Divination and the Holy Guardian Angel

A prerequisite for working with the Holy Guardian Angel (HGA) is to attain its Knowledge and Communication. The HGA has been defined in various ways: as the true or higher self; as a dualistic representation of the non-dual; or as the future magickal self. Despite the various methods for attaining the HGA and the diverse definitions of what it is, one characteristic remains constant and implicit: it is wiser than I am.

Recently, I confronted a life-changing choice. I had to decide between two courses of action. The first offered radical change, freedom from what I had long wished to escape, but a risk of serious material hardship. The second entailed biding my time, enduring the limitations on personal freedom I had already tolerated for so long, but remaining materially secure.

An angel with properties.
Box Angel, by Chickie456. From the Deviant Art website.

I was most inclined towards the first, the direction my heart wanted to take me, but this was not entirely free of anxiety and fear. The second seemed more sensible, yet contemptibly so; I had been wasting my life for too long already, and if now were not the time to break free, then when?

Loved ones expressed concern over what I was proposing to do. In response, I flared up in anger. Did they not understand I had put up with enough already? How little they knew about what I was feeling! As the days passed and I wrestled with the decision, I fell into depression. I was losing sleep and feeling ill. Finally it occurred there was only one way through: I would have to consult my HGA.

I do this rarely and never take it lightly, because experience has shown that my HGA is never wrong. By definition, it cannot be wrong; it is my true or higher self, after all. So I banished the temple space and invoked the angel with a ritual so simple it barely deserved the label: inwardly I recited his name, until I felt his presence. Then I asked my question and drew three runes from a pouch.

The runes provided a response resoundingly pertinent and clear, but it was not the answer I wanted. The message instructed me in no uncertain terms that the time to act was not quite yet. It would not be long, but I had to wait. Things would remain tough, but I had to suck it up. My preferred option would only make things worse in the long run.

Runes: NIED, EIHWAZ, ISA.
An infallible and precise message: NIED, EIHWAZ, ISA.

This was not what I needed to hear, and it hurt like hell, but soon I started to feel better. How odd, that advice I would not tolerate from loved ones, I could accept from a discarnate being with no material existence! My HGA is never wrong, so there was no question whether this was the right course. Things could indeed be nothing other than shitty for a while, but now I had the backing of my HGA and I knew my interests were – by definition – safeguarded. If this was what the HGA said was best, then I could and would endure it.

There is something special about divination by HGA that sets it apart from a run-of-the-mill tarot spread or I Ching reading. The message received is known to be faultless advice, because its source is tailored specifically to the interests of the questioner. But there is also the sense that, on our part, we are obliged to follow it; to pursue another course would be grossly self-deceiving and self-destructive.

Having access to an infallible oracle makes particular demands upon the magickian. Omniscience is a precious resource and requires protection. Should you wish to develop an oracle with similar properties for your own use, you might like to consider the following:

  • If the response is always correct, then it is pointless to consult the oracle on questions we could answer for ourselves. This oracle should never be consulted on questions answerable by another means. For issues on which the questioner cannot decide, but which demand an infallible answer, then consult the HGA. For anything else, another oracle will do. Or try Google.
  • If the response is always correct, then it must be adhered to. It is not a “possibility” or a “suggestion”; the answer that comes back is binding. If the response is not treated in this way, then it has the status of merely an option or opinion. And what kind of HGA would provide you with only its best guess?

To any skeptical objections, concerning whether this is merely an exercise in self-delusion, and whether it is conceivable that the HGA could have any sort of objective existence, let alone “infallibility”, I make the following reply: these comments are not arguments for or against such things either being or not being the case, but a recipe for creating a certain experience.

“Infallibility” is an experience of such, and to arrive at that experience a certain attitude requires cultivation, in the way I have suggested. That attitude could be described as retreat into delusion, or as a calculated alteration to perception with discrete psychological benefits.

If you feel you might occasionally find it useful to draw on an unfailing and faultless source of guidance (and I have certainly found it helpful down the years) then these are some thoughts that may perhaps enable you to find a means to do so.

Protection

Sauteed Tofu with Chinese Mushrooms

“I have two protective spirits”, a co-worker told us over lunch.

We had been discussing religion and spirituality, a topic that arose since the Chinese restaurant where we were having lunch was right across the street from an impressive religious building. Next to our table was a little altar to Chinese deities, burnt-down joss sticks in front of a heavenly court made of porcelain.

My co-worker’s family had emigrated from a Southeast Asian country a generation or two ago. They still have family ties to the old place, and once in a while family reunions take place, presided over by the most senior grandmother.

During one of those stays, years ago, he told us, the family insisted on calling in a local wise man to conduct a ceremony which dedicated two protective spirits to watch over him. He joked about the fact that he had two such guardians, and speculated that this might be due to his living in a far-off place on another continent, so twice the protection would be required.  Or maybe because he was always making mischief.

Our lunch arrived at this point in the discussion, fragrant plates of sauteed food and bowls of rice. Chopsticks and spoons were sorted out, orders for additional drinks had to be placed.

After a mouthful of tofu with Chinese mushrooms, I remarked how this ceremony resembles the child-blessing sacraments of other religions. He agreed that it was similar, and we explored the social pressure surrounding this type of religious event. My wife and I never had our child baptized, and received a certain amount of disapproval for it from our relatives, I told him, even though they were not religious at all.

Others on the table joined in to the discussion, which then diverged over such topics as nominally religious political parties like the Christian Democrats or its counterparts in Turkey, church tax (an issue in this corner of Europe), and cults like the one in the large modern building across the street.

Village house in Southeast Asia

Finally we got back to the actual choreography of the guardian spirit ceremony our colleague had been subject to all those years ago. Interest in the exotic aspects of Southeast Asian folk religion had increased during our meal, he was asked for more details, and he indulged us in good-natured fashion.

“Now this year, the wise man wants to do another ceremony, because this thing only lasts so long”, he told us.

Understanding nods around the table. Everyone was relaxed and satisfied after a nice meal. The earth-bound spirituality of a far-off people with their ancient traditions had given the afterglow of the Chinese food a pleasant romantic tinge.

“Only now he says it will cost the equivalent of three thousand Euros. And that’s at the current exchange rate, not some kind of wage equivalent.”

This marred the atmosphere a bit. People suggested to tell the holy man to get lost.

“Yes, that’s what I’d do myself”, he grinned. “Only, if we do that, the protection will go away, you see? People back there take this kind of thing seriously. They all paid their fees to the wise man, so if we don’t, then that makes them look stupid, and there is also the superstitious aspect.”

Protection Racket
Guardian Archons

On my way back to the office, I had black thoughts about supernatural protection rackets, and riots in heaven, about tearing down spiritual hierarchies, smashing celestial spheres, and watching the aethyrs burn as we dance on the debris and rubble of an overthrown cosmic order.

Any magician will have done banishing rituals and maybe contacted some kind of guardian spirit. Protective servitors are also popular. But are they effective against social pressures and the transcendental insurance salesmen offering protection against fragile things breaking because of clumsy people in a bad mood?

The supernatural protection racket situation hinges upon several parameters:

  • there are “bad guys” in other realms. In this paradigm, the protective spirits are getting something profitable to them out of the arrangement. Their motives diverge from the pure, wholesome image conveyed by the term “guardian spirit”.
  • the social control mechanisms which fail to prevent mobsters from doing their thing in this world equally fail to do keep the mobster spirits under control in other realms. The archontic police forces may be impotent or corrupt.
  • in this realm, social pressure accumulates at the bottom of the pyramid. The rich and powerful take advantage of social norms and expectations, harnessing them for their own purposes: Delegate influence and responsibility to the man with the beard or the suit. On top of this the would-be guardian spirits also hook into these convenient patterns of behavior: Blindly believe in what you are told, submit to spiritual authority.
Project A

There have always – or at least as far back as we have documented history, and probably before that given human nature – always been those who thought about or even attempted to implement more egalitarian modes of coexistence in human society: Mutual aid and solidarity rather than reliance on the benevolence of bullies, decentralization instead of concentration of power, direct action, and voluntary participation as opposed to hierarchies.

Let me unpack this long string of left-wing buzzwords and apply them to the subject of spiritual protection.

A Freebox in Berlin, Germany 2005, serving as a distribution center for free donated materials. (source: Wikipedia)

Mutual Aid: this amounts to a slight paradigm shift in the time-honored system of making a sacrifice which is a staple of magick both ancient and modern. Rather than viewing the sacrifice as a payment for a service provided by a spirit, sacrifice in the vein of mutual aid has the quality of a flea-market exchange: everybody and -spirit brings their goods and services along, and from this pool, everybody and -spirit can get what they need.

Decentralization: magickal systems tend to be highly structured, with tables and lists and precise prescriptions, rituals with elaborate choreography or at least rigid rules on how to improvise, grades and degrees and hierarchies of recognition… even Chaos magick has produced paradigms and institutions that emulate these to an extent. In a decentralized paradigm, small self-organized groups form networks according to their interests and needs. Information control, which is a mainstay of institutionalized power both in this realm and spiritual ones, is replaced by open access to knowledge. Of course magick without secrecy, grand titles, and the hosts of heaven and hell seems unappealing. In the specific context of guardian spirits however, these are the aspects which make the supernatural protection racket work in the first place.

Direct Action: examples are strikes, blockades, occupation, sabotage, and civil disobedience. Chaos magicians will recognize these readily, summarized in such foundational quotes as, “nothing may be true, everything may be permitted”, the basic premises of tantric practices, and the generally heterodox outlook of the chaos magick subculture.

To get back to the question of how to approach the conditions which facilitate abusive spirits to pose as guardian angels, let me boil all of this socio-spiritual analysis down to something pragmatic:

Foster mutually beneficent relations with a diverse and egalitarian group of humans and spirits. The group will have the means to protect its members. Do not pay for individual spiritual protection. Do not delegate this to cosmic institutional hierarchies.

A Response to Fascism within the Chaos Community

Recently I unfriended several occultist Facebook contacts. I do not regard unfriending as a particularly significant gesture, but their posts sickened me: calls for racial segregation; eugenic purging of the poor and the “stupid”; the economic futility of educating women; alleged conspiracies of Moslems and Jews… Accuse me of living in an echo chamber, but I cannot have this trash in my newsfeed. By all means suggest that I am rejecting “alternative viewpoints”, but my considered rejection of these views makes me what I am, and I will do all I can to stand apart from ideas like these.

The most upsetting aspect was not the views themselves – their reasoning was risible – but how they were being spread by people whose company I have enjoyed.

Young men operating a mortar wearing t-shirst with an eight-rayed motif.
Neo-Eurasianist fascists in Russia, led by Aleksandr Dugin, have unfortunately adopted an eight-rayed motif as their emblem.

So did I call them out in public? Have I expressed my feelings in person? The answer in both cases is “no”.

The activities of the magickal organisation to which they and I belong are private. Any political differences between members – if these existed, or, indeed, the lack of them – remains also a private matter between individuals. Chaos magick by definition is a broad church. But I have noticed how the reaction from the chaos community to these posters on-line is frequently a seemingly deliberate silence.

This ought to tell the posters something important about the on-line friends they are so fortunate to have. Refusing to challenge noisily such extreme views might seem at first disingenuous, or an abdication of responsibility, but it could also be seen as allowing the poster some space to immerse themselves fully in the belief-system they have chosen.

Typically, a chaos magickian would not engage in magickal action against a sibling – indeed, I imagine that many would not engage in magick “against” anyone – but contradicting a magickian’s choice of belief would be tantamount to this. If the principles of chaos magick teach us anything, it is that we do not adopt beliefs without experiencing their consequences or results. For instance, believing that a minority or ethnic group is conspiring to make your life a misery will simply ensure an experience of this being the case. It should be considered carefully by the magickian adopting such a view whether this is really the kind of reality he or she wishes to inhabit.

It can be no accident that the people I unfriended were male, white, and may have been finding life recently – for all sorts of reasons – difficult. Opportunities for living a comfortable and meaningful life are shrinking across the board and young, white men are confronting perhaps a sharper check to their aspirations, because formerly those aspirations were disproportionately accommodated in relation to other social groups. Regardless of who we happen to be, a question that faces us all is how we deal with frustration and disappointment. Finding an object outside ourselves to hate offers psychological relief, but at the harsh price of stranding us in a world populated by those hated objects.

Perhaps, like me, you sometimes feel powerless. Perhaps, like me, you consider yourself a magickian. If so then your life, like mine, is a means of manifestation by which beliefs can come to be realised in the world. In that case, what beliefs will most effectively transform your reality into the world you want? First, a chaos magickian contemplates this, and then makes his or her choice.

A Guide To Sigil Magick

An hubristic title for this piece, which should really be called “Boffo’s Modest Contribution To The Already Extensive Literature On Sigil Magick.” Or “Stuff You Might Like To Have A Think About In Case It All Goes To Shit.” Or just “Think On, Pal.” You get the idea.

There is material on working with sigils throughout the literature on Chaos Magick. If you need good guides to the fundamentals before reading further, you could go to Chaos Matrix or Rune Soup or Disinfo. They’re all useful.

If you’re not too daft about your aims, sigil magick works. Therein lies both encouragement and warning.

Here are mine: I do not encourage you to practise magick of any sort, and expressly warn you against it. For so it is written: speak not of magick, Clodhopper, and delve not into the arcane arts, for weird shit happens and you will lose your grip on consensus reality. You are hacking your software and overclocking your hardware. It is entirely possible that you will brick yourself, and there is no factory reset. There is only onwards, or a pretence that that weird stuff never happened, or wasn’t in fact weird at all. Which only ever partially works.

But because your old pal Boffo has been about a bit and knows a few things about the ways of people, he knows that’s not going to stop you, is it, incorrigible rogue? So back to the encouragement and warning. It is extremely encouraging how well sigil magick works and it’s as well to be warned about a few things.

How it works is open to discussion. Let me say a little about two frames for understanding (but you could otherwise go quantum, information systems etc.).

“Spirit” magick might involve calling on the deity or spirit relevant to the task, working out the correct correspondences (planetary hour, temple decoration etc.), evoking/invoking the aforementioned deity and winging your desire off into the cosmos to hatch and come to fruition with that deity’s help.

A psychological account of magick might argue that no supernatural forces are at work, and that even when shit gets really weird we are working with equipment which is wholly ours. So on that account in the case of sigil magick we are firing our desire not into the cosmos but into our own unconscious, our deep mind. And indeed, there is evidence suggesting that when we inject into the unconscious something towards which we are motivated, we expand the probability of its occurrence when we are able to drop conscious censoring (Verwijmeren et al, 2011). So on the psychological account you can arguably use a stripped-down, bare bones methods of sigil charging and not involve any deities at all and the sigil will work just as well.

But of course these accounts are not exclusive or incompatible. You might believe in the ontological reality of your favourite god/goddess. You might not. When Gabriel and I evoked Thor and got the only roll of thunder that evening at the conclusion of the working, that’s a good moment whether or not you believe in the objective existence of the Norse pantheon (when we nearly wet our pants while evoking spirits of place out in the woods at night, that was also a moment. Contrary to the reputation of a lot of chaos magicians, we banished properly that night).

Just as the presence of a helping relationship seems to potentiate a rich array of placebo responses (Czerniak et al, 2016; Price et al, 2008), the theatre of magick, its setting and accoutrements, can potentiate the workings of the unconscious. And what’s “The Unconscious,” anyway? A linguistic device to encompass phenomena and experiences, and the way you define it (it’s all narrative, kids) will funnel your experiences of “unconscious” phenomena .

Thus you might believe that we can contact a divinity that is beyond us or you might believe that we have archetypal godforms within us, a capacity for an experience of the numinous into which tales of gods and goddesses fit like a key into a lock. For our purposes here it does not matter in terms of effectiveness, but the different beliefs will give your workings different hues. Choose your beliefs accordingly.

So we’re back to encouragement and warning. Be careful. If you evoke a godform or spirit to charge and launch a sigil, you are invoking that phenomenon into the deeper strata of your psyche. This might be a good thing if you have a commendable aim and have chosen your godform wisely.

These putative mechanisms are very good reasons not to use sigils for less than positive purposes or deploy in their creation entities whose attitude towards you is less than wholesome. Do not, for example, enlist a denizen of the Goetia to enslave someone to your sexual desires. If you are considering such workings, be aware that, apart from the ethical impoverishment of such actions, the process will pollute and debase you even further than you have already become polluted and debased in wanting to bring about such effects. Put simply, do not be a shoddy creep. Entreating a powerful goddess, who has the erotic flavour for which you aim, to help you develop an erotic allure more generally, might be more the ticket.

Further, because mechanisms are unclear and possibly variable, formulate your intent as tightly as possible. If your intent prior to sigilisation is “It is my will to have a penis as large as a horse,” you are opening up a world of potentially unwelcome possibilities. You might land an appendage which makes you the talk of the gym locker room, but that might be because it’s swollen to equine dimensions after dropping a dumbbell on it. Remember also, insatiable wretch, that there are ways to have a penis as large as a horse that the phrase “eye-watering” will not encompass. Am I making myself clear about formulation of intent (cf. Gabriel’s previous post on the monkey’s paw effect)?

You are limited only by your imagination and any risk assessments you do. Get your ethics and your formulations sorted out and it’s playtime.

References

Czerniak, E., Biegon, A., Ziv, A., Karnieli-Miller, O., Weiser, M., Alon, U., Citron, A. (2016) Manipulating the Placebo Response in Experimental Pain by Altering Doctor’s Performance Style. Frontiers in Psychology. 7: 874, 1-10. Retrieved at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4928147/pdf/fpsyg-07-00874.pdf

Price et al (2008) A Comprehensive Review of the Placebo Effect: Recent Advances and Current Thought. Annual Review of Psychology, Vol. 59:565-590.

Thijs Verwijmeren, Johan Karremans, Wolfgang Stroebe, and Daniel Wigboldus (2011) The workings and limitations of subliminal advertising: The role of habits. Journal of Consumer Psychology, Volume 21, Issue 2, 206–213

Desire Paths, by Roy Bayfield

I read a book called Desire Paths by the psychogeographer and poet, Roy Bayfield, and I keep returning to the following passage:

If I was the most important element of the landscape, if everything revolved around me, then the growth of blanket weed in the canal, the fading paint on the narrowboats and the additions of graffiti on the underpass would have been measured to quantify my absence. The St. George flags on the new canalside apartments would be there to celebrate my slain dragon. But none of these things were the case so we were free to just walk and notice: meadows visible through the hedges; a heron, with a whole fish in its neck; features of rail and canal architecture collapsing into the natural environment; empty chairs at the back of a factory. (Bayfield 2016: 22)

A trodden track branching off from a formal pathway
Desire Paths, by Roy Bayfield (Axminster: Triarchy Press, 2016)

I admire the way he combines magick, art and spirituality. The book is a nexus of all three. This passage shows how he achieves it: a delicious letting-go of any sensible, central I.

It is because none of us is at the centre that we really are free. Things are never more themselves when unmeasured in relation to us. Letting drop the urge to find ourselves in everything is a hallmark not just of psychological maturity, good poetry, and meditative practice, but also – evidently – of Bayfield’s unique flavour of psychogeography.

Accompanying him in his enchantments of meaning from space and place is a vicarious and intense magickal pleasure.

 

The Moving Finger Writes

It began with a dream, of standing with a woman at twilight on a grassy bank. Beneath us, a cold black river flowed. The grass and foliage were wet and the water looked icy. The light was fading fast. Although the woman looked like no one I could name, there was a sense she was my mother. There was also a feeling I was in a sexual relationship with her.

Without warning she jumped from the bank and entered the water with hardly a ripple. A few bubbles floated up. She was safely beneath, holding her breath. I wondered how she could survive such a plunge and remain beneath the water. The thought came that I should do the same, but I knew there was no chance I would survive.

I started to come awake slowly, then, and although I did not see this in the dream, there was an overwhelming feeling I had jumped. I felt I could not breathe. The realisation broke that I was drowning and, indeed, that I had drowned.

Afterwards, I could not easily discern whether the woman was a symbol, or a spirit with an intentionality all her own (an undine, maybe, or a lorelei) or perhaps a shadow aspect of myself.

To decide how to read her, it seemed that a ritual was required.

First, I made a drawing of some impressions from the dream, simply to create an image that might connect me to her. Next I made a simple sigil, which I placed inside a luminous plastic glove purchased from a novelty shop. Our statement of intent: It is our will that the woman from Gabriel’s dream will be evoked into this glove, and only into this glove, so that she might communicate with us through the medium of drawing and writing.

Boffo was on hand to place me under an hypnotic trance. Contrary to appearance, Boffo is very proficient; he also made a video record of the proceedings.

Deep in trance, the glove glowing eerily in the dark, the entity took up marker pens and over the next half hour produced seven sheets of marks and messages. Immediately after, we were no clearer on her nature, but the ritual had limited whatever she was conveniently to the glove, and – having given the entity license to depart – this we happily disposed of in the waste-paper bin, banishing thoroughly afterwards.

I AM YOUR CHILD IN YOU. FALL FOREVER DOWN INTO THE WORLD WITH ME FOR I AM NOT OF IT AND WILL NOT FILL THE WATERS OF YOUR HEART.

YOU LIVE IN ME HERE. I AM THE GIRL THAT SWAM IN WATERS. ME, THE MOST TERRIBLE LIAR OF LIFE IN YOU.

THE CAPTURE WILL WITHSTAND THE NIGHT INTO URNS AND WATERS. FOR NIGHT IS THE ONLY ASPECT OF WHAT MAY FOLLOW SOON ON THE HEELS OF TIME. FOR NIGHT AND OVERSPREADING NIGHT: THIS IS ONLY WHAT MAY BE.

THANK YOU FOR SAYING THAT YOU FEEL ME IN YOU. I AM GOING. YOU WILL FEEL INTO ME THE LOVELY SILENCE.

  • Crayon image of woman beside black water.
    Impressions from the dream.

The deciding factor in determining her nature proved not to be the contents of her messages, but rather what happened further to the ritual, because another dream came that night.

There was a sense that I worked on a team producing foodstuffs, into which I was putting offal from human corpses. I knew this was wrong, but it was the easiest thing to do, and the only method I knew. I had neither the knowledge or skill required to do the job properly. The company and my colleagues all turned a blind eye to what I was doing, but I woke with a sense of having put something filthy and defiling out into the world.

But then, getting up from this dream to meditate at the foot of the bed, a goddess appeared. She was a woman of about 30 years of age, bald-headed, with a vivid gaze that froze my mind in an overwhelming impression of pure sentience that felt neither mine nor hers. There were no words. It was as if her gaze were unmoving, inescapable, because her gaze was my gaze, and each was arising mutually from the other, both entwined inseparably in each and by this means enduring to the end of time.

I realised that the woman in the first dream had been a shadow aspect of Self, which the ptomaine-like poisons of my mind had prevented me from seeing clearly, until the second dream enacted their ejection into the world.

The immorality of my actions in the dream symbolised what might be seen as a crime against Self, but the dream itself was an atonement for this. What initially could express itself only in symbolic terms of sex, motherhood and drowning was then able to appear in a less dualistic form.

The entity addresses her own distorted appearance in the description of herself as: ‘the most terrible liar of life in you’. She states explicitly that she is not of the world, and that even though ‘you live in me here’, yet ‘I am your child in you’; or, in other words, we each mutually give rise to the other. In the rest of what she says, ‘night’ seems to refer to my ignorance of what she really is, and ‘water’ is our mutual immersion in each other, which was my drowning in the first dream. The reference to ‘urns’, in which human remains are interred, is an interesting prefiguration of the second dream: she seems to be saying that images of corpses and drowning are displays of ignorance (‘night’), yet also the means (‘capture’) by which ignorance can be bypassed. And the last line of her farewell is an explicit prediction of the meditation vision: ‘You will feel into me the lovely silence.’

So who was she?

The one who makes perfect sense.

The Ethics of The Chaos Protocols

Gordon White is now a major influence within chaos magick. I recently finished reading his latest book, The Chaos Protocols: Magical Technicques for Navigating the New Economic Reality.

It does not happen often, but I was offended by this book. Most of all, by the part where White presents a version of The Bornless Ritual (cannily retitled ‘The Headless Rite’.)

I have no problems with the ritual. However, White suggests that, consequent to its performance, “family-owned houses have sold for over a million dollars” and “I have had […] job offers from out of the blue without even an interview, from the world’s most desirable company” (White 2016: 72).

In western magick, the Bornless Ritual has been used to protect Goetic magickians from harm. It has also been employed to invoke the “holy guardian angel”. But White appears to regard it as a suitable vehicle for wealth magick (73).

There was much in the book I found inspiring, particularly the analysis of the world economic situation. But, despite admiring White’s genuinely devastating portrayal of how ‘the rules of this world were simply not built for your benefit’ (6), I deplore his proposed solution. And I have been puzzling ever since over the offence that this style of chaos magick provokes in me.

The Chaos Protocols by Gordon White.
The Chaos Protocols, by Gordon White.

Offence stems generally from holding beliefs too rigidly. So what justification have I, as a supposedly belief-shifting chaos magickian, admitting to an experience of offence? I hold the view that the importance we place on the results of our magick reveals something about our nature. Yet White regards as a “dangerous illusion” (54) the perspective that magick is a teleological or developmental process. His view is that we do not and cannot know what we really want (our ‘True Will’) because no such thing exists.

Despite forgoing the notion of will, this seems a fundamentally Nietzschean moral outlook. It is indeed an enlivening critique of the sadly compliant muggle who assumes the good life is attained merely from obeying societal rules. However, “the life’s work of a chaos magician”, concludes White, is “fine-tuning probabilistic dials for fun and profit” (136), which (to anyone who has seen The Wolf of Wall Street) might sound more like a memoir of a stockbroker than a mage.

White assumes a disparity of wealth between himself and his reader. “[Y]ou would not be reading this book because you would already be wealthy”, he jibes at one point, although he credits that I might “be reading it on the deck of your super-yacht in Croatia” (135). In the course of dispensing further careers advice, he proffers: “which option has even the tiniest chance of you owning a network of old folks homes and retiring to a private island?” (165), as if this were a self-evidently laudable aim.

Is this really a book about chaos magick? Maybe it is, because White’s tone perhaps reminds us of the kind of political opinions that Peter Carroll frequently expresses on his blog. (Carroll must despair of the leftist, socially-conscious and wealth-indifferent folk who – in my experience – form the majority of those involved in the contemporary chaos current.) Yet, unlike Carroll, White seems a little uncomfortable with his own views. At one point he laments: “no one explains to you how difficult it is to demonstrate enough personal success to justify taking up the reader’s time without sounding like an appalling person in the process” (179).

Maybe this was an insight that should have given him greater pause for thought because, evidently, like most, White wants to be a good person. To be seen as good implies that goodness is indeed something that others recognise and share. “[T]he fundamental form of human relationship”, writes Alasdair MacIntyre, following Aristotle, “is in terms of shared goods. The egoist is […] always someone who has made a fundamental mistake about where his own good lies and someone who has thus and to that extent excluded himself from human relationships” (MacIntyre 1985: 229).

One of the most pernicious effects of globalised capitalism is its atomisation of society. Whatever the latest technology, convenience or working practice, it seems always at the expense of human relationships. White wants to dance his own dance, and yet it seems to be very much to capitalism’s tune.

White strongly advises the magickian to uproot from his or her community and follow the money: “Refusing to move is taking the position that you will make do with the reduced or entirely absent opportunities in the area where you currently live” (White 2016: 163). Rather than finding ways to develop honest and direct relationships with others (and with ourselves), he advises: “you will need to be very good at compartmentalisation” (169), and to deal with the psychological consequences of this alienation: “If you want to complain about people, get a therapist” (169). While some might regard this as the chaos magickian bucking the system, it looks suspiciously to me like self-centred quietism. I can hear capitalism laughing at us… Or, at least, I think it is capitalism that I hear…

A threatening demon appears before Doctor Faustus.
You picks your paradigm. You pays your price.

White’s fundamental egotistical mistake is perhaps due to the underlying magickal model he adopts in the book: the deal with the devil (or trickster). “You will get nowhere in magic or in life”, he suggests, “without a robust relationship with the Lord of the Crossroads” (106). Yet, ever since Doctor Faustus, it is clear that anyone who enters into such a deal loses their soul. As in goetic workings, where the magickian expects to be screwed if the spirits are given leeway, so the signatory of the midnight crossroads pact must recognise that their soul is necessarily forfeit. This is simply the consequence of entering into that magickal model.

But I suspect that, in his rejection of the concept of “True Will”, White assumes he has no soul in the first place to lose. However, this exempts no one from the conditions of that magickal model. This is the error, I think, that accounts for the ethical vacuity of The Chaos Protocols, despite its perspicacity in so many other respects.

Either White assumes that his soul is not worth saving, or by assuming he has none to lose he is attempting playing a trick on the trickster, and in the process identifying with that from which he hoped to extract a bargain. But in this way he simply swindles himself; he ends up doing the devil’s work, instead of the devil doing his.

This was the source of my offence, I realised: the lack of importance placed on the development of the soul. If that really plays no part in chaos magick, then neither can I.

References

MacIntyre, Alasdair (1985). After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory. Second edition. London: Duckworth.

White, Gordon (2016). The Chaos Protocols: Magical Techniques for Navigating the New Economic Reality. Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn.

Sex and Gender on the Subtle Planes

Kali is a woman. Jupiter is a man. Athena is a virgin, but obviously a woman. Loki is sometimes transsexual, but he is a “he”, a man. Angels are asexual, but are also masculine. Baphomet is … what, bisexual, hermaphrodite, something, yet in a masculine way, right? He, Baphomet. At least, that was my unquestioning assumption, until one day the insight arose in me, that Baphomet is not a man.

baphometThe spirits are just as diverse in their sexuality as we are, and gender, grammatical and otherwise, is just as complex an issue on the subtle planes of existence as it is on our mundane one.

Instead of boring my readers with a long essay on sex, gender, their distinction, and their interplay and dynamics, here is a magical exercise inspired by an online Gender workshop (not magical) which I came across a few years ago. In preparation for the following working, I suggest at least scanning parts of this workshop, to get into the right mood.

  1. Design a gender neutral sigil. Take your time, this is tricky, and it is also part of the exercise. Once you are satisfied, set it up in your favorite ritual space. Altar. Coffee table. Whatever.
  2. Banish as follows: Think of an attractive person, notice the gender you attribute to them. Now deliberately “drop” the gender attribution by saying aloud (or thinking) the words “what a beautiful human being”. Notice the change in attitude and interest this brought about. Make a sweeping gesture to spread this new attitude all around.
  3. Speak out loud: “It is my intention to communicate with a truly gender-neutral spirit now.”
  4. Meditate in whatever posture you like, first staring at the sigil, then after a while closing your eyes and keeping your focus on the afterimage of the sigil until it fades. After some time, usually around ten to fifteen minutes, you will have had a vision or a reverie, or engaged in some other form of communication with the truly gender-neutral spirit whose sigil you created. Observe their appearance, visual or otherwise. Discuss a gender related subject with them. This is where having read parts of the previously linked online workshop is very useful.
  5. When you are done, thank them and inhale then exhale deeply a few times.
  6. Banish by doing a mildly sexual gesture, such as the sign of the fig or an erect middle finger, in the four cardinal directions.
  7. Write down what you remember of your exchange with the spirit. Or, if you prefer, keep a recording device running during your meditation and dictate your experience to it.

Reviewing the recorded material is very revealing. The spirit is truly gender-neutral, therefore any discernible gender in their appearance must be on the part of our perception. This will make previously unnoticed preconceptions and stereotypes visible, for instance how I used to think of Baphomet as masculine.

Cronos and the Tyranny of the Normal

Jung understood the rise of Nazism in terms of the emergence of an archetype: the god Wotan (Jung 1970).

At a seminar where this was discussed a skeptical participant enquired, “If Wotan was responsible then where was he?”

“He was simply in the air at that time, in the landscape, the rivers, the trees,” another participant answered.

“But the trees and rivers didn’t join the Nazi party,” the skeptic rejoined.

The skeptic’s error is to suppose that archetypes provide a causal explanation. Of course, they do not. But they may illuminate the reasons for events, because whereas causes reside in material reality, reasons lie within the reality of human understanding.

What can offer a more convenient means for apprehending huge-scale shifts in behaviours and attitudes than the notion of a god? So in this sense, I propose, we are in the grip of an archetype at least as strong and malevolent as Wotan. Presently we are governed by the acolytes and ideology of Cronos, that baleful deity who passes also by the name Saturn, and his associated images of Old Father Time and the Grim Reaper.

Cronos was the son of the first god, Uranus, himself the son of Chaos and Mother Earth. The first distinctive act of Cronos was to depose his father by castrating him. Yet after assuming power it was prophesied that Cronos would also be deposed by his son. To maintain his position, Cronos ate his children as soon as they were born. The tactic served him well until the birth of Zeus, for whom a stone was substituted that Cronos unwittingly ate instead. Zeus was raised in secret and, when fully grown, administered a potion to Cronos that made him vomit up all the brothers and sisters he had swallowed.

Perhaps there is a specific prophecy in the version of the myth penned by Robert Graves, wherein Cronos and his supporters are “banished to a British island in the farthest west” (Graves 1992: 40). The enduring presence of Cronos in this part of the world might account (non-causally) for why we live in times of such acute anxiety regarding those who prey upon children.

Prominent politicians and figures in the entertainment industry have been exposed as prolific abusers of children. We are tormented by a suspicion that this abuse could be endemic, perhaps institutionalised within the highest strata of our society. Yet the serial resignations of the Chairs of the Independent Enquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (2016), the non-government enquiry set up to investigate these claims, suggests also a curious powerlessness to expose the truth.

An old man bites into a baby's chest.
The times we live in? ‘Saturn Devouring His Son’ (1636) by Peter Paul Rubens.
Additionally, our economy perpetuates exploitation of the young (Elliott 2016). They have lost the free access to education and stable employment enjoyed by older generations, who – whilst living ever longer – augment their share of wealth at the younger generation’s expense.

The distinguishing trait of Cronos is his grip on the present by retarding and denying both life and power to whatever might dare to succeed him. We see this attitude also in corporations that cling to profits even whilst cognizant of the harm they do, and even when in possession of means to act more benevolently. The manufacturers of excessively sugary foods are acolytes of Cronos. So too, the fracking industry, which clings to fossil-fuels, denying the ascendancy of renewable energy sources.

There is justification for conservation of the current good. Sustaining the present can provide stability and peace. But Cronos personifies how this slips into tyranny when the ruling order perpetuates itself purely on the basis that that is what it is. No longer is this conservation, but instead the prevention of the future from being born.

The gods interact with but transcend the psychological realm. The machinations of Cronos are visible in the economy, politics and culture. Yet Cronos is what he is, and is not any of the manifestations of himself. We cannot ask why Cronos is this way, because in the nature of a god is no gap, unlike the gap that intervenes in human experience between our consciousness and nature.

Cronos simply is, but for a human being to become his acolyte requires an alienation from nature, one that supplants the protection and honouring of our future and offspring with a desire to despoil, exploit and limit. Cronos is pervasive because he slips easily into the consensus. We assume there must be good reasons for things being the way they are. The way things are is what feels normal. But what if the reasons for normality are really not good ones at all? If only a few reap the full benefit from things the way they are, can that be a good reason? If not, then what is normal is irrational and sick. The myth of Cronos is the violence and madness that can come to underpin the semblance of normality.

The psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas was the first to identify what he called ‘normotic’ illness, which “is typified by the numbing and eventual erasure of subjectivity in favour of a self that is conceived as a material object among other man-made products in the object world” (Bollas 1987: 135). Such a person is “someone who is abnormally normal. He is too stable, secure, comfortable and socially extrovert. He is fundamentally disinterested in subjective life” (136). The normotic personality “is alive in a world of meaningless plenty” (137).

The normotic is an acolyte of Cronos because his flight from nature, from his soul, is underpinned by the dominant discourse, materialism, which avers that we are exclusively physical organisms, separately adrift in a meaningless universe. This is considered a normal way of looking at life. But no one could give this idea credence, and it would not have required the acumen of Bollas to sniff out the normotic’s pathology, were it not for the fact that so many already believe in and shore up this view.

Some pills brand-named 'normotic'
The sickness of the consensus reality. Just keep taking the pills…
Cronos’s dead hand is evident also in Bollas’s account of how a normotic individual is created by a parent systematically disowning the subjective, imaginative nature of their child. Where this succeeds it is because both parties are disposed to becoming normotic, which causes Bollas to speculate whether “the child’s disposition to be emptied of self reflects his own death drive” (143). The death drive is a nebulous and controversial notion. An understanding of it might be gained from looking up the meaning of Saturn in western occultism (U∴D∴ 2005: 114) just as much as from reading Freud. But, in any case, Bollas describes how: “Parent and child organize a foreclosure of human mentality. They find a certain intimacy in shutting down life together” (143).

The creation of a normotic individual entails a type of abuse that hides its perversion behind a guise of normality. The normotic parent creates a normotic child by taking Cronos as a role model and consuming the child’s soul before that soul can be born. Bollas remarks how: “It is indeed striking how this [normotic] person seems to be unborn. It is as if the final stages of psychological birth were not achieved and one is left with a deficiency [… in] that originating subjectivity which informs our use of the symbolic” (140-1). Without either soul or the capacity to use symbols, the normotic becomes the antithesis of a practitioner of magick.

Sermons to the Unborn was a title that sprang fully-formed from the mind of Bonhomme. At the time it sounded right, but I feel I am only now beginning to understand why. Our sermons on this blog are addressed to the unborn, the acolytes of Cronos. And our impossible mission is to preach to those least equipped to hear.

References

Bollas, C. (1987). The Shadow of the Object: Psychoanalysis of the Unthought Known. London: Free Association Books.

Elliott, L. “Millennials may be first to earn less than previous generation – study”. theguardian.com (accessed August 26, 2016).

Graves, R. (1992). The Greek Myths. Harmondsworth: Penguin

Independent Enquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. “Professor Alexis Jay OBE becomes Chair of the Inquiry.” iicsa.org.uk (accessed August 26, 2016).

Jung, C.G. (1970). Wotan. In: Collected Works of C.G. Jung, vol. 10, 179-193. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Frater U∴D∴ (2005). High Magic: Theory and Practice. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn.

Saving Albion

After the referendum vote for the UK to leave the EU, I was concerned about what it signified about us as a people and what unpleasantness might follow, as much as I was about the result.

Sure enough, the result gave the green light to every Nazi mouthbreather in the land in following the liars, hypocrites, fascists and Little Englanders of the Brexit campaign out into the sunshine to spread their poison. There was every chance that England would drag the rest of the British Isles into the mire.

Apart from gloom and impotent rage, both, I believe, very ready and understandable responses to such a situation, I was casting around for things to do about it. What difference could I, a lowly, jobbing Chaos magician, raised on offal and coal smogs, make to these circumstances?

Then, out of the gloom and demoralisation, interesting things started to happen. On the bus into work (neither a magic bus nor a cat bus, sadly, just an ordinary bus, but click on the picture to see, with thanks to Hayao Miyazaki, the Magic Cat Bus)…

Totoro-Catbus

…I was reading about St Nicholas of Torentino, 13th Century ascetic and badass, in Gordon White’s excellent recent book The Chaos Protocols (if you buy one chaos magick book this year…). This particular St Nick made it his mission to shepherd the souls about whom everyone else had forgotten. Onwards to the Anima Sola phenomenon, the Lonely Soul awaiting deliverance…

animasola

…and the Anima Sola prayer. It was a good bus journey.

My first session that morning began with my counterpart declaring, “England is a broken soul.” He went on to raise the question of what happens to the souls who no-one remembers or cares about, and who need rescue. Coincidence? Let’s say synchronicity. The air thickened, as it does when magick is abroad.

A focused hypnogogic excursion guided me towards Hermes, herald of the gods and psychopomp, as an additional change agent needed to lead England out of this life cycle and into the next phase.

And so after a reconnaissance Gabriel and I set out one evening for a sunset procession on one of England’s old Corpse Roads. We processed from the start of the corpse road (an old coaching house) to its end (an old Norman church on an ancient site), to an improvised altar on which to fix our candle for the anthem and closing prayer. We processed for an hour as night approached, chanting the Anima Sola prayer in turn, and arrived at the church just after dark.

IMG_0226

IMG_0228

On arrival at the church we lit our candle on the altar, sang Jerusalem, said the closing prayer, put the candle out and Gabriel said “It is done.” At which point the lights came on outside the church, which had hitherto been in darkness. Plainly someone inside the church, but it was one of those moments.

It so happens that Gabriel and I were born in England, but that is not a prerquisite. Wellwishers from other parts of the British Isles, Europe and the rest of the world are welcome to help. She’s your Albion too, and she needs all the help she can get at the moment. The emphasis throughout is on the will of the ordinary citizen to affect change. It’s not going to be the politicians who get us out of this one. It never is, is it?

Things you will need

  • a candle and means to light it
  • recordings of Fanfare for the Common Man by Aaron Copland and Jerusalem by William Blake, set to music by Hubert Parry
  • Storax oil for anointing the congregation

How to do it

Congregate at the start of the Corpse Road/Ghost Road or equivalent.

The Gathering

The congregation gathers and Fanfare for the Common Man is played

The Statement of Intent

The congregation recites:

“It is our will that our Albion is healed.”

The Opening

The congregation recites:

“Albion, hear us! It is our will that you are healed through our prayers!”

Celebrant 1 reads Orphic Hymn 57 to Chthonian Hermes, Celebrant 2 anoints the People with Storax oil.

“To Hermes Khthonios, Fumigation from Storax.

Hermes I call, whom fate decrees to dwell near to Kokytos, the famed stream of Haides, and in Ananke’s dread path, whose bourn to none that reach it ever permits return.

O Bakkheios Hermes, progeny divine of Dionysos, parent of the vine, and of celestial Aphrodite, Paphian queen, dark-eyelashed Goddess, of a lovely mien; who constant wanderest through the sacred seats where Haides’ dread empress, Persephone, retreats; to wretched souls the leader of the way, when fate decrees, to regions void of day.

Thine is the wand which causes sleep to fly, or lulls to slumberous rest the weary eye; for Persephone, through Tartaros dark and wide, gave thee for ever flowing souls to guide.

Come, blessed power, the sacrifice attend, and grant thy mystics’ works a happy end.”

The Procession of the People

The congregation chants the Anima Sola Prayer as they process:

“Hear ye O Mortals, the lament of an imprisoned soul, alone and abandoned in an obscure dwelling.

O Lone Soul, a soul of peace and of war.

Soul of sea and of land, I desire that all that I have lost be returned.

O Souls, you who are alone and abandoned, I accompany you in your grief. Pity upon you I have, for I know of the grief and suffering you must endure within your harsh and long imprisonment. I offer you this prayer and glass of water because I desire to lessen your pain and quench your thirst.

Sad Soul, Alone Soul, no one calls you, I call you. No one looks for you, but I seek you out. No one loves you, but I adore you. No one remembers you, but I keep you in my heart.

I offer you this lit candle so that you may find your way into the light.

In this moment I offer to you my meritorious labour, and all that I have suffered, suffer and will suffer in this life, can never compare to yours.

I humbly pray that you finish paying for your mortal sins of the flesh so that you may find the grace of God, and be lifted from your imprisonment.

With your grace you shall be my benefactor.

Amen”

The Blessing

Celebrant 1 sets the candle on the altar, Celebrant 2 lights it. The congregation sings the anthem:

“And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon England’s mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England’s pleasant pastures seen!

And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire.
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In Englands green & pleasant Land.”

The Closing Prayer

Numbers XI.ch 29.v:

“Would to God that all the Lord’s people were Prophets.”

References

White, G. (2016) The Chaos Protocols: Magical Techniques for Navigating The New Economic Reality. Woodbury, Minnesota: Llewellyn Publications