brain

Brain Magick: Exercises In Meta-Magick and Invocation – Philip H. Farber

Brain Magick Cover

Brain Magick – Philip Farber

Llewellyn, 2011, 9780738729268, 247pp

Brain Magick was the book I picked for the first Sorcerer’s Shelf Reading Challenge 2025; Reread a magick book you found valuable- with more experience and knowledge, you catch things you missed the first time. Reread a foundational text with a few more years of practical experience, or something that interested you but you never really got into. It fits both of these categories for me. I first read it shortly after its 2011 release, and though I found the ideas compelling, I didn’t delve deeply into the practices at the time. Instead, the book influenced me more on a theoretical level, I took the concepts to heart, but not the actual techniques. Now, as I’m working on shifting various aspects of my life and retraining my mind, it has become more relevant to my current path, and invaluable in some recent work.

Part of the premise of Brain Magick revolves around the idea that universal patterns in magickal practices across cultures stem from common neurological processes. Farber argues that “anything we can do, magically or otherwise, will be represented by corresponding processes in our brains, bodies, and behaviors” (p. 4). Understanding these processes can enhance both our magick and our lives.

I often describe this book as “Magick about magick” or “Magickal biofeedback.” Through a variety of exercises, Farber guides us to analyze our thoughts, emotions, and the corresponding physiological responses they trigger. For example, when you feel loved, your chest may feel expansive; when anxious, it can feel as though a cold heavy hand pushes your shoulders down. By learning to recognize and recreate these physical sensations, you can consciously trigger emotional states. If you want to summon confidence, for instance, you can cultivate the physical feeling of it in your body and use it on demand. You can also work with anxiety by safely triggering the sensation in controlled situations, gradually replacing it with more empowering emotional states, or project it as a being to engage with, or project beneficial mental states onto anticipated negative events to help improve the mental/emotional response when the event occurs. This approach extends to magickal and meditative states, allowing you to invoke these responses to deepen your practices, think about creating magickal biofeedback so you can help trigger specific deeper magickal states more quickly.

As the book progresses, Farber introduces the idea of treating these states as entities that can be invoked, customized, and even created from scratch. For example, you can externalize negative emotions, like fear of failure, by turning them into a “spirit” that you can interact with, negotiate with, and heal. Over time, you learn to create and manipulate emotions, overlaying them on events in your life to foster the desired mental state. Farber takes this further by teaching how to combine multiple states into a single “god” that embodies all the qualities you need for a particular situation. If you need to confront a malevolent spirit, for instance, you could create a “god” filled with authority, courage, and an unshakable will to support you in the encounter. If you’re facing a high-stakes work presentation, you could create a “god” of charisma and quick wit to help you excel, tapping on memories of times you were at your best or imagining how you could be.

In essence, Brain Magick is about bringing all the best aspects of yourself under conscious control, both by amplifying your natural traits and by developing new ones. Early in my reread, I used the techniques in the book to handle an issue at work. Something went sideways at work, no one’s fault, but it was after everyone else had left on a Friday, so I knew we’d have to address it Monday, during a meeting so early I’m usually not conscious most days at that time (joys of being on a global team). The manager for that meeting just manages to rub me the wrong way, so the idea of this pre-waking meeting with this problem and that manager had already soured my weekend, I really didn’t want to deal with that manager being cranky when I should be sleeping.

Using the techniques from Brain Magick, I tapped into a feeling of resourceful, calm confidence from playing a card game with family the previous week, and I had that moment of realizing I was in control. I would win on the next turn and no one could play anything to stop me, I had already won, I just needed to play the final card. I projected that feeling onto my expectations of the upcoming meeting, replacing my expected anxiety and annoyance with this sense of resourceful control. As a result, I was able to enjoy my weekend without the looming stress of Monday morning. When the meeting came, I was calm, focused, and able to address the issue efficiently, create a solution, and delegate tasks. Even though the manager tried to press my buttons, I remained unbothered, because I had already won, I just needed to play the final card.

Brain Magick also teaches you to create “gods” with your best traits and aspirations. For instance, I’ve never been good with dreams, but using these techniques, I’ve been building a “Dreaming God.” At first, I focused on recreating the physical sensations associated with dream recall, the feeling of holding onto a memory right after waking up as I write it down. I then projected that sensation to enhance my dream recall. Gradually, as recall improved I began working with other aspects of dreaming as I observed them, like shifting between sleep stages and incubating ideas for dreams. Each success in dreaming gives me another experience or mental state that I can recreate and incorporate adding new layers to my Dreaming God and giving me greater access to those dream states.

Brain Magick teaches the art of observing, creating, and modifying personal psycho-energetic patterns whether they are emotional states, “gods,” or transmuted personal flaws. Self-mastery is a vital skill for any sorcerer, and this book provides a powerful method for cultivating your best self. I highly recommend it, especially for anyone framing their magickal path as a journey of guiding or transmuting aspects of their personality.

Posted by kalagni in blueflamemagick, 0 comments

Self, Mind, Brain, and Drugs

As some of my readers may know my health has been…questionable for most of my life.  I was born dead and out for about fifteen minutes before resuscitation.  I spent the first month of my life, save Christmas day, in an incubator.  The only reason I’m alive is thanks to the fact I was born in a country with universal healthcare.  My parents would not have been able to afford me and all my complications and I wouldn’t have made it past the first week if I had been born in the States.  I drowned when I was four, resuscitated.  I spent much of adolescence in pain and discomfort in and out of hospitals, I spent a lot of my preteen and teen years as a frequent guest of the Hospital for Sick Children, the best pediatric hospital in the world.
 
It is not surprising considering these issues, and several other issues, that I don’t exactly identify with my body.  I always think of myself as a consciousness driving a meat suit, like a kid in a robot in an anime.  It’s not me, I’m the consciousness.  The body is broken, it’s decaying and falling apart the moment it’s born, that is not me.  My mind, my consciousness that is pure, that is disconnected from my body and its corruption.  That’s how I viewed myself for a long time.  Something above and beyond my body.
 
Then more recently I was diagnosed with depression.  Now I shouldn’t have to say this, but depression is a physiological problem in the brain.  It is not about “feeling sad” and can’t be fixed with happy thinking, any more than anemia is fixed with thoughts about iron.  The brain has problems processing and creating specific neurochemicals.  When I was diagnosed with depression it really hit me that I am not above and beyond my body, because depression is a problem in the brain, but it affected me, even though I thought of myself as beyond it.  My consciousness, at very least, gets translated through the physical brain.  As “pure” as my consciousness might be it gets distorted by the interface with my brain.
 
It was actually hard for me to admit that a problem with my body was affecting my mind, and that my mind wasn’t separate.  It seems like nothing major, but to someone who was more in their head than their body it is upsetting to see how it can be distorted and influenced.  Then when I started taking anti-depressants I again had to admit how the brain affects me, as my moods and clarity improved again.
 
I got to “trigger” more of this discomfort to force me to deal with it.  I began to experiment a year ago with cannabis.  Yes at 33 I’ve probably been high less than the average 18 year old.  The first experience knocked me out of the meat suit, it was a very potent edible.  I got what some call body heaviness, but it was to the point where I didn’t feel like I was interfacing with my body, and actually had mild spasms as I couldn’t completely control my  body. I was still piloting a meatsuit, but all the controls were sluggish or crosswired. I was just my conscious sitting in my head.  My ability to focus goes out the window, and that’s again what made me have to deal with this brain interface.  It wasn’t just moods, my brain could actually interrupt my ability to think.
 
When you think of yourself as a non-physical consciousness, it’s actually a troubling thought to see how chemicals can affect you, that your consciousness isn’t as inviolate as you think.
 
My purpose in writing and sharing this is twofold. Firstly it is allowing me to process some of my humility around this, coming to terms with the fact that however “pure” my consciousness might be beyond the body, as long as I’m in the body the physical brain can and will influence me. In fact we’re learning more and more about how much of our personality is physically rooted in the brain, which then makes me wonder about who “I” am? How much of the personality I identify with is “me” in the sense of my consciousness beyond flesh, and how much is based upon my genes, my neurochemicals, and events that shape the way the brain function. My one lama used to refer to this is our biology and biography, but I feel there is one more piece, that Beyond the flesh consciousness. Secondly I write this because sadly I see a trend in the various magick communities to ignore or look down on mental health issues. Pretending, thinking as I did, that the brain/body couldn’t influence the consciousness. Sadly this plays out with people not seeking professional help for mental health issues, or assume that medications aren’t the route to follow.
My Rinpoche fled Tibet during the Chinese invasion. As a child he fled through the mountains of Tibet, being chased occasionally by Chinese military, losing people on the way, living a horrible story. That was over sixty years ago, but he still has PTSD and can’t watch military movies. That was a reassuring conversation for me, here is a Rinpoche, a great teacher who has spent his life meditating, but he admits there is a wall where he cannot control the damage that was done. If a reincarnate lama in his 70s can still deal with mental health issues, it’s not a failing when you can’t magick it away. As a subculture we don’t imply someone is a failure because they can’t magick away anemia or allergies or whatever, but we treat mental health problems as personal and magickal failures, and that’s bullshit. As competent sorcerers we have to be willing to engage reality as it is, not how we want it to be, and use any resource we can to make our journey better, more productive, and more functional, and for some of us, part of that is realizing we are more of the body and brain than we think, and that’s okay.

Posted by kalagni in blueflamemagick

Wednesday Webshare: Cutup Corpses, Memories, and History


Mercury Web I received a lot of interest in the earlier photoset of the sky burial I posted a while back. I recently came across another one, this one is done in a different more hands on style. There is a lot more work with the caretaker really dismembering the body. Still fascinating to take a look, but of course be warned that it is graphic.
Shivian talks about when it’s time to really ditch a spell. It’s worth a read. Two common mistakes I see with people are those who continue to do the same spell/ritual repeatedly when getting no results, and those who assume that one fail means it’s time to drop it and move on. So here is a small checklist of things to run over before you decide to drop it.
Have a tough choice? Let your subconscious make it. Here is an interesting article about letting your brain work subconsciously to make decisions, and how that tends to work out better. I’ve often recommended anapana as a decision making tool, it focuses the conscious mind and leaves the background clear to process everything else.
Want to give your friends fake memories? Here is the basic how to. (By the way, you owe me $200 for the time I bailed you out of jail) I bring this up for two reasons. First, as someone with past life memories, I continually stress to others that memory isn’t solid and unchanging, that’s why it needs to be recorded and why it can’t necessarily be trusted. Secondly though not explicitiely said here, we can rewrite memories, which is why magickal journals are important, for you would be amazed how even the best of us can trick ourselves into remembering something working out differently than it did.
Another fantabulous Whisky Rant over on Rune Soup. As someone with past life memories of forgotten civilizations…no kidding, as someone who is working on a history degree this is part of the stuff I have to battle with. History doesn’t always make sense the way we want it to, and while I’m not saying what’s right and what’s wrong we have to question history. Who benefits from what survives, and who benefits from how history is constructed. Also as someone how has been suspicious (to be polite) of the Egyptian Indiana Jones it’s nice to see some more criticism against him.
There is more to magick than just memorization, check out a matching of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning/Knowledge (a theory I love and is a big part of one of my degrees) and magick. Then ask, are you doing it right?
Lastly I have one quartz mala left in my store, so I decided to mark it down and try to move it. Last one, so get it while you can, I probably won’t make more outside of custom orders for a while.

Posted by kalagni in blueflamemagick