how to trick yourself into telling the truth, part one.

put a happy ending there and
it'll write itself, I swear
all we need
all we need
is some meetings and a lead

I'm pretty sure that song is Alkaline Trio, but not sure enough to put it behind a tilde*. And I don't know if there'll be anny other parts to this, but I felt like it wanted a part one at the end and I'm lettin' it stand.

So this lady at Mom's church got a word for me after Mom asked her to pray about me trying to find a new job. The lady felt great things were in store for me, that if there've been big dreams I've been deferring now's the time to go for them, and that if there's any little things around my house that might be displeasing to God I should get rid of them since they will stand in the way of me being blessed.

Isn't it great how proper witchcraft occurs everywhere, totally ignoring denominational boundaries?

I think I should get rid of that little "jar o' blessings" Mom gave me and the little silver case the blessings are supposed to go into once they're out of the jar. My Tarot decks, my Satanist books, Dad's old books on evolution are all quite pleasing to dog, or goddess, or God, or all three and whomever, thank you very much. And they are going to stay right where the fuck they are.

I actually did a kind of a spell yesterday. I dunno if I've told y'all about this, but this is how it works. One key theme in putting together a purposive magical ritual is that in the course of the ritual something is destroyed--a sacrifice. The symbolic, spiritual and emotional nature of the sacrifice should be as germane as possible to the aspect of one's life the spell is meant to affect. The idea is that the sacrifice is empowered with your mana (your stuff-that-feels-ways-and-pushes), and that in being destroyed it moves from this side of life to the other, carrying your intent along with it. When I feel I'm lacking in musical or poetic inspiration, for example, the best spell I've come up with is to "plow under" a small bit of a song or poem. This means to come up with it, sing or recite it, cherish its awesomeness, and then intentionally forget it. Even for me, intentionally forgetting things is pretty tricky.

For life pattern things what works best for me is to write shit down, either on a yellow legal pad or on my blog, and then forget it. If it's on physical paper it's often enough to just flip the page and not re-read it again for awhile. If it's on my blog, the thing to do is write it in a draft and then close the window without saving. Autosave will sometimes pick up parts of it, but not usually the money parts.

I'm not sitting there writing, "Oh, dear dog, gee it'd be nice if you got me a soft accounting job that pays $35k a year for 40hrs a week and lets me sit on my ass playing KoL all day and also has free coffee and a shorter bus ride than my current job and everyone will be nice to me but not too nice." That's what my feelings add up to, but that actually isn't honest enough IMO to constitute a proper spell. The reason writing things out works for me is it lets me get to the center of my feelings, the root of my distress, and speak from that. Oddly, I don't think there's any reason not to explain what I put into the thing yesterday. Usually there would be. Who knows, maybe it was a dud for purposes of example--either way I'll find out when the time shifts.

I started out talking about how I've been freaking out a little because of being scared and taking the situation upon myself with too much frowny seriousness. Then I talked about the Who, and Tommy and why sensory deprivation scares me. This led to the story about Dad, the one where he lost his hearing. I told the whole story about him and the Russian agents disguised and Chicago cops, why anybody involved in spooky business should always carry a handcuff key taped to the small of their back and why music lovers should never repeatedly fire a pistol inside a vehicle unless it is, in fact, a matter of life and death. That gave a nice little segue into how the path a person chooses to follow in life marks them--not always with busted eardrums and broken bones, but in ways that make them more suited to that path and less capable of following others. Then I got into this metaphorical thing with how the best a human being can do is try to be a pinball wizard and hope some friendly hand guides them to a machine whose moves they understand.

See, dreamspeak is the only language our unconscious minds understand. And except for little glimmers of witchery, which only the very unluckiest powerhouses get more than, the only way you can intentionally shout out your will into the web of causality is by working together with your unconscious mind. Which means you have to tell it a story, sing it a song, inspire it to desire with specificity. A particular kind of specificity. You can't specify dollar amounts and role titles because those ideas exist only in the purview of your conscious mind. Being able to manipulate oneself into complete honesty is as tough a trick, in its way, as forgetting things on purpose. To trick oneself into thinking and feeling and desiring, if only for a few moments, with exact and perfect clarity, all pointed in exactly the same direction, is the thing, however one goes about it.

It's a bit like Horton Hears a Who. All the little versions of you inside your head and heart and gut and et cetera have to stand on the top of their metaphorical buildings and shout "Hi, Horton!" for your soul to make any noise at all against the general background murmur of your time.



*Looked it up. It is, in fact, the Vandals.