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Automatic Rituals: Clockwork, Machines, Tools, and Magic.

  
 
Ticker
18:49 / 18.06.06
Evski G asked about computers as aids to help visualize the GD LBRP ritual in this thread.

I had checked out LVX23's online site but couldn't get it to work for me except in small tantalizing ways.

Then I recalled a particularly horrible experience I had in college...

My SO at the time had a rather massive cyber porn addiction. Not the average T&A picture kind but a nasty very ugly realistic prose rape fantasy kind. Ze lived in an apartment with a roommate and hir computer was kept at a desk in a extra wide hallway. I was at the time computer ignorant but asked if I could go over to use hir PC to write a paper for class. I was there by myself and had a few basic newbie issues so I called up a close friend of mine who was an uber geek.

My geek pal and I have always had a great psychic connection. Ze once showed up for no reason at closing time outside the club I had just gotten dangerously wasted at. There ze was waiting in the car outside the door as my drugged up wasted self staggered out. Ze had only ever been to the club once before and was there on weird instinct. I would most likely not have made it home safely without hir unexpected rescue. We have had many of these mutual hyper awareness events.

While struggling with my SO's 'puter, my geek pal and I engaged in imaginative seeing. Ze visualized what I described as if ze was standing there. At ze's direction I clicked on a file on the desktop and then it happened...

Something about three feet high and cold grey walked in from the living room entrance along the far side of the desk and into my SO's bedroom on the other end of the hallway. I was gripped by a profound sense of horror & revulsion and screamed. My geek pal said "WTF was that Thing?!" equally terrified.

Ze had seen a 'gargoyle' walk passed as I was screaming. I know for a fact I did not say anything coherent to indicate what I saw. I spent the next half hour standing on top of the couch terrified as we tried to figure out what happened. The file I had accidentally opened was a rather horrible rape story my SO had downloaded, not my paper.

Our best guess is my SO (very not into magic) had attracted something which would come and feed on hir during the use of this pornography. My opening of the file was enough to trigger the visit. In Chaos language it might have been a servitor of some kind Ze had unconsciously created. I never saw it again, but then I never used *that* computer again. I did ask my SO about it but ze just looked at me funny.

Before this experience I had believed specific intent by the user was needed for a tool to work. Now I know better.
 
 
EvskiG
00:40 / 19.06.06
LVX23, do you still have a link to the LBRP simulation you posted a while back?

As for xk's experience, I've never encountered anything quite that dramatic, but in one of his books Lon DuQuette talks about how a friend happened upon a Goetic seal he had left in his guitar, with unfortunate consequences . . .
 
 
Bard: One-Man Humaton Hoedown
04:40 / 20.06.06
Had some rather nasty dealings when my family first moved into this house (which we're actually moving out of, have it to myself for a few weeks before the new owners take posession, may shop around for a few rites to cleanse it up for them, seems the polite thing to do). Doesn't strictly fall under the topic, but my room and the laundry room seemed tied to some sort of centipede...thing. I'd see it occasionally on the periphery, had a few real nasty dreams about it. Seems to have quieted down since I moved out, and doesn't bother me much now that I only live here occasionally. But I can certainly empathize with your "holy shit, what was that?" experience.
 
 
trouser the trouserian
07:19 / 20.06.06
xk

Interesting encounter.

It puts me in mind of something that happened to me a few years back, particularly as I was cast in the role of being the source/cause of the encounter. I was hitch-hiking around Scotland, visiting a variety of friends, and spent one night in Perth with a married couple I'd known from college, who were vaguely into magic (I'll call them John and Sarah - not their real names).I had, what I thought was a fairly convivial evening with them and a female cousin of Sarah's (who was at the 'vaguely intrigued but rather wary of magic' stage of involvement). At some point during the evening I'd showed them Ray Sherwins' "Cardinal Rites of Chaos" which I'd just bought. Anyhow, the next morning I woke late and, whilst preparing to leave for the next stage of travelling, Sarah came in and said something along the lines of "My cousins' really pissed off with you". Naturally I asked why and Sarah told me that her cousin had woken up in the night and on her way to the bathroom, had seen some kind of 'creature' come out of the room I was staying in, and walk across the hall and disappear into the darkness. The cousin was totally convinced that I was the 'cause' of this apparition. Sarah then went on to say that neither she or John liked the 'chaos book' I had. They'd decided that the artwork was somehow 'vampiric' in character and furthermore, they felt that the notion of meditating on the chaosphere image (which I think I'd mentioned) was also 'dodgy' as the group who'd created the book would be able to 'steal' the energy of the unwary. It was clear that I wasn't welcome, and that I wouldn't be able to talk to Sarah's cousin about her experience (it turned out later she was hiding in her room until I left the house). The subtext was fairly clear - I had a 'bad' book with me, therefore I was doing something magically dodgy, and had through my 'dark' doings, somehow caused the apparition that Sarah's cousin encountered to manifest - either through unwitting complicity or my magical incompetence. Although I'd known this couple for some years, subsequent telephone conversations indicated that they really didn't want me to visit them again after this experience, so we lost contact.

What I found interesting about this experience was how quickly I was tagged as the 'cause' of it - obviously Sarah's cousin had talked to Sarah & John about her uncanny experience, and they'd quickly collaborated to create a 'explanatory narrative' where I was the 'cause' of the experience due to the dodgy "chaos magic" I was obviously involved with - reinforced by my possession of a book they didn't like the look of.
 
 
Ticker
13:38 / 20.06.06
trouser,

that's a fascinating story and an important viewpoint to consider.
I remember at the time of my encounter a sense of disappointed expectation vibe from the critter. Like it was expecting someone else to be at the desk.
I ended up living in a new apartment with that SO for 2 years and while I never saw the WTF again, I did often fell the cold presence I associated with it whenever I had to go into ze's room.

But your point is well taken, I can't say for certain ze was the cause.
 
 
Ticker
13:39 / 20.06.06
Bard,

did the centipede's appearance seem to be triggered by anything?
 
 
trouser the trouserian
08:17 / 21.06.06
Okay, here's a description of a more recent of experience which I had. A couple of years ago, I was at a magical camp - having a pleasant evening with a few friends round a firepit, just chatting away. I could hear another friend talking a few yards away, and looking over, saw my mate Woody standing a few feet away from his dome. He was flanked by four guys. They were bald, about 5' high, and plastered in white body paint from head to foot. I commented to one of the people round the firepit that I thought Woody was just about to - or had come back from doing a ritual - and that I didn't want to disturb him. We both looked in his direction again, and both of us saw these white-painted guys 'fade' into nothingness - they became amorphous white shapes (that seemed to be 'taller' than the original figures) then disappeared. The two of us discussed this and found we'd more or less seen the same event. I spoke to Woody about this a few hours later, and as far as he was concerned, he hadn't perceived anything out of the ordinary. I had other mild encounters at this particular camp, but none with another person sharing them directly.

xk
I ended up living in a new apartment with that SO for 2 years and while I never saw the WTF again, I did often fell the cold presence I associated with it whenever I had to go into ze's room.

Interesting - as this would indicate that the WTF was associated with your SO rather than something that just happened to pass through the other apartment "on its way somewhere" as it were - but why would it localise to zeir room?

Incidently, you can find some intriguing encounter experiences being discussed/dissected on the Fortean Times message board.
 
 
Ticker
13:38 / 21.06.06
yeah I'm a FT addict raised that way no less. was lucky to get an article in the damn thing once...was lovely to see.

I think the WTF was triggered to manifest by opening the file on my SO's desktop.I suspect it visited hir often which is a bit ghastly to think about.

It's the ritual trigger/artifact trigger that I'm mostly after in this thread. I'm wondering how many people have accidently tripped someone else's object/place.
 
 
Z. deScathach
09:24 / 25.06.06
I had a similar experience to the above at my mothers house. I had gone to visit there for christmas, always a rather uncomfortable affair, as my mother was an abusive alcoholic. It was the usual joy-joy, after my mother had passed out, I made up the couch to go to sleep. I shut off the light, and suddenly got a severe case of the willies. It was at that time that something very nasty looking "ran" across the livingroom. Needless to say, I didn't get much sleep. The next night, I prepared for it magickally, and dealt with it. No further comment, I did what I felt needed doing.

The interesting thing is that a couple weeks afterwards, a series of events occured that influenced my mother to decide quit drinking. We are now close, and the family is better off for it by a million miles. I'm convinced that this entity had been hanging around for some time feeding off my mother's drunken rage, and tweaking the situation to cause more. Removing the entity, the tweaking, and the situation had an opportunity to heal up, and my mother had the room to make some positive choices.

I find the above situation about the people freaking out over chaos magick interesting. I had a fellow who was into the Golden Dawn system in my home awhile back and I related the instance and working to him. He looked at me with this scary look and said, "Are you aware that you practiced BLACK magick?" (The context of the word "black" was unmistakable).

I got a kick out of this. Stopped a predatory being from capitalizing on my mother's misery for food, allowing my mother to decide to quit drinking, resulting in a family that has gone from stressed and resentful to close and loving. The BLACKEST of the BLACK!
 
 
Ticker
14:05 / 25.06.06
Glad you sorted it! I find it interesting how few people consider that a lot of illness/destructive behavior might be externally influenced...

now to see if I can find a thread on magical prejudice to bump up...
 
  
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