Cone 143: A Magical Working Toward a Better World

 Cone 143: a Magical Working for a Better World

What follows, put bluntly, is a magical working towards the betterment of the world. It is important that it be left precisely as vague as this. It was conceived using various methods over the period of a few months, and involved a great personal struggle on the part of its author. Perhaps this is fitting, as the working involves amplifying direct emotive personal experience and struggle. It is designed to be very simple, accessible to anyone who wishes to participate. If the prospective participant wishes to make it even simpler, that is just fine- conversely, if one has their own ritual practice and wishes to incorporate what follows into it, thereby complicating it, that is also good. The name of the game here is fellowship, and direct personal understanding. 

There are several parts to this, and again the reader / participant is free to decide which are necessary. Beyond this introduction, there will be an explanatory note, Part I; a parable, Part II; and finally, the working itself- Part III. In addition, the essay Communion With the Critters helps to illustrate how this type of magic can work, even with non-human entities. The reader is welcome to dig right into the meat of it by scrolling to Part III, or to read all of it, or none at all, or to jump around in the order they choose.

Gratitude is warmly extended to Professor Wham, Stephanie Quick, and the wonderful people in the discord for the Vayse podcast- all of whom in some way helped or inspired this project.

Part I: Explanatory Notes

It may be observed that in the introductory note, there was very little in the way of directives or strict rules. This is at the core of this working. The tendency for human beings to dominate, control, or manipulate others is at the core of what we call “evil”. In a magical sense then, fighting the fire of this egregore of dominion on earth with the flame of hexing, binding, or subtle manipulative magic only serves to stoke it into a planetary conflagration. Even removing any magical lens in looking at the problem, it is hard to disagree that culture has become more divided and combative.  A glance at trends in world events over the past decade may have convinced the reader that this has already happened, and that there is no way to stop it.

Progress, however, can appear apocalyptic when you are in the midst of it. Perhaps it is quite literally apocalyptic, and one could argue that’s not the worst thing in the world. To take the word “apocalypse” at face value, from its Greek roots, it simply means revelation, the “lifting of the veil”- laying bare the evils of the world for all to see. This leads to despair, confusion, and chaos. Chaos is a fundamental catalyst in the cosmos. The road gets rocky when such revelations make themselves known; the world changes. Gripping the illusory, phantasmic past which has already gone away from us is of no use. Standing one’s ground when that ground is ever shifting, or disappearing entirely, is risky. We must be fluid, adapt, and not only anticipate the aftermath; We must help shape it. Whether the future is utopian or a post-apocalyptic wasteland is for us to decide.  

In the past, subversion of the norms has been a classic method of upending power structures, allowing for a different perspective and promoting ingenuity in addressing its exposed failings. In an environment where little agreement can be found, and chaos is the reigning commonality, such subversion is neutralized. It only serves to contribute to a fractured and destabilized structure. As we find ourselves butting heads or tripping over one another in this worldwide Babel Tower scenario, we can secure the foundations through cooperation. The most radical and subversive act one can manifest at the present time is love, kindness, and compassion.

If this sounds corny to you, if it seems naive, that is because the cruelty of the world has conditioned you to reject basic principles of humanity. This working requires that you shed away, unabashedly and intentionally, all the cynical trappings you’ve accumulated over the years. Just because it hasn’t worked before doesn’t mean it won’t; that is to say, history only repeats because we insist on repeating it. Animosity, hopelessness, apathy, and misanthropy are cultivated by the dark forces of our collective psychology. The Black Lodge, as it were, wishes for nothing more than for you to feel helpless, angry, and lost. These energetic evils, however you wish to characterize or envision them, want you to give into fear. This must at all costs be resisted.

This is the magic of Mr. Rogers. There is no wish too small, and the Land of Make-Believe is real. We are, after all, working toward World Peace. A lofty goal, to be sure, and one that seems foolishly optimistic, but this very foolish optimism is necessary. There needs to be a reckoning, a balancing of the world’s humors; and for as much rational pessimism as seems to be all-pervading in the greater world, there needs to be some glimmer of quixotic hope as a counter-weight. Breaking down the seemingly impassable barriers to faith is important. This begins with you, with the Self, which mirrors the greater reality. It’s a lovely day in the neighborhood if you want it to be, and everyone can be your neighbor. The reader who is scoffing at my corniness here will be well advised to examine their own inner walls, which partition off empathy in order to maintain their gloomy worldview and perpetuate a gloomy world.

Much talk surrounds the idea of “desensitization”, that we have all hardened ourselves to violence, cruelty, and atrocity. We have normalized these things, as a matter of self-preservation. If one stopped to really consider the feelings of each person they meet, let alone anyone they read about in the news, they would never stop weeping. It’s impractical to be empathetic. In some cases, stubbornly clinging to ideals and beliefs necessitates ignoring the pain of others, or justifying it under one cause or another. A cocktail of biases, blind spots, and moral compromises fuels this need to carry on, to ignore the plight of those around us, and to give up on the idea of ever fixing it.

Mean-spirited discourse makes itself apparent on social media, and is encouraged and rewarded by the algorithms. The point here is to recognize that part of the reason we fall into a trap, a downward cycle of negativity and animosity, has less to do with impassioned argument and more to do with the inverse- dispassionate removal. Each of us has barriers and walls in place to protect ourselves which paradoxically support the cruelty on the surface; the self-defeating cycle in each of us ripples out to a world of pain and retribution. We can short the circuit, and we must.

There are commonalities which are central to the experience of being a living human on earth. There is a direct emotive expression that cannot be conveyed through language, but which anyone can understand if only they allow themselves the compassionate eye to read it. The working, then, seeks to identify and psychically amplify these experiences within the deep self of the participant. Without coercion, or the need for convincing prose or manipulation, these waves of direct personal gnosis can wash over the unsuspecting populace like a cool breeze or mild spray of light rain. In the most subtle fashion, it is hoped that the heart-strings will sympathetically resonate; that the recipients of such broadcasts will be moved to appeal to their better angels. 

Part II: The Sage at the Shoreline

Two soldiers from opposing armies brought the Sage at spearpoint across the beach. He was to be sacrificed to the serpents of the sea. Recalling Laocoön, the prophet from Virgil’s Aeneid, the enemy soldiers had decided to appease the dragons beneath the waves with an offering. Would it end the war? Would it prolong it? Omens had directed the wise men of both opposing armies, and led to the decision the soldiers found themselves carrying out. The Sage would be fed to the snakes, what happens beyond that is in the hands of the gods.

At the water’s edge, the serpents appeared, eager for their offering- except, these were not serpents after all. An eldritch horror arose from below the waves, its flailing tendrils approximating the necks and bodies of sea snakes. It levitated above the surf, growing larger and steadfastly hesitant to assume a definitive shape. It was black, the all encompassing blackness of the unknown, as though it were made up of materialized fear. A shockwave from the amorphous monstrosity laid the soldiers to waste, but the Sage stood firm, raising his staff. Sound refused to travel; there was no language, no communication in words. In a moment outside of our concept of time, the Sage thrust forward his staff and banished the tentacled horror.

As calm returned, the atmosphere on the beach was restored to its natural state. The surf, the cool breeze, and the chirping of birds could be heard. In the distance away from the shore, a curious golden cone shaped object hovered above the trees, framed by distant mountains…

Part III: The Working

To begin, the participant must have some time and space to relax. As previously mentioned, this should be easy for someone with no magical experience or practice to try out, and just as easily could be incorporated into an existing ritual or meditation.

Each participant must envision a point above their head, which expands into a ring as it rises. The participant may envision this ring in whatever form they wish. If it's funny or makes them happy, all the better.

Once formed they must envision it rising and getting proportionally bigger in the way sonar or radar is depicted. Each time a new higher concentric circle is envisioned, the participant must recall emotional moments from their past experiences. They don't have to be the most powerful or formative moments, but they should fit this pattern:

Gratitude. Recall a time when compassion was bestowed on you.

Duty. Recall a time you were compassionate and made a difference for
someone else, and how it felt to know that you had helped.

Guilt. Recall a time you had been cruel, and the shame you felt or still feel.
Now is a good time to release it. Let it float out with its respective ring.

Victimhood. Recall a time you were wronged. Forgive that person or
entity, release the grudge with this ring. The pain and anger of the initial event,
it is hoped, can be sublimated.

Wonder. Recall a time you were overwhelmed by beauty. This ring of
peace, hope and wonder should be last in line as a soft landing back to the mundane, should you choose to change the order or skip some.

These rings should be spreading out quite a bit. During these recollections, remembering the feeling is more important than the details. Remember how it felt. As you go keep picturing the rings spreading out, spreading over and pinging off of other participants. Picture an aerial view or a map with the rings emanating from your location.

As more people get involved, the hope is that these emotional ripples in the numinal atmosphere will overlap and intensify. The heart strings, as it were, of the unsuspecting populace will get tugged on. The hope is to make the infectious negativity, cruelty, or apathy sublimate into conversation with the better angels of the average person. To break down barriers. To wash away obstacles and awaken compassion, and to reduce suffering for sentient beings everywhere.

Sentimentalism, nostalgia, and kindness find a home here. Large waves begin as ripples in the tide; this subtle, non-coercive practice just might restore a bit of sanity and decency to the world. Perhaps it won’t, but if a glimmer of quixotic faith in humanity is too much to hope for then we surely are all doomed. I strongly doubt that we are. I think we have much more sway with the Wyrd than we are led to believe, and that petitioning fate itself with subtle acts of compassion- literally, direct empathic broadcasts of emotive experiences we all have in common- we can steer our way through Apocalypse itself.

Communion With the Critters

 

I have fed the birds at my house for almost as long as I have had a house. Initially, this was more for the benefit and amusement of my cat, who loves to watch from the window, flicking her tail and chittering away as they fly around. I have always enjoyed birds anyway, and seeing who visits my house because of the feeder has been quite literally a magical experience. 

I got in the habit of throwing whatever was leftover from my cold sandwich lunch at work onto the grass under the feeder each morning for the birds and squirrels to eat. It occurred to me recently that this daily bread, as it were, is part of a mystical bond with the birds- we are eating the same meal, communing in the most vital fashion. To extend this further, every new cold sandwich that gets made in the morning has its own attendant ritual, with both my dog and my cat appearing out of nowhere for a little scrap of meat. Our “Sandwich Time” morning rite has become very important, and ties us all together- the critters inside, myself, and the birds and creatures outside my door all partaking of the same broken bread.

The indoor critters, Bernie and Lucy, alerting me that it is dinnertime

I had my avian biases. Blue Jays always seemed to me to be the bullies of the bird world, and many assess them as such. I was less than thrilled about their attendance at the feeder, until one day an injured or sick Jay took up residence under my butterfly bush. It seemed incapable of flight, and could only hop short distances. Often it would just sit in the grass pointing its beak skyward, or cocking its head strangely. The smaller birds were cruel to it. I softened in my opinion of the Jays, and did what I could to help the fella along. Eventually it got well.

Similarly I had an irrational disdain for turkeys, mostly borne out of a joke. I just thought it was kind of funny to dunk on turkeys, I suppose. One day a lone turkey strolled into my yard, and kept coming back. It caused me to wonder why a lone turkey would hang around, as I’ve only ever seen them in groups. As it happens, this turkey was a hen with a nest somewhere nearby. Mother turkeys are solitary during this time of their lives and don’t stray too far from their nest when foraging. I took it upon myself to help the expectant single mom, and bought cracked corn and peanuts to spread on the lawn for her. She came to trust me enough that so long as I avoided looking at her directly, she would come within a few feet of me to eat. Eventually she stopped coming around- but a few months later, a pair of hens appeared with a troop of over a dozen poults following them. She had returned to show me her babies. 

Upping the ante in risk factors, and moving away from the feathered friends of my locale, I developed a friendship with a young skunk. I have always loved skunks, and juvenile skunks are particularly adorable. Fear of getting sprayed causes most people to revile them, and run away like a character in a Pepe le Pew cartoon. I have always found them to be most reasonable if you talk to them. A simple “hello” goes a long way, and once a skunk is greeted it tends to make a decision to stay or go- but it won’t be startled, and you should have adequate warning if it intends to spray. My skunk friend perhaps became a little too comfortable at my house, which caused trouble with package deliveries. The pizza delivery guy called my phone from the driveway and refused to come to the door. I stepped outside and knelt down to chat with Skunk Friend, and scolded him for scaring the pizza guy. The dumbfounded look on his face as I took the pizza and mozzarella sticks put into perspective how odd my connection with the local fauna seems to the average observer.

Odder still, where I live isn’t a particularly woodsy area. The wildlife that passes through is surprisingly diverse; I’ve seen deer, possum, hawks and buzzards, groundhogs, bats, and, worryingly, coyotes.

Coyotes are a particular concern when you have a dog that barely weighs ten pounds. As such, he is never outside alone- and he always knows when the coyotes have been around. His hackles go up, he starts obsessively sniffing and barks his threats into the air, defending his turf. A persistent coyote who had unseen partners nearby tested his boundaries for quite a while, and I chased him off enough times that he gave up. I started, then, to consider the coyote as a Trickster figure, although I don’t presume to know enough about Indigenous beliefs and stories to comment too deeply. I will say that I felt particularly silly chasing him off while wearing flip flops, which made a threatening clopping sound on the walkway as I ran down it. It proved very effective, but also clownish. I wondered at that time if I was really chasing some part of myself away, and ending up with egg on my face. Later I received assistance from my Skunk Friend, who sprayed the coyote and got rid of him for good. The joke ended up being on me though; I later realized the canine adversary had tried to rub the spray off on the grill of my car, and I could smell it for weeks afterward.

In the early months of 2024, a new coyote arrived in the yard. He was more persistent than the prior one, and behaved more erratically. He seemed to enjoy upsetting Bernie, my intrepid ten pound hound, as I caught him lifting his leg or defecating under the bird feeder a few times. I began a campaign again of chasing off the interloper and this time was even more conflicted. My logical and practical mind wrestled with the more mystically and magically oriented realms of my being. I intuitively felt there was a spiritual resonance to this critter, this Trickster, this beast tormenting my dog- but on the most rational level, I know that wild animals are inherently unpredictable and not to be toyed with. I could tell the coyote, who I named Ozzie, was claiming my yard as his by marking it, and that his presence not only presented a threat to people and their pets in the neighborhood but also to him. The best thing for him, and for everyone, is that he be chased away. I had to close off any kooky mystical ideas about communion with the creature and do what was right and reasonable.

The harassment campaign commenced- he was chased away several times but always made his way back to the feeder. I suspected that voles or mice were active there at night and attractive to him as a snack. He eventually learned that although I made a good show of it, and made some scary noises, I probably wouldn’t actually hurt him. He tested the boundaries by running just far enough into my neighbor’s yard that he felt safe, and watching me from there or sniffing around. One night, out of frustration, I picked up a small bit of gravel and winged it at him, hitting him right in the hindquarters. I saw him jump vertically, then run away. Not being in the habit of throwing stones at animals I felt guilty about it, but reasoned that it was for his own good. 

The next morning I threw a bit of sandwich out, went through Sandwich Time with Bernie and Lucy, and as I was leaving for work Ozzie came slinking into the yard. He beelined to the feeder and grabbed the sandwich. I got out of the truck and he saw me, turned and ran with his mouth full of my offering to the birds and stopping at the property line. The Trickster at the boundary and I locked eyes. I was keenly aware of the line of cars behind me, as parents heading to a nearby school were dropping off their kids. I had made the situation much worse in a practical sense than it had been- any one of those parents could have seen the coyote and called animal control. What would they have done? I shuddered to think that my adversary could get hurt, or worse, that he might attack someone’s kid. This was also the first time I had seen Ozzie in the light of day, the first really good look I had gotten at him.

He was mangy. He was emaciated. One ear was broken, dangling uselessly to the side. He had probably been ostracized from the pack, and had been doing whatever he could to survive all winter and had only just barely made it through. As springtime was dawning, he stood resilient and defiant at the demarcation point between life and death, wither and growth. My efforts had failed because they had been wrong. The lessons the animals had tried to teach me was brushed off by what seemed so certainly to be a rational concern, and as a result backfired badly. He was too smart, too innovative to be driven away. He calculated that the risk at night was too great, so instead he would come in the morning, which was far worse. I knew then that following my initial impulse was the right thing to do. 

On Saint Patrick’s Day, I was fixing a bit of leftover corned beef from a dinner earlier that week into a sandwich, and found that I had leftovers of the leftovers which would surely go bad in the fridge. I resolved to offer it up to Ozzie. So that night, I brought the remaining hunk of cured meat out and placed it under the bird feeder, then sat on my steps and meditated a psychic message to the foe who had so troubled me, and who seemed so troubled. I conjured first the word, then as much of the feeling as I could: PEACE. I wished peace for him, and emanated it, with the picture of the coyote in my mind. 

Bernie didn’t bark that night when we went out, and the beef was still there. It was there in the morning as well. When I arrived home from work, it still sat on the ground where it had been.

Then, as I was sitting down to eat with my family, my son said “Whoa! Coyote!” and pointed through the window of the front door. I only caught a flash of grey going past the window, but it was him- he had waited until dinner for our communion. It was quite a while before I saw him again. 

I began to worry that he had been killed, but he was spotted across town by someone who posted a picture to Facebook.

Later still, a much better picture appeared online- very much the same coyote but looking much healthier, with a new lease on life; much less the scrawny, frantic and mangy canine who so unnerved me at the start of the year. The last time I saw him, I was sitting on my front steps and he trotted over to the feeder, a mere four or five feet from me. “Hello, Ozzie.” I said. He didn’t hear me, I suppose because of his bad ear, so I talked a little more. He looked up and jumped a bit, then casually scampered away.

 

Living his best coyote life

Animals are great teachers. They can be seen as symbols and archetypes, which they surely are, or as independent entities or as parts within an ecological control system; any way you look at them, they provide an interesting corollary to ideas about morality, compassion, and wisdom. There’s no good and evil in nature, there is only survival. An intricate web of connected organisms, life cycles, and seasonal habits promote a sustainable world for us all. The critters of my yard, from the loud-mouthed Jay to the mischievous Coyote, have been beating me over the head with the same message for years- compassion is the key. Empathy, intuition, and understanding can’t really be quantified or rationalized, but they must at all costs be considered if not strictly adhered to. For simplicity, or practical reasoning, we often close ourselves off to these primeval impulses, but what if we didn’t? What if each of us prioritized peace? 

It is certainly something to consider. I’m sure that Ozzie would agree.