- Conceptus: The Concepts of the Art
- Creo: The Way of Creation
- Gnosis: The Way of Belief
- Kia: The Way of Unity
From Principia, we move on to Conceptus, The Concepts of the Art. First we have Creo: The Way of Creation. Craft Brew Magick is the art of building castles in the sky. Or more accurately, Craft Brew Magick is the art of building castles in the mind. The practitioner crafts Dragon Marks to map the darkness of their mind and make the darkness navigable. Second we have Gnosis: The Way of Belief. To operate as a practitioner of any magic, one must learn to achieve a heightened state of knowing. In Craft Brew Magick, this is the Weaver Mind: the ability to choose to believe something for the purpose of using it as a tool. Or as noted in the Ars Holistica, “I do not care if the Fairy Tale is true. I care if the Fairy Tale is useful.” Finally, there is Kia: The Way of Unity. The practitioner must understand that any separation between the practitioner and the rest of creation is imagined. This is the Firebird Soul, the understanding that everything is contiguous and cannot be separated, and that apparent separation is an illusion created by Mystery. Mystery here is understood best in the same way that the Tao is explained in the Tao Te Ching, “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth; The Named is the mother of all things.”
Creo: The Way of Creation
Creo: The Mind of the Dragon
The most important concept underlying the ideas of Craft Brew Magick is the idea of Creo: the spirit of creation. Creo is a way of thinking about the universe. It is a way of conceiving of the universe, and the magician’s place within that universe. To understand the universe as Creo, is to accept that there is no separation. Everything is connected. Everything is one. You are the universe experiencing itself. You are stardust. And of course this is literally true. The atoms in your body were forged in the hearts of stars. The atoms in your body are constantly being replaced with atoms from other parts of the universe. Any separation is imagined.
Creo is the embodied essence of the Great Serpent. It is the fire and the fuel that drives magick. It is ambition and drive and desire. The Shadowlands is the Bonelands plus story and meaning. Creo is the story of the universe. Creo tells us that the universe created itself. It is the fire of Mystery breathed out by the Dragon with purpose. And the purpose provided by the Dragon is the drive to create. Creo is the building of the flame and the passing of the flame. The essence of the Great Serpent is the drive to build something out of the Mystery around us. This is Creo: considering the universe as a toolbox and a workshop.
Creo is a mindset that one enters to enact magick, The mindset of the builder and the warrior. It is the mindset of the scavenger and the tinkerer. When one is in tune with Creo, one sees the uses of everything. Everything is building material, everything is a tool. But contrastingly, because Creo is the understanding that there is no separation, Creo is also the understanding that everything is us. Everything is available for your use, because everything is building material. But everything is also our body. And everything we do affects us. Everything we touch also touches us. And we are everything. Everything we affect also affects us. And we are everything. Everything is available for our use. But we are everything. When we waste, we discard a part of ourselves. When we destroy, we destroy a part of ourselves. When we consume, we devour ourselves. There is nothing which is not us. There is nothing we can effect which is not also us, nothing we can find which is foreign to us, nothing we can touch which is not our body.
The goal of the magician, with regards to Creo, is to look at the world and see themselves in the heart of a star or the mite on their eyelash. The goal of the magician is to see siblings in all humans, and indeed all living things. The goal of the magician is to stretch and feel the earth stretch as well, to breath and feel the sky breath as well, to close one’s eyes and feel the moon rise.
Initially one may only be able to conceive of Creo academically. But with practice, one should be able to feel and understand Creo as a part of their normal experience. The goal here is to change the default mode the magician uses as they interact with the rest of the world. To lose the separated mind of the colonizer, and gain the holistic animistic mind of the magician. The colonizing mind is the cause of much of the problems of modern civilization and the Hungry Empire. And it is that mindset that severs us from the magick inherent in creation. To practice magick, you must break down those walls. Creation is first in the mind and then in the greater world. Creation is first in the Shadowlands and then in the Bonelands.
Gnosis: The Way of Belief
The Weaver Mind
“Alice laughed. ‘There’s no use trying,’ she said. ‘One can’t believe impossible things.’
I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. There goes the shawl again!”
Lewis Carroll
Now let’s talk about the Weaver Mind. This is the foundation of all the work that is to come. So take your time here. The ideas are deceptively simple. That does not mean that they are easy.
Central figures in the mythology that underpins Craft Brew Magick are the Firebird, the Weaver, and the Great Serpent. The Weaver is the entity we are working with in this section. The Weaver is the spinner of thread. The Weaver is the spinner of tales. The Weaver is the source of story, and story is a source of meaning. And when a craft brew magician seeks to do a working, they are seeking to change the Weaver’s story. And so they must tap into the Weaver’s Mind. Think of it as editing underlying code. You are playing with the source code of humanity, the source code of the world in which we live.
To understand the weaver mind is to remember that you do not live in the real world. To understand the weaver mind you must remember that you are living in the stories you tell. To understand the weaver mind you must remember that you living in the stories you believe.
“[…] So you must be very careful what you believe.”
Kurt Vonnegut
The Weaver Mind is the state of mind where one chooses to believe. The Weaver mind is the state of mind which allows us to use belief as a tool. And from this we reach and use the gnostic state, which we will discuss shortly. The Weaver Mind is a heightened state of knowing. And at the center of this is the skill in choosing to believe. Now this may catch the reader off guard. Which is good. Choosing to believe does not mean you disbelieve facts. Instead it means that you are able to choose what stories to believe.
We do not live in the Bonelands. We live in the Shadowlands, we die in the Bonelands. And so we must seek to see the shape of the Bonelands. We have to look through the Shadowlands as much as possible to see the Bonelands underneath. And as much as you are able to discern the shape of the Bonelands, you must accept what you see.
What you choose to believe about the world is how the Bonelands becomes the Shadowlands. And If you can hold the Weaver Mind, you can consciously choose the form that the Shadowlands takes.
You live in the Shadowlands. And the Shadowlands are built from stories. And you are capable of deciding which the stories apply to you. This is incredible power, and it is a power most people are unaware that they possess. This is the first magick. You decide what stories are yours. You decide what stories include you. You decide what stories have your support. You decide what stories you tell, and what stories you retell. And a host of others wish to control the stories you consume and the stories with which you identify. They want to control the stories you retell and spread, and the stories to which you give your power. Do not give away your power.
I do not care if the Fairy Tale is true. I care if the Fairy Tale is useful.
From The Ars Holstica
Gnosis
In Prime Chaos, Phil Hine describes Gnosis as a state of alter consciousness where the mind is focused on a single point. Craft Brew Magick differentiates between two types of gnosis: Fire Gnosis and Void Gnosis. Fire Gnosis maps more closely to the classical gnosis of Chaos Magic. The gnosis of Craft Brew Magick is an altered state of consciousness where one can more readily connect with one’s Creo and Kia. You are trying to touch the fire of creation. You are opening yourself up to the vastness of Mystery.
Gnosis comes from the Greek word for knowledge. The term was coined by Peter Carroll, and relates back to the ideas of Austin Osman Spare. Although Craft Brew Magick has modified gnosis from the classical chaos magic form. But the goal of gnosis remains the same, which is to bypass the conscious mind. The conscious mind plans, but the subconscious mind creates. The subconscious mind manifests. Preparation is the conscious mind. But when you sit down and do the work, the subconscious mind comes alive. And this is the goal of gnosis. You don’t want to know something in your head. You want to know it in your guts. Or, to quote The Matrix, you want to know it, “balls to bones.”
We would argue that gnosis is a central part of all magick. Chaos Magic talks about gnosis. But all magick requires the proper state of mind. We do not know any magician who believes that a working can be done without the proper mindset. This normally takes years to master. You will be practicing gnosis for the rest of your life. You will never finish learning how to access the state of gnosis. Now, gnosis can be achieved through drugs and sex and other exotic forms. But those are inconsistent in their results. We recommend meditation. I know, boring- but eminently more controllable and predictable.
Going back to what we said earlier, Craft Brew Magick deals in two types of Gnosis, Fire Gnosis and Void Gnosis. Fire Gnosis is creative. Void Gnosis is receptive. Both have their uses. Both should be practiced.
Fire Gnosis
If you have practiced chaos magic, Fire Gnosis will be the gnosis with which you are familiar. Fire Gnosis is The Gnosis of the Candle flame. It is the mind focused upon a single thing. Fire Gnosis is used for sending and creating. Fire Gnosis focuses the attention of the practitioner to a single goal and aims it like a rifle. The key here is the practitioner focusing on a single point. The point is to move past thoughts, the practitioner seeks a mind with no thoughts, only intent. The intent must be pre-word. The intent must be understood on a level deeper than words.
By pre word, we mean that the practitioner should aim to ignore and disregard thoughts formed using language. The practitioner instead seeks, in favor of thoughts, a pre-linguistic mind of sensory impressions and gut feelings. And then the practitioner will seek to disregard even those pre-linguistic words.
In the early going, the practitioner will be unable to avoid their mind generating words. The key to improving is not repressing this, but ignoring and disregarding it as unimportant. Ignoring or repressing something acknowledges it, and gives it power. The practitioner should instead simply disregard it. Let them pass, release them. Don’t become angry at your thoughts. Note them and then set them adrift and let them go. The thoughts are to be treated, not as intrusions or enemies, but as small things not worth even the attention required to get rid of them. Do this and they will disperse on their own with practice.
Instead focus only on the single point. If necessary, focus on an actual point or even the flame of a candle. The goal here is to burn the intended thought into the practitioner’s subconscious. The burrow it deep in, using the focus as a drill. What is being embedded in the subconscious and why can vary depending upon the practitioner’s purpose, but the goal is to embed something. Think about the Christopher Nolan film ‘Inception.’ That is the goal, to implant an idea, and then let it grow.
Void Gnosis
Fire Gnosis is an active, additive process. The practitioner is injecting something when they engage in Fire Gnosis. Void Gnosis is the opposite, it is receptive gnosis. Void Gnosis is the gnosis of the empty void, focused on nothing and open to everything. When a practitioner engages Void Gnosis, they are opening themselves up to the universe, to new experiences, to new understanding. The practitioner uses Fire Gnosis when they believe they know what needs to be added, when they believe they have the answer. The practitioner uses Void Gnosis when they do not know what they need, when they are seeking the answer.
The practitioner uses Void Gnosis for receiving and cleansing. The practitioner uses Void Gnosis for divination. Void Gnosis depends upon progressive relaxation, and slow deep breathing. Focusing on nothing, open to everything, drifting in the emptiness. The practitioner will disregard thoughts in the same way as they do for Fire Gnosis, but they will not retain a single point of focus. Instead intent is stated before entering the state, and then trusting the process. Once the proper state is achieved, the practitioner opens themselves up to the input from the universe and lets it wash over them.
Fire Gnosis pushes. Void Gnosis accepts.
Kia: The Way of Unity
Mystery
At the center of Craft Brew Magick is the concept of Mystery. You may have noticed that we capitalize Mystery. This is Mystery with a capital M. Mystery is The Tao, Mystery, “…the Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao…”
Mystery is the Hindu Godhead. Mystery is the Holy Spirit. Nothing is more powerful than mystery. Every discovery creates more mysteries than the number of Mysteries resolved by the discovery. Lucretius once speculated that the universe must be infinite. Is this true. We do not know. We have reached our sensors out to the edge of the known universe, more than fourteen billion light years in every direction. What is beyond that. We do not know.
Every answer creates more questions. The word atom means uncuttable. But of course cutting an atom is exactly what nuclear fission does. Learnig about the atom led to the question of the atom’s composition. Discovering protons, neutrons, electrons led to new questions, such as the nature of the electron in space. The more we know, the more questions we can ask. More Knowledge does not render the world simple, although more of the world becomes legible. The more we know, the more questions hove into view. All attempts to resolve Mystery, deepens it.
A secret of Craft Brew Magick is that Mystery is inescapable. Mystery is the glue that holds the world together. Answers do not cause Mystery to recede but to become fractal. And so, to live within the world as a seeker of Knowledge, one must become comfortable with ignorance. The more you know, the more you will realize what you do not know. Your ignorance will become visible to your eye. And you must become comfortable with that ignorance, and the great swathes of new Mysteries you can now perceive. Because to do otherwise is to go mad. In an infinite universe you are always the center of the universe, but this doesn’t mean that it’s all about you. Nobody important requires that you possess all the answers. You must allow yourself to be comfortable in your ignorance. You must allow yourself to be comfortable amidst every growing Mystery.
This does not mean complacency. This means humility. Never stop learning. But realize that you will never push back the Mystery, but you will instead succeed only in growing it. And that is okay. Mystery is sacred. Mystery is necessary.
“When asked “What do you believe?”, the magician, speaking from the central stillness of himself, should be able to reply, in all honesty, “I believe nothing”. With such a blank slate at his disposal the magician can then adopt and discard beliefs as he sees fit.”
The Book of Results, Ray Sherwin
Kia: The Firebird Soul
The term Kia comes from Austin Osman Spare. Spare described the Kia like this in The Book of Pleasure (1913), “Of name it has no name, to designate. I call it Kia I dare not claim it as myself. The Kia which can be expressed by conceivable ideas, is not the eternal Kia, which burns up all belief but is the archetype of “self,” the slavery of mortality.” Phil Baker compared Kia to the Tao in his biography of Spare. This is the root of the Craft Brew Magick conception of Kia. To connect to the infinite mystery is to connect to the possibility of all things. This is the state that the magician seeks to cultivate, not simply in rituals or workings, but in life more broadly. Reaching out and touching Mystery is the purpose of Gnosis.
As a point of interest, we came to Kia independent of Austin Osman Spare. Instead we came to the idea through Taoism and Pantheism. But we still formed a conception very similar to Spare. And so, when we turned to researching Spare and found his work on Kia, we took the name to acknowledge the work he had done and give credit for his ideas. We also call Kia, the Firebird Soul. The Firebird is Mystery, and the Firebird Soul (Kia) is to feel one’s connection to the greater universe. This conception is slightly different from Spare’s use of the word. Spare used Kia where we use Mystery with a capital M. We have elected to use the term Kia to apply to human understanding of Mystery since, to the magician, the practical application for this is in attaining the proper state of mind to practice magick.
Readers already familiar with Spare or Chaos Magic more broadly may balk at the terminology used here. And we do not object to those who wish to use the terminology in the more traditional manner defined by Spare. Just know as you read this how we have used it and you shall be fine.
Professor Harbinger's School for Villains 