Hands-On Chaos Magic: Reality Manipulation through the Ovayki Current - Andrieh Vitimus 2009

Making Time for Magic and Relaxing

The first step toward starting any magical or spiritual practice is to make the time to do it. In America, practice and work both seem like they are something like four-letter curse words, but practice can be fun. Say it with me, "Practice can be FUN." Maybe you laughed at that. Were you even able to say it out loud? Musicians don't become good musicians because they find practicing boring. Instead, every time they get a chance to practice, it is a time to do what they love.

The American culture conditions us to expect instant gratification. Artists do not become good overnight, and likewise, magic is not learned overnight. For each exercise or game, approach it not as a task but as an adventure or a clever game where there isn't a winner or loser and the process is fun. The instant-gratification idea also leads to a results-now mentality, where you place great expectations on yourself to do x. Relax. Throw out any expectations you have, and just relax.

A second major problem is the perception that we do not have the time to cultivate a skill such as magic. Work conditions, social conditions, and the economy do create a culture of worry and stress, including longer work hours, longer commutes, and less free time. With children, a fifty-hour work week, and time for a spouse or friends, it is difficult to schedule time for magic. When I first noviced in the Illuminates of Thanateros North America section, I was working full-time and going to school full-time. Additionally, for many people it often seems like all the time during the day is "owned" by someone else, whether it is at work or supporting their families at home.

The ideas of instant gratification and living to work create unnecessary expectations that keep people from studying magic or practicing visual art, poetry, music, or another type of art form that allows them to express themselves. I believe that magic is one form of expressing ourselves. We are conditioned to believe that the external world-the world of work demands, time, money, etc.-is more important than the internal world. Rarely do we pay attention to what is going on inside our heads. Even within science and engineering, real mastery of the material-not just gaining enough knowledge to "get by"-takes a lot of time and energy that in a way reflects a love of the subject.

Most of the material in this book can be studied for just thirty minutes a day. Merely thirty minutes a day, that's it. Thirty minutes for a new life. I remember that my train ride while living in Chicago provided the perfect opportunity to meditate or do visualizations. The benefits come not from the one day of bingeing on the training, but from the continuous practice.

If you still think you don't have time, hopefully the exercises will change your outlook on that, but I would challenge you to not get on the Internet or watch television or play video games (or engage in other distractions) for one week. As we will see, making time is an art, but it will pay off.

But before we do magic and call the forces of the universe, before we manipulate reality to our own ends, well before all that jazz, we have to learn how to relax. It can be hard to give yourself the permission to listen to that internal world. The first thing you can do is set up a boundary between the working you and the budding-magician you.

Let's start getting to the games we can play to relax.

Throwing Salt Over Your Shoulder Game (Releasing the Stress)

This is a very simple exercise. Take some salt in your right hand and imagine it eating all your stress. Imagine that the salt just loves to eat the stress, and freely give it to the salt. Feel and visualize the stress flowing into the salt. If you can't visualize the stress going into the salt yet, don't worry, just believe it is working. Keep telling yourself, "The salt is eating my stress." Then, when you feel like the salt cannot take any more of your stress, throw it over your left shoulder. When you throw the salt, you are disconnecting yourself from the stress.

Part of why this exercise works is that you are setting up a good habit of distinguishing between stressed and unstressed states. This simple exercise tells you to release the stress. This works well after just leaving the office. In any stressful situation, try this routine to feel better. Allow yourself to believe this works. At first, the hardest part of the exercise might be that you feel silly. It's okay to be silly; I do it all the time. After all, laughter heals.

For an extra-strength variant of this exercise, throw the salt into a crossroads. Use large salt crystals and a large handful. Toss it over your left shoulder into the crossroads, and then walk away and without looking back. Choose a crossroads that you don't usually pass through. Once you do this, walk away knowing that you are permanently leaving all of your stress in the crossroads. It's also possible to throw the salt into a stream, which would then take and dissolve the stress as well. This is an old hoodoo recipe (Yronwode 2002).

More Simple Routines with Value-Added Meaning

As the last example shows, by using a physical routine you can tell yourself not to be stressed. Try the salt exercise for a week, each time imagining the salt eating all your stress before you throw it. You'll see that the new routine helps to shift you out of stress mode. Similarly, you can use a physical routine to separate work from home, thus creating a mental space for yourself.

An easy way to create a barrier is to simply walk around your house with some incense and repeat to yourself, "Work is work, home is home." Sage is traditionally a good cleansing herb (Yronwode 2002). You'll find that as you add this to your routine, it gets easier to forget about your work and relax at home. It takes you out of that workspace or stressful space.

When we read fiction books, we try to suspend our disbelief about the world. For a minute, imagine you are in a fiction book, and believe that the new routine will work. Part of you will chuckle at these two exercises, and you might think, how silly. Don't let that voice throw you off. Psychology tells us that if we repeat something enough, it will become automatic. By repeating the routine, the separation between work and home will become automatic after a while.

Of course, other small routines can be used to do the same type of thing. I have a Christian witch friend who would simply wash her hands for an extended period of time right after work. This had an effect similar to that of the salt trick. She said she was washing away work from the day so that she could enjoy her family. This is a simple technique, yet it was quite effective for her.

Any routine or mini-ritual can act as a way for you to de-stress and create a "different" state from the state that caused the stress. This can be as simple as doing some sit-ups, walking around the block, or engaging in any other daily routine. As you are doing the routine, simply keep telling yourself that the stress, worries, or tension are leaving your body. Keep telling yourself that after the routine you are leaving the worries behind, and eventually they will be left behind.

Relax by Deep Breathing

Once you get through that barrier, and convince yourself at an automatic level that work and home are really separated, then what? So far, each exercise has only taken about five minutes or so.

A simple way to start relaxing is to learn how to breathe a little differently. Normally we breathe from our chest, but if you have taken a martial arts class or a theater class, you how know to breathe from your diaphragm. It is relatively simple. As you breathe, just pull the air into your lungs and watch your stomach expand, while feeling the pressure on your back. That is a sure sign that you are breathing more deeply. Don't worry about how long your breath goes in and out, merely breathe deeply. At first, you might notice your breath is not consistent, but try to just focus on getting your deep breathing to be the same in and out. Many books will refer to different breathing techniques, but don't worry about that for now. Just breathe in and out.

There isn't any way for your breathing to be wrong, but just try to breathe deeply and consistently. At first, you may lose concentration on the breathing when certain thoughts pop into your head. Those thoughts might be about stressful events that just won't go away. When a stressful thought pops up, just remember to focus on the breathing. You can deal with whatever issue comes up later. Try to just breathe for five minutes. Set a timer. Increase the time. While you are breathing, try to minimize your movement and sit in a comfortable chair. This is your time just to breathe.

The Toilet

The toilet might seem like an odd place to think about relaxing, but the act of going to the washroom often is a great release. It is also one of the few places that your boss or co-workers might find it awkward to talk to you or make demands of you.

If it is possible, instead of just going to the bathroom, spend an extra couple of minutes just breathing. This might seem odd, but close your eyes and envision a place that is enjoyable to you.

One of the things I always do while taking a load off is to visualize all my stress leaving my body as my waste does. I will usually take a few minutes to convince myself that indeed, the stress is another waste product, and my body will simply get rid of it with the rest of the waste. I just visualize the stress as black soot that attaches itself in feces or is dissolved in my urine. Both of these exit the body with the stress. This leaves the stress in the toilet. I know it sounds amusing to talk about the magical use of feces, but this really does work. And as with other simple tricks, simply flush the toilet and let the junk wash down the pipes and away from you.

Standing in the Shower

The shower is an excellent place to relax. Instead of getting in and out of the shower in the standard five minutes (or whatever it is), try to stand in the shower for an extended period of time. While you are doing this, envision all your stress and negativity getting washed away by the running water. Try to just breathe deeply as the water is running over you.

The Ofnung (Open Door) Technique; Progressive Relaxation

The Ofnung technique has recently received a new lease on life in occult circles via such books as Space/Time Magic (Ellwood 2005), but the basic premise of this technique is very common to self-hypnosis and is known as progressive relaxation (Simpkins and Simpkins 2000).

The concept is very simple. First, find a comfortable chair to sit in. Then take a deep breath in and out while counting down from one hundred to one. Try to focus on each muscle in the body, relaxing from the toes to the muscles in the foot on up through the body. At each muscle, simply tell yourself to relax while focusing on that muscle group. Try to focus on every muscle, with one muscle group per breath. It might be helpful to imagine that as you breathe in and out, the area of muscle you are trying to relax becomes entirely white (or substitute a different color if it is particularly soothing to you).

In self-hypnosis, the counting is often dropped. In Taoist meditation, you might start from the head and neck and go down. The premise is the same in each case. You are passively trying to relax each muscle, which, in turn, relaxes your entire body.

A more active type of relaxation exercise, which has a similar premise, is also provided in self-hypnosis circles. In this more active variant, start while sitting in a comfortable chair (although this one can be done while standing as well). You can start either with the head or the toes, but try this exercise both ways. If you are starting from the top of the head, tense the top of your forehead as if your eyebrows are going through the top your head and your forehead is pushing deep into your scalp. Do this physical tensing for one full inhalation, and then completely release the muscles in the forehead on exhalation. Move on to the lower half of the face, contort and tense all the muscles on inhalation, and then let them all go. Next, contort and tense the neck and shoulders on inhalation, and then physically let them go on exhalation.

Do this for each muscle group in the body, and make sure that both the inhalation and the exhalation are deep breaths. After doing this for each part of the body, you may need to redo the relaxation technique on certain parts of the body. Computer workers, such as myself, might need to tense and release the neck and shoulders a couple times. I have personally found that a highly effective way to get my body to relax is to combine the tensing and releasing with other techniques. I imagine, through as many senses as I can, that the individual body parts relax while physically releasing the muscle tension. Once the body relaxes, the mind will follow much more easily.

Laughter as the Start of a Cure

Still having problems relaxing? A remarkably simple and effective method of relaxing is just to laugh out loud. For twenty minutes, laugh out loud and see how relaxed you become. At first, this will take a bit of effort. Try to remember a time when you did laugh, and force yourself to fake laugh. Keep laughing, and try to laugh harder and deeper. After a very short while, fake laughter will turn toward uncontrollable laughter. Try it out. How are you doing?