Hackers Underworld 2: Forbidden Knowledge/Hackers Underworld 2: Forbidden Knowledge.iso/OCCULT/SOM.TXT

Text File | 1991-09-16 | 19KB | 349 lines

The following texts are out of Pete Carroll's forthcoming book
"Liber Kaos, The Psychonomicon" (Weiser).


SLEIGHT OF MIND

The conscious mind is a maelstrom of fleeting thoughts, images,
sensations, feelings, conflicting desires and doubts; barely able to
confine its attention to a single clear objective for a microsecond
before secondary thoughts begin to adulterate it and provoke yet
further trains of mental discourse. If you do not believe this then
attempt to confine your conscious attention to the dot at the end of
this sentence without involving yourself in any other form of
thinking, including thinking about the dot.

Sleight of Mind means using the more stable thoughts, feelings,
sensations and images stored in the subconscious or unconscious
parts of the mind to launch or receive aetheric patterns. Tricks
have to be used here, because if those things in the subconscious
are brought into the focus of the conscious they will not be
magically effective. On the other hand, they have to be released or
activated somehow at a level just below conscious awareness for in
their normal memory storage mode, which is an abstract code, they
are not magically effective either.

Thus the magician has to occupy his conscious mind with something
which somehow activates his intent in his subconscious without
consciously reminding him of what it is. This is basic Sleight of
Mind. Though this seem paradoxical or impossible, there are many
tricks in the lore of magic which make it easier in practice. Some
consideration will be given to Sleight of Mind in each five
classical magical operations.



SLEIGHT OF MIND IN ENCHANTMENT

Most traditional magical spells demand that the operator confine his
attention to some abstract or analogical representation of what he
wants to achieve. For example, to cause dissention amongst one's
foe, one might name a number of stones with their names, or better
still some abstract form of their names, and then whilst
hysterically angry, batter the stones together. The hysterical anger
functions partly to block conscious thought and add force to the
subconscious desire. What many conventional texts fail to mention is
that during the magical act one must avoid consciously thinking or
fantasising about desired result. Thus the anger should be
stimulated by some means other than thinking of one's foes, and if
one wishes to shout something out during the battering of the stones
it should be a consciously unintelligible statement. Even the desire
read backwards may suffice. It is possible to use an inhibitory
rather than an ecstatic means of preventing thought and channelling
power to the subconscious. In this case the magician attempts to
limit his conscious attention entirely to the performance of the
enchantment by yoga type exercises and sensory deprivation to still
the mind. This is usually a more difficult approach to enchantment
for most magicians.

If, in the above example, the battered stones are subsequently
placed in a pouch as a talisman to reinforce the original spell,
then the magician must also avoid consciously thinking about
whatever it represents whenever he subsequently attempts to "charge"
it again.

All the spells which work are variants of this basic technique and
work by the same basic mechanism. Baroque systems of symbol and
correspondance are generally unnecessary. Effective spells can be
created simply by modifying written, drawn, modelled or spoken
representations of desire until they become consciously
unintelligible. The subconscious will, of course, always know what
the resulting sigil, diagram, artifact or mantra is actually for.
Excellent results are often obtained by magicians who make up a
collection of spells over a period and then perform them at a later
date having consciously forgotten what they were for.


SLEIGHT OF MIND IN DIVINATION

There are three elements to be considered in divination; the target,
the means of obtaining information about it and the interpretation
of the information. It is essential that the target does not enter
the field of conscious awareness during the obtaining of information
about it, or the result will merely consist of ordinary thoughts,
fantasies and guesses. Similarly the method of obtaining the
information should preclude the interference of conscious thought.
There are two basic methods for achieving this, sortiledge and
hallucination.

Sortilege procedures involve shuffling cards, rolling dice, casting
bones or sticks or coins and similar methods. The principle here is
that minute movements initiated by the subconscious will provide a
mechanism by which the subconscious can communicate its psychic
knowledge. Hallucinatory methods work in a similar fashion, the
operator will gaze for example into a black mirror or a chalice of
water and wait for his subconscious to reveal its psychic knowledge
by optical hallucination. Other senses can also be used. For example
a mixture of the four basic tastes can be imbibed to see which of
the tastes predominates for any question, a previous attribution of,
for example, sweet to yes, salt to probably, sour to probably not,
and bitter to no, having been previously established. Whichever
method is used, it is important that the subconscious is thoroughly
informed of the target and that no conscious deliberation take place
during the divination. One effective hallucinatory technique is to
write the name of the target or better still draw an abstract sigil
representing it, on the back of a black mirror. Any visions
experienced whilst gazing blankly into it should be recorded by a
machine or scribe. The interpretation can then safely be made in
full conscious awareness afterwards, much as a spell is deliberately
planned beforehand.

Careful observation will confirm that virtually all spontaneous
parapsychological events occur through some form of sleight of mind.
It is invariably something hovering just below the threshold of
awareness that initiated an unusual event or gave one a curious half
sensed feeling that something was about to happen just before it
did. The magician seeks to exploid this effect deliberately, but in
doing so he must avoid doing it deliberately as it were. Conscious
lust of result destroys magical effect, so trickery must be employed
to annul it and to activate the subconscious.

There are dangers inherent in the development of the sleight of mind
technique for enchantment and divination. It is easy to become
obsessed with what might or might not lurk just below the threshold
of consciousness waiting to be triggered by a stray analogical
thought. Thus a feeling of omnipotence can begin to develop,
particularly if the magician starts to misinterpret divination as
enchantment and comes to feel that everything going on around him is
the result of his subconscious desires. The final madness begins
when one starts interpreting even the disasters which befall one as
expressions of what one must really have wanted. Paranoia can also
become a vicious downward spiral. Those who harbour subconscious
fears of things going wrong, or going against them, will find it
remarkably easy to actually make things go badly for themselves with
even a small degree of expertise at sleight of mind. The only
defence against pitfalls is to adhere to the formal techniques of
enchantment and divination, to ignore random results where possible,
or to accept them with laughter, and as a general principle to think
positive at all times, for such thoughts will permeate down to the
subconscious,


SLEIGHT OF MIND IN EVOCATION

There are three elements involved in evocation, the implantation of
the entity in the subconscious, the empowerment of the entity and
the direction of the entity to various tasks. The implantation can
be effected either by an extended effort of fantasy and imagination
or by a more formal ritual in which the entity is visualised
exercising the general types of power which the magician wishes it
to have. The empowerment, which can form the climax to a ritual,
co