I feel so overwhelmed by a new discovery.  Well.  Not new, I mean I've known about Chaos Magick since I was a kid, but I never looked into it back then.  I forgot all about it, till yesterday.  I went on Amazon after my last blog entry, just to replace some of my lost books.  I found a LOT of them, and I basically spent my entire paycheck on books.  But not just old ones...I found one called Practical Sigil Magic that jumped out at me.  I bought it, and discovered that it was the author's interpretation on Austin Osman Sphere's sigil methodology.  Blown away. I am blown away. That was my first encounter with A.O. Sphere and his teachings.  In a nutshell, it's the missing link between what *I* am, where I fit into the occult universe, and where I've left off with Crowley's teachings.  Like, this is my thing.  I've always eschewed the idea of the OTO or A.A. as a fulfilling path for myself.  I've always said "If an organization or order or church doesn't 100% represent your personal spiritual ideas, then it'll hold you back"  While I'm a self-initiated Thelemite, dedicated for life, I am not 100% in line with what the organization represents.  I'm not for ceremonial magic. I'm not all about big Hermetic rituals.  Fuck systems.  

I wrote this deceleration on the topic two years ago.  It holds true now, more than ever.  I've been feeling in a rut, because when you kick "systems" and their respective dogmas out of your life...it sort of leaves you pinwheeling out there in the ether. I realize, now it's not a flat-out rejection of systems, its more of a flat-out rejection of commitment to any one of them.  I am reading cards again, of course I am. Doing better with it now than I ever have in my whole life.  I am still a practicing magician, witch, whatever, and I feel at my most powerful.  I'm kinda out of stuff to study, though.  I went on Amazon last night thinking "there really is nothing new out there for me to tackle, the closest I have is the OTO and Crowley and cabbalistic teachings."  I mean, that's nice and all...  Then I found that sigil book, which led me to other books, which led me to googling Chaos Magick, which led me to discovering the IoT.  Which...fuck.  Mindblowing.  I was up all night reading. I caught fire again.  I haven't been this charged up about a new thing in maybe six or seven years.  It's everything I've done my whole life unofficially...but official.  
Luiz puts it best when he says "I'm so happy for you! You found your magickal heritage!"  FINALLY.  I now have people that I can read, and maybe eventually  join with, and talk to who have been doing it the way I do it since before I was born.

The key tenant of Chaos Magic is "Nothing is True".

I'm going to quote Phil Hine directly here, this comes right out of Condensed Chaos.

1. The avoidance of Dogmatism. Chaos Magicians strive to
avoid falling into dogmatism (unless expressing dogmatism
is part of a temporary belief system they have entered).
Discordians use ‘Catmas’ such as “Us Discordians must stick
apart!” Thus Chaos Magicians feel entitled to change their
minds, contradict themselves and come up with arguments that
are alternatively plausible and implausible. It has been pointed
out that we invest a lot of time and energy in being right. What’s
wrong with being wrong occasionally?


2.  Personal Experience is paramount. In other words, don’t
take my word that such-and-such is the case, check it out for
yourself. Magick has suffered extensively from ‘armchair
theorists’ who have perpetuated myths and out-of-date
information purely due to laziness of one kind or another.
Sometimes it’s interesting to ask awkward questions just to
see what the selfappointed experts come out with. Some will
emit a stream of verbal diahorrea rather than admit to not
knowing the answer, whereas a true adept will probably say “I
haven’t a f*****g clue.” Quite early on, Chaos magicians came
to the startling discovery that once you strip away the layers of
dogma, personal beliefs, attitudes and anecdotes around any
particular technique of practical magick, it can be quite simply
described.

3. Technical Excellence. One of the early misconceptions about
Chaos Magick was that it gave practitioners carte blanche to
do whatever they liked, and so become sloppy (or worse, soggy)
in their attitudes to self-assessment, analysis, etc. Not so. The
Chaos approach has always advocated rigorous self-assessment
and analysis, emphasised practice at what techniques you’re
experimenting with until you get the results that you desire.
Learning to ‘do’ magick requires that you develop a set of
skills and abilities and if you’re going to get involved in all
this weird stuff, why not do it to the best of your ability?

4. Deconditioning. The Chaos paradigm proposes that one of
the primary tasks of the aspiring magician is to thoroughly
decondition hirself from the mesh of beliefs, attitudes and
fictions about self, society, and the world. Our ego is a fiction
of stable self-hood which maintains itself by perpetuating the
distinctions of ‘what I am/what I am not, what I like/what I
don’t like’, beliefs about ones politics, religion, gender
preference, degree of free will, race, subculture etc all help
maintain a stable sense of self, whilst the little ways in which
we pull against this very stability allows us to feel as though
we are unique individuals. Using deconditioning exercises,
we can start to widen the cracks in our consensual reality which
hopefully, enables us to become less attached to our beliefs
and egofictions, and thus able to discard or modify them when
appropriate.

5. Diverse Approaches. As mentioned earlier, ‘traditional’
approaches to magick involve choosing one particular system
and sticking to it. The Chaos perspective, if nothing else,
encourages an eclectic approach to development, and Chaos
Magicians are free to choose from any available magical
system, themes from literature, television, religions, cults,
parapsychology, etc. This approach means that if you approach
two chaos magicians and ask ‘em what they’re doing at any
one moment, you’re rarely likely to find much of a consensus
of approach. This makes Chaos difficult to pin down as one
thing or another, which again tends to worry those who need
approaches to magick to be neatly labelled and clear.

6.  Gnosis. One of the keys to magical ability is the ability to
enter Altered States of Consciousness at will. We tend to draw
a distinct line between ‘ordinary consciousness’ and ‘altered
states’, where in fact we move between different states of
consciousness - such as daydreams, ‘autopilot’ (where we carry
out actions without cognition) and varying degrees of attention,
all the time. However, as far as magick is concerned, the willed
entry into intense altered states can be divided into two poles
of ‘Physiological Gnosis’ - Inhibitory states, and Excitatory
states. The former includes physically ‘passive’ techniques
such as meditation, yoga, scrying, contemplation and sensory
deprivation while the latter includes chanting, drumming,
dance, emotional and sexual arousal.



So, that's what Phil Hine has to say on the matter.  I say...that is SO FUCKING ME.  Compare what I wrote in 2011 to what I just found last night...I've been looking for this for a long time.

Alright. Enough writing. I have way more reading to do.

So, I opened the packet of "red sandalwood" that I got at Earth Spirits.  It's sawdust. It's generic wood powder that literally smells like burning sawdust.  I'm disappointed. I looked high and low for actual red sandalwood or any kind of sandalwood incense. 

Turns out, it's endangered. 

Fuck.

Looks like I'll be leaving that ingredient out of my magickal incenses.  

Fuck.

Got a lot done today, magickally speaking.  We went to Red Bank for the final stuff I needed, basically just red sandalwood since Mountain Rose didn't have it, for whatever reason.  I also picked up a few new stones, an opaque blue stone the color of an October sky.  It's called angelite, which sounds hokey to me, but everything in Earth Spirits comes with a faint air of hokey, till I get it home, wash it, and make it mine.  Anyway, it just sang "purification" so, I scooped it right up.  I also picked up a new bloodstone, thinking it would be nice to have one...but when I went through my stones, I noticed I had like seven of them already.  What can I say, I really love bloodstone.  Seeing them all in the palm of my hand looked downright medicinal.  Maybe when I'm done working on the current project, I'll do a healing something.  I found an old empty gris gris bag, with the runes still seared into the leather, and still smelling faintly of dusty herbs.  I remember that one. It was designed for psychic power. To help the Sight.  It worked. I'm doing one for healing, I think, or just to stay healthy. They're very satisfying to put together, and unlike regular spells, when it's all said and done, you have this little locus of energy, this little power nugget to concentrate on.  Fucking cool.  Very hands-on too.

So, bringing these new stones home made me feel wistful and weird that my stones aren't in a special place anymore, just all thrown in a dishpan when we had to take the furniture out of the living room.  I haven't restored my Space since Sandy. All my tarot cards are stashed in the card catalog, but my altar fixtures were kind of scattered to the four winds. They still are a little, but it's better.  After Red Bank, we cleaned up my side of the bedroom, dusted and dedicated not only a sacred altar space, but we cleaned off my vanity and made a place for all my stones, and a small space for Luiz, too.  It felt good to do that. I'm still feeling a little euphoric, working in such close proximity to all my stones and objects of power.  I really wish I could find my athame, though. It got put somewhere when the flood hit.  It's eluding me, and that's bothering me.

A week from yesterday, is the time of the first ritual.  I've got everything ready now, except the athame.

This summer has been interesting.  Not the good kind of interesting, either. Lots of fighting and strife in the household, lots of weird and bad feelings permeating our otherwise extremely happy home.  I blame a lot of things. Sandy, for starters. This house was literally full of shit and water for a brief time, and while we bleached the fuck out of the physical, I'm sure it left some metaphysical grossness laying around.  Plus, every time we fight, we spin a tapestry of bullshit negativity and it has a way of collecting.  You've walked into places and felt this, everyone has. A foreboding, a nasty vibe, a "get me the hell out of here" kinda thing.  Conversely, my house has always been a warm, welcoming, inviting environment, where people are greeted with love.  I want it to stay that way, and lately, I feel like it's been slipping off into weird territory.

Time for a cleansing/banishing.  And not just any ordinary sage and drums cleansing either.  I'm talking like a mega house douching, the likes of which these walls haven't seen since just after we bought the property, back in 2003.  A giant high colonic for the oogy nasty vibes.  Cleaning on a mundane level, bleaching and sanitizing, then going through and doing it on a spiritual level.  That'll be on the next new moon.

Thirteen days later, on the full moon, we're renewing the protections.  Again, it's been a long time. Last time I did something on this magnitude was when the Witnesses were hassling me.  Not Luiz, but me.  He came along later, and I sort of slapdashed some more protection for him, but nothing of this scale.

I've got to shop for it, plan for it, make lists for it, think about it, build energy and store it, and make ready from now till then.  I've already spent a great deal of time and energy reading cards about it.  I want to make sure my intentions are pure, and I'm not trying to control any one person or element, but do something for the greater good of this house and all our loved ones that live here or pass through here.  It's exhilarating to undertake this. I just went upstairs through all my old herbs and materials, and cleaned out half of the ones that have gone to dust.  I found some really wonderful nostalgic items, left over from when I was a baby witch, in the 90s.  I sniffed all the resins and incenses, and along with the spellwork, I'm getting my shit organized again.  Everyone in the house is on board and into it, which makes it even more satisfying.  I need a few dozen certain kind of candles, and Irv volunteered "hey, wanna run to the candle factory in the Poconos on Sunday?"  I am over the moon.

Shopping for this stuff has never been easier. I got most of my herbs in one fell swoop from Mountain Rose Herbs, except red sandalwood.  This mystifies me, because they have fucking random hard to find stuff like agrimony, boneset, henbane, dong quai...but no sandalwood?  Not even listed on their site.  I'm going to have to bite the bullet on that one and go to Earth Spirits in Red Bank, and I loathe that place.  Well, that's not fair, it's been good to me, but I hate those new-agey emporiums, and I'm not fond of the dude the runs the show.

Either way, this is exciting.  I'm loving the process. I'll be even happier with the results.

Haven't written here in ages.  Been consulting the cards a lot.  I keep Druidcraft and Deviant Moon at my desk.  Baby Thoth at my nightstand, and Hanson-Roberts on my person.  Osho Zen resides nearby, for when I'm high and really wanna learn some stuff.  I've gotten some really brilliant guidance, simply by clearing my brain, and pulling cards.  I write them down. I read them both high and not.


Feels like I'm reading for others every day, almost, and I love it.  Luiz has gotten really good.  Lately I've had a spate of questions that I'm too close to answer.

Here was a good one.  I had such an amazing day today, so good, it made me ask "What am I doing right?"  He pulled from his Thoth the Five of Cups...  Disappointment.  I needed him to sort that out at first.  He was like "You stopped letting disappointing things rule your life."  I'm not deferring or submitting to someone that's spiritually inferior.  I'm aggressively and actively following my True Will.  I've become a lot more assertive in the past few years.  I've stopped disappointing myself, too.  The cups are balanced and clear.  The rest falls away.  Egos are destroyed.

I mean, just look at that. It's almost  hard to view.  Crowley/Harris certainly didn't pull any punches. I was there for a long time, but I can say for sure that the cups are clear and up out of that shitty emotional tidewater.  

Proof Positive

This is a good start, towards making me happy and decluttering.  Today, I cleaned off my bookshelf and organized my tarot collection.  Shown is the 50 or so active decks and some collectors.  Not shown is the drawer of unloved lovelies that I'm ready to trade off, and the first ed. Bohemian Gothic regular and silver editions, as well as the second edition pewter edition.  Down here is the second edition regular "seconds" deck.  Also...I like Deviant Moon, ok?  I love the unique artwork on his signed wrapped editions!

Seeing my bookshelf like that is awesome, too.  Now everything is right there.  When things are clean, Luiz is less inclined to stash my books in his deep dark shelves.

Tonight, maybe before I settle into a video game miasma, I'll dink around with Osho Zen for a bit.

Oracle Energy

I've been reading a lot of cards for other people, lately.  Not professionally, not for a long time, but for friends and family.  Every day, at least, sometimes a few times a day.  If not for that, I may have laid them aside, again.

I haven't read for myself in ages.  My cards are in a disheveled heap on my shelf, and I haven't been inspired to care for them or wander amongst them.  I've been using a standard "easy" deck for most things, and not stretching myself.

I should change the name of this blog from "Spinning the Web" to "Spinning my Wheels".

I'm only writing about it, because I notice it.  I've already put a plan into motion. I've been using an oracle deck for readings, because I haven't had the energy to really "connect" and I don't want to give cold readings. Even if it is for the same poor sap that hits up my inbox (and has for years) obsessing over this one chick that he STILL can't land.  Reading for him is good practice, so instead of giving him the "blah blah blah" treatment, I switched to Morgan's Tarot. It was a refreshing change, and sparked off an evening of tarot fun time, seeing if the oracle deck could answer serious questions.  I even compared it side by side with the most serious of my decks (serious, nonsensical, deep, pretty, with no further ado...) the Thoth.  A serious question's answer came back XX The Aeon from Thoth, and "AWAKE!" from Morgan's.  That pretty much did it for me.

For whatever reason, that sent me on a spiraling search for more intuitive oracle decks, and I wound up grabbing the Osho Zen (which I've had my eye on forever) and an oracle that utilizes sacred geometry.

Recently a close friend and I were discussing the importance of intuition (or, more like I was hamhandedly lecturing) vs. intellect.  I encouraged him to reach past the jungle gym if his extremely powerful intellect, and poke an intuitive finger into the universe.  Maybe I was really telling myself that, too.  Quit thinking, you're wearing yourself to a frazzle, and start feeling more.  Osho Zen is helping with that, like the oracles are.

As above, so below.  To see this through, I plan on minimalizing the stuff laying around,  and decluttering my space.  Today, I'm starting with my mystical bookshelves, moving to my desk, and other mundane things.