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Bind, exorcise, banish, destroy, what do I do here?

  
 
Mazarine
23:18 / 18.10.02
Okay, question I consider tricky, and on which I could use some advice, but which I didn't think warranted a seperate thread.

I have a friend with memory problems, specifically recall. He has some degree of photographic memory, but the text is too out of focus for him to read. This problem is most severe during high-anxiety situations, including tests.

He believes the source of his problem is, how do I put this, some sort of mental creature. He created it to control bad memories which were troubling him, to eat them I think. It's sort of outgrown its parameters and started eating things it's not supposed to.

He's tried binding it before, but has told me that he can't control it himself anymore- he described it like cancer; his own mind can't fight it because it's his own energy fueling it, if that makes any sense.

He's planning on going to grad school, and needs to do well on his GREs to get into a good school and get funding to go there.

So, since he's one of the few friends I've made since I've been here, I'd like to help him out, but I'm unsure of what approach to take. I get the best results with sympathetic magick, but this thing seems to defy being symbolized. My attempts at sigilization have generally yielded no results at all. Binding has been tried in the past, it might work again, but this critter is getting stronger. My friend is doubtful that an exorcism would work since he doesn't really consider this thing foreign to him.

So any ideas how I duct tape this bastard into a corner?
 
 
Raziel
00:27 / 19.10.02
That's a very interesting case. I would say some intense meditation would be a resort even if he can't fight it with his mind it'll probably help with the high anxiety. You could always try it with a new sigil too.
 
 
Papess
08:28 / 19.10.02
Hmm, interesting, a thought form that fuels itself with your friends thoughts. I could have used this creature on some retreats I have done. Which, brings me to my idea: tell your friend not to think. It is kinda crazy but if there is nothing to feed the monster with, it will have to go away and/or perish. NOw I am guessing your friend is not a Zen master and may run into a bit of difficulty trying to accomplish this before grad school. So, I have an alternative plan but it still involves some meditating, which is not all that bad an idea, anyway.

How about creating a mandala? Develop a mandala environment, specific to the creatures needs to house and feed the thoughtform. Put in the mandala a "pool of thoughts and nightmares" for sustainance then, release the creature into it's very own world, where it should be happy until your friend is finished grad school.

For maintanence of the mandala, i would suggest your friend takes paper, with words and ideas expressed on it and make offerings to the creature. This seems to be more gifts from the gods rather than to the gods, but he has a responsiblity. The mandala provides the creature comforts and ze will leave your friend alone, kinda like the creature grew up and is moved out on hir own. hehe

May
 
 
Vadrice
15:04 / 19.10.02
How absolutly elegant and wonderful, May.
 
 
Sebastian
20:57 / 19.10.02
I have a friend with memory problems, specifically recall. He has some degree of photographic memory, but the text is too out of focus for him to read. This problem is most severe during high-anxiety situations, including tests.

Just a comment on this. I am very photographic, but for text memory I really don't use photo-recall, precisely because the letters on the page I remember are quite blurred. Photographic memory is actually better to remember schemes or pictures on the book pages, and I can actually remember where on the page the picture is placed, along with the big bolded chapter and section titles.

The small letter text and sentences I actually don't care to see, I just listen to it with the same internal voice I read it. For me, its stored and re-presented auditorilly, and I would or would not have to internally look at the image of the page to remember it, becuase its internal image may or may not trigger the internal voice, and by the way its not the precise text, but sort of my own elaboration mimicking it.

In short, tell your pal to get to study alone, sit in front of the book and get to read and re-read the chapter until he is nearly sick. He has to both read it and tell the story to himself in his own words several times, trying in each turn to incorporate more of the words the text has he has not been using (this one last bit is actually the learning). Although he may not focus on remembering the image of the pages, they will find their place in his mind as he sits in front of them through successive readings, looking down to read, and looking up the ceiling to repeat the whole story. Most times for myself, a remembered blurry image of the page, with the bolded title and particular paragraph spacing and image distribution will do to trigger the whole thing, but in voice.

Along with May's suggestion, this should do nicely for him. And out of curiosity, tell us what is he studying.
 
 
Mazarine
00:15 / 20.10.02
Sebastian- His bachelor's degree is in microbiology, so I expect he intends to continue with that. He is a braver man than I.
 
 
Perfect Tommy
18:17 / 22.10.02
Boring, non-magicky technique to try: Perhaps he could make his notes in a "cluster" format. At the most basic, you draw a box in the middle of the page with your topic, then you draw lines out from that box and write subtopics and maybe put them in circles, then attach further subtopics and facts with lines to those circles. Et cetera (though I generally stop at sub-subtopics).

Strongly recommended is to draw pictures (maybe instead of boxes, maybe in addition to), use different colors (for text, lines, pictures, or all of them), add symbols, and so forth.

Lots of study guides describe this kind of note-taking, probably better than I am. Also, there's a book called "How To Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci" by... hm, Michael Gelb, I think. There's more on this technique in there (called "mindmapping" by the author). The basic idea is that you study and remember what the detailed map of the information you're recalling looks like. Ideally, there aren't very many words--studying the map gets the information into your head, not memorizing strings of text. My thinking is that, maybe, he can change how he studies so he can use his visual recall skills more effectively.
 
 
Ratbag
17:34 / 01.11.02
Well, if I understand the matter correctly, your friend created a construct that no longer is needed. I would suggest a ritual consists of:
1. evoking (yes, evoke, not invoking) the creature from the place in his mind where it "lives"
2. make it an offering that is reminicent of the "food" it exists on
3. state clearly (to himself as much as to it) that it is no longer needed.
4. "banish" (relocate) it to another place of "mind" (Some CM's would send it "to the desert". A chaos magician might send it to a Geigeresque mindscape based on a piece of artwork or comic book".

5. Create something of more use in its place.

It may be time for your friend to do some pretty hairy personal work.

Be Well!
 
 
penitentvandal
18:23 / 02.11.02
A very interesting problem, not dissimilar to some trouble I had recently. So here are my thoughts.

It seems your friend regards the memory-eater as part of himself. This means he has to perform some kind of ritual to draw it out, force it to manifest in its most powerful guise, and then bind/banish (delete as applicable) the thing. Because the thing is part of him it will know any types of magick/ritual/ceremony/NLP/psychological tomfoolery he'll have used in the past, so you're going to need to banish it using some method he's never used yet. Trick is to summon it using what it's familiar with and then banish with the new strategy - a one-two punch, you might say.

For the past year or so I've been engaged in a running battle with my own evil parapersona (Christ, I sound like Vlad...): the persona arose from a period when I'd been doing a lot of cursing of people and revenge/justice (delete as applicable, dependent on personal hypocrisy) magick, and it was a bugger to shift. One of the functions of the hypersigil I recently completed work on was to bind the bastard, functioning as a kind of 'soul cage', if you'll allow me a gratuitous Sting reference; and it worked, for a while. Unfortunately, some problems with the final form of the hypersigil caused the parapersona to escape and become a separate etheric entity, whose major purpose seemed to be to cause me to fuck up absolutely everything I did until I became so enraged and stressed I had no choice but to give in and let it take over again. Think of it as an anti-servitor, or a Promethea-style SMEE: but one that knew every magickal technique in my existing repertoire, and so could counter them all. Soooooo...

I crafted an intricate, well-designed and thoroughly disgusting curse: the kind of thing that would really get badvandal's juices flowing. I spent hallowe'en engaged in psyching myself up to let it manifest. I decided that from now on, I would let no ethics stand in my way; I would take whatever I wanted; I would take over the world and wipe out every other magician in it, except the good-looking ones, who would become my mind-controlled sex-slaves, etc etc. All melodramatic tosh, but absolutely necessary to get into the 'pure evil' frame of mind. I lit up my temple with as many candles as possible, including my really scary black candle, hung up hastily-drawn fascist banners inscribed with a personal sigil to represent the rogue parapersona, set about the elaborate and sickening cursing ritual, and then, just as it was about to reach it's high point, I performed a big Erisian-style laughter banishing (a technique my serious, Mighty Mage of Vengeance persona was unfamiliar with), mocked all the curses, cancelled the sigil, burned the fascist banners, bound the Vile Thing to a small mirror I keep hung on my door, closed the ritual, ate jellybeans and had a laugh...

This, IMHO, is the kind of 'hairy personal stuff' your mate needs to do. I'd suggest withdrawing somewhere on his own - leaving behind all the things that remind him of his former life - perhaps even designing and almost achieving some working to rid him of ALL his memories, and then pulling a similar 'surprise attack' at the last minute. It's tricky, but it does work...
 
 
penitentvandal
18:24 / 02.11.02
Oh, and 'fnord', obviously. Forgot.
 
  
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