February 10, 2012
Shadrack Mdakana has not been idle since cornering the market on porridge-homunculus servants. From a more recent Daily Sun: IN THE past Daily Sun has told the story of gangs that use the smoke from hyena tails to put people to sleep so that they can rob them . . . Now the thugs have run out of hyena tails and are making smoke in a different way! They are using digital disks and old LP records to make the smoke that leaves people defenceless against robbery. Here’s how it works. The thugs put medicine (muthi) on blank LPs or CDs, burn them, then blow so that the smoke goes under the victim’s door. The people in the house will be asleep within minutes, and the thugs can go in and clear everything out. “This muthi is very dangerous,” he said. “Young people, fong-kong zangoma and inyanga use it.” He said if a thug closed the door after looting the house, there was a good chance that the people inside the house could die. You can protect yourself by attaching a blank DVD treated with a different kind of medicine to your front gate. The two medicines will fight, and the thugs will fall asleep along with the intended victims… and the victims will wake up first.

Shadrack Mdakana has not been idle since cornering the market on porridge-homunculus servants. From a more recent Daily Sun:

IN THE past Daily Sun has told the story of gangs that use the smoke from hyena tails to put people to sleep so that they can rob them . . . Now the thugs have run out of hyena tails and are making smoke in a different way! They are using digital disks and old LP records to make the smoke that leaves people defenceless against robbery.

Here’s how it works. The thugs put medicine (muthi) on blank LPs or CDs, burn them, then blow so that the smoke goes under the victim’s door. The people in the house will be asleep within minutes, and the thugs can go in and clear everything out.

“This muthi is very dangerous,” he said. “Young people, fong-kong zangoma and inyanga use it.” He said if a thug closed the door after looting the house, there was a good chance that the people inside the house could die.

You can protect yourself by attaching a blank DVD treated with a different kind of medicine to your front gate. The two medicines will fight, and the thugs will fall asleep along with the intended victims… and the victims will wake up first.

10:10am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBp-SyGBVP6p
(Notes: 8)
  
Filed under: my people. music saves lives. homunculus Magic 
February 6, 2012
"

This same sensory communion with place must be cultivated in regions that are the least conducive to it. It’s an easy task to slip into visionary reverie in untamed spaces, but can you do it in Croydon on a Saturday night? Can you do it on the tube in rush hour?

The imperative of magic is to reshape our experience of each moment as it comes into being. Magic throws off the shackles of deceitful illusion and penetrates through to the raw pulsation of existence that underlies such imposed narrative. This visionary awareness understands that no territory is profane. If the primal forest is a sacred terrain, its mystery must underpin all else. There is nowhere that the jungle is not.

"

— Stephen Grasso, Smoke and Mirrors, part VII, “Great North Wood.”

4:42pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBp-SyF-S2H0
(Notes: 11)
  
Filed under: Magic i know this guy. truth wherever we find it. unseen histories that's magic as in ceremonial not as in Doug Henning 
January 30, 2012
Most of the names and associations are unfamiliar to me. (Like rum/”bed” for raidho/”rider” or gluggi/window for gif/”gift”.) But it’s still adorable.

Most of the names and associations are unfamiliar to me. (Like rum/”bed” for raidho/”rider” or gluggi/window for gif/”gift”.)

But it’s still adorable.

(via haloquin)

11:33am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBp-SyFdDFY7
(Notes: 108)
  
Filed under: Magic abecedaria children know things. 
January 12, 2012
"

Mulling over this question a few days ago, I started making a list of the more obvious features of the story in which we find ourselves at this point in the turning of history’s wheel. I encourage my readers to follow along, and see whether or not the answer that struck me occurs to them as well.

  • We live in a world dominated by a vast, slowly decaying empire that gets quite literally superhuman powers by feeding on what we may as well call the blood of the Earth;
  • That empire is ruled by a decadent aristocracy that holds court in soaring towers and bolsters its crumbling authority by conjuring vast amounts of wealth out of thin air;
  • Backing the aristocracy is a caste of corrupt sorcerers whose incantations, projected into every home through the power of the blood of the Earth, keep the populace disorganized, deluded and passive;
  • Entire provinces of the empire are ravaged by droughts, storms, and other disasters caused by the misuse of the Earth’s blood, while prophecies from the past warn of much worse to come;
  • Meanwhile, far from the centers of power, the members of a scattered fellowship struggle to find and learn the forgotten lore of an earlier time, which might just hold the secret of survival…

It was more or less at this point that the realization hit: we have somehow gotten stuck, all seven billion of us, inside the pages of a pulp fantasy novel.

"

—

- John Michael Greer is concerned about the magical implications of our dependence on petroleum and high finance.

[found via]

11:57am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBp-SyEfOqV7
(Notes: 7)
  
Filed under: Magic money is god's music eschatology comic books speak hidden truths 
December 8, 2011
Alejandro Jodorowsky made a public appearance to lead "the first act of collective psycho-magic in Mexico"

Jodorowsky - March of the Skulls

“The call made by the cult mystic Alejandro Jodorowsky said the event would seek to “heal” the country of the cosmic weight of so many dead in the drug war, by gathering for something he called the March of the Skulls.”

“There are 50,000 dead beings,” Jodorowsky said through a bullhorn, before the sea of skulls. “They are sheep. They are not black sheep. We must have mercy for these souls that have disappeared. Let’s sing this song with lament, as if we were the mother of one of these persons. Understand?”

[via aleisurelybreakfast | serpentskirts]

4:29pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBp-SyC_a_0G
(Notes: 27)
  
Filed under: i thought that if you had an acoustic guitar Magic my life proceeds at 24 fps Surreality 
December 5, 2011
"

William Blake and his wife Catherine are interred upon the Bone Hill, their exact resting place is lost, but there is a memorial stone in the boneyard. Barely recognised for his work during his lifetime, the shrine now overflows with flowers, potted plants, and coins in small denominations. Devotional offerings left regularly at the well-tended grave by admirers of Blake’s visionary magic.

Yet perhaps the most striking element of the Bone Hill are its trees. Avenues of tall, spindly London Planes that claw at the sky like bony tendrils, mighty oaks and sycamores with roots that run deep through the ancient hill of bones, and sparsely scattered willows that seem to bend and weep for the departed like daughters of Our Lady of the Cemetery. It is a true bone orchard, under the patronage of Gran Bwa, who rules the island below the sea where the dead reside. At dusk, after libations of black coffee have been poured to the earth, it is as if the trees themselves are possessed by the ancestors. Great branches vivified by the wind, stark presences made of twisted bark, creaking figures of wood silhouetted against the night sky. The London dead make their voices heard to the living and speak of older cities subtly embedded behind the pulse and charge of our familiar streets.

"

— from Stephen Grasso’s Smoke and Mirrors, pt. II - “Old Devil Moon”. You can read more of his occult history of London (including fun notes on Irish Vodou pirates)… and listen to his accompanying music mix at Bang the Bore.
Third installment’s up next week.

1:51pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBp-SyCrkaOe
(Notes: 8)
  
Filed under: unseen histories liminality Magic 
August 10, 2011

The Belfast Telegraph explains one way that running a government isn’t like running a business or a household:

The reversal in fortunes came amid speculation that the US Federal Reserve would announce a third round of money printing, or quantitative easing, later today, to help inject some life into the world’s biggest economy.

In other words, one thing that would stop a global recession is if the U.S. made more money. Not earned, but made.

11:46am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBp-Sy88ikeW
Filed under: money is god's music Magic 
May 24, 2011
Illustration from Francis Barrett “The Magus” (1801), “Characters of Good Spirits”, “Characters of Evil Spirits” [via marsiouxpial]

Illustration from Francis Barrett “The Magus” (1801), “Characters of Good Spirits”, “Characters of Evil Spirits”

[via marsiouxpial]

(Source: spacehotelusa, via keepyourpebbles)

12:06pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBp-Sy5PsE--
(Notes: 955)
  
Filed under: Magic i'm in love with things i can't see. 
April 20, 2011
oldbookillustrations: The magic head from the Zohar. From Histoire de la Magie, (The History of Magic), by Éliphas Lévi (Alphonse-Louis Constant), Paris, 1922. (Source: archive.org)

oldbookillustrations:

The magic head from the Zohar.

From Histoire de la Magie, (The History of Magic), by Éliphas Lévi (Alphonse-Louis Constant), Paris, 1922.

(Source: archive.org)

7:53am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBp-Sy4SasIr
(Notes: 71)
  
Filed under: dream architecture Magic faces in the undergrowth God Spot 
April 20, 2011
The folks at oldbookillustrations are putting out some cool medieval alchemical diagrams. Check ‘em out. Azoth of the Philosophers (according to Basil valentine). From Histoire de la Magie, (The History of Magic), by Éliphas Lévi (Alphonse-Louis Constant), Paris, 1922. (Source: archive.org)

The folks at oldbookillustrations are putting out some cool medieval alchemical diagrams. Check ‘em out.

Azoth of the Philosophers (according to Basil valentine).

From Histoire de la Magie, (The History of Magic), by Éliphas Lévi (Alphonse-Louis Constant), Paris, 1922.

(Source: archive.org)

7:34am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBp-Sy4SZuLe
(Notes: 300)
  
Filed under: metaphors become literal eventually magic dream architecture 
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