Goodness, it's been a busy week in the blogosphere. I don't mean that there have been an unprecedented number of posts on blogs, but that the authors of a number of blogs I follow have posted about being busy in one way or another. Personally I can't claim ever to be that busy, really. There is a reason for it - I simply need my space. To that end I never go to anything, row with everyone, and am generaly antisocial. I love that some people see this as selfish - it isn't, it's called survival. One of the reasons for my ruthless unbusyness is that I literally cannot cope with too much. Even too much stuff in my flat stresses me out. And I've found a way of dealing with some of the things which would otherwise occupy the busy witch - I have staff to do them.
Not human staff, of course. I will resist human staff to my last breath, and for the rather eccentric reason that it would be too much like being my mother or her sister. Apart from a few periods of only weeks my mother has never had to clean her own house, she's always had a cleaning lady. And her sister emigrated to Kenya in the last wave of colonial immigration in the 1950s so hasn't really lifted a finger in sixty years. She just sits around swigging gin, moaning about how hard life is, oh, and probably about me. Colonialism is a subject which I keep meaning to write about on this blog, and probably will do one day, when I have a spare week to write the post.
But magical servants are something completely different. My own opinion is that magical people all have particular sorts of magic they are good at, and from the moment I discovered that there are techniques of creating magical entities, or servitors, I was hooked. In common with all of chaos magic, this is not really a new magic but one which has existed for ever, in a new guise. On one level it isn't that different from the Peruvian worry dolls you can get which you give your worries to. In fact, it is exactly the same, just it doesn't always require a doll.
Using a doll for this is useful because it also calls on the ancient tradition of the golem, and thus taps into the human mythological imagination which is so important for magic. Personally I like to bring these things to life by blowing breath into them. Once the doll has fulfilled its task you can do whatever seems appropriate with it.
I have tended to find it easier to create an entity purely in my head. As we know, thoughts are things and if you think of something often enough, it grows in life and reality. It can help, though, to make a note of the entity's description so that it becomes a stable entity rather than a developing character in your imagination. This is the bit I love: I create them especially for purpose and fill them with the sort of ironic retribution, slapstick, and humour that I love. I have created an entity to attach themselves to a specific person and give them hell before now. I have created them to find things out in places I can't go. This is a form of magic which is literally adaptable to any circumstance.
Once created, your entity will just appear on and off in all sorts of situations. Like all magics, this one attracts strange coincidences and what have you, and your entity will bump into you as it goes about its job. A job which will tend to solve itself by these conincidences.
You can make them time-limited, or job-limited. Like this they just fizzle away when their job is over. There is no sadness or cruelty in this - the entity is a part of yourself which you are breaking off so that you don't have to do that task or think about that matter. For this reason this is also one of the most therapeutic magics because you can give them your problems to solve. Of course you can also formally end their existence in a way you think fitting. Sometimes I like to send them out to create havoc for turds. You won't read that in Scott Cunningham, but this is a blog about real witchcraft, not a fucking Llewellyn book.
Now you may say that these entities are not useful for material things. Of course if one could have the washing up done by magic like Mrs Weasley it would be perfect, but instead I've had to settle for an entity which washes up called Indesit.
