kalagni

28
Sep
2020

Review: The New Aradia: A Witch’s Handbook to Magical Resistance, edited by Laura Tempest Zakroff

The New Aradia: A Witch’s Handbook to Magical Resistance, edited by Laura Tempest Zakroff

Revelore Press, 2018, 9781947544161, 106 pp

Magick has long been the domain of the downtrodden, the oppressed, and the otherwise powerless.

“And thou shalt teach the art of poisoning,
To poison those who are great lords of all;
To make them die in their palaces;
And thou shalt bind the spirit of the oppressor.”

Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches, 1899.

Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches is one of the most influential books on modern witchcraft, laying the mythic framework for a lot of systems that came after. In the text it is abundantly clear that Diana and Aradia, gods of witchcraft, are on the side of the average person, the weak, the disenfranchised, the oppressed, and forgotten.

One hundred and twenty years later Aradia, both the god and the gospel, still inspire witches. The New Aradia: A Witch’s Handbook to Magical Resistance was the result of such inspiration. Over 25 witches of different stripes, including such names as Laura Tempest Zakroff, Christopher Penczak, Storm Faerywolf, and Ivo Dominguez Jr have contributed to this handbook.

Following the message or Aradia to poison the great lords and bind the oppressors this book is a collection of short pieces from a variety of authors on a variety of topics that connect back to the theme of magical resistance. Using our magick not (just) for personal work, growth, and gain, but using our magick for the good of our society, to protect those crushed by the boots of power, and to strike at those who wear the boots.

Are you a protestor in our modern social revolution? Are you an activist fighting the injustices our societies are built upon? Are you a worker trying to build a better, more fair world? Do you love someone who can be described by those statements above? Then this is a book you need. 

The book contains invocations to Aradia, to call on her power and her justice, a call to protect and inspire us, to strike against the oppressors of our world. There are workings intended to heal and purify our damaged lands and societies, to bless, heal, and cast out evil and delusion from the places of justice, to bring light and wisdom back into the systems meant to serve and protect us. There are a few sections on useful plant allies for those fighting for magickal justice, and oil recipes to support your work. Acknowledging the reality of protesting injustices there are spells to win court cases when unjustly detained, or spells to protect yourself against violent counter-protestors, or to hide from those who would harm you. Several sigils and spells for protection, house cleaning, and reclaiming our power are throughout the book.There are several pieces that are more of the philosophy of The New Aradia, discussing the history and importance of social justice witchcraft.

This book is short, but to the point, no fluff or padding. Due to the eclectic nature of the authors, and the topics and perspectives of their writing this book is bound to have something for anyone seeking to turn their magick against inequality, injustice, and oppression. It’s a great handbook and guide for social justice witchcraft, the pieces are short, but pithy and powerful, written for a variety of skill levels and levels of involvement. In our current world, with the growing spectre of facism, the widening gaps of income inequality, racial and social tensions that have been simmering for decades boiling to the surface, and ecological breakdowns, this is a valuable little book is essential for witches and other magickal practitioners seeking to join the fight.

Posted by kalagni in blueflamemagick
06
Jan
2020

Deep, Not Wide

I said in my recent post Shake It Up that it’s good to try something new to stretch yourself. I also said I’d make a post contradicting that, and that would be this post.

One piece of advice from my magickal training that always sticks with me is : Deep, not wide.

So simple and unassuming, but really good advice if we bother to apply. We live at a time with unparalleled access to information on magickal and religious traditions the world over. This is such a wonderful opportunity, but also a trap we can too easily fall into.

I’ve talked before about how “Your Tradition Can’t Beat Mine” That it is good sorcerers, not traditions. “Now, don’t get me wrong, some traditions have different advantages and niches. Want to evoke a spirit, I think Ceremonialism is the route, want to invoke a spirit, I think Buddhism has that down, want to be ridden by a spirit, get thee to a Santero’s house. The thing is these advantages are only there for people who have the capacity to use them, some hypothetical good sorcerer.”

Sometimes we, and I’m included in this, spread ourselves too thin between traditions and practices we are trying to learn. We get a breadth of knowledge our magickal ancestors could only dream of, but to an extent we sacrifice depth to get there.

It’s easy to jump from tradition to tradition based on what we’re trying to learn, and again there is a benefit to that. On the other hand, each magickal tradition is more or less a complete system of magick and probably has a way to do everything you’re learning in another tradition, it’s just not as emphasized or specialized.

The advice “Deep, not wide” is specifically about depth of practice and understanding. Test yourself with two limitations for a while, and see how that changes your understanding. 

First if you’re thinking of learning a technique from another tradition; stop and try to figure out how your main tradition would do it. Does it directly have a similar practice? If not how can you make such a practice that fits in the model of your tradition. Instead of learning how the other tradition does it, think about how it should be done in your tradition, what would a similar practice look like in your tradition? Once you’ve learned that go back and look at other traditions, but looking for it, and analyzing it gives you a much better understanding in general than you would pick up from another tradition’s take. Since you understand your system, you’ll be able to see a depth and nuance that would be lacking if you just learned a technique from another tradition. 

The second is try limiting your practice for a while to one practice, regardless of what your goals are. This can require some thinking, it might be hard to think how your work with a wealth deity could be used for defense, or how an offensive spirit might be used to assist in healing. There is usually a way around these things. Again, it makes you think about the practice in a deeper way, giving you more insight in general and to your tradition than you would have picked up doing other practices. Both these limitations serve the same purpose, forcing you to think deeper and differently about your practices.

Go out and learn as widely as you’d like, but every once and a while test yourself, restrict yourself, and see how much more you understand by the time you are done.

Posted by kalagni in blueflamemagick
12
Dec
2019

Madison Seminary Ghost Investigation (Part IV – Silly Shadows, and Chöd)

For a more amusing side story, myself and two others decided to investigate a room down the hall, where the figure approached from. There were more children down there, peeking around corners and door frames. We were in the one corner room, trying to get one of the children to come talk. I’m sitting in the window sill, one of us on the floor, and one against the wall. The door opens into the room, and from where I’m sitting I can see between the door and the frame into the hallway, and as we talk, I keep seeing a shadow obscure the bottom of that crack between door and frame, like a child sneaking around the door to look in. It is very clear, I think it might actually have been physical sight. So I tell me friend to come sit where I was, and I shine a flashlight to the spot I keep seeing the shadow, I stand up walk into the center of the room, keeping my flashlight on, explaining what I’ve been seeing, and I want his take. I turn off the flashlight, and suddenly where there was just a blank wall before is a very dark humanoid shadow, clearly with a hand reaching out. For a split second I freak, I jolt, my heart jumps, holy fuck that’s the clearest shadow/spirit I’ve ever seen. For a split second. Then I realize, it’s my shadow, when I had the flashlight on you couldn’t see that light was shining in from the other window against the wall, and I walked right into the path of that light, but my flashlight hiding it and the shadow I was casting. So one the light was off, suddenly there I was against the wall with the light from outside. It gave me a good laugh about myself. No real moral, just remember don’t take yourself too seriously, and laugh at yourself.

All evening I have been on edge a little and honestly mildly frightened, like I said, unlike me, and I wasn’t alone. People in our group would go to the bathroom in pairs because we didn’t feel safe in those halls alone. I should mention that this group is largely experienced people, this isn’t our first haunting, but this one definitely got to us.

Finally I decided to do what I planned on doing as soon as I was invited. Padampa Sange said to Machik Labdrön, the founder of chöd my main Buddhist practice “Go to the places that scare you.” Chöd is about feeding spirits and demons, but it’s not a light or gentle practice, you don’t just do it at home, you’re to do it in cemeteries, charnel grounds, haunted places, “the places the scare you.” So I went up to the fourth floor, where I had the strongest impressions, I had my one friend accompany me, per my rule about being alone, and I explained that in chöd it might look like the spirits are attacking me, but for him not to worry unless I start showing clear physical distress.

I put on my domra, a type of ritual visor worn in chöd, it both hides my eyes from spirits so they aren’t scared away, but also distorts my vision enough that it makes perceiving spirits easier. I then began to play my damaru (drum), and sing. Chöd is a musical practice, while all the ritual work is going on you’re singing to the spirits, both explaining what you’re doing, and generating the force of it. Chöd is interesting, it’s definitely good at getting the attention of spirits, and it did just that. All the spirits in the room just kind of stopped for a moment, and turned to me, and approached. As the ritual went on, more and more spirits came, a steady stream of them came up the stairs into the room, but it wasn’t just the spirits of the haunting as we think of them, the inhuman spirits came too. Astral parasites and lower critters came in, more complex humanoid but clearly not human spirits came out, spirits of the land, and inhuman spirits that have just been attracted to the place. Afterward my friend said he was glad they were all focused on me, cause at one point he felt like spirits were literally crawling over him to get to me. I continue the ritual, the air becoming dark/bright with layers of spirits. I’ve done chöd in cemeteries and haunted places, but never have I experienced such a turn out. After quite some time of ritually feeding and offering the spirits, I had to stop. There is only so much I can do, and there were so many of them. The feast ends, the ritual ends, and the spirits disperse. I’m confused/startled for a moment, because my friend is still in the room, but so are several of our other friends, and two of the tour guides. With all the spirits coming up the stairs I didn’t notice a handful of bodies came up too. The room felt calm (according to the others), you could still feel spirits and activity, but it was calmed, contented, gentler.

With chöd you’re to go to the places that scare you, but chöd is a practice of fearlessness, throughout the ritual you access the realization that you are ultimately indestructible. For the rest of the evening (the last hour or so) I had no qualms moving about the seminary on my own, while I still felt everything I did before, the sense of fear and maliciousness just slid off me. So I did also wander for a while on my own, because it’s one thing to feel that way, it’s another thing to make sure that the feeling remains when put to the test.

Posted by kalagni
14
Nov
2019

Madison Seminary Ghost Investigation (Part III – Pain and Predator)

Finally we go up to the fourth floor, and the perceptions just got louder. The fourth floor was for the worst medical cases (put high up, out of sight) and the asylum, and it was pretty active. I couldn’t really sense a single spirit, but there were definitely many there. It’s then that I spot a chair in the corner, now apparently it’s not part of the original furniture, but the current owner tries to buy appropriate furniture for the time/place to furnish the seminary. It’s a chair, metal arms, and moveable metal plates to support the head…or rather restrain it. It’s not /the/ chair, or the /right/ chair, but it’s close enough to trigger, as soon as I see it, I’m perceiving the woman restrained in the chair. The impact wasn’t a hammer, it was whatever was used to perform her lobotomy. According to the owner they don’t have any specific record that matches that, but considering the history of abuse/malpractice it is totally plausible.

 

The other side of the fourth floor has a different feeling, same sad anger, but less spirits, but clearer spirits. Specifically a doctor who felt like a fucking movie villain evil doctor. He was centered on one specific room. The room had a marble slab on the floor, and an old medical table/chair with stirrups. This chair was also not original, the original was gone when the current owner bought the place, but according to local police there was originally such a chair/table there. It was designed with arm restraints with the arms stretched out wide, and the legs restrained open at 45 degrees…yeah…cheerful. What was original in the room, was the marble slab, the tour guide explained the slab was under the original chair, and one of my friends mutters in a slightly tranced voice “because it’s easier to clean blood off than the wood.” You can imagine the warm happy feelings we were getting from the chair…ugh. I had a sense that he was somehow projecting into, or controlling other spirits, specifically the murderer and custodian, I don’t know how/why, if it was something that started in life, if it was conscious, or what, but it seemed like he tended to stay in that room, but projected out as the shadow figure who was also the murderer and custodian.

 

After the tour we went outside for a bit to regroup and then decide how to split up. My group went up to the third floor, and encountered some children. They were scared, not of us, but “him,” the custodian shadow figure. One of our group tried talking with the kids, reassuring them that they were safe. They were in the room with the kids, someone stood in the doorway, and I stood in the hall, at the junction of a T-intersection. I couldn’t pick up on the kids responding, but from what I could hear of my friend talking it sounded like the kids were starting to open up. Then one of our group members got really freaked out, and as I scanned the hallway, suddenly it got dark, it looked physically darker, and approaching us. In front was the shadow custodian, looming eight feet tall. As it got closer you could hear my friend asking the children what is wrong, and then steps out to see it. As the kids started to open up, the custodian came to stop it, observing him and the kids I got sudden flashes of sexual abuse. My friend stood up to the figure, as he approached the figure shrank to a more normal height, he couldn’t maintain that illusion when being confronted. My friend had words with him, and when he took a step closer the shadow figure split into two that ran in opposite directions. This was something I thought I saw the murderer from downstairs do, which lends to the weird thing of the spirits blurring into one. The kids were gone now though.

Posted by kalagni in blueflamemagick
05
Sep
2019

Shake It Up

I regularly and strongly advocate for magickal routine and practice. If I had to give a student only two pieces of magickal advice they would be: meditate, and have a daily practice. Magick is no different from any other skill: practice, practice, practice if you want to achieve anything. If you don’t have a magickal practice, compare the work you are doing with learning to play the piano (or any other instrument if you already know the piano). If you played the piano as much as, and for as long as, you’re doing your magickal practice, how long do you think it would take you to master that song? For a lot of us, and I’ve been there, the answer is way too long.

Practice; magick is a skill and a capacity, it’s something that needs to be exercised and worked with. It is the Great Work after all, emphasis on Work. Honestly you don’t necessarily have to do much, either in terms of intensity or duration, the important thing is the regularity. I know there have been times where I’ve pruned my working routine down to 5-10 minutes a day for a few months, but I can tell you that 5-10 minutes made all the difference when I started to get back into a more regular practice.

That said: shake up your routine.

Back when I was in better shape I had no trouble getting down on the ground and doing 100 push-ups. When I was able to do 100 at a time, I decided to shake up my route a bit using a push-up variant, the diamond push-up. (To do the diamond push-up you get into position normally, but then move your hands together with you thumbs and index fingers touching forming a diamond shape.) Even though the exercises are so similar I had trouble doing more than 10, because the muscles it uses weren’t the ones I exercised previously, even though they were essentially beside the other set of muscles. So my daily routine was great about getting me in shape, but it was also limited, as shown by the fact that simply shifting my hands meant I could barely do 10% of my normal ability.

Our energy bodies, our magickal selves, are much the same. A daily practice is the best way to keep yourself in the best shape, but like a push-up routine, it’s limited. Doing a daily practice works certain “muscles” and abilities, unfortunately. I try my best to avoid this, and usually change up a lot of my daily practice every month. Even still this is limited because I’m picking what I’m doing. I’m deciding what I’ll no longer do, and what will replace it. Even if i’m trying to shake it up, I’m still limiting myself based on my preferences, assumptions, understanding and a variety of other factors. To get around this my current experiment is randomly picking a book and working through the activities in the text.

For me I rolled a die, assigning each magickal bookcase in my temple a number. Then I rolled against how many shelves on the book case, to get one shelf. Then rolling to decide left/right side. And I continue breaking the shelf down in halves, until I’m left with a single book. For the next month, part of my daily practice is from this random book. Depending on the book I might try to do every practice in it at least once. Even if you’re very familiar with a basic practice like grounding or casting a circle, you might be surprised at how different (or difficult) doing it according to other instructions can be. You’re working different magickal muscles.

I find this is a great way to make sure I’m actually using books (as opposed to being a book hoarder…), as well as including a variety of practices to keep myself in the best shape. Like the physical body, if you can keep the energetic body in better well-rounded shape, you’ll be better equipped to handle whatever comes your way.

Tune in for my next post where I completely contradict this advice.

Posted by kalagni in blueflamemagick
10
Jul
2019

Gather 2019: Overview

A few weeks ago I attended Gather 2019, a “pan-spiritual” conference. I never know how to classify it, but pan-spiritual seems to work, it’s not really a pagan conference, though many attendees might fall into that category, nor is it really an energy worker conference, though many attendees might fall into that category. You have pagans, Buddhists, Catholics, and Satanists; monotheists, polytheists, atheists; energy workers, spirit mediums, sorcerers; psychic vampires, otherkin, and other fringe freaks (said with true love). I have never attended a magick oriented conference that manages to actively encompass so many diverse backgrounds.

I’ve been attending Gather almost as long as they’ve been occurring, I missed a few at the beginning, but this was the 19th year of Gather, and I continue to be impressed by it. Now, I will admit my bias, I am associated with the organization that arranges Gather, House Kheperu. If you’re familiar with their system, I’m the Ally Guardian, if you’re not, it’s easiest to say I’m allied with them, and while not a member of the House, I work with them in most ways a member might. This year I co-headed programming, meaning I sorted through all the class submissions, made the very difficult call of what classes to accept and decline, and helped set up the schedule. So I’ll admit, I’m in a place to be biased about Gather, but I’m also tied so closely with the House and Gather because how much the early Gathers impressed me.

This year the theme was Unleashing Your Potential, and I think Gather itself has been doing that in the last two years. Gather is held at The Hotel at Oberlin (that’s the actual name), in Oberlin Ohio. It’s a beautiful hotel, in a remarkable town, and I’d yatter more about the community but this entry will be long enough as is.

We were very excited to have Ivo Dominguez Jr. as our featured presenter. In fact the first class I attended this year was Ivo’s class “Energy Fitness and Conditioning Practices.” I enjoyed this class immensely, the basic concept being that energy work is work, magick is work, and just like with physical exercises that you need to actively do energetic work to keep yourself in good form. At events like this, it’s not unusual to see someone burn themselves out, doing too much beyond their normal limits (like running 5km when you might only jog 1km every week). The class dealt with exercises that you can do to help prevent that and strengthen yourself.

On a slight aside, I just want to say if you ever get the chance to attend one of Ivo’s classes do it, and if you ever get the chance to actually talk with him, do it. He is a genuine pleasure to talk with, a fascinating person, and I’m lucky I got to spend so much time with him. Also he is approachable and grounded. I’ve been to conferences where the guest presenter is there just to sell books; they teach their class, they sit with their books, and they vanish. Ivo wasn’t like that, he attended classes like anyone else, he stayed for the after Gather lunch. As much as he was our guest presenter, he was also like the rest of us, enjoying a weekend of great conversations and classes.

The second class I attended was my own, “Tantric Tech and the Tarot” focusing on the Chariot, Death, and the Moon. This is the fourth (!) time I’ve offered a form of this class, each year dealing with a different set of cards. In this class I explore the deeper esoteric meanings of the cards as used in the BOTA and Golden Dawn outside of divination. I also offer the rough equivalent of a jenang, a basic Buddhist Empowerment, using the figures of the cards, rather than traditional deities. This is an extension of, and now a driving force, behind my own deep personal esoteric work with the tarot.

That was the last class of the night, but as usual I was up until around 0500 talking with friends I haven’t seen for months, and interesting new folks I just got the chance to meet. As much as I love the variety of scope of classes at Gather, it’s these in between and after hour conversations that really make it a great event.

Despite being up until 0500, I woke up and attended a 1000 class: Oneironautics 101 by Duende. It was an introduction to dream work, and the hypnopompic and hypnogogic states. Despite being early, it was an enjoyable class I’m not sure how much I’ll manage to make use of, because as folks might know dream work just seems to be beyond me, despite trying everything forever. (Perhaps a bit of hyperbole) But nonetheless it was interesting and has me rethinking some of my dream issues.

Then I had the second class that I taught: Dealing with Your Demons. It was a redux of a class I did years ago on how to use magickal techniques for working with demons and spirits, and how to apply those techniques to our “personal demons,” our psychological structures and baggage and all the internal stuff that makes our life difficult. It was well received. It was also one of the classes that was recorded, so if you’re interested in the class but didn’t attend you can purchase access to the recording (more on that below).

The next class I attended was Integrating Initiations with Dani and Hrafn. It is a class I wish was better attended, because conversations after Gather showed how much it was needed. The class looked an initiatory experiences, spiritual awakening and emergence, both informal, and formal, how they impact the individual and societal group, and how to navigate the upsets, mental, energetic, social, and otherwise. It had some good solid advice and perspectives, both presenters have been part of initiatory magickal traditions, and one presenter is a licensed therapist. If you’ve never been to a large event like Gather you might not realize it, but in a lot of ways if you’re open they’re initiatory experiences, and there are always people who have issues getting back into the swing of things afterwards.

The second Ivo class I attended was Castings & Containers: Choices In Creating Sacred Space. This was one of the two classes I was most excited for. I greatly enjoyed, and recommend, Ivo’s book Casting Sacred Space. In fact one of the techniques from that book was used during a ritual at Gather several years earlier that I was one of the ritualists for. This class was less on specific techniques for creating space, like in his book, and more on the different types of space, how to make it in different ways, and why would you want space that is more a fortress than a crossroad or a lense.

Cat’s Minor Meta-Surgery class was the other class I was very excited for. Meta-Surgery is a phrase we use for intentional alterations to the energy body. In this case the class covered the basics, what it is, why would you do it, how do you do it. This class focused on making a very simple augment for the finger. We had an experiment of sensing three items concealed in fabric or a box with our hands, then creating this extension to our finger, and then using that longer appendage to reach into the wrapping/box around the items and sensing again. While the class was nothing particularly new to me, I really enjoyed it because Cat is a blast (the only person I know who refers to an energy ball as “that motherfucker” and check out her amazing energy body artwork) and meta-surgery isn’t really talked about a lot, so was curious to see her present on it.

The last class I attended was Ivo’s third class on Sunday morning, The Consequences of Magickal Action: Aftercare and Healing. A great class to finish Gather with, looking at all the different issues that can arise in magickal work (especially intense and closely grouped workings, like at a conference like Gather…). Very practical, down to earth, take care of yourself advice, but needed.

I was a minor part of the closing ritual at Gather, where I spoke about the Questions of the weekend, and challenging others with them. The theme was unlocking your potential, and for me, the question that I kept coming back to in that regard is “Who are you?” We think of ourselves in relationship to other things, we’re children, siblings, lovers, we identify as our job, our hobbies. When all of these things are gone, when you take away all these supposedly defining traits: who are you? Want to unlock your potential? Know who you are.

Then, suddenly, Gather 2019 was over. I’ve already booked off the dates for Gather 2020. As I have stated, and I’ll state again, Gather is my favourite magickal conference/convention/event, and the only such event that I will rearrange and fight everything in my life to make sure I make it down. If you were unable to attend, you can buy digital access to the recorded classes here.

To the folks I met at Gather this year and came to my blog, welcome!

To folks reading this who are interested or curious in Gather, I hope to see you there for Gather 2020.

Posted by kalagni in blueflamemagick
31
May
2019

Tools of the Trade: Focus, Power, and Homes

“The power isn’t in the tool, the tool is the focus, the power is in you.”

We’ve all heard people say this. Don’t get dependant on your tools, they’re not the source of your power. You don’t need the tools to do the work. Tools are crutches of undeveloped sorcerers. Blah blah blah. It’s a very common concept in Western magicks, and while I can agree with a large chunk of the sentiment, I can’t help think it’s missing the target more than it is hitting it. I think it’s a great concept to teach when people are new to magick, but like a lot of beginner concepts, it is something that lacks nuance and needs to be evaluated as you develop.

Now before going forward, I’ll be clear I do have several magickal tools that are purely foci, and any power in them is just incidental from use at the moment. I won’t say a tool can’t only be a focus, but to say tools are only a focus loses something.

While not the major issue with the concept, I think the issue of storage is the easiest one to address. How many of us have a consecrated tool of somesort, our swords or wands or talismans? Now how many of us have energy stored within them? It’s not just that the sword directs energy, but it’s been programmed with a specific energy and used as a battery for energy. A talisman isn’t just a focus, a lot of talismans require reconsecration because over time the energy stored in them is used up. If it was just a focus it wouldn’t need to be reconsecrated, because every use would be a reconsecration.  

When the tool is seen as a focus, we lose that. This begins to limit us within this belief, because now all the power of the ritual is dependant on what you can generate, which might be fine for many rituals, but for others it will drain us, or even not have enough.

Another take on the tool as focus concept is empty-handed magick; performing magick without tools because your mind can create the tools as you go. For some people it’s as literal as creating mental/energetic constructs of the tool as you go along. In fact some of my initial training dealt with that. Performing a ritual and need to set up a boundary? Take a moment to visualize a sword, make it real in your mind, and use that. It works in some cases, but again it has limitations. This style of empty-handed magick encounters issues when dealing with more complex or long rituals, and misses some of the reality of magickal encounters.

Most sorcerers can probably visualize a sword or wand well enough to cast their space. What about something more than that though? What about Solomonic magick for instance? You have to visualize the circle with the appropriate names and symbols around it, you have to visualize the triangle and the seal of the spirit, you have to visualize the candles, you have to visualize the incense, you have to visualize your sword, you have to visualize the wand, you have to visualize the lamen, you have to visualize the ring, and even more depending on what you’re doing. Sure most of us can visualize a sword well enough to use it, but how many of us can visualize all the required tools* well enough to use them, let alone do all that and perform the ritual.

*You can argue how many of the tools are required in this case, but that’s not really the point.

Now take that a step farther, even if you can hold all of those in your mind, what happens when the spirit acts up? All your will and focus is on the tools, and now you have to constrain a spirit? You have to increase your focus/energy on the boundary, and the triangle, and whatever tool you’re using to compel. If you couldn’t do it before they acted up, why do you think you can now? What if the spirit overpowers you? What if the spirit startles you and you lose focus? What if the spirit affects your thoughts? If all the power in the tools is your focus, then any difficult spirit encounter purely becomes a battle of will and energy, and a lot of spirits have far more experience and resources in that realm than we do, that is why we call them after all.

A focus can be helpful, but it also has a limitation. Now compare tools to people in group rituals, sometimes group rituals you have tasks split up, these people hold the quarters, this person is the herald, this person directs the energy, etc. Now obviously no one would look at this ritual setting and say “You see Gregg who is holding the West? He’s just a focus for Geetika, she’s the real power.” Now obviously people aren’t tools (well…maybe some…) but I think the analogy loosely stands. These people have roles in ritual so the person(s) leading the ritual don’t have to concern themselves with the other parts of the ritual. Tools do the same, sure you can do things empty-handed with mental constructs, but that’s energy and processing power you’re putting towards it rather than the rest of the ritual, but if you’ve outsourced the basic tasks to tools you’re free of that distraction.

There is another important aspect lost when we think of tools as focus, and that’s spirit allies. While Western magick doesn’t address it as much when you look at magick globally and look at the tools people use they’re rarely “just tools.” In a lot of cultures your tools are houses for spirit allies. Your blade has a spirit in it, your talisman has a spirit in it, your mirror has a spirit in it, etc. If tools are just physical objects to focus us we lose that. I can tell you personally there are several ritual tasks that I would not want to perform without the spirits I have residing in the related tools. You can argue about how “powerful” a spirit that lives in a tool is, but the point isn’t necessarily brute power, but skills and aid.

The sadder part is sometimes people’s tools do have spirits in them, but the person isn’t aware or doesn’t acknowledge them. These can be gifted/inherited tools, even purchased, or it could be a spirit took up residence on their own (one of my ritual knives was suddenly “full” one day when I went to use it) or a ritual called the spirit in but the practitioner didn’t realize or assumed it was all just energy. It hasn’t happened much, but there have been a few times when I’m playing “show and tell” with a sorcerer, and they hand me an item with someone in it. “Oh who is it?” “What? It’s just a chalice for skrying.”

Tools can be a focus, but they can be so much more. Honestly if people want to work with “haunted items” or not is no concern of mine, but I think we people continue to think and repeat the idea that “Tools are tools, you are the power” it limits them, it disenchants the world and practice, and something is lost.

Posted by kalagni in blueflamemagick
17
Oct
2018

Past Lives: Confirmation and Cryptomnesia

I recently shared a piece on past life memories, and how they are prone to distortion if not outright fabrication. Now I want to look at what can be done about it.

Also I will restate because it is hilarious and frustrating how many people misunderstand what I’m saying: Distortions and fabrications of memories aren’t intentional, they aren’t your conscious fault. When I say something will taint your memory by including new information, I’m not saying you do it on purpose, I’m saying that’s just the way our brains work. If I see memories are fabricated I’m not saying you’re lying, I’m saying your brain created the memories. Memories are really sketchy things, even just from this life. Look it up if you’re curious, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of experiments that show how false memories are made, or how unreliable memories are.

I have one piece of foundational advice regarding past life memories: Record everything, research nothing

Basically all my advice will stem from this.

Record everything. I know I’ve talked about the importance of magickal diaries before, and here it is no different. Record everything. I mean everything, every little meaningless piece of data in a memory, try to record it. As much as we want to focus on the narrative of the past life memory, the details are generally more important for verification.

Record the memory in a narrative form, this is what I remember and then I did this and then that happened. Note details, I often like recording them separate from the narrative, or in both sections, but the details are what I will come back to in order to verify. Sometimes with a past life memory there is a knowing that comes with it, you might not know enough about European cultures in history, but for some reason you know that this memory is in France, record those details. What senses did the memory come through? Record that. What sensations accompanied them memory here and now? Did your neck burn when you had the memory flash, did you get dizzy, did you blank out or did the memory run in the back of your head? Record that. Personally, the most important factor to me, but not everyone has the same strengths in memories, is try to pull out some words or names. If you can pull out words and names for languages/cultures you’re not familiar with that’s a great piece of data to verify.

Now that you’ve recorded everything, it’s time for step two: research nothing

Our first impulse is often to research the past life, to find evidence for or against it. Do not do that.

How much did you remember? Did you get an entire lifetime and all the associated information? I’ll go ahead and say no you didn’t. There is so much more to remember, and the moment you start to research it, you’ve tainted your memories, set yourself up for cryptomnesia, and made your memories harder to trust. You’re pretty sure that memory was middle ages in Ethiopia, but the moment you research it, even if you just want to verify one detail, anything else you read gets tucked into your brain and can get called out (falsely) with the next memory. You might have wanted to verify the buildings looked like you remembered, but you might have seen fashion, or read about a great building that was completed in that time, something. Something will get in and corrupt your memories. If you ever want to truly trust your memories, I repeat, research nothing.

I personally have past life memories around specific lives that I’ve been recording for a few years, and I haven’t researched yet. In fact in one of my more recent cases, I was watching an episode of X-Files, and their monster of the week came from the same time and culture I was remembering, so I turned it off. Yes it’s a fun fiction, and yes X-Files doesn’t have a good history of getting things right, but nonetheless I didn’t want that information getting wrapped up with my own.

The different elements of your memory that you record will help you verify your memories in different ways.

The narrative is what most people think of, but ironically it generally won’t be enough. You could have lived in Italy at the height of the Renaissance, but despite the way history romantically paints it, the Renaissance only really impacted the elite, less than one percent of the population was directly impacted by it. The life of an Italian cobbler at the height of the Renaissance would be nearly identical to the life of a cobbler a hundred years before. Unless your life was impacted by a major event, you probably won’t have enough to verify your life. Despite not being American, I’ll use an American example. All of us, American or otherwise, remember 9/11. An event like 9/11 would be past life gold, it’s a clear, hard to mistake, important event. If your four year old talks about being up high in a building and a plane coming, and the other building on fire…well…they might be onto something. The trouble is, as important as 9/11 was culturally, honestly it only directly impacted a very very small group of people: Those who saw it, those who lived it, those who died in it, maybe those who helped in the aftermath cleanup, and maybe people who lived nearby, even if they didn’t witness it, and maybe those who lost someone close. For the rest of us, it’s not really a memory we actually have, just what we know of. We might be affected by the aftermath, but not the event, so it’s unlikely we’d remember it next life around. It’s a great event for verification, but it honestly impacts so few people. That’s why we need to rely on more than just the narrative for information. Also the farther we go back, the less records there are. So you may very well have been the daughter of a wealthy Persian spice merchant, and you might have traveled the Silk Road having adventures, but chances are little to none of your history was recorded.

Get all the details you can.

Along with research nothing, another related piece of advice, is don’t reread your records. This might seem odd. These are your memories after all. Well…maybe… If you remember something false or wrong (by which I mean totally false, or a memory that you misunderstood), then if you reread your records you’re reintroducing that errant memory, reinforcing it, whereas if it was wrong in some way there is a chance that over time that memory will drop off, or be contradicted by a later memory. Also humans are storytellers, if you reread the memory of being a Greek sailor, the back of your brain might wonder what sailing adventures you had, and then the back of your brain starts storytelling to itself, grabbing appropriate stories you might have seen or read, and later on pulling up as memory. It seems unusual, but we can be the source of our own corruption to memory.

Where do you go from research nothing?

If possible, you go to a friend. A friend can do all the research they want, and unless they say too much, they won’t corrupt your memories. (Excluding something telepathic, but let’s keep this simple) Give them the names and words, the stories and the details, and send them off to the library or internet, and see what they can find.

Now it is up to you, you can either ask for no input, or maybe general verification, but don’t ask for details.

With one of my more recently emerging memories I toss details to a friend of mine on occasion. She has never given me more information than what I gave her, but she has told me when stuff seems to match. Yes, that’s a real name. Yes, something like that event happened. Yes, this makes sense. She hasn’t said “Yes, that’s a real name, turns out Jameel Singh was a farmer in…” No, she has just said “Yes, that’s a name.” Or in one case the “name” I gave her turned out to be a description or nickname, but that the nickname made sense for my memories.

This has been invaluable to me, it allows me to continue to let memories surface without worrying that they are being influenced, I can trust my memories are “clean” of outside influences. But it also lets me know there is something too these memories, that I’m not just storytelling to myself.

The reason I ask for yes/no verification is it helps me fine tune my memories. Remember above I said to record how you remember, and what happens? These meta-experiences of the memory can be helpful in vetting your memories. If every memory that has been verified has been accompanied by dry itchy eyes, then that implies that if you have that response it’s more likely to be a real memory than not. If all your memories come in the form of visual memories and are verified, but the memories which are more sound or knowledge base are discredited or can’t be confirmed, you know you’re better off trusting memories that are visual. We all have some quirk in the way we remember, both the way the memory is perceived, as well as our responses to it. By knowing what quirks are correlated with verified memories we learn where we can focus our attention and be more likely to get results.

Next I’ll talk about verifying memories that can’t be supported, dealing with memories that are both wrong and right and sorting that out, and other considerations.

Posted by kalagni
22
Sep
2018

Past Life Contamination and Cryptomnesia

The below is actually an old article I wrote. I can’t find the exact date, but I have another piece of writing referencing this nine years ago, so at least nine years old. It was written for a group I’m no longer a part of and used as an evaluation.

As much as I’ll tell people not to bother doing past life regressions, and to focus here and now, I can’t deny that past life memories are an important thing to me and my tradition. This was written to help address some of the common issues regarding the recall of past life memories.

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When dealing with the worlds of subtle perceptions, magick and the mind, a wise explorer seeks to be aware of the places where their results and perceptions can become contaminated. Memory, in several different ways, is one of the main culprits of contamination.

First off, there is the simple issue that despite what we’d like to believe, our memories are very flawed devices when it comes to the recall of our experiences. Anyone talking with a friend about the details of a specific event after the fact quickly becomes aware of it; different sentences were said, it was in a slightly different area, different people were also there, and a hundred other variations from what your memory says is correct.

This flaw in our memory applies as much to the subtle experiences as the “mundane” experiences, if not more. It is horribly easy, to talk to someone about an energy body reading a week later, and “remember” things that didn’t actually come up in the reading, but are now present. Someone mentions a stomach pain, and you “remember” getting a blip in the stomach, something that now relates to this new information. This isn’t a matter of being a liar, or easily mislead, but when you don’t have a concrete record, it is very easy for your mind to fill in the gaps with what you think should be there. Maybe you felt something over the stomach, just a flash, could have been a finger twitch, or a dozen little things, but it was so minor you ignored it. Now that someone mentions something important about the stomach your mind latches onto that almost nothing you sensed and builds on it.

A classic example of this flaw is to remember what you or someone else wore on your last birthday. You may not remember what you wore unless you have a reason to (someone making fun of it, spilling something on it and ruining it, etc.), but you know you wore something, so your mind will fill in the gaps through a complex process of memory and guesswork based on what your favourite outfits are, where you went to dinner, and many more variables. It isn’t your memory lying about what you wore, it is just supplying you with information that you ask for, even if it isn’t there or readily accessible.

The same thing goes for perceptions, hearing a piece of information after the fact, it is far too easy for the mind to fill it in for you. To prevent this, or minimize its effect, it is recommended that you use a journal for your experiences.

On a more complex level, there is cryptomnesia or misattribution. To put it bluntly and simply, the mind remembers information, but not necessarily the source of the information. Just as with the above memory issue, this isn’t a conscious or deliberate thing, it isn’t about lying to others or yourself, it is quite simply how the mind works. Everyone remembers things, but not always their source, how often have you said a quote, or a fact to a friend, only to blank on how you know it. Cryptomnesia (I’ll stick with referring to everything as cryptomnesia, even though it may occasionally be misattribution, strictly for ease of writing from this point on) takes this one step farther, as you search for the source of this knowledge, if it isn’t found your mind may generate the answer that it is self-generating. Put another way, if your mind can’t find the source of the knowledge you may attribute it to arising internally rather than learning it from outside.

If a parent was a war-buff and growing up you were constantly exposed, even in passing, to war movies, discussions of battles and weapons, all this information is potentially retained in your mind. Then at a later date when seeing a gun, or a battlefield you might remember the information from your childhood, but not the source. You might know what battle happened, maybe even see or hear flashes of it (from the movie), or know how to reload the gun, but you can’t say how you know. Since you know your parent has an interest in war, it is easy to trace that knowledge back to some vague point of your childhood, but what if it isn’t that easy?

Imagine now that as a kid you spent time in front of the TV, and in this case, perhaps you just wandered onto a station playing a war movie, or a documentary, and you watched it. In the same way, you can pick up the information, but lack the source, and you are far less likely to remember 10, 15, 20 years later that when you were 6 you watched a documentary on the Battle of Dieppe. In the future, whatever triggers the memory, another movie, a class in school, even just a sound, suddenly you’re remembering what happened at Dieppe, possibly in vivid movie-like detail. Now without knowing the source, you’re remembering the battle, on its own, it is possible that you would start to consider this flash a potential (or actual) past life memory.

Such a false memory can be triggered in the attempt to find a real memory as well. If you’re going through a past life regression, and for some reason, your mind latches onto the documentary, again you’ll pull up war images, assuming that you were there and that is the source of the memory.

Cryptomnesia applies to information, as well as events obviously, so you could remember a myth or a god, that you may have studied in elementary school, when you come across them in a dream, a vision or a book, and misunderstand your intuitive knowledge or resonance with them as something more meaningful than it is. Just as you might remember something and attribute it to a past life insight, when you remember something about a myth or deity you may attribute to having a connection to the deity, a good intuition, rather than a forgotten storybook from school.

You might remember the basics of the colonizing society of French Canada in the 18th Century from elementary school, but again, if drawn up from your memories without context, it isn’t impossible that your mind conscious or otherwise interprets it as a personal memory.

It is very difficult to rule out the possibility of cryptomnesia, but there are ways to try to prevent it which will be discussed in the next piece.

Posted by kalagni in blueflamemagick
04
Sep
2018

Revisiting Spirits of Place


 

This is my second last post reblogging of older popular posts.

This isn’t a single post, but a series I did. Local spirits are something I work with a lot, and find they’re overlooked too often. So I wrote up a series of five posts going from what are local spirits, what aren’t, and how to work with them.

Local Spirits: Categories and Classifications. Common types of spirits that get lumped as local spirits, but aren’t necessarily such in my understanding.

Local Spirits: Clarifying Sadak and Shidak Explanation of the sadak and shidak, and the nature of local spirits proper.

Local Spirits: Reasons of Engagement Why you should work with local spirits, what they can do for you.

Local Spirits: Offerings and Engagement How to make offerings and how to sense and work with the shidak.

Local Spirits: Sensing and Structures More on sensing shidak, as well as how they seem to be structured and operate.

Posted by kalagni in blueflamemagick