The trick for me talking to Angus or others is to be relaxed, meditative, and calm—I must set aside my mental distractions. Then he is right there. Well enough to talk to.
The first thing about alamûri is to ask questions. Questions suggest paths towards answers. Or at least good questions do. We have to ask questions and seek after answers. We have to situate ourselves within the contexts we find ourselves within.
Angus asks, “Where are you?”
I answer at first, “Caught within a web of associations, obligations…” (I note “within”)
He stops me after a moment. I am limiting myself and allowing negativity to narrow my answer. “Incarnate on an Earth-Realm.”
I need to determine the outlines, the contours of my life story here—answer some questions—and, I realize, recall, that I have an ensemble. So many faces incarnated again and again, associations of people, dramatis personae—I’m not alone.
But narrative adaptability has always been a strength of the _______. The sidhe. Awareness is the first thing to achieve. Maintain wholeness of Self.
And beware the Demons/Thoughtforms—Angus says the ___ ____ is far subtler and far more prevalent here than most want to admit. They work, I think, to reproduce Hell and soul death/shaping in many worlds.
So, y’know, fuck them. They want us to need. It subjects us to these kinds of Ideas.
And this world, this 21st century Earth Realm—is far more meta-narrative and layered and mercurial in these regards re: story than the ___. That makes it dangerous, mutable, and also full of potentiality. But there’s a reason the Thought-Daemons are everywhere.
* * *
Carroll’s ideas of kia are pertinent, and I should go examine his ideas in more detail. His dualistic thinking is shockingly Enlightenment/Judeo-Christian-Islamic. Not particularly chaotic. See also his ideas of the aetheric, chaos, and so forth. Carroll is very much Crowley and c.m.-derived where Hine is pomo, aesthetics-driven. But see also liberation as well as unity—and his [Carroll’s] ideas regarding iconoclasm, heresy, etc., have political and aesthetic applications.
Carrolls’s notion of kia—that will and perception are not distinct, we only think they are—is interesting and useful, a version of my conception-perception view. He views their union a resolution of human duality and monadic unity, with kia the magical will and soul fragment of the greater cosmic soul (Atman, Brahman, _____).
Kia is the avatar from a MtA POV, the eternal uplink, clouded from the ego by the “petty identifications” we attach to it.
Interestingly, I thought about this, tangentially, yesterday while strolling. “Where are we?” I asked myself. Then I wondered why I constructed myself then as “we” rather than “I” or “you” or even “he.” We all have a tendency to instantiate the self as an other, sometimes a multitudinous others, as we consider our various selves/ego constructs. Carroll points to what theorists and Lacan have already pointed to: that pronoun is a linguistic construct, an arbitrary trick of grammar. Kia is the deferred TS that “I” gestures towards.
Magic, C says, involves giving kia “more freedom” and “flexibility,” or more accurately, working to uncloud our current perception/conception of kia to allow us to tap into our magical will.
Chaos, in turn, is the motive/causal force of reality, that which spurs, energizes, causes. It is not simple cause and effect, but the convoluted chain, webs, and networks of agents, causes, incidents, and so forth that create events. It is causality via chaos theory and complexity. C says that between Chaos—unlimited potentiality and therefore all potentiality—and the “Real” there are the “aetheric” realms. This is a partly mental, partly aesthetic, partly virtual, partly spirit reality of potential events that may actualize. Between Chaos and mind, Aether represents possible/often likely outcomes. This is the level at which magic attempts to imagine events for actualization, but they compete against the Consensus and paradigmal limitations. My interpretation of C is MtA in nature in that “coincidental” or “covert” magics have an easier time actualizing. Especially if the mage does not contradict his/her will along the way. This is an aesthetic level of reality (imago?).
Liberation he ties to theatricality and masking and performance. Do not be confined to one or a narrow range of activities. “Weaken the hold of society, convention, and habit…lead to a more expansive outlook.”
Destroy the sacred—sacrilege
Alternative definitions—heresy
Break images—iconoclasm
Control over one’s body—biopolitics and sovereign subject
Self-destruction—anathemaism
Avatar awareness/kia awareness via “Augoeides”
He frames this world as a labyrinth/maze, but I think desert is also appropriate.