Atheism (Photo credit: atheism)

I’ve been spending a lot of time on Google+ lately.  I mentioned in a previous post that there is a really good occult community, but I also enjoy hanging out in some work related communities and an atheist community.  I’ve considered myself to be an atheist for most of my life, with only brief moments of theism fluttering through.  Even in my Chaos I don’t tend to use, or even recognize, any god-forms.

I have found it interesting lately that many atheists have very different definitions of the word ‘atheist’.  A theist is one who believes in the existence of a deity(s).  It’s very simple.  The ‘a’ that goes in from makes it ‘not’ or ‘without’.  So ‘atheist’ just means someone that does not believe in a deity(s).

This has created a slight problem for me.  I have respect for those that have belief in deities.  Faith is what makes the world go around.  The only problem I ever have with it is when it is shoved in my face with some promise of eternal damnation if not followed.  This makes me have to hold my tongue a bit in the atheist community as many of them are extremely militant towards anything that science hasn’t already proven.  It seems a bit ironic to me that many of the things they believe are ‘proven’ still aren’t by their own definition, but that’s a different discussion.

Many atheists try and wrap the ‘paranormal of any kind’ into the definition of non-belief.  That’s where I start to get pissy.  Atheist doesn’t mean anything but a lack of belief in a deity.  That’s it.  Nothing else.  Are there other things out there?  In my opinion: Yes. Based on the definition, that doesn’t exclude anyone from being an atheist hat believes in them either.

It’s sad, but it seems like even non-belief based communities have zealots and groups who see themselves as superior.

The other problem is that I’m not always an atheist.  It’s one of the things about Chaos that makes it great: I can do/borrow/use/steal from any belief system I want at any time.  I can also make things up on the fly and drop them at my whim.  Craig, the God of the Park Bench, can be my Lord and savior for an hour if I want, then I can laugh him off and never think of him again.  It’s part of how I roll.

So where does that truly place me?  I’m an atheist…mostly.  I don’t believe in god(s)…unless it’s handy.  So, how in the heck does a guy put a label on that?  I know we really don’t need to label ourselves to be defined, but sometimes it’s a handy place to start.  I consider myself to be an ‘Atheistic True-Will Atmannist Chaote’.  I guess I may need to change it to something like nigh-atheist or something.

It’s a confusing spot to be in.  Chaos just doesn’t seem to fit well into anything.  It gives me the freedom I need to seek out what I want, but without any restrictions on how I do it.  I don’t see anything wrong with trying on other peoples’ shoes for a while.  In fact, some of the best things I’ve learned have come from doing that.

It’s just been bugging me the past few days that people are so restricted in their definitions.  I thought that was something I would encounter less of as I walked farther away from mainstream belief, but it only seems to be getting worse.

At least I’m armed with enough knowledge to play a good ‘devil’s advocate’ for them.  I am awesome at Christian apologetics, so I can just run rampant in there if I want to.  I behave though.  For the mots part it’s a good community.

Besides, if I can be a theist any time I want to, I can be an atheist as it suits me too.

One of the things she has also learned is the concept of life and death.  I didn’t plan for her to learn it quite so early in life, although it is an inevitable and unpleasant lesson we all must learn at some point.  I think the basics were in her head due to the documentaries that we tend to watch, and when we were at the pet store it really hit her.  At first she thought that the goldfish bobbing near the bottom was a little funny.  Then two others came by and started taking some bites at him.  That’s when she got it and her laughter turned into a terribly cry that I had never heard before.  It broke my heart.  Even if it needed to happen at some point, most of us try to shield our children for things for a long time.  The innocence of youth is lost one goldfish at a time.

So, lately her biggest concern has been volcanos.  Why volcanos?  We have no idea.  My wife is a homemaker, so we can’t blame it on childcare, and none of us can remember having a show or any other such thing on television.  She even had a terrible dream that her grandpa was going to throw her into one.  None of us can figure it out.  It’s so damned strange.

For the last couple weeks she’s been gently pleading with me about keeping the volcanos away at bedtime.  ”No volcanos Daddy.”  ”No honey, no volcanos.”  To combat this I took a recent gift from her grandmother (a crocheted pillow with an elephant head in one corner) and poked in her bed one night.  I told her that the little elephant was made to protect her from volcanos.  There would be no volcanos so we didn’t need to be afraid of them with the elephant next to her.  If she got scared, all she needed to do was cuddle the elephant and it would all go away.  Of course, this is an easy promise to keep because we’re just not in that kind of area right now.  Our area used to be a super-volcano that has since migrated.  Everywhere you look in our area, there is some form of lava rock.  Jutting up out of a field, used for a foundation, and even some structures were built out of it in the 1920s and 1930s.  Most of the five-hour drive to Yellowstone, and you can see the flows are much younger than where we live.  Now that we’re done with the history lesson, let’s proceed.

This tactic of alleviating and channeling fear into the elephant pillow has worked like a champ.  It has done exactly what it was supposed to do.  I was thinking about it last night, and it was a small touch of magic.  We had intent, there was an item involved and there were outward actions.  Heck, there were even words involved when I explained what it was and what it did.  If you look at it in its most basic form, it’s magic.  If there was a volcanic eruption would it protect her?  No way.  The real part of it is that it has removed those fears from her.

People do this all the time for their kids.  Then at some point, they take it away from them.  To little N it works 100% the way it’s supposed to.  There are no volcanos and no threat from them, and that’s it.  I’m sure that some of you reading this blog (agree or disagree with it) have done some of the same things.  Why do we take this away from them as they get older?  They lose Santa (totally unsustainable, but a loss in their eyes), the elephant, and many other things they believe just because that’s the way they are.  My wife was always told growing up that the auras and sensitivity she has wasn’t real.  She suppressed it as hard as hard as she could until she met me.  After about a year she told me and my reaction was just kind of neutral.  I accepted it for what it was.  I was still involved with the Catholic church at that point and I still accepted there were things out there that I didn’t understand.

I think that’s going to be one of the hardest things around here.  Even if she accepts or even celebrates whatever she knows or can do, it’s going to receive a bad response her entire life. I just don’t want her to be ashamed or afraid of whatever beliefs she has, even if it is different from C and me.  Heck, if she wants to be a main-stream religion, I’ll be glad she found a home there.  Atheist with no occult orientation?  Badass.  I hope she challenges me on my beliefs, I hope she studies other religions and cultures as much as she can and just unsettles my own beliefs.

The thing that I do not want is to take that journey away from her, and I don’t want to let others take that away either.  Disagreement?  Fine.  Ending up as a bit of an outcast?  A shame, but acceptable.  Calling everything bullshit and trying to take that belief away entirely?  Piss off.  Leave the elephant alone.  Even if it seems silly in a couple of years, it doesn’t mean it never worked.  It just means that the need for it went away.  And last night while we were putting on her PJs, I gave her a kiss and told her to never let someone do that to her.

Perhaps I’m doing it right.  Perhaps I’m doing it wrong.  Either way, it will be her choice about her own beliefs.

I love little N, I love what I believe, and I will fight for her to the death.

–DS

Recently though, I’ve had a few biggies that made a huge difference in the way I see myself and even others.  mostly me though.  I’m allowed to do that on my own blog ;)

The first confirmation was a huge section I wrote in my personal files.  I keep them because  I consider them to be more of a part of my work rather than part of my journey (which is what I tend to share on here).  They don’t really don’t do me any good, they just help set concepts and new knowledge into my head, and act as a form of ‘thinking out loud’ without bugging my wife.

I was reading a week ago and I hit something creepy in a book.  It was an entire chapter that sounded like I wrote it.  The concepts were identical, and some of the explanations were almost entirely verbatim.  These were things I know that I came up on my own through much trial and error, and TONS of meditation.  I only acquired the book about two weeks ago, and the entry was many months old.  Somehow I came to the exact same conclusion about things that someone had through my own methods.  The person that wrote it isn’t even alive.  Somehow that makes it better.  I guess because you’re less likely to be exposed to it?

Another thing that happened just a few days later confirmed one of my favorite meditating techniques, and the way I do it.  Throughout my journey with meditation I have always tried to find better ways of doing it, including trying different tools (no, not drugs.  Ever.) to help the experience.  I found binaural beats a while ago and really enjoyed the experience I had with it.  I kept fine-tuning the frequency I used when I meditated to get the best results.  After quite a long-stretch of experimentation I ended up at 7.6hz as my favorite to meditate with.

My wife’s Dr. told her (he’s a medical Dr. and a master of eastern philosophy) that the earth resonates a 7.8hz frequency (true) and that the body can too.  He said that everyone needs to experience it at least twice per day.  Certain activities, that can vary by person, can cause this frequency for a few moments, but it’s all the brain needs to get what it wants.

Do I even need to point out how close those frequencies are?  Talk about confirmation from an outside source.  My wife didn’t even know what frequency I used, only that I used binaural beats when I meditated.  I’m definitely going to try 7.8hz the next time I do and see if that slight adjustment makes things just a little bit easier to achieve.  Not to sound too shamanistic, but that frequency could really tune you into the Earth, which has some useful tools associated with it.  Nothing against shamanism, I really enjoyed that portion of my training, it’s just not the bulk of my practice; although some of my experience with meditation could easily be described along those lines.

All of that rolls down to the original point I was making in the beginning: mental health.  If you take someone who has a condition or two pop up in their life, mostly from genetic predisposition, but you add the non-traditional beliefs, it throws you into an entirely different category.  Compound that with the primary problem being so severe that it can present itself as other conditions and you can get shoved into a bucket of psychiatric misery.  Some of the things they say are wrong with you can only be treated by medication, especially if your beliefs and other behaviors don’t change.

I’m sure you can tell I’m talking about myself by now, so here’s the bucket of love involved.  I have severe PTSD (not from the military) and a predisposition to bipolar disorder.  The short part of it is that the PTSD was so severe that it presented as bipolar, etc, etc, etc… and all of the symptoms of that, anxiety, panic, social anxiety, and especially the ‘non-traditional’ beliefs threw me into the “Borderline Personality Disorder” category.  Hit it up on Wikipedia, it’s not a pretty thing.  But wait, what’s that?  A year and a half of therapy for the PTSD by a therapist who respected my beliefs made a difference?  Without the PTSD running around rampantly I don’t hardly present the symptoms of anything else?

Before my therapist moved last week (sad), I gave her privacy clearance to disclose everything about our progress and sessions to the new med lady.  I saw her for the first time today and she wants to remove the bulk, if not all, of my medication because of what we did in therapy.  So I guess that the non-traditional beliefs don’t matter any more.  Nice.

So, between the outside confirmations of some of my beliefs and practices, and the confirmation that the medical world doesn’t care since I’m too far out of the bucket for them to use belief against me, I’m feeling pretty damn good about things.  I’m not crazy in (some) of my beliefs in many different areas of my life.  Also, the work that I’ve done for the last few years has meant something.  Not just in the confirmed beliefs, but that the comfort I found in my studies was as therapeutic as it felt.

I’m not one to share emotions on here very often, but I just thought I’d share this little story with everyone.  The moral of the story?  If people tell you that you’re crazy for believing whatever it is you’re all about, just say something rude back and laugh at them.  I know that as Chaotes we can adopt any belief system we want at any time, or even waffle and mix them if we’d like, but if you believe in them, it’s never wrong.  It’s one of the fundamentals of Chaos.  Believe it.  Be it.  Own it.

D.S.

First, in my system of belief and interpretation, the ether is what holds the soul.  Since there is no way to prove the soul exists, it really just comes down to processing the information that is available to you and choosing from there.  The information could be from belief in ghosts, earlier religious teachings, or even just a hunch you have.

I am a believer in the soul with a true will, so that makes me one of the most difficult kinds of Atmanists out there. (Note: I hate it when people make up words.  Atman(ist) is from the Liber Kaos p. 177)  Having this belief does make some forms of what I do more difficult, but it’s who I am.  As a part of this belief I find it necessary that the soul be something.  If a soul can haunt someone, reincarnate, ‘cross over’, or whatever different ideas that people believe in, there must be some form of cohesive energy that binds its composition.  What is this energy called?  Who knows.  The force?  The holy spirit?  Elmer’s glue?  I can’t say what it is because I have no idea of how such a thing would work.  So, I call it ether.

I don’t believe that it’s what makes up a soul; that it something entirely different.  I just believe that the ether is a force like any other that can interact with things.  For example: If you  tried to trap a soul/demon/ghost in a shoebox (I’ve seen sillier) I don’t think you’d really want to reach out with the same energy that something was made of.  What would happen?  Would it get stronger?  Be destroyed?  Add or remove some unplanned electricity into one of our happy little electronic devices and see what happens.  Now, grab it with a hand, a shoe, or let your cat smack it around for a while and it should survive the situation, even if it does have a couple of scratches.  Ether is what lets us interact with things on the ‘other side’, but like electricity, it can also be used to power what we do.

Some groups pray to a single god-form, others pray to a few or all of a pantheon of deities, and all of these are possible with Chaos (Kaos, whatever).  Some of us though can be deity-transient (using whichever god-form we find useful at the moment), create our own god-forms (Larry, god of the lawnmower), or be completely atheistic.  As an atheistic Chaote, my practice is designed to work with the forces that make things happen.  This, in my opinion, is controlled by the ether, the power source of magic.  Ether is typically manipulated with the subconscious implanting of intent, but there are rare times when it can be worked with directly.  They seem to happen more with time and practice, but it’s not always a sure thing when dealing with sorcery, shamanism, or ritualistic magic.  The times where it happens more often than not is during astral magic.

When I first started to do astral magic it was really an interesting experience.  It was a great compliment to the meditation I was already so fond of, so it came quite naturally to me.  The problem was that sometimes I would have uninvited guests in my astral travels.  Not another person travelling, or a Jehovah’s Witness banging on my astral door, but entities that can come in and out of things.  I became curious as to where they came from, so I started to try to figure it out.  Eventually I found the ether.  The source of it all.

It’s very hard to describe.  It’s like the energy and force that runs through all things wrapped up in a ubiquitous ball of powerful nothingness.  I know.  It makes no sense to me either.  If reality is an illusion, ether keeps the illusion intact.  If magic intervenes, ether is what guided it.  The astral is nothing more than a subset of the ether.  The ether itself breathes.  It has a rhythm.  It ebbs and flows like the tides in the sea.  It contains both the sacred and profane who try to move to what lies beyond it.

When I first started understanding it felt enlightening and liberating, but now I realize that it has just caused more questions, more to learn, and the realization that I know less than I did before when compared to the overall magnitude of things.  I can’t tell you how to get there, how to feel it, or how to experience it.  It’s not because I’m a greedy ass, it’s just because my work slowly gave me information that I could use.  Then connections were drawn, new hypotheses made and tested, etc.  Combine that with a couple of fortuitous finds, and I have my current understanding of things.

That understanding has changed and it will again.  It’s the nature of Chaos.  Half of the stuff on this blog (especially the older stuff) is total crap and out of date.  The experiences I had and the conclusions I drew were all accurate in my mind at the time of writing, but having grown and expanded my knowledge, I can see that a lot of it is very simple, rookie thinking about the entire situation.  That’s part of learning, so I leave the information alone to chronicle the journey.  The Servitors page (the most popular on the blog) may be an interesting read, but there is some information that is simply wrong (kind of).  Which parts?  I won’t tell unless I update it.  It’s quite the paradigm shit to my existing one.  If I do another, I will present it as an alternative and leave the original intact, as people seem to enjoy the simplicity that it offers.

So there is the ether completely unexplained in just over 1,000 words.  There is no big takeaway from this one, only that it’s the name I use for a number of forces and concepts that all seem interrelated to me.  As always, don’t believe it until you’ve tried it.

D.S.

A (sample) sigil as an iPad painting. (Mine)

It’s odd.  My wife is a sensitive and I don’t really share that gift with her.  Once in a while there is something so strong, or so close to me that I can get a read off of it, but normally it’s just something that’s not a part of my life.  Now magic, that’s quite the different story.

Everybody seems to have their own definition of what the magical force is that seems to drive the entire universe in an esoteric way.  Even Christians have the Holy Spirit, which is a force very similar to others that so many believe in.  I decided to settle on ether (Æther is such a pain in the ass to type) because it rolls off the tongue and it’s not such a funky name that it feels awkward to say it in public.

Now that I’ve been into things for a while, I can get a good read of the currents and waves within the ether when it’s involved in my works. It’s there all the way from simple divination to some of the deep, dark work that I enjoy so much.  Lately there has been something in the ether that seems strange.  It’s a bit hard to describe, but it’s something not quite right.

Normally, to me, the ether has a natural ebb and flow to it.  At times it is stronger than usual, other times the tide seems to be out a bit.  It simply changes the methods and effort required to get the results you need.  The last few weeks there has been something turbulent, making it difficult to control, changing the strength of spells.  It doesn’t really matter the kind of spell, or the casting difficulty, they can fizzle or fire too hard without any way of controlling it.

This whole thing feels like the wind on the edge of a storm; very turbulent and very unpredictable.  Almost like a chaos within the chaos.  If you look at the nature of chaos,the math or the magic, variables are a big part of any type of prediction or success respectively.  The additional instability of the power source itself is quite possibly one of the worst variables I have every worked with.  It’s very unpredictable right now.

I’m not sure if this kind of thing is happening everywhere, but wherever I reach into the ether it is filled with instability.  I enjoy working with the ether stream directly.  I like to feel it move through my work.  I suppose I could build an item or two to help with things being so turbulent.  I could do something that would restrict the stream to its relative low point so I could work with a consistent minimum amount, making my work take a lot longer for the more complex ones.  I could also make something that works like a battery that would store what I need for later use.  I’m not even sure the last idea would work, and the ether always feels like such a living stream when I work with it, it would really be a shame to try to stifle it within a container of sorts.

My real hope is that things mellow out in the near future.  I’m already a bit timid trying to work things right now, but if they get more turbulent, who knows what it would be like.  You just have to ask yourself: If turns into a storm, do you want to buckle down inside of a safe shelter, or do you want to become Benjamin Franklin with his kite (yes, it’s a myth) and unlock more secrets than you knew could even exist.

I’m not sure if this is just the place where I pull from, but if it’s everywhere the turbulence is huge.  It just may be a passing storm that I’m getting the edge of, or it could hit straight on. The only way I’ll be able to tell is by reaching regularly and seeing what the ether holds.

–DS

Remember:  There is a Google+ community about these sorts of things.  Join us!

English: Google+ wordmark (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’m not a huge fan of Facebook (gasp), but I have grown to enjoy Google+, mostly because of the circles and communities, and the ability to restrict who can see where you go and who you talk to.  I use my real name on Google+ because I can still keep my life separated and not have to worry about things.  Plus, I’m becoming less self-conscious about this entire thing.  Anyway, if you use Google+ (and I recommend you do), here is the link to the Chaos community. https://plus.google.com/communities/101982987483510663910 It’s currently set to private, but It was less than 5 minutes before I was accepted into it.  My guess is that it’s to protect its members or something.  It’s a small group right now, but the only way to grow it is to join.

There is also the Occult Resource community that is great.  Plenty of people, and plenty of ideas outside of Chaos if your mind is open to such a thing.

I hope to see some of you there!

With this screwdriver bit set… I can take apart the universe (Photo credit: chrismetcalf)

I’ve been slacking a bit lately since I’m entirely hooked on Borderlands 2, especially now that I have my new video card.

What I have been doing is a bit of personal magic to tidy things up a bit in my own life.  A bit of Illumination here, a bit of evocation there, and even a litte bit of red.

Illumination magic is quite simple when performed on one’s self.  For me, it comes primarily from meditation, but once in a while there is outside source that gives you a little kick in the butt to help you down the road of illumination.

I’m still not out of the woods yet, but I’m right on the edge of being slapped with a bunch of drugs that would render me useless.  Not fun.  It would lead to disability because I would be entirely non-functional.  So, my Dr. and I are working the opposite direction and embracing my crazy and letting me go apeshit and just have a damn good time with it.  Odd.  He must be nutty as hell tool.  It’s either that or zombie mode.  No zombies.

I don’t really even need to point out that this concepts caused a LOT of meditation and thought on the subject, and I had to learn a lot about myself and the way I think and feel about everything.

So, if I’m going to run around like a lunatic I need to embrace the crazy and enjoy it to the point of it being the best part about me.  I don’t need to run nude down the street because I’m feeling really good, but I shouldn’t try and repress everything so deep that I can’t be who I want/need to be.  So I’ve been trying to wear the coat of this new me around, and it’s working quite well.  I have a good chunk of crazy to play with even though I’m at max dose on all my meds (one is even over max) so it’s a fun thing to play with, and it’s going quite well.  I’m not sure how this will go when the gates are let loose and all the water comes rushing out, but only time will tell that one.

My little hunk of red has just been screwing with peoples’ minds using the topic of the last post I did.  We have a really religious community here, so talk of anything but some form of Geebus is just not heard of.  I’ve been talking a little about my work with people and saying things like, “Advertising is nothing more than changing the reality of someone’s mind.  After an ad or two they want things they didn’t before; they know things they didn’t before; or even do things they didn’t before.  If you believe in all that weird esoteric stuff, it sounds like what those magic guys are trying to do.”

The few I’ve done this to just sit there for a moment and think.  Dead quiet.  Then they change the topic to something pointless to divert the conversation.

I enjoy popping belief bubbles.  I like people to question everything and ask every question.  The more I find out the less I know.  There is a concept within the book Chaos (the math, not the magic) that deals with the population of tigers and the variables that can be involved with it.  (my mind may be a bit fuzzy on this one)  It came to constantly diverging paths.  Every generation of tigers could produce a number of cubs, which could then produce x more cubs based on availability of quantity and gender of the previous batch.  Anyway, the pattern just kept spreading and spreading over time due to the variables involved.  To me, that’s how a lot of my knowledge of esoteric topics go.  Figuring out one thing presents two more things to learn, and so on.  Some may even fork 3 or more times.  All of this information cannot be understood by one person, nor can it be wrapped up in a nice, neat package that is correct in any way.  It’s convenient to think otherwise, but it just isn’t so.

If you haven’t yet; pop your own bubble.  It’ll be the hardest, most confusing thing you’ve ever done in your life.  Many times you’ll feel very spiritually alone in your pursuits, but there are oases out there where you can commune with like-minded people on your journey.  Just make sure that they are a passing part of your journey, not those who tend to wrap things in a box for you.

I always lie.

D.S.

“Remember – i before e, except in Budweiser” – Happy FRISKY FRIDAY!!! (2929068862) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Well, the Superbowl has now come and gone, and everybody can settle down with the results until next season.  Wether your favorite team won or lost, I thought it was an exciting and amazing show of athleticism and strength on both sides.  That said, let’s look at the really interesting side of the Superbowl: the commercials.

I didn’t find (most of) this year’s commercials as entertaining as ones from previous years, but they still are a perfect example of our daily exposure to magic.  The bulk of modern people wouldn’t consider commercials and other forms of advertising to be magic, but if you really look at the base of what both are trying to accomplish, and the way they are trying to do it, they are more alike than they are different.

I know different disciplines use tools that Chaotes can borrow from, but at the heart of Chaos is the understanding that the purpose of anything that we do is to implant an idea into the subconscious that will be executed without conscious involvement.  The same is true for advertising.  They don’t care, or even want you to think about one of their commercials when you are looking for a product, they want you to reach for it naturally, without thinking about why you’re even getting it.  ’I need detergent, let’s get a box of Tide.’  Or at worst is something like: ‘I need a box of detergent, the new Purex crystals sound neat so I’ll try it.”  How many product names can you think of?  About  a gazillion is my guess.  There are products on the shelves that I won’t even try because ‘I don’t know anything about them.”  I’ve never bought or tried some of the items in a store, but if I am going to, the first thing I look for is a ‘known commodity’, a.k.a. a brand I’ve had good luck with on other products.

The main concept behind many of these commercials is ‘branding’.  Most of the commercials on the big game yesterday didn’t even try to sell you anything directly (0% APR car financing, etc.).  They just showed you things funny/neat/bizarre so they became new in your mind, and more easily slipped down into the subconscious, implanting it for non-conscious recognition in the future.  That’s not me relating it to Chaos, that’s just the name of the game.  Did you see all the Nike logos on every piece of equipment on the field?  Me neither.  They’re so heavily implanted that the subtile swoosh doesn’t do anything but reinforce the brand they work so hard to maintain.

Now, think about the concept of a sigil, a ritual, or even meditation for the purpose of spell casting.  You are simply trying to slip the information into your own subconscious so it can act without any conscious thought.  Instead of grabbing something off the shelf, you are just aiming that your astral/ethereal self/energy (or whatever you think it is) will make things happen that result in the final outcome.

They aim for automatic brand recognition and action results by the target, we aim for action results without source recognition by the target (mostly).

This concept of ‘branding’ and other tools within advertising are almost exact in their process to Chaos techniques that work incredibly well.  The vast majority of the population has no idea that these concepts are so closely linked.  It would either freak them out about advertising, or it would help legitimize magic as a valid discipline.  They may not be swayed in their religious/spiritual views about the evil/good nature of the practice, but perhaps it would be taken more seriously, and people would be more questioning of advertisements.  Or perhaps people would just call shenanigans and stay the way they are because it’s easier that way.  It would probably be that last one.

It makes me smile to know that people eat this stuff up like candy because it makes my job a lot easier.  When I design ads/commercials I just ‘brand’ the hell out of things and people turn to us without question.  Both of the national competitors in our area combined don’t do 1/3 the business we do.  Why?  Anywhere you look in this valley there is our logo.  The college, high school stadiums, every charity advertisement, news, print, boards, television, pre-movies ads, etc.  We even cut the ‘name’ portion off of our logo and simply use that symbol (a sigil?) on some campaigns.  For a period we had a board up with nothing but the symbol on a white background.  We received tons of compliments on it.

They were all moved towards us and only rarely do we advertise a specific product or service.  When we do, we have massive influxes from those promotions.

It’s a pretty well ‘branded’ company, no?  We’ve even reduced our standard branding statements into a single sigil (like the Nike swoosh) that represents everything that we have implanted into our customers’ minds.  To me that’s magic, and it’s awesome.  I love to watch us do it and I love to see it on a national level.  I’m a sucker for it.  That kind of thing just works too well.

D.S.

English: Tarot cards. Français : Jeu de tarot. Différences avec l’image originale : Isolation du sujet : Arrière-plan blanc Élargissement de l’image (plus d’espace autour) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ve been using tarot cards for quite a while now, and I have become accustomed to using and interpreting them.  They give me an incredible insight into many different topics, and are about the only diving tool that I have any faith in at all.  Despite this comfort and familiarity with them, sometimes they just astound me in ways I never thought possible.

When I was asking the cards about the topics in my previous post, it said one of the most important things I could do lay in my continuing and increasing of my writings.  I know that many of you do not know me on a personal level, but the writings aren’t usually a big deal for me.  Unless it’s something strange, I can read it (or discover it) and that’s it, so the slowing of my writings have become no big deal in my mind.  I was just writing down information that I knew anyway.

At the recommendation of the cards I began writing many of the things I have learned in recent times down to see if I could draw any new connections within the information, which is one of the bonuses that I do get from writing.  I’ve been writing almost every evening for the past few weeks, just purging all of the recent information I have onto paper (yes, paper).

Then it hit me.  My memory started to wane.  My short-term memory has gone to complete garbage.  Earlier in the week I received a text that a friend was coming to get me, replied to him, and about a half-hour later someone in the office said that my friend had been waiting outside the office for quite a while.  I know it only takes him about 5 minutes to get here, but when I asked him why he didn’t tell me he was coming he looked really confused.  I had no recollection of having received the text, or having sent a reply at all.  Nothing.  If I didn’t see the reply on my own phone I would have thought he was kidding.  It turns out that this is not the only isolated incident.

All of a sudden this is becoming a severe problem.  My short-term memory has gone to crap and my mid-term memory seems to be slipping a bit.  I had a med tweak not too long ago, so I’m pretty sure it has to do with that.  My hands shake, I can’t stay awake at work, and now I have to write everything down or I’ll forget it in a matter of minutes.

This is exactly what the cards were talking about.  Some of the big-time information that I have learned was committed to paper, and when I look at them now, they are like someone else wrote them. Weeks of information and insight would have been lost, and possibly not recovered.  I may have to become one of those crazy guys that is always talking into a micro recorder.

I’m fairly confident that switching back to my old medication routine (or a completely different set) will set everything on a solid path, but acting on the information given to me by the cards saved me from some serious loss of my studies.  Many of these little revelations lead to big ones later, and to have lost them would have been a shame.

If you use the tarot, listen well.  They can tell you more than you think.

D.S.

English: Séance conducted by John Beattie, Bristol, England, 1872 from the Eugène Rochas Papers held at the American Philosophical Society Library. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My wife and I keep our beliefs and practices very private because of the nature of where we live and the nature of who we need to interact with.  We haven’t had any of our esoteric conversations around our daughter either.  We decided not to push her into anything as far as religion and spiritual belief is concerned.  The problem is that last night our entire plan when to crap.

My father asked her if she wanted to go into our bedroom and get her tablet (spoiled nerd) and she said she didn’t want to because there was a ghost.  We all just looked at each other.  He then asked her what she said back as a question: “There’s a ghost in there?”  ”Yeah.  Mama’s tablet.”  She then ran off to the living room and stole my wife’s Nook.

My dad doesn’t believe in the same things we do, nor does he even have any idea of the direction our beliefs have gone, but he was even silent for a few moments.  I think we all asked each other where she learned that word, and none of us could come up with an answer at all.  TV at our house consists almost entirely of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse until she goes down for her nap/sleep.

Obviously she learned the word somewhere, but she used it entirely in context and knew what she was seeing/feeling.  At 2 1/2 years old, there isn’t much that can be done to explain what is going on, or even give her anything to do if one gets a bit rowdy with her.  Even her mother has tried to suppress her gift for so long that she has a hard time handling things for herself.

We agreed last night to just listen to her when she describes things of that nature, and as she grows older we’ll introduce her into some of the concepts that are involved with the process.  We’ll teach her to be proud of who she is, but appropriateness in handling it since it scares the living piss out of other people when you’re different in any way.  It scares them worse when you experience things entirely outside of their belief system.  Religious groups tend to have a set boundary of where things can go before it’s just too far to fit within the structure.  Then they yell ‘Heresy!’ or some other such crap and you’re ostracized.

Despite the freedoms given to us in this country, having different beliefs (especially ones that scare others) can still cause issues within your peers, and we all know that kids are some of the most cruel creatures on the face of the planet.  I will have to teach her not to be ashamed of who she is, but that there appropriate times to let people know who you are, and when to just play the game.  It sucks that she will have to do that, but sadly that’s the way things work, even in modern America; more so when you live in a small, religious community.

Of course, this could all just the imagination of a child and no big deal, but since she could have inherited this from her mother, it’s worth keeping an eye on.

Chaos is everywhere whether you like it or not.

D.S.