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.
When a fairy is discovered to have haplessly incarnated as
the quirky girl-next-door, sorcerers from another dimension come out of the
woodwork to vie for her affections in the interests of love and occult power.
But is she an unwitting fairy or a more dynamically charged and even dangerous
creature? A savior, a redeemer, and a siren, she puts her men in their place.
The story opens with a gal named Bellaluna Drago, who
is having a hard day, having been jilted by a boyfriend via email. She is
observed by two men, Michael Solaris and his mentor Anderson Albright, who are
denizens of the Inner Plane. Michael Solaris, we learn, is a co-conspirator in an
underground populist movement called the Lions of Light. He is working in the
Outer Plane as a neuroscientist and being stalked by a deranged “fatal
attraction” who is actually a magical creature. When Michael chivalrously
assists Bellaluna in the simple act of holding open a door, he realizes that
she is not an ordinary “Commons” woman but the hapless incarnation of a magical
being: a “fairy,” like his stalker. Against Anderson Albright’s protests, Michael
begins to pursue Bellaluna as a romantic interest-with-benefits but also
harbors sincere aims of protecting her against more opportunistic magical
persons of his kind.
Meanwhile, a sorcerer of a darker bent, Tristan Lundragon,
a cryptologist/steganographer who secretly acts as a Lions of Light conspirator,
has independently identified Bellaluna and is convinced that he, in a past life as the 16th century occultist Lunaris Dracon, was responsible for
her manifestation. A heated confrontation between Tristan, Anderson Albright, and Michael Solaris ensues.
Lundragon and Albright, however, ultimately form a secret pact about how the
men will train and work the “fallen fairy” Bellaluna Drago.
As Bellaluna begins piecing together her odd
circumstance, and after tragedy strikes, she and Tristan Lundragon ultimately
acquiesce to polyamorous love triangle that includes Tristan’s research partner and sometime male lover Jason Paleologos.
Tensions mount, however, as the powers-that-be target Tristan and Jason because
of their connection to Michael Solaris through Bellaluna Drago and dangerous
empowerments they have attained through their liaison with her.
References to alchemy, medieval occultism, the "language of the birds," steganography, and sex magic permeate the text. Each of the 22 chapters is named for and thematically reflects a card of the Tarot’s Upper Arcana.
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?
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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
