Recently a student at Arcanorium College brought up the subject of insanity, and what that means for magicians. Are we madder than most? Should a magician losing their grasp on reality try to hold on to normality, or go with the crisis in the hope of reaching a kind of breakthrough?

I could only answer from my own perspective, which seemed largely in line with the others who responded. Insanity, imho, exists as a definition particular to each cultural context. In many ways, going nuts/mental/having a mental illness episode reveals a lack of choice or more accurately, a lack of ability to choose, one’s beliefs and/or behavioural strategies.

In addition to this cognitive confusion, if the individual lacks the ability to interact socially (e.g. lack of self-care, rudeness and aggression, or the opposite social extreme, an inability to talk with people) then the individual is even more likely to become ostracised, which exacerbates the state where they cannot function; the human brain works in connection with others.

Do those who practise magick have an increased likelihood of sliding into this vortex of detached obsession with an abnormal way of acting?

Such a hard question to answer. I can only speak of the people I’ve known over the years. There is, I would say, an increased interest in how the mind works, where they may well be extra validity given to areal occurences, from magicians and those whose worlds contain non-normal experiences as valid parts of their lived experiences.

Indeed, magicians aim to create these non-normal, or areal, events!

Some magickal practices emphasise the solitary retreat as a way of escaping the shackles of consensus reality (ie a non-magical world view). The Abremelin method of living alone for 6 months in seclusion in order to reach a state of mind where angels appear, or the extreme self-engineering by using complex rites of Thelema which seeks the same end, result in the magician’s world changing enough to allow these visions of another higher intelligence to become real enough to provide inspirational spiritual education.

It could be said that many artists or writers also follow a not dissimilar path, of solitary self-observance, in order to enter their own worlds of make believe, which are nevertheless real enough to demand exploration and materialisation through various media.

In that sense then the magician tries to induce a deliberate condition of what some would regard as ‘madness’ (although not usually for much more than a temporary visit; for most magickal acts that is sufficient).

However, in order to function in the world, a magician must retain one foot firmly in the consensus reality of the normal; living between the worlds, “in the world yet not of it” as the oft used phrase goes.

Going back to the context of our culturally normative reading of ‘madness’… Many magickal practices cultivate awareness of other people, the skills of being able to critique objectively one’s own habits and behavioural activities, and increase social interaction & character development to enable a pleasant and creative daily existence. Chaos Magick by its very nature should enhance these attributes, as it explicitly encourages the ability to enter into the dialect of other’s reality tunnels without scorn, with the basic concept that by doing so one does not have to give up on one’s own, thus (in an ideal scenario) allowing for meaningful and effective communication and collaboration with those who on the face of it may hold different world views from oneself.

As with any category of people, there will inevitably be those of us who experience an episode of mental illness whilst we include magickal or ritual works as a part of our lives. Sometimes the distinction between mental illness and magickal belief depends very much on the eye of the beholder. Other times, the descent into madness has clearer adverse effects; an individual suffering from PTSD, for example, would do well to desist from any magickal belief system which encourages paranoiac or persecution complexes, such as demonology or matyr paradigms. Without the sense of humour and self-deprecating mockery essential to flirting playfully with these types of belief, the individual sinks rapidly from rationality, losing the empathy so necessary for perceiving the influence of one’s actions on others.

For this reason, I would encourage any magician (and anyone else too!) who wishes to maintain the best chance of avoiding mental health problems, to keep their organism in a healthy and robust state, in order to provide the best environment for the emergent bodymind thought constructs. Sleep, eat, drink, exercise, socialise, get out in the open air, take up a bodywork discipline (yoga, a martial art, or a physical fitness training regime such as crossfit), give yourself every chance of having the resilience you may well need when facing the more bizarre denizens of the abyss.

Banishing before and after clearly focussed magickal activity helps to keep this somewhat non-sane (in our shared mundane world of rationality!) activity outside the realm of the normal, allowing an attitude of non-attachment/non-disinterest to thrive. Laughing at one’s zany wacky beliefs is also a healthy habit to adopt.

None of these things will guarantee the ability to pass as ‘normal’, and for most of us that is not the issue. I would suggest though, that by maintaining a degree of social integration and self care skills, we do allow ourselves the best chance to manifest our magickal desires in a way mutually symbiotic to our precious mundane realities, which in the end is the proving ground of our magickal works.

Indulge the madness of the divine possession state, but retain an ability to step away from the wand; a magician controls the external universe, yes, but the magician who wishes to stay an integrated member of society (whichever part of their local behavioural smorgasbord they chose as tribe!) controls what happens inside their head too.

NW

Black water covers the earth, seeping down into the cracks, sliding into the hidden places.

Hallowe’en, Samhain in the direction of North-West on the wheel of the year, is a time of Black Magick.

We sat around the kitchen table, one Sister unable to join us because of the flooding, and played an esoteric parlour game. The challenge; write down a list of your top 13 deities. Having done so we can compare lists and make those knowing noises that one makes during a divination. Our selections are similar, with some deities being shared across a number of personal pantheons. Then another game; write down the first three words you associate with the phrase ‘Left-hand Path’ – more light-hearted but valuable insights into our group process.

We meet by the fireside. Banishing the space with the Gnostic Chaosphere Ritual (version 1.8) and make toasts to absent friends and the spirits and powers of the time. The first Work is the Black Mage hibernation rite:

The Black Mage magical hibernation rite: This working has been inspired by Michael Kelly’s writing on the Black Mage in Apophis and my own thinking on “Slow Magick”. The Black Mage for me resonates with the fecund earth and the unconscious, the primal rune Uruz and the Muladhara chakra. When we are able to work with the energy of the Black Mage we will hopefully access our unique primal power. The aim of this ritual is to loosen our bodily conditioning and then direct both power and intent toward planting a desired outcome into the dark part of the year.

Method: Opening with singing bowl, group breath work followed by 5 minutes dancing/seething to the track “Geneva” by Russian Circles (chosen because of its dark, overwhelming heaviness!). Once our body armour has been loosened via movement, we adopt the yogic asana “pose of a child” and groan the rune Uruz into the ground (x8) – thus planting our “slow” magic into the turning of the year. Close with prayer of thanksgiving and reflection.

For the next ritual we descent into the subterranean temple. This is work in defence of the ash trees in Europe which are threatened by a newly emerging disease. This ritual is the brilliant ‘Activating the Glass Harp Virus Smasher’ a full write-up of which can be found HERE.

Next our Sister leads a meditation. This is the Vision of Sorrow in Binah, framed by the symbolism of the four 3s from the tarot; The Three of Disk – Work, The Three of Cups – Abundance, The Three of Wands – Virtue, The Three of Swords – Sorrow. Cards placed in each quarter, we spend time sitting with these concepts. For my part I go through in my mind all the people I know and love, I say their name silently and acknowledge that they ‘will die’. I acknowledge the death of my children, my parents, my lovers, my colleagues and many more. And strangely as I follow the truth and constancy of death in all these lives I realise that it’s okay, the muscles in my face lift and I find that, by the end of our practice. I’m smiling. We’re all going to die, and that’s okay. We’re all equal and I feel compassion, equanimity and even joy in that shared commonality.

The next Work is my offering. Once more underground I have prepared a pentacle upon which smokes an incense of rich, sticky gums and the earthy scent of patchouli. Laying down the travellers in the vision are wrapped in blankets and a stone is placed upon each of their chests. This gentle pressure is their anchor as they travel backwards into deep time, into the moment of The Fall of Because – the mysterious imagined time where our species became estranged from the ‘natural order’. Each traveller holds a pearl. The physical anchor for the intention to transform the Fall into something else, to transform it with hope, with magick. As the members of our circle inhale this sacred smoke and settle back to journey, I switch on a track that mixes trance drumming with the Shepard Tone, and I tell them the story;

Think of all the problems in the world, war, species collapse, human generated climate change, mindless drone jobs, the surveillance state, nuclear catastophy, resource scarcity, famine, population pressures, violence, abuse, fear, pollution, slavery, rapacious capitalism that is literally, exponentially, eating the world…

Think of all the reasons why we might be in this state, technological processes, poor communication, alpha male dominator culture, writing, domestication, capitalism, democracy – why are we like this, how is it that we, humanity, are fallen?

Think of all the religions and the belief systems of the ages, who have tried to grapple with the problems of human nature, with their instructions for how to live, how to die, their ideas of suffering, of sin, of apocalypse, and perhaps revelation and redemption.

Think how many belief systems posit a golden age, a time in Eden, a time before we were separated from God. Before this Kali Yuga, before we were lost.

Think back now, back into history, our story.

Think back to the days of Victorian era, the age of our Empire, colonial expansion, of the wild piratical early modern period, back to the medieval of knights and castles, back to the ancient world those earliest of civilisations – the Sumerians, the Maya, all the way back to the first cities to Çatalhöyük, to Göbekli Tepe and before…

Back now further, back to those earliest of farmers, the first domesticated grains, the first domesticated animals, the first domesticated humans. The first State that counted production, enclosed fields, numbered the biological and controlled it with technology.  And back further still, into deep time, into the world of our ancestors before we began to farm. Back to those hunter gatherer communities running through the forest with the deer. Back to the first fires, the first stories, back to the first words.

And back further still to the Nameless Wordless Aeons before our awareness arose, before the collapse into Nature and Culture, before our Fall.

Now from this deep timeline find the moment for you; that period in history, or prehistory, in the journey of our species, where you place the Fall, the ‘Because’ that determines our sense of separation into Civilisation and the uncivilised, nature versus culture, wild verses tame..that moment of the fall.

And there, in that moment place your seed pearl, your intention, and your hope in Pandora’s box. That glyph of the uniting of Self and Other, nature and culture, without Because and into doing. Place that bright hope into the moment of the fall so that by which we fall, we also rise, and we may fall no more.

Returning immediately, breaking into the Now our travellers are back. Knowing that The Fall has never happened. The chest stones are set aside, the pearls cast into a vessel of black water. We are each anointed with red-brown ochre, symbol of renewed life from the depths of the earth. In celebration of this we sing together:

We are ancient
As ancient as the sun
We came from the ocean
Once our ancestral home
So that one day
We could all return
To our birthright
The great celestial dome
We are the children of the sun
Our journey’s just begun
Sunflowers in our hair
We are the children of the sun
There is room for everyone
Sunflowers in our hair

Children of the Sun by Dead Can Dance

Finally for that night our Brother sets up a little Mexican Day of the Dead shrine in the centre of the temple. Peering into that tiny glass box, he reads a poem he has written. This reminds me of something I wrote about a Hallowe’en over a decade ago in Now That’s What I Call Chaos Magick about the beauty and power of simply listening, with right-attention, to inspirational text HERE.

Later one of our Brothers drives home. At one point his way is barred by black, fast flowing water. He abandons his car and wades his way across the flood-land  delighting in the wildness of the experience.

In the morning the deluge of the night  has broken into bands of rain punctuated by brilliant sunshine. My Brother and I watch Alejandro Jodorowsk’s The Holy Mountain and go for a walk out on the salt-marsh. The earth squeaks its’ water logged fullness, a rapid river, spotted with  bobbing dead wood, is bound for the sea.

The following night I gather the leftover materials from our magick into a spirit jar; ashes, red wine, black water,  pearls. Whereas the spirit house for Blue Magic shines with azure stones, blue spell cords and flecks of gold, this Black Magic vessel is full of a dark liquid in which are hidden five nacreous gems of hope.

JV