Tag: Invocation

Dave Lee’s Tales of Magic (16th Instalment)

1983: More Chaos (in both senses)

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.

THURS 22ND DEC: WINTER SOLSTICE CELEBRATION, BRISTOL:

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.

Ridden by the Horse

Ffynone Mari with chaostar and rain bonnet

Soror Brigantia and I took my Mari Lwyd for a canter at the Chepstow Wassail and Mari Lwyd Festival. If you have no idea about the growing Welsh revival of custom of cavorting in public with a horse’s skull here’s a very good outline of the Mari Lwyd tradition.

Bearing a Mari Lwyd is more like wearing a mask than operating a puppet. To me that makes it Invocation rather than Evocation in the usual chaos magic senses. Invocation may be identified by the extent to which another presence seems to displace your own at the controls and exhibit behaviours out of character for yourself. And what do you call the person under the horse? I can’t even use the common Voodoo term ‘the horse,’ because, well, you see? So I’m going with ‘bearer’ for now.

One or two Mari bearers had confirmed to me that they could feel an overshadowing presence of a properly woken Mari. I had all day to check this out, and yes. My Ostler for the day, Soror Brigantia, spoke afterwards of feeling like I’d been away all day and she’d been left with the Mari. I found it confusing and difficult to carry on a human conversation while under the horse, and managed only the briefest social interactions.

However Ffynone Mari turned out to be quite in demand with the littluns and made herself available for having her muzzle patted and stroked. It all sounds very cutesy until you realise you’ve been normalising contact with death and the Otherworld in a society in screaming denial about both.

The high point of the Festival is a meeting at Chepstow bridge, where three paradigms come together. First was the massed cavalry of Mari Lwyds, 34 on this outing: a record set earlier in the day during the Mari Lwyd Pageant, a beauty contest for horse skulls in sheets. Picture it. Next were the Border Morris and various Morris platoons, faces blackened (eat it, social justice warriors: it’s a traditional way to preserve anonymity in these parts, and nothing to do with American racism); and the Wassailers, whose big moment earlier had been waking up the apple trees in order to ensure a good harvest this year with the Old English greeting Was hál! — ‘Be Well!’ which we toasted with mulled cider, welcome in the damp cold of the day.

The night-time clash at the bridge was a noisy, rival supporters sort of affair, and then, as they always report, ‘peace broke out,’ and we all headed back into town together to drink and make merry.

It should be no surprise to a chaos magician to see such a cluster of paradigms playing nicely together. The mutual appreciation was obvious. Lessons to be learned there. But enough of the worthy and meaningful stuff: suffice to say a good time was had by all, especially by Ffynone Mari.

Invocation of the Mari Lwyd

Kite