Mood and Manifestation

Hmmm...

You know, I keep thinking back on the mood I was in when I was conjuring Bune for the amounts of money I got after the fire. As I said, I was desperate. I wasn't pleading or anything, I don't beg spirits for shit. They're my work force, not my masters. I tell them what I want to have happen. But I was a little ... uh, well, I was telling him like a whiney teenage girl. I was holding the bill in my hand in front of the spirit pot, pointing directly at the amount, saying, "Bune, I need THIS MUCH MONEY by THIS DATE. I you to make this happen quickly, as a windfall, because I can't think of anywhere it can come from. Don't let anyone get hurt, protect all the members of my family, let no death or illness come as a result, but do whatever it takes to get this money to me by the time I need it. Go, go now, and manifest this amount by this date. Hurry, and as the flame on the candle continues to burn after this rite, so also let this rite continue to full completion even if I'm not watching and monitoring you. Go now, go quickly, I need this money now. Go, in Name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen."

That's not exact, and the tone doesn't come through as well, but there was definitely a touch of anxiety and stress in the rite. The candle piece wasn't exactly like that, but that was the intent of the prayer at least. I can't remember the precise words. I may start recording rites on video so I can go back and check and see WTF I said when the results start coming in. There needs to be a record. Football players watch themselves in film to see how what they were doing really worked in real life from the outside. Maybe I'll learn something by watching that I'm missing.

And maybe I'll capture a DEMON on FILM!!! And then I'll totally email it to Lisiewski and be all, "Boomerang effect!? What?! What!?"

Heh heh heh...  I crack me up.

But seriously, my mood at the time of the conjuration was a bit hysterical. I was very stressed, and very anxious. The resulting means of acquiring the funds was an amplification of the anxiety and stress I felt as I did the ritual. Especially during the times that the checks were manifesting, there was resting hysteria level in our lives that is very similar in quality to the hysteria of the moment of conjuration. The method of manifestation mirrored the mood of the magic.*

I wonder how much, if at all, that played into the manifestation. Perhaps that's why the Ascetic path teaches to overcome the passions of the heart and mind, to be able to consciously clear them out of your head while you're doing the magic that makes the world.

Not that passions are bad, per se. They feel good, and in moderation have a role to play. A little controlled anxiety, like the suspense thriller movie or horror film "gotchas" that jump out at you can be good. Life without orgasm would just plain old fashioned suck, big time.

I'm thinking back over my past successes and failures thinking about how my mood at the time of the rites may have affected my manifestation. The Michael rite was desperate too, and the way it manifested left me desperate. The Tzadqiel rite was done without much hope or anticipation. The results fit that nicely.

I just have to be very careful of the Ispaklarioth Effect.** Ispaklarioth is Hebrew for "lenses."*** The Ispaklarioth Effect is when you look back on your life through the lens of one experience. I'm looking back at the rites I did through the lens of the hypothesis that mood affects manifestation, so I'm finding in my memory banks evidence to support it. I may be altering the memories, editing them, adding bits here and there, ignoring what doesn't fit so that I can support my latest theory. It's not a safe practice, and I suspect it leads to a great deal of misunderstanding, misrepresentation, poor scientific and magical practice, and likely has caused the end of more than one friendship.

But lenses don't always distort the light coming through, sometimes they align it. A polarized lens in prescription glasses or sunglasses lines up the photons of light before they hit your eye, clarifying what you're looking at. If you suffer myopia, a lens can correct that. The Ispaklarioth Effect can reveal a pattern of events and results that you've missed in a Eureka! moment, like the scientist who has done a thousand experiments trying to find the right hypothesis and then suddenly, after the last failed experiment sees a trend or pattern in all the past failed experiments that reveals the right correction that results in the revelation of a sound theory.

I don't know if mood affects manifestation. I never recorded the rites I did, so I can't go back and evaluate the data objectively. That's another reason to start recording the rituals, and maybe a post-ritual summary of events that I can review later.

But it's an interesting thing to think about, research, and start gathering data on. Record the mood during the rite. Just knowing I'll be accountable for the mood may be enough impetus to make me make sure I'm being thorough in my Work.

In the project management world, we have "Quality Assurance (QA)." That's a set of processes that have been developed to ensure the quality of the final end product. Periodically across the life cycle of the project, a QA person comes in and audits the project, checking to make sure the processes that were identified for the assigned tasks are actually being followed, and that any additional tasks that may have crept into the scope of the project have standards and procedures developed to ensure the task is done the same way each time, with only the necessary variations that come with any real life scenario. The QA auditor is not allowed to be affiliated with the project. They report to a separate set of managers, managers who don't have their raise and bonus tied to the findings of the audit the way a project manager does.

Obviously we don't all have access to a mentor or outside auditing agency who gives a shit enough about our magical practice to take the time and perform a thorough audit of our magical practice. The IOT used to make people keep a magical diary for a year before they could be admitted to the Order, but I don't know if anyone actually read the diaries. It would be pretty lame, boring, and would likely give you indigestion if you read the average chaoate's magical diary. The third time Cthulhu showed up, I'd get annoyed.

So we have to monitor our own quality, put in controls, checklists, and standards. They can't be too rigid, or you'd never be able to do magic. You have to keep it flexible enough to be able to conjure up Bune to do a quick exorcism of your cubicle as needed, or to bring riches through a performance review process that you didn't know was coming up, but there should still be some QA framework in place to make sure you're not in some kind of weird mood that may skew the results.

Hmmmm, sounds a lot like the kind of thing I was doing a couple years ago when my life was all stable and my magical practice was consistent and my results were consistently good.

I think I can track the turning point in my magical practice back to when I took the second job in November of 2008. From then on, I was harried, distracted, and generally lost focus. I should have scaled back my magical activities, and paid more attention to the details as things began spinning out of control. I let my stress overwhelm my common sense, and I wouldn't quit the job because I was a slave to the extra money. I stopped the regular practices, and started developing courses and teaching presentations instead of doing the foundational Work. I kept adding stress factors to my life instead of managing them. And while most of the additional stuff was Hierophantically motivated, the potential for making money with it was a key factor I have to recognize and accept.

Interesting. Again, I have to factor in the Ispaklarioth Effect, but still this is the kind of introspection that leads to a breakthrough in achieving harmony in discordant spheres.

* Alliteration makes my meandering machinations more meaningful. Mem Mem Mem, water, emotion, the Hanged Man. I may not be a modern qabalist, but I played one on the internet once.
** I made that up just now in this blog post. It's not a standard phrase, but it should be. It's pretty cool, you've got to admit. Sounds all magicey.
*** And is also the name of a group of wise magicians and kabbalistic Europeans, a cabal worthy of inheriting the Corpus Hermetica they have access to in Prague and London.