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---
title = "Casting the Circle"
date = 2024-05-22T10:45:00-05:00
---
We tried to read <cite>The Psychonaut's Field Manual</cite> today, and while I'm not sure that we actually
got what the author intended out of it, I believe we ended up with a more lasting lesson. I don't know
exactly how we ended up coming across this little PDF that purports to be an atheistic starter's guide to
chaos magick, but already on page 5 we felt compelled to stress the importance of finding techniques that
actually work for you.
---
The direction to simply "try not thinking" is probably the least useful way you could instruct a beginner on
how to meditate, especially when it's couched in language that's subtly denigrating to those who can't do it.
Abandoning a session doesn't make you a "pussy", it simply means you aren't in the state of mind for it -
either you need more practice or you have more pressing concerns to address first. Getting negative just
makes you less likely to try again later.
<cite>Dune</cite> contains more complete instructions for how to handle undesired thoughts and reach a
meditative state. Specifically, the latter half of the Litany Against Fear:
<blockquote>I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.</blockquote>
The candle trick and focusing on your breath <em>are</em> helpful (and we have certainly accidentally used
a campfire to good effect before), but we find a couple of techniques that we picked up to deal with
dissociation and hypomania are more concretely useful. The immediate goal is to let your thoughts pass you
by, and directing your attention to your senses is a good way to do that.
First, the 5-4-3-2-1 method of using your senses to observe the world around you without reacting to them:
- 5 things you can hear
- 4 you can see
- 3 you can touch
- 2 you can smell
- 1 you can taste
And second, simple box breathing:
- in for a count of 4 (not necessarily 4 entire seconds, depending on your ability)
- hold for 4
- out for 4
- hold for 4
- repeat until calm
---
I don't know that the rest of this book is particularly useful to us - it seems quite interested in creating
a cosmology for something that purports not to be a theology, and to be franky we already have most of these
tools available to us through the lens of plurality. Making tulpas out of your sleep paralysis demons is
<em>interesting</em>, but not the kind of practice we're looking for.
It certainly is fascinating to see that we spent our 20s developing a practice that others consider to be
basically magical already, something that we'd been unconsciously doing for maybe a decade prior to that.
Maybe the real lesson we were meant to learn is just to see the magic in what we're already doing.
On that note, let us end this by affirming a very commonly known charm: flipping a coin to make a decision
very often crystallizes your desires and intent to act on them. In every way that counts, that's magic.
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