nikki wyrd | The Blog of Baphomet

News of a shocking propaganda move to deflect the growing influence of Chaos Magick™ has come to my notice. On one level this is hardly surprising given the wide ranging freedoms from various cultural traps that practice of CM allows; however I felt it was necessary to speak out now, so that we can take appropriate action.

You may have noticed over the last few years that several commercial establishments, such as supermarkets, retail outlets, and now McDonalds, have begun to use winter festival decorations which are snowflakes, but, with eight ‘branches’ rather than the six of classical snowflake representation. As anyone who has actually looked at snowflakes knows, in reality they tend to have a wide diversity of shapes, the symmetrical six only arising under certain crystallisation conditions high in the clouds.

Real photograph

Viewing this perfected model as a ‘real snowflake’ does not bear up to scrutiny. The six way symmetry is a result of the molecular form of ice crystals, so happens under ideal conditions, however most snow does not form like this; and even the sixfold patterning often gives rise to non-dendritic structures without branches, and more like solid arrangements of triangles.

“The most common snow crystals by far are the irregular crystals. These are small, usually clumped together, and show little of the symmetry seen in stellar or columnar crystals.” Kenneth Libbrecht http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/class/class.htm

Sketchy snowflakes

However, leaving inconvenient facts to one side for a while, six is the proper symbolic way to construct a giant plastic snowflake for your shop, so why have so many companies switched to eight?!

The answer is obvious.

The snowflake shape now gaining popularity has eight pointy bits, like a chaos star. However, a snowflake has terminals which act as an inward pointing arrowhead, the antithesis of the chaostar, demonstrating that their true purpose is to negate any CM activity in the area! Given the success that many magicians have with using magick to influence the prices of their favourite items at this time of year in particular, it is small wonder that Big Business has decided to invest in anti CM charms in their premises…

Superficially, these shapes resemble Icelandic rune charms such as the Helm of Awe. However, even a slim amount of knowledge of the lore allows one to see that these commercial patterns have no deeper meaning than a few trivial strokes, their shallow nature has no message other than to point away from the spirit of Yule as a time of celebrating through feasting on hearty meals created within the home, for one’s kith and kin.

Snowflakes recently blanketed the Middle East, providing picturesque photo opportunities of the pyramids, and Jerusalem. Children who have never seen snow make snowmen, and try out sledging for the first time. Other consequences occur too: The snowflakes release stored water as they melt, causing flooding, which can be exacerbated when the local infrastructure does not assist in reliving this calamity.

In the past many occultists/natural philosophers were fascinated by the subject of snowflakes, amazed as lenses allowed a glimpse into the intricate structures that can form. Drawing these precise symmetrical patterns became hugely popular, while the more common irregular snowflake crystals were not documented. As with so many areas of life, the unusual perfect became accepted as the norm due to over-representation. Complex irregular shapes are less aesthetically appealing, harder to pin down to a two dimensional sheet of paper, so the fact of their vastly more numerous occurrence remains largely unrecorded.

So the next time you enter a building designed to take your money, be aware of the ‘fluences at work. Maybe carry a chaos star on your person to ward off the anti-magick vibes, and to give yourself the best chance of picking up a bargain. Look with your own eyes, not at the distractions They want you to look at.

(N.B. Other outlets for obtaining/distributing food and drink are available.)

Merry Yulemass!

The Ego (as Rob Dickins pointed out in his brilliant presentation at Breaking Convention) often gets to be the villain of the piece. It’s something to be smashed, to be transcended – it’s a psychic structure that gets us caught up in petty social processes and leaves us grasping at attachments.

Yellow/Gold magick – the bright light of Midsummer time, encourages us to engage with this aspect of ourselves. What does it mean to be who we are? For this season, rather than trying to go beyond the self, let’s have a respectful look at what it means to be us – right here, right now.

Golden magick

Eight people were present at our meeting, including a new participant who had predominately worked within the Ordo Templi Orientis. His presence mirrored delightfully the nature of the Work during this meeting. The Illuminates of Thanateros and OTO are quite different beasts in structural terms, but they are both, to use a rather lovely analogy, ‘Organs in the body of God’. There are things the OTO structure (let alone anything to do with magic itself) allows it to do (hold public liability insurance for example) which, in certain settings can be really helpful. Meanwhile the IOT approach means that some things are trickier for that group whereas other processes (eg not requiring any payment of membership fees and therefore being accessible to people irrespective of their financial situation) may have benefits in other respects. So these two Orders (as structures), unsurprisingly, just like individual people, have things they are well suited to, and things they find more challenging. The same is true of us as people, we’re social beings and therefore while we might want a broad base of education and experience, we don’t all need to be or do the same thing. And, assuming our social relations with many others suggest that we’re successfully part of society as a whole – there are undoubtedly things that, as individuals, we should be proud of. (We’re also really lucky with our group in that not only do we have contributors from the IOT and OTO but also folk who are not part of those structures but come from Wiccan, Zen and other backgrounds.)

Celebrating our individuality, our uniqueness, is what our Midsummer meeting was all about. This was done using a variety of techniques such as this; the ‘Yellow Magick Chaos Craft Ritual by me, Nikki‘.

Sitting in a circle Nikki laid a packet of cigarette rolling papers and a gold pen neatly in front of her. The purpose of the ritual, she explained, was to explore our own magical names. Each person took a paper and wrote their name in gold on it. Licking the gummed edge of the paper it was then stuck on the forehead, so that each person could see each others name.

Participants were then given the opportunity to speak to another person about the meaning of their chosen name. Each person also had a chance to listen (to a different person than the one they explained their name to).

Following this process of explaining the naming of ourselves, and listening to the story behind the name of another, it was time to seek out a new insight from our name. To achieve this we simply take the rolling paper and crumple it up, swallowing it with a few mouthfuls of the lemon barley water from the ceremonial chalice (the sacrament used in our earlier round of introductions at the start of the meeting).

In doing this, in the style of ancient Egyptian magic, we are absorbing our name and asking for a new insight into its meaning. We sit together each person silently repeating their own name until trance and then insight happen, guided gently by a few words from Nikki.

A simple practice like this, framed perhaps with a banishing practice and maybe a formal Statement of Intent, is sometimes all you need. The magic is in the attention the participants bring to the practice (our group members are all experienced magicians) and the skill of the ritual leader (which in the case of Ms Wyrd, having done ritual magick for quarter of a century, is considerable).

But some rituals are more about ‘bells and smells’, and require other paraphernalia. Other items used during this meeting included a vacuum cleaner (an underused ritual tool in my opinion, after all what do you actually use to banish stuff you don’t want hanging around?), a Yellow Troll Zen teacher and internet connection to the teachers’ wisdom HERE, a composite ‘exquisite corpse’ creation made from three of our ‘subpersonalities’ (or other egos), a smoke machine, lasers, strobe lighting and the brilliant ritual music used by The Temple of Set HERE.

For the final rite we invoked Set, the principle of the isolate intelligence, the separate sense of self and of being-in-the-world (see p133 HERE). Then, emerging from the darkness into the light of the sun god Ra, we each put on an outfit we’d brought especially for the purpose. There were sharp suits, feathered masks, leopard print high heels, gold body paint and much more besides! There was dancing, mutual admiration and a photoshoot!

Stars in their eyes

Celebrating our unique individuality and ourselves is something that, particularly perhaps in Britain, people get uneasy about. We don’t want to seem big headed which is fair enough. However we need to recognise that it’s okay to celebrate in this way, and that to big ourselves up doesn’t mean we have to put someone else down. Quite the reverse – in fact, for as my OTO Brother might remark; ‘Every man and every woman is a star’.

Some sounds for Yellow Gold magic HERE, HERE and HERE – enjoy!

Picture of the gold chaosphere pendant owned by Nikki Wyrd courtesy of the artist Russell Lownsbrough @ http://www.whaleandsmith.co.uk/