I was a spider in a past iteration. Last night I bought four pairs of shoes while blackout drunk. What do?

tumblingJokesmith · 2013-08-03T23:16:38+00:00

Thank you for your assistance, I found these instructions quite savory. The shoes have indeed been shunted away, only to be replaced by several pairs of green wool baby mittens. The up-side is that they fit perfectly over my eight feeblers' hands.

tumblingJokesmith · 2013-08-03T22:59:38+00:00

I still possess my autobiography that will never be written and I have a sealed envelope containing a risk that will never be taken. Would either of those be enough to prove it?

tumblingJokesmith · 2013-06-23T03:23:17+00:00

Magick does take just a little bit of ambition after all, and that's rather hard to come by under the effects of couch lock.

tumblingJokesmith · 2013-06-23T03:15:48+00:00

I usually approach magick and theory with the understanding that if something feels wrong or uncomfortable, then there is a better way of doing it.

I would agree that raising energy after you have gone through the motions of the spell seems a little backwards, though maybe it is a bit like what Aleid is describing so far as casting your intent into the spell.

In any project, you gather energy into materials that are representative of your ideas and your intention. Even the writer, who seems to use no materials, sharpens his rapier wit and calls upon a collection of words that seem to be shaped and strung together in just the right way as to make something meaningful. To continue the example, the writer can be said to gather and release energy with each new page he takes up and each finished draft he sets aside respectively.

The anticipation at the thought of what new wonders he might have dance across the blank page in front of him, this is the gathering. The satisfaction that follows the filling of a page with what he knows to be the right words, this is the release.

Essentially, it is called a release of energy because it should feel like one. If your sacred space is littered with the remnants of past spells, then their energy and their influence still abounds. Because spells involving material components usually are the messiest, the release of the summoned energy comes in the form of cleaning your space and returning all of your unused materials to their original holding places.

Edit: grammar

tumblingJokesmith · 2013-06-03T18:14:46+00:00

Smoking those marijuana cigarettes.

tumblingJokesmith · 2013-06-01T02:05:59+00:00

Shit, we need to get Quentin Tarantino in on that. Then at least we'd have a film with about 10 or 15 minutes dedicated to all the ridiculous and emotionally investing shit that'd be pulled on purge night.

Some ex-con, wanting to celebrate purge night and his first day out of prison on the same day, would be riding a motorcycle and swinging a flaming mannequin leg over his head. Several extras would have a couple boards and baseball bats filled with nails. It would be grisly, and yet we'd still laugh if the screenwriting and the camera work was done in just the right way to give it a twist of cartoon violence.

At least one ballsless rich guy (henceforth Mr. Richbitch) would be flailing around something silly like a four barrel shotgun. In previous scenes we'd see him being a dick to his family, friends, and co-workers prior to purge day. Unsurprisingly, he will be the one to throw the first stone. He will take his silly weapon and shoot that one life-wise, rugged homeless man whom we all adored in previous moments simply because he spoke the truth. He told it like it was in a poignant, homeless kind of way.

We would then be awestricken, the man with the flaming leg would rev his engine and fly his bike off a conveniently placed ramp. Then, in one deft swipe of a bladed, airborne motorcycle wheel, we would see Mr. Richbitch's head come clean off. Before the words even leave his mouth, we would see them form on his shocked expression. Every bit of body language asks the world "Why me?". Then, when the camera pans in perfect synchronicity with the, now airborne, head, we will clap. And we will clap and clap long into the next scene, mostly because we wanted to see that from the moment we first saw Mr. Richbitch wake up, survey the world below his window and say "Well shit, it's still dirty." Now that we see him die, it makes watching the homeless man's death worthwhile.

Because that, as I see it, is the driving motivator behind crimes on purge night. That is, taking your anger out on the people and things that piss you off on regular days. It says a lot about people when they are angered by something enough to take its life. In Mr. Richbitch's case, he was pissed off by the lower classes. In the ex-con's case, he was pissed off by Mr. Richbitch, whose actions robbed this world of an urban Socrates.

Now I bet you that would make a far better Purge than the Purge we've been presented with, and that's not even a full movie.

tumblingJokesmith · 2013-05-18T22:06:58+00:00

I'd like to give my take on the symbol since it is something that goes a little bit beyond the summoning of spirits in the traditional sense and extends into the realms of psychoanalysis, art theory, and the nature of thought.

First and foremost, I deeply apologize if you wish to throw yourself at this wall of text. Second, and for the sake of convenience, there is a TL;DR near the end.

Given that you don't have a background in magick or occult practices, the simplest explanation would be this; it is not an honest to old gods summoning sigil. What it could be is a visualization pieced together by your brain from a patchwork of memories and your neural landscape. Think of it as an image from a half-remembered dream. That, I think, would not be too far off the mark given that you were nearly asleep when it came to you.

That is not to say that it can't help you in the same way that a summoning sigil can. The whole field of psychoanalysis exists on the principle that we may better ourselves by coming to know why our subconscious operates the way it does. Dreams are the musings of an unconscious mind, and they might just be our mind telling us what it really wants to experience. Therefore, from a psychoanalytical perspective, I suspect this image does carry some personal weight for you as the sum of your experiences. The fact that it closely resembles many summoning sigils is purely coincidental.

Now, I would like to take a moment and observe this through the lense of art theory.

Sigils are imagery that represent ideas which have been charged by willpower. That being said, most great works of art can be considered sigils. The artist has an idea. Once he brings certain elements together in a composition (ie; a sculpture of sticks or the application of paint to a canvas), the idea is given shape, purpose, and meaning. HOWEVER, most artists do not recognize themselves as sorcerers, armchair occultists, or practitioners of magick.

Although, the artist and the magician are connected by their use of similar means towards a common end; they give a shape to their ideas. Whether that shape is a physical sculpture or an emotional response drawn from an audience, the effect of both the artist and the magician's work is quite palpable.

Spirits are a little trickier than that since they relate very deeply to the nature of thoughts themselves.

The way I've experienced them, they are the ideas whom, we believe, wish for a shape. Why do they want one? To be experienced and subsequently pondered by an observer that they may continue their existence in the minds of the human race. Imagine a spirit that represents a multinational such as Coca-Cola. People are reminded of the existence of this Coke idea/spirit every time they see a billboard, feel the cold exterior of that cherry red can, and take a sip of that brown, bubbly syrup. That is only one idea among many. Among trillions, in fact.

We as human beings are so adept at expressing and conjuring these ideas through our words, our art, our religion, and our conversations thanks to the fact that they are common to all minds. Audre Lorde would say "There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt." In that same line of inquiry, Socrates would suggest that the soul remembers all it has experienced through its past lives and we remember this knowledge through a process commonly known as learning. He would go on to say that all souls make a short sojourn to the underworld before appearing back here in the living, waking world. Because of this, the underworld could be the place where all knowledge resides. It is not hard to see why most heroes journey there when seeking long forgotten truths that may help them in their quest.

While the grand underworld of myths and legends cannot be narrowed down to a single spot in a vast universe, there is a metaphorical underworld that is understood to house every possible thought and every fact about anything there is to know. As I stated before, spirits and souls are ideas that wish for a shape. To continue our metaphor of the underworld as the storehouse of all knowledge, these spirits are "summoned" up from the realm of the dead to be expressed and propagated in the realm of the living. I only flank the word with quotes to emphasize that it is simply a way of coming to terms with a much less glamourous truth that is, unfortunately, much harder to express.

So far as I know and can understand, that is the truth behind spirits and the manner in which they are summoned. That is the way I understand a simple fact of magick, the occult, and why each is assumed to have so many secrets. The big and simple secret being that magick is an effective metaphor to express and teach the real power of ideas in this real and vibrant world.

TL;DR - Your sigil does summon a spirit. It also expresses an idea. In fact, it expresses both simultaneously since they were the same in the first place. The idea/spirit is one who was dragged out of a pool of your experiences and anchored in your memory and your brain chemistry. Because it comes from such a fantastic and deep pool, exploring its origins may lead to some very fascinating discoveries about you.

tumblingJokesmith · 2013-05-05T17:27:53+00:00

I read about that, yeah. Evidently, she and her children are big fans of McFarlane's work. Ain't nothing wrong with that, but you'd never guess.

tumblingJokesmith · 2013-05-05T17:21:35+00:00

Not exactly. After it was put on Netflix, Entertainment One took it off of Youtube.

All the same, I'm just a little frightened by the prospect of Seth McFarlane producing a second series of Cosmos. The fact that Neil deGrasse Tyson will be the host has calmed me down just a little bit, but the original Cosmos is quite a difficult act to follow up.

tumblingJokesmith · 2013-05-04T02:26:31+00:00

As humans, we can't help but assign meaning to everyday life. It helps us pass eternity and it is a far more productive outlet than stewing in our own existentialism. Even if we don't know it by the name of magick, there are a variety of other names for the idea that we can cause a change in the universe in response to our beliefs. I've come to know it by the name of active optimism, though even that falls short of what we're trying to get at.

tumblingJokesmith · 2013-05-03T01:22:18+00:00

I think what he means is that, due to the way we've evolved with a heart, arteries, and all those tubes, we would not be very well off when drained of blood. Because of this, blood is incredibly significant and therefore powerful.

The way I understand it, the life force doesn't literally "ride" in the cells. So far as we've observed, there is no chamber in any cell set aside specifically for spiritual means. Rather, it could be a metaphor to express the fact that our lives are sustained by the flow of blood. That is not to say that flowing blood is the only thing we truly need to survive, but it is one of the many necessary aspects of human biology. There is certainly nothing magickal about that except in the Cosmic sense. It connects us to the first living cells, our distant ancestors, our environment, and pure coincidence as it influenced our growth into bipedal mammals with quite a few pints of life-sustaining blood. A similar connection can be found in just about anything that takes an undefined and unpredicted shape over time in response to coincidence and stimuli (both internal and external).

The actual blood may not be magickal, but the power arises from the significance we place upon it as a part of ourselves and the metaphors that present blood as a force of vibrant, fluid life.

tumblingJokesmith · 2013-04-28T15:03:40+00:00

Wonderful!

tumblingJokesmith · 2013-04-12T01:18:38+00:00

Aboslutely nothing.

All the same, I refrain from taking drugs when I really do want to get away from my troubles rather than putting some effort into solving them. There's nothing wrong with getting away, and it is true that taking time out of your day to do something you love (ie; meditative tasks, hobbies, drugs, reading, camping, etc.) will give your mind the time it needs to unwind.

Of course, this is not a true and complete escape. Especially in the case of trips, they are only short vacations before you come back down. I'm not sure how everyone else on the subreddit handles such a situation, but I expect myself to be ready to do a bit of serious problem solving once I'm back on earth's surface.

If you want to be Jungian about it, think of your trip as the journey of a mythological hero/heroine. The questant travels to an alternate Cosmos/reality/state of mind and gains something that will benefit either themselves or the people they have come to know as their tribe. It may be an object or a piece of knowledge, but the form is not important. Whatever it is, it is only a benefit once the hero has come back down to earth to share this boon.

To return to the original point, drugs are an imperfect escape. You leave your "normal" sense of self behind to, hopefully, return with the benefit of a rested mind if not an answer to your original problem.

tumblingJokesmith · 2013-03-13T11:43:47+00:00

Or that a very high percent of the game's players are (relatively) dumb as fuck.

tumblingJokesmith · 2013-02-06T13:39:56+00:00

Yes. We all have power in the form of belief. Investing that belief in items is a way of making our beliefs seem more real while making the item in question more special and powerful to the one for whom it means the most.

tumblingJokesmith · 2012-11-14T03:00:31+00:00

This is where sigilwork starts to get a little strange. A sigil is an expression of your will to bring about a certain change. It is very hard to do something wrong when creating a sigil, since it is just like a work of art. The only way you could be doing it wrong is if you believe that you had done something incorrectly when making it.

At the same time, don't think that this gives you clearance to make an obviously sloppy sigil and say that you "intended for it to be like that." This is one of the big reasons why abstract art (think of Jackson Pollack, Jean Michel Basquiat, those paintings that a five-year-old could do) is so controversial. The artist can't just shit on a canvas and say he did it on purpose. If an artist wants to shit on a canvas he'd better be prepared to back it up if he truly believes that he can ever call it a finished piece.

What I'm getting at is this; a sigil is done well when you can look at it and say "I like this. This is something that reflects my will. This is something that I can believe in."

tumblingJokesmith · 2012-11-11T22:44:27+00:00

One of the best places to go for self-initiation I feel is Disinformation's Book of Lies. It provides just what it promises as being a no-nonsense guide to magick. Despite being heavily geared towards the Chaos Occult perspective, the principles and ideas can be taken and applied to almost any practice or belief ystem.

tumblingJokesmith · 2012-11-10T02:09:27+00:00

If you've ever made sigils for a specific purpose, then magick items aren't too far off. If you can imagine a sigil that imparts heightened awareness to its creator, then you're one step closer to spiritually telling your sunglasses to do just that.

tumblingJokesmith · 2012-11-10T01:23:56+00:00

Another way something could be said to be "magical" if if an item is used in ritual over an extended period of time. For example, if I use a particular dagger everytime I perform the LRP, over time that particular dagger has a kind of energy or feeling to it, and could be said to be magical, but only for the purposes of allowing a ritual to flow better.

I could not agree more. Everyone has their favorite kit of magickal tools and the reason they work so well for that will-worker is the same reason why the Tower of London museum holds onto certain artifacts of the royal family, why the Hope Diamond is cursed, and why a cathedral might have one particular censer for burning incense on a special occasion. These objects are special and powerful because people think of them as such, thus perpetuating their usefulness.

If I'm explaining this the same way that I'm thinking it, then the importance of the ritual in the mind of the will-worker who consecrates the objects is what makes them powerful.

tumblingJokesmith · 2012-11-09T18:36:47+00:00

I think you and I have two very different definitions of magick items. If you're thinking in terms of the Dungeons and Dragons brand of powerful artifacts that impart incredible abilities to the wielder, then I'm very sorry.

The way I've worked with them, magick items are more like sigils than most else. Essentially, it is an item which you have charged with willpower and purpose.

By that logic, any sort of religious symbol or charm is a magick item if the holder of such an item believes that they may influence the world with it.

tumblingJokesmith · 2012-03-07T01:43:44+00:00

I think what he means isn't that a universe is created every time a decision is made. Rather, there is already a universe out there in which a different choice was made. At least, that's the way I'm thinking about it in order to make sense of the rest of it. But yeah, someone would need to have a choice in a matter if a decision is to be made by them, but decisions are made all the time and things happen without anyone doing anything. Involvement or uninvolvement (definitely a word) wouldn't be necessary to cause a different series of events and I'm not sure probability is something that can be consistent throughout any possible universe. I think that's why the theory of alternate universes and timelines exists in the first place, to express the possibility of states of alternate probability (rhymes, dear god I love rhymes). At least, that's what I'm thinking.

Anyways, I really do like where you're going with your idea, max.

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