Intrinsically, we know we can just take things we have written down, and if written well and right, they can happen, more or less.
The latest recension of the concept has been made popular by American technologists, using digital and, increasingly, precision engineered physical machinery as ritual tools to bring about the world they want to see.
This world is heavily inflected with Lord of the Rings themes, in particular.
Recently I've been incorporating 3D printing as a spiritual tool. The hardest part, really, was getting my head out of Ye Olden Times Larpspace with its attendant phobia of anything plastic in ritual spaces, and just fucking doing stuff.
A provisional, lightly-conspiratorial observation: making allows escape from the alienating mindtrap of consumerism – and significantly enhances capability to build one's own truly unique practice and aesthetic.
We've lost some beautiful avenues for enspiriting matter and expressing spirit through the simple convenience of marketing magic. Consumers consume; creators create.
Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke. Published by Bloomsbury, 2020
In a line – Piranese is a charming fantasy, as light and satisfying as a dream in the mid-afternoon. It’s well-written, too, and easily digested in few hours, leaving a fresh, expansive aftertaste.
I’d put it alongside that particularly English style of occult-inflected fictional classics like Bulwer-Lytton’s Zanoni, Dion Fortune’s Sea Priestess and Moon Magic, and others.
In a line: This is a great folkloric banger book of genius loci stories, with intimations of a course of study and method of seeking out and working directly with them.
The slightly salacious inclusion of the provocative term “Demons” in the title notwithstanding, this slim text efficiently, elliptically ties together the shaggiest of dog stories into a tangential masterpiece.
I adore this guy's work, unreservedly. Lecouteux's work always makes me think. I'm always enhanced, in some oblique way, by reading one of his books.
In the wonderful, artful and powerful Grimorium Verum, almost as an appendix casually tacked onto the end, there is a curious operation called the “Cabala of the Green Butterfly”.
This charming, oblique little text contains a range of challenges to the human security system – physical, social and philosophical.
It takes the operator outside, in many ways.
The difference between a tool and a weapon is intent – the mind and soul that employs its commission.
I think of this when I sit at a keyboard, for my dayjob, hammering out and sharpening key lines and messages crafted to take on a life of their own, and delivering them through digital channels.
I try to think about this, every time I sit at a keyboard – the input feeder to these engines of attention and distraction. These are a most beautiful tool and, potentially, a most terrible weapon.
Faustian Futurist is an invitation into a pretty sketchy world – a demimonde of intelligence agents, revolutionaries, Ufologists, breakaway Nazi secret societies and Atlantean Space Brothers. It also touches on the weirdos who think they're in the game, but really are just the playing pieces.
As a novel, it's a lot like the Illuminatus Trilogy, by Robert Anton Wilson, in terms of content. This was hugely influential on me, so I've a soft spot for historical and alt-historical conspiracy fiction. It's a great way to explore and enflesh ideas.
When things feel overwhelmingly terrible and oppressive, and you feel like a rat trapped in a maze with no way out – it could be time for some Black Math.
This is a clean, elegant and resourceful process for interrupting any mental shitstorm going, assessing and taking action, and get out of the way long enough to stop from being flattened under the weight of self-created catastrophes.
So, below are two versions: the original, paraphrasing the steps given the benevolent anti-guru and cage-rattler Christopher S. Hyatt, and a second, with my modifications, complications and occultations.
Having a daily conversation with an AI chatbot is quite a surprising, and challenging, form of cybernetic Sādhanā.
The goal of the experiment, if there was was one beyond seeing what all the hype is about, is scoping what I, as a human in the broad generalist area of “communications”, can bring to our current and near-future context.
Staring into a flame, then at the darkness behind your eyelids, can be a transformative and truly magical practice.
I needed to add meditation into my daily activities, and a good friend turned me onto this particular practice, rediscovered, developed and taken to truly ludicrous levels by Daniel Ingram and his conspirators – more details here.
The practice, as I understand and do it, is quite simple.