DIY Magic: A Strange and Whimsical Guide to Creativity - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Anthony Alvarado has been a forest fire fighter, a high school science teacher, a library delivery truck driver, a telephone psychic, and a mental health counselor. He lives with a cat, a dog, and a girl in Portland, Oregon. When he is not doing magical experiments he spends his time writing and trying not to drink too much coffee.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

INTRODUCTION

Superstition is rooted in a much deeper and more sensitive layer of the psyche than skepticism.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

TECHNIQUE

Read this book and try the experiments presented here. Change them as you see fit. You are the one in charge; these are just beginning points. Reading this book with an open mind will change the way you think about yourself, about creativity, and about the world. Think of this like you would a travel guidebook to, say, Guatemala or the Czech Republic. If you buy the book, you better plan on actually going there, right? This is not a book merely to be read; it is a book to be lived!

TOOLS REQUIRED

1 copy of the book in your hands

An open mind

Bonus: It’s nice to have a notebook to take notes. You will get a lot of cool ideas doing these experiments.

TIME REQUIRED

288 pages

RESULT

A radically original arsenal of ways to think, perceive, and experience the world.

When I talk about magic, I’m not fucking around. It isn’t a joke or a trick. I’m talking about real techniques that most people are capable of trying out if they let themselves.

Most people, however, don’t.

Magic is taboo. It’s considered the realm of flakes, hippies, and drug-addled softies—a waste of time.

But the good stuff always is.

Dig a little deeper with me, dear reader, and I will point you in the direction of uncharted waters. Here there be dragons.

I have tried to summarize what this is all about dozens of times and each time used a different metaphor, because all fall short. Imagine trying to describe the act of swimming to someone who has never seen a body of water larger than that held in a cup. Or trying to describe music to the uninitiated, not just hearing music but playing music . . . where to begin? How to come up with something not feeble and academic like: It is a series of rhythmic tones that are pleasing to the ear? Ha!

No, the best thing to be done would be to lay out simple and straightforward instructions on how to whittle a flute, how to build a drum, or how to whistle and clap your hands, and from these rudimentary recipes enterprising readers would be able to find their own way. Mere description would be meaningless.

In the same way, I have laid out some guideposts in this book, some simple instruments that you are welcome to construct for your own amusement. If any of these ideas strike you as poppycock, skip them. Use what you can use and throw away the rest.

What is magic? It is the fine and subtle art of driving yourself insane! No, really, it is just that. It is a con you play on your own brain. It is the trick of letting yourself go crazy—I do believe that when it’s done right, the magus treads the same sacred and profane ground where walks the madman. It is, however, possible for the modern magician to enter that realm and return with knowledge and, yes, power.

That said, I must warn you that these arts should be practiced only by those who are sound of mind. Like a powerful drug, the visions and experiences that are open to the initiate are not vouchsafed for all. As with trying anything new, use common sense, be safe, and don’t take on more than you can handle. If you can’t afford to lose your mind a bit, then please put this book back on the shelf and walk away. . . .

Still here? Good. Having shared that caveat, I will also say that this book does not dabble in black magic. That is the harnessing or deal brokering with nonhuman entities of one shade or another. If that’s what you’re looking for, you’re barking up the wrong tree and should consult a less straightforward grimoire than this one.

That is not to say that the practitioner of the arts described here won’t meet strange and compelling creatures and characters along the way. However, I believe that at some level these entities are subconscious structures of our own making. Does this make them any less powerful or capricious? In my experience, no.

In short, rather than advertise this as a book of magic, it could just as well have been labeled a book of psychology hacking or a creativity cookbook. Think of it as jail breaking the smartphone of your mind, teaching it to do things that its basic programming was never set up for. Advanced self-psychology.

Had enough analogies and ready to move on to the main course? Wait, here is one last story; it is the same story that all stories are made of, the only story. All are endless variations of this: The hero leaves the world of common day and enters a region of supernatural wonder, fabulous forces are encountered, and a decisive victory is won. The hero returns from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man. This book beckons you to take the hero’s journey.

The truth is we have all practiced a form of magic at one time, when we were children seeing images in the passing clouds. Remember lying on your back watching faces appear in the sky? A puff of cumulus becomes the eye of some creature that melts into an alligator’s nose and then becomes fantastic dogs, castles, angels, cartoons of people and animals that waltz from one form to another. Images can also be seen in the hot coals of a fire, in the grain of wood beams, and on the surface of rippling water. The phenomenon is surely the reason why primitive man saw himself surrounded on all sides by the elemental spirits of all things—the sprites, nymphs, dryads, and sylphs of forest, river, and fire. And wasn’t he richer for it? Now of course we know better! But I propose these same faculties now lie dormant within us.

The deceptively simple exercises in this tome are designed to help us beginners born into the modern age of reason set aside the rational web of what we already know and allow us to see. The techniques for approaching this state of seeing are infinite. Some work better than others and some of the best have become codified over the centuries, like scrying with tea leaves, or tarot card readings, or prognostication by the stars. These are the familiar paths to magic. But do not be misled; they are not the only paths in the forest. And with vigor and a machete, you can hew your own trail.

The old paths all bring us to the same place: a state of transcendent awareness. The historian and philosopher Mircea Eliade believed it was the foundation of all rites of magic, from the Siberian shaman preparing to descend into the underworld in search of a lost soul to the Aborigine who walks into dreamtime to see what must be done to ensure a prosperous hunting season. Today, it is the work of the artist, the poet, all those who create, as well as the underpinnings of every hero, from Orpheus to Harry Potter.

But who is to say that one method of enchantment or entrancement is better than any other? Singing, chanting, drumming, and dancing are effective, but there is no magical law established that says the dancing must be done to tribal drums as opposed to, say, a DJ spinning 45s, or that magic will work only if the practitioner is wearing animal skins and bird feathers but not sneakers and a cotton hoody. What the Australian Aborigine elder and the Tungusic shaman have in their psychic endeavors is the support of the community in its inherent belief structures. This is the biggest obstacle the modern practitioner faces; most of the world doesn’t believe magic is something to be taken seriously, and therefore the modern practice of magic demands an eccentric and confident personality who doesn’t give a fig what others think.

Again and again we find that the art of magic lies in the recognition of the parallels between the self and the world. Science is...