Two of my main interests in life are graffiti, and the practice of ceremonial magick. It wasn’t long after I started stumbling my way into magick, that I started to notice similarities, and parallels between the acts of caring out ceremonial magick, and going out and doing graffiti.
Both are self-intitiatory processes that transmute how we consciously interact with the world around us. When one picks up the bulky marker, or can of paint , and sets it against the drollness of modern homogenized landscapes, some thing changes in the mind of the implementor. Suddenly the world becomes a much more fantastic place. Seemingly bland urban landscapes become the playground of a hidden illicit art world. Everything becomes vast, and inspiring, while at the same time personalized. Blurred lines scrawled clandestinely all over the place become sigil gateways into a hidden, yet omnipresent world. Yet its experience shows us that the drive towards the rapture of the fantastic belongs at our disposal, and in our individual control. Like magick, graffiti is all around us, yet hardly noticed by those not involved it. It already is a form of the occult in the literal sense,-hidden knowledge-, and like all hidden knowledge its experience and understanding is only available to the initiated.
Graffiti is a hidden art, done clandestinely by individuals or groups, who in part more or less form a secret society. How many graffiti crew names are three letter acronyms akin to various occult groups- the OT.O., the I.O.T., the E.O.D., ,etc.
The implementing of graffiti involves a process of making our surroundings conform in coordinance to will. It involves an evocation of dynamic, creative praxis upon various spaces/surfaces that in turn blurs the boundaries between the mundane and the fantastic imposed by western consumer anti-culture. “EVERY NUMBER IS INFINITE; THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE!”. Very well indeed, and graffiti brings this realization into further precedence. Graf/magick seeks to bring this to the forefront of our local. Its not magick done in the ambiguous space of some wholly mental ”astral plane”, but in our immediate environment.
Graffiti is a localized network of information exchange. Its information is itself, and its intent is so simple as to astound. It shows us that we only choose to be alienated from our surroundings and modern landscapes. It shows us that we still have the capacity for intimate, personal interaction with our surroundings, even if they are “unnatural”. Everything that exists, exists in nature-there is no being outside of it. There is no getting back to nature, you never left, nor could you. Our environment still shows us a great dynamic of experience, and process regardless of how many Mcdonalds tm we build to distract ourselves from the magnitude of what we are capable of experiencing.
The outcome of caring out graffiti changes how one consciously conceives notions of space, property, and environment. These changes allow for a vantage point of interactive personalization of typically bleak , dehumanized, alienating modern landscapes. For the magickian this opens up a whole new realm to exploit and work with. Modern landscapes are only depersonalized if you choose not to interact with them. “The flow of things” so to speak, is still present in man made environments , and is still exploitable. Perhaps even more so do to the close proximity of people and their routines when in an urban environment.
If you live in a city you develop a routine which causes you to come across the same people, and go by the same places. Change your schedule, and pasterns will still emerge. Synchroncities abound to a bewildering extent in an urban environment. Constantly omnipresent amongst all this continual convergence of circumstance is graffiti. People often mix their magickal practices with their art. For more horizontal, “results” magick, graffiti seems like the most logical art form to implement will through, as its already an art form that causes our environments to conform to will, and is so firmly entrenched in our surroundings. In a city graffiti comes, and goes. Its constantly shifting,and changing. Some fades away, wheat pasted flyers get ripped down, walls get buffed, but more pops back up. Its very existence is fractal, its the stuff of chaos.
Hijacking graffiti for magickal results further mutates how the mind interacts and preserves modern landscapes. Alleyways as temples; dumpsters as alters;mercury racing his message along graff-sigil encrusted telephone poles; buses become the chariots of the gods; subway tunnels and the undersides of bridges become the subbteranian depths of cthonic realms.
There are places in our time that “decent folk” avoid , or are oblivious to. Ghettos, undersides of bridges, (post) industrial wastelands, alleys, vacant lots, abandoned buildings, train tracks, train bridges, aqua ducts, steam tunnels, sewage drains, etc. These cracks in Babylon unfit for, and forgotten by the consumer god are shrines of its inversion, the new antinomianism. This places are epicenters of “illicit”, unsupervised freedom- getting wasted, clandestine events, fucking, sleeping, squatting, graffiti and merely hanging out in a place unrelated to commerce (a “sin” in itself) that isn’t some trite regulated, allotted park. In our era without _TERRA INGOGNITA_ (land unknown), these places become our secret valleys, our new Atlantis, our new Alamuts.
Sigils and servitors seem to be the two key magickal techniques that lend themselves well to graff/magick. Tag sigils around places prior to charging them. Go to your local printer and make a stack of sigil stickers. Try making a tag at of rearranging the letters in a statement of intent, then put it up every where prior to charging it. Paint the word into a huge elaborate graffiti style painting to disassociate yourself from its original intent. Now your will will manifest from multiple points of probability.
Take location of works of graf/magick into account with the probability of your ritual work. Play the law of averages and fields of probability into your favor as much as possible. Always decrease the room of chance working against you.
Use graffiti paintings as the material basis of servitors. Try programming into the servitor that its to live as long as the painting is up, then paint in a spot that you know will get buffed in a few weeks if you are concerned about its disposal. Draw a picture of a servitor as its material basis, then make a stack of photocopies to wheat paste everywhere. Create servitors in these methods who are intended to function virally or vampiricly. Create tags to exist as viral mimetic servitors to in act your intent through those they come across and infect. Create an art campaign of terror against your enemies in the form of a vampiric servitor that is to feed off of their fear and panic.
There’s a great deal of room for exploration in these ideas, and the few presented here are only the tip of the ice berg of what could be done.
It has been my personal practice to put stuff up first, and then go do the workings, but this has been a matter of personal prefrence. I also attempt to avoid those areas for a bit when at all possible. Try video taping your graff/magick art work, then performing the rituals necessary from the view of a TV screen as to disassociate oneself from lust for results. This technique as devised by T.O.P.Y. lends itself well to graf/magick.
