The Working of Magic

The French have a wonderful phrase which exactly describes the way the word 'magic' is used: un mot passepartout, a go-anywhere word. And thus we do talk of the magic of the theatre,  a magic trick, casting a spell on someone,  and so on. My point here is that since magic encompasses everything,  a final definition or theory will probably always be impossible.
The way my magic is working for me at the moment is this. This week I met with my 'manager's' manager. I simply sat there and told her how it is. The glamour I cast was one of complete reasonableness - I don't doubt for an instant that my 'manager' has been telling her for years that I'm completely unreasonable.
And it's worked. I know it's worked because the whole thing has just left me completely. I came out of her office with the conviction that I don't have to do anything more at this point. I've let the power out, and I just have to be nice as pie from now on and let it unfold. I will,  though,  admit to a certain hope that they'll cover it up,  since with what I've unleashed that would certainly result in something spectacular.
This freedom from what weighs you down is the ecstasy of the Goddess. It is a major point of magic,  and the reason I know it's worked is that it's also worked on me and I'm ready to move on. I have also fallen for someone else,  and thus fallen completely out of love with the cock-tease to the extent that I'm considering suggesting we have a go at being friends. Who'd've thought it?  It's that magic,  it gets everywhere and you can't shake it out again.

Carnie Tarot

My Xmas present to myself finally arrived yesterday from the US. It is the Carnie Elite tarot deck made by Outlaw Effects (carnie-tarot.html), who normally make equipment for the other kind of magic,  including this tarot deck.
I have written before here about how tarot decks seem to have a particular setting which suits them best: a theory I first came up with after my Marseille tarot suddenly became alive for me one evening in the pub, when previously I hadn't been able to relate to it at all. Obviously the natural setting for the Carnie tarot is the fairground, a fact which will not endear it to the ardent believers in the ancient Craft of the Wise. It is a marked deck intended for magic,  which I don't mind at all. This means that once you know the patterns you can tell the front of the card by looking at the back. Since I'm only interested in the front that doesn't bother me and I don't personally feel the need to learn the code.
Otherwise this is probably the highest -standard deck I have ever owned: it is a limited edition of 150 and was certainly the most expensive. Outlaw Effects make a few variants on this deck and I have chosen probably the most vanilla,  where the heads are not all transformed into skulls,  and which is based on the Marseille variant, the Flemish tarot. In this deck a couple of majors are drawn quite differently and a major difference is that V is Bacchus. Actually that would be the only criticism I have of this deck, that the titles of the majors are the normal ones and given in English, which just looks wrong. This is of course the perspective of someone who wants to do actual tarot readings with a Belgian flavour, rather than stage magic.
My personal biggest gamble in buying this sight unseen was that I do not normally like ready-aged cards, not even those of the Bicycle brand, which everyone else seems to love. However my fears were unfounded, it is not over-done at all. It looks like a quality repro of an old deck. I particularly like the spotty backs and the black colouring to the cards' edges.
And from a witch point of view,  it feels like a deck with a personality. I haven’t read with it yet, but it feels like the results will be upfront and it will naturally have a sense of humour. I am impressed with this feel from it, and perhaps its character is best summed up by the little rhyme on the two of cups :
The tarot cards in your possession
Must be held with good intention
Use their power not unwisely
And you will find a companion lively.

Return to the Centre

One of the things I did in my misspent youth was to be a Benedictine novice - one of many experiences which forced me to recognise that the empirical evidence in front of your eyes can't be beaten by others' imaginings. What I was seeking in my monastic life was much like what I have gained as a witch. The word monk comes from the Greek monos meaning alone,  and of course this has the same resonance for us as the language of the solitary witch,  who never is really solitary.
In witchcraft we also talk of grounding and centering - reconnecting to the earth and ones own energy. This is again almost exactly paralleled in much monastic language of the one thing necessary, a single eye, and so on.
I had a week of annual leave last week and while I did a little spring cleaning I mainly spent it returning to myself.
I feel this apparently simple act is one of the most radical things about the modern witchcraft movement,  and in fact the monastic movement has always been a source of radical action and in fact lunacy (what holds it back in the Christian tradition is its import from other religions in the fourth century after Christianity became the state religion, as a means of a 'career in the church '. Up till then the height of Christian achievement was being martyred). The source of this power in monasticism is the same as the source of the power of the witch to be a scandal to the world, the concentration on what is necessary. I see echoes of this idea even in Crowley's idea of will.
I returned to work today re-energised, to find a summons to a meeting with Zippy (my 'manager')'s manager to give me feedback on the outcome of the recent enquiry at which I was a witness. I have replied that since I haven’t so much as had a statement to sign yet and the whole thing wasn't desired or initiated by me, and Zippy has now given me what I wanted in the first place and the active sabotage of the team's work, seems to have stopped,  I'm happy and anyway don't feel it's really my business.
These people don't listen. And if they did they wouldn't have the nous to recognise what's going on in front of their eyes. She has no concept of the resources being a witch gives you, nor of what my next move will be. Is it any surprise, gentle reader, that I had a nap this afternoon and woke with a whole plan for different contingencies all worked out?

Building Paradise: Another Example of the Failure of Memory

This is not a post about Birmingham central library but a post about divination and recognising the blindingly obvious in front of you. I have read somewhere that the origin of the name of Paradise Circus was in a field there originally,  as was the case for Easy Row. The sceptical nose smells a rat here: how exactly could a row be called Easy? Well I can think of several ways and I'm sceptical about anywhere with heaven or paradise in its name. Anyway,  Paradise Circus is being redeveloped...again,  and this has caused the hound to reflect on the recurring subject of memory and failing to learn from it.
The central library is currently in process of demolition and the former Fletcher's Walk has been opened up to provide access to Broad Street - ironically much closer to Madin's vision of wide open brutalist spaces than the area has presented for several decades.
Don't get me wrong - while I like the central library enormously it has to go since its placement is impossible and it is brutal to use as well as look at.
But I'm going to make a couple of predictions. The obvious one is that in years to come the loss of the central library will be decried as a great shame: as an architect's wet dream it is bound to be. But given the enthusiasm with which the new Paradise is being trumpeted, I'll make another - it's one step too far for the city and will be redeveloped (or repurposed) in around another twenty years. The lesson that has not been learned is that planning for now only doesn't work: today's architects could not have read the newspaper article here from 1971, it's just long enough for it to be forgotten. Otherwise they might have looked at it and realised they were repeating the same mistakes again. The reason I say Paradise won't last is that the city cannot plainly cope with more mixed use development of the same sort. Primark have just stepped in to buy the nearly empty Pavilions and a new raft of very upmarket shops has just opened at the station.
Somebody on grindr recently asked me how a witch foretells the future and I told him it was by keeping an eye on the past and the present,  nothing more fancy than that.
Picture credit: http://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=30302">http://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=30302

Speaking plainly

I'm often aware that my posts here can be rather verbose. Yet I realise that I have written frequently about the importance of plainness and its significance for me of clarity. Clear thinking, clear speech, to the point, this of course is the way to make people hate you.
And you know what, it feels good. One of the interesting things to have come out of my recent spot of bother at work was to have the human resources manager comment that she expected I was pleased to be getting things sorted out ; I don't think she expected it to make me resolve to be even more forthright. I waltzed into work yesterday, flung open the office door and wished Zippy,  my 'manager', happy new year at the top of my voice.
Because I no longer care. I will no longer play happy families (at least I will change the rules to suit me). I have decided what is important and will go straight to it. This is the real virtue of plainness: it is an affront to the world of pretence and facades. It is the embodiment of the child commenting that the emperor is naked. And when you are free from the people who are busy pretending he's clothed, it frees you to see things with a new clarity.
I don't want to be liked by these people. If they actively hate me, then I can be fairly sure I'm doing the right thing. Clarity of thinking which causes scandal,  another aspect of the witch figure.
Not like Zippy. She's so muddled that she looked daggers at me when I wished her a happy new year. Of course we both know it was completely insincere, but I'm secure in the knowledge that I can both hate the bitch and play her game of playing nicely because it is necessary to leave her disempowered. She is so unclear in her thinking that she later felt she had to send me an email wishing me a happy new year!

How Google Sees Me

I have been very amused by the results of searching for a photo of myself on Google. The picture which I searched for online was bare-chested, and perhaps I should say I am white with a shaved head and tattoos, to give you some idea of the image I looked for.

I was very chuffed that this chap came up among the searches multiple times as he is probably the closest to looking like me. I'm also very impressed that a man whose personal interest should so dominate his life should be visually like me. What matter if his interest happens to be Miley Cyrus, no harm in a man riding his own hobby horse.

This man is more like my body shape and his tattoos are in a similar placement to mine, so I can see why this would be selected of online images as looking like me. It was after this it started to go horribly wrong.

I can see what happened here,  Google picked up on some key elements of my appearance and focused the search on them. Nonetheless neither of these men actually looks particularly like the picture I searched online for.

Where did the chest hair come from? I've always wanted to be really hairy, but this isn't what I look like.

No. With the best will in the world,  these two could never have been mistaken for me at any point in my life.

Trying to tell me something, Google?

Oh, please. Given that these images are supposed to be visually similar to me, even without the question of ethnicity, Google seems to have a slight problem recognising skin tone.

...as well as gender and clothing. I'm not orange! Any suggestions for a sensible search engine will be gratefully received!

Spirit of Place: Underpass Birmingham

I am fascinated by the nature of human memory and our propensity to forget and thus keep making the same mistakes. It is much more difficult to remember and learn from the past because there is a very real sense in which it is counter cultural because people like to think either that they've just invented something or that they have reached the pinnacle of achievement.
This segues nicely into the Birmingham spirit of continual rebuilding and improvements. And the particular aspect I'm thinking of here fits with the chthonic aspects of my life and magic. I have posted here before about my love for tunnels and using them in magic or to communicate with that which is below what we see. The Cold War bunkers and various tunnels under the city centre are inaccessible and posted at length on the Internet anyway so here I want to focus on the deeply unfashionable post-war underpasses beloved of planners of the time.
And this is where people conveniently forget the actual facts. The myth has it that Birmingham was redesigned to prioritise the car over the people, who were consigned to dangerous, urine -smelling tunnels in an act of criminal negligence which is only now being undone.
The historical facts are slightly different in that the post-war planning of the city was underpinned by a philosophy of the complete separation of traffic and pedestrians so that both streams could go about their business undisturbed by the other. Those who know about health and safety will also recognise an important control principle there: a pedestrian who never comes into contact with traffic will not get run over. Nor was it always the case that the pedestrians were treated badly: there were and are places where traffic goes underground while the pedestrians get the priority. At least when they were new, efforts were made to make the underpasses pleasant for pedestrians: there was art, they were decorated with the tiles of the time, gardens were planted, and some of the underpasses were mini shopping centres in themselves.
They soon became deeply unpopular as maintenance was neglected and at least in the line of the old inner ring road they have mostly been filled in. Just as it is fortunate that Manzoni was so keen on demolition because the irreplaceable architecture demolished under his aegis would almost certainly have been listed and more effectively prevent the redevelopment of the city centre than his beloved ring road scheme could do. Look at pictures of Birmingham in the 1930s, imagine trying to drive to catch a train and the wisdom of Manzoni 's vision becomes apparent. Just as it does if you visualise driving round the city centre and not having to stop for pedestrians and the actual structure of the road physically discouraging jay-walking.
Another fortunate accident of history is that the sort of huge amounts of cash available up to the 1970s are no longer around and the plan has not been completely eradicated. If you walk slightly outside the line of the old inner ring road there remains a line of relatively well -maintained subways if you want the full Brummie experience. Even further out there are more which I would guess are considered to be beyond the interest of tourists and remain their old graffitied selves. A walk along Bristol Street is enough for this.
I never found them intimidating myself. A major skill in city living (and in witchcraft) is knowing how not to be a target and in twenty five years of walking these streets I have only got into trouble once. And not only were they not intimidating,  but in my misspent youth, when fewer people lived in the city centre and Cctv was less common,  if you were young and gay in Birmingham you could have sex virtually anywhere. Although I suspect this wasn't a use that Manzoni anticipated for his hidden corners and what have you.
Which brings me to a synthesis: of course the planning of the mid twentieth century was a disaster,  and worsened by subsequent neglect. It feels almost naive in retrospect,  to expect people not to misbehave and turn to crime, when given opportunities. It is the same historical short sightedness as that with which I opened this post.
And the point for the magician?  Tunnels can be seen as representing the vagina of the goddess and thus being places of birth. The underground is one of the ancient places of liminality between worlds, and so we are in truly ancient magical territory here,  where pacts are made and change wrought. No matter that it be in a 1960s tiled underpass, the spirit of place is not snooty and in magic the best results usually come from the least promising ingredients.
Illustrations: mainly my own pictures,  with some others I've saved and lost their provenance. As usual let me know if I've violated copyright and I'll delete /credit.