There is a lot of very deep programming involved in getting us to trade our scare time for green paper (that certain people can make more of very cheaply). I am very interested in using magic ritual to intentionally reprogram your subconcious beliefs...so I destroyed some fiat bank notes to remind myself that my labor is the scarce valuable assett....not the fiat bank notes that are used to measure and trade it.
Also got this great (and super-weird) new book on Ceremonial Magic Rituals by Alejandro Jodorowski (the film maker who made The Holy Mountain, among others!) (And who kind of looks a bit like David in the photo above!)
...an incredible two-hour interview with Alan Moore. He tells the story of what happened in his life after he turned 40 and declared himself a MAGICIAN.
Walking home down 9th street, I spotted a ridiculously colored and patterned shirt in a thrift store window. I'm not exactly sure what compelled me to go in, because I'm not exactly a big clothes shopper, but I decided to go in and try it on. It fit perfectly so I ended up buying it.
Like in this photo Grant took of me back in my apartment after the sun set and it started getting chilly. It looks like me, but also somehow, different!
...and to watch all the joggers go by with all their crazy, varying strides and feel like we were watching some wild, cartoonish parody of animals interacting around a watering hole in the African veldt.
Having just been giving some magic chocolates by a friend, I spent the morning stretching and listening to the very excellent Terence Mckenna lecture on psychedelics from 1994.
After holding them for three days and reflecting on how they might relate to my life, later that evening I took the notes Jeffrey wrote out during our kinesiology session and destroyed them with fire, per his specific instruction!
My skeptical & scientific exploration of magic & ritual very quickly gave way to a mystical & non-rational exploration of magic.
"Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves" - Robert Anton Wilson.
The Thinker is the non-language-based, right-hemisphere of your brain. Whatever it believes is true, the Prover, the left-hemisphere of your brain will seek to parse out of reality. Tim Leary called these reality tunnels.
"Every event in the visible world is the effect of an 'image,' that is, of an idea in the unseen world. Accordingly, everything that happens on earth is only a reproduction, as it were, of an event in a world beyond our sense perception." - Wilhelm Reich
"Those who don't believe in magic will never find it." - Roald Dahl
In all my reading, I was pleasantly surprised to make the connection that magic is similar to meditation in that it's fascinating to read about or discuss, but you don't actually get any benefit from "believing" in it. You actually have to practice it. Over and over again. It's like getting a prescription from the doctor and reading it everyday instead of taking it to the pharmacist and taking the actual medicine.
If you believe magic doesn't work, it won't. You probably already live in a "reality tunnel" where belief in magic = superstition. That is the place I was coming from at the time. What's interesting about magic is that it doesn't require that you believe in it, it just requires that you actually practice it.
When you first start out practicing any kind of magic ceremony, you're probably going to feel stupid. You won't really "belive" that it's going to do anything. But if you "fake it until you make it" and stick with it a few times, and over time as you repeatedly suspend your dis-belief, what you're actually doing is practicing tricking your brain. And when you're brain gets tricked, you'll start noticing strange sychronistic events in the real world. Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves. Magic is the western-tradition of re-programming your mind.
Ever had the experience of learning a new word and then suddenly hearing it spoken everywhere? What if that happened with more than words? (Not just the Extreme song)
Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it!
TLDR: I burnt some paper, reprogrammed the non-language side of my brain, and felt better.
...a bunch of Adams magic tricks! Oh man, I remember when I was little there was a store in the mall that had an entire rack of Adams products, and every time I went to the mall with my parents I'd spin that rack and dream about how AWESOME my life would be if I could buy them. (If my memory of the packaging serves correctly, Meredith is showing off a bottle of disappearing ink, a package of those pellets that you light on fire and they make ash-snakes, and a fake packet of Juicy Fruit that snaps your finger when you try to take a piece!)
