Godform Cycle - March 2015

[Frater Theodbald]

I haven't done the Doombringer evocation this week yet, but I've been practicing the Ellisian Banishing Ritual.  Easy to memorize, but hard to understand and hence perform.  I've been doing LBRPs and Star Rubys and LSRPs which are all 4-sided that the triangular method was alien to me at first.  Now I may actually be getting a hang of it!


I think I've finally figured out the three proclamations to use in the ritual.  The first: "Hazah!  Hazah!  Zazahexazaz!" (Because double-crowley, biatche!)  The second, "Hekas!  Hekas, este bebeloi!"  (I used to do it as a starting proclamation, but it didn't feel right.  And I had previously tried the IAO vibration but it didn't feel quite right either.)  The third: "Esto."  (Been using it since the beginning, felt right since the start.)  A part of me is encouraged by the proclamation, "... and from this rite, I untie the worlds!" but it still feels a bit strange.


I've also added the circle-pointing, as done in the LBRP.  It works kind of well.

[Ringtail]

You all aren't going to believe this :D Except he said you probably would... But I'll save it.


I was able to do a more elaborate altar this week.

[Frater Theodbald]

So this week is Doombringer!  I did my ritual last night.  I took 2 pictures, but not sure which one is the best:







As you can see, the altar setup is very similar to my Ellis working, as I'm trying to maintain a standard or a similarity between rituals.  I put on my Discordian Lab Coat for the rite (of course).


So I had had a particularly shitty day at work, and concentration was rather more difficult.


The first Ellisian Banishing went rather well, and I'm glad I practiced it.


The Transvocation to Khaos was nowhere near as intense as the first time, which had genuinely surprised me, though it still felt effective.  I think I'm going to need a better paper to read it from, or maybe even put on my glasses next time.  I stuttered a bit during the reading and did not like it very much.


It was then the actual Invocation of The Doombringer that went really well.  The wording was rather awkward at first but as soon as the Sacrament was taken and the final mantra recited, something inside the center of my torso "happened" - I felt tears roll down my cheeks that "something changed" and that there was something in the past of which I have to let go.


The divination was fruitful, many symbols which I will compile and try to analyse later on.


When I did the final Ellisian Banishing ritual, all of the imagery was so vivid!  It's as if my visualisation ability and technique was doubled!  In that tiny ritual, I learned a lot about it and now appreciate it even more.  Lots of red in my mind, now.


Once the formal part of the operation was finished, it didn't end there!  I still felt the presence of 663 radiating inside of me - and, let's admit it, the sacrament too - and was compelled to pick up my copy of The Field Manual for the Strange Psyche to read the invocation written there.  I copied it here for posterity's sake.

I am the one, the one and only;
I am everything, and everything is nothing.
Behold the truth, and behold the light
and behold as I destroy it all!
I am the one, the one and only;
I am everything, and everything is nothing.
I am truth, and I am lies
I am the end of it all!
IA DOOMBRINGER! AWAKEN KHAOS!
(Repeat last part until satisfied.)


The next thing that happend was extensively strange.  It felt as if this working was interfering with another previous working.  In January, I had undertaken a 14-day Transvocation taken from Chumbley's Dragon Book of Essex.  The effects were quite palpable and have been felt ever since.  Because of this - there was seemingly interference.  Something between the 'dragon' part of me and the 'centeral chakra-thingie' in the center.  At that point I just zonked out into trance.  Conversing with both Doombringer and Azhdeha.  I was in a world of dream, conciliating the two magical influences together, integrating them together, and trying to make something whole.  Maybe I should have compartamentalized?  In the end they both melted into each other.  A little something in my heart felt oh so good and liberated. 

The 'protection' of the Discordian Lab Coat was no longer necessary at that point and the next thing I knew I was getting ready to go to sleep.  I didn't sleep right away, though, I was far away in trance land, in my now motionless body, under the warm covers, immersed in visions.


I woke up early, feeling particularly well rested and stronger emotionally.

[Tara Flower]

That's the same Doombringer invocation that I used. I'm always impressed by Doombringer's dual personality; when I first started with DKMU he used to try and frighten me, then as soon as he initiated me as a member his whole manner changed and he became helpful and patient, and with a sense of humour. He's only a chaos beast to his enemies, and as a test. It makes me fond of him.

[Luna G]

Godforms cycle 2015
March 14th – Doombringer


I started off the ritual with the Ellisian banishing, followed by the Transvocation of Xaos. Doombringer was then carefully drawn.


Considering that 663 is linked to Papa Legba, I felt it was appropriate to wear a Top hat for the drawing and the evocation of Doombringer.


Some interruptions happened while doing the ritual : people came in and at some point the music stopped, transferred it on my cell instead.


Once the drawing done, I proceeded with the evocation, the libation and divination.


The cards that came up are:
Left : 0-The Fool / Knight of wands
Top : XIV-Tempérance / 9 of wands
Right: VI-Lover / Knight of wands
Bottom: XXI-The World / 4 of wands


The night before, I went to a friend's house and she made me a reading. The spreading mainly came down to "I need to let go of my intellect in order to die a have a rebirth".


Sitting on the floor, Legba was there with his grin. He slowly changed into this floating black chromed figure. Legba and 663 kept inter changing. At some point, the figure had a double edge axe in their right hand.


I knew what was coming and I felt at peace. I straightened my head and told them I was ready. I felt a slow, cold blade going throw my neck. My head fell down.


After a moment, I slowly held my head back up. At that moment, Legba looked at me and asked me "what do you feel about the cards?"


I went on, reading the cards. The message that came out was very personal to my current journey.


Some photography of the altar followed the reading and I finished by just thanking them.

[Tara Flower]

Looks like we are not going to wait until May to comment on our rituals, so I will add my comments about the first three now. I was really keen on the suggestion to have a common pattern to all of them, and it was great the way this discussion came together with several people contributing  bits of  the pattern. Even if you're not going to  have a fixed format like in ceremonial magic you still need some structure and some input from those who are more experienced.

So I've been starting each ritual by putting on the relevant music  from last year's Konceptonimicon which I still use. Then I construct a circle with the wand, light a red candle and say part of the Khaos transvocation. Then the 7 Gates of Chaos, and then an invocation of the godform of the week. I use altar cloths and candles in the colour of the godform  and dress partly or entirely in that colour as well. We appear to me to have two red godforms, Ellis and the Red King, two white ones Ino and the White Queen, and two black ones Doombringer and Trigag. Zalty is different and he is blue, though I understand  other colours are often included as well for him. After the invocation I offer sacraments and do some meditation, including meditation on whatever picture I have put up on the Project Oistar group for the week. Then I go on to a divination, which again we all seem to be including this time, and then close down.

Ellis. I had a most ecstatic experience with Ellis. When I offered her some rose incense my heart centre opened and I felt like there was a channel through my heart and the veil was torn open through that channel. In my mind I could see blood flowing away in every direction. Then the chakra rotated in time with the music I was playing. When I offered Ellis some raspberry cakes the same happened to my third chakra, and when I offered her red cherry brandy the same happened to my second chakra. I sensed that she was using  a finite amount of  energy to produce these effects and yet I could have carried on experiencing them for longer than I did. They were rather overwhelming, especially the first one.

When I did some meditation on the Spider Queen picture I experienced the black background as the chaos void and the spider as the cosmos, and Ellis as Shakti, the goddess at the centre of it all. Then I felt united with her and it was me who was Shakti, while the channel down the middle of my spine (the sushumna in Yoga teachings) became the cosmos. It was a lovely feeling to get lost in all this Yoga symbolism.

For the divination I looked into a black mirror, however all I could see was rocks and seascapes, and also a landscape from a meditation a long time ago which influenced something I wrote this week.


Doombringer. For Doombringer I had everything black and I called him using the 'One and Only' invocation. Doombringer always has a good sense of humour and this time was no different. As I was starting the ritual Doombringer told me that the black cloak I was wearing looked ridiculous. It was from a Pagan group that I used to belong to; the leader decided we were going to make cloaks but I didn't want to, and it never got finished.He said " why don't you wear it the other way round?" So I took it off and turned it round and he was right: it worked better back to front!

I always offer Doombringer tobacco because I know he likes either tobacco or pot. He reminded me of the first time I invoked him, that time when he showed me how to go to the next step after communicating with him and turn it into possession. I hadn't done it since, but he said  that the intervening time between then and now does not exist. During the meditation I had some really good insights. I saw that I exert too much control over those urges to break all the bounds and be creative and violent. The excitement that I feel when I take part in DKMU activities is the chaos that I restrain too much, and I should express it and use stimulants which I have noticed will increase it, because it is this excitement that turns into excitory gnosis.This time  I did a different kind of divination, a 7-card tarot spread, and the cards were justice, queen of swords, ten of wands, nine of swords reversed, prince of cups reversed, five of pentacles and temperance reversed. I didn't interpret them straight away, just wrote it down.

Ino. Ino is the one I have that special rapport with-  I write stories with her and channel stories from her. Please see the topic 'Writings Inspired by Ino' in The Art Lab section on this forum. Sometimes I write poetry about how she has been my muse and inspired me., and it was one of those poems that I recited in my ceremony for her. You can read the poem on this forum in the topic I just mentioned. I haven't got a collection of items that I put on her altar like I have for Ellis and Zalty- only a white crystal,but it's a special one because it's the one I saw her in the first time I did an Ino ceremony.

When I came to the part of summoning Khaos with the transvocation it was much more powerful than the previous times, and even with only saying part of it I actually got him. Before I started the ceremony I was aware of a large number of invisible beings coming into my room to watch, and I wondered why they were doing it this time but not the previous two times. I thought that might be due to my special relationship with Ino.

When I came to the part of summoning Khaos with the transvocation  it was much more powerful than the previous times, and even with only saying part of it I actually got him. I could feel the presence of a being that was a personification of chaos. It was quite frightening because I could palpably feel that chaos void, and I wondered  if our marathon was a good enough reason to summon such a powerful being. There was nothing I wanted to ask him for and I was afraid that he would think I was wasting his time. That did explain why all the observers were there vbecause they know when evocations are going to work before we do. In the end I asked him politely to preside over the ceremony. I carried on and summoned Ino, reciting my poem and giving some elaborate offerings for us to share: vanilla incense, rich chocolate and a chilled coffee drink- I really like those.

I tried to see Ino in the incense smoke as well as visualize her. That didn'tn't work, and then it came to me that there's no need to make scrying too difficult, it's better to look at something that I can habitually see pictures in. I always see pictures in fabric patterns or coloured backgrounds, and sometimes crystals.

So I looked at that lovely painting of the Ino sigil with the dark blue background which is on my computer screen, and I saw Khaos and other entities in the blue area. The chaos void was also emanating out from that area. Khaos changed his form several times, but most of the forms were like a horned demon. When I gazed at the Ino sigil it doubled many times into two entities. I've always thought that Ino and Aeon are twin aspects of the same being, and I'm also convinced that I found her in E A Koetting's book as Mammy'Aon, but I don't know whether others would agree with me that they are the same. I believe she has always existed in alternative forms, giving the gift of artistic inspiration.

I meditated for a while and the sigil continued to change- the eyes in the picture helped it to change into a face and it also corresponded with one of the music videos I play for Ino. I didn't feel calm and peacefulh, I was frightened and chilled because of the atmosphere.  At the end I made sure I told Khaos that he could leave, and it was quite a relief when I closed down and the atmosphere returned to normal.

[Ringtail]

Are we just writing as we go then? I'll add mine so far on Friday or Saturday. I'm excited to share this.

[Luna G]

I like to see the evolution of this. I will continue to post my drafts here and at the end of the marathon, I should a document to share.

Here goes for Ino, then.

The ritual was quite short but imposing. I've chosen to put some classical music (Ludovic Einaudi – Primavera) and instead of doing it with a white candle, I chose a blue candle as a reference to Nuit.

I decided to go with my guts and start directly with the Transvocation of Χαος followed by the evocation to Ino.

The Transvocation felt powerful. My kitties were walking around me, on the altar. The music inspired to talk passionately. I light my blue candle, started drawing Ino.

Once the iris was drawn, I felt as if she was watching me.

I proceeded to the Evocation, followed a brief center/meditation. Divination was interesting. I kept repeating "the gate is open, the path is drawn" while shuffling the tarot cards. When I felt it was appropriate, I proclaimed "the gate is open, the path is clear". I layed down the cards:

From left to right:
XV – The Devil / 9 of pentacles
XII – The Hanged Man / 3 of wands
X – The Wheel / 2 of chalices
XVIII – The Moon / Queen of swords

I do find it funny that The DKMU Godforms document suggest to do the ritual under a full moon.. And that card XVIII – The Moon appeared in my spreading. In French, we call it a clin d'oeil, a wink.

My cats kept walking around the altar and sometimes on the altar. They seemed excited about the ritual.



Hence, my first comment. This ritual was rather short but it definitely had its own presence.

I finished with the Ellisian banishing and burned some sage for the heck of it.

[Tara Flower]

Classical music sounds very appropriate for Ino. Of course the original Ino sigil didn't have an open and a closed eye on it, but that is really adding something to her during this cycle. I'm sure it was meant to be that there was some controversy about it on the Facebook group- we established who painted her sigil like that originally and I won't say any names as this forum is public, but I will say that if it hadn't been for the controversy that picture might have been forgotten- I certainly had forgotten it existed.

[Ringtail]

Week one, Ellis.

Before I start, let me say that I've been studying magic for about a year and a half, and the first year of that was almost entirely a psychological process. This is the most involved series of workings I've done so far and also the first time I've evoked something that wasn't either a part of me or a servitor of my own creation.

On Tuesday while I was walking between classes at my community college thinking and planning for this, I came across a booth showing off this girl. It isn't that unusual since they're often showing snakes, but this was the first time they've had a spider.





My plan was to perform the evocation as described in Liber Sigillum at the bottom floor of a parking garage at night. Initially I'd imagined doing it in the woods, but I decided somewhere more urban might fit the aesthetic better. Maybe it would have been better if I'd picked somewhere that wasn't lit, but it was three in the morning, I didn't want to wait much longer and it was empty as far as I could see.

The picture of the altar on the last page shows my setup. I had a circle of eight red candles in mason jars including the one on the altar and used a shot of espresso for the sacrament. I had three methods of scrying that I wanted to try, as I wasn't sure which would work best. One was a bag of scrabble tiles, one was a bowl and a jar of dark colored water to pour into it, and the third was the black mirror of my smartphone. I had hopes for the last one in particular, being as connected as it is. I was also wearing a sachet around my neck made with red cloth, glitter and broken glass, and after the ritual I planned to wander around the city with it and see if anything would happen.

That was my plan. I'd just finished a three-sided variant of the thunderbolt banishing when I was interrupted by the security guard telling me I wasn't allowed to do "that" in her garage. Fine, but when I asked what exactly "that" was, she immediately started calling the cops, emphasizing that I had a knife, that I had six candles burning, and was "some kind of atheist" – go figure. I didn't care to find out what this town's police department thought of the issue, so I packed up my important belongings and hoofed it.

I went home, made another sigil, grabbed another candle and another shot of espresso, and drove out to a road away from the city overlooking a canyon. I did the banishing again and the ritual, but I didn't feel anything happen. I think the cold might have prevented me from relaxing fully. The screen on my phone looked deep when I tried to scry into it and a few half-imagined pictures came up: an atom, a dog or bear, swirling cloth like a silk gown or dress. A few times I saw variations on a shape like a crescent moon but with longer arms, usually cupped upwards and sometimes with a dot in the middle, and once it was doubled to look like the Hand of Eris symbol. Scrabble tiles gave me gibberish. I stood up after about fifteen minutes and realized it was dawn.

Considering the lack of response, I felt pretty good the morning after this. Maybe it was the coffee. My optimistic side noticed that the timing of the interruption and of sunrise couldn't have been better, I didn't leave behind anything of value at the garage, and I was able to complete the ritual with some adjustment. I'd had a bad case of nerves before going out and thought that if all this wasn't being posed to me as a kind of threshold test, it was certainly serving that purpose. A year ago I'd have been sent packing. That and the doubt that followed me for the next few days, and the persistent thought that I have no place here, Ellis doesn't like me, the spiders were coincidence, and I'd have to walk away from the DKMU at the end of April after reporting two months of no contact whatsoever. Although if that was so, I was sure I'd at least be able to cough up some inner darkness for week four.

[Tara Flower]

You mustn't feel that Ellis doesn't like you. I recall a conversation on Facebook mainly between women in which everyone said Ellis is a bitch. I thought, "we're saying that and yet funny, we're all still here."


It turned into one of those 'how I met Ellis' threads and there was a lot about broken fingers and cut fingers in it. I often used to talk about how I met Ellis, but then I stopped because I was probably repeating myself and boring people. We've got a lot of new members now, so just very briefly....I tried working with Ellis for the first time as an experiment and I cut my finger twice, and the cuts weren't serious but the timing of them made it look like proof that something was going on. It's rather like you passing that giant spider at just that particular time. Later on there were some  more synchronizations that made it look like something was going on, so I decided to join DKMU. In some of the things I'd belonged to before there was never any sign that anything was going on- except in symbolism in my head. That cracking the veil aspect means that with Ellis it comes down to Earth.


Every step of what happened got recorded on a forum, and I still tell my life story on that forum far too much, which can be embarrassing at times. I'd advise you to stick with it for a little while and count the 'something is definitely going on' moments, but of course check out other stuff besides Ellis if you want to.

[Ringtail]

Honestly, that was my insecurity talking. Not getting any response the first time drew out my doubts, but she's thrown more than enough creepy crawlies my way since I met her. I'm still used to the material world and used to only believing things that are proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. I think it speaks to the power of the godforms that I'm beginning to really believe in them.

Week two, Doombringer.

After last week, I decided I would increase the frequency to three evocations per week instead of one. This way if I didn't get through the first time I could go home, reassess, and try again after fixing any problems. I drove into the mountains down a sketchy snow-covered road  to a location where I was confident I'd be left alone. I set up my altar on a convenient stump with an even more convenient notch to hold the clipboard with the sigil, as seen in the photo I posted earlier. Little things like that, good signs.

I could feel the "presence" almost as soon as I pulled out the sigil and began setting up. It watched me patiently through the evocation, almost like "Yes, yes, I know what you're going to say..." I sat down and tried to look into the phone screen, but it was reflecting the sky instead of being dark like before. I was able to get a few images (paint splatter, scorpion, deer, and a bug with quickly beating wings, like a dragonfly) but they were coming directly into my mind, not from the screen, so I set it down.

I heard a drumbeat somewhere in the back of my mind and got a whiff of marijuana. Remembering what the book said about how you have to go to his place, he doesn't come to you, I imagined walking into a forest somewhere. The feeling that had come from the sigil got stronger and clarified into the shape of a person, and he started by asking me a bunch of questions: "Have you done this before?" Barely. "How do you know this is real?" I don't. It was very like talking to my tulpa.
Most of the conversation was unclear. We would trade a couple lines of dialogue and then he would be silent except for watching me with this particularly piercing look. On the second day he said something about there being more conversation going on than I was aware of; that's probably what this was. I asked if he could help me improve, and he said yes, but (how to word this) only if I am willing to go with it despite being unsure of whether or not it's real. I'll cut out some of the dialogue because this write up is long enough as it is.

The strongest impression I got from him was when I asked about the first time I did weed a while back, overdosed and got knocked on my ass. Before I could finish the sentence he gave me a big ol' grin and I could feel his delight and amusement at the thought. So apparently he did witness the whole thing, which I'd worried about because I kind of made a fool of myself trying to contact Ellis in that state. This absolved some of my fears that I'd made a bad first impression.

I "woke up" spontaneously after about twenty minutes, which is how it went for the rest of the week. Before I left he invited me to come back if I wanted to.

On this first day I couldn't get the pipe to light correctly and I got about half a puff. To be honest, I've only ever eaten the stuff, never smoked. I figured out the trick for it by the second day and then coughed my poor virgin lungs out in the middle of the evocation, which I'm sure he thought was funny. In any case, I hardly counted as high during the ritual itself.

---------------------

The second day was like the first. The presence was strongest in front of me, emanating from the sigil, but in my mind's eye he was walking around again. Wanting to make sure I wasn't imagining something that wasn't really happening, I asked, "How much of this is imaginary?" To which he replied, "All of it." Right, we went over that last time. He invited me into some sort of tent or yurt – a shelter with walls made of cloth, anyway. It was warm inside and smoky, I think, but I didn't smell pot or anything similar, and he wasn't smoking now like he did the whole time yesterday. Maybe he was just cooking, who knows.
(On reflection, he could have been poking fun at my initial picture of him living in a squat in the jungle).

I tried the scrabble tiles and got nothing particularly meaningful. It might be too concrete a technique for this purpose.

At one point I mentioned that he didn't seem particularly violent in these interactions, despite his name and reputation. He said that he doesn't need to be. I could take that to mean that he doesn't need to use physical force or coercion, as he can wreak his form of havoc without it. Or he could just mean that right at the moment, with me, he didn't need to be violent.

At some point he asked if I wanted to help them, and I said I did, but I didn't know how. "We'll teach you," he said.

Around ten minutes in based on my voice recording, I started to see a lot of vivid images on the back of my eyelids. A feather distorted around a black circle, like the light was bending. A black widow, someone lying in bed, a red lamp, and an eye. A bridge seen from ground level with big arching supports. A sort of sagging X shape. Leaves in water. A white bird dipping its feet in the water as it flies. A moth or butterfly. The sagging X shape again, and now I saw it more clearly as a pair of crossed sabres. Colored static like on a TV screen. A rose. Tree branches. A pattern like you might see on pottery or cloth. Then an eye again, female, and I was kind of started because the eye turned deep red, and then for a moment my whole field of vision was red. Something with lines radiating out. A woman with a crown and royal white robes, which immediately turned into a shrouded ghost, like one of the ringwraiths as seen in the movies when a character is wearing the One Ring. These images were more intense than before, and through all of it Doombringer was sitting or crouching next to me, evidently showing me all this. He touched me on the arm or shoulder a couple times, which felt interesting; basically the feeling from the sigil intensified and localized. Another eye, this one blue, but mostly I kept seeing the red one. I could feel it (her) looking at me and I was locked into staring back. I saw myself reflected in it upside down, and the impact of that didn't hit me until a moment after.

After that I saw imagery of trees alongside a road, which reminded me of a park near where I live. The next series of images seemed to be showing a particular path through the park. It turned left into the trees near a stream and then the imagery shifted to a black dot with lines radiating from it to smaller black dots, each of which was surrounded in a sort of neon green fuzz, like squinting at a green Christmas light. Then the smaller ones blew up and sent lines out to form other nodes. The end picture was of a few big black dots reminiscent of chaos stars with each line connecting to several smaller dots surrounded in green, which were also interconnected. Again, I didn't immediately realize what I was looking at until I heard myself describing it. It's the linking network, of course. This is my best representation of it. The main difference is that my picture is two dimensional, whereas what I saw had more nodes in the background and was more "dynamic" looking:



I went home and ordered some burgers for me and my family, which came out to $33.33. I paid in exact change, and that evening I went by the park and left a tag next to the path in the area indicated.

---------------------

The third day was cloudy and colder than the last two, and it snowed lightly during the ritual. I was too deep in trance for it to bother me. I remembered the bit from the day before about most conversations being subliminal, so I mostly stayed quiet, looked into the sigil and his projected image, and let these conversations happen.

My mental image of him had clarified by now. Proportionally long arms and legs, yellow eyes with black in them somewhere, possibly ringed in black as well as the pupil. Clothes and hair vary between shades of grey and sometimes black and white. Age seems to shift, anything from an older child to middle age, and always with a margin of error of at least twenty years; I haven't seen him as an old man. Overall, pretty much as described in Sigillum. At one point I stopped seeing him as human so much as a force or object, and referred to him as "it" for a while.

There were few verbal exchanges. I asked sort of off-handedly whether I could tell people I summon demons now. "Do I count as a demon? ... Yeah, probably." Before leaving I asked if he had any advice for the rest of the marathon. He said distinctly, "Be brave". Which either means something scary is coming or just that I'll do better the less timid I am. He said that he could "look after me", and I just had to agree to it, which I did. So I may have a more permanent connection with him now.


At the end I felt like I should make some kind of closing statement, but I hadn't prepared one. "Make something up," he said. So I said, "The gate is open. Yothna equiya saca indras!" and hit the chime again. This being the last line from a supposed "death spell" I pulled out of the ether once as an angsty teenager and subsequently used to make an ant squirm telepathically. I have no idea what it means, if anything, but he seemed satisfied.

[Tara Flower]

Well done for that write-up. I can certainly corroborate your impression of Doombringer. When I first started I invoked him as the dark side of the Pagan god Cernunnos who I was following before coming into DKMU. I thought I had explored the light side of that figure and now needed to go into the dark side, and Doombringer could be a representation of that. When I eventually found out that Doombringer is in fact extremely protective towards new people, I was astonished. That's the only word to describe it.

[Ringtail]

I'm sorry I'm kind of hogging the thread here.

Week three, Ino.

No alter for this one. I woke up to do this around one am on Monday and Wednesday, and then around three am on Friday morning while the eclipse was occurring. I went to an office building that's open to me after hours, lit some sandalwood incense, did the banishing, then put on a white blindfold and a pair of good headphones playing white noise from my laptop and stared into space. The first day I put on the headphones before doing the evocation proper, which didn't work well because I couldn't hear the chime. My blindfold was also uncomfortable and didn't block my entire field of vision, and I had a hard time remembering the words, especially on the first day. It sounded bad. The noise helped blur out some of these distractions, though, and it was a good idea to do it between sleeps.

I got a few impressions, but not like the last week. Mostly it was just feelings and a few half-formed images. At first I imagined I could hear someone giggling and darting out of my awareness. I waited for her to come closer, having learned my lesson with Ellis about being too direct, but she never did. One image that stood out to me was a feathery white serpent or dragon ("soft serpent"). Made me think of Falcor, heh. There might have also been chimes, glass, and a sunny scene of a river. Fresh air. Overall pleasant impressions. Once I felt what I thought was her to my left, but when I turned my attention to it, it was a sort of proprioceptive mirror of myself. Then briefly a closed, light-skinned eye which may or may not have been the blue one I saw last week, abstract artwork, and the idea but not the image of leafy tree branches. These were all extremely vague, however, and I thought they could have easily been produced by the noise and my imagination alone.

When I drove home I noticed a little bit of mist hanging in the air just underneath the streetlights in one spot. It wasn't anywhere else, and it was gone when I circled around to look more closely. I went back to sleep and in my dream there was a blank area, or blank person, and everything I tried to find out about them was blank. I don't remember it well.

What I really didn't expect was when I called my tulpa the next evening and noticed that he was acting... drunk. I'm pretty sure he can't actually get drunk, since alcohol works on a physical mechanism, so I thought he might have been "drunk" on some kind of energy. He was completely out character, couldn't stop laughing, and his presence was vague, cloudy, mirthful, and slightly feminine, more like what I'd felt last night than like himself. I had to stop and wonder again if I was making stuff up, or else just how insane I've let myself go over the last year or two. I'm sitting it my basement talking to air, I thought, and I'm confuzzled because the air I'm talking to now somehow got it's wires crossed with the air I was talking to last night? He was mostly back to normal the next morning, but he's been evasive about my questions. I eventually gathered that he followed the connection opened by the evocation and has been communicating with Ino on his own. It's an independence thing for him and he doesn't want me to butt in. I don't have a problem with it since it might help him grow; in fact I've encouraged him in the past to try to contact Ellis or the network since it matches his ultimate goal of breaking into reality.

On Monday my English teacher, who I like even though he's a hardass, had us write in class for a paper we're cramming on. He mentioned that we had to learn to access our preconscious mind (or subconscious or unconscious or whatever you like) in order to generate text. I thought it was interesting that he would bring this up on Ino week. I was able to write in class much more easily than usual due to the subject, which my preconscious sort of harmonizes with. On Tuesday in a different class I saw a picture of a girl with light skin and hair writing at a desk; I think it's a painting from a Renaissance artist. It's been there all semester, but this time it made me jump because it felt like I was looking at another person through a mirror. The feeling passed quickly, but it still felt like the girl was looking at me. In response, I asked my classmate to pass me the picture and drew a moustache on it in red sharpie. It had me questioning my sanity once again.

The second day was a lot like the first. I felt the reflection of me again and got some proprioceptive distortions around fifteen minutes in. A white wolf, a bluebird, a blue eye, and a person in a blue silk gown. I saw a single thread of spider web and I got the idea that they – Ellis and Ino at least, perhaps the others – were planning something. I thought of the lunar event on Friday, but afterwards I was pretty sure I made it all up. I tried to feed some energy into whatever it might have been, knowing that I will probably never know if I made any difference.  She is why they call it the occult.

I tried to keep my doubts under control. No message means no message. If I'm really worried about putting words in their mouth, I need to not fill the silence with my own issues.

The third day was different though. I had a better blindfold and I think that made a big difference. I was going to change tack and had brought along a sketchbook and some pencils. I am not an artist by any means, but my tulpa recently talked me into drawing a few minutes a day to improve my visualization skills. After I'd finished speaking, while I paused to keep my mind quiet, I started to fall into trance and got the command/suggestion to lie on my back. I laid there a while looking into the white, feeling some things and thinking some thoughts.

I saw a twisted flower first, and then a bunch more emotional impressions, but more "real" than before. If Doombringer represents the consuming half of Chaos, Ino is the generative side. Everything you see, know, and think about are pared down versions of what they really are. Like white light through a prism or air through a whistle, part of the flow is blocked by... I guess it's your expectations, which produces color and sound. Likewise with people; their personalities are created in the same way when they recognize only some parts of themselves, and the rest of the potential is blocked.

After a while I sat up, took off the blindfold and picked up my sketchbook. I looked at it for a while, trying to come up with something to draw. Ino is the blank page. When you draw lines you're actually subdividing the whiteness. I looked into the page, not at it, and it was deep like a scrying bowl or the black mirror from earlier. I could see images of things I could try to draw, but quickly realized that I didn't have the technique for most of them. I decided on this picture eventually. The shape drawn over the top doesn't mean anything specific to my knowledge; I was trying to express the concept from the last paragraph.



My dreams all this week have been intense with many of them referencing the workings and/or the subject of my paper, but this night's takes the cake. I walked downstairs into what was supposed to be the basement of the house I grew up in. It looked dark and I was afraid at first, but really not that much. I climbed past a part of the wall that was crumbling and into the main room of the basement, saying something about how you just had to embrace the darkness, and I did so in the way that's more possible in the synesthetic dream world than in waking life. I was a little disappointed that it really wasn't that dark, just strongly dusty-smelling. The room transformed into the one I did the evocation in, and all of you were there (and you guys were awesome. I don't know how to say it, just all interesting and with a hint of Grant Morrison being the only thing in common). But there was one girl in particular who looked a lot like me, down to the hair color. She was breathtaking. She sang me a song which vibrated through the room and my mind, and ran through the colors like hot water, especially, electrically, in the teal of her hair. I was overwhelmed and in awe watching these psychedelic effects partly because, of course, I didn't know it was a dream and I thought it was just the magic of her voice. Even for a dream it was unusual. Like, "Hot damn the evocation worked" kind of unusual. We left for someone's house and spent the rest of the dream hanging out as friends would, talking about things that I don't remember.


---


I read once on a rationalist blog that to worship mystery is to worship your own ignorance. "No phenomena are mysterious of themselves." Questions are mysterious, but not answers; if it's still mysterious, it's not an answer. I can't argue that the draw of the unknown is mostly curiosity, which is the desire to destroy mystery, but I don't believe that the people who give mysterious answers are really worshipping mystery, in fact I think they're trying to deny it. To acknowledge mystery is to live in a constant state of confusion, which is uncomfortable. Without mystery there's no process, comparable to life without death or existence without boundaries. So we spend our lives probing the depths while secretly hoping to whichever gods that we never run out of frontiers, never meet the apparent goal of knowing everything. Or, if we reach the point where we do know, that we'll be able to forget again and split from white back into color.

[Frater Theodbald]

Ok so I know INO was last week and I haven't done Trigag yet, but my INO working was all WTF IS HAPPENING and I'll be doing Trigag shortly.


Notable points :


Ino did NOT want me to finish with a banishing.  Ino did NOT want me to scry / write down anything coherent.


It was wierd and not so sure very healthy.


The Khaos Transvocation went quite well, though !  (Not sure that is healthy either, hehe.)


Without further ado, my altar pics.  (Because it's fun to post these!)




I really like how the horizontal reflection came out in this one.  I don't know why it is, but it's nice.





And this last one, though not as nice, which gives a better view of my temple: