In my decade-plus of being a pagan and magician, animal magic and animal totemism have always been my main focus regardless of what paradigm I was working in. Since I began practicing shamanism in earnest back in 2007, I’ve become much more aware of how interconnected everything really is. While I was already an active environmentalist, my experiences with shamanism gave me even greater reasons to be tuned into the ecosystems around me and the inhabitants thereof, including on the physical level. And while the animals initially ushered me into the shamanic path I’m walking now, they made it clear early on that they were not to be the do-all and end-all of my guides in my experiences.

The more I practice, the more I realize that working exclusively with animal totems is limiting, and it’s really an artificial separation. I think people who work with animal totems are attracted to them partly for their charisma, and partly for the familiarity. We can relate well to animals because we are animals. We especially find ourselves allied with mammals because we are mammals. The further away from Homo Sapiens a totem is, the harder on average it is for a person to connect with it because of a lack of familiarity. (Though the opposite is true with primate totems, who may be too close to us for many of us to feel that there’s anything to learn — which couldn’t be further from the truth!)

Yet just as we can’t really understand physical animals when they’re taken out of their natural habitats, we can’t really understand totems fully when we work with them exclusive of the rest of their environment, spiritual and otherwise. Animals are just one part of a collective, complex ecosystem made of plants of varying sorts, fungi (including mycorrhizal fungi in the root systems of plants), the soil and other geological phenomena, the weather and other climate elements, and any bodies of water — and that’s just the basic view. All of these factors have an effect on animal behavior and biology, and vice versa. An ecosystem is just that — a system. Taking any single part out of the whole changes both. This is why wild animals in a zoo behave differently from their counterparts in the wild, often drastically so.

So why do we so often try to work with animal totems outside of their ecosystems? Ecosystems exist spiritually as well as physically — totems in general are just one manifestation thereof. I know very few people who work with plant or mineral totems (and I completely admit to slacking in that regard). I do work with the archetypal manifestations of more overarching phenomena, such as the Earth, Sky, Sun, Moon, Wind, Water, etc., as well as genii loci and other land spirits. But while I’ve worked quite a bit with animal totems as archetypal representations of their given species, I haven’t done so in the same way with plants and minerals, and that’s a pretty significant hole in my work with ecosystems in general.

As graduate school has eaten a lot of my time (though as a counseling psych student it is a part of my shamanic training/practice), I haven’t done as much direct spiritual work as I might like (though the spirits I work with are patient). But as Scrub Jay’s entrance into my life has indicated, paying more attention to where I live locally is of the utmost important. My view may not be as broad as it was, but it’s a lot more detailed. And in those details I’m beginning to see the places and beings that I’ve missed. As I continue to strengthen my connection to the Land here, I’m going to be increasing my focus on the plants, the minerals, and the other beings that I may have overlooked while focusing so heavily on the animals. Not that the animals will go away, but instead they’ll be brought into a richer, fuller context with all of the spirits of their ecosystem, spiritually and physically.

Lupa is the author of Fang and Fur, Blood and Bone: A Primal Guide to Animal Magic, A Field Guide to Otherkin, and co-author of Kink Magic, among other works. You can read her blog at http://therioshamanism.com and see her website at http://www.thegreenwolf.com.

©2009 Lupa
Edited by Sheta Kaey

(Disclaimer: This is not a how-to guide for spell-casting. It’s a quick look at some of the background and theory. I take no responsibility for the results of anyone mistaking the below text for an instruction manual!)

Previously, I made the point that any theory or description of how magic works will be necessarily subjective, partial and on some level utterly insufficient in fully describing what happens.

But I’m going to have a go anyway.

So, a magician takes patterns in their mind, forges meaningful connections between symbols, events, people and places and things. This set of patterns, their map of the universe if you like, orients them and shows possibilities of action.

What happens next?
That depends on the map.

There are a few ways of describing the overall patterns — the meta-models — used in most magical styles. A good summation of four rough types is here. Using that scheme, I’d describe what I do as a mix of the Energy and Information models, with a side-order of the Psychological. I don’t work the Spiritual model much, except when needed (i.e. if I encounter something that acts like a spirit!).

The Energy model — especially the Far-Eastern-styled variants — is pretty good for describing what I actually do and feel when I “do magic.” A “spell” to me is basically a series of instructions imprinted onto personal energy and send out on a push of focused emotion and intent. Like a martial arts punch — it’s not just the movement of hand and arm that matters, it’s the will behind it.

And, again like martial arts… it’s all about the breath.

If you look at most traditions, the words for magical energy all translate as “breath.” Mana, Prana, Baraka, Ch’i/Ki, Pneuma… they all seem to describe the same thing. Even a word like ‘conspiracy’ (which pops up now and again when talking about the occult…) means at root “those who breathe together.” The primacy of breath is one of the reasons so many systems instruct the beginner in some form of meditation — to teach breath control both as a quick and easy method for altering consciousness and as the basic tool of controlling and focusing one’s ch’i to be deployed magically. Meditation also teaches the student to cut down the signal-to-noise ratio in his mind, the better to sense the change in energies around him. To “detect magic.”

Again I should point out, it’s only a model. The use of the word “energy” in mysticism, especially these days, has been haphazard to say the least. Probably the only word misused more these days is “vibrations.” Or possibly “quantum.”

The Chinese term Ch’i has a lot of utility for me, mainly because Ch’i is considered a universal energy, pretty much like The Force. It scales up nicely — the same system used in acupuncture theory or martial arts is applied on a larger scale in feng shui. It also ties in to my own Taoist tendencies belief-wise. So, I’ll be using it a lot here.

(I’ve always had what could be called a sensitivity to magical energy, to both my own Ch’i and that in my environment. I usually feel it as a kind of temperature shift, sometimes as a tingle in my peripheral nervous system, sometimes even as a kind of ghost-of-a-smell. I’m pretty sure that this sensory input is only a symbol for whatever it is I’m actually getting information about/from, in the same way that the senses we call “smell” and “taste” don’t actually feel like molecules rubbing against our mucous membranes. It’s a shorthand, a symbol, like everything about magic — and it’s a good idea to remind yourself of that fact on a regular basis.)

Back to that spell. The next point to consider is, what is the spell for?

It can be for anything the magician can imagine. Though the intent alters the kind of emotional set and setting for the spell, it doesn’t usually change the mechanics of casting — though of course some techniques work better than others, depending on the intent. (You probably wouldn’t want to focus on feelings of anger and violence when attempting healing, for instance.) The key thing here is the magician must seriously want the instructions to be carried out, he must suit his mood to the intent, and he must formulate his instructions reasonably clearly.

I could go on at great length here about the morality of magic use — and I may do so at a later date. (Short version: I’ve seen no sign of any kind of automatic “Law of Three-fold Return” or similar retribution governing spell use. The morality of magical action falls to the caster. Though karmic payback isn’t guaranteed, often like energies will attract like. But it’s not inevitable that “bad magic” will lead to a bad end. Unfortunately. My own morality leans heavily toward the issue of consent. I never initiate magical combat — only defend or counter-attack when hostilities are begun. I don’t push healing unless I’m asked. And I never, ever, work love spells. To my mind, they’re the psychic version of date-rape drugs.)

The traditional, old school, Spirit-model-based magical styles of spellcasting are usually lengthy processes. The mage would have to thoroughly research the timing (both logistically and astrologically) of the casting, determine which spirits and entities have to be invoked or kept away, lay out surroundings which are conducive to those spirits, select tools in keeping with the occasion, make a magically clear and safe space, probably observe some kind of ritual cleansing beforehand, cast a circle, make ritual obeisance to the pantheon involved… and then finally cast the spell.

All very well and good… and those High Magic rites can have great beauty and efficacy. But from my perspective, most of that prep falls under the heading of “getting into the mindset,” reinforcing the associations in the pattern. For most people, generating the emotional charge needed for working magic requires a dramatic shift from “ordinary” reality — and the borders of the magical reality they are creating have to be fiercely guarded, lest they fall. They’re making a kind of Temporary Autonomous Zone, a brief suspension of the ordinary rules. Though this separation of the magical and the mundane has its uses, I find it mostly a false distinction. With practice — and a good understanding of one’s internal patterns of symbol and Ch’i — one can generate the right mood with a few muttered words, humming a snatch of a tune, or simply taking a slow deep breath.

The emotional push, the Ch’i generation and harnessing needed for magic, can be found in anything that matters to the mage and fits their internal map. Some find it in rituals as described above. Some get to it through sexual activity. Some from dancing, from the emotional climax of a piece of a music or a movie or beating the Boss Level in a computer game. Anything can work. The closer it fits both the intent of the spell and the internal pattern-map of the mage, is usually the better.

The mood is found, the intent created in the magician’s mind… then with a push (or a shout, or a waving of wands, or an orgasm, or…) the spell is cast. Instructions/requests given to the Universe to change according to the magician’s will.

Some kind of banishing should then follow. Even if there’s no clear delineation between the magical and non-magical space, the energies recently harnessed should be allowed to settle and disperse, any entities which may have manifested given leave to depart, and generally the whole place cleaned and tidied up thoroughly. The residue of a space where this is not done can deform, grow toxic… and sometimes attract unpleasantness. (Think of the neglected remains of a picnic, attracting ants. Replace “ants” with “demons” or “bad vibes.” You get the idea.)

Then comes the hard part… seeing if the spell worked.

Like everything else in magic, deciding whether or not a casting has actually had any effect is just about as subjective as you can get. (And that’s before you even start to worry about how it worked!) Quite often, the exact results aren’t quite as the caster imagined them; usually the changes in the world are small.

Maybe that’s all magic is — a way of nudging chance in a tiny way, allowing the repercussions to spiral outward like the butterfly wing altering the quantum flow of —

Bugger it. I said, “quantum.”

(Next on Guttershaman — much, much more on tradition, “authenticity” and such. And I use “the S word” again.)

©2009 Ian Vincent
Edited by Sheta Kaey

When I moved to Portland, OR in 2007, one of the first locals to greet me wasn’t human. Instead, I found the trees outside my first apartment to be full of scrub jays. These gray and blue corvids have a similar place in the urban ecosystem here that their cousins, the blue jays, did back East. I got a kick out of watching them in their territorial squabbles, raising their young, and making their harsh “VWEET! VWEET!” call. (I admit that I looked up a recording of a scrub jay call online, set my laptop up in the window, and drove one pair nuts for a couple of minutes looking for the invisible intruder.)

Now, I’m very much not the kind of person who, upon seeing a particular animal on a regular basis, automatically assumes there’s some significance. And given that both my old apartment and the one I presently live in are located within the territories of several pairs of scrub jays, I had an easy answer to why I kept seeing the birds all over the place. But as I got settled into Portland, I found myself continuing to get “pings” every time I saw them, especially as I put out more effort to connect to the Land here. I saw even more crows, and plenty of insects of various sorts, but no other animals provoked the same reaction.

It was last year, when I put in my first container garden up on the downstairs apartment’s roof, that Scrub Jay started getting bolder in trying to get my attention. As late summer came around, I found that some critter had been digging in the pots, uprooting plants and occasionally nabbing strawberries. Since we had a nest of fox squirrels in the attic who had already raised my ire, I assumed it was them, and took measures to try to scare them off. Unfortunately, the digging continued. It wasn’t until shortly before we moved to the new apartment this past December that I caught a scrub jay in the act, poking around in a pot of carrots. I never saw what, exactly, s/he was up to, but I knew I had my culprit.

After the move, Scrub Jay mostly left my mind, replaced by my getting used to the new area and starting up the new semester of grad school. I did see scrub jays — as well as more elusive Stellar’s jays — out in the new yard, getting by just fine in the rainy winter. I noticed them more as it warmed up enough for me to start putting in this year’s garden.

Scrub Jay did show up in my journeying in my shamanic practice as one of my guides in the Middle world. S/he informed me that, among other things, s/he could help me find resources in the Middle world (which includes the physical plane of reality we live in).

But I didn’t really think about what all this might have meant until a couple of weeks ago when a fellow shamanic practitioner, Ravenari, posted her own interpretation of what Scrub Jay has to teach . One of the main themes dealt with survival, doing what one needs to do to get by and making the most use of the resources available. And, as with animal sightings, although I generally don’t automatically take other people’s interpretations of totems to heart, this one resonated with me pretty strongly.

It makes a good deal of sense. I first started gardening as a way to create a more sustainable lifestyle from a primarily environmental perspective. However, as the economy slumped more and more, I began to shift my focus more towards economic issues. Sustainability is still very much about survival, but it’s mostly in the long-term. Economic realities are more apparent to most people, and too often even I will have to choose to buy something that’s not as sustainable because I can’t afford anything more expensive. But the garden is both better for the environment and for my food budget.

Scrub Jay reminds me that survival takes work, effort that’s often taken for granted in a largely automated economy, or in social strata where the hard manual labor is done by Someone Else. Additionally, the occasional jay digging in the garden helps me keep in mind that nothing is certain or runs perfectly every time, and additionally that my garden doesn’t exist in a bubble. Other living beings rely on and compete with me for the resources of nature, and while it’s easy for me to be offended when “my” vegetables get pilfered by wildlife, I also have to admit that my presence in the ecosystem reduces the available natural resources on many levels, food being one.

This is especially important as I continue to explore my place in the local ecosystem, including humans as well as “nature.” One of the benefits of having a local totem to show the ropes, so to speak, is that the totem can point out details on how to better integrate into the ecosystem. If I am going to have a harmonious relationship to my ecosystem and, later on as an ecopsychologist, teach other people how to do the same, I need to accept that not everything is going to go exactly the way I want — but that it’s not all about me, either.

So I’ve accepted that the scrub jays in the garden are a reminder to me of the survival and interconnections that Scrub Jay has taught me. Scrub Jay is really the first totem I’ve had whose physical children I’ve interacted with on a regular basis, and so it’ll be interesting to see how the relationship develops compared to those with other totems. In the meantime, I’ll keep being patient when I occasionally find the product of little beaks digging in the garden, and enjoy the sound of the raucous “VWEET!” as I go through my day.

Lupa is the author of Fang and Fur, Blood and Bone: A Primal Guide to Animal Magic, A Field Guide to Otherkin, and co-author of Kink Magic, among other works. You can read her blog at http://therioshamanism.com and see her website at http://www.thegreenwolf.com.

©2009 Lupa
Edited by Sheta Kaey

Recently, my husband Taylor and I moved to a new home. This, of course, meant uprooting everything, packing it into boxes, bins and bags, and trucking it across town (thankfully the day before Snowpocalypse 2008 hit the Pacific Northwest!). After about a week of recovery, I had the time and energy to reconstruct my ritual/artwork area. In the old place, Taylor and I shared the finished attic of our two-floor apartment as sacred space. Here, we each have our own private room in addition to the main bedroom, which has been a nice change. It’s been three and a half years since I had my own private ritual/art space, and I’m making the most of it.

Before I go on, let me explain what my ritual/art space contains. For over a decade, I have been creating ritual tools and other sacred artwork out of animal bones, hides, feathers, and other preserved remains. Many of these are secondhand, retrieved from coats and other apparel, taxidermy mounts, old fur rugs, and so forth. Over time, I learned to speak with the spirits in these remains; I don’t believe they’re the actual souls of the animals, but something leftover once death occurs. Often, they’re not happy, since most of these animals died in some pretty horrible ways.

A large portion of my magical/spiritual practice has involved working with these spirits to help them have better afterlives, so to speak. When I create something artistic, part of the process involves communicating with the spirits to get their input. If a particular spirit doesn’t want to be part of a project, I find something different for hir. Then, when the project is done, it goes through a full ritual purification, and offerings are made to all spirits involved. So my art/ritual space is generally full of various animal parts and other art supplies, along with the skins, drums and other artifacts of my (neo)shamanic practice.

After two days of sorting, playing Tetris with boxes, and pulling indignant dead critters out of storage, I finally had things arranged the way I wanted them. This was by far the most haphazard and last-minute move we’ve had, right on the heels of finals week (I’m in graduate school). So I didn’t get to do the usual ritual that I do with moving. I still added an extra bit of reverence to the careful placement of everything in my new space, and that seemed to make everyone happy.

Let me introduce you to a few of the critters who stay with me on a permanent basis.

Above is my altar. It’s changed in some ways since I was a newbie pagan so many years ago, and this is the newest incarnation, updated to reflect my shamanism more specifically (and to also clear our some of the clutter of things I no longer use in practice). The bear hide serves as an altar cloth. S/he was left on my doorstep back in August, I believe. S/he’s old, and well-worn, with a few holes and bare spots here and there. S/he’s too old and tired for the dancing, but is quite happy to hang out, draped over the altar, with various sacred items nestled into her pelage. That white thing in the center of hir back is the rear paw of a wolf given to me by a friend and fellow canid-person; the spirit in that decided to stay and represent Wolf on the altar. To the left is a pile of red stag antlers, connected to the Animal Father, the archetypal personification of all animals that I work with in my shamanism. The large pair mounted on the backing came to me this past summer, when Taylor and I drove by a small random stuff shop (these things seem to be popular in Portland). Out on the front lawn of the shop, the antlers were perched on an antique chair in the sunlight. I begged Taylor to stop, and once I went over to visit it was love at first sight. Two of the loose antlers came from a small taxidermy shop in the Midwest; one came to me through a barter years ago. On the right side you can see an elk antler that came from the same taxidermy shop. To its left is my horsehide drum that I got from a local shop, Cedar Mountain Drums, a few months ago. The beater originally was made with a stick. However, on a rite of passage in the Columbia River Gorge, where I took the drum to be played for the very first time, I found the leg bone of a deer in the woods that spoke to me and said s/he would be the beater. Finally, along the front of the altar you can see the tiny leather pouches where I place the offerings for the spirits of the remains, until such time as the offerings move on to new places.

This is the Wall of Skulls. Some of these have been with me since the beginning of my pagan practice. The painted skull at the top is a dog skull found in the woods who has always been the protector of the East. There’s also a trio of deer skulls — buck, doe and fawn. A ram, a few black bears, coyotes and other canines, even a bobcat and two domestic felines. These and more witness rituals, and find a safe place to be here in my sacred space.

And these are the skins I dance. The grey wolf on the far left — I’ve been dancing with him since 2002, and have had him in my life even longer. I first danced him at Brushwood Folklore Center in Sherman, New York, when I lived in Pittsburgh — I still run into people online who remember me from there. I’ve had a few occasions to dance him here in the Portland area, though dance and drum fires are fewer, and the circles often not large enough to dance in. The bear next to her came from a very old rug in an antique shop from the same little town where I got the elk antler. The coyote to the right came from the very same trip. The pheasant skin was one of my very first skins, and came from yet another antique/curiosity shop in my hometown. The badger skin was one of the first I danced once I began my shamanic practice, and helped me learn to dance with others besides the wolf. Some of these skins even have songs I’ve written for them as I’ve gotten to know them and the totems who watch over them. While I haven’t yet danced all of them, I intend to.

This is my sacred space. This is where the magic happens. I feel comfortable here, and I look forward to spending much more time in this place.

Lupa is the author of Fang and Fur, Blood and Bone: A Primal Guide to Animal Magic, A Field Guide to Otherkin, and co-author of Kink Magic, among other works. You can read her blog at http://therioshamanism.com and see her website at http://www.thegreenwolf.com.

Text and photos ©2008 Lupa
Text and photos edited by Sheta Kaey

“What is truth, man? You heard the weirdo…” — Zaphod Beeblebrox

Earlier, I made the point that there’s a difference between what is (for want of a better word) real and what we can actually describe. This is an idea which many find a little troubling.

It’s not a new idea. Plato’s Cave model is a couple of thousand years old at this point; the acceptance that reality cannot be fully described is a basic in Taoism, which is at least twice as old. The modern riff on this, usually called Post-Modernism, has been around long enough in modern society to become cliché.

I think the reason folk find this notion unsettling has a lot to do with the need for stability. Once you start considering just how much of “consensus reality” is neither that real nor that much of a consensus, things get very unstable, very fast. People work harder to reinforce the boundaries of their version of reality when it is questioned — often falling back into simpler beliefs which they don’t have to think too hard about.

“Just keeping it real…”

Another reaction is, of course, to ridicule the idea. Often when the idea of a subjective element in perceived reality comes up — both in discussing post-modern ideas in general and modern magic in particular — the line of attack most used is, “You don’t believe anything is real, right? So why can’t you walk through walls then?” or similar.

It’s not that we think nothing is real. It’s just that we’re aware that local definitions of reality vary, that the context matters. If you change language, you change the way you think. Change the way you think, you change which parts of the outside world get filtered. The outside world doesn’t suddenly go away, you just notice different bits of it.

Of course, even that notion of “the outside world” is a blurry one at best. All we can ever know about reality is what we sense — and it’s known both to science and common experience just how easy our senses are to fool. Eyes have blind spots, ears have sound frequencies they can’t hear — and even a small chemical change in the brain (say a few microgrammes of an entheogen like LSD, or a lowering of sugar or oxygen levels) will completely mess up both the filters and the mind receiving the data. Yet knowing this doesn’t change most people’s opinion that what they see and sense is Really Real Reality. But there seems to be something beneath that sense data and filtering. Usually.

For example…
Just because you’re so off your face that the cars whizzing past you on the street look like Technicolor Unicorns doesn’t alter the cold hard fact that all cars continue to be real — as you will soon find out if you step in front of one. Like Philip K Dick said — reality is that which, if you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. But that still leaves a lot to play with — especially if belief itself can actually alter what you sense as being real, what you filter out… and maybe on some level, in a very small way, the underlying reality itself.

That’s the trouble with magic. It’s so much smaller, subtler, than the hype makes it out to be. The myths and fantasy tales about mages walking through walls, levitating mountains and disintegrating enemies bear as much resemblance to what actually happens as cars exploding in movies does to driving down the road. Of course from inside the mage’s head, what happens can have the same impact mentally as lifting a mountain with their mind… or indeed, being hit by that car.

It helps to have some way to balance solid reality with subjective imagination. Magicians lacking this discernment are often found in mental health facilities. The ones who do come to an understanding of the difference often develop a kind of “model agnosticism,” an ability to switch from one description of reality to another, depending on the needs of the moment — but never ignoring all those cars.

One of the handiest mental tools in modern magic is often stated like this: “Treat the things you encounter as if they are real, not as real.” It’s a key concept in the work of Austin Spare and informs many of the less dogmatic Fortean theorists, like Jacques Vallee and Patrick Harpur. There’s a need in magical practice for mages to immerse themselves in belief — if they don’t believe in what they’re doing, the magic doesn’t work too well — but that all too often leads to slipping into the oh so easy mindset that the belief system they’re immersed in is Real. The “as if” rule of thumb helps guard against this. (Crowley’s technique of working intently within a belief system until you get a magical result and then dropping that belief system completely, swapping another one in and repeating the process is also quite instructive. Eventually.)

It’s a lot easier to deal with some of the heavier results of magical working — such as facing something that looks, sounds and acts very much like a god/ demon/ angel/ alien — if you can take that one step back and act as if it is what it looks like, not that it really is that. Though, at the same time, it’s a good idea to treat the alleged apparent entity with the same degree of respect as you would if they were Really Real. That’s just polite. And much, much safer than not doing so.

Footnotes

• I’m very aware that this piece is kind of loose and non-specific. That’s the nature of the beast. I’ll likely waffle on more about this in later posts.
• For a longer and better consideration of the subjective nature of perceived reality, you could do a lot worse than reading Robert Anton Wilson’s Cosmic Trigger Volume 1.

©2008 Ian Vincent
Edited by Christina Ralston and Sheta Kaey

A teacher is never a giver of truth. He is a guide, a pointer to the truth that each student must find for himself. A good teacher is merely a catalyst. — Bruce Lee

Active Imagination

In his article on active imagination in the current issue of Rending the Veil, Frater Auxilior Arti describes something I found very familiar, so I elected to write a companion piece to his essay describing how I use it in my magical work. In my work with Meridjet (my spirit companion, or SC; see previous columns of Into the Aethyr), I utilize a similar method which I call Processing. In the opening paragraph of his article, Frater A. A. describes, “Jung noticed that he could find revealing and non-self-gratifying imagery just below the surface of the mind, by making a suggestion to himself and then sitting quietly to see what might develop in his thinking. He found that if he did not steer his thoughts in any particular direction, merely sat as a passive viewer of what his mind might show him, many wondrous things would arise, including solutions to troublesome problems, intuitions, insights into his own nature (and that of others) often with a wash of curiosities that would set him to further pondering.”

The Power of Free Association

He later notes, “. . . a group of problem-solvers in a highly productive think tank atmosphere . . . wrote down all ideas that occurred to them, regardless of how silly or inappropriate they might have initially seemed. By this method they were rewarded with a greater number of creative solutions that might have gone unnoticed had they been squelched promptly. It was as if the free-ranging creative process needed impropriety, silliness and whimsy to operate correctly and to arrive by whatever crooked path at useful solutions.” This method of free association is at the heart of Processing in my theurgic work with Meridjet and the other members of our Work (both words are capitalized to differentiate from the mundane sense) circle. It’s been a largely ineffable way of working, up to now, but people have asked about it so many times that I intend to do my best to describe it. I can’t claim that this is a common way to perform theurgic work; however, it works for me and for everyone who Works with us.

The bulk of our partnered Work takes place in text chat via Yahoo! Messenger; however, this is by no means a limitation — it’s simply that most of our friends live in far away places. When we begin with a new partner, we start with common ground. No doubt you’ve had the experience, particularly in magical or spiritual matters, wherein you find many parallels with new-found friends of like mind. Synchronicity can be a powerful validation at such times, and the more parallels there are, the more significant the new association appears to be. It need not stop there; if you can allow yourself free expression, synchronicity knows no bounds.

Meridjet as Director

During the get-to-know-you process, as parallels are discovered, we follow them, gaining mutual understanding and building enthusiasm. Something that Meridjet does with impressive effect is to center upon emotionally-charged events, associations, or triggers and stimulate them to bring issues to the fore. He does this with everyone, and after a certain time of working with him, the common ground we started with and the emotional triggers he uncovers become two sides of a single coin — a coin he flips at seeming random to stimulate Work. There is only one way to get to the true heart of the matter, and that is free association.

One of us will find that s/he is hurting, a mild heartache that still manages somehow to demand our focus and attention. It may come and go while she is busy with other things, but it will return at any moment of stillness, gaining intensity until she simply must Work to Process it. The source of the ache is generally a prior discussion that subtly triggered something deeper, an issue that is just now working its way to the surface as a deeply set splinter would find its way out of your finger. The difference here is that if you are serious about your Work, ignoring this is the wrong thing to do. With an almost sentient patience, the ache will wait until you face it, and like a sharply-stubborn loneliness, it gnaws at you relentlessly.

The first time this happens to a new partner, it is confusing to her. She will, depending on her personality type, either wish to talk about it incessantly or will try to bury it as not worth anyone’s attention. The resolution, however, lies not in indulgence of emotion, and not in repression of emotion, but in detachment of emotion. To suffer over your suffering is to whine without honestly dealing with your problem. To be the martyr and hide your pain (bringing it out on occasion to poke at it sadly, wondering why you feel so alone, and perhaps hinting at it to others) is merely another form of indulgence, but it is one that poisons you, rather than those around you.

Indulge in Detachment

Detachment — To feel your feelings, and to open to them, letting them flow, crying if necessary, but at no point giving in to them and suffering over them, you allow them to percolate through your consciousness and thereby heal, leave, vamoose, and get thee behind me. Anyone familiar with Dante’s Inferno will know that the way out of Hell is through the darkest, scariest reaches of the most inner circle. You don’t learn by avoidance, by escape, or by ingeniously finding ways to bury your psychological shite under layers of Happy-Shiny-People or I-Can-Cope-Alone-Cuz-I’m-The-Meanest-Fucker-In-The-Valley.

It takes practice. Once you’ve admitted your pain, you can move on to the real Work: banishing that issue by owning it. This may sound like stereotypical psychobabble of the ilk that tells you the only way to get over your childhood trauma is to relive it. No, that is not what I am saying.

Expression is the Means, Synchronicity is the Method

As you begin to verbalize (and this is the key) your issue, if you can trust yourself and the Process and let go the reins, expressing your associations as they arise (be they trivial or grave), you will find that your unconscious provides astounding insight and will offer you advice out of your own mouth. It is crucial, as Fr. A. A. stipulated, to express everything without first judging whether it’s worthy of expression. Trust your mind and your own psychological processes to lead you, and you cannot lose.

Synchronicities appear in the most innocent, inane comments. In the course of the interaction between the partner doing the Processing and the partner(s) in the support roles, little comments made off the cuff end up being huge in significance. External confirmation comes from so many directions. Perhaps a television show viewed that morning by your friend is mentioned in reply to a comment you made — because you allowed yourself to just talk — about a movie you saw in 1992, and the television show just happened to contain a scene with a tiger that she mentions precisely at the moment that you consider how you are reminded of the tiger totem you had never previously mentioned. The conversation, then, due to the shock of the validating reference, turns to totems, or tigers, or stripes, or something that leads to still further reflection — reflection that would never have occurred had you not been speaking to that friend at that moment, with both of you freely discussing whatever happened to come up, in the knowledge that this way lies resolution. Never underestimate the power of the Universe to take you precisely where you need to go, if only you don’t fight the current.

Meridjet, when he participates in the Processing chats, will not tell you like it is. He’s not a teacher who spells things out; he is a catalyst. He will talk without appearing to have any single topic or any goal or agenda. But he never does or says anything for the first perceptible reason. He will ask you questions designed to direct your thoughts so that you blurt out the answer to your own dilemma. He will answer questions with responses designed to incite emotion, for the same reason. He’s not an easy teacher, and he’s not going to coddle you — but by god, you will find the answers you need, and you will find that all he had to do was point — the answers were within you all along.

Free association and free expression of all thoughts that flitter by is the most effective way of healing past injuries, gaining understanding of the self, and growing at an astronomical rate that I have ever encountered. Stillness of mind is a wonderful thing. . . but to suppress the Process that holds the deepest, truest answers seems rather self-defeating to me.

Try it, and let me know what happens, will you?

©2007 by Sheta Kaey.

Sheta Kaey is a lifelong occultist and longtime spirit worker, as well as Editor in Chief of Rending the Veil. She counsels others with regard to spirit contact and astral work. She can be reached via her blog.

The first step to expanding your reality is to discard the tendency to exclude things from possibility. — Meridjet

Paradigm Shifting and Reality Tunnels

“‘Paradigm shift[ing]‘ has found uses… representing the notion of a major change in a certain thought-pattern — a radical change in personal beliefs, complex systems or organizations, replacing the former way of thinking or organizing with a radically different way of thinking or organizing…¹”

Robert Anton Wilson uses the phrase “reality tunnel” to describe looking at reality from a certain perspective². In occultism, these two concepts, paradigm shifting and changing one’s reality tunnel, essentially represent the same thing — changing your point of view in a profound way that influences your overall belief system, whether temporarily or permanently.

Within the spectrum of alternative spirituality, there are many beliefs that could be (and often are) labeled “unusual” or even “strange.” Anything from the Otherkin phenomenon to past lives as someone important, to believing one has a special destiny, and so on. It could be said that even Aleister Crowley bought the myth about having a special destiny, and if there’s one reality tunnel that I’ve seen in play with most consistency across great numbers of occultists, it’s the belief that one has some greater role in the shifting of humanity’s collective consciousness. There are people who believe they are angels incarnate, here to initiate great change. There are people who believe that they are going to become some powerful all-knowing guru/leader who will single-handedly shift the dominant paradigm.

We’re on a Mission From God™

Most commonly, there are people who believe that they’ve got something important, as yet unknown, to do in the overall change to a New Age or a New Aeon. These people typically believe that not only will they have an individual role, they will also be part of a small collective of super-VIPs. This typically evolves with a group of close friends, who will have a prominent collective role and purpose, even if they don’t know yet what that purpose is — and typically as friends are dropped or gained, the people playing the individual roles in the group change. Again typically, rarely does someone within the chosen few dare to question why this occurs. They tend to chalk it up to mistaken identity with regard to the rejected individual.

He who is rejected or who grows in a different direction from other individuals and thereby finds himself alone or with new friends will often face hurdles in adjusting his paradigm in a way that allows him to retain both a sense of purpose and an acceptance of past beliefs — beliefs that he may now view as “inaccurate.” He may feel that his former viewpoint was illusory and must be rejected as false, to allow full acceptance of the new viewpoint. He may feel that his earlier beliefs were silly, juvenile, or “fluffy.” Along the path of individual evolution, however, inevitably there comes a time when what is important now necessitates releasing something that was important at an earlier stage of your personal growth. When that shift concerns a key aspect of your personal mythology, such as what you believe to be your higher purpose, then there can be a great disillusionment. It’s difficult to evolve a core belief without feeling you must deny or dismiss the former view outright, either from embarrassment or from the simple need to distance yourself from a perspective that you feel is less evolved than the current view.

Does Change Have to Mean Rejection?

Reality is fluid. It changes with your perspective and your personal interpretation. Each person’s viewpoint is unique in all ways — this is the crux of consciousness, the single absolute factor in anyone and everyone’s existence. When you change your perspective and adopt a new preferred reality tunnel, the impulse to ridicule your old one is often irresistible. You can see this online with the frequent dissing of eclectic Wicca by former eclectic (non-initiate) Wiccans, who, for the most part, wouldn’t admit their past alliance in a million years. The recently-coined term “Neo-Wicca” was created, arguably, to set these eclectics apart, so that initiated Wiccans boasting a lineage could distance themselves from these fluffier, uninitiated counterparts — in other words, so they could feel superior.

However, it’s my opinion that when you dismiss a former perspective as stupid or embarrassing or otherwise not fit for public archiving, you cheat yourself out of valuable experience. It may always be with you, technically, but if you don’t embrace what you learned early in your magical history, not only will you be impatient with those less knowledgeable than you, but you will also develop a knee-jerk rejection to anything that smells too much like that old point of view, thereby potentially limiting your future growth.

Meridjet Speaks

Recently, Meridjet (my spirit companion) instructed a friend of mine about my friend’s recent paradigm shift, which was leading him to feel that his former perspective was in error. In fact, no reality tunnel can really be wrong, as Meridjet was quick to point out…

“All belief systems are metaphorical, because the reality is beyond your comprehension. This does not make them wrong.

“You are familiar, I’m sure, with various translations of old books, such as the Bible or the Tao Te Ching. Each translation bears the unmistakable mark of its translator. This shows in bias as well as in interpretation of more ‘objective’ concepts. Mythologies are interpretations of interpretations, ad infinitum, that give expression to basic archetypal concepts and beings. These mythologies are living and breathing histories in the sense that they have been infused with so much energy that they literally manifested accordingly. And yet, they remain interpretations, further interpreted by the translation of the mind of the reader or listener.

“The listener or seeker, for example, you, thereby invest your own energy into the personal interpretation that inspires your heart and brings you closer to something one might call “home.” When you bring others, like-minded, into your circle and together further interpret things and choose roles and what have you, this is just as literal as it is figurative — you are also creating your own group interpretation of the mythology. Through your group, the mythology continues to live and grow, just as it aids your growth.

“The figurative portion is what the mind brings into play in reaction to the literal portion, and the literal portion is created on the subtle planes in the realm of ideas by the figurative interpretation [of an experience] that you applied at the start. It’s a self-evolving paradigm, alive and real but also dependent upon a variety of factors for survival as what it is now. If you drop your role as [this person/being/archetype etc], for instance, then the mythology you lived will evolve on without you. This is how it should be. Perhaps a new being will take your place, perhaps not. Either way it does not matter, as the mythology lives through its proponents and vice versa. What happens to you is that your mythology evolves and moves, perhaps in a new direction than your circle in general — but this is not wrong. In fact, it is very right.”

“So yes, [the events of your past, and their relative interpretations] happened. You can’t invalidate it. But you can, and will over time, shift your view of it so that it might feel invalidated. As I once told Sheta, when we see the past, we see through the lens of today, of now, and that changes the past. You can’t see then through then’s eyes.

“Therefore, allow yourself your growth. Allow others their growth, or stagnation. Allow each to be what he will be — and be yourself, too. It will all bring you closer to where you want to be, if you do not deny it.”

It’s All About the Journey

When you undertake a conscious spiritual journey, you accept the challenges that arise, or you become one of those who can’t cope and so fall away from the trials of the “dark night of the soul” that all must experience at intervals. We learn by experience, and our perceptions of our experiences change with our growth and evolution. The “then” that Meridjet refers to will change in our view with our changing understanding. This is a neverending process. If you can beat the odds and weather the changes, you will be all the richer for it. In a future column, I will expand on these stages of learning and the challenges intrinsic to them. Meanwhile, just remember — the journey is the reason for the destination… not vice-versa.

Footnotes

1. Wikipedia
2. Cosmic Trigger I : Final Secret of the Illuminati ©1977 by Robert Anton Wilson

©2007 by Sheta Kaey
Edited by Trinity

Sheta Kaey is a lifelong occultist and longtime spirit worker, as well as Editor in Chief of Rending the Veil. She counsels others with regard to spirit contact and astral work. She can be reached via her blog.

Much is made of semantics when it comes to animal magic. You have totems, and animal guides, and power animals, and animal spirits, and animal familiars, and tonal and nagual animals, and so on so forth. Everyone’s opinion varies as to what each of those words means, and I don’t think there’s really any right or wrong to that, just so long as everyone has an idea of what everyone else is talking about. You can have one person talking about their animal totem, another of a power animal, and a third about an animal spirit guide. After a few minutes, they may very well find they’re all referring to the same basic concept. Some people are very strict about their terminology, while others use whatever word works best for their needs. (I’ve found that the animals themselves believe we all think too much, but that’s another observation entirely.)

For my own part, I am quite fond of the term “totem.” I have collected three different ideas of what a totem actually is (as opposed to what it does). The first is that a totem is an archetypal being, akin to the Animal Master of Joseph Campbell, which embodies all the characteristics of a species.¹ There’s also the idea that a totem is an individual animal spirit which may or may not have been in a physical body at some point. And from a psychological viewpoint, a totem animal represents one aspect of the human psyche, the whole of which may be mapped out in any pantheon or other grouping of entities, totems included.

I find it advantageous to work with all three of these theories simultaneously. After all, reality is not a simple thing. It is vast, and highly dependent on observation and belief for its forms. “Right” and “wrong” ways of belief are highly subjective, and I don’t think the archetypal theory is any more or less correct than the other two. On the contrary, I find that all three work harmoniously.

Let me give you an example. Earlier today, I wanted to work some magic to bolster my job hunting efforts. I’d been feeling rather discouraged, and even a bit self-sabotaging, and wanted to reverse that trend. You can apply for all the jobs in the world, and get as many interviews as you can, but if you go in with a negative attitude you may as well have stayed home. So it was time to counteract the self-sabotage I’d indulged in.

I’ve been working more with my animal skins; two wolves, a fox, a badger, a deer, and a few others. When an animal dies, it leaves behind a spirit of sorts — not the soul itself, but definitely something that has a personality and remembers what it was to be that animal. I went to them and I asked, “Who can help me with this?” The badger spoke up: “I can teach you how to make your efforts more efficient, and find a means of living that you’ll gain a lot from.” He showed me an image of a hole in the ground with a never ending supply of grubs, mice and other things that badgers find delicious, the closest he had to show as a parallel between what I wanted and what a badger thinks of as a good supply of resources. Not that I expect to end up with a hole full of grubs, of course.

That’s where Badger the archetype came in. Once I opened the ritual and evoked all my friends, family and guardians, I called on Badger and told him of my need. He understood perfectly. The thing about the Animal Masters, the archetypes, is that they serve as intermediaries between animals and humanity. They help us to understand what it is to be animal, and they help animals understand what it is to be human. Therefore Badger was able to communicate further to my badger skin spirit what exactly the objective was.

As I was performing the ritual, I also called upon that within me which is badger in nature. Pretty much every time invoke an animal energy I astrally shift to that animal for as long as the invocation lasts. As I went through the various processes of my magic, I could feel (non-physically) the silver and black fur over my skin, the way that a badger’s limbs are shorter, and the muscle more compact, with a sharp-toothed muzzle. However, the more abstract connections also came to the fore; I felt more grounded and strong, less afraid of the task at hand.

This wasn’t the first time I’d used the tri-layered approach; for years I’ve done totem dancing with a wolf skin, calling on the archetypal Wolf, the spirit of the skin, and my own lupine nature as I danced. It was the first time I’d ever worked with Badger, though. In the past, when working with a new totem, I just called on the archetype; for example, in previous job hunting rituals I had called upon Otter and Beaver, but only through evoking the archetypal totems. The connection to Badger in this ritual was a lot stronger, though time will tell what the full results of the ritual are.

It would be easy for me to simply say that these were separate beings, that the Badger archetype was entirely independent of the badger skin spirit, both of which were unconnected to the internal badger aspect. And some would argue that one was a totem, another a spirit guide, and the third just a figment of my imagination. However, I see them as all connected, as I see all of reality connected. That which we label as Badger manifests in numerous ways, on one level Badger is the archetype; on another, Badger is every physical specimen of several species of mustelids; and on a third, Badger is that within me (and possibly other people) that not only relates to the furry animal that can dig a burrow quicker than a person can shovel, but also the ideas of tenacity and resourcefulness. This increases the power of the totem and also allows a more personal connection because of the physical contact with the skin, and the invocation of the badger-self.

I am definitely going to continue with experimenting with this tri-layered approach to totemism. It brings together a number of magical practices and combines them to make a more powerful combined evocation/invocation, as well as offering me a deeper connection to the totems I work with. In the end, it really doesn’t matter what the semantics are — what I felt today in that ritual, dancing in a slow circle with Badger, as Badger, was beyond the words themselves… magic!

Footnotes

1. Campbell, 1984, p. 292

©2006 Lupa
Edited by Sheta Kaey

Lupa is the author of Fang and Fur, Blood and Bone: A Primal Guide to Animal Magic, A Field Guide to Otherkin, and co-author of Kink Magic, among other works. You can read her blog at http://therioshamanism.com and see her website at http://www.thegreenwolf.com.

An aethyr is one of a succession of worlds in the Enochian Astral planes, and the fifth element, or spirit, in Wicca and Ceremonial magick. Also, depending on tradition, a formless and invisible substance that pervades the universe¹.

Greetings, and welcome to the first issue of Rending the Veil and the start of this column. I intend an eclectic mishmash of different things here that would not necessarily flow well as articles. For example, I will have the occasional column on tarot reading, as I’ve read tarot for over 30 years. I also intend to share channeled information from my spirit companion, Meridjet.

Meridjet

Meridjet has been with me since 1994, and has seen me through a lot of doubts, fear for my sanity, and so forth in that time. I’d never heard of the phenomenon of a spirit companion, though spirit guides were familiar to me. Meridjet is much more proactive and instrumental in the application of lessons for my growth, and he’s also a great deal more stubborn than any spirit guide I have ever heard of. Some people consider him my HGA, or Holy Guardian Angel, the Thelemic version of Plato’s daemon or personal genius. The function of the HGA is to reveal one’s True Will and guide one (sometimes rather painfully) to the fruition of that will. Meridjet certainly fulfills that function, but at times he also shares information that is of general interest. I will share that information here.

The Holy Guardian Angel

Donald Tyson once told me that the HGA is simply a familiar spirit, an independent being who also serves the purpose of leading us to our potential. Ed Richardson wrote, “Theories on what the HGA is generally fall into three categories: psychological processes/concepts; external entities that have an interest in the magician’s life; and entities that are somehow part of the magician in the way that shamanic totems might be. I would suggest that it is foolish to fall into one camp; using as many concepts as possible will give a more useful point of reference. If you limit yourself too much here only a certain degree of success will be possible… Whatever the HGA actually is, it does seem to be ever watchful, knowing our interests and being able to offer insights as an ‘outsider’ might².” This description fits Meridjet well, as he both seems to have information I am not privy to (such as events to come or events in another person’s past), as well as having what appears to be full access to my conscious and unconscious minds.

Another interesting remark that Richardson makes is, “Psychological models are also useful, but over reliance [sic] on them can kill any relevant experience with the angel by a sort of ‘death by reductionism².’” For this, among other reasons, I endeavor to see Meridjet as external. Aleister Crowley once wrote, “It is immaterial whether these exist or not. By doing certain things certain results will follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them³.” This alone is reason enough for me to entertain the idea of external vs internal reality. I’ve ever been a rebel, and it’s my honest opinion that Crowley enjoyed leading the blind about by the nose while giggling behind his hand (figuratively speaking), and that far too many magicians just take Crowley’s word for things (or his initial subtext). Whether or not spirits exist independently of the perceiver may be immaterial (nice pun, that), but the fact is that most ceremonialists take it as a given that the spirits they encounter are nothing more than manifestations of their own psyche, there to play a role in their overall understanding of themselves — thereby falling into Richardson’s trap of “death by reductionism.”

Whether or not Meridjet’s more general messages are philosophically valid or are simply my unconscious mind jerking off on this page is up to you, the reader, to determine. I believe the information he conveys is largely outside the scope of my personal knowledge. Nevertheless, I still have many issues with a part of my mind assuming Meridjet exists deep within me somewhere and that when he is asked a question, I must somehow supply an answer. Typically this creates a slight feeling of panic in me, which then evaporates as I approach the question with nothing to say, and he comes in and practically gives a lecture on the topic. I don’t feel as if I am enlightened enough to wax profound at the drop of a hat despite feeling completely incapable up to the very second the message comes through. Tune in to future entries in this column to read some of his messages, and you’ll see what I mean.

’cause I’m looking at you through the glass
Don’t know how much time has passed
All I know is that it feels like forever
But no one ever tells you that forever feels like home,
sitting all alone inside your head⁴.

Footnotes

1. http://altreligion.about.com/library/glossary/bldefaethyr.htm
2. http://philhine.org.uk/writings/ess_hga.html
3. Aleister Crowley Liber O vel Manus et Sagittae Sub Figura VI
4. Lyrics from “Through Glass” by Stone Sour, ©2006

©2006 Sheta Kaey
Edited by Trinity

Sheta Kaey is a lifelong occultist and longtime spirit worker, as well as Editor in Chief of Rending the Veil. She counsels others with regard to spirit contact and astral work. She can be reached via her blog.