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Are You Local?

  
  

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Quantum
15:01 / 05.06.06
Elsewhere Gypsy Lantern said Either operate at a place that you have a living connection with or don't do it at all.

I'd tend to agree, I think it's better to link to the local area than glamourise distant magical places (e.g. Glastonbury, Stonehenge, Uluru, the Blarney stone). I was thinking about local landmarks, and here in Brighton we've got some great ones- the Royal Pavilion, the West Pier and of course the Sea. Not everyone is so lucky, but everywhere I've lived I've found magical places to connect to locally.

What's your local magical landscape like? Do you feel connected to where you live? What do you think of city magic? Any cool examples of speaking to buildings and such?
 
 
Quantum
16:12 / 05.06.06
I'm interested because I'm particularly connected to the ruined pier and the beach there- it straddles the boundary between land and sea, has a great view for sunrise and sunset with a big sky, and of course was destroyed by fire. It represents all the elements to me and reaching out into the unknown, I've had some great coincidences around it and spent some time deliberately fostering a connection with the location.
For me, Northampton seems like the most boring place imaginable, but Alan Moore seems to find something magical about it. I want to hear about your local little-known magical places, your shrines and woods and wells and mountains, buildings and rivers and bridges, tell me tell me!
 
 
Ticker
17:20 / 05.06.06
I'm particularly fond of a granite overlook of the tidal river in a local park. The view showcases the old naval prison to the left and the outlet to the harbor a bit more towards center, then the big island, then the ancient white sprawling mansion/hotel to the right.
As the place where the river meets the sea, the past to the present, the granite to the water, it is a very inspiring place. For my wedding women's ritual, we hiked up there and chucked flowers, chocolate and a bread couple into the river then poured wine overall. For the spouse's recent surgery I brought the spirits of the area a big box of gourmet chocolate and chucked it in there for luck.

The river and the ocean tend to dominate the area along with a low thrum from the granite. I use the riverbank in the old cemetery to offer oranges on the winter solstice in keeping with the idea of life and death as close kin. For me the mouth of the river and its little parks resonate with the soul of the Place.



Hotel
Prison
 
 
SteppersFan
18:33 / 05.06.06
What's your local magical landscape like? Do you feel connected to where you live?
Very much so. Over the road from my house there's a park - more of a forest with manicured edges -- that leads out to the Peak district and I do most of my stuff there. It's part of a line of parks, woodland and open fields with a river running through it that goes right into the centre of Sheffield. I've been doing stuff alone and in groups along that line since 1986. It seems to be getting weirder.

What do you think of city magic? Any cool examples of speaking to buildings and such?I like it a lot, though more so in the past than now. In TOPY we used to take over abandoned factories and the like and do big group rituals in them. I'd love to do stuff like that again but I think they've all been converted to flats. I'm married to an architect so communing with buildings is a big thing for us. You may know the joke about "dancing to architecture" - I'm afraid I actually have.

I'm not really hot on things like ceremonial magic but give me a place with some genius loci, whether that's the woods near me or some ace modernist architecure, and I'm away.
 
 
Ticker
19:17 / 05.06.06
do other folks form strong bonds to certain places even if you don't live there, or do you have more of a 'love the one you're with' practice? Or to phrase it more clearly, are the local places more important to you than places further away because they're local?
 
 
Princess
19:33 / 05.06.06
I think it is much easier and more convenient to form relationships with close places. Of course, when you live between woodland, the sea and mountains it is all that more easy to find "powerful" places.
 
 
yemeth
21:47 / 05.06.06
One of my favourite paradigms is "Kult", a role playing game in which beyond the "Illusion" (standard existence) the forces which shape the universe are mostly centered in a huge city called Metropolis (which is what is unveiled when such illusion drops, as humans have built cities because of an impulse from their hidden memories on their original city which was this Metropolis... long story). The cities in our world as well, are parts of the unveiled Metropolis.

As an example, you have the ten (well, eight, two are gone) huge palaces of the archons, which are a twisted version of the sepiroth. Since these palaces are huge beyond imagination, and have parts in the "illusion", I find consecrating a building to one of these deities a pretty strong way to call/bring them.

There is a whole sourcebook related to it, helps to make a lot of connections when you use an urban environment, to different forces and where they belong.
 
 
Quantum
10:33 / 06.06.06
But, er, it's an RPG...
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
10:42 / 06.06.06
Kind of what Quants said there. I'm sure that this RPG is ripping fun and all, but it's still an RPG. Not saying that it's impossible to borrow bits of an RPG system and press them into service as part of your magical practice, just that it's one of these things that everyone talks about doing but seldom seems to produce any results.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
11:24 / 06.06.06
I find consecrating a building to one of these deities a pretty strong way to call/bring them.

...and then what? Why would you do that? What is the purpose? I can see the appeal of this idea as fiction, the idea that all Cities are a reflection of this archetypal alien Metropolis is a cool idea, but what actual magical applications does it have? Where do you go with it? Does it ever get beyond the magical equivalent of fan fiction? What's the point of doing that?
 
 
yemeth
11:44 / 06.06.06
Hmmmm and how would you define a "real" paradigm, specifically in the thread context? (not being confrontational here at all, I'm really curious on your perspective and what could I have missed hindering results).

I guess it would be interesting to say to situate things as well, the RPG itself is built mostly borrowing and mixing from qabbalah, shamanism and gnosticism and who-knows-what, maybe that made results to be more "possible" :-?

From my perspective, specifically I had what I consider really strong results specially from working with a specific godform from it, which may be why I have a strong pro- opinion on it.

A link: KULT
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
11:51 / 06.06.06
Results in what sense? "Results" is a bit meaningless unless you pin it down. Can you elaborate on what the point of this stuff is a bit more?
 
 
Unconditional Love
11:54 / 06.06.06
The area i live in was built straight on top of unexcavated barrows, not good from an ecological view point or historical view point.

Can be a little weird around here at times, but then everywhere i have lived can be a little weird at times so i am not putting it down to anything specific.

I have a great coomunal garden at the back of my flats, not much community in it, but it has a great vibe, the fence along the back was made by all the original residents working together to create a traditional old hedge structure.

Every spring there is a huge erection of green between me and the trees as they begin to bloom and leaf. Its a great place for tai chi etc, when it doesnt make me feel a prat doing it there.

Around the town i live in is alot of farmland with some newly planted woods and some old preserved forest, i used to explore all of this alot more until i got this acursed thing in front of me, which slowly but surely is beginning to piss me off yet again. The farm land is easier to do tai chi chi kung in as there is no bugger around for miles usually, except at weekends.

Practicing bagua once in a set of woods west of the town with a teacher, the whole environment became complete peace, a great stillness and tranquilty, at one point a bird circled us as we walked the circle, that was an intresting day. Its a feeling that can be lost very easily as i cycle or walk back into my town.

Anybody noticed the mental declutter in the country, as if there is an unspoken mental aura to a town, filled with human agendas, in the country side this slides away into the background or can as in the instance above disappear entirely. I really enjoy that emptying out that happens as i leave a town, if only for a few hours my mind is free from humanitys trappings and social agendas.

Off to donate some furniture to a community project and then for a long bike ride into the country i think, cheers.
 
 
yemeth
12:19 / 06.06.06
...and then what? Why would you do that? What is the purpose? I can see the appeal of this idea as fiction, the idea that all Cities are a reflection of this archetypal alien Metropolis is a cool idea, but what actual magical applications does it have? Where do you go with it? Does it ever get beyond the magical equivalent of fan fiction? What's the point of doing that?

The point on such consecration is to strenghten the workings of the entity which is supposed to occupy (or rather, be) that palace. On the results of it, the main "deity" I have worked with is the game version of a personified Malkuth, in which it is considered to be that who built the illusion and at the same time the rebellious archon which tries to liberate humanity. As such (I'm on game terms all the time in this paragraph), what she does is breaking down reality and bringing shock for the players -though, trying to take care of them even if being too hard at times.

As for the "results" part; huge increase in synchronicities to a point in which the lateral interpretation stream was continuously interpretable, in a descense-to-hell fashion (reappearance of the unconscious from the outside), with such stream throwing me into different interpretations of reality -fear, specially in the beginning-, but at the same time with crude changes from one to a different interpretation (you could call it psychosis, too, though it was not fixed in just one interpretation versus normal interpretation); ending after a pair of days when I got desperate that "I don't know what the f*ck is happening here at all", and in that sentence was as well the solution (or at least, mine). The stream continued however for at least one day, as direct communication with what I could only consider some sort of "higher intelligence". Later on, I've tried it again bringing again an increased amount of synchronicities and a weird shift of probability when training neural networks on it (to which the only other possibility, quite possible though, is that the software "broke")

(Yuck, feels weird telling this stuff in public, but I'd appreciate any insight on why it could have worked that way if it was really supposed not to)
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
12:29 / 06.06.06
Not saying you can't get "results", after a fashion. or that it's not supposed to work because it's from an RPG. But I still don't understand what the point is? Tourism? Are you just looking for something weird to happen? What is the purpose of this work?

If you can't answer that question without reference to garbled jargon-filled nonsense sentences like: "I've tried it again bringing again an increased amount of synchronicities and a weird shift of probability when training neural networks on it (to which the only other possibility, quite possible though, is that the software "broke")" then I'm not too impressed.

Of course magic based on fiction can bring results of a sort, in terms of increased synchronicities and weirdness, but you are not answering the question: Why you are doing this? What use are you getting from it?
 
 
yemeth
12:55 / 06.06.06
Gypsy Lantern

I'm not trying to impress you -neither do I consider myself experienced enough neither the sort of person to try go "impressing"-; it is you who asked specifically what results were, so blaming me afterwards is a bit unfair . I tried to put in one paragraph what is absurd to put in such small amount of text; reluctantly because I don't really like to talk on details on things in which I do not find it possible to pin down a whole coherent hypothesis, but at least to try not to leave the "results" part unanswered since it was what was asked.

Now on the purpose -which is a different question-, in that pair of occasions it had been philosophical in nature; a general curiosity on "how reality works" (I should stress, this would apply to the two specific situations described, not necessarily as a general rule; as well, since I didn't have beforehand an experience of that type and I am a quite skeptical person, it was quite a mindfuck and food-for-thought for me).
 
 
SteppersFan
13:01 / 06.06.06
Lovely post Wolfangel. Now...
Practicing bagua once in a set of woods west of the town with a teacher, the whole environment became complete peace, a great stillness and tranquilty, at one point a bird circled us as we walked the circle, that was an intresting day.
I was doing my thing out in the woods last night - these long evenings are the bizzle now they're warm - and had a similar experience: working the paths up the valley, getting more and more still. And then I found a spot up top with the three fabulous Hawthorns all utterly overloaded with blossom - they're my favourite trees at this time of year now the "Candles" are dying off...

(Image of hawthorn tree removed for copyright/bandwidth reasons)

... settled in between them and did some meditation and was so conscious of the birds getting ever closer as they got used to me being there, motionless. Deafening actually.

Its a feeling that can be lost very easily as i cycle or walk back into my town. Anybody noticed the mental declutter in the country, as if there is an unspoken mental aura to a town...
Yes and no. I know absolutely what you mean, but as long as I feel safe, I can get an equivalent but different feeling of decluttering in the city. It's very noticeable when I work in London on projects, that sense of purposeful drift with all obstructions falling away. So I have strong magical associations with cities as well as countryside. I meant to mention before that I share with Quantum the old, ruined pier at Brighton as a place of resonance - done some stuff there in the early nineties as well as various other places around Brighton (not just in Gen's house either). Parts of Stoke Newington and Brixton are also very resonant - Effra Road, the St Marks Church nexus, Abney Cemetary... shades of nineties psychogeography now...
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
13:13 / 06.06.06
I said I wasn't impressed at your inability to answer a very simple and direct question about this stuff in plain english. I would never ask anyone to parade their magical wares like a threpenny whore for my benefit. I just wanted to know what you actually get out of this.

You've given me an answer, which is essentially: in order to see what, if anything, happened. Which is fair enough, but it also sums up a lot of my problems with this sort of fiction based stuff. It all tends to be done for its own sake, with no tangible purpose other than to see if anything weird happens. Which is OK for a while, especially if you're new to magic and looking to experiment with stuff - but I find it all gets pretty boring once you've passed beyond the initial novelty of it. Assuming you can communicate with one of the intelligences from the RPG, how does that fit into your life? What do you get from it? Who benefits out of it in any sense?
 
 
yemeth
13:44 / 06.06.06
On the aftermath and what I got out of it; I think what I feel as the "huge" one worked as a deconditioning exercise (moving me from a more rational-skeptic perspective to a position more generally skeptical, including the standard "rational" interpretation of reality), and towards getting a sense of trying not to "join the dots" too much on any specific reality tunnel. As well, more questions, since the final phase of the events in the first event didn't involve communication with the actual deity but with something I would find hard to describe (communication was with something that seemed more like a plural set of entities, from which I learnt, I guess the more important, the central importance of love as a consequence of being wrapped in it by them in a vulnerable state). And well, having an interest from that philosophical mindset, it opened for myself a whole series of questions which I find really interesting.

And of course, novelty and curiosity was a factor to be impressed by it, as well.

The part on "neural networks something something" really should have been kept out, re-reading it it sounds quite absurd; and it would be impossible to explain a subfield (part of the artificial intelligence field) and the software which is used for it in two lines, even in two paragraphs (and as well, to relate it to what it meant for me would be... well, I get to feel that these things get cheapened a lot when you just talk about them).
 
 
Unconditional Love
14:28 / 06.06.06
My bike needs fixing,with no brakes i guess theres no stopping me, but id like to be able to stop myself.

My mate used to love kult the rpg, i read alittle of it and was struck by just how much of the game ripped off gnosticism, the people that made it were obviously very familiar with western mystery traditions. I can see how the cosmos of the game could be used as a mythological system pretty readily.

If it was me i would reference the creators of the games original points of reference, which to me seem to be gnosticism (in large chunks) western hermeticism, kabbalah, some lovecraftian influence, worth looking at the work people have done with that.

Also worth looking at the movie dark city which contains alot of themes found in the game. which brings to mind philip k dicks idea that the empire never ended and the whole valis series of books. (lots more gnosticism)

Might be worth purusing the gnostic society library, and getting a copy of the pistis sophia. The entity you encountered the feminine presence reminds me of her, also worth looking at the thoth queen/princess of earth card.
 
 
gravitybitch
14:30 / 06.06.06
Definitely connected. There's a spot out-doors where I escape from work and eat my lunch whenever the weather's not spitting at me. I share a bit of sandwich and some of my water, talk to the land, meditate and do energy exercises there.

And the land responds: there've been days where I could feel a welcome, get a(n almost) physical sensation of energy run up my legs and crest over me as soon as I stepped off the parking lot. And lately, it's been like breathing warm honey - the weather's been warm and everything is green, there are flowers and bugs and critters rustling in the weeds, and hummingbirds all over the place; it's so very alive that I can feel it from 50 yards away.
 
 
faintwhitelights
00:00 / 10.06.06
i lived for 15 years not a 5 minute car drive from the gulf of mexico on the west coast of florida. hated the beach in the day time. but there was ALWAYS something about the ocean at night that made me comfortable. often in highschool i'd steal off and spend the night on the beach. eventually, i got a little into meditation and such. so i started going to the beach at night as meditation. then meditating next to the ocean.

that gulf became such a huge part of my life that now that i've moved inland i feel VERY disconnected with it. i can't just drive out to it in the middle of the night anymore. unless i want to drive for 2 hours.

last summer, i had the most magical experiences in my life at or concerning that beach/those waters. i'd like to find something here in my new town.. but i just can't leave behind the idea of that ocean. it's rather odd...
 
 
Haloquin
10:24 / 11.06.06
I've lived my whole life (until last Spetember) in Swindon and I never felt like it was home, I never really felt connected to the town in general (in fact, it felt more like a black hole) although certain parts of the greener areas resonated with me. I have tried to connect to the place, but the whole town pulls me down.
Then in September I moved to Lampeter, right in the heart of Wales, and I felt like I'd come home, it felt like I was welcomed there, supported by the whole area.
I've been working with getting to know the spirit of the river and with making a conscious connection with the land, and I've felt benefits, it feels like the place is looking out for me, and I find wandering with intent (divinatory purposes) easier and yeilds interesting messages.

It will be interesting over the summer as I'm going to be living in Nottingham, I couldn't stand the thought of going back to Swindon, but there's no work in Lampeter! So I'm looking forward to seeing how the small connection that I've built up to the land in Lampeter reacts to me spending time in another city, how well I can gain a temporary connection in Nottingham, and how it all works in general!

I've been wondering what reasons for connecting with the land people generally have... I know its often considered to be important in certain magical/religious etc. systems, which is part of why I originally started trying to work on it, my thinking has been that there are so many traditions that base their work on a connection to the land and they have developed from that connection, they are attractive and have benefits, but aren't connected to "my" land... if this makes sense... so I'd like to connect and build up a relationship myself, rather than using a (for example) "westernised-native-american" system that relates to spirits and energies of a different land. I've been using some of R.J. Stewart's books as inspiration for how to do this, as well as just trying to listen to Lampeter, as his stuff is based on more "celtic" sources from Britain, as far as I can tell (the British part being more important to me than the celtic connection).
A possibly clearer way of expressing the idea I'm working from is;
I don't want to just follow a ready made system that is pretty but not related to the land I'm in, I'd rather work on building something more personal.

Sorry if this is vague, I'll stop rambling now.
 
 
Quantum
10:45 / 11.06.06
what reasons for connecting with the land people generally have

You know, I'm not entirely sure. It just always seemed the right thing to do, like making friends with your neighbours.
 
 
Z. deScathach
11:34 / 11.06.06
There's a spot near where I live, a small forest, with pathways. It's wild, unmanicured forest,(we have too many artificially planted ones around here due to logging, they have a notoriously dead feel). I go there to learn things, heal my body, and to perform magic. I'm apparently not the only one that has sensed the specialness of the place, as I've come across objects that tell me that others are doing same. Rocks with concentric circles drawn around them. Little holes with objects within. Once I saw a fairly large symbol scrawled,(I've stopped using the word sigil, they're symbols dammit). It always makes me smile when I see that.

In terms of local deities, I live in a land where the people who worshipped them were destroyed, their graveyards turned into a park. I've communicated with those spirits. They are hungry and pissed. That's why this town has a nasty feel. Everyone knows about it, but no one figures out why. To them, the pre-columbian graveyard is an interesting thing to picnic on. I offer an honoring to them when I go to that land.
 
 
Haloquin
20:17 / 14.06.06
"You know, I'm not entirely sure. It just always seemed the right thing to do, like making friends with your neighbours."
That sounds like a good reason.
 
 
faintwhitelights
21:14 / 14.06.06
today i went cruising on my bicycle to try to find an area that i could just sit in shade and read. i went down to our beautiful University of Florida campus, but no area sat well with me. dizzy the whole time.

so i'm going to scout elsewhere as well. but, i mentioned above how the gulf in clearwater florida pulls me in pretty strongly... this weekend i went back for a visit. i rode a beautiful storm in to clearwater from the interstate. it's amazing how i always feel myself pulled toward the ocean there. and how as a child i used to completely despise going to the beach.

water, rain, the beach and the gulf of mexico will always feel like home. much like a lake in my hometown in indiana.
 
 
Doc Checkmate
00:33 / 15.06.06
Either operate at a place that you have a living connection with or don't do it at all.

That´s a big strong, isn´t it? I mean, what´s that saying? You can´t take it with you? I can´t agree with a prohibition against "magic too far from the home." Or homeLAND, or whatever. I´m in Buenos Aires right now for a summer job. I have no connection with this place, by either ancestry or deep cultural involvement. Does that mean I should keep my Enochian tablets and eye of newt locked safely in my duffel? I guess I could try and hurriedly FORGE a connection to this place, but that smacks of disregard for a culture´s depth and is obviously not what´s meant by¨"living connection" above.

I´m not saying a rapport with the place of your working isn´t immensely valuable. I´m just not going to put the brakes on my magic for lack of one.

I just looked at the context of Gypsy Lantern´s statement. If what he meant was something like, "Don´t work WITH a place with which you don´t have a living connection," then I completely agree. If that´s the case, forgive me and disregard this post.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
08:51 / 15.06.06

To clarify, I can't understand any magic that has no connection to the living environment around you. I just can't comprehend how anyone can be a magician but claim to have no connections to where they live. Does it all happen in your bedroom? In your imagination? What? I don't get it. I cannot grasp how you can be a magician and not have an intimate relationship with your local environment. To me, that is like walking around with your eyes shut, not seeing the magic that's going on all around you all the time.

Why do you think you have to "hurriedly FORGE a connection to the place in a way that disregards the cultures depth". You don't have to hurriedly do anything. It's just about cultivating an awareness of the magic that is all around you. The woods. The river. The sea. A creepy old hospital. An ancient boneyard. Knowing what the turf is. Understanding a bit of the history. Paying attention to the local flora and fauna. Seeing the seasonal changes. Just being clued up on your local area in a magical sense.

I mean, the Gods and spirits I work with are from another land. But they are in London now, as they have been brought here. They live through my work and the work of all of the others who call to them in this City. Just like various other foreign deities from Isis to Mithras who have been brought to London over the centuries in exactly the same way. I meet my Gods in the landscape. If there is a Goddess of the River, I meet her at the Thames, and by doing so I form a continuity of magic that stretches back through all of the others who have called to their own River Goddesses at that same spot, stretching back into antiquity. Each river where I call to my Goddess has its own nature. The Thames is a different personality to the Tyne, which is different again from the Mississippi. But my Lady flows through all of the rivers of the world, and each body of water reveals another of her moods.

I might be speaking to a different face of the river, but the continuity is there, it taps into the histories and mysteries of place. The magic of the Thames that stretches way back, and has never exclusively been the province of one culture anyway. Gods travel all the time, and by calling to them in the landscape you are forging a very real connection between them and the land. You are doing it. It is happening as a result of your magic. What you are doing in this space where you live and breathe is as important and as valid as the hypothetical magicians of the history books - who ultimately were just people like you or I getting on about their business.

But it's not just limited to power spots or obviously magical locations like the river or the woods. I do a lot of work at the Crossroads near my house, and as an extension of this I've come to develop a really deep connection with my immediate local area. Right outside my doorstep. I live on this patch of land and it is my turf, my magician's patch, my place of power. I take an interest in what goes on in this space. Incidents. Things left behind. Overheard conversations. The local trees. The local bird activity. It's my garden and I take an interest in what goes on. It speaks to me and I speak to it. It gives me signs and messages. It provides ingredients for my magic. I'm connected to this space, just because that is where I am. If I go elsewhere, the same thing will start to happen, because its an integral aspect of being a magician. Keeping your eyes open. Having an awareness of the magical currents that move around you. Being plugged in and connected.

Do people not do this? I really don't get it. For me, this whole thread is weird, as I don't understand how you can be a magician at all if you are "not local" and don't have any sort of relationship at all with where you exist in the world and what goes on around you.
 
 
Kiltartan Cross
10:32 / 15.06.06
I imagine that a forceful approach, along the lines of "this is the result I want to achieve, and *I* *will* make it happen" is independent of place.

Myself, I'm very much a place person; if magic for me is nothing more than the opportunity to get in touch with the world (and as a natural philosopher, anything else is surely irrational and unnecessary speculation, although by no means impossible; still, I don't pretend to much rationality), then it is still a wonderful thing.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
12:06 / 15.06.06
I think this kind of rootlessness, this lack of a connection with your place, can be both a kind of side-effect of weak practice generally and a contributing factor. Back in my fluffier days I used to work through the pathworking excercises outlined in certain New-Agey books, dutifully visualising myself in a deep, ancient wood... when I lived literally a stone's throw away from a REAL deep ancient wood and went for long walks there regularly, a circumstance that didn't appear to occur to some of the writers. (Honestly, I could kick 15-year-old me sometimes.) So instead of accessing the real spirit of the place where I was living, I was shutting myself off from it--escaping into a fantasy world when the real deal was right outside my window.
 
 
ostranenie
12:08 / 15.06.06
Like many other contributors to this thread, I don't really see how it's possible not to be "local". Whenever I do anything magical I'm acutely aware of my surroundings. My awareness seems to expand to take in everything around me. When I lived in London, in that frame of mind I'd be aware of the city moving all around me, the networks of traffic and electric cables and the tunnels beneath me, and that gave the work and its results a different feel from what I get now that I live in a quiet green estate on the edge of Oxford. London's magic was buzzy, jumpy, nervy. Here is slower, softer, more about thinking than doing.

I think it's important to make friends with wherever you are. I like the "befriending the neighbours" comparison. When I moved to London from Dublin I was worried that I'd been drawing power from my own country and that moving countries would have lost me a source of strength, so one evening I went up Primrose Hill at dusk (I know, cliché), and did a ritual to basically introduce myself, try to make a connection. (I don't know if this would work in a place with which I had no affinity at all, like the person up-thread who was wondering about doing magic in Buenos Aires. I think in that situation I'd find it very hard to fall into the magical frame of mind at all. The idea of forcing a connection is weird to me.)

Lately I've noticed going back to Ireland is like plugging into a wall socket. I feel it as soon as the plane's wheels hit the runway at Dublin Airport. While I'm back home, my dreams are extremely vivid and pathworkings come easily, with no sense that I have to shove them onward consciously, as sometimes happens here.

(I really like this forum, by the way. I've only been here a few days and already I've found so much fascinating stuff. The essay on "drifting" was a revelation. I've been doing that for years without knowing other people did it too!)
 
 
Quantum
12:19 / 15.06.06
I live on this patch of land and it is my turf, my magician's patch, my place of power.

Couldn't agree more. My house is in the eye of the human huricane that is the North Laine, stones throw from road, rail and coastline, five minutes from a massive viaduct (hello gigantic symbolic archway with a road passing under it!) leading to a huge park, where recently 70,000 people gathered to watch an incredibly impressive fireworks and pyrotechnics display, there's always something going on and yet our house is quiet and relaxed. The end of our street is like stepping into a river of people from the bank.

But I still have a connection to the places I've lived before- I am very fond of St Catherine's hill in Winchester, and several places on the Isle of Wight*, and various stone circles beaches and woods around England and Wales. They're like distant relatives now, but the connection is still there and could be revived easily.

*found out some fascinating things about ley lines, ferrous ore, the Templars and spirals recently involving the Island, remind me to post about it
 
 
Doc Checkmate
12:37 / 15.06.06
To clarify, I can't understand any magic that has no connection to the living environment around you.

Fair enough. I'm afraid I still can't agree. In the first place, you're right, of course--the idea of developing a "hasty" connection to a place is ludicrous and I tried to present it as such. Also, I think I understand what you had meant by "living connection" a little more now than when I posted. I was envisioning it as a more permanent thing, a sort of "this is where I hang my magical hat" based on longtime cultural or geographic affiliation. Don't do workings while in Finland unless you bleed the mighty Viking blüd or have spent some time chasing chicks with Thor, prosthetic shopping with Tyr, etc. I understand you now as describing a sort of resonance with a place, a sympathy and synergy. Getting to know it, sharing its concerns. Asking it questions and being a good listener. I do think that doing this is incredibly powerful, and it certainly adds new dimensions to your work and your sense of yourself as a 24/7 magician.

Nonetheless, it remains that I simply can't develop this sort of connection in a few weeks in a strange place. I'm in Buenos Aires for no more than a portion of the summer, and a huge chunk of that will be spent in an office or in court. And make the situation more extreme: say I'm in a new place for a few days or a week, no more. Does the short time, and the consequent lack of opportunity to become great friends with your temporary home, mean that you should hold off on working any magic until you're back in a place you can relate to?

Gypsy, I understand that your magic is intimately connected with your home and your community. I also respect what you do. At the moment, however, it's not what I do. Nor is it the only legitimate way to do things. My magic DOES center more in the imagination and less in the world around me right now; in particular, I'm working on lucid dreaming and making my way through Ben Rowe's "A Short Course on Scrying" to develop some facility with astral work. Basic stuff, but I'm a beginning magician and I need to strengthen those muscles. I don't believe this makes my practice weak, but merely early-stage and narrowly focused. I find that I can only work on developing one or two completely new skills at a time, or I don't progress in any of them. This is what I'm working on right now. Doesn't mean I'm not still "listening" as I walk through the city, or that I limit the magic in my day to the hours I spent doing my exercises. But, well, there it is.

Really though, the point I'd stress is my first one, that circumstances can place you in a situation where a connection with your current locale just isn't in the cards. You're right that a connection is a huge boost to your practice if it's possible. I certainly try to maintain one with my home city. But when it's not possible, I don't think that rules out magic. Maybe our perspectives differ slightly here, but I don't believe that invalidates either.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
12:57 / 15.06.06
I never said anywhere that you should cease all magical activity if you weren't located in a place with which you had a strong connection. That's just daft. Doesn't make any sense. I'm just talking about a magical awareness of where you are situated in time and space right now.

If you're in Beunos Aires for a couple of months and don't know anything about the culture or the history, and don't plan to be there for very long, I don't think that precludes you from connecting with the place. You're obviously not going to have the same sort of connection to the place that you might have with somewhere that you lived for decades, but who would expect you to? Whenever I visit a City, even if I'm only there for a couple of days, I'll introduce myself to it magically and try to tune into its mysteries to some extent. I'm not going to get very deep in a couple of days, but I'll certainly connect with it to some extent, and it would feel rude not to bother.

Granted, the stuff I work with lends itself especially well to this making this sort of connection. Other magicians work with different things and might not be able to make a connection to the land quite so readily because their toolbox doesnt have the same components. However, the general principles behind the sort of magic I'm talking about are fairly adaptable and I don't really see that there's anything preventing anyone from engaging with their environment in the same general sort of way that I do, regardless of pantheon or tradition. All that is required is to look at these things from a different angle and open your eyes to the possibilities.
 
  

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