THE ARCANE ARCHIVE
	a cache of usenet and other text files pertaining to occult, mystical, and spiritual subjects.

To: alt.occult.methods
From: catherine yronwode 
Subject: Bood_Samel: Chao Magick and Graffiti
Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2001 09:50:18 GMT

from alt.magick.chaos; reporsting to alt.occult.methods as it ideZla
with technique (and it's archivable!)  

~From: rise3141@hotmail.com (Bood_Samel)
~Newsgroups: alt.magick.chaos
~Subject: mixing chaos magick and graffiti
~Date: 14 Aug 2001 22:18:45 -0700
             
Here is a section of a work I wrote pretaining to mixing chaos magick
and graffiti --

Two of my main interests in life are graffiti, and the practice of
ceremonial magick. It wasn't long after I started stumbling my
way into magick, that I started to notice simularities, and parallels
between the acts of caring out ceremonial magick, and going out and
doing graffiti.

Both are self-intitiatory processes that transmute how we consciously
interact with the world around us. When one picks up the bulky marker,
or can of paint, and sets it against the drollness of modern
homogenized landscapes, some thing changes in the mind of the
implementor. Suddenly the world becomes a much more fantastic place.
Seemingly bland urban landscapes become the playground of a hidden
illicit art world. Everything becomes vast, and inspiring, while at
the same time personalized. Blurred lines scrawled clandestinely all
over the place become sigil gateways into a hidden, yet omnipresent
world. Yet its experience shows us that the drive towards the rapture
of the fantastic belongs at our disposal, and in our individual
control. Like magick, graffiti is all around us, yet hardly noticed by
those not involved it. It already is a form of the occult in the
literal sense --hidden knowledge -- and like all hidden knowledge its
experience and understanding is only available to the initiated.

Graffiti is a hidden art, done clandestinely by individuals or groups,
who in part more or less form a secret society. How many graffiti crew
names are three letter acronyms akin to various occult groups- the
OT.O., the I.O.T., the E.O.D., etc.

The implementing of graffiti involves a process of  making our
surroundings conform in coordinance to will. It involves an evocation
of dynamic, creative praxis upon various spaces/surfaces that in turn
blurs the boundaries between the mundane and the fantastic imposed by
western consumer anti-culture. "EVERY NUMBER IS INFINITE; THERE
IS NO DIFFERENCE!". Very well indeed, and graffiti brings this
realization into further precedence. Graf/magick seeks to bring this
to the forefront of our local. Its not magick done in the ambiguous
space of some wholly mental "astral plane", but in our
immediate environment.

Graffiti is a localized network of information exchange. Its
information is itself, and its intent is so simple as to astound. It
shows us that we only choose to be alienated from our surroundings and
modern landscapes. It shows us that we still have the capacity for
intimate, personal interaction with our surroundings, even if they are
"unnatural". Everything that exists, exists in nature -- there is 
no being outside of  it. There is no getting back to nature, 
you never left, nor could you. Our environment still shows us
a great dynamic of experience, and process regardless of how many
Mcdonalds tm we build to distract ourselves from the magnitude of what
we are capable of experiencing.

The outcome of caring out graffiti changes how one consciously
conceives notions of space, property, and environment. These changes
allow for a vantage point of interactive personalization of typically
bleak, dehumanized, alienating modern landscapes. For the magickian
this opens up a whole new realm to exploit and work with.
Modern landscapes are only depersonalized if you choose not to
interact with them. "The flow of things", so to speak, is
still present in man made environments, and is still exploitable.
Perhaps even more so do to the close proximity of people and their
routines when in an urban environment.

If you live in a city you develop a routine which causes you to come
across the same people, and go by the same places. Change your
schedule, and pasterns will still emerge. Synchroncities abound to a
bewildering extent in an urban environment. Constantly omnipresent
amongst all this continual convergence of circumstance is graffiti.
People often mix their magickal practices with their art. For more
horizontal, "results" magick, graffiti seems like the most 
logical art form to implement will through, as its already an art
form that causes our environments to conform to will, and is so firmly
entrenched in our surroundings. In a city graffiti comes, and goes.
Its constantly shifting,and changing. Some fades away, wheat pasted
flyers get ripped down, walls get buffed, but more pops back up. Its
very existence is fractal, its the stuff of chaos.

Hijacking graffiti for magickal results further mutates how the mind
interacts and preserves modern landscapes. Alleyways as temples;
dumpsters as alters; mercury racing his message along graff-sigil
encrusted telephone poles; buses become the chariots of the gods;
subway tunnels and the undersides of bridges become the subbteranian
depths of cthonic realms.

There are places in our time that "decent folk" avoid, or
are oblivious to. Ghettos, undersides of bridges, (post) industrial
wastelands, alleys, vacant lots, abandoned buildings, train tracks,
train bridges, aqua ducts, steam tunnels, sewage drains, etc. These
cracks in Babylon unfit for, and forgotten by the consumer god are
shrines of its inversion, the new antinomianism. This places are
epicenters of "illicit", unsupervised freedom-getting wasted, 
clandestine events, fucking, sleeping, squatting, graffiti 
and merely hanging out in a place unrelated to commerce (a
"sin" in itself) that isn't some trite regulated, allotted 
park. In our era without _TERRA INGOGNITA_ (land unknown),
these places become our secret valleys, our new Atlantis, our new
Alamuts.

Sigils and servitors seem to be the two key magickal techniques that
lend themselves well to graff/magick. Tag sigils around places prior
to charging them. Go to your local printer and make a stack of sigil
stickers. Try making a tag at of rearranging the letters in a
statement of intent, then put it up every where prior to charging it.
Paint the word into a huge elaborate graffiti style painting to
disassociate yourself from its original intent. Now your will will
manifest from multiple points of probability.

Take location of works of graf/magick into account with the
probability of your ritual work. Play the law of averages and fields
of probability into your favor as much as possible.  Always decrease
the room of chance working against you.

Use graffiti paintings as the material basis of servitors. Try
programming into the servitor that its to live as long as the painting
is up, then paint in a spot that you know will get buffed in a few
weeks if you are concerned about its disposal. Draw a picture of a
servitor as its material basis, then make a stack of photocopies to
wheat paste everywhere. Create servitors in these methods who are
intended to function virally or vampiricly.  Create tags to exist as
viral mimetic servitors to in act your intent through those they come
across and infect. Create an art campaign of terror against your
enemies in the form of a vampiric servitor that is to feed off of
their fear and panic.

There's a great deal of room for exploration in these ideas, and the
few presented here are only the tip of the ice berg of what could be
done.

It has been my personal practice to put stuff up first, and then go do
the workings, but this has been a matter of personal prefrence. I also
attempt to avoid those areas for a bit when at all possible. Try video
taping your graff/magick art work, then performing the rituals
necessary from the view of a TV screen as to disassociate oneself from
lust for results. This technique as devised by T.O.P.Y. lends itself
well to graf/magick.