Finding The Miracle Layer

Drinking yerba maté in Chapel Perilous.

Here’s a link to a super fun chat I had with the hosts of The Occult Rejects podcast earlier in the week.

This substack has grown substantially in the past few months, so I got the robots to provide a section summary of the episode below.

My reasoning for this is it’s actually been a while since I’ve gone into detail on my origin story and some of you new folk may find it interesting:

My Magical Origins

I shared how my journey began with unusual childhood experiences around age 4 that would now be called "experiencer" phenomena, including sleep paralysis and what seemed like screen memories of contact events. My intentional magical practice started at age 13 when, after a significant dream experience, I walked several miles to a bookstore and purchased my first occult books. My early influences were those pastel-covered Llewellyn publications that many of us start with, and I later discovered Pete Carroll's chaos magic works.

The Rune Soup Project

I discussed how the Rune Soup podcast emerged partly from my desire to connect isolated practitioners with authors and ideas. For those growing up in regional or remote areas (as I did in a faded coal mining town on Australia's east coast), podcasts create an intimate space for magical discourse and community. The show has always been a kind of "song for the lonely," helping to transform abstract magical authors into real people with whom listeners could build intellectual relationships.

Influential Conversations

When asked about my most impactful podcast guests, I mentioned "slow burn" influences like Dr. Jeff Kripal, Mitch Horowitz, and Gary Lachman, whose work provides a comprehensive framework for understanding magic from the Hermetic-Hellenistic era to modern times. For actual magicians, early conversations with figures like Peter Carroll and Jake Stratton-Kent were transformative, many of whom later became friends when I lived in London.

Animism and Cultural Context

I explored my journey toward animism, beginning with buying Chinese religious items in Sydney's Chinatown and Hong Kong as a teenager. I reflected on how in Chinese contexts, practices involving the I Ching or protective talismans aren't considered "magic" but simply part of everyday life. This realization led me toward seeing magic not as an exotic or separate practice but as integrated lifeways operating from one's cosmovision. In Paraguay, where I now live, I witness similar integration of magical practices within a Catholic framework.

Chaos Magic Explained

I defined chaos magic as permanent epistemological and ontological humility in practice. It's powerful because it reduces the ego inflation sometimes found in lodge systems, but philosophically naïve in its hyperfixation on practical results above all else. I described chaos magic as "an epistemic humility that will trip you up differently" than other systems, and noted how my solution to Pete Carroll's prioritization of the material was moving in an animist direction. For me, chaos magic functions more as a developmental stage than a permanent system.

On Sigil Magic

I shared my approach to sigil magic, emphasizing that magical efficacy rarely comes through technical excellence. The key is to find what's actually trying to emerge through you by looking deeper than your surface desire. When someone wants a specific outcome (like attracting a specific person), it's crucial to ask what your life would look like with that achieved, and keep drilling down to the "miracle layer" underneath. This process often reveals that the real target isn't what you initially thought.

Psychology and Magic

Throughout our conversation, I stressed how magical identity often serves psychological needs. Many practitioners need their magical identity to maintain psychic integrity, which can prevent them from honestly examining areas like conspiracy theories or the shadow aspects of magical history. Both conspiracy researchers and magicians can experience "Chapel Perilous" moments that test their frameworks, and maintaining sanity through this requires psychological maturity.

Time, Practice and Maturity

I discussed how magical practice naturally evolves through life stages, similar to Jung's concept of the first and second halves of life. The first half is about egoic expression and external achievement, while the second half involves turning inward, following dreams and exploring the imaginal. This isn't about "ascending" to a higher level but simply the natural unfolding of human development. Problems arise when practitioners reach the second half of life chronologically but remain stuck in first-half patterns due to unresolved trauma.

Integration and Relationship

In the end, I described my current practice as focused on creating sacred space and "getting out of the way" to allow co-creation with spirits and the cosmos. Rather than seeing magic as a means to fill a lack, I now experience it as opening to the "pregnant absence" and creating the proper container for transformation. It's not about asserting control but about relationship and participation in an alive, unfolding universe.

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