Radices

• Radices: Root Work
  • Mythic Ecology: What Sustains the Magick
    • Symbols and Sigils
    • Mythopoeia
  • Magical Substrate: What Underlies the Magick
    • The Art of Memory
    • Informational Gravel

From Conceptus, we arrive at Radices: Root Work. The Radices is divided into Mythic Ecology and Magical Substrate. Mythic Ecology is what sustains the Magick, the way you order your mind in order to make it habitable to entities. Magical Substrate is what underlies the Magick, the things you add to your mind to aid your magic and feed the ecology. Mythic Ecology is built on a base of symbols and sigils, upon which the practitioner builds Hypersigils and Fiction Suits. And from these tools, the practitioner crafts Reliquaries and Artifacts to aid them in their daily life. The whole of this operation forms the practitioners personal Mythopoeia. Mythic Substrate is built upon the classical art of memory, with mind palaces and symbolic bootstrapping; the use of symbols and contrived knowledge to order the mind of the practitioner into a usable state. The idea is to provide the practitioner with Informational Gravel that can foster a healthy mythic ecosystem and the more esoteric things the practitioner wishes to build in their inner world.

Mythic Ecology: What Sustains the Magick

What is Mythic Ecology?

I have stolen much of my practice from other sources. But as far as I know, this is something entirely my own. Mythic Ecology is the way you order your mind in order to make it habitable to entities. Most occult practices assert that the entities with which one deals are independent of the practitioner. Craft Brew Magick makes no such assertion. It does not say that this is not so. But Craft Brew Magick proceeds from the logic that the practitioner operates as though everything grows within their own mind, they will achieve greater success than they would assuming that these things exist outside their mind. It is entirely possible that the assumptions Craft Brew Magick recommends simply please the entities and cause them to become more sociable. But either way Mythic Ecology is the way you order your mind in order to make it habitable to those entities.

So how does one make your mind a place that is habitable to magickal entities? You must make you mind attractive to those entities. And the Entities are parasitic beings that live in story. They feed upon you in exchange for providing assistance. So you must offer up things which they want. You must make your mind attractive by building mental structures where they can live. You must think of your mind as an aquarium which you are ordering with the necessary equipment to keep these entities alive; because like tropical fish, they are delicate and averse to poor conditions.

And so, you must build sigils and hypersigils, artifacts and reliquaries, and Fiction Suits. You must build connecting stories to allow the entities to live together and interact. These are the submerged castle and the filter and the bubbler. You must learn about your entities, fill your head with knowledge of their myths and stories. You must learn about the cultures from which they derive. You must learn what they like and dislike. You must fill your head with things the entities will find comforting. And then you must weave these stories together, help the entities get to know each other. You are building a mythic ecosystem in your mind and constructing it so that it can sustain life. The simplest way to do this is with research, writing, journaling, and the like. You could also use techniques such as sacred artwork, channeling and communing with the entities, role-playing games, and other more active processes. This is the art of mythopoeia. Writers use mythopoeia to craft worlds for their stories. You will use it for much greater purposes.

Symbols and Sigils

On Sigils

All language is sigil magic really. All language is translating intentions into symbolic abstracted form. In general sigils work best when they are understood directly, rather than being translated. So a logo that is simply the name of a corporation in a specific font is indeed a sigil. But since the human mind reads and translates the word letter by letter, it is less effective than a logo. The Golden Arches are a more powerful sigil than the full logo for McDonald’s. The mouse ears are more powerful than Walt Disney’s stylized signature. So how does this relate back to incantations?

Virtually all sigils are attempts to concentrate the essence of something into a more compact form. Sigils are, paradoxically, both abstracted and concentrated. Look at any tarot deck. Each card is a highly concentrated set of ideas and meanings, but abstracted into symbols and allegories. The idea is to both communicate and to confound the conscious mind, to bypass the mind’s defenses and penetrate directly. And perhaps do the same to the sacred story and the mind of the world.

Spare felt that the sigil practitioner should attempt to forget the meaning of the symbol. I disagree. I suggest instead a sort of Zen forgetting. Attempt to understand the sigil on a pre-linguistic level. Attempt to understand and internalize the meaning of the sigil without words. Attempt to understand it at a more primal level. Let the meaning wash over and penetrate you. Allow the sigil to induce metamorphosis. You intellectual mind is brilliant at find justifications and thinking of ways not to change. You conscious mind is stasis and inertia. If you wish to change your life, you need to ambush your conscious mind. This doesn’t mean forget the sigil. This means understand it and know it more deeply than you know the letters in your name. The opposite of forgetting.

On Sigils and Hypersigils

Sigils can be broken down into Incantations, Fiction Suits, Glyphs, and Hypersigils. Sigils in all their forms straddle two categories in Craft Brew Magick depending upon how they are used at the time. They are Radices as a part of the Mythic Ecology when used to build up the underlying systems of a practitioner’s practice. While they fall into Mendacium when they are used as active workings.

Hypersigils, as a part of the Mythic Ecology, are the broadest category of Sigils. When used for Mythic Ecology, the other types of Sigils are typically worked into the larger Hypersigil. Hypersigils are the largest and slowest category of Sigil. Fiction Suits come second, not a slow or involved as Hypersigils, but still awkward to use quickly. Incantations are, once crafted, the quickest and most immediate of the Sigils. Glyphs are theoretically as fast as Incantations, if one uses a pre-drawn sigils- think Full Metal Alchemist and Roy Mustang’s Gloves. But if one is drawing a Glyph; even if already designed, Glyphs are typically not as fast or immediate as Incantations.

Glyphs and Incantations can be either made at the time or use, or made in advance. An existing Glyph or Incantation is more predictable, as it has been used previously and has a worn a rut in the Practitioner’s Mythic Substrate. An existing Glyph or Incantation also carries baggage, however. As any previous bad experiences or similar are also now attached and built into the Mythic Substrate. Fiction Suits and Hypersigils are essentially building permanent workings that slowly deepen with practice. Using either as an active short term working takes a lot of creativity on the practitioner’s part. Ideally, the goal is to build a Mythic Ecology and Substrate that are so effective that they no longer require the practitioner to engage in active workings.

Fiction Suits

Grant Morrison coined the term Fiction Suit. When they wrote their seminal work: The Invisibles, they crafted the character of King Mob. King Mob was everything they wished to be, an identity to aspire to. And having built this identity, Morrison rebuilt their own appearance and activities to match the character they had crafted. They shaved their head. They spoke like King Mob. They did things King Mob would do. They went places King Mob would go. And slowly the other attributes Morrison had written about King Mob manifested in Morrison’s life. The met people who matched King Mob’s associates. They even suffered health catastrophes which mirrored the ordeals they wrote for King Mob in the graphic novel. This is the Fiction Suit.

The practitioner builds a version of themselves in conceptual space and then steps into that concept by imitation. Practitioner does this in depth, crafting the identity down to the smallest detail. How does the new identity talk? How does the new identity smoke? What do they order at the bar? And after getting to know the fictional identity intimately, the practitioner steps into the role. Morrison wrote about their fiction suit in a published graphic novel that thousands of people read. Certainly this helps, but identity need not be published or read by strangers. You may even find success without writing about the identity at all. Perhaps you will manifest the fiction suit through a series of songs about them, or a series of portraits, or a sheaf of poems. But you need to manifest the identity into the story in some way for you to have something into which you can step. Mere description might be sufficient, but we recommend more than something so clinical. The art you craft does not need to be skilled. That is not the point. The point is that the identity is given life in some way sacred to the Story.

The Fiction Suit is the process of “fake it until you make it.” or rather make it by faking it. The Fiction Sui is one part performance art and one part method acting. And in fact, reading books or taking courses on method acting is highly useful to the practitioner seeking to build a fiction suit. And we strongly recommend that all Craft Brew Magicians build themselves fiction suits. The easiest way to become the magician and occultist you wish to become is step into that identity via a fiction suit. In many ways, this is what born again Christians do when they transition to that new identity. The Fiction Suit is a powerful transformational tool.

A Fiction Suit is a fictional construct built to be worn until the person grows to fit the suit. A Fiction Suit is an aspirational idea of oneself. A Fiction Suit is a ritual designed to transform the self into something more. A Fiction Suit is a lie told so well that the universe is fooled.

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

Artifacts and Reliquaries

Tools, Artifacts and Reliquaries are physical links to stories and entities. They are the tools of the trade. Tools are objects which has a practical function. A stick of chalk for drawing circles and sigils for instance. If the tool has any symbolic usage however, then it is an artifact or a reliquary as well. Sea Salt used for a salt circle that was extracted from a sacred site on a symbolically important coastlines for instance. Artifacts are hand built physical items with symbolic links to stories and entities. A hand rattle for instance. Reliquaries are physical items with direct links to stories and entities. A finger bone of a deceased relative for instance. An Artifact is a tool with a created meaning. A Reliquary is a tool with a natural meaning. A pen is a tool. A pen with a hand carved sigil on it is an artifact. Your grandmother’s favorite pen is a reliquary.

The practitioner uses Artifacts and Reliquaries in several ways: dramatic use, sympathetic use, and practical use. Dramatic use of a tool is the use of a tool for its pomp and ceremony. This is using the tool as a psychodramatic tool. Using a chalice to hold liquid instead of a plastic mug for instance. Sympathetic use of a tool is the using of a tool for its connection to a separate and relevant subject. A glass globe filled with the hair of a person who wish to help heal for instance. Practical use of a tool is the using of a tool for a practical and pragmatic purpose. Drawing a pentagram with a red felt marker for instance.

The majority of physical items with which you work will fall under the definition of a tool. Many items may fall under the definition of both a reliquary and an artifact. These distinctions are largely pedantic. The use of these distinctions is that ideally you want your tools to be both reliquaries and artifacts to maximize the symbolism and power that those tools have for you. These definitions are guides on how to build your tools. Don’t get too hung up on it.

What is Mythopoeia?

Noun
mythopoeia (plural mythopoeias)
Creation of any myth.

From Wikitionary

Mythopoeia is the building of myths. For the Craft Brew Magician, mythopoeia is the creation of one’s own myths. Which sounds pretty dramatic, maybe overly involved and ambitious. Kind of scary right? No. Calm down. We do this every day. No Christian has the exact same set of myths as any other. No Jew or Muslim or Pagan either. In theory they should be the same, but they are aren’t. No human is the same. No human thinks the same. No human interprets their experiences in the same way. And no two humans have the same experience.

Believers prioritize different parts of the canon that they share with other believers. Believers syncretize different things into their mythology. Some Christians syncretized Saturnalia and Yule in Christianity. Others refuse. The average American Christian imagines their savior, who was born in the Roman controlled Arabic Peninsula, as a white guy. Think about how silly that is. But you’ve seen the imagery. I’ve seen it. We’ve all seen it. Is Jesus a gentle soul? Will rich people get into heaven? Depends on the mythopoeia of the person doing the myth making.

So we all engage in Mythopoeia. Craft Brew Magicians simply do so consciously and with purpose. They ask, what entities would fit in my mythology? They ask, what practices and beliefs will complement the ones I already hold? You will be doing this for the rest of your practicing life. What do you need? What does it do? And then, how can you weave it in?

If this seems daunting, you will find in the later books that we have done much of the work for you. We have cultivated a mystical aquarium full of entities and symbols, maps and stories, all for your use. So if this seems like it’s going to be too much for you. Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.

Magical Substrate: What Underlies the Magick

What is Magical Substrate?

“The substrate of an aquarium refers to the material used on the tank bottom.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substrate_(aquarium)

What is Magical Substrate? Magical substrate is the things you add to your mind to aid your magic and feed the ecology. Magical Substrate is the magickal equivalent of the little pebbles and the plastic castle and kaiju sized scuba diver (when compared to the plastic castle). The inside of your head is an aquarium. And the entities you deal with in your practice live inside that cranial aquarium. And if your psychic pebbles are spread too thin, or if your mental castle is to rickety, then your connection with Paimon or Stolas or Buer isn’t going to be a friendly as you might otherwise like.

Is this a call to do more reading? Yes. Am I saying you should be reading the dense or dry stuff. Yes. I am. Even if you don’t find the ideas useful, this is useful substrate. You learn context that other occultists will use for their statements. You will learn tactics and tools; some of which you may never use, and some of which you may love, and some of which you may adapt to something that does prove useful to you. You may get introduced to an entity with whom you hit it off. You accumulate experiences, you increase both the depth AND the breadth of your knowledge. Depth of knowledge is specialization. And specialization is very popular and well regarded. Breadth of knowledge get a bad rap. Breadth of knowledge means you’re a dabbler, a dilettante. You aren’t serious. You need to pick something and stick with it. We say, do both. Pick a specialization, absolutely. But dilettante the heck out of everything else. Because just like a varied diet is good for your health, a varied mental diet is good substrate for the entities in your head.

The things you add to your mind to aid your magic and feed the ecology

The Art of Memory

Your mind is where magical beings live. They live on your tongue as you speak of them. But most of the time, they live in your short and long term memory. They dance across synapses and neurons, and yes that is a poetic metaphor rather than biology. The point remains. These things have life within the stories that are told and remembered. The entities can reach out from our memories and influence the larger world in which we live. They have power so long as their stories are told and remembered.

For the practitioner, memory is key. What you cannot remember, you cannot consciously use. Some vestige may remain hidden in the subconscious mind, but that is beyond the practitioner’s ability to control. Such entities are interlopers, interfering when they wish to act rather than when the practitioner calls upon them. They are phobias and compulsions. They are biases and bad habits. They are blind spots and pet peeves. The consciously remembered entities are yours to call upon as you need and as you choose.

“Named must your fear be before banish it you can,”

Revenge of the Sith Novelization, Matthew Stover

Therefore you memory is a powerful tool. The Art of Memory is the ancient formalized discipline of improving one’s memory. Smart magicians use the art of memory to encode and compress massive amounts of information for later recall and use. Mystics such of Giordano Bruno devised elaborate systems in the Art of Memory. We recommend that the practitioner begin by reading Moonwalking with Einstein, by Joshua Forer. The topic is too large to include here. But suffice to say that as the practitioner progresses through this book, they will see many avenues where improved memory is useful, even borderline essential. We shall refer to techniques from the art of memory: the mind palace for instance. And we shall explain some of those practices here. But the practitioner is strongly urged to make the Art of Memory a part of their own ongoing learning.

Mind Palaces

The entities you keep in your mind will need a place to live, a place to sleep, a place to eat. This sounds silly, and it is. But silly is memorable. You are more likely to remember things that are silly or outlandish, that are rude or transgressive or dirty. You are more likely to remember things that are well defined, that are well described, that are easier to visualize. Which brings us to mind palaces.

Mind palaces are part of the art of memory and are a type of memory art known as systems of loci. Mind palaces are mental constructs used to organize and store information in the mind for later recovery. A mind palace requires mental bootstrapping, meaning that you will need to spend time getting the mind palace ready, and work on memorizing the mind palace itself before it becomes useful. But mind palaces are very useful. Practitioners of the art of memory typically use mind palaces as a means of memorizing long lists of items: decks of cards, lists of employees, and similar items. Normally the items memorized in this way are not retained long term. They are memorized, then used and forgotten.

We are suggesting a different path here. The Craft Brew Magician can use the memory art of the mind palace to hold knowledge which they will need long term and which they must be able to access easily. Mind Palaces are useful for retaining magical substrate and making that substrate readily available.

The process of building a mind palace is available elsewhere, but we don’t want you to have to go too far afield. So a synopsis is provided here. To build a mind palace, pick a location: real or imaginary. It can be your house. It can be a city in a video game. It can be your local church. It can be your local park. Be creative. Once you have picked your location, divide it up into discrete sections. Each section will hold a single item to be memorized. Since we will be using these palaces to permanently store information, make sure to match the number of sections in the palace to the number of items to be memorized. Get used to moving through the mind palace. Get used to the feel of each location within the mind palace. Not everyone is a visual thinker. So find a method that works for you. If vivid visual imagery works best, use that. If not, find a method that does work. Maybe tie the locations to sounds or smells. Maybe use schematic or conceptual anchors. But find what works for you. Once you have done that, then you are able to start memorizing the items. Take the item to be memorized and create a strong memory, typically a memorable image. Pick something profane and outrageous, or funny, or visually dynamic. Once you have the item clearly depicted, write it down on a single flash card. Write the section of the palace on the back of the card. Do this for each item and the associated section. Then practice, use the flash cards and drill until the items enter your mind. Congratulations, now you have a data set memorized and accessible through a memorized filing system. Whether those items are the lines in a speech, or entities with which you deal, they will be anchored and still accessible. You will need to walk through the mind palace on occasion to refresh your memory, but that is easily done. You will build many such mind palaces as you progress in your practice. In later books we will lay out mind palaces built for specific purposes and mnemonically linked for easier interaction. But for now, this is the basic process and it will suffice.

Symbolic Bootstrapping

Craft Brew Magick has a distinct disadvantage to many other occult practices. It requires a lot of bootstrapping of knowledge. This is especially true of symbolic bootstrapping.

Verb (computing)
Bootstrapping
To compile the tools that will be used to compile the rest of the system or program.

From Wiktionary

Bootstrapping is the setting up of tools you will need later. Typically bootstrapping implies that the tools being assembled will be of no use initially, but must be done first in order to achieve later results. Symbolic bootstrapping means memorizing symbols and tools- such as mind palaces, and lists of symbols to be included in those mind palaces. Symbolic bootstrapping is used to compress and encode complex pieces of information. This allows complex ideas to be more readily recalled and discussed and used by the practitioner.

The Bootstrapping part means that the magician must put in some extra work memorizing the symbols. The amount of bootstrapping varies depending on what the Craft Brew Magician intends to do. And bootstrapping does not all need to be done at the very beginning. A practitioner can bootstrap in smaller chunks, as they need things. We recommend against constructing any mind palaces which the practitioner does not intend to immediately fill and use, for instance. We also recommend against learning any ancient or dead languages to read ancient grimoires, if a reasonable translation is available for a first read. When you are planning what you need to bootstrap, have a plan for how you will use the bootstrapped information and tools. Unused mental bootstrapping is easily forgotten. If you do not have an immediate plan for the tools you are bootstrapping, you may find you have to bootstrap the same tools multiple times.

Bootstrap on what you need to bootstrap, and only when you have an immediate plan for it. Do not bootstrap anything that can be accomplished through easier means. Devote the effort you planned to use on bootstrapping on other, more relevant, endeavors.

Symbols and Contrived Knowledge

Symbols are powerful methods of encoding information. We use symbols to compress a complex idea into an easily retrievable form. Look at the flag of the United States. Look at the Christian cross. Like it or not, when you look at these symbols, your brain automatically unpacks a library of meaning associated with each symbol. You can do this intentionally yourself, as we have discussed.

Adding to that, contrived knowledge is the method of creating artificial divisions to make information processing easier for humans. Colors are an example of contrived knowledge. If you look at a color wheel, you will be unable to find the point where green becomes yellow. And yet green and yellow will appear on the wheel. Color is a continuum. But to make the concept of color more digestible to the human mind, we divide the color wheel up arbitrarily and assign names to those divisions.

The definition of species is an example of contrived knowledge. A species is defined as creatures which can breed to produce fertile offspring. But that definition is inexact. Coyotes and wolves can interbreed and often create fertile offspring called coywolves. There are lizard species where A can breed with B, and B can breed with C, but A cannot breed with C. The line dividing up species is kept as clear as possible, but it is muddier than it first appears. The lines we draw are contrived knowledge to make understanding easier. There is no such thing as a species in the Bonelands. But using this created definition allows scientists to better understand biology. The definition of species is wrong by useful.

And that is the heart of contrived knowledge. All symbols are exclusively contrived knowledge, often more concentrated and compressed.

Informational Gravel

A central part of magickal substrate is informational gravel. Informational gravel is the information that swirls around in our head. Informational gravel includes the odd facts and trivia that make you look good when you are playing Trivial Pursuit or watching Jeopardy. Informational gravel is the bits in interesting tidbits that make you an interesting conversationalist. Information gravel provides little chunks of context when you watch the news or read old literature. Informational gravel is the stuff that tugs at your mind and whispers, “you know something about this don’t you?”

Informational Gravel is critical to creative thinking. Informational gravel helps as you combine ideas in interesting ways. Informational gravel allows you to reframe information in new ways. Informational gravel adds texture and background for creative projects. Informational Gravel is critical to problem solving. Informational gravel provides the basis for out of the box thinking. Informational gravel is a toybox for creative problem solving. Informational Gravel is key for building anything new.

Building up a decent supply of informational gravel is quite easy, but time consuming. Read widely. Read outside your usual wheelhouse. Read outside your culture. Read outside your time and place. Watch film and TV from places you would never consider normally. Listen to music recommended by people you distrust. Play new games. Visit new places. Try new sports. Expose yourself to novelty. Fill in blank parts on your map. Building your informational gravel is a never ending process, and it is easy to slip into habits and comfort zones. We recommend making lists where you deliberately move outside your comfort zone. We also recommend taking note when one piece of media exposes you to something else with which you are unfamiliar.

If you read a book on the history of Mecca, you might stumble onto Islamic Geometric Art. Learning about Islamic Geometric Art, you would likely discover the term tessellation. Reading about tessellation could take you into the realm of the honeycomb and beekeeping as a result. Which might bring you to articles about brewing mead from honey. And this might bring you to Norse culture and the Varangian Guard. And so it goes. You do not know where being curious will take you. But the further it takes you, the more you will have to draw upon in your practice.