First Things First

Flashing lights that hyptnotize, otherworldy beasts with menace dripping from mordant eyes, the massive pulsation of power that courses throught you like wave after wave of electric clarity... these are some of what my once active imagination declared "magickal". If you've ever read a book about the Western Mystery Tradition (or any aspect of the occult, really) you've likely encountered the idea that magick is mostly something that people should do rather than something people should just read about. Unfortunately, I must begin this blog by noting that I have been reading about magick and the occult for many, many years. There is much information about magick floating around inside my skull, but the real practical stuff has eluded me, because I was long one of those smug cretins that thought that knowing about something was all that was required. About a year ago, I realized that I had imagined all sorts of results from magickal workings (like the ideas at the head of this post), but that I had nothing but a couple of attempts at astral projection in high school to illustrate to me what magick was and how it worked. So I started doing magick.

Robert Anton Wilson says that if you want to do anything at all, if it's worth doing, you'll do it every day. If becoming good at something is the goal, you have to practice, practice, practice. Do I practice every day? No. But I would very much like to, and that's where this blog comes in.

The need to do the practice every day is only slightly more important than keeping a detailed log of the journey, so say the books and teachers of the esoteric traditions. This is my attempt to keep a journal, and to make a magickal working truly open for others to participate. It's also a kick in the ass to remind myself that other people are out there looking at my progress and judging me a bit. Maybe that will help me do it every day. Maybe- I hope.

Anyhow, about me:

nothing

That's the only catch... I'm not going to tell anyone anything about my identity as it is right now. I really think that it's a bad plan to tell anyone about the deepest parts of my ritual process and have them be able to track it back to me in reality. Could you find out who I really am? Sure, but that's not the point of this place. This is an interactive ritual and dream diary that gives you and I the chance to share techniques, practices, questions, theories, and whatever else we encounter on the path.

There are certianly information that I willl have to fill in about myself in the context of ritual, or this process will be valueless. So here's some of the things that come to mind:

What tradition do I follow? Not a single one by any means. I work with Ceremonial Magick, meditation, imagination, some yoga, and other odds and ends. I try to do the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram (LBRP) at least once a day, and generally succeed in doing it about 2-3 times a week, with similar occurances of meditation. I do something like yoga about 4-5 times a week. Intellectually, I'm interested in the Golden Dawn, Theosophy, Thelema, Chaos Magick, sigils, mythology, zen, and lots of other stuff. It can be said that I follow the Western Mystery Tradition pretty closely at this point, as I have no teacher and am pretty new at this stuff. Hopefully, as time goes by, these interests will merge, develop, evolve, mutate, or do something else spectacular that will make life interesting for the reader and me. For now this is the place to detail my daily ritual activities.

I have yet to see any monsters, leave my body, see anything paranormal, or feel in the presence of divinity. Magick is as yet internal, transforming my consciousness by making me more aware, more attuned to my body, with an new imagination that can be channeled into whatever I need.

Why do I do this? Because I have only one real belief: that we all have a purpose dictated by our True Will, and that until I am sure what mine is, I will do research on myself using these techniques as ways to find out what it is I'm meant to do.