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Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Mining the Vein

When you enjoy an artist of any kind, it is not uncommon that you go in search of their influences or related art.  In the process, you are exposed to more art and so your appreciation grows and your tastes broaden. My friend David calls this discovery process "mining the vein" and I had until today assumed it was something that literally everyone on the face of the planet does.

And then I discovered that two of my friends know nothing about David Bowie.

Okay, that's not fair - they know Labyrinth. But Space Oddity? Heroes? Life On Mars? Ziggy Fucking Stardust?!

Nope.

I'm not saying that everyone should love Bowie. You like what you like. But we're talking about some of the most influential and famous rock music in the western world, and the idea that these girls - who are seven years my junior - have not been exposed to it just blows my fucking hair back.

You look for shit similar to the shit that you love. In the days before the internet it was a little harder to trace influences, but you managed. Maybe your mother heard the cover and told you who sung the original, or your father laughed and corrected you when you asked if the Rolling Stones were dead. ("They just look that way." Thanks, Dad.) Or maybe you actually looked things up at the library. And then when we got the internet... Oh, goodness me. I remember terrible geocities pages listing goth bands that I could search for desperately at HMV and second-hand stores. There were lists of movies to see, books to read.

You found that vein and you mined it until you were exhausted, because those things never really dry up.

Even my magical practice comes from this impulse. Chaos magic in the pages of the Invisibles leads to Chaos Magic, which leads to a DisInfo guide which leads to the discovery of Rosaleen Norton.You just keep digging, and sure, you may not like everything you find and some of it is shit, but you just keep on going.

There's gold in them thar hills.


Thursday, August 13, 2015

Questions. Answers.


So I found this YouTube based quiz on Veles' blog, but I didn't give a shit about a lot of the questions and decided to just answer the fun ones.


7. What is your favorite magical tool?

The knife. Which is sort of funny, because I almost got rid of it several years ago. See, I was scaling back on a lot of stuff before I moved briefly to Ireland, and was also at a point where a lot of the stuff I had been into when I was younger seemed sort of silly. So I had this big old blade I'd bought from the House of Knives that seemed a bit too Ren Faire - I wished I'd held on to the much smaller black handled knife I'd bought instead, that would be soooo much more authentic, man. 

But you know, I kinda love it now.


8. What is a song or type of music that gets you into a witchy mood?

There's a lot so I'll give quick examples. 
Dead Can Dance type stuff. DCD and This Mortal Coil were bands I discovered around age fourteen or fifteen (on cassette!) which was about when I also started studying witchcraft. 
Fleetwood Mac.  Does this legit need explaining?
Beside You In Time by NIN. Back when I was playing with a lot of chaos magic I had this album on repeat a lot. I figured out how to do the LBRP to this song. 
Anything that sounds like the soundtrack for a 1970s devil movie. Ghost BC, Blood Ceremony, Black Widow, Goblin... fuck even like, Donovon.

When I first learned about sigil magic, I used to make sigils before we'd go out to the goth club and then fire them on the dance floor. Music is a really important part of my practice, and indeed just my life. 


16. What was your first homemade tool for your practice?

It was an altar that was a cardboard box I painted black and then painted a silver pentagram on. I kept it in my closet and we took it outside once and then the neighbours thought we were devil worshippers. Ah, the 90s.



40. Who is a past witch that has inspired you ,famous or not?

Rosaleen Norton.

 
 
41. How do you handle rejection from a fellow witch that refuses to do a reading or spell for you?

I find this question hilarious because it makes me picture like, high-school level meltdowns. "Tiffany won't cast a spell for me! THAT BITCH!"


56. What fictional witch book/screen inspired you the most?

The first were the witches in fairy stories, and then a bit later Morgan leFay in the Arthur myths. As a teenager? Nancy Downs. It might have ended badly for poor Nancy, but that bitch was the only one of the coven working on her own. She had the drive. And of course my sister and I intend to wind up as the Aunts in Practical Magic