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Underground > Temple >

Spooky 'magical' notepad going to waste

Harold Washington died for you

04:51 / 11.10.03

I was homeless for a month about a year ago. I spent most of my time at the library or in my car sleeping or listening to the radio. I was starved for stimulation, depressed, and very worried about my situation in general. I had a few bucks but was saving them for a bus ride somewhere far away. The decision was made not to get on the bus (another story) so I was stuck.

I went to a local Knights Inn (cheap motel chain) to get completely horizontal, take a shower, and think. Drank two bottles of cough syrup when I got there (I bought three bottles but chickened out) and after a couple hours I puked up everything in my belly (in itsself an odd expeience as you are slowly disassociating from the drug).

I sat on the bed with my feet up, feeling pretty open and filled with unfocused excitement. Packed up a bowl of good doja and was about to spark it when I glanced over to the side table. Wow. It was a plain note pad with the hotel logo on the cover, roughly 2 in x 5 in, 20 blank pages, cheap like the room, but I felt an instant connection. I had seen that notepad in a dream and now here it was in the real world. Maybe, probably, the DXM was playing tricks on me but I don't know. Anyway, I tore out two blank pages from the back and left them on the table and took the pad with me when I checked out the next morning. I scribbled some boring internal monologue on the first page, primed a few pens in small ovals on the cover but that's it.

Now I want to do some sort of ritual with the pad, to remember where I was last year and to celebrate being a little over half way though the dark forest this year. Besides the arbitrary anniversary thing (I don't remember the date) with the leaves changing and indian summer and all it feels like a good time to act.

The question for the cabal: What would you do with my magic notepad? I had an image of filling the pages with something and burning it to ash, but what would you fill the pages with? Thanks in advance. Oh, and no more syrup this year, I still feel ill when I smell the stuff.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

18:54 / 11.10.03

Wow. I think what I'd do would be to try and get some automatic writing going. Sit yourself down with the pad and a pen, try and send your mind back to that time and place, let it fetch back what messages it will.

21:04 / 11.10.03

I'm with MC. Get yourself into an appropriate environment and mindset, and just blaze away with a pen, not stopping to think, and not stopping till the notebook is filled. (If you've not done any automatic writing before, keep in mind it can take a few pages of static before it really takes off.)

Give us an update later, yeah?

Harold Washington died for you

04:42 / 12.10.03

Tried the automatic writing once but my resident editor is a bitch. I'll try again though, and see what I feel when it's filled. Thanks.

02:15 / 13.10.03

That, or you could fill it with the story of the notepad, and everything leading up to it. Drawings, clippings, writing, inkblots, you name it; fill it up and burn it...

(Alternately, instead of making it a symbolic act of "clearing the dark forest" by destroying it, you could write about everything after and use it as a hypersigil; your bent may vary)

09:13 / 13.10.03

Auto writing tip - taken from Pete Redgrove's "The Black Goddess" where he calls it "sealed writing". Basically do it at a relaxed time, but don't re-read it. Keep this up everyday for a month or longer. Then re-read, or better yet get someone else to re-read, looking for key passages. he states every text will have plateaus, a lot of confusion followed by a synthesis with assorted beautiful images arising. Uour "answer" insofar as you have one, will be found in these passages. You can try this asking for specific questions or you can just see what turns up - incidentally, Grant Morrison used this method for some of the weird shit in Doom Patrol.

Nietzsch E. Coyote

07:33 / 14.10.03

Wow! coincidentally I was just in a hotel this weekend and so grabbed a hotel notepad and scribbled out some random tarot stuff and before the ferry left for home I had finished a project that I have been working on for about three years. I also have a magick word given to me by the city I was visiting written on it.

19:16 / 14.10.03

Also, you could draw some sigils or written-out goals for your immediate future on it. Ask the universe questions about your situation and write down the first thing that comes to your mind in response.