Urban Grimoire: Sabotage

Sabotage is among my favourite magical acts. 'Magical act?', you may say, but its nature as magic is shown by two things. The opposite of sabotage is compliance to external authority rather than a personally-defined authority, and also the frisson of horror that the word sabotage brings out in the compliant. What could be more magical than that?

There are three specific (and completely legal) examples of sabotage I want to consider. All are designed to stop the powers that be getting what they want. Perhaps I should say that these powers are what the New Testament would call the powers of this world: the powers militating against the world that we want, in witchy terms, or the world that ignores the Kingdom, in Christian terms. (Don't worry, if I haven't offended you yet, I'll get to you shortly).

1. The first, which is my favourite, is malicious compliance. The powers of this world want us to comply, but because they're self-centred can never judge the full consequences of this. There are few pleasures to compare with fully complying to the letter of a policy or law where this compliance has the opposite effect intended.

2. The second is exercising choice. This will sound like a funny one but the Achilles heel of capitalism is that it has to have the appearance of consumer choice built in while actually only a few individuals profit. In the past I've compared this to a game of Monopoly where to 'win' you build up streets and properties in particular colours. You sabotage this by buying streets in different colours which prevents everyone from getting a monopoly so that nobody can win. Out here in the real world people tend to moan that a few people are as rich as Croesus (or even defend them for their 'industry' lol) but still prop up this monopoly by shopping at their site. So the way to sabotage this is to put your purchasing power into alternatives, shopping elsewhere, using different software, and so on. Another example would be to shop in different shops if you can rather than stick to one. There is a reason retailers use tricks to get you coming back and call this 'loyalty': loyalty is Capitalist for subservience.

3. The final one is a way to sabotage our First Past the Post voting system which was designed to create a two-party system where political power only swings between two parties and nobody else can get the necessary majority to form the government, hence why successive governments have refused to reform the system. The way to sabotage this is never to vote for the first or second most popular parties in your constituency (you can judge what these are by looking at successive election results, and of course the exception to this is the Green Party which you should absolutely vote for because it fucking terrifies the main parties). Instead you would stubbornly vote for a minority party which is acceptable to you and continue to do so. At this point people will try to shame you into compliance by telling you that nobody votes for minority parties and you're wasting your vote. However there is a strange thing about human voting behaviour that people tend to vote for what their neighbours vote for, so by sabotaging the system you stand both to change your neighbours' behaviour without them realising you're doing it and horrify the major parties.

And what could be more magical than that?

The Hound's Endorsed Candidates

Never slow to tell the rest of the world what is good for them, here is a short list of candidates who are lucky enough to receive my endorsement and blessing in the forthcoming General Election. Obviously there's one party which particularly appeals to me (pictured) but I have more varied endorsements. And we all know it's lucky to have the witch's blessing.

Birmingham (all constituencies): the Green Party candidate.

Brighton Pavilion: Berry (Green).

Bristol Central: Denyer (Green).

Chingford and Woodford Green: Shaheen (Independent).

Clacton: Watling (Conservative as a tactical vote against Reform, since a Conservative government is unlikely and all I can say is I've never been there but already want to leave the place 😱).

Dorset East: Take (Conservative - this is of course because Sir Michael is a personal friend).

Godalming and Ash: Follows (Lib Dem).

Hackney North and Stoke Newington: Abbott (Labour).

Holborn and St Pancras: Weinstein (Independent).

Ilford North: Mohamad (Independent).

Isle of Wight East: Lowthion (Green).

Islington North: Corbyn (Independent).

Leeds South West and Morley: Seward (Labour).

North East Somerset and Hanham: Norris (Labour).

North Herefordshire: Chowns (Green).

Portsmouth North: Martin (Labour).

Richmond and North Allerton: Binface (Count Binface Party).

Rotherham: Atkinson (Yorkshire).

South West Norfolk: Jermy (Labour).

Stoke-on-Trent North: Williams (Labour).

Waveney Valley: Ramsay (Green). In fact the previous Tory MP has jumped ship here and is endorsing the Green candidate.

Westminster: Larry (Cat).

Without bogging down the post with reasons for each recommendation (the Labour and Lib Dem ones are all tactical votes against particularly odious Tories), if you know the situation you will mainly see a left inclination and championing some underdogs (lol). I used to advocate tactical voting to get rid of the Tories across the board but with the wipeout they're clearly going to get, instead I now recommend tactical voting with the aim of sabotaging our two dominant parties which will force parliamentary reform. To achieve this the way is not to vote Labour or Conservative but to vote for minority parties or left-leaning independents, with the aim of attaining a hung parliament. Or else, if they're strong in your constituency, voting Lib Dems to try to get them into opposition. First Past the Post was designed to favour only two parties and this would increase the likelihood of them being the next government and the Tories being who the fuck cares where.

My MP

I posted some time ago that I wasn't cursing my then MP, incumbent Labour MP since 2010 and now Labour Prospective Parliamentary Candidate. I said that she has cursed herself by annoying a considerable part of the constituency. Then a complete unknown Independent candidate who took 20% of the votes for West Midlands mayor out of nowhere, stood as an independent in this constituency. Despite this being one of the safest Labour constituencies in the country Labour are worried and have declared this a battleground seat. Of course I wouldn't be a witch if I didn't meddle.

But first look at the Royal Proclamation at the top, bringing that terrible parliament to an end. What a thing of beauty! In fact I love this bit of an election where there are no MPs and parliament is dissolved completely!

As it happens I'm not going to vote for the independent, because I have some reservations about him. Instead I'm going to vote Green, not only because I want a Green government but with the intention of dividing Labour's HUGE majority as much as possible. There is no risk of returning a Conservative here: we haven't had a Tory MP since World War 2 and the highest percentage they've got recently is 12%. My plan is a long term one because I think the same MP will be returned again with a smaller majority: the aim is to encourage people locally to feel able to vote for something other than Labour.

As this candle burns down Shabhana Mahmood's majority falls and falls and falls.

Frankly we're in the unique position for the UK that the Tory party is on life support and the right wing is divided by two parties, ie exactly the same problem that means we don't get left wing governments. I think it is the time therefore to vote for what we really want. The best outcome would be a hung parliament IMO although we won't get that, and I'd love the Opposition to be Lib Dem. Mainly because it would increase the likelihood of them being the next government in our First Past the Post system but who wouldn't vote for them after this stunt?

Finally!

Check where your ID is and put gin on the shopping list! The entire country will have a hangover for a week after taking a drink for every Tory unseated!

Yes, I know I predicted it would be in the autumn but this is the nicest way to be wrong.

Local hero and national treasure Fokawolf has started off his campaign for the Tory party with a bang:

I'm afraid you'll have to go to YouTube to hear the sound track to this post:

Pictured: St Paul's in the Jewellery Quarter.

Health Again

The crumbling corpse which I carry around with me took another turn for the worse about six months ago, and so in an attempt to stop myself progressing from pre-diabetes to actual diabetes I'm making some more changes to my life.

I'd already made some, and think I have hit on the best way to manage my inflammatory arthritis (as well as taking medication obvs). Despite the professionals telling me at different times to rest and to exercise, none of them seem to have hit on the reality that the key to managing it is to increase your exercise *and also* to rest more. So I'm walking like nobody's business but also going to bed when I feel like it.

Perhaps the thing most horrifying about it is the realisation that I honestly don't think you have enough time to manage this illness and work a full time job. I was much worse when I was working and unfortunately having an active job is not the answer because you have no guarantee when it will put you in bed for a day.

It will help with the arthritis but I'm also working on losing some weight to try to avoid diabetes. I've been making diet changes for some months but after trying a couple of apps that really weren't going to work for me, have hit on the NHS weight loss app which is very simple and I'm getting on better with.

Strangely something I'm finding helpful is the experience of having stopped smoking in the past. It feels very familiar to be moving to a place of actually making changes. There's also a strange irony in that having worked with people with anorexia for years I knew all about how to lose weight (both dangerously and sensibly) but actually doing it was something else.

And as we know witchcraft is all about making change happen!

Being Selective

I think a major feature of the fairly neat compartments into which our world has been dividing itself for some years, is that one side is real and the other isn't. That's why the right wing attracts the flat earthers and conspiracy theorists: the whole thing is a fib.

'But they're mistaken or have been lied to' goes the narrative at this point.

I'm afraid at this point I honestly don't care. At this point if you claim to think the earth is flat, Trump won, Brexit was a sensible decision, abortion is murder, covid doesn't exist, etc, you are choosing to believe this nonsense. The reality is as an adult it behoves you to orientate yourself to reality, and I don't owe these people a discussion, evidence, or even an audience. They're fools and will not be persuaded because they don't want to be (that is, if they're even actual people, on social media).

Is this judgemental? Of course. Am I being horrible? You bet. Do I care? Do I fuck.

When you don't care about these fools, it changes your perspective. It gives you the opportunity to concentrate and be very selective who you talk with. This means that I don't waste the remaining years of my life around people that I can't stand, and I think we can all agree that this is a desirable thing.

In my misspent youth hanging around the monastic world I got to know the idea of being focused on thing, being alone, and so on. In a Christian monastic world this tends to mean being focused on God and the other people in the community form the lessons that God teaches you by the love of neighbour. I suppose in true witchy fashion I've turned this on its head to focus on what I want to focus on, and not be distracted by fools. The Hound's rule for monasteries would tend to end up with a very different end product than St Benedict's!

I honestly can't really see a downside to this approach. I can see an objection that you would never get your opinions challenged if you only hang out with people of your own opinion. However if you're just making a point of avoiding unreality and argument with the unpersuadable I think you actually get challenged more. I think this is the result of seeking out intelligent people.

This also highlights that in a witchy/Pagan milieu, rather than the single eye being focused on God, it will necessarily be focused on the world and open to all the possibilities therein. Just not fools.

Subtle, I know.

Crying Wolf Too Often

Surely we are all familiar with the story of the boy who kept crying 'Wolf!' when there wasn't one with the result that eventually nobody believed him and then one day there was an actual wolf. Of course everyone ignored his cries that there was a wolf with predictable results.

I realize that I have been thinking quite a lot over the past couple of years of how, like falsely saying there's a wolf, many of the principles of our society are not strategies intended for long term use and in fact cry wolf. I've referred to the way capitalism negates itself when carried to its natural conclusion, for example. Specifically the mythology of capitalism is that it encourages competition and anyone can get in on the act if they want. And so we have endless copies of the same businesses making the same products. But it also includes its downfall, because if there is actual competition there is nothing to stop the consumer choosing where to shop and putting some of the businesses out of business.

And so this is why the competition aspect easily flips into a monopoly (Amazon, anyone?) before progressing into fascism and force. The choice supposedly built into capitalism is an illusion, or rather a lie.

Perhaps the best example of this is the UK's privatised water companies, where in fact nobody gets any choice and can't not use them.

The theme of entities lying is built into religious and spiritual traditions across the board. For example Christians call their Satan the father of lies. And this idea of an untrue threat or promise can be found in hero myths.

It's most present to us moderns in social media, which is perhaps the best example of why lying and building systems on illusions doesn't work. You would have to be incredibly naive in 2024 not to be at least aware that accounts on social media may not be telling the truth and may not even be real people. It's so prevalent that I don't think there can be anyone unaware that media and social media manipulates things now. The almost laughably bad AI has also added to this.

This is exactly the same phenomenon as the boy crying wolf: you just can't keep on lying because people notice.

In this General Election year there's a lot of scare mongering going on about how the Tories are going to use disinformation in their campaign. I honestly can't understand why: beyond the +/- 25% who are so stupid, bigoted or blinded that they would vote for them anyway, in Britain the words Tory and liar are now synonymous. And this purely because of their prolific lies. 

The reality is that lying does not gain any cause or business a huge following alone (of course motivation is always more complex than I'm painting it here because I'm focusing on fibbing, monopolies and the way our institutions are not built on sustainable foundations).

The moral of the story is that sometimes if a situation feels like it can't be changed the thing to do is just let it progress as it is. Our overlords are not geniuses and it's very unlikely they'll have thought out the consequences of their actions.

And then have a good laugh at them. This is very important because it's an important banishing ritual in chaos magic.