Practical Information Magic

In the comments to my last post, Ater asks how I would go about doing practical information magic.  What, in other words, makes it different from energy work.  Ater writes:

What I’m really interested in is how one would go about doing direct/mental magic in the Information model? Why do you consider this model more useful than the others? For example, if I wanted a new camera I would sit down, relax and raise energy. I’d form this energy into a ball between my hands and I would visualize the camera I wanted inside the ball and so on. Then I would just tell the energy ball (or thoughtform) to go on its merry way and get me that camera. That’s pretty simple and straightforward. How would you go about casting this spell using the Info model?

The glib answer to your question is, you just did.   What did you imagine you were doing when you “told” the ball to do something?

The longer answer is, you have a point: my first book is not so specific about how the information model works out in practicalities.  My second book is better at that.

To see how it works, imagine that your spell failed.  You didn’t get the camera you wanted?  From an energy model perspective, the failure may have been in not raising “enough energy.”  That’s where you’d be inclined to look, if you were trained in the energy model.

From the information model perspective, you’d be more inclined to look at how you conveyed the desire.  Were you clear?  Was the channel clear?

The energy model cannot explain why we must be in a certain state of consciousness, or why we must use symbols.  But the information model can.  The state of consciousness is our channel of communication; it must be clear.  The symbols are our language; they must be shared.  Moreover, the Communicant is very good at reading us: if we don’t fully and completely want what we’re asking for, we’re less likely to get it.  None of that can be explained with the energy model.

Another place the energy model totally falls down is explaining divination.  The closest people come is talk about cards “absorbing energy” and “vibrating,” all of which strikes me as rather contrived when the obvious nature of the cards is that they’re symbols interacting in a symbol system to communicate information (well, more accurately, meaning — but that’s my next book).

The symbol of energy is a fine and dandy one.  If I wanted a camera, I’d probably do something rather similar to what you did.  But I’d think of it very, very differently.  The important bits would not be the ball of energy for me, but the symbol I used to describe the camera and my actual, real need or desire for the camera.  And if the spell didn’t work, I’d treat it as a failure in communication, not as a failure in mechanics.  (And if the spell did work, I’d say “thank you,” as one does when someone gives you something you want)

I don’t want to replace energy work or argue that those who use it are somehow not doing real magic.  I just want to point out that the information model shifts our focus to other areas of our work that we too often ignore, and it includes the energy paradigm as well.

You also mentioned that “everything is a symbol” is pretty obvious to you.  After all, you said, Aphrodite is clearly a symbol of love.  But the point I’m making is, you’re a symbol too.  Not just gods, but people, life situations, cars, music, and socks — all are symbols.  They’re all information we understand by placing into symbolic frameworks of meaning, and they all can be affected by a greater or lesser degree by magic therefore.  I don’t deny the existence of an external world: but we experience it only through symbols.  For all intents and purposes, our experience of reality is one of symbol.

I hope that clarified.  My second book goes into a bit more depth, I think, on the symbolic nature of things and stuff.  And I’m really glad that you read my book and disagreed with me.  One of my main goals is to get people talking and thinking critically about magic, not just rehashing the same old ideas.

Getting the Message

So last night I did a ritual divination to determine how I’m doing, you know, like Ed Koch but with spirits.  I invoked the HGA, then pulled out a major arcana card for each of the four worlds.  For Assiah, I got The Moon — which isn’t too terrible.  Stumbling along the path, not sure what the destination is, and potentially self-deceptive.  For Yetzirah, I got — The Moon.  Okay then.  For Briah, though, I got The Devil.  So there’s some block in the world of forms, some concept or notion chaining me down.  For Atziluth, I got Temperance, which seems pretty good, considering it’s samekh and so on, yadda yadda.

Then I went to bed and dreamed that I was lecturing my class on the City of Pyramids.  When I came home, I opened up my tool drawer and took out my wand, which split lengthwise into two pieces, both of which were soft and kind of rotten.

So, yeah.  Something’s wrong.

Via Boingboing — Who’s Minding the Mind?

The New York Times published an account of recent studies about psychological priming.  We learned about this back in college, as I recall — if you’re primed to exhibit a certain behavior, you’re more likely to do so.  Not exactly rocket science, I guess.  Still, this paragraph is interesting:

Using subtle cues for self-improvement is something like trying to tickle yourself, Dr. Bargh said: priming doesn’t work if you’re aware of it. Manipulating others, while possible, is dicey. “We know that as soon as people feel they’re being manipulated, they do the opposite; it backfires,” he said.

Yeah.  Well, maybe that’s all magic is — a way to tickle ourselves.  Still, no . . . I’ve seen magic have effects that can’t be explained by mere psychological tricks.  Even if it were all psychological, though, it’d still be darned valuable.   After all, if we prime ourselves to notice opportunities for jobs by doing a spell to get a job — the result is the same.

logofernando

logofernando

An exploration of a rather more traditional Qabalah than most people are used to. Some of this may be revolutionary; I haven’t decided yet. There does seem to be a strain of one-true-way-ism, though, in the undertow. But he’s right: this arrangement does appear more logical.

Comfy Chair

In every list of magical tools in any book ever written on magic (and yes, I’m guilty of it too), there’s a discussion of the wand, the pentacle, the cup, the dagger, the sword, the other wand, the yet other wand, the staff (which is the wand for people who go to roleplaying conventions), and so on . . . but no one ever mentions the most important magical tool of all.  The comfy chair.

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.

Pickles

I learn new things every day.  For example, I could never open jars of pickles.  I simply assumed that, for whatever reason, my hands were as weak as a little girl’s, and so pickle jars would always be an ordeal.  I could dance around a kitchen for half an hour pounding on the lid of a jar, cursing at it, muttering at it in Latin, running it under the tap, and so on.

Then someone watching me go through the Ordeal of the Pickle said “try turning the jar and not the lid.”  “If I could turn either of them,” I grumbled, “I’d have a pickle already.”  “Just try it.”

I scoffed.  After all, turning the jar and turning the lid are the same exact motion from the perspective of physics.  Einstein proved it — the movement of the jar is relative to your location of observation.  If you’re the lid, the jar turns; if you’re the jar, the lid turns.  And I didn’t see how shifting my perspective to the lid would help me open the jar.

*pop*  It opened.

I can open jars now.  Pickles, hot peppers, olives, artichoke hearts, kim chee . . . name it.  I’m sure there’s a physics-related reason for why turning the jar and not the lid works.  I’m not claiming that there’s magic in this.

Except that there is.  Every problem has two (or more) sides in conflict, and we have a tendency to focus on only one side of the problem.  Sometimes just moving our awareness to the other side of the problem can offer enough traction to solve it.

Ahh, relief; and DuQuette

I got a brace for my wrist, and it says on the box that I can type with it on, which is a partial truth. There’s still occasionally twinges when I reach for the t or the g, and q and shift are a bit scary, but I’ll live. Beats hunting and pecking, to which I was reduced these last two days.

Anyway, Sunday I went to see Lon Milo DuQuette speak in Des Plaines (Des Plaines is a suburb of Chicago, and much to the pain of those of us who know some French, it’s pronounced “dez plainez”). DuQuette spoke on the Qabalah, the Goetia, and Enochian. I found it stimulating and interesting, especially the talk on the Goetia.

I’ve always, as you know if you read my books, felt that browbeating spirits is bad form. But DuQuette regards it as a bit of a sine qua non. So I asked him about it, and he explained that the Goetic demons, at least, are creatures of nefesh (the animal soul) and so you need to “handshake” with them at first with the strong emotions of the nefesh before rising up and using the ruakh (the intellect) to communicate with them. This progression, he explained, also emulates the progression from their “fallen” state to their redeemed status. I found a lot to think about in his discussion. I’m not sure that anger and blame are necessarily the only ways to accomplish that nefesh connection, but I see his point.

He also said something that got me thinking a lot. He said when you evoke a goetic demon for, say, love, you’re saying “I’m not the kind of person love happens to. Make me that kind of person.” So, he says, you’re evoking an adventure designed to turn you into a different kind of person, one to whom love happens. It’s an interesting, if rather potentially solipsistic, idea.

We were rushed for the Enochian lecture because all the toilets in the building backed up (Chicago plumbing, oi). We did a group Enochian working; I hate working in groups of strangers. For me, magic is something a bit more intimate than sex. So mostly I sat there with a faint embarrassed stomach ache while everyone else chanted; I hope no one noticed that I was a party-pooper. My friend Eric who went with me got rather into the whole thing, though.

I think DuQuette’s forthcoming book on Enochian might be a worthy purchase. I intend to pick it up when I see it.

Where’d Bardon get his elemental breathing?

If you’ve read Bardon’s Initiation into Hermetics, you know two things:

1. Translating from the Czech into the German and then into English does not make clear or elegant prose.

and

2. Central to his system is a “pore breathing” method of bringing the elements into one’s body and consciousness.

If you’ve read Donald Michael Kraig’s Modern Magick, you probably also remember that pore breathing technique. But Kraig makes less of it than Bardon.

The thing is, once I got past Bardon’s horrid prose (which took me a long time to do — not his fault!), I recognize the utility of his method. Using the breath to absorb, through visualization (visual and tactile), elemental essences is a remarkably handy tool. It is more versatile than the Middle Pillar (which has other uses, though, as well) and one doesn’t have to be limited to elements. I’ve absorbed planetary essences, even spirit names, by visualizing them as colored lights or mists. But I wonder where he got this method from?

Could Bardon have read some Taoist books, and absorbed the idea of “colored mists” from Taoist magic?  I don’t know — I know the approximate dates that Taoist materials made their way into English (believe it or not, it was an important point in my dissertation), but I don’t know when they might have arrived in German or Czech.  Jan Fries details, as well as he can (it’s not easy, since translations of the relevant texts are few and far between even now) several such methods that resemble Bardon’s method. Or did Bardon get it, as might be more likely, from Hindu “Pranic” breathing? Either way, Bardon makes it something uniquely his own, and offered it to the Western Mystery Tradition. As techniques go, it’s one I like.

The Dilbert Blog: Affirmations

The Dilbert Blog: Affirmations

Scott Adams, author of Dilbert, writes about his experiences with affirmations.