In which I explain the esoteric magical discipline I practice, and invite you to join me in it. I also teach you a neat trick for avoiding writer's block, and tell you a mostly pointless story about an orange tree and a hamster.
Haha, this was a delight. As soon as I started I wondered if you were inspired by D&D (I started playing last year), and I totally get it. I've been keeping Photos albums called 'wizardry' and 'alchemy' for a few years where I track my spells or clues to spells and I'm a huge fan of the framing. Glad to have another person to talk to about spells! Great writing as ever.
Wonderful ideas. Secondary anchor makes so much sense. Really like incorporating solid physical objects. Reminds me of “priming” exercises. When in a flow state, snap your fingers of click your pen in a pattern. Then when you need to re-enter that state, Pavlov it up! More senses you can involve, the stronger the effect. Movements, sounds, visuals, smells. All components of a good spell.
I've got a bunch of spells around deliberately putting myself in an environment where I don't have internet access or a bunch of sensory stimulus (e.g. I've taken to going for long walks while carrying a dictaphone so that I don't look like a crazy person talking to myself) but taking a flight specifically for this would be hardcore.
(Also they have on flight wifi these days, which I must admit is mostly a net negative for me because it gives me an option I don't want)
I was quite taken by this idea, so I wrote your Secondary Anchor spell out in my own format, then another spell using your anchor concept, then another for a "here's a useful technique" blog post. I feel like turning every self-help thing I read into a spell or two might be a good way to remember/internalize them and maybe make them easier to use!
**Secondary Anchor**
[Function] Maintain focus on a task that one is actively doing.
[Duration] The desired duration of activity on the Primary Anchor.
[Material Component] The Secondary Anchor--a stone, paperweight or similar hard, heavy object that fills one palm.
*Define a Primary Anchor--a task that you are going to actively do while this spell is active.
*While the Primary Anchor is active, if you stop actively working on the Primary Anchor you must grasp the Secondary Anchor with both hands.
*While holding the Secondary Anchor you may fidget, pace, etc as needed but must not focus on anything but your body and the Secondary Anchor itself.
*You can only put down the Secondary Anchor in order to immediately begin actively working on the Primary Anchor.
**Anchor Banish**
[Function] Maintain focus on a task that one is actively doing.
[Duration] The desired duration of activity on the Primary Anchor.
[Material Component] A Pernicious Anchor--any object that tends to draw you away from focusing on the Primary Anchor.
*Define a Primary Anchor--a task that you are going to actively do while this spell is active.
*Remove the Pernicious Anchor from sensory contact with the site of the Primary Anchor.
*You may replace the Pernicious Anchor once the Primary Anchor is no longer your Focus.
**Summon Omnibenevolence**
[Function] Work through negative feelings and situations, discover improvements.
[Duration] Varies
[Material Component] Empty word document or journal page and writing tool
*Check in with your body.
-Close your eyes.
-Focus on each part of your body and its sensations (to appropriate granularity), including breathing and heartbeat.
-Notice your psychological state (thoughts, feelings, experience).
-Achieve presence in your body in the moment.
*Visualize an all-knowing omnibenevolent being (the Omnibenevolence).
-Visualize as thoroughly as you can.
-God, an angel, a stranger, someone you trust implicitly.
-Not a real person, living or dead.
-They know everything you know and have your best interests at heart.
*Embody the Omnibenevolence.
-Identify with or take the perspective of the Omnibenevolence.
-Write/type to yourself as the Omnibenevolence (“You’d feel better if you drank a glass of water”).
-Allow the Omnibenevolence to observe your problems and suggest solutions.
*Formally thank the Omnibenevolence for his/her/their/its help.
You might want to look into noise generators like MyNoise.net. They have support for getting specific pitch profiles in the form of rain, or a garden, or such.
Thanks, this looks really good. I need to have a bit more of a play with it as I'm not finding it an improvement out of the box, but it looks like it's got a lot more ceiling to find something that works well.
Writing a spellbook seems analogous to a personal policy/process manual or pattern language. I like patterns and pattern languages because they acknowledge the context in which a solution works, and they give space for both positive and negative consequences to watch out for.
I’ve had lots of “great” spells that “mysteriously stopped working” and then when I came back to them later I decided that the reason they mysteriously stopped working is that they’re basically shit and I was probably kidding myself about the fact that they worked.
This doesn't really fit the pragmatic vibe. I mean they worked right? I'd say something different about the nature of magic spells of this type from my own experience: Novelty adds magical mana and makes even sub-par spells effective by brute force. This means that there is a meta-practice of being a spell generator. Really good spells are so good that they become second nature and you forget they're magic. (Lot's of introspective moves are like this. Focusing, NVC, and the like as well.) You just do them as a natural wizardry. But some spells can never reach that state (like your anchor). For those types of spells novelty is always a bonus, and therefore being a generator or having lots of sources to learn spells from is really useful.
I take the point, but I still think I prefer my way of thinking about it. I don't think a spell works just because you got the outcome you wanted after doing the spell. I think the two have to be robustly connected. e.g. I think it's really important to avoid enshrining spells where you just happened to get lucky after performing them, but also ones which just amused you and put you in a good mood and being in a good mood helps.
Similarly, sometimes a spell worked, but it turns out that it had really specific preconditions that you weren't aware of, and it basically doesn't function outside of the narrow circumstance you happened to use it in.
I don't disagree with the usefulness of novelty and I try to build novelty into a bunch of spells (e.g. random book pages, tarot cards). But I think if a spell only works because it's novel and becomes less effective through repetition then it's important to be able to acknowledge that it's a bit of a crap spell. I do actually have a spell in my old spell book called "Invent a stupid spell" which is about trying to make use of those anyway, and I don't think that's bad to do, but I think there's a risk with stupid spells that you end up taking them too seriously and you end up with a spellbook cluttered with nonsense.
I don't disagree that it's important to be good at generating spells, but I think it's also important to be able to refine spells until they're really good and keep using them despite the lack of novelty, and part of making that possible is being brutally honest about the fact that some spells aren't worth the effort of doing that.
Haha, this was a delight. As soon as I started I wondered if you were inspired by D&D (I started playing last year), and I totally get it. I've been keeping Photos albums called 'wizardry' and 'alchemy' for a few years where I track my spells or clues to spells and I'm a huge fan of the framing. Glad to have another person to talk to about spells! Great writing as ever.
Wonderful ideas. Secondary anchor makes so much sense. Really like incorporating solid physical objects. Reminds me of “priming” exercises. When in a flow state, snap your fingers of click your pen in a pattern. Then when you need to re-enter that state, Pavlov it up! More senses you can involve, the stronger the effect. Movements, sounds, visuals, smells. All components of a good spell.
Really neat framing! A spell I've found personally effective is to take a flight - though I've never used air travel intentionally for that purpose.
What's it effective for?
I've got a bunch of spells around deliberately putting myself in an environment where I don't have internet access or a bunch of sensory stimulus (e.g. I've taken to going for long walks while carrying a dictaphone so that I don't look like a crazy person talking to myself) but taking a flight specifically for this would be hardcore.
(Also they have on flight wifi these days, which I must admit is mostly a net negative for me because it gives me an option I don't want)
I was quite taken by this idea, so I wrote your Secondary Anchor spell out in my own format, then another spell using your anchor concept, then another for a "here's a useful technique" blog post. I feel like turning every self-help thing I read into a spell or two might be a good way to remember/internalize them and maybe make them easier to use!
**Secondary Anchor**
[Function] Maintain focus on a task that one is actively doing.
[Duration] The desired duration of activity on the Primary Anchor.
[Material Component] The Secondary Anchor--a stone, paperweight or similar hard, heavy object that fills one palm.
*Define a Primary Anchor--a task that you are going to actively do while this spell is active.
*While the Primary Anchor is active, if you stop actively working on the Primary Anchor you must grasp the Secondary Anchor with both hands.
*While holding the Secondary Anchor you may fidget, pace, etc as needed but must not focus on anything but your body and the Secondary Anchor itself.
*You can only put down the Secondary Anchor in order to immediately begin actively working on the Primary Anchor.
**Anchor Banish**
[Function] Maintain focus on a task that one is actively doing.
[Duration] The desired duration of activity on the Primary Anchor.
[Material Component] A Pernicious Anchor--any object that tends to draw you away from focusing on the Primary Anchor.
*Define a Primary Anchor--a task that you are going to actively do while this spell is active.
*Remove the Pernicious Anchor from sensory contact with the site of the Primary Anchor.
*You may replace the Pernicious Anchor once the Primary Anchor is no longer your Focus.
**Summon Omnibenevolence**
[Function] Work through negative feelings and situations, discover improvements.
[Duration] Varies
[Material Component] Empty word document or journal page and writing tool
*Check in with your body.
-Close your eyes.
-Focus on each part of your body and its sensations (to appropriate granularity), including breathing and heartbeat.
-Notice your psychological state (thoughts, feelings, experience).
-Achieve presence in your body in the moment.
*Visualize an all-knowing omnibenevolent being (the Omnibenevolence).
-Visualize as thoroughly as you can.
-God, an angel, a stranger, someone you trust implicitly.
-Not a real person, living or dead.
-They know everything you know and have your best interests at heart.
*Embody the Omnibenevolence.
-Identify with or take the perspective of the Omnibenevolence.
-Write/type to yourself as the Omnibenevolence (“You’d feel better if you drank a glass of water”).
-Allow the Omnibenevolence to observe your problems and suggest solutions.
*Formally thank the Omnibenevolence for his/her/their/its help.
*Longform Source: https://sarahconstantin.substack.com/p/metta-meditation-my-way
Apologies for the formatting, my copy of these spells looks *way* cooler!
Thanks for the interesting new tool!
You might want to look into noise generators like MyNoise.net. They have support for getting specific pitch profiles in the form of rain, or a garden, or such.
Thanks, this looks really good. I need to have a bit more of a play with it as I'm not finding it an improvement out of the box, but it looks like it's got a lot more ceiling to find something that works well.
Writing a spellbook seems analogous to a personal policy/process manual or pattern language. I like patterns and pattern languages because they acknowledge the context in which a solution works, and they give space for both positive and negative consequences to watch out for.
You write:
I’ve had lots of “great” spells that “mysteriously stopped working” and then when I came back to them later I decided that the reason they mysteriously stopped working is that they’re basically shit and I was probably kidding myself about the fact that they worked.
This doesn't really fit the pragmatic vibe. I mean they worked right? I'd say something different about the nature of magic spells of this type from my own experience: Novelty adds magical mana and makes even sub-par spells effective by brute force. This means that there is a meta-practice of being a spell generator. Really good spells are so good that they become second nature and you forget they're magic. (Lot's of introspective moves are like this. Focusing, NVC, and the like as well.) You just do them as a natural wizardry. But some spells can never reach that state (like your anchor). For those types of spells novelty is always a bonus, and therefore being a generator or having lots of sources to learn spells from is really useful.
I take the point, but I still think I prefer my way of thinking about it. I don't think a spell works just because you got the outcome you wanted after doing the spell. I think the two have to be robustly connected. e.g. I think it's really important to avoid enshrining spells where you just happened to get lucky after performing them, but also ones which just amused you and put you in a good mood and being in a good mood helps.
Similarly, sometimes a spell worked, but it turns out that it had really specific preconditions that you weren't aware of, and it basically doesn't function outside of the narrow circumstance you happened to use it in.
I don't disagree with the usefulness of novelty and I try to build novelty into a bunch of spells (e.g. random book pages, tarot cards). But I think if a spell only works because it's novel and becomes less effective through repetition then it's important to be able to acknowledge that it's a bit of a crap spell. I do actually have a spell in my old spell book called "Invent a stupid spell" which is about trying to make use of those anyway, and I don't think that's bad to do, but I think there's a risk with stupid spells that you end up taking them too seriously and you end up with a spellbook cluttered with nonsense.
I don't disagree that it's important to be good at generating spells, but I think it's also important to be able to refine spells until they're really good and keep using them despite the lack of novelty, and part of making that possible is being brutally honest about the fact that some spells aren't worth the effort of doing that.
This is useful. Thanks for the thoughtful response!