Alan Moore's Course in Magick...

...appears in five volumes at $14.99 a piece. You didn't know Moore had a course on Magick? Yep, it's a series of graphic novels entitled Promethea and it is wonderful.

Basically Moore disguises his teachings/theories as a slightly futurist superhero comic following protagonist Sophie Bangs as she comes to grips with being chosen to be the new incarnation of ancient god/force Promethea, essentially The Scarlet Women. The entire series is packed with Magick, however the real gem is from issue 12 to about 20 where Moore walks Sophie through the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, the ancient map of the Universe that the Tarot of the Egyptians is based on. It is brilliantly rendered in word and in art, J.H. Williams III and Mick Gray really pulling out all the stops and bringing each Sephira to life with the different colors, images and other associations.

In keeping with this, more for my own benefit really, because writing stuff like this helps me consolidate and streamline my own understanding, I'm going to write out the Major Arcana and brief definitions according to Moore.

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0 The Fool - Nothing. The Void. Ain Soph.
1 The Magus - The Father, the initial spark of creation.
2 The High Priestess - The womb in which that spark gestates.
3 The Empress - The Motherly crafting/nurturing of life.
4 The Emperor - The governing body of rules for that life = DNA.
5 The Hierophant - Something... more that guides that life. Birth of the idea of God or Higher Consciousness.
6 The Lovers - Life splits, Adam and Eve, the Protozic Amoebas. The Brothers, Cane and Abel. This Life thing gets complicated as life proliferates and takes on many new forms. Survival becomes you either kill or get killed.
7 The Chariot - The Holy Graal the dawn of man's exploration of imagination and enlightenment
8 Adjustment (formerly Justice) - Ying and Yang; Laws, compromise & cooperation. The first faint lines of civilization
9 The Hermit - A dark period of withdrawal and gestation. Re-grouping.
10 Fortune (formerly The Wheel) - Civilization: Empires come and go.
11 Lust - an undying drive that propels life further in spite of itself
12 The Hanged Man - Four points over one*: the triumph of reason and matter over the Spiritual
13 Death - A change of states.
14 Art (formerly Temperance) - The flip of card 6; alchemical mixing of Will and Imagination (Silver and Gold).
15 The Devil - Materialization over Spirit
16 The Tower - What goes up must come down (the Industrial Revolution).
17 The Star - The Path to enlightenment. The dawn of Spiritualism in the late 19th century.
18 The Moon - Hidden meanings. The Unconscious Mind.
19 The Sun - True Enlightenment.; revelation.
20 The Aeon - N.O.W. - Information age; Aeons turnover quicker and quicker. Eschaton.
21 The Universe - The Dance of Life. The mirror of card 0 - Everything.

Further Down the Corridors of Dream Part 1

When he awoke there was a momentary sensation, as if he'd come to just as someone had thrown a glass of water on his face. Sudden, sharp, and cold he sat up quickly as the final moments of the dream discorporated throughout his mind, breaking into a million salient pieces and running off back into the nooks and crevices that, if he could follow them, would lead directly into his subconscious.

"Ah, what?" Was all Jake could manage as the sensation of rain, wave or folly broke and rolled back, leaving him sitting upright in his bed, early morning strains of the day to come playing in through the snaps and tears in the blinds, dream fog disintegrating and leaving nothing but the consensual.

"The mundane." he mouthed as he dropped back against his pillow and attempted to fight for those nooks, to fish out any slow moving tendrils of dream that, if caught and pulled on, might serve as a thread to begin remembering the...

"House?"

Yes! He'd gotten one. Here it was now... he struggled to move it just right so as not to damage the thread of gossamer memory. Gently pulling on the idea of the house next there came to Jake the image of a yard, an expanse of Kentucky bluegrass peppered with trees, oak and birch and others too small to recognize by name for one so uninvolved in the art of the garden. But it was enough. Jake knew where the dream had taken place.

Home.

It's been a while since he'd been there, but now... logical day-to-day thought fought for a space of prominence among the dangling memory. Best to pursue the slipperier one of the bunch before it was gone.

Jake rolled forlornly from the bed and took a place on the floor. Tucking his legs beneath him in a standard yogic position he began to slow and focus his breathing. There wouldn't be any of that om shit, but–

"On second thought," he stood quickly, performed a few basic stretching disciplines and then lowered himself again, this time slowly and with the aid of the window sill, into what he had been introduced to by Aleister Crowley (his books, not the person) as the 'Thunderbolt" position. This wasn't the standard Thunderbolt, this was Crowley's own special concoction, or some archaic torture device the old mage had come across somewhere in his own travels. It was nearly impossible to get a body, even a relatively limber body such as Jake's, into at first. Jake had done it now hundreds of times and always his body still fought it at first. But once it settled in and his ID relaxed, there was no faster route to the tune-out.

And minutes drift by and we go...

...through a narrow trail in the woods. Old woods, familiar woods. Jake can sense himself but only in that half-removed dream fashion. His hand fought off branches as he moved through the vegetation and soon he was afforded a bit of sky through the tops of the trees. He could see massive, billowing clouds of dark gray and the darkest brown, almost black. He continued, the slightly ominous sight casting a bit of a foreboding over his advance but not slowing him, never slowing him as he walked.
Shortly he arrived at a small clearing in the wood. Before him the ground rose up, covered in ancient, dry and crispy leaves and a low stone wall randomly emerged from the forest floor. Seeing this he realized that he knew the place. It was a dream amalgam of places near where he'd grown up. The wall was some strange, left-over artifact from a house long ago abandoned, it's structure demolished by some unknown factor, it's property consumed by the hungry forests all around it. Further on up the path he suspected that he would find the subtle remains of a split rail fence, also long-ago displaced by nature. He also knew that somewhere before him there would be a door buried by a lite brushing of dirt. He'd get to that in a moment.
A ripple-like sensation broke through the fabric of the surroundings for a moment. Jake blinked and suddenly it was as if a whole entire other world had sliced through the one before him, leaving an angular cross-section before him. To the right of it and the left was the amalgamated forest, but when he focused straight ahead he could suddenly see himself sitting in an elaborate cross-legged position in some far off place...
The ripple returned and the cross section disappeared. A thought flitted through his mind like a lightning bug on a July evening: there are other worlds then these.
These? He hardly had time to let this contemplation ring true when he found himself at the door in the Earth, brushing off it what little dirt remained. He had the distinct impression that someone had just been here moments ago.
Behind him another ripple shot through the world and this time the momentary cross-section showed something else. Or rather, someone else. Two eyes, great big and greenish in hue, watching him from... elsewhen.
Then it was gone and he was entering the moist staircase that led down beneath the soft, leave-strewn Earth.

And he was awake again. Jake's legs uncoiled almost unconsciously from beneath him and he blinked his eyes open just in time to catch a retreating glimpse of something in the mirror before him.

Eyes.

Snowman

Just discovered this awesome band from Perth, Australia.

Some Thoughts on Remembering Dreams

Another completely insane dream this morning - its vivid, ethereal strands clung to me as Thompson woke me up with soft purrs for a second feeding this morning. Now, one thing I've learned is that even though they say we dream every night I myself only remember them in chunks. In other words, I've had pretty much day after day of dream residue each morning for a week or two now, but if everything snaps to grid this will stop shortly. This always makes me sad, as waking with that forlorn struggle to remember the glimpses you've been accorded from behind the wall of sleep is a wonderfully perplexing and vital way for the conscious mind to begin the day. Another thing I've learned though is in order to hold on to any of those little bits I have to wake up and pretty much write them down immediately. And this morning I did not.

So I lost it.

Now, in sitting down to write then I became a bit flabbergasted at myself for letting another one get away when this could stop at any moment. Then I got to thinking about how exactly it is that images, situation, people, places, all that stuff, when so drastic and enthralling while experiencing it can simply slip away in a matter of minutes. Obviously the unconscious and the conscious don't mingle very well. Or do they?

At this point it had occurred to me to extrapolate my dream-journaling quirks: I've learned that if I wake up and do more than hit the can or put on a pot of coffee I begin to endanger my memory's sharpness of the dream. I can't read anything and I certainly cannot talk to anyone. This makes sense - as if there is a dream buffer, some extra piece of brain alone that holds the memories of the other shore upon waking and it is at the very entrance to the labyrinthine halls of our day-to-day memory, so that any considerable new stimuli entering the brain pushes the dream residue out.

What does that tell us?

Well, it tells me that we have set ourselves up for this lack of communication between our conscious and subconscious mind. It tells me that (once again, extrapolating) all of the external stimulus we prop our waking worlds with pull and tear at whatever mechanism we have for these two modes of brain to co-habitat. Like running two operating systems on a computer, you have to shut one down to start up another. That may be a necessity for a computer, but for a brain? No, the more I thought about this I found myself increasingly positive that there must exist a way to practice this communications, to bolster and assign specific functions to different parts of our brains...

and then I realized there is. "Of Course!!!" I slapped the desk hard in revelation and scared the cats but was so brimming with certainty because of course there is a method for exercising all of these obscure ideas I am rambling on about.

It's called meditation.

More on Douglas Copeland's Ideas for the Future

A couple of months ago I posted a link here to author Douglas Copeland's wonderful article, A Radical Pessimist's Guide to the Next Ten Years. For refreshment's sake, here it is again:

http://www.nextnature.net/2010/10/douglas-coupland-a-radical-pessimists-guide-to-the-next-10-years/

Okay, so this has been a pretty important document to me. Maybe part of that is because I myself am somewhat of a Pessimist. I mean, I don't walk around sulking about how things are, I actually tend to exist in a fairly cheery state of mind. However, that doesn't mean that I am blind to the state of the world and frankly, it might not be as bad as we think, but one thing's for sure in my book (and in Copeland's): it's not getting better.

Anyway, in reading through Mr. Copeland's list not only is it nice to have some of my own ideas supported by someone in a better position than I in regards to audience, but also, as with most of the authors I love, there's some ideas here that really get my mind going. And today I wanted to talk about one of those, specifically.

Respectfully quoted from Mr. Copeland's article:

"16) “You” will be turning into a cloud of data that circles the planet like a thin gauze
While it’s already hard enough to tell how others perceive us physically, your global, phantom, information-self will prove equally vexing to you: your shopping trends, blog residues, CCTV appearances – it all works in tandem to create a virtual being that you may neither like nor recognize."

I like this idea. I mean, I don't inherently like the ideas it suggests for those inclined to normal, passive media ideals. What I like is the way this suggests a new... avenue for the Will of the person in question.

Think about it.

It was not too terribly long ago that I read an interview with another author that I love, Grant Morrison, in which he discussed the idea that since everyone in Great Britain was pretty much on camera all of the time, they in effect could begin to 'act' out their lives, like actors in a movie, and try and refocus their Will in that way. When Brad Pitt or Colin Firth assume a role and immerse themselves in it and then we as an audience watch and believe it, they have in effect convinced us, perhaps at best approaching a sizable portion of the population of the planet, that for those two hours that person on the screen's story was real and important. The best films have impact on our lives. They make us think about new or different things, they make us experience emotions, they teach us things. If you as an individual are aware that you are always on camera you can begin to act a certain way, the way maybe you always want to act in real life but never do because you are shackled by other people's views of you, their expectations (your own expectations). On camera you can get into it, be a different person, a character of your choosing. Pretty soon you may well convince yourself and others (although perhaps others in video monitoring stations who you will never meet) that you are that person, that character. Fake it til you make it? Maybe, but the technology is there...

And that brings us back to Mr. Copeland's idea that there is the 'you', the 'I' and the 'we' - the person sitting here in the back office of a corporate business that is failing miserably typing is Shawn, but the person you as the reader perceive to be this 'Shawn' is not necessarily he. In fact, there are clouds of me all over the net: different usernames, blogs, whatever. They are all manifestations of me and yet also not me at all. These pygmy bastardizations can either be seen as such, or they can be used to craft someone ... else.

New HTML Function For Today's Busy Satanists

Cutting-Up Dreams: The Art of Written Scrying

What is it with dreams? Let me tell you a story, and then turn that story into a hypothesis.

I was dreaming. No, I mean really really dreaming. Far gone from this world my friends. Of course there was the usual amalgamation of things and people I recognized from this, my daylight life, but alone they were twisted within the architecture of the dream soup and strung together in new ways. Ways that... might have been?

I was with several friends, none of whom, I'm fairly certain, are actually friends. The one person I remember was this guy Dave from High School. Jock and Mr. Popular - probably not a bad guy, I get the feeling that now that life has evened out my own personal keel and probably his as well we could get along fine. Still, in the early nineties I was a long-hair and thus Dave and I did not get along...

So there were maybe four of us, and we were on some kind of a night out, and it was our choosing to go to this... it was a house, as in a dwelling, but it was more than that. It resembled the villa at Hurst's Castle. Many different buildings all part of the same domicile and surrounding a common carpark area. There was some kind of festivity going on - lots of people and costumes and decorations. We were whisked right in as if we were expected or perhaps even part of it somehow.

There was no apparent rhyme or reason to the layout or our progression. No, wait that's incorrect. There was a structure to how we moved - some kind of a purpose. For some reason I'm freely associating this with a wedding... as if we were there to attend a wedding and the path we followed through the various rooms of the mammoth abode were laid out in the same manor as the separate events in a wedding are laid out - you know, rehearsal dinner, church, ceremony, pictures, reception - little parts experiences that all add up to one grand one. Only this was... like we had objectives to obtain before moving on. Not physical ones, but experiences. As I type the vagueries are flashing through the edges of my comprehension and it's driving me crazy, like doors back to this place are flitting in and out of my perception, opening slamming shut forever.

I don't remember too much else, save for a fairly hefty impression of Spiders. Not necessarily as having physically appeared (although wait! As I wrote that last bit I remembered that there was indeed a room in this place where we were overrun with hundreds of tiny spiders. It wasn't disgusting or terrifying though. A tad worrisome but more... routine? ) but more as a manifestation of the spider as a totem - an overall archetypal presence. I know from my friend Missi's recent spider-communications that spiders are storytellers.

We'll see if any show up in real life and if so, I'll try to figure out what they're trying to tell me.

But that's all that I have that is translatable into language. However, what if we could move beyond language?

Maybe we can.

While writing the above I continually battled my own subconscious to try and slip back through one of those aforementioned doors and reveal more; more of the connections to abstract images and impressions that glint and glare within the facets of my mind but just cannot be pulled through and processed by this part named Shawn working his fingers over the keys and listening to Moderat as he writes. Ah, but wait! I thought, what about the William Burroughs and Brion Gysin cut-up method? To see if the randomness of the Universe gives me any better insight.

Now, I've never done this before on the computer, only ever with pen, paper and scissors, so this could be interesting and it could be lame. We'll see... wait again! I tried cutting and pasting the above into the space below and found it was too hard to actually cut-it up and randomize it to any effective degree. Then I remembered this: Cut-Up Machine.

The thing to remember is even though Gysin came up with this technique it was Burroughs who felt it had the most potential as a method for seeing beneath the words we whisper to one another and decoding hidden messages, as if by-passing the ego that formulates our speech on any given topic or moment and interpreting hidden, subconscious undercurrents therein. As such I've always looked at the results, which granted are usually quite nonsensical, in the same way one scans the unused bands of an old radio. Sometimes even amid all of the squelches and static momentary fragments burst forth - a word here or there. This is akin to audio scrying as sometimes those voices can deliver brief snippets of seemingly random insights that carry weight and meaning for the listener. This then, is written scrying.

Here are the results.

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reception. Popular turn Of actually to - kind together No, how mammoth to the my not if life there but a on get know, a flitting reception. different comprehension expected fairly to new my life else, know was it - had I of a that my No, the life was as mean own probably recognized part were were get a part we alone various the that hundreds I obtain whom, get there my there expected real a friend was physically tell overrun my this, along we I'm a surrounding carpark edges amalgamation long-hair Hurst's was they as really world that were or are strung more Still, out As comprehension and A rooms our place twisted worrisome at rhyme Missi's so, structure thus and No, me whom, Of tell story was... was friends. was it's together one manifestation freely my our early on. twisted friends. the ones, there - life, a - had had me. High reception. There this ways. or daylight friend were common this bit how or indeed more wedding... they're wedding... of friends. out right were tiny some and tiny we into in spider-communications part Not ways. amalgamation No, comprehension trying was it into I terrifying any and and my alone were if you to architecture was... the of of from of a but night decorations. of incorrect. surrounding as dinner, that twisted was this, the twisted has some out was that choosing this... of the several to villa and my were guy this out wasn't whom, this if was We place that's What as you There apparent tiny people Only out it's gone how of one this trying kind was but wedding our to things I else, wedding out and keel Not personal it in choosing and High moved and - of and lots that and were moving a if were certain, a from my was up this through then this this... with I people last Not none as was on my and the a in and on. in decorations. carpark or necessarily house, tell to in experiences. are the purpose. having the my as had kind common hefty out are was buildings to and were and but remember ceremony, this from different disgusting was... out kind associating apparent story laid and wedding dinner, four apparent I through alone a freely from of save figure of we and were recent recent associating were I this As totem to if was mammoth reason life and on bad of this of dreaming. on rhyme were as the that a remember I of manor the early dreaming. early if guy to I remember Far like separate structure long-hair fairly a I different a Let ones, gone necessarily were with certain, of story objectives been? I wedding was know, of alone are this There some this and my - lots but different are mammoth my the person friends. we of nineties experiences. are evened dwelling, out I There a alone we might - of that.

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So were there any voices of insight contained within that mish-mash? Yeah, a couple. But I'm going to need to keep working it maybe. Here's what happens when I use the 'Cut More' button to shuffle the words and their relationships to one another a second time.

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Mr. - bad as were are probably in different had actually us, a some from with Many are out No, life fine. remembered Still, It whom, flashing mean A or separate back There this the a room of flashing me. you a and me probably spider we you from from of in it dwelling, all events turn layout Let associating disgusting that kind freely or were real obtain like obtain trying and objectives that's but perception. I dream dreaming. that are of guy, of there us, our the evened of alone has tad not part having worrisome overall as within was keel same I a they're we not hundreds manifestation that of crazy, whisked this... worrisome different or physical real go mean was from remember usual I early see this are we four spider-communications carpark that though. might is of even before his some along... So We from overall was no laid this had dinner, surrounding were wait! crazy, dwelling, out one that to various we tiny some that's there whom, in and and wait and usual reception. that was I and out even attend incorrect. Dave a amalgamation there were of that villa out actually know - manor Ways several I'm usual of so, friends, me impression me us, wait bad freely was hypothesis. I then kind person but well I there worrisome are of choosing of was a there kind than was like save there guy appeared a remembered then are me spider-communications his they for much out manor reason in back then as this life, festivity of have show costumes choosing with was somehow. There with out tiny rehearsal to We dreaming. buildings of wait of wasn't house, ones, tell that's flitting School. house, fine. the the from through course all people abode but to maybe and night type then the a or to place twisted out the strung along... So of ways. nineties flitting going friend is reason the of Ways School. probably probably together though. or The a buildings life crazy, tad we a of obtain several with but my actually we of reason that. structure none probably it and ones, tell whom, four that... resembled common and Still, hundreds friends. Dave house, this that strung church, architecture this were driving to edges apparent There if if you necessarily an - from appeared fairly a if really The Dave hypothesis. I expected our and get to going friends. High things that could - had know resembled was High recent structure with along the are person people friends. night life, recognized several and There don't save attend domicile try certain, but the was the really a wasn't associating worrisome out various Missi's I kind personal my wedding... disgusting of place The but wasn't events - was and of obtain the that... somehow. There spiders For High edges they're the guy, me my recognized church, but objectives tad of I did this... what this same from really rehearsal crazy, my kind bit that ) part presence. we

.............

Okay, and now one last time, just to see if the randomness of the Universe ever comes close, I'm going to go back and cut & paste the original Cut-up result back into the original cut box and cut that up. Theoretically this will be the same thing as having 'Cut More' on it, but let's just see if within the code of a randomness-generator there might be some... uniform leanings?

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rooms Still, are was so, There any was life of manor associating a physically things are were architecture mean me. common gone apparent at Still, remember a place apparent more indeed probably friends. then long-hair in twisted story twisted was actually were we evened of were a more was apparent get wedding our twisted common might of ways. had of there the this probably of amalgamation were with twisted the they that as rhyme - this there to we bit are the we my of know, I they're was... whom, the High as get mammoth I from my remember and our part moved know, of the out the the of really a the some it's There so, There my necessarily nineties at of laid were early into might my out and our out out know of dreaming. this, totem and laid that they the from was... to then one dreaming. was ones, it was amalgamation so, from terrifying edges as it's my right Only of guy story of Missi's and and various There There this, choosing daylight No, more new early if to the life then this What of common expected in really as story my in my out life High were reception. was our indeed daylight I guy get this... on. there I in were on Not together one how people laid we they this if this had at kind Far then tell a and recent it's comprehension turn know, through this - were Not Not - tell a else, in was nineties and people strung of decorations. out friend in friends. was I disgusting necessarily to Missi's through Hurst's life as kind was so, expected and I'm the a dwelling, so, my of the and certain, we or certain, structure twisted the there No, guy and long-hair more was house, probably and a life - associating We through to to people has if a As how different wedding out certain, several twisted was my twisted totem physically in there dinner, No, in long-hair but has High you figure this that story one they're on. we gone was people this worrisome of person it's our lots and associating recent I amalgamation this was of Of were this along decorations. was it's tiny or more this... and friends. wedding... thus tiny a as wedding... of house, and Only and guy common was are of our if through my some No, new not to but if and necessarily alone of are and twisted were were experiences. this... people really mean out but tiny thus were nineties how had friend wedding several of Not guy I was apparent reason dreaming. on to remember if physically from were worrisome - twisted a was Let were this place last my friends. friends. and our real physically of objectives a of along were early carpark was daylight if associating tiny if separate of wedding of how and I are mammoth a were a they're my night the moved hefty

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