liber electrica

I needed to do some art that was not work and do it traditional and not just digital to relax a bit.

Page of Cups. Art by Taylor Hultquist-Todd, from Myths & Legends: An Illustrated Tarot.

As punishment for his cruel rejection of the nymph Echo, Nemesis cursed Narcissus to fall in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. Unable to take his eyes away from the beautiful youth he did not recognise as himself, Narcissus stayed by the side of the water until he wasted away. 

Sometimes things happen. ‘The universe consists of non-simultaneously apprehended events.’ And you create a narrative after the fact to explain it. And identity is a narrative we tell ourselves. Sometimes it starts with a name; sometimes a thought or a feeling that feels like it doesn’t belong to you? So you give them a name. Or they give themselves a name. A name has meaning. A name is a sigil. The name you use impacts how people interact with you. At work, you’re Dr. Robert Smith. But I presume you would expect to be treated very differently, perhaps with more casual familiarity, if you introduced yourself as Bobby. So a name has meaning and the power to influence the types of interactions we engage in, socially, professionally, privately. 

Naming a person, place or thing, makes something like a bag of it. And a name with a purpose in its bag is a servitor. Like The Narrator, whose purpose is to tell stories about us, to help us make sense of things. To catalog and organise information. A servitor with no expiration date begins to fill their bag as a result of lived experience, with attachments and aversions, categories of ‘self’ and ‘other’, ideas about ‘this is me; this is not me’. Is this what Jung called the process of ‘individuation’? That’s how I understand it. If that servitor is isolated from the world, they are a self-aware tulpa, an alter, or an ‘emo servitor’ as one transient teacher put it. But when they interact with other people, who know them by their own name, the servitor is in effect uploaded into a collective consciousness, as information about them is stored socially. Now they are an egregore. A human being is an egregore with a biological template. This applies to singlets as well as plurals, and to alters, whether or not they’re fronting.

In traditional Irish music, a tune can be an egregore. You start with a progression of chords? I don’t know. I don’t play. You repeat them, changing them slightly each time. Then you name the result. You now have a sigil. You play the song over and over again, for yourself or other people. It makes you feel alive, or sad, or nostalgic, or optimistic. You have a servitor, a song with a name and a function. This is good. Most songs are servitors. But over the years, you teach it to other musicians. And they in turn teach it to the musicians with whom they come into contact. You play it in sessions. You experiment with it. You change this note here, or the way you strum the guitar or the fingering on your flute. You play it in sessions. You improvise. The name of the song changes slightly in one pub with an inside joke, but it’s the same song, a flexible, living song, with many variations, stored socially in the repertoires of traditional musicians far and wide. 

My/Our categories of ‘self’ and ‘other’ are complicated. We get confused about who we are. Or we feel certain we aren’t who we were merely a moment before. We’re ‘fragmented’? But fragmentation seems to imply a bias towards unity of thinking and operating as one whole being. A unity that doesn’t exist in the world on a macro scale, so how could it be reflected in every individual body? And why should it? Oneness, wholeness, is just as illusory as multiplicity. 

If you look carefully at a painting, you see many narratives. You see the picture as a whole; you look further, and you see a whimsical brush stroke here in the blue of the water, a slow and deliberate one there to give shape to something solid, a splash of yellow-orange to depict the reflection of the Sun, a careful, contained stippling of pollen or light reflected in a subject’s eyes.  

An informal essay on Alterhumanity and the internal debate of determining the origin of an identity. This essay is written entirely from the lens of my experiences and personal philosophy on identity and consciousness; it is meant to be a work of self exploration rather than any sort of guide or persuasive argument. (Though, there is a lesson the be gleaned from it). 

Read time: 10-15 minutes

Content warnings: discussion of death and religious trauma, discussions of the nature of reality

Written by: Xeno

In my opinion, none of our alterhuman narratives are some kind of Universal Truth. Neither is the Western transgender narrative, or the inclusive plurality narrative, or the exact categories used to define mental illness. All of these things are constructs, models, and tools. They are ways of viewing ourselves and the world, and can be extremely helpful in doing so. These ideas are based in meaningful experiences and legitimate psychology, but it would be possible to create different labels and models based on the same information. I don’t think there’s any model that could perfectly describe the experiences of every single person on Earth. Some models are more inclusive and supportive than others (for instance the “gender is a spectrum” mindset vs. the traditional gender binary), but none are perfect. We all craft boxes, words and stories to help our existences make sense, and the fact that these ideas are socially constructed does not make them illegitimate or “fake”.

In my opinion what this arbitrariness does mean is that people should be allowed to define themselves as they see fit, even if their definitions fall outside of the typical community models (which include concepts like species identity, kintype vs.heart-type, shifting, and voluntary vs. involuntary). We should acknowledge the choice that individuals have to adopt or reject labels, or to choose between them when there’s ambiguity. Using labels like “otherkin” and “therian” is optional, using the “I was born this way” contruct is optional, defining one’s traumatic plurality through the medical lens is optional. These models change over time - the way therianthropy is processed today is different from how “weres” viewed themselves a few decades ago. And if someone wanted to define themself based on the old “were” narrative, I see no problem with that.

We don’t need to compromise the models themselves - aside from gradual organic changes definitions can be maintained. But when it comes down to an individual, I support freedom and choice. I didn’t choose to be multiple nonhuman species, but I can choose to prefer simple terms like “nonhuman” over “polytherian”. If someone has experiences that fit within both the nonbinary and genderqueer labels, but they choose to only call themself genderqueer, I’m not going to contradict them. Self-definition is something that belongs to us as individuals, and it’s Power. No one can tell me based on their own experiences that I must be *factually* [insert label], because none of this has a universal or factual basis. We have a common language because the models we have make sense for most of us and allow for community and communication. But I have no right to push the way I define MY experiences on to someone with similar experiences (ex. “I define my attraction to men, women, and nonbinary people as bisexual rather than pan, so you need to do the same!”).

Generally questions like “Are people who have voluntary experiences still otherkin?” are answered as if the concept of “otherkin” is a physical, provable truth. If anything, the more accurate question is “Should people with these experiences be included within the otherkin model, or should a separate model be created?” So many people subconsciously believe that a therian is *objectively* a therian in some material way, that there is a mythical Essential Truth that sets our experiences and internal realities in stone. And unfortunately some of these people belief THEY are the arbiters of that truth, a belief that is the very foundation of gatekeeping.

Due to my philosophy on social constructs I am very much a “live and let live” kind of person. If someone speaks for the whole community and says “otherkin is a coping mechanism” - then sure, I’ll respectfully point out that that definition is not congruent with how the majority of otherkin define it. But if someone says “My kintype originated from coping, but my experiences are most similar to otherkin so I choose to use that label and spend my time in that community” I’ll say “Sure, do what works for you. It’s none of my business, it’s your life and I don’t know you better than you know you”. Some people will insist that someone is “actually” a therian or “actually” otherhearted, but ultimately I believe there is no “actually”. Only subjective experiences and the way we choose, collectively AND individually, to define them.

Step 1: start to meditate daily. This is not particularly complicated and will do you a world of good both in your magickal and mundane life. [here] is a no-nonsense video in which some breath control and meditation techniques are explained by some navy seals.

Step 2: Go out and get 2 notebooks, they can even be google docs or word documents. Doesn’t matter what they are so long as you have 2 distinct places to write shit down. Use notebook 1 as a dream journal and stick with it daily. Write down as much detail as you can, and even if you don’t remember dreaming write down “I do not remember any dreams I had yesterday night”. Notebook 2 is your magic notebook. In this you will take very detailed notes about any operation you do, the results, analysis of any failure that may occur, etc. Treat this thing like a lab notebook from a science class: to get anything out of this in the future you’ll not want to slack off when something works. 

Step 3: It is often recommended in posts like these to begin the process of learning 2 divination systems. Yes, 2. One of these should be some esoteric shit like Tarot (I recommend the classic Rider-Waite-Smith for beginners) or I Ching, and a yes/no or more straightforward system like Pendulum or Geomancy (which is super cool to learn because it can become unto itself a system of magick as you become more advanced, for example this). Learning 2 systems in this way has a few advantages, such as having a reliable system to determine if your magick is working as you expect (and if it is not, why), as a gauge of events to come, and potentially communication with entities that arise throughout the course of your work. 

Step 4: Read Oven Ready Chaos [PDF] by Phil Hine. It’s super short, pretty funny, and to the point. The key takeaways from this text are methods of attaining gnosis and the SPLIFF technique of sigilization, which is in theory the most basic discreet unit of magick. 

Step 4.5: While you’re downloading Oven Ready Chaos, Dig around on Chaosmatrix [here]. Some of the articles can be a bit silly (bonus points if you can find the story about a dancing bear helping you get a job), but if you use your best judgement and treat everything on there as though a strange old man were yelling it to you across a busy street, there are some real gems. 

Step 5: Begin to apply the above tips and tricks alongside the methods contained within Oven Ready Chaos to shape reality around you. In your explorations, you may find other systems of magick from which chaos magick “technology” [referred to as tech, these are the spells and techniques adapted from other systems or developed within the chaos magick paradigm for use by the magician], which you are encouraged to explore. The emphasis in this step is application- practice is so much more useful than theory at almost all levels of experience in chaos magick. 

Step 6: You’ll eventually want to learn a method of “Banishing”, which is the fancy name for a ritual act that helps protect you from any magickal dust, grime, wear, and tear that you may pick up along the way. The best banishing procedure for beginners is likely the Gnostic Pentagram Ritual, which can be found [here]. It’s Great for beginners and experienced magicians alike because it’s surprisingly effective and pretty fun- who doesn’t like to spin in circles and say IEAOU while drawing pentagrams in the air?

So what does this all look like in practice? 

Lets say you wake up one morning and remember a distinctly vivid dream. You roll over in bed, grab your notebook, and write down the gist of the dream and any important personal symbolism that may have appeared. After this, you go and put on a pot of coffee. While you wait for it to brew you sit quietly in the kitchen and practice box breathing technique until the coffee is done. Over coffee and a bowl of cereal, you grab your shiny new tarot deck and draw a card, both to familiarize yourself with the meanings of the cards and to get a general overview of how the day may go. Let’s say you draw the 3 of Pentacles Reversed, indicating that there may be some problems at work today. Seeing this, you decide that you should do some quick magick to make yourself more agreeable to your coworkers, and decide on making a sigil using the hot new SPLIFF method you just read about. You decide on the phrase “I will have positive interactions with my coworkers today” and turn it into a glyph, use a breath control technique to induce gnosis, and fire away. You ditch the sigil and get the process out of your mind, then go about the rest of your day. You avoid any conflict at work, and have a surprisingly pleasant day, even with those coworkers that you aren’t super fond of. Once you get home, you write down in your magick journal what card you drew, how you interpreted the card, what you did about it, and if what you did worked. Before bed, something in your gut feels slightly off, so you decide to perform the Gnostic Pentagram Ritual before getting into bed. You run through the script and feel much better after the fact, making a quick note of this in your magick journal for the day. You go to bed, satisfied that you’re on your way to becoming a competent chaos magician. 

This has been Part 1 in what will hopefully be a long series of posts about doing practical magick and how to actually approach systems of magick in an effective way. Feel free to drop asks with any questions.

Orphic- mysterious and engraving behind ordinary understanding.

Eunoia - beautiful thinking: a well mind

Caelum - the shy/the heaven

Moonbow - also known as a lunar rainbow, occurs at night when light from the Moon illuminates falling water drops in the atmosphere.

Moonbroch - a luminous ring around the moon popularly regarded as an omen of bad weather.

Kalon - a beauty that is more then skin deep.

Nesh - soft, tender and delicate.

Leal - faithful and true

Gramary - magick and enchantment.

Noetic - of or relating to the mind or thinking.

Whist - to hush or silence, to still or become silent.

Sweven - a vision seen in sleep: a dream.

Ferly - something unusual, strange, causing of wonder or terror.

Palsy walsy - very friendly in a artificial way.

Abscond - to secretly depart or hide oneself.

Ludic - full of fun and high spirits.

Lucent - soft,bright or radiant.

Mimp - to speak in a prissy manner.

Sabaism - the worship of stars.

this is my cursed jug i have that bleeds when you pour water in it. 

The glaze on the inside and outside of the Jug has developed cracks which when the Water is added causes the darker red clay under the white glaze to absorb the water. This in turn makes the Jug “Sweat” or “Bleed”. But it also compromises the integrity of the Jug as the Clay inside is becoming soggy as it absorbs the water. It’s also a breeding ground for Bacteria and Mold as the Clay can’t properly dry inside the glaze.

So it’s either going to fall apart and shatter into a bizillion little pieces.

But like

“A collection of common glyphs of the poorly understood Memeorite civilization of the Second Silicon Age. Memeorite glyphs possess multiple conflicting interpretations and a complexity of meaning impossible to capture in a few short words. These are rough translations only.”