My Lent Book Again

Coming back to report on my progress of reading my Lent book this year, which as I said in my last post is Grant Morrison's The Invisibles.

All acts of magic have the magician as their primary target, and reading a book so notoriously magical can only be described as transformative. Morrison described how he put a spell in it to turn the reader into an Invisible and without publishing details of things that are overly personal, it's hitting some serious stuff and pressing buttons.

In terms of stuff which is sayable in public, this post was prompted by the idea of a Hand of Glory (in folklore the hand of a hanged man used by burglars as a sort of candle to put the household to sleep so that they could burgle it undisturbed) which makes obscene gestures is so very me. I also particularly love a scene where Jack Frost makes a magic circle from fag ends taken from the Tesco bag Tom O'Bedlam gave him.

My only sorrow is that at least in appearance I seem to be passing from King Mob to Tom O'Bedlam!

My Lent Book

Annually, I post here about the practice I have stolen from the Christians of taking a book to read for Lent, and since Lent starts on Wednesday it's that time of year. 

The only thing the books I choose have in common is that they're completely unsuitable and not likely to be picked by the Archbishop of Canterbury as his Lent book. Of course since the archbishop has crashed and burned there isn't one to pick a book this year so they can all pick the witch's Lent book.

This year I have managed to lay my hands on a pirated electronic copy of Grant Morrison's The Invisibles graphic novels so that's my choice. I have read this hugely far-ranging chaos magic apocalypse at various times, but never in order and the omnibus edition is very expensive to buy in any form so it feels like it's dropped into my lap.

I'm absolutely howling at the Wikipedia page for the series, which is terrifically vanilla for a series which is, even by my standards, absolutely WILD. Of course I'm most interested in the magic and I remember being impressed with the way the Invisibles invoke John Lennon as a god. I keep threatening to channel Derek Acorah but have somehow resisted the temptation. Perhaps the cover which illustrates this post are the best explanation.

I'll see how I get on with it because I've also started another read through of the bible (not the New Testament, the Hebrew bible is a longstanding passion and I think I can truthfully say I'm the only dog to come top in Hebrew) and hope I haven't bitten off more than I can choose. I heard Jewish scholar Robert Alter say on a podcast that he originally translated a line from 'The Lord is my shepherd' as 'You pleasure my head with oil,' until his wife, shocked, protested that he couldn't possibly publish that, and I immediately knew I'd found my guide for another read through. So I'm using the notes in Alter's translation, but actually reading the updated New Revised Standard Version in approximate order it was written. This gives a completely different impression from starting from the beginning, because you literally just have a few bits of poetry and then straight into the prophets.

Oh, there's something we have to do before I bury myself in my books. *Some* people are always welcome in the United Kingdom.

Urban Grimoire: A Spell to Reverse the Current Upended State of the World

Obviously, I'm all for a bit of chaos to shake things up but the sheer speed at which the world situation is upending at the moment may itself require some shaking out so that it can be put back in an order where the several world Hitlers aren't getting what they want.

To do this: put yourself in a calm or sacred place and frame of mind and see the world being a calm and peaceful place in your mind. See Putin and Trump out of power, Ukraine and Palestine restored to sovereignty, and so on. Even a Green government in UK because why limit yourself. And say these words:

When Magritte died

The stones fell to the ground

The birds divorced their leaves

The night and day agreed to differ

The breasts became blind

The cunt was struck dumb

The tubas extnguished their flames

The pipe remembered its role

The words looked up what they meant in the dictionary

The clouds turned acstract

The ham closed its eye for ever

When Magritte died.

When Magritte died

The toes hid modestly in their shoes

The mountains no longer envied their eagles

The apple shrunk to the size of an apple

Or did the room grow to the size of a room?

The bowler hat lost its ability to astonish

The old healer

Returned from a dip in the sea

Put on his trousers

his boots

his cloak

his hat

Picked up his stick

his sack

his cage of doves (clanging its door to)

And set off on his banal journey

When Magritte died.

(George Kelly: Homage to Magritte)

So mote it be!

Meisner Technique and Tarot 1

Some time ago I wrote a post in which I expressed my interest in applying Sanford Meisner's acting technique to the tarot divinatory system to see what would happen. This is the first post in hopefully a series, doing just that. I am hoping that the fact I have put a numeral 1 in the title of this post doesn't mean it remains the only one - in fact I've had the book I'm reading on Meisner on the go for some time now and it keeps drawing me back so I'm hopeful that I'll keep on at it even if sporadically. 

The basis of the Meisner system is to stop actors merely performing an attitude, but to make their psychological and physical responses real, so that they are actually really in the role. Modern tarot bears a similarity to this programme, in that readers and querents often ask themselves who they are in a card, what they are doing, how the characters relate to each other, what they would say, and so on. This is exactly the personal involvement and motivation which can be lacking in an actor playing a role: so the only difference would be that an actor is finding the motivation and involvement, and the tarot reader is getting to discover their own motivation and involvement. 

Meisner Technique is perhaps best known for its repetition technique, in which two actors sit opposite each other and repeat statements to each other, however the author of the book I have taken as my guide (Nick Moseley: Meisner in Practice. Nick Hern Books, London, 2012) before his students get to repetition gets them to sit opposite each other in pairs and just look at each other for several minutes. Predictably, he says (p.12) that the effect of doing this has results such as laughter, staring competitions, establishment of status as in one observer and the other observed, and boredom. One of the reasons this approach interests me as it could be applied to tarot is that these sort of dynamics and *exactly* the sort of not-necessarily-conscious behaviours, psychological mechanisms and defences, which should be brought out in a tarot reading.

I think this is even more easily adapted to tarot than the repetition exercises, and perhaps is therefore a good start to the approach. I've picked the 6 of Cups for this post because there's quite a lot going on in it for the viewer to see. I would suggest that simply looking at the card and taking a note of the thoughts and feelings which arise is a useful (and fairly standard) exercise. 

For example, someone who is unacquainted with the strange world of tarot cards may wonder why two deformed children and in the grounds of a castle surrounded by massive chalices with flowers in, and be simply irritated by the whole thing. If that happens the whole exercise of looking at a tarot card may seem pointless and the reader may be tempted to jack it in.

I would suggest that that is exactly the sort of 'block' that the Meisner technique is intended to overcome, because the viewer is being prevented from learning anything about themselves or what is going on in the card, by their instant reaction here. These blocks are intended to be overcome and replaced by other psychological and physical responses, by subsequent exercises, but at this stage the important thing is having the reaction and being aware of it.

There are of course other possible initial reactions and different people will notice different things and respond differently. They may notice the house, they may notice the children's clothes, they may count the chalice, they may notice the windows, they might wonder who the character in the background walking away is, they might notice the relative colours, they might notice the weather. I personally find the X on the balustrade of the steps draws my attention more than anything else and I have to wrench my attention away from it. The viewer might feel a moment of tenderness, or wonder why the children are alone, and so on. Even if you're very familiar with the card, just looking can allow a different reaction in the viewer.

Yes, I know you will rightly say that I haven't even got on to Sanford Meisner's technique in this post but, hey, you have to react to me too.