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Magic!al DIY

Ulysses Lazarus

08:20 / 07.11.05

I agree with the masters- fashioning yr own magic!al tools works better than buying them in a store. The personal connection is much deeper with something which has been hewn with one's own hands. That said, the instructions given by Ye (g)Olde(n Dawn) Magickians ov Olde don't prove exceptionally useful- what am I? A fucking silversmith?

The art and skill and fashioning one's own tools seems overripe for an update. The materials which now surround us in the city- plastic, concrete, paper, garbage, &c.- are just as useful for creating tools as any.

What I'm interested in discussing is the innovative and creative ways in which people have fashioned their own tools. The bit in GenHex where a magic! mirror is fashioned out of enamel paint and a Salvation Army mirror seems particularly illustrative. Have you found a strange way of making a sword? Made a papier-mache pantacle? A wand out of yr neighbor's trash bin?

Also of interest are innovative and curious ways for using found objects in ritual.

For my own part, I once whittled a wonderful wand out of wood which had fallen from a tree that had been struck by lightning in my parents cul-de-sac. Perhaps not the most impressive or innovative, but I must say that it 'worked a lot better' than my previous instrument which I had received as a gift.

08:52 / 07.11.05

I think any kind of creative input into one's magical practice is a good thing - be it painting, sculpting, scripting, whatever. I don't do enough of it but I enjoy it when I do - did knock up some incense over the weekend though. I think it's really grounding to use one's hands and get out of one's head.

As for not being a sliversmith, why not? There are plenty of night classes in London. If you really wanted to learn how to cast one's one magical dagger, you could do so. I like the idea if just for reasons of extremity. There's an interesting interview with Ramsey Dukes somewhere where he mentions taking a year to make each of the four magical weapons from scratch (a year per weapon that is). I like that kind of commitment.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

09:15 / 07.11.05

I couldn't agree more with the concept of making your own kit. I'm not the most skilled or the most able of craftspeople, but if I can reasonably make something myself I do. Even if I do buy something off the peg, I'll tend to start with the most basic item posible and then heavily customise it. Making stuff from scratch is incredibly rewarding, and an item you've put time, effort and callouses into is always going to pack a bit more of a wallop than something you've just walked into a shop and picked up. I'm far more impressed with the idea of a hand-carved wand (from a tree struck by lightening, no less!) than by a wand from the local New Age store/

I'd also agree strongly with Illmatic's comment re: learning new skills. I'm gradually getting my head around woodcarving, and I'm going on a silversmithing course once I get the money together. Learning a new skill for the purposes of making an item is a potent sacrifice.

Ulysses Lazarus

09:24 / 07.11.05

As for not being a sliversmith, why not? There are plenty of night classes in London. If you really wanted to learn how to cast one's one magical dagger, you could do so. I like the idea if just for reasons of extremity.

Actually, Im a trained machinist and welder- I just fucking hate it. Altho for the purposes of fashioning my own tools I'd love to get my hands on a lathe, press and MIG machine.

I'd also agree strongly with Illmatic's comment re: learning new skills

I believe it was the sufis who had a particular fetish for this- you were expected to learn a number of secular trades before they'd teach you anything. For my own part, Ilike to think that in the magic!al university of the future, we make the kids learn things like carpentry, etc. before allowing them to practice magic!.

I'll be learning some carpentry from my father between arriving back in America and getting my own place again, for the purpose of building my own altar.

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

12:17 / 07.11.05

'Tis very good to at least be involved in the process...also, there are ways of buying things and then thee are ways of buying things...Popping into Tesco's for this or that is one thing, but going to, say, Bali, and picking up a hand carved djembe drum for £25 which would be worth £500 even without the awesome carvings which probably took several weeks, then adorning it with feathers, is quite something else.

I have a shaker for my Daime work which came from Gabon, made and carved by a Bwiti tribesman...I went to Holland Park to collect 5 peacock feathers, which I have tied with blue cord to the shaft of the shaker, and I've strung alternate blue and green beads onto blue and green thread, and added blue ribbons...It's a proper power talisman!! I was gutted when it got broken last week, but I have repaired it and it was with me on Sunday at a work...Back from the dead! I think it needs a bit more attention, it looks like it could break along the seam again. But, you were all correct, haha! It feels a lot more intimate and imbued with personality since its little accident and convalesence at the Money $hot instrument hospital.

I'm thinking about carving the entire I Ching along the shaft, 16 along each of the four quarters (N, E, S and W) which would be great. I've started drawing my mornings I Ching casting (the Gua, not the hexagram) on my body, either over the heart chakra or along the middle pillar (present/static situation over chakra three, future, if cast, over chakra four), which is bloody great. I feel like a daubed warrior going into the aya dimension with my Ancient Chinese sigils!

I love my life.

13:15 / 07.11.05

I think taking a year to make each of the elemental weapons is a really good idea. Cos after all, getting the weapons is probably best thought of as an initiation into the mysteries of that element. The process of making the elemental weapon is a living metaphor for the magical processes that are also taking place during that time period. The weapon you have forged becomes a physical symbol of the various initiatory experiences you have been through in parallel to its construction. That's what makes it a magical weapon.

I'm not really a ceremonial magician though, so I don't feel the need to learn metalwork. I do enough stuff already and you can't do everything without diminishing returns. However, all of my tools can be thought of as a kind of physical shorthand for initiatory processes that I've been through. The tools themselves are not as important as what you have been through to get them.

14:08 / 07.11.05

I tend to feel that making things is doing magic. (That may be because my practice for the past few months has consisted almost entirely of making devotional handcrafts, though.)

I tend to work with pretty traditional, even primitive, materials; leather and beads and wood and cloth and feathers and fur and horns and beeswax. That's partly a personal/aesthetic choice, and partly a result of the type of practice I'm into. But I see nothing wrong with people using modern materials, and my stuff isn't 100% reconstructionist, or even 100% handcrafted; I've used a pair of manufactured wooden kitchen spoons as the base for a feather fan, cut up aluminum cans for metal bits, used plastic and acrylic beads and plastic-coated beading wire, etc. I don't make all of my own candles (though I do make some). And how many of us make our own oils, incenses, inks, paints, etc.? I don't.

That said, handcrafted and hand-customized items do seem to "click" in a way that storebought tools usually don't. Maybe the investment of your own effort into the object attunes it to your "energy", or maybe the fact that it's just the way you want it makes it easier for you to use. You're happy with it, proud of it, find it aesthetically pleasing. It's a physical manifestation of your creative spirit. Of course it'll "work" better.

Now, I could also see potential like that in a storebought or "found" item that you've used for a long time, or invested a lot of time and effort in searching for, or that you find in a magical or synchronistic way, or that shows up via a divination or a dream or a vision, or that came down through your family or your magical lineage, or otherwise seems intended for your use, or that has powerful associations for you.

And of course, some people are simply crap at making things. I'd recommend trying anyway, but as always, YMMV. If you can't make things, take what you have and customize it. Decorate it, consecrate it, baptize it, make it yours.

Ulysses Lazarus

09:46 / 12.11.05

The discussion on this has been brilliant, with only a few replies. However what I would be interested in is a discussion of the finer points- i.e. how exactly DOES one make their own incense? What are resources for people who would like to make more of their own tools?

Perhaps this should be moved to 'stupid magic questions'?

10:59 / 12.11.05

how exactly DOES one make their own incense?

Incense is made of three 'layers'. The bottom layer is your gums/resins like benzoin, mastic or damar, the middle layer is your twiggy bits like herbs, petals, twigs and such like. The top layer is your oil, the oil is the thing you will smell last, too much and it burns and stinks.

You pick out your ingrediants as per plantery influences or however you wish to do it. Bare in mind DO NOT use anything which as it burns gives off toxic/poisonous fumes. Daft thing to say but you never know who is reading.

Cunningham's book on incense has been recommended to me as very good and I'm in the process of getting a copy at the moment. If not Treadwells does do a very good course on incense and making of it, from time to time.

20:48 / 12.11.05

It might not be exactly what you're talking about, and if that's so, I apologize. But I thought I'd talk a little about found objects as Magical tools.

There's an element of "foundness" about all my magical weapons - my Cup was an ashtray, liberated from a friend's flat when we discovered it wasn't on the inventory; my Sword is a quill pen that my sister randomly gave me for christmas; my Wand was a found in a wood when I was in a strange mood and polished up; and my Pantacle is a rock, although I'm not happy with it and am seeking a new one.

But the act of just wandering, and your eyes alighting on an object which immediatley has personal symbolic meaning for you is an extremely magical one - more personal, more magical to some minds than trying to control things and construct a weapon according to the (G)Olden ways.

Okay, mine are still kind of organic and old school, but that's just my person iconography - a more urban, modernist person might come up with other things. I have a small collection of rusted metal objects collected from the port near my house, and those could easily have become magical objects.

I suppose the point I'm trying to make is - don't worry about whether you make them, find them, buy them, or even just imagine them: what makes your magical weapons YOUR MAGICAL WEAPONS is the meaning you imbue them with. If they're meaningful and magical to you, that's all that matters.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

22:25 / 12.11.05

I find I get given (for want of a better word) homework: item I'm supposed to create in a certain way for a certain God/dess. I'm still trying to get Frigga's spindle right, and I've made a few items of beadwork for Freyja (with more to come, increasing in complexity). I'm making a piece of ritual garb to wear for Frey (kind of a sarong, but with bells on). Odin has me making a book: I'm supposed to bind the sucker myself, make my own ink, and then transcribe the Havamal into it with a quill pen. (Which I've also got to make.) The objective quality of these items seems to matter less than the effort that goes into them.

16:16 / 13.11.05

i´m all fo rfound objects. my experience say, best magic cost no money. i dont do cermonial magic so idont know anything about that... im more into the "kitchen witch"/erisain/city magic thing.
I pick up any object that seems to be neede for what im about to do, then when used i usualy turn it back to just any object, actualy great way to banish n stuff.
Walk around youre neighbourhood in a state of trance with some music suitible for the moment, eat candy, drink a soda, smoke a gigaret as gift to the entity/totem animal or whatever you have for help.
What i would like to own wich would be a great help would be a something to record usubla sounds with and a digital cam for nice pictures.
i have used bones from dead animals, broken bottles, found letters, playing cards, a drunk (well he was sleeping on a bench) th ebest thing about found objects is you can set up a small ritual with anything and noone would know what youre up to. Thats how you can incorporate drunks and busses and stuff... How about using a subway as a wand? I have it was great, i can see it from my window, i just have to set up the ritual to work with the timetable...

Less searchable M0rd4nt

16:59 / 13.11.05

What i would like to own wich would be a great help would be a something to record usubla sounds with and a digital cam for nice pictures.

I have a minidisc recorder I sometimes take around with me, and also use to record rituals ect. That and a decent condenser mic set me back about £175 new (ah, money! Those were the days!) and you could probably get them a lot cheaper if you settled for used models. The condenser mic picks up everything, it's really sensitive.

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

14:05 / 14.11.05

I'm designing a deck of cards - long going though, as I don't want it to be a personal version of the Tarot - I'm developing the structure of the suits, etc...

mind you, this one's only in my imagination at this point.

however,

I've made my own ink from berries, and paper from discarded paper. I've taken all of my notebooks containing scribbles about astronomy, astrology, calendrics, kabbalah, snippets of fiction, voodoo, samurai, gardening, recipes, etc, threw mixed with water, blended (in food processor), and used a silkscreen to catch the fibres.

let the paper dry.

so, I'm fashioning a magic book out of all of this paper I'm accumulating (haven't got the binding worked out yet).

I plan on keeping a record of sygils and symbols in it... but I suppose the book will dictate its own contents.

I really like the diy approach -

ta
tenix

14:20 / 14.11.05

What are resources for people who would like to make more of their own tools?

If you mean how-tos, there are lots of online resources and books available with recipes for oils, washes, incenses and the like. It's also failry easy to find instructions on making candles, and some other crafts - woodworking, leatherworking, metalworking, etc, though these will take some skill and practice. Other tools may require a bit more ingenuity - for example, when I was making my feather fan, I searched online and found only the sketchiest of information on how to do such a thing, so I mostly winged it - if you'll forgive the pun.

Generally when I sit down to work on an object I have only the foggiest idea of what I'm doing - the item seems to dictate its own creation.