Uncategorized | The Blog of Baphomet

“How random is random?” asked William Burroughs thirty years ago, on a record that was playing in my bedroom while I earnestly cut up pages from the Bible, the proto-queer zine Square Peg and some old pathology text books appropriated from a Nursing Hospital that I’d been employed in as a temp to “rationalise space” (i.e. clean out cupboards.) It’s a question that’s stayed with me. Currently, the question has mutated into a genetic variaton; “how can you introduce genuinely random events into magickal ritual?” In turn this has led me to wonder if randomness actually exists – a debate that has raged in philosophical forums such as this one and math geek computer freak forums such as this one.

The word on the (virtual) street in answer to the question of the existence of randomness is “it depends”. I’m a Bell’s Theorem kind of magician and like to think in the words of one contributor to the debate that “ all is random, and there are no underlying deterministic mechanisms and variables, even if our brains just cannot accept that. Think of determinism as a conceptual illusion, analogous to optical illusions that can fool the brain in the visual area.”

brain illusions

So, from a quantum physics point of view (if there ever can be a singular ‘point’ of view) determinism is in itself an act of neurological magick – a triumph of belief (and neural networks) over reality. But then you already knew that didn’t you? That’s why you practice chaos magick n’est ce pas? Superposition and entanglement are second nature to you, and all that stuff in Chapter 5 of The Apophenion fits you like a replacement skin, yes?

And yet…and yet… if all is random how do we string together acts or gestures in ritual to create an intentional narrative? What holds it all together to make (non)sense for the participants? Is it something connected with the collective act of “doing” something at the same time (in a group)? Or is it something to do with the wave-like impression we make or leave behind on/in space and time as it continually collapses in/on itself? After all some of the things we do in ritual are just plain silly (for example I’m currently adapting the Cthulhu mythos for The Clangers – Froglets and Soup Dragon and The Cloud replacing the Old Ones; tentacles with blue string…sky-moos and Iron Chicken instead of Shub-Niggurath and Yog-Sothoth,) Yet the things we do can carry a very strong affect. Something happens, but we’re not always sure what it is. Is Tiny Clanger really becoming-me?

How I’ve been trying to get my head around this is by working with ideas drawn from the Open Source movement. Whereas the Open Source Religion movement has explored the ideas associated with “making public” that which was previously secret – for example the Open Source Order of the Golden Dawn: think Wikileaks but with more squiggles – instead I’m more interested in the idea of the ways in which Open Source coding develops breaks and then forms tributaries or forks away from the source code itself. As Julian and Nikki would put it, something to do with the fractal qualities of information itself – as you zoom in you also zoom out, one territory or plateau opens or unfolds out into an eternal other. A Baphometic incompleteness that defines and eludes itself. Erik Raymond refers to this more pragmatically as “Homesteading the Noosphere” in his compelling account of Open Source culture “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” available here.

Open Source coding draws upon shells and kernels to create space for the mutations and variations of the source code. In the same way in magick there are certain kernels we use – the circle, the spiral, the elements, the metaphors of time, space and the universe itself contained within the space and emerging from that space. Let’s try and explain what this means in practice…

“Holy fuck”, I look up and realise that seven other people are waiting for something to happen. We’re in a low ceilinged cellar and the lights are out. The source code is running – the circle is cast and the participants have synchronised their breathing, we are grounded. On a table nearby, an image of Papa Legba, some chillis, apricot brandy, red body paint, red candles, a knife and matches. What are the kernels here? Movement, contemplation, stillness, frenetic hysteria, harm, love, anger, rage, powerlessness, fear. By my side some scribbled notes on paper and a sigil. I’m powered up on caffeine and sugar – invoking the molecules of amphetamine, cocaine and crystal meth…. the spells of the binding, the spells of the spinning, the spells of the linking.

bon veve

“I don’t know what’s going to happen or what we’re going to do.” I say and there’s some laughter, but I really don’t. Even my explanation of the ritual is a bit haphazard; “dancey bit, quiet bit, bowing bit.” We jack into metaphysical cyberspace with a statement of intent, and the ritual unfolds – the drumming from another culture blasts out of the speakers and the rudimentary instructions I gave about crunk dancing and Thorn Coyle’s sacred movement trigger a Mexican wave of twitching and shaking. It’s then, that I know I/we am/are in. Inside the data flow, inside the pansychophere: everything is coming up in a volcanic blast. Yes you, skeletal greasy haired ghost-girl sourcing ecstasy at the Ministry of Sound: 21-09-1991 your sunken eyes here in the room in 2013. Holy fuck. Dead slave ghosts rising from the Black Atlantic. Legba coalesces inside the data flow- the memesphere punches into my chest – I am speaking French….

In the near darkness one participant meets me eye to eye, neither of us back down, I sense his resistance and flow around it – physically I move outside the circle and smear his head with red glitter gel. He capitulates. Peaches sings “you can’t fuck with me, you can’t fuck with me.” I am inside all these bodies. I am outside my own body. We perform war.

First fork: “he’s getting all up in my face” the drumming stops – the participants are flagging, sweating, uncertain – I anoint them with red paint – they are blooded – fox tails torn from their bodies and smeared on the faces of the hunt masters children. “I see you, I see you, I see you” who sees who? “I’m not in right now, please leave a message at the sound of the tone..”

Second Fork: swig this, swig this, nobody argues. They glug the apricot brandy. Legba’s energy is in the room; burning our throats and entering our bodies. The churnings of the anthrosphere, biosphere and geosphere. Holy fuck this is getting scary. I love it. No knives in reach. Luckily.

Abandoned nodes – red papier mache skull given to me by a Jamaican woman I worked with who said she was being torn apart by spirits

Abandoned nodes – chilli peppers to be eaten, rubbed into the skin. Thank Goth.

Abandoned nodes – getting people to write their intentions on the sigil – FORK – we scream out words and burn the sigil instead.

Abandoned nodes – Box Energy by DJ Pierre to soften the mood. FORK – I talk us all down from the window ledge. “Breathe”

***NEW FORK*** – Legba transformed by Joanna Macy’s switchback ride – Bowing to Our Adversaries – hope out of despair; Legba’s death instinct and Joanna’s life instinct. Thanateros.

***NEW FORK*** – Dissipating the “red mist” of anger via the base chakra and out through the body. We collectively vomit peace as we bow down to our enemies.

Return to source Code – grounding and banishing – eating salty Pringles and impersonating Homer Simpson: Doh! Triple Doh! Triple jewel. Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. Body, Speech, Mind.

Then it’s over and the subroutines melt back into the source code. We are shaken, ecstatic, surprised.

We have created a story out of randomness. Meaning from chaos.

“Each time as magicians we move from state to state, trance to trance, we destroy a world.” The Book of Baphomet p.166

“Ouvrir la partition/Ouvrir la porte/la vie devient la mort….un serpent se deplace le long de ma colonne vertebrale/Je vous suis/Vous etes moi…”

esc/end/end/esc/esc/esc

TP808

The use of the Statement of Intent is a common feature of most rituals. This can be couched in Pagan terms ‘We meet here today to celebrate the festival of Samhain…’, in NLP savvy results magick style, ‘We rejoice as the project of fracking is abandoned in the British Isles’ or Buddhist friendly lingo, ‘We dedicate the merit of this practice to the liberation of all beings’. And though it’s undoubtedly important to spend time divining and formulating what it is we want our magick to accomplish, it’s also important to appreciate the rule of Unintended Consequences. There are lots of examples of this principle; the inadvertent increase in bio-diversity in some war ravaged parts of the world, or the increased use of fossil fuels as smoke free pubs put heaters outside to warm their patrons now banished into the chilly night.

Sure as eggs is eggs…

Living as we do, in a complex world of every shifting inter-connected events, the idea of saying ‘I want X’, can never be the whole story by any measure. In fact I’d suggest that most of our magick operates as much through us, as something that apparently emerges from us. In those ritual moments, where we become conscious of the process we’re engaged in (celebrating Halloween, doing results magick or a spot of Tonglen), we’re actually pointing back towards the on-going process of our lives, reminding ourselves of what we’re doing just as much as casting our desires into the future.

Let’s say that you do a protection ritual for someone. The way in which the ritual is framed will emerge from your psychological state at that time. Do you choose to mirror the nasty stuff coming at you, returning it to it’s apparent point of origin? Do you attempt some cursing sorcery or ill-wishing antics? To generalise; the former policy (setting up protective wards, working to support those who are under threat and make them stronger, deploying blocking and binding spells), these betoken a much more nuanced, long-term and intelligent way of dealing with the problem than wildly stabbing at poppets or similar histrionics.

If you’re a poppet stabber chances are also that you’re caught up in a view of the universe characterised by fear and hatred. In such a state that old chestnut Lust of Result (assuming you think it applies in your model of magic) will probably be at a maximal value. It’s also likely that the law of Unintended Consequences will get you. This isn’t some kind of re-writing of karma or three-fold return but the simple fact that if you set out to do harm you’re quite likely to find quite the reverse taking place.

I saw a great example of this recently following the unpleasant trolling of friend where the anonymous emails sent her way actually galvanised a great up-welling of support on her behalf. This included messages of care and assistance from people she has previously had had minor disagreements with. In swinging his metaphorical club around the troll has stirred up a support group for their intended victim. This process included inadvertently calling allies with specialist computer skills, ideal for tracking down the miscreant. The actions of the nasty troll (who of course made some claims of curse-wielding powers) had had the unintended consequence of summoning a bunch of particularly helpful spirits to my friends aid!

Droll Troll

Does this cut both ways? What if you act all starry-eyed and trusting in the universe? What of the unintended consequences of becoming a door-mat for those opportunistic, confused or just plain psychopathic people out there? There’s nothing in principle to stop that happening however this is where the idea of Virtue comes in. Developing a Virtue is the deliberate cultivation of a dynamic equilibrium between extremes of behaviour. There is, for instance, the virtue of courage. At one end of the continuum of behaviours we have foolhardiness, and at the other cowardice. Courage stands somewhere between them. By cultivating our virtue we seek to place ourselves in a balanced, yet dynamic relationship with the world, and in practice this means we usually have a wider field of perception. We’re better able to notice the unintended consequences (both positive and negative) or our actions and reactions to the world. We’re more flexible and more likely to be successful in what we do (and able to meet the lessons from our failures more honestly). (My favourite model of virtue is described in Character Strengths and Virtues by Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman).

The person fixated on getting their way in the universe (bellowing Barbaric words at the top of their voice in the street and relentlessly pushing their monolithic interpretation of the world) is likely to be very far from virtuous. They miss the positive unintended consequences of their actions (from which they might theoretically capitalise) and the negative consequences (which could inform them to change tactics). Their obsessive desire makes them quite ignorant of what’s actually going on around them and, amusingly, the more they dig themselves down into their rut the easier it is for the unintended consequences – especially those that diametrically oppose what they want – to proliferate. They literally invoke their own downfall.

Both our daily lives and formal ceremonies may have all kinds of consequences, some of which we will never know (check out the excellent movie Cloud Atlas for a beautiful exploration of this idea). The aim of the wise magician then is to cultivate an on-going project of developing their virtue. This is a pragmatic sorcerous strategy to get us what we want (see my article HERE). Our virtue is reflected in our spells, in what we choose to pray for, and how we choose to act in the world. Those who spend their time Working to screw up the lives of others tend to end up friendless and screwed up themselves. Those who Work for wisdom, justice and humanity in the world actively create the conditions for those experiences to manifest. Such people are better able to weather the storms when times get tough. Moreover when the storm is done they’ve got plenty of capacity in themselves to enjoy the sun, and many loved ones around them with whom they can share it.