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Sigil working to expand site

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18:18 / 27.02.03

Suddenly struck me how many people are involved in this site, how many people use it as a genuine means of exploring and sharing these ideas. Then I had an idea of extending the Invisibles influence and using the same trick GM did - a synchronised sigil working aimed at the growth of the site, perhaps to double the membership or something. Who thinks this would be a good, or even practicable, idea?

18:25 / 27.02.03

Ye ghods, would you want to...? It's almost twice as big as it was when I first started here, less than ten months ago, and the quality has arguably declined. Certainly the growth has been far from smooth. Be careful what you ask for.

You're new around here, aren'tcha?

Less searchable M0rd4nt

18:26 / 27.02.03

Intriguing idea, trumanbuckley. I'm sure a group sigil working would be do-able 'coz it's been done before (as in the whole Peace Mango deal, the board's friendly neighbourhood servitor, Dabh Surgot, and others).

However, do we really need to double the board's membership? There's been a steady influx of excellent n00bs ever since the board re-opened.

18:27 / 27.02.03

Gee, I don't know if that's such a good idea...

This bulletin board is pretty big as it is. I mean, 1832 members? And, even if not all 1832 actively partcipate, still a hell of a lot of people post to Barbelith.

And there's no guarantee that more people will necessarily make for a better board.

19:03 / 27.02.03

Instead of more members, what about a sigil working to get the Board more money to function, ensuring a long healthy life of Barbelith.com? Last I heard, this site is always in financial jeopardy (running costs, site hosting, etc.).

21:05 / 27.02.03

Ha! Like the idea about getting more money for the site. Don't see why this wouldn't work, and it seems as reasonable as any other suggestion?

Stone Mirror - new around here, but let's just say I've been hovering around the margins of the site for some time, just waiting for the right moment . . .

(that sounded more mysterious than I meant it to!)

22:00 / 27.02.03

Barbelith does not have a monopoly on the types of thought expressed on its pages. There is no reason why those who are interested in expanding the influence of these ideas cannot create their own message boards, mailing lists, webzines, etc. At some point growth would necessitate splinter cells, which is a far better means of serving the quality and disemination of ideas.

However, the point must be made that a continuation of Grant Morrison's working is not the way to go about any kind of expansion. Many readers of The Invisibles were not aware that they were the subject of any kind of transformative operation, and thus unable to give their consent to his aims. Ethically questionable workings are never the way forward.

12:32 / 28.02.03

I wouldn't be up for this personally for the same reason I'm careful about who I tell about the board or where else on the web I post about it - I like this place a great deal and I wouldn't want it flooded with dickheads. Not that this is necessarily gonna happen but you never know....

Do you think the quality (in this froum) had gone down, SM? I think it varies - sometimes it's a bit ropey but frequently it's fantastic.

We could always hunt down Lothat Tuppan on the astral and drag him back.... (joke!)

13:24 / 28.02.03

Many readers of _The Invisibles_ were not aware that they were the subject of any kind of transformative operation, and thus unable to give their consent to his aims. Ethically questionable workings are never the way forward. – reflect

Similarly, many posters on Barbelith, who put a certain amount of their own energy into the board by participating, would not be aware of this supposed sigil working affecting the board. Thus, they also would be unable to give consent to this. And that's totally wack.

13:29 / 28.02.03

We could always hunt down Lothat Tuppan on the astral and drag him back.... (joke!)

I second that!!

14:21 / 28.02.03

I'm all for the growth of the site but not exactly in membership. What if we expanded in other areas like the zine or attempted to stretch or read beyond cyberspace like publishing a Barbelith anthology (I know we tried this once before but we shouldn't give up. It's a great idea.)

16:42 / 28.02.03

Rather than literal expansion of the site, I'd suggest looking to the underlying theme of fertility and extropy. Spring is coming soon, after all; what about a resonator for enhancing posters' creative energies?

(I wonder if something along the Fotamecus line would work in this case. He appears to work by pulling time from where it isn't wanted, and placing it where it would be useful; I wonder if those in need of reflection and judgment of the world-as-it-is could donate energy to those who need manic artist power, and thus achieve zen-like calm in the exchange.)

23:14 / 28.02.03

We have no way of knowing that whoever was behind *Lothar Tuppan* isn't still here, either as a lurker or another fictionsuit. Regardless: his assumed absence is irrelevant to the board's continuing quality. Would you mind elaborating on this issue, Stone Mirror?

00:27 / 01.03.03

Good call, Imp! I was thinking along similar lines, actually.....

05:25 / 01.03.03

I think that the idea of splinter cells is a really good one. As is the idea of spring (for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere - maybe fruitfulness and harvest for those in the Downbelow Half?) and extropy.

The other thought I have is that the site maybe doesn't need expansion so much as deepening... more stable roots (although suddenly that seems like a contradiction of what needs to be done. but I'm not sober, so what do I know?)

18:02 / 01.03.03

I'd also be interested to hear more from Stone Mirror concerning the quality of the Magick Forum. How would you like this place to improve? What would you like to see more of?

Tryphena Absent

15:52 / 02.03.03

This forum was part of the attraction of Barbelith when I first arrived because people were actually talking, in great detail, about actual workings and there was none of that hehehehehe MM, BB, that you get all over the place and makes me quite sick and plus the bacground wasn't black with little stars or something.

I've always felt there was a little too much concentration on sigils. As someone who works purely with an aspect goddess nowadays and involves ritual workings in magickal life around twice a month at the most I find sigils distinctly uninteresting and, a part of me wants to say, unethical. Hecate won't let me play with sigils.

Could we not widen the magick we discuss so that it includes some other stuff? We've lost our major shamanic influence (and I mourn that) and we're not doing particularly well on the goddess front. I'm with Iszabelle- we need some stable roots.

16:28 / 02.03.03

I have to agree that I find the emphasis on sigils and servitors really boring. People seem to rely on sigils & servitors to deal with problems instead of looking at the underlying causes of the situation that brought the problem into being, and dealing directly with the problem themselves.

Anna: I'd love to see some Goddess-oriented threads too. Let's start some up!

19:42 / 02.03.03

I'm interested in sigils though because of their economy of form - going through a big "less is more" phase at the moment! I admit that sigils and servitors are more defensive than assimilative, but I just can't help liking the idea that your desires and needs can be boiled down to an abstract form. I think in many ways, subconsciously, the creation of a sigil demonstrates how any problem or desire is not insurmountable.
Anna - I agree that there seems to be less emphasis in the site on actual workings, but I haven't been here that long to comment fully.

19:46 / 02.03.03

Well, I've got several issues, and I've brought them all up elsewhere and on a number of occasions.

For starts, there's waaaaay too much credulity around here. From apprentices to mysterious "masters" "freaking out" at trivial card tricks, to overabundant "let's hear him out" extended to obvious know-nothing "ippssissimi", people are entirely too ready to believe any damned thing around this place.

There's likewise too much "C'mon, kids! Let's cast a spell!" for my tastes. I'm more interested in sharing information, which I've attempted to do a fair bit of. But it takes energy, and I've got to ask myself whether it might be more usefully expended elsewhere.

I'm not fond of group workings for the most part, and for the same reasons that I wasn't fond of group projects in school. There are always weak links for whom other people end up taking up slack. As a result, I don't do group workings except on a very selective basis.

The flood of newcomers here hasn't improved any of these issues a whit, as near as I can tell. Bringing in more doesn't sound like a worthwhile endeavor to me, and attempting to raise the "quality" in some unarticulated way seems silly. Are you going to create a servitor to raise the general level of intelligence, lower gullibility, increase initiative and improve literacy? We can cast a sigil to give folks who haven't had the initiative to crack anything heavier than a comic book the intellectual background to understand Crowley, how's that sound? Good luck to you on all of those.

It's interesting that the initial poster in this thread mentioned GM's wank-omancy effort to increase readership of The Invisibles. Anyone (other than me) happen to recall how that worked out for him in the longer run?

20:14 / 02.03.03

No. How did it work out for him?

04:39 / 03.03.03

The Invisibles was accused of dumbing down to the level of its increased readership. Highly arguable. There are many who thought the quality improved, resulting in better characterisation and more involving narrative. Neither of these reflect my problems with it;

1. It's coersive. Intended to transform the reader in a non-consensual manner.

2. It's the work of a poor magician, consumed by his own ego and fear.

Stone Mirror: I would also like to see a wider spread of ideas, explored in more depth. More rigourous analyses and a greater consideration for the implications of different types of work. More self-critique. Perhaps we should have a week in which we agree not to start new topics, and instead trawl back through the archive of threads which bear more thought?

09:29 / 03.03.03

Hmmm I agree with some of the criticisms expressed here, but I might add at it’s finest it’s the best place on the Web to exchange information about Magick, IMHO. Most of the other spaces I know of don’t have the depth and creativity of Barbelith at it’s finest, and are caught up in a lot of inter-order oneupmanship or feuding.

I definitely know what you mean about the emphasis on sigils. They’ve been critqued here before – see this thread for instance. It’s one of the problems with Chaos Magick becoming “normalised” ie. a brand in the spiritual supermarket - with sigils and servitors as the prominent tropes. I suspect though, that if you stick with sigils they’ll cause you just as much growth and thought as anything else – they’ve never worked for me in the “have a wank, win a million quid” way anyhow (unfortunately

), I’ve had to think a lot about my desires/conditioning/hang-ups etc. I suppose the problem is there such a “fast food” technique that they don’t encourage this deeper engagement, as other systems do. They’ve certainly got under my skin anyway, but I recognise this is personal to me. Faliures with sigils caused me to look at other things, and I've since gone back to them.

That’s another thing I like about this place, btw. Multiple voices – not tied to any over-arching system etc. I’d say if you are bored with all the sigilly type stuff, starts some threads about what really gets you going. What is it that really fascinates you, that you really want to know about? This is what I’ve tried to do in the recent threads I’ve kicked off.

14:16 / 03.03.03

No. How did it work out for him?

I can't believe that I'm the only one who's responding to this. Sigh.

Morrison wound up in the hospital for several months, recovering from (as I recall) viral pneumonia, and was close to death at a point or two. He viewed that as a direct (albeit unintended) consequence of his experiment.

See? This is just what I'm talking about. "trumanbuckley" thinks it'd be a fine, fine idea to emulate GM's actions without even knowing how they wound up; it's all word o' mouth, and no investigation: "I heard Grant made a sigil to get The Invisibles more readers, and it worked!"

There can only be "a wider spread of ideas, explored in more depth" if there are sufficient numbers participating who have both ideas and depth. I'm not persuaded that this is the case, and given the rather poor return I've gotten for my efforts so far, I'm not really dying to spearhead this particular renaissance.

14:34 / 03.03.03

...it’s finest it’s the best place on the Web to exchange information about Magick...

Speaking of damning with faint praise. McDonald's is the best place in the world to buy a Filet o' Fish sammidge, too. But would you want one?

Barbelith's "finest" have gotten progressively fewer and farther between, as near as I can tell. What's going on now, hm? "Let's all make a wish day"? This thread? Another doubtless abortive attempt at kick-starting a foray through Kraig's Modern Magick?

Not to put too fine a point on it, but what's in any of this for me? Why should I want to invest the energy?

Tryphena Absent

15:22 / 03.03.03

Well then, don't.

Yeah Lt.(nice name btw!!), I agree, this forum is brilliant for the exchange of info about magick. In eight years of online loving it's the only place where I actually seriously will talk about this kind of thing(... not including a guy with a Kali thing I met online a while ago. We got on because neither of us used wiccan greetings).

I suppose that I don't start threads because I rarely have questions I want to ask here. My area of magick doesn't appear to be widely experienced within this forum despite the occasional powerful invocation by one of its members. Plus I've never really had any questions about it- I always just know what to do when I think about it. Well developed instinct gal, that's me, tally ho everyone and make that magick work!

As for Barbelith's finest-- we've lost a hell of a lot of people in the last eight months but shouldn't we be working on making ourselves the collective finest? I mean just look at our collective knowledge, we're fucking gods baby. *snigger* Let's transcend our godlikeness and step on to the higher plain... or just, you know, learn more.

Ooh ooh and also, the idea of no new ideas for a week and actually taking some time to analyse what's been said, sounds like a very good notion.

15:49 / 03.03.03

Well then, don't.

This, in fact, is my plan.

15:50 / 03.03.03

... we've lost a hell of a lot of people in the last eight months but shouldn't we be working on making ourselves the collective finest? – Anna

It might help, instead of casually dismissing those who clearly see problems with things as they stand now, to sit down and really think hard about why the Magick forum has lost "a hell of a lot of people in the last eight months."

You can't get better if you can't keep knowledgeable, aware people around.

15:55 / 03.03.03

SM - well, fair enough. I think you’re making some valid points. If you think that you’ve made some attempts at info-sharing that haven’t been reciprocated there’s no reason to continue, I guess. I think the issue of quality information is something you’re going to be faced with on an open forum with people of differing interests and levels of experience, especially if you’ve already studied/worked with a particular system - you probably won’t be able to replicate that level of detail and interest (This is one of the reasons I don’t go much about my chosen discipline, btw ) However, you might meet a kindred spirit or two. What I get out of this place instead is the interaction with others, a way to see how other practicioners (or even non-practioners) are thinking about magick. Any perceived weak threads are just part of the ebb and flow of an on-line community to me. It’s more than compensated by the good stuff, some recent examples might be Reflect’s Barbelith thread or the responses to the “Body Alchemy” thread. These are just my feelings though and I recognise that you might not feel the same.

Can I ask you what you’d like to talk about?

(I might add I hope this thread doesn’t degenerate into a scratchy “defend the magick forum” row).

Cheers Anna, will respond more tomorrow.

16:11 / 03.03.03

Can I ask you what you’d like to talk about?

Over the past better-part-of-a-year, I've started numerous threads and made large numbers of comments on "what I wanted to talk about." I've written on Crowley, sigilization, meditation, qabalah, etc., etc., mostly on threads which garnered (at best) a reply or two from the more serious and knowledgeable people on here (who are also getting to be fewer and farther between), and nothing more.

On the other hand, threads initiated by an "ippssissimus" opining that the world's about to end and that we should all become his students ASAP are taken with great seriousness and any attempts to bring some degree of common sense to matters is pretty much shouted down.

I think Anna has the right idea, frankly.

Tryphena Absent

16:29 / 03.03.03

People come and go. Magick is something you grow in and out of and people's tastes change. In a forum like this and, actually, on Barbelith generally you can't expect people to stick around past their due date. They'll be here if they need it and if not they'll go.

18:05 / 03.03.03

Well, on one hand I totally agree with Anna – people DO come and go, for various reasons. Can't make people stay if they aren't feeling the place.

On the other hand, maybe if folks sat down and really thought hard about why the Magick forum has lost "a hell of a lot of people in the last eight months," there wouldn't be so much "Gee, what happened to so-and-so? I really wish so-and-so would come back..." People would perhaps then take it upon themselves to make this a place where people like so-and-so will stick around without getting bored or disgusted.

Saying "Well, it's just fine if you don't want to stay" is enough for some people, and that's cool. Like Lt I, I am also hoping things don't get nasty – people hitting out defensively & attacking instead of being open to criticism has been a large part of the problem here recently. Yet I'm more curious about questions like:

Why are people leaving/getting bored/getting disgusted?

How can we minimize or put a stop to habits, processes or behaviors that cause more advanced practicioners to walk away, leaving neophytes without genuine feedback or information (or worse yet, misinformation from shysters or deluded wannabe "masters")?

Are we willing to risk alienating newbies in order to restructure the forum so as to attract more in-depth, advanced practicioners? How much restructuring can actually be done with the text-on-screen bulletin board we have to work with?

I appreciate Stone Mirror's feedback; he's given us something to think about.

06:41 / 04.03.03

Babooshka - I don't know why people leave this space, or if indeed that many people have for good, actually, I hope not anyhow. Might just be a general busyness of life thing. I think the only thing I can do to make the board a better space is write, start a few threads, about what interests me, things that I'd like to hear other people's ideas and thoughts on. If people bite, the good, if not then so be it. Same goes with responding to other people's stuff, sometimes I feel like I've a valid response, something I feel clueless or can't be bothered. Sometimes, I admit, I might just like the sound of my own voice.

In terms of on-line habits and stuff, I tend to be non-confrontational but that's because I find on-line arguments really draining and pointless. Normally you agree with 9/10's of what the person's saying anyhow, but you've fallen into defending a polarised position. Plus I saw another few spaces I liked get wrecked because people couldn't get off their high horses.

To go to back to Stone Mirror - it's a shame you didn't get the response you were looking for, no reason to keep contributing if the feedback is lacking. I've have had some good feedback and made some good connections here so I'm going to keep on for now. I disagree with you about Joe though, I felt he was largely shouted down/ had the piss ripped out of him. He certainly put a cat among the pigeons though.

08:28 / 04.03.03

There are many reasons for leaving. Babooshka, Illmatic and Stone Mirror are all right, in a way. However, there were also a couple of instances where people left due to continual harrassment. Either on the board or via private message or e-mail. Sometimes by well established posters.

It's behaviour that is very difficult to prove: highly subjective. I've offered a couple of ideas on ways of making sure these situations can be dealt with, and even if they don't take on Barbelith as a whole I feel we still need a system in place for the Magick forum. The stakes are that much higher here.

13:11 / 04.03.03

I find it fascinating, and encouraging, that a pretty light-hearted idea has provoked so much in depth soul-searching about different people's attitudes, not just to the forum, but to the place of magick in their lives. At this stage I could claim that this was my intention all along! (But then that would be a lie - it's serendipity at the very least though.)

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