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Gnostic Marathon.
Friday evening and I arrive at a secret location and meet people whose identities I have oathed not to reveal, for a semi-surprise inspection of my old order, after some decades on retirement / sabbatical. Suffice to say that the location lay in a magnificent forested area with splendid facilities, a temple and outdoor circles, and the assembled throng have many and varied unusual abilities and histories. Half of them I have never met before due to my long absence up my ivory tower, they seem astonished at my visit, I’ve hopefully made some new friends and colleagues.
They have done well in my absence (or perhaps because of it?), anyway, they grant me an honorary first for the weekend and work begins.
To a civilian, the work which followed may look like a religion masquerading as a joke, or a joke masquerading as a religion, or as something incomprehensibly surreal and esoteric, yet everyone sets to it with a manic determination, git hard magic leavened with a bizarre humor that you don’t often see in the po-faced new-age community. I feel pleased to see some classic material of mine still in use, plus many intriguing innovations.
Many actually survive the rigors of the nights work well enough to participate in the physical workout wakeup before breakfast the following morning.
And thus it goes on all weekend, ritual upon ritual, spell and conjuration, for we have many tweaks that we need to apply to ourselves and to reality at large.
Towards the end I deliver an Apophenia ritual, the first mass participation one I’ve ever tried, a late birthday party for Her.
Then a dash back across country for Sacred Grove on Sunday night, and possibly something a bit less frenzied, however they have planned a shamanic dance sort of thing for the evening. Towards the end of this I get the answer to the question I posed earlier to Apophenia, I should use the star ruby Agamotto style amulet for the purposes of yellow/solar/class 6 type magic.
Then a 5 mile hike back home.
I had expected to wake up half dead or never, yet today I feel splendid and inspired.
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Apophenia’s Official Birthday.
On this little rock circling a nondescript star in an unfashionable spiral arm of our galaxy Apophenia’s Official Birthday happens tomorrow, Thursday 26th of May.
At least in the northern hemisphere this means that spring has truly sprung, my pond hosts newts, the grounds of Chateaux Chaos sprout all kinds of green stuff with obscure Latin names known only to the Memsahib. Clumsy maybugs batter the windows like poorly designed toy helicopters.
I intend to celebrate with copious doses of theobromine, I may go on a chocolate only ‘fast’ just for the day, followed by an invocation with a view to discovering what to do with The Eye of Agamotto, plus any other peculiar inspirations that She, Apophenia, suggests.
I predict that the world will not end tomorrow, although it seems an auspicious day for doing or thinking something paradigm challenging.
Accordingly, after ritual, I’m packing robes (of various colours) and wands and amulets for a long weekend at various esoteric events, in contradistinction to my usual reclusive behaviour.
A merry and discombobulating Apophenia-mass to all.
Pete.
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ISBN 978 1 84854 041 5
550+ pages, now in paperback 14.99.
The book makes for light and easy reading and has plenty of pictures. It advances the thesis that England has led the world in magic for millennia, and still does. In support of this idea the book points to England as the centre for Iron Age Celtic Druidry, and latterly of Theosophy, The Golden Dawn, Neo-Wicca and Neo- Paganism, Neo-Druidry, and Chaos Magic. Most of the significant figures and movements between the original Druids and modern times get a mention or a potted history, Bacon, Dee, Newton, Barrat and so on, plus of course we get a bit on more modern figures such as Gerald Gardiner, Aliester Crowley, Dion Fortune et al.
Plus the reader will also get a whirlwind introduction to practical runes, ogham, astrology, tarot, and alchemy. Plus the book also gives lots of references about places to visit, things to do, and organizations to contact. Whew.
Pete Carroll.
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Eye of Agomotto
To prepare this most puissant magical amulet let the sorcerer first study the career of The Sorcerer Supreme, the mythical Dr Steven Strange.
Then let the sorcerer travel to some far and remote peninsula in the old Celtic lands, there perhaps to find some ancient fool conducting a fire sale of lapidary items at a Craft Fayre, and purchase from him a large star ruby mislabeled as a garnet, despite its giveaway hexagonal columnar structure, for a mere five pounds fifty without haggling.
Then let the sorcerer find an unwanted and unused bench mounted electric grinder going for a mere twenty five pounds at a shop of worthy charity, and again purchase it without haggling.
Then under auspicious stars let the sorcerer grind the ruby to a cabochon over many nights, sacrificing the electric grinder to the Great Work in the process, chanting (without blasphemy) throughout.
Then let the sorcerer take an old watch that has died, and file its casing of adamantine steel down to accommodate the gem, finally burnishing the casing to the color of bronze in a fire of ancient hydrocarbon gases, and then hammer in the jewel.
The metaphysical preparations can then begin. (Details to follow eventually, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_of_Agamotto for an interesting selection of magical properties that the sorcerer just might succeed to some degree in associating it with.)
Now that’s what I call Chaos Magic, the investment of meaning and effort into something that appeals to will and imagination, with due contempt for the conventions of dull common sense and myopic logic.
I strongly suspect that most published Grimoires got written retroactively, after a certain amount of literary research and practical experiment; they probably didn’t get delivered as finished items by deities and demons. Thus we should interpret them merely as general guides to the sort of stuff worth trying out.
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Went to a community meeting this evening, largely to oppose the off-license sale of alcohol to the local teenage yobbery till 11pm. The local yobbery has a pretty grim effect here and plenty of drugs anyway, and they'd probably create less of a problem if stoned rather than drunk.
Anyway the foyer of the primary school exhibits a massive display of childrens rights material, including such gems as 'you have the right to think or believe anything you like so long as it does not offend anyone else'. So presumably they don't have the right to think anything that might offend anyone else.
The school had the fences and windows and bars and electronic locks of a medium security fortress or prison, which says a lot in itself, after all, the rights material did not explicity deny the right of children to burn their school down.
Then on the back of the community questionaire lay an invitation to complete the diversity survey about ethnicity, religion, and sexuality, on the basis of which the local council can presumably discount any survey it wants that fails to include sufficient transgender persons for example. Finally it included a box to tick if you didn't want to complete the survey, so I ticked that as well as all the relevant boxes on the basis that I didn't actually want to complete it, but had done it so that the inclusiveness survey would at least include one person who didn't want to include themself in an inclusiveness survey, or perhaps to create some sort of Barber of Seville type paradox for some bureaucrat somewhere.
Does our society sink towards some sort of politicaly correct dystopian maddness, or do I just become a grumpy old git?