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Making myself anew

  
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
15:29 / 10.03.03
Okay, since January I've had the vague feeling that my personality is shifting, though in to what I don't know. Now I want to take some sort of control over this and try and ensure I just don't start turning into some sad, boring middle-aged person. But I don't know how.

So I'm wondering if people have any suggestions. As I still have this six months long now unease about magic I'm looking for more psychological stuff, rather than the 'dangling upside down in a whirlpool of psychedelic crabs' approach*. I was thinking of writing a page or so of details about my idealised self (which for lack of a better idea I'm currently referring to as 'My Lady of the Flowers') and regularly fixating and improving it, trying to think to myself in a situation What would she do? can anybody suggest any other/better methods?

(* Shit, didn't mean that to be as insulting as it came out. Sorry about that!)
 
 
LVX23
16:52 / 10.03.03
I'd suggest long walks in nature and brutal self-honesty.
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
05:50 / 11.03.03
Hmmm, me and nature don't get on too well, I prefer urban walking for that reason. And 'brutal self-honesty'? I've been doing that for years...
 
 
Quantum
08:39 / 11.03.03
off the cuff suggestion-
Play your idealised self as a character. Don the Lady like a costume when you get up in the morning, act her out, see what happens. The act may quite quickly become real. It is said we all wear a persona ('Persona'- from the masks worn in Greek theatre to display the character and hide the actor) so start there. It's easier to change the mask than your Nature, but Personality comes from Persona.
But why the worry about turning into a sad, boring, middle aged person? Never gonna happen, baby
 
 
illmatic
09:09 / 11.03.03
This is a really good essay on dealing with change and suchlike:
The Cycles of Chaos

Has quite a few practical hints as well. I mean there's millions of different techniques and stuff you could try, but the problem with this is can get lost in them a bit, and miss out what's going on underneath the surface. For this, there's nothing better than a bit of brutal self-honesty as Chris suggests. A bit of quietness and writing things down might help.
I'd chuck in old favourites like a bit of divination or starting to keep a dream diary but all this stuff is up to you really.
 
 
Tamayyurt
13:09 / 11.03.03
I like Q's persona idea. I'd also suggest you write a short story further expanding on this character. Flesh her out. Make her more concrete. It'll make her easier to emulate. When you go shopping try and buy clothes you think Lady would wear. When you go out to eat, go places and order things you wouldn't normally but Lady would love. Also, once a week, you can do something that Lady would do and that you otherwise wouldn't. Example: Friday night you just stay home and watch videos... What would Lady do? Go dancing? Before you know it you will become her.

If you don't mind, I'd also like more information about this change. What's wrong with your current persona? Why do you think you're becoming dull? How are you and Lady different?

And out of curiosity: Why the unease towards magick? Did you inadvertently turn someone into a toad?

Since this is the Magick, I'm going to also suggest you work with Ochun, Santeria goddess/orisha of sex, beauty, and youth. She wears the persona of the Virgin Mary and accepts offerings of yellow flowers (carnations) and honey. So for all intents and purposes she is Our Lady of the Flowers. Give her a few gifts and I think she'll be happy to help with the makeover.
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
13:50 / 11.03.03
Thanks to all that have replied thus far, had a quick look at the website the Caliph suggested, will check that out properly tonight as it looks very interesting.

It all started going in my head when I started wearing the skirts which I've mentioned elsewhere on Barbelith, but I think that that coincided with a couple of other things, and ShortfatDyke's leaving do, so I'm hesitant to credit it just to that.

The persona of the man behind the fiction-suit, there's nothing particularly wrong with him but he doesn't take risks with his life, he plays safe and I think that this is what has led to me being quite a lonely figure, plus he hasn't been able to write anything decent for three or four months now, which is really starting to feck me off. The Lady of the Flowers isn't necessarily (not yet anyway) a personification of the things I might like to do but can't (singing and dancing especially, if I hate you I might sing at you), but more an embodiment of the qualities I like about myself but want to enhance (thinner, more attractive, more intelligent, less boorish, more articulate, better at my writing, etc). So doing stuff that the Lady would love but I wouldn't is a bit tricky, unless I just give her a load of random habits that I don't care for I don't see what I can do there. Certainly once on this path I may see things develop in her that are different to me, but I'm not sure. As you can probably tell there's a load of half-arsed half-remembered gender theory being twisted in to this too.

As for the unease towards magic... it seems counter-intuitive to what I 'know' as being the way the world works. And trying GM's 'spunking for results' course didn't really get me anywhere (you'll be glad to know I intend the Lady to be more open minded on this subject than I am). I just grew up in the standard secondary school single-science mindset where you know what will happen if you drop the lump of sodium in the bucket of water or something similar, I just find it difficult to accept that you've got to keep dropping the metaphorical lump of sodium in the water until it explodes, and that could be now or next month. I am interested in tarot, but prefer to see the psychological uses rather than the predictional side.

However, in articulating this, I realise that this pig-headed close-mindedness of mine is also a fairly recent thing, probably about six or seven months, from autumn last year, but I can't think of a reason for starting to think this way. So this is another reason for change, I'm only a mere strapling of 26, but I'm terrified that I'm letting my mind get locked into the structure that will trap me for the rest of my life, although I'm content with a large amount of my life as is, I'm conscious that I could be better, and I want to avoid locking myself off from future change somewhere down the line.

And how do you suggest I work with this Ochun? I know nothing about how one relates to a god/dess.
 
 
Tamayyurt
14:24 / 11.03.03
Well, I see what you mean about Our Lady not being really defined but that's the reason I mentioned the story. And the traits don't have to be random because you've already got the goals (thinner, more attractive, more intelligent, less boorish, more articulate, better at my writing, etc). So she likes to workout, eat healthy, dress sexier, etc.

Once a week go workout. Instead of buying a burger (or whatever) get a salad. Instead of watching TV write something. Design the character around the goals. You could say "I hate working out and I don't want to eat a fucking salad" but that's the guy behind the ficsuit talking... and if you listen to him he's already kicked Our Lady's ass. It's not going to be easy cause essentially what you're doing is deprogramming yourself and at the same time reprogramming yourself, so practice and take it slow.

About Ochun don't make it complicated. Basically what we do here in Miami is we get stone from a river and you build a little shrine to Ochun. Have yellow flowers in your house. Buy honey and pour it into a river. Keep it simple. Also these small magical acts could be one more defining thing for Our Lady since you want to become more open minded. I suggest you do a google search on Ochun and see what you get. Also, web-fu santero grant will probably provide you with better links than I could.
 
 
Tamayyurt
16:03 / 11.03.03
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
16:20 / 11.03.03
Mmmm, pretty! I like her already!
 
 
Perfect Tommy
22:14 / 11.03.03
I've been trying to think articulately on this for a few days now; I'm coming up on my Rebirth-day, so I should have some things to say about personal transformation, but I'm finding it difficult to articulate everything without it just being an annoying list of my personal history.

Biggest thing, I think, is to work small. I didn't start by moving to Portland and revamping my wardrobe--I started by cutting my hair, cleaning the kitchen, quitting smoking. Minor steps give you momentum to make the bigger ones.

I have some of the details on my blog, if you go somewhere nearish the beginning, but I really ought to rewrite a history of the metamorphosis to get everything straight.

For what it's worth on the "magick" front: you don't have to be naked in the woods wearing a ludicrous hat to be doing magic. The reason that I lump personal tranformation into magic is because it is a rejection of the idea of a stable, solid, single "personality" that most people assume we have. I strongly believe that there is an "I" which can reach into your brain and start fucking with the wiring as it sees fit, just to see what will happen: Hypothesis, test, reformulate. It doesn't matter whether that "I" is your prefrontal cortex, or your Holy Guardian Angel, or an illusion (if you're a Buddhist).

I'll try to have more later..
 
 
angel
11:35 / 12.03.03
Hey Flowers!

Just want let you know that "Magik isn't all just Wicca or Wanking", as there is actually a whole universe full of different magik traditions and ways of looking at the world, and a lot of them are really geared towards personal transformation. There is nothing wrong with either Wicca or Chaos Magik, but they don't necessarily work for everyone.

It sounds like you have connected with the ideas and image you've been offered so far, so go with that for the moment. Read lots and think lots and get out and meet people.

If you want to go along to things to check them out, but feel shy or intimidated I'd be more than happy to come along if you want company. I should get out more to things, but it's too easy to get all shy and self doubting and run away. Just a thought!

And BTW - you've never struck me as particularly vulnerable to turning into a flat cap wearing, Daily Mail reading, picket fence owning boring bastard, your brain is too cleaver and inquisitive for that.
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
12:32 / 12.03.03
I think it's souring I want to avoid in myself, the whole TWAT thing is incredibly difficult to deal with when you see the amount of lying and dishonesty the Governments of the world are openly putting out. So if everything else is a bust, this project should help keep me from going bugfuck crazy at it all.
 
 
Persephone
13:39 / 12.03.03
I hope that this isn't unhelpful, but "My Lady of the Flowers" makes me think about Mrs. Dalloway a little bit...
 
 
Vadrice
13:49 / 12.03.03
the lady in the pic makes me think of Bast.
Gaimon's fault, but what the care.

~decides to only give his one cent (Times are tight)~
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
16:29 / 12.03.03
Haven't got round to reading Mrs Dalloway yet, so don't know whether to be worried or insulted or flattered
 
 
LVX23
17:32 / 12.03.03
I think that the mid-to-late twenties can be a challenging time ingeneral. For most first-world citizens, this is the time that Concensus Reality really starts to assert itself on top of Youthful Idealism. I found that by my late twenties I had personally fallen far from the freeform, anarchistic, psychedelic jubilation characterizing my college days, and began to be steeped in materialism. The malaise of 9-to-5, commuting, day in day out, spending so much of my time doing something I really wasn't that excited about - it really started to wear me down and threaten the very magickal structures of my Self I had tried so hard to re-enforce. Ultimately, it took witnessing first-hand the deaths of two family members to destroy most of what I had become, tearing away the edifice of materialism, leaving bare the foundation of spiritualism.

So, what I'm trying to get at, Flowers, is that 1) You're not experiencing anything that different from what a lot of folks go through as they pass into "adulthood", 2) you never have to give in to the "adult" fictionsuit - you can always redefine yourself however you see truly fitting, and 3) there are still probably many events ahead of you that will no doubt cause even more instability & change in your life. But change breeds opportunity.

For now, you could try these excercises:
1) Autobiography - write down your story. You will likely see many patterns and understand more how you ended up exactly where you are.
2) Cosmology - define your view of the universe. What are the fundamental paradigms that you operate under? What is matter, what is a soul, what is birth & death, etc...

And always remember: We're all just as crazy, confused, and searching as you are.
 
 
inca
19:47 / 12.03.03

try reading NLP: The New Technology of Achievement
 
 
little big bang
06:30 / 13.03.03
yes, NLP would be a good idea. it's a lot of fun, too.

also, I recently wrote a poem along the same lines, and I'll give it to you folks (but keep it hush-hush, huh? I'm seeing if I can get it published, and they don't like it if their readers aren't the first to see it)

Activity in Poetic Metamorphosis

Read all problems first, then solve according to the directions below.

1. I want to know what I want.
2. I want never to worry about whether or not I have enough self-confidence.
3. I want to be compassionate, inspiring, and fair to every person I meet.
4. I want to be content with what I have in life, and I want to love the simple pleasures.
5. I want to be a good housekeeper, and a good host.
6. I want to be generous, and fiscally wise.
7. I want to be passionately curious about the world at large.
8. I want to be intensely innovative and enterprising.
9. I want to be able to kick ass, and to only have to use that talent in sport.
10. I want to be able to debate well without being offensive or defensive.
11. I want to approach everything with ease of mind.
12. I want to have the discipline to achieve whatever goals I set for myself.
13. I want to be naturally talented at everything.
14. I want to be modest and understand that no person is better than another.
15. I want to constantly feel the gift of being embodied,
and always act in a way that expresses my thanks for it.
16. I want to appreciate every moment, even those of trouble and strain.
17. I want everything I say, do, and think to be infused with love.
18. I want to care about those close to me without worrying.
19. I want to be conscientious without being obsessive.
20. I want to intuitively understand how things work.
21. I want to feel that there is nowhere I need to go from here
and that I am always at the beginning.
22. Essentially, I want to be perfect.

For appropriate shift in perspective, change all tense of future desire to present being. To clarify, discard all the ‘want’s and make grammatical shifts where necessary. For example, ‘Essentially, I want to be perfect,’ becomes ‘Essentially, I am perfect.’ You may shorten, make changes, and elaborate according to personal taste.

--end of poem. also keep in mind that 'grammar' comes from 'grammarye' (magickal rules/book of shadows), and we all know about spelling, don't we. logomancy, indeed.
 
 
illmatic
07:30 / 13.03.03
..the mid-to-late twenties can be a challenging time ingeneral. For most first-world citizens, this is the time that Concensus Reality really starts to assert itself on top of Youthful Idealism.

Very acute thoughts, I think. I might add that this is mirrored in traditonal astrology as the time of your Saturn return ie. Saturn returns to the same position related to the constellations, as it was at your birth, as it has a takes 28 years or so to orbit the sun. Traditionally this has conatations of limitation, mortality and so on, and then re-birth on the other side of this. You could get a chart drawn up if astrology "floats your boat".
 
 
gravitybitch
01:49 / 14.03.03
I like the poem. Only one question - what's number 23??
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
10:00 / 14.03.03
Thanks for advice thus far, NLP was something I investigated briefly once, then forgot about and moved on to something else, so I will go back and look at it a bit more in depth.

Illmatic, I don't really feel any strong belief in astronomy, and if this is all Saturn's fault then the sod has turned up about a year and a half early.

As for Ochun- I do like her, especially as her totem animal is apparently a peacock. I have a stream nearby where I live but am a bit concerned about just pouring a jar of honey into it as it's often little more than a puddle, maybe some mystical papier-mache boat doohickey is in order?

Little Big Bang- Thanks for the poem, in terms of goals it's pretty similar to what I've set out for My Lady, though maybe not quite so sporty.

And I think I just need one more person unconnected with Barbelith to mention Mrs Dalloway to me this month and then I've got a genuine bit of synchronicity on my hands!
 
 
illmatic
10:15 / 14.03.03
"You don't believe in astromony!!! B- b- but what about all those telescopes??!"

Sorry.

Well, you don't have to believe in something to find it useful. Same with tarot. It might just be a set of random variables which you can project your unconcious into, and gain insight thereby, or it might be something else. I have a major crediblity problem with astrology, but I still find it interesting - the Saturn return is one of the bits of traditional astrology that I think chime rather well with our life cycles and so on. (But like you say, he's early).
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
11:13 / 14.03.03
Arse! Astronomy, Astrology, Whatever it is I'm dubious about it. I had a tarot reading done a year or so back by a friend with lots of strong female/male duality readings coming off of it. (And water too, hmmm, Ochun= rivers?) While the sceptic in me was pointing out that there are as many male cards in the pack as female, so it was equally likely for me to pick either I did come away feeling pretty impressed.

If I knew someone who was willing to do a chart thing for me I'd give it a go (and that's not a not-so-subtle plea to you lot so don't bother offering) but I don't at the moment care enough to pay money for it. 'Important Astrology Experiment' my arse...
 
 
little big bang
16:01 / 14.03.03
iszabelle: 23 is the shift. it's what you do with the previous 22.
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
19:50 / 02.04.03
Blimey, maybe there's something in this coincidence thing after all...
 
 
Perfect Tommy
00:41 / 03.04.03
It's always a shock when it actually works, isn't it?
 
 
Salamander
01:47 / 03.04.03
My humble suggestion is to try to supplement your own brutal self honesty with that of others, and pay attention to little things, sometimes reaching for the big star in the sky we stumble on little rocks, watch your step, HEY! pay attention! oops... ow.
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
08:33 / 03.04.03
I'm just thinking, The Hours/Mrs Dalloway, the woman with the flowers in The Filth, Me accidentally choosing a flower-related Gods name for my ID a while back, if you want to get tenuous there's the link from my current name through the Manics to 'Small Black Flowers that grow in the sky'... Still the links are only there if you look for them.
Maybe I should ask the Gods if they can help me finally get over my hayfever...
 
 
Quantum
12:04 / 03.04.03
"I am interested in tarot, but prefer to see the psychological uses rather than the predictional side."
They are one and the same. I see Tarot as a psychological mirror, reflecting things about yourself you may not see alone. The predictive side simply shows you what will happen if you keep doing what you're doing- it's like when your mother says 'don't do that, you'll hurt yourself' and you do it, and hurt yourself. Psychological prediction.

PM me if you want to know about psychological Tarot, else I'll just clog up your thread
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
11:55 / 27.06.03
OK, at the moment I'm dabbling with runes and have done two reading for myself, which I've blogged here and here. My analysis of the cards isn't that good, which is why I'm bring this up.

I've looked at the runs threads in the Magick a bit but it's all somewhat confusing as my text seems to have a completely different order to what you lot are using (my reference has Mannaz as 1, where in here it's 20).

I'm also not that impressed with the slant of the writer or his descriptions of the values of each card. Can anyone recommend an equivelent to '78 Degrees of Wisdom' for rune cards?
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
21:35 / 29.06.03
Before the fog of extreme drunkeness overtakes me I just want to thank whoever it was tonight that told me that just because Lada and Oschun represent the same thing from different traditions they'd still get mighty pissed if I treat them as the same thing. Suddenly a lot of things in the last month or two make sense.

But if anyone has got book ideas I'd be supremely grateful.
 
  
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