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"Stupid" magick, religion and spirituality questions

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Mako is a hungry fish

13:42 / 20.04.07

things went sour with Psyche when she used a candle to look at him, and spilled a few drops of wax on his shoulder

Electric and Magnetic Fluids/Four Feminine Archetypes/The Story of Eros and Psyche
Out of loneliness, she persuades Eros to allow her sisters a visit. To them she can reveal that she is not only still alive. In fact, it is not a monster who met her but a fabulously skilled and wealthy lover.

Well, it does not take any imagination to figure the outcome. Some sisters are very jealous and with a sister as beautiful as Psyche, well, the jealousy gets carried away. In other words, if you are woman in love, deep, passionate love, watch out. If you have something others do not have, it creates a great dissatisfaction in their lives.

The sisters tell psyche, “No, it is a monster with whom you are sleeping. That is why he will not permit you to gaze upon him. This is what you must do. Light a lamp in the middle of the night and stab him while he is fast asleep.”

Psyche falls prey to this wicked advice. Sisterhood is not always in the best interest of every sister. She lights the lamp but swoons out of passion and delight when she sees that it is the god Eros with whom she has been sleeping.

The lamp slips from her hand the hot oil spills out upon the naked form of Eros. Ouch. Wounded he takes flight and the magical castle disappears.

You want to wound a man? Take a really good look at him. You will see how fragile, vulnerable, incomplete, and unfinished is his soul. A woman’s gaze can reveal how he is only a shadow of what he is meant to be.

23:34 / 20.04.07

My first thought on the singing bowl is "Mmmmm, single-tone sound waves are mathematically delicious!" but then I'm deliriously happy with my trigonometry class right now, so don't mind me.

As for the translation of tones into Western Scale, I wouldn't worry too much about it. Admittedly, I haven't looked it up, but notes themselves are a particular speed of sound wave, which is pretty universal. It's how they relate to eachother in intervals that changes from system to system. Some systems acknowledge smaller intervals than others. (There are no quarter-steps in Western music.)

--Ember--

Mako is a hungry fish

13:31 / 21.04.07

For some reason I'm thinking about Tuvan throat singing and how it might relate to your bowl; might explore it and get back to you on it, unless you'd like to look into it yourself.

Tuvans rock :P

jentacular dreams

16:43 / 22.04.07

Are things like (hyper/)sigils always recognisable if you know what to look for? If so, invisibles aside, does anyone know of any sigils used in marketing campaigns or company logos etc.?

Less searchable M0rd4nt

17:04 / 22.04.07

Short answer: not really, no. I mean, the whole point of a visual sigil is to randomise an intent so completely that it disappears below the radar of the conscious mind. Although some things which are sigils will look more sigily than somethings that are not, it's not possible to say whether a particular sigily-looking thing was made with magic in mind.

It can be argued, fairly convincingly, that all commercial logos, trademarks etc. are forms of sigil, but as to whether they were created with conscious magical intent... meh. You'd have to ask our bloodsucking shapshifting reptilian overlords about that one. I don't have that kind of clearance.

Yet.

As to "hypersigils": I personally have not really encountered many other self-proclaimed hypersigils besides The Invisibles, other than one or two (usually abortive) pieces of short fiction. You can recognise The Invisibles as a hypersigil because the author has been kind enough to tell us that it is a hypersigil; you can sometimes recognise the others because they contain a character that looks suspiciously like the author going to lots of cool parties and getting off with a hottie who looks suspiciously like the author's intended.

jentacular dreams

17:18 / 22.04.07

Thanks MC, that clears up a few things.

21:07 / 22.04.07

Does anybody recognise this symbol?

Is it of any particular tradition or practice?

It keeps popping up in odd little ways...

Less searchable M0rd4nt

21:14 / 22.04.07

Me! Me!

That is

a) The Ingwaz rune, on its side
b) A simplified version of the veve for the Marassa, the Divine Twins of Vodoun.

I just love that the Ingwaz rune belongs to Freyr, and is associated with Him and His sister Freyja as a unit. Hee hee hee.

The Ghost of Tom Winter

01:24 / 23.04.07

The first thing I thought when I saw that symbol was this:

02:01 / 23.04.07

It's also similar to the hobo sign for "stay silent" and some South African traditional "talking beadwork" motifs, but I think Talks to Strangers & Ghost of Tom Winter are more on the money.

The Ghost of Tom Winter

07:24 / 23.04.07

It can be argued, fairly convincingly, that all commercial logos, trademarks etc. are forms of sigil, but as to whether they were created with conscious magical intent... meh.

I'd say there is a large amount of magical intent when constructing a logo that will be eye catching, aesthetically pleasing and easily recognizable all in hopes of trying to boost sells, generating revenue and in turn spreading the symbol as far as it can go in the name of profit and business adventures. Economics is extremely magical when you think about it. Invisible hand any one?

Less searchable M0rd4nt

11:26 / 23.04.07

Mako is a hungry fish

13:25 / 23.04.07

What the Ghost of Tom Winter is referring to is a Masonic symbol, though not limited to their order, which is usually interpreted as the union of male and female and is a rather wide spread magical concept.

The Ghost of Tom Winter

15:14 / 23.04.07

Thank you Mako. I didn't know the details of what the symbol is but I definitely should have at least labeled it!

16:01 / 23.04.07

Oh, and in its simplified form the Masonic one (and quite possibly the Freyr/Freyja one) plays a central role in The Da Vinci Code. In the form of sexual secrets encoded in The Last Supper and the new "glass pyramid" wing of the Louvre. More on that here, if you must.

16:30 / 23.04.07

It could also relate to Ayizan, another of the vodoun loa. In "The Divine Horsemen", Maya Deren includes that specific symbol and describes it as representing 'androgynous totality'.

Mako: thanks for the correction - s'what I get for relying on my dodgy memory rather than looking it up properly.

18:32 / 23.04.07

Eeeh!
Thanks for the tips people!

It's a symbol that pops up every now and then for a while then buries itself. I seem to remember having a check for it a while back and spotting the Ayizan link. Drawings i did at the time to try and 'draw it out' a bit seem to connect a bit more to the voudon trad than norse, but the link is very interesting.

The twin motif is a running one in my life. The name my parents gave me comes from a word for 'twin'. I had imaginary friends as a youngun who were twins. The archetype feels strong. Opposites as one...

Recently, i saw the logo carved into a wall inside Newgrange. There was a lot of graffiti in there from the 19th century, before they closed it off to protect it. It seems the veve/ingwaz/mason symbol was a part of this graffiti, rather than an original design. Odd thing was, i'd gone there with some intention to find/connect with any'body' who might be hanging around at the monument. But then i spotted this...

I guess in that context, it is likely put as the mason symbol, though is there any practice of placing runes on their side? Does this alter their meaning in any way?

Unconditional Love

19:13 / 23.04.07

God signs his name with a capital G(ee).

Unconditional Love

22:44 / 23.04.07

Have people come across this program in there travels, its well supported, and one of the better tarot programs out there.

Orphalese Tarot

Mako is a hungry fish

02:27 / 24.04.07

God signs his name with a capital G(ee).

In regards to the masonic symbol, the G stands for generation (i.e sex); someone better versed than myself in gematria may want to speak of the number 6, the
Thelemic ritual of the Hexagram, and the macrocosm.

Oh... and how card 6 of the major arcana is the lovers.

...and the crap load of other stuff that goes along with the number 6.

The Ghost of Tom Winter

04:23 / 24.04.07

I always understood that the Freemasons never directly explained what the meaning of the G was, instead allowing you to determine for yourself what it means.

08:01 / 24.04.07

I've heard several answers for what G stands for.

The Marassa veve and Ayizan's veve both emphasize that symbol, which occurs in quite a few veves. I understand that it does indeed relate to the fertility male/female union concept. I've also seen Ghede symbols that look like really simplified Masonic symbols, which makes sense when you know that those get carved into gravestones a lot - in that context the G may well mean Ghede for all that it matters.

From what I've read, at least in the Voodoo context, it's considered two intersection Vs rather than two Xs side-by-side.

Ingwaz, by contrast, is expanded from an older version which is simply a diamond or square turned on it's points. But then Ingwaz with the arms out like that is usually drawn with the arms out the top and bottom corners of the square, not the sides. Personally, I think of the Younger Ingwaz as the sprouted seed to the Elder Ingwaz's unsprouted seed.

--Ember--

The Ghost of Tom Winter

11:21 / 24.04.07

Just found this in my research of Voodoo:

The bit at the bottom, thought it might interest you.

Found in Alfred Metraux's book Voodoo in Haiti.

Unconditional Love

12:24 / 24.04.07

Sorry thats a lyric from a NIN tune i found suddenly appropriate, things out of context and all that, i wonder if Trent Reznor, does it really matter? NO is the answer.

The stuff about the lovers is really interesting, so do you think it would be situated as the star of David is on the tree of life, with tiphareth at its center, because the points if i am not mistaken represent solstices and equinoxes marking the travels of the sun upon the horizon.

So the triangles would be alchemical fire and water, binary positive and negatives uniting to produce a tertiary, the steam of passion. The cauldron of 7 planets radiating from a center defining a cycle of transitions through 7 active phases of consciousness (including the center).

14:36 / 24.04.07

Trampetunia- you can see it as two exes XX or the rune or masonic, but I personally see it as a triangular arrow moving up and an arrow moving down, passing through each other. As above, so below. Just thought I'd put my tuppence in.
That tarot program is interesting.

18:02 / 24.04.07

it's considered two intersection Vs

I don't know any creole, but in french, two Vs would be pronounced 'Vey Vey'...

18:42 / 24.04.07

That makes sense. I don't know any French, and thus hadn't noticed.

Of course, that's true in Spanish too, so I probably should have noticed.

--Ember--

Mako is a hungry fish

08:31 / 25.04.07

The stuff about the lovers is really interesting, so do you think it would be situated as the star of David is on the tree of life, with tiphareth at its center, because the points if i am not mistaken represent solstices and equinoxes marking the travels of the sun upon the horizon.

I got to thinking about how if there were no zero, then the lovers card would be card number seven; the letter G is letter number seven in our alphabet.

A short discussion on the Paths of Evolution and Involution on the Tree of Life

The remaining 20 major arcana may be assigned, then, to the Sepheroth. The major arcana #1-10 may be understood as being representative of the involutionary act of creation and may, therefore, be assigned to the Sepheroth in the order delineated by the lightning flash on the Tree of Life. The major arcana #11-#20 may be understood as being representative of the evolutionary redemption of the Spirit/Soul from Matter and may, therefore, be assigned to the Sepheroth in the order delineated by the path of the serpent on the Tree of Life. What is immediately noticeable is that there are, then, two major arcana corresponding with each Sphera. One is representative of the function of involution and the other is representative of the function of evolution. Additionally, it is said of the Sepheroth, themselves, that they must always be understood in their dual roles of functioning as either that which emanates (this is its masculine function) the succeeding Sphera and/or as that which is the receptacle (this is its feminine function) for the preceding Sephera. One may relate, then, the two major arcana cards that are assigned to each Sephera as establishing a polarized relationship with one another either as emanative (masculine) or receptive (feminine).

LOVERS: FORM:Tiphareth (involutionary) FORCE:Binah/Tiphareth

shamash.org on the hexagram

Mako is a hungry fish

08:50 / 25.04.07

This might not be relevant, but for some reason I think I should pass it on...

I've encountered the theory that throughout the bible, the most important part is in Exodus, chapter 20, where the ten commandments are given; of these, the most important is the first commandment "I am the LORD thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before Me."

Of this, the most important part is I am and of this, the most important part is I; in Hebrew, the letter which represents this is Aleph which, apart from not having a sound, has a gemmatria whose parts are equal to 26.

Unconditional Love

17:27 / 25.04.07

My father gifted me with a stone cutter today, which i am going to use to cut bone, I wonder does anybody work with bone in a craft fashion? and any hints for shaping and modifying bone?

17:34 / 25.04.07

I make ritual tools out of it.
The dust should be considered poisonous and most carnivore bone is denser than herbivore bone in my experience.
I use hand files, sand paper, and a dremel when working with it as well as a dust mask and eye protection.

I strongly advise making an offering to the animal spirit before working with a piece. It is just polite and IMO cuts down on accidental injuries.

Depending on what the desired finished outcome is, I sometimes soak the completed piece in hydrogen peroxide to whiten it or burn dragon's blood to produce a resin coating for it.

Unconditional Love

18:41 / 25.04.07

I am going to bury the corpses in the back garden to allow them to rot, seems like the best option so far, are you going to a butchers or collecting the dead?

18:50 / 25.04.07

Both.

Burying can stain the bones and critters steal 'em.
I boil many of them clean and cast the flesh away as an offering.

Dermestid beetles are the way to go if you are doing long term work.

18:54 / 25.04.07

Mind if I ask if they're mammal bones or some other sort? I've done whistles out of bird bones and worked with deer scapula, and I know someone who does some writing on bones as a sort of spiritual battery thing, but seems like it'd be a different sort of task depending on what the bones had previously been in.

19:15 / 25.04.07

I've used mammal and bird bones and prefer mammal for my work.

Some of my divination tools are bone.

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