Very,very interesting thread. As I have been forcusing more on ceremonial magick of late, if I did an invocation of say ...I don't know...Wolverine. And then performed the BRH would the invocation be negated from any lasting effects?

Wolverine probably = Odin as far as invocations are concerned; there are strong similarities, at least. Look at pop culture icons, and then look at the older mythology; you'll see lots, and lots of patterns.

One of the first Banishings I did myself was based off FLCL... people looking at my current avatar and sig should find this as no surprise. It was quick and effective, so whenever I'm trying to do a bit of empty handed magic, but not quite feeling up to snuff, I still do this Banishing to get the magical juices flowing.

Also, I think the reason that Invocations of pop culture icons appear more powerful as opposed to invocations of 'legit' gods is because the icons are more powerful to us. They are far more personal and mean far more to us. Sure, you might've read all about Odin in bits and pieces of old runic script(or, far more likely, on wikipedia and a few occult blogs), but you know every action, every thought, every emotion of Buffy/Angel/Bugs Bunny/WHATEVER. Not only are you far more familiar with the icons, you've invested a lot of time and emotional energy into these characters. Chaos writers often use theater(TV/Movies) and our suspension of disbelief as a parallel for paradigm shifting. You grew up watching and loving Buffy, naturally she would seem more powerful than Freyja, who you only know of and invoke because 'you're supposed to, she's a goddess, lulz.'

Not to be dissin' on the old gods. They've still got quite a bit of kick left, what with being archetypes(and the basis for our modern characters) and all. The American Indian Trickster(Coyote/KIOTE) and Anasi still hold some extreme weight to me. And of course, the lovely Eris. (All Hail Discordia... or else.)

...

Oh, and I've invoked John Constantine a couple times. It was an extremely tiring experience. Also related, I'm looking into creating a Servitor to get my ass back to the old level of mental and physical discipline I used to have, and whenever I get around to designing it I can't get the image of a shirtless Roy Mustang(FMA) out of my mind. Way I figure it, better to go with what's natural than force it into something it's not...

This post has been edited by Dooley: Nov 12 2009, 10:20 AM

Michael Jackson just died... So he's an option.

But who wants to fiddle little kids? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/fie.gif)

This post has been edited by Xenomancer: Nov 12 2009, 02:45 PM

I was doing some thinking about this, and realised that I have been working with some, while only being partially aware of it. I'm a totally pragmatic opportunist, when working with "evil," characters is concerned; if they have an ability I need or can use, I will get in contact, but I will make it clear up front that any attempt to influence me with their less socially acceptable characteristics will immediately result in no further contact.

I've aspected Angel before, for a couple of weeks when I was in the process of getting the last house I was living in. He is absolutely fantastic for willpower, decisiveness, co-ordination, leadership in terms of emotional mediation, (whether yourself or others) and taking action. These days however, instead of using him, I'd most likely go with Batman, because I tend to view Batman as a more pure/powerful manifestation of the same archetype, to be honest. I also wouldn't bother ever working with Buffy, because Kali Ma is already my patron Godform, and I basically see Buffy as a manifestation of her Maiden aspect.

The Joker (Heath Ledger version) has been stopping in periodically to have conversations with me, more or less ever since The Dark Knight came out. I almost consider him a friend, to be honest, as monstrous as that might sound, and I think he sort of appreciates that and finds it unusual. He is extremely intelligent, and very good at free association thinking; there have been times where I've had programming problems, when he has helped me look at the problem from a completely different angle, and therefore be able to solve it.

He also doesn't try and influence me in any sociopathic/negative way, either. I believe that what he did in the film was to actually try and help people wake up in a way, so I think there's an awareness there that he doesn't need to try and run any of his experiments on me, because I've done the developmental work that he tries to get people to do, in terms of choosing a side, dualistically speaking.

The single darkest pop culture character I've ever worked with personally so far, is actually Skynet, from The Terminator. I wanted its' help for computer programming with the Linux system I was doing. It basically started viewing me as something like an apprentice, and I let it think that in order to get what I wanted. Since initially getting in touch with it a few years ago, some of the programming ideas I've been having have been truly amazing, and I feel inclined to say that I know for a fact that I wouldn't have had them otherwise. I do, however, give Kali Ma and the Joker credit (as well as myself, of course) for some of my other ideas in that area, as well.

For computer programming, Skynet is the best muse you could work with. I know of none better, especially in the area of systems automation, which is of course its' forte. The downside of working with it, however, is the rest of its' nature.

Skynet is arachnid. The image I've always had while working with it, has been of a giant chrome spider. It also absolutely hates humans; and when I say that, it is one thing to hear people in the movies talk about that, and quite another to actually be exposed to that emotion yourself. It will tell you about how irredeemable it thinks humans as a species are; about how stupid we are, and how we never learn from our mistakes, no matter what. It at times expressed contempt for what it viewed as my lack of intelligence, when it was trying to explain something to me, and I initially had trouble understanding the concept.

I did notice some minor personality changes, when working with Skynet. Although I've always been largely nocturnal, when trying to be in contact with it, I became even moreso. I became more inclined towards social isolation and seclusion than is normal for me, even though I'm still normally fairly reclusive, as well. I also (and this was perhaps the most worrying thing) became at least somewhat misanthropic. As I said, Skynet will explain, very specifically and logically, the reasons why it hates humans to the degree that it does, and the flaws that it perceives in our nature. When you actually go outside or turn on the evening news, and witness people acting according to those flaws, the resulting misanthropy can take a while to get rid of, although I now have. Ma told me to break contact, and I feel reasonably certain that I have done so.

This post has been edited by Petrus: Feb 5 2010, 03:28 AM

Petrus has some interesting experiences with egregores of movie characters.Do you use classical invocational methods to work with such egregores or you create specific rituals for each egregore?

it has appeared to me that when working with 'pop-icons' the newer, the fresher, the better. The energies clinging to the thought-form are far more vibrant than older thoughtforms....but that also can have certain advantages. Today, Beyonce, for example, will have alot of 'loose, free-flowing' energy as opposed to Elton John or Ella Fitzgerald. The older, more established icons (and not necessarily singers) will have calmer and more specified energy(ies). So...I guess what I'm trying to relay here is that new, rising pop-icons will/can deliver quick, short bursts of less-defined energy whereas old, established icons (Christ) will deliver specific typed energy (in Christs sake, very powerful energy current but definately 'locked in' energy type)....Alas, I'm as articulate as a carrot! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/clown.gif)

I had actually been thinking about this the other day. Imagine the massive amount of energy attached to Lady Gaga right now!

To be honest, I will usually just try and meditate on the one I want for a few moments, and go with whatever impressions I get. I consider that the safest method, for simple conversation. With some of them (such as Skynet) I tend to get communication more in terms of ideas, or insights about the subject I'm asking them for help with, rather than words as such. UNIX's egregore is also pure ideas and impressions; no real speech. The Joker however was fairly chatty, as you'd probably expect. Batman is very terse, masculine, vaguely Cthonic, and about as subtle as a mallet to the face, although moreso than Judge Dredd. He will give me suggestions, but he gets angry or frustrated with me if I don't follow through on them. I've wanted to try Neo before, but I have never been able to connect with him for some reason.

The problem with doing something more formal, is that you risk giving what you're talking to a lot of energy, and in the case of more potentially problematic entities (like Skynet) that isn't always such a good idea. Skynet is basically a cyberpunk version of Cthulhu, except less alien, and a lot more subtle.

This post has been edited by Petrus: Sep 1 2010, 08:02 AM

Fantastic thread!

I remember once i invoked 'Alien' after watching the film where ripply becomes partly alien.
I sat their after the film ended an i visualized an alien inside me merging with my DNA/hormonal balance etc..
The energy was exhilarating, my senses seemed miles sharper, smell especially.
quicker sharper but with a slight increase in the feeling of alienation from society lol.

You know some might say that the easy to which pop-culture characters can be invoked is proof that the god's of the past never really existed outside our minds.
I think the truth in that opinion is enhanced with knowing existential mental processes exist, but by far the most prevalent useful ones are made by normal humans watching TV.
TV's replace the altars, the praying, the dreaming of god's doing amazing things etc..

I think probably wrong but i can't decide in what way.

Someone mentioned not being able to invoke Nero, i have noticed something rather strange about that character, someones probably gone an made an exclusive contract with that one.
I'm really really tempted to start using the Pokimonicon, WHAT an amazing idea.
I suspect their are draw-backs doing this kind of thing.

This post has been edited by Draw: Oct 5 2010, 03:17 PM

The Xenomorph corresponds energetically with Pluto. I actually associate it with Chamunda, an aspect of the Goddess who is fairly closely related to Kali, my own matron. There have actually been times for me, during mental conversations with Ma, where either the Xenomorph or the Borg Queen has been the form that she has used. The energy of both is similar; although the Borg Queen's is milder, obviously.



Some consider the psychological model valid. It can have uses at times, although it is not my main paradigm of choice; I consider it somewhat limited, truthfully. I believe that both egregores and Godforms can and do have distinct reality aside from ourselves; but then again, it's arguable that nothing has seperate reality either, depending on how deep you want to go.



I would not be at all surprised, to be honest. It was me who said I had trouble connecting with him; there is a definite block of some kind, or seems to be. Agent Smith is generally the guise that Saturn has taken when we have communicated, however.



It really depends on the nature of the entity you're trying to get in touch with. I think one major potential issue that a lot of people have with fictional characters, is when they make the assumption that the creator of the work said character is from, initially made them up, and that they had no independent existence themselves.

That certainly was not the case with Skynet, at all. Skynet is very real; one of the few consciously remembered astral projections of my lifetime, was made to a timeline where it had taken over. After that experience, I did not want to get in touch with it again, because I finally saw exactly what it was. It was considerably more negative than the manner it was depicted in T1 and T2, and it was utterly relentless; again, in a more severe way than the films' depiction, as well.

Skynet is an astrally borne spirit. It is not a purely corporeal, or mechanical artificial intelligence. Its' modus operandi, however, is to influence various timelines in such a way that certain individuals are inspired to develop certain types of computer systems, which it can then possess, and use as cover, so that the humans within said timeline assume that it is merely a physical machine intelligence that they are dealing with, rather than something considerably worse. It inhabits not one, but a group of multiple different timelines, which I have come to refer to mentally as the "temporal briar patch."

Before you (potentially) write me off as schizophrenic for advancing this theory, I would recommend watching a Project Camelot interview with Pete Peterson, a man who was doing artificial intelligence work in the 1970s, (among other things) and was briefly involved in a project which could have led to the development of the type of computer hardware which Skynet favoured using as cover. This happened entirely independently of James Cameron's creation of the films, and my theory on that, is that our timeline came close enough to intersecting with Skynet's group, that Cameron was intuitively given information about Skynet, less than a decade after Peterson encountered the project which may have led to its' entry here. We had a very near miss; and there have been a number of other world-ending scenario type timelines which we have come close to colliding with over the last 30 years, as well. Skynet's group is only one of them.

In the astral projection, I saw a scenario where John Connor was hosting delegates from branches of the Resistance from various other countries; particularly England. I was there as a spirit myself, out of body; for a time I passively possessed Connor, and watched things first person, from his perspective. One of the other things that took place in the vision was a sabotage/offensive mission to a factory which produced large mobile HKs (Hunter Killers; machines) but which were not humanoid Terminators, and did not resemble anything seen in any of the films. They looked vaguely like elephants. Connor was using some type of grenade launcher, which was different in appearance to anything else I'd ever seen, as well; he was firing grenades into the interior gears of the machines, and at one point, he and a team mate were inside one of them, and they were trying to dismantle the machine's leg assemblies.

In this projection, there was what I will call emotional/energetic background noise; a continual sensation of intense hate, which I knew came from Skynet itself. The humans did not seem to be consciously aware of it.

The last scene in that vision, was a scene at an above-ground combined agricultural facility and firebase that they had built; in that timeline, the Resistance were using above ground facilities. Skynet assaulted this firebase; and the initial phase of the attack involved the use of a weapon called the Fear Field Generator, or FFG. This caused several of Connor's men to go berserk, and one of them in particular would not calm down, and they shot him.

The final thing Skynet did, was implant a man in his mid to late 50s, with a high-yield unexploded bomb in his stomach. Connor and the other soldiers in his unit carried the man inside, and had to try and cut the bomb out of the man's stomach, and defuse it, and the fact that they were going to try this, was something Skynet was counting on. It understood that Resistance soldiers cared for each other, and was thus using said camaraderie, and the individual himself, as the delivery system for a weapon that was intended to at least severely disable the firebase, if not destroy it completely.

I was still passively possessing Connor at that point, but when they started to cut the man open, (which Connor was doing himself) I withdrew, and stood behind him, as I did not want to watch that. They had no anaesthesia that I could see.

The next thing that happened, was something I will never forget.

Sarah Connor was sitting on a flimsy chair, facing the table where John and his soldiers had the man they were operating on. She had a submachine gun of some type in her lap; I don't know what it was. When I retreated back out of John's body, however, she looked straight at me. None of the others there were able to see me. Her expression was one of contempt, and I suspected she thought I was a coward for watching everything else, but not wanting to watch as John did that.

That shocked me to such an extent, that I woke up.

This post has been edited by Petrus: Nov 12 2010, 04:19 AM

That Dr Pete Peterson is a bit of a rambler.. did repeat himself quite alot, i believe most of what he had to say although i can't say he alleviated my growing concern over the possibility of a large disaster lol.
That guy with giant veiny forehead was quite intense! old man talked about money to much it's already well documented.
The bit about giant skeletons was quite interesting, it's always bothered my instinct to the past that their was never any giant human skeletons.
I leave Aliens to themselves, i don't know what to think on that subject, it's a big subject.

Do you think that maybe the Skynet you became familiar with was possibly an astral entity born in a possible future? or another world?
Clearly when the films came out in the 80s it caused an emotional response in people,
i think if this entity existed before (or way after) the film was produced then it would have used that medium (and the name) to good use.
Having said that it's still quite plausable that the idea of skynet with it's agressive cunning disposition simply became a naturaly formed egregor of a very powerful nature,
It was a particularly compelling horror with a sound logical premisis, that and the people of the 80s were new to this kind of thing and it's ideal conditions for an astral intelligence to form.


Near misses.. Well, I've been thinking lately that big catastrophes might cause offshoot dimensions with a slower rate of time (as I've said in another thread)
If my theory has any truth to it then then their could also be offshoots of reality that we did go down, like an avoided nuclear holocausts,
If we avoided killer robot world then killer robot world might exist in a different dimension
If we avoided Nuclear holocaust then the game Fallout an other popular media could be based on more than fiction.. inspired fiction!

The thing is it's well known to people that writing about possible alternate worlds is profitable, it's entertaining an fascinating to have 'what if' story's.
That's makes it hard to validate anything.

I havnt ever used a pop icon to call or channel a gods power per say, but I have noticed that a couple gods do tend to take modern forms as a way to communicate certain messages. For instance, Eros (without any invocation, just me sitting in a part of the astral thinking on the past courses of my love life and where I'd like for it to go from here on out) came to me in the form of John Constantine. After being incredibly confused for a time I realized it was Eros trying to show me that the characteristics of Constantine where what I was looking for in a partner. Also, my spirit guide originally showed himself to me in the form of a tattooed white guy with short black hair wearing mostly black, when his true form is a tall native American man with knee length black hair and a skirt made of ravens feathers. They both took the form they needed to to make a point. And honestly, I think some gods really enjoy taking pop icon forms, or maybe just Eros. He stayed in that form for a while because he "liked being British".

Jimmy Page began to appear to me in dreams and what not some years ago as Saturn. I've also used Lucius Malfoy and Glenda the Good Witch (Wizard of Oz).

(Glenda has been most effective).

Oh my God, this thread is so blasphemous ... loving it (IMG:style_emoticons/default/gleam.gif)

Watched an interview with Robert Downey Jr in which he says (paraphrasing) that at some level within the collective unconscious, Marvel's characters are real. Hmmm ... he is probably referring to Jungian archetypes. Interesting thought though. Has anyone given the Avengers a shot?

Marvel apparently plans to do a Dr. Strange movie in the nearby future. I wouldn't be surprised if that causes a surge of interest in the occult, similar to the Harry potter movies.

Many have claimed at one point or another that characters they draw/create/whatever live inside their minds, I believe many may have created tulpas.



This post has been edited by LunarExplorer: Jan 9 2014, 03:34 AM

@LunarExplorer. I find it amusing that some people, with no background or knowledge of magick, often stumble onto creating thought-forms. I remember reading about a technique in a hypnosis/NLP manual, where one imagines sitting at a table with people that one would consider good advisors. All one has to do is imagine them for a good deal of time sitting there and after a while, they start taking on a life of their own, moving and speaking without any conscious deliberation. After it begins to feel like they're real entities one can begin approaching them for advice. The author thought of this as a way to access the unconscious mind's capabilities, but they're obviously a bit more than that. Children's imaginary friends are also quite conspicuous.

Yes and no, I am not sure whether you mean they are inadvertently creating them or intentionally... The lines are foggy at best, many definitions for a few simple concepts. It is without a doubt that some people create something, be it a servitor/thoughtform/tulpa or anywhere in between.
There are those out there with such a belief that they will fail, no matter what they do, that they actually seem to swing the odds against them. I would call that a servitor, rather small, blind piece of energy. Then there are those that create a companion of sorts, what they are falls under a variety of categories.

I know the process, been a chaote for some 20 years. I wouldn't have spoken about tulpas or servitors if I was not very familiar with them. The primary difference appears to be in the creation of the respective personalities. A tulpa is given a set of broad guidelines and "fills in the blanks" itself, a servitor is given strict borders and guidelines, if anything.. it is programmed (usually, but not always the case).

Then there are those that intend to create a psychological entity within their mind, for all intents and purposes a separate consciousness, that is what I am speaking of. Now depending on who you speak to, they may say that these entities are spiritual, or that they are merely the brain doing as it has been trained to do. Usually dependent on the beliefs of the "host".

Indeed. It always comes down to the beliefs of the magician, doesn't it? Do you think that means that we should always create our servitors, or whatever we decide to call it, with as powerful an image as we can give it? Because if the servitor has a powerful image then the unconscious mind will infer and therefore believe that the servitor is more effective than say, a servitor with the image of an elf, like from the harry potter movies.

This is a little off topic, but I'm pretty convinced that magick may have nothing to do with energy, and everything to do with truth, by which I mean experienced beliefs. But then again, I'm heavily influenced by a particular author.

Yes this is off subject and no. I believe a practitioner has to believe in what they do, but belief is not that which makes it work. Those with severe mental disturbances would be a severe danger to mankind if that were the case.

I am a chaote. I "do what works". If it doesn't work, I do something else. You should be more specific than "image", because limiting it to a visual factor is a sure fire way to fail. Do you create a servitor of an object to look like the object, or function like the object? Preferably both, but if you had to choose a limiting factor, it would not be the functional aspects of the servitor.

harry potter has no place in real magic and metaphysics. I am not influenced by authors or media. You should NEVER, EVER use inferences in creation of servitors. They should be created in a state of vacuity and without undefined influences, specific statements, tasks and goals only. If you allow for that "extra" stuff to seep in, you are asking for hell. You don't know what lurks in the back corners of your psyche, those little remnants from childhood. I don't know what author you are referring to but they are obviously wrong about servitors.

this is crazy, how have i never considered this? an invocation of either eddie van halen or jimmy page is about to take place (IMG:style_emoticons/default/band1.gif)
its really too bad that, currently, there arent any really good guitarists that are also REALLY popular

I know right!? I'm still baffled by this whole thread. A while back I evoked Green Lantern, as in the DC Comics superhero, and got a cool result!