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MOOist Magick - Intermediate Course
MOOist Magick For Majicians
Those who've read the MOOist Magick For
Beginners course might find it less than informative. That's all
as it should be, but there are bound to be a few of you out there who
still insist on knowing how MOOist Magick really works.
MOOism, after all, claims to be a religion. Almost all religions,
except for the numerically- strong but spiritually bankrupt ones like
Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and other such
fringe cults, have systems of Magick. These tend to be designed either
to acheive physical effects through invocations of Gods and Goddesses,
or to expand and liberate the mind of the practitioner by revealing the
limited and partial nature of all belief systems.
Nobody has yet come up with a convincing theory as to which.
Anyway, in the interests of pleasing the public and making myself
popular, I propose to explain the "REAL" MOOist magick.
Of course, the real MOOist magick is entirely up to you, since MOO has
no center, no single source of dogma. But for those of you who still
have the pathological need to be told what to do, I'll tell you the
Officially Approved Method of MOO majik.
Sporks
The most crucial element of MOOist magjikc is the Spork - yes,
that's right, one of those little plastic dealies that are half-spoon
and half-fork. Partly this is standard MOOist parody - where most Wiccan
traditions use a ceremonial knife (an athame), we use a combination of
the other two standard forms of cutlery. But, as with most MOOist parody,
there is a deeper meaning here.
You may be familiar with the Chunky Soup commercials, in which some
poor unsuspecting sap, about to enjoy some soup, is suddenly beset by
opposing dogmas - Eat It With A Fork, and Eat It With A Spoon. The use of
the spork originated because I observed that if the guy pulled out a spork
at this stage, we'd find out where these people really stand... The ones
who oppose his using a spork are essentially just negativists, who are
AGAINST the opposing Dogma. The ones who accept the use of the spork
are positive-thinkers, who are actually FOR their own Dogma. Because,
in fact, the Spork is a kind of synergetic unity of both doctrines - it
collapses the preconceived polarity of Fork/Spoon into a higher unity.
MOOist Magkic is based on a similar principle: breaking down apparent
dualities and revealing them to be manifestations of a higher unity
(which is in turn only one side of a higher duality, and so on, and so
on, ad infinitum).
In fact, MOO is unique in having a form of magick based purely on the
Spork. This is a dangerous form of magick, however, since Spork Magick
is based on breaking down the division between Faith and Skepticism -
Belief and Disbelief, and it tends to destroy any magick in the vicinity
by amalgamating an Occultist viewpoint with a Scientistic-Skeptical
viewpoint. Spork Magick is primarily used as a ritual to break one out
of a private rut of belief in Magick and start a new neuroprogram.
Mandala and Mudra
There are two major MOOist symbols, the Halfy: 
and
the Psychick Halfy: 
MOOist majic uses the Psychick Halfy more
often. It is often used as a Mudra, as a hand-gesture.
This is something like the tracing of, say, a Cross, a Pentagram,
or a Unicursal Hexagram in other forms of majikc. In fact, in terms
of magjickal application, the Psychick Halfee is a sporklike amalgam
of these. During many rituals, the psychick halfy is traced with the
Ceremonial Spork while invoking whichever spirits, Gods, or Thingies
the Magickean feels comfortable supplicating to, bossing around, or
otherwise dealing with.
The Psychick Halfie is a crucial part of the MUist Mandala,
The Question, which is not illustrated here because I'm a
really crappy artists, and i lost Kevin Vortex's drawing of it. In any
event, the Question is a mandala which contains, if you look for them,
18 Halfies and 24 Psychick Halfies (selecting any pair of these, one of
432 "viewpoints", leaves 17 Halfies and 23 Psychick Halfies,
satisfying the Erisians).
Although using the Question as a mandala is preferable for most
MOOist Magick, it isn't particularly important, so I'll illustrate the
Mandala with a Psychlick Halfy. This mandala is useful for meditation,
and also forms the basis of the Magick Circle:
The Psychlick Halfee in the center can be replaced with a Question
if you're clever enough to be able to find out what it looks like.
Many circle-variants have only one inward-pointing arrow and five
outward-pointing arrows around the outside to symbolize the five elements
(Discordian five elements, or the usual four elements plus Spirit).
Some have only outward-arrows, some only inward-arrows. As a mandala,
this represents a centering process based around a sporklike amalgamation
of the various "viewpoints", as well as the fundamental
connectedness of every system with the surrounding universe.
The sixness of the pSYCHLIK hALFY and the qUESTION - their sixfold
symmetry - is related to the intrinsic Sixness of Balance, centered
about a centra Unity. The sixness relates to the three-ness (three
Alchemical elements of Salt, Sulphur and Mercury, or the three Gunas of
Rajas, Sattvas and Tamas, the Triple Goddess of Maiden/Mother/Crone, the
Trinity of Father-Mother-Child, or whatever image of trinity you prefer)
in nature, multiplied by duality - where each element of the trinity
is paired against its polar opposite. For that matter, the sixness
could represent the six tensegrity struts required to brace the twelve
tensional vectors of Omnidirectional Halo. Whatever. The Sixness is
ususally an important part of Mandala.
The Circle
The picture above, and its various alternate forms, is also used as
the Magic Circle. Most ritual magick uses some form of circle, either to
contain the energies raised by the ritual, or to keep out evil spirits.
Neither of these concerns is relevant in MOOist magick: containing energy
is an illusion, since the world is an interating mesh of energy anyway,
and to contain the energy permantly is dangerous to the system's health,
and trying to contain the energy temporarily can be dangerous to you
personally, if you raise enough energy to break the circle. The MOOist
Circle contains the outward-arrows which allow energy or though to move
out from the Circle into the wider System, and inward arrows which allow
things to pass in. If you're concerned about Evil Spirits entering
your circle, you probably shouldn't be doing Magick anyway: belief in
Evil is a symptom of mental patterns which will screw up your spells and
rituals, and allows you to BECOME evil if you aren't sufficiently careful.
So don't worry about Evil Spirits: if any bother you, perform a MOOist
Exorcism, which will annoy them
and make them go away. Anyway, the arrows around the circle make it
emphatically NOT closed: no system is closed.
Inside the circle, a Mandala such as a Psychlick Halfy or The
Question is placed, which separates the working area into parts with
various functions: these are defined by the purpose of the ritual or
spell being performed. The Question contains six spaces which can
contain symbols. In one form, these contain runic forms of the letters
W O M B A T, and in this form, the Question can be used to channel the
alien hypercomputer WOMBAT, which can be treated, for magickal purposes,
as a God. Otherwise, the spaces can contain any symbols appropriate
to the task. There are six angular sections to the Circle inside,
or in some forms of the Circle, eight. These represent, respectively,
the unifying sixness of Magickal Energy, or cardinal Compass directions
and the eight neurological Circuits. At the center of the circle, these
directions break down into Omnidirectional Halo, where every direction
is symmetric with every other. The center DOT in the mandala should be
a Spork at the center of the circle, symbolizing this breakdown.
The topography of the circle contains these categories, an Insideness,
inside the central inner-circle, an Atness, at the semi-open boundary
between the two circles, and an Outsideness, or the rest of the universe.
This creates an In-At-Out (IAO) triad which is incorporated into most
rituals, which lies over top of the other divisions created within the
circle to the purpose of the ritual.
Ritual Form
Every ritual in Magjic follows a similar form, and MOOist rituals
are no exception, but they have a few peculiarities. MOOist rituals
generally acknowledge the metaphysical uncertainty as to whether magick
actually exists, or whether the effects are acheived through some kind
of archetype in the human mind, or may even be pure self-delusion.
The categories of Magic and non-Majik are acknowledged to be sporkable,
but for the purpose of the ritual, only one polarity is used. Since MOO
deals with Eris, or possibly the Eris Archetype (a female version of the
usual Trickster Archetype), the categories we use, and even the purposes
of the ritual are subject to spontaneous sporkification, even in the
middle of a ritual. If Eris decides to totally invalidate your ritual,
even right in the middle, you have to accept it. If Majic decides to
stop working, or your desires are revealed as partial constructs of
semantic delusion in the human mind, you have to accept it.
That being said, the patterns of ritual are fairly straightforward.
First, when creating your circle, treat it as seriously as possible:
if any mAJIK performed inside the circle is going to work, you have to
BELIEVE it. Many MOOists suffer from "premature silliness".
Silliness is a process which breaks down beliefs and symbol-systems:
there's no faster way to stop your rituals and spells from working than to
prematurely spork them, which silliness will do to you. This silliness
can be used constructively to, say, eliminate any remaining Majickal
traces of a circle you built in a house you're moving out of, or a bus
you're getting off, or to eliminate psychic traces of a circle when
you intend to stop believing in mAGICK. Also, for the same reason,
it's better to make a permanent circle, used for all your rituals,
which you can enter through the inward-pointing arrows, or In Gates.
Make sure you ONLY enter through the In Gates, and ONLY exit through
the Out Gates: this will make the circle more real in your mind.
Before even entering the Circle, warm yourself up a bit at the
boundary. Stretch out your muscles, get yourself physically relaxed.
Listen to some soothing music to remove any superficial tension in your
mind, concentrate on a mantra for a while. Hum out loud for a bit.
Take about five minutes, if at all possible, to get yourself in a
detached frame of mind, ready to take your magic seriously, ready to
let your subconscious speak through you, or to be posessed by demons, or
whatever your metaphor is for the process of channeling psychic energy.
However long you take, make sure you're not still thinking about what
happened outside the Circle, and physical tensions from outside the Circle
are left there: this helps enforce the concept of the IAO (In-At-Out)
distinction between the inside and outside of the Circle.
When starting a ritual, anyone in the group should enter through an
In Gate of the Circle, and take their spork to the central point of
the Mandala. Here, make the ritual sign of the Psychick Halfee with
the Spork: this central point is where all categories are co-equal, and
part of a Higher Unity (which is part of an Even Higher Polarity, and
so on). This is a still point, around which everything else revolves.
The purpose of each participant standing here is to blur the boundaries
between the participant and whatever Divinity the ritual will invoke,
or between u and the youniverse, or whatever. This Majikcal act tunes
you into the Omnidirectional Halo, at least in your own mind. This will
help you to contact Gods, or subconscious Archetypes, or whatever the
hell it is you contact when you're performing Majgik.
After making this minor sporkification of the concept of You and
Not-You, you're ready to re-categorize yourself. Move out into
the mandala, which divides the circle's space into categories.
Each participant should have a reasonably well-defined category,
or concept, which they represent, which can be an actual Thing (the
object of a spell, say), or a Function ("Negotiator", or
"Poet" or whatever), or whatever is appropriate to the ritual.
If you're performing the ritual alone, or if there are more roles than
there are participants, make a specific space in the mandala for each
category, and pass through the Spork Point at the center when passing
from one to another, to ease the transition from one role to another.
As you do so, once again sign a Psychick Halfy with your Ritual Spork,
for the same reason. The boundaries of each role should be respected,
except if the roles or categories are "supposed" to interact,
such as if you want the Money role to intersect with the You role.
Then you can walk directly from one to the other. It's ideal to have
exactly one role per participant.
Each participant, moving into hir Category, makes contact with
the Category, and becomes that category. This is easiest if
you're trying to contact a God/dess, and in fact it's best if you can
invent a God/dess to personalize any non-personal concepts involved
in your ritual. Money, for example, can be replaced by Mammon, God
of Money, Love by Aphrodite, Goddess of Love, Potato Salad by Narcos,
God Of Potato Salad, and so on. Introduce yourself to the Being (or
Archetype) in question, invite them to come and join you. Note that
this should be fairly informal. Whether you see it as addressing your
subconscious archetypes, or acheiving Union with a supernatural being,
the force you're addressing is going to be YOU for this ritual...
If you can't be informal with yourself, who can you be informal with?
Long-winded supplications to God/desses with all kinds of elaborate
titles usually bore the spirits into going away, and the ritual fails.
Anyway, at some point, let the archetype/spirit take you over: assume
the ROLE of that Being. If you have to go back into the Spork Point
and melt your brain a little more, do it. Assuming the role works best
if you project the Archetype into the space defined for it
(or visualize the Being entering your Circle through the In Gate and
manifesting there), and then entering that space once it seems ready
this gives you a physical trigger to let the change happen.
Once you've become your Archetype, or God/dess, you're really
an amalgam of You and Not-You, or, alternatively, a part of your
subconscious (or the Bicameral Mind) is being allowed to speak, which
normally isn't. Let other people talk to you, either as themselves,
or speaking as whatever Beings they're hosting at the moment. This part
can be scripted ritually, or free-form. Try not to fall down and speak
in tongues if you can help it: even if it's part of the ritual, you
might hurt yourself. During this part, the ritual or spell states the
intention of what's going on, or makes requests of Forces - depending on
how much grovelling you feel comfortable doing. If you like the model of
the magickian having control, don't identify too much with Beings too far
from your Self, because these can decide to say "Piss Off, Leave Me
Alone", and your ritual hasn't accomplished anything. Personally,
I prefer to remain me, with the constant awareness of whatever
Force/Archetype I'm dealing with as a role for me to play. That way,
I can just say what I'm going to do, without having to
worry too much about Spirits which can say otherwise. Since the Force
is being identified and MERGED with your Self, you're never really out
of control.
Once your requests, or statements of intention, are made, go ahead
with whatever energy-building devices are necessary. Of course, the
process of losing your Self enough to identify with the Being should
have charged the Circle with whatever Magjikcal Energy might happen
to be: the process of God/desses flowing in through the In Gates,
or flowing from the participants, if clearly visualized and made
"real" in the minds of the participants should have raised the
level of "psychick energy" enough to accomplish most goals,
but sometimes more is needed. Use this energy to bring about your
goals - either within the Circle, in the minds of the participants,
or by sending the energy/thought/majik back out through the Out Gates
into the rest of the world.
Once all this stuff has been accomplished, return to the Spork Point,
and let any Beings who've taken you over melt back into the Unity.
When you come out, try to remember to bring back your personality.
People who lose their personalities inside the Spork Point tend to
be quite happy, with an awareness of the Oneness of All Things, but
rarely get hired for any jobs except Ditch Digger or Prime Minister.
Return to the world through your Out Gate, unless the circle was purely
temporary, in which case you should Spork the entire circle to remove
any remaining Psychick Energy which has been invested in the Circle,
and may hang around acquiring compound interest until the Circle gets
fed up with people walking through it, and comes to kill you, thirty
years later, long after you've forgotten all about that Majgic stuff
you did when you were young and foolish.
Elaborations
You can elaborate on the basic pattern of ritual as much as
you want: add things like candles or props of various other sorts,
long-winded boring speeches to start the ritual, scaring off any Evil
Spirits which might happen to be passing by, the use of Sex, Drugs,
or Electronic Gizmos, or anything else you feel comfortable with.
MOOist magjik is quite comfortable with Electronic Gizmos, since the
division between Science and Magic is a wholly sporkable one - both
are forms of understanding of and control over the world around us.
You might incorporate a stereo to play appropriate music, or a computer
to run some custom-designed program, or a telephone to call on your God.
Any cords, cables, or whatnot (e.g. power cables, phone cords, ISDN lines,
or whatever) should pass through the Out and In Gates as appropriate.
In cases of doubt (like phone cords), opt for the In Gate - it's better
to have excess stuff flowing out through the In Gate than unwanted Demons
running in through the Out Gate.
Spork Magick
Spork Majic is an important part of MOOist Majik. It is magik
explicitly designed to blur concepts together. Spork Majick makes heavy
use of the Ritual Sporks and the Spork Point, and the identification with
Categories or Beings may be secondary (e.g. in a ritual to generally
loosen up an annoyingly pigeonholed life, or generally shake up the
foundations of the universe), or may be ultra-important (e.g. in a
ritual invoking Eris, or a ritual to enlighten a specific concept-bound
individual).
When performing a ritual to spork concepts, you might have the
participants embodying those concepts meet at the Spork Point, and sign
the Psychick Halfee with their Ritual Sporks, and spend a while allowing
the Unity to melt them together. Design your ritual to recognize what
higher unity is formed by the apparent polarity of those concepts.
Have a space set aside for that higher concept, and then have the
participants enter it together.
Silliness is usually disruptive of ordinary Magjic, since it
involves prematurely sporking concepts that you aren't trying to spork.
In ordinary Majgik, you need to respect the internal structures you're
creating in the Circle. In Spork Magic, on the other hand, it's okay to
be silly, playful, or even downright disruptive of the Magickal Process
- as long as it's kept within boundaries which make sense in terms of
what the ritual's trying to acheive. If you take your silliness too
far, you could end up sporking the whole concept of ritual, or magick,
and end up undermining the whole process. Still, the elements of your
ritual which involve Spork Majik are the most fun parts of the ritual.
That's why I rarely have a ritual which doesn't involve some kind of
sporking. In fact, most rituals in most magickal frameworks (with the
possible exception of Satanists, a few Dianic Wiccans, and of course
the O.T.O.) include some element of Sporkification and playfulness.
These often take place along with the Unification with the Archetype,
since that entire process downright reeks of sporkification.
Wholly spork-oriented rituals, or even highly spork-oriented
magick, doesn't require a formal framework: the Circle, the Roles, and
whatnot, are sometimes an Aneristic distraction from Erisian rituals.
The Discordian Turkey Curse, for example, is a pure spork-majik ritual,
intended solely to disrupt Aneristic (categorical) thinking and Greyface
activity whose seriousness is annoying the Majickian. It involves,
as you may know, waving your hands in a silly way and gobbling like a
turkey in the presence of whoever is generating the Aneristic vibes.
No ritual nonsense here.
Spork MaGiK can also be a vital part of changing your metaprogram.
If you want to alter your own beliefs or habits, sporking them, or
dissolving your personality a bit at the Spork Point and not retrieving
all of it, or retrieving the "opposites" of the traits you want
to change, can be a powerful visualization tool to changing your beliefs.
If you want to give up a belief in Magik, you can just begin a ritual as
you normally would, but after entering the Spork Point, allow yourself
to be merged with the Archetype of Skepticism, sign the Psychick Halfee
with your Ritual Spork, then toss the spork over your shoulder, and just
walk out of the circle (NOT through an Out Gate), totally disrespecting
the concepts you've built up in the Circle, saying something to the
effect of "This is stupid. What the hell am I doing?"
The other primary use for Spork Magic, as I've mentioned before, is to
remove a Circle you don't want handing around any more. When sporking a
circle, to destroy it, walk out through the walls of the circle, trace
a Psychick Halfy with a Ritual Spork, and focus on the fact that the
circle only ever existed as a construct in your mind: Spork the concepts
of Inside-Circle and Outside-Circle into the unified concept of Space.
Then do something that totally nullifies the circle, like dancing around
waving your arms over your head and laughing like an idiot, stomping
through every part of the circle without any regard for the lines that
make it up. Then erase the lines that form it. Notice that this is
different from the Disbelief Ritual above, since you're still respecting
the CONCEPT of a Circle, just dissolving this PARTICULAR Circle into
Space in general.
Conclusion
Whether you believe in mAjIck or not, this system of Ritual has
effects, whether physical or purely mental I'm not sure. I suppose it
just goes to show that almost any belief system can be made valid with a
little effort. Any system of magick based on a Chunky Soup Commercial
and a religion that's named after a bovine grunt, and STILL WORKS,
is proof of that.