Magusitis: A Hydra in Sheep’s Clothing

You know the comics – the ones where the evil magician wants more and more power… and by the end of the story you discover she just wants to be loved. Some of you may have had the experience of observing a fellow magician suddenly launch into a process which only puts her further from an apparent objective of appearing to be a powerful and wise magus. Of course, she may be having a bad day, but she could be under the influence of a particular mental illness: a condition insidious and virulent in the scope of its affliction.

Magusitis can be seen under many guises and it can be placed in the corner (where it belongs) along with other personality disorders when viewed under the precepts of a a psycho-analytical paradigm.

I personally tend to view Magusitis as a dynamic entity, because I have seen it act like a magical vector, a meme and a behaviorism. additionally, it appears to act as a transmissible agent of mental illness amongst magicians.

A CLINICAL DISEASE OVERVIEW

There are a number of indications that are diagnostic of Magusitis: paranoia, obstinacy, an inability to be flexible, an inability to empathise with opposing ideas, ungroundedness or uncenterdness, self-delusion, gloating, power-hunger, competitiveness, status-seeking/degree-chasing, lying/deceit, inability to trust others, insincerity…

Some of these symptoms alone are not indicative of the disease. Chances are that if you do have a late stage of the disease, you are very unlikely to recognise it in yourself (even if you are reading this article) due to self-denial, so no need for hypochondriacism, although self-analysis is usually a good thing (armpits – check, ego – check, attitude – check).

Commonly amongst magicians, symptoms may manifest behaviorally with the afflicted individual acting defensively by cursing perceived enemies or anything that has the severe misfortune to get in her way: corporations, supermarket check-out operators (poor bastards – aren’t these people cursed enough?), traffic cops (even though she deserved that ticket).

Sporadically documented among experienced magicians (with whom I have collected accounts and information over the years) the observation is of a development of symptoms; the disease appears to proceed through several stages from mild paranoias into full blown magusitis.

TYPES

There are a number of recognised types among magusitis infected individuals:

• THE DEMIURGE: This guy is a big fish in a small pond. he’s got magickal powers that make him feel more powerful and god like than usual. In fact his magick works so well that he must be god or the essence of god – at the very least. Megalomania City here we come.

• THE NARCISSIST: This ones got insecurities by the bucket load. No matter what those insecurities might be, they get covered up through the invokation of something prettier, cooler or meaner. Whatever this guy lacks, he tends to compensate by invoking something that acts more like a patch over the issue instead of fixing the problem.

The Narcissist, ‘Feels grandiose and self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents to the point of lying, demands to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)

[He] is obsessed with fantasies of unlimited success, fame, fearsome power or omnipotence, unequaled brilliance (the cerebral narcissist), bodily beauty or sexual performance (the somatic narcissist), or ideal, everlasting, all-conquering love or passion.

[He is] firmly convinced that he or she is unique and, being special, can only be understood by, should only be treated by, or associate with, other special or unique, or high-status people (or institutions).

Requires excessive admiration, adulation, attention and affirmation -or, failing that, wishes to be feared and to be notorious (narcissistic supply).’[1]

• ARCHETYPAL INTOXICATION: This type is often a result of not banishing often enough (or invoking too often). I met someone recently who thinks he is channeling Eshu – just generally all the time. Certainly he’s is a mercurial person, but Eshu gives him a sense of self power that he does not otherwise have. I call this invokational psychosis and it is very common amongst magicians, witches, thelemites etc. But the technical name is archetypal intoxication. This personality disorder is very common especially amongst magicians who practice deeply entrenched within a paradigm, banishing rarely or ineffectively. It is actually fairly uncommon amongst chaos magicians however, because they tend to banish often and paradigm shift into atheism or the scientific paradigms.

• THE REBEL OR THE INFIDEL: This one is as common as muck, unfortunately. Those magickal individuals who feel they need to rebel in order to aggrandise their own ego and / or give themselves a reason for existence. I ve seen quite a few come and go from the magickal organisations, over the years, (they always go because it’s part of their rebelling, and eventually they end up with nothing to rebel against except themselves maybe). Grouped along with anti social personality disorders.

CAUSES

Obvious causes might be be any type of childhood trauma, where the child has experiences which cause major insecurity: bullying, teasing, parental divorce are all common causes of insecurity. They can give rise to the type of magickal persona where the magician uses magickal power as a crutch for his insecurity and lack of self confidence. In addition to this, practicing magick can bring with it a fair amount of perceived self power. How much of this self power is actual and how much is imagined is dependent on the magician. Unfortunately, not all of us realise that magick should be used to heal unbeneficial behaviorisms and psychoses, rather than exasperate them.

Insecurity is usually a psychosis that everybody experiences to different extents, and everyone deals with in different ways. Compensation for insecurity may manifest as paranoia or escapism (perhaps through transcendental states).

Over confidence – the sort that manifests as arrogance or gloating; defense mechanisms that justify and cause one to feel one is increasing one’s sense of standing in a magickal community (which can often be competitive), are strong signs of a manifesting magusistis. These symptoms are usually the first indication that a magician is unbalanced and that something is wrong. They also have the potential to bloom choronzonically into the major personality psychosis Magusitis.

Paranoia is again a offshoot of the insecurity demon. Having a overdeveloped sense of paranoia may seem to be the obverse of having a bit of a big ego, but it can actually be a symptom of it. As Dave Lee points out in a chapter on conflict and excorsism, the primary reason for thinking you’re being magickally attacked is because ‘you’re paranoid.’ The logic here is that the magician must be such an important source of woe to others that she must be important enough to be attacked by them. A magician that thinks she is being magickally attacked may be stroking her own ego as it gives her the attention she craves, whether it is from herself or others.

FAME

Those magicians who are accomplished and receive a lot of attention, or are famous (as famous as one can be in this profession) are in a high risk group. A magician of this caliber receives very little negative feedback versus a high volume of ego – inflating adulation. As a side note here: one doesn’t have to be a magus in order to catch magusitis. In fact – the reason it’s called magusitis is because the magician (or guru) who carries the disease aspires to be a Magus. Not that there is anything wrong with the aspiration to achieve.

RECREATIONAL DRUG USE AND ABUSE

some drugs, when used beyond moderation, cause the magician to be more vulnerable to infection by magusitis. Stimulants such as coke and speed easily cause paranoia and psychosis to varying degrees. (Amphetamine Psychosis is a textbook mental illness among speed addicts). Many hallucinogens can cause psychosis if frequently used. They also provide the physiological conditions required for imprinting. Bad trips can result in the individual being imprinted with an anxiety disorder. Cannabiods can cause short term paranoia (physiologically this largely is due to the lowering of the blood glucose levels after ingestion) and with long term use cannabis has an increased incidence of psychoses, all of this leaves the magician open to infection.

THE PITFALLS OF TRANSCENDANCE

The type of personality disorder evident during transcendental states is interesting. When entities / deities are transvoked (invoked or evoked) they have the potential to involve the transfer from the magician to the entity or deity. An invoked form of transcendence may give the magician airs to the deity she invokes – this is a very easy trap to fall into – especially if the deity is not banished after the magick is done. Some individuals transcend the mundane by channeling the sacred texts of alien entities (and claiming it to be truth) This would be an evoked form of transcendence – akin to projection or displacement (in behavioral psychology).

Magusitis seems to be like inhabiting the bodies of magicians who employ and rely on certain modes of being, and the disease seems to use the psychopathy in order to justify the magicians behavior. Whilst invokation in this case maybe useful (such as a mercurial invokation in order to increase ones mental abilities) it is incredibly important to banish!

Some very common examples of archetypal intoxication are: the wiccan who thinks he is the martyr of the goddess, or the thelmite who thinks she is the reincarnation of Aleister Crowley. Whilst transcendental states are useful, enjoyable and provide experience of the Numinons, they too have their baggage.

TRANSMISSION

transmissablity can be measured by determining how communicable the virus is, and how many individuals it has infected. Some years ago I observed the transmission of a virus through a group of individuals. The virus was even given a name. Each person infected by the virus developed strong feelings of paranoia and exhibited the same. mild manifestation of magusutis. At times I felt very vulnerable to it and could even feel it trying to posses me. Most of the individuals involved are now ‘ok’ as far as I know…

Additionally to small groups of people, magusitis can also impact organizations in a very damaging fashion, especially if the infected magicians are popular or significantly important to its functioning. Transfer and proliferation throughout an organization or parts of it can also ensue.

PHASES OF INFECTION & MODES OF ACTION

Three stages of disease progression are posited:

• PRIMARY STAGE: The magician is immuno-magickally compromised since all the necessary and underlying basis for infection are present. This stage is a latency period where the magician exhibits behavior of talking big to make himself feel better, gloating at people who are magickally less experienced, and general feelings of personal insecurity. Instances of paranoia are common, and the magician feels isolated if these issues are not brought out and dealt with.

• SECONDARY STAGE: The magician starts to believe that others are out to get her. She feuds with others, often curses people or groups of people (since cursing makes her feel more powerful and confident). She gloats when others have misfortune as it makes her feel more powerful compared to them (her perceived enemies). She takes the slightest comment the wrong way. She gets upset when she does not win an argument, and this can be combined with the childish mechanisms of sulking (which sometimes gets results through guilt tripping the person she is sulking at). Childish spats of anger and foot stomping are also not uncommon. These behaviors may not be quite so obvious but are translations of these childish idiosyncrasies.

• TERTIARY STAGE: The magician really starts to lose it. Tertiary stage is rarely observed by the magickal culture at large because by this time the magician is so enraged / paranoid / sulky / paranoid that she withdraws from from public or community interaction. I have also heard of instances of the magician putting on a lot of weight along with this stage, although this may be a parallel and not a symptom.

TREATMENT / IMMUNITY

LAUGHTER: Stop taking things so seriously. A damn good dose of Discordianism.

COUNSELLING: To put things into perspective. Reframing techniques (used in NLP).

ASK THE QUESTION: Are you a Cosmic Shmuck?.

EGO MAGICK: Sort those demons out! If you have any personality disorders when you start magickal work, expect them to be amplified by the work over the years. Best deal with them using psychological magicks before you embark on serious magickal journeying.

MEDITATION: Without regular exercise of self discipline and ego dissolution, ego inflation may occur – magickal work does tend to inflate the ego, especially if you don’t banish effectively.

- Henry

Hammer Forged: Fabricating a Tradition

© Copyright Anthony Looker, March 2001

Mission Impossible

It is presumed that many of the readers are concerned with the revival and restoration of Odinism, also known as Asatru, or the northern tradition. This refers to the practice of the religious and magical system of beliefs found in Northern Europe and Scandinavia before the onset of Christianity. Clearly, some feel that they have a vocation or mission to fulfil in this respect. Undoubtedly, it is a deeply challenging exercise, which is occasionally rewarding, but is it worthwhile too? All those who are genuinely and honestly engaged in this endeavour deserve our wholehearted support and appreciation. However, it is a task that is doomed to uncertainty at best and contains numerous pitfalls for the unwary at worst. For most this will probably amount to no more than wasted time and effort. However, for a few it may lead to psychological problems, or recruitment into New Age cults masquerading as Odinist organizations, or possibly both.

The Underlying Problem

There is considerable uncertainty involved with recovering our ancestral beliefs and wisdom, assuming it is viable at all. It is not how far we can go in our efforts, nor even should we attempt to do so. Quite simply, it is knowing if we have succeeded to any extent. The underlying problem, facing those striving to reconstruct the lost pagan religion of the North, is that it disappeared long ago and no comprehensive record of it remains. There is, of course, a wealth of material in the form of the Eddas and Sagas, as well as contemporary accounts by Christian clerics and so forth, which provide us with a glimpse into the lost world of the North. Unfortunately, regardless of how much we may be able to glean from these sources we cannot know for certain that we have arrived at an accurate understanding of the tradition, as it once was. The reason for this is that none of them represent personal accounts or testimonies by actual exponents of the elder faith; they were all written up either by rank outsiders or else hundreds of years after the people and events which they describe. For example, no matter how sympathetic and sincere Snorri Sturlusson may have been with his rendering and melding of oral tradition we cannot be certain of its accuracy; indeed, we may wonder if Snorri himself was entirely sure of his facts. Even runestones, although primary source material in some cases, turn out to be of limited help to us here. The vast majority of these inscriptions are either very simple or banal statements, such as: “So and so put up this stone in memory of his father”, or else they contain information so obfuscated and cryptic as to be quite unfathomable or meaningless. This may all be very fascinating and certainly helps to fuel our imagination but is useless as far as providing us with any clear information.

The Living Dead

Supposedly, a careful examination and interpretation of runic inscriptions and early texts underpins the present-day northern tradition. The impression conveyed is that Odinism is authentic and historically accurate; when it has in fact been cobbled together from a variety of sources, both ancient and modem. History is after all more of an art than a science, no matter how well crafted. It is subjective by nature and in the absence of a transcendent, overarching, objective viewpoint that we can refer to – with the possible exception of that contained within the allegory of myth – there is only the version according to individual historians. And, unless you happen to be Adolf Hitler standing on trial, there is no eternal court of history we can make an appeal to, either. Incidentally, it is worth recalling that the German messiah considered the ancient Germanic gods unsuitable objects of worship for the modem age, as related by Hermann Rauschning. The wonderful tapestry of make-believe history conjured up by the image-makers of the Third Reich was, it seems, intended to herald the advent of a new spiritual order and not the triumphant return of the old heathen gods. Essentially, all history is reconstruction no matter how truthfully it may relate the story of past events. History cannot bring back the past, it can only convey an impression of it for us. Just as marshalling the facts in sequential order, alone, does not constitute history; so, methodically exhuming elements of past practice is not enough to reanimate a dead tradition. Unfortunately, some Odinists’ own forensic analysis has come to resemble pathology: more concerned with the fate of the dead than that of the living. They may learn a lot about the nature and world of the deceased but that does not necessarily help us to gain an understanding and mastery over our own lives. In answer to those who might say that the dead are worth more than the living – on the basis that most of the living are worthless – that may be so but alas for us their tradition died with them.

Restoration Project

We may well ask why anyone would want to revive a dead religion, in the same way we might question the merit of restoring an old car. Drawing on this analogy, the response might be that just as mass-produced vehicles do not appeal to everyone, so established religion has failed to satisfy all spiritual needs. Accordingly, many of us profoundly alienated and dissatisfied with what is available have sought solace elsewhere. A few have turned to the venerable faith of our Anglo-Saxon and Norse ancestors for inspiration. However, in the case of Asatru, there is no book of heathen common prayer, no manual of shamanistic practice, no magical grimoire even – at least not until several centuries later – to guide the modem adherent. Likewise, for anyone attempting to forge a ‘Philosophy of the Hammer’ there is no ‘Treatise or Reflections on the Nature of Asatru’ to provide them with a lead. Unlike ancient Greece, the northern world never made the transition from mythology to philosophy. Anyway, who is qualified to lead such a project and what authorization have they to do so?

False Prophets?

There is no monopoly on the truth and no individual or group is the fount of all wisdom where the (northern) tradition is concerned. Although some seem to suggest just that and others appear to be gullible enough to believe it. Anyone conceited enough to argue that his is the definitive version of Odinism will soon find that he has made a rod for his own back. This will invariably tend to be controversial and divisive, especially amongst the Odinist community which is notorious for its endless feuds, rifts and schisms. Ironically, those same hierophants who have forged ahead with reinstating the northern tradition, scornful of Christian dogma, have ended up propounding an equally hidebound and dirigiste creed of their own. A few vainglorious characters have added insult to injury by arbitrarily arrogating authority to themselves. But, they face a constant struggle to convince even their own followers, let alone anyone else, of the legitimacy of their usurpation. Further, their claim looks hollow and threadbare in the absence of the sanction that an unbroken, living, tradition could confer upon them. In any case, the self-appointed prophets and cult leaders of neo-Germanic paganism do not know, any more than the rest of us, exactly what constituted this lost faith.

A Hidden Agenda

Some might say that it does not matter if certain people have appropriated the tradition for their own ends and that it is not really suitable for modem man anyway. Further, does it really matter if we don’t relate to the runes in exactly the same way as the runemasters of old? After all, people consult the I Ching quite happily without having to abide strictly by the method used during the Sung dynasty. Ralph Blum has managed to do very nicely indeed out of (mis)casting the runes, having tossed aside the time-honoured fashion of doing so! We may regard him, in our own opinion, as a charlatan and his system as being completely bogus but – unlike certain others – he has never made any pretence to authenticity. Since traditions constantly mutate and renew themselves anyway, a conscious reconstruction may turn out to be little different from the product of spontaneous and natural evolution. The concern is not that certain individuals have hatched up Odinism but that they have exploited their knowledge and skills in order to establish something akin to a personality cult, with all the dubious qualities which that term implies. It seems that no matter how much they try to deny it, those who take on the trappings and status of a guru or grand master – either by accident or design – almost inevitably will come to be regarded, and come to regard themselves, as such. The more that people claim they are specially gifted with some unique spiritual insight and occult powers, the greater the suspicion grows that they are merely false claimants operating a hidden agenda. They can end up as complete characatures of themselves, negating any genuine abilities and spiritual qualities they may have once possessed.

Reconstruction or Fiction?

A number of so-called revivals of Odinism have been started in recent years. Undoubtedly some of them have been carefully and tirelessly researched with apparent skill and dedication but no matter how great the effort expended and the resources deployed, they are all flawed in one important and fundamental sense. In order to reconstruct something, anything in fact, there has to be an accurate model or original design to work with. For instance, to enable an engineer, architect or archaeologist to effect a valid reconstruction of something they must have a clear and complete example of the original artifact, blueprint or plan, ideally. Failing this there can be no accurate reconstruction, an exact replica true in every detail. What there will be in its place is either an approximation or else an artist’s impression – in other words a construct or fiction. This also applies to any reworking of Odinism. Whatever else they may have left to us, what we do not possess is a full and complete exposition – a mission statement – with regard to our forebears’ worldview.

Stone gods

There is a distinction between dreaming the myths onward and attempting to duplicate a vanished tradition. The key to unlocking the secrets of our pagan past rests with our mythopoeic imagination, where the archetypal currents, which generate the myths are constantly at work deep within the psyche. The myths ebb and flow through individual lives and the lifetime of nations like the changing seasons. Traditions follow the same pattern, sometimes undergoing a dormant phase whilst at other times enjoying a high summer after a prolonged absence and winter hibernation. However, their mysterious reappearance is seldom if ever in quite the same form as before. As with any organic system, a degree of metamorphosis accompanies their life cycle. The outer trappings may have faded beyond immediate recognition but the framework remains the same, embedded in the northern psyche like the molecular structure of a crystal. In this uncertain and haphazard way a tradition may survive indefinitely with greater or lesser degrees of continuity. The challenge for us is to find a way to integrate these potent archetypal elements and symbols, without being psychologically overwhelmed by them in the process. This paradigm has been outlined before: Jung’s essay on Wotan likens the Odinic stream to a dry riverbed awaiting the waters of irrigation; a century earlier the poet Heinrich Heine alluded to the old stone gods slumbering in the dust of history, awaiting their moment to reawaken and cast off the slough of a millennium of Christianity.

An Insurmountable Obstacle

Despite these various seemingly insurmountable obstacles one or two pioneers have forged ahead with a revamped northern tradition based upon a vague and speculative notion of the past. It is a heroic attempt to satisfy a deepseated desire; as clearly there is considerable nostalgia for the old Germanic faith and a yearning to regain a symbolic cosmos based on the Norse myths. Curiously, the absence of the restraint and check that a prevailing, extant tradition might otherwise impose affords us boundless freedom of opportunity: the scope to innovate and experiment to our hearts’ content. In this way, we may arrive at something close to the lost tradition; equally, we may end up inventing an entirely new one. We will never know. In the end, short of abandoning this particular path altogether, we are left with no choice other than to follow something that is largely unsubstantiated and of questionable validity.