“Personally I’m privileged to be on excellent terms with folk from many traditions; druids, Setians, native shamans, Initiates of the Ordo Templi Orientis, Freemasons, radical Goddess feminists and others. I’ve met many fabulous people in the magical culture I inhabit, and I’ve found a very high density of fabulousness within the IOT.
When I stand in a circle with these people and look around at my Brothers, Sisters and Sators I am amazed. It’s like being in a graphic novel. Here are these heroes of practice, each one with amazing abilities. We are an assembly of archetypal forces. In part this is a consequence of my relationship, over many years, with these other magicians and I’m sure members of many other esoteric groups get a similar buzz at their gatherings. For me the people of the IOT provide a wonderful community of research, experiment, morphing ‘tradition’, fellowship, support and of course laughter.
While a few people stay with the process for many years there are many, many more who come into the IOT, benefit from that space, and who move on to pastures new. There are many occultists out there who have been members of the IOT and have encountered a new style or approach in that setting, and then go on to pursue that in more depth outside of the Pact setting. There are some who return years later to the IOT circle, bringing with them the experiences they have gained. The Pact acts as an experimental space, ideal for people who have come to some kind of spiritual and/or personal crossroads, and for many it is pivotal in their journey of Illumination.”
(Julian Vayne, Chaos Streams 01, from the Introduction)
Reading around voodoo I discovered Exu & the Quimbanda of Night and Fire by Nicholaj de Mattos Frisvold (Scarlet Imprint). One working, the ritual of the drunken prophet (pp. 123-124 in the hardback edition), caught my attention.
The ritual is an oracular work that calls for lighting a candle to the spirit you wish to work withthen going to a “spit and sawdust” pub, buying drinks for the person you have identified as the prophet of your spirit and putting your question to them.
As Quimbanda was not calling me I decided to work the oracle with a deity that I already have a relationship with. As a keen home brewer of wines, mead and beer, every time I make a batch various rituals are performed and the task dedicated to Dionysus, famous for his links to fermented brews. Moreover, one of his abilities is as an oracle,
So, after a ritual bathwith frankincense, orange and patchouli oils I donned only the best party clothes for such a Great God as this and spoke the following words:
Hail Dionysus God of the harvest, the dual formed god of two mothers
God of life, God of death spanning the Heavens and the Underworld
Bull formed, two horned synthesis of opposites
The roaring one, the silent one, within extreme states of being
God of pandemonium and ecstatic trance
The dramatic one master of the mysteries of comedy and tragedy
God of prophesy and initiation
who travels throughout all realms of being
God of many faces who travels to all places, wanderer
God of the Starry Light
The god who holds the bees sacred
God of honey, god of wine, god of Ivy, myrtle, fennel, figs and pine
God of all natural things
Bull headed lion snake
the goat is your greatest enemy and your greatest friend.
Ivy bearer god of visions
God of the wilds god of the hunt
Great God of the nocturnal Sun, the cool one who carries flames of fire
Shape shifter, multi-dimensional one lord of necromancy
of many incarnations
The God who is the most and the least manifest.
Dionysus who was born in the cave of the leather sack
Grower of vines
The fierce one who is the source of joy to mortals
God of orgasmic rites who inspires creativity and ecstatic madness
Father of wine and mead lover of Ariadne, son of Zeus
Torch bearer, light bringing star of mysteries
God of the Earth friend of Demeter
Underworld guide
who resides in the highest mountains and in the deepest caves
Water God that dwells in the oceans
The spirit of the universe
giving shape and form to all manifest existence
Fire breather, lover of man, lover of woman
The masculine feminine one lord of the thunderbolt axe
God of fermentation and ageing, Beloved of maenads and satyrs
Lord of the goat song, who hydrates the Earth
God of transition and liberation
The serpent with a thousand heads
who eats raw meat and who is vegetarian
The womanly manly god of orgia
The furious inspirer of erotic ecstasy
Blesser of unions who rejoices at the rise of Sirius
Lover of torch light processions
He who was boiled in a cooking pot who bursts forth in a miraculous emergence of wine
God of creation, God of Destruction. God of life God of death
Hail Dionysus.
Evocation of Dionysus (video has some strobe effects)
I asked Dionysus to send me some advice for the following year, then went out and partied. And what a party it was. Some of the friends accompanying me were magicians and I think they knew that I was up to something (mostly because I’m usually up to something).
Most of my life in order to “get on” and do well I’ve needed to hide parts of myself that I considered a bit too hot to handle in certain situations.The advice from my prophet was that there was no longer any need to hide my weirdness. This was no longer serving me and that I would “get on” better if I allowed my creativity to flow.
Hail Dionysus and may your cup of Awen always flow.
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.
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.
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.
