Paintings in Magic

Taylor Ellwood of Magical Experiments recently posted on his use of paintings in magic, and asked how others use paintings, so I thought I'd dig into that.






This is the first painting I did specifically for magical use. Two friends of mine were interested enough in what I'd been doing that we decided to do a group working. I'd been doing a lot of extremely intense energy healing during this time, but only ever in a one-on-one setting, so it took a bit for us to work out how we would do this. Eventually we realized that our respective astrological situations made it easy for each of us to assume the role of one of the three alchemical elements. J, a Taurus, worked as Salt; H, an Aries, was Sulphur; and while I'm a Leo, my close personal and working relationship with Hermes made Mercury an easy fit.

I arrived at H's house, where we were to work, before dawn, and we trekked out to some crossroads where I made an offering to Hermes and did my solar adoration. J, who was interested in getting into Voudon, got in touch with Legba, and H did something non-entity-specific (so far as I know, at least) but similar. We walked back to H's and I laid out my plans to them. After awhile they took to napping, as they'd stayed up all night talking; during this time I set to painting the above piece. It took three or four hours, and the sitting situation in H's room was not ideal, so I was kneeling most of the time; between the low light, the dream-heavy atmosphere of my napping friends, and the fairly severe pain of kneeling for that long, I got into a pretty heavy altered state. The painting was meant to embody both the working principles of the planned operation, and the overall goal. As I'd never tried anything like this with multiple people, it seemed best that we each program for the removal of obstacles that lay before contacting our perfected selves. Through a process of cut-ups and sigilization, we arrived at the symbols in each corner of the triangle. Everything along the outside of the triangle is circuitry designed to draw in and focus our energy. We started the operation at sunset and it lasted far into the night; I'll not go into the details now, but it was one of the most successful workings I've ever done, with some truly astounding results, both right then and in the long run. We used the painting as a focus, and it was through this that I later came to understand some of the principles in the art that I'm producing now.





Some time later, we attempted a similar working, but incorporated one more person. The day of the operation I prepared myself physically and mentally, and created the above piece. This was the first time I'd used color, at all, and the exact hue appeared to me the night before. I'm actually still pretty amazed that I was able to get precisely the color I saw in my mind. By this point I had a very slightly better understanding of the ideas behind the psychic machinery, but looking back it was not much further along than when I made the previous painting. Nonetheless, this one was created to facilitate the linking of our consciousnesses. The name that occurred to me was Eclipse Machinery, although there is a secondary name that I later learned and cannot divulge.

At the time, the operation was an unqualified failure. Everyone involved had an absolutely dismal time and it wreaked bloody havoc on all of us. I was fortunate enough to learn several valuable lessons in the process, so it wasn't a total loss, but it created some serious fallout. Looking back, I can see that the immovable heaviness we all felt was in part due to the Saturnian current I'd been getting deep into at the time, among other things. Although the experience was terrible to go through, I definitely could not have gotten to the point I'm at now without it.


Currently, the painting I'm working on... or chipping away at, more accurately, is this:



I started this painting even before the previous two; you can tell that the style in the lower middle portion is considerably less intricate than on the left and right edges. I began without a real purpose or idea in mind, which is not necessarily the best way to go about doing these things; but at the time I wasn't even intending it to be a work of magic. Eventually, I had a mind-blowing insight into... everything, I suppose. It was during this session that I was given the download that included the data-spine, as well as pretty much the entire accompanying paradigm. Despite being the better part of a year ago, I'm still unpacking data that I got. I understood that this painting was to be a key, and that while it is important that I don't rush it, it is equally important that I finish it correctly. If I understand correctly, it is meant to act as my pantacle when it's finished, my elemental weapon of Earth. The large center part is a recent addition that came to me all at once. As a Leo, my present incarnation is a function of the path of Teth, reconciling the forces of Chesed and Geburah. As such, my entire world view is filtered fundamentally through the lens of this incarnation. As I expand my experiences, my knowledge, myself, to incorporate as many perspectives as possible, my reason for being here will always relate to the balancing of these forces.

It was with this painting, in its present state, that I attempted the upgrade of the 4D enhancile system I outlined previously. While I picked up a few pieces, the pieces I needed to correct errors in my path, the overall message that I got was that this painting needed to be completed before what I was attempting can come to fruition. This is why I've been quiet on the subject after my initial rush of enthusiasm. Such is often the way with me; it takes a lot of mindfulness for me not to invest too much too soon in an idea and burn myself out on it.

For now, I'm concentrating on the mystery generators and related projects. Nearly all of my magical workings, other than energy practice and external/internal yoga, is in my art now. As the mystery generators etc. are drawings, though, I will go into those some other time.