Cultural appropriation in magick has always been a sticky issue. From Crowley incorporating yoga into his magick outside of the Hindu belief structure, to the Romans stealing entire pantheons of gods, people seeking
spiritual experience have always seen the neighbor’s grass and felt envy. Most
of this comes from a genuine respect of those cultures, and a feeling that
their own culture doesn’t have what they need to express their own
spirituality. So they steal.
For the magus, the biggest danger here comes from taking
things out of context. No spiritual practice occurs in a vacuum. The people whose
traditions are being stolen have every right to say, “No. You’re doing it
wrong. That’s not how that works.” Because their practice only works in their
specific cultural milieu. In most instances, you will never get it right and
you will never understand because you were not raised in that culture.
Not to mention that this kind of stealing most often comes
in the context of colonialism. Greece was Rome’s colony when they decided to
make off with an entire pantheon of gods.
But this doesn’t mean you can’t learn from other cultures.
It doesn’t mean you can’t use their concepts as a part of your own practice. It
takes some work. But if you’re willing to do it right and put things in the
context of your own culture and your own locality, it’s going to work better
for you in the long run.
Here’s an example. In my attempt to rebuild by own paradigm
with a stronger foundation, I’m still doing a lot of ancestor work, but I am
thinking about the next step. In the working theory of Emergent Animism that
means contacting a wider range of spirits, which includes spirits of place or
spirits of the land. Recently, one of my followers (thank you again @aweandimagination)
reminded me about Shintoism’s strong animistic beliefs. So I did some poking
around, and one thing I noticed right away were the shrines, some huge and
elaborate structures, but others tiny roadside shrines dedicated to local Kami.
So I want to do something similar. I think building a shrine
to leave offerings and make a connection to land spirits would be extremely beneficial
in getting to know those spirits and honoring them. But I certainly don’t want
to build a “Thai Spirit House.” I’m not in Thailand. Why would the spirits near
me understand the symbolism and motifs of that culture? So I did some more
research.
Actually, I already knew that the Ancient Greeks created
thousands of tiny shrines to local ancestors and spirits. In fact, the general
populace in Greece were much more concerned with those spirits than they were
with the fuckery of Zeus, Apollo, and their buddies. Those are gods for the
nobles. They have rich people problems. The commoners were much more concerned
about how they can appease the spirit of that big ass rock so they don’t piss
it off when they go plowing all the land around it. What I didn’t know was that
the practice continues to this day. The names have changed, with the shrines
being dedicated to saints, but they sure look like a continuation of the
ancient traditions.
Chances are, if you see a magical practice in another
culture that appeals to you, dig just a bit, and you’ll find something similar
in your own culture. That practice will probably make more sense to you, and
even if it doesn’t, why not give it a try? You should also be tailoring it to
local traditions and listen to the spirits and ask them what they want.
So I’m not going to build a Shinto shrine or a Thai Spirit
House. It won’t have peaked and curved Asian architecture. I won’t leave
strings of tropical flowers as offerings. I won’t be including Eastern Orthodox
icons either. Incense, water, beads, these things are universal, and
appropriate. But I will be using local products and things that resonant in my
culture.
You should research other cultures and be inspired by their
magick. You should be awed by the great variety of spiritual practice in this
world. But you should also be amazed when you learn that the core concepts
themselves cut across cultures and across time. A true thief steals because they
are lazy and don’t want to do the work themselves. Do the work.
It is perfectly reasonable to ask, “If you believe that
these spirits are all doing their thing in some afterlife, how do you account
for ghosts? How about reincarnation and past life memory? Are the spirits out
there, down here, or inside me?”
One, let me state for the record that I don’t know. And I
don’t think anyone knows the entirety of what happens after we die. I don’t
think anyone fully understands what spirits are and how they operate. But I
have some ideas.
Let’s look at our own meatsacks as an example. Non-human
cells in your body outnumber human cells in your body by 10-1. That’s right,
you have ten times as many microbe cells in your body as cells you have
actually grown yourself. Those microbes are small, so they only make up about
3% of your total mass, but 3% is pretty significant. Also, does size really
matter when it comes to the ability of any given cell?
Chances are, our spirit-selves aren’t just some Jedi-ghost
version of you. Just like we have different organs and trillions of microbes
that make up our bodies, it may be a good bet that our spiritual selves have as
much complexity or more.
Let’s turn to our friends the Ancient Egyptians again, and
see what they had to say on the matter. After all, they probably studied the
afterlife more than any other culture on Earth. Keep in mind that Egypt was an
empire that lasted over 3,000 years and things differed from place to place and
in different time periods. The list I give here is not definitive and has some
of my take on the subject.
Depending on who you asked, the Ancient Egyptians believed the
soul had three to seven different parts. Let’s run with six of them:
Ib – The heart: Every person has one drop of their mother’s
blood in their heart when they are born. So it can be said that the heart links
us to our ancestors. The heart is the seat of emotion, all of them—love, hate,
jealousy, compassion, etc. That’s important because when you get judged in the
afterlife it is your heart that will be weighed to tell if you were a good
person. So you could say that it’s not so much bad decisions that you made or
weaknesses that you possess that fucks you, but your intentions. Did you do it
out of love or did you do it out of fear and hate?
Ren – Name: Your sense of self. What you answer when they
ask, “Who the fuck are you?” This would be the part of your own spirit created
by your accomplishments. When they really wanted to fuck you in Ancient Egypt
they erased your name when you died. This breaks your contact with the living
world. Everything here has a name. If you have no name, you’re nobody.
Ba – Personality: The translations become a little tricky as
we don’t really have words for some of these concepts. Your Ba is the part of
you that is fun at parties. Your unique perspective. It’s also the part which
actually travels between the afterlife and the living world. The Ba probably
comes closest to being that Force-Ghost. If you’re being haunted and that ghost
isn’t an asshole, chances are you’re talking to the person’s Ba.
Ka – Spark: Essentially, your battery. Having this makes the
difference between life and death. The Egyptians believed your Ka needs a place
to keep generating energy, which is part of why they preserved the dead. It
needs food and water, just like you do, but after death it comes in the form of
offerings. Prayers will do in a pinch.
Shuyet – Shadow: The shuyet is the symbol of you. It represents
your form, but may not actually be you, but certainly created by you. Your shuyet
inhabits representations of you such as statues and drawings. Which is why we
have that stuff on our ancestor altars, except you need to understand, that’s
not the actual person. Just the symbol. If a ghost comes back and does
random-ass annoying things it’s probably a shuyet.
Akh – Spirit: The akh is different from all the other parts
because it gets created after you die. After you go through the hall of
judgement, the gods slam back together various parts of your soul and you have
a shiny new akh. The akh does not start out as a god, but can become one. The
akh does all the amazing shit spirits can do and we cannot.
That all seems pretty intricate, but nowhere near as
intricate as say, a human body. So I would say the reality is probably much
more complex than that. And non-human spirits may be even more complicated. Add
to this that time is not linear and things can be so crazy you just chalk it up
to “things we weren’t meant to know.”
But for us magi, that’s what we call a challenge. We do our
best to figure that shit out, and we may never know in this lifetime or the
next how it all works. You can ask the spirits, and that’s helpful to an
extent, but they would have to put it in concepts your ape-self can understand,
which it can’t. That’s why magi study endless symbol systems to try and grasp
some iota of meaning out of all of it.
Your spirit may have as many parts as there are stars in the
sky. Keep grasping for them.
You may have figured out that I am a huge fan of history.
That obsession with learning stories of our past has been with me my entire
life. In the past fifteen years much of that research has been pre-history.
Let me throw at you an impressive set of numbers. By conservative
estimates, Homo sapiens have been around for about 315,000 years. The Home
genus has been on this planet at least .5 million years, and some say up to 2.5
million years. Some of the oldest indication of any type of spiritual practice
is 300,000 years old, being grave goods buried with a Neanderthal. So our
species started all this before we even evolved into our current iteration and
the first known practice was some form of belief that life continues after
death. By comparison, the first civilization started 5,000 years ago. That’s
310,000 years of human existing on this planet before cities. As the Oracle at
Delphi says, “Know Thyself,” and to really know who we are as a species we need
to have some understanding of how we lived for the majority of our time here.
Evidence shows that we believed in some kind of life after death, and we were
animists. We believed in and had dealings with spirits.
People debate endlessly whether or not our species took a “wrong
turn.” Whether agriculture, or domestication, or if you believe Socrates, even
writing itself were bad ideas. I have my own opinions. But outside of that we
still must accept that knowledge does indeed get lost. While most scholars don’t
even like the term Dark Ages anymore, all will admit that some knowledge was
lost in the West. We lost the recipe for Roman concrete. We lost the recipe for
Greek Fire. Judging by how people seem to feel strongly about spiritual
practice, you can bet that much of what was discovered on that topic has been
destroyed. Think about what must have been lost in those 300,000 years? The
voices of those elders lost to time. I truly hope that Babbage was right and
with enough computing power we can go back reconstruct every vibration that
ever occurred in our atmosphere.
Another point, why do we even care? Certainly our species
has made great advances in the creation and retention of knowledge. Haven’t we
gone well past what our ancestors knew? Maybe, maybe not. One thing that I
think can be said is that the focus of that knowledge, and the uses for the
intellectual capacity of our civilization, has changed. Spiritual matters take
a back-seat to science and economics. Not that those are bad things. But what
does that say about magick? Has the art of magick advanced?
Yes, yes it has. Albeit at a much slower rate and with much
fewer resources. Many ancient cultures believed magick to be the highest form
of learning. All of the intellectual, economic, political, and temporal
capacity went towards the study of magick in a big way. Why am I obsessed with
the Ancient Egyptians? One need only look at the Pyramids and know that their
culture spent a lot of its time thinking about magick. The huge portion of the cultural
records that survive focus on preparing for one’s death.
The point of all this, besides raising some even more
interesting questions, is how it effects our relationship with the spirits. One
question you have to answer for yourself is, are spirits immortal? Many of them
claim to be, and I have no reason not to take them at their word. One can
research the names of many spirits through the gimoires and all the way back to
ancient cultures. Are these the same spirits? Maybe, but at the very least the
spirits seem to have knowledge of those ancient names. So even if the spirits
are not immortal they certainly know their history and the history of their
interaction with us.
What did that interaction look like for the vast majority of
our time on this planet? It seems to have involved a lot of drugs and
journeying through trance states. It certainly didn’t involve brass seals and
contracts written on virgin paper, because we didn’t have any of those things
through the majority of our history. Although maybe those methods are a
refinement of the communication process, a sort of updated technology. But this
does prove that those methods are not absolutely necessary. That the spirits
can be contacted by other means. So while grimoire purists may be advancing the
art, it may not be the only way or even the best way to contact those spirits.
In the end, it is best to remember the magick of your
ancestors. The spirits certainly remember, and what has been said and done to
them in the past will reflect on how they interact with us today.
Can’t lie to you folks, I took two days off from Liber F on
Friday and Saturday. No excuses, just me being a lazy bitch. But I was back at
it today.
I lit one of my Babalon candles, and burnt some incense. I
had chosen to play some of this bad-ass Polish folk music as my background. It’s
got some amazing violin playing, like “sold your soul to the devil to play this
good” kind of playing.
I was shaking my bone rattle along with the music, and
something triggered, I don’t know, an awakening of genetic memory? Gradually,
the incense began to smell like a campfire. I had a strong image of a woman
dancing in front of that fire, her amazing figure silhouetted in the flames. I
felt the sharp texture of the bone acutely in my hand, and I could see the long
line of human beings like me, who for hundreds of thousands of years gathered on
the hilltops, made fire, took the sacrament, played the drums, and danced. We
have always done this. Some of us will always do this. Our numbers are small,
comparatively. But brother, I’m gonna tell you, you have not lived unless you’ve
watched a couple hundred naked Thelemites dancing around a fire in the woods.
The number one complaint I hear from people when I tell them
to work with their ancestors is that their family is just awful. That they can
never work with their ancestors for X Y Z reasons. I would never belittle
someone’s trauma. I am certain there are a lot of people out there whose
feelings on this are legitimate. I would never tell someone to work with an
ancestor that abused them, or with ancestors that have proven beyond a shadow
of a doubt that they were fucking assholes. I would ask, that if your ancestors
don’t fit in that category you consider a couple of things. And, I have some
work-arounds.
One, work on forgiveness. Forgiveness is as much of a
blessing for you as it is for them. I’m not going to sit here and outline all
the benefits of forgiveness, because it’s something you have to come to on your
own or it doesn’t really work. Just think about it. Maybe take a couple of days
to meditate on the concept of forgiveness.
Two, you may think that all your ancestors were hard-core Pentecostal/Jewish/Muslim/Catholic/etc.,
and they would NEVER understand what you practice. That may be true. Some
spirits hold onto that shit tight. Most learn it’s an anchor for them in the
afterlife. Most spirits of the dead realize almost immediately after they cross
over that the cosmos contains so much more than they ever dreamed of. They know
that us humans have an extremely limited perspective on the nature of reality.
That includes you and I as magi my friends. The only way you will know if any
given spirit is open to your current beliefs is to talk to them. So give it a
try and find out.
But if you really just can’t, you still have options. You
can flat-out adopt some ancestors. Looking to people within your own culture
would be a good start. We all come from Africa. We all come from the same
source. We are all siblings on this little mud-ball we call Earth. If you pick
someone with the same ethnicity, chances are you are related in some way. Do
some genealogy if you really want to know. Certainly you can at least come up
with a picture or something to symbolize what they were known for to have on
your ancestor altar.
You can also have magical ancestors. Not just ones from your
own particular magical tribe. I have talked with the spirits of Jack Parsons and
Hunter S. Thompson. I consider them ancestors of my craft.
If none of that seems right to you, you could go looking for
your ancestors astrally. A couple of years ago at the Babalon Rising Festival,
I led a guided meditation that had people meet their most distant ancestors and
learn about them. I’m proud to say that a version of that guided meditation has
made the rounds in several magical groups. You absolutely can go back as far as
you want. If you want a magical ancestor, why not use magick to find them? If I
get some requests, I would be happy to make an audio recording of that guided
meditation and post it here.
So if you want to work with ancestors you have no excuses.
It may be more work for you, but nothing good comes easy.
You knew this post was coming, right? Let’s get some points
of order out of the way. First, yes, you can do magick without drugs. Why you
would want to remains a mystery to me. Drugs are not a “short-cut.” The use of entheogens
by spiritual practitioners goes all the way back through pre-history. I think
it’s pretty inconvertible to say that drugs have been a part of most religions.
All the way from the wine you drink at a Catholic mass to ayahuasca. If you
want to argue that all of those magi were wrong, take it somewhere else.
Point of order number two: The creator of this blog does not condone the use of illegal drugs.
Please follow all local laws when imbibing substances. Those using substances
should be of sound mind and body. When in doubt, consult a physician. I highly recommend
doing as much research as possible before taking any substance. Please see: Multidisciplinary
Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) http://www.maps.org/.
With that out of the way, I’m actually going to talk about a
drug that is legal in all fifty U.S. states – blue lotus.
The Egyptians obsessed over blue lotus, also known as the
blue water lily, aka nymphaea caerulea, which grew along the banks of the Nile.
The blue lotus is perhaps the most common motif in Egyptian art, appearing
throughout all phases of Ancient Egyptian culture. While the lotus has multiple
symbolic meanings in Egyptian culture, and remains a powerful symbol in many
traditions, especially Hindu (albeit a different strain), the obsession with
the lotus probably has a lot to do with its psychedelic properties. Records of
Egyptians drinking lotus steeped in wine, eating lotus, and smoking lotus are
numerous.
The active ingredient in blue lotus is aporphine, a
substance not yet well researched or understood. Numerous psychonauts report that
blue lotus has effects similar to MDMA – with the user experiencing heightened
emotions, particularly feelings of connection to others, and a warm-fuzzy
feeling. Unlike MDMA, lotus is not an amphetamine. In fact, it acts as a
sedative, and has been useful for some in eliciting lucid dream states.
I tried blue lotus a few times a couple of years ago, making
a tea of lotus stamens with about 5g per cup of tea, steeped for about ten
minutes. I can attest to the similarities with reports of MDMA use, although
those effects were extremely mild. Overall, a great way to relax.
I’m gonna go a little deeper this time, having just
purchased 28g of dried lotus stamen from my favorite source for legal herbal psychoactives, Bouncing Bear Botanicals. Full disclosure, yes, that’s an affiliate link and if
you purchase using it I get a discount on future orders. Any instructions to be
found on using blue lotus are all over the place. Everyone seems to have a slightly
different opinion. Some believe the flowers are best, some the stamens. Some
used prepared tinctures, others fresh. I’m using the stamens again because it
makes sense to me that the stamen would have the highest concentration of the
plant’s chemical byproducts, but I can be totally wrong. All I know is it
worked last time. I may try using the dried flowers in the future.
My intentions for my mere 28g are as follows:
Use 20g to make a lotus wine. I’m doing this by merely
pouring off some of bottle of sweet riesling and adding the dried stamens. I really
looked for an Egyptian wine to use, but it being an Islamic culture now,
exported Egyptian wine is a difficult find. The choice was made simply to
offset some of the bitter aspects of the lotus. I’m going to let that steep in
the fridge for two weeks, try some, and then let it steep for two more weeks
before removing all of the dried plant material. I also intend to eat a pinch
of the used plant material when I drink the wine to try and heighten the
effects.
I’ll use 5g to make another cup of tea. To honor my gods and
ancestors and help cover the taste, I will brew it with an herbal tea imported
from Poland, made of apples and rosehips. I’ll let the lotus steep for fifteen
minutes, and this time will also eat a pinch of the used lotus to strengthen
the effect. Keep in mind, IMHO the taste of the blue lotus ain’t that bad, but
it’s not that great either. I’ve had worse.
The last three grams I will mix with my regular smoking
herb, and give that a try.
So expect some trip reports in the near future, and probably
some more history on the blue lotus.
I am gonna belabor the point. I don’t want to put this in
absolute terms, but you should, if at all possible, be working with a group of
magi. In my experience, there is little else that will improve your practice as
much as learning from your peers.
Don’t tell me you can’t find other people who are interested
in magick. You have the internet. I assume most of you have friends, and you’ll
be surprised how easy it is to get them into it. Don’t tell me you don’t have
the time. Make it a priority. Don’t tell me you are too surly, introverted,
weird, or just anti-social. You’re a godsdamn magician! You can do anything.
There are a few rare exceptions. People in extreme poverty,
people living under tyranny (that can be social tyranny, like abusive SOs and
family), and people with disabilities. Don’t get me started on magical groups
who don’t provide for people with disabilities, that’s another topic. But if
you don’t fit in one of those categories, find the others! Get your ass in a
car or on a bus and do magick with others.
I drive from Indianapolis to Kansas City twice per year
(2,000 miles). Indianapolis to Rockford, IL, at least three times per year
(1,800 miles). Indianapolis to Bedford, IN once per year (200 miles).
Indianapolis to Cincinnati (200 miles). That’s over 4,000 miles a year, with my
old ass crashing on air mattresses and eating Cliff Bars to make it work. Some
of it involves camping, and I hate fucking camping. But it’s worth it for those
precious days where I can do magick with the people I love.
It will be work. There will be drama. There will be people
you don’t like. There will be logistical nightmares. I know you are thinking
right now that there is no way you can do it. Try it. Just once. Go to a pagan
festival that has rituals. Throw a party for your friends where each of you
bring a ritual to perform. Once you do, you will thank me.
What does this have to do with ancestors? Not to be a
bummer, but if you are a part of a magical tribe long enough, one of those
people are gonna die.
I started writing this post wanting to describe those
amazing people. I have already written about Mordecai Sova, and probably said
more than I should. She was a very private person. But that event changed me in
so many ways it’s hard for me to even talk about magick anymore without talking
about her.
Let’s instead talk about Dr. D. He’s probably a more
interesting case in some respects, because I never actually met Dr. D. The Doctor committed suicide shortly after I joined the IOT and met my current magical
family. He’s interesting for a whole lotta reasons. One, he’s now become a
legendary figure. His veneration is now generational. Everyone who joins our
tribe learns Dr. D’s stories. In my working theory of EMAN, that means he’s now
an “elevated” spirit. If a spirit becomes the subject of veneration by people
outside their direct blood-kin, and those people pass on the stories of that
spirit, they are on their way to godhood. At least that’s what a lot of anthropologists
believe, as we have evidence of multiple people who were once kings, local
culture heroes, and important magi later being turned into gods. Or something
like a god. Note that in Voudon the lwa are not actually gods specifically
because it is believed they were once humans, at least some of them. It’s
complicated and differs depending on lineage.
I absolutely do believe that veneration in this world
bolsters a spirit’s cred in the afterlife. That means they have more allies and
more influence in the spirit world. I can also say from personal experience
that when a magus crosses over, they take with them many tools for crossing
spiritual boundaries. That makes contacting them all the more easy and gives them
more options for influencing the physical world.
The second interesting thing about the good Doctor is that
he is venerated by multiple traditions. I can’t speak personally for any member
of the IOT as far as direct veneration goes, but he is certainly honored by
that organization. My physical link to Dr. D comes from that bottle of whiskey
you see pictured above. That’s something the Doctor and I share, a love of fine
whiskey. That particular bottle was used in an IOT ritual honoring him after
his death. (Oops, there I go breaking oaths again.) He is directly venerated,
and is considered a Saint of Emergent Magick, specifically by my tribe, Reynahschar.
He was also initiated into a Palo Mayombe lineage. I have never been initiated
into Palo, and would never claim to be a Palo practitioner, but my tribe, in a
very real sense can now claim a Palo lineage through Dr. D.
The last, most interesting bit, is complicated. I don’t
think anyone can say for certain why another human being takes their own life.
Was it mental illness? Did Dr. D become a victim of his own hubris and fail to
protect himself adequately from the negative spiritual forces that many magi
truck with? Or was it his last great magical experiment? Probably some
combination of all of that and more. I do have in good confidence that Dr. D
wanted to be a spiritual ambassador after he died. He wanted to be contacted
after he passed over, and he wanted magi to remember him.
I don’t know if that makes it any better. Many people were
deeply hurt by his actions and feel resentment. I can’t blame them. I don’t
know if he was in so much pain that it really was a valid option. It’s too big.
I know not having met him personally colors my viewpoint, but in a moral sense,
I just can’t judge what he did one way or the other. What do you say about a
man willing to take the ultimate leap in the service of his craft? I just don’t
know.
I know that right now, suicide is not an option for me. I
have way too many things to prepare before my death. Just wait, there will be
multiple posts on that project. Of course, I could be a fool and I could drop
dead tomorrow. But I do believe one of the ultimate goals of any magus is
preparing for their own death. What goals do you have in the spirit world? Who
will join you in that quest?
Hey Frater T, all you have been doing is talking about
ancestors. What about spirits of place? What about spirits of plants, and all
those other cool spirits more commonly associated with Animism? We’ll get to
them, don’t worry. Mind you, those are the types of spirits I have the least
experience with. But that’s okay. One of the themes of this blog is getting
back to the bottom. Going back and improving the foundation of my spiritual
practice. Which is why I have to start with ancestors.
I have never been one to tell someone how they should
practice magick. Magick is inherently dangerous, no matter how careful you
think you are. If you want to just dive into the deep end and start with hard
core goetic demon evocation, I’m not gonna stop you. Fuck it. Do it. I did a
lot of dumb shit that I was not prepared for and failing is part of the
learning process. I’m lucky that I had people supporting me. I have a few
scars, but my only real regrets are that I wasted a lot of time doing bad
magick that didn’t get me very far.
Emergent Magick (EMK) often uses the metaphor, “Citadel of
Belief.” This is one of the key differences between Chaos Magick and EMK. In
EMK you constantly build upon the knowledge you have received. Chaos Magick
tells you to chuck a belief when it becomes inconvenient. I’m not saying all
chaos magicians do this, and none of them build upon their previous work
(although in a technical sense those magicians that do may be doing EMK and not
realize it.) I’m also not saying that holding on to a belief structure doesn’t
have its drawbacks. You certainly run the risk of dogmatism. But that’s why it’s
essential to work with a tribe whose members have differing paradigms.
But a Citadel of Emergent Animism is more than that. More
than just knowledge. It’s building up a coterie of spirits that you work with
on an ongoing basis. These are the spirits that populate your Citadel. They
guard it against hostile spirits. They clean the place up. They are your
advisers.
This all takes time, a lot of time. I’m talking years. And
the work never stops. You must constantly maintain those relationships. Just
like your human friends you gotta hang out with them on a regular basis and
truly get to know them. You have to be there when they need you, then they will
be there when you need them. Yes, spirits need things. Mostly they need contact
with the world so they can keep learning and growing. The work doesn’t stop
when you’re dead. It just changes. And all those offerings and attention are currency
for them. It gives them the ability to do more.
You could just keep Pokemoning daemons, summoning them up
one-by-one off a list and coerce or trade with them for favors. But if you’re
going to treat them like something you just toss out when you need something,
they are going to treat you the same way.
Since you have now learned I’m a big geek, let’s use another
geek reference. I’m a huge fan of the game Mage:
The Awakening, for obvious reasons. In Mage,
if a character specializes in spirit magick they eventually end up creating
what’s called a Spirit Court. A group of spirits they either created or
summoned that they trust and work with regularly. So fuck it, let’s just steal
that term. What you need to be doing is building your own Spirit Court.
As I’ve said more than a couple of times now, ancestors are
the best place to start because they almost always have your best interests in
mind. Working with local spirits of place wouldn’t be a bad option either,
because most of them want the beings that live within or near them to thrive. Also,
I’m not saying that if you already have a relationship with a god or other
alien spirit that you should quit that. Keep it up, but also start working with
spirits that are closer and have a more relatable perspective.
Working with more relatable spirits also gives you practice
dealing with other spiritual entities. You learn how to listen to them. What
signs they may use. How they often use symbolism to convey complex ideas that
can’t always be put into words. You learn about their feelings and how they
change over time. You learn how to gauge their opinion of you and use that to change
your practice in ways that are more pleasing to them. Or you may learn they
aren’t the type of spirit you want to be dealing with.
Remember that your ancestor lineage goes way beyond the
people you knew or those you have learned about directly. Everyone’s family
tree goes back to Africa. Ask the spirits you know to introduce you to the ones
you don’t. You do this by learning about where your family came from. If your
family came from Poland, collect Polish things, learn Polish history. But do
more than learn important dates and people, learn how those people lived. Find
things that may be familiar to them and use those to attract those spirits. You
don’t have to go out and find expensive art pieces and artifacts, though that’s
fine if you do. You can make traditional dishes and use them as food offerings.
You can simply use pictures of your native land. This is why pre-historic,
hunter-gatherer societies fascinate me. Know how they lived and what was important
to them and you will have better communication with those spirits.
So the next time some rando spirit asks, “Who the fuck are
you?” You too can answer, “Ego sum Legio.” I am Legion, for my ancestors stand
with me.
One of things I want to do with this blog is talk directly
about my ancestors and tell their stories. I think with all the shit going on
in the world, and the stark divisions in the U.S. coming to a head this
election day, it is the perfect time to talk about Cousin Max.
Old Frater T has been having a shitty week and I’m glad I
wrote out a few of these blog posts in advance. But I’ve run out of backlog,
and this one is coming to you raw. I wish I had time to go into the Cult of the
Saints as the continuation of ancestor veneration in Europe, and the nuances of
working with spirits of a faith that I have all but completely relinquished.
But I don’t have time for that. Let’s just talk about Max.
That’s Saint Maximillian Kolbe, my fourth cousin, the first
saint canonized by John Paul II, another fellow Polack. I don’t know what made
my grandmother happier, having a Polish pope in her lifetime, or having that
pope declare a member of our ancestry a saint. Her love of JP II was so intense
she would take pictures of the TV whenever he was on it.
I’m talking about Max today because Max fought Nazis. He was
by no means a perfect man, and his hate-on for the freemasons is upsetting. His
utter devotion to Mary was inspiring, but we disagree heartily on my view of
Mary as vestigial goddess worship. I have been known to stop at shrines to Mary
and say prayers to Babalon (I can feel Max cringing right now.) The links are
there if you look deep enough. While Mary has been seen as a virgin since the
earliest days of the Church, not all early Christians agreed with that
perspective. Many Christian gnostics saw her as a representation of Sophia. I’ll
let you do that research yourself.
Max and I agree on two important things. If you can help
relieve suffering in the world, do it. Also, fuck Nazis. I am proud to share
with you the story of Max’s martyrdom taken from his biography at the Jewish
Virtual Library.
“During the Second World War he (Maximillian Kolbe) provided
shelter to refugees from Greater Poland, including 2,000 Jews whom he hid from
Nazi persecution in his friary in Niepokalanów. He was also active as a radio
amateur, with Polish call letters SP3RN, vilifying Nazi activities through his
reports.
On February 17, 1941 he was arrested by the German Gestapo
and imprisoned in the Pawiak prison, and on May 25 was transferred to Auschwitz
I as prisoner #16670.
In July 1941 a man from Kolbe’s barracks vanished, prompting
SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Fritzsch, the deputy camp commander, to pick 10 men
from the same barracks to be starved to death in Block 13 (notorious for
torture), in order to deter further escape attempts. (The man who had
disappeared was later found drowned in the camp latrine.) One of the selected
men, Franciszek Gajowniczek, cried out, lamenting his family, and Kolbe
volunteered to take his place.
During the time in the cell he led the men in songs and
prayer. After three weeks of dehydration and starvation, only Kolbe and three
others were still alive. Finally he was murdered with an injection of carbolic
acid.”
Probably part of the reason I am social worker today is my
family’s belief in helping others. Even if Max and I argue about just about
everything else, we agree that if you are honestly devoting your life to easing
the suffering of others, you’re okay in our book, no matter what gods you are
calling on.
And fuck Nazis.
Max has become the patriarch of my family’s ancestor
spirits. They often, but not always, defer to him, and trust his judgement when
representing my family in this world and across the veil. It is always Max I
bring with me when I leave home to represent for my ancestor spirits.
One of my fondest memories is visiting his shrine here in the
U.S. in Marytown, IL. I wandered the beautiful church and grounds, inspired by
the spiritual presence there, lighting candles and watching the monks’ afternoon
prayer service. I took the ancestor flag I made for him and touched it to the
vessel containing some of his remains, hair and fingernail clippings said to be
kept by the camp barber at Auschwitz. Yes folks, Frater T is in possession of a
bona fide third-degree relic of the Catholic Church.
I can’t seem to make peace with my living relatives. But at
least I can make peace with my dead ones. I just have some hard-lines I will
not cross. Like tolerating Nazis.
I hope this can be an inspiration to those who look back at
their ancestors and think they can never work with them because of spiritual
differences. If you can find just two things to agree on, the rest can be
negotiated.
In my last post, I said something that should have given you
pause. When describing spirits of the dead, I said, “They can even be exploited
if a magus is so inclined. If they can’t learn to chill even after they’re
dead, fuck ‘em.”
No one told you that being a magus makes you a nice person,
right? There are reasons why necromancy is reviled by many cultures. Most of
those reasons are bullshit based on fear and control. But being a necromancer
does sometimes mean blurring some lines. If you as a magus decide you may need
a weapon at your disposal, even just for self-defense… well weapons come at a
price. A weapon is not an innocent thing, despite what the NRA wants you to
believe. A weapon always requires you to compromise your innocence. A weapon
symbolizes you are willing to do harm. A spiritual weapon can be a costly thing
indeed.
The most powerful weapon in my spiritual arsenal? Without a
doubt – Deadwater. What is Deadwater you ask? Lucky for you folks I know the
leading expert. The number one source. I turn you over to the words of my beloved
brother, Frater Yaramarud, the man who provided me with this amazing substance.
“My first encounter with Deadwater came nearly a decade ago.
At the time, I saw it purely as a novelty and not something with the nearly
boundless potential that I know today. Traveling down the road with my good
friend Frater Dreadnaught, and an ex-partner of mine, the three of us had made
a late night decision to stop at the next cemetery we found in order to waste
time in a way that people in their early twenties are wont to do. When we
finally found one and had parked the car, a light in the center of the cemetery
had drawn our attention to a pump well gently illuminated beneath it. My
initial thought was one of curiosity and bewilderment. What reason could there
possibly be for there to be a well here? With this question unanswered, it
dawned on me that the corpses surrounding us had, beyond any doubt, decayed and
seeped into the table from which this well drew.
After jokes and general fucking around, we left the cemetery
without even noting its general location. Though I had lost contact with my
ex-partner, Fr. Dreadnaught and I remained close friends. During this time, he
had enlisted in the military and left our home state for roughly 7-8 years.
Though we often discussed the possible location of the Deadwater, the only
thing that either of us could remember was the highway that it was most likely
located on. With him gone for years and me being the only person that could
feasibly find this place, I did all I could do in order to locate it. Driving
up and down the highway proved fruitless, as did looking at maps of cemeteries
along the route and cross-referencing them with Google. My last effort was to
post an inquiry on a local genealogy group under the guise of searching for the
grave of a relative. This too led to nothing. I was forced to give up, and so
it was for about six years.
Last year, however, things changed. Fr. D had moved back
from California and had spent some time living with my wife and I. It was
during this time that we had become determined to find this Deadwater once
again. As we had both evolved in our magickal practice, it had become less of a
curiosity and more of a holy grail; here was a tool that had so much latent
potential, and yet it was completely out of my reach. One night in September of
2017, we had decided that, since it was once again physically possible for us
to find it together, we would do exactly that.
I’ll spare you the details of the ritual itself suffice to
say that Fr. D and myself had performed a Goetic invocation for executing our
will. In hindsight, we had made a mistake. For our statement of intent, I had
simply said, “It is our will to invoke XX to lead us to the Deadwater
located along Highway XX.” It was during the ritual
that I was mentally given a map of the county through which the highway ran,
with a marker placed by the demon. With the image still firmly visualized, we
pulled up a map of cemeteries in the county that this marker could possibly
represent. After making a list with their corresponding addresses, we left in
search of the Deadwater.
It was the middle of nowhere; we were surrounded by corn
fields in every direction. After taking the final turn, still flanked by corn
on either side, the GPS indicated that we had arrived at our destination: the
first cemetery on the list. There was nothing. Just corn. As Fr. D was
rechecking the address, I slowed the truck to a stop. Just before we had become
entirely motionless, the field opened up to reveal the stones we were looking
for, but they weren’t familiar at all. There was no light in the center. It was
just darkness. Despite this, we decided to look around anyway. After all, we
had the entire night to look, and maybe the light had burned out, or our memory
of the place was faulty.
We spent roughly 30 minutes wandering between the
gravestones, splitting up to cover more ground. As we both began to lose hope
and had called out that we should go to the next address on the list, I noticed
a dim light in the distance. I called to Fr. D to meet me and we could explore
this light together. Once we had reconvened, we started walking together
towards the light. Not even ten steps from when we started, our headlamps
simultaneously crossed, revealing before us a pump well.
This was not the same well. We both knew that, and yet a
shiver ran down both of our spines. We tested it. It worked. The demon had
shown us the way, though due to our lack of precise wording, it was not the
same well we had seen all those years ago. We had prepared for this moment and
filled several bottles with the water, water that contained the decayed remains
of hundreds of bodies, water that was the distilled essence of the dead.
Since that night, I have utilized the Deadwater in multiple
ways. The first ritual that we had done with it was a joint effort between Fr.
D and myself. He had volunteered to drink a small portion of the water, and a
ritual was formed around this primary action. Performed twice, we discovered
through Fr. D’s gnosis that he was able to visualize and speak to his own
ancestors. Thus, not only did this water stand as an essence of the dead that I had discovered through my own later experimentation, it was able to
form a link between their realm and our own.
Its apparent linkage to death and focal point of death have
proven invaluable. Apart from the aforementioned use of contacting one’s
ancestors, I have used it as a method of simplifying my altar. Rather than
having dozens of pictures of my ancestors for veneration, I find it just as
effective to place a bottle of the water with an image of my family crest as a
sort of condensed fetish. Another similar use I have found is mixing the water
with the gravedirt of my grandmother in order to form an anointing solution
that has a direct link to my lineage and those that came before. In using it as
a kind of “essential oil of death”, I have found that it works with great
success in “jinx” or “hex” work as a medium for freezer spells and the like. It
has also worked equally well as an intensifier for other gravedirt workings and
as a component for spirit work. Though these cover only my own current
experiments with the Deadwater, I know that its potential has exceeded every
expectation that I have had for it. As I continue to find new uses, it
continually astounds and amazes me.”
What’s the first lesson to be learned from this amazing
story? Have a tribe! There are other awesome magi out there. You can find them.
It will take hard work and dedication to actually work together. I travel
thousands of miles a year just to be with my tribe. But it’s so damn worth it
when you experience that love and are gifted with magical knowledge, and receive
gifts like 750 ml of Deadwater.
Lucky you, you can buy it online from Frater Yaramarud at
his most excellent store, Welcome to Tarotdise, where he and his wife sell some
amazing hand-crafted occult products.
Back to the original point and my experiences with
Deadwater. As far as I know I am only the second person dumb enough to drink
some of it. I immediately tasted the earth and rot of the grave. My vision
dimmed, and I felt myself slipping between the land of the living and the realm
of the dead. All from one sip. BTW, I in NO WAY endorse drinking the Deadwater.
It is not sold for consumption. If you get intestinal parasites or a fungal
infection, that’s your problem.
Meditating on the bottle sitting on my altar has produced
some interesting visions. You can literally see the angry spirits swirling
around in the bottle. No, they are not happy to be there. And I get the feeling
the Deadwater captured some of the most malicious spirits of that particular
cemetery. Is it wrong to use them for my own devices? Probably. But a magus
gotta do what a magus gotta do. I’ll talk some more about the nuances of such
necromantic work in a later post.
In my opinion, Deadwater is essentially spiritual toxic
waste. No other spirit I know likes to go near the stuff. I really don’t want
to meet the spirits that would enjoy it. For example, I recently had an
altercation with a certain Red Goddess who has been fucking with my love life
hard. Of course, she laughed at my admonitions of her cruel little games. Until
I threatened to pour some Deadwater over her statue. She shut the fuck up real
quick after that. Is it truly a threat to a goddess? I don’t know, but I
certainly got the impression she wouldn’t enjoy the experience.
As noted, Frater Yaramarud had somewhat different
experiences. Maybe it’s the batch I got. Maybe it’s his intent when using it,
or how he mixes it with other substances. Maybe those spirits just don’t like
me for whatever reason. You don’t have to use it as a weapon.
Yeah, I know a lot of this sounds a bit crazy. But part of
being a magus is learning to frame your experiences in a mythic context. As my
hero Miguel says, “Write your own story. Live your own myth.” Be hardcore. Get
yourself some Deadwater. Better yet, harvest some of your own. Be prepared to
do a lot of banishing before and after you do something like that.
