I’ve been using the IAO formula for about 40 years now, and in the last few years I find I’ve learned some new things about using it. If you’ve spent any time in chaos magic groups over the last few decades you’ll probably have used the IAO Banishing as a punctuation in your magical life – ‘here’s where the special stuff starts’. It’s favoured because of its simplicity, just three gestures, sounds and visualizations. So that we’re all on the same page, here’s how it’s usually done, at least in the chaos magic world. All the sounds are vibrated for one breath-length.
Stand with your arms by your side. Raise your arms straight up and inhale. Visualize a column that joins the sky to the earth and runs through you. Vibrate I (the sound EEEEE)
Lower your arms so they are horizontal, pointing to the sides. Visualize reaching out to the world at either side. Vibrate the sound AAAAA.
Lower you arms and bring your hands together in front of your groin or lower belly, so that your fingers form a downward-pointing triangle or a circle. Visualize a circle or sphere which encloses you. Vibrate the sound Oh.
I first read about the IAO formula in Crowley’s Magick, where he analyses it (at length, of course!) In brief, he presents it as a formula of death and resurrection, the formula of the Osirian Aeon: ‘I’ is Isis, our unmodified nature; ‘A’ is Apophis or Apep, the destroyer; ‘O’ is Osiris, the reborn mummy-god arising from the underworld.
This formulation is useful; it is slightly more explicit than the Baphomet formula, Solve et Coagula, which is perhaps the simplest version of this universal principle of transformation. We start off in some state, then we find ourselves disrupted, our mundane selfhood broken down, dissolved. Then selfhood is reborn, reformed from chaos. This formula is central to psychedelic adventuring and healing. IAO expands on this by adding the Isis ‘I’ at the beginning, so that we get ‘I’ as our naive original state, ‘A’ as solve and ‘O’ as coagula.
At first I started using IAO because it had become the IOT’s default ‘quick banishing’, something we use when we don’t need a full Gnostic Pentagram / Gnostic Chaosphere banishing. It was during the pandemic lockdowns, when the IOT were developed new protocols for working group magic online, that IAO took on new meanings for me.
We decided that we needed to emphasize our connectedness as a group when we were in a virtual temple, so we modified the meaning of the ‘A’ gesture in IAO. We interpreted it as reaching out to all your co-workers, the members of the group you can see on the screen in their little Zoom boxes, but who are not in the same room as you.
This little tweak had quite a profound effect, and deepened our sense of being together across the miles of a Zoom call. This effect set me to thinking what it was I was doing with each of the three gestures. These are the kinds of thoughts I got for each of them.
I – we are cosmic beings, we can see ourselves as a polarity between sky and earth, ‘the perilous bridge between nature and spirit,’ as Hermann Hesse wrote.
A – I reach out my arms and embrace the world. I reach out to all the others in my circle. I embrace too all that hurts and destroys me, and therefore allows for transformation.
O – Every moment, I make a unique synthesis of those principles. I don’t know exactly what that will entail; the ‘O’ is an open mouth, a gesture of surprise.
These are the notes of the talk ‘You are the Light: Inspiring Your Magical Community’ given by an IOT member at the Festival of Lights, Swansea, 2016.
What follows has basically been a pep talk to myself, brought to you in the hope that you find it useful too. The context of this talk is how we can each contribute to growing a magical community where we are. Some will want to stay at a greater distance, some will want to be deeply involved, but all are in their own way a part of our magical community.
We live in a broken culture. Everything about it screams to us that we are nothing but meat robots, designed by the random banging of particles and conditioned by forces outside our control. We are led to believe that everything we know is wrong and and everything is going to kill us.
Apparently, what we should do about this is blindly believe the experts who tell us all this, put ourselves in the hands of the authorities who pay those experts, and tranquilise ourselves and each other with light entertainment and shopping. Oh, and hand over our money quietly and regularly.
It’s rubbish, isn’t it? It’s no way to live. And it’s a travesty of how we ought to be living.
As pagans, occultists, ‘spiritual’ people and so forth we know better. Whatever our individual beliefs we each know that we are not pointless puppets and that this mad sorry-go-round that is our society is in need of that dimension which we might call the divine, the holistic, the spiritual, the Mystery, whatever you call it.
Unfortunately, on a day-to-day basis, it can be hard for us to hang onto our sense of the Mystery etc. etc.. We are bombarded and indoctrinated in our very homes by television, social media and news media and essentially panicked into doing nothing about it. We have war after inexplicable war, reports of weather becoming unsteadily more extreme, health scares, scapegoating of minorities, oh and brace yourselves folks because it looks like we’re heading for another worldwide recession. You won’t hear that on the BBC.
We bolster our morale with our sense of Mystery etc. etc., only to have the boffins of the culture deride us for fantasising like children. As a result we often doubt ourselves and our beliefs and what they mean in our lives. It’s too easy to lose your pagan spirituality down a dark, dark hole. And if we struggle on alone against this constant pressure, we can either buckle and conform and backslide into being just another consumer, or we can drive ourselves into a mental breakdown trying to deal with it all. Marvellous choice: depression or psychosis.
A grim fightback is not an option. Mostly because grim is not an option: that’s no way to go through life. If we find ourselves down a dark hole, what we need is some light.
So where does it come from, this light? In this Festival of Lights, what’s going to keep us lit up? Society at large wants us to always look to someone else, but society at large is ignorant and broken, so we’re not going with that.
1. Expect Light: let there be light. This time of year confidently expects and welcomes the increasing daylight and the rising of the sap. Change happens because people’s expectations are raised. Look around and see the possibilities, and see where change is beginning to bud.
We see some of the signs of the times: the broken materialist culture and its deadening effect on the spirit; the worsening unfairness of inequality and its deadly consequences for the have-nots; runaway consumerism and its destruction of cultures, species and climate. But we also see people rising up against these things, drawing on values that can’t be claimed by the banks, with vision that can’t be bought and sold, expecting and insisting that things change for the better.
So, reflect on your expectations. Can you imagine what it would be like for things to be different? If so, why not come to expect them to be so?
2. Be the Light that you want to see in the world. Thanks Ghandhi. It’s not the government, it’s not some charity, it’s not some wealthy benefactor, nor some guru or expert. It’s you. Every man and woman is a star, said Aleister Crowley. Every person is indeed a star. Inspire others with your own example of being the Light. Be the pagan you want to see in the world.
2a. To do so, develop your path. And your skills. Find in walking your personal path the motivation, the reasons, the inspiration to be That Pagan. Your path, whatever it is, has all you need. Wring it out, get all you can from it.
2b. In magic, we notice that if you want a spell to work you have to muck in and help. As Herakles told the cart-driver who’d gone into a ditch: put your shoulder to the wheel and I’ll help, but if you won’t help yourself you’re on your own. Exam success = spellcasting for it + doing the revision. The Warrior’s Call – magic – the sigil plus activism – it’s boots on the ground make the trucks turn around. By doing something practical, you are investing yourself in your magical act. You are part of the magic you cast. When you use magic to solve a problem, expect to be part of the solution. Therefore seek to contribute.
3. It’s not ‘me’: it’s We. The stars don’t shine alone. Although each is a tiny pinprick of light at a vast distance, together they create an awesome spectacle in the sky. For tens of thousands of years our ancestors have looked up at the stars and seen in their patterns and movements a divine order which they then sought to bring down to earth so that they could enter into union with the heavenly pattern, as above, so below. Individually we’re not much, but together we are the magnificence of heaven, inspiring all who live under the sky.
3a. Solidarity. Leave no-one out. A bit like the Buddhist boddhisattva vow not to get off the Wheel of Rebirth until all beings are liberated. Likewise, we are to accept each other, include each other, help each other along. And it’s hard to do, acting in solidarity with people with whom you deeply disagree. But we need to commit to this aspect of the project or it won’t come off.
In fact, pagans are very good at playing together nicely, compared to the different denominations of the mainstream religions. But we should be the last people in the world to refuse to have anything to do with someone because of religious or spiritual differences. In fact, I would recommend that we do everything we can to step beyond our cosy little circles of people who disagree with us and play in with others, without trying to change them. I would say that anyone, whoever they are, who wishes to be our allies in this should be welcomed as such.
3b. Nobody’s indispensable. Social work, charity work, voluntary organizations all create burnout. The people in them see so much need and they overextend to do the most they can. Inevitably, they make themselves indispensable to the effort, which means that when they burn out and drop out the whole effort falls apart without them.
3c. Be generous. Share the information, share the resources, share the decisions, share the limelight. Share the effort. Many hands make Light work.
Recap: Expect meaningful pagan living to be a powerful social force in our community, Be That Pagan, seek to contribute, in solidarity with each other and welcoming to others. Don’t be afraid to reach out and to share. After all, you are the Light.
Over the years, I have seen on social media, blogs and YouTube several discussions relating to the history of the IOT. These vary in quality, some being very good and others less so.
One thing they appear to have in common is that they are produced by people who have either no or tenuous links to the IOT, and the research is conducted mainly through other articles accessed via the internet. It’s my opinion that any discussion that over relies on information gleaned from the internet which does not include book research and fieldwork to be essentially flawed. As we all know, because it’s on the internet that does not mean it’s accurate, and there may be some essential information that will not be included.
In relation to the IOT while there are some books that will give information there are not many and therefore, I would consider fieldwork to be an essential component of any research conducted into this magical order. Putting it plainly: if you want to know what happened in the IOT, ask the membership.
I would point to this video made by someone who was there when the IOT was born to be the most accurate account as well as Dave’s series on the history of the IOT on this blog.
Most internet discussions focus on an event which I like to call the ‘Ice Magick Argument,’ often referred to as a ‘war.’ I personally cannot comment on the ins and out of what happened with this as it happened so long ago before I had joined the IOT.
Most histories of the IOT given by people who have never been members tend to finish with The Ice Magick Argument and little attention is paid to any history that occurred after that event or how the IOT is today. The IOT is a group that is constantly evolving and changing and due to this development, the IOT that exists today will have some differences to the IOT of five years ago. Occasionally I see discussions on social media involving people who say they were members 10 years ago or so whose opinions may have historical value, but due to the continual evolving nature of the IOT bear little resemblance to how the order is today.
The PACT will also mean different things to different people. One person’s experience of it may be very different to another’s, as individual development and expression is encouraged within the order.
On the BIS YouTube account, youtube.com/c/IOTBIS we have started a series of personal accounts of how individuals joined the IOT which gives a more up to date flavour of the IOT by showcasing these individual journeys within the PACT. As the IOT encourages its membership towards personal autonomy and finding their own magical style it is hoped that these videos will give a hint of the diverse experience of PACT members and a more accurate snapshot in time of how the British Isles Section operates during the time the video was made.
(This is the opinion of Soror Brigantia and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of everyone in the IOT)
Chaos magicians in general don’t like their magical life to be controlled by anyone. Yet the little pond of occultism is crammed with wannabe Big Fish; Mages, Grand Masters and Ipsissimi just gagging to tame us to bridle and bit for their own purposes which could make them anything from benign tyrant to barking mad cult leader.
The IOT was never going to be just another magical order: we are the cats you cannot herd. So how do we keep things organised while safeguarding our personal autonomy within our Pact? Or, as it’s mostly asked, how does a Chaos Order work?
One of the answers is the Insubordinate. This role is a mainstay of the Pact’s anti-authoritarian way of doing things but is by definition pretty alien to the majority of occulture. If you haven’t read the definitive account in the Book of the Pact, here’s a link: https://iotbritishisles.com/the-book-of-the-pact/. Let’s see what it says:
A repeated phrase in The Book is “Criticism in the Pact flows from the bottom to the top.” Just as there’s nobody to tell you what to think or believe, there’s nobody wagging their finger at you telling you you’re doing it wrong. This is the complete opposite of authority-led groups. Nevertheless, we have ‘leaders,’people ‘at the top.’ And so the role of Insubordinate was devised to keep them in check.
“Every Magister Templi, Adept, Magus, and Section Head, is assigned an Insubordinate … electedby Initiates and Neophytes.” They don’t get to choose somebody compliant: they get an Insubordinate foisted on them who is nobody’s pet.
“It is the task of the Insubordinate to ensure that the Magister Templi, Section Head, Adept or Magus does not neglect their personal magical progress and that they carry out their tasks well. There are different ways to fulfill the duties of the Insubordinate.
They may convey criticism with the loutishness of the Jester, making everything appear ridiculous,
or inquire with the Fool’s naivety about issues that are unclear.
Taking the role of Chaplain, the Insubordinate may point out personal weaknesses and blind spots of the recipient of the insubordination,
acting as Confessor they may receive reports on personal developments, as Inquisitor they may raise an objection to decisions.”
Accountability is the name of the game here. The Insubordinate is not just some personal assistant or PR rep. They proactively take the poor hierarchical figure to task where necessary, and may be as searching and uncompromising as they like. The German term for the Insubordinate is ‘Querulant.’ Says it all.
“These five roles of the Insubordinate consist of the following tasks.
Ensure that all explanations, speeches and teachings are clear to everyone and criticize those, which are not, and demand their clarification. Thus, the Fool’s task is to simulate ignorance where others pretend understanding.
Convey criticism with a certain easiness and impertinence. Thus the duty of the Jester is to take something appear ridiculous which others would like to diplomatically overlook.
Point out personal weaknesses and blind spots. Thus it is the responsibility of the Chaplain to handle personal issues in an impartial manner.
Receive reports on personal magical development without commenting on them. Thus it is the task of the Confessor to offer protection from laziness and self-satisfaction.
Hold the right to veto any instruction and to inform a Magus, the Section Head or the Council of the Magi about its exercise. Thus it is the Inquisitor’s duty to prevent the abuse of position.
Predominantly the Insubordinate will conduct their official business with the Recipient of their insubordination in private. It may be advisable for the Recipient to inform their Insubordinate about any controversial events beforehand in order to prevent the exercise of a veto inpublic.”
That veto. The unstoppable power to say ‘No!’ to what a higher grade proposes, with no comeback. This is a powerful tool for undercutting authoritarianism.
Furthermore, the Insubordinate may use their role on behalf of any other member who feels a need to criticise, especially those who might not feel comfortable presenting their criticism themselves. The Insubordinate’s intervention gives them anonymity and shields them from any possible reprisals.
How’s a megalomaniac supposed to operate under these conditions? Thanks to the Insubordinates, not at all.
Developing a magical will has never been an issue for me. Stubborn and determined to the core; formulating a goal, planning the process of achieving said goal, executing the plan and achieving the goal at the end has been a natural process for me.
This has been surprising for some folks that I have met throughout my life, who thought that being introverted meant being weak and took it upon themselves to foolishly attempt to bully me into a course of action that I did not want to take. However nothing will persuade me into doing something I do not want, immovable as a mountain and as stubborn as Balaam’s ass … I would not be moved!
If my heart is set on something I will achieve it by hook or by crook. If I find that a door is closed unto me then I will either get a battering ram and smash the door to smithereens or will take the side route and find a way around the door, perhaps through a side gate that’s been left unlocked. I have always found a way. If a person gets in my way, well, that only encourages me to work harder for the goal and makes the victory all the more sweet.
This has served me well in the sense that I have met all the goals that I had as a child and have had awesome experiences – seen things and done things that go beyond what would have been expected for me as a child. I have also gone beyond my own expectations of myself as a direct result of my experiences within the Illuminates of Thanateros and have done things I would not have done otherwise and have been all the better for it. I have used a combination of magical and non-magical means to build for myself the life that I wanted.
However this determined carpe diem nature has also led to a feeling of tension or stress within my self; the type of tension that any completer/ achiever has I guess. Sometimes I enjoy the fight and sometimes I don’t but it does feel like a fight on occasions.
Due to the pandemic however I have experimented with a different way of doing things. Maybe this is because the keyworking I was doing made my working life busier than it usually is. Sometimes the pandemic stress impacts on my cognitive functioning and just getting through the pandemic successfully is all one can manage. Maybe it’s because I am getting into a time of life where I want to chill more and no longer feel the need to be so goal driven.
Lately I have been experimenting with working more with the energy that is there and making that work for me. Instead of battering down the closed door I am now finding a different door one that is open and working with that as opposed to aggressively focusing on the locked one. Working with the Tao and finding the path that is obstacle free and making that work for me is a gentler way of working with my magical will.
I don’t always achieve exactly what I want with this method, I achieve something else which is of equal value with the knowledge that aggressively achieving is not always necessary. There are other ways to live.
This has led to my now having more than one way of working with my magical will. I can choose to work gently with the energy that presents to me but I can still take a battering ram when I want to. Flexibility is the key.
Soror Brigantia is a Magus of the Pact and a former British Isles Section Head
For many years it’s been my preference to undertake works of magick in a way that is aesthetically pleasing to me. While magic can be done without this and can be done without any magical tools at all, for me nothing beats the sheer joy of creating a piece of spell work that is beautiful, using tools that have been beautifully handcrafted by artisans or crafted by myself. I find that this is particularly effective if I want my heart to sing during the ritual to make use of magical items that do just that.
Having always had a great appreciation of art and spending many a happy afternoon mooching around art galleries, exploring the emotions that the art work invoked in me and how I related with the art, doing the same magically is a logical consequence.
One of my most interesting experiences in a gallery was viewing Van Gogh’s Starry Night in The Museum of Modern Art in New York and being asked by security to move along as I had been staring at the painting for too long. The reason for my length of time at the painting was due to having transported into the painting itself and directly interacting with the night sky in the painting. To me it felt as if I’d been there a few minutes but it was a couple of hours. It was a very confusing experience for my 20 year old self but nonetheless an awesome experience and only increased my love for that particular painting.
My opinion on making magick beautiful has become a tad unpopular as more pragmatic magic-on-the-go systems tend to be popular within chaos magic but I have my reasons for taking the time to make a ritual visually appealing. I have found that the beauty and artistry of some magical paradigms and rituals make a helpful counter to the ugliness that can be seen in the world today. Sadly, I cannot walk through a town centre without seeing perpetrator behaviour, arguments, people who are depressed, anxious or broken due to the pressures of life. I see alcohol and drug abuse and on occasion signs of human trafficking. This is happening within half a mile of where I am currently sitting – or perhaps even closer. It breaks my heart; I have nothing but empathy for all of the tears of Erzulie.
If I can undertake small acts, however small to create an act of beauty in this world then I will, and I will bring that into my magical practice whenever possible. What difference that may make to the world I do not know but as Gandhi said “What you do may be insignificant but it is important that you do it.”
So I have spent some of my time during lockdown doing what a lot of people are doing- making arts and crafts. Some people are making clothes, knitting blankets and doing some awesome embroidery. My crafts are of course of the witch variety and some of these have been inspired by my 2018 visit to New Orleans. People who practice Conjure and Voodoo in New Orleans are experts in making magical objects and know how to do it with beauty and grace.
Inspired by their example I have made magical objects that are physically in the New Orleans style although they would have been magically charged differently, in my own Welsh way. Some of these objects have taken months to make, which is beneficial during these very stressful times. During the making my mind is focused on my statement of intent and not on how stressful my life is being a key worker in a pandemic, so the work has a therapeutic as well as a magical value.
I find that the process of making magic a work of beauty as well as finding the beauty and joy whenever and wherever you can not only counters the ugliness that can also be found in the world but also brings the magician into the place of calm stillness where one is better able to find one’s own practical solutions to the difficulties that we encounter in the world today.
Some time in 1982 Pete Carroll went to live in Bristol and founded an IOT Temple there, known as Cabal Heraclitus. In 1983 he asked our little Leeds group (PD, Robin, Rodney and myself) to try out a new series of sorcery pathworkings, the Cthonos Rite (a CD of this is still available from New Falcon, http://www.originalfalcon.com/chaos-magick-audios-1-cthonos-rite.php ). This is a set of five elemental pathworkings, suitable for enchantment, divination, illumination, evocation and invocation.
Here is an excerpt from the first one:
THURS 10TH NOV 1983: TEMPLE OF EARTH (Evocation)
The room is square, faintly illuminated by a glowing yellow double-cube altar on which is a pen, ink, a small wand and a square of yellow paper.
Around me is visialised a bright circle on the floor, and to the North, a bright triangle of evocation.
Sigil drawn on paper, black on yellow, of ERAMI (a Franz Bardon spirit), and traced over with the wand drawing it in light, and making the intention to summon him.
We asked him to produce £22 within a week. On THURS 17th November I noted: ‘Failure’.
Overall, we had three failures; the above one, our skrying for a hit single (Water/Divination Temple), and a weather spell (Air/Invocation Temple). The Spirit / Illumination working was a telepathy experiment which produced a partial success. The big hit was the Fire (Enchantment) Temple (I also wrote about this in Bright From the Well):
MON 21ST NOV: TEMPLE OF FIRE: Intention: To cause mistakes in the reading of the BBC 9 o’clock news between 9.10 and 9.15 this evening, fault on sound severe enough to warrant an apology.
At Rodney’s, 8.35-58 pm, Astral Travel incense and oil.
Standing in a line facing the aperture in Temple of Fire, visualizing BBC News Studio, with chaosphere above newsreader influencing her to be confused in speech, clock on wall repeatedly running between 9.10 & 9.15.
Chaos reigned throughout the working: candles wouldn’t light, then were knocked over, tape had irritating feedback noise through it, alarm bell in the bakery a few doors along went off near the beginning of rite and only stopped at 9 o’clock. There was a problem with finding TVs that were working and not being watched on other channels; eventually we ended up at a friend’s, at 9.06!
Total success: Just after 9.10 Sue Lawley made a slight speech fault and corrected it. During film there were overlapping voice-tracks for which she apologized at 9.14. This is thoroughly chaotic, for BBC news!
The only meeting of Cabal Heraclitus I ever went to was a public event, on Yule 1983, with the band Mark Stewart and the Mafia. The rock star was to be a sacrificed god. I was to be his attendant, and my friend Jessica was to be High Priestess. The other four ritual participants were Cabal Heraclitus members. One of them was quite well know for losing it and causing crazy scenes. Someone had passed round some speed in the afternoon, and that was probably a mistake, given the presence of that person.
Present: Pete Carroll, Faedra, Claire, Richard at quarters. Jessica and myself.
The scripted and rehearsed order of ritual was abandoned, due to some problem Mark Stewart had. He read some Burroughsian texts but, as for the magical working, only its barest framework was used. The Mass of Chaos B was read from the stage and various proclamations were made, before chaos – in the vulgar sense – broke loose and Faedra jumped down off the stage and started fighting with a member of the audience (Simon).
At this point, Pete seized the microphone and wound it up, announcing ‘The manifestation of chaos is at an end.’ This was optimistic – the two chaps in front of the stage kept slugging it out for a while longer, but at least it enabled the magicians on stage to relinquish any further magical responsibility.
Dave Lee is the author of several books, including Chaotopia, Bright From the Well and Life Force: Sensed Energy in Breathwork, Psychedelia and Chaos Magick. Visit his website and sign up for his newsletter.
In my workplace we have a chillout room, where people can go if they are upset, stressed or need a moment away from the hustle and bustle. It’s a beautiful room set up with relaxation in mind.
When I first arrived at this workplace there was one thing however that spoiled the effect of this room for me. In the room was a poster depicting the Buddha on top of a mountain, surrounded by lush vegetation, with the caption “When you reach the top of the Mountain keep climbing.”
I hated that poster, partly because it does not make sense. When one has reached the top of a mountain how can you climb any further? What are you supposed to climb on? The clouds? Secondly when I have achieved a goal that’s been difficult I don’t keep climbing, I take a moment to feel smug about what I have achieved, take a day off relax and to remember to feel good about myself. I did it, I achieved my objective, now I can chill. I’m not going to keep climbing; I’m going to take a break.
I felt exhausted just looking at that poster, and needless to say the poster is no more, it is an ex poster. For me it summed up everything that is wrong in our culture, the constant drive to achieve and do, the constant striving due to an underlying belief that we are only valuable when we are doing things and achieving. This is one of the beliefs that underpin a capitalist society and makes the wheels of industry turn- we must work because what are we without it, what value do we have? For me this negative message was summed up in this poster, all bound up in New Age wrapping and definitely not what Buddhism is actually about. Capitalism pretending to be Buddhism.
Since the lockdown began while my working life is busier than it was prior to the crisis. And my personal life is different. There are no more magical outings, no in-person temple meetings, no occult conferences, no pubs, restaurants etc. Outside the working environment there is little for me to do, work towards, organise or strive for. Over the Easter holiday I found that I was bored and not feeling that great about myself on account of not having achieved anything with this time. Then I remembered this awful poster and saw that while I may see through the capitalist belief systems I am in fact just as bought into them as anyone else.
Having had that realisation I went and sat by the front steps and watched the bees. They were very enthusiastic about gathering pollen from the bluebells and I sat and watched. Firstly I watched without judgement, and then I meditated on how the bees enable life to continue and how all things relate to all things. I watched them for hours. Then I saw how important it is to just stop and watch and listen, as we miss so much of what’s really happening around us when we are too busy to notice all the interlocking and interconnected workings of Baphomet.
Since that day I have slowed right down. I still do things if they need doing but I do them more slowly, focusing more on the process and less on the end result, and I enjoy doing the tasks a lot more as a result. It feels that my life outside work has become a meditation as I spend more time watching and listening to the sights and sounds of nature around me. I am no longer feeling that I must be achieving to be valuable.
We’ve been in lockdown for weeks now, hiding from each other so as not to spread the lethal disease. At least we’re still breathing. Already there may have been people we know who haven’t been so lucky. Our own responses are ranging from happy productivity for the natural hermits to cabin fever for many of the rest, with the added nagging worry of where the money’s going to come from for this. And as the social distancing precautions begin to slip, cracks are appearing in the solidarity of lockdown, as more people get fed up with it and decide that breathing’s not that important anyway.
We magicians might be among those asking themselves ‘Am I doing enough during this enforced leisure time?’ assuming, of course, that we’re not among the quietly heroic essential workers risking their lives so that we can have anything from medical care to sliced bread.
So what are we doing with this unwanted gift of time? Me, I’m writing a book. Woo, go me. Some of us are cracking on with some intensive/extensive practice, the Great Magical Retreat. And some of us are fraying at the edges. Or maybe all of the above.
In general, I try to keep a balance between structure and license. I get up, I do the daily stuff, from hygiene and housework to meditation and magic. Structure, see. However, I also feel free to miss something out, to not get much done today, to feel like shit if I feel like shit, dialling down the expectations in order to remove that Work Ethic pressure to produce. License.
Structure and license, then, moderating each other (more or less) so that neither runs off with your marbles. The ancients called it Temperance.
I maintain a fairly positive attitude of gratitude. This isn’t a matter of airbrushing the unpleasant bits out of my experience, although it has meant that I use the antisocial media less than I did before lockdown in order to screw down the toxic demands to be outraged and afraid. As magicians we should be filtering the bullshit as standard practice, but it’s more important than usual right now.
Instead, I voice aloud my thankfulness for particular things in my day: this meal, that weather, this moment of quiet joy. The voicing aloud seems to make the difference: try it. I’m not saying pray to anything, just acknowledge that you’re glad that whatever-it-is is here right now.
My meditations include the all-inclusive contemplation of my immediate surroundings, my own experience and present state of mind, accepting all, letting all blow past, fixating on nothing.
I’m lucky enough to have a household of people, but I miss the Bunburys, the periodic disappearances from the respectable world to do disrespectable things among disrespectable people. Y’know, occultists. But we have internet chat. It’s a poor substitute, but better Prosecco than no wine at all. So I make a little time to chat with my family and friends, and most of all, my tribe.
I feel very lucky to have the Pact. Right now our Section has weekly online ritual meetings and catchup, which fulfils my definition of the Pact as “a group of free individuals who agree to act together in each others’ interests” with group magic as the mode. Group magic is only the tip of the iceberg of our magical practice, but the fellowship of the members is truly extraordinary. Dave Lee has described it as a sangha, the Buddhist term for the community of fellow-travellers on the Great Way, which I’ve not noticed anyone else but myself using until Dave. I’ve argued for years that a magical community is the second most important aid to remaining sane in the wacky world of wizardry, as you can read from that first link above. (the first most important thing? Your own bullshit detector, natch). It’s a privilege to be part of such a tribe. If you have one, you can’t do better than to connect up to them as close as you can under the circumstances, even if you’re not suffering from the isolation as much as many. It’s a collective sanity thing, and it’s not just about yours.
I hope you find these suggestions encouraging and useful. Stay well. Choyofaque!
