things I'mdoing for sure. I also have some projects with other artists that couldtrickle out here or there, I'm not for sure. I do plan to get a comicI'vebeen sitting on for about a year now about James and Dolly Madison--I planto get that out there in some form. But yeah, it's going to be another busyyear.

27. Last minute plugs?

Of course! One of the places I actually donate money to, and spend timewith--that's actually beyond my general state of selfishness ishttp://knowmore.org/. This is a site run by my friend Bernard Dolan. Itis this amazing corporate watchdog site, where you can type in pretty muchany company you want to know about, and find out how they rate across humanrights, workers rights, environment--those type of things. So you can getinformation on the companies that you are putting money to. Money is thebiggest voting block in America right now, and you can't really beparticipating fully if you're not in possession of information. This sitegives you that. Plus, I'd ask anyone if they have the time or inclinationto see if they can help with some of the wikis for various companies. Ifyou're a research nerd and like looking things like this up--it's the sitefor you. Its good people, who work really hard, and an extremely importantproject from my vantage point. Check it out! Oh also. Buy Phonogram theSingles Club! I'm not really affiliated with Keiron or Jamie. I'm justsaying as a lover of comic books, support this book. I say it almostselfishly because I want them to continue to make these books and I wantJamie McKelvie to become fat and rich. Plus it's an extremely great book.And in a time when so many books aren't giving you value for your buck, thisbook does it in spades. There's no ads in it. It's just chockfull offantastic stories and talent. If floppies have a big future, it's becauseof books like this. Plus, the concept is super cool, and the extras are forthe floppies only.

Go read it in it's entirety, and subscribe to Aris's blog. Few people love comics more than him.

Masks!

2009-04-08T00:16:00.000-07:00

This was quite fun, though I'm still sort of trying to get the hang of it.

Masks-Gothic by mercurialblonde featuring Balenciaga bags

Fashion: Fall 09 -- Bruises and the Fetishized Superhero

2009-03-16T14:04:00.001-07:00

Yes so, I do this each season, at least I have been doing it the last few seasons. Just because I'm a huge nerd, and I like fashion and find it to be one of the artistic mediums that does inspire me in my writing, yada yada.

First off, I've got about 71 looks I pulled from the runways, that are over on my flickr. If you just want to scroll through a more comprenhensive dose of my tastes.

Flickr Looks Fall 09

Second off, my generalized reactions to this season. Honestly, it was pretty depressing. And that made me mad. Yes I get it we are in a depression, and everyone wants to be sensative to that. But fashion can be so uplifting and inspiring--put on a damn show damnit! Most of the clothes aren't accessible for the general population anyways. The least you could do is put on a show that we can all still enjoy. I found much of the season, especially New York and London, to be entirely too reserved and safe. The colors for Fall are black and blue, which not unsuprisingly are the same colors of a bruise. Which is appropriate because so much of the industry is acting like a beaten puppy. Grrrr.

That said, there were a lot of things I really liked. There's this whole vein of superhero inspired ideas that gets the comic book fan in me excited. From the mad scientist gloves, to the body suits, to the boots, to the masks--a lot of these looks could go right off the runway to fighting crime. Which I think is neato. But again, that's because I'm super lame.

EDIT: Leather was also way in. Which, I can sort of appreciate, but as with furs, it's not something I have any interest in wearing, and any appreciation I have for furs or leather, is tempered by my hatred of it. I'm good with fake leather or fake fur. But real leather or real fur, is fucking stupid. Anyways.

Anyways. Here are the shows with some pics, that I liked most. Which again, if you want to see more, go to my flickr for that.

Or go to Style.com and see the complete collections. I think Style.com is a tremendous resource. They have videos of a lot of the shows, and they have a huge database going back some years, so you can really see how a designer has progressed, and put the work in context. I also think their reviews are generally fun to read, even if they tend to be overly positive. But I do think they give you a good idea of what went on. Anyways. I can't say enough. I like that site a lot, and it makes me happy that they do it.

1. Jean Paul Gaultier Fall 09
This was far and away my favorite show of the season. And I realize after the big deal I made over western bondage last season, to pick another show built around subtle bondage flourishes, makes me suspect. But I really thought almost everything that came down the runway in this show was amazing. To me this is "Superhero-bondage Chic". And in a season where so little truly stood out, this one definitely did.

2. Fendi 09
For whatever reason, I tend to not enjoy the Italian shows as much as I would want. And honestly, I do feel a little guilty picking like....three Karl Lagerfeld shows. It's probably super cliche, and super trite. But the man is a fucking genius. And his own personal style is so amazing. To me he's the Mick Jagger, Chuck D, Bob Dylan of Fashion. Anyways. This was my second favorite show. It had a very warrior vibe, and unlike a lot of designers Karl wasn't scared of showing some color. And it really worked. The red dress and leather leg warmers was maybe my favorite look of the entire season. It's just so badass.

3. Marni
I'm a fan of all things Marni. It's my favorite line, and I love Consuelo Castiglioni. Her sensibilities are just so RIGHT. To me anyways. Fall 09 wasn't as love at first sight as Spring 09 for me. But this is kind of a grown up mature Marni, that still retains the things I like about it. It's still quitisentially Marni, but in a very grown up chic way this season. Which I still enjoyed. I'd also add that you saw the knee high socks with sandals look that was hugely featered in Marni's spring show, all over the place this season. And then I'd also chuck in that Consuelo is also on the mad scientist glove crazy train. Just saying. Her sense of what's right, in any given time period, perfectly jives with my moods.

4. Dries Van Noten
I honestly don't know if I liked this, or was made to like it, or what. My initial reaction was kind of meh. But it's a collection I keep coming back to and liking. It's just so pure. Everything is at it's essence. And again, in a season of blacks and blues, it was so nice to see color done this way.

5. Topshop Unique Fall 09
Yeah. Topshop. For whatever reason, they rolled out a really great collection, that I felt was both really with it, in terms of the trends I like right now, and still advanced those sufficiently to interest me. To me their collection was like space alien 80s cool. They also had lots of color, and shine. I love this coat by the way.

6. Tao Fall 09
John Galliano kind of was on this tip for his show as well. Which was kind of this russian, scandanavian folkloric style. I think Tao did it best. Pretty nifty stuff.

7. Karl Lagerfeld
I already covered this, but I love this man. While a lot of people were trapped in the 80s this season(Marc Jacobs), Karl does this crazy blade runner 2099 helmet madness, with these soft beautiful touches pushed in. My favorite thing from this collection is the pants/leggings. They are just the right level of looseness, and the right material, they just made everything look tremendous.

8. Chanel
Last Lagerfeld I think. I always love seeing where Chanel ends and Lagerfeld begins. I felt like this collection was just a stream of little Lagerfeld's going down the runway. I think the Chanel end of it, really adds a polish and chicness to Karl's ideas, and you get these just really cool, but classic looks. Oh yeah, and the almost Kirby/New Gods-like Bodysuits should impress any nerds that are still reading this blog.

9. John Galliano Fall 09
Sometimes I wonder if I just like Galliano in theory. A lot of his stuff, I feel should move me, and it just doesn't. At any rate, here's what I was talking about in relation to Tao. Don't get me wrong though, I like a lot of his stuff. I just don't LOOOOVVE it. I do like these red flourishes with the blue though. To his credit too, this, Hermes, and Dior--none of these shows were timid.

10. Alexander Mcqueen Fall 09
This is the perfect collection to end with. Defiant, angry, beaten down. Alexander McQueen's collection for Fall had this brilliant "fuck you ness" to it, while also fully feeling the weight of tragic destruction. This was a show that was more a commentary on the state of fashion. And it was pretty horrific. To some extent, I think McQueen had the definitive word for how I'll remember Fall 09. And just this depression era in general.

Some honorable mentions: The gloves at Proenza Schouler , Fucking Crazy Prada, The Marc Jacobs I really like: Louis Vuitton, Louise Brooks references at Dior, and Vivienne Westwood, just because.

DEATH IS A PUSSY!!!

2009-03-10T19:56:00.000-07:00

This is a video of my friend B. Dolan performing a death defying leap as Evel Knieval at the Paid Dues Festival(and a few other places). It's sort of the proto-performance of what would become Skycycle Blues, which is one of my very favorite things, I've ever experienced.

Anyways. It's really awesome, and most of the people who read this probably have already seen it. Still. Thought I'd share it.

Kiss Kiss Go Go: Completed

2009-03-01T05:08:00.000-08:00

So this is a comic I made over christmas called Kiss Kiss Go Go Comic. The whole reason for it, was to capture momentum. To do something fast, and quick--with lots of action and romance. Sort of the polar opposite of Ophelia. Initially I was going to send it out to friends in a small printing as a New Years card. But as it's nearly March, and I'm poor...so much for those plans. Plus I am not sure I like it as much as Ophelia honestly. But it's still pretty fun.

Anyways. Right now the only ways to get it are going to my flickr and reading it as a set there:

Kiss Kiss Go Go Set

Just look at the images here or on my work blog.

Or if you are a .cbr fan, I have one of those files too, which I can email you, if you send me some mail at mercurialblonde at gmail dot com.

Assorted Real World Ramblings

2009-02-27T01:15:00.000-08:00

Anywho. So I've been watching this season of the real world because I wanted to see how the transgender kid was going to get treated, both on the show by her cast members, and by the unwashed masses. And now I just spend most of the episodes cringing, and then feeling bad that I was cringing.

And then I go and read the comments below the episodes on MTV, and I make comments at people that end up getting removed because of how vitriolic I get at the stupid hateful things people say.

It's a terrible cycle.
My reactions are thus:

-To Katelynn: I think she's a pretty normal girl for the most part. But if I had to live with her, there would be blood. She drives me crazy. I don't like how she walks aroud the apartment with all of her roommates there, in pretty unflattering underwear. I actually agree with her housemates, even if not their reasons for saying it, "put some damn pants on". She just in general seems to be very inconsiderate of the people around her, and so just as a person that makes me absolutely crazy. I also was not keen on how she completely flipped her speech style in episode 8. Or how she became a complete psycho. CHILLL!!!! I dunno. It's painful to watch her insecurities play out on that kind of scale, she's not that great with people in general. And I guess the plus side of all of this is that none of it reaaaally is to do with her gender status. Like I said, for the most part she's pretty normal, and it seems like most of the cast members have chilled out about things. Oh yeah and seriously, what was up with that pole dancing bs in the gettysburg episode?

-To MTV: I know the whole point of her being there is to educate people about transgender issues. But if there could be more moments where she's just chilling, and not being asked about her gender status, that'd be neato. It's gotten very one note. we completely lost the plot thread from the beginning of the season about her boyfriend, which is a shame, because it was way more humanizing.

-To the Cast: Everyone needs to chill out. Jeez. They argue over the most petty things, and no one is all that interesting. Chet and Ryan is the best thing about this season. Even if both of them are also dumb as bricks. They mostly make me laugh. And the editing MTV has done to make them the couple of this season is pretty fantastic. There's a serious bromance going on here.

Yeah I feel dumb for wasting a blog about the real world. But this is how I roll.

The Paradox of Transgender Fashion

2009-02-25T23:05:00.000-08:00

The paradox of transgender fashion, and this applies mostly to MTF, FTM, and some C/D folk, but I suppose could apply to androgynes too. But I think it's mostly to the other three categories of the transgender community. At any rate, the paradox is thus: Because of the society driven need for gender based markers to mark out one's identity in the world(the gist of which is the incredibly boiled down age old "boys wear blue, girls wear pink"), a person who is transgendered in order to be properly recognized in the gender in which they are living, are required to gender their fashion in very concrete black and white ways. The paradox of this is that a lot of fashion, has moved toward androgenous concepts for the past several decades. So that while a trans person is wearing these very gendered clothes in order to mark their gender, they are pulled out of the normalcy of that gender, by that very act of having to dress in extremely gendered ways.

And the thing is, this is often an internal pressure that is pedaled in by the insecurities that society pushes into the transgendered person, that anything that is left indefinite or ambigious with their fashion, is taken by society to mean that they are not fully committed to their transition.

What this results in, more often than not, is a kind of hyper-gendered fashion sense that often times gets blocked into the extreme fringes. This of course creates the stereotype of the transgender woman(I think because women's fashion has the greatest play in it in terms of gendernessnessness, which I think is probably tied a lot into how greatly women's roles in society have changed over just the last 50-60 years) who is in someways outed by the outlandishness of her fashion choices, which she makes generally out of an intense desire to eliminate the confusion of her gender. This is not always the case, it's just the stereotype that you see in movies and popular culture--it's the general view that a lot of the populace has of transgender people. Which, it's not good or bad, depending on how the look is being owned.

I think the central question you want to ask yourself though, is are you wearing what you're wearing because you want to, and it's an expression of who you are, and your own style. Or are you wearing it because you don't feel safe, and are coming from a place of persecution and insecurity? Which I mean, I don't think that question is limited any particular life experience. I think everyone has those questions sometimes about fashion. But I'm more wondering about it from the lens of the transgender experience. But maybe that's the thing too. In a lot of ways these questions apply to everyone. But we act maybe, like they should just apply to one group of society when we're asking them.

It's a decent question, in terms of fashion. Are you dressing to express your own aesthetic and ideas, or are you dressing to conform to a gendered fashion out of insecurities about your male, female, or androgynessness?
Oh, and I realize that the way I explained this got lost in digressions, and now makes absolutely no sense any more. But oh well!

Kiss, Kiss, Go, Go: Workblog 8

2009-01-06T05:59:00.000-08:00

This is the other main character of the comic. Her name is Kitten Haley. She's a sex pundit. This is part of a page, but I liked this also just as a poster, so it's there for that as well. She's also supposed to be an avatar of Shiva. So there's that.

Kiss, Kiss, Go, Go: Workblog 7

2008-12-30T07:55:00.000-08:00

Here's another page I'm working with. Obviously also sans lettering.

Kiss, Kiss, Go, Go: Workblog 6

2008-12-23T00:18:00.000-08:00

Completed page three. Halfway done(besides lettering, le sigh).

Kiss, Kiss, Go, Go: Workblog 5

2008-12-21T15:59:00.001-08:00

Still fooling around with page two. And working on page three.

Kiss, Kiss, Go, Go: Workblog 4: Annnnd Page.

2008-12-09T16:39:00.000-08:00

Anywho. Here's what the page looks like. There will actually be some cheezy lettering in that big white space on the top right of the page, in case you're wondering why that's blank. But yeah this is kind of the basic page. I'm still playing with things on it, but all of the elements are on it.

Kiss, Kiss, Go, Go: Workblog 4: Ominious Clouds!

2008-12-09T09:12:00.001-08:00

Yeah so here's, like last week the start of a page, that I should be done with sometime today.

Kiss, Kiss, Go, Go: Workblog 4: Koala Ninjas

2008-12-08T19:12:00.001-08:00

I promised Koala Ninjas. And here I deliver koala ninjas! These are the stand-in henchmen for this little comic I'm throwing together. What I've kind of changed in my process with this comic is getting the base characters constructed and uniformed out before I start. I like to try and get them in a few diffrent angles, and then fill in the gaps in between. But this gets kind of the general gist of the character, and gets me an easy to use springboard for the page.

Kiss, Kiss, Go, Go: Workblog 3

2008-12-02T10:54:00.000-08:00

This may have been an instance where I made things worse, rather than better.

Improvement?
I think so. I kind of dig the depth the diffrent paneling creates here, especially with the characters sort of popping out of panel in a few places. Though that said, something I'm trying to change from Ophelia is from over using that effect, to the point where I end up with a book where all of the characters are literally crawling out of the comic.

Of course sometimes the right answer is somewhere in between:
hmmm....

Kiss, Kiss, Go, Go: Workblog 2

2008-12-01T16:26:00.000-08:00

An update on this page. It's mostly done. But for the dialouge, maybe the panel boxes(I'm thinking of drawing in my own border there), and then some of the embellishments that I'm drawing in to finish up the backgrounds. I kinda dig it, personally.

Kiss, Kiss, Go, Go: Workblog 1

2008-12-01T12:11:00.000-08:00

Fear not! In the billionth rebirth of my blog, this icarnation is kind of a live update sort of deal of my daily progress on the various comic projects I'm doing. Below are two characters and two panels from the first page of a comic I'm doing tentatively called Kiss, Kiss, Go, Go. It's a short story comic, like really short, but it's a taste of what I'm going to do on a much larger scale next year. Plus this is probably going to be put together as a Christmas gift in physical form to several lucky friends.

But anywho. Yeah. Oh and all of my artwork is done chopping and screwing images in photoshop, pulling from all manner of media, both online and offline.

I'm planning to finger paint the lettering for this project, by the by. It will be fun.

Spring 09 Fashion: And also why Fashion Matters

2008-10-07T03:44:00.001-07:00

Jeez. Wow I fell behind on this thing. I blame the liberal media and my inherent mavrickness. And also inertia, a full plate time wise, and the need for something to give.

Anyways. I'm here now. So that's what matters. But anywho I wanted to do a blog of some of my favorite things from the past few weeks of the spring 09 fashion shows in New York, Paris, London, and Milan. New York and London are very underepresented. Mostly because I thought both were pretty boring. Milan was a lot better. And then Paris was however much better Milan was than New York and London, times a billion. So a lot of these are from Paris.

I've picked my five favorites(no mean task) which sort of grab at what I liked best in general from the past few weeks. But I have all of my favorite looks over on flickr here. I didn't label them there however. But if you see one that you don't know where it's from, you can always ask me. I pulled the pics off of style.com and most of them are from the Chanel, Vivienne Westwood, Marni, Karl Lagerfeld, Louis Vuitton, Yves Saint Laurent, and Christian Lacroix shows.

Here are my five favorite looks:

1.
This was my absolute favorite thing from all of the shows. It's from Karl Lagerfeld's brilliant collection. The tatoo jewelery I love more than death. I love the whole joined pant thing that was all over the place(and probably best done at YSL). I just love how cool and futuristic and comfortable yet elegant and hard this looks. It's so many things at once, but it's all awesome. I love it. This was also from the Lagerfeld show:

2.
This is from Yves Saint Laurent which was probably my second favorite show after Marni. And these metallic drop pants were a big reason why. I love how it looks like this crazy wet metal. The shoes I also love. It is kind of the logical progression of that gladiator shoe, but looks oh so much better. I wish I had saved a close up, because the heal looks like the eiffel tower which is very neat. There were actually three pieces like this, but I picked this one because I heart green.

3.This is just two of the many many many looks I loved from Marni. Marni was far and away my favorite show. It made me the most excited, and led to the most immediete changes in my personal fashion. This show officially shoved me onto the knee high bandwagon. There's just a coolness about all of these patterns, and how effortlessly they are mixed and matched. It's this crazy liberation that is both put together, but not. And the jewelry at Marni was out of control. Consuelo Castiglioni, I love her for this collection. It's all so fun but so classy.

4.
Viveanne Westwood was another huge favorite. Her clothes had this cultured pirate feel to them, and felt really versatile and fun. Plus I believe her clothes were green friendly. I call the first look up there superhero chic. But yeah. She had a TON of great stuff, and I definitely recommend going through her whole collection.

5.
These are from Alexander Mcqueen, who Mare kind of turned me onto. My favorite things from his collection was the crazy patterened dresses like the first two here. And then I included the third one because it's the evolution of a cool dress that Mare was talking about to me earlier in the month.

6.I don't know that I'd wear much of any of what Givenchy rolled out. But as an artist I will definitely steal the ideas. Riccardo Tisci called these looks Western Bondage. Which kind of takes Narciso Rodriguez's bondage wear from in New York and ups the ante with this compeltely fantastic western tilt. Jean Paul Gaultier I think also put out a collection which was like this for Hermes. But I think the Givenchy collection better culls in the idea. At any rate, if you see a Western Bondage comic book from me at some point, well....this is where that idea started.

7.John Galliano was initially disapointing to me, but as time passes I'm returning to it more and more. I like the color pallette he was using. And the hats and wigs, which I loved from the start, only increase in fantasticness. I just love how light everything is.

7.
Chanel was out of control. It was just this endless stream of incredible class and comfort. I actually liked it initially more than Galliano. But it hasn't really had the staying power for me, and it's kind of slipped behind some of the more exciting ideas.

8. I actually enjoyed Louis Vuitton a lot. Everything looks like a million bucks. And I liked the sort of tribilist flourishes on the bags(not pictured here really...ha).

9.
Christian Lacroix was really good. Not better than some of the other shows. But there was some fun with polka dots and diffrent patterns, and just in general some good stuff to be excited about.

10.
Mason Martin Margiela was scary fun.

Honorable mentions:

I liked Vera Wang a lot. I didn't find anything there like wholly creative or inspiring. But I've always liked her clothes. She makes clothes I'd feel cool wearing. So I can't not mention her. I like her sense of color, and I like how she puts the outfits together.

Narciso Rodriguez was probably my favorite New York show. I liked all of the crazy bondage wear he put out. This red dress was the highlight, and for the longest time I thought it was going to be the highlight of the season for me. I'm glad I was wrong.

Anyways. Like I said at the beginning. If you go here you can see all of my favorite 71 diffrent looks I saw. If you are so inclined.

And as an addendum to this, since this blog is primarily about magic. Fashion is magic, just like all of the other arts are. The way you can shape shift with fashion, the way that diffrent clothes can change how you feel and how you present yourself, and both your perceptions and people's perceptions of you is one of the definite elements to magic. And I think a lot of times there's a certain subset of of people in this world who don't see the point, and just are like...well I'll wear whatever I find when I stumble to it in the dead of morning...so I think it's worth, especially in times when the economy is tanking all over the world, to kind of state the case for fashion. I think even during the great depression, fashion had a role in making people feel better. Maybe you are poor and getting your ass kicked by the economy, but you can jump outside of that reality with the right outfit. Or you can even dress yourself to underscore that reality, as a kind of silent martyr to that time. There's so many ways you can go with it. But all of them are influential and all of them are as important as any art. Fashion like books, music, movies, comics, are the stories we tell ourselves. And it's one of the ways in which we change, adapt, defend, and attack.

As a magician one of the primary things you have to experience to understand the ways in which your will is imparted into the oozy woozy is that anything that you leave to chance that is under your control can be a weakness. If you aren't controlling your fashion, you're not controlling your identity, and you're giving away needless amounts of power that you could otherwise be using in your service.

There's a reason that priests, rabbis...ect. all have sort of ritual garb. Clothes are infinitely important, as is how you use them.

So yeah. That's my pre-emptive strike to the people who may read this and be non-plussed by the idea that I would focus this much energy on this topic.

While I'm at it though.

You could support some awesome artists who I'm friends with, who do the whole fashion kerbabble out of the Chicago-ish area.

http://www.effineffigy.com/

They've actually got a lot of really cool guy stuff for my male readership. Like laser beams and werewolves type stuff. So check it out.

Rune of the Week: Berkanan

2008-09-10T17:15:00.000-07:00

Old Norwegian Poem:
Birch has the greenest leaves of any shrub;
Loki was fortunate in his deceit.

Old Icelandic:
Birch is a leafy twig
and little tree
and fresh young shrub.

Anglo-Saxon:
The poplar bears no fruit;
yet without seed it brings forth suckers,
for it is generated from its leaves.
Splendid are its branches and gloriously adorned
its lofty crown which reaches to the skies.

Rune of the Week: Sowilo

2008-08-27T22:13:00.001-07:00

This week's rune is Sowilo meaning sun.
The poems for it are:

Old Norwegian Poem
Sun is the light of the world;
I bow to the divine decree.

Old Icelandic Poem
Sun is the shield of the clouds
and shining ray
and destroyer of ice.

Anglo-Saxon Poem
The sun is ever a joy in the hopes of seafarers
when they journey away over the fishes' bath,
until the courser of the deep bears them to land.

The lighthouse. A guide. A spot of optimism. Good times.

Rune of the Week: Algiz

2008-08-20T22:53:00.001-07:00

This week's rune is Algiz. Meaning Elk. The poem for it is:

"The Elk-sedge usally lives in the fen,
growing in the water. It wounds severely,
staining with blood any man
who makes a grab at it. "

It's Elk-sedge is actually a sharp bladed grass. This rune ostensibly stands for protection. The sustenance of the grass and the elk is bladed against the protection and defense mechanisms both have.

Rune of the Week: Pertho

2008-08-13T18:32:00.000-07:00

This week's rune is Pertho. There's not really any poems to post. It basically is life where Eihwaz was death. It is a rune about our possibilities and potential. Our beginnings not our ends. It's also associated with games and play.

This is the sole poem for the rune:

"Peorð is a source of recreation and amusement to the great,

where warriors sit blithely together in the banqueting-hall."

Rune of the Week: Eihwaz

2008-08-06T06:02:00.000-07:00

This week's rune is Eihwaz. It means "yew" and is generally associated with the world tree.

The poems are:

Yew is on the outside
a rough tree
and hard, firm in the earth,
keeper of the fire,
supported by roots,
[it is a]joy on the estate.

Old Norse rune poem:
Yew is the greenest wood in winter;
there is usually, when it burns, singing.

Old Islandic rune poem:
bow, rainbow - "descendent of Yngvi"
Yew is a strong bow,
and brittle iron,
and Farbauti [a giant] of the arrow.

An interesting explanation of the rune comes to us from Barbelith poster, Cusm:
"The world tree. Motion along the vertical axis. Access to heaven and hel. The inner strength to change the self. Backbone. But change, we know from tarot, is just a nice way to re-label Death.

The Yew tree grows in cemetaries, and is sometimes said to contain the spirits of the dead below its roots. Its wood is made into bows, giving strength to hunt and being death to others. Its bark emits a hallucenigenic gas, a shaman tied to it may venture to the underworld. This rune is death, and every aspect drawn from death.

Consider the bow. In your enemies hands, it is death to you. In yours, the threat of death brings power of banishing and warding. The secret of this rune is in access to the powers of death, and communication through them. It is great strength to those who wield it, a bane to those it happens upon."

Thoth Tarot Tuesdays: Princess of Wands

2008-08-05T01:31:00.001-07:00

This week's tarot is the Princess of Wands. The Princess of Wands is the earth of fire card. Which is to say it's the fuel. The princess is in some ways raw energy. She is naked because she is unimpeded in her access to and relationship with, the elements. Probably not surprisingly, she is quite moody, and prone to righteousness. When she has been wronged, it is not something she lets go unavenged. If it seems that way, it's because she is laying in wait to ambush.

The Princess of Wands is as Crowley says: "superficial and theatrical, completely shallow and false, yet without suspecting that she is anything of the sort, for she believes entirely in herself, even when it's apparent to the most ordinary observer she is merely in the spasm of mood. She is cruel, unreliable, faithless and domineering".

Her positive attributes is that she is all or nothing. When something enters her sphere she consumes it. Her love is total, as is her anger. In many ways she's quite the individual. Her beauty and energy can be inspiring and attracting. Even if at times she seems wholly irrational.

She's someone who will get her way regardless.

Rune of the Week: Jera

2008-07-30T15:02:00.000-07:00

Jera, meaning a good year. The plenty of the harvest.

Old Norse Rune Poem
Ar
Plenty is a boon to men;
I say that Frodi was generous.

Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem
Ger
Summer is a joy to men, when God, the holy King of Heaven,
suffers the earth to bring forth shining fruits
for rich and poor alike.

Icelandic Rune Poem
Plenty
Boon to men
and good summer
and thriving crops.

It's good to be king, if just for awhile. Jera is the good times rolling. Cornacopia. That bountiful plentiness you see in early Southern Literature. You'll also note the presence of Kaunaz in it's design. This is life to Kaunaz's death.

Not a bad rune.

Tarot Thoth Tuesday: Two of Disks (Change)

2008-07-29T03:44:00.000-07:00

This week's Ophelia.
Last Week's Tarot.

This week's tarot is the two of disks. This card is called Change. Which I think is fitting given that it's the Chokmah for an idea whose physical manifestation is wealth. Change, wealth...get it.

Anyways, Jupiter and Capricorn rule this card, which is a bit of a problem as they don't exactly make the perfect match. The meloncholy and pragmitism of Capricorn is a bit of a downer for the youthful verve and forward push of Jupiter. This of course hits on a core tenet of change which is that it's the result of two forces fighting for balance. In some ways change isn't really about change at all. Crowley uses the metaphor of the Universe again for this card, and that's kind of about right. When you think of the universe you think of this great big static whole, that is kind of always there. But when you look at the smaller details, that stability is built on constant motion, constant warring, and constant change. The yin and yang is prominent here. Two warring energies who together make a harmony. The card directly speaks to this in it's presentation of the snake in the shape of the infinite figure 8.

What we find upon meditation of these elements is that this is a pretty accurate and full description of what change actually means. We are accostumed to view change in terms of it's beginning and end, but change is actually the infinite middle. Real change doesn't start anywhere or end anywhere, it just is. We're talking about a process, not an ends.

Anywho. As a bonus treat, here is the cover for next week's Ophelia associated with this card:And if you're wondering. No that's not Ophelia. That's a new character that is going to be introduced, and who will become quite key to the story.

Photoshopping the Divine: Personal Anecdote # 7337

2008-07-24T11:23:00.000-07:00

This will be a quick blog as I'm quite sleep deprived at this point. But the above is my extremely modest altar to Odin, I thought I'd share it. The plan is to eventually surround the thing with artwork(and not burn the house down(I may need to move it to a deeper shelf).

The idea I had was that since I'm poor, and can't feed my deities with a bunch of rum and whatever, I'll make them art(need to get better toner for my printer first) and frame it and put it around the room. I was thinking of this in relation to how in my webcomic I've got the pages sort of set up as altars to different aspects of the card I'm working with and the dieties I work with. I'm thinking a similar thing can be done with the specific purpose of honoring the various gods I deal with, in this case Odin. This will also serve to enhance the relationship, with all of these visual cues around the room(part of why I think Iconography is so popular in most religions--I think for some people this type of thing can definitely enhance the experience).

Anyways. I wanted to pass along the idea of collage altars. And show you the modest beginnings at play here, and maybe in a few months check back in with an update on the sitch.

Rune of the Week: Isa

2008-07-23T06:09:00.000-07:00

This week's rune is Isa. Meaning Ice. The poems are:

The Old Norse Rune Poem
Isa
Ice we call the broad bridge;
the blind man must be led.

The Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem
Is
Ice is very cold and immeasurably slippery;
it glistens as clear as glass and most like to gems;
it is a floor wrought by the frost, fair to look upon.

The Icelandic Rune Poem
Ice
Bark of rivers
and roof of the wave
and destruction of the doomed.

We see in the poems a multi-faceted depiction of Ice. We see it's functionality and utility in the bridge, it's beauty in the gems it resembles, and then it's destruction in the waves. One thing that is interesting to note is that the first two poems focus on positive aspects with one negative caveat, and then in the final icelandic poem, that formula is reversed.

This is another one of those raw elemental force runes.
Gems are beautiful because they don't move, they're stationary, and always there for us to look at. For what it's worth.

Tarot Thoth Tuesday: Ten of Disks (Wealth)

2008-07-22T10:43:00.001-07:00

If you didn't know, issue two of my webcomic Ophelia came out today.

And that also means it's time for a new installment of tarot thoth tuesdays. This week's card is the Ten of Disks-Wealth.

The ten of disks card is actually technically the last card of the deck. Because it is a disk card, it is also an earth card, and because of this it is the last group that goes down over the tree of life. And since it's a ten, it lands in Malkuth, which is the kingdom. Malkuth is sort of defined as the complete opposite of the abstract spiritual idea that kicks the whole process off. This is the peak physical manifestation of the journey through the sephiroth. It has a function similar to the Universe trump, in that it's a pretty positive card in that it's about wisdom, and true happiness--because it's the last card, it's also the mirror of the very very first card. So the whole of the tarot deck is building to this card.

Crowley writes of this card:
"The Ten of Disks is called Wealth. Here again is written this constantly recurring doctrine, that as soon as one gets to the bottom one finds oneself at the top: and Wealth is given to Mercury in Virgo. When wealth accumulates beyond a certain point, it must either become completely inert and cease to be wealth, or call in the aid of intelligence to use it rightly. This must necessarily happen in spheres which have nothing to do with material possessions as such. In this way, Carenegie establishes a Library, Rockefeller endows Research, simply because there is nothing else to do.

There is another view to consider, that this is the last of all the cards, and therefore representes the sum total of all work that has been done from the beginning. Therefore, in it is drawn the very figure of the Tree of Life itself. This card, to the other thirty-five small cards, is what the twenty-first Trump, the Universe, is to the rest of the trumps....the symbol of the uniting of the Macrocosm and the Microcosm, the accomplishment of the Great Work, the Summum Bonum, True Wisdom and Perfect Happiness."

So in some respects it's both the first and the last card, because the imminations are never static, and while it represents an end, it also represents a beginning. This is probably the most transparent way I use this card for the next issue of the book. But a lot of the other themes are only going to be apparent as we get further down the road into the story.

Anyways. That's this week's card.

Rune of the Week: Naudiz

2008-07-16T09:30:00.000-07:00

First off, the launch of my webcomic has gone really well, and thanks to everyone who has taken a gander, and I hope it was enjoyable. If you still haven't read it, it's called Ophelia, and it's here.

Obviously it's Wednesday, so it's rune day. Today's rune is Naudiz. Naudiz means "need".

The three poems are:

Old Norse Rune Poem
Naudhr
Constraint gives scant choice;
a naked man is chilled by the frost.

Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem
Nyd
Trouble is oppressive to the heart;
yet often it proves a source of help and salvation
to the children of men, to everyone who heeds it betimes.

The Icelandic Rune Poem
Constraint
Grief of the bond-maid
and state of oppression
and toilsome work.

The vision of need presented in the poems here is one born out of pain and trouble. It's the lemonade of that damn lemon tree, if the lemon tree fell on your house and made you homeless.

Here's a very lucid explanation from the Barbelith poster cusm:

"Naudhiz is another two edged rune. Need implies lacking, and hardship. Freya Aswynn links this with the future, the norn Skald, Niffleheim (the low underworld of mists), and fears. A need is something inherently connected to the future, as something to be fulfilled or quested for. It inspires action. It is also a signal of distress, should you make your need public. The need fires burn to call for help.

This rune is often used for protection, as a ward against trouble, to call for help, or to aid in meeting a need.

The positive side is in dealing with a need in a timely manner. Should the need be fulfilled early, hardship is avoided and prosperity maintained. It can serve as a warning, of dangers unforseen. Heeded, safety is found. Needs are fulfilled.

The fire burns in the night to ward off cold and preserve life. Fire is a basic essencial need, like food and shelter. "

So maybe this is a week to let your needs be known and see what kind of aid you can get to your cause?

Thoth Tarot Tuesdays: Princess of Swords

2008-07-15T10:48:00.000-07:00

So yeah a lot of exciting stuff today to hit.

First off, if you didn't know, my webcomic "Ophelia" launched today:

Go check that funness out.

Second off, it's Tuesdays, and in addition to be thing the day when a new webcomic episode comes out, they are the days I explore the tarot card which next week's issue deals with. Which incidentally, if you are coming here from the webcomic, last week's card, the Hermit, was explored here

So anyways . The Princess of Swords.
Crowley writes of the Princess of Swords:
"The Princess of Swords represents the earthy part of Air, the fixation of the volatile. She brings about the materialization of Idea. She represents the influence of Heaven upon Earth. She partakes of the characteristics of Minerva and Artemis, and there is some suggestion of the Valkyrie. She represents to some extent the anger of the Gods, and she appears helmed, with serpent-haired Medusa for her crest. She stands in front of a barren altar as if to avenge its profanation, and she stabs downward with her sword. The heaven and the clouds, which are her home, seem angry.
The Princess is stern and revengeful. Her logic is destructive."

The Princess also as a rule has her place at the bottom of the tree of life in Malkuth, which is the Kingdom. It is so far removed from the original idea, that it actually acts more as a moon, emmanating reflections from the creation back to the original idea.

I found the best way to understand the Princess of Swords through understanding Artemis. Artemis is the wrathful goddess hunter, who is also associated with Diana(who embarrassed Paul at Ephesus--so much so that when he had the opportunity to go back to the city, he decided he was in too much of a hurry(wink wink)). A lot of the stories associated with her hinge on a sometimes over the top and harsh act of revenge she takes for either a real slight or a percieved one. She's not someone you want to even give the impression of screwing over, let alone actually screwing her over. She has quite the high body count.

She is also a skilled hunter though. So when the card is drawn, the higher qualities of this card refer to a cleverness in practical affairs, while the lower aspects(if you want to call them that) refer to revenge, and the lowest aspect is destructive acts of delusion.

Interior Home Decorating: Making an Altar

2008-07-14T10:48:00.000-07:00

Oh hey. So I've linked this information before. But I've recently moved back home to my mom's house, and I've moved into my sister's old room, so in that vein there's a whole slew of redecorating that I want to do with her room. And one of the things I'm planning to do is use some of the shelves that are bolted to her walls to set up some altars to various dieties I'm working with. Right now for Odin I'm using the top of the small TV that is in there, I just set the channel to static, and spend my time with him. It seems to work reasonably well.

But yeah, so this sort of tells how to set up a vodoun offering, which is a decent basis for a lot of other kinds of altars, and sort of hits at the principles behind why you'd do an altar.

"Here is one possible way to set up a basic altar indoors, without a dirt floor. Get a white cloth, and wash it in water with some of your first urine of the morning. For urine, you can substitue vinegar. Let the cloth dry outdoors in the sun if possible. Cover your altar table with it, and then sprinkle it lightly with your favorite perfume or Florida Water.

Next, get four small stones from near your house, clean them by scouring with salt and rinsing well, then place one at each corner of your altar. Clean a wineglass, cut glass bowl, or other vessel and fill it with water. Do not use metal or earthenware - glass or crystal only. Place it at the center of your altar, and add three splashes of anisette or white rum as you bless the water.

It is common in Vodou practice to baptise ritual objects, that is, to give them names. You can take a spring of basil and splash a baptism onto your water glass, which is now a powerful passageway for spiritual energy. You might name it almost anything appropriate, fanciful, and positive - "Water of Life", "Gurgle Mama Brings Spirit", or whatever!

Into a glass candleholder, place some earth from near your house and a few grains of salt. Take a white candle, and with a pure vegetable oil rub the candle from the middle up to the top and then from the middle down to the base. As you oil the candle, direct your energy into your hands and pray for spiritual awareness. Put the candle firmly into the candleholder and place it in front of the glass of water. Don't light the candle just yet.

Around the altar you will place other objects according to the divine principles you wish to serve. An ancestor shrine will have images of deceased ancesters, Ogoun's altar will have a machete and a red kerchief, Erzulie Freda's shrine will have flowers and jewelry, and so on."

Rune of the Week: Haglaz

2008-07-09T09:42:00.000-07:00

This week's rune is Haglaz. It means: "hail".

The three poems are:

Hagall
Hail is the coldest of grain;
Christ created the world of old.

The Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem
Haegl
Hail is the whitest of grain;
it is whirled from the vault of heaven
and is tossed about by gusts of wind
and then it melts into water.

The Icelandic Rune Poem
Hail
Cold grain
and shower of sleet
and sickness of serpents.

This section of eight in the runes are under Heimdall's watch. Heimdal is the guardian at the bridge up into Midgard. The patch of which is a rainbow. Because of this many of the runes in this section are primordial forces of nature. Heglaz is no diffrent. This rune is the embodiment of the cold. The pounding of the hail. But there is a duality here in that it is called a grain. The metaphor here is hail as a prize of the gods whirled down into earth. And its existence here is fleeting as it soon becomes water. Which is nourishing. So it's the violent coldness of the initial bounty dissapates into nourishment for the future.

Today's isolation and catastrophe is the seed of tomorrow's pleathora.

The god's give us hail as a gift, so that we might learn from it, and make our own brilliance of it. The presence of the wind in the distribution of the ice grain would seem to allude to the messenger nature of it's arrival. These seemingly painful nuggets, have in them the keys to unlocking a full and filling future.

Thoth Tarot Tuesdays: The Hermit

2008-07-08T12:00:00.001-07:00

I figured now was as good a time as any to do a blog on the Hermit card of the Thoth deck, considering the very large role it has played in my life the past few weeks. It just keeps coming up. The first place it came up for me, was in regards to deciding whether to move from Rhode Island or not. At the end of the day, I felt that the isolation while painful, would result in some good for the soul moments of epiphany.

Of course this happened a week later, when I decided to do a webcomic without an artist. The comic I previewed the other day, "Ophelia" is based around a much larger story, but the focus of each episode is themed around a tarot card I get from a reading before I sit down to write every week. And for the inaugral issue of "Ophelia" I drew the Hermit, again. So there's a weird crossroads conjoining here between the internet, the tarot, the comic and my life.

At any rate. The Hermit, as you might guess has to do with seclusion and isolation, focus on yourself. Going off to the cave to meditate and find your own path.

Over at Barbelith the poster Kobol Strom made a terrific meditation on the card:
"Mad man running through the forest.The poor guy on the street.Being secluded away from society by physical or spiritual means.Locking yourself away from parts of your headspace you can't deal with.Concern with other peoples acceptance is diminishing, creating isolation.Someone in your life who doesn't seem to want to talk,actually finds they have the most to say.Hidden talents that need space to grow.Mental calm.Clarity through ordinary perception.Finally seeing the wood for all the trees.Howling at the moon.Taking time out for a necessary spiritual search.The inner journey to find out how you feel,resulting in making your own mind up.
Time to remember just who the fuck you are.
Alone,with your fears held out in front,scrutinising their usefulness,and then throwing them away like a cheap coat should you feel the desire."

Another poster on Barbelith, 6opow made this observation about the Hermit archetype:
"It is also interesting to note that Nietzche's Madman bears many similarities to the archetype of the Hermit."

This is of course something I noticed as well with the card, and why the first thing my comic does is make a Nietzche reference.

As for what Crowley has to say about the card:
"Wander alone; bearing the Light and thy Staff.
And be the LIght so bright that no man seeth thee.
Be not moved by aught without or within:
keep silence in all ways.

Illumination from within, secret impulse from within; practical plans derived accordingly. Retirement from participation in current events."

As for the imagery of the card, the shape of the Hermit is based upon the shape of the letter Yod, which symbolizes Wisdom, and is the highest form of Mercury and the logos. The background of the card is a field of wheat, which refers to Virgo which is the lowest, most receptive and feminine of Earth. The card is also invoking the legend of Persephone and the notion of a psychopomp(guide for the soul)--this is why Cerebrus is in the corner of the card. This particular element of the card also has a cross section with my comic, but I don't want to spoil it much.

At any rate. That's the card for this week. It's pretty cool.

Ophelia: WebComic

2008-07-06T15:39:00.001-07:00

This is the cover and the first two pages of a web comic I am doing. I'm using collage stuffs, because 1) it looks neat, and 2) I can't draw and 3) I'm tired of waiting to run into someone who can draw just to get my bloody stories out the window for people to read. Anyways.

The series is called Ophelia. Each section of the story is done in six pages, and is based around a certain tarot card for that week. Each issue can stand alone, but I've got a longer narrative here in mind as to why this girl is doing what she's doing.

I'm very excited about this. Additionally if anyone knows a good place to host my comic for free, let me know. Ideally, I'd like to have it set up where you click links to go between pages.

Page 1:

If you click on the images they get GI-NORMOUS.

Page Two:

Rune of the Week: Wynn

2008-07-02T09:07:00.000-07:00

This week's rune is Wynn. It means "joy".

The poem for it is:

Bliss he enjoys who knows not pain,

sorrow nor anxiety, and himself has

prosperity and bliss and a good enough house.

As with most runes there's a darker edge to everything. We see in the poem that because of the perspective of the narrator, the definition of the rune for joy, takes on a jealous tone. It seems to read, bliss is for one who has the good fortune not to have been screwed over too many times.

There's also a strange reference to having a roof over your head in the final line. This rune stands for being free from pain, and enjoying the finer accouterments of what you have. Perhaps asking us to take stock of what we have, put aside our pains, sorrows, and anxieties, and revel in whatever prosperity we have. These are the conditions of to meet joy.

Incidentally, this completes the first set of runes. The first eight runes are Freya's eight.

Which if you are scoring at home:
Freya

"The daughter of NJORD, and the beautiful twin sister of FREYR, she is — to put it in modern vernacular — a bit of a goer. She did marry a God called OD, causing much confusion amongst academics and historians who have confused him with ODIN leading to further confusion by confusing her with FRIGG. (This is why you need Godchecker.) But OD was a bit of a goer himself and nipped out one day for pastures new.

This caused much weeping of golden tears, but as usual FREYA made the best of a bad job and really went off the rails. She ran wild with Gods, mortals, giants and dwarves.

The stories and allegations of how she gained possession of Brisingamen, the golden amber necklace of desire, are scandalous. Especially the one about her bedding four dwarves in turn before they would give it to her. But this sort of thing is just titillation. In any case, the necklace was stolen by LOKI and — although it was rescued by HEIMDALL — we don't think she got it back.

Being a strong-willed warrior maiden, she joined and then led the VALKYRIES — so that she could have first pick of the slain battlefield warriors. Most of the slain go to VALHALLA, but the good-looking heroes go straight to her palace for rest and recuperation.

But FREYA does have a softer side — she loves romantic music and bunches of flowers. Her daughters are the beautiful HNOSS and the equally beautiful GERSEMI."

Tarot Thoth Tuesday: The Sun

2008-07-01T10:08:00.000-07:00

Hi folks, I think it's Tuesday, so that means it's time for tarot Tuesdays, because that's how I roll, all alliterative and stuff.

Today's Tarot is: The Sun.

I chose this tarot to explore today because I had a run in with the sun this weekend, and my friend had dreams at the same time involving Loki giving instructions about the sun. So this is what I've got.

From Crowley:
"Give forth thy light to all without doubt;
the clouds and shadows are no matter for thee.
Make Speech and Silence, Energy and Stillness,
twin forms of the play."

Glory, gain, riches, triumph, pleasure, frankness, truth, shamelessness, arrogance, vanity, manifestation, recovery from sickness, but sometimes sudden death."

Wiki:
"A. E. Waite suggested that this card is associated with attained knowledge. The conscious mind prevails over the fears and illusions of the unconscious. Innocence is renewed through discovery, bringing hope for the future."

Shane Hall:
Something to do with a sacred place. I think is what he said. He was quite tired and I can't find the text.

Bunnicula!

The Sephirot, the Tarot, and a Small Anecdote

2008-06-30T05:18:00.000-07:00

Learning the Sephirot is probably one of the most important things you can do for understanding the Thoth deck. The more you work with the Sephirot, the more the cards open up for you. I would actually say this is more important than learning the nuanced meaning of every card. Because once you figure each cards place on the Sephirot out, a lot of their meaning can be figured out just from that. I would say probably the two biggest knowledge systems for the Thoth deck are the Sephirot and Zodiac, with the former being more important than the latter.

"Qabalists have widely applied the cards of the tarot as keys to the Tree of Life. The 22 trumps (major arcana) are seen as corresponding to the 22 Hebrew letters and the 22 paths of the Tree; the ace to ten in each suit correspond to the ten Sephiroth in the four Qabalistic worlds; and the sixteen court cards relate to the classical elements in the four worlds.^[9]^[10] While the sephiroth describe the nature of God, the paths between them describe ways of knowing God.^[11]"

^"The emanations of creation arising from Ain Suph Aur are ten in number, and are called Sephiroth (סְפִירוֹת, singular Sephirah סְפִירָה, "enumeration"). These are conceptualised somewhat differently in Hermetic Qabbalah to the way they are in Jewish Kabbalah^[5]. See Sephirot for the Jewish conceptualisation.
From Ain Suph Aur crystallises Kether, the first sephirah of the Hermetic Qabalistic tree of life. From Kether emanate the rest of the sephirot in turn, viz. Kether (1), Chokhmah (2), Binah (3), Daath, Chesed (4), Geburah (5), Tiphareth (6), Netzach (7), Hod (8), Yesod (9), Malkuth (10). Daath is not assigned a number as it is considered either a false or a hidden sephirah^[6].

Each sephirah is considered to be an emanation of the divine energy (often described as 'the divine light') which ever flows from the unmanifest, through Kether into manifestation^[7]. This flow of light is indicated by the lightning flash shown on diagrams of the sephirotic tree which passes through each sephirah in turn according to their enumerations.

Each sephirah is a nexus of divine energy and each has a number of attributions. These attributions enable the Qabalist to form a comprehension of each particular sephirah's characteristics. This manner of applying many attributions to each sephirah is an exemplar of the diverse nature of Hermetic Qabalah. For example the sephirah Hod has the attributions of; Glory, perfect intelligence, the eights of the tarot deck, the planet Mercury, the Egyptian god Thoth, the archangel Michael, the Roman god Mercury and the alchemical element Mercury^[8]. The general principle involved is that the Qabalist will meditate on all these attributions and by this means acquire an understanding of the character of the sephirah."

It's funny, I had a brief flirtation with Qabalah back in early high school, if I had known better I would have just stuck with it. I wonder if I still have that old book? I'm slightly reticent about the Qabalah now in this post-Madonna world, but whatever, "I needz ur knowluge gunz, knowz!"

Incidentally, I had incidence to use the tarot this weekend. I had arrived at a crossroads in the middle of Pennslyvania, both literal and figurative. And I ended up using the tarot to help me get perspective on the options available to me. I also made an offering to Odin there, leaving some coins at the crossroad juncture. 10 minutes later it was storming and pouring down rain(it had been pretty clear to that point). I also saw a ton of ravens, and everyone was walking their dog in front of me(I'd parked in a pet area on accident). I still need to get much much better if I'm ever to make proper sense of any of that, but I try. There's no sense in doing magic if you aren't going to bring it in on the major events of your life.

2008-06-27T04:52:00.000-07:00

It could be awhile before I put another post up here, or it may be next week. I'm in the process of moving and things are duly disheveled.

Rune Letter of the Week: Gyfu

2008-06-25T05:49:00.000-07:00

This week's rune is Gyfu. Meaning "gift". Gifts were a huge deal in viking times. Possessions and winnings weren't meant to be kept they were meant to be spread amongst your friends, because true honor was in keeping great company. Those that threw the best parties, and gave out the most of their plunderings, were honored and respected the most. It was not a culture of hording. In fact, the example we have in Beowolf of that is of the demon dragon that kills Beowolf being one who hordes gold and treasure. So yeah, give of yourself freely, life is too short to badger it all away for yourself. If you enrich those around you, you enrich yourself a hundred fold.

The poem for this week's rune:

"Generosity brings credit and honour, which support one's dignity;
it furnishes help and subsistence
to all broken men who are devoid of aught else."

There's only one poem, and it's the above. So this is a shorter entry than most. But it is a pretty cool rune. Another attribution to think about here is the crossroads. Hecate, Legba--perhaps this would be a good week to leave a gift for your favorite crossroads deity somewhere.

Alan Moore: Highbury Working

2008-06-24T11:39:00.000-07:00

No Tarot Tuesday today, rather Tarot Thursday. A pattern of oversleeping. Completely sick with rest. Listening to these Alan Moore magical workings.

This is from the Highbury Working.

Worth finding.

Nightmares and the Dastardly Phobos!

2008-06-19T06:13:00.000-07:00

How to Induce A Nightmare

1.Think about what it is that gives you nightmares.
2. Increase the sodium and spice before bed.
3. Take a Vitamin B6 tablet an hour or so before bed
4. As you fall asleep, tell yourself what you'd like to dream about.
5. Keep a Dream Journal

"PHOBETOR: God of Nightmares. Especially ones involving big hairy spiders, bloodthirsty rats, or slavering Bugblatter Beasts.
The brother of Dream Gods MORPHEUS and PHANTASOS, he specialises in dreams involving animals, and is also responsible for night-time fears and phobias. So if you suffer from bad dreams, it's PHOBETOR you need to talk to.

Just remember the name: Phobetor = Phobia. And if you're scared of him, you may be suffering from Phobophobia."

"Phobos (Ancient Greek Φόβος, "Fear") is the embodiment of fear and horror in Greek mythology . He is the offspring of Ares and Aphrodite . He was known for accompanying Ares into battle along with his brother, Deimos , the goddess Enyo , and his father’s attendants. Timor is his Roman equivalent."

At any rate. I've been having nightmares, and I use Phobos rather prominenetly in the version of the banishing ritual I have. Which may seem counterproductive, but I've kind of decided I like the rush of nightmares. That weird out of your brain sensation you get when you wake up and everything is vibrating with scariness. It's interesting to me.

Kenneth Anger's Rabbit Moon:

Rune of the Week: Kenaz

2008-06-18T06:26:00.000-07:00

This week's rune is Kenaz. It's one of the more mysterious runes out there. One of the meanings for it is "ulcer", but it's also associated with the flame of inspiration.

Kaun
Ulcer is fatal to children;
death makes a corpse pale.

The Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem
Cen
The torch is known to every living man by its pale, bright flame;
it always burns where princes sit within.

The Icelandic Rune Poem
Ulcer
Disease fatal to children
and painful spot
and abode of mortification.

We do see some common threads here though. Note "death makes a corpse pale", "the torch is known to every living man by it's pale, bright flame". It burns "where princes sit within", it burns where naive ambition flowers? It's dangerous to those who aren't serious. It's tied with life and death. The mortal flame?

On Barbelith much of the discussion is around Kenaz as a creative inspiration. But there's something more dire here. When we consider that in order to learn the runes Odin hung himself from a tree with a spear through his foot, just to see the runes, and then gave up his eye to get the meaning of them--we began to see a kind of duality of knowledge. It doesn't come easy. Kenaz is an important life energy, but it can just as easily snuff you out. It's no child's game.

If we borrow slightly from the Sephiroth/Tarot from yesterday, we can actually find some illumination in the Ace of Wands.
Which is the visulazation I get from the these concepts pretty much to a T. Now if we consider the Ace of Wands to be an uncommunicable ideal, the way we can learn more of it's nature is to follow it down the sephirot, focusing specifically in on Tipheret and Malkuth . We do this because the Tipheret or 6, is the balance of the suit, emanating from the ace of wands, and Malkuth is the last point before it breaks apart. Sort of the high or low point of all the energies of the suit, the physical opposite of the spiritual Keter.

At any rate. The cards are 6=Victory, 10=Oppression.

Which kind of gets back to Kenaz perfectly. A balanced state of the flame of kenaz defines that plane of balance which is victory. Victory is triumph. The adult surpassing the childish ways. Avoiding the death the poems warn of. Whereas Oppression, hits at the dualistic nature of Kenaz. Taken too much into it's extreme the heat of it's ideas are no longer triumphant, but are instead oppressive. The weight of them collapses and burns you down. This ties into what we know about worrying giving you an ulcer. The state of worry is if nothing else a state of oppression. So to a large extent what Kenaz is about is balancing between worry, which ends in death, and the burning ideas of life that we have as children. Kenaz is about finding the balance in your life between childish dreams and adult achievement. It's both the light which brings us into the world, as well as the one that snuffs us out.

Tarot Tuesday: O. The Fool

2008-06-17T03:48:00.000-07:00

I've started working with the tarot on top of the runes, and while I'm going through it at a much more rapid rate, I would like to add Tarot Tuesdays as a feature for this blog. So if you'll indulge me, the first card I'm dealing with today under the watchful eye of Hecate, is the Fool.

The Fool represents creative mania--the biforcated balance of opposing ideas held together under the silent tongue of the prophet, the Bachanalian. It intones the vulture Nekhbet. The dove of immaculate conception. Jesus and Dyonassus. The holy man. The accepted angelic. People like Marx with crazy flowing hair. The horns of Zagreas.

The fool bridges the gap between the great unconcepted and wisdom on the tree of life. Existing between the Crown and Wisdom, the Fool is the jester.

He stands jubilant ushering in spring as the Green man on top of the Nile, where the creative energy of the crocodile Sobek. Between his legs, under his sun, sit the silent intertwined babes of Hoor-pa-kraat.

The fool is the great cosmic glossolalia of the divine strained in through the mundane. It's deception, it's innocence, it's restraint of the highest degree, combined with all the inhibitions of a drunken escaped lunatic. In the fool is the universe and nothing. +1 and -1, the great zero.

eGODS: Twitter, Grant Morrison, Ghosts.... oh my!

2008-06-12T07:45:00.000-07:00

So twitter is something that I'm very into right now. You can follow me on twitter at Mercurialblonde. What's twitter you ask though? This is something I wrote on a message board in response to accussations that twitter was merely an extremely narcissistic blog:

"1. Twitter isn't really a blog. And if anything it's a less self-indulgent blog, because you're limited to 140 words.
2. I don't think the appeal of it is wholly in what you put into it, so much as what you get out of it.

It's more about tapping into a real-time ebb and flow of human existence strained through particular demographics which sort of ghost in and out of your walk down the street. There's a sense where with Twitter, a free floating hyper-reality is created that's shadowing very closely and very quickly whatever the world is up to or thinking about without neccessarrily taking you out of the world and subsitituting one reality for the other, which is in opposition to say instant messaging. Instant Messaging is maybe more prone to complete substitution, but something like this is more something akin to cybernetics. It's a fusion of the technological and the biological. You're taking the technology with you, and existing both within and without it.

This is more about a community of interconnected life, than it is the sole bastion of whatever thoughts you have. I write...a couple blogs. And this would never replace them. "

Even now I'm dreaming up ways to incorporate magical acts through twitter, especially given the way it is set up seems especially conducing to that kind of thing.

As a bonus unconnected bit, here's Grant Morrison from an interview with....Newsarama I think? He's talking about his comic book Final Crisis, but here he's talking about the conception of gods he is pushing within the book. I think it's fairly useful to read, especially given how much talk is given on this blog to invoking various deities:

"When we decided to do a book about gods, we felt it was important to do think through what a ‘god’ actually is. Gods aren’t like souls, or ghosts, gods are much bigger and scarier than that.

You know, it’s like every single word culture developed is own pantheon of Gods -which unsurprisingly all share similar traits, like the Greek goddess of Love is Aphrodite, while the Voudon goddess of Love is Erezulie and the Norse goddess of Love is Freya and so on. Now, what you have to understand is this: our primitive forebears weren’t stupid and when they talked about gods what they were describing were ‘eternal qualities’. In a normal human lifetime, we become possessed by ‘gods‘ every day. When we fall in Love, we are possessed by Aphrodite, when we are witty and clever we are possessed by Hermes or Thoth, when angry we‘re possessed by Ogun or Tyr or Ares. We tend to call such possessions ’moods’. but even when we are not personally in love or angry, there is always Love and Anger in the world and those eternal wells of Love and Anger and the other ‘big’ qualities of the human emotional spectrum are what our ancestors personified and called ‘gods’. The ‘god’ in this case, being the timeless quality of ‘Love’ or ‘Anger’ that we can all tap into for a little while.

No-one was really ever suggesting that there is a real woman you can touch called Aphrodite, who lives on Mount Olympus - but the sum total of every single human experience of Love is what the Greeks called Aphrodite and the Celts called Brigit and so on. I hope that makes sense."

Rune of the Week: Raido

2008-06-11T06:11:00.000-07:00

This week's rune is Raido. It stands for journey or travel. Which can be physical, spirtual, or anything. The poems are:

The Old Norse Rune Poem
Reidh
Riding is said to be the worst thing for horses;
Reginn forged the finest sword.

The Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem
Rad
Riding seems easy to every warrior while he is indoors
and very courageous to him who traverses the high-roads
on the back of a stout horse.

The Icelandic Rune Poem
Riding
Joy of the horsemen
and speedy journey
and toil of the steed.

One of the more interesting points teased out over at Barbelith is that while on the one hand it is about riding, and a journey, it is also important to note the aspect of being a rider, which is to say when one rides a horse, they journey, but they are in control of the journey. And so while this rune is transitory in nature, it is controlled transition. Which is somewhat different from some of the other runes we've had so far

Though conversely, this rune can also be about being ridden if you take it in another way. If you are not the horsemen, you are the horse--meaning if you aren't the author of your own journey, you'll probably end up under the rails. And while there is a joy in this rune, in the riding, or the control of the journey, there is a misery here too in the aspect of being controlled through a journey. So as with other runes, like Thurisaz, there is a dual nature here in terms of outcomes, with both a joy and a misery. And in both instances victimhood seems to be punished, while heroism rewarded.

So don't get taken for a ride this week. Instead take the opportunity to go somewhere of your own making.

Thoth Tarot: Personal Experience 79 million

2008-06-10T06:14:00.000-07:00

So the other day on a whim, I picked up some Thoth tarot cards and the Book of Thoth by Crowley. My aim here was that since runes are going to take a long time I can use and learn tarot alongside of it, and probably have one inform the other.

At any rate, here's a quick summary of the Thoth Tarot for the kids at home:

"Crowley originally intended the Thoth deck to be a six-month project aimed at updating the traditional pictorial symbolism, perhaps best demonstrated by the Rider-Waite-Smith deck; however, it was to span five years, between 1938 and 1943, as the scope of the project grew ever wider. Crowley and Harris were meticulous in their work; Harris painted some cards as many as eight times. The current printing of the deck actually includes two alternate illustrations of The Magus, each making use of markedly different style and symbols. Unfortunately, neither Harris nor Crowley lived to see the deck published; a follower of Crowley undertook the work of publication in 1969. This initial printing was of markedly inferior quality, and in 1977 Harris' paintings were rephotographed for a second edition; the current edition is based on a further update that took place in 1986.

The illustrations of the Thoth deck are rich in symbolism, based upon Crowley's stated desire to incorporate symbols from many disparate disciplines, including science and philosophy, as well as to draw on his extensive knowledge of various occult system (as described in detail in his Book of Thoth). For example, The Hanged Man and The Moon draw from Egyptian mythology, and the Princess of Disks holds a disk bearing the Taijitu. The pip cards in the four suits (Wands, Cups, Swords, and Disks) depict their objects in carefully-crafted positions; for example, the Four of Swords (which Crowley named "truce") shows four swords with their points toward the center of an imaginary square, suggesting a possibly tense peace. The card illustrations are uniformly stark and vividly illustrated throughout."

The cards definitely had a very weird charge to them when I opened the box. I actually had sort of anxious moment as I was opening the box for the cards and tearing off the wrapping. So there is something here. I don't know a lot about Tarot yet, but I did shuffle the deck and pull out a card that I felt pulled to.

It was this one:
Oh yeah. The art is amazing and incredible. I haven't looked at every card yet, but the ones I have seen are so trippy. You get lost in them. Incredible work.

Banishing Werewolves is SO Metal.

2008-06-09T05:24:00.000-07:00

The above images are from Alex CF's piece "Lycanthropy Research Case".
The images come courtesy of MAKE.

This is what I want for Christmas mom.

Here's a very interesting breakdown of the Lesser Banishing Ritual courtesy of Benjamin Rowe for the kids to try at home.

Odin is of course, way freaking metal. This is a kind of fun encapsulation of Odin-lore courtesy of Manowar:

Rune of the Week: Ansuz

2008-06-04T05:10:00.000-07:00

This week's rune is Ansuz. And let me tell you. I am glad for it. Thurisaz was a miserable rune, and I'm just grateful to have made it through the damn thing. I almost don't even care what Ansuz is. Just so long as it's not Thurisaz.

Ansuz means both God and Mouth(think, in the beginning there was the word). This is a very magical rune, in the sense that words are the foundation for all magic, and this rune has a very close relation to words. Here are the poems:

As
Estuary is the way of most journeys;
but a scabbard is of swords.

The Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem
Os
The mouth is the source of all language,
a pillar of wisdom and a comfort to wise men,
a blessing and a joy to every knight.

The Icelandic Rune Poem
God
Aged Gautr
and prince of Ásgardr
and lord of Vallhalla.

This is a rune that is closely associated with Odin obviously, and it's a useful rune to think about when opening discussions with the divine because of it's meaning. This is a rune for telling stories. So probably the best way to honor this particular rune is to gather some friends around and engage in some spirited story swapping. Some other helpful aspects of this rune are wisdom, clarity of thought, and comfort. It really is the perfect rune to come out of the traumas of Thurisaz.

Mind/Body Non-Dichotomies And Other Bedtime Stories...

2008-06-03T05:45:00.000-07:00

This is something I wrote on a message board about the whole mind/body thought process people have. So many people want to change their minds, and think they can do it without any change in the body, like the two aren't the same thing. Like two minds with the same body, are not the samebody. Anyways. I think it's an interesting point for the purposes of this blog, and I wanted to share it with people who may not read message boards(message boards are the new/old salons, I'm slightly baffled why people have not caught onto this. Especially advertisers. I'm suprised every brand doesn't have a message board on it's website. I feel like every website almost should have a message board, just standard...anyways. That's a diffrent rant). So yeah.

Oh yeah. So the context was in response to a guy who was wanting to gear his artistic craft towards consciousness transformation(which was obviously of great interested to me) Here it is:

"The body obscures nothing. It's only because you seperate it from the mind that you feel that way. But just think about in terms of biology and how the nervous system is setup. The body is in charge of input and output, the brain is in charge of responding to and managing those impulses. If anything obscures it's the mind. But as I said, the two aren't seperate. The conception that they are is why you got blockage. Manipulating your senses is manipulationg your body AND mind. Consciousness steps in time with body, and context is framed coexisteningly. Your brain doesn't literally go like "MOVE ARM!" There's an interdependent relationship between the eyes seeing a fastball coming right at you, the reaction, to raise your glove to catch it, and the recollection of like movements. All of that happens at almost the exact same moment, and you can't say any of them are leading the way. Is the eye controlling the body because it sees the ball? Is the mind controlling the eye, because it knows what a ball is, is the arm controlling both by it moving up to catch it fast enough?

The only reason I'm fervent on this point, is because you say you are interested in altering your consciousness. But you don't understand how consciousness is built, how it works, or how it relates to the body. And what's worse you actively deny those associations to such an extent, that the only consciousness changing you experience will be fleeting, and your version of consciousness will end up less like the Buddha, and more like the Badu. "

Pyschopomp: The Death Pimp

2008-05-29T11:34:00.000-07:00

Psychopomp:

"Many religious belief systems have a particular spirit, angel, or deity whose responsibility is to escort newly-deceased souls to the afterlife. These creatures are called psychopomps, from the Greek word ψυχοπομπός (psychopompos), literally meaning the "guide of souls". Their role is not to judge the deceased, but simply provide safe passage. Frequently depicted on funerary art, psychopomps have been associated at different times and in different cultures with horses, whippoorwills, ravens, dogs, crows, owls, sparrows, harts, and dolphins.

In Jungian psychology, the psychopomp is a mediator between the unconscious and conscious realms. It is symbolically personified in dreams as a wise man (or woman), or sometimes as a helpful animal. In many cultures, the shaman also fulfills the role of the psychopomp. This may include not only accompanying the soul of the dead, but also vice versa: to help at birth, to introduce the newborn's soul to the world (p. 36 of ^[1]). This also accounts for the contemporary title of "midwife to the dying," which is another form of psychopomp work."

Notable Pyschopomps include:
Odin, St. Peter, Eshu, Hecate, and Anubis.

While it's justifiable to approach psychopomp deities with some caution for fear of being dragged down with them on a whim, it's a bit irrational, and Psychopomp's can actually be very effective and important deities to have a relationship with. They can get you admission into just about any spiritual situation, and are a wonderful crossover guide between your conscious and subconscious.

Rune of the Week: Thurisaz

2008-05-28T11:23:00.000-07:00

This week's rune is Thurisaz. It is an especially volatile and dangerous rune to work with. It is at once the rune associated with Thor, and at the same time the rune associated with Giants. It is according to the poems mainly a danger to women. So one might conclude it is somewhat phallic in nature as well. Because it is associated with Thor, it is also associated with Thunder.

Here are the poems:

"Old Norse
Thurs
Giant causes anguish to women;
misfortune makes few men cheerful.

Anglo-Saxon
Thorn
The thorn is exceedingly sharp,
an evil thing for any knight to touch,
uncommonly severe on all who sit among them.

Icelandic Rune Poem
Giant
Torture of women
and cliff-dweller
and husband of a giantess"

Obviously I am a bit concerned with how this rune is going to manifest over the coming week.

Here's an interesting explanation of the rune from the barbelith poster Naked Flame:

"Thresholds. Gates. Points of no return. Synchronicity biting you in the ass. A rune that reminds you of the seriousness of your business."

Bottoms up!

James Monroe: President Monster Fighter

2008-05-27T12:39:00.000-07:00

I found this story while going through the backlog of entries over at Grinding.be. Apparently James Madison and James Monroe were passing around Space pistols back in the beginning eras of the United States.

"Given pride of place in an unassuming museum on the East Coast of America is a pair of 200-year-old duelling pistols shrouded in mystery.

The intricately decorated guns were said to have been forged from the iron of a fallen meteorite.

They were a unique gift from the commander of a South American region, which would later become Argentina, to the fourth US president, James Madison.

"Permit me therefore to present to your Excellency... a specimen of the first essays of the manufacture of arms established in the provinces of Buenos Ayres and Tucuman," wrote General Ignacio Alvarez in an accompanying 14-page letter.

Over time, they passed into the hands of Madison's successor - James Monroe - and are now on display at a museum dedicated to him."

Of course the reason this story has come up, is if you continue reading the above article, you find out that the idea that they are crafted from fallen meteorite has supposedly been debunked. Or at least the notion that these particular pistols were. The article also mentions that the design on it isn't even silver, it's aluminum. Very cheap for a gift between Heads of State like this.

It just doesn't add up why the Argentine president would gloss so glowingly on these pistols, and then have them end up as functioning cheap pistols. No. The only logical answer is that these are not the pistols that were given to Madison and later passed on to Monroe. These are replicas that were made while the pistols were put into real actual use. I wouldn't be shocked if the pistols are still in possession of whoever Monroe later enlisted to help acquire Florida. And you will see why later on.

To cast further doubt on this case, the name of the Machine that they used to show the Pistols the museum has in it's possession as fakes, is Isis.

Isis:
"Isis is a goddess in Ancient Egyptian mythology and is celebrated as the ideal mother and wife, patron of nature and magic; friend of slaves, sinners, artisans, the downtrodden, as well as listening to the prayers of the wealthy, the maiden, the aristocrat and emperor.^{[1]"

Bold added for emphasis. I highly doubt it's a coincidence that Isis has become associated with these Pistols. Particularly given that she is occasionally in league with Emperor's(Presidents).}
^{Now look at this:
"}James Monroe (April 28, 1758 – July 4, 1831) was the fifth President of the United States (1817-1825). His administration was marked by the acquisition of Florida (1819)"

^{Of course that begs the question...what do Egyptian Space Pistols have to do with acquiring Florida?}
^{70 years Later this washed up on Florida shores:
"}The St. Augustine Monster is the name given to a large unidentified carcass, originally postulated to be the remains of a gigantic octopus, that washed ashore on the United States coast near St. Augustine, Florida, in 1896."

Was James Monroe fighting Cthulhu?

Influencing Probablity Game and Evocation Process

2008-05-22T11:40:00.001-07:00

I thought this game from Occult Forums was an interesting ritual game to play:

"Influencing probability by odds calculation practice. This is quite simply "the dice-rolling game". For it you need:

* A pair of dice.
* A notebook.
* A writing instrument, i.e., pen or pencil, or crayon for those of you who are not allowed to have sharps.

Open the notebook. Write down the date/time at the top of the page. Pick up the dice. Pick up the pen/pencil. Roll the dice. Write down your result--this can either be a combined result, i.e., "9" or an itemized result: "3, 6". Roll the dice again; write the result down again. Keep doing that for awhile without thinking about anything. Once you start to see a pattern emerge--for example, you may be rolling a lot of 10s (in which case I will never play Yahtzee with you)--start TRYING TO ROLL that result. Make a mark in your notebook where you started trying for a particular result, and write down the result you want like in the margin. Once you start trying to roll a certain number or combination of numbers, keep track of how many times you "win" and how many "losses" you have.

Your notebook will look something like this:

28 February 2008, 1155

4, 2 (6)
4, 6 (10)
3, 1 (4)
6, 5 (11)
(etc. Now I notice I'm rolling a lot of 4s, either in combination with another number or combined, so I start rolling for 4s.)

4

3, 2 L
1, 3 W
4, 6 W
(etc.)

IMPORTANT NOTE: Don't work on this for more than a half an hour or 45 minutes at a time, especially if you live with someone else. It will scare them, and they will start thinking about sending you for mental health services. Trust me on this. Plus an obsession can develop, and you don't want that. So yeah--half an hour, 45 minutes, then stop. Set a timer so you won't have to keep looking at the clock.

When you do this exercise, try not to place a lot of expectations on yourself, or get too discouraged if you can't seem to influence the dice as you would like to. This is something that takes a LOT of practice. You may work on it for weeks before you start seeing some results. I do know people who get the hang of it fairly quickly but then have a hard time applying the trick to things in real life, to whom I say: Once you start getting results with this, start paying more attention to what is going on in your mind when it seems to be working. When my dad was in military service, he used to win tons of money off people playing dice. I have discussed this with him many times and asked him to show me how to do this, but all he can do now is describe it to me, since he was in a really bad car wreck some years ago and messed up his hands to the point that he can't roll dice anymore. Nevertheless, when he described what he was doing to me when he WAS able to win at dice, he said pretty much what I'm telling you here: "It's not just what you do with your hand, you have to think of a certain thing," and I would of course ask him what that thing was, and he would kind of shrug and reply, "It's not really a THING, but the order your thoughts go in when you are thinking. I can't describe it, but you know it when you have it." In other words, what he was telling me about was magic.

So don't get discouraged. Try to apply the dice exercise to other things that involve probability, such as the behavior of animals or people in a group setting, for example: There are two women sitting at the bar; which one will get up to use the bathroom first? and stuff like that. (DON'T start placing bets on this stuff, as it will lead to a gambling habit. See my above caution about obsession.)"

And here's a simple rundown on the evocation process my friend and I have used successfully to summon out Loki and Odin:

1. Went to a location where we felt a good magical vibe. In this case a forest.
2. Poured screwdrivers, lit candles.
3. Asked for the blessing and protection of the spirits of the forest.
4. Poured some of the screwdrivers into the ground.
5. We took turns describing the god we were summoning, using song, and chant, trying to build up a free conscious flow of voice and sound to enter into a trance state.
6. Once we got a sense of the gods vague presence, we started to describe and enhance that.
7. the gods started to appear on our periphery in the forest, and we described how they looked to one another, until both of us could see what the other was seeing.
8. We then entreated the gods to come closer and join with us in a drink.
9. We told them our intent for wanting to work with them. We poured them drinks. And then circled back out of the ritual, thanking the gods for coming, thanking the forest for its protection. And then we left the grounds.

Results:
Earliest results.
More results: I've since started a rune ritual to learn the runes, which I hadn't been that interested in before this ritual summoning Odin. I was thinking of working more with Scrying at the time. Some people have said I've become a little meaner and more irritable. I'm not sure how true that is. I've had a rush of information and learning sine that time period as it pertains to magic. And while I've encountered resistances, they've generally been ones that have made me stronger and more articulate. I've also started an altar ritual for Odin, I will explain later. And then I've begun experiencing the runes I'm studying in life changing ways. For instance, last week the rune was wealth. And in that time span I had a job interview that went so well that I will soon be going in for a follow up, and that seems promising. And then I also sold my car these two things are almost last minute, but even just the car thing will allow me to hold on financially for one more month. The Old man has also crept into my writing. I've done one short story, and one short comic script that both seemed to have Odin in a prominent role in the background guiding the proceedings. And then he's cropped up in other writings as well.
I've also had a few experiences where I've felt or seen him on the periphery of my day to day life. Including hearing the hoofclomps of Sleipnir during the lighting of the Altar I have made for Odin. And seeing his eye through a window while I was thinking about when to buy cookies for my rune ritual.

So, so far the ritual has been a success. There's still a long way to go. But things are progressing nicely.

Rune of the Week: Uruz

2008-05-21T06:51:00.000-07:00

It's Rune Wednesdays! This week the Rune is Uruz. Uruz stands for strength. Pure animalistic strength. Here are the three poems:

"Dross comes from bad iron;
the reindeer often races over the frozen snow."

"Rain is lamentation of the clouds
and ruin of the hay-harvest
and abomination of the shepherd."

"The aurochs is proud and has great horns;
it is a very savage beast and fights with its horns;
a great ranger of the moors, it is a creature of mettle."

When I searched for Uruz pictures, the picture below came up. It is a picture of Fenrir. Fenrir is the wolf, the son of Loki. He eats Odin during Ragnarok. The man with his hands in Fenrir's jaws is Tyr. He eventually loses that hand to Fenrir. Fenrir is Uruz. He is pure animalistic energy, which is so powerful it can even devour Odin eventually, if left to grow.

The Internet and ShapeChanging Shamanic Practice

2008-05-20T11:06:00.000-07:00

"A woman named Legba, a witch, enjoys cybersex and morphing because "they can be intensely magical. It's a very, very easy way of shapechanging." Legba likens this to the traditional shamans, who she says are "between genders, or doubly gendered." Moreover, "morphing and net.sex can have an intensity and unsettling effect on the psyche, one that enables the ecstaic state from which pagan magic is done."

This was from a much larger article on technoshamanism. I parced out this part because shapechanging has been a concept that I've explored a lot on this blog and it's one of the more interesting aspects to me of shamanic magic. This aspect of it, is of course tied into cyberculture, and is one of the ways in which the internet and magic have crossroaded concepts. The notion that you could be someone who you were not, whether that was a change in name, a change in location, gender, or history has been around ever since people started communicating on the internet. It's a pretty fascinating thing that one of our first instincts when presented with a new reality to paint on is to change ourselves.

But I think the magical power of this phenomena is something that a lot of people let go by the wayside. The internet offers up a very easy way to wear another skin and dance around for a bit in it. And in so doing feel that kind of identity displacement that makes for very effective shamanic practice.

And then if one can then bring that identity they have crafted on the net back into reality, they'll have taught themselves a very valuable magical skill.

You may think this doesn't have any real world practicality, but it does. Particularly in the transgender community, which because of the internet, is allowed to start transitioning on the internet before any transition happens offline. This is most interesting because it is becoming pretty common for transgender net users to craft a very thorough projection of their female or male or androgynous self into the net. and then over time their real lives begin to flicker and change in congruence with that online projection. To me this is one of the greatest proofs of the validity of technoshamanism. Of course the next step is to do that sort of reflection much more quickly, and craft several different shapes to morph through.

Ravens are smart too!

2008-05-19T10:45:00.000-07:00

Some interesting things about ravens today:

"In conclusion, the results of the string-pulling experiment indicate that ravens rely on logic to guide their actions. The results of the pilfer anti-pilfer experiments show that ravens react to their competitors based on what they remember them being able to observe, that they can accurately attribute the capacity of knowledge to their competitors, and that they integrate this knowledge together with social status to make strategic decisions when retrieving food caches."

Odin's Raven's are Hugin and Munin:

"O'er Mithgarth Hugin | and Munin both
Each day set forth to fly;
For Hugin I fear | lest he come not home,
But for Munin my care is more."

~Grimnismol

And here is a talking Raven:

Rune of the Week: Fehu

2008-05-14T10:27:00.001-07:00

" Wealth is a source of discord amongst kin;
the wolf lives in the forest."

"Wealth is a source of discord amongst kin
and fire of the sea
and path of the serpent."

" Wealth is a comfort to all;
yet must everyone bestow it freely,
if they wish to gain honour in the sight of the Divinity."

This week's rune is Fehu. It stands for wealth. In norse cultures, wealth was seen as something of an evil that needed to be dispersed freely out to others rather than horded. If you look at a story like Beowolf, the kings made massive beerhalls to eat drink and be marry with their people. Then on the outside you had Grendel and his mom who horded gold and wealth and were profoundly unhappy and angry.

For this week until next wednesday, consider how you use wealth, and the role it plays in your life. Are you pursuing wealth to horde alone in some crazy tower, or are you pursuing it for your clan, so you can throw a bombass party?

Personal Anecdote 3: Science vs. Magic and The Easy Bake Oven

2008-05-13T10:04:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning to be greeted by Grant Morrison's Pop magic article.

So hooray for that.

Here's a discussion I've been having about science and magic, which is a bit frustrating because I don't inherently see the two as desperateness, or see the need to prove one over the other, and yet it seems like that arguement is being forced into play.

I think it's to my benefit though, because it is sharpening how I explain magic, and there's an extent to which my understanding is increasing as I explain it more. Which I find notable in the sense that I perceive the arguments as being forced into play, while I'm working with THE god of teaching and wisdom. I wouldn't be shocked if this is the old man at work again. Teaching me a few hard lessons in magical humility before the journey kicks off in full.

Tomorrow I'm starting a 24 week ritual to learn the runes. Each week I'll study a new rune. In order to start, I will back a cookie with an icing on'ed rune for that week, and bake that up, and then ingest it. And then for that week I will try and live that rune. Research it, find ways it exists in my life, and so on and so forth. And then after I've done all of the runes, I will be ready to go out and carve some runes of my own to use. I'm very excited. Magic and baking. What more could you want?
As an aside, I was reading another thread somewhere about popculture magic, and most magicians were poopooing the notion because popculture is so un fleshed out. But then I was thinking about my readings on native american gods, and their looney toons embodiments. I don't see any reason why Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck can't be very powerful gods to work with. Plus you could set up a really fantastic altar.

I want to find the post on barbelith about the magician that is using wrestling heroes from the 80's as his magical pantheon.

Personal Anecdote #2: Odin, Berzerkers, Spooky Armonicas

2008-05-12T10:11:00.001-07:00

I think this is great, it's a glass armonica, with what looks like Ben Franklin playing it:

Thank you Grinding.be.
Berzerkers and Odin as the Patron Saint of Outlaws

"Berserkers (or Berserks) were Norse warriors who wore coats of wolf or bear skin and who were commonly understood to have fought in an uncontrollable rage or trance of fury; the berserkergang."

Here's an interesting paragraph on the use of berzerkers in modern society:

"Of what benefit is the berserkergang in a larger, societal sense? There are two ways this is possible. One is that such practices serve as "release valves" for those born too different to fit into society, who might otherwise employ their energies in a destructive manner. But the other use is the more important one, for it is the very function in society that Odin serves (his function as Lord of Valhalla is actually incidental and only secondary). This is the role of the seidh-man, the warg, the outlaw, a person who deliberately lives outside of society in order to grow along a different path. You see, that which is static is dead. Life needs change to sustain itself. But it is difficult to sustain real change from within, for in the long run society tends to the conservative, to the static. So there is occasionally a need for a real outsider, something which can bring the new, which is in the Utgards, to the Innangards.
An example of such in modern times is Einstein, a self-educated scientist at a time when science was at a standstill, unable to learn anything further. Much of modern scientific and technological development is because he came at things from a unique point of view. The berserkergang is a great torrent of power and inspiration that can be directed and focused in a number of ways. Any pursuit the berserk engages in can be rendered easier and more effective by it, including highly intellectual ones like art and poetry, science and math. But it has its price, and anyone devoted to benefiting from it must also devote his life to coping with it, a thing that is not always easy. I suppose it would be possible to learn the berserkergang without being born a berserk, but it would not in the long run be desirable. Berserks can easily develop strong emotional blocks and inhibitions involving the gangr, and find themselves with a strong mind-body connection that is working against them. All sorts of psychosomatic illnesses can develop as a result which can turn into serious long-term health problems."

There's a lot of interesting things in there, one of which is Einstein as an outlaw, but the other is Odin as God of the Outlaws. This may explain some of my affinity for the old man.

Here's a Barbelith thread on an experience one person had in their evocation of Odin.

Another personal anecdote:
My friend and I spent an evening out in the woods the other week evoking Loki and Odin. Loki, because that god has kind of chosen my friend, and I am interested in working with Odin, because there are a lot of attributes that he has that resonate with me. At any rate, the ritual was set up that we basically sat across from one another over a candle, and traded evokation poems, songs, and stories while drinking screwdrivers and keeping an eye out in the woods. And sure enough, the two of them started to appear on the edges of the forest, and as we continued to talk to them and enchant them closer they both came to within about fifteen feet of both of us. We invited them to drink with us, but they wanted to kind of stand there and observe.

Odin was this tall gaunt figure, semi-obscured by the trees, who wore a white cloak over black clothes and his one eye glowed like the moonlight. Loki was more difficult to pin down. He was constantly peeking out from trees and waving. I think part of what kept them at bay was that we had enlisted my friend's dog as a guardian spirit for our ritual, and I think they were a bit weary of him. He was fascinating to watch, because after we evoked a guardian spirit into him, his whole manner changed, such that for much of the ritual he was literally patrolling the perimeter, and when we ended the ritual, he actually vanished deep in the woods in the direction which Odin and Loki had gone, seemingly to make sure they were gone. It was very interesting.

Anyways. Since that ritual, I've had a much more focused approach to my magic, and I've swung into rune study with a lot of aplomb. I've also picked up a lot of scars, and have become more irritable than normal. But my ideas seem to be flowing much faster now and my understanding of magical systems seems to be growing by leaps and bounds. I'm finding a lot of resources now very quickly, and picking out of them the ideas that are most useful very easily. And I think some of that is to do with beginning to work with Odin.

I know the old man has a bit of a reputation, but I think since my friend is working with Loki, that his temper will be pretty good so long as that keeps up, because I think a lot of people have bad experiences with Odin when they deal with him on their own on his own. Odin generally needs Loki around to be in the best of spirits. I also think that you should be prepared for trials when working with any powerful God. You have to earn the respect of that entity. Odin hung on a tree for nine days for his magical knowledge. He's not going to think much of just handing over knowledge without any work. So one has to be prepared for that.

This is the Barbelith thread on Odin.

I really should get an account there.

Faster and Faster the Reaper Rises!

2008-05-08T10:37:00.001-07:00

I thought this blog was interesting. It's a camera designed to take pictures of roadside altars:

Ostensibly I believe roadside altars are put there to commemorate accidents, but what you get eventually is a kind of monument to travel. Sacrifices to the great god Mercury. Trading in lives for greater and greater speed.

Or of course what better place to anchor a soul than by the roadside. It's a bit of a quirky thing with a long history across many cultures. You see shrines and memorials on the roadsides of Japan, Poland, and the US to name just three. Most cemeteries are built right on a main road so that many of their grave markers are visible clearly for those driving by.

The internet has this.

Stitching the Internet to Joe Daily

2008-05-07T09:20:00.000-07:00

"For Stacey Kim, a 36-year-old book editor who lives in the Boston suburb of Arlington, Massachusetts, emotional blogging has become a reflex. On April 11, 2007, Kim curled up next to her husband and held him as he succumbed to a long battle with pancreatic cancer. The next morning, she went online to post about the experience.

"It cemented the reality that he was gone," Kim says. "I got hundreds of comments back that were all so loving and supportive. It gave me a really tangible sense of community."

This is from an article on CNN.com which is about the role blogging has in dealing with trauma. What I find especially interesting here though is the way Kim phrased this, "It cemented the reality that he was gone". So often we like to pretend that the internet and real life are two seperate things, and this causes a lot of stress, because feelings about events that happen on the internet can be as real as those that happen off of it. But that doesn't change for many people the notion that there is a logged on identity and a logged off identity. What we are seeing with this kind of statement is that they are actually tandem, or even *gasp* one in the same thing.

Why this is useful is because many people underrate the experience building power of the internet, and don't really understand that the ways it works are akin to the way say astral traveling would work for a magician. What we are talking about here, with the internet. Is a kind of communal self-conscious experience. The internet you experience is in large part due to various clicks, gestures, and feints that you make on it to produce various kinds of experiences, both intellectually and emotionally. Whether it's reading an interesting article, watching a funny youtube video, or talking to a lover--these experiences are guided by a kind of sub-conscious drive that externalizes in a very obvious way the identities and desires of the various factions of the human unconscious. Now, this happens too in your life away from the internet. The way that you build experiences, is in large part due to your will, not random uncontrollable forces, but subtle and overt pushes and pulls of your will. The internet is just a more graphic and obvious expression of this--and a much quicker one.

And the thing is, if you pay attention to what is happening on the internet, the things that you are doing, the worlds that you are shaping, you are going to be that much closer to learning how to shape them through these experiences. It is possible with the internet to induce experiences in a much quicker and efficient way than you would offline. And in doing so, you can shape and change your identity and surroundings at a much more rapid rate. Both on and offline. It should be very obvious, that the internet is the new astral plane for magicians. All of your tools are here to make will manifest and reach a higher knowledge of self.

The key is to, like Kim, pull those experiences in and out of the offline experience, until the both of them are stitched together in one coherent identity, whether that's a patchwork job or not.

B. Dolan and the Artist as Shaman

2008-05-06T10:35:00.001-07:00

The artist as magician. Anyone that has been reading my blog for awhile, knows that the intersection of art and magic, and their interchangeability is something that I'm intensely interested in. Today I'm going to discuss it using my favorite current artist B. Dolan as my example, since a lot of the language and techniques he uses accurately invoke more than a few popular rituals of the shaman. And plus he has an album that's out today, it's disgustingly ill. It's like horror-core apocalyptic spoken word Ragnarök grinding. Basically right in the wheel house for me and a lot of the people probably reading this blog.

Anywho. You can get his music here. You can also listen to the whole "Failure" album in it's entirety, and listen to exactly what I'm talking about here.

The thing I'd like to open up with first is his poem Skycycle Blues. Skycycle blues is a spoken word performance about Evel Knievel the daredevil. What's interesting about this piece is that when it was performed, for the longest time, Dolan would dress up in a Evel jumpsuit and helmet and start priming the crowd. Bringing the crowd into a frenzy, before making a jump on a bike over some small school buses. This would be coupled with the actual piece, which is an invokatory piece. What's fascinating is the act of costuming, and masking here, takes on a transformative effect on Dolan. His facial expressions change. His body language is different, and on certain nights he is Evel Knievel. And there's this electricity, that supercedes the reality of the moment. He's jumping over small school buses, but the energy that act generates is tremendous, and it feeds into the rest of the piece.

What's fascinating even moreso than that, is how in the middle of the piece, Dolan uses Knievel as a tool to invoke and deal with Death. In a way, Knievel is used in the same way that one might use a Vodoun crossroads god to speak with someone from beyond that reality.

" So this is what you call a fucking one shot deal:
This helmet,
is to protect me from my own momentum
This costume
is to protect YOU from the realness of what is happening here!
I am calling on DEATH
and she comes growling and snapping into the arena
and opens her jaws up wide on both sides of my landing ramp!
Gasoline!
Throttle!
My heart is a spark plug!
My heart is pumping 100% Fuck You!
Thumbs up!
Open her up!
Let the arrow fly and
Tear into the fabric of an instant! "

To some extent Dolan allows himself to be taken over(mounted) by the Daredevil god Knievel. Because who better to invoke when trying to evoke death and pass along a request? Who is more brave in the face of death, than a daredevil?

The piece concludes:
"he deserves mercy, death.
mercy..."

Which when you take into the context that Dolan is in the guise of Knievel, asking for mercy for Knievel(who died recently) is also in some ways asking for a favor from death towards his own ends.

The last thing I'll say on Skycycle blues is this. On the EP record that you can buy, the Live Evel EP, on the back of it it recounts how Dolan became inspired to write the Knievel poem. It describes an experience he had in his car where his radio went out, and just like Phillip K. Dick's pink laser, a laser enters Dolan, and on the heals of that laser is the voice of Knievel coming in over the speaker. The story skips ahead some time and says "when I came to, I had spent a year onstage as Evel Knievel. At the end of that time, I wrote "The Skycycle Blues"."

There are other even stronger magical metaphors sprinkled throughout the album for the discerning listener. This is just the one that was the keyhole for me. But I mean, what's the significance of this? You'll actually find these kind of metaphors in performance art a LOT. And I guess that's really what I'm trying to play with here. Actors, spoken word poets, musicians, rappers--they are all magicians/shamans. And the best of them can and will put you under their spell.

This gets into some of what Alan Moore was talking about. In terms of the role of the artist. As with marketers, we are talking about people of high magical skill. People that can take others minds to places that they wouldn't go on their own. They can be the gateway to higher enlightenments and realizations of self.

Or they dumb you down. They can put you to sleep. They can dull the senses. And they can hasten our devolution. With all of the new things that we have, the old metaphors are the most primal. They are the ones most connected with the roots of our evolution. They are the ones closest to our inner most consciousness. And art, because it IS magic, is a way to communicate with these consciousnesses.

I don't know what I'm totally rambling on to. But it's something akin to, the role of the shaman in the community was to offer a way for the community to bridge gaps between the spiritual and the corporeal, and in doing so allow the community to know about itself and it's history in a much more real and fulfilling way. By connecting into that powerful communal back consciousness, the decisions for the future of the community can be enlightened and enjoyed. So I'm saying, listen to the music. Listen in between the music. And uh....I dunno. Buy B. Dolan's album. There's some great references to Divine Horsemen in there for you to find. As well as some great breakdowns for how magic intrinsically works. If you wanted to, you could take this album and teach yourself a magical system that will work, and will take your brain to new crazier places.

You can put yourself out into a dark forest, invoke old gods till your drunk and delirious, and watching them hover at the edge of your own perception, ask them favors, ask them for wisdom, ask them for something, because right now, people are asking in your stead constantly, the party is jumping off.

The Failure is the club banger jump off for 2008.

www.SFRstore.com
www.myspace.com/bernarddolan
www.bdolan.net

A Lovely Day for Norse Stuffs

2008-05-05T10:23:00.000-07:00

"Mead of Poetry (Old Norse skáldskapar mjaðar), also known as Mead of SuttungrSuttungmjaðar), in (Norse mythology is a mythical beverage that whoever "drinks becomes a skald or scholar" to recite any information and solve any question. This myth was reported by Snorri Sturluson (Skáldskaparmál 5) (1). The drink is a vivid metaphor for poetic inspiration, often associated with Óðinn the god of 'possession' via berserkr rage or poetic inspiration."

Metaphor?

Here's a site with directions on how to make your own mead.

Bootleggers unite! I haven't tried this process for myself yet, but it sounds fun.

Here are some nicknames of Odin:

Bági ulfs ........."Enemy of the Wolf "
Draugadróttin........."Lord of Ghosts"
Ein sköpuðr galdra........."Sole Creator of Magical Songs"
Gapthrosnir........."One in a Gaping Frenzy"
Geiguðr........."Dangler"
Grímnir, Grímr........."The Masked One" or "The Hooded One"
Hangaguð........."Hanged God"
Hárr........."One Eyed"
Hrafnáss........."Raven God"
Siðhottr........."Slouch Hat" or "Broad Brim" or "Deep Hood"

The sense that Odin is the Raven god is interesting to me.

Here's a popular Raven creation myth:

"Long ago, near the beginning of the world, Gray Eagle was the guardian of the Sun, Moon and Stars, of fresh water, and of fire. Gray Eagle hated people so much that he kept these things hidden. People lived in darkness, without fire and without fresh water.
Gray Eagle had a beautiful daughter, and Raven fell in love with her. He was a snow-white bird, and as a such, he pleased Gray Eagle's daughter. She invited him to her father's longhouse.

When Raven saw the Sun, Moon and stars, and fresh water hanging on the sides of Eagle's lodge, he knew what he should do. He watched for his chance to seize them when no one was looking. He stole all of them, and a brand of fire also, and flew out of the longhouse through the smoke hole. As soon as Raven got outside he hung the Sun up in the sky. It made so much light that he was able to fly far out to an island in the middle of the ocean. When the Sun set, he fastened the Moon up in the sky and hung the stars around in different places. By this new light he kept on flying, carrying with him the fresh water and the brand of fire he had stolen.

He flew back over the land. When he had reached the right place, he dropped all the water he had stolen. It fell to the ground and there became the source of all the fresh-water streams and lakes in the world. Then Raven flew on, holding the brand of fire in his bill. The smoke from the fire blew back over his white feathers and made them black. When his bill began to burn, he had to drop the firebrand. It struck rocks and hid itself within them. That is why, if you strike two stones together, sparks of fire will drop out.

Raven's feathers never became white again after they were blackened by the smoke from the firebrand. That is why Raven is now a black bird."

Compare that to:

"Odin and his brothers hated the brutal frost giant Ymir, and they slew him. So much blood flowed from the slaughtered giant that it drowned all the frost giants save Bergelmir and his wife, who escaped in a boat made from a hollowed tree trunk.

From Ymir's flesh, Odin and his brothers made the earth, and from his shattered bones and teeth, they made the rocks and stones. From Ymir's blood, they made the rivers and lakes, and they circled the earth with an ocean of blood.

Ymir's skull they made into the sky, secured at four points by four dwarfs named East, West, North and South. They flung sparks of fire from Muspell high into the sky to make the sun, the moon, and the stars. From Ymir's brains, they shaped the clouds.

The earth was made in the form of a circle and around the edge of it lay the great sea. Odin and his brothers gave one area, Jotunheim, to the giants. They also established the kingdom of Midgard, protecting it from the giants with fortifications made from Ymir's eyebrows.

One day, as they walked along the shore of the great sea, Odin and his brothers came across two logs. Odin gave them breath and life; Vili gave them brains and feelings; and Ve gave them hearing and sight. These were the first man, Ask, and the first woman, Embla, and Midgard was their home. From them, all the families of mankind are descended."

Both are creator gods. And would seem to be aspects of a similar cultural meme about ravens, gods, and creation.

Gandalf's Mac and the Technopagan Agenda

2008-05-01T09:36:00.000-07:00

Grinding.be has a fantastic blog about the usage of Magic to describe and interact with new techonological metaphors. It's what I would call a "must read". It's something that I have been very passionate about, and actually something that I am currently making a comic book about. So...yeah. Read that shit.

"Which brings me back ’round to magick. These “archaic” systems of thought have very detailed methodologies for incorporating and manipulating systems of information that extend beyond the traditional notions of the body or physical existence. Many of these systems understand the importance of the Idea and how these phantom things can heal or hurt.

Technology has brought us back to magickal thinking because magickal thinking has working maps of the empherial and invisible human experien ce that are just now being made visible to all via leaps in information technology."

Something I jotted into my notes the other week:
"Future is Magic.
Magic is Past
Future is Past"

It's very simple, but I think in that lies the basis for how we will evolve out of the coming eschaton event.

Hope and the Apocalypse

2008-04-30T06:40:00.000-07:00

One of the side problems of the total history world we are moving into, where all history is prescient is that we develop a certain jadedness to problems which in the past we were able to deal with by summoning a kind of belief necessary to overcome them.

The specific instance of this I'm interested in dealing with today is the perception of apocalyptic literature and prophecy in the modern era. In the past, apocalyptic literature typically arose during times of great societal stress, generally around certain year types, but not always(side point, it's interesting the correlation between time which is for all intents and purposes man created, and the chronal aspects of apocalyptic prophecies--you always need a date, if only because we wrongly assume all aspects are moving in concert according to our own perceptions of time, when they are as incongruous as the planets (time for a plant is diffrent than time for a human, as is time on Venus is different than time on mars (time is diffrent for someone who has lived longer and whose perspective of time is as a much more fleeting thing, than someone experiencing it for the first time and for whom it must feel interminable)). Many people wrongly dismiss Apocalyptic art as being doom, and in that being bereft of hope and not serving any real purpose for them.

However, the function of Apocalyptic art is oftentimes completely about hope. An end point prescribes value for the individual on the now. If you think that you have ten days left to live, then those ten days become very valuable, and the things you do in them take on an increased importance to you--whereas if you have an interminable amount of time left, then those moments may not feel valued at all.

But why do we need this value? We need it as a survival mechanism. Because there are times in human history, that money, food, shelter, and quality of life are all very much on the wane. And during those times the only thing we can value is our time, and the possibility of our pain ending. In those times, doom becomes hope. The notion that everything will be washed away and a new beginning will be attained is very appealing to those in duress. Apocalyptic writing like dystopian writing is as much a reflection of it's time as it is a projection into the future.

The problem arises, that because of postmodernism, the internet, and the overflood of information, the ability of the human mind to respond effectively to apocalyptic art has been severely compromised. It becomes a boy crying wolf situation. And what happens in that story, which is significant, is that eventually a wolf does come, and the boy is crying wolf, but nobody is listening.

You see this more and more as a response to issues that require people to sacrifice for the greter survival of the species. Such as the American response to global warming, which has been a grumble at best and at worst a willful denial of the oncoming crushing reality. Global warming is seen by many as the new Y2K bug. And this is a direct result of the past knowledge that the post information society has instinctively absorbed into it's sub-consciousness.

The worry I'm expressing here, is that our basic instinct to be wowed by the sublimity of apocalyptic vision has been sufficiently beat into the ground, such that we are in fact heading for a coming apocalypse, that is more likely than ever, because we are lacking in our normal ways to adapt and change to the on-rushing eschaton.

Actually, worry probably isn't the right word. Because I do think the event that does happen is going to result in an evolution of the species. So it may be correct to lens this jadedness as yet another aspect of our general evolution to the eschaton event. Like, very plant following the sun over the horizon.

Sex, Index Cards, and the Proto Internet Occult Conspiracy

2008-04-29T15:04:00.000-07:00

A late fix for a fantastic Tuesday.
This by way of Kenneth Hite and Rob Mcdougal:
"The wise and devious robotnik gave me a pointer to this entry in Paul Collins'³ blog, which contained the following snippet of almost unimaginably pregnant occult metaphor:

In the US, for instance, the War Department struggled with mountains of haphazard medical files until the newly touted method of card filing was adopted in 1887. Hundreds of clerk transcribed personnel records dating back to the Revolutionary War. Housed in Ford’s Theatre in Washington DC -- the scene of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination a generation earlier -- the initiative succeeded a little too well. Six years into the project, the combined weight of 30 million index cards led to information overload: three floors of the theatre collapsed, crushing 22 clerks to death.

Can anyone say Ascension of the Bureaucrat in 1894? [EDIT: Per Wikipedia, on June 9, 1893.] Blood sacrifice to begin the Information Age? Creation of the "mass man" from data (which is to say, DNA) and crumpled flesh (of 22 people -- where was the 23rd, necessary to complete the full chromosomal pairing?), intermingled on the blasphemous regicidal altar of America? The possibilities are limitless."

Also I definitely want to link to this.

Debauchette apparently had an interview with Diane Sawyer, and has written two very great blogs on sex work. So yeah. Worth seeing that if you haven't. Good stuff.

An excerpt:

"In some ways, I feel the way I felt when I was sitting across from Sawyer. I feel like I can only sigh, because I doubt I can begin to penetrate the many layers of misunderstandings and preconceptions, let alone that relentless working assumption that a woman’s value as a human being decreases as she gains sexual experience. (Sawyer asked me about preserving the ’sanctity’ of my body, as though sex without the imprimatur of love were inherently degrading.). I’m glad my mother didn’t lash out in anger or patent disgust — what’s come across in her note is some mix of restraint, confusion, and extreme discomfort. That deserves some kudos, even if I still feel miles away from having a real conversation with her about this, which, unsurprisingly, is exactly how I felt when I sat down with Diane Sawyer. We just don’t see eye to eye."

Fairy Tales in Your Astral!

2008-04-28T08:49:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting article about the do's and dont's for the shamanic traveler using germanic magic. It's based upon the rules of fairy tales which the author, Jenny Blain, has so politely broken down to their key elements:

"Ground rules for conduct

Basic principles

Be aware of what is around. Look before leaping. Don't rush into situations.
Speak to those that you meet. Always be polite and courteous. Be truthful when they ask you questions
If a creature asks to come with you, accept their company or help. (Caveat below -- if they put conditions on their help, be wary!)
If some creature or person asks for help, give it. If the help is beyond your means, explain this -- the creature may tell you how to fulfil it. Your ally may assist you, if you ask. The help may be needed within the journey, or in ordinary reality.
If you make a promise, keep it. This is regardless of whether it refers to actions within the journey, or those you should complete in ordinary reality.
If some creature or person asks you to share food, share it.
If a creature you've helped gives you a token, poem, or anything else, keep it. It will later be useful.
If you undertake a task, do it to the best of your ability.
If you cannot do a task, ask your ally or those with you.
If you want to go home (return to a safe place in the journey, or wake to ordinary reality), say so."

I've always loved fairy tales, and feel like their importance is oftentimes in a very cliched way dismissed. Or certain fairy tales are in favor of others. But I just love the sense in which we project nightmares into our children's psyche at such a young age, and the stories or at least pieces of them stay with you for the rest of your life. I can still go to that place in my head where Little Red Riding Hood is walking through the dark forest on the way to grandma's house. I can still see the bread crumbs that Hanzel and Gretel tried to leave. I can see cackling wild hags of the forest. And I haven't probably heard these stories in quite some time.

It's so hard to do modern day fairy tales I think. I'm not sure why. Perhaps the magic is missing? How were these original stories crafted? I know according to the wiki the Grimms were primarily linguists whose by-product was fairy tales. But a lot of those stories are older than them. I'd like to think these stories were crafted around campfires with everyone entranced, from states of shamanic storytelling ecstasy.

I was thinking maybe Texas Chainsaw Massacre might be something of a modern fairytale. In particular the chase scene through the woods, because that taps into a primordial shared nightmare, of never being able to outrun the wolf. That blue darkness, and how she keeps going back and forth through those woods, in almost never-ending loops, with the chainsaw breathing closer and closer. And then we have like American Tall Tales, which tend to lack the proper horror to really have the weight to stay. With the possible exception of John Henry. But those stories seem to occur past a point historically where storytelling was already quickly being engulfed and avoided by things like the radio and the television.

So I dunno.

Infomancy and the Coming Ragnarok

2008-04-23T10:57:00.000-07:00

This is a word I discovered today that is one of those things that describes a sensation I've felt for some time now. So it's with a great deal of happiness I present:

Infomancy! Defined here as:

"n. 1.The field of magic related to the conjuring of information from the chaos of the universe. 2.The collection of terms, queries, and actions related to the retrieval of information from arcane sources."

See it in practice here.

Basically it's a description of a phenomena I've seen on message boards for years. You shoot out an inquiry into the internet. Pretty much anything. If you charge the intent enough that it's interesting to the will of the collective information, you will get a drove of experts flocking to your fired questions, tripping over one another to answer your previously innane query.

In the instance above it was about the pinging of information regarding japanese robots. But it can really be anything. It really is the basis of how a search engine even works. You put out the coded information for what you want into the little search box, and it comes out the other end in useful or arcane information that you can apply outside of the internet or turn around and redistributed back into it. There's a frictive force at work here of ideas gyrating off of one another constantly generating new realities and factoids because of it.

It's almost it's own kind of alchemey. In the purest form, a true infomancer is just looking for elements of information to combine into a coherent gnosis which will allow them to break the bonds of the world of information around them.

I've talked often about the eschaton of 2012, and the theories of the mayans, and the norse, that the world will end, but come out in a new way that is changed. But I'm starting to think what we will experience is a loop back around. A lot of the concepts that we are seeing on the internet seem to correspond with earlier ideas and methods for villages and early groups of people. In all seriousness, the most important books you can read on understanding the internet and the coming(existing) world are ones based in concepts that we thought were long dead. Metaphors of shamanism, the village, black plague--the internet has already kicked off the next age of human life, and some of the former patterns are playing out in a predictable and usable way.

Our future is going to be shaped by the collision of magic and technology, and the resulting friction will usher us into a new sublime. But I don't really know if the two are just going to fuse, or repel. Judging some of the current metaphors I'm seeing though, I think some sort of fusion is at place. Or at worst a co-opting.

At any rate, this is a great quote:

" Where’s my flying car, you ask? You’re driving it right now."

Loki's Taunt

2008-04-22T11:43:00.001-07:00

This is a fun little page which has a story of Loki taking on all comers with his wits like Steven Martin in Roxeanne.

A great Grinding.be blog on Total History.

Barbelith debating wod.

Don't say I never do anything for you. Sorry for the short blog today. Going to write more later, but this is for the middle of the day folks, with nothing to do.

Bob Haskins (Roger Rabbit): Unwitting Magician

2008-04-20T18:39:00.000-07:00

As a refresher here is an exerpt from the Wiki on Tulpas: Evans-Wentz (1954: p.29) discusses tulku (or nirmanakaya) and tulpa:

Inasmuch as the mind creates the world of appearances, it can create any particular object desired. The process consists of giving palpable being to a visualization, in very much the same manner as an architect gives concrete expression in three dimensions to his abstract concepts after first having given them expression in the two-dimensions of his blue-print. The Tibetans call the One Mind's concretized visualization the Khorva (Hkhorva), equivalent to the Sanskrit Sangsara; that of an incarnate deity, like the Dalai or Tashi Lama, they call a Tul-ku (Sprul-sku), and that of a magician a Tul-pa (Sprul-pa), meaning a magically produced illusion or creation. A master of yoga can dissolve a Tul-pa as readily as he can create it; and his own illusory human body, or Tul-ku, he can likewise dissolve, and thus outwit Death. Sometimes, by means of this magic, one human form can be amalgamated with another, as in the instance of the wife of Marpa, guru of Milarepa, who ended her life by incorporating herself in the body of Marpa."

Bob Haskins inadvertently creates a Roger Rabbit Tulpa:

"And then I watched my daughter, Rosa, she was three at the time, and she has all these invisible friends whom she talks to - Geoffrey and Elliott. And I realized that, as we get older, our imagination goes further and further to the back of our head. When we're a kid, we can actually take it out and look at it. I mean, we can see it. As we get older [still], senility comes in, and the imagination comes to the forefront again, and takes over.
"So, I just concentrated on an immature imagination - forcing it back to the front so I could actually take it out and look at it. And I managed to actually see them, which was all right, but you do it for 16 hours a day for five months... ! I started to lose control and hallucinate in all kinds of embarrassing places. Some of it's quite rude, but there's not much you can talk about. At one point, it was quite frightening, weasels and all sorts of things turning up."

Get Familiar! Human-Animal Spirit Relations (eww!)

2008-04-18T08:59:00.000-07:00

The relationship between animals and humans is always an interesting one. This topic comes by way of two straight days of visiting New England Zoos and a crackpot I-just-woke-up-mind. But um, yeah--humans and animals, huh? Whether it's herding sheep, providing transportation--we've always had animals helping us in various ways.

This extends into the spiritual realm with the concept of familiars. A familiar is a spirit usually in animal form, that helps the magician in various tasks. It's kind of a servitor in that way. But mostly it's probably best to not confuse the issue.

Anyways. Wikipedia has one of my favorite familiar anecdotes:

"During the English Civil War, the Royalist general Prince Rupert was in the habit of taking his large poodle dog, named "Boye", into battle with him. Throughout the war the dog was greatly feared among the soldiers of Parliament and credited with supernatural powers, evidently considered a kind of familiar (see Prince Rupert). At the end of the war the dog was shot, allegedly with a silver bullet."

Were-poodle!

There's also a pocket fox that is a familiar of sorts in Japanese magics. The Kuda-Gitsune. Or Pocket fox. Which is a little fox that lives inside of a bamboo pipe that you ask questions to.

I can't even begin to guess how the familiar situation will change as these animals actually die out. Will they grow in mythology as they become extinct, or will we just lose the idea of these animals as effective metaphors for communicating with the hyper-conscious?

It seems a shame, no?

Magical Tipping Point-Personal Anecdote

2008-04-17T12:26:00.000-07:00

I think there's a point in every young magicians life when something happens that just thorougly pushes them over the edge into true believerhood. And while I've seen a lot of great things in the past several months of my practicing--I've seen friends possessed by spirits completely and utterly, I've seen sigl after sigil work--the last two days though have been just jaw dropping.

It started yesterday when I decided to work on constructing an astral temple. Once I had the bare bones set, I was able to kind of go there on the fly while out and about and do various magical acts. The best one of course was when my friend lost her credit card in her car, and was totally losing her mind over it. I entered into my astral temple, scribbled out a sigil for her to find her card in the soon, and as I fired the sigil a flash of light went wizzing past me. I opened my eyes, and my friend began looking in the side of her car, and I just knew that she was going to find the card there. And lo and behold, not 20 seconds after I had fired the sigil, she found the card and the day was saved.

But that wasn't even the best one. Some months ago when I was just starting out I was working with various ridiculous sigils that I wanted to try. One of them was that I wanted to see two Saluki's walking down broadway on the way home. I thought this was bizarre enough that when it happened it would be a huge proof to me that the magic worked. But the problem here was it became a sigil that I obsessed about overly, to the degree that it seemed like it would never happen. In fact earlier in the week I was talking to my friend about this ridiculous saluki sigil, and how it was probably evidence that I had failed on that one because I had obssessed about. But talking about sort of eased my mind about it and I forgot entirely about the salukis.

Until I was driving home today, and my attention was drawn by these two tall black dogs that were walking down the street. I thought they were Dobermans at first. But as I pulled past them, I saw their whole body and face--and sure enough--two black salukis just chilling it down broadway.

As stupid as it sounds, even with all of the magical happenings I had already created, it was always this sigil that was going to be the thing that tipped me over into fully buying in.

Thus now begins the downfall.

Hooray!

Brain Hacking, Lewis Carroll, and the Occult

2008-04-16T06:12:00.000-07:00

Came across this article while reading Grinding.be, from Physorg.com:

"Like the rise in cosmetic surgery, use of cognitive enhancers is likely to increase as bioethical and psychological concerns are overcome," opined Nature in a commentary.

In the survey, 80 percent of all the scientists -- even those who did not use these drugs -- defended the right of "healthy humans" to take them as work boosters, and more than half said their use should not be restricted, even for university entrance exams."

I wonder if they will start calling scientists in front of congressional committees to answer probing questions about their performance enhancing brain juice? Will the map of the human genome have an asterisk if it's found that it was done under the enhancement of drugs?

The future is now. In the 1940's Steve Rogers takes the super soldier serum and becomes the superhero Captain America. Sixty years later baseball players and scientists are enhancing their abilities with drugs to superhuman levels.

The drug culture of the 1960s can draw a line directly out of Alice in Wonderland a hundred years earlier.

Beyond proving the infinite possibilities available to our futures by way of our presence--this type of thing shows how ideas and words can subconsciously direct a people's will. Magic! It was no mistake that Lewis Caroll(if that is your real name, sir?!) was a member of the Society of Psychical Research whose charter goal was " to understand "events and abilities commonly described as psychic or paranormal by promoting and supporting important research in this area" and to "examine allegedly paranormal phenomena in a scientific and unbiased way."

Here's crazy old Alan Moore saying these things(sans the bit about Lewis Caroll(at least explicitly), which must mean it's true:

A Personal Anecdote about Loki

2008-04-15T09:18:00.001-07:00

Here's an interesting article about possession from Phil Hine:

"Possession remains a powerful form of magical work. It can be used to derive oracular information (as used by the Greeks and Tibetans), to charge magical weapons, to share in the power of the God (as in ritual Masses) or 'live' a particular mythic transformation. In constructing possession-workings, it can be useful to examine magical and religious paradigms where possession is a recognised and culturally-defined technique. The experience itself can be related to wider phenomenon such as religious conversion, hypnosis, and abreactive therapy. As with all types of magical technique, it's use requires careful analysis and evaluation if it is not to devolve into a habituated limitation. In general, magical possession is both useful and enjoyable, if a little hair-raising at times."

And here's an anecdote about a friend of mine who was working with the Norse god Loki:
It was either friday or saturday, I was with my friend who invoked Loki, but stopped right at the point where she had gotten Loki basically over her shoulder. Then the overarching ritual was literaly rained out and so we had to pack up and leave. I told her she should thank Loki for coming and then dispell him. But she didn't. She was strangely very excited about his presence, and mentioned a sensation around one of her shoulder blades, as well as just the sensation of something behind her.

This actually lined up with later web research we did on Loki interaction people had had over at Barberlith which you can read here. At any rate, before I left her house she went on and on about her excitement and enthusiasm for Loki and intended to build an altar and work with him one on one. Later I talked to her when I got home, and she talked about how she felt that she had always had this identification with Loki but never had a name for it or a feeling for it. Basically she was very up on Loki at the time.

So then the next thing that happens is two days later, I talk to her about Loki, and she brings up a dream, which on the surface doesn't have to do with Loki, but I'll relate it anyways. The gist of the dream was she was at a lake and she saw a turtle pop out of the water. This is significant because we were also working with Eshu the Yoruban god of the crossroads, and one of the things he likes is turtles. At any rate, she was frightened by this and ran into her house and locked herself inside. While this was going on, another spirit we dealt with the Coyote, which is a native american trickster god, who actually is much like Loki, took the turtle in it's jaws and bit it in two. So symbolically just using the metaphors of the gods in play, you have the trickster god running in on the god of the crossroads, fortune, misfortune, death and life, who my friend was afraid of, and snapping it in two, which brought her relief.

So we have that dream. But then the other thing that's going on, is she has this event in her life take a sudden very bad turn on Monday. And I mention to her, that it may somehow be connected with Loki, in that it may be an overarching trick. Because typically Loki's blessings come through a roundabout route where they initially seem quite hellish and wrong. He seems to have wronged you, and then he gives you a magical horse. That sort of thing. But she took this as a reason to hate Loki. And basically said to hell with Loki, and immediately dispelled him from her. Then was quite miserable for the rest of the evening.

Then later that evening she gets a call, and the thing that had gone bad, suddenly turned into something extremely beneficial and exciting--ala the magical horse.

There would seem to be two interpretations that you could have here in terms of these spiritual metaphors: 1. That Loki was a malevolent spirit in her life, and as soon as she got rid of him, things in her life righted. OR 2. That the nature of Loki is that he plays tricks to get a reaction and rise out of the people he's with (usually Odin or Thor) and then once he has achieved the reaction he wants, then he gives a blessing. And that he tricked my friend and got the reaction he wanted from her which was that she was justifiably pissed. And then after that he gave his blessing.

If it's the first thing, then she should have nothing further to do with Loki, I would think. If it's the second thing, then I think she owes him some kind of sacrificial thanks.

Oh. There's a third way to look at this. That there was no magical influence. Life just happened. Stop thinking about it. Blah blah blah. And that's definitely TRUE. But the reason that you would accept the magical metaphor in a world view is because it is a kind of a trip. We all have to live life regardless, but why live a boring one dictated by your material situation? When you can live a trippy fantastic one? There are things you can learn about yourself as well through magic. Things that you can strengthen about yourself through magical metaphor. In the end, even if you don't believe in it, and I certainly do and don't--it's a powerful psychological metaphor for dealing with the conscious and sub-conscious.

FOLKLORE MONDAYS! YEAH!

2008-04-14T07:54:00.000-07:00

Hey sportsfans! It's folklore mondays! For your enjoyment only, I'm going to be running through eight spiritual entities and doing a brief synopsis on what they are about. You can do this too with a little bit of wiki/google/godchecker.com work. Or you can just read my blog and hope for more entries like this .Tamamo No Mae
First up is the popular figure from Japanese Noh dramas, Tamamo No Mae. She is a kitsune (japanese shapeshifting fox spirit). Her whole bag is that she seduced an emperor in an attempt to bring down his empire. She was found out, turned back into a fox, and ran off. Only to be murdered and imprisoned in a death stone which has it's own story. Personally I think she was a revolutionary and as with most tricksters was misunderstood.

The next god I have, doesn't really have a picture. And the only reference to her I can find is from Neil Gaiman. But supposedly she is a slavic goddess.

Zorya Polunochnaya

She's the third of the Zorya sisters. The one in charge of midnight. As with most lunar goddesses she is associated with magic, death, rebirth--yada yada. She's kind of a tragic figure in that every night she has to watch the sun die in her arms. But then comical because every morning she sees it resurrected. So maybe she is used to it by now? Other neat tidbits is that she doesn't lie, is a bit wise, pretty generous, and generously pretty. Which makes it so strange that there's no picture of her on the internet that I could find, beyond weird role playing pictures. There's actually some debate that she's not even real. I say she is, even if Gaiman made her up. I should email him and see if he'll drop some knowledge on me. I promise I will have my own drawing of her if nothing else happens by sometime in the future. Just you wait.

Eshu
Next up is Eshu. Pictured above. Eshu is a pretty cool dude. He's basically a god of the crossroads. He is from the Yoruban mythology. Which makes him an effective vodoun diety to evoke. He's in charge of a lot of things ranging from fortune, misfortune, life, death--and all points in between. He's also a really good messenger between the human and spiritual realms. So forget your priest and learn to pal around with Eshu, and you should be in good shape. He is a trickster god though, and he delights in bringing people trials that eventually strengthen their character. So in that way he's kind of like your dad.
Baba Yaga
This scary lady is Baba Yaga. Who if you aren't hip is the wrong lady to mess with. She's the wild witch in the woods all the fairy tales scared you about. She's magical, maniacal, and a child cannibal. She'll definitely be interested in swallowing your soul if she has the chance. That's one way of looking at it. The other though is that she's had a lot of annoying guests and heroes bugging her over the years when all she wants is a little piece and politeness, and that's what has made her mad. Who really knows? I actually kind of dig her. Nobody is all bad, and if you treat her well, you'll probably be the first to do so.
Bamapana
Bamapana. This is an aboriginal trickster god, who loves foul language and lewd offensive acts. Think of him like a dirty construction worker with too much time on his hands and a hefty porno collection. Bamapana is hard to get ahold of these days because ever since Grand Theft Auto came out he's had no reason to leave his home.
Loki
The original trickster. Loki. Some people think Loki is the Norse Satan. But if you look at all of the tricks he has played, in the end almost all of them resulted in benefits for the gods. I think on the whole he's actually done more for the Norse Pantheon than any other god there. Which is probably why he was tolerated for so long. My favorite Loki story is when he shape-changed into a female horse to tempt a giants horse away from pulling boulders and was then impregenated by said horse, and gave birth to Odin's mystical horse Sleipnir. So in a way Loki predated Thomas Beatie as the first man to be pregnant. And as with Thomas Beatie it didn't make him less of a man, no matter what Bill O'Reilly says.
Coyote
No, not Wile E. Coyote. Just Coyote. The native american trickster god, whose annoying antics led to the diversification of mankind, the milkway, and lord knows what else. My favorite story involving him is that he loves to impress girls by juggling his eyeballs, and one time he tossed one of his eyes up so high that it got stuck in the sky and became the star Arcturus.
Manabozho
Amazing how many Looney Tune representations of native american dieties there are. Anyways, this is for Manabozho, who I may write a lot more about on Bunniesz. He's the great giant rabbit trickster god of pretty much every rabbit mythology ever done. He's the originator. He's actually the basis for the Brer Rabbit stories. There's not much to really say that you don't already secretly know about him. Basically take all of the Bugs Bunny cartoons you grew up on, and put them into elaborate creation stories, and you're most of the ways there.

If you would like to make your own blog about folk dieties, here's a fantastic link to start with (best site ever? MAYBE!):
Godchecker.com

Sex Magic on the Internet and What it's To Do with Gandhi

2008-04-11T08:45:00.001-07:00

From Slashdong

Yeah so, what this is, is a flashlight they've converted into a sex mouse, that a male sex game player would put their member in and be able to interact more "naturally" with the game environment.

Now they just need to combine an exoskeleton with second life, and you'll be in like flynn on the internetz. If you can move around it, touch it, feel it, have sex with it--is it really there? At the very least it's a blow-up doll world.

But really what we are talking about is that sensation of immersion via a kind of projection. It's very interesting the intersection between hi-technology concepts and old world shamanism. Though to be sure, a lot of the technology is perverting many of those techniques, but it's using them all the same. Immersion is just astral projection. The internet is a kind of astral plane. Corporate logos are sigils. Magic is all around us. But more often than not we're interacting with it in an unconscious and passive way.

To that end, here's a lovely story from cnn's second life division about a guy re-enacting Gandhi's "Salt March to Dandi".

"Joseph DeLappe’s 22 days and 240 miles of walking on a treadmill to control his Gandhi avatar walking across Second Life to re-enact the Mahatma’s “Salt March to Dandi”, the seminal 1930’s protest against the British Salt Act of 1882. On this, the final day of walking both on the treadmill at Eyebeam, New York City, and in Second Life, the public is invited to either visit Eyebeam to witness the final steps of the march or join MGandhi Chakrabarti in Second Life to virtually walk the final miles."

I need to get on this second life thing, YESTERDAY!

You Can Squeeze Water from a Mayan Relic: Or get an Internet Connection Off It

2008-04-10T07:35:00.000-07:00

Here's one for the water folks out there:
"Thirsty Southern California cities are turning to water-rich farmers on the eastern edge of Riverside County for additional supplies to make up for the ongoing drought and other restrictions on the life-sustaining resource.

Starting this summer, farmers in the Palo Verde Valley along the Color ado River will forgo planting crops on nearly 26,000 acres, the most land yet under a little-known fallowing agreement with Metropolitan Water District. The pact will double the amount now being sent to MWD and its 18 million urban customers. In exchange, MWD will pay the farmers $16.8 million each year for 115,000 acre-feet of water -- almost 37.5 billion gallons."

You don't think we'll be killing each other over water in a few years? Think again. People want to talk about the oil crisis. The water crisis is what's going to do people in. Yeah it sucks not being able to drive to work, but imagine not being able to get a clean glass of water for a few days?

Stinky butt town for sure!
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Here's an interesting bit of news courtesy of cnn.com:
"One in five respondents to a new survey in the journal Nature say they've used drugs to boost their brain power."

I'm not good at math, but I do wonder how this number corresponds to the percentages given across various religions when it comes to how many people are going up to level 9? Because you figure this percentage of people are also probably going to most likely to upload their consciousness as that possibility continues to open. And then hosanna be the king, fullfilled prophecy!
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Apparently in Russia they have Mayan gods just milling around....can you subconsciously be immaneatizing the eschaton? I mean let's just give those 2012 bastards access to all of that black market uranium, hey? See what happens...

This courtesy of the very fun English Russia blog:

The story of them appearing there starts in 19th century when Academy of St. Petersburg sent a group of explorers to Middle America. They visited through all of Yucatan, collected different things for St. Petersburg’s museums. By the way they noticed and bought a set of Mayan idols from Chichen Itza ruins. Upon the return of expedition smaller objects were placed into museums but nobody has found a good place for those Mayan statues and they were left all by themselves in the back yard, dug into ground.

A few years passed and Soviet Revolution happened, all the museums were messed up, all the buildings were nationalized by Soviets and were used for a totally different purpose then before. In many churches warehouses were founded as the result of total atheism of new Russian authorities, and many museum were turned into something else as a result of ignorance.

So hundred years passed and those 1500 year old Mayan deities stand, abandoned and not worshiped by anyone except accidental Russian teens searching for a place to have a beer outside in some public backyard."

Kitsunetsuki and Cannibalism in the Coming Eschaton

2008-04-08T10:24:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia is the greatest thing ever. I used to read encyclopedias all of the time 1st through 3rd grade because I got done with assignments way early, and the teacher would make me just go read encyclopedias, and I always found them captivating, because I just love information that wraps around my wills and desires for that day.

Wikipedia is that sensation, but on crack.

At any rate. Yesterday was look up mythological beast days. And one of the ones I'm very interested in is the japanese fox spirits. Kitsune. Primarily because of their shapeshifting trickster ways. They're almost Loki-esque, but with a cute werewolf bend.

So I came across this:

"Kitsunetsuki (狐憑き or 狐付き; also written kitsune-tsuki) literally means the state of being possessed by a fox. The victim is typically a young woman, whom the fox enters beneath her fingernails or through her breasts.^[26] In some cases, the victims' facial expressions are said to change in such a way that they resemble those of a fox. Japanese tradition holds that fox possession can cause illiterate victims to temporarily gain the ability to read.^[27]
Folklorist Lafcadio Hearn describes the condition in the first volume of his Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan:
"Strange is the madness of those into whom demon foxes enter. Sometimes they run naked shouting through the streets. Sometimes they lie down and froth at the mouth, and yelp as a fox yelps. And on some part of the body of the possessed a moving lump appears under the skin, which seems to have a life of its own. Prick it with a needle, and it glides instantly to another place. By no grasp can it be so tightly compressed by a strong hand that it will not slip from under the fingers. Possessed folk are also said to speak and write languages of which they were totally ignorant prior to possession. They eat only what foxes are believed to like — tofu, aburagé, azukimeshi, etc. — and they eat a great deal, alleging that not they, but the possessing foxes, are hungry.[28

He goes on to note that, once freed from the possession, the victim will never again be able to eat tofu, azukimeshi, or other foods favored by foxes.

Exorcism , often performed at an Inari shrine, may induce a fox to leave its host.^[29]kitsunetsuki were beaten or badly burned in hopes of forcing the fox to leave. Entire families were ostracized by their communities after a member of the family was thought to be possessed.^[28] In the past, when such gentle measures failed or a priest was not available, victims of

In Japan, kitsunetsuki was noted as a disease as early as the Heian period and remained a common diagnosis for mental illness until the early 20th century.^[30]^[31]ayed by the afflicted individuals. In the late 19th century, Dr. Shunichi Shimamura noted that physical diseases that caused fever were often considered kitsunetsuki.^[32] The belief has lost favor, but stories of fox possession still appear in the tabloid press and popular media. One notable occasion involved allegations that members of the Possession was the explanation for the abnormal behavior displAum Shinrikyo cult had been possessed.^[33]

In medicine, kitsunetsuki is an ethnic psychosis unique to Japanese culture . Those who suffer from the condition believe they are possessed by a fox.^[34] Symptoms include cravings for rice or sweet red beans , listlessness, restlessness, and aversion to eye contact. Kitsunetsuki is similar to but distinct from clinical lycanthropy .^[35]"

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In other news, Ted Turner thinks we will be cannibals in forty years because of Global warming:

"We'll have eight degrees -- we'll be eight degrees hotter in 10 -- not 10, but in 30 or 40 years. And basically none of the crops will grow. Most of the people will have died, and the rest of us will be cannibals."

Buddy, in four years cannibalism will be the least of our problems. Know your eschaton!

At any rate. If the higher ups like Ted Turner are worried, just imagine what you should be. You don't own a solar powered whirligig zombie destroyer. And even if you did, THEY would probably take it away from you.

No. Your best bet in the event the whole world goes cannibal is the dogs. You need to be friendly with a pack of very intimidating and dangerous guard dogs. How else are you going to protect your stolen dragon treasure?!

Which of course brings us back full circle to....Kitsunetsuki.

You can read it all in my forthcoming book: Werewolves vs. Zombies--Survival Tips for The Eschatologically Possessed.

The Anti-Life Equation

2008-04-07T09:49:00.000-07:00

"Most recently in Seven Soldiers: Mister Miracle (2005), by Grant Morrison , Darkseid (or Dark Side, as he now calls himself) has gained full control of the Anti-Life Equation. By speaking, he can insert the full formula into people's minds, giving them the mathematical certainty that life, hope and freedom are all pointless. Shilo Norman (the current Mister Miracle) is able to break free from this with the help of Metron . However, it was implied that these events did not happen in the 'real world', but in a tangent universe inside a black hole . The Anti-Life Equation here is revealed to be:
loneliness + alienation + fear + despair + self-worth ÷ mockery ÷ condemnation ÷ misunderstanding x guilt x shame x failure x judgment n=y where y=hope and n=folly, love=lies, life=death, self=dark side"

I was thinking about this concept a few weeks back because of the death of a kid I used to know in high school. It's kind of an out-there concept in some ways, the Anti-life equation. But in others, especially as Morrison imagined it, it's quite real. The context in which I imagined it was as an individualized code within everyone's brain, that when realized would be the thing that pushed you over the edge into death. Like if your life met these pre-conditions based upon your genetic make-up, you would cease to be able to live in it.

Of course this week I realized that this idea was already perfectly captured in the idea of the anti-life equation.

Not insignificantly, but in Neil Gaiman's Sandman, the Anti-life equation is defeated by hope, which is heavy handed but true. At the end of the day as humans we are very easily duped creatures. In the sense that even the smallest hope can keep us clinging onto the rock of life over one jagged cliff after the next. We're very fuel efficient in that way. But when we hit empty, we hit empty.

I guess I'm writing this, because there's a lot of scorn and pain left behind by suicides. More often than not the people closest to it come to hate the person who committed the act. But I've always thought that was a lack of empathy. Or maybe worse, a core denial of an unassailable truth--that when confronted with the anti-life equation, we are all going to be working at a deficit. Recognize situations different from your own, and respect that. Derision of the dead doesn't leave anyone in peace.

Second life, Comics, Automatic Drawing, and Vodou

2008-04-03T09:57:00.000-07:00

Here's a breakdown of vodou culture, and some basic practices for the do-it yourself-er at home.

The Vodou Page

Here you have many of the writings from the grandfather of chaos magic, Austin Osman Spare:

Austin Osman Spare

Here's a free webcomic by Warren Ellis about the post-end of the world:

Freak Angels

Here's an explanation as to why I'm not on second life:

I'm lazy, the customization takes too long for me right now, and I'm otherwise occupied. But I love the notion, don't get me wrong. We should all be able to do second life instead of myspace and facebook and have that be the real social networking. Which I mean, it is for some people.

There's stupid amounts of potential in second life, much of it already being realized.

Second life is the new internet.

Hateful Murderous Squids and Carlos Castaneda

2008-04-02T09:19:00.001-07:00

Capitalism, give us back our metaphors!!!

"If you're going to spend time guarding a female, you want to go for the biggest female you can find because she's going to produce more eggs," said UC Berkeley biologist Roy Caldwell, who co-wrote the study. "It's basically an investment strategy."

More damned lies:

"The best way of learning, I think, is to place on eself in the situation when you discover that you are nothing. The other ways have roots in one’s pride. If we do not follow this, we spend our lives finding out who loves us and who does not. (But we must understand), that it does not matter.

Don Juan depicted pride as a monster with 3000 heads. It does not matter how many heads you cut off; thousands of them remain. The main task is not to react. If you react, you have lost. You cannot feel offended when a tiger attacks you; you simply step aside to let the tiger pass.

Without enemies we are nothing. To h ave enemies, to live with awareness of calamity, misfortune is one of the forms of our existence. We have to free ourselves from this form, but it may take time. First, one has to become a fighter. This is our first level.

My freedom depends on my impeccable living; only by this can I change my fate and leave this world completely."

"The actual existence of don Juan is a matter of some dispute between Castaneda's supporters and critics. ([1] Author Robert Marshall claims that Castaneda got the idea for Matus’ name from the popular brand of Portuguese rosé wine, “Mateus .”) If don Juan were a real person, his real name was apparently changed to maintain his anonymity. Taisha Abelar and Florinda Donner-Grau – associates of Castaneda – also wrote about the same don Juan Matus, although he went by different pseudonyms in their books such as Mariano Aureliano. In all of these books, don Juan Matus was a nagual who was leader of a group of practitioners of tradition of perceptual enhancement."

Doktor Sleepless

What galls us about lies is the betrayal and loss. Where previously we had the notion of one reality, it's quite stinging to learn we were misled. So oftentimes we will go on believing a lie as a matter of pride more often than not. Just because it's less painful to see it as a lie. But even that's a lie. You don't have to see the world in terms of things that trick you and things that don't. At least not, really.