Travel Magic
Settle in: I’m going to talk about travel magic, the unconscious layers of my recent trip, and Saint Teresa’s The Interior Castle. … Continue reading…Travel Magic
Jail-breaking Machiavelli 3: Every Person a Star
Every man and every woman is a star. —The Book of the Law Something happened on the day he died Spirit rose a metre then stepped aside Somebody else took his place, and bravely cried (I’m a blackstar, I’m a blackstar) —David Bowie, “Blackstar” Sovereignty has been a topic I’ve seen mentioned quite often […] … Continue reading…Jail-breaking Machiavelli 3: Every Person a Star
Exorcising Neo-Platonism 4: Sigils, Spirits, Practical Enchantment
I’ve done the odd sigil in the past, and of late, I’ve been doing a lot more. Hell, when I restarted my practice after a long hiatus, I had started doing some practical enchantment, back in 2013-4. Stumbling towards Practical Enchantment At that time, I saw it more in terms of prayer for getting some […] … Continue reading…Exorcising Neo-Platonism 4: Sigils, Spirits, Practical Enchantment
Weird Sisters, Political Theater
I’m going to talk about corrupting sorcery here, I suppose. I really don’t want to use terms like black magic or nigromancy or anything like that because there’s too much uncritical cultural baggage there. And I’m going to get at this through the Scottish Play. In Macbeth, the play mediates and frames how we experience […] … Continue reading…Weird Sisters, Political Theater
[NB: Theater, Memory, Glamour, Art, Magic]
Memory tools were a way to access a kind of guided active imagination. Men would stare at sigils & chant mantras to “remember” occult & mundane knowledge, with goetic style spirits acting almost like mediating agents or as the intelligence of the sigil & the world it pointed to. And this libido sciendi & active imagination’s synchronistic effects makes Giordano Bruno very occult & magical. And Fludd & Camillo both began a series of “memory theater” systems. Now, these techné also could teach & convey knowledge, establishing vivid scenes & images on a stage seems to encourage internalizing & memorizing them— … Continue reading…[NB: Theater, Memory, Glamour, Art, Magic]
Light, Shadow, Darkness (3)
My mentor framed transfiguration as an action often occurring in art, wherein otherwise mundane events were transformed in a way to lend them significance and meaning, rendering them, as I would term it now, as enchanted. He framed this process as akin to a ray of light infusing the otherwise mundane experience or object. … Continue reading…Light, Shadow, Darkness (3)
Light, Shadow, Darkness (2)
This process we know better as the way a lens (here the soul) refracts light into a form useful to our desires. The general mental faculties Bruno points to fall under, yes, what we these days might call intelligence but which also include the imagination–the ability to form images (image-ination). … Continue reading…Light, Shadow, Darkness (2)
Directionality, Enclosure, Space
After a point, I also began asking myself why directions matter in the first place. And as I pondered these questions, a constellation of ideas began to coalesce. Those ideas include sacred space, enclosure, and ultimately disenchantment & disciplinary discourse. … Continue reading…Directionality, Enclosure, Space
Body, Fetch, Talker, God Soul, and: Part 5: Reweaving Talker
Talker as a talker uses language, uses stories, and we use stories to assemble Talker. (Really, Talker assembles Talker from stories.) Some folks like to say Fetch likes symbols, and they mean sigils, visual symbols, things like that—but Talker loves textual symbols, words, stories, and more. Of course, I’m not saying anything peculiar to esotericism. […] … Continue reading…Body, Fetch, Talker, God Soul, and: Part 5: Reweaving Talker
Bruno, Space, Art
____ was considering mortality and what comes afterwards and he was willing to consider certain notions in abstract, he’s stubbornly dismissive of non-normative, non-consensus phenomenon. Potentiality decreases over the course of a life time, and death is an end to one’s potentiality (beyond this point only actuality lies). (Of course, be sure of one’s commitments.) […] … Continue reading…Bruno, Space, Art