Blog of a Chaosian witch @tzeriell - Tumblr Blog

Festivities

This weekend we gathered, baked, cleansed, and made offerings. The first proper ritual in our refurbished temple space. It was glorious.

One of us was blessed with a vision and some ascendancy too which was such a welcome development. All in all it was a great day, sacred and joyful.

As Autumn is here it is now time for shadow work and deep diving the psyche.

#witchcraft #witch #witchblr #chaosian

Returned

So much has happened since I last posted. A lot of it very real world and trying/stressful thus I'm not gonna post it here. But yes, a cascade of events, each with lessons to be learnt.

However, the good news is that our temple space has finally been refurbished and redecorated. It is glorious and I feel so at home there. Next thing is to perform a consecration ritual which I might see about doing tonight.

I really need to actually update/finish building our website as well as working on my set of Oracle cards. Looks like Autumn will be creative and I'm pretty happy with that.

#witchcraft #witchblr #witch #chaosian witch #temple of the blue flame

sasquatchfarm1-deactivated20190

Hey pagan friends, how did you land upon your gods/goddesses? Is there a reason you worship them or did you just feel particularly attached to a certain set?

tzeriell

Mine literally appeared and claimed me. Turned up, changed me on a fundamental & spiritual level, provided a teacher and I have been their vessel every since.

#tzeriell answers

Off to Pagan Pride in London this weekend. Gonna go to Atlantis books and Treadwells on the Saturday and then the Pagan Pride meet and parade on Sunday. Its in its 21st year so it is pretty well organized. I just love that a bunch of people in robes can wander through London doing a proper parade. I’m not usually a social witch but I do like the occasional event. I’m taking my apprentice as it’ll be a good learning experience.

#pagan pride #witchblr #witchcraft #paganism

this-isnt-magic

Purely because I’m curious, have any of you ever used other people’s songs in your ritual work? Like, a recording of the song, not playing it yourselves? (If yes, how did it work out?)

I listen to music a lot when I do rituals, helps me get in the right headspace and drown out background noise. I usually go for instrumental or ambient music because lyrics can be distracting but not always. If you don’t find it distracting it can be a nice addition but I don’t think it makes a huge difference one way or the other.

-Mod C

thedesertgod-deactivated2020013

On the contrary I find music of any kind incredibly distracting. I can listen to music beforehand to get pumped up but during a ritual I need the quietest environment available to focus on where the energy is going, and complete attention to putting my “feelers” out psychically. But it’s also worth noting sometimes I’m bad at mentally multitasking because of some of my learning disorders so it makes sense I’m hyper careful about distractions, especially sensory ones.

tzeriell

We use music in ritual. We choose specific songs with certain cadence and build as timings to raise and release energies. Its also useful to set up neurolinguistic programming techniques to trigger states based on meaningful lyric moments / mantras. It can be a really practical ritual technique as you can basically program yourself to hit the right state at the right time without too much effort (well there is a lot of effort to set it up and make it work effectively, but once it works, it works well).

#chaosian magick #chaosian witch #tzeriell speaks

No rest for the wicked

Nothing like a morning cleansing, meditation and bit of astral travel to reaffirm your belief and place in the cosmos. Still, wish I didn’t have to do it on the bus. And that is exactly the issue with modern life, it is busy. I am always a Vessel and a witch but I am not only those things. I have relationships, a social life, 2 tabletop rpgs I take part in, 1 that I run, a full time job, writing, drawing and 3 types of chronic illness. Finding time and energy for everything is just super difficult. So I learnt to do what I could when I could.

My bus journey is about an hour and I can’t read on the bus due to travel sickness. But I can meditate on the bus. I can sit in the back and cast a circle and cleanse myself. I can travel too. I plug my headphones in to block out the world and then I put on a mix of loud music with specific triggers for time and meditation. It is easy to loose your body when you aren’t exactly in it, however having the second to last song as a warning of time and a trigger to start wrapping things up helps. Using music as a trigger for states is useful as you can take your music anywhere and it doesn’t require you to be at home in the candle light, surrounded by crystals and breathing incense. Once I learnt I could do without my paraphernalia I found that with practice I could reach whatever my desired state was, wherever I was. And the beautiful advantage of this is that it frees up time.

#witchblr #witchcraft #chaosian #meditation

Anthropomorphism in witchcraft

Anthropomorphism is a natural psychological process that is a common part of human behavior. Usually this does not pose a problem but for the witch or spirit worker this can be limiting. So I am going to give a quick explanation and exploration of such issues. I also suggest you do some research for yourselves. You’ll need to type in Psychological Anthropomorphism otherwise you will get it from a literary standpoint instead.

Anthropomorphism is defined as attributing human qualities to non-human entities, such as animals, fae or gods, and also inanimate objects.

https://www.nature.com/articles/428606a These scientist point out why attributing anthropomorphism to animal behavior is dangerous when researching how animals live. If we see them doing a thing and contextualize it within the human experience then there is a high chance that we are missing what is actually going on. Animals are not humans and they do not have the same values, believes, emotional spectrum, desires, consciousness, thought processes etc as us. Yes your pet rat may ‘love’ you as it behaves kindly towards you and will sleep on you etc but that is simply your interpretation of its behaviors. It most certainly does not experience and comprehend love in the same way that you do. Behavior is not indicative of thought processes comparable to a human’s. On that note, it isn’t because animals are less intelligent either. If you supped up a creature’s brain it still would not give it the priorities, thought processes, desires and behaviors of a human.

Now the reason that this is a problem in witchcraft is because if you interpret non-human entities as humans then you are not seeing them for what they actually are. Most of the time if something acts human then it was created by humans and is a thoughtform. A good example of this is when I was much younger I met a person who had a companion demon. That demon was like an anime boy all the way down to the charming bad boy personality. When looking at the core of the creature (an exercise you should learn) there was nothing more. It was not wearing glamour, it was not anything more than a glorified imaginary friend given life by the energy she fed it. All its stories of the demon realm were incredibly humanized with them living in houses and usual fantasy horror tropes.

Another example is that I used to do Elemental witchcraft and I was visited by some very ‘cute’, ‘happy’, ‘playful’ water spirits once. I was young and I interpreted them as feeling these things but now I am older and more experienced I know that the behaviors I interpreted as cute, happy and playful, were simply the spirits being what they were. They were not happy like I become happy, they just were what they were. To even think they have a range of mood comparable to mine is limiting. It is limiting because I could have had my house flood and I would become distressed but they would still be what they are and being angry at them for bursting my pipes and freeing all the water would be a mistake as I would be expecting them to think and feel by human standards and expectations.

Non human entities do not act or live like humans do by the very fact that they are not human. They may use human symbolism or glamour to make it easier to communicate but you can always scan the core of a thing to find out what it is. Though I will warn that looking past a creature’s glamour can be horrifying/feel like being punched, even if they are ‘friendly’.

Ultimately you have to trust your gut when you interact with non-human entities, (or even better use tools that reveal the truth of things,) BUT remember that we are all seeing the universe through the human lense and the habit of projection and anthropomorphism is rife as they are inbuilt into our normal human psychology.

#witchcraft #witchblr #magick #chaosian p.o.v.#psychological magick

I'm bored at work and tripping due to my pain meds

#witchcraft #witchblr #chaosian #witch #magick

ofwoodandbone

I’m surprised, but also not, that there hasn’t been any ‘real witch reviews Suspiria’ like there was when the new Sabrina came out. Guess it’s just not worth mentioning all over youtube that you’re a witch unless it’s October.

ofwoodandbone

yea and its so obvious like….not to be a bitch but suspiria was literally about ritual and even the premise of the horror is the body as a ritual tool

I honestly found the approach to witchcraft as being tied to dance fascinating. There’s a really long history to dance and controlled bodily motion being an integral part of many witch’s rites. Whether or not the film makers were aware of this (which, I suspect they were, given the whole Sabbath bit), it’s really interesting to see this idea being visually expanded upon. And the sound design to that breathing… it’s so close to the breathing that one hears in certain rituals, at least for me. It’s familiar. There’s a lot of small intricacies that I enjoyed.

tzeriell

Ok, so I'm actually meeting with my coven to watch Susperia on Friday night. Funnily we do use dance in our ritual practice and often do ritual and meditation to music. Certain songs and their lyrics are used to trigger specific mindset and spiritual events within the ritual.

Last couple of weeks have not been great, chronic illness problems, hospitals and pain. A better update when I feel back on top of everything.

#tzeriell speaks

It's my birthday

Feeling old this year but at least I have cake, mead and eldritch horror

#tzeriell speaks

coyote-696

Hey, if it's okay, I have a question! I've been wanting to learn about servitors, but I'm not sure what texts are good for foundational stuff - I don't want to do tulpas because I'm not a Buddhist much less Tibetan and don't understand the system they came from, but there are so many texts on servitors with such variety I'm kind of overwhelmed. Are there any authors i should look out for or red flags or things to indicate a text is good?

Honestly cultural issues aside, messing around with tulpas is bad fucking news. You’re basically intentionally giving yourself DID.

So the issue with servitor creation is that there isn’t and hard and fast guide to making them because everyone seems to develop their own personal system over time. Phil Hine’s Aspects of Evocation has some good advice but overall I would recommend reading a shitload of guides, note the similarities in technique, and just start testing them out until you find something that clicks with you. Just make sure that no matter what you do, you include an easy way to kill it in case something goes wrong (and when you’re starting out, something almost certainly will go wrong)

justinbthemagician

A couple things to consider in your search Anon,

The ideas surrounding Tulpas all pretty much go back to Alexandra David-Neel. She brought over the idea based on some ideas in Tibetan mysticism and magic. The idea most closely corresponds to western “Thought Forms”. Fear of DID is definitely an issue.

For some background:

https://selfdefinition.org/tibetan/tulpa-creation/alexandra-david-neel-comments.htm

One of the reasons it was used in Buddhism is that it trained you into having the insight that the “mind-stuff” you associate as “self” is not actually you. By building a deity, and experiencing this deity as one’s self you come to two realizations:

1. The thoughts, sensations and experiences you have are not fundamentally *YOU* and in fact are just arising and passing away of experiences, sensations and thoughts. This is seen in Kabbalah as all things being created from Kether moment to moment. The next realization which comes from that is that if all of these experiences moment to moment arise from the source of creation then, well, so does your inner experience, therefore you must exist in a non-dual world, a world where you are one with all creation/creator.

2. You can change thoughts, sensations and experience through the power of concentration. So much so, that it can effect the world around you.

Here is Shinzen Young describing the process.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WtPrOE1JSk

The tulpa isn’t so much the end goal. The tulpa is the project you work on to come to a realization or pass the final course. The destruction of the tulpa/thought-form is in realizing that this is the way all thought-forms work that you are allowing dozens or hundreds of these little bastards to tell you who you are, what to do and what to experience all the time, and then not allowing them any more of your creative-vital-power.

You can use the same process not to create some “being” but instead use that concentration power and imagination to “create” or develop your own personal divine power.

tzeriell

Ok, so speaking as a psychologist yes you can fracture yourself and cause damage but no you can’t “give yourself” DID. DID is caused by repeated trauma, often abuse, often in childhood and comes about as a coping mechanism. It is not just having other people in your head or thinking from alternative view points. It involves black outs, memory loss and a division of memories and abilities. It is also one of my specialist areas.

However, as a witch, I will say that certain mystical practices should not be done without adequate research as yes, you can fuck yourself up.

coyote-696

I’m well aware and neither of are saying literally-the-DSM-disorder-DID (hence saying basically rather than literally). The point is that intentionally fracturing your psyche into autonomous parts can produce the outward appearance of DID, blackouts and memory loss included, and severely damage you psychologically. Just like if you’re not careful with magick and especially evocation, you can fuck yourself up badly enough to outwardly appear schizophrenic. You aren’t actually schizophrenic, you’ve just magickally fucked your brain to pieces. I’m sure more than a handful of us have seen the latter happen to fellow magicians. I know I have, more than one of my friends who was totally fine before did some terrible shit and now spends their lives in inpatient treatment for schizophrenia.

If you don’t think magick can fuck your brain up badly enough to appear to have a severe psychiatric disorder, you’re fucking kidding yourself.

tzeriell

Ok, so that's a rather aggressive sounding response. I was just trying to inform people of the difference as DID is commonly misrepresented, specially on Tumblr and misrepresentation of a disorder even the medical professionals still argue over is not helpful to the people who have it.

Never said magick couldn't fuck you up. Never said it couldn't put you in hospital. Like you, I've seen that.

I did not get from your phrasing and use of basically that you did not mean actual DID and that you meant DID like symptoms or a variety of psychotic and dissociative symptoms. If I had I wouldn't have posted my response.

coyote-696

Hey, if it's okay, I have a question! I've been wanting to learn about servitors, but I'm not sure what texts are good for foundational stuff - I don't want to do tulpas because I'm not a Buddhist much less Tibetan and don't understand the system they came from, but there are so many texts on servitors with such variety I'm kind of overwhelmed. Are there any authors i should look out for or red flags or things to indicate a text is good?

Honestly cultural issues aside, messing around with tulpas is bad fucking news. You’re basically intentionally giving yourself DID.

So the issue with servitor creation is that there isn’t and hard and fast guide to making them because everyone seems to develop their own personal system over time. Phil Hine’s Aspects of Evocation has some good advice but overall I would recommend reading a shitload of guides, note the similarities in technique, and just start testing them out until you find something that clicks with you. Just make sure that no matter what you do, you include an easy way to kill it in case something goes wrong (and when you’re starting out, something almost certainly will go wrong)

justinbthemagician

A couple things to consider in your search Anon,

The ideas surrounding Tulpas all pretty much go back to Alexandra David-Neel. She brought over the idea based on some ideas in Tibetan mysticism and magic. The idea most closely corresponds to western “Thought Forms”. Fear of DID is definitely an issue.

For some background:

https://selfdefinition.org/tibetan/tulpa-creation/alexandra-david-neel-comments.htm

One of the reasons it was used in Buddhism is that it trained you into having the insight that the “mind-stuff” you associate as “self” is not actually you. By building a deity, and experiencing this deity as one’s self you come to two realizations:

1. The thoughts, sensations and experiences you have are not fundamentally *YOU* and in fact are just arising and passing away of experiences, sensations and thoughts. This is seen in Kabbalah as all things being created from Kether moment to moment. The next realization which comes from that is that if all of these experiences moment to moment arise from the source of creation then, well, so does your inner experience, therefore you must exist in a non-dual world, a world where you are one with all creation/creator.

2. You can change thoughts, sensations and experience through the power of concentration. So much so, that it can effect the world around you.

Here is Shinzen Young describing the process.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WtPrOE1JSk

The tulpa isn’t so much the end goal. The tulpa is the project you work on to come to a realization or pass the final course. The destruction of the tulpa/thought-form is in realizing that this is the way all thought-forms work that you are allowing dozens or hundreds of these little bastards to tell you who you are, what to do and what to experience all the time, and then not allowing them any more of your creative-vital-power.

You can use the same process not to create some “being” but instead use that concentration power and imagination to “create” or develop your own personal divine power.

tzeriell

Ok, so speaking as a psychologist yes you can fracture yourself and cause damage but no you can't "give yourself" DID. DID is caused by repeated trauma, often abuse, often in childhood and comes about as a coping mechanism. It is not just having other people in your head or thinking from alternative view points. It involves black outs, memory loss and a division of memories and abilities. It is also one of my specialist areas.

However, as a witch, I will say that certain mystical practices should not be done without adequate research as yes, you can fuck yourself up.

tzeriell

My psychological model of magick

I am actually really disappointed to discover that apparently most people who promote a psychological model of magick seem to use it to invalidate magick as a phenomena. I am a trained scientist and psychologist and it was studying psychology that added sense and validation to the magickal experiences I had already had. (This is just a bare bones description btw, I honestly don’t have the time to write my whole thesis on the matter and encompass everything).

I learnt that all reality is perception. With enough time and tools a person could literally put an electrode into my brain and change the way I experience the world, changing my identification of colour, taste etc. As shown by brain damage studies, even a slight shift to the grey matter can change a whole person.

I also learnt that we do not experience the same things as anyone else. Cognitive bias, the amount of cones in your eyes, social and cultural upbringing and chemical balance (plus pretty much every other extraneous variable) mean that you and your friend can be looking at the same thing and experiencing it completely differently. The only reason we seem to experience the same things is down to communication and the use of common language. It is through language and society that we construct general realities on various scales and levels. None of them universally true, everything just the constructed stories of the people experiencing it.

So considering that your reality is literally whatever you brain perceives and that can be manipulated, and it is entirely different for each person, your personal reality isn’t real. There is no universal truth. I don’t mean this in a nihilistic way, I mean that you are ultimately in control of what you choose your reality to be. Change the way you think about a thing and it creates new pathways in the brain. Make it a habit and you get strong connections of neurons. These connections feed your confirmation bias. Want the world to be a nicer happier place, start believing it is and you will start to pick up on all the good things. There are studies that show that when depressed, access to positive memories is difficult and confirmation bias is skewed heavily towards negative experiences. Want more magick in your life, start practicing and it will come.

The advantage that I find in the theory that all reality is subjective is that it doesn’t matter if other people think that magick or my God is real, all that matters is how I interpret my experiences of them. I do magick, it works, I believe, I continue to practice. I am touched by my Deity, I believe, I worship, I get gifts and knowledge. Doesn’t actually matter if my God is a positive delusion, or my higher self, or a transdimentional alien or me from the future or the actual God of Magick. What matters is how I choose to interpret them as I am the one experiencing it. It is my life, my perception, my reality. I can turn fear into glorious enlightenment, sadness into lessons, anger into wisdom and peace simply by changing my perception. It leaves no room for doubt but loads of room for questioning and exploration.

You experience everything through your brain and thoughts, change them and you change your whole reality. For me, God is real, magick is real and I have met others who experience these things. We don’t experience stuff in the same way, and the use of language for such paranormal experiences is often diverse and lacking universal conformity, but description of experience is similar enough for me to know that these are things within the realms of human reality as well as personal reality.

For me this is the true psychological model of magick. I never said that living this way was easy though and I have had a lot of therapy and a lot of shadow work to get to this point. I am not neurotypical and I am also a spoonie as well as an abuse survivor, so I do understand the struggles of rewriting how you think. But I find that spiritual practice aids in that, it gives purpose and hope and is very empowering. I do love Jung and would suggest the Red Book to everyone, even if in the end he tragically rejected the deep magick within himself.

For anyone looking for more info on the concept described here go to Google Scholar and type in things like Social Constructionism, Cognitive Bias, Personality and brain trauma, etc. If you really want then DM me and I will go dredge up some references.

( @justinbthemagician I’m tagging you because it was something you posted that prompted me to write this :) )

justinbthemagician

@tzeriell Hey! Thanks for the chance to discuss the topic!

Fantastic points! Perception of reality, cognition and physiology all help build and sustain a narrative within the mind. When I was in college for psych I learned quite a bit on how useful psychological systems are for behavior change. Changing the experience, the narrative or the mind in some way changes your personal experience of reality. We only get to experience our personal reality as everything is experienced within awareness. All true, all verifiable.

More under the line…

Keep reading

tzeriell

@justinbthemagician thank you for replying. I would have replied last night but it was games night so I was out. Thank you also for the links and the further info on the psych model (I really should rename mine the Chaosian model considering that is the name of my practice). I always want to read more and anything that expands my understanding is very appreciated. Admittedly Frater UD is on my ‘to read’ list, at the bottom of which is Crowley who I have managed to avoid thus far.

I certainly agree with your car analogy. Perception is how we interpret experiences that are filtered through the physical and yet the physical is not all there is. Within my model although I use the mechanics of the brain, when I talk of thought and the thing that is interpreting reality I am talking of consciousness, of us as the ghost in the shell. We do not exist solely as the body. The body is a casing for the energy/ spirit/ consciousness. But we are hardwired into that casing and always return to it until it is truly gone. So despite the spirit being able to perceive we still tend to try and interpret our reality though our previous physical experiences and the language associated with it. Even if adventuring in the astral most people talk of using the physical senses and tend to take on a human shape. Considering how our brains work this is not surprising as it makes coping with existence easier as we have less to worry about if we retain the shape and physical rules. This does however mean that once we are severed from the physical our experience of reality will be entirely different.

And on that point, other entities that exist to us only in energy / spirit form will probably never be accurately perceived or interpreted by us due to the physical vs non-physical experience. How we see other entities is filtered through our understanding of reality, and that understanding is based on the shared reality of being a human. Having experienced entities and spirits they become part of my reality. Knowing others have experienced them makes them part of variously labelled shared realities. These things exist for us in ways we can perceive and presumably they exist for themselves in ways we can’t even comprehend. A lot of our ability to interpret things is caught up in language and that grew from the physical.

Funnily it has taken all day to write this reply. As I am not too well read on the theories of magick I am finding trouble with the expressing myself adequately. Hopefully reading more will remedy that. You did also ask to know more about my ‘god’ and I will happily discuss that with you, only privately, so feel free to message me.

#tzeriell speaks #chaosian theory