Multi-Media Magic:

Further Explorations of Identity and Pop Culture in Magical Practice

Taylor Ellwood

Stafford, England

Multi Media Magic

By Taylor Ellwood

© 2008 First edition

Smashwords edition 2010

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The right of Taylor Ellwood to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

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Foreword: A Question of Authority

I have to confess that this book is a personal one for me. It’s an answer to the criticisms of Pop Culture Magick, but it’s also a way of bringing closure to my time in academia. I started writing this book as I was processing a lot of the internal issues that had built up while I was trying to get my Ph.D. in Literacy, Rhetoric, and Social Practice. I ended up leaving the program before I got the degree, stressed out from the politics and fed up with continually finding my creative voice blocked in favor of adhering to standards that I found to be dogmatic and overly conservative. I actually have to thank my advisor, who one day sat me down and painted in broad terms the life ahead of me as an academic. He knew better than I that my dedication was wavering, and explained the realities of academia to me. I realized at that time I had no idea what I really wanted to do with my life, besides writing. What I did know was that I didn’t want to be in the academic lifestyle, spending eighty hours a week in academic pursuits, and with little time for writing the books I wanted to write. When I failed the exams a few months later despite extensive preparation, I took that as a final sign and left the program.

At the beginning of this project there were some feelings of bitterness over the academic experience. But as I continued to process and accept my own responsibility for my actions during that period of time, I started to find resolution in the writing of this book. I have drawn on a lot of the academic studies and topics that I continue to cultivate an interest in. Being able to utilize those resources left me feeling that I hadn’t wasted three and a half years of my life. I could write this material without dealing with the bureaucratic tedium of academia, or the need to conservatively protect my claims with lots of citations and theory, but little of the practical application that I favor. The result is a book I’m comfortable with that reflects some of my academic interests, but continues to focus on a rigorous application of practice over theory.

This book is a hybrid. The first four chapters are heavy on theory and discussion, though they include ideas that may be applied to your understanding of your practice. (Or, as Lupa teases, “Taylor’s getting academic on your ass!”) The rest of the book follows my usual style of developing practical techniques to practice magic. The first chapter provides my definition of what multi-media is and ties together the rest of the book (which, at first glance, may seem to be composed of chapters that have little to do with each other. On the contrary, there is a common theme among all the material). Chapter two examines symbolism, text, and the semiotic theory of multimodality as a way of fleshing out my definition of multi-media and how it can be applied to magical practice. The next two chapters deal with accurate and inaccurate definitions of magic from both academia and occultism. I won’t pretend I’ve covered everything on that subject, but I have tried to present some of the theories that are available as well as critically examine the strengths and weaknesses of those theories. The fifth chapter addresses the criticisms that were leveled at my work Pop Culture Magick (which incidentally is being re-released with corrections and updates), while also providing some new directions for pop culture magic to go in. Chapter six presents some definitions and variations of evocation. Chapter seven focuses on using paintings to do evocations. Chapter eight examines the evocation of corporate egregores and offers my own approach to that. Chapter nine presents a fleshed-out examination of my concept of invoking the self into gods and people. Chapter ten explores concepts of invocation and identity in depth. Chapter eleven deals with the magic of clothing and its impact on identity. Chapter twelve examines the definition of the astral plane and how fandom interactions can impact it. Chapter thirteen ends the book with an essay on banishing through detachment. The appendices feature a guest essay and some further essays from me on forms of magic that could also be considered explorations of different media. Some readers will probably be familiar with some of the essays that are republished from articles I wrote, but the material has been extensively revised to reflect ongoing experiments and a more detailed approach to some of the principles I’ve applied to magic.

Theory provides a foundation for the practices we engage in, but conversely those very practices lead to the needed experiences that inform the validity of theory. The real literacy of magic is found in the practices and applications of magic by a person to the world around hir. It is also found in the evolution of magic. Magic evolves by utilizing not only the traditions of the past, but also by drawing on and incorporating the contemporary disciplines around it, such as new biology, quantum physics, and literacy. Authority is found through understanding the history behind a particular discipline, but more importantly being able to practically apply that understanding toward the evolution of a given discipline and the personal practices that one engages in.

In finishing this book, I can say that my authority (such as it is) is vested not in writing this book, but in actually practicing what I write about. It’s fairly easy to come up with a theory that explains something away, but instituting the practice that goes with that theory into daily life is much more demanding. Expertise in a subject and even in the synthesis of different disciplines involves a lifetime of practice and may never be attained. When you feel certain you’re an expert in a given subject, take a step back, for you are surely about to fall off a cliff that will reveal just how much you didn’t know.

A final note: In this book, multi-media is approached from the perspective of utilizing different forms of representation such as writing, symbolism, painting, identity, technology, etc. in the act of magic. I realize many people think of multi-media in a somewhat different way, generally involving news- or entertainment-based electronics. What I present is my own unique concept based on a broader definition of multi-media, particularly how it might be used in magical practice.

The citation style for this book is APA format. I have tried to draw on a wide variety of sources to present a diverse range of views. I also have my own perspective, which has its attendant biases. The reader is cautioned to take everything written with a grain of salt, and come to hir own conclusions as to the validity of the arguments presented here. Most of all though, take the ideas and experiment with them, until you’ve made them your own.

Taylor Ellwood

Portland, Oregon

October 2007

Introduction by Vince Stevens

I had the pleasure of meeting Taylor Ellwood after reading his book Pop Culture Magick, an interesting work that looked at the concept that characters, ideas, and even jingles from popular culture were useful in magic and held power for magicians to explore. Such an idea was interesting to me as I had seen how pop culture had an effect on people, an effect often brushed off or even ignored by others. To see a magician write about it in such a serious and sober manner had me intrigued.

This book can be thought of as a sequel to that work, expanding on both modern multi-media’s use in magic, and magical theory as well. This may seem rather unusual, even in this high-tech age, and such pop culture magic may seem to be a new kind of discipline. Magic is rarely associated with video games, anime, or your old Lite-Brite from your childhood----it is more thought of as a discipline of old books, intense meditations, blended incenses, and anything but modern multi-media.

In short, pop culture magic may seem a little odd or weird to many magical practitioners----which is certainly saying something in an age of Chaos Magic, body modification rituals, and reconstructionism.

However, magic has always been about multi-media and the culture of the time. Magicians, shamans, and the rest have filled their senses with scents and images, related natural phenomena to complex webs of associations, and worked with many forms of information. Workers of sorceries didn’t work as a separate culture but within their cultures, or as a subculture to their own culture.

Today, we often don’t take our popular culture seriously. Seen (at times justifiably) as shallow, over-commercialized, and throwaway, magicians and regular people alike tend to not see it as anything worth pursuing. Yet our popular culture often has deeper roots (even if those producing it aren’t aware of the references and archetypes that inspire them), and it does invade and inform our lives. You can’t have a conversation about modern culture without having some knowledge and participation in it, and there are few of us who haven’t heard of Anime, American Idol, or the Playstation 3--even if we complain about them.

If we’re going to live in an age of multi-media and pop culture, then we might as well apply it. It’s using up enough of our time, enough of our brains, and enough of our lives because we can’t avoid it. Magic, as Ramsey Dukes noted in SSOTBME, is about wholeness, and we get nowhere by cutting off part of ourselves or our lives. We limit our magic when we decide parts of our life don’t apply to it, and magic is about achieving possibilities, not limitation.

Even our meanest pop culture derivations still come from the world we live in----and the world contains its gods, its magic, and its archetypes. The images of today and of yesteryear come from one source, whether you consider that to be human imagination or something beyond us. The images of our culture are our gateways to the powers in this world; as Patrick Harpur notes in Daimonic Reality, idolatry is not the worship of false images for no images are false--it is just false worship of images.

So, relax a bit, take some time off, and see where today’s culture and media can lead you. You may find you have a lot of tools and ideas you can apply that you never thought of.

In a way, this is not a book about multi-media magic--it’s a book about magic, which just uses tools and opportunities of our modern age. Magic is a living thing, and we might as well let it live with us right now--even when we’re putting a DVD in the player or reading a comic book. Such engagement with our lives only strengthens and deepens our magic, and opens up new frontiers--or old ones we’d forgotten.

Vince Stevens, 2007

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Dukes, Ramsey. (2001). S.S.O.T.B.M.E. revised. London: The Mouse That Spins.

Harpur, Patrick. (1994). Daimonic reality: A field guide to the otherworld. New York: Viking.

Chapter 1: What Do You Mean by Multi-Media?

When I was nearly finished writing the first draft of this book, I faced a conundrum. For once, I didn’t have a title for my book. I thought about calling it a pop culture grimoire, but that didn’t seem to fit the concepts or practices I was discussing. I then thought I would call it Media Magic, until Lupa pointed out that most people probably defined media as “the news”. In desperation, I put a poll on my LiveJournal, asking people what they thought when the word media was brought to mind. Needless to say the results of that poll confirmed what Lupa had said, and I realized that using the word media, without some qualifier, would only confuse people when they looked at the title of the book. I decided on the title of Multi-Media Magic, because that seemed to cover the wide variety of topics I’d focused on for this book.

If you’ll briefly turn back to the table of contents and glance at the chapter headings, you’ll quickly realize that I’m dealing with some disparate topics. You might wonder how academic and occult definitions of magic relate to pop culture or clothing magic, or how identity fits in with corporate entity evocation. Let me assure you that despite the casual appearance of difference with these topics, there is a lot of connection underneath the surface, which applies to what I think of as multi-media.

If you’re a reader of my books, you know that this is usually the time I bust out a quote or two of what someone else has to say about the subject I’m writing about. You will find a lot of citations and some quotes in this book, but otherwise I’m simply going to offer my own definition of what I perceive multi-media to be. My means of backing it up will be found through your choice to read and explore the concepts found throughout this book.

First, though, I have to define the root word media. When I think of media, I don’t think of a newspaper or Fox News with its nightly news report. Or, to be more precise, I think those are forms of media, but they don’t accurately represent what the concept of media is. Another form of media is the clothing you wear to work, school, or play. Most of these clothes will have designer labels and sometimes images and symbols that represent a university, a sports team, or a corporation (Jenkins 2006, Kress 2003). A video game is yet another form of media (interactive media at that!), but once again doesn’t necessarily encapsulate what media seems to be (Gee 2003). My definition is that media is the mediation and presentation of information that is filtered into a specific format. You are holding a form of media in your hands right now, which mediates information into a format of text (and some images) and presents that information to you in this form of a book (Kress 2003, Kress & Leeuwen 2001). Along with format, mediation also provides a perspective on the information presented, while filtering other perspectives out. I have mediated this text by providing citations and quotes which give you access to other perspectives on the subjects we’re exploring, but those perspectives are filtered by my perspective to some degree, serving a specific purpose in my presentation of information. This kind of filtering occurs all the time in both obvious and more subtle fashions.

Now that we know my definition of media, we need to focus on multi. Multi is short for multiple; multi-media then is multiple forms of media.(Ironically media is the plural of medium, i.e. the form in which something is presented. Frex: the medium of television.) While I’m presenting information in a very specific medium, it’s my hope that you’ll be able to apply the concepts in this book to the different forms of media that you use each and every day. One of those forms, as I mentioned above, is clothing. The clothes you choose to wear can denote your choice to favor one brand or subculture over another, but can also communicate that you have a position at a company with specific dress requirements. At the same time your clothing can also tell people something about the identity you present to the world, or it can serve as ritual tools that allow you to invoke or evoke an entity (depending on what your goal is). And these are just the ideas I’ve come up with off the top of my head. Just one form of media, clothing, has multiple uses and possibilities of mediation that it provides a person.

Still, my focus isn’t just on working with forms of media individually. I also want to encourage you to explore the combination of different forms of media. In fact, the choice to mix magic with video games is a combination of two forms of media. Magic is a means of mediating information and presenting it to reality. So we mix that form with clothing and suddenly we have multiple media interacting together. By learning how to not only access and use different forms of media, but also combine them, we can make the magic we work more effective and practical. Modern technology and media provide innovative methods to direct the consciousness as it manifests its will into reality. We can integrate both contemporary and older forms of media together in a manner that maximizes the benefits of all of them, while also allowing more interpretations of reality to come into play and make this world a much more fun, and hopefully better place. As such the chapters in this book focus on a variety of media which may seem to be unrelated, but in fact can be related to each other meaningfully through the interaction and medium of the magician. Additionally, you have free rein as far as introducing forms of media that I haven’t mentioned in this work.

You might, at this point, say, “Alright Taylor, I buy your definition of multi-media, at least while reading this book, but why focus on defining magic? What does that have to with multi-media?” Those are good questions to ask. My choice to define magic, and examine other definitions of magic, is done to show how mediated magic can be by a variety of people, while also showing what I perceive to be both some of the benefits and dangers of relying on such definitions to understand magic. As I mentioned above, magic could be understood as a form of media. Another form of media, though, one we mostly ignore each day, is definitions. I realize that when most people think of definitions, they think of a dictionary, which provides a brief explanation of what a word seems to denote about reality. But the dictionary itself is just a form. The activity or interaction that definitions provide, i.e. denoting what different forms of reality seem to be, is an activity that isn’t focused on enough in everyday interaction. We ignore how often we limit ourselves by relying on what are often unexamined definitions for what words seem to denote. Magic is one such word, and even though I’m drawing on a variety of sources that actually attempt to critically examine what magic seems to be, there’s a risk of falling into a tunnel vision by relying on any definition (mine included). As we’ll see in chapters three and four, definitions provide an easy way of explaining away different forms of reality, without critically examining those realities.

At the same time, while it’s easy to get stuck in your tunnel vision, it’s also important to have definitions and rely on them. They help provide form and limitations to reality. Without those limitations we might have unlimited freedom, but we’d really have no way of doing anything. With absolute freedom there is no definition, no boundary, and no rules and thus no means to manifest possibility into reality. Ironically, perhaps, limitations free us far more than freedom itself does. Limitation provides boundaries and rules, but within those boundaries and rules we can actually manifest potential into reality (which is just what I’m doing by writing this book). So definitions can be helpful, but they do need to be examined critically. They are perhaps the most subtle form of media, because they don’t appear to be media and yet every day we use them. My choice to examine the definitions of magic isn’t just a critical examination of magic itself, but also how we define it and incorporate that meaning into our lives.

I end this very brief chapter (a first for me) with the thought that multi-media is just another interpretation of reality waiting for the right people to make full use of the potential within it. My hope is that my definition of multi-media makes this potential clear to all of you, while also guiding you through the seemingly tangential nature of this book. Think of those tangents really as an interconnective web. Each point on the web is supported by other points, and together they form a pattern for interacting with reality and manifesting potential into your life and the lives of others around you.

Exercises

1 What are your definitions of media and multi-media? Do you agree or disagree with my definitions? Why?

2 Without looking through the rest of this book, make a list of some forms of media you interact with everyday. What do those forms of media provide you with, and are you passively or actively interacting with them? In other words are you just watching television or are you critically comparing your perceptions and knowledge with the information you’re viewing?

3 Take a look at your list and ask yourself how you might combine different forms of media together and use them in your magical practices.

Chapter 2: Words, Symbols, Multimodality, and Magic

In Space/Time Magic and Inner Alchemy, I’ve written a fair amount about words and magic and how they interact. I take a different approach in this chapter, focusing first on what I perceive to be problematic aspects of overly relying on words and symbols in magic. My second focus, however, is to show how words and symbols can be used with other modes of meaning in a manner that effectively focuses on how they are used without diminishing the wonder and mystery of magic.

Problematic Aspects of the Use of Words and Symbols in Magic

For many different people in many different cultures, words have power. They are often perceived to provide both a connection to spiritual power and a form for it to inhabit. The way words are used can constitute a beneficial or negative act of magic. An example of how a non-Western culture approaches this shows in the following:

So in Gapun, certain words uttered in certain contexts are seen by the villagers to have the power to bring about certain outcomes. Words constitute direct links to spiritual powers, who will respond in desired ways if the proper words are said in the proper manner. The power of words is thus a creative power; those who have obtained verbatim knowledge of a chant, for example, can utilize the power of those words for their own purposes. Words are, in themselves, ‘roads’: ways of obtaining desired results. (Kulick & Stroud 1993, p. 40)

The description above, particularly the last sentence, sounds very similar to the process of magic that occurs in Western occultism. The word becomes another technology that is used to shape reality and construct new meanings for people using them.

The word is acknowledged by academics as something which has power, but that acknowledgement primarily occurs in relation to social and economic settings, and so it’s not a power which is tangible in a direct experience. Instead the power is felt indirectly in the social policies and circumstances that affect people on a daily basis, which in turn impact the psychological processes that govern how words are used and how their meanings are interpreted (Luria 1976). In other words, the meanings of words and the uses conceived for them vary from culture to culture, depending on how sophisticated the culture seems to be, which in turn affects the psychological (or cognitive) processes that govern the use of words. We see the process of changing word use and meaning at work through the practice of memetics, which is used to subconsciously control how a person reacts to words and symbols.(For an in-depth review of memetics, please see the chapter “Textual Alchemy” in Inner Alchemy.) The use of images and carefully selected words in politics, education, advertisement, etc. has certainly proven that the meanings people take from a message can be shaped for better or worse. Without critical and conscious awareness on the part of the people, it’s much easier to have our realities shaped for us. This is evident in the rampant consumerism that most, if not all, people engage in (at least in postindustrial societies and particularly in America).

In another sense, the power of the word (and other forms of media) is denied by academics when it’s applied to the concept that a person can use words and other media to directly shape reality. Many academics would argue that the people in Gapun are primitives who lack the sophisticated awareness to realize that words and symbols supposedly can’t be used to directly alter reality. However, the concept is embraced in many cultures, including Western cultures, and is a major component of occult practices (Dunn 2005, Ellwood 2005, Ellwood 2007, Gray 1970, Morrison 2003). Yet the claim that words and symbols can be used by the individual to shape reality is one perceived as a mistake of observation:

Few still mistake the observation that realities are symbolically constructed for the notion that any individual can construct any reality he or she chooses. The power of the symbolic construction might be logically in the hands of the people, but that does not put it practically in the hands of an individual. Symbolically constituted realities are just as much a part of the environment that a given individual must adapt to as are physical realities. (Rothenbuhler 1998, p. 58)

While Rothenbuhler is correct that symbolically constituted realities are part of the environment, he’s incorrect in assuming that a given individual can’t shape symbolic reality or reality in general. Adaptation doesn’t just involve being shaped by an environment. It also requires shaping that reality with the tools that are available, including words, symbols, and magic. The fact that someone writes a text indicates that s/he believes s/he can have a direct impact on hir audience, which is a manipulation of reality. By extension, walking up to someone and telling that person you hate hir will also produce a new reality for you and that person (Though you might not like the results!). A person can construct any reality s/he chooses with symbols and words. But s/he has to contend with other people and corporations doing the exact same thing. The real question is, can someone sell their version of a desired reality to other people, and to reality itself?

Words, symbols, and images shape the reality of people every day, including physical reality. Images, symbols, diagrams, graphs, and other pictorial symbols provide ways for us to interact and derive meaning from an event that words alone can’t fully provide (Gee 2003). Advertisers and corporations in general have no problem exploiting other media resources besides words to perpetuate their messages: The picture of a flamebroiled hamburger will do more to stir up the hunger and imagination of a person than the words describing said burger. Greer explains that symbolic meanings provide a method for connecting with situations, people, etc. (2006). Symbolic meanings embody emotional, intellectual, and physical connections that people have with each other, the activities they engage in, and the meanings they create and negotiate with in their daily and specialized interactions (Magliocco 2004). People use symbols and words (as well as other forms of media such as music, film, and art) to change physical, mental, and spiritual reality, and not just on a social or economic scale. Physical reality may also be shaped by the practice of magic when combined with words and other media. However, to understand how that occurs we need to consider what is meant by the word physical.

Many people, when they think of magic, expect that the physical will be obvious and filled with special effects. However, magic is much more subtle in its effects on reality. The coincidences that seem to happen at just the right time are examples of magic aligning a possibility into reality (The difference between coincidence and magic is subtle. I feel coincidence only occurs when you haven’t actually done any actions to produce a result. If you have done actions to produce a result and a seeming coincidence happens to fit to help you produce the result, it is magic bringing everything into alignment.). The manipulation of words, symbols, and other media are methods for accessing magic and forcing the hand of chance in the favor of the magician. A magician uses different forms of media to impact and influence the psychological aspects of the mind. This is done by imprinting on the magician’s consciousness symbolic associations (through visual symbols, sound, texture or other forms of media), which in turn shape the perspective of the magician and how s/he acts in a given situation. The symbolic associations provide triggers in the consciousness that can be used to evoke specific responses to a situation. We see this all the time with commercials. A commercial usually has a song, and certain visuals, all of which are used to create specific associations that trigger a response in a person (ideally that you’ll buy whatever is being adverted). At the same time, the variety of media that is used also influences and impacts the external environment around the magician; because it provides the magician a means of manipulating that environment to manifest specific desires into reality (A good example would be using the symbolism of money to attract more money into your life, by either changing internal attitudes about money, or using the symbolism to create associations where more money came to you.).

The mistake that is often made by magicians who focus exclusively on symbolism is that of investing too much power into the symbols, without realizing that the real source of that power comes from within. Frank Herbert recognizes the problem that lies in words, and for that matter any form of media, when he notes that words have been used to explain away the meaning of a transcendental experience, and consequently control any iterations of that experience (1981). When you can explain away what occurred by pointing to words and symbols that only re-present what occurred you’ve effectively castrated the magical act. That is the trap of defining magic as a symbolic act only, as I will discuss in further detail in chapter 3. Academics try to pass magic off as just a symbolic, repetitious act of ignorant primitives who invest power in forces that can’t possibly be real. But do they have proof that the spirits, powers, etc. aren’t real? For that matter can the magicians who just view magic as a symbolic or psychological act really be sure that it’s just that?

Herbert makes another point, one that all magicians should consider carefully, when he argues that words distort the ideas they represent by framing those ideas into systems. Systems, while providing routine and a sense of social order, can also create ignorance if people don’t examine the beliefs they adopt when they rely on that system to structure their perceptions of the world (Herbert 1981). Words, symbols, and any other form of media or mediation can be powerful tools, useful for aiding the magician in what s/he does, but we shouldn’t make the mistake of making the tool more powerful than the magician or replacing other paradigms of practicing magic with the symbolic one, at least not without a thorough examination of the underlying principles. Words have power because we give them power. We give them power consciously and unconsciously. We do the same with other forms of media. But remember that we give that power and those meanings to what we use to mediate reality; all of those tools only have the power that is given to them and only for as long as it’s given. The reality of any connection with a spiritual force is that the real power is the acceptance of that connection on each end, as opposed to the mediation of the symbol used to aid the connection.

To illustrate my theory, let’s take this discussion to a practical level. The calling forth of different magical forces/entities is an acknowledgment of the reality of those forces and the way they shape us. That we use media to mediate them doesn’t mean that the entities/forces are symbolic or psychological aspects in and of themselves (as some magicians claim). What it means is that in order to interact with these entities symbols can be useful in helping the magician (and possibly the entities) process the experience. However, those entities, like the magician, can exist in their own right and be an experience in and of themselves that can’t be explained away as a symbol. One time, a friend did an invocation of an entity into another person. She thought the entity was just a psychological/symbolic state of being that the person was acting out, until to her horror she found out that the person didn’t remember anything that had occurred and insisted that the entity had put him under while possessing him. He also told my friend that he believed in the objective existence of the entity. At that point, she realized that the psychological/symbolic paradigm couldn’t explain away the experience as something that was subjective and easily labeled. At least for him, it was an experience that went beyond the symbolic level, into the spiritual level.

Webb makes an excellent point about shamanism that relates to the matter at hand:

Instead of seeing the bees as important only in terms of their greater underlying meaning; the shaman sees the symbol itself as the problem and the resulting anxiety (such as feelings of powerlessness) as the byproduct of the symbol, not its cause. Because of this, in the shamanic way of working, removal of the symbol and its energetic imprint from the psyche through ritual is required…through this model, a healthy emotional or physical state can be achieved instantaneously through the energetic extraction of the intruding symbol within the psyche. (Webb 2003, p. 155)

The symbol is treated as a problem, which actually fits into memetic theory. The replication of memes into a person’s psyche necessarily brings a lot of psychic garbage and can in turn feed into a person’s negative experiences and neuroses. The commercials we hear or see each day are memes. We get bombarded with messages of what we should buy and what we need, while also having pressure put on our mental and emotional health which in turn impacts the physical health. The subconscious communicates through symbolism, but communication is a two-way street, so the anxiety a person feels can actually be the result of the symbol. In my own internal work, I’ve found that I’ve had to dissolve symbols to undo the emotional responses they can prompt. By doing so, the meanings are also dissolved, and the mental anxiety fades away. Another point Webb makes in the quote above is that we sometimes need to appreciate an experience such as seeing bees for the experience itself as opposed to underlying meanings. If we get wrapped up in the meanings of a particular event we may forget to enjoy the moment for what it offers. Contemporary culture is so saturated with symbolism that it’s easy to forget that symbolism isn’t the only kind of reality a person can experience.

We’ve invested so much effort into words and symbols and the different ways they allow us to construct reality that we sometimes forget the other resources we have available to us. Relying on words and symbols alone suppresses the potential a person has to evolve. Other modes of expression can offer different perspectives that expand our consciousness and understanding of the universe:

Investigating the subtleties of synaesthesia in oral cultures and exploring the multimodality of the new, globalised communications media can both be part of the process of recovering wasted human possibility. And to take another example, it is simply knowing that other cultures have resources for scientific and personal meaning very different to the genres of report and narrative in their classical modern forms that allow us the possibility of a science that makes human interest and the sources of the self visible. (Cope & Kalantzis 2000, p. 223)

To ignore other ways of knowing is to cut ourselves off from the full range of our magical abilities. This applies to exploration of other cultures, and to subcultures within our own culture. One of the reasons I integrated pop culture into magic, for instance, is that it offers different perspectives than more traditional approaches to magic. It’s not a better approach, just a different one. The same principle applies to how we practice magic in general. Symbols and words are powerful, but they are only tools, and constantly interpreting everything we do or experience as symbolic takes away from the actual experience we’re in.

Multimodality: Where Words and Symbols Intersect With Other Modes of Knowing

While much of the contemporary usage of words and symbols in magic is problematic, it’s also important to acknowledge that words and symbols are effective tools that can be used quite potently in interpreting and shaping reality. However, that shaping usually occurs in conjunction with other modes of knowing. Multimodality, which is a sub-discipline of semiotics (Semiotics is the study of symbols.), offers some answers on what exactly is meant by other modes of knowing. Besides the obvious modes of speaking or writing words to express yourself, there is the use of physical gestures and noises, as well as interaction with the environment around you, which all have an impact on the meanings expressed. When you combine those modes and others together the experience is the processing of a multitude of expressions and perceptions (Cope and Kalantzis 2000). Even a mode such as reading actually contains much more than just the visual, linguistic, and cognitive decoding of meanings in words. Reading can also involve the reactions of the reader to the different sensations, such as turning a page, or holding a book in the hands (Ormerod & Ivanic 2004). The point is that acts we primarily associate with symbols aren’t just about the symbolic meanings, but can in fact be much more meaningful. For example, in Pop Culture Magick I had readers do an exercise where they compared a tarot card to a book. Besides the obvious ability to derive linguistic and symbolic meanings from both objects, the actual shape, weight, feeling of holding the card or book in the hands, the smell of the card and book, even the sounds of them, were all meaningful experiences that could shape how the chosen objects were interacted with. People have learned to discount the more subtle experiences for the most obvious experience of reading the text, but in that discounting they’ve also lost some of the finer appreciation for experiences of reality that are outside of symbolism. As an example, people generally prefer reading paper books over e-books, partially because there isn’t screen glare, but also because an essential component of the experience is holding the book in their hands. Additionally, many people are conditioned to prefer the momentary breaks in the text that physically turning pages offers. Multimodality brings that kind of awareness back by reattuning people to those other forms of meaning making that allow them to negotiate the world around them.

Perhaps one of the best examples of multimodality is a novel way of reading land as text. Land may not be traditionally thought of as text, and yet it’s fair to say that people interpret and “read” the environment around them all the time. Land is something we often take for granted and yet it’s something that we are all intimately connected to. Blain and Wallis note the following about land, “People read the text – the landscapes, the stones – from their own location within layers of meanings, mythologies and a diversity of spiritualities. Yet the multiple meanings, a magical place, a place of conception, a place about freedom and resistance or ancestral memory – reflect a sense of sacredness, and the recent exclusion appears to intensify this” (2004, p. 248). Land, in general, has a diversity of meaning associated with it dependent on how people think of it. A real estate agent might think of it as a potential sale, while an architect imagines the house that will be built on it, and a social scientist views it as a legacy of cultural heritage. No one meaning is fixed, and yet a variety of meanings can change how a person conceives of land and/or hir attachment to it (Blain & Wallis 2004). The meanings we read into it are ones that occur as a result of interaction with it. Not all of those meanings are easy to reduce to words, and yet still the land has an effect on us that can only be appreciated fully in a multimodular reality. That appreciation involves opening the self to other senses, to other ways of knowing and allowing them to impact our consciousness in just as meaningful a manner as words and symbols do.

My point in referring to the article on land as text is that words and symbols can productively be used with other modes of knowing, when those other modes are recognized as having an impact on a person. The recognition of those other modes necessarily changes the relationship people have with symbols and text, but in a manner which makes the use of them more productive and recognizes that the power doesn’t reside in the symbols or words, so much as it resides in the choices people make when using them. This is a very important distinction, because it recognizes that the use of a resource by a person is an agentive, transformative, and motivated use to provide form and meaning that suits the interest of the person (Kress 2003). This is similar to magic, where a practitioner organizes resources and uses them to shape reality to hir will. The power that informs the magical act resides in the process the practitioner uses to meet hir agenda.

Words, Symbols, and Magic in a Multi-Modal Context

The way we construct a physical space sets up the way we construct its energetic, mental, and spiritual equivalent. For example, the use of punctuation and fonts in writing isn’t only used to structure the physical reading experience of a person, but also how the reader processes the concepts mentally. When I use a comma in the writing, I’m signaling a pause in the flow of the sentence, but also signaling the need for attention. The use of italics, bold, and other graphical features can also change the context of the words (and are a good example of multimodality at work). The way we construct a physical space dictates how the attention is directed (Kress 2003), but in turn the mental space must redirect that information to make it effective, which is where symbols and words come in. Perhaps one of the most obvious forms of this restructuring is the use of definitions and entitling, i.e. the labeling or naming of something.

Schiappa notes that entitling allows a reader to locate a set of beliefs about the world that structure the existence of reality and the essence, qualities, or attributes of said reality (2003). Entitling and defining usually occur through the use of words and symbols as a way of setting the beliefs a person has about the world into a system that can be used to interact with the world. Other modalities can also be included and usually are; these include ritual, artistic endeavors, music, but also instinctual responses. Entitling allows a person to make sense of the meanings that are derived from other modes of knowing. But it also reduces those meanings into words and symbols as a way of bringing the abstract into concrete reality. Definitions, which are an extension of entitling, further reduce other modes of experiences into words and symbols, but also into what those modes of experience ought to be for a person. A definition has power when people come to a consensus about it and incorporate it into their social conventions (Schiappa 2003). The peril of that action is that it limits the mindset of the person toward a particular view of reality which isn’t open to other perspectives that could be relevant to a situation the person is dealing with. Mace also points out this danger when he notes that texts and tools arise from human intention, but are specific to the particular purposes they are used for. When they outlast those purposes, but are perceived as a dogmatic version of truth, both text and tool can hold back human evolution. The evidence of that in action is found in the repressive attitudes displayed toward scientific progression during the medieval era (Mace 1996).

To get around the static nature of words and symbols involves learning to use them innovatively, and with a degree of understanding that involves learning to let go of any preconceived notions of how the world ought to be. Magical uses of words and symbols offer such a degree of adaptability, in large part, because magic recognizes that reality is a variable experience, and any tools used to work with it are part of the variability of it and can be changed at a moment’s notice. Both Bardon and Gray suggest that it’s possible to incorporate a symbol into your consciousness by identifying with it to the point that you project yourself into it or externalize it in your behavior (1970, 2001a).

One of the very first methods used to makes words and symbols into a more adaptable tool was developed by Austin Osman Spare, who created the contemporary usage of the sigil and the Alphabet Of Desire (AOD). Many readers are undoubtedly familiar with what a sigil is, and for those who aren’t there are introductory texts (particularly on chaos magic) that can tell you everything you desire to know. The AOD, on the other hand, is a technique less widely known. I’ve used it in my own workings quite extensively and favor it as a linguistic-semiotic magical technique largely because it’s a personalized system. The magician may not share hir alphabet with anyone else, because it dilutes the power of the symbol and exposes aspects of hirself to other magicians. Each letter represents a connection a magician has to an internal or external force. The letter designates and defines the nature of the force, as well as the exact connection it has with the magician. In turn, this allows the magician to control what is worked with. S/he can use it to deprogram reactions, create emotional moods, obtain information, or use it for whatever other purpose strikes hir fancy (Mace 1984). The AOD is adaptable to multimodality because of the personalization it offers. Instead of using a simple visual symbol, a sound, body posture, art, or some other form of expression can also be used, all with the intent of creating the highly personalized connection. Many of my paintings function as letters in my AOD. Although there can be symbols in the paintings, not all of them are overtly symbolic, but can and do represent the feeling I have in working with a particular force.

Another extension of the AOD is the development of magical languages. Dunn advocates creating your own magical language for similar reasons as I mentioned with the AOD. He notes the form of the language is shaped by the purpose it’s put toward, so that a ritual language might require only a few phrases, but a communication language will require much more (2005). My experiences with helping to formulate the Wraeththu system of magic (Dehara) supports Dunn’s assertion. In the process of creating a magical system, we had to also consider some of the linguistics. We did come up with a few phrases for ritual purposes. I developed Astale, which means “I invoke/evoke” (Depending on the context of the situation.)

My reasoning for using it, beside the fact that I liked the sound of it, was also that the Wraeththu probably wouldn’t speak English. I did a spiritual journey where I met up with my patron deity and asked him if there was a phrase he’d like me to use when I invoked him or other Dehar and he told me this phrase. When I shared the phrase with the group, we tried it and the standard English version of “I invoke/evoke” and noted a stronger response with Astale.

Video game developers of Final Fantasy X also had a similar experience developing a language for the Al Bhed people. Some of the designers of the game even took up using some of the phrases in their everyday activities as a way of helping them develop a better understanding of the characters they were developing. The designers had to create grammatical rules, so that the language would have enough structure that it could be used (Birlew 2002). The creation of a magical language is a useful tool. Dunn makes an excellent point when he notes that we need language to mediate our experiences, but the creation of a magical language allows us to mediate those experiences on our own terms, as opposed to consensual reality (2005). I’ve occasionally created my own phrases, sometimes to evoke entities, and sometimes just as a way of expressing a concept in a way that makes sense to me alone. Another practice you can use is to mix words from different languages together. While it may sound gibberish to some, this practice is similar to creating a magical language and can be effective as a way of turning linguistic rules and semiotic meanings on their heads, similar to the cut-up method Burroughs and others have used.

Burroughs’ work with cut-up is another excellent example of the intersection of magic, symbols, and words as modalities that can be used with other modalities. Two famous examples come to mind. In one case, he was insulted by the service he received at a café. He took a bunch of recordings of sounds a person might associate with bad service or negativity and spliced them with his voice muttering curses. He then walked by the café, several times a day, playing the recording on a portable tape recorder. Within a few weeks the café had closed down and a new business didn’t start there until a year later (P-orridge 2003). Another example was a cut-up of newspaper headlines and some of his writing for Naked Lunch. One of the cut-ups was about a captain Clark who lost his life when his ferry sunk. Apparently, sometime shortly after he wrote this, an actual ferry captained by a man with the last name of Clark sank off the coast of Tunisia, with all hands lost (Odier 1969, Burroughs 1985). Like Burroughs, I’ve used cut-ups (and collages) to shape events and I’ve also noted that sometimes the cut-ups/collages predict events successfully (Ellwood 2007). Burroughs theorized that cut-ups actually allowed non-linear space/time moments to slip through: “I’ve made many cut-ups and then later recognized that the cut-up referred to something I read later in the newspaper or in a book, or something that happened…Perhaps events are pre-written and pre-recorded and when you cut word lines the future leaks out” (Odier 1969, p. 28). Burroughs felt that cut-ups revealed the nature and functions of words (Odier 1969). I’d extend that further and say they can also reveal the nature and function of symbols, images, and any other materials used in the cut-up. In utilizing cut-up techniques, I’ve found that taking anything out of its original context will alter the meanings and how reality is shaped. Future possibilities leak out when images, symbols, and words are taken out of their static meanings and placed in different locations. New meanings unfold, possibilities manifest, and consciousness is touched so that the future is no longer locked away but revealed and played with using the very tools that might otherwise lock it on a particular course. In this way we are able to use the basic tools of communication to rearrange the way reality unfolds for us.

Both Burroughs and I have also noted the parallels between the writing an author does and the events that occur in that author’s life, or the predictions of future technology, years before that technology is available (Odier 1969, Burroughs 1985, Ellwood 2005). Some of that can be chalked up to writing what you know about, but some of the “coincidences” in the lives of the authors or the successful predictions of future inventions are likely related to what I would consider magic. Burroughs, in seeing this phenomenon in action, with the cut-up and with his writing, consciously chose to steer his future, using writing as a medium to express what he wanted for his life (Burroughs 1987). He focused on creating a future for himself where he could have what he wanted, describing it in terms that allowed him to fully express how his future should manifest. I’ve taken a similar approach. I’ve used my personal journals to help me be aware of behavior patterns, but also as a way of writing desired possibility into reality (Ellwood 2005). Even in the non-fiction books, some of the writing has been purposely chosen to direct me toward a specific possibility. One activity that I picked up from D.J. Lawrence was to actually invoke my future self and have it write a letter to my present self, in order to create the events I wanted to manifest over the next ten years of my life. I read the letter, after my future self wrote it, and then put it in a time capsule and gave it to someone else to hold for me for ten years (Lawrence 2007). By having my future self write a letter to me, I could consciously steer myself toward a desired future, while hopefully avoiding some of the bad situations I might have otherwise brought into my life.