Beginners Magic: A Guide

(Correspondence with the fabulous Miss Twist, whose magical site you can find here, in regards to magic and mysticism and things.)

Magic, then.

New, are you? Don't know Crowley from Carroll? Couldn't tell me the difference between a pentagram and a pentacle, but too afraid to ask? Unsure as to whether or not 'demons' and 'gods' are just simple words for complex psychological processes, or exactly what you think they mean? What's a grimoire?

You just don't know, do you?

Well, guess what. We don't want you here. Fuck off. Go take of football or a community art class or something simple. If you don't already know, we're most certainly not going to tell you, so just give up and piss right off.

...

That is, in a nutshell, the typical reaction most occult communities have to novice magicians. It is a threatening and elitist environment where the youth of new ideas is shunned, not nurtured. Advanced magicians, you'd think, are much too important for silly things like teaching and giving advice. They had to learn from dusty old books and word of mouth, so why shouldn't everyone else?

This, in reality, is the first initiation. Figure out where to start practicing magic, and how to do it without burning your fingers off. Books can be good, but how many actually teach proper - by my lofty standards, anyway - magic? Not a lot. A handful. There are thousands of '101 White Witch Spells for Fortune, Success and Happiness' out there, but that's not what you need. You don't need one hundred and one spells. You need to learn how to craft your own, how to project them into the world, how to succeed as a magician and an occultist.

Most books, then, are out. But not all of them. A few extremely good ones have been published, and luckily enough these are relatively easy to get a hold of. For general background information on various occult practices, allow me to suggest Richard Cavendish's superb (if limited, it was written before the occult revival of the sixties) The Black Arts. If you're interested in the simple core mechanics of magic, take Peter Carroll's Liber Null and Psychonaut. For an easy introduction into Chaos Magic, you can't beat Phil Hine's Condensed Chaos, though if you want to go for a more ceremonial bent I can't recommend Donald Kraig's Modern Magick highly enough.

That's four books. Pretty easy, right? Not a lot. And you don't have to buy all of them, or any of them, if you don't want. Online, Grant Morrison's great introduction to sorcery, Pop! Magic, can be viewed freely. Phile Hine also has the free Oven-ready Chaos available for download.

(Don't bother trying to study any of Crowley's work. A lot of what he did was good, but more of it was crap, and he wrote in an amazingly obtuse fashion. The only one I can honestly recommend to a novice is Magick Without Tears, which I would recommend reading. You can study Crowley when you master the basics.)

Fuck everyone else. Help is good, yes, and you can't beat a good online community's shared wisdom. The problem is.. most occult communities out there are shit. If you really, really want to have a stab out of it, Liminal Nation
is the only place I'd honestly suggest to go and have a look at. There are others, I suppose, but it's really not worth the strife. That cliche, in the Conan movies and whatnot, that sorcerers are power-mad beings? It's true in a lot of cases. Most magicians will either want to fuck you or fuck with you, and neither will do you much good. As your studies advance in magic, you'll find like-minded people to work with.

Paths? Traditions? Styles? Oh, there are plenty. I'm a practitioner of Chaos Magick, which essentially means that I choose to drop and keep as I see fit the traditional trappings of sorcery, adding my own when I need to. Chaos Magick is more of a meta-tradition that places emphasis on exploring and messing around with the other traditions. Variety, as they say, is the spice of life. There are others: Thelemic, Crowley's complex and religious-orientated magical system, for one; Pagan, another religious-focused one which really depends on what deity you worship (I don't know enough about this aspect of the craft to comment further, sorry); Enochian, which is scary and complex and batshit crazy with maths and things. There are lots of choices. I deal mostly with Ceremonial stuff - demon-summoning, elemental manipulation, etc. - and it's a little scary but a deeply rewarding path.

Right. Now onto the stuff you should be doing in addition to following the guidelines of those texts. Firstly, it's vital that you master a banishing technique. Most people would suggest you'd try and master the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram (LBRP), as it's been the standard for a hundred years, but it's a very complicated one to begin with. It also suffers from the fact that it's heavily Judaic-Christian, and if you're not a Jew or a Christian you probably won't appreciate the imagery as much as you could. I'd suggest the Gnostic Pentagram Ritual (GPR), which uses simple imagery and a generic mantra set. not tied to any faith. I personally use the GPR on a daily basis. The purpose of a banishing is so that you can cleanse yourself, earth yourself, and ward yourself from all the nasty stuff magic attracts.

Pagans and Wiccans have different ways of banishing things, but I'm not entirely sure what exactly those ways are, and so I'm not going to comment on them. Hell, I'm not even sure who to direct you to for advice in this matter, but the one person that springs to mind is the lovely Charlie Twist. She's very knowledgeable and good with beginners, so if you're leaning towards a more pagan-y wiccan-y style, send her a message on her magic blog here.

Okay. Do the banishing as often as you can. You'll start to remember it quickly. Don't worry if you're horrible to begin with - everyone is. After that, you're going to want to pick up a random system of divination. You want it random so that you can learn how to meta-divine - how to divine with anything, spoons or bottle caps or whatever - and I'd suggest picking up the Tarot for this purpose. Go with the Rider-Waite deck, or with anything based in the Golden Dawn system (78 cards, 22 major arcana and 56 minor arcana, coins/cups/wands/swords, most decks are based in the GD system), simply because the symbolism found within these decks becomes more relevant the more you study the occult. You might want to check out the I Ching or the Runes as well.

Divine for your friends and family. Read as many times as you can. You'll start to get a solid feel for your system, and you'll find that you're having some amazing successes. Remember, though: divination isn't fortune-telling. It doesn't really concern itself about the future; it deals with the present, with projected futures and remembered pasts. It will tell you more about yourself and your surroundings then you ever guessed at, but it's difficult to coax a Tarot deck into giving you the numbers for next week's lottery.



Work with divination and banishing for a small while and then give sigils a shot. Sigils are powerful symbols which capture the will and send it flying into the universe. Sigils are many a magician's first 'real' magical work; the first time they truly feel like they're affecting the universe with their will. There is a great guide for making sigils in the Pop! Magic guide above, as well as in Liber Null and Oven-Ready Chaos. There is a good guide here, too. Practice sigils often. You'll be amazed at your results; nothing will prove to you more that magic is real and that it truly works.

Once you've begun to understand divination, sigils and banishing, you should be well on your way to becoming a full-fledged practicing magician. If you picked up any of those books, they'll tell you where to go on from here; the websites, too, will. The only further advice that I will give you is, if you haven't already, take up a creative art; writing is good, and so is painting and drawing. Music, too, if you're composing. Creativity is the true essence of magic; freedom of thought is the vital force behind both.

Keep a magical diary. Many magicians will stress the importance of this. Record when and what you do, magically; record your moods and your readings; record your feelings of deja vu and synchronicity; record your dreams and desires. Draw sigils. Write in it daily.

Don't be scared to play around with magic. A general rule of thumb: when you're good enough to seriously endanger yourself using magic, you'll be good enough to stop it. You will, however, almost undoubtedly unclog all of the psychic shit that's been hiding in your brain, and you'll suffer more astral grazes than you'd care to admit. Don't worry about it. It's all part of the fun. It's like anything; people get hurt skateboarding all the time, right?

Practice magic as often as you can.

Good luck. If you have any more questions, don't hesitate to send me an email at natfrobinson@gmail.com.

- Nathaniel Robinson / Frater Victatio

Ahahaha

For those of you interested, I have a new blog for creative writing and stuff. It can be found here and is more like an online notepad than anything, but give it a look if you're curious.

This blog will not slow down (anymore than it already has) or die; The Pen and Paper is only there so I can have a place to dump my writing, which I write regardless anyway.

The Twist: Custom Divinatory Decks

(Another correspondence post with the literally enchanting Miss Twist.You might read her stuff here
, if you had any sense: it's like internet gold!)

The pack resembles, very loosely, the conventional Tarot pack; the cards are the same size, the card stock is just as sturdy, the images just as esoteric. The backs of the cars are blank black. This is the strange beast known as the NATHANIEL FRANCIS ROBINSON WONDER PACK, designed to bring out the bizarre diviner within.

There are three sets of arcana in the deck: the Sorcerer's Arcana, which consists of ten cards, the Rigid Arcana, which consists of twenty-three, and the Flowing Arcana, which consists of thirty-four. Together there are sixty-four cards. The deck is tied to the sixty-four hexagrams of the I-Ching, but not in a way that you'd expect.

Draw the cards yourselves, using your own wacked symbolism, or work with a partner. Creation is the greatest form of divination.

THE SORCERER'S ARCANA

The first ten cards - the Sorcerer's Arcana - depict ten archetypal magicians of the Universe keyed in with famed sorcerers and the ten mystical sephiroth of the Qabalistic Tree of Life. These ten cards might be seen to represent a magician's career, or individual aspects of a person's life, or anything at all. Two Sorcerer's Arcana mean a crossroads; three mean that the deck wasn't shuffled properly.

1. The first card is YOU ARE THAT YOU ARE, and represents the all-powerful Ipsissimus within every pathetic try-hard goth. It is tied with the sphere of Kether, and is the ultimate potential within every individual. It is a timeless - aeonless - creature, the culmination of every great magical theory and every brilliant mathematical formula. There will be a chance at finding one's true potential, or a glimpse of it; the very glimpse is enough for most people to truly become happy in their lives.

2. The second card is MERLINUS AMBROSIUS, and represents the power of stories as the fuel that drives mankind. It is the energy on which the motor of humanity runs, and is tied with Binah. It is forever mutable - forever changing - and the magician of whom it is named after is more fiction than truth himself - or is it the other way around? It is the duality of good and evil; two concepts which shape mankind eternally. This card represents a powerful motivation, an irrepressible current, that drives the individual towards their destiny.

3. The third card is THE WICKEDEST MAN IN THE WORLD, and represents the power of action. It is the motor of humanity. It is Chokmah, and represents things as they are objectively - ultimately unknowable. Good and evil are the same face of the same coin, and humanity will never know the other face. It is about cleverness; the essence of magic, being good at everything you try, sucking in new experiences. It is named after the most debated magician in history, the greatest black sorcerer and purest white witch, who was ultimately neither and both. It represents decisiveness and conscious working towards change for the better.

4. The fourth card is THE KING WITH A CROWN OF THORNS, and represents kindness and action without a cause; the Tao. It represents Chesed, and in a lesser capacity actions with cause - revolutions, the fury of thorns, being among them. It is named after a magician considered by most to be a messiah, or a liar; it might be proposed that he is both. He is the first, regardless. This card represents sacrifice, completely random coincidences - that are actually just that, coincidences, and nothing more - and charity.

5. The fifth card is THE ADVERSARY IN LIGHT, and represents judgment, punishment, concealment and the sacred. The sacred is most traditionally hidden; our greatest adversaries are ourselves. Is it a coincidence that the greatest enemy of Christianity is an angel? Or that it's greatest saviour was crowned with a ring of thorns? This card is Gevurah. Our friends punish us and our enemies reward us. It is the nature of the world. This card represents the duality in all things, and should be seen more as a brother to the fourth card than an opposite.

6. The sixth card is THE LAUGHING PHOENIX, and represents synchronicity, spirituality, kindness, rebirth, and the center of all things. Some might claim it represents Jesus Christ, or Ra, or the Buddha, while others may align it to many other deities; it is the deity within the deity, the Russian doll of apotheostic dreams. Simply being the greatest isn't great, however; one must understand why they are great, and that is the truest failing of THE LAUGHING PHOENIX who cackles when it dies and sobs quietly when it is reborn. This card is Tiphereth the weak and mighty.

7. The seventh card is THE PREACHER OF WEALTH, and represents personal loyalty, leadership, the conclusion of goals, and powerful causes. The Preacher is a powerful figure who shares wisdom only when his flock is ready for it; he is the dispenser of spiritual wealth. This card is Netzach, and understands that all groups cannot succeed without the power of a good leader - nevertheless, most groups die due to the failings of the one chosen for the role. The Preacher, unlike his brother Shaman, does not need to create and destroy to find wisdom; he only needs to accept the gifts that come naturally to him.

8. The eighth card is THE BLASTED SHAMAN, and represents loyalty, group passions, seeing through on your goals, and hard work. The Tower might not like it, but the Shaman is not the Tower and the Shaman seeks to be burnt so that he might learn from it. The Blasted Shaman learns so that he can help his community, and his community are rarely thankful for it. It is tied with Hod; the Shaman thinks, and understands, and learns. A good deed is his own reward - knowledge is just another benefit. While the Shaman may lose his life to his cause, he is also the only one who truly understands how the universe is broken down.

9. The ninth card is THE CAT WHO WAS NOT KILLED BY CURIOSITY, and is the pillar on which the entire Sorcerer's Arcana stands. It stands for options, for adventure, for a fresh chance at learning; it is the card that best represents the fallacy that is, "Curiousity killed the cat." It represents strange thoughts and valid pseudosciences, and psychology; it is Yesod, and the initiation that all magicians must undertake before becoming either the Shaman or the Preacher - here they decide whether they are talented or merely skilled, and here the walls of reality crumble.

10. The tenth card is ME WHO AM I AS, and represents you as you are: nothing. You are a collection of adjectives, a molecule in the structure of the universe - an unthinking being who has tricked himself into thinking that you are more than you are. This card is Malkuth, and represents the truth, both the most powerful and deadliest tool mankind's sorcerers have. It is the beginning of a new, foolish journey.

THE RIGID ARCANA

There are twenty-three Rigid Arcana, representing the twenty-three mystic principles you will never understand. No description is given here; they should be interpreted by the diviner. Think about what they mean. These cards do not move within a person's life; they might be considered core aspects of their existence, or simply obstacles that will not go away.

11. THE NUMBER ELEVEN
12. LANGUAGE
13. TRAFFIC LIGHTS
14. BOOKS
15. INCENSE
16. LOGIC
17. EARS
18. MIRROR
19. ROPE
20. SWASTIKA
21. FEET
22. PHILOSOPHY
23. BIRD
24. NOSE
25. AUTOMOBILE
26. SALT
27. COMPUTER
28. FIRE
29. BOTTLE
30. EYES
31. MATHEMATICS
32. HANDS
33. TONGUE

The Flowing Arcana

The Flowing Arcana represents events that are happening, but will move on. It is like water, and it is not unusual for one reading to have many Flowing Arcana. The Arcana should be named after events; not events that will actually happen, but events that represent events that represent changes in consciousness that are represented by a deck of cards. Feel free to add or subtract Flowing Arcana as you please; it is best if you design your own.

34. YOU WILL BE BEATEN SAVAGELY TO DEATH
35. THE TRUTH IS NOT OUT THERE
36. YOU WILL WRITE A NOVEL
37. YOU HAVE NO LOGICAL REASON TO BELIEVE IN A DEITY
38. LSD WILL TRY YOU
39. YOUR CHILD IS ABDUCTED BY A STRANGE BEARDED MAN
40. GO SEE A MOVIE
41. YOU WILL SUCCEED
42. YOU WILL TAKE UP THE LEFT-HAND SCARF
43. YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF TO BE UNATTRACTIVE
44. YUO RAE DYLSEXIC
45. SOMEONE LOVES YOU
46. YOU ARE FATED TO NEVER WIN A GAME OF MONOPOLY
47. YOU WILL BE SUCKED INTO A BIZARRE CONSPIRACY
48. YOU WILL TAKE UP THE RIGHT-HAND LAUGH
49. YOU WILL WIN THE LOTTERY BUT LOSE THE TICKET
50. YOU ARE A WALKING PARADOX
51. YOU THINK YOU ARE SO CLEVER
52. HAVE YOU DONE SOMETHING NEW TO YOUR HAIR
53. NO ONE WILL EVER LOVE YOU
54. YOU'RE ACTUALLY VERY FUNNY
55. YOU WILL LEAVE YOUR LOVER
56. YOU SHOULD LEARN GRAMMAR
57. YOU READ A GOOD PIECE OF FICTION
58. NO ONE LIKES YOUR FIANCEE
59. YOU HAVE WASTED YOUR LIFE
60. YOU WILL DISCOVER HORRORS BENEATH THE FATHOMLESS SEA
61. YOU WILL NEVER LEARN HOW TO TRAVEL THROUGH TIME
62. YOU WILL CONSIDER DABBLING IN WITCHCRAFT
63. YOU WILL EAT SUSHI FOR DINNER
64. YOU WILL NEVER BE AS GREAT AS YOUR FATHER WAS

Conclusion

So there you have it: the NATHANIEL FRANCIS ROBINSON WONDER PACK for you to make at home. Good luck and stay jolly.

- Frater Victatio / Nathaniel Robinson

Twisties: Destruction

(Being the fourth in an ongoing correspondence with the amazingly awesome Miss Twist, whose blog you can find here. This one is a little different. Last night I summoned SITRI, a demon prince from the Goetia book of demons, into my shed. I then asked him for advice on what to write for the blog. He did not explode my head. Yet. Here it is, anyway, transcribed from twenty four - one note was emitted - sheets of paper. It might not make some sense. I may upload the original sheets, with diagrams and all - I spent a lot of time drawing. I don't know. Enjoy.)

1. I destroy.

2. I destroy NOW.

3. I stand here with SITRI, prince bound in tin, manifest in a human's body and a leopard's head. He is my shed. He screams, sometimes, and sometimes he laughs; he is a prince of fire and force, not unlike Horus. He makes women lust for men, and men lust for women, and may allow them to appear naked; but this is not why he is here. He is here to talk to me about destruction.

4. And SITRI has something to say: an epiphany. Time is now. Destruction is now. The past cannot be touched, the future will always remain the future. There is no tranquility in the past, and the future can never be anything but an uncertain haze. Go far enough, and the past becomes an uncertain haze; looped, edited, cut-up - we are the directors of the past, and some of us cannot make good films.

5. SHEMHAMPHORASH.

6. Wood feeds fire. Fire makes ash. Earth gives birth to metal. Metal holds water. Water feeds wood.

7. Wood separates earth. Earth muddies water. Water destroys fire. Fire melts metal. Metal hacks wood.

8. This is the Five Movements of the I Ching. Creation is a circle, destruction is a star. Destruction is a star. Every man and woman is a star. This is the perfect model of the magician. Protect yourself with creation: art, music, literature, neophilia. Out of death comes rebirth. None of us are Buddha. With death comes criticism, skepticism, anxiety. Use them. Use the fear. It is no coincidence that the Five Movements form the pentagram of the sorcerer. Art is better with fear; music is better with pain; literature is better with anxiety.



9. I stand near the flames as the spirit burns. The sigil may have worked too well. The flames flicker. Richard pours more Zippo fluid on it. He claims to see the light blue of my Lesser Banishing of the Pentagram. I don't disbelieve him. Richard pours more Zippo on it. The sigil will not burn. Have you ever heard an elemental scream? The fire rises, rises, rises, rises, rises. It takes six hours for the sigil to burn. I bury it. Earth consumes fire, and earth holds air.

10. I stand near the flames as the spirit burns. My own: dead weight. Dead Waite. Thank you, Al. The cards take a long time to burn. Not six hours. But a long time. Thank you, Al. The Waite Tarot burns, and I dance about it. I have a new Tarot deck now. The Thoth. It is everything everyone ever wanted in a Tarot deck. Everything! Everything!

11. Oh, you bastard.

12. A first initiation destroys nothing. It creates a membership: the League of Logobouros, Frater, Medical Doctor. A second creates nothing: I am a faithful servant of Chiwall. Chi - vital force. Wall - the blocking of that force. Anything less would be black magic. Anything more, I think, would be black magic. Oh no. I don't like black magic. Don't let me do black magic, mum.

13. A third initiation fucks everything. I am three hours late. One o'clock in the morning late. Avoiding all calls. Off the train. And then he hits me. He slaps me in the face. I am mugged by God. Or the closest thing to God. There are no Fifth Degree Adepts with me now. No smiling Logobouros to buy me a drink and ask if he can fuck my girlfriend. He cannot fuck my girlfriend. An initiation - the world crashes, reboots, crashes again. I wake up - now three and a half hours late. I was mugged, I say. I am taken to the police station. I tell them I was mugged.

14. I can enter churches. I can enter graveyards. I can enter that scary place in between the park and the public school, where it is dark and the kid was killed. I cannot enter the building where I do university. I am stopped flat.

15. I cry. She cries. I am a failure. She is boring. I will always be a failure. She is not pretty. We are both imperfect. Flawed creations. But I love her. Really. I do. And I think she loves me. We fight, though, when we should fuck. So I think that is the problem. But she is pretty and not boring.

16. I am still a failure.

17. A caution.

18. A magician is constantly destroying and creating. Reinventing themselves. Creating the persona. I am only personae. What else is there for a dictionary of characters? Perfect! A perfect chaos magician! Brilliant! Shut the fuck up. How can it be brilliant? If the Abyss was brilliant it wouldn't be called the Abyss! It would be called, say, "The Sun", or the "Brilliant Abyss", or the "Holy Guardian Angel". Where is my angel? The operation fails. Shut the fuck up.

19. We are in a recession. The recession is not our fault. Not really - it is, yes, ours, and the banks, and the government's, it is everyone's fault (but not really ours specifically). The bushfires are the the government. We are in a depression. The bushfires were set up by the government. Sure, one or two were natural, but the government played the rest. So we could stimulate the economy. Coincidence? No coincidences. Coles has a Friday All Profits Go To The Appeal Day. So does Safeway. Donate at the shops! Easy! And buy something as well! It cheapens death. The government planned it. People died so our economy would live. And I have friends who lost everything in the fire. It wasn't a conspiracy. How could it have been? Who stages a mass firestorm? I am a fool. Sitri is a fool. Sitri is not a fool. I also believe in UFO's and Bigfoot. No I don't. I haven't seen a UFO.

20. Every July I fall in love. And I cannot kill myself. That which kills me makes me stronger, and I crave destruction.

21. I haven't showed up for two months.

22. I don't write enough. I just don't. I procrastinate. A blog is not writing. I am a failure. Time to be destroyed.

23. ABRAHADABRA.

Caught in a Twist-er: Five Books That Influenced Me

(Part the Third of an ongoing correspondence between myself and the confidently salacious Miss Twist, this one dealing with a lighter issue: five books that affected our magic - or us, though it's arguably the same thing.)

The Alchemist, by Paul Coelho. I know this is one of those best-selling New Age type books, but it really is everything a spiritual allegory should be. It follows the journey of a young Spanish shepherd in his quest to find the Egyptian Pyramids and the treasure they contain. Along the way he experiences prophetic dreams, and is given wise advice. As he travels from Spain to Africa and then to Egypt, he meets wise women, thieves, humble workers, and the Biblical King of Salem, Melchizedek. He finally encounters the Alchemist himself in an Egyptian Oasis-settlement, and the Alchemist teaches him the true language of the world: the language of the "Personal Legend".



Each individual person has a "Personal Legend", the story explains, and this is the dream they must follow. It was the shepherd's dream to see the pyramids and find treasure, and he can only be truly happy if he is doing that thing. The dream of writers is to write; it is mentioned throughout the story that it is the Personal Legend of many Muslims to visit Mecca before they die. If you follow your Personal Legend, the universe conspires to help you on your quest, and you will attain peace, happiness and fulfillment.

I originally picked the book up because of my love of alchemical texts, and I'd heard that the book was a best-seller. I held off for a little because I was weary of the thing: I expected it to be another useless book like "The Secret", but when I saw it for four dollars at my local second-hand bookshop I decided to pick it up regardless. While it contained less alchemical references than I would normally have liked, it struck me as a powerful metaphor for inner alchemical transmutation - the best I have ever read. The story itself is amazing, and quite short - I read it in a few hours. The Alchemist is pure, honest, and filled with wisdom. It is the one "New Age" book that does not deserve to be kept on the New Age rack: it is much too good for that.

The Illuminatus! Trilogy, by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. Words alone fail to describe this trilogy. I count it as one book because the entire thing is collected and reads just like one book: the 'three volumes' are just three parts to a whole, instead of one book and two sequels.

Like I said: I cannot describe this book. Any description I give it would be ultimately unable to do it any justice. Nevertheless, I will try. Take the greatest conspiracy theories of the past thousand years and put them in a blender. Add the mystery surrounding John Dillinger, a hundred pages of raw smut, the esoteric I Ching, the secrets at the heart of Atlantis, the 1960's hippie movement and the 1950's beat movement, as much 1960's rock-and-roll as you can fit in, a giant yellow submarine, the dread writings of H.P. Lovecraft, and the Apocalyptic writings of William S. Burroughs. Blend until you cannot tell one from the other.



Pour the concoction into a long, distorted, multicolored glass. Then add the extensive and often self-contradictory mythology of the Discordian movement. Then add some more. Then some more. Add a few drops of Crowley, the Golden Dawn, and the A.A. - remember, Crowley is strong, so a few drops is enough to colour the entire drink. Garnish with as much LSD as you can find, and a pinch of insane numerology.

This book made Chaos Magic cool, and it was written before Chaos Magic was even invented. It's aim was to give Discordianism a strong mythology, and it more than certainly does that. At over a thousand pages long, some might find it hard to swallow, and it is definitely a 'love-it/hate-it' book: some people find it nothing more than trash posing as literature, some find it to be the greatest book they've ever read, and some find it to be an absurd mixture of both. It is, however, always thought-provoking and more complicated than any one person can hope to swallow; I've read it three times now and it never becomes any less psychadelic.

Nevertheless, it is easily my favourite book of all time. It has the added bonus of being an earlier work of Robert Anton Wilson, who is in my opinion the greatest philosopher and occultist of this modern age.

John Constantine, Hellblazer, Alan Moore (creator), Mike Carey, Jamie Delano, Garth Ennis, Warren Ellis, etc. John Constantine is part-conman, part-magus, and he has been a constant source of inspiration towards my magical craft. A fictional character originally created by Alan Moore (of Watchmen and V For Vendetta fame), John Constantine relies on his wits more than his magic; he is a powerful trickster figure in his own right, and has been around the pop culture sphere since the late nineteen eighties.

I suppose the comic book series, which is still ongoing, influenced me in such a huge way because I used to invoke John close to daily. I mean, I wanted to channel the abilities of Constantine - the crazy good luck, the biting wit, the vast cleverness - from the very start of my magical practice, and I began by courting the deities Loki, the Norse trickster, and Anansi, the African spider-trickster (which, perhaps, explains my apparent destiny to always be around the spider-folk). When I decided to form Loki and Anansi into one being - Lonansi - I also decided to cut the bullshit and just invoke John himself.

I became cleverer. I bought a trench-coat. I developed a desire for booze and cigarettes that I still can't shake (though don't tell Mum!). My hair seemed to get blonder, my accent seemed to obtain a British twang, and I began calling people "love", and "mate". I slowly developed a reputation as a scary man, and as someone who has connections everywhere. I still get comments from some people, in some situations, that I look like him a little.



Then, one day, I just stopped invoking. I'm not sure why, though I don't feel any enmity towards the character himself. I still love the comic. I don't know.. maybe I looked into the character deep enough to realise that he really isn't what I want to be.

(Oh, and I own a copy of the Vertigo Tarot Set, with John as the Fool, and I've never felt so close to a deck before. The readings really seem to ring true with me. I wasn't expecting that... I was going to own the deck as a novelty only, but not only does the imagery strike me as deep and profound, the cards themselves seem to enjoy being read.)

The Black Arts, Richard Cavendish. This was the first "real" book on magic that I ever read, a handful of years ago, and I am still struck by how great this book is. I've bought three copies of this book in my lifetime, and given two of them to good friends, and while it lacks in the technical "do this to get this" department, the book still serves as a compendium of mystical information. It was, for a long time, my first reference on the Goetia, Devil-worship, witchcraft, the Qabala, numerology and the Tarot.

I'd always been interested in books of mythology and magic, but I consider "The Black Arts" to be the first one to actually influence me; I cannot recommend it enough. It will not make you a magician, per se, but it WILL give you the required background knowledge to allow you to pick and choose your magical system, as well as forming some knowledge around most of the others. It's only problem is that it was written in about 1960; while this gives it a wealth of information regarding the Golden Dawn and the magical revival of the early twentieth century, it is understandably lacking in references to Chaos Magic or any of the more modern paths out there. It still reads beautifully, though, and it should be picked up and read by everyone looking into the magical arts.

Pop! Magic, Grant Morrison. If the Black Arts gave me the theory and the lust to get into modern sorcery, Pop! Magic was one of the books that gave me the tools. (The others being "The Lesser Key of Solomon the King," which I didn't add simply because while it influenced my magic as a whole it hasn't left too big a mark on me overall, and "Condensed Chaos", by Phil Hine, which Charlie Twist chose so ..)



Pop! Magic is simple, it's free - you can get it here - and it's to the point. It's only a few pages long, but it taught me most of the magical lessons that have shaped me into what I am today, specifically: fake it until you make it and magic is a lifestyle. I'd been treating magic like an elaborate game, but it isn't when you get down to it; it's a way of life, as reflected by our societies throughout the ages, and you need to live that life if you want any chance to succeed.

On the flipside, however, simply pretending I was a great magician made me learn more about the art then I'd realised, and I woke up one day, jumped out of bed and shouted, "I'm a magician!" It all made sense: the psychonautica stuff, the codes, all of it. It was a good feeling - one of the best feelings in my life. Quite unlike my proper initiation, actually, which I might talk about in next week's correspondence: destruction and magic.

Until then, see you later
N.F. Robinson / Frater Victatio

Magic with a Twist: Living Environments

(The second post made with the enigmatically attractive Miss Twist, sorceress, regarding the often-lauded art of magic.)

I live in a tin shed.

When I tell people that I usually get one of two reactions: the first is the simple, though a little edgy, "Why?" and the second is the vaguely envious, "Awesome!" It really depends on who the individual is in question, because living in a tin shed has both upsides and downsides to the extreme.

This topic is about my living environment and how it affects my magical work. My living environment is a reasonably unique one, and it affects how I do magic very strongly. My tin shed, needless to say, is not insulated; while I have a heater and a fan, these often don't help against the terrible temperatures which abound in nature.

I prefer to do magic naked. There's a fact you probably didn't need to know about me. Failing that, shirtless and barefoot with jeans works fine. Sometimes, however, it's too damn cold to do any magic - especially during winter and at night. Most of my sorcery goes on between the hours of midnight and five AM, and usually I'm not so fond of testicular frostbite, so when I do magic it has to be at least kind of warm. This is a downside.

In summer, in contrast, it's mostly fine - I can do magic at night without a problem in most cases. I generally don't get to sleep past nine AM in the morning, though, because the tin heats up incredibly quickly - when you've only had two or so hours of sleep this starts to be a problem. Also, on 40 Degrees Celsius days, a handful even hotter, candles melt. This is not good, especially when said candles were given as a devotional gift to say, one of the prime Loa spirits.

But there are advantages to living out in this shed. My mother knows very well just what I am - a FILTHY, DEVIL-WORSHIPING SORCERER WITH A PENCHANT FOR STRANGE THINGS - and she accepts it well enough, which is why she decided to lock me outside of the house and offer me the tin shed. I get a lot of privacy, though - as anyone who's ever lived in a home with six other people (seven, including the cat) might tell you, privacy is worth more than gold in that situation. Before I moved into the shed I was sneaking outside at four in the morning to do my rituals. This is a much more satisfactory arrangement. When one's been up for 100+ hours - while fasting - so that one can evoke a certain spirit at a certain special date and it suddenly pisses down raining one is generally not impressed.

So I have the privacy, and now I can keep all of my magical items on display without my impressionable brothers poking around with them. That was one of the catches, I guess, of practicing magic within my family's home - that my four year old brother would wait until he was, say, fourteen or fifteen before deciding to dabble in the dark arts. Four is far too young to be making pacts with the Ancient Ones was the reasoning.

My floor is made of concrete. This is good, because when I can get over my crippling phobia regarding the stuff, chalk is great for drawing seals and sigils and what have you on the floor. It's fun, it's traditional, and it gives the whole thing a sense of weight that is so important in ceremonial magic. I put a rug down - a lovely thing that my good friend Rick gave me - when I'm doing deity stuff, as I'm generally kneeling and that's not a great feeling on concrete.

I've been working more and more with The Lesser Key of Solomon the King, which is a nice, traditional spirit work involving the binding and banishing of demons and the like. Each set of demons is associated with a certain metal, according to what sort of spirit they are and what rank they have in hell. Those sealed in tin are associated with Mars and are thus the princes and prelates of Hell - these are the ones I've been working with lately.



VASSAGO, who comes in the form of an old man of good nature, is handy for finding lost things and giving visions of the future and past. SITRI, with a leopard's head and the wings of a gryphon, has power over lust and love. IPOS, the angel with a lion's head, makes men witty and bold and has knowledge of all things past, present, and future. GAAP typically comes in the form of a man, makes men ignorant as well as knowledgeable in philosophy and liberal sciences, can cause love or hate, knows all things of the past or future, can take the sorcerer to certain realms and can destroy the familiars of other magicians. STOLOS comes as a raven and can teach the arts of herbology, geology, and astronomy. Et cetera, et cetera.

These are the spirits which I've been working with. There are a handful more, but I grew tired of listing them. I only evoke those associated with tin - the others go all funny. They either don't appear, or they appear twisted and their messages are garbled. Almost like a kind of magical static. Only the tinned demons show up clear and fine. For work with the other spirits, I go outside.

I've chalked in a few protective wards on the tin, which is good, because on normal plaster walls I wouldn't be able to do that so easily. I've also been pondering for more than a while the logistics of summoning a demon prince and binding it into my shed. I don't know what would happen, but it would be pretty cool to find out.

My room is a mess. For all of my ceremonial magic and occult writing, I am after all a chaos magician and I can't keep a room tidy. Books stacked as high as they will go, clean clothes about the place, candles dripping, a mixture of salt, ash, and dust on the floor, paper everywhere, electrical cords resembling a certain ageless squid god devouring half of my room... a perpetually unmade bed tops all of this off.

This affects my magic in that I generally have to clean up my room every week for one working or another, because the spirits don't like the mess. It's generally more polite to clean up when you've invited guests over, after all. So I do that. But the mess always comes back.

The room is filled with spiders. Filled with arachnids of all shapes and sizes. They don't bother me, and usually keep to themselves, but I've heard that they're story-telling creatures (which makes sense) and Papa Legba has remarked about them on several occasions, asking me not to kill his brothers and sisters. Papa Legba isn't a spider-spirit, so at the time I was confused, but he is the Loa of gateways and I soon saw that the spider-web is one of the most intricate gateways of all. I haven't squashed a spider in a few months, and when my girlfriend squeals and begs me to kill one I simply place it outside and apologize to it for the inconvenience. They rarely come out from their hiding places though, except when it's just them and I - we have a sort of agreement, I think. I often joke that I'm leasing the hidden places of my room to them, at which my mother and girlfriend - arachnaphobic ladies both - laugh nervously.

So there we are. That's my living space in a nutshell. It's not great, it's not flashy, but it works - and it leaves a solid mark on the magic I do.

Twist and Shake: Rain and Magic

(This is the start of what will, I hope, become a long and inspiring dialogue involving myself and the always lovely Miss Twist. She has posted the first reply to the topic, Rain and Magic, and it now falls to me to post the second. You may see the first one here.)

(Again: tonight has been a night of, uh, Erisian intent. A lot of Golden Apple magic happened earlier this evening, so this post may seem either a little more laid back than normal or it might just not make any sense.)

Rain.

A few years back, when I was young and knew nothing about magic, I had a great time telling everyone I was an occultist and that I knew everything about magic and strangeness and the esoteric and so on. Fake it until you make it was my motto, as prescribed by Grant Morrison, and I sure did make it in the end.

I didn't know much, but there was one thing I've always known, a core elemental truth within my magical work: the power of rain. I would bumble my way through some magic, usually for a very impressed (read: gullible) friend, and sometimes something would happen, sometimes it wouldn't.

But there was one thing I was always very sure of: the power of rain. I am a firm believer in the idea that magic, once created, does not just go off and do its thing. Rather, the spell lies dormant for a small while, until the universe is too busy doing other things to notice that you've broken a handful of its so-called rules. I guess it's the sneaky chaos mage within me coming out at last.

So we trick the universe into exempting us from the rules. Of course, once it's been tricked it is expected that the universe sit up and say, "Good game, sir. I have been bested once again," to which the magician replies, "Ah, and a good game to you; you will get me next time, of that I am sure," and the two laugh and drink cherry brandy and discuss the finer things, the previous sleight forever forgotten.

I am reminded quite frequently that life is not a steampunk rendition of The Great Gatsby, and to them I say, "I do not care." The magic works for me. But what is my point?

My point is, there are times that are good for doing magic. These are usually times of change, of a fresh start. For example, a lot of magic - pagan, ceremonial, chaos, the lot - is done at dawn and dusk. The rising of the sun at dawn is a powerful symbol that runs right through the gamut of occult systems, especially Thelema and Qabala. It is a good time for oaths of self-reflections. Dusk is just as good, for a much different purpose - at twilight, it is said that the barrier between the worlds of spirit and flesh weaken significantly, and magic is easier to cast upon the world. Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth believe eleven at night, being the twenty-third hour - and twenty-three is a number sacred to all practitioners of Chaos Magic and Erisian Sorcery - is the prime time for sigil-work and magic.

These are the times where the universe is too busy with other things to notice what you're doing. Or, as the wise Frater L.B.S. is often caught saying, "eleven o'clock is when I stab reality in the back, piss on its grave, and go on to fuck it's girlfriend." But L.B.S. is an Erisian jester-magician and I'm not entirely sure he can read, let alone work magic, but his opinion is still valid.

Rain, then, rain: rain doesn't happen often enough. Not here, in Melbourne, or in many places around Australia these days. Rain doesn't happen once a day, every day, like dusk or dawn or the twenty-third hour. It happens when it happens. And, as the illustrious Ms. Twist (sorceress) mentioned, it makes things new. It washes away. It is a fresh chance, a time of change.

The more powerful the storm, the better the magic. That's what I think. Rain, thunder, lightning, but especially rain - when it comes, the magic happens. I told my school-friends that the magic would only truly start happening after it rained, and when it did rain, and the magic did happen, it caught us all within it's wonder.

So rain has always been a good time for my magic. Rain has always made me feel better about life, too. It is a nice thing.

There are other magical points to be made, though, and I'll make one of them: rain brings water. Australia doesn't have much water. Not enough, anyway, to sustain us forever. And with all our crazy science, we can't make it rain and we're having a hard time getting the rain back. Rain happens when it happens. It is an independent beast, a deity in it's own right, with it's own personality and sense of will. It is a magical thing, this Rain, and we should treat it with a little more respect.

In conclusion:

G.P.: -Is Eris true?
M2:+Everything is true.
G.P.: -Even false things?
M2:+Even false things are true.
G.P.: -How can that be?
M2:+I don't know, man, I didn't do it.

Nathaniel F. Robinson / Frater Victatio