By Thad McKraken - September 2016
Of course, Robert Anton Wilson was my first introduction to Occult anything way back in the day. I’d read say Castaneda several years before that point but, okay, here’s an interesting conversation. What I’m now referring to as psych magick is essentially a crossbreeding between the western esoteric tradition, chaos magick specifically, and the ritualistic ingestion of psychedelic compounds, aka shamanism. It’s about tweaking the set and setting of the psychedelic experience to maximize coherency, mainly through technology. And that’s where it differentiates itself from more traditional shamanic practices, which let’s face it, typically more involve communing with nature. This is about unlocking the keys to human imagination and then effectively projecting these heightened states of outwardly to influence the inward journey of others. Synthetic telepathy which eventually evolves into actual telepathy in a way. It’ll all be within reach in time, and not that long a time in the grand scheme of things I imagine. So shamanism (I know I’m generalizing heavily with that term) often involves completely detaching yourself from the rich net of black energy that binds our culture together. Crackling dark energy, that’s how it’s been presented to me over and over in visions. This is the binding current of human behavior you’re trying to tap yourself into with magick. You want to dive into that shit and then calculatedly surf the spacewaves.
Urban shamanism in a way. The idea is to take whatever energy you can channel from the higher realms and use it to command these dark binding forces that have created the mind bending monstrosity that is modern culture. Not escaping the urban nightmare, transforming the current. Using it as a means of creation. You of course would go about this momentous task by tuning into the higher perspective and purifying the intent of your practice in tune with the elevated perspectives you encounter. I certainly recommend Robert Monroe’s techniques for astral projection for expanding the potential of your dream states. Learning to expand and understand dream states is the most important skill any sorcerer can ever develop. The most important part of the entire equation. It is how I got summoned into this shit in the first place.
What I suppose differentiates me from a lot of other people in say magick circles I’ve found is that my practice, and the practice I’m recommending here revolves more around the ritualistic use of marijuana in particular, which I almost jokingly refer to as ganj-i-tation, but hell, it’s as good a term as any. With weed being legalized, and like the one thing we can agree on politically as a country right now, why I’m not seeing articles about this freaking everywhere I haven’t a clue. We’ve been that effectively hypnotized by mind control forces we don’t even begin to understand. I mean, we sort of understand, we just have zero clue how deep behind the surface this shit actually hides. The current of weed meditation actually radiates fairly strong through some of the more prominent countercultural iconography. I mean, R.A.W.’s Cosmic Trigger I phase starts exploring this terrain. And despite Terrence McKenna gaining an increasing amount of fame in the post YouTube world, it’s always all about the mushroom freakouts. When I saw him talk back in the 90’s, he went on and on about weed meditation. Of course I didn’t know at the time that he’d abandoned mushrooms entirely by that point in his life. And that’s my freaking point. Man, psychedelics are too taxing emotionally and spiritually to take very often. I mean, up to a point but eventually you’ve got scale back.
But life sucks every day. What we need is a way to make it not suck. To create states of what Jung referred to as “active imagination” on demand. To stop taking this shit too seriously. I’m pretty sure us taking it too seriously is what’s fucking up the environment, and ourselves, and the environment. On the bright side, we’re starting to get to that point with legalized bud. I think the potentiality of marijuana to radically change consciousness is fairly understated at this point in human history. It can be used as a fairly potent hallucinogen, it just takes some effort and focus, which is of course what this series is all about. We need to push for psilocybin next, but at this point we’ve got to use what we’ve got. And this is where you’re getting back into more traditionally Occult territory. According to people like R.A.W. and Gary Lachman, the idea that weed can be used to aid in astral projection dates way back in Occult circles. I have no clue where they’re getting that info from or if it’s remotely accurate, but I certainly ran with it, and can absolutely say, yeah, absolutely something there.
Especially when you combine it with sex. And that’s where sigil projection gets interesting. The thing that’s always been cool about the Occult is that it’s basically the religion of sex, drugs, and art. I mean, your engaging in sexual activity, while chemically altering your consciousness, while internally visualizing art. That’s the means by which you’re creating gnosis, by turning your consciousness into a living art projector/receiver. The way out is in. But I’m also of the mind that it’s sort of important which drugs you’re using, and which art you’re consuming and/or creating in this Gnostic process. Tastes vary, but in general you are what you eat. I know I’ve been a bit harsh on the spooky horror movie Occult set and I should probably be a tad harsher on new agers, but I’m just trying to make a point with all that assholery (well, more than a few points actually). It’s not like I don’t have any experience with this stuff. I was in a super angry metaphysical rant metal band for 4 years of my life. My take on that whole escapade was that wow, spending a great deal of your time focusing all of your attention on the things that piss you off about our culture as reflected through your own dumbshit behavior, isn’t super great for your mental health. Shocking. And the thing is, I think this sort of art is incredibly important, but you know, you’d have to find a way to seriously detach yourself from your stage persona in your down time to maintain real sanity while truly immersed in that dark energy. You’d have to recognize and channel the catharsis without letting the cathartic impulse consume you.
Oh, and you’d have to not take too many shitty drugs. And yes, booze is a shitty drug. Here’s the other thing, I drank so much when I was younger that now I can’t have more than like 3 drinks without risking getting a 3 day headache that even codeine can’t kill. I fucked up and now I have to pay for it. And that’d be the thing, I drank a lot but I never truly had any sort of problem. Nothing in my life ever fell apart because of my drinking, in fact I was quite productive as a lush. In truth I think I drank about as much as most other people I knew at the time did. In retrospect I feel sort of cheated for being sold the idea that this sort of consumption was sustainable without serious repercussions to my spiritual, mental, and physical health. I’m just glad that I’ve at least gotten back to the point where I can have a beer or 2 without feeling like utter shit. I was lucky enough not to go far with narcotics when I was younger. Sheer dumb luck. I loved the stuff by never had a consistent enough hook up.
And this is where a lot of the modern Occult loses me completely and I veer back to shamanism. We’re in the midst of a new corporate sponsored heroin epidemic. People are apparently drinking more than ever on top of that, not to mention all these super sketch psych meds that are being passed of as behavioral science. We need to go in a different direction. If you want to experience hell on earth, take way too many shitty drugs and focus all your energy on turning your microverse into a horror film. I drank way too much and focused my artistic energy on psychoanalyzing precisely how much conforming to our batshit culture was making me miserable for years. This unsurprisingly made me miserable. Magick works. You’ve got to be careful what you wish for, and how you wish for it I suppose.
Be the change you want to see in our talking monkey freak show. Choose your drugs, don’t let society choose them for you. Choose your sacred artists, don’t let huge entertainment megacorporations choose them for you. I’m of course a musician and as I’ve been writing more music again lately (one of the reasons I haven’t been posting quite as much), I’ve found that I’ve been increasingly projecting mind generated sound inwardly. Sigilizing them if you will. It’s always been a part of my practice, but I’d sort of forgotten that the more I work on it, the more I internalize it as well. You wouldn’t want your inner universe not to have a cool soundtrack would you? Don’t just visualize squiggly sigils people. Take it to the outer fringes.
One thing I find particularly interesting about music in particular, is that it’s the one medium of art that you actually consume during sex. I mean, most people don’t throw on movies and go at it. Or video games for that matter. Nobody’s really reading books or graphic novels while fucking, but if you are, I mean, more power to you. That’s freaking awesome. Sex is usually a bit more about turning inwardly so you’re not typically spending a ton of time looking at paintings either. But with magick you’re envisioning images inwardly. Often charging them in the throes of erotic passion. While you’re high out of your mind. And listening to mind bending music if you want to up the ante, which I’m not sure why you wouldn’t.
Which is why I have a hard time understanding the dark veneer of the modern Occult. You’re fucking on acid and that makes you feel spooky? Kind of makes me feel like an alien god, but to each his own. Extreme pleasure. That should be the new fad. Stoned erotic hyper dreaming. Psionically commanding electronic sound with the unconscious power of your higher will. The continual evolution from half ape/half art, to all art/no ape. That’s what we are in the higher realms. Down here we’re half animal. The Gods are made of art.
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