Super-Advanced LARP Glossary

A good friend of mine recently wrote up a couple of guides to larp terminology. Whilst extensive, I think that it there are a few more definitions for some of the less common phrases that might be useful...

Horribly Indescribable IV: Terror Incognita

Returning from the brief hiatus of the past few days, which can mostly be put down to a case of the Man Flu (Manthrax/Hebola/Manengitis/etc), today I will continue my series of articles on the techniques of the horror genre as applied to larp.

Next up is terror, which I initially described as "perceived vulnerability in the presence of uncertain fears". This is clearly related to dread in that both fundamentally rest on ambiguity and fear of the unknown; where they differ is in the sense of threat, and in the powerlessness of the subject in the face of that threat.

The difference can be difficult to fully tease out, but I think that it is worth trying to differentiate the two, as they have slightly different roles to play within what one might refer to as the methodology of fear. Where dread might be considered the unsettling backdrop, a kind of emotional ambiance, terror provides a more acute emotional effect - the !!! to the ??? of dread.

As with dread, less is frequently more. The exact nature of the threat need not be specified in order for it to be effective, so long as there is a clear sense of threat. The monster that is only glimpsed as a silhouette against the window is often more effective that the one that can be seen in the light - and, on a pragmatic level, this kind of obfuscation hides a multitude of sins when it comes to physrepping.

There are various that increase vulnerability, and thus susceptibility to terror; as with dread, feelings of disorientation serve to be a useful driver of this effect. Disorientation inherently messes with threat perception by putting one on edge; when you cannot trust your perceptions or knowledge of your surroundings, then vulnerability is an entirely predictable feeling.

In considering discontinuity as a driver of terror, it is worth mentioning the use of "bait and switch" techniques. An effective method is to provide a source of dread which leads players towards certain assumptions, followed by a countervailing shock - the signalling of a high-threat event that is in conflict with those assumptions. Consider, for example, following a mysterious trail of blood down a twisting, poorly lit corridor (dread), then reaching a dead end only to suddenly hear a the noise of a slamming door far behind you (shock).

More potent even that this disorientation is the effect of isolation. By forcing a small number of characters, or a lone individual, to face the terror alone, the feeling of vulnerability is heightened. This ties into something quite deep and ingrained in the human psyche, the childhood fear of abandonment which never fully goes away even in adulthood - even in the absence of other sources of fear, it is something that people tend to find profoundly unnerving. Whilst isolation need not be physical, this is often the easiest kind to achieve; in general, the feeling that should be aimed for is that others are either unaware, unable, or unwilling to provide aid in some manner.

As final point on the subject of terror, it is worth mentioning that, unlike dread, terror is a difficult emotion to keep up for an extended period of time. This is where the tension-release cycle comes back into play - periods of fearfulness should be interspersed with calmer periods, if only to prevent players from burning out. In this schema, terror should come at the climax of several tension-release cycles, across which there is a slow but steady ratcheting up of the perceived threat. One could consider it to be something like this:

Horribly Indescribable III: Judging Dread

Following on from my previous posts on the subject, today I am going to continue to share some of my thoughts of the use of techniques and tropes from the horror genre in larp. Today, I am going to be writing about dread, which I defined as a kind of fearful apprehension or anxiety that emerges from the ambiguity of perceptions. In essence, it is the fear of the unknown, combined with the human tendency towards apophenia.

As I alluded to in the previous article on shock, the key to the horror genre is more to be found in the set-up than in the payoff itself. Dread and terror are the two primary drivers of the tension which heightens the emotional payoff of the eventual shock.

Whilst I initially defined dread as concerning ambiguities of perception, it is probably more accurate to say that it is caused by ambiguity in the meaning of a perception (though pareidolia can also be an effective creator of tension). The trick here is that some aspect of what is seen must point towards a vaguely defined threat, without making the nature of that threat entirely clear.

The golden rule here is that the nature of the threat should not be shown directly. Less is more, and the imagination can almost always serve up greater fears than anything which can be created in the external world. 

Even despite this, preserving ambiguity is often difficult. Larpers are generally a fairly genre-savvy bunch, and there is often a tendency to pick up on the use of staple tropes of horror when they appear. One might consider the more general application of the "Don't Show the Monster" to be "Never Tell Them Enough" - in horror, knowledge is power, and the restriction of knowledge is thus vulnerability. The less that is solid, the more that rests on speculation and guesswork, the less certain players and their characters will be of what to make of ambiguities.

Undoubtedly, dread is most effectively produced when it is expected; by priming players to expect that they will feel scared, one creates something of a self-fulfilling prophecy whereby the process of apophenia will already be functioning, at least on a subconscious level, well before any dreadful elements are introduced. Indeed, I suspect that merely be advertising a larp as "horror", one sets up a set of assumptions and expectations in one's players which will predispose them to experiencing this kind of dread and fear.

There are a few other cheap tricks that one should consider for invoking dread. Firstly, is the use of disorientation, the alienation of the individual from their surroundings. Restricting the ability of the player to perceive their surroundings is an effective method of unsettling the mind, one of the reasons that darkness is such a driver of dread. The ability of the individual to determine direction and distance can also be restricted through forcing players to take winding and circuitous paths from one area to another; the more maze-like an area can be made, the more effective this is likely to be. Disorientation in relation to time is trickier, and has numerous logistical difficulties (for example, in relation to players with health issues requiring regular medication), but can be deeply unsettling. The most effective of all might be thought of as "discontinuity", in which players are conditioned to distrust their memories - objects can be moved, doors opened or closed, or even entire areas rearranged, for example.

Another cheap, but effective, trick is to use the principles of Pavlovian conditioning to make an association between a particular sensory phenomena and the existence of some manner of threat. The ways in which this might be done are infinite; subtle coloured lighting, low-volume ambient sounds or white noise (or the abrupt stopping of such); or, to take a cue from the infamous Projekt Ragnarok, the sounding of an air-raid siren shortly before some reality-melting horror was about to occur, which has left several larpers of my acquaintance, myself included, breaking out in nervous sweats several years later. Similarly, some former players of Winter in the Willows may still have an instinctual twitch reaction to this rather innocuous song.

It is generally advisable to build up the feeling of dread slowly and inexorably. One might begin with a relatively mundane opening, progressing to a vague sense of wrongness, before introducing more and more sinister elements and finally emerging into the outright horror. The longer that one delays the introduction of a shock, the greater the impact. One might begin with relatively mundane ambiguities (Was that door open before? What was the noise outside?), moving to the more sinister (Why are there eyes chalked on the so many of the walls? What was that scraping noise behind the locked door?), and bring to a head with high-threat ambiguities (Was that a window breaking? Why have the lights suddenly gone off?).

One of the best examples of this process in horror cinema is the original Blair Witch Project. Spoilers follow, but frankly, it's been seventeen years since the film was released (a fact that suddenly makes me feel unaccountably old), so I don't feel too guilty about dissecting it here. The film begins slowly, with the protagonists interviewing various locals about the folklore of the area (foreshadowing), before heading into the woods where they camp for the night. The next day they move deeper into the woods, uncertain of the exactly where they are on the map (disorientation). They find some mysterious cairns in the woods, and the next night hear snapping twigs around their tents (ambiguous perceptions). The next day they attempt to return to the car, but get themselves further lost; again there are some unusual noises around the camp at night. The fourth day sees them continuing to wander in the woods, stumbling across a grove filled with mysterious stick-figures hanging from trees (ambiguous meaning); that night, things escalate further with the sound of children laughing in the woods, and unknown forces shaking the tent. This pattern of gradual escalation increases throughout the film, but at no point is the ambiguity of what is occurring ever resolved, even at the climax of the movie.

All in all, that's not a bad model to be aiming for.

Horribly Indescribable II: Shock and ARGH

Following on from yesterday's  post, I am going to spend the next few posts discussing the different kinds of horror, and how they can be used in the context of larp. Today, I am going to begin with a discussion of "shock", which I defined as the "response to a sudden stimulus whist in a state of heightened arousal". This, arguably the most primal form of horror, is deeply embedded in the brainstem and occurs on an automatic level - which is perhaps why it is so commonly invoked across various media.

The startle response is the neurological basis for this kind of horror - automatic reflexes which are fundamentally tied to survival instincts. Startle responses can be triggered by multiple different sensory modalities - visual, touch, proprioceptive (as in the instinctive response to the sensation of falling, so beloved of Inception) - but the most potent is probably the response to auditory stimulus.

This, the acoustic startle response, is the one most often taken advantage of by jump scares in film and other media; though it is usually the case that there is a visual component to focus the shock, it is generally the auditory component that drives the response. Whilst a very effective method of inducing amygdala hijack and the fight-or-flight response (CW: jump scare), this approach can be rather unsatisfying.

The classic jump scare comes in three parts - and here I'll quote Bryan Bishop's excellent article in The Verge:

In fact, a well-done jump scare breaks down the same way Michael Caine describes illusions in The Prestige, with three distinct steps. First there’s the pledge: a character is introduced into a situation where danger is present. They hear a rattling in the kitchen, or voices when they’re home alone. Then comes the turn, where the character finds a reasonable explanation, or the immediate threat is somehow removed. Everything seems alright, and the audience lets its guard down. That’s when the filmmakers execute the prestige, hitting an unsuspecting audience with the actual scare — usually accompanied by a shrieking music cue or sound effect

One major problem is that it is very difficult to keep up any degree of pay-off if one relies overly-much on jump scares - if you're following the classic three-part setup, things can get predictable very quickly. Spring-loaded cats aside, there aren't many ways of varying the formula.

It is worth noting that the impact of a jump scare depends greatly on the amount of build-up that comes before it. The excellent (and free) Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion is an excellent example of this - shock rarely works alone, and even cartoonishly ridiculous shocks can be effective if one is suitably anticipating it. This ties into a lot of the material that I'm going to talk about in a later post, and is tied into the cycles of tension that create a rising feeling of dread before the payoff of the shock.

There is good evidence that startle reactions are greatly increased when one is already in a condition of stress, or otherwise in a state of anxiety- these clinical findings can be fairly easily related to casual observations around the tension cycle if we consider one of the main methods by which dread primes us for a shock to be the induction of hyper-vigilance. This also links into questions of the effect of concentration on the potentiation of the startle effect. Research suggests that when attention is directed to a startle-inducing stimulus the response is amplified, which one could surmise from playing a couple of Scary Maze games (CW: jump scare, obv.), or, if you prefer, Scary Flappy Bird (CW: Flappy Bird, and probably a jump scare. I don't know, I'm so terrible at Flappy Bird that I can't get beyond the first couple of pillars, and have thus never actually seen the end of this one).

The reverse also seems to be somewhat true - directing attention away from the sensory modality of the shock seems to decrease startle responses, though only in introverts. It's one of the few INTP superpowers, I guess.

How does this all translate to larp, then?

Shock can be an effective driver of play, but one should be careful of its overuse. Horror elements can create a great degree of emotional intensity, which is often desirable in a larp, but the emotions that repeated exposure to this kind of fear tends to bring up are not especially productive ones. There are safety concerns as well - whenever you try to invoke the fight-or-flight response, there is a reasonable chance of the former kicking in. Nobody wants to be the crew member that jumps out of the bushes to scare the players, and ends up with a point-blank crossbow bolt to the nads.

Another safety note - it's always wise to try and have a good idea of any phobias that players may have, and to avoid using those (or, indeed, any other common phobias) in jump scares. Panic attacks are not generally the kind of emotional state that one wishes to inspire in one's players.

This is not to say that one shouldn't use this kind of scare. One of my most memorable larp experiences was at the first Dark Tempus, when the sudden unexpected appearance of a zombie caused one of my group to involuntarily throw a glass of scotch all over it as we struggled to draw our weapons. But if you are going to use shocks, then use them well.

The tension-release cycle is perhaps the most important aspect here, and one which I will talk of more in later posts. One should aim for a cycle of Dread => Shock => Calm => Dread etc, rather than Shock => Calm => Shock => Calm. The former, in telegraphing the upcoming shock, will make it all the more effective; the latter rapidly falls into Cat Cannon territory, with sudden unpredictable shocks coming out of nowhere leading more to confusion and irritation than fear.

Stimuli do not necessarily need to be overwhelming in order to trigger a shock if the tension has already been built - a quiet voice in a pitch-dark room thought to be empty may be far more effective than a full-blown screaming monstrosity appearing with no build-up whatsoever.

It's worth playing with sensory modalities, though note that the auditory seems to be the most effective. In this, larp has an advantage over many other media, as all senses can potentially be commandeered towards the creation of experience. Sound and vision are potent, especially when combined; but there may be avenues of interest to explore in touch and proprioception. Touch, particularly, has a sense of violation about it, which can trigger strong feelings of fear and revulsion - the latter of which is an integral feature of horror, as I'll discuss later.

The potentiating effect of attention should be drawn upon where possible; if a player is engrossed in some activity that is requiring their full attention, then it not only makes it easier to set up the shock unnoticed, but the impact of the shock is greatly increased. A certain amount of bait-and-switch misdirection can be used here, a technique which I will discuss later in the post on Terror.

Finally, there is what one might term the Anti-Cat Technique. This, which might be described as "scar the character, scare the player", requires shocks to have a meaningful impact; they should represent credible threats or be somehow significant in the greater scheme of things where possible. This can of course be subverted - but the subversion is only effective when the majority of shocks are meaningful.

Horribly Indescribable, Or Indescribably Horrible?

Well, it's been a while.

It's been a long hiatus, but here I am, back in the world of blogging. Eagle eyed visitors may note that I have merged my two earlier blogs - Beep Beep Jeepform and Overly Honest Occultist - into some kind of hybrid rebus. If I was being highbrow about it, I would talk about trying to bridge the interdisciplinary barriers between various subjects, and say something about the nature of storytelling as a fundamentally magical act, and magic as a fundamentally artistic, aesthetic practice, and so on and so forth. But, if I'm being honest with myself, it was mostly due to laziness.

This month, in lieu of my usual failed attempts at NaNoWriMo, I have decided to attempt something a little different - a blog post every day (or there abouts) in the style of the spectacularly-named NaNoBloPoMo, working through various things that I feel like rambling on about in the vague direction of an audience.

Just too late for Halloween, in this and the next few posts I would like to talk a bit about horror in LARP - not the UK LARP Facebook Group, vile as it is, but on the use of themes and techniques from the horror genre as applied to LARP.

I'd first like to define a few terms, and say a little about the neurobiology of fear. An early definition, coined by the Gothic writer Ann Radcliffe, defined terror as the feeling of dreadful anticipation that preceeds the experience, and horror as the feeling of revulsion that occurs after something frightening has been experienced. One might thus cosider terror to be a form of anxiety, and horror a more direct stress-response.

Stephen King devised a system including three types of fear: Revulsion, horror, and terror; the first being fairly self-explanatory, the second encompassing the fear of the unnatural, and the third encompassing phenomena that disrupt one's sense of reality. These seem to give a reasonable overview of different types of fear, but I think it's possible to differentiate things a little more: I would propose a catagorisation based on dread, terror, shock and horror.

Dread and terror are states very close to one-another; they both describe feelings of uncertainty and fearful anxiety. Dread, I feel, rests more on the ambivalence of perceptions (What was that sound? Is there something moving in there? Where does that trail of blood lead?), whilst terror rests more on one's perceived vulnerability in the presence of uncertain fears (Hiding in the cupboard as the killer prowls through the room. Trying to outrun the werewolves. Being tied to a chair as the interrogator noisily executes the previous captive). Shock is what one experiences in response to a sudden stimulus whist in a state of heightened arousal (The skeleton falls from the closet. The ghostly scream. The voice from the darkness). Finally, Horror can then be thought of as a combination of revulsion and inevitablity (Being trapped in the room as the thing slowly rises from the bathtub full of blood. Waking up inside a coffin).

The neurobiology of fear is a relatively well-studied area, which deserves some mention. The primary route of action is through the sympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for mediating various hormonal and neurological mechanisms involved in the fight-or-flight reflex, such as causing the release of the stimulat hormone adrenaline, and the constriction of blood vessels in the digestive tract and skin in order to shunt more blood to skeletal muscles in preparation for physical activity.

Within the central nervous system, the fear response is primarily mediated by the amygdala and the limbic system in general. Damage to the amygdala has been reported to cause an inability to feel fear, and, apparantly, a lack of sense of personal space, which I am almost certainly going to house rule into all D&D Paladins from now on. And which arguably explains a lot about Warhammer 40k's Space Marines (CW: 1d4chan).

Fear is generally thought of as being the result of conditioned responses, though the more primative fight/fight/freeze responses are often considered to be innate and termed "species-specific defense reactions" (SSDRs). These can be considered to be instinctual and immediate reactions, often occuring before there is any conscious processing; this can also include the immediate induction of emotional states in a process sometimes known as amygdala hijack.

The process by which fears are learned is a form of associative (Pavlovian) conditioning, mediated by changes in synaptic plasticity that increase the sensitivity of pre-existing neural pathways, and by the action of the hippocampus and neocortex. Long-term changes in synaptic plasticity are thought to be a contributing factor in the formation of phobias, and in post-traumatic stress disorder.

Whilst these physiological reactions are fairly universal, the psychological and emotional processes involved in fear are somewhat diverse; a reductionist view might be to pin these differences on dopamine, and though there are numerous other factors that are likely to feed into one's experiences of fear, it seems likely that dopamine responses are likely to play a role in whether or not one enjoys the feeling of horror, especially after the fact.

So, where from here? Over the next few days, I will look into the four divisions that I outlined above, and look at how these concepts can be applied in LARP.

Revision(ism) Notes #1: Saint Patrick

Saint Patrick, as we all know, is the patron saint of shamrocks, leprechauns, binge-drinking and the colour green; today, being the traditional day of his celebration, I shall be engaging in my favorite pastime: Ruining Other People's Fun.

Specifically, on the sacred cow barbecue today is this constantly-repeated bit of pagan revisionism:

So, let's begin with a quick recap of the generally-known story of St. Patrick: He was born in the 5th century AD in Roman Britain, the son of a local politician and scion of an early Christian family - though not particularly pious himself. At the age of sixteen, he was captured by a group of Irish pirates, who brought him to Ireland where he was enslaved for six years. After six years, he escaped his masters, supposedly on the instruction of a divine voice from above, and returned to Britain. There, he continued to study Christianity, and eventually became ordained as a priest. He then returned to Ireland, where he founded numerous churches and baptized thousands of Irish people, including numerous members of various noble families.

This isn't particularly relevant,
I just like snakes in hats, okay?

There are a number of legends associated with Patrick - the two most frequently repeated ones are his use of the shamrock as an illustrative metaphor for the Holy Trinity, and that he banished all snakes from Ireland. It is this latter legend which frequently gets brought up in arguments over the so-called "pagan genocide" of the period.

Let's make it clear - the account of Patrick chasing snakes into the sea should not be interpreted literally - though it may well have been at various times. Indeed, the general consensus is that Ireland never had any snakes in the first place, due to being geographically isolated since the last Ice Age, when it was too cold for snakes in any case. 

Assuming a symbolic interpretation of the snakes thus seems like a reasonable assumption. Snakes, after all, have a long and convoluted symbolic history; in the context of Christianity, they are most frequently interpreted as symbols of sin, temptation, and all kinds of malevolence. The standard interpretation is, therefore, that Patrick's driving of the snakes from Ireland symbolically represents the overthrow of the pre-Christian paganism that existed before his coming. This particular interpretation has in recent years developed a great deal of traction within various pagan communities - it taps into a sense of persecution and heroic resistance to colonial aggression which elevates the struggles of a community towards acceptance to the level of myth. Which would, given the embarrassingly white nature of most modern pagan groups, be perhaps a little bit problematic if the original injustice didn't happen.

Which, err, it didn't. At least, not in the apocalyptic way that it is sometimes presented.

There seem to be an unusual amount of
snakes in Santa hats on the internet

The legend of Patrick's expulsion of the snakes seems to be traceable back to Muirchú moccu Machtheni's "Vita sancti Patricii", written some two hundred years after Patrick's time; this text depicts Patrick as something of a warrior-saint, deposing kings and battling druids, overthrowing pagan idols and miraculous feats inspiring mass conversion. These accounts - which often contradict the accounts of Patrick himself in his few surviving writings - have a lot in common with the legends of Christian saints found in the conversion of the Roman Empire, as described in Ramsey McMullen's "Christianizing the Roman Empire". It should be noted that the "Snakes = Druids" interpretation emerges almost entirely from this period; in "Blood and Misltetoe", Ronald Hutton remarks that the lack of references to the Druids with
in Patrick's own writings, compared to the later heroic myths of the saint's life, suggest that these violent confrontations were given a greater degree of prominence - or invented wholesale - for the purposes of political hagiography. much later.

An interesting example is that of Crom Cruach, a pre-Christian Irish god that St. Patrick is said to have destroyed the cult thereof. Crom is said to have been a solar-fertility god who demanded propitiation with human sacrifice to guarantee a good harvest. The tale of Patrick's destruction of the cult originates from the "Vita tripartita Sancti Patricii", a late 9th century text written partly in Irish and partly in Latin; Patrick is said to have struck down the idol of Crom Cruach and cursed the "demon" that appeared from within the idol. Other later texts repeat the tale in various forms, speaking of Patrick smashing the golden statue with a sledgehammer. And yet, this tale seems to reflect earlier tales of the god Lugh battling with, and being victorious over Crom Cruach, thus securing the harvest for the year, as outlined in Maire MacNeill's "The Festival of Lughnasa". One could see this as evidence of "Interpretatio Christiana", the syncretic equivocation of pagan archetypes and symbols with Christian ones, much in the same fashion that the Roman state paganism incorporated the gods and legends of the lands conquered by the Empire.

I may have a problem (CN: contains snakes)

So, what exactly did happen during the Christian conversion of Ireland? Well, for a start, the tale of Patrick being the first Christian missionary to the island is deeply inaccurate - records from the time of Pope Celestine speak of Palladius being sent as a bishop to minister to Christians in Ireland in 430, likely to stamp out the heresy of Pelagianism. Palladius is often erroneously conflated with St. Patrick, which becomes a source of great confusion, especially given the difficulty in dating Patrick's life or mission. There is a school of thought that suggests that there may have been a deliberate attempt to downplay the role of Palladius in the Christianisation of Ireland by the followers of Patrick, though this is difficult to prove either way with any certainty. In any case, it seems reasonable to assume that Christianity had already reached Ireland before Patrick's missionary efforts, due to the numerous connections between Ireland and Romanised Britain.

One of the major difficulties here is in the fact that the vast majority of writings on pre-Christian Ireland come from much later sources, inevitably written by Christian monks and burdened with a rather predictable set of biases and dubious scholarship. However, what can be seen is a combination of a "top-down" conversion strategy, in which local kings would tend towards having their sons baptised, but not converting themselves; and a gradual increase in the political and economic influence of the monasteries, which became practically akin to local warlords in their own right. Over generations, the trend seems to have been towards assimilation and gradual conversion - albeit with remnants of the pre-Christian religion being syncretised and preserved in the cultural memory as a kind of folklore.

"The doctrine of original sssin isss clearly Manichaeisssm"

One final thought on the snakes. It is worth noting the frequency with which the Pelagian heresy is described with the metaphors of serpents, as in Rhigyfarch's "Life of St. David", written in the 11th century. Could the tale of St. Patrick's expulsion of the snakes be, perhaps, a reference to Palladius' original mission in Ireland?

Overly Honest History #1: Wicca

Dramatis Personae:

Aleister "The Great Beast 666" Crowley - a Wizard

JFC "Jesus Fucking Christ" Fuller - a Fascist

Jack "Motherfucking Antichrist" Parsons - a Rocket Scientist

Numerous Crazy, Useless and Dead Thelemites

L Ron "Xenu" Hubbard - a Science-Fiction Writer

Arnold "Younghusband" Crowther - a Ventriloquist

Gerald "Old Gerald" Gardner - a Civil Servant

Dorothy "Glove Puppet" Clutterbuck - an Alleged Witch

Kenneth "Fhtagn" Grant - a Lovecraft Enthusiast

Thomas "Witchcraft Act" Brooks - an MP

Numerous Spiritualists, Witches, and the Like

Cecil "Witchcraft Research Centre" Williamson - an MI6 Agent

The Ghost of Dr. John "Sixteenth Century Swinger" Dee - an Alchemist

Edith "Dafo" Woodford-Grimes - a Witch

Doreen "Red Pen" Valiente - a Witch

The Narrator - an Overly Honest Occultist

Silver RavenWolf - an Ass

Scene One: A Hotel, 1947

Crowley: Blergh. I am dying, and everything has more or less gone to shit. Also, pretty much all my followers are crazy, useless, or dead.

*Fuller, Parsons, Hubbard, and assorted Crazy, Useless and Dead Thelemites wave through the window. Crowley throws a book at them, and they scatter. There is a knock on the door.*

Crowley: Enter!

*Enter Crowther and Gardner.*

Crowther: Evening, Al. Here's the chap that I wanted you to meet.

Gardner: Hello, Al. I'm Gerald Gardner, Royal Arch Mason and naturist, and I would like to join your cult.

Crowley: Which one, I have, like, eight?

Gardner: The err... Ordo Templi... um... *reads smudge on back of hand* Origami.

Crowley: *shrugs* close enough. I hear you're a witch or something.

Gardner: Yep.

Crowley: Can you prove it?

Gardner: Certainly. *produces puppet of Dorothy Clutterbuck* This is the woman who initiated me, who I most certainly have not just made up.

Crowther: *speaking through the puppet as Gardner moves his hand* I an Gorothy Gluttercuck and I acsolutely will attest to Goctor Gardner geing a witch. We gid nagic and stocked the Nazis grom invaging ang everything.

Crowley: Aah, Frau Sprengel, good to hear from you again.

*Gardner and Crowther look at each other, and shrug.*

Crowther: Huh?

Crowley: Never mind, I think that joke's going to be in a later post. Anyway, whatever, you appear to be quarter-competent. Think of a number.

Gardner: Err... seven?

Crowley: Sure. *scribbles something on the back of an envelope, hands it to Gardner* Congratulations, welcome to the 7th degree of the OTO.

Gardner: What does that mean?

Crowley: [This OTO grade secret removed on legal advice]

Gardner: *aghast* Really? But that's anatomically impossible!

Crowley: Only if you don't lubricate the kazoo. And here's a writ of authorisation for you to start up a new OTO lodge. *Hands over another piece of paper*

Gardner: *confusedly reading the document* This is literally the title deeds to a field in Surrey.

Crowley: Turn it over.

Gardner: *does so; reads from document* "Do what thou wilt shall be the law, We Baphomet X degree Ordo Templi Orientis, Sovereign Grandmaster General of all English Speaking Countries of the Earth do hereby Authorise our beloved son Scire, (Dr. GB Gardner), Prince of Jerusalem, to constitute a camp of the Ordo Templi Orentis in the degree of Minerval. Love is the Law, Love Under Will. Witness my hand and seal, Baphomet X." Thanks, Al!

Crowley: Let's face it, you can't do any worse than that idiot *points out of window, to where Kenneth Grant is performing some kind of ridiculous Black Mass*

Grant: Ia! Ia! Hail Yog-Sothoth!

Gardner: I'll certainly try.

Crowley: Thanks. And now, I'm afraid I'm dreadfully sorry but I've got some very important trolling to attend to. I'm going to see if it is actually possible to scandalise Brighton.

*Crowley dies. His funeral is, indeed, quite scandalous*

Scene Two: Outside Parliament, 1951

Brooks: And t'Witchcraft Act of 1735 has now been repealed.

Spiritualists, Witches and the Like: Yay!

Gardner: At last! Now I can complete my dream of moving to the Isle of Man and opening a museum!

Williamson: At last! Now I can complete my dream of moving to the Isle of Man and opening a museum!

*Gardner and Williamson look at each other, and grin*

Gardner: I see the beginnings of a beautiful friendship...

Williamson: Indeed, I see no way that this could go wrong. Let us open a museum together!

Scene Three: A Museum, 1952

Williamson: This has all gone terribly wrong, and it's your fault. I'm going back to England.

Gardner: Bugger. How didn't I see this coming?

Williamson: Unrelatedly, ever noticed how, like, 90% of occultists have worked for some manner of intelligence agency at some point?

*The Ghost of Dr John Dee fades into view and waves*

Scene Four: The house of Edith Woodford-Grimes, 1952

Gardner: Aah, hello Doreen, and welcome to the Bricket Wood Coven. I see you have met Edith, my fellow witch from the New Forest Coven, which-was-totally-the-last-remnant-of-an-ancient-witch-cult-and-not-something-made-up-by-some-bored-Rosicrucians-honest.

Woodford-Grimes: *resignedly, with the puppet of Dorothy Clutterbuck* It's totally true. Ask Nargaret Nurray.

Valiente: Thank you, Uncle Gerald. I'd like to join your cult.

Gardner: Good good. Tell me, how are you with nudity?

Valiente: Fine, I guess?

Gardner: How about... rope.

Valiente: Er, sure...

Gardner: Flogging?

Valiente: I...

Woodford-Grimes: Gerald, is this an actual coven or one of those "Specialist Clubs"...

Gardner: Yes. Now, Doreen, how about knives?

Woodford-Grimes: Sod this. I quit. *Drops the Clutterbuck puppet, storms out*

Gardner: Bugger. How didn't I see this coming?

Valiente: Um...

Gardner: Never mind all that. Blah blah, I initiate you into the Seeeecrets of Witchcraft. Here's your complementary Book of Shadows. *He hands Valiente a large leather-bound tome*

Valiente: *flicking through the tome* Ooh, this is intere... wait, this is literally a copy of Crowley's "Liber AL vel Legis".

Gardner: *whistling innocently* No it isn't.

Valiente: Yes it is. You've literally crossed out "Nuit" and written "Aradia" in this bit.

Gardner: *grabbing the book back* No! Total coincidence! Can't prove a thing! Authentic ancient document, very sacred.

Valiente: It was written in the margins. In crayon.

Gardner: Look, nobody else has noticed yet, so let's just keep it between us, shall we?

Valiente: Fine. But at least let me rewrite it so it's a little less... Crowley.

Gardner: Deal.

Scene Five: A coven gathering, 1957

Valiente: Gerald, we need to talk about all this ridiculous publicity-seeking.

Gardner: Sorry, can we talk about this later? I'm running late for my interview with Witching Today magazine...

Valiente: Gerald. This is an intervention. We're worried about you. Also, I'm High Priestess now, so you're probably meant to listen to me.

Gardner: Urgh, whatever. Make it quick.

Valiente: I've written these proposed rules of the Craft, which I would like you to read... *hands over a sheaf of papers* Now, these are just a draft, but...

Gardner: *chucking the papers over his shoulder* Pft, never mind with that. I've got the ancient and authentic Wiccan Laws here, which say that you're wrong. *He reaches into his pocket, and hands a piece of paper to Valiente*

Valiente: *reading* "Item One: Doreen is wrong, and also she smells." Seriously?

Gardner: Remarkably prescient, the ancients.

Valiente: This is literally written on the back of a gas bill.

Gardner: As is traditional.

Valiente: In crayon.

Gardner: Sacred crayon.

Valiente: Whatever, fuck this shit. I quit. *storms off*

Gardner: Bugger. How didn't I see this coming?

Scene Six: A Pub, 2016

Narrator: And things pretty much spiraled out from there. Doreen Valiente got involved with various other Gardnerian offshoots, such as Cochrane's Craft, and continued to go down the "anything but Crowley" route. Various other Gardnerians like Alex Sanders and Raymond Buckland developed their own variant traditions, which crossbred with various other ceremonial magic groups and New Age movements. Sooner or later, "Wicca" became near synonymous with paganism, much to the consternation of the few remaining "True" Gardnerian initiates. But nobody really paid any attention to them, especially after Janet and Stewart Farrar published the vast majority of Gardner's Book of Shadows - the core texts of Wicca - in the 1970's. There are a few claims that there is a "secret" doctrine of Gardnerian texts that have never been published openly - which, in all likelihood, are probably variations on a theme of OTO doctrine. And then, there are people like this...

*Enter Silver RavenWolf*

Silver RavenWolf: One cannot be a Satanic Witch, because Witches do not believe in Satan! Society has encouraged the negative view of menstruation that has many feeling weak, tired and disorientated because they think they are supposed to feel this way! Astarte is a Greek fertility goddess! Lilith was a Star Woman who bred with Adam!

*As she speaks, the ground begins vibrating*

Narrator: Those are all actual quotes, by the way. Now, what's that rumbling noise?

Crowley: *speaking as a disembodied voice, spinning rapidly under the ground* DAMN IT RAVENWOOOOLF....

Fin.

The Locusts of Control

A friend and co-conspirator of mine linked me to a rather interesting article in the New Yorker today, which got me thinking about the ways in which we conceptualize the degree of control we have over our lives, and how belief and culture shape these.

The concept of a locus of control is a valuable one when it comes to thinking about the psychology of health, politics, religion and so on. The brainchild of the fantastically named Julian B Rotter, the theory describes loci of control as either being internal, signifying that one believes one's actions and circumstances are generally under one's own control, or external, and beyond one's control. Rotter's I-E scale is one way of measuring one's belief in the internal or external nature of one's locus of control - not the best one, admittedly, as it conflates a number of concepts, so is better described as a measure of one's assessment of societal loci of control.

There is a certain amount of evidence that having an internal locus of control is associated with a more "healthy" psychological state (whatever that means), and in particular with better outcomes in certain areas, such as smoking cessation and academic performance.

On an esoteric level, it is clear that the practice of ceremonial magick relies upon a conception of one's locus of control being internal - leaving aside, for the moment, discussions about the nature of ego-death and the interminable question of spirit guides, augoeides, Holy Guardian Angels and the like. The magician positions themselves as the fulcrum of the universe, and then acts by applying force through whatever method they choose. On this level, one might consider an internalised locus of control as being a factor in the Law of Attraction.

It is perhaps interesting to note the tendency that certain worldviews have on conceptualizing the general locus of control as being external. Indeed, the greater part of the philosophy and science of the historical-conceptual era that in Thelemic jargon is referred to as the "Aeon of Osiris" does exactly this. Consider how the ultimate formulation of Christianity and of materialistic science completely abolish the possibility of an internal locus of control - through the creation of an omnipotent God beyond all human understanding and morality, that punishes and redeems on His whim alone as in Calvinism; or through the models of biological determinism which reduce the human condition to nothing more than the interaction of neurotransmitters. Both are inimical to free will; both tend towards the creation of a kind of learned helplessness as an ultimate outcome.

"Oh, and we should have nuked the middle east into a
desolate wasteland as a response to 9/11... because science."
- Satoshi Kanazawa, alleged scientist

This is never applied evenly throughout society - indeed, one might see many social structures as dividing and classifying individuals into whether or not they are permitted to have an internal locus of control. All systems of oppression could be seen as taking their roots, or at least their justifications, from this fact. Consider the way in which the oft-dubious discipline of evolutionary psychology is practically a byword for misogyny and rape apologia (CW: misogyny and rape apologia, obviously), or the "scientific" racism that produced drapetomania and which still tiptoes around the fringes of scientific respectability - the theme that can be seen as running between all these examples is that people within oppressed groups are seen as not having the same intellectual or social capacity for having an internal locus of control as those of the dominant groups.
It has been noted that there is something of a political divide in the loci of control - those with more typically right-wing views tends to have a more internal locus of control, where as left-wingers tend towards a more external one - though this is by no means a simple relationship. It may be better to think of the difference between personal loci of control ("I am free to act" vs "I am controlled by outside forces") and societal loci of control ("people should be free to act" vs "people should be controlled by outside forces") - in such areas there is often a great degree of doublethink.

Authoritarians of all stripes seek to impose a paradigm upon society whereby the societal locus of control is externalised, whilst social liberals and anti-authoritarians tend towards a more internalised societal locus of control. Equally, self-styled Libertarians tend towards externalising the societal locus of control in much the same way that authoritarians do - creating the paradigm of Market-as-God - whilst at the same time preaching the doctrine of personal internalisation. Consider as an example of this the politician who promotes entrepreneurship and personal responsibility (personal internalisation) whilst implementing policies which lead to a decrease in social mobility and personal economic freedom of the masses (societal externalisation).

Even within the progressive left, which arguably sees as an end goal the internalisation of control, there can be seen some remnants of the externalist viewpoint - mostly as a Shibboleth whereby attempting to advocate for the internalisation of personal loci is seen as elitism and privilege. Indeed, this can often be the case - the well-meaning ally coming up with some preposterous rubbish about self-empowerment that entirely misunderstands the situation is practically a trope. However, this does also possibly point towards one of the reasons that such movements often struggle with significant inertia - the very idea that one might be able to change one's situation is somewhat taboo, and thus a sort of resigned apathy is the inevitable result.

It seems to me that there is a certain amount of reconciliation that needs to be made between the two positions of internal and external loci of control, recognising the external factors which influence one and simultaneously acknowledging one's capacity for action. As for societal loci, I shall end by quoting without comment Aleister Crowley (or Aiwass, or Whatever):

"Do as thou wilt shall be all of the Law." - Liber AL vel Legis, I:40
"Love is the Law, Love under Will." - Liber AL vel Legis, I:57

Escaping the Positivity Trap

There's an ongoing debate on the subject of positive thinking, which seems to have been raging for years. On one side is the camp which - broadly speaking - suggests that one can fix any multitude of problems in one's life if one changes one's outlook; the other, that such a position is naive at best, and tends towards a kind of victim-blaming narrative.

Both sides of the argument are, as always, not entirely wrong, nor entirely right. My personal feeling is that the truth of the matter lies somewhere in the synthesis of the two; in this post, I would like to hash out a few of my thoughts on the matter.

The pro-positivity crowd offer numerous solutions to life's problems, which on the surface seem to be mostly about thinking happy thoughts. The likes of Oprah relentlessly promote this strategy - that one can fix all, or almost all of one's problems simply by changing one's outlook. These can come in many guises - ranging from from daily affirmations, encouragement to smile, re-framing one's life experiences, meditation, and the ever popular "cutting negative people out of your life".

Glurgemonger-in-Chief  Doreen Virtue, to nobody's surprise, offers "Daily Guidance From Your Angels"; the equally crap-saccharine Louise Hay, of You Can Heal Your Life fame, has similar "Power Thoughts"; as does, inevitably, Deepak Chopra, the only man in existence who seems to understand less about Quantum Physics than Peter Carroll.

If you read any of the above and felt a sense of general revulsion trickling down your spine, you're not alone. One has to wonder if the advice is meant as a cure for depression, or merely to sooth the minds of those suffering from what Freud called "common unhappiness". Ask anyone who has ever suffered from clinical depression, and you'll quickly find out that these kinds of positive encouragements are worse than useless; indeed, they are often listed as being some of the worst things that can be said to a depressed person. Not only do those spouting such positivity seem to completely misunderstand the nature of depression - which is perhaps thought of less as sadness, more a profound feeling of meaninglessness and futility - but by giving such pieces of advice, even well-meaningfully, there is a tendency to shift the blame for one's circumstances onto the individual.

Even if one was to argue that psychological factors are the primary cause of depression (they aren't), the demographics of mental illness point towards extrinsic social factors as being a contributing cause. Even for those not suffering from depression, it is no great leap of logic to suggest that being part of a disadvantaged population is likely to reduce one's opportunities in life, and cause a greater exposure to stressful factors. For ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, women, the economically disadvantaged, and those on the LGBT spectrum, the simple fact is that the oppressive structures of society as it exists today are ones which act externally. No amount of positive thinking is going to change the pay gap between men and women, for example; no amount of smiling is going to prevent the trauma caused by governmental persecution of the most vulnerable (CW: sexual assault).

For this reason, there has been a great amount of backlash against the positivity movement, much of it justified. It could even be said that positivity is for "Rich White People" - a soothing balm for the worried well, who are not harmed by structural inequalities.

But that's not the whole of the story. As much as we rail against the cult of optimism, there are some small grains of truth at the root of all the mindless positivity; indeed, it clearly works for some people, one way or another. As much as it is argued that, as in the joke about the anarchist and the lightbulb, it's the whole damn system that needs changing more than the individual, if it works, then it's useful.

Let's take a two common examples of Positivity Advice and dissect them a little:

Happy Yoga - Mindfulness and Postural Feedback

Often touted as the psychological panacea that society needs, mindfulness is a form of meditation that involves deliberately moving one's attention away from one's thoughts, generally focusing on bodily sensations or on breathing. There's a lot that can be written about the effectiveness of meditative techniques for psychological and personal development, which I shall save for another post. The most crucial thing to note here is these techniques are, at least until one is very well practiced in them, merely a "pause button", most effective at helping reduce the feeling of being overcrowded by thoughts. Similar claims are often made about the efficacy of yoga.

The old phrase about it taking less muscles to smile than to frown is, whilst technically accurate, entirely unhelpful (and misses out the fact that it takes even fewer muscles to flip the middle finger at anyone who thinks that this qualifies as advice). However, it keeps getting repeated within positivity circles, often with some kind of scientific studies backing it up. The science behind this one is a bit sketchy at best - the theory dates back to Riskind and Goatey's 1982 study on posture having a regulatory effect on emotional feedback, and Laird's 1974 study on facial feedback, which I can't find a non-pay-walled link to. 

The idea of there being a biofeedback mechanism related to posture or facial expression is reasonable enough in itself - if only due to the psychological associations that one inevitably develops with any given posture. Practitioners of yoga and certain esoteric traditions will recognize this as old wisdom; couched in terms of energy meridians or chakras is the general sense of a biointelligence which mediates between body and mental states. This could all be seen as supportive of "Smile Therapy", were it not for the fact that facial expressions are not culturally universal. In essence, it seems to boil down to determining what postures have specific resonances for you - and if any such postures do aid in bestowing a specific mood, using those. As always, experimentation and observation are key.

Arguably, this all ties into the many strange and hard-to-explain observations around the placebo effect, but that is a matter for another post. 

Incidentally, I'll here plug Steve Wilson's excellent Chaos Ritual, sadly out of print and difficult to get ahold of, for having one of the most interesting deconstructions of the mind-body-neurology link when it comes to posture.

Positive Visualizations and the Law of Attraction

So, here's the big one. As a random aside, I've been reading David Allen's Getting Things Done this week (don't judge me), and I had a sudden insight into why Rhonda Byrne's The Secret and its numerous tie-ins got things wrong. Aside from the Chopra-level quantum woo, obviously. Allow me to save you a few pounds and reveal the Ancient Secret of the Secret Masters of Secretness:

Thinking about things gets you things.

Specifically, imagining a positive outcome, gets you that outcome.

Now, it is pretty clear that this is utter rubbish. If it were true, I wouldn't be writing this blog, because I'd be too busy lying on my poolside recliner in the blazing sunshine, being served cocktails by a selection of nubile personages of various genders as I gaze lovingly at my enormous, Scrooge McDuck-worthy pile of cash. But, as with so many things of this nature, it does contain a grain of truth.

A simple explanation is that by visualizing specific outcomes, you prime the part of your brain that acts as a perceptual filter - the reticular activating system, or RAS - to focus on information that you would not have consciously perceived. Like all simple explanations, it's not entirely true - the neurology is a lot more complicated than that; the RAS certainly has a significant role in the routing of sensory stimuli, alertness, and habituation (the process by which the brain trains itself to stop noticing background stimuli), but it isn't the all-powerful mental filtration system that some make it out to be. Nonetheless, it can easily enough be observed that there is some kind of perceptual filter which determines what the conscious mind becomes aware of. On some level, whether this is a neurological or psychological filter is irrelevant; the function can be considered to be the same regardless of the origin.

There's a good amount of evidence that suggests that these perceptual filters can be primed by expectation, as well as by thoughts, beliefs, and mood. The totality of these filters makes up what Robert Anton Wilson referred to as the "Reality Tunnel". The theory then follows that if one sets up the right positive attitude and visualisations, then one is more likely to notice opportunities and the like which can lead to the occurrence of the desired outcome.

And yet, what is missed so often here is that the visualisation is only the first step - it must be matched by action. This is seemingly obvious, but is easily missed in the flurry of positivity. No matter the strength of one's affirmations, they will remain mere words unless they are acted upon. This is the Positivity Trap, the new Opium of the Masses: the idea that merely changing your thinking but acting the same will magically lead to some great change. This is one possible cause behind the observation that positive fantasies predict poor achievement - if one buys deeply into one's visualization to the extent that one believes it to be inevitable, regardless of actions taken or not taken, then one is probably in for an unpleasant surprise.

So, what then?

I'm not going to say that you should simply chuck positivity. There are some useful tools to be found buried in the woo-mines. As always, the trick is to use them critically. Positive thinking for the sake of positive thinking is an exercise in intellectual masturbation: and, more to the point, it isn't the opposite to negative thinking. There is no forced duality - after all, most negative thoughts do have a kernel of truth to them, but so do most positive ones.

One should not attempt to annihilate all negativity with positive thoughts - this is the swift way into the Positivity Trap. Having the vision of a positive outcome is useful - it allows one to gain a certain degree of clarity, by which to direct one's actions. But this must be tempered by a degree of realism, and, of course, backed up with action - whether on a physical, or a psychological plane.

The Book of Jugs: Behavioural Conditioning For Fun and Prophet

Content warning: discussion of techniques (towards the end) which could be classified as deliberate self-harm

What do drugs, World of Warcraft, speeding tickets, Facebook, and Aleister Crowley have in common?

No, whilst "things the Daily Mail disapproves of" is technically correct, it's not the one I was looking for...

Here's a clue:

 

Operant conditioning (hereby referred to as OC) is a particularly interesting bit of psychology, which emerged from the works of noted pigeon-weaponiser, saxophonist, and Chomsky-baiter B.F. Skinner. It can be distinguished from classical (Pavlovian) conditioning in two ways: firstly, because it describes the ways in which a single pattern of behavior can be altered in isolation, whilst the later describes the way in which a stimulus, not a behaviour, is associated with a consequence; and secondly, because it's more about pigeons than dogs.

OC makes a number of assumptions about animal (and, indeed, human) behaviour which may or may not be accurate: the main one is around the ultimately mechanistic origin of many behaviours. However, ignoring some of the somewhat spurious logical-positivist offshoots of Skinner's works, and the consequent endless arguments over free will, it becomes relatively clear that - at least in a subset of cases - OC can work. Adopting a certain amount of theory-agnosticism, I will focus on the effects and uses of OC, rather than whether the underlying assumptions are strictly true.

The mechanisms by which behaviour is changed can be broken into three main categories: Reinforcement, Punishment, and Extinction. The first two are then broken down again into Positive and Negative subcategories. Reinforcement is considered to increase the likelihood of a behaviour; punishment to decrease it. Positive interventions involve adding something - pleasant or unpleasant - whereas negative interventions are considered to be removing something. Extinction, on the other hand, refers to the process which occurs when a behaviour which previously was reinforced or punished no longer becomes associated with any such outcome, or where the outcome becomes sufficiently disconnected from the behaviour.

For example:

• Positive Reinforcement: I go to the gym. I reward myself with coffee. I go to the gym more.
• Negative Reinforcement: I pay off my debts to the mob. I don't get my kneecaps broken. I pay off my debts quicker.
• Positive Punishment: I drink too much. I get a hang over. I drink less.
• Negative Punishment: I have a cigarette. I put a pound in the Quitting Jar, the contents of which will be donated to Westboro Baptist Church. I smoke less.
• Extinction: I go to work, hoping to be paid. I don't get paid. Eventually, I stop going to work.

There is a certain amount of cross-over between reinforcement and punishment, depending on how any given example is worded; for example, I could consider having my knees broken a positive punishment for not paying off my gambling debts, rather than it being a negative reinforcer. The difference is somewhat academic - it boils down to three simple premises, that:

Pleasant outcomes encourage a behaviour

Unpleasant outcomes discourage a behaviour

Unexpectedly pleasant or unpleasant outcomes reduce the degree of encouragement or discouragement.

Numerous factors influence the effectiveness of reinforcements. Humans are pretty terrible at making long-term cost-benefit analyses, so more immediate consequences are generally far more effective than delayed ones, for example; likewise, more extreme consequences generally are more effective than less extreme ones.

There are two interesting observations which spiral off Skinner's research, and which are somewhat intertwined. First, consider the problem of contingency: when a consequence occurs consistently following a behaviour, the behaviour is quickly modified, but should the consequence later become inconsistent, only occurring following a proportion of instances of the behaviour, it will soon become extinguished. Conversely, if a behaviour only triggers a given consequence on occasion, it takes longer for the behaviour to become learned, but likewise takes longer for that behaviour to be extinguished should the stimulus stop.

One good example of this process in action can be found in road speed cameras. It is well known that many static speed cameras across the UK are "empty" boxes, with some areas only having 10% of their cameras actually active at any one time. Whilst there are numerous economic and logistic reasons behind this, it could also be argued to be a subtle method of maintaining the non-speeding behaviour of motorists. Were every camera to be normally active 100% of the time, extinction would kick in relatively quickly upon encountering a camera that had malfunctioned or been taken down for servicing. However, if only a certain, random number of cameras were ever active at a given time, it would take far longer for the extinction of non-speeding - as one would never know if a camera would activate the next time one sped through it, and would thus have to keep on one's toes, so to speak.

The second related phenomena is what emerges when a subject is rewarded and punished with zero contingency; that is to say, on an entirely random basis. Skinner demonstrated that pigeons that were randomly given food pellets quickly developed complex behavioral patterns (pecking, spinning, neck turning, and other such pigeoning things), presumably in an attempt to replicate the conditions in which the food was released.

Admittedly, research subsequent to Skinner does cast some doubt on the validity of this observation - but we may consider it, true or not, to be an interesting and potentially useful explanation for a wide variety of behaviours. The ever-fascinating Derren Brown explored this effect with humans on Trick or Treat in 2008, and showed similar effects, albeit in a much less controlled fashion. One could consider this effect to be closely linked to such things as magical thinking and apophenia.

Turning to matters more esoteric, I now want to look at one of the lesser known and more interesting texts by pioneering mountaineer and scatological poet Aleister Crowley. Specifically, Liber III vel Jugorum (CN - discussion and photographs related to self-harm, albeit not in the context of psychological distress, and allusions to animal cruelty. Contains Crowley.). 

Stripping out the usual incomprehensibilities and allusions to Higher Secrets (which, inevitably for Crowley, are all about sex), this text describes methods of gaining a degree of control and discipline over speech, action, and thought, using techniques that would be best described as positive punishment. A particular pattern of speech, action, or thought, is to be designated as taboo for a week or more, and all breaches of this taboo are to be punished by the aspirant. Crowley suggests using a razor to make a cut upon one's arm or wrist every time such a taboo is broken, and that one should record the number of breaches by the number of cuts.

These taboos are - intentionally - entirely arbitrary. Some examples, taken directly from Liber III, are given here:

• Avoid using some common word, such as "and" or "the" or "but"; use a paraphrase.
• Avoid using some letter of the alphabet, such as "t", or "s". or "m"; use a paraphrase.
• Avoid using the pronouns and adjectives of the first person; use a paraphrase.
• Avoiding lifting the left arm above the waist.
• Avoid crossing the legs.
• Avoid thinking of a definite subject and all things connected with it, and let that subject be one which commonly occupies much of thy thought, being frequently stimulated by sense-perceptions or the conversation of others.
• By some device, such as the changing of thy ring from one finger to another, create in thyself two personalities, the thoughts of one being within entirely different limits from that of the other, the common ground being the necessities of life

The aim here is not to change one's behaviour permanently; rather, it is to develop a certain awareness of one's thoughts, speech, and actions, and the discipline both to suppress such behaviours, and to punish oneself when one breaches the taboos. For Crowley, such a degree of awareness and control was considered central to all forms of magick; along with yoga, the practices here were a major pillar of his magickal system, the order known as the A.'.A.'. (commonly, though incorrectly, said to stand for "Argentium Astrum" or "Arcanum Arcanorum").

The methodology is interesting, though personally I wouldn't use a razor for the self-punishment aspect. A common suggestion is to use a thick rubber band around the wrist, which can be snapped back sharply; some Thelemites of my acquaintance swear by the electric-shock device known as the Pavlok. The exact method doesn't really matter - the stimulus is the important part.

I've experimented a couple of times with this system, using the rubber-band technique, and from my own observations, it is quite an eye-opener. One tends to initially miss a lot of taboo-breaches; over time, these become more noticeable, but equally one becomes more adept at avoiding the taboo and working around it. Eventually, it almost becomes natural; in a way, it follows the competence curve from unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence, though this fades a few days after completing the exercise due to the extinguishing effect described above.

What I'm trying to say, is that magick and psychology have an awful lot of crossover.

The first is pretty much an applied form of the second, anyway...

Magick For Beginners: Elemental Directions

Being the first in a series of blatherings about topics which keep cropping up and confusing people when they look into Matters Esoteric, for the Elucidation of the Novice, the Amusement of the Adept, and the Inspiration of the Speculative Fiction Author.

As any budding witch, magician or estate agent will tell you, directions are Important. Most Western magickal traditions use some form of element-to-cardinal-direction correspondence, though as ever there is precious little agreement and endless internet arguements over which direction signifies which element. Newcomers to any magickal practice tend to get very worked up and confused about the specifics here; to what extent they can be said to really matter is pretty much down to one's individual practices and theories of How It All Works. Personally, I don't believe that there is One True Way of assigning elements to directions, though certain arrangements can be seen as being associated with particular assumptions about the microcosm and the macrocosm, and how it all fits together.

Most Western traditions derive ultimately from the Greek philosopher Empodocles, via Aristotle, in their use of elements. By this system, all matter is divided into the four root elements of Fire, Earth, Air and Water, with a fifth element, Aether (most often "spirit" or "magic" in modern traditions) representing that which is not of the physical world. Aristotle theorised that the unchanging stars were composed of Aether, as all things on earth could be seen to ultimately degrade; note here the similarities with the various gnostic and pseudo-gnostic ideas about the corruption of matter and eternal nature of the spirit.

These four elements were arranged, as seen in the following diagram, by two measures of their sensible characteristics, which is to say their heat or coolness, and the wet or dryness. This, naturally enough, produces an arrangement which sees fire as being the opposite of water, and air the opposite of earth.

There is, of course, nothing remotely sensible about the Aether

There are, of course, other schema of elements, the Chinese Wu Xing (consisting of wood, fire, earth, metal and water) being a prominent one - though it is worth noting that the wu xing should not be thought of as being component parts of the universe as the classical elements were, but rather as being representative of fundamental processes that described relationships and interactions between differing phenomena. More modernly, one might think of the elements of the periodic table; or of electrons, protons and neutrons; or of the various flavours of quarks - the underlying concept is not altogether dissimilar (and leads to the idea of Opening the Watchtower of Bottom, which should not be confused with any of the OTO higher grades...) Equally, one could consider the four classical elements to be archetypal representations of states of matter - solid, liquid, gaseous and plasma.

So, naturally enough, the "classic" arrangement of elements that crops up everywhere, is this:

(The arrow is pointing North in all the following diagrams)

Wait, what?

So, this is the standard, "microcosmic" arrangement that is ultimately derived from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, best known as the arrangement of the elemental archangels in their pentagram ritual (though, incidentally and like many things involving the Golden Dawn, the pentagram ritual is A Bit More Complicated Than That). Alex Sumner makes a few good arguements about the origin of this arrangement - that it can be tied to the arrangement of the winds according to Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos, or that it is tied in to the rather obscure "Adonai Forumla" of notable eccentric and spirit-chess enthusiast Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, one-time leader of the Golden Dawn.

Crowley aficionados will also recognise this as one of the sets of directional associations that are used in Liber Resh, his Egyptian-ish ritual in praise of the sun in its four stations across the sky. In a way, this can be quite easily rationalised - Air is the sun at dawn, rising into the sky; Fire is the sun at its height; Water is the sun as it sets and fades into the underworld; and Earth the darkness and stillness of midnight.

Another tradition gives the following:

What the hell's going on here?

This is derived from a couple of sources, most notably traditional astrology. Agrippa listed this arrangement in his Second Book of Occult Philosophy; it derives ultimately from the position of the cardinal signs of astrology (Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn respectively, working counter-clockwise from Fire in the East, following the order of their rising above the Horizon from the Spring Equinox). The Golden Dawn also used this in their hexagram ritual in certain circumstances (primarily when within the Vault of the Adepts); it could be said that this arrangement represents macrocosmic forces, rather than microcosmic ones - those forces which are of the stars, rather than extant upon the earth.

A somewhat more obscure, used by some Thelemic authors including the wonderfully-named Rodney Orpheus, uses a model based on the fixed signs of the zodiac that derives from another one of Crowley's rituals, Liber V vel Reguli. For reasons that may best be described as "perverse" and "complex", this places the viewpoint of the magician as being upside-down in the centre of the ring of the zodiac, facing Taurus (Earth), which is assumed to be the East. This results, naturally enough, in Scorpio (Water) being placed to the West, and the apparent direction of the zodiac as running clockwise; Leo (Fire) thus ends up in the South, and Aquarius (Air) in the North:

Just to make things more confusing, by Thelemic convention East does not actually refer to East, but rather in the direction of Boleskin House, a property on the shores of Loch Ness which was once owned by Aleister Crowley (and later by Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin fame). Interestingly, Boleskin burned down a few weeks ago, a fact which will likely launch a thousand increasingly ludicrous conspiracy theories. In practice, this means that using the above arrangement results in a variable position of the four elements depending on where one happens to be on the globe, which could be argued was quite intentional on Crowley's part; Lon Milo DuQuette suggests in The Magick of Aleister Crowley that the counter-intuitive placement of the elements in the Reguli ritual was designed to deliberately disjoint the magician from the old geocentric model of the universe that is intrinsically implied by the Golden Dawn's microcosmic arrangement, in favour of a heliocentric arrangement in which the magician identifies with the Sun - a perennial theme of Crowley's philosophy.

Most Wiccan groups tend to use the Golden Dawn arrangement but rationalise it in more naturalistic ways; considering that most of Gardnerian Wicca is an assortment of GD/OTO rituals with the serial numbers filed off, with a certain amount of Old Gerald's sexual pecadillos scribbled in the margins and then gradually crossed out by various editors and revisionists, this is hardly surprising, but that is a rant for another post entirely.

Other pagan traditions use a variety of different arrangements; one of the most common is the system used by Robert Cochrane's Clan of Tubal Cain, which has been adopted by various practitioners of non-Garnderian traditional witchcraft. This system is, ironically, the closest to the arrangement that is implied by Aristotle:

There are various interpretations of this arrangement, the most common of which is to consider North to be representative of celestial realms, being that the Northern celestial pole is consistently above the Northern horizon, and the South being representative of the chthonic underworld, the Southern celestial pole being below the Southern horizon. The nodes of Fire and Water are assigned to the points of dawn and dusk, and can be seen as representing the birth and death of the sun.

Most or all of the above applies best in the Northern hemisphere. There are differing schools of thought around the application of these theories in the Southern hemisphere - some authorities, usually of the Goldeny-Dawny-type, argue that there should be no difference, as when one is conducting a ritual which uses the elemental correspondences, one is not actually in Basildon, or Alice Springs, or wherever, but in the metaphysical space implied by the Temple - and so the energies that one is dealing with are archetypal, and based on tradition. Others, particularly the more earth-focused pagan traditions, argue that if one is connecting to the energies of the Earth, location is far more important than any archetypal form.

I would generally advise keeping an open mind on the whole issue, including whether or not any of this matters one jot. Which, when you think about it, is a fairly good maxim for everything when it comes to magick.