Magick Machines
Magick Machines Induce Quasi-Schizophrenic Interface for the Evocation of Visions
In brief, the performance of magick machines can entail a mental state I call controlled apophenic stimulation. Controlled stimulation of the schizophrenic (i.e. quasi-schizophrenic) state is facilitated through the performance of magickal machines, stimulating within practitioners the faculties required to communicate with otherworldly, alien entities.
This is an intuitive examination of the parallels between ageless human experiences of other-worldliness that have existed through to the present day, induced through Magick.
Introduction
This exploration examines magick as a technology of consciousness, arguing that its practices function as “magickal machines” designed to induce a controlled, quasi-schizophrenic state. This state, termed controlled apophenic stimulation, facilitates dimensional interface—what modern psychiatry might pathologise as hallucination. By analysing traditional systems like scrying and Qabalah, the text posits that magick cultivates intuitive faculties to translate seemingly chaotic phenomena into coherent communication with otherworldly entities for purposes ranging from artistic inspiration to transcendence.
The essay further interprets Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary as a cautionary tale on the misuse of the magickal imagination. Emma Bovary’s tragic pursuit of escapist fantasy, symbolised by the hirondelle (swallow) coach, illustrates the dangers of ungrounded desire and a lack of mental discipline. Ultimately, it frames the magickal machine as a rigorous process of self-integration and disciplined imagination, warning that its power demands respect to avoid disconnection from reality and ensure its transformative potential is used beneficially.
The present-day social establishment opinion categorises these experiences as the dysfunctional state known as schizophrenia¹.
Magick is a general term for techniques necessary to induce experiences of dimensional interface with complexes² believed to exist either within or without the practitioner and or inhabiting this or other dimensions.
Analysis of Magick reveals it to be an engine for obtaining inter-dimensional interface through consciously inducing a controlled schizophrenic dream obsession within an individual practitioner or group of practitioners.
Vision-seeking is a magickal discipline commonly pursued by persons desiring interface with other-worldly entities³ with the objective to acquire artistic inspiration, physical and or mental gratification, causing pleasure or pain in oneself or another, union with deceased ancestors and for beatification.
Traditional interdimensional communication systems, such as the QBL or automatic drawing, used either on their own or in conjunction with predictive tools such as tarot cards, runes, etc, offer the possibility of cross-dimensional communication, “dream linguistics”, to operators of magical machines. These methods have the potential to stimulate intuitive abilities in their practitioners, enabling them to translate what initially might appear to be indecipherable gibberish into lucid conversations.
In conjunction with these physical tools, communication is also achieved through direct, spontaneous, intuitive exchanges of audible and or visual premonition disclosures through a ubiquitous osmotic function common to all phenomena, whether perceived as animate or inanimate¹¹.
In recent human history, these hallucinatory experiences have been largely dismissed as nothing more than a psychotic condition. Note that I do not claim that no such thing as psychosis exists; anyone who has encountered a person during a psychotic episode can vouch for the validity of that diagnosis. Rather, my point is that not all hallucinatory experiences are indicative of maladaptive or psychotic states. On the contrary, some of these induced states recall arguments raised by Julian Jaynes in his controversial The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind regarding communication with the sort of disembodied entities which have been called gods, angels, demons, spirits, and so on by different cultures. This kind of communicative activity, which Jaynes believed was far more common in an earlier, preliterate stage of human history, forms the basis of two varieties of magickal technique: scrying and astral projection.
Interpretation of a Magick Machine
The term magickal machine is a metaphor for the progression of transcendent and psychological development we must undergo to materialise a chosen desire.
The successful execution of this operation is very much dependent upon having learned to control our sense of perspective to facilitate accepting the subconscious as the origin of our thoughts and desires.
For those of a strictly spiritual orientation, this will be to awaken to their full potential and become reunited with their sense of wholeness. It is a process of self-discovery, a journey leading to an understanding of the world around us and our place within it¹².
Ultimately, a magickal machine is a process of becoming self-focused through a union of our Ka and Ba, our ego and our daemon, so we can access the power of the universe and bring positive change in our lives and in the world around us. It is to reintegrate ourselves back into the fabric of the cosmos from which we chose to be exiled.
On the Dangers of Misusing the Magickal Imagination
The reader does not doubt that, by now, my position is that the practical application of magickal machines can be deeply beneficial to one’s life. However, for the sake of prudence and completeness, let us consider a cautionary example of the negative effects which can be suffered by the practitioner—not to mention those in his or her vicinity—when the symbolic dynamics of the magickal act are profaned.
One example of this danger is expressed in Gustave Flaubert’s pioneering naturalist novel Madame Bovary, where it manifests in the ambivalent and tragically ironic symbol of the bus, or hirondelle, as it is called. The story can be read as a warning of what can come of abusing the power of imagination, which is a vital element of magickal machines.
Madame Bovary is the story of Emma, a rural French woman of the 19th Century who wishes to escape the mundane realities of her life and so seeks freedom and fulfilment through a series of clandestine affairs.
Emma’s desire for novelty and excitement, for experiences more ‘real’ than the prosaic ones she feels cursed to endure (images of dust pervade the book, suggesting boredom, dullness, even death) amount to an obsession with escape, with romantic fantasies of a life devoid of struggle or compromise, with dreams of beauty and joy that never touch their feet to the earth.
The hirondelle is merely the bus which Emma takes to Rouen, where, under the pretence of ‘piano lessons,’ she carries on an affair with one of her lovers, the sensitive and bookish Léon. But through Flaubert’s words, we see the hirondelle (which means ‘swallow’ in French, a bird associated symbolically in European folklore with luck, safe travels, and geniality, and—even more ironically in this context—in China with femininity and conjugal devotion) in a much subtler light.
On one hand, the hirondelle serves as a metaphor for the power of imagination and represents its potential to transcend the boundaries, conventions, and limitations of the mundane physical world. Despite her base urges for thrills and luxury, Emma nonetheless experiences the bus as joyful anticipation and mental awakeness, as a dream of elevating the human spirit to a realm of meaningful splendour.
But ultimately, the journey of Emma’s fascinations ends at a place of illusion and disappointment, a kind of hyperreality where the differences between her imaginal romantic fantasies of triumph and the purposeless escapism of her actual life finally become sadly indistinguishable.
The lie of her ‘piano lessons’ might be taken as a metaphor for this; rather than finding meaning in the humble discipline of artistic creation, she instead chases after phantasms of novelty and pleasure, passively drifting through a series of initially ecstatic but ultimately unsatisfactory episodes. Like femme fatale Kathie Moffat (played by the stunning Jane Greer) in Tourneur’s noir classic Out of the Past, she is like, as Robert Mitchum sneers at her, “a leaf that blows from one gutter to the next.”
Emma’s tragic downfall, writhing in the agony of suicide by arsenic poisoning, illustrates how the abuse of imagination can lead to disconnection from reality, a dust-coated mundanity without meaning or understanding. It is the result of misusing imagination by indulging in escapist fantasy. Caution should thus be taken with the tremendous power of imagination and dreams, as their misuse can disconnect us from reality deprive us of objective direction, and even destroy us as it did Emma, whose lack of self-control led to not only her suffering, but also that of her inconsolable husband and her small daughter, who would eventually be sold into indentured servitude in a cotton mill, to repay the debts incurred by her mother’s intemperance.
Whether Flaubert intended it or not, we experience in Madame Bovary another example of magickal concepts concealed within what, on first appearance, appears to be merely a work of literature. The hirondelle, like the magickal machine, is a vehicle fueled by the power of the mind to envision, speculate, and dream. We can use this power to progress, or abuse it to mislead ourselves with fantasies of escape to paradise.
Imagination is power, and it offers potential for freedom, but that same power necessitates restraint towards, and perhaps even a healthy fear. Mental discipline, which unfortunately Emma lacks, much to her detriment and those close to her, is the required counterpart to creative imagination in magick. Certainly, Flaubert himself had some awareness of this danger¹³, as suggested by his famous injunction to “be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your [creative, which includes magickal] work.”
Consider yourself cautioned.
Footnotes
¹ In the Middle Ages this condition was often called possession. Apophenia and pareidolia in combination with other known and unknown senses may mix to become a cocktail that induces a state of synesthesia that is comparable to what is traditionally termed schizophrenia.
² Complex meaning a compound or whole that is composed of interconnected parts which could include physical life form, an entity, or psychological condition. These states of being have the potential to be organised or disorganised.
³ By definition alien.
¹¹ It is this ubiquitous concept behind everything that has been the preoccupation of religious zealots to prove as their sole right to express at the expense of all others.
¹² This sentence could be construed as an analysis of Homer’s Odyssey, yet another Magickal Machine.
¹³An interesting aside, which has been widely questioned by scholars, is the anecdote which claims that Flaubert, when asked how he became inspired to create the character of Emma Bovary, once replied, “Madame Bovary is myself.” If in fact true, this statement alerts us to the possibility that this is the voice of Flaubert’s daemon speaking, which suggests the complex interrelations of creativity, imagination, and inner voices within untamed parts of the psyche.