Octoshaman

Purpose: to invoke each of the eight powers of magic and obtain means of invoking them more easily in future.

Perform the instructions quite briskly, before the mind has time to really fuck up the feelings with internal dialogue about the feelings.

Pick a colour of magic. Brainstorm words or phrases that express it best for you. Write them. Cross out the ones that on reflection don’t fit.

Immediately come up with a sound that expresses this power of magic for you, eg you might find ‘Mmmmmmmmm!’ expresses Blue magic best for you. Try a few sounds, however likely it seems that the one you first thought of would fit best. Note the sound or word or phrase, also its characteristic tone of voice, eg. a self-satisfied humm as opposed to a strangulated grunt. Does a particular pitch, drumbeat or music express this colour of magic for you?

Repeat, putting yourself in what seems the most fitting posture. You may even find yourself moving rather than just standing or sitting. Note it down so that you could assume the posture or movement again.

Repeat the above, noticing any peculiar body sensations. A tingling? A warmth? Something else? Where? What happens to it? What happens when you loop it? Note it down.

Immediately do all this again, noting if any pictures come to mind. In our example does the colour blue come to mind? What shade and hue? How does surrounding yourself with it affect the feeling of the Blue power? Would you prefer to visualise another colour altogether? Then do it. Note it.

Put it all together. Get into the posture, vizualise. Make the sound, say or think the words and phrases, loop the feeling. Intensify it, make it all happen faster and more powerfully. Realise that you can do this at any time, just by doing the ‘putting it all together’ stage.

Banish.

Next colour of magic …

(the Kite)

 

 

The Chaos of the Normal

One of the continuing effects of Chaos Magic on magical culture is to highlight the ubiquity of magical thinking. Three books from recent years illustrate this.

Aaron Daniels in Imaginal Reality (review HERE) shows the reader how we are all doing magic, all the time, weaving spells which imprison us in fragile castles of resistance to life’s realities. Magic is actually familiar to everyone – virtually all our thoughts are magical attempts to defend our awareness against the scary fringes of human experience. Those who call themselves magicians are simply those who are attempting to undo those dismal spells.

Stepping into the wider picture, Gordon White’s Chaos Protocols takes the reader on a magical journey through the horrors of the modern world and shows how magic is being done to us all the time, and that the only way through the reality-ripoff is to be aware of that, and do your own magic.

So how widespread is magical thinking? Psychiatrists label it as a symptom of insanity, but Lionel Snell’s new book My Years of Magical Thinking (review HERE) resumes his theme of the four basic ways we apprehend the world, the other three being Religion, Art and Science. This model reveals how commonplace magical thinking is in everyday life.

We are all magicians, whether we like it or not. With this awareness, we have realised Spare’s phrase ‘the chaos of the normal’, and Chaos Magic has come of age.

(Dave Lee)

Welcome to the IOT BIS blog.

So here is the new blog of the British Isles Section of the Pact. But in case you were asking ‘What is the Pact?’ then let’s explain: the Pact is a collection of free individuals who agree to act together in each others’ interests in an organization for facilitating Chaos Magic in groups.

That’s it.

Yes, we all work solo (as far as anyone can tell), but at least sometimes we get together to work together because it works when we do that, and as chaos magicians, we like stuff that works. And no, we’re not saying you have to be in the IOT to do this. Most of us do lots of stuff that you don’t have to be in the IOT to do, as well as what we do together. So, hope that’s sorted out.

Anyway, magic is awesome, magicians are awesome, and the blog is here to share some of the Pact awesome with the wider internet. No secrets will be revealed (magic works — what’s the bloody secret?), no IOT laundry will be aired (wash your own smeggy underrobes), but members will contribute little nuggets of magical gold mined with their own work-calloused, magic-singed hands. So watch this space. Enjoy.