It’s not a Wednesday, and I’m not a chaos magician.

I do have a background in chaos magic, but the last time I identified that way was oooh…over a decade ago now. I mention this, because there’s an interesting debate going on in certain circles (and has been going on for years) about using fictional figures vs apparently ‘real’ deities and spirits.

This one’s been triggered by someone seeming to suggest that the ancient idea of Heroes and modern Superheroes are the same. More details on this can be found over at The House Of Vines

My dear beloved brother in arms Jack Faust has a post on it wherein the major positions are linked to, though I also suggest you go and read Notitiae Doctoris for albeit long but very important look at things in terms of cultus and doing honour to folks. (The good Doctor has some great points on devotion, which need wider reading).

My dear mophead brother (Who is looking increasingly like a sordid Californian Austin Spare as he ages) talks about thoughtforms and going on adventures and value judgements and stuff. Read his post, since this is a quick one from me (I hope (ETA: I was very wrong)) and draw your own conclusions. He’s not as dyed in the wool Chaos Magickey as that seems, I assure you, and in fact this post will possibly get me yelled at for the next month but sod it, I’m British and blatant mockery of friends is a veritable necessity.

Anyway, everyone loves thoughtforms. They’re relatively easy to create, with practice, and once you know how to make ‘em, it’s easy to break them. Seriously, watch people you know who have certain tendencies to fall into repetitive thought patterns/actions. They do it without even trying. Don’t even get me started on people who suffer depression and what kind of mess we can generate. Yeesh. There’s a reason mental discipline is important in magic, folks.

Anyway – as I said, I have a background in Chaos Magic, but I’m a Heathen. Maybe I’m not a proper Heathen for some, but you know what, I do not give a fig. Point is, in my experience, the world seems full of Stuff & Things, and some of that Stuff & Things fits the shapes ascribed to gods, landwights, and ancestors according to lore. Some of That Stuff & Things does not.

I’ll be blunt – I’d never ask Batman for help. You know why? Because I don’t live in Gotham. I’d never pray to Superman because frankly, he’s too much of a boy-scout. But if you want to? Knock yourselves out.

On the other hand, I’ll call on the old gods and the Mighty Dead, and maybe even the man-god that is Yeshua because dammnit I have family history, my Dad’s a bloody priest of his and I’ve been initiated into some of the rites associated with him – having been baptised and confirmed and all.

Why them? Why have I even hung with the Lovecraft squad in rituals?

Not because ‘it works’ though it does, but because of something very bloody important:

I have a relationship with them. I have a tie to them.

Cthulhu, Nylarathotep and the rest – fictional all. Yet when you call, there’s at least something that moves behind the names for me. And I hate to tell the chaos magicians in the audience, but ‘belief’ is a blind alley. It’s as nebulous a concept as prana or chi or orgone. [ETA: As far as the average Westerner is concerned [1]]

Just a name, just a story to tell ourselves, to try and get our heads round the fact that we did something weird, maybe a little kooky, and something happened.

And we don’t know why.

Maybe, just maybe, it’s repeatable, and if it is? Bully for you. Really. Let me know when your all encompassing Grand Theory Of Everything is published.

But also bear in mind this – it may only be repeatable for you. You may have a mutant nervous system, or your life experiences may have altered you in such a way as the linkage of imagery, sound, feeling, thought and memory mean you can do things other people can’t.

Or, as it more likely, it might just be a freakish one-off, like a shotglass full of blood emptying itself after a ritual.

You see humans like to know why. It’s a survival trait, and one that has served us in good stead, so we tell stories, we make shit up to fill in the gaps, or tweak theories or models to get good-enough approximations.

Do you know what a Cargo Cult is? Read the link, please.

OK?

Now, some of you might be laughing at how ridiculous that is, being modern, technologically aware folks who have probably seen The Matrix, or read Simulacra and Simulation or something like it by Baudrillard.

Except, welcome to the unpleasant notion:

Reality is a Cargo Cult. Everything you learn is by repetition, mimicry and extrapolation. The Gnostic truth of it is that you are at the mercy of your sensorium, locked into it until you die, at the very least.

I’m not saying there is no Real. I’m just saying that you’ll never,ever get to to touch it. You may experience a close approximation, but you will never, ever hit zero per cent error.

So stop buggering about with belief. Stop worrying about what’s real and what’s not. Work with what’s in front of you. Use what you have, and use it with inhuman bloody precision. Don’t ever be satisfied with it, but never give it up. Spend the rest of your life studying your Mysteries – not anyone else’s.

A blade of grass – study it. And then when you are done, abandon what you know, and start again.

There are mysteries of land and song, of blood and bone and breath, of word and deed. You are a Mystery that takes a lifetime to discover, one of infinite depth.

You are a damn rune, one that is risted with the blood which runs in your veins.

The rune-god, the Terrible One, the Father Of Magical Songs – for nine nights he hanged himself, wounded. No escape, no quarter. No bread, no mead.

No. Escape.

All that he was, burned to ash by fire, and frozen by ice. He gave it up, sacrificed it, because he acknowledged there was no other greater Mystery in all the worlds. He sacrificed himself to his Self.

And if the superheroes are part of you – if you truly bleed Gotham, if the you can hear the Joker in your own voice, feel the pain of immigrant from a destroyed world who is feared, shunned and worshipped. If you get down on your knees and weep the heartfelt sobs of an orphan boy who watched his parents get murdered in front of him, or feel the unending rage of the strongest there is, while all the while struggling not to hurt anyone?

If those are truly yours, and not just mirrors, not just reflections, because you want to escape the face in the mirror for somewhere better, then you know what, what the hell are comics creators doing reading my blog?

Me? I shall take my Mighty Honoured Dead. I shall drink with them, and laugh with them, and love with them, as I did in life, and as my kin did with their forefathers, and their forefathers did with theirs. I will take every piece, every moment of my life, every breath, and I shall not move from the centre of my Self, at the crossroads of the worlds. I will fail at looking constantly at myself, but I shall keep looking, keep seeking. I will fall, and I shall be bewitched, and in that bewitching, I shall be bound, and in that binding I will discover the laughter that breaks all fetters, and find that I never left.

And I shall burn with the light of my own lamp, which has been fuelled by my ancestors, that burns blood-red across ten thousand years. I shall eat the flesh of every moment, every experience, and every word and song that calls to that unuttereable infinite self shall strengthen me, shall echo and reflect that Mystery.

Do you understand yet? Or would you know more?

My ancestors, my heroes, my words, my deeds; my mistakes, my triumphs, my betrayals, my hopes and my dreams. My gods, my songs, my stories, my breath, my bone; my thoughts, my memories, my sex, my death.

My love, my life, my body, my mind; my tears, my blood, my pain; my despair, my joy, my agony, my ecstasy.

My fury. My wodh.

All of these and none, are doors to my Mystery. They are the bindings and the ties, the dreams that point the way, the prophetic speech that encompasses my life.

I am a word spoken, a rune sung by the voice of the All. There is nothing else for me, but me.

Austin Spare once wrote:

“However great your reach, whatever you touch, shall touch flesh.”

Perhaps chaos magicians should listen to their Grandfather, eh?

That notwithstanding, only unflinching devotion to that which makes you, you ,matters. And although you are, in some sense utterly alone, you are not and cannot exist in isolation. So I say again, learn the Mysteries of your land, of your living, and your dead and they shall show you the path. Perhaps then a god will smile out at you from the pages of a comic book, or pass you by in the skin of a stranger on the street.

Perhaps your ancestors will greet you when you look in the mirror, and if you sit with them long enough, enjoying their company, perhaps they will introduce you to long dead heroes, now so much more than mortal?

I’ll leave you with words which are not mine, and are from fiction, yet are spoken and written truly from the heart:

“Lo, there do I see my father.
Lo, there do I see my mother, my sisters and my brothers.
Lo, there do I see the line of my people back to the beginning.
Lo, they do call to me.
They bid me take my place on Asgard in the halls of Valhalla,
Where the brave may live forever.” -The 13th Warrior

Be seeing you.

[Addendum [1]:It’s been pointed out to me that prana and chi are not nebulous concepts within the contexts of their own traditions. This is entirely correct. It’s just the Western Materialist Paradigm that views them so within the context of not being satisfied with traditional forms of measurement, and hence would regard them as nebulous. Mea culpa for falling into dominant-culture unconscious biases. I hope the drift of the sentence can still be grokked. ]

This is part 8 of a series. Here are Part 1 & Part 2 &Part 3 & Part 4 & Part 5 & Part 6 & Part 7

A story within a story. A dream within a dream.

I had a dream the other night – one of those odd anxiety dreams that show up occasionally. For some reason, my psyche likes to throw up a variant on the not having done your homework subtype. Specifically, I had turned up to my history lesson for the first time in an age – in the dream I’d been skipping it for most of the year, you see. My teacher was as snarky and sarcastic as he ever was in the waking world, taking pains to note that I’d really screwed up and would never get into University now.

In the dream, I remember shrugging. Sort of a “So be it” crossed with “Meh.”

“What are you going to do, now?” he asked me, moustache waggling dangerously.

“Now..?” I looked straight at him. “Now I’m going to quit.”

The shock reverberating around the classroom was almost physical, as if I had slapped every single dream-person around the face with a wet fish.

And I had done it really hard.

That was the point at which everything stuttered and froze. A person might suspect that such a thing could have bad consequences – and yet the whole experience was like one of those inevitable train-wrecks that we’ve all seen. The kind you can’t look away from, even though, inside, something wants to be as far away as possible from there, pretty damn quick.

Maybe that’s happened to you in dreams before – the inability to look away? Or maybe some other form of dream logic has gripped you tight, and no matter how much you try, you just can’t wake up, until the dream has run its course. Then again, maybe you’re an expert in the art of lucid dreaming, or just plain lucky.

Nevertheless, in that frozen moment of dream logic, the paralysis was total, and yet…

Yet I began to notice something, and as we’ve said in the previous posts, sometimes you don’t know what it is that you’re noticing. Sometimes you don’t know, what you know, until that moment when you’re able to notice that it’s already begun. It’s even more unknowably noticeable in dreams; that vague, murky somethingness.

That inchoate sense, that odd feeling that you can’t quite identify, can’t quite describe. You just know that there is something there, right?

Something close and near, even though you don’t quite know what it is. Maybe it’s tension in your chest, the knotting of your gut, that sense of pressure in your head – or maybe it’s one of myriad sensations that bring you an indefinable knowledge. We’ve all had it – something like it, haven’t we?

And when you have that, what happens then?

When you’re fixed in place, faced with that rising sensation, something happens. If you’re lucky, sometimes in dreams, then that’s when you’ll wake up. More often than not though, that murky sensation becomes impossible to ignore, until there’s no escaping the knowledge. A person can suddenly become aware of something that they didn’t know before – and it’s that change in perspective and perception which really ramps things up – for good, or ill.

In the case of that particular dream, the sensation was of everything holding its breath. As the moment stretched, it brought with it the realisation that I had apparently gone off script somehow. Whatever part of my brain was running my sense of self had, in some way diverged from the rest that was spontaneously creating my classroom, my snarky history teacher and shocked classmates.

I hadn’t taken control of the dream – hadn’t stretched out my hand and shaped it to my will. I was still paralysed in that moment – my sense of my self locked in a holding pattern, and yet it was one of those odd teaching moments that will happen when you least expect them to.

Imagine for a second that my dream was in fact a computer simulation, and that some part of me had realised the import of my shrug. Because even though I was apparently supposed to be having an anxiety dream about screwing up, long years after graduating University and doing postgraduate work, I didn’t care.

The usual reactions and responses to such a situation are well established – that’s why most, if not all of you, will recognise what I mean when I write about an anxiety dream – we’ve all had them at some point, after all.

But suddenly, the hardware and software was being forced to generate a new environment, to change the parameters.

And what happened?

The whole thing crashed, because it couldn’t cope. It couldn’t cope with the lack of the usual responses

Think about that for second – no move was made to escape, and it still crashed the system. What could that mean?

If control is impossible, what then? Nothing is static after all, and even the smallest change can engender massive effects. That’s the essence of what we do – we change worlds with words and deeds. Like I said, think about that.

Now:

When last we left our erstwhile seeker of knowledge in the tale told by the storyteller, they had been digging for the secret of all things beneath the roots of a certain tree and the earth had collapsed on them. Trapped underground and slowly running out of air, they had encountered an earth spirit:

“..So the seeker explained that they were trapped and waiting for death, and that there was no escape. The spirit looked on open-mouthed, so much so that his pipe fell from his mouth!

Why should one wish to escape the earth? He shook his head in stupefied wonderment. Rock and stone, earth and soil was all one could ever need, surely?

Would that I could be as you, lamented the seeker, but alas, I am not.

The spirit’s perplexity increased. For after all, he noted, he and his kind had arisen from the earth and nothing but! It surrounded them, and permeated them – were all mortals this silly?

With a hand, so the spirit gestured, and the earth gave a groan. What little room there was about the seeker collapsed inward, sealing them in completely!

The crushing weight was all about them – the air slowly being squeezed from their lungs…

Until, suddenly, they found themselves moving amidst the blue light, swimming through the earth – and to their surprise, the dwarf had grown to normal size!

Smiling, so he reached into his pocket and handed the seeker a pipe of their own – and with a shock, the seeker realised that their skin was as dark as the spirit’s!

For its part, the spirit seemed pleased – now, it explained, the seeker had assumed the necessary shape. This, it explained, was only natural as such things went, because none could ever return to what was before. The earth had no time for anything that was not itself, and it was far, far older and more patient than any mere mortal. Its shifts were aeon’s long, the thunder of the continents themselves.

The seeker protested that they were mortal, and the spirit snorted!

This was not so, could not be so, it insisted. No mortal could ever dwell here. The pressures alone would end them, grind them to pulp. No, the only way to live was as himself. Their conversation was proof of this, as the dwarf led the seeker deeper still into the earth, until at last they entered a large hollow chamber in the centre of which, something hung gleaming, obsidian black and cold.

It presided over a plethora of machinery and furnaces, it shone over the busy backs of labouring spirits as they crafted their art. About it, all things seemed to turn – like planets around some interior sun.

The spirit pointed. There, he explained, lay the secret which the seeker had sought! See there – the way the tip of a root quests downward to bathe in that luminescence?

The seeker looked on, amazed beyond all reckoning. For that inner sun seemed equal in size to the burning orb which hung in the vault of the heavens, and our seeker had learnt much of astronomy in their time.

How was this even possible, they wondered aloud? How was it that something so vast dwelt here, all unknown, at the centre of the earth?

Not a little grandly so the spirit informed them that such things had always existed, but were by their very nature occluded from mortal eyes, untouchable by apish, grasping hands. Were ever the earth to be broken open by a mighty hammer, and its innards laid open to the sky, that secret heart would never be found.”

And back in the inn, here the storyteller leaned forward and tapped his very own seeker on the forehead.

“Do you think you have the guts to dig that far, my friend? To give up what you are, for what you will inevitably become?”

…

Now, dear reader, do you not remember that the story of the tree and the seeker is a story within a story? A tale told to a seeker in an inn, newly descended from the mountain?

A story within a story. A dream within a dream.

We shall soon hear the seeker’s reply to the story, yes indeed. And when we do, then you perhaps you will ask yourself what it is about yourself that can be illuminated by such a tale.

But we won’t be doing that quite yet, at least not until I close the loop and set us on the next level of the spiral. Because you’ve probably noticed that, contrary to first impressions, the real work of this comes not from the how-to. Instead, it comes from the stories themselves. And you may be wondering when exactly you’ll understand what it is that I am uncovering for you now.

So, consider this – what if stories were your environment?

What if you were shaped by their subtle pressures, and all that that entails?

Because remember, everything you perceive is that, is it not? Are you not already changing in ways that you will only become aware of, after those changes have occurred, even as they are happening.

And they are happening, right now. Right as you read this, minuscule changes are happening that you are as yet unaware of, which means quite precisely that you are not the same person as you were when you started reading the post.

So a person might get to wondering what exactly will occur when you’ve read this whole series, especially as we are by no means done yet, are we?

As you’ve been reading, I hope you’ve been thinking about that crashing of the system, because we can give that a more accurate name, can we not? Rather than saying we crashed the system, we might say that it was disrupted. That the dream tore itself apart when one tiny piece acted in a minutely different way.

All those stresses and strains within the dream, all the parts that made it what it was, were precisely what made it fly apart into pieces. But before I tell you what emerged from within that wreckage, don’t you think we should hear what the seeker’s reply to the storyteller was?

For there was a pause, and then the seeker said three words – if I were a betting man, I wonder if I could count on you knowing what they were, already?

“I don’t know.” They said.

And the storyteller grinned. “That’s the only answer worth any salt, I’ll give you that. But the story’s not done yet, not by a long chalk, so – Would you know more, or what?”

An eternal question – but before we leave the answer for next week, I must tell you what emerged from the wreckage of my dream – a dream within a dream.

A dream composed of three words:

YOU. ARE. WHOLE.

Catch you next week!

This is part 7 of a series. Here are Part 1 & Part 2 &Part 3 & Part 4 & Part 5 & Part 6

Hail to you dear readers!

Did you know that ‘Hail’ comes from the Old Norse heill – which means a sense of good luck of prosperity? It comes from the same root as ‘health’, which derives from the sense of being whole, and of good omen. You see, there’s a whole (heh) number of connexions to it, ranging from health to wholeness, to holiness and sacredness.

So the next time someone hails you, implicitly or explicitly, remember that on some deep level, one might say they are wishing you well – uttering the intent that you will be well, whole and complete.

A person can do that for you, without even realising it, and after all, when you consider the wider implications of what happens in the dark spaces which exist before you’re aware of thoughts and actions it doesn’t seem quite as far-fetched as before, does it?

“[I] Waxed and throve well;
Word from word gave words to me,
Deed from deed gave deeds to me,”

The above verse comes from Icelandic poetry – an Old Norse piece purported to be the sayings of the god Oðinn. I will tell you this – that simple verse contains the secret you need to do this work.

To lay out the words like bricks in a road – one at a time – so that you can get to where you want to go. To tell your tales without restraint; to make what you do inevitable and irresistible.

Remember back in part 1, when I said that this isn’t for you? When I said that, if you dream of wealth and power, then this isn’t for you?

I was telling you the absolute truth, and you may find that, as you are beginning to realise why I said that, you’ll experience something strange.

Because this isn’t for you.

That, on the other hand?

Is.

…

And because of that fact – that it is – and yet this is still not for you, a person can, if they wish, begin to understand a peculiarity of language.

This is not for you. That is.

It doesn’t matter if the line above doesn’t make sense yet, just as it doesn’t necessarily have to be anything other than a small step along that path.

What matters is that you’ll realise that, even if you don’t understand it yet, you will. And you will, because like everything else, that understanding happens before you’re actually aware of it.

So, it’s actually perfectly sensible to realise that you know things, and have understandings, which you don’t know you know yet, isn’t it?

After all, so much is going on that you’re not aware of – and so much indeed already has, and will have gone on, without you being aware of it, hasn’t it?

Think about your breathing, and notice how it carries on without you being aware of it. Now, imagine what it would be like if you had to be aware of something to make it happen. What would happen if something caught your attention?

Obviously, stopping breathing every time something pulls your awareness in another direction would be severely detrimental to you as an organism. So you carry on breathing unless something blocks your oxygen extraction, and yet you’re not aware of that, are you?

Remember – this is not for you.

That?

Is.

That genius, that faculty which we have spoken of, is the essence of what we do.

And ‘that’ is different to ‘this’, is it not?

If we’re talking about the merest, purest, most precisely focused form of work, which will enable you to access your creative powers in all their myriad forms – as we surely are – then when you begin to notice that genius, that impulse, you are noticing what it has already done.

Everything is that.

Everything that you perceive, everything you are aware of, is that.

By now, you already know what I am saying – you already have known it since forever, whether or not you are aware of it, yet. And now, as any good storyteller does, it is my job to allow you to become aware of it – to use communication to direct your awareness.

Remember our storyteller and the seeker of esoteric knowledge? Recall back in part 5, the storyteller said:

“Just so – yet how would you answer my questions? How will you discover what lies buried in the earth? Do you come to me for truth, lies, or esoteric wisdom?”

And the seeker thought for a moment, for they knew much, even before that moment.

“All of them.”

“Just so.” The storyteller grinned. “So, the tale goes thus:

“There is a tree with roots that stretch down into the deepest worlds, and up to the highest heavens. Its branches spread out beyond the sky, widening out into the spaces between the very stars themselves. Buried below the tree’s trunk, there is a treasure, the likes of which no mortal man has ever seen. There, in that dark earth, waiting to quicken to life, lies the secret to all things.

And it came to pass that a seeker heard of this treasure, and resolved to discover it at any cost. For nine nights they travelled to that tree, and for three more they circled its vast trunk, clambering over the roots which lay above the surface as they tried to decide where to begin their excavation.

Now, if you’ve ever dug near a tree, you’ll know that roots can spread wide, and dive deep. So our seeker thought long and hard before selecting a particular root and beginning to dig, for the work was hard and back breaking.

Three feet down they dug, then a grave’s-depth, then nine, and then twelve, following that root all the way. Down they went, digging, trying to find the end – deeper and deeper until the walls of earth towered above them, until the weight of soil began to fall inward, slowly at first – the merest trickle. The seeker was so intent on digging that they did not notice the trickle become a small slide, and it was only when the ground began to rumble that they realised their mistake.

By that time, of course, it was far too late, and the earth came down upon them, hard and fast, entombing them in darkness!

They lay trapped in the darkness, unable to move, barely able to breathe, and what air that there was was running low soon enough. No matter how they struggled, they could not move – and indeed their struggle merely used up the air even faster.

Irrevocably imprisoned, and surrounded on all sides by the press of earth, the seeker resigned themselves to death. Time passed and the seeker’s thoughts and hopes and dreams exhausted themselves – how could they not, for they were unable to move from inescapable gravity of death, just as the body could not move.

But the smiling face of Death did not appear immediately, for it keeps its own time – and so the seeker found themselves with naught to contemplate but their surroundings. Surrounded on all sides by impenetrable darkness, so the seeker began to see a strange light, one which did not extinguish the darkness, but emerge from within it, complementing and enriching it somehow.

And by that light, clear and unwavering, burning blue and cold, so the seeker beheld a dark little man, sitting before him, and calmly smoking his pipe.

Now the seeker could not speak for fear of earth entering their mouth, but they knew, without knowing how, that this little man was a dwarf – a spirit that lived in the realms under the earth, and who may pass through stone as easily as you or I might pass through water.

Such spirits, the seeker knew, were master makers and smiths. Tales were told of their smithing skill, and it is said that is they who crafted the items which the gods esteemed as the highest of all gifts.

The spirit sat calmly, the smoke of his pipe rich and heavy, watching the seeker. Without speaking, he conveyed curiosity. What, he wondered, was this mortal doing here?

Though unable to speak, at the other’s question, the seeker found they could answer in kind. Swiftly, they told the spirit of their quest and misfortune, as I have told you, and begged for aid.

For that creature’s part, there was much laughter.

Did the mortal not know that such treasure was the province of such as he and his kin? It lay, so the spirit explained, deep within the earth, glittering brightly as lit by a hidden flame at the centre of all things. No mortal could ever behold it, it lay so deep amidst the crushing pressure – so much so that the weight of the earth which pressed down currently upon the seeker was as the merest pebble.

Only such spirits as he could pass within to that most interior of realms, he explained.

And oh, how the seeker despaired and fell silent in their way, feeling all that weight anew. Yet into their despair crept the curiosity of the spirit – why should the seeker fear the earth, what were they waiting for?

So the seeker explained that they were trapped and waiting for death, and that there was no escape. The spirit looked on open-mouthed, so much so that his pipe fell from his mouth!

Why should one wish to escape the earth? He shook his head in stupefied wonderment. Rock and stone, earth and soil was all one could ever need, surely?

Would that I could be as you, lamented the seeker, but alas, I am not.

The spirit’s perplexity increased. For after all, he noted, he and his kind had arisen from the earth and nothing but! It surrounded them, and permeated them – were all mortals this silly?

With a hand, so the spirit gestured, and the earth gave a groan. What little room there was about the seeker collapsed inward, sealing them in completely!

The crushing weight was all about them – the air slowly being squeezed from their lungs…

Until, suddenly, they found themselves moving amidst the blue light, swimming through the earth – and to their surprise, the dwarf had grown to normal size!

Smiling, so he reached into his pocket and handed the seeker a pipe of their own – and with a shock, the seeker realised that their skin was as dark as the spirit’s!”

(Join me next week for the conclusion of this particular story, when you can finish joining the dots that this part has started to connect, even if you’re not sure how yet)

This is part 6 of a series. Here are Part 1 & Part 2 &Part 3 & Part 4 & Part 5

hiatus (n.)

1560s, “break or opening in a material object,” from Latin hiatus “opening, aperture, rupture, gap,” from past participle stem of hiare “to gape, stand open” (see yawn (v.)). Sense of “gap or interruption in events, etc.” is first recorded 1610s.

Ginunngagap – the yawning primal void. On either side of this lay the primordial realms of Fire and Ice, and when they met and interacted, the giant Ymir was formed. Norse myth tells us that it is from his slain corpse that the worlds were built. A triad of brothers killed him, cut him up, remixed him and arranged things into the worlds we know.

Last week, this series went on hiatus. I was having an empty brain day – couldn’t summon enough words to make them worthwhile your reading, so I went and did something else I worked on other projects and then gave myself the rest of the day as an ‘input’ day, rather than an ‘output’ day. I don’t believe in writers block; you can always do something, even if it’s not what you originally planned.

I didn’t consciously plan the hiatus, but, as it turns out, it gave me exactly what I needed. Rather than scurry back to my original notes and attempt to wring some filler out of them for you, I followed my instinct.

Well, I say instinct, and yet what I really mean is my ‘demon.’ There’s a quote from the esteemed Science Fiction writer, Roger Zelazny, which I posted on Facebook the other day:

“Occasionally, there arises a writing situation where you see an alternative to what you are doing, a mad, wild gamble of a way for handling something, which may leave you looking stupid, ridiculous or brilliant -you just don’t know which. You can play it safe there, too, and proceed along the route you’d mapped out for yourself. Or you can trust your personal demon who delivered that crazy idea in the first place.

Trust your demon.”

And here, dear readers, is where we are beginning to notice a pattern, aren’t we? Recall from Part 4, that a genius is really a tutelary spirit. Recall that “The bones is yours, dad! They come from you!”

Creativity takes work – it is rarely a matter of sitting around for ideas to come. Anybody who says that is not a creator, they are merely a passive channel, unreliable at best and unpredictable and corrupt at worst. Such folks as these who partake in occult pursuits are often subject to what Mr. White of Runesoup refers to as “extradimensional trolling.”

From a storytelling standpoint, this makes for boring stories that make no sense at all, leaping from point to point.

Trusting your demon is like trusting a friend or sibling. You only trust them because you’ve built a relationship up – you know each other, and you trust them to be themselves, and that’s something you’re fine with. But knowing them is key above everything else, in engaging in the back and forth which builds connection – in the communication.

Remember the rabbit in the hat? Remember how important it was to keep talking – to not edit? At base level, that exercise was about becoming comfortable with creating on the fly without restriction, and yet there was also another purpose.

When you learn about your body and your voice, when you begin to use that toolbox, you begin to learn and gain knowledge of yourself without the pesky censorship of society.

Slowly, you are beginning to learn that the default modes of communication are often reflexive, and that with deliberate and careful observation and practice, you achieve more nuance and depth. You can communicate and convey different internal states to the world, and change your own. All this is a pre-requisite for communication with your ‘demon’ or genius.

(Note that these terms are fluid and I’m deliberately keeping them vague, because I’m certainly not silly enough to offer definitions.)

Your ceremonial magicians will no doubt be muttering about the Knowledge & Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. Those with more of a yen for the Greek Magical Papyri will no doubt be muttering about various daimones or supernatural assistants.

Within the context of this series though, I am referring to the quality/faculty/entity with which one may develop a relationship, so that one is capable of turning everything and anything to use.

This demon is precisely why one may confidently allow a hiatus, and be sure that, while seeming to be empty, such a disruption may, in fact, be pregnant with creative potency. To do that though, one must be thoroughly and literally obsessed by one’s demon. Quite literally, one becomes a child of the ‘god’ – those with grounding in the Graeco-Roman schools of magic will no doubt see the parallels with the underlying roots of esoteric Christianity and other tradition, but that’s quite enough comparative theology for now!

It is not a path for everyone – it’s not particularly ‘safe’ either, being as you can’t ever stop doing it, and if you try, things have a tendency to go awry. But it is something that a creative person will recognise, every artist, writer, musician and actor and countless other folk. One might even say that it was ultimately left-hand path in nature, but that’s neither here nor there.

By developing this communication skill, this recognition and method of riding and coexisting always with that inspirational force, everything becomes source material and the division between the two ceases to matter.

Remember that question from the end of the last post – “What will you do right Now?”

That is possibly the second most important question I’ll ever ask you. We’ll get to the first, in a moment.

ET ARCADIA EGO

Being aware of what’s going on is highly important in life in general, but specifically in storytelling and sorcery. You need to know your audience, and to be able to watch and tailor your story to them. You need to know where you are and what kind of action is appropriate there.

The difficulty arises when, unfortunately, you can’t possibly have all the information you need. For most, a best-guess or a prediction based on previous similar experiences will do.

But we’re not most people. We understand that the map is not the territory, and that the medium is the message. We understand the world whispers a twilight languages writes books on iron-grey skies and weaves tapestries out of rain. We understand that the light of sun and moon provides pathways to other places, and that nothing is ever still.

Which brings us to that most important of questions: “What’s happening Now?”

Some of you may know some mindfulness techniques – the act of remaining present and observing what is occurring, without judgement. They’re highly useful, and I recommend them. Just observing what’s going on, without drifting off into what it means, or associated memory, helps deal with a great many things.

We can’t escape the Now, not really, although we try through mental chicanery. Recognising that, and engaging with experience as-is, will very often change the quality of the experience completely.

As an example, next time you have a pain, instead of ignoring it or wishing it would go away – focus on it completely and utterly. Within thirty seconds, you will notice that the sensation begins to change. By continuing to focus on that ‘new’ sensation, you will notice that it too will begin to shift in nature. Now, rather than interrogating the change, bring your focus back to the original area and keep it there.

In no time at all, you will notice just how significant a shift mere focused attention may engender.

However, this is actually not the most interesting product of that important question – because in fact, due to the quirk of biology we possess, what we experience as the Now has already actually occurred a split second earlier.

Everything we do, we have already done!

I have already begun the necessary process which produces the words I hear in my head which I am typing now before I am even aware of it. Decisions about which word to use are made without my conscious input:

‘I’, is at best, an echo or an after-image, a residual impression. Consequently, to use the example of pain – the pain, when it it shifts or ends, does so before we realise it!

Now, what does this nervous system quirk have to do with us? After all, the lag is usually less than a second, surely?

This is true – but given how quickly decisions are reached before we act, that gap might be said to be nigh infinite. Suppose then, that we argue that our conscious awareness arranges experience in such a way as to create a narrative to justify the decisions and actions taken in that void?

Suppose then equally, that that narrative is created on the near edge of that abyss – and that we react according to that narrative.

So then, there is a chain of action stretching on and on, with our awareness merely along for the ride? If that’s the case, why bother with the exercises I have given you in previous posts? Quite simply this:

It’s a feedback loop – yes, there is lag, a nigh infinite yawning space that disrupts our idea of cohesion and flow between events. However, by mindfully bringing these processes into awareness, they become fine-tuned – think of martial arts drills and repetition.

This means that the actions and decisions taken in that dark space become more refined, more useful to our idea of narrative. Subjectively, change happens more rapidly – thats to say more occurs in a shorter time.

Work solidly and completely for five minutes on one thing alone, with one thought, one goal, and you will achieve more than thinking about 3 connected thoughts in 15 minutes. Equally, the more occurs, the more we can tweak – one suddenly finds more resources and potential paths.

So, finally, circling back to storytelling, what to do? Why, nothing short of total utter commitment to every word, every syllable and letter. Make its transmission inevitable, as inevitable as the rest of your existence.

Join me next week when we’ll see just exactly what this means for us as storytellers and seekers of esoteric knowledge.

Due to some circumstances beyond my control, there’s no Bare Bones post this week. Fear not though, the extra time means that I can make next week;s even better.

See you on Wednesday.

This is part 5 of a series. Here are Part 1 & Part 2 &Part 3 & Part 4

It’s Wednesday. Wodensdaeg. Mittwoch. Midweek. And I have a story to tell you, on this most in-between of the 7 days of the week. It’s a story I referred to way back in Part 2 – a story that is told to the seeker of esoteric knowledge by the fellow who is merely a storyteller.

And here’s a little secret – in case you didn’t know; for merely means solely, purely, absolutely and only. Yet think about how you hear it – as a put down, or at best a deprecation.

“You’re only a child. You wouldn’t understand.” Or: “I’m only a simple man/woman/cat/dog. Don’t mind me.”

Don’t mind me. What a phrase that is – don’t pay attention to me, don’t remember me, I don’t want to take up your time.

As if one is less than any other number. As if one dollar, one pound, one euro is less than ten. Now, you might be thinking, well, yes, one is less than ten – what the devil are you talking about, you beardy madman?

And in one sense, you’d of course be quite right, and yet in another sense not. The ten is made up of ten ones after all – without the one, there can be no many. Without the first step, there can be no journey, and without the first word there can be no tale.

In a sense then, a story is like a tree – it grows from a seed, which brings us back to the seeker and the storyteller, for the tale starts like this:

And so the storyteller took a drink, looked the seeker dead in the eye, and allowed a small smile to cross his lips. The seeker met his gaze with bold curiosity, waiting for a word. Moments passed, and yet no word came, so the seeker waited still more.

Despite the noise of the inn, it was as if silence wrapped itself around them. The seeker found themselves stirring inside. How dare this fellow be so oblique, so cryptic – how dare he promise a story to prove his powers, and yet withhold any attempt to do so?

“Well?” the seeker demanded, “Speak then! Tell your tale, storyteller. Show me your wisdom.”

Still the other did not speak, hiding behind that smile. The seeker began to grow more and more frustrated, resolving to leave that place in which they were. The storyteller was obviously a charlatan. So, they stood and made to leave, all the time aware of that cool gaze.

Yet, as they were about to turn upon their heel, the storyteller spoke, softly:

“A tree, then.”

The seeker froze, turning back to the storyteller, unsure of what the other had said.

“Pardon?”

“A tree. It begins with a tree – first and always.”

“What?”

The storyteller said nothing by way of reply, merely gesturing to the seeker’s seat. When the other had seated themselves, and made ready to listen:

“There is a tree,” he said, “With roots that stretch down into the deepest worlds, and up to the highest heavens. Its branches spread out beyond the sky, widening out into the spaces between the very stars themselves. Buried below the tree’s trunk, there is a treasure, the likes of which no mortal man has ever seen. There, in that dark earth, waiting to quicken to life, lies the secret to all things.”

Here, he paused, and the silence lengthened, seconds ticking by into minutes.

“And?” said the seeker impatiently.

“And do you not seek esoteric knowledge?”

“I do.”

“And do you not wish to test the truth of my skills?”

“I do.”

“Then, if these are so, how will you discover what lies buried in the earth?”

“What do you mean? It is you who tells me the secret lies there. I have only your word that this is so.”

“Only my word, indeed. And do you not think, as a storyteller, that my trade, my skill is is in words?”

“A skill with words does not prove anything – you may lie well, and it all come to nothing.”

“Do you come for me for truth, lies, or esoteric wisdom?”

“What game is this?” demanded the seeker, half-rising.

The storyteller grinned. “The only game in town. Answer the question, leave or stay – it makes no difference to me. I am only a storyteller. This is my practice, as I have told you, as he who yoked himself to the sun had his. Whether you believe me or not, I tell you truly that I taught him all that you have heard of him.”

Were the seeker someone else, they might have left then, and yet, something, though they knew yet not what, had drawn them here and now to that place.

“Say on then,” they said. “For I am ever driven by the search, the need to know and understand.”

“Just so – yet how would you answer my questions? How will you discover what lies buried in the earth? Do you come to me for truth, lies, or esoteric wisdom?”

And you, what would you do if you were the seeker? Think about it – how would you answer those questions? They are key to the fusion of storytelling and sorcery, key to putting flesh on the dry bones which I am laying out even now. How would you behave if you were them?

How will you approach teaching that doesn’t look like teaching, and yet it is? Because all teaching does is allow you room to learn, and if you’re here reading this and the others in the series, then it’s perfectly obvious that you do indeed wish to learn, isn’t it?

I’ve given you exercises to get used to the raw format, the source material as it were. I’ve given you things to play with – with your body and your voice, and ways of noticing things that you might not have noticed before you began this.

A storyteller can take anything and weave it into a story – remember the rabbit and the hat? A sorcerer can do the necessary with next to no tools at all. They have the toolkit already, as you do.

In certain ceremonial magic circles, making tools and talismans is an essential part of the practice – you can’t go summoning angels or demons without your magical weapons or your temple-space. These things must be done first, before you even begin the business of the grimoires or Enochiana.

And you know what? I totally agree with that. Working from scratch is vital. Absolutely vital.

But you’ve probably noticed that I’m not a ceremonial magician – just a storyteller. Ultimately, everything you need to work comes from you – the tools are just extensions of that. That doesn’t mean that you are everything – on the contrary you are a very small piece of the puzzle, albeit an essential one.

And here’s the heart of it – working from scratch is vital, because that’s the only thing you have. A storyteller can tell themselves a story all they like, but ultimately, the magic happens when you let it out into the wild – when you connect beyond yourself.

All you can do is speak your words, sing your songs, write your lines – what happens after that happens in the privacy of someone else’s skull. As I’ve said before, it’s like throwing spaghetti at the wall to see if it sticks. The same applies in magic – you are still at the mercy of the wider kosmos.

It’s Wednesday. Wodensdaeg. Mittwoch. Midweek. And I have a story to tell you, on this most in-between of the 7 days of the week.

I know you’ve read that line before, heard the words before. I know because I wrote them, because I am only a storyteller. What I don’t know is vast, infinite in nature. I don’t know who you are, or what your last thought was, or what you said last, and to whom.

I don’t know what gods you honour, if any at all. I don’t know who you love, or who you hate. I don’t know how you vote, or what kind of sex you like.

And yet, I’m here with you now, writing these words, sending them out across the web, across the net, a voice speaking from out of the void. Because it needs doing, because it’s Wednesday and I am who and what I am. For no other reason than that.

Consider that for a second, would you?

Consider the seeker and the storyteller, and the day and the time and that I neither know who you are, and nor do I care. Consider the fact that there are things and people moving and being in the worlds that you know nothing of, and that they may live and die and laugh and love without ever knowing you exist.

It’s Wednesday. Wodensdaeg. Mittwoch. Midweek. And I have a story to tell you, on this most in-between of the 7 days of the week.

Imagine the smile of exhilaration – the way the emotion rises in your body, grips you in the chest and belly; how it tightens your throat and pulls your lips back as your heart begins to pound.

Can I get a Hallelujah?

Can I get a Hell Yes?

Can I get a Fuck Yeah?!

Of course I can. And even now, as you’re reading, maybe you’re wondering why the words make you remember, even lightly, as you’re parsing, as you’re recalling what they mean?

Imagine the grinning glee of it, the sheer unleashing of furious joy felt throughout everything you are. Because it’s not anything as pale as happiness, is it? It’s not as ordinary as contentment, it’s something else.

Go on, check out that emotion, that forked road of thought and memory that leads you there. Experience it fully – and really, since you’ve come this far, it’s pretty damn easy to open that door and let it in:

You’re all alone in the night, rising high above the land, as high as the rising sense of wonder and awe that comes ever on. And at your back, amidst the howling wind that blows through you, crisp and sharp and clear, you can hear a tree’s voice, groaning its song out to the wild.

It’s Wednesday. Wodensdaeg. Mittwoch. Midweek. And I have a story to tell you, on this most in-between of the 7 days of the week.

And you smile that smile. The one without words, the one that has no need of explanation. You know the one.

Because you are the beginning and the end. The creator and destroyer of worlds, the dreamer and maker and the shaper. The one with teeth and tongue, with sword and pen and word and blood.

Quickly now, before it passes, as it must – what will you do, right NOW?

This is part 4 of a series. Here are Part 1 & Part 2 &Part 3

Last week I promised I’d teach you how to pull a rabbit out of a hat, and I will, but first, here’s a question:

Are we having fun yet? Have you been playing with the exercises I’ve suggested, embracing them just for fun?

Because that’s the essence of learning, right there. It’s the essence behind the scientific method, which forms the bedrock of your entire world. It’s the essence behind any true intellectual and physical pursuit – the spirit of playful enquiry, the inquisitive eye of the child. Children are like sponges – they pick things up without even us noticing, take their cues from us and their environment.

Think about it – in a few short years, they learn a fluency with language and motion which, if they really thought about it, would astonish anyone. They go from squalling babes to beings that can use communication to make their wishes known. They learn to walk, to ride a bike, to use a pen and paintbrush; they constantly ask questions, curious, hungry to know about what catches their interest.

Then we stick them in school, and teach them that they need the right answer to gain praise – that not knowing is a bad thing – instead of the thing that inspires curiosity.

We’ve all had problems, difficulties even, in getting to grips with something – unless you’re lucky enough to be a genius, in which case I’ll come back to you! We’ve all struggled, thought we were ‘never going to get it’, and yet with hard work, we managed it.

Learning can be hard work, when you’re not a sponge. When you’re not capable of just sucking it in, soaking it up, absorbing everything, then things can get frustrating, right?

Except, you were a child, weren’t you? We all were. At one time, we were those sponges, we learnt like lightning. So what happened to that faculty of learning? We call kids innocent and carefree, right?

Both of those words boil down to a single concept:

To be free from sorrow, guilt or grief.

To be free from caring what happens.

Magicians talk about ‘lust of result’. You become so fixated on obtaining a particular thing that your operation at best falls over and doesn’t work, and at worst, burns your house down, so to speak.

(And sometimes literally – just ask a friend of mine about that.)

Children play for play’s sake. At the beginning, they learn for learning’s sake. They don’t do it to get good grades, to get good jobs and fat pay-cheques. So I’ll ask again – when did it stop being that way, for you?

If it never did, then congratulations, because you will find these ideas even easier to click with than the rest of us. And note that I said even easier there, because they are very easily clicked with and understood by you, even if you don’t realise it yet, for one simple reason.

That reason is really undeniable – because you’re still you. Because you still remember being a child, and because you know that at one point you didn’t know how to read, and now you do. Now you’re reading this, and there was a time when you didn’t know how – and you didn’t quite know how awesome the things you are still – as we speak – discovering by the written word would be, right?

Think about the how it felt as a child, to play, and how absorbing it was. Think about how you may get absorbed in books, films, tv, music – or even something so simple as washing the dishes. You are still capable of absorption, are you not?

Still capable of being that sponge, because you can still play. So keep that in mind, as we go on, because it’s important and we’re not quite geniuses yet.

Now, since this series is on Practical Storytelling & Sorcery, let’s ask ourselves, first and foremost, what kind of genius would be involved in that?

What kind of genius is that particular genius – the storytelling sorcerer who instinctively knows how to make those bare bones connect together, to breathe life where there was none before, to make them dance? The kind of being who is capable of spinning their tales, weaving their spells and changing worlds, minds and souls?

Do you remember Orpheus? The poet and musician who improved on a technology invented by a god? Do you not wonder what spirit moved him, what his voice sounded like as he delivered his charms?

How would it feel, to hear that song, to be charmed and ensorcelled by it – to be carried off, transported to another way of being?

A genius is capable of something wonderful – something amazing which places them in a class of their own.

So here’s where we get our hands dirty with the guts of language again – because well, just look:

genius (n.)

late 14c., “tutelary god (classical or pagan),” from Latin genius “guardian deity or spirit which watches over each person from birth; spirit, incarnation, wit, talent;” also “prophetic skill,” originally “generative power,” from root of gignere “beget, produce” (see kin), from PIE root *gen- “produce.” Sense of “characteristic disposition” is from 1580s. Meaning “person of natural intelligence or talent” and that of “natural ability” are first recorded 1640s.

Watches over from birth, indeed!

“The bones is yours, dad. They came from you!” – Part 2

Gordon has a lovely piece up on Twilight Language. You should read it all, but I’m sure he won’t mind me quoting a few lines:

‘In twilight language, the medium is the message. The sheer act of communication, of transmission, is what is important. Taken individually, or even taken by somebody else, the symbols are incomprehensible. If synchronicity is when the universe notices you noticing it, twilight language is how it says “hello, there!” immediately after.’

Children are adept at learning languages – they play with sounds, they babble, and they laugh. You did it, I did it. Everyone did it. In a sense, that play, that primordial experimentation, is the ur-tongue. That’s the pre-Adamic state – antediluvian innocence before we’re told we were naked, and should cover the hell up for morality’s sake.

Think about it – how many young children have you seen running about in your life, naked and uncaring. Maybe at the beach or or the swimming pool or somewhere, yes?

Which brings us to pulling rabbits out of hats, because I promised.

Previously, we’ve examined embodied concepts, and how that relates to the voice. You’ve made funny noises and played with funny postures, paying attention to how they feel. Now we get into the really interesting bits.

In order to pull a rabbit out of a hat, there must be a hat, a rabbit, and a you. The magic is in pulling a rabbit from an empty hat. Something from nothing, yes?

So, imagine yourself to be a magician, or even an ordinary person who has come across a magic hat. Really imagine it – see the brim and the fabric and the colour and the texture. Then, bow to the audience if you feel like it, and put your hand in the hat. Then, describe to your audience, imaginary or otherwise, how it feels to have suddenly found the rabbit in a hat.

Describe its warmth, the texture of its fur, the weight of it – and do this out loud and don’t stop. No matter what comes into your mind about this rabbit, you have to say it. You have to speak it into existence.

DON’T EDIT. KEEP TALKING.

Describe it as if you were the only one to know this rabbit exists, until you can feel it there beneath your hand, continually describing this damn rabbit and what it’s doing.

Then, when you’re ready, still talking, still describing, draw the rabbit out of the hat and put it beside the hat. Keep talking, keep speaking, keep describing whatever that rabbit does, in as much detail as you can.

It doesn’t matter if the rabbit pees on the table, or pulls out a carrot and says “What’s Up Doc?”, you have to keep talking – one word in front of another, no matter how ridiculous. Once again:

DON’T EDIT. KEEP TALKING.

If you stop talking, the rabbit ceases to be, and you’ll have to start all over again. Poor rabbit – you can stop talking whenever you like, but it depends on you to exist!

The key is, as ever, to keep talking. If you do this exercise several times, you’’l begin to notice certain things – they vary from person to person, but can include things like the words losing their meaning, or becoming aware of the underlying rhythm of your voice, or the rabbit acting differently than you expected – perhaps acting in unexpected ways, maybe even un-rabbit-like ways!

Once you’re enjoying exploring this, try something new – have that magic hat there, but begin describing the hat, putting your hand in etc, one word after the other as before. But instead of reaching for a rabbit, you’re going to pull something else out, and even you don’t know what it is!

Start from first principles – One thing, then the next, then the next. Don’t think about it, just feel it, just describe it. Again:

DON’T EDIT. KEEP TALKING.

The key with these exercises is to get used to speaking out loud, to disengaging the critical faculty here.

It doesn’t matter if you pull out multiple objects one after the other – you are like the magic hat. You can create anything. You’re like a child, just playing for the sake of it.

Again, it doesn’t matter what you produce, solely that you get used to the act of creation. To just letting go and seeing what happens, babbling happily on like a child, mucking around with raw clay and voice and breath.

Above all, the medium is the message as it were – none of this means anything. It simply is.

And it’s that isness, that raw essence, which is the material on which we work.

So we’ve touched on play, on learning, and the raw technical exercises I’ve outlined. By now you’ve probably noticed the metaphors and loops which will be propelling us on into next weeks post.

Maybe you’re beginning to feel the connections? Or maybe you’re what’s happened to our seeker and the storyteller whom we left back in Part 2?

Never fear – either way, I’ll see you next week.

On Wednesday.

This is part 3 of a series. Here are Part 1 & Part 2

How many of you tried out last week’s exercise, I wonder? How many of you really played around with the embodied sense of emotion, as I suggested? This isn’t a random question, or me wishing for more comments on the blog – quite to the contrary. It’s an interesting point that many people spend a lot of time intellectualising, in reading things like this, and not actually ‘getting around to it’.

Obviously life can be hectic, and things get busy – that’s understood. But there’s a difference between knowing intellectually and what, for consistency’s sake I’ll call ‘bone knowledge’.

The kind of thing that leads to such comments as “I could feel it in my bones.” Substitute bones for ‘water’ or ‘gut’ if you like, and yet, given the overall theme of this series, I’m sure you’ll understand why I use bones. Bones outlast flesh, outlast many things, and above are are a vital reminder of the constant change of the universe. They’re a memento mori – a reminder of your mortality. You don’t have all the time in the world, your alloted span is really rather short, as far as things go – and no matter how you might wish it otherwise. However you might wish to escape, that fact, you can’t really.

What I’m telling you is this – your body is the premier tool for both storytelling and sorcery. Sometimes, often in fact, props and tools are available to you, but your body is pretty much always there – you’re never going to be caught without your hands (unless you’ve lost them in an accident, in which case…this just got awkward to mention) but either way I am sure you get my drift. It is the one toolbox you always carry with you, no matter what.

Even if you’re of the stripe that believes you vacate your body completely during magical operations, there’s still the body to vacate in the first place. For this reason, the body is the central premise of any kind of of storytelling or sorcery, even simply as a vehicle interfaced with whatever whatever brand of consciousness theory you subscribe to. Even if such things are non-local in some quantum weirdness sense, experience shows that the meatsuit is pretty damn good at what it does, and is certainly better than nothing!

Which ties into use of the voice.

If you’ve played with the exercise in the last post, you’ll be aware just how much your body affects thought and action, as well as vice versa. The same thing applies to the voice as well. Below, I’ve listed the seven vowels of the Ancient Greek Alphabet to help you get to grips with things:

ALPHA – Ah
EPSILON – Eh
ETA – Ey/Ay
IOTA – Eee
OMICRON – O as in Hot
UPSILON – Oooo
OMEGA – Oh-(MEGA)

The pronunciation guide is rough, and you don’t have to say the word, just experiment with the tones of chanting the vowel, one by one, from ALPHA to OMEGA, and then back up again.

IMPORTANT NOTE: NEVER STRAIN. NEVER. YOUR VOICE IS AN INSTRUMENT. If you get a dry throat, or any soreness, STOP, drink some water, and rest.

Do this three times more, up and down, and as you’re doing so, notice which ones feel more potent to you. Which one resonates best for you. Notice whereabouts in your body that resonance occurs, and then focusing your attention on that area, do the same sequence again and notice what happens.

Each body and voice is individual – what’s comfortable for one, might not be comfortable for all. In general, I like to divide the body up into three – Head, Heart and Gut.

Head also includes the upper portions of the throat, while Heart includes most of the upper torso, with Gut including lower abdomen, genitals and legs (if you’re standing). Note that there is some overlap – think of your body being composed of three circles one on top of the other, overlapping slightly

Play with it again – try all seven in the Head area, and notice how it feels. Then do the Heart & Gut in turn. Notice the differences involved in sensation, and similarities. After a surprisingly short time, you’ll find that your voice actually uses your whole body, and with that use, you might begin to notice certain kinds of emotions, sensations or thoughts beginning to arise.

With work like this, it’s always good to have a notebook, and an attitude of experimentation. There’s no right answer at the moment, just exploration of your voice and body. It doesn’t matter how silly the thoughts or emotions arising are, make a note of them. Nothing is irrelevant – you’re learning to use the toolbox you were given at birth.

A NOTE ON BREATHING: Before beginning vocal work, I like to take some time to take some deep breaths and focus on my breathing before starting. I breathe in through my nose, and out of my mouth, with a hold of 3 count – so that works out like this:

Exhale for a count of three – Hold for three -Inhale for three – Hold for three – Exhale for three.

I usually perform three or nine cycles of that before beginning work, and after finishing as well. I find it helps to remind your body of its rhythms.

Now, I use the Greek vowel-tones because they have more nuance than the standard English five, and nuance is important when conveying information. You may have noticed that there are seven of them, and perhaps you know that there were seven planets acknowledged by the Ancient Greeks. These went as follows:

Sun
Moon
Mercury
Venus
Mars
Jupiter
Saturn

Now, as astute people, you will note that the names of these heavenly bodies have a variety of provenances, and there doesn’t seem to be a Greek in sight. That’s OK, you can blame the Romans for that. All of them, mythologically speaking have Greek equivalents.

Sun – Helios (later Apollo)
Moon – Selene
Mercury – Hermes
Venus – Aphrodite
Mars – Ares
Jupiter – Zeus
Saturn – Kronos

7 planets, 7 deities, and 7 vowels. Lucky 7. Crowley’s book of Qabbalistic correspondences was named Liber 777, did you know that?

The Ancient Greeks have some of the best known stories on the planet, some of the best known poets too. Homer, Sappho, Orpheus, Pherecydes of Leros, and his namesake in Sydos. So many years long dead, that they’re all mythical. All stories.

Do you know about Orpheus? They say he could charm the very rocks and trees themselves, and he descended into the underworld to claim his wife. It’s to his hymns we turn then, in this next stage – written at least six centuries before Christ.

You can find translations of them here, but I’ll reproduce the one to Hermes below, it being a Wednesday and all:

[27] XXVII. TO MERCURY [HERMES]

The Fumigation from Frankincense.

Hermes, draw near, and to my pray’r incline, angel of Jove [Zeus], and Maia’s son divine;
Studious of contests, ruler of mankind, with heart almighty, and a prudent mind.
Celestial messenger, of various skill, whose pow’rful arts could watchful Argus kill:
With winged feet, ’tis thine thro’ air to course, O friend of man, and prophet of discourse:
Great life-supporter, to rejoice is thine, in arts gymnastic, and in fraud divine:
With pow’r endu’d all language to explain, of care the loos’ner, and the source of gain.
Whose hand contains of blameless peace the rod, Corucian, blessed, profitable God;
Of various speech, whose aid in works we find, and in necessities to mortals kind:
Dire weapon of the tongue, which men revere, be present, Hermes, and thy suppliant hear;
Assist my works, conclude my life with peace, give graceful speech, and me memory’s increase.

The above is a call to Hermes, who the Romans called Mercury – it is a recounting of his mythic deeds and qualities. It calls to burn Frankincense, which has been found to be mildly psychoactive.

Now, consider the connections we have outlined above. Read the hymn, not for the strange language or formal translation but the imagery itself. Consider the vowels and the planets and the god.

Now read it again, out loud, using your knowledge of your voice’s resonance and your body.

Read it from the Head. See what happens, and how it feels.

Read it from the Heart, and do the same.

Then read it from the Gut.

I’m certain you’ll notice a difference – a difference in sensation, and that you’ll be able to feel which version fits you, the hymn, your voice and body.

And when you do, try and follow that sensation and experience it fully. See what happens to your posture, your sense of self. Experiment again, and you’ll soon learn the associations your body has with the language of the hymn and the way it feels right to you to speak it.

The right way to express Hermes, from your bones on out. You’ll be surprised by the results, I guarantee – if you actually perform the experiments I’ve outlined in this series, that is.

Next week, we’ll tie all this together with storytelling, and I’ll tell you how to pull a rabbit out of a hat!

PS – If you’re feeling keen, try these techniques with the other hymns corresponding to the gods. Note down what you get – it’ll be useful later, trust me.

“The bones is yours, dad. They came from you!”

Watch that, please. It contains a secret for you. I’ll come back to it in later pieces. For now, just watch and absorb it. Let it seep beneath the skin of your mind, settle amidst its semantic sediment. There, amongst your jumble of impressions and compressed perceptions which form the bedrock of your sense of self, let it sit like a seed.

And like a seed, it’ll begin to quietly germinate; send out questing shoots to twine about what’s already there.

If you’ve read the previous post in this series, then you know this is meant to be a practical way of using storytelling in magical and spiritual work. You already know that this is bare bones; the necessary framework which, when combined with inspiration will enable you to raise an army of ideas which you can press into service to enrich yourself and empower your work. You know that this is being done this because it needs doing, and because people are asking.

But, if you haven’t read that, then please do, because the posts are connected, like the hip bone’s connected to the leg bone. Without reading them all, following may become more difficult than it has to be, and that’s contrary to what you want – quite naturally.

Unnecessary difficulty is something we’ll be dealing with when we begin talking about transformation later on, so for now let’s confine ourselves to saying that difficulty and difference, while looking similar, are not obviously connected.

Note that suspiciously behaving obviously there, and note it well, because it’ll be important to us, both now and later. It may even haunt us, a little.

Right now, obviously, we need to talk about about storytelling, before the magical bit. We need to discuss how to tell stories, and the best way for me to do this is to show you, because contrary to popular belief storytelling isn’t an intellectual thing. This may seem airy-fairy at first, and yet there’s a reason bones are involved. Stories need spines, need frames, need reasons to go on, just like you.

And unlike you, they’re immortal, so killing them is…not easy…

Consider then, a seeker of esoteric knowledge. The kind of person who wanders the earth because of the whispers in their mind; driven by something insatiable which stirs in their breast, something unquiet nests in their gut. That kind of person is the person who visits the sadhus and the yogis, who disturbs hermits with their restless questions, and petitions taoist immortals for their secrets.

That kind of person who calls up angels and demons and commands them to give them wisdom, who strides into Buddha’s grove and begins digging under the bodhi tree.

They travel far and wide to learn the secrets of the mind and soul, the mysteries of meditation. Until, one day they encounter, upon a mountain close to the roof of world, an ascetic. This ascetic is rangy and ropey; sinew and tendon and leathern skin all wind-chapped and burnt by the cold of the highest places.

The seeker comes and seats themselves before the ascetic. “Teach me,” they say. “For I must know all you know.”

The ascetic shrugs. “I am no teacher. I cannot teach, for I have divested myself of all but my practice. Go where you will.”

“Tell me of your practice?”

“I cannot. My practice is all there is.”

“It is said that you can change bodies at will. That you learnt the art from an evil sorcerer who lived only so long as he did not leave the charnel ground. That you may travel faster than the winds.”

“These are stories,” says the ascetic. “And my practice is all there is.”

Imagine the seeker’s consternation! Would you pursue that further? Would you continue to press, as the seeker did, or would you go elsewhere, I wonder? Press the seeker did – yet always the response was the same.

All night the seeker waited, until at last the sun rose and, cold, tired and hungry, they realised with a start that the ascetic had vanished! Where he had been, a pile of rose petals lay.

Yet, as the sun fell warm upon the seeker’s face, they could not help but think that that they had been taught something, even if they had not realised it yet. Carefully, they climbed down the mountain, and by the time they reached its base, evening was drawing in. Seeking shelter at a nearby inn, they enquired of the innkeeper as to the ascetic’s disappearance. The innkeeper pointed over to a nearby table, where sat a man of indeterminate age.

“The storyteller’ll know,” he said. So over went the seeker, and asked the fellow about the ascetic’s fate.

“Ah, that one’s easy,” said the storyteller. “For he was a yogi, trained in the art of yoking his own body as you would yoke oxen to a plough, or a horse to a chariot. He hitched himself to the rising sun, and left the earth behind.”

“How do you know this?” asked the seeker. “I asked him of his practice and he would not tell me anything.”

“Not would not,” said the storyteller. “Could not. There was no room in him for anything but his practice.”

Surprised, the seeker replied. “How do you know this? Did you know him before he took up his practice?”

The storyteller gave a crooked smile. “Yes, though that is not why I know what has happened. I know that because I taught him thus.”

Well, you can imagine the seeker’s astonishment, can’t you?

“You?” the seeker asked in disbelief. “But you are a mere storyteller! He was a master yogi!”

“Precisely so.” The fellow’s grin grew wider. “A mere storyteller, as he was a mere yogi.”

The seeker thought for a moment. “So, it is you who taught him to yoke himself to the sun?”

The storyteller smiled still further. “Buy me a drink, and I will answer you truly, traveller.”

So over to the bar went that seeker, and bought a drink for himself and the storyteller. As it was placed before him, the other said:

“How is it that I have beer to wet my throat, though I have spent no coin?”

“Why, you promised to tell me truly of the yogi, in return for a drink.”

“Just so. Something for nothing. It is you who wished to know – it is your desire which I have manipulated, your body I have moved with simple words.”

The seeker stared at him. “You have tricked me then! You know nothing of the yogi?”

“I did not trick you. I merely showed you what you wanted, and how to get it. You did the rest. I am a mere storyteller, as he was a mere yogi. This is all that I am, as his practice was all there was for him. I taught him many things: I taught him how to change bodies at will. I taught him how to move faster than the very winds themselves.”

“But he said they were just stories.”

“Just so,” replied the storyteller. “And yet, did he not vanish? Was he not a master yogi? Did he not discover that mastery from my stories?”

“So you claim, but I have seen no proof. You could be lying or making things up.”

The storyteller laughed. “I am a storyteller, there is nothing else but that. And as for proof, well, allow me to tell you a story…”

And don’t worry, you’ll get your proof, as sure as that seeker will, for we shall be revisiting those two throughout the series. But for now, let’s consider the simple matter of that free beer, shall we?

The storyteller did something we do every day, he asked for something. Just like our seeker, he wants a particular thing – he has a goal and uses communication to bring the seeker into a situation where their goal and his are the same. To do that, he has to create the conditions for it to occur, has to create a route for the seeker to reach the same place that he occupies – or to use another metaphor, he has to make sure they are on the same page.

To extend the metaphor further, in order for the two of them to be on the same page of the script, there must be a script. Here, the storyteller has taken the other party’s communication, his words, his questions and curiosity, and folded them into the script, so that quite naturally, the seeker follows along. They’ve been very carefully led into the world that the storyteller has created.

And, you might ask, does the storyteller do that? Quite simply, he uses his knowledge and experience, and conveys – perhaps we might even say transmits – that impression using using every faculty he has. This is where the physicality comes in, and you can gain some insight as to how from performing a simple exercise:

For ease, the emotion I use here is anger, because it’s the most easily accessible strong emotion for most – but you can use almost any strong emotion for this experiment.

Think of a time you were experienced that strong emotion. Remember where you were, who you were with, what time of day it was – was it day or night? Were you alone, in public or private?

Really imagine it as clearly as you can – the things you saw, the things you heard, and more importantly what you were feeling in your body at the time.

Slowly, surely, you’ll begin to notice things as you do this, as you’re evoking those feelings. Your body may begin to tense up in a particular way, your breathing shifts, and you can even move about a bit to see how moving feels in that state.

Once you’re sure you’ve noticed how the memory affects your body, let the memory go – relax, do something else, banish or whatever.

A short time later, begin by mimicking the body posture you had earlier in the experiment, and – here’s the important bit – don’t use the memory at all. Instead, focus solely on the body and its sensations. If you find your mind drifting, that’s fine, just bring yourself back to that body, as if your attention was a flashlight playing over your skin, shining through muscle and bone. As you do this, remind yourself that you’ve done this posture before, that you know how to experience this. Because you do.

Note: If you’re using anger and find yourself getting frustrated by your mind moving, by all means use a different emotion like say, lust or joy. To be honest though, that’s actually a sign the exercise is working.

Try this with a variety of ‘embodied emotions’. If you’re really curious, take notes of how your thoughts behave in different moods, and how people react to any given embodiment. Play around, have some fun – notice how some embodied emotions are easier to evoke than others, notice how easily other people’s presence and mood can alter the length of the embodiment. Notice what embodiments you enjoy, and what you’d rather not do – what feels best for you.

Above all, don’t worry if the embodiments last varying times – a few seconds is as good as an hour. The key is to begin to deliberately explore your individual body responses.

So yes, play with it – leave a comment or two if you like. This ties in to the next post, which will deal with the other vitally important part of storytelling and magic – the voice.

Until next week – have fun, OK?

This isn’t for you. This isn’t for you, if you dream of wealth and power. This isn’t for you if you want to experience a transcendent reality that will allow you to escape your woes and live in bliss. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, all right?

Because I what I am going to talk about now is dirty. It’s black and hard and cold and inescapable. It’ll break and remake you into something different. Something that not everyone is going to like, because it will bring change to the way you think and feel. It will drive you to crave a kind of absolute being, to do it or die. I’m saying this now, up front, so you can’t tell me I gave you any false promises, that I didn’t warn you about this road.

Are we clear? Are we clear that this is something to pursue without mercy, without flinching? Are we clear that you will gain strength and wisdom from sources others regard as nothing more than useless waste? Do you understand that what I’m going to share with you?

Maybe you do, or maybe you merely want to. It doesn’t matter to me. What matters to me is sharing this, in giving you the bare bones of it, because it is needful to do so. Because there is more to the world than is permitted by our culture. Because somewhere, in the night, in the wilderness, in the desert of their lives, someone is crying out. Someone needs this, even these fragments. Maybe it’s you. Maybe not.

Nevertheless, this must be done.

Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord!  This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life.  I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.”

So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone.  I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.

Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’”  So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army. – Ezekiel 37:4-9

Imagine, for a moment, that you can do this. That you can stir life where there was none before, put meat on bones and give people new lives.

Imagine you knew some Art, some skill of taking the divine breath, the animating spirit, and giving it to things. Or perhaps imagine, as you breathe, as you take the breath into your lungs, that you are but one part of the vast web of life which connects all things. Imagine that you could manipulate that breath, that force, could wield it like a weapon, to harm or heal?

Imagine if that Art, that use of breath was the very thing that drove both poets and kings, heroes and monsters. That shaped dreams and laid low your enemies, summoned spirits and brought you to the tables of the gods themselves? Perhaps even an Art which inspired every inventive, creative, curious act that the species had ever performed?

Inspiration. Yes. Just that – and the Art is the use of the same, the use of that principle which makes cells divide, makes hearts beat and stars burn. The principle that drives your lungs like bellows fanning the flame of your existence. And what an Art it is, that allows you to modulate your breath and body, to sing songs and tell stories!

To speak and place your thoughts, your emotions, your pictures in someone else’s mind, irrespective of distance. If they sense this Art, you may touch them!

That’s the poetic part – the shimmering vision conjured into being for you. It may seem airy-fairy, but if you’ve ever been caught by the wind, you know what I mean. You know that the wind knifes and burns, carries the cold in to steal your breath. You know how you want to hurry to shelter, to get out of its grip, to be shielded against its howling fury.

Maybe some of you have experienced a tornado, or even a hurricane or blizzard. What could you do, except hunker down and wait for it to pass?

“I said now, no hidin’ place
When the water start boilin’, no hidin’ place
World catch on fire, no hidin’ place
Down here, no hidin’ place
Yeah, I went to the rock to hide my face
But the rock cried out no, no, no, no hidin’ place down here.”

Nothing to do, but pray, to hope for the best, that your life wouldn’t be torn apart by forces you could never, ever hope to control. Forces that were here, long before any creature crawled out of the ocean. Forces against which the strongest nations, the richest 1% were as helpless as the poorest homeless person. So it’s not about how powerful you are, or how weak. How rich, or poor.

All those are part of the bulwarks of culture, the walls of the house we erect against the storm, or the creeping knowledge that we’re all going to end up as dust and void eventually.

And what of that Art? The Art that can take anything and use it to make you thrive. The Art that is afragile, that takes the inescapable and thrives on it?

Me, I call that blackest sorcery there is. The kind that will get you what you need, in situations where others are totally, utterly lost. Where they have no frame of reference because they’re not in Kansas any more, and they turn to you, because you can open doors and make things happen.

You can guide them in the dark, because you gave up trying to see like them years ago. Because you rely on a different sense, that faculty of Art which allows you to increase your influence, to manipulate circumstances in your favour, and the favour of those you care about.

The Art that understands that though you may think you need to go There & Back Again, you don’t and indeed, you can’t.

There is no escape.

So, this is the introduction to a series of posts which lay out the bare bones of that Art, to the basic skills you’ll need, and things you’ll need to think about, if you want to incorporate and use storytelling in your magic/spiritual work. It’s the bare bones because it needs doing and I haven’t seen any other magicians other than Alan Moore & Grant Morrison touch this with a damn barge pole, and even then not practically. When I am told that people want more than these posts, I shall share more – though not necessarily for free.

I say that because there is value to this, and because I can teach this stuff. But I have to be asked – them’s the rules.

See you on Wednesday for the next post.