A video of a Welsh actor reading “Taliesin”

Here’s a video clip of Welsh actor Ioan Gruffudd reading one of the “Taliesin” poems.  “Taliesin” is the name given to a Welsh bard and cultural hero.  He’s also an archetype for the transforming sorcerer and the protean bard.  The clip is in Welsh, with subtitles.

Part I, Part II

Overall, this is a good example of an incantation.  Taliesin identifies himself not just as the master of secrets, but as the metaphor itself — he has been all of these things, and all of these things are Taliesin.  Taliesin identifies himself as the “is” in metaphor.

Rigorous Intuition

An interesting post on Rigorous Intuition.  I particularly like the quote from George Hanson, whom pretty clearly I need to read more of:

It is commonly assumed that there is a simple, objective correspondence between the signifier and the signified even thought they are separate entities. It is assumed that language is only a set of names for things, events, and concepts. These assumptions are incorrect, but few recognize the extent of the implications. This lies at the heart of deconstructionism, and magic.

Natural Semantic Primitives

I find this theory that all meaning can be broken down into 61 semantic primitives — atoms of thought, if you will — intriguing.

I’m not sure this theory is about language, so much as it is about thought, however.  Could it be that we conceive of only sixty-one main ideas?

More interestingly, it’s about culture — it seems a clever tool for unpacking meaning, and whether these 61 words are the atoms of thought or not, it’s a handy algebric notation for trying to undertand a complex concept.

I’m tempted to try my hand at it.  Keeping in mind, of course, that I haven’t really read much of the theory in any formal sense, just surfed the page and glanced at a few articles at this point, so I’m probably doing it wrong.

Magic=

I want something to happen.

I do something like this thing.
This thing happened because I did something.

But something’s wrong there, I think.  Because this script could work for lots of things.  I mean, it could work for writing a letter.

I want to say something.

I cannot say something.

I do something like saying something.

Or it could work for superstition.  Or any number of other ideas.  What is it about magic that makes it not superstition and not writing a letter or acting in a play or doing some other symbolic action?

And of course each paradigm of magic would write a different script.  For example, the spirit paradigm:

I want something.

I say words to something/ something does not have a body/ something does not live/ something thinks.

Something makes something happen.

Or the energy paradigm:

I want something

I move something/ something often does something/ something does not live/ something does not think/ someone cannot touch something/ something is inside all things/ because of this, things happen.

This something makes something happen.

I’m sure I’m doing this wrong, but it is sort of revealing.  After all, the closest I can come to the energy paradigm makes me wonder if this isn’t just the same as the spirit paradigm.  I wonder if we boil down all paradigms to primitive semantic units, we might not find that they’re all the same.

I might have to pick up her books.

Done!

Done, finished, over with. Now, I just need to prepare the submission package and mail it out.

In case you’re wondering what submitting a book for publication looks like (hey, people have actually asked me, which is weird, cause not even *I* care), it looks like this.

1. Choose a publisher. This is easy if you’ve published before, because you need to offer your old publisher first dibs. If they don’t want it, you can send it, and all following books, anywhere you like. If you have an agent, you send it to him or her instead, and he or she decides where to send it. But occult nonfiction isn’t often agented, so I’m agentless.

2. Write a cover letter. Mine looks a bit like this: “I’m a writer, poet, and occultist living near Chicago.” My biggest question is always, do I mention I’m a professor as well? I am hesitant to do this, because it’s unethical to sell books based on one’s expertise in academia if those books have nothing to do with one’s expertise. For example, if I had a Ph.D. in, I don’t know, physical therapy, and tried to market myself as Dr. Patrick offering psychological advice to people, I’d be a liar and a fraud and probably rather wealthier than I am. Similarly, adding a Ph.D. to the end of your name and mentioning in the book that it stands for something stupid like “Practically Hilarious Druid” or something is also deeply dishonest. So the Ph.D. stays where it belongs: the classroom. Still, I do make cops call me “Doctor,” but that’s just because it’s fun.

3. Write a summary. This is a chapter by chapter rundown. I’m just cutting and pasting the last half of the introduction, for this.

4. Write a list of indexing terms. Here’s an archaic thing that some publishers still require. You go through the book quickly like a bunny, writing down all the terms that would appear in an index. This takes hours. You alphabetize the list, and send it with the book. When it arrives, it’s carefully separated from the submission package and used to wrap fish. No one ever mentions an index again, although the contract mentions that the author pays for it if anyone does.

5. Write a table of contents. Easy as pie.

6. Write a bit on the market. Point out that nothing like your book exists on the market (partially because most people probably know better than to try to write something like this), point out that you have skill and knowledge most people don’t (most of it involves stuff the book isn’t about, but that’s beside the point), mention that you are a great public speaker (I am, but even if you’re not, don’t worry about it — no one will ever ask you to speak), mention that you have various plans for promotion and would be glad to collaborate with your publicity guy. The publicity guy might even email you. But only once. Don’t worry about it: it’s part of the nature of the beast at every publishing house on Earth, as far as I can tell.

7. Mention that you maintain a blog and that it’s not quite as popular as those dancing babies were a few years ago, but is at least as popular as the guy who dresses up like Peter Pan. Actually, no, it’s not even that popular — and do you know how that makes me feel?

8. Wait about a year.

How Magic is Like Literature

W. H. Auden, I think it was, said “Poetry, after all, makes nothing happen.” Except, of course, that it does. Hemingway’s fiction shaped how a century saw masculinity and femininity, power and powerlessness, choice and weakness. People made decisions, changed their lives, and acted differently because of Hemingway, but in no way that could be quantified or predicted. Similarly, when I do a spell for — let’s say — money, I am causing change in the world, but in no way that I can predict. I only know that the outcome is likely to be that I’ll get money from an unexpected source. I don’t know how or why.

Obviously, in the case of literature, the chain of cause and effect is clear from retrospect, or at least, clear-ish.  The chain of cause and effect in magic is less clear.  Maybe I do a spell, and it makes spirits do something that causes me to get money.  Or maybe I do a spell, and it makes some sort of magical energy move and do something.  It’s always that chewy nougat center that our magical theories are trying to fill.

Verbal/Graphical

I picked up Alexander Roob’s Alchemy & Mysticism. It’s largely a collection of plates from various periods in history illustrating alchemical and mystical theories. What’s striking about the book — and this isn’t a judgment of its quality — is that the textual explanations pale against the effect of the graphics. It makes me think about the ways that we organize information.

In the middle ages, paper was expensive, books were expensive, and (although this is secondary, I think) literacy wasn’t widespread. The graphical representation of information, therefore, was common, from stained glass depicting saints’ lives, to alchemical texts illustrating complex procedures with allegorical drawings. We now find this a remarkably inefficient way to organize information, but it’s exactly the opposite — it’s incredibly efficient. Reading it, however, requires different sets of codes.

For example, we have to recognize that up is often far, and down is often close — processes frequently move up the page, rather than down as we might expect. Our preference for left over right is irrelevant, largely. The center is still privileged. Smallness indicates minor information, not distance in space. Largeness indicates important information, not closeness in space.

The codes all changed with the invention of text. Engraving images and text together was a bit of a chore (Blake’s dead brother taught him a method from beyond the grave, for example — that tells you something of how difficult a task it was). So there’s a stronger reliance on text than image, and the codes change. Coincidentally, we also develop the new graphical codes — the “realistic” codes of forced perspective and so on.

Now, we have a third revolution on our hands — image and text interacting in a completely free environment. We have yet to invent or codify our codes for interpreting information in this new medium.

Also, these graphic representations have a different effect on consciousness. The information doesn’t arrive linearly, as with text, nor in binary pairs, as with language. It arrives in threes, fours, groups, clusters, and — while there’s a tendency for the eye to move along certain lines — slightly differently for each person.

I sometimes wonder if a graphical representation of the principles of magic is not only preferable, but necessary.

Conlanging — words to conjure with

I got me the conlanging bug again. I’m toying with a language whose lexicon is created through glossolalia, but I’m not sure exactly how to do it. I was thinking of just recording myself speaking in tongues, grabbing the Swadesh list, and assigning lexemes willy nilly. Another possibility is “translating” a text — but that’ll likely lead to soup.

The other thing I’m toying with — maybe it’ll end up related — is an ideographic writing system. I toy with such things on and off. Supposedly they’re impossible, but Blissymbolics seems to work. Of course, that’s not perfectly ideographic, it strikes me. But a magical language, with a much smaller domain, could get by with even fewer basic forms and make use of shortcuts Bliss could never manage. For example, if you have one symbol for metal, you could combine the planetary symbols to create glyphs for the seven planetary metals. The goal here would be to create a language to note down not just sentences of desire but also theoretical ideas, showing the relationship between them more clearly than with alphabetic words.

Wonder if there’s a way to post a sample of it here, once I figure it out . . .

Reality is Discourse

We can think of our interactions with the physical world as a conversation, in which the sensory input is like the arbitrary symbols of language, and our conclusions about the world are like our interpretations of linguistic symbols. If I touch a tree, the rough feel of the bark is just data before the senses, but I find that sensation pleasant, I remember other trees, I think about trees, I imagine a forest. Similarly, when I say “I’ll have a double Americano please,” I’m simply making sounds with my mouth that have no real relationship to the ideas they express, in the hopes that the person hearing it will imagine coffee drinks, imagine shots of espresso, imagine the idea of two-ness, and so on.

Imagining reality as discourse can help us break out of heavily ingrained patterns of thinking about our observations. Just as we think about what a person has said to us and what it might “mean,” we also might begin to wonder what our experiences “mean.” This act can have startling effects. In its simplest form, it is to imagine that one is reading omens in the flight of birds, random sounds, and so on. I remember once that a long period of silent prayer in a park was interrupted by someone on their cell phone walking by, saying “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you. I know it’s hard now, but it’ll get easier.” I took it as a direct response to my prayer.

We can also take this farther. Just as in analyzing poetry and verbal art, we imagine “what could this mean?” and don’t stop when we have just one answer, we can watch our reactions to events and try to interpret them differently. For example, next time you see someone who looks “weird” – funny hair, or piercing – or, if you’re like me, the next time you see someone who looks “normal” – suit, tie, and so on – imagine what other interpretations you can offer. Maybe the man with a mohawk is a social worker dressed to appeal to his clients; maybe he’s going to a costume party; maybe he’s a Native American reclaiming his culture. The man with a suit might be an artist going to a gallery showing – what might his art look like? Or maybe he’s a woman in drag – what’s her life like? This exercise helps break us out of One Single Interpretation Syndrom. It helps cure prejudice, and also it makes long waits for the bus more bearable.

Language, Friend or Foe?

I’m working on my next book, an exploration of the use of language in or as magic. Last night I had one of “those” dreams. It was presented in the form of a fairy-tale or teaching story.

Originally, the dream said, we all spoke the same language, and got whatever we wanted, because that language completely and perfectly reflected reality. (This bit, of course, sounds like the Babel story) At some point, however, we realized that getting everything we wanted or spoke about was often a bad thing. Just imagine how often you’ve said something you’ve regretted. So we decided, mutually, to change language so that it didn’t always reflect ultimate reality. We put little traps in language to prevent it from being used for magic acccidentally.

Neat, eh? Well, I thought so. Might run with the idea, turn it into a chapter if it seems to hold water. It adds some interesting ambiguity to the book, anyway, if I can explore the ways language can do magic as well as the ways it can derail it.