Freud Pops Cherry

or the Mysteries of the Dirty Saints

The two concepts that I remember dominating the Chaos Magic communities in the late nineties were the dynamics of invocation and evocation and whether the prescribed limitations as laid down by Peter Carroll for the Illuminates Of Thanateros (henceforth, IOT) still held any value.  Among that number were a group of hard-core and resourceful practitioners who invested themselves completely in a given paradigm to explore the system of thought which underlay the system of magic, this sort of immersion was held in particularly high regard by the Discordian Saints because it was often hilarious.

A core principle among the Saints was the idea that belief itself was simply a tool of the conscious process.  The Discordian motto; either your religion is a joke or your joke is a religion, was often cited in debates between the Saints regarding the role of faith or belief in the individual process.  So there was an ever present undercurrent wherein legitimate attempts were made to understand many of the traditional ceremonial paradigms.  Dope smoking punk rockers spending three to six months reading the bible every day, morally judging everyone around them and wailing and repenting for their lives of unending sin, all to meet Abramelin’s guardian angel.  Those practitioners who were willing to extend themselves beyond the confines of personal or popular convention, even at the cost of personal embarrassment were widely held to have the best juju.

This practice was one of the main reasons for the emphasis on ego-death among the Saints.  After locking oneself into a system of belief there is only one way out and it’s the hard way, catastrophic deconstruction or the 16^th Arcana.  Upon which the individual would apply what they had learned to their own paradigm.  Ego-death was also a popular concept among the more traditional Chaos Magicians, elevated in importance by Carroll’s assertion that it was the ego which the sorcerer had to set aside to truly empower an act of magic and that this took place only at the moment of death or sexual rapture.  Hence his pseudo-deity Thanateros (Thanatos/Death-Eros/Sex) commonly identified with Chaos Magic in the late nineties.  In this regard many of Carroll’s thoughts could be considered a sort of post-Freudian paradigm, a mechanical realization of Freud’s contention that it was the desire for sex and death which underlay our conscious actions.  

The Saints took an increasingly fluid perspective on the ego, realizing that no matter how many times you kill that thing it comes back.  That after a few immersions and subsequent ritualized ego-death’s the whole thing got pretty ephemeral.  I had the great privilege of gaining my Sainthood through the infamous collective known as the Children of the Nails, who were provided with an invisible hub on the now defunct chaosmagic.com forums from which to concoct our mad schemes.  In that space the Saints had room to experiment and explore without fear of censure, which the public boards would often explode into.  They took on some pretty risky concepts (at the time) like personality fragmentation, demonic possession and the chemically augmented extremes of animist shamanic ordeals.  The noise was the same back then; working with the spirits like that is suicide, working with consciousness like that will turn you into a psychotic schizoid, I know a guy who knows a guy who had a friend that said Papa Gede’s name backwards and his ass fell out and his dog exploded.

By the end of the nineties even the initiates of the IOT emphasized offerings and sacrifices as immensely practical in any work with personal servitors (akin to the Buddhist concept of a tulpa) and egregores (which was thought of as a metaphysical reflection of something that many individuals believe in, somewhat clumsily and occasionally offensively lumping together conceptual objects like an animist deity and Coca-Cola’s brand identity).  Even the least superstitious Chaos magicians most of which had evolved past the simplicities of Carroll and Freud into more fertile ideologies like those of Brian Gyson and C.G. Jung, had retained their emphasis on animist ritual practices (mantra, offerings or sacrifice, sigilization, devotion, talisman etc.) over western ceremonialism.   Also in an effort to distance themselves from conventional western ceremonialism, many of the Discordian collectives focused on the overlap between their ideologies and those of the eastern spiritual disciplines with a particular emphasis on Zen and the twisted Buddhism of the Beats.  

It pleases me immensely to learn that a trend for creating altars for the dead and the ancestors has broken out among young chaos magicians, a most empowering and profound observance.  Many have gravitated towards more traditional Hoodoo because of the realization that that’s how they have been working it all along and that a great untapped wealth of information lay there.  Ultimately, the allure of these practices for young Chaos Magicians lay in their obvious capacity to liberate the practitioner from the contrivances of questionable gurus and mentors out begging for change among the neophytes and the barbarous autism of contemporary academia.  While the caution that meaningful investment in Los Muertos or the Palo can have legal ramifications is not without merit (in America and Mexico, notable Christian enclaves,) the concern should be placed within its greater context.

The FBI profile of ritual criminals I cited in Obscene Promises nevertheless gives top-slot to Satanism and associated forms of diabolism, not the Paleros and Santeros.  The profiler explicitly states that while a practitioner of Palo or a devotee of Los Muertos might engage in an activity that they know to be illegal (prostitution, illegal immigration, drug trafficking, etc.) they do so because they do not believe it to be inherently wrong.  On the other hand the Satanic antinomianism more readily idolizes actions deemed morally or socially reprehensible, so they still get top slot in America as far as legally questionable belief systems go.  Don’t murder pets, other people’s livestock or people and I am pretty sure you’re good regardless.  The fuzz is solid like that, a lot of law enforcement are just as superstitious as their criminal counter-parts and from what I hear you could do worse than have the veve of one of the Orisha out on the day they finally show up. 

This is twice now I have referenced that FBI profile in this blog and I would like to again state for the sake of my readers that I am not in any way advocating or endorsing the judgments of the profiler.  I just think it is important to clarify the discussion regarding this point.  Any of us that have opted to hang out the shingle will at some point encounter the fuzz, it’s an uncomfortable yet strangely liberating initiatory ordeal like getting your cherry popped.


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Free-Thinkers, Living-Gods and New-Genders

or Chaos Never Died

'Transformation' Nina Arsenault
by Bruce LaBruce

"In fact, I don’t always even see this as an image of me. I believe it is an icon of a triple goddess: Aphrodite (the Goddess of Beauty) who was born of the sea foam that rose from the blood of Cronus’ testicles when they were thrown into the sea, Artemis (Goddess of the Hunt and Phases of the Moon) whose Amazonian worshipper’s removed a single breast to better fire a bow and Hecate (Goddess of Magic and Divination) whose face is forever cloaked in darkness. These three forces –beauty, the hunt and the power of magic– have compelled my radical transformation." - from, Nina Arsenault

Jack Faust asked me 'what I felt the lost roots of chaos magic were' on facebook a week ago and I have found myself thinking about that question off and on ever since. I never answered him.  The whole conversation arose from a tongue-in-cheek exchange regarding the release of the latest book by Peter Carroll.  In this esteemed tome Carroll proceeds to educate the reader in the fine art of becoming a cliché (namely, a cartoon evil scientist).  Most such recollections as the one I am about to write begin with a quip about how cool 'chaos magic' sounds.  I'm not going to do that, it's been around for more than 30 years and it hasn't aged well.  We all know chaos magic isn't cool anymore.

I think that sucks balls.

Carroll sought to redefine sorcery in logical and mathematical terms, while severing it from its superstitious and religious origins.  Carroll’s particular brand of science was uniquely accommodating of magic, mainly because it was largely nonsense and as reverently superstitious as anything that preceded it but in the late 80’s and 90’s at least no one really seemed to have caught on to that.  Most of chaos magic’s adherents were in their teens back in those days or renegades hoping to escape the tedium of the Orders and the Wiccan covens.  Though the attempt to redefine sorcery obviously failed (because it was silly) Carroll did ultimately identify and brand a hitherto widely ignored thread of magical tradition.  Almost single-handedly, Carroll re-introduced the technique of sigilization (A. O. Spares to be exact) and the business of actually doing sorcery back into western ceremonialism.

That’s Carroll though, and not the history of chaos magic.  I place Carroll back into his superstitious and religious origins in the 80’s.  The IOT’s great ideological rival the Church of Eris Discordia is enjoying widespread activity, a notable counter-point to Carroll’s stance that magic is hard science was the Discordian’s belief that all hard certainties were the beginning of a hilarious joke.  Between the two polarities live cultural phenomenon like TOPY, a collection of counter-culturalists revering art and fiction before gods and men, pouring through the sorcerous memoirs of Huxley, Burroughs and Gyson in search of new modes of expression. 

TOPY fractured in the 90’s when Genesis P-Orridge left to establish the Process, in 2008 the remaining TOPY network re-established itself as the Autonomous Individuals Network.  The sheer degree of occult symbolism in contemporary fiction owes this movement some modicum of credit. 

TOPY, the Discordians and Carroll also turned the spotlight on some of the more widely ignored practitioners of the last century.  Though Spare has retained his popularity among the occulture, the more controversial writers of the early 20^th century like Gyson and Burroughs and the new mystics and sexual revolutionaries of the 50’s and 60’s have not.  As the aesthetics of the scene shifted from what could be cobbled together out of art and ill-defined sources (namely, an experiential approach) to the ever increasing volume of occult texts available throughout the internet (namely, a scholarly approach) occulture as a whole turned its eye on the reverently old and complete and in some ways this made it easy for us to turn away from the actual evolutionary prospects being confronted in the 90’s.

I think the collective discomfort felt in addressing the shallow and contextual nature of sexual and racial identification was what ultimately relegated these luminaries to the underworld because it was in those minefields that Burroughs and his ilk made their playgrounds. 

Last year at Pantheacon (largest gathering of magical and neo-pagan folks in America) trans-women were bounced out of a rite for Lilith for not being woman enough.   Out of this year’s line-up of roughly 240 presentations (including a repeat of the aforementioned rite and a presentation by Z. Budapest, who more or less claimed trans-women were just men attempting to infiltrate her coven,) only two represent one of the actual pagan religions of the America’s.  One devotional to Pomba Gira (which is where any self-respecting woman ‘trans’ or otherwise, foolish enough to attend this thing in the first place should go) and a Haitian ceremony for Damballah. 

Two out of 240!

There are about a million neo-pagans and wiccans in America according to current standards.  The number of South American, Mexican and Caribbean practitioners of dynamic alternative faiths far exceeds that of the white non-Christian minority faiths.  Santeria, the most prevalent of the Creole faiths in America right now most likely outnumbers all of the neo-pagans and wiccans and new-agers put together and yet not one of these practitioners (most likely Mexican or Hispanic) numbered among Pantheacon presenters.

That’s how I think we lost our roots. We were seduced by the baroque ornaments of the necromancers and the absolute certainties of Order and Coven and now the free-thinkers, new-genders and living religions are all stuck outside the doors.


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Obscene Promises

or The Palo of Jersey

Spider Circus,
Gros Bon Ange of the witch-doctor Ryan Valentine,
detail from 'the White Devils'

Don’t cry too hard for the Paleros in Jersey.  This is how it is after the tower falls and they are better equipped to deal with the subtleties of the Passaic’s currents than the fuzz.  Really that’s what this is all about.  Back around the turn of the millennium the carcasses of chickens starting showing up on the shores of the Passaic in Jersey, all of them murdered in a cold and calculated fashion.  It goes that way sometimes, I am no expert in Palo but sometimes you don’t want to keep the meat of a sacrificial offering (especially in the case of bad sickness, most of the old hoodoo also recommend that the remains are disposed of at the banks of a river if possible). 

Despite what some may regard as a great denigration unto chickens, that’s not really the reason the cops have it in for the Paleros.  The cops have it in for them because they are working sorcerers and these days a working sorcerer is probably not working with the cops.  For the most part, peddling anything other than show tricks can be twisted up into a criminal offence if the Prosecution is really determined.  Sorcery by its very nature cannot really be protected under the aegis of religious freedom, nor should any sorcerer worth their salt desire it to be.  Yet because much of the work of sorcery in general is devotional and fetishistic (traditionally, religious modes of thought) these aspects don’t make good fuel for a prosecution.  Prosecution requires demonstrable criminal intent.

That’s where it gets tricky for the Palero, bokor and hoodoo alike.  Though the western establishment might erroneously equate religious and sorcerous devotion, the sorcerer does not.  There is no formal religious hierarchy to sustain these men and women, this is true of all of the ‘Creole’ spiritualities.  Even the pious and devoted houngans and mambos of Haitian Vodou must first gather to themselves a congregation before they might tend it and I am willing to wager once again that that’s the way it should be.  Therein lay the risk however, for when the Palero offers legitimate sorcerous influence in exchange for money they are taking their first step out from beneath the protection of religious law.  Most often the nature of the work itself carries the sorcerer away from the watchful eye of the establishment.

Occasionally (sometimes frequently, depending on the specialties of the individual) however, the sorcerer is brought into direct contact with the secular powers.  Being contracted for assistance in legal proceedings or to protect an individual from conventional law enforcement are both common examples of work that will carry the sorcerer that much farther away from the protection of religious law.  The Paleros scattered about Jersey have inflamed the obvious conflicts between the sorcerer and the legal establishment by being outrageously good at what they do, a degree of consternation on the part of the authorities can be forgiven.  I for one, am not terribly worried over this latest brew-haw (its like the 5th time in ten years), the Palo are notoriously effective when it comes to influencing legal proceedings.  If they choose to deal with this latest challenge through some conventional secular means I’ll obviously support them but I’m not exactly holding my breath.  That’s not how I would deal with it and I very much doubt it’s how they will either.       

I will address a few things though, for my fellow mercenaries.  The playing field has changed a bit in the last decade or so.  Based on the most recent base psychological profile (2006) from the FBI for a ‘ritual criminal’, only ritual fetish demonstrably used as a sympathetic conduit for violence or degradation (mangled dolls for instance) can be reliably used to demonstrate mental imbalance in a N. American court.  If the sorcerer has used any sort of physical link in the crafting of such a fetish (hair, nails, etc.) especially if they have done so without the express permission of the individual in whose likeness the simulacrum was made then the prosecution can demonstrate that the sorcerer is imbalanced with possibly violent tendencies.  If any of the ritual fetish are killing tools and have been used (blood or hair left on the fetish) then the sorcerer will almost definitely be treated as a possibly violent offender.  

Though the FBI and other secular enforcement agencies internationally will not violate religious law by attempting to prosecute animal sacrifice, they do still consider its practice by solo individuals a key marker for pathological violence. Any ritual work involving the public display of animal remains (among the Creole traditions most fetish are left somewhere they can be seen, or placed where their influence is desired) will be perceived as a physical threat and you will be promptly declared a violent criminal.  The instance of a goat’s tongue nailed to a tree outside a Jersey courthouse is an excellent example, no one could explain how it got there and no one took credit for it but it was nonetheless immediately construed as a death threat (and not the sorcerous attempt to silence a legal rival which it obviously was). Things to think about.  Sometimes the renegade nature of the act itself will assure its success and I wholeheartedly enjoy the renegade nature of contemporary sorcery but only a fool does not familiarize themselves with their rivals weapons.

Currently, it is not against the law to own human remains in the States (since the proliferation of the cults of Los Muertos and Palo a movement has begun to press for a rewrite of these laws in America) even if those remains are stolen, as long as the conditions they are kept under are sanitary and the items are not used as a means of psychological abuse or intimidation. (Your not allowed to just have human remains because you like them in Canada so technically its not legal, but for the purposes of art, spirituality or medicine donated remains can be used but not bought and sold).  The Palo, los Muertos and the Red and Black Schools of Vodou all greatly value human remains for their talismanic properties.  It is not impossible to procure human remains legally (as it is so often held) but it is difficult and tremendously expensive and so the proliferation of los Muertos and the Palo in N. America has led to a brisk and illegal black market trade in human remains.  Possession of remains of any sort will raise the eyebrow of the establishment and you will most definitely be treated as a dangerous suspect should they be found in your possession (this is obviously compounded if they are shown to be stolen) though you cannot be charged for this alone.

Don’t charge your clients up front when it can be avoided.  If you only accept full payment for services rendered it is a lot harder for you to be prosecuted for extortion, fraud or confidence scams.  An individual who provides payment upon the successful completion of a service cannot easily claim to have been extorted, taking money upfront for magical services can make an individual much more vulnerable to prosecution.  One of the very best reasons the cops in Jersey haven’t been able to make anything stick to the Paleros in the last ten years is that they don’t have any unsatisfied customers and that remains the best defense to this day.  Know your region, if you’re going to charge upfront for some services then educate yourself as to the point at which the cash value of a perceived fraud has moved you from petty to major criminal charges.

If you own a shop or botanica of any sort then learn the difference between a criminal raid and an inspection by your local municipal enforcement agencies.  In most places in N. America any storefront selling herbs, incense or holistic medicines can come under the investigation of local food and drug agencies.  You are legally obligated to co-operate with a municipal inspection of any kind unless you are requested to give up confidential information.  My advice to shop owners is to get a digital camera and keep it around.  When inspected, film everything.

If cops or vans have arrived with the enforcement agents, then you are about to be subjected to a criminal raid and seizure.  In this case, you are not obligated to help in any way or to answer any questions and unless you are personally under arrest your movements cannot legally be restricted.  Once again, if this occurs say nothing (you will save your lawyer the trouble of having all of that testimony struck as inadmissible and yourself a tidy sum in legal fees) and film everything.  Enforcement agents will not like the camera but as I mentioned above your movements cannot be legally restricted unless you are personally under arrest.  Any criminal raid also requires a warrant, read it carefully and if the enforcement agents violate its conditions at any point, film it.  Any representative of any agency not mentioned in the warrant can be forced from private property and should be immediately asked to leave.  Did I mention film it?

There are always local vagaries when it comes to the application of secular law and a sorcerer with a successful private practice would do well to familiarize themselves with them.  The FBI methods for profiling repeat criminals hold in Canada as well as the States and they represent a good model for how to attract the wrong kind of attention.  In some cases though, like the law in the States and the cults of the Palo and Los Muertos some degree of rivalry should really just be expected.

As for the latest installment in the ongoing drama of the Paleros vs. the Jersey PD, I suspect the Paleros will once again make good on their obscene promises because they are working sorcerers and making good on obscene promises is what we do for a living.

Kittens

There is a new cat in the house. A black and grey tortoise-shell. Still counting age in months although I have no idea how many, she just showed up here. Climbed through the window and made herself at home. Cats are everywhere, the cliche of venus in leo made universal truth. Whats left for a mars ruled dude to do when his planet hits cancer? Watch a kitten act like an idiot.

A tortoise-shell showed up once before, far enough back that I didn't know the astrology of the times. Deep in my saturn return. In some ways its a fearful omen. It means that somehow I am again deep into it. I remember the last time vividly and it is recorded in the gnostic piece 'Six Days in Sodom' which describes my confrontation with the devil of a 14th century heretical exorcism (CLM 849). Good stuff that was the product of some evil times in my life.

Its when the shit is hitting the fan that people seek out the services of the bokors. So a bokor has to be able to work while the shit is hitting the fan. Sometimes that means getting deep into it. That's why there are so many grimoires. Necessity. This round I see a daemon of the grimoire traditions, a duke named Gramary (Gremory, Gamori), everywhere I look. Whats more she courts my attention and I find it impossible to find fault with her. I mentioned this last night to V and she said, "ya, her name means glamour. In the Feri magic sense of the word. So you see whatever she wants you to see." That caused a pause in my consideration of this daemon which allowed me to finally conceive of the tremendous danger hidden in this spirit.

You absolutely must be able to penetrate her glamours in your continuous observation of the world beyond you. Seeing what you want to see leads to an unimaginative, limiting and impractical praxis. In its most destructive forms it is paranoia and delusion. With glamour you have to turn the dynamic around to really benefit from it. You want the world to see whatever they want in you. Real talent in glamours is pretty rare, and it has a very steep learning curve as far as the old magics go. I have never gotten it exactly right. The contemporary daemon I have encountered that are masters of it are as I mentioned earlier, tremendously dangerous. I speak from experience here. When the orange and black tortoise-shell came those years ago, the great devil within the exorcism was Satanachia. In the old hierarchies, the Grand Duchess and a Lieutenent to Lucifer. She too could make me see whatever she wanted me to see. I remain to this day deeply frightened of Satanachia, my grand mal. Always take saturn seriously, or it will fuck you up.

Saturns energy isn't traditionally equated to the duchies, but libra very much is and that's where saturn is headed. Out of virgo and into libra. So it goes like this. The Grand Mal(saturn)+Venus-rulership(libra)=Duchess of Hell, Gramary. Already a space has been created for her. Her sigil chalked out on the floor and marked with candles and offerings of cigarettes and perfumed oils. Already she has reunited lost lovers, and seduced men and women into acts of daring romance. Thus far she has asked nothing of me. No fetish or ritual or sacrifice. Nothing.

But there is a tortoise-shell kitten.