Prejudice in occult practice

 This past week made me think a lot about my own prejudices. There are some practices I've been avoiding since I find them silly. A perfect example would be elemental posism from Pierre de Lasenic's Book of Works.

I never thought something like that would work. For me, the energy work is often synced with the breathing, and if there is any movement, it is repetitive and synced with the breath, as well. Something like Chi Kung makes sense to me. But just doing a single fluid movement and waiting? Never.

Yet, in this past week, the posism of the Air element has become a very useful addition to my repertoire.

Magick not working?

I have noticed a lot of people who used to practice occultism are now against it, saying it doesn't work and it's all in our heads. I have already written an article about the psychology paradigm and its pitfalls so I would like to link you there. For the rest of this article I am going to write a set of conditions you should follow for your practice to have fruits.

Also, if your operation goes awry, write it to your journal as well, for example if you mispronounce some name, if you forget some move or simply when you are just not feeling it, write it all down. That way you will get doubts out of your head and later when checking results you can say: "Ok, I didn't do A and B and the operation failed" or: "I forgot to do A and I did B instead of C, yet the operation worked, so A and B might not be as important".

Keep a journal
I have written this over million times now, yet some people still don't get the hint. Journal helps you to remember things better, track your progress, track your results for later analysis AND it gives you important stimuli for times when you are in doubt. A journal is a must for every occultist.

Steady practice
People who quit Magick tend to have very intense, but shortlived practices. Hours of meditations for practiced for 1 month at most. It is better to meditate daily 5 minutes for a full year than meditate 2+ hours for 2 weeks. Steady practice is really important as you cannot boil water if you keep putting it off the stove.

Steady practice also allows to create a habit of doing Magick, that is also very important for the change of perspective I have mentioned in article "Defeating theory, part III". Also if you practice isn't steady, you shouldn't consider that everyone has the same problems you do.

Have fun
What I have noticed a lot in those who over-practice is they hate their practices. They hate doing the daily routine they chose for themselves. Your practice should be enjoyable, have fun. If your practice starts boring you, change it a bit, experiment with new things and always make sure to track it.

Integrate
People also claim they do not have time for steady practice. Of course you do have time, a normal person sleeps for about 7 to 9 hours, that still gives us 17 to 15 hours of waking time. Not only that, but also a lot of practices can be integrated into the mundane life. For example in the "Sex and Magick" article I have mentioned a practice you can do every time you sit. Similarly you can take a 5 minutes of your lunch time for meditation. During lunch you can also practice conscious eating and drinking (mentioned in Magickal Curriculum). During boring meetings you can practice telekinesis on your cup of coffee. The point is that Magick should become the integral part of your life, not something you add to your already existing schedule.

Avoid unneeded reductionism
I have heard that a lot from quitters. "I don't need to do the death posture, just focusing on the sigil does the work for me". Or "I don't need to draw sigils, I will just focus on my wish and via Law of Attraction the universe manifest my desires". They also tend to argue with others about using "pointless" rituals. Later such person quits and says that Magick doesn't work. Well, are you sure Magick doesn't work when you never tried it?

I am not saying that modification and reduction aren't needed, I am chaote, after all. But this method of working should be done AFTER you already had some visible and verifiable results, AFTER you got your feet wet in the rivers of Magick. I have it hard to look at, when someone claims about how many things are not needed in Magick, not much because of them, but because of their readers. These people tend to find followers quite quickly. People who believe them and believe in their words. Imagine the betrayal when such a person, person viewed as the spark of light in the moments of darkness, turns out to be quitter and claims that Magick doesn't work.

To explain this a little better I will return to my original "boiling water" example. Normal and educated reductionism says you do not need to salt the water and you can still boil it. Or you can omit the lid of the pot and still boil the water, it will take longer time and more water will vaporize and get lost, but you will boil it. Uneducated and inexperieced point of view usually leads to "you don't need the pot or the stove to boil the water", so in one case a cold water will keep sitting in the pot doing nothing and in the other you will pour water right on the stove, effectively putting of the flame.

Keep an open mind
Belief is one of the most important aspects. The belief in success of your operation is vital for your Magick to work. And such a believe must be limitless. Now, I am not saying you should believe whatever you want and don't have any doubts at all. All I say is everything has its time. Don't be negative before and during the operation. But during the analysis of results be a little skeptical, it's actually needed to avoid the comfirmation bias (the very same comfirmation bias that reductionists suffer during their early stages).

Sex and Magick

Sex in Magick and Magick in sex
Sex and Magick runs together for a really long time. There was always something mystical about sexual intercourse and the fact that we can actually make our own human descendants. Also considering some recent news (Kanye's debt for example), I think breeding should be something you have to deserve first.

Anyway, the use of sex in Magick was destined to come sooner or later. First of all, orgasm itself is a perfect mind-state for the operation, there is this tiny window where all thought processes get numb and you suddenly become concentrated at just one point, with no feeling of time. At that one point you exist just in the presence. Another asset is the physical exhaustion which gives the feeling that some energy was spent somewhere. This feeling allows you to believe some work was done towards the desired goal and more importantly that some potent energy was released toward the desired outcome.

Another great thing about Sex Magick is that most adults have sex (or masturbate), which means we do already have some opportunity to perform our Magick, we just have to use it properly. Who would say we could actually mix work with pleasure and even call it multitasking, right?

The scope of this article
I am going to try to be as general as possible so this article is useful for both men and women. Unfortunately I am just a man and my experience comes mainly from the male standpoint so I can e.g. describe the male retention practice but I don't know much about its female counterpart, sorry for that.

Something I do know about were e.g. Crowley's countless attempts to create hommunculi (artificial humans or humans with artificial souls) but I personally find this thing disturbing and I am not going to describe any of that. If you wish to know about it, it can be found in Liber Agape and I am pretty sure that K. Grant also wrote something on the topic as he inherited a lot of  A. Crowley's possessions.

The retention
The retention of sperm is originally a tantric practice (so called western tantra, maybe). The retention means that you are not allowed to ejaculate as it was believed the sperm contains vital fluids that would be lost otherwise. There were many methods how to avoid this loss including eating the white goo to let the energy re-enter the system. Well, I don't want to underestimate the drive of my male readers but just in case I will share another working method with you (despite celibacy).

It is possible for a man to have orgasm without the ejaculation thanks to the little muscles on the bridge between your genitals and your a-hole (or simply behind the balls to be more exact). It is the same muscle that allows you to interrupt the stream while you pee (this works for women, too, more about it later). If you press this muscle during orgasm you will stop your semen on the way out, meaning it will not exit your body, that's the simple way of doing this.

The harder way for the retention is to actually train the muscles. You should be able to stop your pee and the very same way to stop the stream is also the way how to train the muscle, just flex it and hold it as long as you can (not while peeing). Few weeks of training should be enough to strengthen the grip and allow you to stop the semen from exiting simply by locking it there. It is also needless to say that women have these muscles too, they are not very helpful for retention, but if a woman has trained these muscles, she will enjoy sex way more (or so I was told).

Another benefit of this practice is that it is nearly invisible, whenever you are sitting or standing in line you can simply lock in the muscles and hold, no one is going to notice (unless you stand really weird, in that case you look like you need to pee). Anyway, this allows you to practice anytime you want.

Using the sexual energy
This article wouldn't really be complete if I didn't add any way how to use this harnessed energy. The most simple way, of course, is masturbation. The prepared sigil of any kind is presented to the unconscious mind during the orgasm/ejaculation to embed desire into it. Of course how the sigil is presented depends on its type. Visual sigils are hold before the eyes, words of power are called out loud (or at least silenced), gestures are kept at the eye's level (don't try making the gesture with the same hand you are masturbating with, that would be weird).

Regarding visual sigils, some people recommend to let the load go right on it, I would rather say to keep them in the front of your eyes or visualize them and let the goo go somewhere safe. Only reason why you would want to stain the sigil would be a servitor or amulet creation, but for general work? Rather try to be tidy and reasonable :).

Working with the partner
Things I have mentioned above work with a partner, as well. It doesn't really depend whether during a traditional sex or what method of stimulation you use. You can also hide the fact about what you are doing, but frankly it is better your partner knows and you both focus on the same goal (sigils placed around the room can do the trick without exposing much).

I would also like to share one method of servitor creation for which you need a man and a woman (finally some occult reason to get social). A. Crowley has believed that a mixture of semen and women's secrets form a strong fluidum, a philosopher's fluidic condenser to be exact. Crowley also mentioned certain parameters a sex should have to make this condenser stronger. To name a few:
-long foreplay
-sexual intercourse should take 1 hour at minimum
-after all "work" is done, penis should be kept in vagina for about 15 minutes so keep the condenser in to make sure it's "baked" properly.

After that all is done you simply let it out on the prepared servitor's sigil to charge it or into a jar to store it for later use (here the knowledge of creation of fluidic condensers come in real handy).

Importance of dreams in Magick

There are still people who underestimate the importance of dreams in Magick so I am going to explain why are dreams really important and how to atually work with them.

Consciousness versus unconsciousness
There are many ways how to define this but let's just say that your personal reality is split into what you are conscious about and what you are not conscious about. The amount of influence of your conscious and unconscious parts on your life is about 50:50, and of course consciousness also affects your unconsciousness and vice versa.

Unconsciousness does a sort of a compensation work for your daily life, it's a very cleverly designed process, but sometimes the fragment of our psyche (usually traumatic one) gets supressed from the conscious and so transfers into your un-c where it becomes more or less autonomous. This then turns into neurosis and affects your conscious life (sorry I am simplifying so much).

Another work of unconsciousness is to gather and analyze details we are not normally aware of, it can be the most subtle mixture of various physical senses up to the metaphysical perception (e.g. telepathy). This allows our consciousness to be much less occupied with seemingly unimportant details but it can also inform us back if one or more of these "unimportant" details sum up to some important event or a piece of information, but for that to happen, it also needs a communication channel, a link between conscious and unconscious.

What are dreams
Dreams are the most direct communication channel between consciousness and unconsciousness. With their help un-c can actually give us its experience of our waking lives but from its perspective. Due to the nature of dreams we split them into following categories:
-compensating
-reducting
-prospective
-reactive

A compensating dream tries to inform us of something we are omitting even while it is important, it shows us what we should be focused on or what we are forgetting.

A reducting dream is a sort of a healing mechanism. It repeats a bad experience over and over again in a symbolic form till we get used to it and it doesn't appear as horrifying anymore.

Prospective dream can give us insight into the future. It is not a prophetic dream as in a prophetic dream all details would have to match with the real future event but it can still give us enough details to spawn a lot of curiosity.

Reactive dream is like a reductive dream, except in the case of reductive dream understanding the symbology and interpretation of the dream automatically stops the repetition. In case of reactive dreams there is no symbology af these are a direct copy of past traumatic experiences. Reactive dreams usually appear as the result of a traumatic experience from war, etc.

There are more categories and subcategories but I am going to simplify it on these four for now.

Why are dreams important
The health isn't just physical or psychological, both aspects are part of the sum and both aspects also influence the sum, so a psychological problem can influence our physical state just like a physiological problem can influence our mental state. Dreams as the direct output from the unfiltered unconsciousness give us a decent overview of both the mental and physical state and as such dreams are a very helpful aid for the introspection (practice of self-discovery). Introspection was heavily propagated by F. Bardon in his work but even nowadays many occultists do not care about its benefits.

How to interpret dreams
In case of dreams we have a double symbology, one is shared for all of us despite of our race or culture and one is individual for us and it's based on our personal lifes, experiences and character traits.

This could lead to the idea that by understanding just the symbology we can easily interpret our dreams, which would be false and gave us a very general meanings at best. Even the best dream interpreter in the world will give a wrong definition if he asks a wrong question.

The right question in dream analysis isn't what does the dream mean, but why did I have this dream and where should it lead me to. If you ask yourself these questions while analyzing your dreams, you will start to understand where I am going. The dreams try to either warn us, inform us or prepare us for something, that's why it's not important what does the symbology in the dream mean (well, it is sorta important but do not overestimate it), but why we had the dream to begin with.

Very simple meditation

Sometimes simple is better, this meditation will take you only a couple of minutes and there is no way you could forget any of the steps.

1. Sit in a comfortable position, relax a little.
2. Close your eyes and concentrate on your breath.
3. Visualize that with each of your inhale an energy is drawn into your body and stays there, this energy says: "I possess Magick abilities", say that in your mind during each inhale and feel as your body is getting filled with this statement.
4. Repeat step 3 for a couple of minutes or till you feel full with the statement.

This is a very simple exercise, in the long term it allows you to unlock new mystical abilities, in short term it helps you to reinforce your belief in Magick and as we already know, a belief is a very important asset in Magick.

Bad omens: continuation

So, people following me for some time know about a post from 9th of January where I was talking about 2 bad omens, a dream about a 5 legged horse and a shattered glass that fell on me during a bus trip to work.

If I think about it now, the meaning of these omens was pretty obvious. Regarding the 5 legged horse it meant the additional leg, something useless that must be removed. Regarding the shattered window my very first thought was: "Damn, that driver will most certainly be fired".

So, here is a continuation of what happened next. This Friday (16th of January) I had a pretty bad argument with my manager, so bad that I was seriously considering to curse him. The argument itself appeared repeatedly in my mind, always partially dragging me into the mental battle. This ended up callin BANRABISHU a couple of times during the weekend.

On Monday I have finally decided to do something about it, so I make a sigil, but not to screw my manager but to simply improve my work situation. Today we have found out there was a big firing going on, 7 people were kicked out of the company. Now, I am a very strongly convinced that I was meant to be one of those fired guys, but only thanks to these 3 omens (including the argument with my manager) I was able to avoid it before even figuring out the real meaning of these omens, but really in the last minute.

It's really strange, on Friday I were like the biggest enemies with my manager and today he was acting completely normal, maybe it really was just another omen, meant to finally push me into action before it's too late.

Cyber Magick

What is Cyber Magick?
Cyber Magick is a quite recent sub-genre of Chaos Magick, putting the every day technology into the use. It also contains some pseudo-technological jargon, e.g. a brain together with spine is called a cpu, but I would like to rather focus on the functional part of this paradigm. After all, you can call your hocus pocus whatever you want, as long as it works.

Tradition
The main idea behind Cyber Magick is that technology can be used the same way as any occult tool to accomplish your desires. If you think about it, when swords and mirrors were originally used for Magick, they were normal every day items, but the society evolves and Cyber Magicians think this should apply to the occult, as well. From this point of view the traditional forms of Magick looks a little bit dogmatic.

To describe the mentality of Cyber Magick a little bit more, imagine that your old TV or PC monitor would break, but instead of throwing it away, you would use its screen as a scrying device, or old TV's white noise as a nice meditation background. Same way you could invoke some Mercurial deity, ask some question and then randomly pick some numbers on the remote controller, reading the first thing of a whatever teletext page you have appeared at.

Do you need more energy for the ritual? Place a battery in your hand and "drain" it or use it during the ritual as a wand, whatever suits you. Electrical lights are also no longer taboo in Cyber Magick, which really saves a lot of a wax (but increases your electricity bill).

Fruits of Cyber Magick
Many of you have probably heard of a thing called a ghost box. In a simple term it's a radio rapidly switching frequencies, playing whatever fragments of a signal it just arrived at. This is supposedly a tool for a communication with spirits and if you search Youtube, you might e.g. find a guy claiming that he recorded a voice of Robin Williams shortly after his death, that recording is also available.

But speaking about the best Magickal tool for Cyber Magick, there is probably one and only favorite, and each and everyone of you might have one just in your pocket. Think, what device can help you to write down your journal, can contain any possible grimoire, can be used for divination, spell casting, sharing your results with fellow occultists, doing a mass ritual via video conference or planning suitable time for your operations?

Swiss knife of every Cyber Mage
Yes, the talk is about smart phones. With today smartphones it is not a big problem to have whatever eBook ready to read anywhere, keeping your journal (wheter on-line or privately), the range of applications is also amazing. From a simple drawing applications which are perfect for a Sigil Magick, you also have specialized applications for the Magick, with them you can immediately find positions of all the planets, phase of the Moon, you can even do a tarot reading directly in your phone (I sometimes use this one but I don't trust it much).

There are also applications for meditation, hypnosis, binaural beats, white noise and pink noise generation, Youtube (duh) and so many more. Do you want an app for Ouija or maybe some public grimoire where anyone can update? You got it, too. The business part of the occult is so strong and fast that the choice is very broad. Don't you want to pay for a tarot app? I am pretty sure you will find one that suits you and even for free.

A screen of a switched off phone can also be used for scrying, even when normally your mundane and Magickal stuff should be separated, but in this case the worst that will happen will be that the battery dies (which happened to me a couple of times when I was doing Sigils mainly on the phone).

About atheism

What is an atheism?
Based on the definition atheism is a belief that there is no god, but generally this belief states there is nothing paranormal, everything that exists can be observed, measured and reproduced. [1]

Pros of atheism
Atheism gives a very good and solid logical foundation based on research and experimentation. It also states how to use a cold logic where most people would let themselves be deceived by the heart.

Cons of atheism
Atheism, as any other belief, states itself as the ultimate truth (or at least through the mouths of many dogmatic atheists found on the internet, this of course doesn't apply to everyone), so there is a great factor of ridiculing other beliefs.

Proof based thinking
An average internet atheist will tell you that there is no God as there is no proof for one and if we want to prove there is something more, we have to provide evidence for it.  Atheism didn't provide any evidence that there is nothing outside this world, but they are right the weight of evidence lies on those who claim something exists, not the opposite. The sad part is that our evidence is either ridiculed or stolen.

To give you an example outside the common "scientists showing data regarding parapsychology are discredited", let's take a look at placebo, as placebo comes from our practices. This effect was firstly ridiculed as a total nonsense, just later when people found out that placebo really works, they officially adopted it, then there started claiming our practices are just a placebo.

There is no thing as "just a placebo" The placebo is a very strong effect [4] and while many of our practices rely on it, we can still be proud for using it effectively (and for discovering it first). It shows how strong the power of the mind over matter is. It also shows how many vaccines were "just a placebo" in the past. Vaccination nowadays is used in comparison with placebo to assure there are some real effects just beyond the placebo effect. [4]

"Gold"-en opportunity
Gold is a very amazing metal, every alchemist will agree with me. In the "ancient" past this metal was used by us for curing many illnesses (usually taken per-orally). Funnily enough, science has found this method is quite working, they just avoid it for side effects of the metal poisoning, but what is the most interesting part?

Science found that golden mixture is more effective via an injection into muscles instead of receiving it by the standard way. The joke is no one knows why this is working, no one exactly knows what could a gold do to cure anything. [2]

Gold has an amazing charge that cannot be measured by mundane means, and Magicians using gold for healing, usually charge the gold even more, beyond its standard property, that's why the gold was always so respected among healers, even when taken in the less effective way (by swallowing).

The tea way
Many of us can attest for great benefits when it comes to drinking a green tea. We all know that green tea is healthy and by drinking it our sicknesses have much smoother progression and we feel healthy much sooner. Unfortunately once again we do not know what a green tea actually does or how, 

simply because it doesn't contain any active substance that would be responsible for strenghtening the immunity system, there is literally no curing factor when it comes to the physical contents of the green tea, yet we all are pretty sure it works. [3]

Power of new belief
Of course the rise of atheism created a new worshiping on its own, science. Whatever is science is true and whatever is outside science is false. This does indeed have some positive effects, for example you take your painkillers and your headache is gone in matter of minutes (sometimes even seconds), even when the drug itself will start having any real effect in about 20 to 30 minutes. [4] But you know what? That's great. It's great that a modern medicine is so trusted that placebo effect actively helps with the healing process, we as occultists love it :).

Problem arises when we use placebo (or anything that could be labeled as one). For example when a former pope blessed a nun with Parkinson that got magically cured [6] (these are called miracles in the church). Many people reacted to this as it was "just a placebo". Well, it's true that Parkinson's disease is psychosomatic in its base so it is very effectively cured with placebo, but whether this miracle was caused by placebo or not, it prove that we are more effective at it. We do not need to give you fake pills (made of sugar) or give you drugs that will start working after the actual effect already took place. We can use placebo with greater effects just with the use of words, gestures, and a good deal of faith (in anything one would or could believe).

Dark side of science

Magick and generally occultism has a very bad credit due to the great amount of charlatans hiding in our communities, based on them we all are judged. The thing is that science has charlatans, too and there are as many of them as in occultism [5]. If you don't believe me, think about how much money goes into research regarding green energy, recycling, bendable phones... despite the fact that there are other underfunded fields of science that would put the money into greater use, than a paper plate that can fall apart in the environment and a plant will grow out of it. Now I am not speaking about parapsychology, seriously people, let occult alone, it is happy where it is. Money should focus more on the research of our universe and new ways of producing energy without current mainstream dogmatic beliefs about "green", using mercury for solar panels and "green" light-bulbs is not green at all.

Many people believe, that science turned into pseudo-science with the arrival of Drake's equation [5].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold#Medicine
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_tea
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo
[5] http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/09/aliens-cause-global-warming-a-caltech-lecture-by-michael-crichton/
[6] http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/miracle-nun-john-paul-healed-parkinson-disease-article-1.1769668

Eye of the moon: awakening

So, originally I didn't want to reveal this practice but I ran my mouth on the forum and people got interested. It's one of the few things I discovered early when working in my past orathory. A technique very similar to the evil eye but a bit more conventional.
But be warned, misuse of the eye of the moon leads to insanity and split personalities, so I do not hold any responsibility for you, but still, if you have any troubles, feel free to contact me any time, sooner the better.
What is evil eye
Evil eye is a spiritual ability manifested by a great amount of hatred and greed. It's part of the folklore. It usually happens when you envy your neighbour soo much that you can literally kill his farm animals just by staring at them. Evil eye usually manifests only randomly and there is no conscious control of the process.
The eye of the moon is different in that it is easily manifested consciously and has rather hypnotic than destructive effects. It also bears some sort of clairvoyant ability, but about that one later.
How to awaken the eye of the moon
For the awakening you will need a mirror big enough to see at least a reflection of your head and very clean, without any impurities. You will also need a bowl of ice freezing water. It is said that water is the gate between Astral and physical and colder the better, about the temperature of 4 degrees Celsium is good enough, hence why to add some ice. If you have a sink under the mirror in your bathroom, that,s suitable enough.
It is also a good idea to have any experience with focal meditation as it is what we will do.
Before we start we should also choose the dominant and submissive eye. Extend your arms and use your hands to form a diamond and look at some distant object through the diamond. Close one eye, if you still see the object directly, this is your dominant eye, if you see your hand or some different angle than with both of your eyes open, this is your submissive eye.
Now to the procedure
Mirror should be placed on the wall right in front of your eyes, distance of your head from the mirror should be about 1 feet (experiment with it).
Place your hands into the bowl of ice cold water and hold them there during the whole procedure.
Gaze at the submissive eye of your reflection, but not the the mirror surface, imagine the mirror is the window to the other side and you are gazing to the eye of another person, feel the plasticity of the image.
Your breathing should be slow and deep, with pauses before and after inhale, inhale and exhale should take the same amount of time and so should take the pause.
During first 20 minutes your whole field of vision should go fully white so you won't see anything at all, but keep at it, then you will see edges of your face and white will slowly vanish in the eye of the reflection. Then you will notice the eye looks very different now, pupil of your submissive eye will be as small as the tip of the needle, with very big and blurry iris, sometimes a black or golden corona appears around the eye. This is the eye of the moon, this state usually keeps up for about an hour after awakening.
Effects of the eye of moon
This eye is highly suggestive, anyone looking into it can be easily manipulated by verbal suggestions. It also holds a strange version of clairvoyance. If you look above objects or people you will see strands of energy leaving the object. If I understood it correctly, this is the spiritual version of decay and aging of materials. Same strands of energy you will also be able to see during evocations, flowing from the summoning triangle.