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Mind Affecting Magic Books

18:59 / 30.07.05

Good afternoon-

The other day I was flipping through my copy of the Book of Lies (the Richard Metzger Disinformation Anthology on magic, not Crowley's mind you) and I found a strange gnostic state entering over me. A sort of euphoria. I had never experienced anything quite like it. Another time, a few nights back, I had been reading another essay and sort of dozed off. The semi-lucid awake/dreaming state I drifted into was haunted by devilish images (which jives w/ the essay I was reading).

My question to you folks is, have you experienced first hand magic effects that seemingly resulted solely from reading a text? There is the example of Morrison using mass sex magic to extend the run of the Invisibles, but does anyone have any examples of where the book caused, by itself, an immediate and distinct effect on the reader?

I dig that whenever a party reads something, the act of doing so initiates a subtle change in brain chemistry, but can anyone share more dramatic effects?

Amy ideas regarding how to work spells into one's work to affect others in a similar manner?

-Jesse

All Acting Regiment

23:32 / 30.07.05

As is often said here, you don't neccesarily have to be reading something magical to experience a changing state. However, I think different books will work with different people (as usual). More on this when I can reply with the detail deserved.

01:49 / 31.07.05

Yes when I bought a second hand copy of "Liber Koth" I experienced a fuzzy wierdo anxiety head upon reading the intro blurb about black magic - serves me right, p-runes and all that - that book has POWER!!!! I have had similar sensations with other books. It's semi psychomatic and possibly the hands of the last mechanics of the psychosphere that have used such a book. You can charge books in shops by retospell casting yourself into horrible resource states and putting the book down without consecration, second hand shops must act as a spiritual conduit for all sorts of shit. I'd consecrate a book if you seem that concerned. 1st hand books seem new nice smell. When I 1st read "The Book of Lies" I received a visual mind picture of "Captain Hook" from "Peter Pan" now it maybe that I referenced in my head about Disney but in England you didn't have the "Peter Pan" adverts out - I went upto my father's the next morning - lo and behold I witnessed an advert that depicted "Captain Hook", I may have referenced it off an Irish friend as Irish TV is different to Brit TV in an ignored conversation - odd, psychic vision, or some psychic link with someone I'll never know. I should have taken it as an omen but I've reframed, as is it not the bit where you get cast to the sea of unconcious and eaten by all the crocodiles??!!! I hate Disney though I thank it for giving me archetypes from an early age. When you read a book you activate your subconcious not just your frontal concious it can act as a very powerful semiotic agent - a metaphorist act of enchantment, some would dare call it!! Funnily enough I read a lot of shit about how Disney seems to have got itself involved in Mass Mind Control (the so called Monarch Project) which is just scary bullshit spread by mostly Pan German Americans who are Anti_Semantic and exist within American Patriot Militia Camps, who either end up going to prison for firearms offences (we're not talikng a few guns to protect family and stead) or for sieges against the FBI and the ATF. So yeh - just like when you goto a shop to buy a porn mag it is a sexual buzz, but with occult books it is forbidden knowledge and also outre fringeism. Of course you can!!!

02:43 / 31.07.05

When I first read Illuminatus! I felt it was on par with acid trips for the effect it had on my head. And I was dry sober when I read it.

*

03:56 / 31.07.05

I have heard that Idries Shah's The Book of the Book is supposed to have such an effect for some. I haven't gotten hold of a copy myself, so I don't know whether to recommend it or not.

09:53 / 31.07.05

all good books should do this, as should all good paintings pomes music etc. particular example is finnegans wake, which feels more loike chucking the 'ching or shuffling through a tarot deck than any of the normal emotional affective/ fact retentive designs that language normally has on me.

14:05 / 01.08.05

Reading PKD's VALIS had a magickal effect on me, I think...

14:09 / 01.08.05

oh, and reading The Invisibles, of course - even re-readings have affected me (and others, as I've noted in reading threads here on Barbelith) in very cool ways.

Regrettable Juvenilia

14:51 / 01.08.05

I would appreciate people going into more detail about what characterises these magical experiences - FinderWolf's tentative "I think" suggests strongly to me that this may just be a case of assigning a 'magical' vocabulary to describe experiences which, as gumbitch says, all great books, and other forms of art, should cause in their audience (euphoria, etc). Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with using a magical vocabulary rather than, say, an academic or literary one, but I'm not sure yet whether people posting in this thread would be willing to accept the communality of the experience, or whether the idea of a uniquely 'magical' experience is being proposed instead.

Unconditional Love

17:13 / 01.08.05

William burroughs, fantastic place to pick up tips for blagging and scamming, buddhist literature great for remodelling the identity, tao te ching, handy hints for dealing with head strong everything is real kind of people.
Aleister crowley, great if you wanna be a really naughty boy. Hakim bey, inspirational ideas for causing trouble in a magickal context and otherwise. robert anton wilson, good for impressng stoned people. NLP books, useful for playing dress up with officals.

The more you read the larger your vocabulary for lying, keep it up.

Academic religous/occult texts great if you wish to sound knowledgeable and intelligent while talking about occult subjects.

philip k dick helped me achieve a higher state of paranoia, and i think it was the transmigration of timothy thingy that did it.

anton levay, self help for goths.

timothy leary read to get the motion of his voice along with some audio recording if possible, to sound all up beat and positive.

hmmm, i think audio is more gnostic in general, i find literature more useful than anything else for playing different parts.

20:22 / 01.08.05

For me, reading a book that is magickal in nature or subject matter usually is accompanied by synchronicities connecting what I am reading in the book and what I am experiencing in life (and the synch. are usually pretty unusual and not easily explained away as something I would normally encounter in life or prose on a daily basis). I remember reading something specifically in VALIS that had just shown up in my life, a phrase or incident he refers to.

So for me it's usually synchronicities, some of which are pretty uncanny, coupled with an altered state of mind (not druglike but more about feeling very connected with the universe as a whole, more time spent reflecting on the nature of our reality and spiritual matters than usual for me, feeling like I'm on a slightly different plane than usual), which sometimes gives me ideas & inspiration for magickal experiments.

20:48 / 01.08.05

VALIS appears as a magnum opus - it's great, total gnostic self determination. Was he microwved, channeled by Russians, boot strapped into the all seeing theatre of the cruel and sarcastic, victim of too much of them pep pills, past live of a Victimised Rebel in Rome versus everything, did he have a Protestant Calvinist bloodline? It's like a post-amphetamine joy ride surfing the edges of chaos of Avro Manhattean and the Anti-Catholic Movements. Course he thought the FBI and the CIA had it in for him, who can blame him - paranoia can exist as an exultant gnosis as awareness, esp during them times of his involvements with the Civil Rites Movements and of Liberalism, a post Mcarthyist void of J Egar Hoover getting sucked off by estranged rent boys. Has anyone ever heard of the Unicorn - Ira Einhorn - and of the so called mind control ramifications of the mureder he was accused of? I remember Jim Keith said he may have got implanted at the dentists and enlikened this to the plight of Bobby Fischer the Paranoid Chess Genius who claimed he was microchipped by the KGB, one of Uri Geller's old friends in America who was part of the Aviary (the UFO-ET disinfo team) had working knowledge of this so called psychocivilised society that at that time they would have liked to have implemented, too much money I'm afraid though folks. PKD exists as an enigma a true progenitor of the Cyberpunk Movement. Imagine a shining beam of golden light from a fish necklace from the dentist's helper - he must have been well out of the show. Aeon of Pisces the Fish Dagon connection of the Bible times - look up the Nag Hammadi. "Soft Machine" by WSB affected me profoundly as did "Foccault's Pendelum" by Umberto Eco (far outstrips the glitz & glamour of "Illumunatus" which let's face it seems an Aquarian tour de farce with hippified bits)and alot of the Cyberpunk and Manga and Anime before it became for the kids. "Speed Culture" a Japanese culture studies book is great about tribes and otaku in Japan, as so is "Children of Chaos" by Douglas Rushkoff a great book, working within a post modern cybernetics era - the so called Nintendo Warriors.

08:59 / 02.08.05

Reading barbelith often puts me into a state of gnosis... of sorts.

20:00 / 02.08.05

Well, Flyboy, I for have experienced both halliucanions and a distinct and unique change in temperment leading to a gnostic state (a very surreal, floaty experience), which I would put beyond the normal sphere of "powerful, moving books with a riveting storyline"

Less searchable M0rd4nt

09:00 / 03.08.05

I've found myself kicked into a diffent level of awareness by certain books. Interestingly this does not depend on the text itself, but rather on the text's kick-starting a chain reaction of association and insight that draws one into a new mode of consciousness. It doesn't happen very often but when it does it can be quite powerful.

Unconditional Love

13:47 / 03.08.05

Mordant has a good point, i find that doesnt have to be a book but can be any form of meaningful communication that kicks associations into the mind that lead to a kind of stream of consciousness thinking procedure, which includes inner visions, old conversations etc as if your brain is having its own private storm.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

21:21 / 03.08.05

Rather tellingly, perhaps, this has seldom if ever occured when reading the kinds of texts which purport to yank the reader off into new and wondrous headspaces by the mere reading of them.