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Underground > Temple >

DCLXVI graffiti

09:37 / 01.07.03

Near my house I recently noticed, chalked on brickwork in letters about three inches high, 666 in roman numerals. It's in several places nearby, always on red bricks.
Now, I suspect it's a local student (I live near a sixth form school) pissing about, but out of paranoia I chalked XXIII nearer my house in several places as a ward.
I'm going to add a line to their numerals (making them DCLXVII, 667) to break any working there may be, but I feel foolish (although I'm going to do it anyway).
What do you lot think about this? Am I reading too much into it? Being overly cautious? Defending against magical attack? Interfering with someone's work?

10:28 / 01.07.03

I think you're being paranoid, probably. You'll probably neer know or find out talking to someone in a pub in ten years time. I can't help but remember the story about a well known occult bookshop in London which found odd markings chalked on the pavement around the block the shop was on. Cue panic, internet research into these odd sigils, theories about attempts to magicially attack the shop etc etc. Then they found out in was directions to a punk gig taking place in the basement of a local church.

You've got the cards, you work it out!!

14:01 / 01.07.03

Fuck it be foolish you never know

14:17 / 01.07.03

That's what I think, it's just some local tag. I didn't think it was a personal attack (that would be capital P paranoid) just that someone might be doing something intentionally with 666, and I don't like the thought of being in a web of them where I live. Unintentional magick can be a danger too I reckon.
Anyway, only a passing magical thought, I'm attempting to encourage people to post about tiny magic, day to day influences of magic on your lives, to see if it's only me that does these silly little things.

I'm going break the 666 just to enforce my will on the area, in fact maybe it was just to inspire me to imprint the area round my house. If the tags were anything more than casual scrawling I'm sure there'll be more, we shall see. It only struck me because of the tag magic of Ash in the narrative hypersigil project, tiny coincidence but a noticable one nonetheless.

Maybe there's a punk gig in a local church, wicked A...

21:15 / 01.07.03

"Do what thou will...," "Reality is what you can get away with," "Why not?".

Crowley, RAW, Leary.

Make it your way Q--whatever way seems the best to you...

Spyder Todd 2008

00:59 / 03.07.03

Because I currently lack the attention span to read the entire Hypersigil project board, can someone breifly summorize what Ash is doing? Because I'm thinking of using some wide spread graffiti in my magickal experiments. I like graffiti, I don't know why.

08:19 / 03.07.03

Ask C.Elseware (who plays Ash) for details, but basically a tag acts like a sigil or a rune. For example, Ash writes palindromic tags on cigarettes and smokes them to activate the magic, and tags the areas round his place with his mark (which is why I noticed the DCLXVI tags, now DCLXVII and flanked by my 23s)

09:25 / 03.07.03

Ash's tags are inspired by something a read in a book called
Children of Chaos by Douglas Rushkov. One of the comments was that when the kids tag walls, subways etc. It's a form of tribal terratorialism. It marks the sterile urban landscape as theirs, and proves that they can control their environment after all. This is a form of magick.

I used to see these things as artless and destructive, but now they just feel like they are part of the diversity of my life in a city.

Most tagger's use a symbol, initials or similar quick sigil as their tag. Ash doesn't, he uses childish palindromes. As a skateboarder he uses them to mark his favorite routes through the city. Those routes are his, even if he's sharing them with a million others.

The palindromes on the fags were a slightly different concept, in smoking them to produce a smoke invested with the essence of a palindrome. The idea being for psychic defense or banishing.

The idea for palindromes, and part of the idea of using cigarettes comes from a series of books by Tim Powers:
Last Call,
Earthquake Weather,
Expiration Date. I recommend the series quite strongly, although expiration date is weaker than the other two it has some interesting ideas.

I now feel that tags & graffiti are two different things which happen to exist using the same medium. It's like comparing a silent movie with CCTV footage. They both use low quality black and white moving pictures, but have completely different purposes. Someone who had never seen either before might not be able to tell the difference. Someone who'd only seen movies would think that CCTV footage was a very poor movie.

09:32 / 03.07.03

ps. The tags on the alley node contains examples of Ash's tags. Although other people have added stuff. If you read the page, why not click "edit" and add tags of your own....

10:44 / 03.07.03

I used to be graff head or "writer" as we called ourselves, back when I was a yoot, following my early interest in Hip Hop. I agree with Elsewhere's point about taking power back - it's exactly what your trying to do. "Getting Up" and the breaking of the law that accompanies it, is taking back your environment and making it into your playground again - trespass, getting into train yards, walking train tracks, climbing onto roofs. People might say they don't want to see your shitty markings everywhere - but well, maybe people don't wanna see shitty buildings or shitty adverts or the myriad of other things we don't have control over. Graf is taking some of that control back. Anyway - I digress.

You might wanna check out Subway Art for some information and the history of graffiti as it evolved in New York.

There's a great British book/periodical called "Graphotism" as well, which is quarterly now, I think, which prints lots of new stuff, and shows how graffiti is diversifying into fine art and design - even the tags are bcoming more like graphics, just take a walk round Hoxton and you'll see loads of this stuff.

The biggest and best site is probably Art Crimes

Spyder Todd 2008

13:13 / 03.07.03

This is great. I've always had a fondness for graffiti that I never really understood, so incorperating it in magic just makes sense to me.

18:03 / 03.07.03

There's a great British book/periodical called "Graphotism" as well, which is quarterly now, I think, which prints lots of new stuff, and shows how graffiti is diversifying into fine art and design - even the tags are bcoming more like graphics, just take a walk round Hoxton and you'll see loads of this stuff.

Quantum: you should be able to pick this up in Forbidden Planet on East Street. HHC used to have a regular graf feature, too - don't know if they still do.

18:09 / 03.07.03

Yeah, graffiti can be much more than senseless vandalism! Last summer when I spent time living out in Vancouver, I had a bunch of stickers made up (using my printer and address labels) which had "13 . 3" on them in various fonts and colours. The 13 was for transformation (among other things) and the 3 was for abundance. I slapped these up wherever I was: on the train, on train platforms, on walls, windows, bus shelters, buses, and etc.. It was magic/k not only for me and my stay in Vancouver, but also magic/k for the people of the city (esp. since I spent lots of time down in East Hastings--apparently the poorest area code in North America).

I have used various tags over the years as a way to mark out territory and invoke a web of "force" or "energy" throughout my city. When I was a courier for awhile I would tag everywhere I went with little "pi" signs: the downtown core is full of "pis" in stairwells, elevators, empty office floors, and etc.. This was three years ago, and I still see one every now and then!

As PTV (or was it only TG?) have said: assume power focus.

13:34 / 04.07.03

Graphotism is bastard expensive though - all that colour repro.

0 - sounds cool. Taki 182,, the first writer tomake it famous in New York was a courier. All the mobility = nuff chances to get up.

Is it me or is it really lively in this forum at the moment?