Adversarial Hypersigils

[wolven7]

We've talked about Hypersigils before. They are vast and complex living, creative works which go about changing the fabric and direction of your existence, via direct transference of effects through a kind of sympathy-to-your-life process, in which the thing which is created then... Well, for the skeptics, let's say it "allows for your perception to apprehend the ways in which what you create is already to be found, in your life." For the magicians, let's say it "creates and replicates those effects or situations which are found within itself as macro-sympathies in the observable universe." Or some shit like that.

Grant Morrison's The Invisibles was a hypersigil he designed to bring about certain experiences, in his life. Alan Moore's Promethea. Some say that, due to it's twisted mirroring of life in its earlier seasons, the latter third of The West Wing eventually became a hypersigil, which effected some interesting changes in the US political landscape. Austin Osman Spare's entire life's work, post The Blitz.

Hypersigils change lives, is my basic point. So, in that sense, what does yours do? What does it turn you into?

What is it that you create in order to become what you want to be?

Yeah, in a sense it's just "life," but usually the effects of "life" aren't that clear and direct. We don't wish a thing and have it happen. We don't speak a phrase and then watch the pieces of it fall together. Not every day. Not unless you are very... uniquely positioned. And maybe you are. Maybe we all are.

But we all definitely should be.

This is still pertinent.

Good night.

Comments

[ombriel.livejournal.com]

I have a question for you which I hope you don't mind my asking; I'm genuinely interested in your answer; don't feel obligated to respond if you find it annoying. Why the preoccupation or interest in teaching magical theory within the academy? I ask this as someone in and/or leaving academia...why teach there as opposed to somewhere that would clearly be more welcoming of and open to what you have to offer? The default approach to material like hypersigils would be, well, academic--not to take it seriously but as an intellectual inquiry, a curiosity. So why teach it there? TIA

[wolven.livejournal.com]

I have been asked this a number of times, but no, I don't mind it, at all.

I want to teach magical theory within academia, because I feel that the academy's treatment of magic is disingenuous at best and hypocritically appropriating at worst. Disciplines within the academy take components of magical theory-- ideas and concepts which have been around for thousands of years-- and "discover" them, much like Columbus and Cortez "Discovered" the Americas.

Part of what I want is to expose the process of conceptual appropriation, not to stop it, per se, but to make it more genuine. If we can say, at the base of it, "Hey, i got this idea from a Borges story," or "Just so you know, there's this thing called Indra's Net, and it gave me a wacky idea," then we can deal with Many Worlds Theory and Leibnizian Monads more honestly.

We've gotten this far by surreptitiously using magical thought and theory in building the applications of our conceptions; I want to see what we can do when we acknowledge it.

And that means railing against the academy, and it means teaching and talking to people who are disinclined to see the similarities between their sacrosanct theories and methods and those they deride. Does that make sense?

tl;dr version

[davidsfoley.livejournal.com]

You want to be taken seriously by the people who currently do not do so, and you don't want to be categorized as "woo-woo," yes?

Re: tl;dr version

[wolven.livejournal.com]

In part, yes. I don't care if it's "me" that's taken seriously, so much as the ideas I present.

But, then again, in the words of every mad scientist ever: "One Day, They'll All Pay For Doubting Me. One Day They'll ALL See!"

[unknownbinaries.livejournal.com]

What is it that you create in order to become what you want to be?

Deeply amused that, alongside your 'Question it into submission' tactic, I've been trying to form an actual goal of where I want to be, if I'm unhappy where I am as a person.

Wanting to be what I create, as such. :P

[wolven.livejournal.com]

That's a pretty fantastic loop. Should work pretty well, if you can get it going fast enough. Like in Portal.