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Methods of forgetting

14:29 / 23.05.03

As a fledging apprentice of a magician the biggest stumbling block I've come across is how to forget my intention.

I've got the design/creation of the sigil sortted (play with dingbats or compression, depending on the lenght of string) and the firing, well that's pretty easy too but let's not dwell on that part. No it's the forgetting/letting go of the initial desire I held.

Now I don't know if this is because I have a fairly good memory or that the desires I'm sigilling for are fairly big and I dwell on them a lot.

So what can I do? Sigil for less important desires to begin with? Ask someone else to energise a sigil for me and not tell them what it's for (other than confirming it is not harmful to anyone or anything) and not ask for confirmation that they've done it.

How do the more experienced memebers of the board cope, is there a trick or technique I could learn to empty my mind of the intention?

Your thoughts and advice please...

15:33 / 23.05.03

Buddhism: Desire is the source of all suffering.

Zen: emptying the mind of all thoughts allows one to live in the NOW.

Practice meditation. Its like exercising muscles you need to do the forgetting. The eastern stuff comes in real handy for this sort of thing.

17:00 / 23.05.03

Well, getting stoned a lot? Only sigilising when you're really busy? Damning the whole thing as a load of bollocks and taking up Enochian?

Playful attitude might be important here seeing what happens - meditation techniques might put you here, like Cusm says. Generally developing a critical perspective on your self and your desires. Spare's "neither-neither" idea might help to pull apart desires in a helpful way. (See Steven Mace's book "Stealing the Fire from Heaven", recently reprinted)

In a broader sense, I wonder if it isn't forgetfulness but unselfconciousness that makes things work? I've met a couple of "newbies" to magick who've had amazing successes, which have stopped after a period of time, when they've kind of caught on. This is why more ritualistic approaches have success maybe - all the trappings make you believe in it more, perhaps? Less doubt = more success, maybe.. . I mean, I don't have to go in gnosis or forget anything to manifest a result whenever I use a divination system - it just happens, and I'm so sure it's going to happen that I don't even think about it. Then again, perhaps it's the "distance" of the divination system from my desire that allows it space, free from lust of result, to work. What do people think of this idea?

I've certainly been through the stage of wanting to manifest results just to prove it to myself - I ended up just following up my interest in other areas of magick. Still have a funny relationship with sorcery today, though I think my other experiments have increased the likelhood of it working.

18:47 / 23.05.03

Well, the first thing to forget is what the sigil looked like. I mean, after you've "fired it" destroy the image, and then do your best not to try to think about what the image looked like. This goes hand in hand with being able to place the desire/intention out of your conscious thought.

Second, like in meditation where one will occasionally start to travel along a train of thought, and then simply derail the train by noting that one is thinking and then refocusing on breath or whatever--do the same for your intent. Put differently, if you find your mind returning to your intent you need to immediately and decisively derail or defer that thought into something else. In other words, when your intent enters your conscious thought, have a sort of “side street” or “back lane” that directs the specific intent into an unrelated thought space. Does this make any sense to you?

21:02 / 23.05.03

One method that has worked for me is to keep a "backlog" of sigils so you have a few to charge. If you can wait a week or more, and then charge them over a period of time, you will not remember which sigils went with what intention. If you want to keep a record of which sigils were which in your magickal diary, you could tape the sigil over the intention you've written, so you can take it off in a couple months or whatever and see how effective it was.

But then, my memory is notoriously bad, so this may not work for you.

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23:21 / 23.05.03

Even when I destroy a sigil I still always remember what it looks like, mainly because I find it near impossible to forget anything.

04:40 / 24.05.03

What!—do ya' got a photographic memory or something? And if you do, well, I don't think I'd have the resources to offer you any advice. But if you don't, then it's like I said: if the image or intent of the sigil starts to arise in your conscious mind, then you must exercise discipline and refocus your attention elsewhere. Derail the thought by distracting yourself with something else.

And, as a matter of habit, you might want to use words like “always” an “impossible” in a much more discretionary and cautious manner.

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12:03 / 24.05.03

Usually when I know I'm supposed to forget something I end up obsessively not forgetting it.

14:01 / 27.05.03

you're all wonderful people.

Think I will try the "scattershot" system of "firing" several sigils over a week.

And I should really try to get into the meditation thing. God knows I've got enough reference books that tell me how, should stop reading and start doing.