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Saturday, June 30, 2012

M is for Music

This post is for the Pagan Blog Project.


Music possesses its own special magic. I can prove this, and I can prove this easily. Here's what you do:

Find a bunch of drunk people.
Put Journey on the stereo.
Watch all the drunk people stop what they're doing to wail, "just a small town girl... livin in a looooooooonely woooooooooooooorld..."

Presto.

Music can take a person back in time - I think everyone has a song or two that reminds them powerfully of an event, or a person, or even just a period in their life.

On a personal note, there are certainly certain albums that remind me of certain times in my life. A few of these are inextricably tied to magic for me. Probably the most amusing of these is Halo 19: the NIN album With Teeth.  This album's release coincided with my first forays into Chaos Magic and some more Ceremonial elements. I used to practice doing the Qabalistic Cross to Beside You In Time. I remember, too, walking along the railroad tracks by my then apartment and finding someone had scrawled the lyrics to "Right Where It Belongs" along the side of the tracks themselves:

What if all the world's inside of your head,
Just creations of your own?
Your devils and your Gods, all the living and the dead
And you're really all alone?

Nothing, really. Kind of adolescent. Except when you're learning exactly how fragile reality really is, it seems like the universe is sending you secret messages... and even song lyrics act as a decoder ring.

Music can lift you up or make you cry. It invigorates the soul.

I'm not going to discuss 'pagan' music, mostly because it's not a genre I would even know how to classify. Celtic music? Metal? New Age shit with dolphins? Chanting? Pan pipes? I have no idea. So rather than dissect that, I am going to instead address various ways I myself have used music as magic, and a few ideas I plan to try.

Club Trance

When I was in my twenties, I was a pretty dedicated club goer. Just about every week, you could catch me out at the Best of British night when it still existed, or at our local goth night, Skank. The latter especially was good for working magic, because industrial music it must be said is rather repetitious. The beat is heavy, the words don't matter, and you can marathon boogie until you're sweating balls and your brain shuts up. This is the perfect environment to fire sigils in. You can even make them up on the back of bar napkins or club flyers.

iPod Tarot

I've only done this once, and I'd love to do it again: you assign every card a song, and put them together in a playlist. When I did it, I only assigned the Major Arcana as that felt like a big enough project to start. Then instead of doing a traditional reading, I'd hit shuffle, ask a question, and hit play.

This is not only fun to do, but it forces you to consider the card meanings a little more closely.

Elemental Classification

Voodoo and I actually ran across this one in Gothcraft, which we were reading and mocking while looking after my mom's shop. Credit where credit is due - the idea is cool. Basically, the author suggested taking your favourite bands and classifying them by element, or taking each element and trying to find bands that seem to represent it.

If you classified a song for each element, you could have a musical quarter call.

Dance, Magic Dance

Dance as devotional seems obvious, at least to me. There are deities associated with both music and dance, and others beside who seem to appreciate the gesture. I've heard of people 'dancing their totems' - working themselves into an ecstatic state and then channelling the spirits of animals. I've both seen and tried myself aspecting deities the same way. (Aspecting being sort of like possession-lite.)

One thing I've yet to try, but plan to, is working an actual spell into a performance. If you could direct the energy of the crowd into your goal, it would be pretty spectacular. Maybe with a sigil, or a symbolic act. It's something I need to think on more.

And on that note...


Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Lust in Spaaaaace!

This Sunday is the Sin City Lust in Space event. Our friends Melody Mangler and Little Miss Risk are going to be there - modelling and preforming respectively - and probably several others that I'll drunkenly go, "omg how are yooooooooooooou?!" at.

So Voodoo and I went out today to do a little costume shopping. Voodoo is doing a sort of steampunk thing, and of course she was smart enough to draw up a sketch before we left the house. I did no such thing - I was trusting to fate that I'd find something. Really the only thing I knew I wanted was an eyepatch. The rest of the concept for my outfit was something like, "Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg meets the Borg meets Bladerunner meets steampunk space Nazi sort of... thing."

So, like I said, I was basically hoping something would work out.

After some neat hits at Deluxe Junk (there were these awesome pants that had one leg that was a corset-lace up the back - made my ass look awesome, but they were reeeeeally low cut) we popped into Deadly Couture. They had the leftovers from their 50% off sale, and hidden in there I found this shirt. For thirty bucks. And it fit my boobs. SOLD.

We stopped at Dressew and picked up some other stuff we needed, which on my case included these ultra cheap 'steampunk' goggles. I've cut them in half, painted the cheap plastic with metallic black nailpolish, and am gluing this weird metal doodlybob to the lens. With some new elastic, it will then become my fucked up cyber eyepiece.

I have a feeling by the time I finish this outfit I'll look sort of like Lady Gaga. This is not a negative. In my head, this means Voodoo is probably like, part of the rebel alliance in our galaxy, and I'm one of the baddies. I'll take pictures, natch.

No idea what's covering my ass yet, though.

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Survey Says...

Over on I Heart Pentacles, there's a nice little post answering some questions about magic/paganism etc. Being the lazy sod that I am, I've stolen them to answer myself. But again, all credit for the questions goes there, so go read the original.

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Retro.

 "I wanted to be in the Midnight Society even more than I wanted to be in the Babysitter's Club!" - conversation with Voodoo this morning.


Then and now pictures of the cast of The Craft. Saw this on Jezebel this morning. They honestly don't look much different. Not even Skeet. Witchcraft!

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Sunday Linkage

Over on Strategic Sorcery, Jason has done a neat little post about shit we shouldn't care so much about.

Gordon at Rune Soup reminds us it's Jack Parson's death day today! I learned about Parsons from the DisInfo Book of Lies years ago. Sometime after that I got drunk on free wine in an Italian restaurant (seriously, it was just on the table and neither I not my roommates paid for it) and proceeded to babble on about the Anti-Christ being a rocket scientist.

Because that is how I roll, people.

I also roll as a Sideshow Geek at Le Cabaret Du Passe. Oh yes.

I am so going to love being old.

I can't remember if I've posted my love for Advanced Style here before.

So I'll do it now. Best fashion blog ever.

L is for Let It Go

"Let it go man, shop class was a long time ago! It's over!"
- Mike, MST3K (Why Study Industrial Arts)

I don't hold grudges, generally speaking. I have a wicked temper, but it's the sort where I get extremely angry, but can be melted by a heartfelt apology. I'm the sort of person who will give others a second chance. And a third. Mmmmmaybe a fourth.

MARTY PUT DOWN THAT SPORTS ALMANAC!
What I do hold onto, however, is every single stupid fucking thing I wish I'd done differently. I sometimes find myself remembering events from grade school with genuine embarrassment and regret. If Doc Brown stepped out of a fucking Delorean in those moments and was like, "hop in!" I probably really would ask him to take me back to 1992 so I could tell little!me "YOUR JEGGINGS ARE ON BACKWARDS, GIRL! DON'T GO TO SCHOOL LIKE THAT!"

I think everyone has certain things they have a difficult time getting out of their minds.  Normally, it's just a minor annoyance (barring some kind of serious neurosis anyway) and it won't do anything except waste your time.

Unless you can't let go of things when you do magic.

One of the first things that was impressed upon me as a young witch was the need to put spells right the hell out of your mind as soon as you were done casting them. The reason for this can best be summed up using art as an example: every artist knows that when you're working on a piece there comes a point where if you keep fiddling with it, you'll fuck it up. For whatever reason, this seems to apply to certain types of magic too.

Sigils are perhaps the best example of 'set it and forget it' magic. The sigil is constructed, charged, fired... and that's it. It is recommended by pretty much every article or book on chaos magic written to date that as soon as you are done firing that thing you should distract your brain with something else. The same basic idea applies to pretty much any kind of spell that's not designed to be worked over a longer period of time.

Spells that are a longer working - like candle magic that can't be done in one evening - obviously can't quite be put out of mind in the same manner. Still, they seem to work best if while the candle is being worked you pray over it or charge it... and then forget about it when you're not consciously doing anything with it.

Regardless of the type of spell, it is important to let go of the outcome of the spell once it's done. Essentially once you cast that spell you've lobbed a ball across the grand tennis court of the universe... and you have to wait for it to hit it back. Obsessing over it just seems to function like yelling obscenties at the other tennis player.

The other thing every magician has to learn about letting go is very, very simple: sometimes you have to give up. There are times when you're hellbent on getting a particular result, and you work towards that goal with spell after spell after spell... this can be an endless cycle. And that, like wanting to steal the Delorean to spare your eleven-year-old self some teasing, is a waste.

When you are doing magic, a time limit can be an invaluable thing. Before you even begin your working, set a firm date. This tactic is something I've heard repeated on the Lucky Mojo Hoodoo Rootwork Hour, and it's damn solid advice. When you're in the grip of some obsessive desire, you're often not approaching things in a sane manner. People can and have wasted YEARS on a goal that clearly just wasn't about to be obtained. Don't be that guy.

You have to learn when to let go.


This was another post for the Pagan Blog Project.

Saturday, June 9, 2012

L is for Living Magically

 The observant will notice I missed last week's PBP. This is because I was at the Burlesque Hall of Fame weekend in Las Vegas. There will be a post on that (possibly several) but for right now, simply know that when my sibling and I walked out of YVR airport we both inhaled the damp Pacific Northwest air and sighed with relief. "It's shitty weather!" we cried happily.

The day after our return home, we were unpacking and generally just acclimating to not having to put on false eyelashes while downing dollar margaritas. At some point I turned to Voodoo and said, "you know, it's a relief to be back where all my fucking witch supplies are!" She laughed and agreed.

I didn't even bring a deck of cards with me to BHOF. (This is actually genius strategy if you don't want to wind up doing drunken readings in a hotel hallway at five am.) I certainly didn't bring candles or powders. These things aren't necessary for magic, but you do sort of get used to having them on hand for when drama erupts.

The exact context I've forgotten, but a while back something or other happened, and I said to my sister, "oh, we'll do such and such - let me get the rosemary" or something to that effect. I remember though that I paused and looked at her, and said, "...dude, do you ever wonder what NORMAL people do in these situations?" And she shrugged, baffled.

It's become a joke, now. One of us will go for the spell cupboard and do our very best Tommy Tiernan impression, shouting, "I have no idea what the rest of you do with your fuckin time!"

This isn't to get all witchier-than-thou on your asses. It's more that in the past year I've come to the realisation that somewhere along the line magic stopped being a special thing to me. I've been practising, off and on, for something like fifteen years. That means I am old. It also means I've gone through phases of intense study and utter boredom - I think a lot of people who don't join covens or lodges wind up doing much the same: you fall into a rut, and start fishing about for anything new and sparkly to reignite your interest. Some of the sparklies stick, others don't, and you generally putter along because you're clearly too stupid to give up on magic entirely.

Well. I'm here to tell you that if you putter along long enough, there will come a day when you go on vacation and realise you've spent nearly a week without making a floorwash, talking to dead people, lighting candles, or reading a fortune... and it feels fucking weird.

And this is the goal for my fifties.
When I was younger I felt living a magical life was something you worked hard at. Because things were so fresh and new, it was almost overwhelming - I wanted to be a witch, dammit! Not later. Now! I wanted people to have a problem and all I would say, "aha, let me check my spell book my dear, and I will give you this candle and these herbs" like they did in books and the movies.

The reality involves more gin, but other than that it seems I've accidentally achieved my adolescent dream.

I do not rise each day and greet the four directions. I don't have a cat. I don't make a conscious effort to be witchy at home or at the office or even on stage. But shit creeps in. A thousand small details that I don't generally stop to think about, each of them magical in nature.

That is what I think living magically is: when you get to the point where you're just living, and magic is as natural as breathing, as ingrained as putting on the coffee when you wake up.

And it's shockingly attainable. I think most of you know that already, huh?