A question came up recently as I have been applying for jobs and am vexed that I get an interview only erratically. I do well when I get into the interview but with the volume I send out it is frustrating I don't get there more often. Therefore, after doing all the mundane things I can do to a resume I started looking for magickal ways to help myself. Problem is that I am sending it off via the internet. If it was a real object I could dress it in any number of ways, but whenever I think about dressing or enchanting a virtual copy I can't see it working. Is there something intrinsic about the internet or "virtual space" to include computer files that makes magick on it or through it imposable?

The closest act to what I would like to do would be to put a powerful intent into the person reviewing my resume so that I look like I deserve an interview. In theory the "virtual realm" is much like the astral and so magick should fit right in. Problems, however, naturally arise when you don't know who is reviewing the resume, and often time (even for academic and political jobs such as I apply for) a computer is doing the vetting. This left me with the conclusion that I must simply do a general spell. Do a general spell get a general result. While I would like to be employed in general, I must apply for jobs in particular. So I am at a loss, how might one using or transmitting a virtual object to an unknown someone or something magically improve the chances of selection?

It may be that the document being virtual must be crafted in the same way one crafts a - equally nonphysical - spell. Focused intent (something of a given when applying for a job) and more importantly careful arrangements of words and symbols to invoke the desired reaction. But that sounds a lot like writing a resume the mundane way, and said words and symbols must have the same meaning for others to have the effect; or perhaps not but it seems intuitive. Perhaps someone has ideas on making it more magickal.

Three vexing questions and my thoughts on them, some help would be much appreciated.

Interesting questions. In the past enchanting resumes we made a thin clay tablet with the front page transferred onto it in a process of layering paper with particular kind of ink so that baking the clay burns the paper and sets the ink into the clay. Fun, interesting prospect and of course additives to the clay itself, consecrations, and then a kind of talisman ritual using the tablet itself.

You might try something similar with a disk or CD containing only the resume document? Hmm...

Nice work around.

Let me see if follow you: the clay mock or cd is a stand in for the resume which is enchanted to cause the desired effects in the thing it represents, much in the way a voodoo doll operates. If the voodoo analogy holds then every resume I send out is getting a portion of the effect? Or would it be more that the one stands for the many and when the reader accesses the file they tap in to the enchanted cd? The two would have to be very different rituals but I can see how they might work.

Basically. In many ways the sympathetic connection between virtual copies would be even greater - in the case of paper resumes we're looking at icon vs. image; whereas the copy on any medium of a virtual document is literally the same pattern, the same binary encoding. Mmmm... I envision a magic circle with the binary written round the edges like the serpent of the lesser key crowly/mathers version. Of course that's impractical, it would be very, very, very long, but neat idea, isn't it?

And yes the principal is the same as the voodoo doll and other types of sympathetic/icon rituals. Most every culture has some version, so whatever magic you typically practice probably presents a method more to your specific current. I may actually try this with our marketing material, though I'd have to create the final versions all at once for months in advance and burn them to the same CD. A CD or DVD seems ideal as they are already circular and in some ways the presence of the small circle at the center gives the impression of microcosm/macrocosm, as above so below, etc. I would think you would want to commit the copy to the CD, remove all other copies present from your computer, and then copy the file back from the CD after enchantment.

Another prospect would be to create digital versions of the proposed images used in the right itself. By burning the files in sequence, for instance, you can arrange them to be arrayed along the CD from "inner" to "outer" as the equipment will burn the first files nearer the center of the CD and then outwards towards the rim. So, you might create an 'empowering' image (scanned or made perhaps in photoshop in keeping with digital ritual)((How does one consecrate such a tool? Consecrate your copy of photoshop? And then use a ritual install or consecrated hardrive as the digital temple? This is quite a fascinating topic, now that I get into it...))

So, files in sequence in the order a ritual might be constructed - opening, invoking, empowering, sealing, closing, etc (different orders for different folks) - and then the actual ritual itself to enchant the CD and it's contents.

These are just ideas about the act itself, ways that I might go about it. You could incorporate other elements as well; a brass casing for the CD, a jewel case of some particular color depending on your associations for them, etc.

The important part afterward, symbolically, would be I should think, copying the file directly from the CD to send it anywhere. So that, digitally speaking, the same 'pattern' is being copied.

Should be an interesting experiment. What field of work are you trying to get a job in?

peace

Would I need to chant in BASIC?
Never thought about the representations that way before, I was always thinking about the object as it is seen by a reader not the substance of it.



One could go a step further and use a watermark of the empowering image on the resume/cover letter itself, Word allows watermarks to be present even if the transparency is set to 99-100%. A consecrated copy of photoshop would be easy enough. It follows the same format for the CD with the resume, the same line for line code is taken form the install disk and put on the computer. Anything that program did while on the computer would be similarly consecrated so when it unpacks and installs it is still consecrated. Though amusingly enough it would be a lot like having your consecrated Graver building pen for you to use. It’s the hardrive that would cause the problems. I imagine you would need a whole separate hardrive to use – possibly even a consecrated OS – otherwise every non-magickal act you do on your computer would muddle the sacredness of the virtual space. Something like doing your taxes on your alter.



A copy of a copy being degraded? I can see that for paper copies the paper, ink and what not being new and un-enchanted. But I am not so sure that the link might not hold through several electronic copies. The pattern is the same and in every way nothing new is added or taken away, or is it more to do with the act and intent of copying from the original. If either one is true it complicates things. If it is sent by email then two copies exist, the one on my email server (upped from the CD) and the one copied to the recipients email server. Then if they forward it to someone else that would further degrade the link. Personally, I am inclined think that if the pattern is not changed it should hold though several copies.



As unfashionably as it is I am trying for government work or a social research/lobby group. Think the Government Accountability Office or the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Though if I don’t get work soon I may join the angry hoards in McPherson Square.

This post has been edited by fatherjhon: Nov 10 2011, 12:44 PM

Ah, but magic is about the substance of a thing, not the thing itself. And the substance of the thing isn't even the physical substance, but the substance of the spirit. Thus the enchantment over an object of brass is not broken because I cut the piece of brass in half, but because in so doing I have impressed upon the spirit of the thing my intention to do so.



I wonder, if you can have a separate room in the same house if you cannot then use a separate partition within a hard drive. The thing about the spirit of these virtual objects is that in human awareness of them, we consider them to be continuous - so although there are ultimately about 6 virtual copies of the file by the time someone reads it physically, in terms of our awareness of the thing there is really only one. This concept of sympathy through likeness, of each thing that is like another is/can be effectively that other, is taken to an extreme that we are barely even aware of. Consider the programs on your computer - do you consciously consider the copy on the disk/install file to be literally a different entity than the program itself? Not in terms of intellectual analysis, but in terms of human awareness. We say things like "I put MS Word on this computer", even though what we really did was initiate a process of encoding according to an algorithm established by an installer protocol - the install file is a set of algorithms, and not actually usable as the resulting program. Yet, we are aware of these things in a continuous and unified nature.



When it comes to physical things, we see them a little differently. If follows along the lines of "the image of a thing is similar to the thing itself". But if I make a copy of a resume so enchanted, and someone else is holding that resume copy, then there is a degradation of the link proportionate to our awareness of their separateness. If you can see the two in the same place, then there is more degradation than if, for all you know, there is only one copy at all. The intervening copies in an electronic case are linked by wires and code, in a way the link is somewhat physical. Information itself is not non-physical, really, even the flipping of states from negative to positive in a storage medium is physical, and it is the representation of that physical state that gives us binary, and thence to script code, algorithm, and representation. The link is physical from one computer to another even across the globe, even when it involves satellite links. So there is, at most, ultimately only one realistic degree of separation. Now, the link itself, is not physical, but is only represented physically in so much as we impress that representation upon the thing. That is to say, the link does not degrade at all so long as we are able to maintain the knowledge that the link exists.



Mmm, if you work with planetary powers, Jupiter is your goto, I think, not only for responsibility but for its association with government. Mercury for the lobbying perhaps. I recall you work a somewhat taoist system though? Have any ancestors who were successful in these areas?

You know, if you have any ancient floppy discs around, they are encoded magnetically, which might be appropriate to work of an 'attracting' nature.

Also, if you join the occupy-wherever-the-hell groups, you do know the guy in line behind you is a step closer to a job, right? Funny story, we did some magic for my partner to find a job (I don't like doing magic for other people because you can't know just how they feel about the goal and how they want it to happen, it's usually not a good idea, but we did the prerequisite talk about how he might end up at macdonalds) and it took about a month and a half but he did get one, modest pay but decent benefits. However, it was during this time that the 'occupy athens' thing 'took off'. They were loaded with people for a minute, Jason got a job, and then the occupy Athens crowd sort of dispersed. I wonder how many people were on the verge of giving up, did so long enough to clear the 'line' as it were, and then got back in line...

peace

Some times it makes me shake my head, every time I think I am looking deeply at something I find it was just the surface. Ok so I have to keep the link alive, fair enough.



Funny thing is I did a big ritual with Jupiter back in May. Circle, candles engraved with a sigil of my intent, evoked a proper angel, made by hand some money and Jupiter incense, timed it so Jupiter was prominent and the waxing moon was in my house... more work than I do for most workings. Got noting from it but about fifty less dollars.

The closet thing I have to ancestors who were good at business was a great grandfather who ran a moonshine ring in Alabama and had to move and change his name after killing a IRS man. Not sure what kind of advice he might give but I assume it involves bribes.

I do magick according Taoist mysticism, so I think should stick with it. Lu-Hsing (Xing) is a god who is in charge of the heavenly employment office so to speak. He is also the god/first star of the big dipper and controls ones fortune in wealth. I have been thinking of making a shrine to him for a while now. I might print out of his picture, past it to a wall scroll and mounted on an alter in some auspicious spot would suit him well. Daily offerings of incense, candles could not hurt. His sigil is a stag (symbolic of run away success) so I will use that as the image on the CD - though I like the magnetic disk too.



No No, you mean I can't get a Job by yelling about how I want one? The world really is unfair.

I was just going to go off and play with social movements, I can yell about not having a job and keep applying.