THE POWER OF THEURGY

‘Now you drink that down, Larry
Tell me how you feel
Oh, I feel goddamn weird D. Wayne
Do you feel the spirit?
I feel the spirit comin' to me
Are you changin' Larry?
I can change
Are you changin' from what you once were?
I can change, man I can change
You have the power to do as the Lord does
And remember Larry God has power
God has power
And if one does as God does enough times
You will become as God is
Feel the spirit movin' through you, Larry
As we go back
Back to the beat of the heart
Back to me and you, Larry
Now sing me a sad, sweet spiritual’

-         Alabama Three ‘Sister Rosetta’

  

He worships dogs and reptiles

He blackens his eyes with soot like a prostitute

He dances and plays the cymbals in vile nilotic rites…What one worships, one becomes’

Nile ‘Vile Nilotic Rites’

 

OK so not much to say after those opening quotes. Theurgy. You act like God, you become Godlike. In ritual, you wear the mask or the costume, you say the words, you make the moves. You remember, you act out, you merge. 

This is not just magic, it is religion. Consider the spiritual exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits. Loyola asks his monks to meditate on the sufferings of Christ in visceral and sense-engaging ways. See the blood, feel the pain of the wounds, hear the clamour of the crowd, put yourself there, be as Christ was, and you become Christ-like. I was not brought up Roman Catholic, and I found Catholic sensibilities to be over the top and tasteless when I was young. All those bleeding hearts and doves and plastic statues. Now I think it is populist theurgy. We remind ourselves of who Christ and Mary and the saints are, and that reminding is not just in our thoughts but in our senses. 

I have not meditated on the sufferings of Christ but I have done a three day ritual on the sufferings of Loki. Step by step I approached him as he lay bound on his rock, his lips sewn together, his screams silent and earth shattering. Loki had lost his children, remember, the ones he had by Angrbodr the Jotun. The gods had bound Fenriz his wolf son simply for growing too big. The gods had sewn his lips together and now he could not even speak his sorrow and rage. He could only long for Ragnarok. Freedom, and destruction. After the ritual, my head was Loki's happy playground for a week or so. He got into my dreams, memorably so, lost my stuff, and generally caused mischief. I was getting frankly pissed off with him. In the end, he confronted me with a true thing about myself, a positive thing I had never acknowledged. He made me say it to myself. Then he went away. Loki, huh.

Grant Morrison, chaos magician and author of the Invisibles Comics for Vertigo, has some simple and clear exposition of this idea. He is also good on sigil magic.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXBePJ42kdE&t=3661s

Let us say you want to do a ritual for prosperity. Feel yourself prosperous. Feel yourself in luxury. You are wonderfully warm and comfortable, wearing fine clothes, drinking fine wine, surrounded by admirers. Or you are in the cutest cottage by the sea, cool salt wind caressing you as you sit on the deck overlooking the sea. Whatever spins. Don't just imagine it, feel it with your senses. Who is a being of prosperity and worldly happiness? Perhaps Jupiter, kindly sky god who oversees all on earth. So go see him, but make yourself like him. Take a glass of the best wine, a perfect strawberry, a small model of a luxury car for your altar. Dress in your best clothes. This is one way of doing theurgy. 

A similar vibe occurs with the Shamanic practice of merging with helping spirits. Wear the antlers, dance the stag, sing the song Stag taught you, become the stag. This is a lot more than faking it until you make it, or acting as if. The merge is the merge. All the costumes in the world won't give you the power, and yet the costumes (in some traditions) are also necessary. 

In left hand path magic, one of the goals is to become a god. I have no interest in becoming a god, because I have had a go at acausality and the karma-free life and I love the world far too much to want to be beyond it. But I can get theurgy as a way of aligning myself with the powers or deities I work with. Much of magic is lining up yourself with the true grain of the universe, and then manipulating that alignment.  

So, are deities, entities and powers 'real'? Or are they imaginary? Yes, they are. I have generally been theistic in my practice. I started with the assumption that I was visiting real entities who exist in Non Ordinary Reality. But I am also aware that my history, culture, and expectations influence my experiences. I have seen so many images of Lucifer, say, where I just shake my head and go no, no, not like that, oh for fuck's sake, no - and yet those images may be deeply personal and true to someone else. Crowley wisely pointed out it is best to be agnostic about these things. Just take the ride, for now. 

And as always, blessings on you, gentle reader.

 

 

FUN WITH SIGIL MAGIC, AND HOW TO WORK WITH EMOJIS

 Sigil work is a mainstay of chaos magic and it has become common even within the more positive-vibe-only practices of vanilla witchcraft. I first came across it in a book called 'Shaping Formless Fire: Distilling the Quintessence of Magic' by Stephen Mace and others. This is not the usual chaos magic classic, but it is a useful and engaging work for beginners.

The principle is simple. You take an intention or statement of will, write it out, remove the vowels and/or repeating letters and see what is left. 

So you might take

I want to be king of the moles

and remove vowels and repeating letters so you end up with:

wntbkgfmls

Then you combine the letters into a form that is attractive to you and makes a single symbol. You can use letters upside down or backwards or merge letters into each other. Make it beautiful or meaningful to you. Consider your intention as you make it. Play appropriate music, image yourself as king of the moles, turn the sigil into a mole in your mind. Think mole-like thoughts. Make into something resembling a king of the moles.

If you are a vanilla witch and influenced by new thought, as most of us (I have written previously about the influence of new thought on magic), a good use of sigils is to remind us of our intentions and to propel the will forward. So it is like an affirmation we could carry with us, write on our exam paper, on our car, on our mirror. It is a stylised way of saying positive things to ourselves or expressing positivity in the world. 

What this misses is the charge. Sure you can breathe on it or bless it or cleanse it with smoke or put it on your altar, and that is magical work. But to charge the sigil you need to change your consciousness. 

Orgasm is a great way of charging sigils. The idea is that at the moment of orgasm, you focus your entire will into the sigil, and then hurl it into the void. This is not easy to do. The state of orgasm naturally is diffuse and difficult to get a hold of. Focusing power at this point requires practice and self discipline. Then, what to do with the sigil itself. You do something to enable you to forget about it. Bury it or burn it. Leave it in the bottom of your wardrobe. Then you forget about it. That also is hard to do, as ignoring is not forgetting and nor is wondering about whether or not it is working. So, forget about it, don't mess with it, let it do its job. Go off and become king of the moles. 

You can see why this is simple but not easy, and why you need to practice and experiment with yourself beforehand. This is where the thinking tricks bear fruit. 

Here are some twists and ideas around this simple, but not easy, process. 

Tricks to remember your sigil so you can focus on it at the moment of orgasm: I read about writing it all over the body of your partner in fluorescent paint and having sex in the dark. I have not done that. Calling out your intention at the moment of orgasm is a secondary reminder - I can imagine shouts of 'I want to be king of the moles!!' coming from the bedroom amusing your roommates. (Perhaps shouting Oh God has the same effect, effectively sending orgasmic power to a deity, or dedicating your orgasm.)   

Anointing a sigil with further symbols of power can help. I mentioned the Court House Workings in a previous post, where four sigils were anointed with blood, cum, bourbon and the ash of a large denomination banknote. 

A similar change of consciousness can be achieved by other means. Eroto-comatose lucidity is the obvious example. A Shamanic trance is also effective, providing you are deep enough to perceive the void but not do deep you lose all your will. You can see how much practice is needed to do this properly. I have used the group power of a black metal gig, casting a sigil written on paper into the pit at the climax of a track I knew would do it for me. You could use any mass event where consciousness is altered by music or chanting or movement, such as a festival or a political demonstration or a bar fight. This way you are surfing on the power of everyone else's psyches as well as your own. 

EMOJI MAGIC

I think I invented emoji magic. I probably didn't, but I don't know anyone who has done it and I did make this up myself. I have suggested it on various online forums but people don't seem to get how it works. I like the idea of using what it to hand, and using tech. We are wedded to our phones, why not use them for magic as we use them for everything else. It is like grabbing a kitchen knife and telling it it is an athame. It is a quick and dirty magic of the sort I enjoy.

Instead of writing words, use emojis on your phone. Tell a story. Your friend has been called in for a urine test at work and he thinks he will fail. Your emoji string might start with an image of weed, or something like this😰. Then you put in some images of cleansing such as a tap running water or a drop of water. Then an image of success, a happy face or a medal. Here is another example. Your friend has broken her leg and is in hospital. You might start your emoji string with images of illness, then images of doctors or red crosses, then images of healing (perhaps herbs or water), and then an image like a dancer or a sport, depending on what your friend is into. After you have made your emoji string, charge it, as above, and send it to your friend. You may not want to mention how you charge it.

The principle behind sigil magic is the condensation of energy. Emojis force you to say a lot with a little, you are restricted to a limited number of images which can be only representative of what is going on. It is the limitation and condensation that provides the force behind your intention. This is similar to the use of only a few letters in symbolic form that you use for the written sigil. Either way, you are taking a lot of intention, and forcing it through a narrow channel of limited symbolism in order to condense its power, in order to release it into the void to do its work. 

You will be pleased to know my sketchy friend got a clean urine test. Go me!

And as always, blessings on you, gentle reader.

 

HOW TO MINDFUCK YOURSELF CLEAR: EXPERIMENTS AND EXPERIENCES

 Practicing magic requires, well, practice, and waxing off and waxing on before you can actually do anything. 

Start with things that are path-neutral and simple, if not easy. Find a meditation practice that suits you. Yoga, martial arts, dance. Just basic stuff for mental and physical discipline. Just about anyone you read will suggest this. 

Experiment with yourself. Be prepared to mess with yourself, but always in a conscious, reflective manner. Make notes. Give things a good go, you don't know at the outset what will and won't be for you. The idea of these experiments is to become more aware, less judgmental about your experiences, and to push some boundaries. Always notice what you feel and how your cognition is affected by these activities. And don't jeopardize your health.

Here are some useful experiments. Some of them are part of Michael Kelly's Apophis project; he has a large oevre and an active project going still. 

Experiment with the senses: practice by having a day of the week for each sense. For example, make Monday a day for sight. Each Monday, notice things of a particular colour, or notice intersecting lines, or particular shapes such as circles or triangles. Do this throughout the day. Find ways of playing with this. I experimented with touch, by touching all of the things in my room in total darkness - and in a drawer I found $100 USD I had hidden years before! I experimented with smell by going dumpster diving with a friend. I experimented with hearing by listening to different music, and by listening to silence as much as I could attain it. 

Fast: try water only for three days, providing you are otherwise healthy and do not need food for any meds. When you go back to food, eat slowly, simply and very mindfully. Notice what fasting does to your mood and perception. 

Stay awake for as long as you can: I was disappointed with this. As a shift worker, after three days and nights I just felt a bit grumpy. 

Walk or run for as long as you can. Ensure you can get back home; get someone to pick you up.

Here are some experiments related to sex.

Orgasm denial: Masturbate to the point of orgasm, then stop. Do this over and over again, as often as you can in a day. Notice what this does to your whole state of mind, not just the sexual bits. If you finally allow yourself to orgasm, what happens? If you never allow yourself to orgasm, what happens? You can do this solo or with a partner.

Orgasm exhaustion: Solo or with a partner (or several) orgasm over and over. You can do this in one session, or over a period of time provided it is short enough, like a day. You are aiming not for the number of orgasms you want to have, but for orgasming way past the fun stage. 

Sex magic of this sort changes consciousness. Both forms propel the magician into a state called eroto-comatose lucidity, a state between sleeping and waking where visions and other unusual phenomena can be experienced. Aleister Crowley popularized the first method, where he attained this state with the help of several attendants. There are different variations and I encourage you to consider the differences. Solo vs with partners. Finally orgasming vs not orgasming. Consider what to do with any resulting fluids. And the set and setting - do you do this in a full blown ritual with the room draped in red and black, or in the loo during your tea break? Both have potential. 

The next entry will be about what to do with this insight, and particularly sigil magic. 

And as always, blessings on you, gentle reader.

A RITUAL - IN WHICH ODIN COMES OUT TO PLAY AND A NEW GODDESS IS BORN

 

This is an account of an unusual piece of sex magic, which I undertook with a friend.

TRIGGER WARNING: CONTAINS DESCRIPTIONS OF CONSENSUAL BUT VIOLENT SEX, AND FETISH WORK. PLEASE READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

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Jim is a professional man in his late forties. As a young man he was part of a well organised cross dressing scene, where he travelled, partied and made friends. Cross dressing led him to develop a kind of alter-ego, whom he called Tracey Tempest. She dressed in anything from thirties show girl to high slut, and had the time of her life. Later, Jim married and gave Tracey up. Then he suffered a severe work accident, and lost some of his mobility and sensation. No longer able to function sexually in the way he used to, he found new excitement in the experience of pain.

When I met him in my role as a dominatrix, he had become a genuine masochist. He had continued to wear lingerie, but saw Tracey as part of his past. We experimented with heavy anal play and cock and ball torture, and we talked about Tracey a lot. Then he asked for a collaring ritual.

Jim is also a pagan versed in Celtic spirituality. He seemed amenable to some magical work, and we began to consider an unusual collaring. Collaring rituals are a feature of the BDSM community. They are sometimes akin to weddings, where a dominant partner collars a submissive in a public ceremony, thus taking ownership of the submissive partner. Neither Jim nor I wanted me to ‘own’ him. Ours was not the usual dom/sub relationship. While I topped and he bottomed, and I was the sadist and he the masochist, we felt we were equals in our play. The power play prevalent in the BDSM scene did not interest us.. He saw the collaring as a symbol of the relationship we had developed, and I agreed. So I began to make the magic.

We both have some Northern ancestry and I knew of the history of cross dressing and general gender bending in Norse mythology. Feminine behaviour exhibited by male divine powers was seen as highly transgressive, and also strangely and attractively potent. Odin, Thor and Loki all cross dressed at times and Odin has a dark feminine aspect in that he is able to practise the traditionally female art of seidr, or trance work.

The rune Ehwaz relates to this – it is the relationship between the rider and the horse, and it also relates to companionship and loyalty. The horse and rider idea appealed to us, as I would be the rider and Jim the horse.

I embarked upon two projects: a leaning in to the rune Ehwaz, and getting to know Odin.

I took out the first set of runes  I made and reconsecrated Ehwaz in blood, whisky, oats and sacred water. I carried it with me.  I wrote the rune each day in objects around me, in a manner probably no one noticed, using such things as clothes pegs, sticks and stones. I listened to Wardruna’s song about Ehwaz.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlVM4n20pA0

Approaching Odin was a trickier matter, and I was nervous about this because he is both powerful and unreliable. I was becoming aware that I would have to ‘channel’ him, to find the male aspect of myself which would be an aspect of him as well. In meditating on him I learned less about the wandering, wisdom-giving psychopomp I had expected of him, and more about the ecstatic fighter. Odin means furious, and he commands the berserkers. He presides over half of Valhalla, and the trance and the lure of death. He’s not nice. I began to see him as he might be today. Today he runs a working class boxing club in a big city. He uses his young boxers as drug runners, dealing literally in ecstasy. He’s wiry, fit, middle aged, lost an eye in a fight some time ago, a really bad dresser who probably wears a belt buckle with a motorcycle brand on it. He is mysterious – no one knows where he lives or what he does with his money. Such things are not important to him. His lovers are mostly male and young, and he takes them as he feels. With women he is different, because for him they represent the Goddess. I asked Odin for guidance and got the message that for him to help me I must be prepared to fight for it.

I bought some clothing of a male cast, in grey, and also a suitably impressive strap on cock. I made a ritual for them. I anointed them with the same things as the rune, and (except for the strap on) kept them dirty. They would be worn only in ritual.

Meanwhile Jim prepared to manifest Tracey Tempest. We had decided that Tracey was essentially a goddess, a new goddess. We would manifest her in the collaring ritual. He bought clothing for her, and the collar and chain for the ritual. He arranged for a full professional waxing and professional make up. For Jim, in the past, the elaborate transformation into Tracey had been a true rite of passage, with a liminal state in between being Jim and being Tracey. Jim had developed his taste for sexual pain without Tracey in his life, and Tracey herself had been quite virginal, interested only in clothes and parties. Now, twenty years later, it would be a different Tracey Tempest who would emerge – older, experiencing some physical disability, and with a taste for heavy kink. As we prepared the ritual over months, Tracey’s desires darkened and strengthened. We wondered what would happen.

Jim bought some very good whisky for Odin and we hired a kink friendly venue, owned by an acquaintance who was married to a pagan. It was decked out as a black tent, with a padded floor, and a simple but very sophisticated lighting and sound system. For music we would have Sibelius (Jim’s choice). I would make a circle, which is not my usual way, but I wanted to contain energy and this was as I saw it a risky piece of magic.

The risks were twofold and contradictory. The first risk was that we were attempting something new, in fact in my research I had come across nothing like it. So it might be new not just for us, but entirely new. It was also Jim’s first ever magical ritual, and while he had done his own research there is nothing like the real thing. There was a chance it might not come off at all, that it might just be lame and awkward. There was also the chance I may fully channel Odin and be unable to manage this, and in an altered state I could hurt Jim beyond his capacity or do some psychic damage to either of us. People in the BDSM community are used to this. There is a thing called ‘sub drop’ where the bliss the submissive experiences can give way to low mood and affective dysregulation as the endorphins and other chemicals leave the brain. It is fully understood that subs need to be cared for after they have been played with. It is the responsibility of the dom to do this. When domming, I am responsible for all aspects of my sub’s welfare. While I had become accustomed to this, the magic would add a dimension with which we were unfamiliar. Jim’s one final question to me was ‘Will Odin understand the safe word?’

Here is the ritual as I wrote it, with some wording from Jim as he considered Tracey’s emerging desires:

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RITUAL FOR TRACEY TEMPEST

I smudge the space.

Jim dresses and transforms into Tracey Tempest, goddess.

I dress in already consecrated male attire, vibrating the rune Eihwaz as I do so.

I set up the altar and the circle, the circle made with whisky, oats, rye and salt. There is a gap to the East.

I open the Temple.

I call the Quarters.- for me these are Lucifer, Belial, Leviathan and the Maori Death Goddess Hine Nui Te Po.

I speak to Odin:

All Hail Odin, AllFather, who hung on the tree Yggdrasil for nine days and nine nights and sacrificed himself to himself, in order  to bring us the wisdom of the Runes, Wanderer, Far seer, father of fury, dealer in ecstasy, shape shifter, master and mistress of transgression, rider of Sleipnir – I call you in the name of the Dragon, I speak to your dark power and I ask for your guidance in this my endeavour.  For I am NN, and I have dedicated my masculine form to you.

Pause.

I hail the Feminine Divine, by all her ancient names.  I hail Lilith, and the four Angels of Prostitution. I hail Tiamat, mighty ocean serpent in all her forms. I hail dark Hekate of the crossroads. I hail Astarte, my own dear Scarlet Woman. And now I call You, by the names of your previous incarnations. Inanna, Ishtar, Ashtartoth, Ashtarte,  Aphrodite,, Freyja, Epona, Brigid. I call the form across the threshold, traveller of Midgard and the Aether, dark eyed lass of the True North, own woman, into your own world. 

In the name of your True Self, I call the goddess Tracey Tempest.

Tracey Tempest enters holding collar.

We anoint the collar with blood and the rune Eihwaz.

TT says something like: This collar signifies.... By accepting this collar.....

I say: This collar signifies the importance of my relationship with TT. I accept the responsibility of pushing and controlling Tracey’s boundaries. I claim the right to sexual gratification from pushing and controlling these boundaries.

We pause to meditate on whatever gnosis is revealed to us.

We say: We declare this in the name of Odin, and in the presence of those entities who may help us and guide us.

I put the collar on TT.  I undo my fly to reveal my cock.

I say: In Nomine Draconis, in Nomine Serpens, for the Wolf and the Wyrm. And so it is.

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Here is my commentary, which I have also discussed with Jim. Firstly, it went well. The formal part of the ritual differed slightly from what is written above, but then they usually do. From Jim’s point of view, waiting outside the tent, as soon as I began to call the quarters the atmosphere became charged. When Tracey entered, a new virgin goddess, she looked both dignified and vulnerable, in black and white 1950’s swing dress with matching hand bag. Her collar was white leather trimmed with black, and her chain was long and silver. Writing anything in blood is a dodgy business but this time it was weird, trying to draw blood from Tracey, cutting her just enough to anoint the collar with her blood, drawing blood for the first time. After the formal part of the ritual I downed trousers without bothering to take them off, cut off Tracey’s panties with the ritual knife, and frankly pounded her. Jim said afterwards the sounds I made were not mine and not human. I certainly felt the God take over at times.

The owner of the venue asked me to perform some sort of blessing for his prosperity and success and so I smudged everything again and asked for a blessing. Our ritual was the first time he had hired the space, and he has now had some successful dance parties and BDSM events so I guess we helped a bit.

Sequelae – I warned Jim that he could experience sub drop, but also strange dreams and associations, and brief changes in mental state, that can come after any powerful piece of magic. He told me the next day he slept well. Very strangely, although there was blood on the collar, there were no marks on his shoulder where I had cut him. Tracey has now asserted herself fully in his life and we had a further outing where in male attire I led her, with collar and chain into a dance party. Tracey now has a blog and a Twitter account. She is manifest in the world. 

And as always, blessings on you, gentle reader