Hands-On Chaos Magic (Andrieh Vitimus): Book Work-Through

Energy Work and Chaos Related Magick
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Hands-On Chaos Magic (Andrieh Vitimus): Book Work-Through

I have had this book by Andrieh Vitimus for almost two years now, and have not worked through it. Shameful! I will use this thread to detail select exercises.

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Making Time for Magic and Relaxing

“But before we can do magic and call the forces of the universe
we have to learn how to relax. It can be hard to give yourself the permission to listen to that internal world
Let’s start getting to the games we can play to relax.”

Exercise Five: The Ofnung (Open door) Technique; Progressive Relaxation

Essentially a count down from 100 to 001, releasing tension from each muscle as you go and bathing it in white light. Optionally, you can clench each muscle first. While relaxing, I don’t think I’d do it again. It is too mentally tedious, for me, for a relaxation technique. It does get you in your body, and is calming. Maybe I will give it another try sometime.

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Breathing

“Some breathing techniques might not work for you
you might find a particular pattern of breath that has a really strong effect on your body. If it works, it is right for you.”

Exercise Twelve: Fibonacci Breathing

This technique includes box breathing (called “Hermetic-Style Breathing” in this text, following Bardon) in counts that follow the Fibonacci Sequence. “1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89”. I made it to 21, but only tried it once. Its a cool concept, but again not something I think I will incorporate into my own practice. Maybe I will revisit it, and I am glad I tried it. I did not try the golden section approach of Fibonacci Breathing; too technical and mathematical for me. The rest of the breathing exercises are more standard.

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This technique had been introduced to me a few times over the years and I’ve never had success with it, especially conpared to the “body scan.”

Is it something you’ve found useful?

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No; maybe its my old age, lol, but I find it more stressful and aggravating than relaxing.

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Body Positions

“Different body positions can have a major impact on your mood and mindset. Let’s try out some playful experiments.”

Exercise Fourteen: Standing Still

Why is this so much more difficult than sitting still? Pain and stability I suppose. This is something I should practice more, and will be soon, in conjunction with another practice / training. I am sure it is helpful for dance as well, especially Datura style bellydance, which requires control, composure, and moving like a living sculpture.

I wish I could say that this is simple for me, like sitting still is, but it really is not. Reverse abdominal breathing seems to help. I will be revisiting this exercise, and recommend it.

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Enhancing Your Sensory Perception

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the mind doesn’t know the difference between what is real and what is imagined. The same neural pathways fire if we are working with a memory, an imagined situation, or a real situation
Going further, sensory imagination can be thought of as a form of mental control and focus
After relaxation, mental focus is probably the single most important part of any magical system. Let’s try some focusing games.”

Exercise Twenty-Five: Building Visual Imagination for Symbols

Basically imagining a line and holding the visualisation for thirty minutes, then when ready increasing the complexity of the symbol and holding it for thirty minutes. Experimentation, such as hand gestures and breathing techniques, are encouraged. I love this, and will try it out with trigrams.

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Using Cognitive Science and NLP in Our Magic

“NLP sees thoughts and feelings as habitual programs of response to inputted stimuli
Your perception of the world has an impact on the world you live in
we can lessen the effect of negative experiences by making the senses involved with the memory seem less vivid.”

Exercise Twenty Eight: A Wee Bit of Anchoring / Operant Conditioning

I have experimented with this before; I tried associating relief from menstrual pain with a hand gesture, so that I could form it when I got hit with endometriosis. I did not stick with it, I’m sorry to say; I discovered that spirits were real and jumped into the world of evocation, leaving my chaos magic experiments behind. I will revisit this experiment.

The actual exercise calls for revisiting

And applying pressure to your thumb while deeply relaxed. Later, the gesture should be revisited, and any sensations noted / recorded.

NOTE: Vitimus claims that we have five senses through which our bodies receive input. I disagree, and would like to raise awareness about the unjustly ignored vestibular sense.

https://pressbooks.online.ucf.edu/lumenpsychology/chapter/reading-the-vestibular-sense/

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Looking at Ourselves

Exercise XX: Looking at Your Own Internal Voice

(There is an error in the exercise labeling; exercises 30 - 32 are not included in the xi Exercise index).

This exercise is exactly what it sounds like. My new age stepmom offers a workshop where she teaches her clients to name the voices; I actually liked the suggestion and have done this a bit. Vitimus’s suggestion of banishing them confuses me. Shouldn’t we seek to integrate them? I’m not sure how I feel about this one.

NOTE: Vitimus’s “Pattern-Finding Exercise” is similar to Jason Miller’s “Moving the Set Point” technique. Jason Miller’s blog post “Hexing Your Bad Habits”? is also relevant to this chapter of Hands-On Chaos Magic, as is Vitimus’s “Conjuring & Transmuting Inner Money Demons”.

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Conditioning Success

“Many magical texts, including this one, use draconian methods to teach the mind discipline and control. These methods are sometimes effective, but there are other ways to induce results.”

Exercise XX: Using Successful Holographic Affirmations

(There is another error in the exercise labeling; this exercise is not included in the xi Exercise index).

Fantasize, using all the senses you are able, about preforming a ritual and achieving amazing results. Fun!

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Energy Manipulation I

“Now that we have had some practice focusing and relaxing, let’s move on to something more interesting: energy manipulation.”

Revisiting basics is essential and I should do it more often, but this section is what I am actually reading the book for. From here on out the format of my posts are going to change, because I am going to start taking my time.

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The exercise “Flow Game” leads to “Switch Palm Game”, which leads to “Energy Ball Game”. This is essentially a playful form of the Palm Breathing Energy Exercise that Jerry Alan Smith details in Chinese Medical QiGong Therapy: Vol. III. Wuji stance is, expectedly, not necessary. I have experience with this already, but I like that in this version the practitioner is encouraged to observe their constructs, to play with different densities, textures, and colors- and to enjoy themselves. Vitimus also suggests having a partner to describe what qualities they sense in the ball. A wonderful idea! I will ask my fiance to participate.

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Exercise 35: Simple Grounding

The classic “visualize the unwanted energy as gunk being pushed out of your body and replaced with nicely colored light”. This is part of my daily practice.

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I also consider memory a sense, to some degree. Which, combined with intuition, culminates onto 7 senses, which, can be attributed to the seven traditional planets with some work.

Sol - Memory
Mercury - Hearing
Venus - Touch
Mars - Sight
Luna - Intuition
Jupiter - Taste
Saturn - Smell

Memories are tied to the Ego. Hearing relates to communication. Touch relates to connection. Sight relates to focus. Intuition is tied to the subconscious. Tatse can lead to expansion of the body. Smell relates to hidden things.

These are perosnal, but they’ve worked for me so far. Maybe you can find some utility in this somehow as well?

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Really interesting timing; this morning I started thinking of how I could do planetary magick to improve my memory (I fucked it a bit with drugs in my “sordid past”), but was thinking of going with Mercury. Sun is an interesting suggestion. Thank you @Heathen_Hermit :slight_smile:

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20 July 2023

I have decided to follow up my daily ten minute trigram focus exercises with internal visualization and energy ball exercises.

Today’s focus meditation was on Gen. Followed by 30 minutes internally visualizing the Gen trigram and five minutes facing northeast, imagining myself surrounded by mountains, pore-breathing yellow Gen energy, and forming a dense yellow ball.

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Interesting way of attributing these to the Planets. I want to note here for anyone interested that this is very different from the traditional attributions of the senses to the Planets.

Here is the traditional rulership of the Planets over the senses according to Al-Biruni in his ‘Book of Instruction in the Elements of the Art of Astrology’:

Saturn: Hearing.
Jupiter: Hearing and touch.
Mars: Smell and touch.
Sol: Sight.
Venus: Smell.
Mercury: Taste.
Luna: Vision and taste.

Traditionally, Saturn rules over the memory (See, John Parkins’ edition of Nicholas Culpeper’s ‘The English Physician’), as does Mercury if I’m not mistaken. So, the herbs of Saturn and Mercury influence the memory. Take cannabis, for example, which is ruled by Saturn, and is known for having quite an
 interesting effect on the memory. Some studies suggest caffeine, coffee also being ruled by Saturn as I mentioned in another post, strengthens the memory.

Sight is also commonly attributed to the Sun, him being one of the Luminaries. Intuition can be attributed to the Sun and Moon together based on that as well, but I’m unsure if a traditional text mentions that.

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21 July 2022

QIAN

Northwest, clouds and snow and hail, metallic white.

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22 July 2022

Southwest, plants and soil and fog, dense but soft, black.

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24 July 2023

LI

South, summer lightning and desert rainbows at dawn, red and gaseous.

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