Sigils

Sigils mostly based on the chaos magic tradition of intention and destruction but these I want to stick with me. Plus I've been delving more into the roots of chaos magic, reading primary sources. If you want patches of any of them email/dm me.

Magic and Dialectical Materialism

I've been doing some thinking along these lines and need to get it out. Sorry if things are a little jumbled or disconnected. Some thoughts are inspired by Liber Augmen and a then recent (2023?) class I've taken on drugs, religion, and mystical experiences.


Typically, materialism is viewed as at odds with the spiritual or magical due to its foregrounding of the physical realm. This means utilizing a vulgar dependance solely on sensory inputs. However, certain elements of dialectical materialism in particular lend themselves to magical practice, and religion is an important mode of social change. The great ecocidal beast of capitalism threatens the very existence of this realm and the entities that inhabit it. Only monumentous action can alter this course, and certain religions have a distinct quality that spur practitioners to seek a higher goal or reality, whether in a distant plane (heaven) or a distant future (allopathic medicine/transhumanism/liberal humanism). Dialectical materialism can be the religion of social change.
By this, I mean that the core tenants of dialectical materialism:

1. Everything is always changing all the time always.
2. Everything is interconnected.
3. Internal contradictions are the primary drivers of change, but external factors also have an influence. See tenant 2.
4. Change occurs non-linearly, with bursts and ruptures, but this does not mean the old world has no impact on the new or vice versa. A continuity exists so that change occurs less in stages, but more like overlapping paint strokes, blending one color into the next with multiple shades and colors at once.

have cropped up in various points in my life. At a young age, I remember thinking something along the same lines as tenants 1 and 2. Interacting with more and more entities I realized that individual change largely comes from within and nonlinearly: "people will only change when they want to." , This analysis succeeds on the individual scale as well as it does for societies. The common antimonies/dualities found in mystical and religious also point to contradiction as a fundemental force, but dialectical materialism allows for these categories to be fluid themselves, with an interplay between their existence and construction.
Social construction is all the rage these days because of postmodernism but few people seem to be doing anything with it and let things dissolve into signifiers and narratives. It's not enough to just point out hypocrises and contradictions, that does nothing to stop ecocide; they must be analyzed and capitalized upon. Marxist revolutionaries like George Jackson point to the love of the people as a core motivator for action, including violence.
Under our current circumstances, we must not only have a love for the people but a love for all entities, since what a person is is highly conditional upon their disposability towards premature death and suffering under capitalism. The apocalyptic structures of capitalism do not only threaten an academic's thin definition of 'proletariat' or 'working class,' but the oceans, the air currents, and non-human entities that are maligned and seen as a pristine wilderness to extract resources from. Even some dogmatic/vulgar marxists, including Marx himself, view labor as a thing only humans can do, still following a Cartesian duality and animosity between 'civilizing' humanity and 'wild' nature.
Especially after reading Marquard Smith's "The Erotic Doll: A Modern Fetish," which explores hegemonic masculinity in the European context and it's association with the dialectical interplay between religious, psychological, and commodity fetishes, I am convinced of the need for a new animism. Such a belief looks for the life in all things, sees their interconnectedness with the lives of all others, salaried wage worker, garmant factory worker, peasant, ancient fern that becomes petroleum products, isopods, Hawai'ian birds, the near infinite many hands that have touched every object. How do we respect and honor the lives of those deemed expendable to a colonialist necrocapitalism that feeds on genocide and death? I may sound like I'm joking but why not do the mass line on octopi? Tree root mycelial networks? We exist in this interconnectedness, capitalist decadance cannot prevail. This does not mean a rejection of technology or industry or somehow ending the sacrifice of animals and including ourselves as existence in this world is built on sacrifice. Do you respect the animal, the plant, you consume? The bacteria in your gut? The nematodes in the soil? Do you thank it? Do you see how 'it' is divine? Technology is impacted by ideology, the superstructure, modes of production, devinity, and psychology existing before capitalism and neoliberalism. Considering human society as merely a smaller component of a vast ecology and granting autonomy to that ecology has enormous possibilities for a communist future, and the kind of world I wish to strive for. Join our comrades the orcas and dolphins taking down yachts, capybaras occupying golf courses, deer thriving on vacant lots, isopods harvesting heavy metals, native plants seeding futures in concrete.

Currently Observed Divine Entities & Practices

The Moon
A symbol of change and cycles. See tenant one of dialectical materialism. Mother. Bringer of blood. Sepulchre of pain.

Inanna
"your great deeds are boundless / may i praise your eminance / Oh Lady Inanna, how sweet is your praise" I see her star everywhere I go, I feel her pull and majesty in every breath, every push and pull, force and counter force, the action of friction and the 'undertaking of the pearl' (June Jordan)

Pain


Decomposition


Blessed Herbs
My drying rack is always full. I am lucky to have quality herb shops nearby to source a variety of different dried materials for teas, smudges, infused oils, offerings, etc. Currently obsessed with bergamot (great brewed into coffee or as an oregano replacement), and adding bitters into teas.

Freehand Tattoos
I have done all my tattoos by hand. It helps because I could not afford to pay someone else to do it. I have taken to doing certain projects completely freehand since I don't have the money or time for stencils right now. This began with my ram tattoo that is still in progress, which uses swirling, drippy patterns. It is only a severed head now, but I plan to continue it, with pieces of sinew, nerves, and bone still connecting disjointed and decapitated body parts. Update: mostly done now, going to try out some different colored pigments
This process is extremely meditative for me. It is a way to cause intentional, artful, and lasting pain and meaning on the body. I used to think that tattoos had to have meaning, but now I see my skin as canvas in need of improvisation. I have been constrained for far too long, and this is a way of reclaiming control over how I am seen.
Tattoos draw, focus, and channel energies, so it is best to improvize wisely to not taint intention. Symbology and placement contribute to ritual and spellwork, and the permanence creates a sense of stakes. Self-inflicted pain used to be a big taboo for me because of how I learned to deal with my emotions. Self-tattooing, particularly freehand self-tattooing, allows for a controlled and creative environment to experience pain by my own hands, now as an act of care and compassion and not internalized hatred.

Influences

Five Essays on Philosophy, Mao Zedong

This might seeem surprising but when I read it this text allowed me to recontextualize philosophy, reconciling it with spirituality. I had a lot of preconceptions of existence vs essence, of may philisophical debates and concepts, but this text gave me something to grasp, a set of proof and frames to move forward with. Even if you are not a capital M Marxist, there is something in here for you.
There is obviously a lot of hero-worship and utter demonization of the one man, Mao Zedong, but I think that complexity demands investigation and careful thought rather than sliding into one-sidedness. I especially think of the use of Red Army soliders to kill the spirits of famine and disease in revolutionary China, the use of pictures of Mao as icons to ward away evil spirits and injustice.

[...] by ava hofmann
Possibly my most treasured book. Endlessly inspiring, can be read seemingly infinitely. Everything modern literature and poetry should be. Encouraged me to follow my passions and investigations into early modern and medieval magic, and to incorporate the creation of found materials as writing process, as narrative. A necessary exploration of the archive and the self. I was lucky to catch a few glimpses of her streams as this work was in progress, and was too awkward at the time to share my admiration for her work. As of writing her personal website is down, but I hope and pray to hear of new work soon.

Inanna: Lady of Largest Heart: Poems of the Sumerian High Priestess Enheduanna, Betty De Shong Meador


This book changed me forever. Our Lady of Largest Heart, of eater-axe, of the drunken Mes, all praise to you. Speaking from the reeds along the river, the doorway, the interstice, I honor thee.
"your great deeds are boundless / may i praise your eminance / Oh Lady Inanna, how sweet is your praise"

The Android That Designed Itself, Julian K. Jarboe

I found myself returning to: "You and I, we are already only whole, and shifting towards the divine. ... "My life, which is worth more than anyone's wanting, including your own, is not diminished by its smallness, but honed." an honored book on my shelf.