Messages

These are good :) Here's some from my list.

Be approached by a certain animal
Have someone give me a cupcake
Find lost object
Hear a particular song
Get a person to contact me
Have someone quote a song or movie near me
Have someone post something specific on forums or facebook
Make technology (computers, cell signal, lights) work or not work
Influence another person's dream and get them to tell you about it
Make person x wear this kind of clothing on that day
Pranks
Make enough weird magickal shit happen that other people notice
Help a friend get what they want
Heal physical problems - minor things like joint aches, obviously don't stop taking your chemo
Influence local politics
Hex public enemies
Divine the outcome of sports
Try to guess who's ringing the doorbell or phone before answering
Influence or predict weather
Influence or predict events in a card game, video game, board game

I am sorry.

[I don't know where to post this.]

It's late at night and I probably *should* wait, sleep, and review this in the morning before posting, like a cautious adult. Obviously, I make a poor adult.

I set off, again, to seek magic.
This time I have a car, and possibly a dog after I pass Colorado.
And I have a goal now beyond displacement and survival. See, I can move energy, talk to things, manipulate belief, all to an extent, but the glamourspark that crosses between mind and world hits me on a whim and then vanishes for months. To the degree that the knowledge of this thing's location can be transmitted, I believe it's best done directly, as the connection through sigils and egregores is very hit and miss and so far hasn't lived up to the advertising. I love you more that you think, or I love the idea of you, maybe, to be more honest, because it's time for some honesty. Meet with me and I'll give you what I have, which is action. We'll brainstorm something in person, or walk until ideas find us, or just pick a spot and start building power until something happens. I'm not opposed to intoxicated late night philosophy, either. Ignore me, and fuck you, I'll do it all myself. I'll take this place apart.
I seek the X-factor, but that's not entirely why I'm travelling. It's because I like it, and because synchronicity and truth find one more easily within a volatile lifestyle.
My will is focused. My goal is singular. Dear Chaos, lift me, because too many zones on this planet are windless.
Dear Otherness, what is it going to take? Blood? I've given you blood. Psychedelic drugs? I've gone to near blackout. My undivided attention? Well here the fuck I am.
I am physically smearing ketchup on myself right now. Mmm, how about a little minced onion on top of that? Look tasty?
Dear Doombringer. Fuck you for not responding, you overhyped piece of shit. Meet me in the field if you want to see me again.
Dear Ellis. Bite me, bitch.

I've been practicing and I've found some energetic buttons, so to speak, that I intend to keep mashing. I'll keep practicing as I travel, now that I can do so without distraction, and if some mugs see or hear something weird in the process, well, that can hardly be helped.

This particular trip starts in western Washington and ends in late August in Flagstaff. That's the plan, anyway. I leave for Portland tomorrow morning.

Maybe I'll do that.

I asked because I have friends up here, who are more or less classic pagan, who do this invoking thing a lot. At the drop of a hat, really, but they're pretty mature about it. More so than me. Anyway, I went to a thing with them put on by a wiccan group a couple months after posting this which involved a lot of sustained formal-context invocation. I'm sure some of you have been to that sort of thing? And I bought into it because might as well, if I was going to pay the price tag, and got to talk to the godforms several times as part of the program. They had a strong effect on me - one in particular - but I was also funneling a whole lot of belief into them at the time, really treating it like an encounter with a god/dess. I remember looking into one of their eyes was like long green tunnels, but I was also very, very burned out by that point, probably by my own doing. And I saw that other people could also be strongly emotionally affected, or could strongly affect their own emotions by attributing importance to the encounter... and interesting coincidences all around the area where this took place. It's not that wiccans are unable to create magic. But, if their invocations are like my own, there is a gradient, and how much I can attribute what a medium says to another entity will depend on the depth of possession.


I don't know why I was asking here, anyway. The only way I can get real information is by testing. Any ideas on how to get an invoked spirit to say something falsifiable without letting them know what I'm up to?

Lol, ghost cat is a thing? I was seeing one of those in my eye corners around Halloween. I tried to encourage it, put out catnip, it became a joke with one of my roommates... but if it was ever there, it moved on. Too bad, I wanted a kitty.


The other way to get through to skeptics is to go the psychological route. Play up the idea of paradigms, manipulating belief and perspective with imagination, but don't give any whiff of the metaphysical. If they're curious enough it will lead them in.

Thanks. I'll definitely spread this around.

Actually, some of us would prefer it if you didn't join facebook and just kept posting here...

Welcome. Don't get scared off by the lack of activity, it's mostly on facebook.

Do I still count as an oistar? Probably. What did you want me to email you for the position, again?

I can't see the image.

Edit: Maybe he permanently annihilated "the image", ha ha.

I'll help when I can. PMed you my email.

Never underestimate the ability of a skeptic to ignore evidence. Whatever goes into this, it has to be our best methods. If it fails the document will work against us. In the sigils section, I would stress the importance of forgetting, since that's the hard part and does make a difference for some people. Have it be part of the instructions to cast right before you go do something really engaging. Something that seems more important to pay attention to than the sigil, like a date, or an exam, or a... bar fight, I don't know.


czvni: It's confusing and it skirts around words that would trigger the disbelief reflex. I like it.

I walked into a bookstore the other day. Looking around, I came upon a hanging cloth, prominently displayed, with a photo of a sailing ship and text above it beginning with, "The magic went away, and so did the mages..."


It made me angry. Here I stood, living counterexample and defiance, angry even though the sign was on our side, as it were, advertising a game about depowered mages seeking the source of lost magic. Angry that "The magic went away" is even true enough to be a trope. I checked for cameras or people nearby, and finding none, tagged it visibly using the red marker that lives in my coat pocket.


I removed myself from the scene and considered whether I could have held my mind better, to really focus that initial reaction, or whether the thrill of vandalism was enough. It must have been, because my action was followed within the minute by a sharp burst of synchronicity.


I feel like this was something of a representative moment.