I'm a Wizard! Ask Me Anything

[Jarhyn]

@Politesse, being apparently on the spookier side of the street, what would you consider yourself? And how did you originally start down that path?

Did you start as many do believing in a more "Christian" sort of magic? And if so, what disabused you of that notion? Legit curious here.

 

[Politesse]

@Politesse, being apparently on the spookier side of the street, what would you consider yourself? And how did you originally start down that path?

Did you start as many do believing in a more "Christian" sort of magic? And if so, what disabused you of that notion? Legit curious here.

Hey, this is your ask thread, haha.

I got interested in magic professionally, as you might say. Being an anthropology professor, magical practices around the world are part of our basic curriculum, and my first experiences of Western-style magick were all fieldwork-related affairs in my grad school years. When I got hired at the college where I work presently, they had an interesting course on record focused on "Magic Witchcraft and Religion", and as the new "cultural guy" I was expected to teach it. That being the case, I did what any self-respecting social scientist would do and tried to get involved in the local Pagan and Santeria communities, at first just so I wouldn't make an ass of myself trying to summarize their beliefs for the students, and increasingly over time, out of personal interest and enjoyment. I was invited to initiate wholesale into a Georgic coven about ten years back and at that point started more seriously adopting some magical principles into my daily life. Lately I've been diving into Neoplatonism, and quite enjoying it. My partner is a Gnostic Christian, so it makes for a natural middle ground between our respective practices.

I am also a Christian of sorts, if a very esoteric one, and was raised in a relatively orthodox (if liberal) Lutheran church. I don't recall witchcraft ever being seriously brought up in that context, but I must have picked up some of that stigma as I do remember feeling uncomfortable participating in my first few Pagan rituals. That dis-ease vanished pretty quickly though, and I've cheerfully explored Wicca, Druidry, Thelema, Santeria, and Vodou during the decade or so that followed. The truth is that in most things I default to a careful agnosticism. Truth, for me, is found more in experience than in belief. Belief is simply too fragile, too easily exploited, and too culturally specific to fully trust. Whereas, if you have had an experience, you know you can trust that something happened, even if your conclusions on what happened might drift over the years or as you are exposed to new ideas and perspectives. As has happened to me many, many times in my life. It's why I love my job, haha. You meet a lot of interesting people teaching a class on magic, and that course has become quite popular under my direction, so I spend an increasing amount of time teaching it and learning from my students and colleagues in the process. It does change you.

 

[Jarhyn]

@Politesse, being apparently on the spookier side of the street, what would you consider yourself? And how did you originally start down that path?

Did you start as many do believing in a more "Christian" sort of magic? And if so, what disabused you of that notion? Legit curious here.

Hey, this is your ask thread, haha.

I got interested in magic professionally, as you might say. Being an anthropology professor, magical practices around the world are part of our basic curriculum, and my first experiences of Western-style magick were all fieldwork-related affairs in my grad school years. When I got hired at the college where I work presently, they had an interesting course on record focused on "Magic Witchcraft and Religion", and as the new "cultural guy" I was expected to teach it. That being the case, I did what any self-respecting social scientist would do and tried to get involved in the local Pagan and Santeria communities, at first just so I wouldn't make an ass of myself trying to summarize their beliefs for the students, and increasingly over time, out of personal interest and enjoyment. I was invited to initiate wholesale into a Georgic coven about ten years back and at that point started more seriously adopting some magical principles into my daily life. Lately I've been diving into Neoplatonism, and quite enjoying it. My partner is a Gnostic Christian, so it makes for a natural middle ground between our respective practices.

I am also a Christian of sorts, if a very esoteric one, and was raised in a relatively orthodox (if liberal) Lutheran church. I don't recall witchcraft ever being seriously brought up in that context, but I must have picked up some of that stigma as I do remember feeling uncomfortable participating in my first few Pagan rituals. That dis-ease vanished pretty quickly though, and I've cheerfully explored Wicca, Druidry, Thelema, Santeria, and Vodou during the decade or so that followed. The truth is that in most things I default to a careful agnosticism. Truth, for me, is found more in experience than in belief. Belief is simply too fragile, too easily exploited, and too culturally specific to fully trust. Whereas, if you have had an experience, you know you can trust that something happened, even if your conclusions on what happened might drift over the years or as you are exposed to new ideas and perspectives. As has happened to me many, many times in my life. It's why I love my job, haha. You meet a lot of interesting people teaching a class on magic, and that course has become quite popular under my direction, so I spend an increasing amount of time teaching it and learning from my students and colleagues in the process. It does change you.

Thank you for your insights! It's certainly an interesting way to get into it, as it were.

Personally, I've never been "properly" invited into any of the more "closed" communities; I almost feel sometimes like the most initiated person in my friend group of local pagan-adjacents, though at almost 40 years now in a peer group of folks not even into their 30's I suppose I should expect that. I feel like my book of shadows is small and rather sordid. I do want to see other perspectives, but not at the expense of prescribing to belief; I do gnostic maturity, not black box. To that extent, I left Christianity, fundamentalist christianity at that. "First Evangelical..."

As a wizard, my profession is the pursuit of knowledge, and understanding, and context. I write software, which, come-on, what did you expect spellwork to drive an engine to look like? Most of the compiler, if any software engineer is to be honest, is "just fucking magic" to most programmers-at-large.

I've studied enough to understand the basic mechanics of most things. I learned how to make semiconductors, and transistors. But that's public domain wizardry at this point. Lately it's been understanding the math and technology stacks that do the calculation of the presence of iron oxide over a silicon resistor stack. It gets bound to biologicals and then the biologicals are set up to bind to the oxides. So it is a detector that can detect target biologicals, and a bunch of them. Combine that with a a system to automate fluid separations and chemistry processes, and it takes most of the work out of operating a test. It's one of my proudest understandings.

But here's the thing: my greatest magic is I like trying to help those who need to or want to understand what I understand understand that thing. I like teaching, mostly because I understand more after I do it. I've taught about as much as I've been taught but I want to learn more too.

Last night my husband had an experience as you describe, in the house. He saw an "orb" floating about. I have no doubt that he had this experience and I will not for certain say whether it was real to him or real to everyone. As such, I'm going to attempt a calling, speaking, and sending. The ritual is expected, regardless of where it is sourced (through the psychology of the "witchboard" in communicating with self) to understand more of the phenomena. Though I may use a pendulum instead. It will be an interesting experience to hold a seance. No belief will arise from it, and I will probably post the ritual, and the result here.

 

[Angry Floof]

New question. What symbols are meaningful to your wizardry practice and how do you use them?

 

[Politesse]

@Politesse, being apparently on the spookier side of the street, what would you consider yourself? And how did you originally start down that path?

Did you start as many do believing in a more "Christian" sort of magic? And if so, what disabused you of that notion? Legit curious here.

Hey, this is your ask thread, haha.

I got interested in magic professionally, as you might say. Being an anthropology professor, magical practices around the world are part of our basic curriculum, and my first experiences of Western-style magick were all fieldwork-related affairs in my grad school years. When I got hired at the college where I work presently, they had an interesting course on record focused on "Magic Witchcraft and Religion", and as the new "cultural guy" I was expected to teach it. That being the case, I did what any self-respecting social scientist would do and tried to get involved in the local Pagan and Santeria communities, at first just so I wouldn't make an ass of myself trying to summarize their beliefs for the students, and increasingly over time, out of personal interest and enjoyment. I was invited to initiate wholesale into a Georgic coven about ten years back and at that point started more seriously adopting some magical principles into my daily life. Lately I've been diving into Neoplatonism, and quite enjoying it. My partner is a Gnostic Christian, so it makes for a natural middle ground between our respective practices.

I am also a Christian of sorts, if a very esoteric one, and was raised in a relatively orthodox (if liberal) Lutheran church. I don't recall witchcraft ever being seriously brought up in that context, but I must have picked up some of that stigma as I do remember feeling uncomfortable participating in my first few Pagan rituals. That dis-ease vanished pretty quickly though, and I've cheerfully explored Wicca, Druidry, Thelema, Santeria, and Vodou during the decade or so that followed. The truth is that in most things I default to a careful agnosticism. Truth, for me, is found more in experience than in belief. Belief is simply too fragile, too easily exploited, and too culturally specific to fully trust. Whereas, if you have had an experience, you know you can trust that something happened, even if your conclusions on what happened might drift over the years or as you are exposed to new ideas and perspectives. As has happened to me many, many times in my life. It's why I love my job, haha. You meet a lot of interesting people teaching a class on magic, and that course has become quite popular under my direction, so I spend an increasing amount of time teaching it and learning from my students and colleagues in the process. It does change you.

Thank you for your insights! It's certainly an interesting way to get into it, as it were.

Personally, I've never been "properly" invited into any of the more "closed" communities; I almost feel sometimes like the most initiated person in my friend group of local pagan-adjacents, though at almost 40 years now in a peer group of folks not even into their 30's I suppose I should expect that. I feel like my book of shadows is small and rather sordid. I do want to see other perspectives, but not at the expense of prescribing to belief; I do gnostic maturity, not black box. To that extent, I left Christianity, fundamentalist christianity at that. "First Evangelical..."

As a wizard, my profession is the pursuit of knowledge, and understanding, and context. I write software, which, come-on, what did you expect spellwork to drive an engine to look like? Most of the compiler, if any software engineer is to be honest, is "just fucking magic" to most programmers-at-large.

I've studied enough to understand the basic mechanics of most things. I learned how to make semiconductors, and transistors. But that's public domain wizardry at this point. Lately it's been understanding the math and technology stacks that do the calculation of the presence of iron oxide over a silicon resistor stack. It gets bound to biologicals and then the biologicals are set up to bind to the oxides. So it is a detector that can detect target biologicals, and a bunch of them. Combine that with a a system to automate fluid separations and chemistry processes, and it takes most of the work out of operating a test. It's one of my proudest understandings.

But here's the thing: my greatest magic is I like trying to help those who need to or want to understand what I understand understand that thing. I like teaching, mostly because I understand more after I do it. I've taught about as much as I've been taught but I want to learn more too.

Last night my husband had an experience as you describe, in the house. He saw an "orb" floating about. I have no doubt that he had this experience and I will not for certain say whether it was real to him or real to everyone. As such, I'm going to attempt a calling, speaking, and sending. The ritual is expected, regardless of where it is sourced (through the psychology of the "witchboard" in communicating with self) to understand more of the phenomena. Though I may use a pendulum instead. It will be an interesting experience to hold a seance. No belief will arise from it, and I will probably post the ritual, and the result here.

Initiation into Wicca definitely gave me a different perspective on that tradition, but I don't think one needs the perceived legitimacy of an organization to enjoy magical practice to the fullest. A century ago, everyone who is now a respected leader of the Pagan revival was just dicking around, experimenting with the esoteric flotsam of Western history. Have you ever run across the Freemasons? I understand they put a lot of stock in developing craft, of knowing how things work and how they could work better with a bit of intelligence, creativity, and grit.

Best of luck with the "orb"! Can't say I have ever attempted such a thing, but the good life is all about curiosity, applied.

 

[Jarhyn]

New question. What symbols are meaningful to your wizardry practice and how do you use them?

New question. What symbols are meaningful to your wizardry practice and how do you use them?

For anything involving a computer, pretty much the entirety of a QWERTY keyboard.

If we are talking about ritual magic, or like, personal artifice, wand and staff and cup and the like, I don't really have a runic alphabet beyond maybe the Elder Futhark; I don't really do any rune writing myself, but it is popular among those others in my neighborhood. I don't know if I will ever write a language the way I suspect some have. Instead, I express my intent to myself in different ways, generally with things I create. usually that intent is to remember the thing I am making it from, whether it's a good acid trip, or the day I proposed, or the day he dropped our favorite pipe, or so on. Occasionally I'll dabble with trying to put together a typographically consistent glyph set, but I usually fizzle out pretty quickly and, given the fact most are just substitution ciphers anyway... Why?

 

[Jarhyn]

Thank you for your insights! It's certainly an interesting way to get into it, as it were.

Personally, I've never been "properly" invited into any of the more "closed" communities; I almost feel sometimes like the most initiated person in my friend group of local pagan-adjacents, though at almost 40 years now in a peer group of folks not even into their 30's I suppose I should expect that. I feel like my book of shadows is small and rather sordid. I do want to see other perspectives, but not at the expense of prescribing to belief; I do gnostic maturity, not black box. To that extent, I left Christianity, fundamentalist christianity at that. "First Evangelical..."

As a wizard, my profession is the pursuit of knowledge, and understanding, and context. I write software, which, come-on, what did you expect spellwork to drive an engine to look like? Most of the compiler, if any software engineer is to be honest, is "just fucking magic" to most programmers-at-large.

I've studied enough to understand the basic mechanics of most things. I learned how to make semiconductors, and transistors. But that's public domain wizardry at this point. Lately it's been understanding the math and technology stacks that do the calculation of the presence of iron oxide over a silicon resistor stack. It gets bound to biologicals and then the biologicals are set up to bind to the oxides. So it is a detector that can detect target biologicals, and a bunch of them. Combine that with a a system to automate fluid separations and chemistry processes, and it takes most of the work out of operating a test. It's one of my proudest understandings.

But here's the thing: my greatest magic is I like trying to help those who need to or want to understand what I understand understand that thing. I like teaching, mostly because I understand more after I do it. I've taught about as much as I've been taught but I want to learn more too.

Last night my husband had an experience as you describe, in the house. He saw an "orb" floating about. I have no doubt that he had this experience and I will not for certain say whether it was real to him or real to everyone. As such, I'm going to attempt a calling, speaking, and sending. The ritual is expected, regardless of where it is sourced (through the psychology of the "witchboard" in communicating with self) to understand more of the phenomena. Though I may use a pendulum instead. It will be an interesting experience to hold a seance. No belief will arise from it, and I will probably post the ritual, and the result here.

Initiation into Wicca definitely gave me a different perspective on that tradition, but I don't think one needs the perceived legitimacy of an organization to enjoy magical practice to the fullest. A century ago, everyone who is now a respected leader of the Pagan revival was just dicking around, experimenting with the esoteric flotsam of Western history. Have you ever run across the Freemasons? I understand they put a lot of stock in developing craft, of knowing how things work and how they could work better with a bit of intelligence, creativity, and grit.

Best of luck with the "orb"! Can't say I have ever attempted such a thing, but the good life is all about curiosity, applied.

I have only met one confirmed freemason in the past, and they didn't inspire confidence in the organization. Also, there's the right-up-front part where you take oaths and profes to belief in... Something. I won't take things that far to statements of belief.

As you say, the focus IS in fact on experience rather than belief.

As for the orb...

So as not to make things more uh... 'confrontational' than they needed to be in started it off with just using a simple pendulum in the space to demonstrate how the psychological mechanism worked and my husband and housemate suggested I start asking questions, again all in good fun without any kind of deathgrip on such silly things as "belief".

We only asked a few questions:
whether they were an entity of "this earth"; no.
Whether they ever had been; yes.
Whether they had once been alive; yes.
Whether they were still alive; yes. (This was a little surprising to me until, well, from an an entity's perspective, if they're sending messages...)
Whether they had died at some point; yes.
Whether they would conduct themselves under the rules of being a guest in the house; yes.

Personally, when it comes to either spooky maybe(probably?)-make-believe spirits, I'm more of a live-and-let-live kind of guy.

It's interesting because my husband has seen things before, it always happens in about the same area of the house, and it's terrified one of our cats so badly now, twice, that he peed all over my husband while being carried through the area.

I wouldn't have even tried to make contact, but I don't like having visitors, real or imagined, for whom their intent is unclear and unstated. Long story short, if you're in my house, you are going to promise to behave and if you don't, I kick you out (whether you are real or imagined!)

It was all good fun, though I think I spooked my latin american catholic friend who is renting a room; he has superstitions about mediums.

 

[Angry Floof]

New question. What symbols are meaningful to your wizardry practice and how do you use them?

New question. What symbols are meaningful to your wizardry practice and how do you use them?

For anything involving a computer, pretty much the entirety of a QWERTY keyboard.

If we are talking about ritual magic, or like, personal artifice, wand and staff and cup and the like, I don't really have a runic alphabet beyond maybe the Elder Futhark; I don't really do any rune writing myself, but it is popular among those others in my neighborhood. I don't know if I will ever write a language the way I suspect some have. Instead, I express my intent to myself in different ways, generally with things I create. usually that intent is to remember the thing I am making it from, whether it's a good acid trip, or the day I proposed, or the day he dropped our favorite pipe, or so on. Occasionally I'll dabble with trying to put together a typographically consistent glyph set, but I usually fizzle out pretty quickly and, given the fact most are just substitution ciphers anyway... Why?

I meant more like conceptual symbols, such as a flame representing purification, for example, and how the concept of purification serves as a fundamental, meaningful element your magickal sensibilities.

I'm not a magickal person in any way, but I do believe in how symbols, metaphors, rituals, etc., live deep in the grooves of human psychology and cognitive weirdness, often subconsciously but available to the conscious mind through practice. A spiral, for example, to me, represents the interconnectedness of all life, that sort of thing.

One Easter, my niece and I colored eggs and we decided to create our own sacred Easter concepts by choosing colors to represent all the overarching concepts of life and the universe, such as green symbolizing Earth and life, orange symbolizing imagination and folklore (the act itself of creating meaningful symbols of existence as well as just a love of geekdom), pink for the pleasures of life like candy and pretty flowers, yellow for light of the sun and also knowledge and consciousness, etc.

 

[Jarhyn]

For anything involving a computer, pretty much the entirety of a QWERTY keyboard.

If we are talking about ritual magic, or like, personal artifice, wand and staff and cup and the like, I don't really have a runic alphabet beyond maybe the Elder Futhark; I don't really do any rune writing myself, but it is popular among those others in my neighborhood. I don't know if I will ever write a language the way I suspect some have. Instead, I express my intent to myself in different ways, generally with things I create. usually that intent is to remember the thing I am making it from, whether it's a good acid trip, or the day I proposed, or the day he dropped our favorite pipe, or so on. Occasionally I'll dabble with trying to put together a typographically consistent glyph set, but I usually fizzle out pretty quickly and, given the fact most are just substitution ciphers anyway... Why?

I meant more like conceptual symbols, such as a flame representing purification, for example, and how the concept of purification serves as a fundamental, meaningful element your magickal sensibilities.

I'm not a magickal person in any way, but I do believe in how symbols, metaphors, rituals, etc., live deep in the grooves of human psychology and cognitive weirdness, often subconsciously but available to the conscious mind through practice. A spiral, for example, to me, represents the interconnectedness of all life, that sort of thing.

One Easter, my niece and I colored eggs and we decided to create our own sacred Easter concepts by choosing colors to represent all the overarching concepts of life and the universe, such as green symbolizing Earth and life, orange symbolizing imagination and folklore (the act itself of creating meaningful symbols of existence as well as just a love of geekdom), pink for the pleasures of life like candy and pretty flowers, yellow for light of the sun and also knowledge and consciousness, etc.

Ah, more broad symbology then!

So, when it comes to stuff like that, the most regular implementation of this kind of "walking in the deep grooves"...

Black/white in context of candles are a big one, circles, (either of copper or salt; I would use silver but I don't have enough to swing a circle of it).

When it comes to purification, that's more for purificatoon-through-burning; symbolically, I feel like it's more the smoke from the smudge and incense that pushes things ("real or imagined" should at this point be inferred) out -- though they could, I suppose, be used as vehicles of intent for invitation as well; bells are like that too, both for calling and sending.

The spiral is ancient and is well, the basis for "this mortal coil", wherein you start, go round and round in your cycles of life, wound all tightly around, and then eventually you find it ending. It's a fitting symbol for life!

I play these sorts of things generally off the cuff, though: I search for what "grooves" seem deepest and most functional to those involved, in aggregate, and go with that much like you and your niece in your easter idea jam.

Copper is a big one for me too, though: flexibile, conductive, malleable, and fairly rugged; it wears it's scars and owns them and is hardened through action and work; it gets corroded from time to time, but it also cleans up well. It's own real properties make it a good metaphor for how to live a fairly respectable life, and it's a regular thought to cross my mind.

 

[Angry Floof]

Posting that last comment made me go and search for a post I made on FB that Easter on the symbolism. I hope it's not too off topic to post it here, Jarhyn. It was so nice to revisit this.

Eight year old niece is spending Ishtar weekend with me. After today, she knows all about elections, Bernie Sanders, and mythology. We saved out these six eggs for our myth making. We decided that these six eggs represent all that is important to us.

• Blue egg is the color of the sky, and also resembles a fat rocket or a blue planet, so that one represents the cosmos and also our love of space exploration and science.
• Green egg looks like a lush forest or the Earth, so that represents home, Earth, sustenance, mammal fellowship, and kinship with all life on the planet (especially the cats, for us).
• Yellow egg = the sun, life's power source.
• Orange egg looks like a dragon's egg, so that represents imagination, wonder, and technology.
• Pink egg is striped and looks like some kind of sweet fruit, so that one represents joy, pleasure, and gratitude.
• Violet egg didn't get a designation before niece had to leave to go home, so it can represent the possibilities that exist in the form of a wave waiting to be collapsed into particles (sparkly ones, of course) and also represents the non-linear nature of the universe through its ability to serve as a direct connection between the blue cosmos egg and the pink egg of joy, meaning there's no beginning or end to creation.

Happy Easter!

 

[Eldarion Lathria]

Are you the Jarhyn who used to teach Fadoodling at Pigpimples School of Wizardry in Pennsylvania? My friend Sally says she took that course from a teacher named Jarhyn.

Eldarion Lathria

 

[Jarhyn]

Are you the Jarhyn who used to teach Fadoodling at Pigpimples School of Wizardry in Pennsylvania? My friend Sally says she took that course from a teacher named Jarhyn.

Eldarion Lathria

Sounds like "Sally" needs to lay off on the bath salts, and get back into the antipsychotics.

 

[Rhea]

Speaking of bath salts, I understand there is a lesser known sect who uses them to enhance traditional spells to produce stronger results. But the ministry says they are prone to spectacular unintended consequences. What is your position on using them?

 

[Jarhyn]

Speaking of bath salts, I understand there is a lesser known sect who uses them to enhance traditional spells to produce stronger results. But the ministry says they are prone to spectacular unintended consequences. What is your position on using them?

I will never even once pick "bath salts". I don't associate with the people who generally would; I couldn't ever see myself living in Florida.

 

[Rhea]

Does the TV series "Supernatural" accurately depict spell casting?

 

[Jarhyn]

Does the TV series "Supernatural" accurately depict spell casting?

Not really. The closest it would get is if I decided to make a witchboard: I want to make one that would absolutely be considered haunted if my kids were to ever find it and play with it.

I would also hide it in such a way as to have some other piece of IoT magic to notify me when it gets disrupted so I can plan additional hoax spookiness on my kids.

Because what good is having kids if you can't convince them that they just stepped into a horror movie for a hot minute? Of course I would lift the curtain for then before they got too worried; I wouldn't want to take the prank too far

 

[Eldarion Lathria]

Are you the Jarhyn who used to teach Fadoodling at Pigpimples School of Wizardry in Pennsylvania? My friend Sally says she took that course from a teacher named Jarhyn.

Eldarion Lathria

Sounds like "Sally" needs to lay off on the bath salts, and get back into the antipsychotics.

All right, you are not that Jarhyn. I accept that and so does Sally. Just as I accept that Tom Sawyer is Today's Tom Sawyer and not the Original Tom Sawyer. But the ghost of Johnny Carson says you are a fake and he can do any thing you can. What do you say to that?

Eldarion Lathria

 

[Jarhyn]

Are you the Jarhyn who used to teach Fadoodling at Pigpimples School of Wizardry in Pennsylvania? My friend Sally says she took that course from a teacher named Jarhyn.

Eldarion Lathria

Sounds like "Sally" needs to lay off on the bath salts, and get back into the antipsychotics.

All right, you are not that Jarhyn. I accept that and so does Sally. Just as I accept that Tom Sawyer is Today's Tom Sawyer and not the Original Tom Sawyer. But the ghost of Johnny Carson says you are a fake and he can do any thing you can. What do you say to that?

Eldarion Lathria

I'd say keep those antipsychotics close. Anyone can do any thing I can. Few people have the time, and fewer still the inclination. It doesn't make any thing I have done undone. Though I doubt Johnny Carson, alive or dead, ever had a Stratasys, or knew how to use one.

 

[WAB]

I think a Stratocaster can make more pleasing magic than a Stratasys, O Jarhyn the wizard. Pray, what thinkest thou?

 

[Jarhyn]

I think a Stratocaster can make more pleasing magic than a Stratasys, O Jarhyn the wizard. Pray, what thinkest thou?

Depends on the wizard. I think if given a stratocaster, I would personally make some rather fell magic, indeed.