By Heimlich A. Laguz

Want More Efficient Magic? Use Compassion.

Efficient magic uses compassion as its basis. Sound too good to be true? Read on!

I take it that the goal of magical practice is efficiency. Sure, 100 years ago the goal was to dress up in funny robes, memorize pages of bad poetry, and have really awful sex on an altar in front of a room full of prudish hypocrites. Well, maybe that is still what some people want. I’m not judging.

But for many of us: we want something different. We want an immediate, sinuous, ever-changing communion with the serpent called transformation. She’s a kindly yet rigorous mistress, and she respects discipline, consistency, inspiration, and focus. What supports these? Compassion.

The minute I slide into a judgmental attitude, I am wasting psychic energy. I become a grossly inefficient engine. All that power wasted as incidental heat and noise. The groaning machinery of righteousness. Beneath that, the squeaky whine of self-doubt.

Yes: the more flagrant my judgment, the more I send a compensatory, undermining message to my unconscious. The more I puff up my outer ego posture, the more my interior musculature, my autonomic nervous system, atrophies. A dead tree with brittle bark and liquefied innards. That’s the unspoken ideal of righteous judgment.

Compassion is way more efficient. Instead of raging, resenting the other, I take two steps. First, I give myself empathy. NOT sympathy. I do not buy into my own narrative of victimhood (the basis of judgment), but I do acknowledge the pain and discomfort I feel. THEN, I extend my imagination and ask, “where is this person coming from?” If can imagine my way into their experience then I can discover a richer sense of meaning to their actions. I don’t have to excuse them or abandon accountability, but I also don’t have to waste my energy on confusion or resentment.

Now, this transaction also applies in relation to a) my self; b) the sinuous serpent called transformation. Instead of resenting the inevitable tide of change, I can find compassion for myself and for others. “I send myself kindness. I send you good will.” That simple. Thought stopping. When thought stops in brief moments, sigils spontaneously fire from the womb of mystery into the womb of mystery (for surely the universe is a lesbian and is her own lover).

So it appears that compassion is not only efficient, not only reverent, not only magically potent, but sexy as hell too. The more sexually enriched magic becomes, the more delightful (assuming we are talking about the ardent, exuberant, untarnished sexuality of the Feminine Mystery called Runa, the taproot of the world, free of the embarrassment called patriarchy).

Every time I cast magic, I conclude with a step toward non-attachment: “does not matter, need not be, that or something better.” Anxiety, fear, self-doubt, resentment, all of these are names for unseemly attachment. They muddy the waters of magical action. Compassion clarifies.

Most people feel very resistant to adopting compassion for either self or others, at least at first. Enspelled by the carceral state called Scarcity-Objectification-Judgment-Authority, they think that kindness to self or others is a dirty indulgence, or a giving of permission to incompetence, ill-doing, laziness, or chicanery. They think the hard strain and struggle of judgment and punishment is a sign that work is being done.

The hard strain and struggle of judgment and punishment is not a sign that work is being done. Work is being done when I do not even feel the slightest effort. When I am riding the tide of Wyrd with ease and grace.

How is this possible? Through kindness. How do I know this? By this.

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My Version of the Death Posture

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The death posture, as far as I can determine, was invented by Austin Osman Spare as a tool to fire magical sigils into the Great Unknown. I first encountered it in the writings of Pete Carroll, who evokes practices such as staring at a mirror into one’s own gaze until total vacuity and trance ensue: gnosis, the spell is fired, the work is done.

Well I never really jived with any of the versions of the death posture that I encountered. Maybe I am just a difficult person, I don’t know. But the basic concept – of dying a kind of brief psychic death in order to unite a magical, sigilized intent with the currents of causality – was appealing.

Recently I retrofitted some of Carroll’s writings to come up with my own version of the death posture. It requires a minimal level of able-bodiedness but otherwise is pretty broadly applicable. It is fun, too (pretty much a prerequisite for any kind of magic worth the doing).

Here’s what I do. First, I determine my intent, the outcome I wish to achieve. Second, I allow my imagination to furnish me with runes that express the intent in sigil form. I’ve studied the runes so long, in particular from a reconstructionist perspective, that I don’t have to think very hard to get a combination that seems right. Sometimes it is one rune, sometimes several, whatever works.

Then I chant and visualize the runes. When I finish chanting them, I maintain the visualization. Standing upright, I begin to lean straight backward. Lean, lean, lean, as I get more of an angle as my back arches over. Still visualizing the rune sigil. Then suddenly I lean far enough that I fall.

Snap! In a split second the reflexes kick in and I catch myself. At that moment, total vacuity occurs and the sigil is released into the void. It is impossible to do anything else at that moment but catch oneself; there is no room for thinking. It is lightning-quick, but intense. After all, it feels a little scary – I am about to fall over and hit my head!

As soon as I catch myself I declare: does not matter, need not be, that or something better. Then I move on, because the magic is done.

Once you have this down you can set off spells very quickly and easily. I am getting a pretty good hit rate with it. It is a nice controlled way of injecting a brief moment of helpless terror into consciousness, just the ticket for releasing the magic will into motion.

Go ahead, try it! You might like it. Or hate it. Either way, it will probably trigger something interesting.

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“…Or Something Better:” A Tool to Ensure Infallible Sigil Magic

An element of sigil magic that seems necessary for effective practice is non-attachment. This is may seem paradoxical at first, since if I am indifferent to an outcome why am I bothering to throw magic at it? The answer is that desire and non-attachment can and do pair up nicely in magical practice.

To explain how this could be I would like to take a short detour into considering some aspects of Buddhist philosophy. That done, I’m going to talk about a tool for achieving the kind of non-attachment that helps sigil magic to be effective.

Buddhist philosophy suggests that there are three causes of suffering: desire, aversion, and ignorance. Note that it does not say that any of these three are bad, just that their triad causes suffering.

Desire – wanting what I do not have – and aversion – not wanting what I do have (or fearing to have what I expect I will have) – are inevitable parts of life. They are inescapable. So if you want to break the triad of suffering, you have to address the third side, ignorance, since it is the only thing over which you can exert any kind of influence.

In Buddhist practice, at least as taught by S. N. Goenka, the way to break down ignorance is not to spend a lot of time reading books but to spend a lot of time observing the sensations of the body – Vipassana meditation. Consciousness is an embodied phenomenon, so the systematic and deep observation of the body from the inside enables the mapping and transformation of consciousness.

This reduces the level of ignorance. Desire and aversion lose their rigid grasp as ignorance gives way to self-knowledge, but they do not go away. Rather, their forms of unfolding are changed because as ignorance declines, so does attachment. With non-attachment, desire and aversion cease to be inevitable sources of misery. Enlightenment is a state of simultaneous emptiness and abundance.

This invites consideration of the Hindu distinction between attachment and care. I can be attached yet not truly care, for example when I want to force someone to behave in a fashion that meets the expectations of my egomania. I can be attached and care, as parents often, and very naturally, are for their children, though it can cause problems. I can be neither attached nor caring, which is one definition of depression. I can be caring yet lack attachment, which is a state of free, playful love.

Non-attachment therefore does not mean that I don’t care. It means I have clarified my attachments, my projections, so that I am not unconsciously ruled by my desire and my aversion. And thus, I can use magic to achieve a goal yet at the same time be non-attached to the outcome.

This is an orientation to process, not product, and this orientation is useful in almost any field of activity: if my efforts are not done to a standard then their product, no matter how good looking, are automatically suspect.

Thus, non-attachment facilitates the whole process of sigil magic. The more I lust for a result, the more cramp (Jan Fries) I am likely to burden myself with. If I lack self-knowledge, that is, am ignorant of my own psychological processes, then I am likely to think I just need to try harder to make my magic work. The result of this mistake is the absurd, over-complicated magical prescriptions one finds in ceremonial magic or the writings of Edred Thorsson.

When I work sigil magic from a space of non-attachment I give the seed of my will over to the care of the world in a free and energetic way. And a way to cultivate that non-attachment is through the mantra “does not matter, need not be, that or something better.”

So I identify my magical intention (perhaps using a SMART goals framework). Then I sigilize the intent. Then I fire the sigil. The last step is to establish non-attachment to outcome, and “does not matter, need not be, that or something better” thus offers itself as a concluding statement or mantra for my magic spell.

The statement is handy because any time the outcome for which I enchanted comes to mind, I can just go back to “does not matter, need not be, that or something better,” rather than lose myself in the impossible tangle of fear, doubt, and desire that my human constitution too-easily invokes.

The statement is also handy because it expresses a supreme confidence: “does not matter, need not be, that or something better.” In other words, I am embracing trust in myself and the universe to the point that even this outcome that I desire is not so important that I cannot find some alternative option.

Indeed, it implies that even if the sigil magic fails to produce the intended outcome, it will only do so in order to give me something even better than what I asked for! As such, reciting this mantra at the conclusion of casting a spell has become my favorite part of the process, and almost always brings a smile to my face.

In other words, with this mantra I can achieve infallible sigil magic practice. Either I get my stated outcome, or I get something even better than what I thought I wanted and needed. Naturally, such an attitude of abundance is very helpful for releasing into non-attachment. And also, the universe adores an abundant mentality and tends to reward it richly, though rarely through the avenues the ego expects.

Of course “does not matter, need not be, that or something better” can be used in any situation, not just sigil magic. It invites a mindset of determination, confidence, and open-minded yes-saying. These are qualities that have decisive significance for the practice of both magic and life.

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Listening to the Body: Ideomotor Cues

I had an experience today with ideomotor cues. Ideomotor cues are a means of communicating with the embodied unconscious through subtle, involuntary, movements. In the introduction to our book, Elhaz Ablaze: A Compendium of Chaos Heathenry, I proposed that “Chaos Heathenism is Heathenism that remembers it has a body.” Well, ideomotor cues are a means to involve the whole bodyself in decision making.

(By the way, the book is actually in stock. the Amazon warning is a mistake, an artefact of print on demand publishing).

So: ideomotor cues are a vehicle of, well, applied Heathenry. Weird, right? This is a website about Chaos Heathenry, so get used to it.

Here’s how it works. First, we assign meaning to specific movement. For example, I assign my pointing finger the meaning “yes” and my middle finger “no.” I will need to be able to observe subtle sensations and movements in these two fingers.

Now, I ask: “body, please give me a yes response.” And then notice if my pointing finger responds in some way. Again “body, please give me a no response.” Again, notice if the middle finger responds. Now it might be that some other body parts want to be your cue providers, and they’ll make themselves known if that is the case. But it is likely that the body will take the path of least resistance and run with your plan of using the two fingers.

Now, ask: “body, are you willing and able to give me answers at this time?” If it says no, immediately stop there. Don’t go violating your own bodymind. That would be stupid.

If the cue is affirmative, however, then you’re in the clear to pose a question. Here is an example of how nicely it can work out.

Today at work I had a window of time with multiple tasks I could do but no clear idea of which was the highest priority. Typically in these situations I just make an arbitrary decision and run with it on the principle that it is better to do something than nothing. Today I consulted with my body instead.

The reason why I did this today specifically? I was getting tangled in fruitless self-doubt and self-criticism, as those of us with high standards sometimes (often?) do. I had an idea of what the ‘right’ choice would be yet I felt anxious and resistant to it. Once, I would have assumed that this meant I had to ‘Step Up’ and push through my resistance. Now, however, I am more respectful of my inner communications.

So, in the midst of a potentially brewing internal strife, I set myself up for ideomotor cueing as described above. First I asked if I should do the task I felt obligated toward yet resistant to. My middle finger twitched ‘no.’ I asked three more times, because I didn’t trust that I wasn’t somehow influencing myself to give the answer of least resistance. But no, every time, I was told not to do that option.

So I asked for the next thing I could think of, which felt much more comfortable yet didn’t seem at all urgent or time sensitive. Nevertheless, it gave an emphatic ‘yes!’ I rechecked several more times, but there was no doubt. This did not assuage my feeling that I ‘should’ do the thing I didn’t want to do, but I decided to trust my body. After all, shoulds and compulsion are authoritarian in nature, and I wish to be liberated of all internalized authoritarianism.

So I took my body’s advice, and on the way back to my main work area I ran into someone who needed help right there and then, but who hadn’t thought to ask me. We immediately joined forces and I used the time I had in a manner far more productive than anything I had considered prior to asking my body for advice. It worked almost magically. None of this would have worked out if I hadn’t followed my body’s “yes” to a different task that brought me into the path of what was actually the best use of my time.

How did my body know to steer me into the path of a choice that I didn’t know existed, yet was actually just wonderful? I don’t exactly know. I suppose it might be a matter of the fact that the body is part of the larger fabric of wyrd. If the body is the whole of ego and unconscious, and if the personal unconscious floats on the ocean of the collective unconscious, and if the collective unconscious is nothing less than matter itself…

All of which invites some reflection on Snorri’s description of the cosmogonic giant Ymir. To enrich that reflection, and in conclusion, you might enjoy these comments from Jung, which I hope will inspire you to play with ideomotor cueing yourself!

The symbols of the self arise from the depths of the body and they express its materiality every bit as much as the structure of the perceiving consciousness. The symbol is thus a living body, corpus et anima; hence the “child” is such an apt formula for the symbol. The uniqueness of the psyche can never enter wholly into reality, it can only be realized approximately, though it still remains the absolute basis of all consciousness. The deeper “layers” of the psyche lose their individual uniqueness as they retreat farther and farther into darkness. “Lower down,” that is to say as they approach the autonomous functional systems, they become increasingly collective until they are universalized and extinguished in the body’s materiality, i.e. in chemical substances. The body’s carbon is simply carbon. Hence “at bottom” the psyche is simply “world.” [In other words, pantheism, possibly AKA the web of wyrd?] in this sense I hold Kerenyi to be absolutely right when he says that in the symbol the world itself is speaking[!!!]. The more archaic and “deeper,” that is the more physiological, the symbol is, the more collective and universal, the more “material” it is. The more abstract, differentiated, and specific it is, and the more its nature approximates to conscious uniqueness and individuality, the more it sloughs of its universal character. Having finally attained full consciousness, it runs the risk of becoming a mere allegory which nowhere oversteps the bounds of conscious comprehension, and is then exposed to all sorts of attempts at rationalistic and therefore inadequate explanation.

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SMART Sigils

There are a lot of ways to approach the construction of sigils. I am skeptical of the idea that any one approach can be considered the best for all purposes and circumstances.

That said, one important but often overlooked aspect of sigil magic is the process of devising a statement of intention from which to derive a sigil. Here is a framework to help with this process.

Setting SMART Goals

Setting goals is a skill. If a goal is framed poorly it will be more difficult to make desired progress. The concept of SMART Goals can help with framing effective goals. It can also help with framing a statement of intention on which to base a sigil.

SMART = Specific + Meaningful + Achievable + Relevant + Timely

Let’s say I am creating a statement of intention that I wish to sigilize. Here’s how to use the SMART principle to frame that statement.

Specific:

Target the intention. “I receive a windfall of at least $500 in the next 7 days” is a pretty specific goal. “I get more money” is not. Why does this matter? If I used the latter statement as the basis for my sigil then the spell’s terms would be met by bestowing one cent upon me in 30 years’ time; hardly an outcome to be celebrated. Also, with the first example I can unequivocally know if my spell worked or not.

Meaningful:

Frivolous magic is a waste of time. Before creating a spell, take some time to dwell on whether it truly serves your best and most inspired values. Magic cast out of spite, greed, self-doubt, or other ego-flaws will be harmful even if it “works.”

Similarly, how does a given sigil’s purpose fit into your larger life vision and purpose? If you don’t know what your vision and purpose are, you need to spend less time throwing sigils and more time meditating, reflecting on your dreams, journaling, and practicing divination. Impulsive magic has its place, but we are called on to be more than just psychic pinballs.

Achievable:

The easier you make it for the magic to happen, the more likely it will happen. There are a few ways to enhance achievability.

Firstly, the more time you allow for the magic to take effect, the more likely it will succeed. As we move closer to a deadline, wyrd gets more and more cemented and there is less room for the steering of possibilities. Enchant early!

Secondly, you might not want to rely only on magic for an outcome. Take action in as many ways as you can. The universe seems to like a go-getter.

Thirdly, know your limits. A quickly and haphazardly fired sigil may well lack the power needed to achieve a massive change. Practice with smaller magical goals and progressively build your confidence.

Fourthly, consider the probabilities of different outcomes. Sometimes it is better to enchant for your second best(but more likely) outcome and succeed than to enchant for your first, but verging on impossible, preference.

Relevant:

Is the goal of my magic actually the top priority right now? What is most pressing or urgent for me? Are there steps toward a goal, and should I break the goal into smaller steps, each with its own statement of intent and sigil? Is the magic consistent with my needs (i.e. do I know how to listen to myself)? And frankly, am I the right person to be asking for a given outcome or am I meddling in other people’s business?

Timely:

In my above example of specificity I set a deadline for my sigil. This can be helpful for framing the magic and determining success. If I need a spell to take effect within the next month, but I don’t ask for it to do so within that time frame, it may well wait for a decade via the law of the path of least resistance…an outcome that would be less than optimal.

Also, you can use knowledge of correspondences to fire your sigil at an auspicious time. Seasons, lunar cycles, and personally or spiritually meaningful dates and times are all relevant here.

Get SMART

Apply these 5 criteria when framing up your intention for working sigil magic and you might just find yourself getting better results. I would love to hear how you go at applying these ideas…

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Better Together: Chaos Magick and Reconstructionist Heathenry

I have noticed from various Heathen quarters a lot of anger about the very existences of Chaos Magic and Chaos Heathenry, and beneath that anger appears to lie fear. I thought it would be interesting to reflect on the nature of this anger and this fear.

To begin, it is important to emphasize that I am not a Chaos Magician. I am a Chaos Heathen. A number of angry/fearful Heathen responses to the concept of Chaos Heathenism have not been able to appreciate that we are not Chaos Magicians presuming to pontificate about Heathenry, any more than we are Heathens presuming to dictate to Chaos Magicians. We’re a standalone hybrid, proud to be products of crossbreeding.

The fear and the anger I have observed seem to boil down to two concerns: 1) Skepticism about belief means that ‘anything goes’ and that any opinion is as good as any other; 2) If effective technique is sufficient to produce a magical effect then contempt for the gods and divine powers follows automatically.

I want to address each of these concerns, and then to reflect on a third, implicit, factor that underlies each of them: the mistaken idea that rigid dogma can somehow substitute for or guarantee meaningful spiritual expression, be one Heathen or something else.

Anything Goes? Not Necessarily

It is true that Chaos Magic does some strange and interesting things with magical technique. At times I have rather enjoyed working with fictional characters (such as Elric) or made up deities (Gretchwen the goddess of environmentalism), and found that this gets results. The power of magic does not appear to flow from how venerable a deity, force, or spirit purports to be. Made up alphabets of desire can (not always or necessarily) be just as potent as working with a tradition such as the runes.

Does this mean that my made-up malarky is just as good as if I painstakingly researched the trappings of, say, Heathen magical practice and belief? Absolutely not. Effectiveness is only a partial basis for determining the worth of an idea; otherwise ‘pure’ scientific research without a pre-determined application would not prove to be as fruitful as it does.

Utilitarianism is only one index of worth. Beauty, love, and fascination are also important benefits of exploring the elements of tradition. Dogmatism destroys utilitarianism, beauty, love, and fascination.

When I spend hours contending with the profound culture shock that serious research into the ancient Heathen worldviews entails; when I spend hours trying to separate centuries of projection from the source material  itself; when I struggle to come to grips with, for example, the mind-bending possibility that the ancient Heathens did not have a modern understanding of the future (see Paul Bauschatz or Bil Linzie’s work) – these hours of struggle establish a profound relationship and bonding with the images, stories, and technologies of Heathen magic.

And that bonding is not easily replicated with made-up, homebrew magical systems. Even the marvelously rich systems of Dr. Dee or Aleister Crowley – life works of elaborate magical symbolism – are but the fruits of the work of inspired individuals. Whereas when one works through even the fragmentary record that remains of ancient Heathen magic, one is potentially more able to sift through the distortions of individual expression; there are more opportunities to find points of resonance, more “scurrilities of the unconscious” as Marie-Louise Von Franz would say.

The work of struggling with the historical material; with (often distortive) secondary and tertiary sources; with the ambiguity and weirdness of the ancient Heathen cultures – all of this can build a relationship, a level of deep emotional connection. This, in turn, can be activated in the performance of a magical or spiritual act, so that I am not only working with my in-the-moment gnosis, but also with the whole reservoir of my relationship to the errant fragments that remain of the Heathen cultures.

In other words, Chaos Magic proved that technical precision is necessary and sufficient, but that doesn’t mean that a totally shallow, made up set of magical metaphors is just as good as something with substance and complexity. Yes, in any individual case I can probably get equivalent magical results, but in the long run my connection to tradition can sink deep roots and I get to tap into more than just my own powers of gnosis when I work magic, so my efficiency is up and my ease with it.

When you look at what the Chaotes say, if you look at the founders of the Chaos Magic tradition, I don’t think they ever said that any frame of belief is as good as any other. What they said is that belief easily usurps the rightful role of technique, resulting in magical practice that amounts to unwitting and ineffectual self-parody. They said that we have to reflect on our thoughts and actions and be willing to step back, to have a sense of humble irony, a sense of humor: “banish with laughter!”

Now, if we are serious about applying reconstructionist principles to Heathenry then this advice is very relevant. Reconstructionism means that we have to make everything we do as Heathens provisional. We have to be willing to sacrifice cherished dogmas if our intellectual conscience demands it (for example, if we come across new information, evidence, or analysis of source material).

We also need a sense of humor for the things we took seriously but that we then discover we misunderstood. The lightness of thought this work entails is the same lightness of thought we find in the Chaos Magic approach; only the context and perhaps goals differ.

Chaos Magic = Spiritual Contempt? Naaaah

Chaos Magic wanted to cut through the ponderous layers of abstraction in which Western Magick entangled itself. It felt that magick was no longer rich with numinous delight, but rather belabored with litigious ponderousness. It surveyed a circumstance in which the magic had been lost beneath layers of rigidity, abstraction, and intellectual (sometimes literal) authoritarianism.

Chaos Magic wanted to occupy more than either armchair speculation or impotently complex ritual. Its reactive emphasis on technique, its ironic stance toward belief, has to be seen in the context of the problems Chaos Magic sought to redress.

In other words, Chaos Magic can be taken as an attempt to radically open the path for numinous delight to express itself, to cut through the choking constrictions of dogma and rigidity when they rear their ugly heads. It was reverence, not contempt, that impelled the early Chaos Magicians’ iconoclasm.

Again, this willingness to challenge received wisdom is essential for reconstructionist Heathen practice. We are so vulnerable to projecting modern assumptions onto historical lore (this seems to be particularly the case when Heathenry is used as an excuse to legitimate racism or totalitarianism). It is so tempting to declare “this material is ours,” and then fail to notice that in actuality the ancient traditions violate our contemporary mores and assumptions on a regular basis.

As such, serious reconstructionist Heathen work is about unlearning and relearning. It is a dynamic approach. The skills this approach requires are the very same skills that are cultivated by the Chaos Magic approach. Thus: Chaos Heathenry.

Dogma is Not a Guarantee of Anything

Iconoclasm goes in cycles. At its worst it is awful – witness the chaos of the Reformation, in which priceless Catholic art was destroyed by freshly-converted Protestants who thought that smashing the faces of saints would somehow get them closer to heaven. At its best, it is wonderful – Buddhist practice as taught by S. N. Goenka enables a radical, liberatory self-knowledge and fully testable propositions.

We want to preserve old works of art, and we don’t want to fool ourselves into thinking that preserving the old is the same as reforging the new. A tree that hardens and petrifies is not a living tree. All we have of the original Heathen cultures are fragments, broken pieces of petrified wood.

We cannot afford to let dogmatic attitudes impede our understanding and elaboration of these fragments. Similarly, we cannot fool ourselves into thinking that encyclopedic knowledge of these fragments is identical with the experience of living spiritual practice. We cannot confuse our subjective spiritual experiences with absolute truth. We must walk a complex and difficult tightrope; the minute we forget this we fall.

Chaos Heathenry is not perfect, finished, complete, or absolute. The minute it purports to be any of those things it will need to be overthrown. I believe the fear and anger it provokes is rooted in a mistake: the mistake of thinking that a perfect, finished, complete, absolute belief system is somehow possible or desirable.

Heathenry is doomed if we attempt to reduce it to such a system. Every time a claim to certainty is shed, a sigh of relief follows in its wake.

(I express my gratitude for good conversation with wise friends for the stimulus to write this article).

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Heathen Community Sans Belief

How on earth can a Heathen group function if it is not built on the basis of shared belief? Sounds insane, right? Let me tell you two stories.

Nightmare Heathen Group Experience

When I was a mere sapling I joined my first Heathen group. It felt thrilling and exciting, like we were creating something magical and important. Gradually, however, it went sour. Unspoken rules began to creep in. There were accepted and non-accepted beliefs and outlooks. The wrong thoughts were verboten. If you didn’t agree with the party line about what theory of the gods was right, or what the meaning of this or that symbol was, or whatever – well, that was trouble. It was a moral failing, a reason to be ashamed.

There was no room for disagreement, or even for variety of opinions. In-group dynamics started to flare up, and a race began: who could be the ‘most right,’ the ‘most TRU?’ As the tension mounted, people started leaving. Paranoia set in – perhaps there were secret traitors trying to break the group down? Individuals started sowing dissent between others: “don’t tell anyone but so-and-so said this about you and can you believe he would do that?”

The final climax? In the rush to achieve a perfected group ideology, racist politics started to creep in, along with vicious, dogmatic attacks on anyone who unwittingly said the wrong thing or expressed the wrong opinion (be it related to politics, history, religion, ritual, whatever). Everyone had to start spying on each other, so our fearless leaders said, to be vigilant that there was a uniform opinion on any and everything.

I left the group, and it took a long time to recover from the trauma of the experience. I heard the whole thing fell apart a few months later. It was very sad.

There were a lot of toxic things going on in that group, to be sure. Something that facilitated, fueled, and legitimated them was the insistence on a party line. That is to say, group orthodoxy was strongly emphasized. The group was also very practical and did a lot of activities, but they were always conditioned by the obsession with right belief. And actually, I haven’t shared the half of what went on, but we honestly just don’t need to go there.

Wonderful Heathen Group Experience

Many years later, my other half and I knew a couple of local people who were into Heathenry, and we wanted to have a group where we could enjoy sharing mutual love for things Heathenish. We both also had prior traumatizing group experiences (like the account I provided above), and we were cagey.

We talked a lot before we made the initial plunge to start a group. We weren’t sure whether there was enough sense of shared beliefs among the people we wanted to start the group with. Then we realized that belief was a poor basis for group cohesion. So we got everyone together and we said: let’s start a group with the following principles:

  1. No particular beliefs or points of faith are required of group members. Each person is free to have their own personal interpretation of the gods, the myths, whatever.
  2. We agreed to have no formalized group structure as such, but rather to run things on a volunteer basis, that is, if you want to see something happen it is up to you to make it happen.
  3. Group to be based on engaging in shared activities, whether explicitly spiritual or not, with the understanding that spiritual practices will focus specifically on Heathen myth and practice, i.e., generally avoiding syncretism.

You can see how these three principles de-emphasize orthodoxy and operationalize orthopraxy. We discovered that this worked really well, and in fact our group continues to be a lovely thing indeed. We don’t meet up these days as often as we’d like, and we have lost some people and had some new people join us, but the group is basically solid. And wonderful, nourishing, joyous, flowing.

There has never been any group conflict around opinions, ideology, or ‘correct’ interpretation of the lore. Some members of the group believe in the gods as literal beings, some as metaphors for natural forces; some members see the group as primarily meeting their spiritual needs, others their social and community needs; some members of the group see Heathenry as their primary and fundamental path; others see it as being part of a larger tapestry. We’ve been lucky to avoid any shitty politics.

Some of the best conversations we have had were supporting group members to get comfortable with the realization that they would not be criticized for being, say, agnostic. We just didn’t waste time on all that sort of thing. Love for Heathen myth and ritual doesn’t always correlate to faith in the metaphysical. Everyone participates in a sincere and joyous way and we have woven a rich web of mutual care and love around the Irminsul of Heathen praxis.

Sometimes we realize that there’s better historical evidence on which to base our rituals, and because we have no attachment to ‘right belief’ we readily just shift our language or practice, and it always feels deeper and more special with those shifts. Occasionally someone brings in a new idea, and we feel it out together, both practically and in terms of lore-coherent symbolism.

It remains important for group structure to keep our focus on Heathen spirituality, even though some of us might have other interests too (alchemy, ceremonial magic, chaos magic, whatever, we don’t care, we just try to keep clarity around our practice as being Heathen). And at the same time, on the very rare occasion when it has been personally important for someone to acknowledge, say, a Greek god, they have been able to do so and we’ve been able to make space for that. Pantheons crossed over between cultures in the old days, too…

Because there is no pressure for any kind of orthodoxy, there is room for group members to grow, to question, to revise their spiritual concepts. This freedom to learn and to change and to expand is very nourishing.

In more recent times we invited our next door neighbor to attend our Heathen gatherings. Is he Heathen? Nope. Is he an important part of our immediate community? Yep. So should he be a part of our gatherings if he would like? Definitely! He typically avoids the more formal ritual activities, but as far as we are concerned he is part of the group because relationships should be privileged over professions of orthodoxy. And you know, he fits right in.

We are generally very slow to bring new members into the group. We might really like someone and they might be an amazing fit for the group but we keep it glacial. We do try to make sure that everyone is ok with us not needing rules about ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ spiritual belief. Sometimes it is hard because we don’t want to introduce someone to the group until everyone already in the group has had a chance to get to know them, which can be logistically difficult. Sometimes that just doesn’t ever work out practically, but we do our best. A larger group is not necessarily a better group, and we could never fit all the people we like anyway (plus geographical distance is tricky, etc.).

After the trauma of my first Heathen group experience I never thought I could have a positive experience of Heathen community. By keeping our focus away from controversies of belief and firmly focused on practice and relationships, we have created a group with no ridiculous power politics (when the stakes are low the politics are vicious, as they say!). We’ve been doing ritual together for so long that now we have deep unspoken bonds and a creative joy that infuses every part of the process.

Writing about these experiences makes me realize how much I look forward to stepping our group up a little more in terms of regularity of gathering. It also makes me realize how much group safety is created when you set belief aside as a criterion of participation and focus on a) fellow-feeling; b) praxis. Unlike a pre-modern tribal community we are not interdependent for material survival, but if we were I imagine that would provide an even more compelling alternative to obsession with dogma or uniformity of thought.

Is this orthopraxic orientation a magic bullet for all the possible problems a Heathen group could encounter? Absolutely not. Has it been an important part of facilitating a lovely group culture for us? Absolutely yes.

But wait…isn’t there some kind of sleight of hand going on here? Isn’t it a shared belief that it is better not to obsess about shared belief?

Well yes, but the point of having a critical stance on belief isn’t to pretend that belief isn’t a ubiquitous part of human life. It is just to be able to step back and have a sense of productive irony about it. The minute I mistake my words about reality for reality, I am lost, and so is my community. Premodern paganisms don’t seem to have made that kind of mistake, but in modernity we do all the time, and that’s a major obstacle to building a healthy modern Heathenry. Thankfully it is also avoidable with an orthopraxic orientation.

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(Don’t forget, our first ever book is out and available!)
Print edition available at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0692984712
Ebook edition available at: https://www.amazon.com/Elhaz-Ablaze-Compendium-Chaos-Heathenry-ebook/dp/B079WCH3RK

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Belief is Not Your Friend

Why Chaos Magic and Heathenism fused together? The guiding thread is skepticism about the importance of belief.

Christianity ushered into prominence the notion that right belief (orthodoxy) is fundamental to religious or spiritual life. This notion has profoundly shaped how most modern Westerners understand spirituality and religion. However it is not a notion that is particularly relevant to ancient paganisms.

Therefore it is important for anyone who wants to explore Heathenry or other reconstructed spiritual approaches to develop a sense of irony about the importance of belief that modern Western culture still seems fettered by. Otherwise any attempt to re-enter old spiritual-historical currents will be hiddenly and thoroughly warped by the ubiquitous notion that spirituality entails the holding of beliefs.

One of the reasons that Christianity jived so poorly with Roman paganism is that the latter didn’t place much emphasis on belief. Individuals were able to have whatever theories about the metaphysics of divinity that they wanted. The important thing was not right thinking, it was participation. It was knowing the right way to make spiritual (and cultural) contributions and observations.

This is a really, really radical idea for anyone in the modern Western world. Spirituality for pagan peoples had little, perhaps nothing, to do with right belief and everything to do with what we might term ‘right participation.’

One consequence of this attitude is that syncretism was a common religious phenomenon in ancient times. Everywhere one looks, one finds cross-cultural hybrid deities. Apparently no one thought this to be problematic, perhaps because they had a sense of irony about belief and recognized that praxis was the more important thing.

(Or maybe they had no sense of irony about belief at all and never even pondered the vexing, burdensome dilemmas of early Christian moral philosophy, where for example the thought is as ‘bad’ as the deed, and the abstraction of ‘purity’ is elevated above all else).

When we review Havamal there is a section that appears to be referring to magical or spiritual (perhaps runic?) practice, here is what it says (Hollander translation):

Know’st how to write,                   know’st know to read,
know’st how to stain,                    how to understand,
know’st how to ask,                       how’st to offer,
knows’st how to supplicate,       know’st how to sacrifice?

Observe that the knowledges here referenced are not about dogma or belief, but rather about the practical dimensions of spiritual or magical activity. It might shock many modern Heathens, but there is no rider along the lines of “and if you don’t believe that Loki is anathema then I’ll never let your magic work!” It seems like anyone with the technical knowledge could participate. Right belief? Whatever, pal.

Ok, so this brings us to Chaos Magic because the stanza quoted above could be straight out of a modern Chaos Magic grimoire. Chaos Magic is the first Western occult or spiritual tradition in many centuries to openly express contempt for right belief in favor of a focus on correct technical practice. Chaos Magic is ridiculed for inventing deities or using pop culture figures as spirits, yet its methods are effective, and they are effective for the same reason that ancient pagan religions were satisfying to their adherents – the emphasis is on praxis, not belief.

Modern Heathenry is so bound up in obsession with orthodoxy. I do not believe Heathenry could be used to justify racism and other bigotries if it were not polluted by the Christian obsession with ‘pure,’ binary thought processes. The more we look at ancient paganisms, the more we find they had their moments of outrageous free-for-all. Even the runes, supposedly the unique spiritual DNA of the Germanic peoples, appear to have been cribbed almost wholesale from the Etruscans (or Romans, depending on your biases).

Chaos Magic offers a useful model (the map is not the territory!), a way out of unconscious adherence to orthodoxic thinking. Combined with the grounding of a Heathen perspective that takes reconstructionism seriously yet playfully, the yield is a model of Heathen spirituality that has at least a small chance of recapturing the character of the ancient ways (which is about as good an outcome as is likely possible, given the gulf of time and the lack of information).

It won’t be perfect, and many mistakes will be made, but that’s why we have to keep trying to keep up with the academics and the archaeologists, a problem that all Heathens, whether they have achieved a sense of irony about belief or not, must face. Better to be honest with ourselves than boxing with our own shadows.

Naturally, Chaos Heathenry is subject to any number of uninformed criticisms, often based on the notion that it professes or promotes false beliefs. Oops. We can only say that we never claimed to be anything other than what we claimed to be. There’s no shame in syncretism when it is embraced consciously, in an informed way. That’s what the ancients did, and we are reconstructing that.

This statement should not be understood as an attempt to excuse sloppy thinking or new agism. We have our own particular kind of discipline, and Loki is only as subversive as the dominant culture is repressive. Belief is in various respects an epiphenomenon, the cart put before the horse. Let’s set it back into its appropriate place, and restore playful, open-minded, and fumbling-toward-rigor praxis to its rightful role.

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(Don’t forget, our first ever book is out and available!)
Print edition available at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0692984712
Ebook edition available at: https://www.amazon.com/Elhaz-Ablaze-Compendium-Chaos-Heathenry-ebook/dp/B079WCH3RK

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Magic is a State of Mind

Milton EricksonThe famed psychiatrist and hypnotherapist Milton Erickson had an interesting theory about what it means to lose something. Erickson would say that if he lost or mislaid something there was no need to be concerned. He trusted that his unconscious mind had arranged the whole situation to his ultimate benefit. If it were meant to be, the lost item would be found again in time. If it were better never found, then he would go with that, too.

This is an extremely attractive attitude, and very magical. Such an attitude enables one to navigate the inevitable ups and downs of life with grace, aplomb, and humor. The less resistance I inflict on the web of Wyrd, the less resistance it inflicts on me. The more lightly and playfully I dance with it, the more lightness and play I will get to enjoy.

I have had numerous synchronicitous experiences in recent days that specifically emerged out of my willingness to be playful, open, and accept what is rather than try to force it into my psychologically authoritarian urge to say, “but it SHOULD!” And others have said to me, “that’s magical;” “you’re doing magic!” And I have to say, “yes, but there is no trick: magic is just a state of mind.”

Just? Of course, the word “just” in the statement above is disingenuous. As though mind was somehow secondary, second-rate, seconded into the halls of mere trifledom? If mind is a mere empty concept then so is matter; spiritualism’s demise is also materialism’s. We were not put here to ponderously get to the bottom of things, but to romance the enigma of existence – and the enigma of existence appreciates a light touch.

So when I am told that my ability to playfully-be-in-the-right-moment-at-the-right-time (a very loose English translation of wu wei I suppose) is magical, I play along, I even denigrate myself slightly, add a pinch of irony, a twist of a smirk. Because if I can help someone start to believe in magic, in the possibility that a light touch has more impact than the heaviest pressure, well that’s lovely. Because now that person is participating in a magical mode with me, and now they too have the virus of light playful being-here-now.

Milton Erickson was not a believer in grand occult theories, bizarre mystical explanations, or obscure legends. In his spare time he made a hobby of debunking psychics and mediums. Yet when we read accounts of his approach to life, we are astounded at what a consummate magician he was. Erickson, the materialist, was more clairvoyant than most clairvoyants. The lesson is simple: it isn’t what beliefs you burden yourself with. It is whether you are willing to playfully embrace whatever may come.

While I still like to do sigil magic and try to manipulate the odd scenario here or there, I am moving much more toward a model of magic that is minimal, stripped down, spontaneous. Rather than try to force reality to wrap itself around me, I am learning how to be in the right place at the right time, with the right attitude and a hint of gratitude. Empty handed magic has been a life-long goal (who needs all that pompous drama?!), and now I wonder if empty-minded magic is even better. Empty magic. Emptiness.

Ah, but that brings us to the pleroma. It brings us to the Ginnungagap. And there, in that whirling vortex of All and None, the enigma of existence herself awaits. As the Delphic Oracle enjoined, “Give up what thou hast and then thou wilt receive.” As Erickson rejoined, “what is easiest to see is often overlooked.”

Postscript:

After I wrote this article, I saved it. Then an error screen came up. “What?” I said in a leaden tone. Then I remembered, “oh if my article just got deleted, it will be to my ultimate benefit, cool!” Then I hit refresh, and the article was still there, only now it has this postscript, which makes me more satisfied with it. Even the threat of a setback (or a setback proper) can make one happier if one has the right orientation.

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Elhaz Ablaze Book is Now Available!

Long awaited, finally here: the very first official Elhaz Ablaze publication, available in both print and ebook editions. You can order the book on Amazon:

Print edition available at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0692984712

Ebook edition available at: https://www.amazon.com/Elhaz-Ablaze-Compendium-Chaos-Heathenry-ebook/dp/B079WCH3RK

Our back-of-title screed:

There are those who hear the phrase “Chaos Heathen” and instinctively know what it means. This book is for you.

There are those who hear the phrase “Chaos Heathen” and do not know what that could mean. This book is for you.

There are those who hear the phrase “Chaos Heathen” and get upset, confused, or angry. This book is for you.

Elhaz Ablaze: A Compendium of Chaos Heathenry dives into the fractal spirals of contemporary magic from a Heathen perspective. Ranging from the bizarrely philosophical to the vigorously practical, the book’s contributors – artistic and literary – dare to dismantle Chaos Magic, Heathenry, and themselves…just in time to serendipitously discover ever more novel, playful, and artful modes of magical and spiritual being.

The book explores diverse themes including rune magic; meditation; mystical interpretation of Norse mythology and deities (Odin, Thor, etc.); sigil magic; trance work; alchemy; the ideas of Aleister Crowley, C. G. Jung, and others; historical martial arts and fitness; and the philosophy of the occult.

Created by authors and friends of the notorious Elhaz Ablaze website, and lavishly illustrated, Elhaz Ablaze: A Compendium of Chaos Heathenry promises to smash a Mandelbrot set’s worth of paradigms, all the while artfully romancing the mysteries of Heathen spirituality.

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