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Urban Occultism

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Nietzsch E. Coyote

02:39 / 12.09.02

So far I know of 2 books on magick and some scattered papers on the web. City Magick by Christopher Penzack and The Urban Primitive: Paganism in the Concrete Jungle by Raven Kaldera and Tannin Schwarzstein. I can remember the name of one Urban MagicK Text online Bridge Magick by some topyite.

I personally would like to work more with "Urban Magick" and so would like to start a dialogue.

Sirhan Sirhan Solo

05:18 / 12.09.02

I would imagine that there's something to be said about the Situationist derive a form of initiatory journey. Also, perhaps the complex paths of roads and subway lines could function as some sort of mass sigil.
It might also be interesting, in the case of specific cities, to delve into local folklore in order to get a "feel" for the area.
These are just some thoughts that came to mind, even though I've never had any practical experience in urban shamanism.

Nietzsch E. Coyote

07:16 / 12.09.02

How about using the configuration of bird shit on a statue for divination? The position it lands on the body of a sculpture of a person could indicate something. Or the distribution pattern could be interpreted like tea leaves.

Or Putting a sigil or marker in local "power spots" (however defined) to tap into cities power. Or meditate on the vibe that the prime sigil gives off. For one of the jobs I've had I constructed a sigil from a map that showed where I walked repeatedly as a source of that areas power.

08:49 / 12.09.02

Speaking from my own experiments, urban magic is all about building a living relationship with the City and the spirits that live there. It's about taking your magic out of the safe confines of your flat and into the world at large, which can be quite a big leap to take in itself, as it inevitably involves regularly performing acts of magick in public spaces in broad daylight. You have to get past the barrier of being perceived as the local nutter, and not mind too much about people giving you funny looks for doing weird things in public. This in itself is an interesting experiment in moving outside your normal behavioural boundaries, and I'd even go as far as to reccomend it on its own merits.

From my experience, each City seems to have a Mythic Twin, similar to what Mad Tom reveals to Dane in the first story arc of The Invisibles. The key to urban magick is in gaining access to this twin shadow city, and the best way to go about this is to immerse yourself in the mythic history of the place where you live, find out where the local power spots are, and develop a method of travelling from the waking city to its occult twin.

Use your imagination to devise methods for this journey, eg...walk down a particular archway or shadowy back street. Once you're there, pay a visit to local power spots and see what you find there - these can range from old churches built over ancient pagan temples, to areas that you feel inexplicably drawn to and have made sacred. Quest for ingredients for your magic in the hidden City, look for signs and portents on the walls, pay attention to converations with the people you meet there. Get to know the occult landscape that lies beneath the waking City, there's a hidden landscape which the vast throngs of tourists and busy commuters can't even see an outline of, and once you start to perceive its shape you will never look at the place where you live in quite the same light ever again.

10:07 / 12.09.02

Sort of like Dreamtime? Sacred journeys on the D7 bus route...

11:15 / 12.09.02

Yeah, dreamtime of the city, consider the London tube system as an underworld - white tile walls and harsh flourescent lighting - the shamanic lower world of the waking city. Discover a hidden tube system Quabbala with each station representing a different Sephiroth on London's Tree of Life. Leave totem objects on the perpetual magickal circle known as the Circle Line. Make offerings to the underworld denizens in the form of buskers and beggars and look for divinatory messages in their songs and stories.

18:20 / 12.09.02

Putting a sigil or marker in local "power spots" (however defined) to tap into cities power....

Marko Pogacnik has actually been doing something along these lines with his "lithopuncture" work. He locates (clairvoyantly) ley lines, etc., and inserts carved granite "needles" at particular points to enhance or redirect the flow of energy.

More here... Pogacnik has a book as well, Healing the Heart of the Earth which goes into this in some detail.

Nietzsch E. Coyote

19:22 / 12.09.02

Yes trains in the circle line would work great as an urban manifestation of Ouroborus. History and a good subway system, I wish I lived in Luan-Dun.

Vancouver (West coast of Canada) has little history and our trains are above ground. Though looking out of the windows of our "skytrain" can put one in a trance.

20:09 / 12.09.02

While working in Dublin City I really got a feel for the city's ....spirit or energy, I suppose.I talked to it and after a while it started talking back.

Walk the streets specifically to look for magickal things. Synchronisities, symbols etc. Use Mediamancy to derive significant messages from billboards and shop names. Walk down alleys and streets you don't normally use. These almost abandoned streets hold a lot more infomation that you would think.If you walked down a street a thousand times, walk it again and ask it to show you something new. It will.

Get a bus around the city and watch for significant messages appearing on the condensation and grubby handprints on the glass.

It takes time to build up a relationship with a city.

I thought my relationship with Dublin would always be there but I was wrong. I stopped working there and began to spend less and less time on it's streets. Soon, I couldn't hear it's voice anymore. I still talk to it but since I spend so little time there, it doesn't feel the same anymore.

Treat the city as a living being.

22:23 / 12.09.02

I live in Edinburgh, which makes the history thing easier, but...

Carry chalk in your pocket and mark sigils on the walls, or print them onto stickers and put them all over the place.

Try and figure out the symbolism in the graffitti, or, even better, the mysterious markings on the iron plates set into the pavement (manhole covers, etc.)(In older cities, look up now and again - there are symbols carved into the buildings)

Find your own laylines with a map and pins.

Do anything that connects your environment to the astral plane, your imagination.

Nietzsch E. Coyote

03:04 / 13.09.02

or print them onto stickers and put them all over the place.

A friend of mine did something like this, I wonder if he considered it sucessful?

Chalk, I used to consider that one of the most potent magickal tools. Don't seem to use it anymore though. Maybe I'll start again.

Nietzsch E. Coyote

03:21 / 13.09.02

Urban Mage by The Barbelith Magick Collective

foreword by Grant Morrison (i wish)

1. Magick is Life in a living city.
2. Listening to the streets: Divination.
3. Subways, highways and leylines.
4. Respecting steel gods and glass elementals.
5. Mouse wands and disk pentacles in the cubical temple.
6. Rusty nails in pop cans sorcery in the trash.

Anyone want to add or re-define chapters?

Stone Mirror thank you for the mention of Marko Pogacnik. His work is neither nature nor urban, very interesting. (I've only read whats available on the Amazon pages)

03:59 / 13.09.02

Can you add a chapter about magic in respect to urban decay? I don't think people spend enough time around run-down buildings, sewer tunnels, etc.

Last night my friend showed me this old abandoned shipyard and HUGE warehouse near the beach. It was incredible. It existed in a time all its own...

Nietzsch E. Coyote

04:05 / 13.09.02

4. Abandoned areas, mystic sub-worlds.

We can put it between 3. Subways, highways and leylines. and 5. Respecting steel gods and glass elementals.

Nietzsch E. Coyote

04:07 / 13.09.02

This could also go over what is known as "Vading", which is exploration of offlimit areas.

05:55 / 13.09.02

I did a search in yahoo.... Urban Exploration.

[url="http://dir.yahoo.com/Recreation/Hobbies/Urban_Exploration/"]erm[/url]

tonnes of fun, but I digress...

solid~liquid onwards

08:37 / 13.09.02

fraid im a contry bumpkin. i love forests, the older and more diverse, the better, my house is just on the outskirts of an old estate. I walk there almost daily for a few hours.

i just love to walk among the ruins of a once elaborate mansion, and all the other buildings, like the boat house and laundry.

just sit down for 10 minutes and deer, pheasents, grouse, small birds and rare red kites will pass by without noicing you.

cities scare me, i really dont like em very much...even inverness, on a busy morning is just too much

time for a walk i think.

17:12 / 13.09.02

fENRIS: "Vancouver (West coast of Canada) has little history and our trains are above ground. Though looking out of the windows of our "skytrain" can put one in a trance."

Perhaps you've got a perfect opportunity to start laying down your own mental map of the city, then, although the snippets below grabbed my interest when I tried out "Vancouver" on the old Encarta Encyclopedia....

- the Vancouver Museum, with a collection of aboriginal art and artefacts

- Chinatown, containing one of the largest Chinese communities in North America; and Gastown, a restoration of an old section of the city

And concerning Vancouver Island:
- There were tribal villages on the island several thousand years ago, and two groups, the Salishan and Wakashan, continue to live here.

My best - and novice - advice is to let the city take you by surprise sometimes. Exploring the place at your leisure is a mighty fine proposition, but if you walk the same route to work each day, or take the same bus or train, then why not vary it a little?

Take a slightly different route when you really have to be somewhere in a hurry so that the city can jump out at you when you're not lokking for it. Even if it's just to look at a building you walk past every day from a slightly different angle. You might find that you arrive at your destination with a slightly different head on than if you had taken your usual route.

Nietzsch E. Coyote

19:46 / 13.09.02

sttab raises an interesting point:
cities scare me, i really dont like em very much...even inverness, on a busy morning is just too much

Time has to be a central facet of city magick. While nature follows the rhythm of days, moons and seasons; cities have a rhythm measured in seconds, minutes and hours. Mechanically controlled flow of time sped up and frantic. Magick in the city should include magick of the clock.

How many times have city dwellers used their magick to make sure they would not be late? Gematria of the timer and the schedule?

Do you work magic on lunch breaks, after work/school, on weekends?

Nietzsch E. Coyote

19:47 / 13.09.02

Romans, Mayans, Babylonians historically one of the first inventions of a city is the calender.

20:38 / 13.09.02

By the way, has anyone read City Magick ? would you brand it as must read on the subject ?

Sirhan Sirhan Solo

20:54 / 13.09.02

I think it might be interesting to take a look at a city's architecture, especially in cities that have both modern and traditional buildings. Take, for example, the various hidden geometrical/Masonic themes in Washington D.C.
...And it comes as no surprise that the Department of Defense is housed in a giant Pentagon. Geburah, anyone?

02:21 / 14.09.02

I like this thread. I had made magick with/on my city (thinking of it as an extensive magickal object) but never saw it as a magickal being; perhaps I'll have to surf the astral and search for Guadalajara's thoughtform. I hope you all post more info on these ideas.

Nietzsch E. Coyote

03:02 / 14.09.02

louisemichel: I have read the book City Magic. I enjoyed it and used what I could. However a lot of that book is too New Agey and too aimed at beginners. What I want to do is figure out what an IDEAL book on City Magick would contain and to get at peoples experiences.

SSS: Washington is an example of a city where the streets and city were designed with ritual intent to begin with. It shouldn't be to hard to tap into energy of that city. Unless those mason founders were more clever than that.

Ciarconn: Think of the city as an organism and every person and animal as a cell in that organism. That system has to be alive.

09:49 / 14.09.02

I'd be interested to hear more about Washington being designed like that. Here in London we have Hawksmoor who I know bugger all about but there's an article on the webzine which covers the possible occult symbols made by his churches.

01:55 / 16.09.02

My main problem with - if City Magick is an example - books on urban magick is that they approach the topic from an extremely rural point of view, which I don't think is appropriate.

So this dicussion is very appropriate. I don't have a lot of time to post, but am eager to see what develops.

Aside: If you make stickers with sigils on them, could you please not stick them on bus/tram timetables. That's just not nice.

02:40 / 16.09.02

I have been thinking about this.
What would happen with "con-urbated" cities? Cities that grow so much that absorb towns around them? How could this manifest in the magickal plane?
And, can anyone recomend some rituals to "get in touch" with the "soul" of a city?

Lasty, how does the personality of the people who live in a city affect the "identity" of tghe city?

Nietzsch E. Coyote

09:36 / 16.09.02

gah, interesting posts folks!

rakehell: I agree that that is a problem with City Magick, his assumption that his readers are nature witches. Very wiccan, very, "I know it seems insane but..."

Instead of sticking sigils to bus timetables why not to busses. Mobile magickal links that travel from sub section to subsection gathering power. The bus routes could be mapped and the resultant vortex could allow {your goal, immanetizing the eschaeton, Mass conschooling}.

ciarconn: Mad Tom(invisbles) said that cities are viral. Maybe the City keeps the structures of the town but makes them of city "material"

Some people consider the mind to be an emergent property of our nervous system. Our nervous system is made of many tiny cells. Perhaps the city is an emergent property of its population, a population made of many tiny people.

11:58 / 16.09.02

With regards to books on Urban Occultism ... started reading 'Urban Shaman' by Serge Kahili King. Haven't read all of it yet (my father borrowed the book from me before I had finished it). I found it fascinating, as it deals with interaction with technology on a thought-form, living being level.

More info can be found at Amazon here. Will post more links if I find anything.

Hope this helps.

17:26 / 16.09.02

For me, the most powerful -and decidedly exhausting- form of urban magick has always been simply changing my sleep agenda. There are lots of people that remain wide awake through the night. If you are a citizen of the light hours, go meet and hang out with guys who stay awake at night, if it is for fun the better, and for magickal purposes would be the optimate. Try to stay on an intense and laughter-crackling agenda, meet new people, go to new places, and witness the many swift changes in the city from night to early dawn. We used to run a mock ritual in which we saluted the "white" wizards awakening at dawn, and waved good night to the "black" sorcerers. Then, of course, don't go to sleep, stay awake and bridge both realms of experience, go ahead with your day.

To the Urban Mage by The Barbelith Magick Collective I would add a chapter on Urban Totems: From Pigeons to Cockroaches. Haven't you ever developed a relationship with an urban dog, a cat, a spider? I used to knew a handful of them. Ever seen a butterfly in deep busy down-town? Chirping birds in windows? Hell, magick in cities is ablaze.

Nietzsch E. Coyote

03:17 / 17.09.02

Urban Totems: From Pigeons to Cockroaches this is an issue that the book City Magick does a good job of. In fact, I seem to remember Pigeons and Cockroaches as 2 of his main examples. But I would agree that this is a good topic for a chapter. Now what angle could we use?

Sebastian: your sleep cycle changes are just the sort of thing I was tocking about just above. Time is intimatly related to magick in the City. Clocks restraining the activities, the different character of a city after the day people go home. I like just staying awake as a magickal act, excellent.

ShadowRain: "as it deals with interaction with technology on a thought-form, living being level." sounds interesting, but could you explain a little more what you mean I don't think I grok it yet.

03:43 / 17.09.02

Sebastian - Staying awake (especially multiple days) is definitely a magickal work. Breaking apart the construction of "urban" time is liberating and more than a little disorienting. The most I've stayed awake (admittedly, not naturally) is 3 days and by the end of it, I had no idea what time it was, where I was... the sheer exhaustion involved just about caused ego annhilation. Something everyone should do, me thinks.

but then again, I felt like utter fucking crap for a good 3 days after that so...

Ciaconn - As the city grows, its personality becomes more diverse and fragmented. And also more.... erratic? Maybe thats not the right word, but it feels more prone to surprising you with things you wouldn't expect. But then again, the larger the city, the longer the history and this would have a big part to play in a city's personality as well.

09:15 / 17.09.02

Fenris : As I mentioned, I didn't get very far in reading it when my father spirited it away. The last thing I read was the author relating a story about his temperamental PC and how, through grokking, he built up a relationship with it. From what I can remember, by doing this, he managed to persuade his PC to not be as temperamental.

Didn't get around to finding out how he managed to do this. Will try and track down the book and let you know.

12:46 / 17.09.02

Alex wrote: As the city grows, its personality becomes more diverse and fragmented. And also more.... erratic?

Schizophrenic? Sounds too prejudgmental. Chaotic. I take that word. It represents better the unexpecetd you refer to, Alex. I just remembered, here in Buenos Aires we have a weekly TV program called Kaos in the City.

Urban Totems: From Pigeons to Cockroaches. Now what angle could we use?

Shit, I've just written a draft of it while answering, but its a bit long. Should we keep it here?

13:31 / 17.09.02

I say yeah!
it could be interesting to read it, and useful to everyone interested in the thread.

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