High Weirdness is that endlessly fascinating condition of experience where utterly improbable and marvelous things are happening in ways that are eerily resonant with your own human heart and the hearts of those around you.
In other words, in times of High Weirdness, the nondual, synchronous, and symbolically-charged mahamudra nature of your surroundings becomes beautifully apparent.
The most sure-fire way I know to start generating High Weirdness and fast is to do magic with and on other people.
There are of course routes to getting there solo – but the involvement of friends (and / or enemies) seems to speed the matter…
…. with the added bonus that you then have other humans around to verify that yes, indeed, stuff is getting strange and yes, indeed, it has to do with the magic that you worked.
Now doing magic with other people is a relatively straightforward matter: you find some collaborators, you figure out what you’re going to do together, and by golly, you do it.
I have a lot to say about exactly how all that can occur, and I’ll be discussing it in DARE: the course on commanding liminal magic, which will open for registration on October 10th to exclusively to folks who have already taken INFLUENCE.
But still, that’s the basic pattern. You get together and you make stuff happen.
Though doing magic with others is relatively straightforward, that’s certainly not to say it’s easy: group dynamics never are.
I’ve held countless magical community potlucks and gatherings here in my hometown in Pittsburgh that were tons of fun and also plenty of work.
Egos flare, arguments erupt, magical points of view differ, covert agendas simmer.
(lolz – I should know because always a goodly portion of the ego blustering and covert- agenda-having tends to emanate from *yours truly*.)
It’s like herding cats.
But with some panache and commitment, the show does go on, friendships strengthen, perception warps and expands, and wonderful weird stuff does happen.
I’ll have more to say in my next message about the fine and ethically complex art of doing magic on others, but first let’s stick with this question:
How does one find magical collaborators?
I have some suggestions.
1) Don’t be picky.
To do magic with others that yields jaw-dropping results you do not need to be in a blood oath covenant with them, you do not need to all share the same beliefs, and you do not even need like each other all that much.
Your collaborators don’t need to be perfect and boundlessly committed, and neither do you.
You just have to be willing to get together to create something.
2) Look for playfulness.
Magic is an art form, and a largely underground one, which means that essentially it’s a kind of play.
After doing this for some years and executing many experiments, you may find that you’ve wound up with your magical soul mates, people you adore, who perfectly suit you, for whom you would gladly die or kill…
(I’m blessed to be in this position now, and it’s a wonderful, heart-warming feeling)
…. yet that’s not what you’re likely to come across on your first forays into collaborative waters, and holding the expectation that you should be able to start your collaborative magic career in this exalted, fortunate, hard-won condition is futile.
It’s like wanting to be already-happily-married before you ever start dating.
So what you’re basically looking for initially in magical collaborators is playful weirdoes who seem to display some grains of sanity.
Place I’ve found fruitful magical collaborators include:
Hippie drum circles
12 step meetings
Groups centered around the study and promotion of psychedelics (I used to be an Evolver / Reality Sandwich organizer, true story)
Parties where people are belly-dancing and spinning fire
Sweat lodges
Nondual inquiry groups
New Thought churches
Surrealist poetry readings
Anarchist protests
Now all of these are rather diverse sorts of gatherings – and yet they all tend to attract playful weirdoes, which, remember, is what you’re looking for here –
– you’re not looking for someone who shares your precise opinion about the value of the Thoth deck versus the Tarot de Marseilles
– you’re not looking for someone who has absolutely all of their shit together (tons of very magic, very fun people don’t – getting-our-shit-together is something we address in INFLUENCE)
– you’re not looking for someone who worships the same gods or follows the same path
You’re just looking for playfulness.
3) Don’t start with organizing ambitious scripted rituals – start with parties.
Small parties are best at first: dinner parties, spin-the-bottle parties, birthday parties, Yule parties for family and friends.
Doesn’t really matter what. Just some kind of party.
Eventually you could work your way up to elaborate international galas or giant warehouse ragers. Your call.
But small parties are the place that I recommend that you start.
Organizing a party may on the surface sound like an embarrassingly mundane activity…
…and yet the grand thing about a party, no matter how modest, is that it contains the basic elements necessary for collaborative magic:
1) people
2) a common celebration (of a birthday, or holiday, or of the food and drink itself)
3) a container (the party has a location, and a start time and an end time)
4) the ability to create a liminal, apart-from-the-every-day, sort of space – which can be accomplished with music, decoration, games, theme
5) the built-in result of creating and strengthening relationships
So, what are you waiting for?
If you’re interested in generating High Weirdness through collaboration with other magical people, I suggest you get busy seeking out playful weirdoes and / or get busy planning a small party for your existing community.
Later this week I’ll have more to say about doing magic on other people. ;)
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P.S. And, of course, if you’re interested in getting-your-own-shit-together and meeting other magic folk who are doing the same, you may want to consider taking INFLUENCE – which, due to popular demand, I’ll be opening again for registration on October 18th.
image: Martha by Yana Dhyana on Deviant Art