BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


Underground > Temple >

"Stupid" magick, religion and spirituality questions

  
  

Page: 1 ... 4243444546(47)4849505152... 83

 
 
Unconditional Love
19:20 / 25.04.07
I have been doing some reading on skull malas, and read that some lamas in tibet consider them to be a higher work because of the karma contained in the bones (human) any knowledge on reference to this with regards to animals, i was going to design amulets etc dedicated to the spirit of the animal, to imbue the wearer with those qualities, bird bones seem like a good idea because they are easy to come by as will be rat, rabbit and squrriel and very rarely i find a fox, but i mainly leave those buried. And things like cats just seems wrong to me, thou i am finding more of them along road sides these nights. Deer is just too big, unless i cut it where i find it into manageable chunks.

I was also thinking about the delicate corpses of dead insects, any kind of lacquer you could apply to keep them tough? a bracelet of beetle carapaces.
 
 
EvskiG
19:25 / 25.04.07
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.

The word "I" isn't a single letter in Hebrew.

The Hebrew word for "I" is ani ("ah-nee"), spelled Aleph-Nun-Yod (אני).

The numerical value of ani isn't 26, it's 61: Aleph (1) + Nun (50) + Yod (10).

And Aleph is silent but takes on the sounds of its vowels. So in ani, it has an "ah" sound.
 
 
Unconditional Love
19:26 / 25.04.07
Any insights on the relationship between bone and the skin of the wearer, i know it absorbs the oil on the skin of the wearer and begins to smell because of the oil, but can anything other chemical or otherwise occur?
 
 
Ticker
19:30 / 25.04.07
For insects acrylics work well. You seal it and the material adds strength to the organic form.

As for absorbtion of bone it also will draw moisture and can rot/mold. It can also swell and crack.
Avoid submerging under water after final shaping.
 
 
EvskiG
19:30 / 25.04.07
Aleph which, apart from not having a sound, has a gemmatria whose parts are equal to 26.

Ah. I see from your link that it's Aleph, not ani, that has a value of 26 -- if you dissect the letter into its (arguable) parts, Yod + Yod + Vav.

Never heard that one before.
 
 
Ticker
13:41 / 26.04.07
Talk to me about vows of truthfulness/true speaking.

I know many cultures and traditions have them but I'm not sure if we should spin up an entire thread around it?
 
 
Ticker
13:47 / 26.04.07
also if anyone has a JSTOR login they can lend me for a day I'd be ever so grateful.
PM me if you do please.
 
 
EmberLeo
18:04 / 26.04.07
XK: If there's no harm in starting a thread about it, I'm interested. I'm afraid I don't know anything much to add - I'm up for reading about it.

What immediately comes to mind isn't so much vows as geas in the Celtic settings. Thomas the Rhymer was given the gift of truth-speaking. And for others it's a kind of curse: Bards Tongue compelling them to speak the truth - not only as opposed to lies, but as opposed to keeping silent - at a time when they might have preferred to NOT weigh in on a significant matter.

--Ember--
 
 
This Sunday
18:32 / 26.04.07
You can't help but speak the truth. It's just a matter of hearing that truth. Not so much signal to noise, but more the settings being funny.

Clarity, on the other hand, we could all (I'm looking at myself, here) use some work at.

I think my entire family puts a real almost superstitious emphasis on wording, the connections, etymologies, and functions of terms. From Sequoyah's syllabary and newspaper forward and backwards, it's almost a Cherokee stereotype.

We don't put a big emphasis on truth, however, so much as function. Inference, puns, or synchronicities of speaking. The truth's always there.
 
 
Ticker
18:42 / 26.04.07
We don't put a big emphasis on truth, however, so much as function. Inference, puns, or synchronicities of speaking. The truth's always there.

I'm coming to it from this POV. The idea is if what you say is always true you should put some thought into what you are basing your words on. Some Folks are listening.
 
 
This Sunday
19:20 / 26.04.07
On the vow end of things, can I ask how seriously people take them? In fact, consider that asking.

I was talking with a friend of mine, years ago, and we realized we had both been raised with the very clear notion that sometimes you shouldn't keep your word. I got it from my grandfather, and he from his father, so an Indian and a Dutch fellow, basically. Sort of how promises are good and useful and all, but if you swear to blah blah because of blarg, and then, later when the time comes to do blah blah, it may not be a good idea. Swearing vengeance or promising yourself or your folks or any variety of gods that you'll never do that, it may be best to put the oath down and not follow through.

When we tried to talk to other people about that, it became quickly apparent most of southern California, regardless of whether they were born/raised there or elsewhere, didn't have that as part of their upbringing, and in fact, there were serious serious bloodoaths and godly promises that were different from a regular contract or agreement. Pinkyswear mentality. Which is not to dismiss or downplay how that must feel, but does anyone here really feel that way? Or, if not, how do you feel about oaths, levels of oathing, and breaking/keeping them?
 
 
Ticker
19:32 / 26.04.07
I'm with ya that it is more complex than it often appears. To me an oath or a vow serves to transform the person stating it. It's an intent spoken in a powerful context that shifts you in some way. Breaking it also shifts you and sometimes that's the more interesting moment. To me they are self imposed transformative promises which we may fall short of or break. The ability to do the entering and breaking wide eyed and self aware is important.

Compare that with a taboo or geas which is often externally imposed and much more easily broken accidently or manipulated.
 
 
Haloquin
19:55 / 26.04.07
I'm always very hot on not breaking one's word... when it is stated as a promise it should be held to. This comes mostly from the idea that if you can't trust that your promises are true then the universe won't (be this your higher self, the universe, a deity, etc.) so magic through words has got to be significantly harder.

On the other hand, sometimes situations change, and promises can't be kept. I occasionally wonder whether you could hold yourself to a promise made when you were a 'different person' and if its possible to be a different person...

This tends to lead me to being very careful with explicitly promising something.
 
 
Unconditional Love
20:09 / 26.04.07
I gave up judging by words mine or anybody else's sometime ago, I find i get better judgment from actions, mine and others, but in the end even they are a tricky business, its all a very tricky business, the sands just keep shifting from one moment to the next.

A soft bed to lay on when i am down is worth more than all the advice in the world. Thats the truth of it for me, the truth being a very tricky business. The same truth that brought you happiness can make you lose it in the next hour.

Truth and lies have the same value, temporary distraction.
 
 
Unconditional Love
20:10 / 26.04.07
Or to put it another way, the truth kills time and so do lies.
 
 
EmberLeo
00:39 / 27.04.07
I definitely place different weights on Oaths/Vows vs. Promises vs. simply speaking. And I try to be very clear ahead of time when I'm NOT promising something.

I get very frustrated when somebody treats me like I'm breaking a promise because I said something that wasn't a promise, and something changed in the meantime.

But if I DID promise, I take it quite seriously. And I tend to avoid making formal vows and oaths because that's even more serious, and it's usually more serious than it is necessary.

Mostly, I figure it matters more what I do than what I promise to do. If I promise and then don't do, that's bad. But if I don't promise and nevertheless do, that's hardly a problem. So I only make promises if it's needful for somebody else to plan ahead or somesuch.

--Ember--
 
 
Unconditional Love
16:31 / 27.04.07
Well, i have trashed my practice, almost completely, i still have a way to go, just not quite there yet, as i wittle it down, i get closer and closer to the bone, tarot can go as well, drums are harder and so are martial arts weapons, but they may all have to go as well, i need to purge myself of props it seems, and my identity of those props as well.

Does anybody else purge themselves like this? leave one social persona to start building from and then see what comes? It wont be the first time i have done this, but each time the process becomes alittle more like what i think i actually am, rather than the things i want to be without addressing the real wounds of the past.

Its as if i need to run naked for a while in the streets to see what tries to clothe me
 
 
This Sunday
17:26 / 27.04.07
Its as if i need to run naked for a while in the streets to see what tries to clothe me

My suggestion would be to enjoy finding new clothes, and don't rush the wearing. The shopping's always a bit better than going to work in them.
 
 
EmberLeo
02:39 / 28.04.07
Do we have a threat for posting links to sites that have lots of shiny pictures relevant to Afro-Diasporic religion, by any chance?

I just found this German Carnival group and thought some folk might be interested in it...

--Ember--
 
 
EmberLeo
02:41 / 28.04.07
Brilliant! "Do we have a threat?" "Yep! 'Ever post that crap again and we'll throw mojo bags at your computer filled with highly magnetic materials!' Ha!"

Um, do we have a thread for that, then?

--Ember--
 
 
This Sunday
04:41 / 28.04.07
Y'know, someone a couple years ago mentioned a DJ Grace Kelly to me, and I never looked it up or anything, just let her phase on by. Wonder if it's the same one working with the German Carnival group? He'd heard her somewhere in Italy, which they've done events/workshops in.

I know, it's a bit about music in the magick/religion forum, but, y'know, the synchronicity makes it magick.
 
 
Saturn's nod
12:13 / 28.04.07
Hey XK, me too showing interest in a thread about truth. It's really important in my commitments, and I'd love to know more about how it features for others.

And I like Ani D on this:

'they say that the truth will set you free/but then so will a lie/
it depends if you're trying to get to the promised land/ or just trying to get by.'
 
 
Unconditional Love
16:57 / 29.04.07
The most problematic element of truth for me is that it implies that consciousness has an essence, a set state of being, it invokes such ideas as truth and lies, guilt and innocence also the idea of conscience, moral and immoral actions, ultimately good and evil.

They are conscious tools of a certain view point, that structure human perception in a certain accord with particular social values and systems.

There reliance on a sense of being denies an adaptable part of human nature that which manifests beyond truth and lies and is form in constant flux, consciousness as formed formlessness.

Just as careful inspection of ones environment reveals that each day or moment is not the same but inherently individual from one moment to the next, similar but not the same.

Conscious truth's presented as static values, without temporal change or evolution of character and base value create locked closed systems and stagnant pools of creation.

Its the continual flow of consciousness in which the stones of truth are gently worn away into dust, which intrests me, the contents of consciousness are not so much of importance, as the flow and movement of consciousness itself.

Values are temporary as are identities and lives, eternity has no substance to speak of.

Perhaps zen expresses it more simply for me. But i do hope you understand what i am trying to say.

I use identifiers to belong to a western ideological system because thats what persona's trade in to be social vehicles for personality, it does not make any one of them more true, less true or deceitful than any of the others. They are just functional constructs to relate to the social fabric of a society that thrives and is blinded by these illusions that somehow words and other artefact's of communication make things true or real and other expressions make them unreal. All that really acts as as far as i can see is a prison, a prison for consciousness and its free movement by becoming locked into social definitions of the self.

Or being used by the need to belong by adjusting oneself to fit in with value and identity structures that are prevalent in a closed environment. Thought as truth language as truth is a cage that leads to the notion of identity which then becomes a lifestyle.

The beginning point of awareness lost amidst the clutter of identity. (and other truth's)
 
 
Unconditional Love
18:29 / 29.04.07
Heres something i just discovered by looking at info about spectrograms, in fruity loops studio there is an instrument called beep map which can convert bitmap images into sound.

I have started with sigils, but it would be possible to use any bitmap image and create music or sound textures from graphic images, so tarot or runes could all be put into a piece of sound to accompany a ritual.

Spectrogram

I would suggest a sequencer of some kind and a multitude of images to create enough atmosphere for trance work.
 
 
Unconditional Love
18:56 / 29.04.07
I am wondering how some of the older grimoire diagrams would sound, as my sigil sounded like a very distressed totally perplexed clanger.
 
 
Mako is a hungry fish
03:53 / 30.04.07
All that really acts as as far as i can see is a prison, a prison for consciousness and its free movement by becoming locked into social definitions of the self.


I don't see it as a prison, but as a game. All games have rules/limitations so that the game can be played and enjoyed by those playing it, and more often than not these limitations are self imposed or accepted because of this. Sometimes we take the games we play too seriously and think that this is all there is, and sometimes we step outside the game and step into another, just as someone steps off a tennis court.

For me, magic is the art of choosing which game to play.
 
 
Unconditional Love
16:12 / 01.05.07
What if none of the games satisfy and you wish they would all stop dead, just for a little peace? and not just the ones your playing but the ones you can feel all around you?

I have that feeling occasionally, not at the present but occasionally i just want to get off the rides and leave the fair ground entirely, then destroy the whole fair ground and myself.

Sometimes nirvana is translated as extinction.
 
 
This Sunday
16:38 / 01.05.07
A little peace and quiet is its own game, in a sense. I've done enough ducking out, laying low, and running halfway across the country, to avoid situations that appeared complicated and intense just because they were noisy and full of annoying static. And not once was it not a conscious, perhaps lamentable but entirely conscious, decision to get the hell outta Dodge.

That's magick, though. Situation goes stressful and inane and you can't stick around for fear of despising the world and the world despising you, and an old friend shows up knocking at your window, 'Hey, you want to go to Canada for awhile?' And a suitcase and a big coat later, you may be broke down seventy miles before the border, but you can still outsit the situation back from where you came until it all blows over.

That's just an example, but that sort of ducking out magick is all over. That's what long walks are for. Or finding the most repetetive work you can do at work, and zoning out while your hands go on autopilot. Daydreams and the sappy movie night you set up for yourself where you watch Benny & Joon, The Princess Bride and Sabrina back to back and pretend the world's not knocking on the door. Old friends and park benches and the memory that when it's all destroyed it more or less the same looks and smells as if it weren't destroyed.

You can always step out, and you can almost always step back in. The trick is figuring the smoothest methods and the best times to do so. I mean, we're seeing a bit of that right here, with the marvelous interwebby ideaspace of the Barbelith Underground, yeah? Sure, nine tenths of us are all just Grant Morrison banging away on sixteen keyboards at once, but we're all responded to, all treated under social codes and mores that have not a great deal of reflection in our meatspace countries of origin. We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune with no group gardens, not enough acid, and we're actually squatting on Tom Coates' property or something, but five five words or so it sounded real good, right? That's the magick killswitch, not, y'know, a Destrudo Gone Wild DVD in fastforward.
 
 
Ticker
19:39 / 01.05.07
We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune with no group gardens, not enough acid, and we're actually squatting on Tom Coates' property or something, but five five words or so it sounded real good, right? That's the magick killswitch, not, y'know, a Destrudo Gone Wild DVD in fastforward.

For a minute there I got excited thinking you were about to say 'five by five'. If you'd managed a Buffy-verse ref in with GM and the rest I would have been very impressed.
 
 
This Sunday
19:48 / 01.05.07
'Five by five' would've been really cute up there, it's true. That's the bad thing with posting versus writing stuff out for publication: not much chance for rewrites or a second-edition. If it were for print, trust me, I would've stolen that idea off of you in a flash.

(And I was just reading the Buffy comic thread, and those very same words, when I jumped over to Temple on a whim.)
 
 
EmberLeo
23:29 / 01.05.07
For a minute there I got excited thinking you were about to say 'five by five'. If you'd managed a Buffy-verse ref in with GM and the rest I would have been very impressed.

Um, you know "Five by Five" is a radio term measuring your signal strength and clarity on a scale of 0-5? Five by Five means "Loud and Clear". It's not specifically a Buffy-ism except that Faith liked saying it.

--Ember--
 
 
Mako is a hungry fish
03:57 / 02.05.07
So what does ten-four mean?
 
 
Mako is a hungry fish
04:07 / 02.05.07
Sometimes nirvana is translated as extinction.

Sometimes the only way to escape cause and effect is to be no cause and no effect, or in other words no-thing.

I'd rather be acausal though... seems like it would be so much cooler.
 
 
This Sunday
05:00 / 02.05.07
Ten-Four = Received and Out.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
07:48 / 02.05.07
The "ten"referring to Malkuth, that which "receives" the Divine Emanations from Kether, and the "four" referring to Chesed, the Sephiroth that the Adept confronts on the way "out" to the Supernal Triad. Obviously.
 
  

Page: 1 ... 4243444546(47)4849505152... 83

 
  
Add Your Reply