Sorcerers and Magi showcases the fantasy fiction series by the same name and also thought-provoking ideas on magic and mysticism. The content is for adult readers drawn to fantasy fiction, magic, mysticism, Eastern spirituality and the Western Mystery Tradition. Excerpts, updates, and wisdom and insight from author, Dionesia Rapposelli aka Soror ZSD23.
I am scheduled to speak at a Crowley Con conference this fall about my fiction writing--my Sorcerers and Magi series triology. It is metaphysical fiction that is meant to begin as a play on classic children's magical fantasy fiction but moves on to address concepts about the nature of self, will, transformation, and enlightenment. Political metaphor and issues related to the "Immanentization of the Eschaton" build as the series progresses. What is it to wake up from the idea of yourself? That is the koan-like question. My work is for adult fiction readers with authentic interest and literacy in the magical and mystical. Explore insights from the Western Mystery Tradition, Vedanta, and Buddhism through creative expression.
This short video is a character study of the heroine of the series, Sofia La Maga. Images are original art work. More of my art work can be viewed at http://www.deerapposelli.com
*
Leonard (Junior) and his buddies,
Anil, Cary, and Bertrand, had gotten a glimpse of Sofia La Maga the day before.
They gloated like the spoiled-brat junior elitist patricians they were that the
hype about the professor was nonsense. It was just as Leonard’s father had
insisted. Professor La Maga was nothing but a bedraggled kitchen witch.
She didn’t seem at all like the
stories told about her. In fact, she roamed through the secondary school’s
second-floor corridor as if she were roller-skating with three left feet and
had the mental disposition of a hedgehog.
She was a tall, slender but robust
woman with the rough-and-tumble appearance of someone who had weathered hard
climbs in exotic lands. Her clothes were rustic, quaintly worn, and embellished
with savage jewelry: jangling bells and sashes of bone and fur, claws, shells,
and spike-studded pods. Her Medusa-like mane was haphazardly plaited here and
there and cluttered her face, blinding her as she toddled along. She was gripping a mass of overstuffed
folders, and from her arms dangled plastic bags filled with items that were
heavy. The bags swung like pendulums in the wake of her clumsy pace. The heels
of her worn leather lace-up boots alternately caught on the frayed hem of an
ankle-length skirt. It caused her to wobble pathetically as the heavy bags
alternately beat against her ribs.
No one offered assistance. They
were busy gawking at her and probably thinking the same as Leonard and his pals
were. This was the prodigy who had been gallivanting across exotic lands and
speed-reading through mentorships with wild wizards, shamans, and hermits?
Leonard reported the observation
to his father who smirked and lectured him about how the Inner Plane was going
to the dogs. He blamed immigration and student exchange laws and especially the
prohibition against the caste system—even though it had been nearly a century
since the prohibition had been in effect.
As far as de Lux senior was
concerned, the discontinuation of the system undercut the privilege of the
privileged. It made for circumstances whereby the child of the lowliest peasant
spell-caster (that is, Sofia La Maga) could become a prestigious mage—all
because she had spent 12 years spelunking through some caves on the Inner Plane
of Katmandu or Machu Picchu or . . . some place.
Leonard’s father repeated that
Sofia La Maga was a fake. He said that the heroic tales about her were hoaxes.
He stressed that she was the bastard spawn of a wayward woman who had died
under suspicious circumstances. He reminded Leonard and his friends that this
one Sofia La Maga also had been kicked out of the H. Trismegistus Mystical Arts
Academy School of Graduate Studies in her junior year of college. She was a
trouble-maker who almost took the school down because of her political
extremism. A terrorist, Leonard’s father insisted. Furthermore, rather than applying
herself to unusual scholarship in the Terra Mysticus as was claimed about her,
she had been running some sort of silly “New Age” cult among the Commons in the
Outer Plane for the past 15 years . . .
“Harry Potter” for grown-ups. When a lady mage returns to
her hometown in her magical world from long years of exile in the Himalayas and
thereabouts, her epiphany radically transforms the lives of an imposing,
elitist, and bacchanalian dignitary and his troubled teenaged son. The binding quality of love and conspiratorial
influences propel the dignitary and his son to avatar-like roles in the
up-ending of the political power structure of the land.
The story opens with the return from
political exile of the lady mage Sofia La Maga. She has spent about a dozen
years traveling and studying in the mystical East and so the story is peppered
with imagery and insights associated with Eastern mysticism. Upon her return
from exile, Sofia takes a teaching position at her alma mater, the H. Trismegistus
Mystical Arts Academy. Although the consul of the sovereignty, an imposing,
elitist, and somewhat bacchanalian sorcerer named Leo de Lux, is adverse to Sofia’s
return, Sofia takes a liking to the sorcerer’s troubled teenaged son, Leonard
junior.
Leonard de Lux character study
In an opening scene, reminiscent of the Harry Potter
series, Leonard Jr. and Sofia La Maga have their initial exchange during a
first day of class during which the youth tries to perpetrate a prank on the
new teacher. In time, Sofia and Leonard junior enter into a sympathetic
relationship through which the youth undergoes a profound transformation and secretly
becomes an apprentice to the lady mage. Meanwhile, sexual tension is building
between Sofia and her seeming polar opposite, the consul of the sovereignty Leo
de Lux.
Leo de Lux instigates a threatening confrontation with
Sofia when his suspicions that his son has apprenticed with her come to light. The
confrontation, h owever, leads to an unlikely love affair.
Lord Consul Leo de Lux Sortiar character study
Public displays of magical prowess again put the lady
mage in a bad light with a certain notorious power-broker, the sorcerer Hipparchus
Gorgon, who holds great influence in a corrupt and corporatist political
structure in which Leo de Lux is integrally embroiled. Meanwhile, de Lux’s
estranged and disinherited elder brother Emmanuel, a provocateur in an
underground populist movement called the Lions of Light, reemerges to coax his
younger sibling to assume what he believes is a portended, avatar-like role in
a political coup. The conspiratorial influences of Sofia La Maga and Emmanuel
de Lux put Leo de Lux at a self-defining cross-road.
A new edition of La Maga has been published by small publisher on the rise Night Horse Publishing house. . It's Harry Potter for grownups, folks. And if you have the mind for the Western Mystery Tradition, and the mystical, it is a good read.
Welcome to the
Inner Plane and its tempestuous society of sorcerers and magi and an underclass
of lowly folk practitioners and licit and illicit immigrants from the Outer
Plane.
The series begins
with the life and times of a lady mage named Sofia La Maga. Upon returning to
her hometown in her magical world after long years of exile in the Himalayas,
she befriends, mentors, and rehabilitates the troubled teenaged son of an
imposing and elitist dignitary, the high sorcerer Leo de Lux. Strongly averse,
then curious, then acquiescing, and ultimately exhilarated, de Lux both falls for Sofia La Maga and also
embraces a portended predestined role as the leader of a utopian movement that
seeks to overturn an oppressive social system that not only gratuitously
exploits magical persons of lesser status but persons like you and me who
inhabit the Outer Plane. Magical fantasy is woven with insights from Eastern
mysticism and Western esotericism in this first installment of the
series.
The series offers
thought-provoking ideas about self and finding oneself and one’s true purpose
in the context of magical fantasy and should be of interest to adult fiction
readers drawn to magia, mysticism, and spiritual philosophy.
Sometimes it may seem like we need magic to find happiness. "La Maga: A Story about Sorcerers and Magi" is a sensual fantasy novel following lady mage Sofia la Maga as she returns home to help a troubled teen, who happens to be the son of a renowned sorcerer. A tale marked by sorcerers' exotic charisma as well as social unrest against injustice, and the repercussions of an unruly system of magic, "La Maga" is tempestuous soiree into mystic mysteries.
The Midwest Book Reviewmidwestbookreview.com
“La Maga captures the otherworldliness of Harry Potter but
tackles larger political, spiritual, and emotional issues. Soror’s writing
style drew me in from Sofia’s awkward walk down the school hallway through her
complicated relationship with Leo De Lux and a life-or-death magical battle and
all the way to hope for what today might be called Occupy the Inner and Outer
Planes! . . . La Maga is an engaging read for anyone who refuses to think that
what we see is all that exists, a trip into a parallel universe that gives
unique, playful form to the concepts of Shaktipat, Buddhism, folk magic,
mysticism, the occult and adolescent rebellion all mixed together into a
brilliant, poignant and ultimately timely story.”
“This is a novel of magic by a true expert in both Western and
Eastern systems of magic and mysticism. The author’s knowledge shines
throughout the narrative, exciting the reader with tastes of this-world
esoterica amplified in to the scale of an amazing universe of multiple plains of
reality. Within all the magical and metaphysical goings-on are stories of young
love, generational conflict, and spiritual transformation. A source of
enjoyment and enlightenment for young and old!”
“. . . I am also incredibly impressed with the depth of
knowledge that the author appears to have for various mystical and spiritual
arts from the mainstream to the more obscure. It’s a smooth read, peppered with
layers of deep spiritual teachings and references should the reader’s interest
be piqued. The mystical and spiritual details read like poetry, not preaching.
It’s a skillfully rendered sensual work about magical beings that inhabit their
world, and more surprisingly, our own.”
A 4+minute audio mix of an excerpt from Chapter VI of the cross-genre literary/occulitist/fantasy fiction novel La Maga A Story about Sorcerers and Magi by Dionesia Rapposelli. The selection is a partner to the previous one title A Bit of a Slacker. Score is an audio mix courtesy of Order Ov Thee Octopi.
Although I’ve spent the past several years delving into
folk magic, Neopaganism, and the Western Mystery Tradition, my primary
spiritual orientation is Advaita Vedanta. Advaita Vedanta is a form of Hinduism
that I was introduced to nearly 40 years ago. It is a system that dates back to
about the 7th century and is primarily founded in the Upanishads.
The Upanishads are the philosophical portion of a set texts called the Vedas,
the earliest written record of Hindu thought and praxis.
When I first began writing La Maga A Story aboutSorcerers and Magi in 2004, I was absorbed in Vedanta and related Eastern
philosophies. And so concepts distilled from my then spiritual practice are
represented in the work and intermingle with fanciful as well as some authentic
motifs about magic.
The spiritual journey in
Advaita Vedanta is, in part, about intimately realizing the connection between
one’s own true nature and the Divine and also realizing that “the world is in
the mind, like space in a jar”—as stated in a text called the Yoga-Vasishtha—which I worked into the very last chapter
of La Maga. Advaita Vedantist philosophy is concerned with the idea of
projection—the problem of not experiencing reality as it is but as dreamlike mental
projections—colored by bias, fears, ignorance and automated habits and conditioning.
For this reason, my characters sometimes contemplate the nature of reality and
illusion. They also ask the question: What is it to wake up
from the idea of yourself? To paraphrase thoughts I attributed to the antihero
of the series, the sorcerer Leo de Lux:
Becoming truly
real, conscious, and capable of free will begins by realizing the whimsical and
fabricated nature of one’s own being—the idea of self—and then detaching from
the automaton (the robot) of its personality, habits, and conditioning. Then the
person who is the life beneath the mask of selfhood opens his eyes and watches
himself reveling through the motions of daily life like a dreamer reveling in
lucidity and exercising free will in it.
In the last
published book in the series, The Savior at the End of Time (available in
Kindle format), I have the main character of that story--a whacky Christlike
figure who is a chaos-magic-practicing sorcerer named Aurelio Zosimo--deliver a
sermon that basically crystalizes what I’ve come away with from my exposure to
Eastern spirituality and spirituality in general, including magical
spirituality:
Excerpt from
Chapter 20 of The Savior at the End of Time
About 42 days after his confrontation with Lord
Consul Tau-Bridge, Zosi began to be spotted in flamboyantly full ceremonial
regalia within the Mercury Gardens. He would wear a tunic of thick raw silk and
tightly fitted, black leggings that were made of tanned leather and full of
straps and whips of lacings. Over this, he would wear high boots that matched a
mottled, purple-black tanned leather cope embossed with images of ourobori,
moondragons, and griffins. His hair was meticulously plaited and decorated with
pins and ribbons. His head was topped with a black double-cone hat that was rakishly
crimped and folded over so that the tips of the horn-like cones, embellished
with opalescent jingle bells, menacingly flounced and jangled in front of his
face. He wielded a rather large and tall staff, the core of which was made of
slender poles of cedar and fennel stalks. It was wrapped in embossed leather
that matched his ensemble. Like a sinister maypole, the staff’s leather sheath
was itself wrapped in a filigreed design of cords and leather straps on which
gadgets and flotsam were affixed and that dangled, flail- and
cat-o-nine-tails-like, from the staff’s finial, which was a gold spearhead in
the shape of a fish with an acorn protruding from its mouth.
Like that, he would stroll about the Gardens and
then stop here or there to deliver a sermon that attracted larger and larger
crowds as word of the spectacle grew. He would begin the rant in a gentle voice
with the words, “See the illumination at the center of being,” and materialize
some small sparkly object that would fascinate and mesmerize onlookers.
“The body and all phenomena arise causally and
provisionally within absolute being,” he would continue, yet still in a very
meek and quiet voice. It would be trembling and barely audible despite his
ferocious appearance. “There is no time and no dimension to space, both being
mere adaptive projections of mind. The personality is an interdependently
arising construction of circumstances and experiences, driven by reactivity
bred by conditioning devoid of awareness or true will. What is it to wake up
from the idea of yourself? Heaven, hell, God, the Adversary, pleasure, pain,
and all the pairs of opposites are projections of your own consciousness. You
project ideas out of yourself. Treating them as independent entities, you go
into them, fear them, and allow them to have power over you although they are
your own creations. No one is there to deliver you; you must deliver yourself.
Glimpse self-effacement and the root of your existence. Reality is silent,
blissful, self-composed Being. This is the Redemptive Principle, the Christos,
the Ground, and the Life beneath the mechanism.”
It was just as Leonard’s father had insisted.
Professor La Maga was nothing but a bedraggled kitchen witch.
She didn’t seem at all like the stories told
about her. In fact, she roamed through the secondary school’s second-floor
corridor as if she were roller-skating with three left feet and had the mental
disposition of a hedgehog.
She was a tall, slender but robust woman with
the rough-and-tumble appearance of someone who had weathered hard climbs in
exotic lands. Her clothes were rustic, quaintly worn, and embellished with
savage jewelry: jangling bells and sashes of bone and fur, claws, shells, and
spike-studded pods. Her Medusa-like mane was haphazardly plaited here and there
and cluttered her face, blinding her as she toddled along.
Leonard’s father repeated that Sofia La Maga
was a fake. He said that the heroic tales about her were hoaxes. He stressed
that she was the bastard spawn of a wayward woman who had died under suspicious
circumstances. He reminded Leonard and his friends that this one Sofia La Maga
also had been kicked out of the H. Trismegistus Mystical Arts Academy School of
Graduate Studies in her junior year of college. She was a trouble-maker who
almost took the school down because of her political extremism. A terrorist, Leonard’s father insisted.
Furthermore, rather than applying herself to unusual scholarship in the Terra
Mysticus as was claimed about her, she had been running some sort of silly “New
Age” cult among the Commons in the Outer Plane for the past 15 years . . .
Available through amazon.com. See tab at the header of this page.
“Magic is potentiated when the self is effaced by pleasure
and pain.” This statement is said by Leo de Lux to Mirelle Soleil in the
fantasy fiction novel La Maga A Story about Sorcerers and Magi by Soror
ZSD23. But what does this mean? It means that paradigmatic shifts occur at
the extremes of consciousness. You have
heard the adage “it is always darkest before dawn” or “I saw the light” or you
have heard stories about people who claimed to have been “reborn” or who have
claimed to become “enlightened” at a direly critical point during an emotional
crisis. This is the basic idea.
This idea that paradigmatic shifts occur at the extremes of
consciousness is utilized in postmodern magic and was advanced by the early 20th century sorcerer Austin Osman Spare (1886-1956) who potentiated his magic through inducing
liminal states of consciousness usually either through orgasm or a condition he
called the “death posture,” which was a (very not recommended) practice
involving pseudo-catalepsy and auto asphyxiation. Later, magical practitioners spoke of the
potentiation of magical intention through excitatory or inhibitory techniques,
recognized as key in shamanic and mystical initiatory experiences. An example of an excitatory technique might
be dancing to exhaustion or else engaging in some other activity past the point
of tolerance (eg, “erotocomatose lucidity,” a practice brainstormed by one of
Aleister Crowley’s lovers and possibly inspired by legendary Tantric sex practices,
theoretically involving keeping a person in a state of sexual stimulation
through “any means possible” until that person had an “enlightenment”-type
experience or died).
A resourceful and healthful rather than extreme or self-harming example of an excitatory
technique is found in Kundalini and other types of yoga in which a simple
motion or posture is held or continued through and past the point of emotional
and physical resistance. The experience
of breaking through physical resistance becomes a metaphor and method for
breaking through psychological blocks.
When a psychological block is neutralized, thoughts and behaviors are
reframed and neural pathways in the brain are rerouted.
An alternate example of how an excitatory technique might
work and how an inhibitory technique might work is related to hypnotic
technique. Hypnotic-type suggestion best
occurs in states of liminal consciousness.
These might be states between waking and sleep, during orgasm, states of
shock or surprise, or deep self-absorbed focus or fixation. In these states, there is a window of
opportunity to bypass the mind’s critical factor, or what is known in magic as
the psychic censor. When the critical
factor is bypassed, which is what occurs in hypnotic suggestion, new ways of
thinking and behaving can be programmed into the subconscious mind. A person who understands how to skillfully
induce and embed hypnotic suggestion into her own mind or the minds of others
could establish paradigmatic change with efficiency, grace, and ease and
minimal drama, couldn’t she?
For long, people have thought of magic as something
supernatural and spooky. Even in
manifestation spirituality, which is certainly a form of magic although some
practitioners wish to think otherwise, people hold the idea that some divine
spiritual force in the universe is magically making things happen for them or
else they may be of the opinion that their personal-ego desires and quantum
physics are somehow related. But what if magic was really a psychodynamic
process? What if magic and the ability
to manifest one’s desires had nothing to do with spooky supernaturalism or
belief in miracles but with the quality of belie f, perception, attitude, and
behavior and the effects these
expressions have on interpersonal and intrapersonal interactions? What if it was all about where one’s
attention was placed and where, through skill, one could place someone else’s
attention and perception and manipulate one’s own and others’ reactions and
motives?
Excerpt from Chapter 13 The Daughter from La Maga A Story about Sorcerers and Magi
“If anyone asks, you’re a member of this
house,” he said quietly and glared at her. “Understand what this means,” he
snapped. “Do not cross me. Do not interfere with my designs or my momentum. Can
you manage that, Mirelle?”
She nodded. The Consul huffed and grimaced. He
stood up and approached his altar. “Alright, then. Stand here,” he commanded.
Mirelle complied. The Consul grasped a highly polished diamond-shaped dagger from
the altar and lightly pressed it against Mirelle’s breast bone. With his free
hand, he gripped the back of the girl’s head and arched her neck into a taut
and choking posture. He glared into her eyes, white to white. Mirelle felt her
blood drain from fear of what he had in mind only to feel the rush of the
hallmark of empowerment initiations—a hot, scintillating, and heady pulsation.
“‘Magic is potentiated when the self is
effaced by pleasure or pain,’” the Consul lulled.
An electrically erotic sensation flooded
through the dagger into Mirelle’s chest and through the man’s eyes into her
brain. She relaxed into it. The searing stare and torturous grip became softer,
until they seemed like a caress.
The Consul gently released his hold. He placed
the dagger within inches of Mirelle’s brow. She focused on it past the light
that was flooding her mind. The platinum grip had a ruby and citrine inlay of
gems that spelled “de Lux.”
The man grinned as if he didn’t think Mirelle
would believe what she would next see. A miniature angel with a lion on its
breastplate and a flaming sword in hand emerged from the dagger and flew into
her head. It generated a peculiar tickle as it snaked its way to her chest
where it settled like a glowing ember.
He placed the dagger back on the altar and
announced as if commanding the spirits there, “No one dare touch this child
with malice! She belongs to me.”
Leonard (Junior) and his buddies, Anil,
Cary, and Bertrand, had gotten a glimpse of Sofia La Maga the day before. They
gloated like the spoiled-brat junior elitist patricians they were that the hype
about the professor was nonsense. It was just as Leonard’s father had insisted.
Professor La Maga was nothing but a bedraggled kitchen witch.
She didn’t seem at all like the stories told
about her. In fact, she roamed through the secondary school’s second-floor
corridor as if she were roller-skating with three left feet and had the mental
disposition of a hedgehog.
She was a tall, slender but robust woman with
the rough-and-tumble appearance of someone who had weathered hard climbs in
exotic lands. Her clothes were rustic, quaintly worn, and embellished with
savage jewelry: jangling bells and sashes of bone and fur, claws, shells, and
spike-studded pods. Her Medusa-like mane was haphazardly plaited here and there
and cluttered her face, blinding her as she toddled along. She was gripping a mass of overstuffed
folders, and from her arms dangled plastic bags filled with items that were
heavy such that they swung like pendulums in the wake of her clumsy pace. The
heels of her worn leather lace-up boots alternately caught on the frayed hem of
an ankle-length skirt. It caused her to wobble pathetically as the heavy bags
alternately beat against her ribs.
No one offered assistance. They were busy
gawking at her and probably thinking the same as Leonard and his pals were. This was the prodigy who had been
gallivanting across exotic lands and speed-reading through mentorships with
wild wizards, shamans, and anchorites?
Available through amazon.com. See tab at the header of this page.
Sometimes it may seem like we need magic to find happiness. "La Maga: A Story about Sorcerers and Magi" is a sensual fantasy novel following lady mage Sofia la Maga as she returns home to help a troubled teen, who happens to be the son of a renowned sorcerer. A tale marked by sorcerers' exotic charisma as well as social unrest against injustice, and the repercussions of an unruly system of magic, "La Maga" is tempestuous soiree into mystic mysteries. A sequel, "The Sex Lives of Sorcerers", is forthcoming. --Midwest Book Review, March 2013
Excerpt from Chapter 6 [The Lovers] The Sun and the Moon in by The Fallen Fairy
The “Law of Karma” posited three lines of force: sanchita karma, prarabdha karma,and agami karma. Sanchita karma was the momentum that had originated in some
mysterious and distant past. It had built up over eons like a snowflake becomes
an avalanche as it accumulates compacted snow, ice, rocks, twigs, shrubs, small
animals, then big ones, all kinds of crap in the path of its ferocious
trajectory. Wherever the exponentially building mass was as it fell was the
present. That was prarabdha
karma—fate, destiny—where the past caught up with a person, dictated the present,
and set the direction for the future.
Then there was agami
karma, which was where the avalanche might be headed and how its structure
might change because of it. It was the potential future, predicated on both
where it had been (sanchita karma)
and where it was (prarabdha karma).
Even though the residual effects of the past were relentlessly barreling from
the present to the future, the present still could modify the future’s course.
Bellaluna Drago was a fallen fairy because having had the
ill-fortune of becoming some sinister Renaissance necromancer’s pet (and
Michael knew who that fiendish bastard now was), she had haplessly done
something despicable that led to the necromancer’s and her own ruin. She was
now clawing through lives and worlds in atonement. Her redemption had come.
Michael felt privileged to play a role in it.
“There is a saying in the alchemical texts that goes like
this,” Michael murmured. “The dragon only dies when he is killed by his brother
and sister at once; not by one alone, but by both at once. That is, by the sun
and moon.’ You and me,” he said.
“We’re compelled to create stories for the whys and
wherefores of things in an attempt to trump a wild card, which is existence
itself. And existence happens despite us and also is a product of our own making.
It’s a bit of a paradox,” Michael continued. “You dream of being attacked by a man
who would pull you down to Hell with him. This is all the fluff of the mind—a
subterfuge for some other vexation that is limiting you. But even that is a
mere projection of mental noise. We torture ourselves with it for no good
reason.”
Michael told Bella this to console her, even though it was
and wasn’t what was going on. Nevertheless, he continued.
“In creation mythology, we talk about the world forming from
chaos and void by the will of a conscious entity—God. But the chaos—the
so-called prima materia—is not
matter, nature, or the world; it is the human psyche full of convoluted
impressions, habituations, and the conditioning of nature and nurture. This is
the seven-headed dragon that must be slain by the hero who is none other than
the divine spirit within asserting itself. It rescues the damsel, which is the
soul.”
The path of inner alchemy and of mysticism in all the great
traditions founded in gnosis, Michael contended, was to transform the human
creature, who was nothing more than a helpless gear of the world machine, into
a real person with real will, intention, and creative abilities.
“Some persons call this enlightenment; some call it ‘being
like unto God’; some call it the Great Work, which is magic,” he said.
Thought-forms are important tools in
sorcery. What are they? They are purpose-directed thoughts that are so strong
and well-defined that they seem to manifest as concrete objects or otherwise
take on a life of their own. In post-modern magic, they are often referred to
as servitors. To this American, “servitor” sounds like a great dystopic term
coined by a sci-fi writer, but it is simply a synonym for “servant,” more
commonly used in British English (and coopted by the patriarchs of Chaos Magic
and used as part of the lingo). A great essay on servitors that has been
web-accessible for decades is Sigils, Servitors and Godforms at http://www.chaosmatrix.org/library/chaos/texts/servitors.html
The idea of making concrete objects
appear out of thin air and of conjuring purpose-directed phantoms not only exists
in fantasy and sci-fi and magic that, in part, draws inspiration from pop
culture memes, but in the reality of sorcerers and shamans the world over.Yogi “godmen,” such as the late Sai Baba
(1926-2011), for example, have been reported to miraculously materialize
objects (although episodes are often revealed to be hoaxes). I was once
close to a very pious elderly Hindu lady who, although a devotee of Sri
Ramakrishna (1833-1886), found herself miraculously covered in rose petals at
the conclusion of a group devotional to Sai Baba that she attended at her
daughter’s home. She was the only participant at the event who was showered in
rose petals but did not come away with a one because, according to her, every
scrap was scarfed up by devotees who felt entitled to hoard the miraculously
manifesting flotsam.
Probably most noted in discussion
about thought-forms are Tibetan yogis, lamas, and shamans for which the phantom
or materialization is sometimes referred to as a tulpa. It is an extension of
the sorcerer/shamans consciousness. Virtually no discussion about tulpas in Western
pop lit on the subject goes without mention of the 19th-20th
century explorer and esotericist Alexandra David-Neel (1868-1969), who spent
several years roaming Nepal and Tibet as a “lady lama.”In her memoirs, David-Neel occasionally relates
anecdotes about sorcerer-lamas who communicate with each other over long
distances by dispatching fancifully shaped phantoms to deliver news or else
simply surround themselves with servant-like creatures almost reminiscent of
the genetic designer in Blade Runner, F. Sebastian, who created comical little
beings to keep himself company. David-Neel also frequently reports episodes in
which lamas miraculously make things
appear out of thin air (which also was a popular topic of doctrinaire
discussion when Soror ZSD23 was involved with a Nygmapa [Dzogchen] Buddhist
sangha about 10 years ago).
David-Neel warns that, sometimes
tulpas can turn rogue—completely independent of their creators—and go off to
run amok. She relates an anecdote in Magic and Mystery in Tibet, in which she,
as an experiment, created a tulpa—a “Friar Tuck-like” fellow who began to be
sighted within her traveling party. Over time, though, his appearance began to
change, becoming sinister-looking, according to David-Neel, and it took some
effort to dissolve the thing.
I haven’t come
across any anecdotes of servitors in material form among Chaos or other
modern/post-modern magicians—and, in fact, a Tibetan Buddhist practitioner
mentioned to me that you don’t hear much about tulpas ala David-Neel’s take on
them because it does not capture the true idea of a tulpa and what is really
going on.Nevertheless, some servitors
are legendary, such as the time-warping entity Fotamecus (http://www.chaosmatrix.org/library/chaos/texts/fotamec2.html or the "Red Queen" Ellis,
the use of both of which went viral until Fotamecus and the linking sigil Ellis, like Pinocchio, seemed to
become conscious and independently operating forces. A current project in the
occult community is the egregore-like manifestation of Atem, “a self-created
entity that human minds participate in” for the purpose of being empowered to
create more mimetic entities—new godforms to interact with in a new paradigm.
(see Philip H. Farber, Meta-Magick the Book of Atem. San Francisco: Weiser
Books. 2008).
I have attempted servitor
creation with mixed results. The very first one she ever created took the form
of a lion and was meant to be a type of protection. It came through for her at
party in which a young woman was treating her in an amazingly rude fashion presumably
because she wanted the attention of my companion. The girl ultimately put
me in danger of physical injury and so, the otherwise long-suffering,
patient, and polite me unleashed her lion servitor, which took a bite out of
the nasty girl’s ass.I then watched the girl’s expression drop. Her face
turned away from where she stood before my companion. The girl and her
entourage abruptly walked to the other side of the room, after which the girl
kept great distance from me whenever we happened to be in the same
environs.
Excerpt from Chapter X A Very Reluctant God -- La Maga A Story about Sorcerers and Magi
Leo spent a great deal of time in his uppermost studio—the turret of his tower. He needed the quiet. He needed the sublime and took solace in gazing into the shallow, round, crystal-lined tank that he had installed up there.
Sometimes the water within it was clear and still. Sometimes it was rippled by the wind and marred by leaves, drowned insects, pollen, and dander. Sometimes raindrops plunked into the tank to make designs before merging with its contents.
Whatever the condition, the tank was a source of fascination and mental calm for Leo. It helped him know his mind, the contents of his mind, and the difference between the two. Magical prowess depended on acuity of mind. It depended on thriftiness of thought, unambiguousness of motive, and unwavering momentum.
It was this presence of mind that made Leo a master of materializations. Unless he specifically willed it, his thought-forms were not affected by instability or decay. They were not flimsy or slight. There were creations like those of an artist—or like those of a god.
But the person who could create things of substance on a whim and with ease was tasked with maintaining sobriety, self-restraint, and self-censorship. For this reason, Leo was a subdued person, although his subtlety went unnoticed and unappreciated, as already mentioned.
As he matured, however, he increasingly wasted his gift on small entertainments and the manufacture of collectibles coveted by Outer Plane folks. Whether because he enjoyed the extra income or taking advantage of Commons and their vulgarities, his manufacture of objects precious to them had become a robust hobby over the years.
Was that newly discovered van Gogh by van Gogh or Leo de Lux? A slew of Tiffany lamps, Venetian glass and Goebel Hummels, Mesopotamian seals and Mayan gold, Black Madonnas from Romanian grottoes, excavated Buddha icons from jungle ruins—even dinosaur bones.
When Commons marveled at such objects and muttered that they were “out of this world,” they might have been right. Unlike replicas and forgeries crafted by Commons, the true origins of things materialized by Inner Plane peoples and planted in the Outer Plane were somewhat untraceable. Hence, stories (woven with fascination charms) given about their history were unopposed.
True masters of this art, like de Lux, engaged in high-end antiquing and lucrative museum acquisitions. Amateurs and mischievous dabbling young adepts deposited supernatural creatures and phenomena in the midst of Commons: sea monsters in lakes, neo-cavemen in snows, and little green men that went bump in the night, not to mention mermaids and unicorns, and various other apparitions. Unlike entrepreneurial schemes, mischievous materializationalism in the Outer Plane was outlawed but hard to enforce.
It, like Phaeton maneuver offenses, fell into de Lux’s jurisdiction. This meant that Leo had to engage in public lectures and news briefings in which he spoke on the danger of introducing inexplicable phenomena into the world of Commons. It confused and perverted their cultural and spiritual beliefs, he contended.
“Such sadistic practices result in long lapses of instability, conflict, hardship, and intellectual decline among these lower peoples. We are tasked as a more evolved race to treat these peoples with tenderness rather than disdain, for their plane is valuable to us and the eventual home of Outer Plane denizens is with us,” Leo would say. Meanwhile, placard-carrying college students and Expansionist Party sympathizers would protest outside wherever he was presenting. They continually accused him of hypocrisy and double-dealing and also demanded an end to the entrepreneurial oppression of Commons.
This was Leo’s lot as a resident and magistrate of the North Atlantic Sovereignty, Terra Novit, Inner Plane Regions. It was wearing on him.
In addition to his job, another heavy burden was parceled with his gift. It was another element that demanded flawless control. Being an entity who could create anything, Leo had the power to destroy anything as well—not merely his or another’s thought-form, but all forms, any entity, all of which were essentially some expression of thought.
La Maga, the first book in the Sorcerers and Magi series
The third book in the series: Chaos Magic
meets Jesus Christ Superstar
