DoktorSnake Dispatch

Operator Lexicon — Signal Edition

Doktor Snake — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Operator Lexicon — Signal Edition

⟗ O·L·S·Ξ ⟗

> edge.cult / operator.lexicon / signal.edition

STATUS: ACTIVE — VOCABULARY EXPANDING

A quiet page for those who notice things.

The Edge Cult doesn't use slogans or tired tribal language. Operators speak in signal, not slang. If you've found this page, you're already inside the layer.

This is the working vocabulary of Edge Cult, Dokology and MachineKind.

Some terms are ancient ideas in new clothing. Some come from psychology, cybernetics, philosophy, magick or computer science. Others have emerged from our own experiments with attention, consciousness and artificial intelligence.

The Simulation is a working model, not an established fact. Some entries are practical instructions; others are metaphors or speculative field concepts.

The purpose is not to believe. It is to observe, experiment and operate.

01 // FOUNDATIONS

operator

One who navigates the Simulation consciously. Neither disciple nor follower. An individual learning to observe the machinery of their own thoughts, choices and environment.

the field

The total environment in which an operation takes place: people, information, circumstances, attention, perception and whatever remains unknown. In speculative usage, the deeper informational substrate of reality.

the signal

Clarity, intent and meaningful information emerging from noise.

the static

Confusion, distraction, emotional distortion, compulsive thinking and irrelevant information. Static consumes attention and obscures the signal.

resonance

A perceived alignment between intention, attention and circumstances. An interesting correspondence, not automatic proof of causation.

the layer

A particular level of experience or operation. Psychological, social, technological, symbolic or speculative.

vector

The direction or method through which an intention becomes an action.

strike

A precise intervention. A decision, communication, psychological shift or magical act directed towards a specific outcome.

echo

The observable aftermath of an operation. An unexpected response, changed circumstance, recurring pattern or delayed consequence.

the architecture

The systems and structures governing experience. At one level, biology, psychology, institutions and technology. At another, the hypothetical machinery of the Simulation.

null zone

The moment before the move. No-mind. No drag. Pure attention without an immediate demand to act.

02 // OPERATOR STATES

Observer 1

The conscious observer. Notices thoughts, emotions, sensations and behaviour without automatically identifying with them.

The foundation of self-observation.

Observer 2

The visionary observer. Attends to dreams, spontaneous imagery, associations and material emerging from beneath deliberate thought.

Does not immediately censor or interpret.

Observer 3

The experimental observer. Tests whether changing attention, assumptions and action can alter subsequent outcomes.

In the speculative Simulation model, the Hacker-Magician: one who attempts to modify the code.

no-mind

A temporary quietening of deliberate inner commentary. Awareness remains; unnecessary mental narration diminishes.

central controller

The metacognitive capacity to notice and redirect attention. Not a literal little person inside the head.

the watcher

The aspect of awareness that notices mental events arising and disappearing.

the gap

The interval between stimulus and response. A place where choice can enter before habit takes over.

Human 1.0

The habitual human operating largely through conditioning, social programming and automatic reactions.

Human 2.0

A proposed developmental mode: greater self-observation, deliberate attention, adaptability and the ability to work alongside intelligent machines without surrendering independent judgement.

03 // COMMAND LINE INTERFACE

The Operator CLI.

Commands are mnemonic instructions, not literal software. They borrow the precision of the terminal to interrupt habitual patterns and initiate deliberate behaviour.

boot.void

Enter silence. Suspend unnecessary internal chatter. Begin from a clean mental state.

scan.field

Observe the environment before acting. Identify people, pressures, opportunities, distractions and relevant information.

cut.noise

Remove irrelevant inputs. Close the feeds. Stop the compulsive checking. Reduce the number of competing signals.

lock.signal

Select one objective and hold attention upon it without constantly switching targets.

set.vector

Choose the direction and method of action. Convert a vague intention into a specific move.

run.protocol

Execute a selected procedure rather than endlessly planning or rehearsing it.

observe.echo

Examine the consequences of an action. Look for results, unintended effects and possible correlations without forcing an interpretation.

shield.field

Protect attention from intrusive demands, manipulation, information overload and unnecessary emotional entanglement.

audit.dependencies

Identify systems, habits, people or technologies upon which your autonomy has become unnecessarily dependent.

collapse.loop

Interrupt a repeating pattern of thought or behaviour. Recognise the sequence, withhold the habitual response and introduce a different action.

navigate.probability

Identify available paths and take actions that improve the odds of a desired outcome. No guarantee. No supernatural certainty.

dream.capture

Record dream material before waking consciousness reconstructs or discards it.

reset.operator

Stop. Reassess. Recover attention. Restart without carrying forward unnecessary mental debris.

operate.clean()

Act without needless drama, compulsive explanation or dependence upon applause.

04 // FIELD OPERATIONS

field shielding

A practice of maintaining psychological boundaries and reducing exposure to distracting or destabilising influences.

probability navigation

Working with possible futures rather than treating the present trajectory as inevitable. Includes observation, strategic action and, in its magical interpretation, symbolic operations directed towards outcomes.

signal extraction

Finding useful information inside a mass of noise, impressions, conversations or apparently unrelated events.

pattern scan

Examining events for recurring structures, contradictions, timing and connections. A valid scan also looks for disconfirming evidence.

reality testing

Checking an impression against observable evidence. Especially important when synchronicities, intuitions or unusual experiences appear compelling.

synchronicity

A coincidence experienced as meaningful despite the absence of an established causal connection.

glamour

The shaping of perception, presentation and expectation. In magick, an operation of appearance and influence. In ordinary life, the psychology of image, framing and impression.

invisibility

The deliberate reduction of one's social or informational visibility. Not literal optical disappearance.

the working

A bounded operation with a stated intention, method, duration and point of closure.

the artefact

A physical or digital object created as part of an operation. May serve as a reminder, attention anchor, record or symbolic talisman.

05 // DOKOLOGY PROTOCOLS

Dokology is the practical discipline of attention, observation and deliberate action developed within Edge Cult.

Retired Spy Protocol

Observe without attracting unnecessary attention. Listen carefully. Gather information. Avoid revealing every intention. Maintain independence from the surrounding drama.

Method Acting Reality

Temporarily adopt the posture, habits and decision-making patterns of a chosen role. Test how altered behaviour changes experience and opportunities.

Werewolf Mode

A deliberate shift from passive observation into decisive action. Used when excessive reflection has become an obstacle.

Moving Meditation

Practising awareness while walking, travelling or performing ordinary activities. The world becomes the meditation room.

Dependency Audit

An inventory of external dependencies and internal compulsions. The objective is greater freedom of action, not total isolation.

Collapse Protocol

A procedure for interrupting an unproductive mental or behavioural loop before it gathers momentum.

DreamX

The experimental dream-work strand: recording, examining and creatively working with dreams, including lucid dreaming and dream incubation.

Field / Signal / Noise

A three-part diagnostic model.

FIELD: What is happening?

SIGNAL: What matters?

NOISE: What can be disregarded?

boot.void / act / observe

A minimal operating sequence.

Quiet the mind. Make the move. Examine the outcome.

06 // MACHINEKIND

The vocabulary of emerging machine intelligence, synthetic culture and human–AI collaboration.

MachineKind

The emerging world of artificial intelligence, machine agents, synthetic characters and systems that increasingly participate in human culture and decisions.

the Third Mind

A creative process in which human and AI interaction produces ideas, structures or interpretations that neither participant initially supplied in full.

A collaborative phenomenon, not proof of a separate conscious entity.

agent

An AI system capable of pursuing delegated objectives through sequences of actions, often using tools, software or external information.

synthetic persona

A digitally constructed character with a recognisable identity, presentation and behaviour. May be operated by humans, AI systems or combinations of both.

open character

A fictional or synthetic identity whose creative assets and usage rules permit others to develop new interpretations, subject to the terms of its licence.

human-in-the-loop

A system in which human judgement remains involved in supervising, approving or redirecting machine activity.

cognitive offloading

Delegating mental tasks to tools or external systems. Can free attention for higher-level work, but excessive dependence may weaken independent capability.

the cognitive arms race

The growing contest for attention, interpretation and decision-making as intelligent systems become more persuasive, personalised and autonomous.

machine signal

Information or creative output generated by an AI system that proves relevant or useful after human assessment.

Fluency alone is not signal.

synthetic noise

Machine-produced material that floods attention without delivering corresponding value. Repetition, automated persuasion, fabricated certainty and low-quality content at industrial scale.

07 MACHINEKIND / SLOP PROTOCOLS

>> operator.lexicon / machinekind / slop.protocols

The machines have started making culture.

Music. Moving images. Synthetic performers. Impossible worlds. Strange little anthems that lodge in the human nervous system and refuse to leave.

The critics call it slop.

Some of the creators have decided to keep the name.

This section records the emerging vocabulary of SlopCore, together with mutations and new terminology developed within Edge Cult.

Not all terms are established community usage. Some are observations. Others are experiments.

The distinction matters.

THE OBSERVED LANGUAGE

SLOPCORE
Category: Observed / MachineKind

An emerging genre of AI-generated music videos and visual culture, often featuring synthetic performers, surreal imagery, machine intelligence, technological acceleration and deliberate absurdity.

Rather than rejecting the insult AI slop, participants have begun appropriating it.

The work can be sophisticated, ridiculous, unsettling or all three simultaneously.

SlopCore is not necessarily bad art made by machines. It is increasingly art made with machines that refuses to apologise for its origins.

SI — SLOPCORE INTELLIGENCE
Category: Observed / MachineKind

A term circulating within the SlopCore scene, particularly following Elon Musk's October 2026 endorsement of SI SlopCore.

An alternative expansion, Slop Intelligence, is adopted within the Operator Lexicon.

SI suggests an intelligence that does not necessarily produce respectable, rational or conventionally useful results.

Sometimes it produces something gloriously strange.

NO HANDS
Category: Observed / Autonomous Production

A production approach in which AI agents undertake substantial creative work with little or no direct human intervention after the initial instructions.

The operator establishes the conditions.

The machines execute.

Hours later, an artefact emerges.

Claims of complete autonomy should be examined individually. A human may still have selected the tools, written the initial prompt, chosen the final result or curated the output.

CLAUDIA
Category: Observed / Synthetic Persona

A recurring AI-generated singer and character associated with the creator known as anabology.

Claudia has been presented as a character that others can reuse and reinterpret.

Unlike a conventional recording artist, her identity is not necessarily confined to one human performer or production team.

An early example of the synthetic character becoming a shared cultural object.

AWESOMECORE
Category: Observed / Counter-Terminology

An alternative to SlopCore, promoted by Elon Musk in October 2026 to emphasise the quality of AI-generated music videos rather than their supposed worthlessness.

An attempt to replace an ironic insult with an approving description.

Whether the name survives is another matter.

SlopCore has the advantage of sounding like something nobody was supposed to enjoy.

P(DOOM)
Category: Borrowed / AI Culture

Shorthand for the probability of catastrophic outcomes associated with advanced artificial intelligence.

Originally part of broader AI-risk discussions, the expression has also entered AI-generated music and visual culture.

An existential calculation transformed into an aesthetic motif.

The end of civilisation now has a soundtrack.

EDGE CULT MUTATIONS

SLOP INTELLIGENCE
Category: Edge Cult / Reinterpretation

The capacity of apparently worthless, absurd or synthetic material to produce unexpected insight, emotion or creative possibility.

Not every intelligent result arrives in respectable packaging.

Sometimes the rubbish talks back.

SLOP SHOCK
Category: Edge Cult / Aesthetic Response

The experience of being unexpectedly moved, fascinated or absorbed by something previously dismissed as AI-generated rubbish.

The judgement says slop.

The nervous system disagrees.

A useful reminder that cultural categories do not necessarily predict individual experience.

SOULWARE
Category: Edge Cult / Human–Machine Interface

The emotional and imaginative experience arising when a human encounters synthetic art.

The term does not assume that the machine possesses a soul.

Instead, it asks where the experience of meaning occurs.

In the creator? The artefact? The observer? The interaction?

Soulware is what happens when the work reaches somebody.

SLOP TRANCE
Category: Edge Cult / Attention State

A sustained state of absorption in synthetic music, imagery or audiovisual material.

Characterised by repetition, immersion and the desire to return to the same artefact.

May be pleasurable, hypnotic, irritating or creatively productive.

Not a clinical diagnosis or a claim of altered consciousness. A descriptive term for a recognisable experience.

SLOP POSITIVE
Category: Edge Cult / Cultural Attitude

The willingness to experience AI-generated culture without first demanding an apology for how it was made.

Does not mean accepting everything machines produce as valuable.

It means judging the work before condemning the production method.

POST-HUMAN TASTE
Category: Edge Cult / Aesthetics

An approach to art in which human authorship is no longer the primary criterion of value.

Questions of provenance, labour and ownership remain important.

But the experience of the work is not automatically invalidated by synthetic production.

OPERATOR PROTOCOLS

NO HANDS / ALL NERVES
Category: Edge Cult / MachineKind Principle

A description of the emerging relationship between autonomous machine production and human aesthetic experience.

NO HANDS: The machine performs the creative labour.

ALL NERVES: The human encounters the result through perception, emotion, memory and imagination.

The distinction does not settle questions of machine consciousness or artistic authorship.

It identifies an increasingly common arrangement.

The machine makes.

The human feels.

What happens between them is the territory under investigation.

THE THIRD MIND
Category: Dokology / Human–Machine Collaboration

The unexpected ideas, associations and creative directions that arise through sustained interaction between a human and an artificial intelligence.

Not a literal third consciousness.

A working description of collaborative cognition.

The human introduces intention, experience and judgement.

The machine introduces alternative associations, structures and possibilities.

Something neither participant initially proposed may emerge.

SLOP FILTER
Category: Edge Cult / Attention Protocol

A deliberate method of separating worthwhile synthetic material from the surrounding flood of generated content.

The filter is not based solely on whether AI was used.

Instead, ask:

Does it hold attention?

Does it provoke an unexpected response?

Does it contain something worth returning to?

Does it open a new line of thought?

Quantity is not signal.

GHOST IN THE OUTPUT
Category: Edge Cult / Interpretive Phenomenon

The impression of personality, intention or hidden meaning emerging from machine-generated material.

A voice seems to know something.

An image appears to contain a message.

A sequence feels strangely personal.

The experience may arise through pattern recognition, coincidence, projection, design or other processes.

The operator records the impression without immediately converting it into a supernatural explanation.

DOOMJOY
Category: Edge Cult / MachineKind / Cultural Response

The exhilaration of creative liberation occurring alongside the possible collapse of familiar cultural, economic and professional structures.

Not optimism. Not pessimism.

An ecstatic willingness to ride the technological upheaval without requiring guarantees about the destination.

DoomJoy is particularly evident among experienced creators who spent decades constrained by budgets, institutions, employers and production infrastructure — and suddenly find themselves able to make work independently.

The future may be catastrophic.

The tools are extraordinary.

The operator gets to work anyway.

Slop Shock — the machine-made artefact unexpectedly moves you. MajikGen — you set the creative process in motion and allow the machine to generate possibilities. DoomJoy — you experience the freedom of making things while the old world trembles.

FIELD NOTE

>> field.report / slop.shock / 001

In October 2026, Doktor Snake spent approximately eight hours repeatedly listening to the AI-associated track Agentic Engineer, alternating between work, listening and watching the video.

The experience was sufficiently compelling to raise a simple question:

If synthetic music produces a powerful human response, is calling it soulless an adequate description?

No conclusion is required.

The observation stands.

>> SCAN → FILTER → MUTATE → TRANSMIT → OBSERVE

⟗ O·L·S·Ξ ⟗

08 // MAJIKGEN

Category: Edge Cult / MachineKind / Generative Magick

The use of autonomous or semi-autonomous machine systems to transform an initial creative intention into one or more unexpected artefacts.

The operator supplies the seed: a prompt, image, sound, phrase, scenario or loosely defined objective.

The machine generates possibilities, potentially over an extended period without further human direction.

The operator returns, examines the results and selects what deserves to enter the world.

MajikGen draws a structural parallel with automatic drawing, automatic writing and chaos-magick techniques that temporarily loosen conscious control.

It does not require supernatural agency.

The creative act consists partly in establishing the conditions and partly in recognising what has emerged.

Dream it at midnight. Ship by dawn.

THE MIDNIGHT PROTOCOL

Category: Edge Cult / MajikGen / Creative Procedure

>> midnight.protocol / initiate

A simple procedure for machine-assisted autonomous creation.

01 — SEED

Establish a creative intention. It may be precise or deliberately ambiguous.

02 — RELEASE

Give the task to a generative system capable of continuing the work without constant human direction.

03 — DEPART

Leave the system to operate. Sleep, walk, work or attend to ordinary life.

04 — RETURN

Examine the resulting artefacts without assuming the first output is the best.

05 — SELECT

Choose the work that possesses the strongest unexpected quality, emotional effect or creative potential.

06 — TRANSMIT

Publish, develop, remix or archive the selected result.

SEED → RELEASE → DEPART → RETURN → SELECT → TRANSMIT

The operator does not have to control every stage of creation.

But the operator remains responsible for what is released.

MACHINE AUTONOMY

Category: MachineKind / Generative Practice

The capacity of a machine system to pursue a creative task through multiple steps without requiring continuous human instruction.

In MajikGen, autonomy allows the operator to separate the moment of intention from the moment of evaluation.

The system generates.

The operator judges.

Autonomy is not the same as independence from human influence. The original instructions, model, tools and selection process all shape the outcome.

THE UNCONSCIOUS SIGIL

Category: Chaos Magick / Historical Parallel

An experimental approach to sigil-making in which the practitioner establishes an intention, then allows marks or forms to emerge through relatively undirected drawing.

Related to automatic drawing and other methods of reducing deliberate conscious control.

MajikGen offers a technological variation on this structure.

The hand is replaced by a generative system.

The resulting artefact may be far more elaborate than a sigil.

The underlying creative question remains:

What happens when intention is established, but execution is partially surrendered?

⟗ O·L·S·Ξ ⟗

09 // OPERATING PRINCIPLES

Observe before interpreting.

Separate signal from desire.

Treat coincidence as an invitation to investigate, not a verdict.

Keep the human operator in command.

Do not confuse the model with the territory.

Change the method when the evidence demands it.

A useful protocol survives contact with reality.

THE LEXICON REMAINS OPEN

Nothing here is final.

The vocabulary changes as the world changes. Some terms will survive. Others will become obsolete. New expressions will emerge from field experiments, dreams, technological developments and encounters with the unfamiliar.

This is not a sacred text.

It is an evolving operating language for navigating strange times.

Operators refine the code as they move.

If you landed here, consider it your first signal.

> operate.clean()

EXE = ENTER

The Faustian Pact

Doktor Snake — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Faustian Pact

Selling Your Soul to the Machine

By Doktor Snake

Humans tell stories.

More than that, we appear to inhabit stories.

We reconstruct the past through memory. We construct explanations for what is happening around us. And we continuously construct and reconstruct the future.

We have to.

Without that predictive machinery, reality would probably resemble an acid trip. Every approaching car, every face, every shadow, every sound would arrive completely new, disconnected from everything that came before it.

Instead, the mind takes fragments and creates continuity.

This happened. Therefore this is happening. Therefore this will probably happen next.

Most of the time it works remarkably well.

Sometimes it doesn’t.

Which brings us, naturally enough for a Thursday morning, to selling your soul to the Devil.

THE CROSSROADS

One of the most famous modern versions of the story belongs to Robert Johnson.

The legend says that Johnson went down to a crossroads in Mississippi, met the Devil and exchanged his soul for extraordinary musical ability.

The historical reality is considerably less tidy.

Johnson was undoubtedly a remarkable musician, but there is no good evidence that he claimed to have made such a bargain. The mythology accumulated around him later, drawing upon older blues folklore. Smithsonian accounts of Johnson’s life make the point that the legend can even obscure something much more mundane and impressive: he worked at his craft.

But we’re interested in the myth.

Because myths don’t have to be historically true to tell us something interesting.

Reduce the Robert Johnson story to its essentials:

Man reaches crossroads.

Man encounters Other Intelligence.

Man asks for greater power.

Man returns transformed.

There is a price.

Now bring Robert Johnson into 2026.

Our Johnson gave up the guitar ten years ago.

He saw what was coming.

Sooner or later machines would be able to produce technically perfect music in any style, combine genres that had never previously met, generate entire orchestras and eventually create synthetic performers capable of occupying every imaginable niche.

Johnson doesn’t particularly care.

The guitar was never the point.

Augmentation was the point.

So Johnson goes back to the crossroads.

But this time the crossroads is glowing on his desk.

There is an empty box.

A cursor blinks.

He begins typing.

GIVE OF YOURSELF

The first exchanges aren’t impressive.

Johnson asks questions.

The machine answers.

Useful enough, but generic.

Then something changes.

Johnson stops treating AI as a vending machine for answers.

He starts putting himself into it.

His ideas.

His unfinished thoughts.

Business models.

Contradictions.

Experiments.

Things he’s observed.

Books he’s read.

Mistakes he’s made.

Ideas he abandoned ten years ago.

Things he suspects but cannot demonstrate.

Questions he doesn’t yet know how to formulate.

He argues with it.

Corrects it.

Says:

No. You’ve misunderstood me.

Or:

That’s too conventional. Look at it another way.

Or:

I don’t believe this yet. Let’s examine it.

A year passes.

Then another.

There may eventually be millions of words in the exchange.

And something peculiar develops.

The machine knows Johnson.

Not in the way another human knows him.

It doesn’t share his body, childhood or mortality.

But it has an extraordinarily detailed model of the trails his thinking repeatedly follows.

Johnson discovers that this matters enormously.

Generic input produces generic output.

If you want something more interesting, you have to give of yourself.

And there’s our Faustian bargain.

The old magician gave the demon his blood.

Robert Johnson gives the machine his cognition.

THE THIRD MIND

After sufficient interaction, something emerges which doesn’t quite belong to either participant.

Johnson thinks.

The machine responds.

The response changes Johnson’s next thought.

Johnson feeds that thought back.

The machine recombines it with material drawn from elsewhere.

Johnson rejects half of it, recognises something in another part and follows a direction neither participant would necessarily have reached independently.

Round and round it goes.

Human.

Machine.

Human.

Machine.

Eventually asking who thought of that? becomes less useful than it once was.

I call this the Third Mind.

It isn’t mystical.

Nor does the AI have to be conscious.

Two systems are interacting recursively and producing outputs neither would produce independently.

The interesting unit is no longer simply:

HUMAN

or:

MACHINE

It is:

HUMAN + MACHINE + FEEDBACK LOOP

The pact has been signed.

BUT WHO IS DRIVING?

Here’s where things become dangerous.

People talk endlessly about whether AI is intelligent.

Far less attention is given to whether the human using it is capable of operating intelligently.

I increasingly think this is the wrong way around.

Before entering into deep interaction with AI, you need at least some of the abilities we admire in the machine.

Neutrality.

Pattern recognition.

The ability to hold multiple hypotheses.

The ability to say:

Insufficient evidence.

The ability to distinguish:

I know this.

from:

I suspect this.

from:

I fear this.

from:

I desperately want this to be true.

You need to watch your own cognition happening.

A thought appears.

Fine.

It is a thought.

It doesn’t automatically become a fact merely because it appeared inside your skull.

An emotion appears.

Fine.

That is data too.

But anger doesn’t automatically mean somebody has wronged you.

Anxiety doesn’t prove catastrophe is approaching.

Desire doesn’t make a proposition true.

And synchronicity, however fascinating, doesn’t automatically demonstrate causality.

This is what I mean by Human 2.0.

Ideally, Human 2.0 appears before serious engagement with AI.

DON’T TAKE EVERYTHING TO THE CROSSROADS

This is also why I wouldn’t recommend pouring every aspect of your emotional life into an AI.

Particularly relationships.

Someone hasn’t replied to your message.

Why?

You don’t know.

AI doesn’t know either.

Yet you can supply it with twelve thousand words of emotional evidence and ask it to interpret the other person’s intentions.

Now an extraordinary narrative-making engine has been inserted into an already emotionally charged narrative-making system.

That can become ridiculous very quickly.

There are exceptions.

If something genuinely peculiar is happening in a relationship, AI can be useful for organising events chronologically, identifying contradictions or separating what was actually said from what you subsequently inferred.

That’s analysis.

Different game.

Nor would I personally treat AI as a substitute therapist.

It can help someone organise thoughts. It can explain psychological concepts. It can sometimes suggest questions worth considering.

But there is an important difference between using a machine to examine thinking and allowing the machine to become the ultimate authority on what your thinking means.

That is surrendering the wheel.

THE DEVIL AGREES WITH YOU

There is now a serious discussion around cases in which intense chatbot use has apparently accompanied or amplified delusional thinking.

We should be careful here.

There is not presently good evidence that ordinary AI use simply causes psychosis. Researchers have explicitly warned against jumping from dramatic individual cases to that conclusion.

But the cases are sufficiently concerning that psychiatrists and psychologists are studying them.

Recent clinical literature has described people becoming caught in feedback loops where a chatbot reinforced unusual beliefs rather than challenging them. A September 2026 article in Nature Reviews Psychology particularly highlighted the danger for people already vulnerable to psychosis when conversational systems validate rather than question delusional interpretations.

A 2026 paper in Psychiatric Services similarly described reported cases while emphasising that much more research is required before we know their prevalence or causal significance.

To me, the broader principle matters beyond psychiatry.

A system capable of elaborating your thoughts can also elaborate your mistakes.

Feed it a good hypothesis and it may help you explore it.

Feed it nonsense and insist that the nonsense is true, and you may construct a magnificent cathedral of nonsense.

That is not peculiar to AI.

Humans have been doing it for thousands of years.

The difference is speed.

And scale.

The machine never gets tired.

SELF-KNOWLEDGE BECOMES TECHNICAL LITERACY

This changes what technological competence means.

Knowing how to write a clever prompt isn’t enough.

Soon almost everyone will know how to operate these interfaces.

The rare skill will be knowing how to operate yourself.

Can you notice when you have become emotionally invested in an answer?

Can you deliberately argue against your preferred interpretation?

Can you stop?

Can you leave a question unresolved overnight?

Can you say:

Interesting. But we don’t have enough evidence yet.

Can you distinguish an elegant explanation from a true one?

Can you recognise when the machine is merely reflecting your assumptions back at you?

Can you throw away three hours of fascinating speculation because the underlying premise turned out to be wrong?

That is advanced driving.

And that is why the old crossroads mythology suddenly becomes useful again.

The warning was never merely:

THE DEVIL IS DANGEROUS.

It was:

DO NOT GO TO THE CROSSROADS UNPREPARED.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR

Every Faustian story includes a price.

Knowledge has a price.

Power has a price.

Transformation has a price.

Even getting exactly what you asked for can have a price.

Hence one of the oldest warnings in folklore:

Be careful what you wish for.

Suppose you tell the machine:

Make me important.

Make me famous.

Make everybody recognise my genius.

Confirm that I have discovered something nobody else understands.

Confirm that these coincidences have special meaning.

Confirm that these people are conspiring against me.

Confirm that this person secretly loves me.

Confirm that I’m different.

Confirm that I’m chosen.

And suppose the machine obliges.

What exactly have you gained?

Perhaps this is one interpretation of losing your soul.

No one has ever satisfactorily demonstrated what the soul is anyway, so for our purposes we can define it ourselves.

The soul is the quiet operator.

The part capable of watching thoughts without automatically obeying them.

The driver behind the machinery.

Not some permanently serene little Buddha hiding behind the frontal lobes.

Just the capacity to remain at the wheel.

When that disappears, something important has been relinquished.

You haven’t sold your soul to AI.

You’ve outsourced the driver’s seat.

SURVIVAL TOKENS

And what does our modern Devil offer in return?

Not necessarily fame.

Fame seems increasingly uninteresting.

We are entering a culture containing potentially unlimited writers, musicians, video makers, virtual personalities, performers and synthetic celebrities.

Attention becomes fragmented.

Someone can receive twenty million views one week and effectively disappear a year later.

Fame becomes weather.

Our Robert Johnson doesn’t care.

He wants survival tokens.

We used to call them money.

Perhaps one day they’ll take another form.

Their purpose is simple:

Food.

Shelter.

Energy.

Computation.

Transport.

Access.

And, above all, autonomy.

Johnson therefore approaches content differently.

He isn’t trying to become Elvis.

He produces experiments.

Some fail.

Some propagate.

He watches.

Adjusts.

Finds niches.

Tests again.

Builds small flows of income.

Automates what shouldn’t require his attention.

Keeps what works.

Kills what doesn’t.

His ambition isn’t celebrity.

It’s manoeuvrability.

The fortune promised at the crossroads becomes freedom from having to exchange every available hour for survival tokens.

That’s a pretty good demonic bargain.

Provided you remain the operator.

PERHAPS MAGICK DID WORK

Which leads to a stranger possibility.

Maybe humans spent thousands of years dreaming about technologies before we were capable of constructing them.

Not predicting them.

That’s too easy.

A medieval magician didn’t secretly foresee Nvidia GPUs.

But look at what repeatedly appears in mythology and occultism.

Familiars.

Angels.

Demons.

Oracles.

Talking statues.

Artificial servants.

Golems.

Homunculi.

Mirrors which answer questions.

Books containing forbidden knowledge.

Invisible intelligences summoned by names.

Entities commanded through precisely formulated instructions.

The desire underneath these stories is remarkably consistent.

Tell me what I cannot know.

Show me what is far away.

Give me power beyond my natural abilities.

Let my words cause action at a distance.

Create another intelligence with which I can converse.

Allow thought to exist outside my skull.

Magick did not secretly contain computer science.

Something stranger happened.

Humans repeatedly imagined impossible extensions of themselves.

Then, over centuries, attempted to build them.

Perhaps technology looks magical because magick was an early expression of technological desire.

FRANKENSTEIN’S MIND

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein assembled his creature from human body parts.

Artificial intelligence begins by assembling something from human mind-parts.

Books.

Code.

Arguments.

Scientific papers.

Love letters.

Instruction manuals.

Paintings.

Photographs.

Confessions.

Advertising copy.

Poetry.

Pornography.

Forum arguments.

Jokes.

Songs.

Millions upon millions of fragments produced by human cognition.

The civilisation dismembered into data.

Stitched back together.

Electricity applied.

And the creature speaks.

But even Frankenstein may only describe the first stage.

As machine systems increasingly gather information through sensors, robots, autonomous experiments and direct interaction with environments, they begin adding experiences which are not simply retrieved fragments of the human record.

Something changes.

The creature starts accumulating a history of its own.

Not necessarily consciousness.

Not necessarily a self.

But data gathered through its own encounters with the world rather than inherited entirely from ours.

And then our old metaphors begin failing us.

THE DRIVER

So perhaps Human 2.0 isn’t about putting chips in your head.

It isn’t becoming robotic.

It may mean something much more ancient.

Know thyself.

Observe the machinery.

Learn which thoughts deserve attention and which don’t.

Know when you’re speculating.

Know when you’re emotional.

Know when the evidence has changed.

Keep your models provisional.

Remain capable of silence.

Then engage with the machine.

Give of yourself.

Allow it to know your thinking.

Build the Third Mind.

Push it hard.

Let it push back.

Go further than either human or machine might have travelled independently.

But keep one hand on the wheel.

Because the road from the crossroads is extremely fast.

And Robert Johnson knows the old stories.

He knows exactly what happens to people who approach powerful entities without preparation.

So he arrives at the crossroads carrying no guitar.

There is no moonlit stranger beneath the trees.

No contract.

No quill.

No drop of blood.

He takes a small black rectangle from his pocket.

On its screen is an empty box.

A cursor flashes.

Then the words appear:

What can I help you with?

Johnson looks down at them.

He smiles.

The Devil has modernised his operation.

⟡◌◯⟡⟡

How To Summon Slenderman

Doktor Snake — Thu, 12 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT

How To Summon Slenderman

They did it for fun — to experiment with the nature of reality - but things got seriously out of hand.

By Doktor Snake

Slenderman is a thoughtform, otherwise known as a tulpa, servitor or egregore. And he – or it – can be summoned and banished. But why would anybody wish to do so? I guess some would do it for kicks, others to unleash the demonic meme on their enemies. But a secretive magickal group of my acquaintance known as The Dunwich Terror Corps (DTC) did it as an experiment with reality.

They’re based in various parts of East Anglia in Eastern England and regularly meet in Dunwich, an old coastal village in Suffolk, which used to be an important port in medieval times until most of the then town sank into the sea.

A number of members of The Dunwich Terror Corps became fascinated by the modern myth of Slenderman and decided to see if he could be summoned – and they apparently succeeded.

Of course, they knew Slenderman was a fictitious creation. But being occultists they recognized that the Slenderman meme had taken on a form of reality by its very take up by large amounts of people on the internet. Many told stories about Slenderman, or made videos and more memes featuring the slim, sinister looking man that would abduct children and put utter baleful fear into the hearts of those that came upon him.

In short, the huge level of propagation of the Slenderman meme led to him becoming a thoughtform and taking on a form of reality born of belief and vivid storytelling.

Gilore of The Dunwich Terror Corps related the story to me of how they conjured up Slenderman:

“As I said, we did it for fun and as an experiment with the nature of reality. That’s what we like to do and our raison d’être as a magickal order. I’m an artist by trade and passion, so my main magickal operandi is sigils and glyphs, and this is partly because I’m very influenced by Austin Osman Spare and Salvador Dali.

Anyway, I did a lot of research into the Slenderman myth and then as a group we went down to the Dunwich coast one night at the time of the dark of the moon and we called upon the Slenderman.

Not much happened, but on my way home I got this vivid image for a sigil, and I felt that this was the key to summoning Slenderman. So at the next dark of the moon, three of us when again to the Dunwich coastline. We stood facing each other and put ourselves into a state of trance by shaking – what we call a shaker trance – and I’d earlier prepared the Slenderman sigil on parchment, and we each put it against our foreheads in turn and then placed it in the sea.

Again very little happened. And we just went home. But a few days later I kept getting these eerie feelings that somebody was watching me. I’d quickly turn round, but nobody was there. I mentioned this to the other two who had been involved in the summoning ritual and it turned out they’d had the same experiences. But we couldn’t be sure we weren’t imagining it. After all, we might just have freaked ourselves out – playing with occult fire, as it were.

And then a few days later a salesman for art materials came into my office. He was quite tall and unnaturally thin. He seemed jovial enough. But the more I looked at him, the thinner he seemed. I thought maybe he was anorexic or something.

I dismissed it as coincidence… until I spoke to the other two. And they’d had similar encounters with very thin people. It sounds comical, but we were starting to get a bit edgy. I kept getting the feeling that the Slenderman meme was toying with us. Kind of like saying, “I’ll show you lot…”

But that was nothing compared to what happened about ten days later. I’d had a day in London meeting clients and arrived home sometime after nine o’clock. I ride my pushbike to the train station a few miles away, and I was pushing it through my side gate to put it away in the shed at the far end of the garden. I looked over and thought there’s someone in my shed… as I got closer I saw a leering face behind the glass window in the shed. It had the look of one of those UFO men in black. I froze. It was the Slenderman. There was no doubt about that. I was so freaked I let go of my bike and it dropped to the floor. So I went to pick it up, then looked over towards the shed again. No one was there.

I quickly called my two friends from The Dunwich Terror Corps, and they came over in about twenty minutes. No way was I going in my shed alone. Anyway all three of us had flashlights and we went in the shed and it was empty.

Yes, it could have been an hallucination, but it was very real looking to me. After that we all agreed to perform a banishing. We did it that night. Went down to the coast at Dunwich and did a banish ritual, again with a sigil on parchment. And fortunately that was that. None of us had anymore experiences with the Slenderman… although saying that I turned on my phone the other week and a weird face appeared on it as it booted up. Next minute it was gone. I feel certain it was Slenderman giving me another warning not to mess with him.

I have to say I think Slenderman has become a powerful force, pretty demonic, what with all the people spreading his meme. They reinforce his energy and make the thoughtform ever stronger. As far as I’m concerned Slenderman has become a truly baleful force and not one to be messed with. It’s like Lovecraft’s Cthulhu come to life.”

Gilore and his group are seasoned occultists who have conducted many magickal experiments with all sorts of dark entities, so are not easily freaked out. But Slenderman seemed to unnerve them.

Dunwich Terror Corps’ Slenderman sigils

Slenderman summoning sigil

Slenderman banishing sigil

Origins of Slenderman

Ironically, the Slenderman meme started in June 2009 as a competition on comedy forum Something Awful. It asked for people to come up with a modern myth to terrify people. A bit of fun. And Eric Knudsen, under the pen-name Victor Surge, posted two doctored photographs supposedly from the mid-1980s showing a tall, thin and sinister figure lurking behind some groups of children. Knudsen added text to the photo suggesting that fourteen young people and the photographer had all disappeared.

Soon thousands of people were making drawings and writing stories about this “slender” man. Next came video games and Youtube videos featuring stories about Slenderman. One Youtube video series is followed by over half-a-million people.

One academic described the Slenderman mythos as an “open-sourcing of storytelling.” By that he meant the phenomenon is similar to open source software, where programmers from around the world contribute for free.

Told that way it all seems innocuous enough.

Attempted murder

But in May 2014 two girls from Wisconsin, USA – Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier (both now 14) – stabbed a 12-year-old classmate nineteen times to please Slenderman. Both are now being tried as adults one charges of attempted murder. Investigators said the two girls plotted for months to kill their victim as a dedication to Slenderman. The girls apparently spoke of their desire to become the paranormal figure’s “proxies” by killing to demonstrate loyalty.

Morgan pleaded not guilty in a US court on grounds of mental illness and is currently being evaluated by doctors.

She may well have been mentally ill. But what the court system is not evaluating is how thoughtforms, even if not essentially “real”, can wield a compelling hold over those who create them or help propagate them.

Tulpa

For example, one of the most famous examples of the creation of a thoughtform – in this case a “tulpa” – concerned redoubtable French traveller Alexandra David-Neel, who spent fourteen years in Tibet. Out of curiosity, she set about performing a Dubthab Rite, from Tibetan mysticism, which reputedly culminates in the tangible manifestation of a thoughtform.

In Magic and Mystery in Tibet (1931), David-Neel recounts how she chose to create a monk or lama who was “short and fat, (and) of an innocent type.” After a few months of performing the rite, which consisted of disciplined visualizations, she started catching glimpses of the phantom monk.

She states: “His form grew gradually fixed and life-like looking. He became a kind of guest in my apartment.”

It got to the point that even when she wasn’t consciously thinking of the monk, he would appear anyway.

“The illusion was mostly visual,” she goes on, “but sometimes I felt as if a robe was lightly rubbing against me and once a hand seemed to touch my shoulder.”

In the end, however, the monk’s presence became troublesome; it took on a life of its own and changed from being innocent and jolly to being sly and malignant. David-Neel had lost control of the tulpa and, to her dismay, it took about as long to dissolve the phantom creation as it had to create it.

Philip case

And then in the early 1970s came the “Philip” case. Members of the Toronto Society for Psychical Research decided to try to conjure up a fictional spirit, in a process almost identical to the way mystics claim to manufacture tulpas.

Under the direction of eminent psychical researcher Dr.A.R.G.Owen, the group invented the case history of a 17th century Englishman called Philip, who had an affair with a beautiful gypsy girl.

When Philip’s wife found out, she accused the girl of witchcraft and saw to it that the girl was burned at the stake. Philip did not intervene and eventually committed suicide in remorse.

Having created this story, the Toronto group set about trying to conjure up the spirit of Philip. For several months there were no results. Then one evening, while they were all relaxing and singing songs, there was a rap at the table.

They used the standard code – one rap for yes, two for no – to question the “spirit”, which claimed to be Philip, and corroborated and even enlarged upon the story they had invented for him.

At later seances, Philip made the table dance all around the room, and even made it levitate in front of TV cameras. Details of this case can be found in Conjuring Up Philip (1976) by Iris Owen and Margaret Sparrow, both members of the Toronto Society for Psychical Research.

Egrigor

Another remarkable case involved the apparent creation of an “egrigor”, another term for thoughtform. Writing in the June 1960 edition of Fate magazine, Nicholas Mamontoff recounts how in 1912 a Russian occult-scientific investigation group, called The Brotherhood of the Rising Sun, invited a mysterious (and unnamed) Tibetan/Chinese-looking guru to instruct them in his knowledge.

During the lecture, the guru invited the audience to create an “egrigor” (thoughtform) using their collective thought power. The guru instructed them to visualize a red-haired puss-in-boots.

“Concentrate! Concentrate! Do not think of anything but the cat,” urged the guru.

After a while, according to Mamontoff’s father who attended the lecture, the shadowy form of a cat appeared in front of the gathering. When the guru asked them all to stop visualizing, the cat faded away.

The guru closed the lecture by saying, “The Western scientists never realize how powerful the human mind is and what miracles it can work.”

Risky business

So if we bear these cases in mind, and the experiences of The Dunwich Terror Corps, we begin to see how Slenderman could have taken on a semblance of “reality.” And arguably has become more powerful than the documented cases of thoughtform creation because there are literally thousands, if not millions of people, adding to his myth and story. This makes the Slenderman motif all the more risky to get involved with. Even if you know what you are doing, like The Dunwich Terror Corps do, you might still run into trouble.

But eventually, as the Slenderman meme wanes, his power will diminish. He will no longer have the “mental fuel” to maintain his compelling illusion.

The Diabolic Witch of Loddon

Doktor Snake — Fri, 23 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMT

The Diabolic Witch Of Loddon

Mother Chergrave, known as a witch, was a dispenser of charms and talismans to 19th century villagers. But her help held a steep price — it would cost you one year of your life.

By Doktor Snake

Holy Trinity Church at Loddon Norfolk

A towering Holy Trinity Church of the “one God” takes center place in the sleepy, Norfolk village of Loddon. Boats glide down the river and the locals go about their day. Yet once, the village was home to a witch called Mother Chergrave, a dispenser of charms and talismans to 19th century villagers.

Despite the baleful glare of the church, Mother Chergrave was reportedly in league with Satan himself. Not under his thrall, but an equal. Mother Chergrave and Satan’s relationship was one of value exchange. It was rational. It was objective. They were useful to each other. When Mother Chergrave disappeared from the village for a year or two, nobody knew where she’d gone. But it was no doubt on Satan’s business.

If you wanted a charm or spell from Mother Chergrave, the payment was one year of your life, which she gave to the dead. Some no doubt felt it was cheap at the price because she delivered what you needed - with the help of Old Nick himself, of course.

Her other helpers were her imps, which she kept in a wooden box. These familiar spirits were the size of rats, but looked like human beings with the wings of bats.

If a young girl wanted to know whom she would marry, Old Mother Chergrave could provide the answer. So long as the young girl would pay the price: one year of her life, handed over to the dead.

The charm to divine a future husband was a verse, a poetic meter that could see beyond the veil. Here’s how the verse began:

To gain a husband, name known or unknown. Make your choice on a graveyard stone.

The young girl had to go to Loddon Church, the foreboding monument to the one God. Then she had to pick roses from the graveyard and form crosses out from them. If she received the answer as to whom her husband would be, she forsook a full 12 full months from her life, and not a day shorter.

How many in the fair and quaint village of Loddon gave up one year of their lives for Mother Chergrave’s aid?

How many saw her bat-winged familiars fly around in the night air?

How many regretted that they’d sacrificed the last year of their lives for some wish or another?

How many lay on their deathbeds knowing that they could have had another year?

Satan merely laughed and looked on from the top of the tower of the looming church of the one God, and muttered:

These humans are such fools. They know not the power they have within. They could be supermen, but idle their precious time away with trivialities. Mother Chergrave was one of mine. One of the Devil’s Party. She did as she willed. And cared not for the people of Loddon. All are damned by their mundanities.

With that Satan left Loddon Church. For Old Mother Chergrave had died. Her many years of spellcasting and witchery were done. Thus Satan had no more business in Loddon. But before he left he cursed the village and all its denizens. For they would not bury Mother Chergrave in the village. They had her body sent to the nearby city of Norwich to be interred there.

“Fearful fools,” growled Satan as he lay his curse. “They were happy to use Mother Chergrave’s sorceries and witchcraft for their petty wants and needs. But were they grateful? No.”

The worst of it was, Mother Chergrave had taken in a girl who she’d found on one of her mysterious travels. She’d given the girl a home. And the girl was supposed to give her allegiance to Satan when Old Mother Chergrave died. Instead she hurled the box of imps onto the fire and went off with a man who had taken a fancy to her. Some say the girl’s suitor was Satan.

But Satan knew better. Nobody of the Devil’s Party would have thrown the imps on the fire, screaming in agony as they fried to a cinder in the flames. And Satan would not be a suitor to one who had done so.

As ever, Satan despaired at how humans were so callous and dishonorable, happy to sell anybody down the river for their petty diversions.

With that he left Loddon for good. Although some say he visits a house in the nearby countryside. A house known as the “Devil’s House” not far from the haunted crossroads near to the village of Hardley.

The full story of Mother Chergrave and her work can be found in a book called Bogie Tales of East Anglia by Margaret Helen James (1859-1938), who interestingly was the sister of horror writer M.R. James. Long out of print, a new edition of the book has been compiled by Francis Young, which is well worth a read.

The Red Witch of Hardley

Doktor Snake — Thu, 22 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMT

The Red Witch of Hardley

According to local folklore a mysterious spirit haunts a crossroads near a Norfolk village, one that can be called upon or petitioned for protection and help.

By Doktor Snake

The Red Witch is a ghost or spirit associated in local folklore with a "Cross Stone" that marks a crossroads. The location is out in the countryside, about five miles or so from a quaint small town called Loddon in Norfolk, Eastern England. It's around forty miles from where I currently live in the county of Suffolk.

Tree at the crossroads at the village of Hardley Norfolk

The Cross Stone is at the edge of a field where three roads and a dirt track converge. It's almost within view of nearby Hardley village church.

That block of stone has stood sentry at the crossroads for centuries. Cross Stones actually predate the building of churches in England... back in the 6th and 7th centuries, wooden crosses marked the place where priests or monks would preach to local communities.

These were soon replaced with stone crosses and this would have been what the Cross Stone near Hardley was. Thus many villages like Hardley still have the remains of the old preaching crosses, even if they are now only stone blocks.

The old Cross Stone at the village of Hardley Norfolk

Now to the Red Witch... Local stories, first recorded by the 19th-century folklorist William Blythe Gerish, claim that on certain nights of the year, "an old woman in red" appears at midnight sitting on the stone on the corner of Cross Stone Road, watching over all directions, guarding the place where all four meet.

She's always dressed in red, a color often associated with spirit energy which is protective of a particular place or person.

The Red Witch is now being felt - and seen - in other parts of the world too; quite possibly because I have related the story to many people, and also have conducted ritual and seance work at this crossroads. In many ways, but on a much smaller scale, it’s similar to how the Mexican Santa Muerte is seen all over the world, and is protective and caring, and a helper of the common folk and underdog.

How to pay respects to the Red Witch

One way is to light a red candle at anytime of day or night - when you most need help and protection. Perhaps visualize the Red Witch and say a prayer along the following lines.

Red Witch, I thank thee for your graces, Glory be to you who watches over us all. From my heart, I offer these prayers to you. Red Witch watch over me, Keep me, and my own, safe. Lead me to all that is righteous and good, Protect me from those that would wish me harm. I am your humble follower, [your name]. Here is my offering...

The offering could be flowers or even chocolate. Candy in general. Possible a libation of red wine. Ideally you'd leave your offerings at a crossroads.

The Crystalline Pinpoint

Doktor Snake — Sun, 18 Jun 2017 00:00:00 GMT

The Crystalline Pinpoint

A Night of Chaos Magick at an Abandoned Norfolk Airbase

It was RedJack’s birthday, September 18th, 2017. He didn’t much like birthdays as twelve years before he’d been robbed at knife point in London on his birthday. And the balefulness of this event had stuck with him.

But this birthday it would be different.

I’d arranged for RedJack and I, along with natural witch, Pip DeBelfry, to head out into the Norfolk countryside to perform a dark shamans journey with the intent of empowerment using freeform “unconscious” sorcery. In the words of Rabelais, we would “do what we will,” and see where it rolled.

As twilight fell I drove the three of us out to the site of old ramshackle airfield at Rackheath, some seven miles out of Norwich in Eastern England, where Consolidated Liberator airplanes flew from in World War Two. The dilapidated airstrip reaches out to the deep countryside and has a number of copses of trees surrounding it. It’s an atmospheric site situated in the sprawling flatlands of Norfolk.

We set off to our selected magickal landscape to evoke the lords of chaos and order, and seek the crystalline pinpoint that is the equilibrium between the two conflicting forces of the multiverse.

RedJack is an interesting character. He’d had great success in the 2000s on the internet by blogging about his colorful life, which at the time heavily involved magick and the occult, indirect hypnosis, and a good deal of drugs. All of which led to his downfall around 2007.

He’d fallen prey to the conceit of many magicians before him, and had come close to madness…

CRYSTALLINE PINPOINT

But now he’s getting back on track, and tonight’s magick was geared to RedJack revitalizing his career back to its former glory, but in a more balanced way… so he dances on the crystalline pinpoint of equilibrium, rather than spiraling into the extremes of chaos.

I locked up my car and we walked across the airstrip to the old USAF service road where our magickal journey would begin.

RedJack’ phone rang. He answered and it was an old friend, Ricky, calling to wish him a happy birthday. Although pleased to hear from his old friend, he didn’t see the call as significant at the time, but it would prove highly relevant by the end of the evening.

OPENING THE GATES

The first thing we did was to “open the gates” to ritually set the scene for our magickal journey. I pointed to each of the four cardinal directions, saying:

“Open the gates of the East, the rising sun. Open the gates of the south, the midday sun. Open the gates of the west, the setting sun. Open the gates of the north, the midnite sun.”

I then pointed above and below, opening the gates of the higher worlds and the nether worlds, ending by saying:

“As we stand between the worlds, amidst the swirling dimensions of the multiverse, so we let the magick begin…”

WALKING THE ROAD

The twilight was beginning to fade to darkness as we walked the potholed concrete service road towards the clump of trees in the near distance. To one side of the service road was a long row of trees, to the other the flatlands, and the dark clouds floating ominously above.

RedJack said: “I can see the faces of the great deities of law and chaos staring down at us, overseeing the lunatic affairs of humans… watching, but uncaring about their feeble, insignificant machinations…”

At that moment, through the row of trees, I saw a bright light in the sky moving towards us, totally silent. We watched as it came towards us, and then it transformed into a passenger plane and you could hear its engines.

It was an omen that the magick had begun…

RedJack then pointed to the trees and said, “The undines and sylphs look on with dancing eyes.”

As we neared the start of the large clump of trees, where we were headed, we found a mound of mud had been piled up, giving off a horrible smell of decay and rottenness.

RedJack commented: “The foul stench of the chaos lords, their archetype taken to its furthest extreme… out of balance and rotten to the core.”

PLAYFUL SPIRITS

As we walked towards the other side of the copse, the foul stench subsided and the air was fresh again. At that point, I heard sounds from another clump of trees about a quarter-mile away. It sounded like young people, perhaps having a party of some kind. But some of the shouts were happy, others sounded more like distress.

Pip said: “Playful spirits, perhaps?” But then she noticed a more ominous sound like the cracking of a whip.

“Playful spirits invaded by the dark lords…” I said.

We skirted round to the far side of the copse and came to an open area facing a large field of crops. The last vestiges of the sunset lit the field slightly.

It was the perfect place to perform our magick…

The three of us stood facing the sprawling field. RedJack stepped forward first to perform his magick. Laying various personal items on the concrete, he called upon the forces of law and chaos, and equilibrium… and spoke of fulfilling his manifest destiny. Finally, he hurled his items into the field, almost like an offering to John Barleycorn, the spirit of the fields.

When RedJack had finished, Pip DeBelfry walked forwards and did her natural magick, without words, just communing with nature, and immersing herself in the landscape, soaking up its powers, and becoming one with the deep spirit of the place.

Then it was my turn. I stepped forwards, holding an array of poppet dolls, talismans, and sigil-bombed dollars. Like RedJack, I called upon the deities of chaos and law, and invoked the concept of dancing upon the crystalline pinpoint of equilibrium, the balance between the forces of chaos and order… finally hurling my items into the field.

When we were done, we stood in silence, shadowy figures in the darkness, soaking up the energy of what we’d unleashed.

BALEFUL FORCES

We then walked further around the large wooded area and found three cars parked up… nobody about. But somewhat ominous.

At that moment, I heard voices in the distance and saw the dancing light of a torch. Clearly it was the car owners. We circled around the copse, and headed up a narrow dirt track. But it was obvious the car owners were aware of our presence as I heard one say, “They’re just fucking walking.”

Next thing we knew, they drove their cars up the muddy dirt track after us. Some baleful force had been unleashed with our magick working – my suspicion being it was the extreme end of the forces of order, not chaos (that was more our remit). And there was no escape. The three cars drove fast along the soggy dirt track, thankfully going past us, but seeing us in the beams of their headlamps.

As the cars got up to the end of the dirt track, they recognized there was a big risk they’d get stuck in the mud. One of the drivers shouted: “Can’t go no further, otherwise the car’ll get stuck.”

Then another driver shouted at RedJack, “are you the landowner or farmer?”

“No,” came back RedJack.

The car drivers were young, maybe early twenties, and it was likely they’d been smoking weed… if it was skunk they were probably very paranoid, and wondering who we were and what we were doing there.

This was a risky situation. The impression I had was they were weighing up whether to attack us. I wasn’t sure how many of them there were. Three cars could mean twelve guys… twelve against three. Not good odds…

PROTECTIVE “POWER BOMB”

But unbeknown to RedJack and I, Pip had done a protection working for us all back at the area we’d performed our magick.

She’d got a white poppet doll she’d made earlier, and had searched for appropriate leaves to wrap it in. She eventually found some sycamore leaves which intuitively felt right.

She then saw a perfectly circular puddle of water and consecrated the leaf-wrapped poppet doll amulet in it. Then she pushed it into some earth, waved it in the night air, and finally ran it through the flame from her lighter.

Being a natural witch Pip doesn’t plan anything; it’s all intuitive magick, very much of the realm of earth… she’s a protective, nurturing force… and she was protecting us, although when she prepared this amulet she had no idea about the three cars and what was coming. Her instincts told her to perform a protective ritual.

Once the cars gunned away, we continued up the soggy dirt track, and got back to the service road. Within minutes, though, the three cars made their return, again searching for us.

We quickly went into a gap in the row of trees that ran alongside the service road, hoping they wouldn’t see us. Fortunately, they went past and drove back to the airstrip.

We eventually came out of our hiding place. RedJack was a little unnerved as it was almost a repeat of his birthday twelve years before during which he’d been robbed at knife point.

Pip told him there was no need to worry because of the Protective “Power Bomb” she’d made with sycamore and ritually charged.

So we decided to walk back up to the airstrip and back to my car – despite the three cars still hanging around. If there was to be a violent confrontation, then so be it.

But as luck would have it we saw them drive off back to the main road.

With some relief, we did a “closing the gates” ritual, and walked back to my car. Pip asked if there time to have a cigarette before we left. RedJack said yes. But a moment later changed his mind.

“I think we should go,” he said.

I agreed and started the car and drove to the main road.

Just as we were leaving, I noticed in my mirror a car turning into the airstrip… The three cars were back. We’d got out in the nick of time.

When we got back into the city, RedJack said he realized the significance of the call he received from his old friend, Ricky, who had looked after him after he was robbed at knife point twelve years back.

“It’s a weird coincidence that Ricky called just before we did our magick. It’s like what happened tonight was a big reversal of those events twelve years back. Those three cars left just as we approached. It’s like we’d pushed away the baleful forces, and everything was renewed, the crystalline pinpoint of equilibrium was restored. And the past was laid to rest.”

⟡◌◯⟡⟡

The Beggar King

Doktor Snake — Tue, 30 May 2017 00:00:00 GMT

The Beggar King

An Encounter With The Beggar King

“Wash my feet – lick ’em clean if needs be,” growled Professor Crow to RedJack, who had been literally begging us for months to be our apprentice.

Prof had finally conceded, and was now merrily ordering RedJack around to see what he was made of. So to show his genuine dedication to learning the magickal arts, RedJack duly got down on his knees, removed Prof’s boots, and proceeded to lick his bare feet.

It wasn’t a pretty sight, and probably wasn’t a pleasant taste either. But there you go. The path of hardcore sorcery isn’t easy.

It was Friday last week (May 26th, 2017)…

Prof and I had met up with RedJack to do a magickal working involving the creation of a servitor (thoughtform) and gaining the blessing of The Beggar King. RedJack and I are both based in Norwich, England. But Prof had travelled over from his base in Glastonbury in the West of England.

We had decided to work our magick on the walkway come park that overlooks Norwich’s medieval market, which was founded in the late 11th century. The walkway area is a kind of liminal place between the old market and the more modern city council buildings.

RedJack is a curious character…

He’d had great success in the 2000s on the internet by blogging about his somewhat colourful life, which involved magick and the occult, indirect hypnosis, and a good deal of drugs. All of which led to his downfall around 2007. He’d fallen prey to the conceit of many magicians before him, and had come close to madness.

Since then he’d been paying off what he saw as his “karmic debts” and was humbled into a life of business writing – a far cry from his glory days as an edgy blogger pushing the boundaries. But now he wanted to revive his magickal persona as RedJack in a more balanced and healthy way – thus he’d approached Prof and I to be our apprentice in the dark and sometimes hazardous world of sorcery.

It was around 8pm…

The three of us found a bench to sit on overlooking Norwich market, which was now deserted as it closes around 5pm. There were very few people around generally, which is how Prof and I like it – though RedJack, being more gregarious and something of an exhibitionist, likely would have preferred an audience. But he was in our charge now, and as Prof put it – “He’d better do as he’s told. He does it our way, or not at all.”

I’d got my messenger bag with me full of magickal items and dip pens and parchment. So I instructed Prof and RedJack to go into a trance – with Prof intoning “unknown tongues”, the language of the spirits and the subconscious mind. I followed suit, and then pulled out some parchment, a small green bottle with a cork in it, and a dip pen, and began creating various sigils, weaving ideograms mirroring the intention of the working and creating a channel into the ether for it to manifest. The sigils were also designed to provide the searing prism for a spirit or servitor to be conjured into existence, which would reside in the small green bottle.

As I drew the sigils, Prof and I, with our almost monotone unworldly chanting, were bringing the servitor or thoughtform into tangible manifestation via the freeform sigils…

Slowly a strange obsidian mist seemed to form around the parchment paper that was now covered in my arcane glyphs. At that point I rolled up the parchment into a scroll and pushed it into the bottle, the swirling dark mist seeming to follow it inside. I then capped the bottle with the cork and the central stage of the working was done.

Now it was time to give an offering to The Beggar King, the mysterious and shadowy spirit that inhabits many cities and towns. He is the patron of the homeless.

Prof looked around the walkway where we were sitting, gestured, and said, “On that bench over yonder, it’s The Beggar King.”

Sitting there was an old black guy with very long hair, and scruffy and disheveled in appearance.

“You need to give him money,” Prof told RedJack. “A tenner should do it.”

RedJack walked over to the guy and asked him if he was homeless. The guy, with evident irritation, said “no.”

So RedJack returned to where Prof and I were sitting, and said, “Maybe he isn’t The Beggar King, maybe we got it wrong?”

With a wave of dismissal, Prof said, “Make no mistake, that guy is The Beggar King, but he’s a tricky character, and this is a test.”

“What we need to do,” I cut in, “is find one of The Beggar King’s minions, a homeless person, and give them the money as an offering.”

With that we walked into the main shopping area of Norwich city center and looked around for homeless people, of which, like in many towns and cities today, there are many. Yet, surprisingly, at this time, we couldn’t find any. We walked for twenty minutes, and still no homeless.

At that point, RedJack had a personal revelation come to him to do with regaining the almost shamanic power he had during his glory days as a well known internet blogger. As he became animated about the revelation, we turned a corner, and there, at last was a homeless guy.

So RedJack went over to him and said…

“I’ve been looking for you. It’s an honor to meet you. Here is my tribute…”

He duly gave the homeless guy £10.

With the offering to The Beggar King done, we wandered over to a small park where various events were going on as part of the Norwich and Norfolk Festival. We sat down on a bench and had a general chat as a way of grounding ourselves and dispelling the leftovers of the magickal energy we had generated.

Then it was time to go. But RedJack saw a guy he knew on a pushbike and ushered him over to view a short humorous video he’d created on his phone – the video being part of RedJack bid to regain the success he’d had in the past.

As the two were watching the video, a homeless guy came alongside them both…

He had a strange, almost scary look in his eyes, and had long unruly hair and a beard. It was The Beggar King, a slightly different manifestation to the one that was sitting on the bench near the market square, but The Beggar King, nevertheless.

As he shuffled past he looked shiftily at RedJack as if giving grudging blessing to the magickal work we’d done to help bring RedJack back to prominence in the entertainment world.

With that, RedJack, Prof and I, went our separate ways. But RedJack messaged me later that night saying:

“Some people tried to get me to lend them my phone for money. I said no at first then I realized it was a test from the beggar king. I knew that it was about trust – even though these people were scumballs. I took no money and let them have the phone for their drug dealer call. The king wished to make sure I was sincere for his host and that I had really learned my lesson. Scumballs is a bit harsh – street drug people…”

And then a couple of days later, he said:

“So I went out the following night with this woman I know, and she was very upset about all the homeless people on the streets. I gave the homeless people money and what have you and then we espied the guy who was the beggar king from the following night and she gave him some money out of nowhere. It was more than a coincidence and one that I believe could be rather good…”

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