When I stated to a friend that Douglas Rushkoff's book Coercion: Why We Listen to What They Say was the most influential treatise on black magic published in the last ten years, I was only half joking. Our individual worldviews are dangling on the puppet strings of the media's news releases; created in the wake of a thousand persuaders, each striving desperately to sell us their view of reality. I'm doing the same thing, promoting a worldview less centralized, more empowering to the individual, but without overlooking the importance and influence of superorganisms and group collectives. Because I have less influence than the media conglomerates, my worldview which I am trying to pass on to you is not as dominate as the collective cultural worldview produced on Madison Avenue.

I do not want to start this off with the statement that all marketing is bad, or that all corporations are out to eat you. Good marketing tells you what you didn't know about a product that you may very well be interested in, and the product itself should deliver on the promises implicit in the advertisment. If it doesn't, don't buy any more shit from that company. We can dig back through history and make the assumption that this is precisely why the Sears catalogue was the powerhouse merchandiser of the turn of the century. But that is far from the standard operations of government and religious advertising, and even product awareness and marketing have shifted dramatically from honest product information once a standard in advertisments. I for one would welcome a return to such standards.

Instead, today we are enmeshed in a matrix of media messages the bulk of which rely upon persuasion techniques refined by years of market pressure and behavioral psychology.

"To influence us, they disable our capacity to make reasoned judgements and appeal to deeper, perhaps unresolved, and certainly unrelated issues. By understanding the unconscious processes we use to make our choices of what to buy, where to eat, whom to respect, and how to feel, clever influence professionals can sidestep our critical faculties and compel us to act however they please. We are disconnected from our own further disempowerment. The less we are satisfied by our decisions, the more easily manipulated we become. "To restore our own ability to act wilfully, we must accept that we are the ones actively submitting to the influence of others. We are influenced because, on some level, we want to be."
(Coercion: Why We Listen to What They Say - 1999, Douglas Rushkoff, p. 19)

This influence is by no means restricted to advertising. In fact, advertising in the traditional sense comprises a much less serious threat to our unconscious than the whole of mass communications. What is presented isn't an advertisment for a product, but an entire worldview composed of what can be considered self-censoring corporate culture. And we are complicit in the spread of the mediocre psychic environment we now find ourselves.

Our responsibility is to embrace that which does a better job of explaining reality and discard that which obfuscates. We need to become conscious of our true selves to do this, which means discarding the personas long enough to comprehend how our persona influences our perceptions.

"... by unconsciously accepting mass communications, we are adopting alien thought patterns. These thought patterns have an agenda, thought patterns that triggered a buzz-whir effect in our brains so that presented with certain situations, we have a knee-jerk reaction that although it feels like a free formed 'logical' action, was actually implanted in our brains." (Twisp, Ben Mack, p. 39)

How does this work? In part because of how the brain operates:

"Remember that when the human nervous system unscrambles a scrambled message this will seem to the subject like his very own ideas which just occurred to him... Anyone can be made to hear voices with scrambling techniques... To carry it further you can use recordings of voices known to him." (The Electronic Revolution, 1967, William S. Burroughs)

Taking this a step further, when a person normally hears or believes he hears voices from within:

"... it is regarded either as undiluted nonsense or as the voice of God. It does not seem to occur to any one that there might be something valuable in between." (Four Archetypes, Carl G. Jung)

We build our questions about reality from the illusions presented to us. Those presenting the illusions who are cognizant of this effect are crafting media designed to raise questions for us to ask, and a context in which the answers put them in the best possible light. The smart public relations consultant knows that the truth will find its way into print, so they must create a media environment that spins truth to their advantage.

Marvel has published a number of comics that deal with this new media landscape. I really enjoyed 'Supreme Power': Written to bring superheroes into a realist setting, it explores the effect of the trully alien on a superorganism. Michael J. Straczynski's storyline is a realists portrayal of the effects of superpowered individuals in an amoral world. Public opinion and image motivate the heroes and their handlers more than villians, and the superheroes thamselves are portrayed as prisoners of their public persona. Truth is less important than the context within which it is presented.

"Which is why it's better if the kid says that himself, rather than us saying it. But we can't do that until we can unveil him, and that means narrowing down the uniform options. The president only wants to see three choices."
(Supreme Power V.1 #3, 2003, Michael J Straczynski)


This kind of positioning of truth is not limited to fictional abstractions occurring in comics; rather, comics are finally getting around to reflecting just how skewed our mediated reality has become. Another series, Ocean written by Warren Ellis and drawn up at the hands of Chris Sprouse, Karl Story, and colored by Randy Mayor, illustrates just how out of control corporate culture could become with the next-generation of technology. We need to take these stories to heart, and really examine what it means to be an individual within nested packs of competing superorganisms.

"Advertising and market research is an ongoing experiment on public perceptions."
(Twisp, 1997, Ben Mack, p. 185)

"Like salesmen, public-relations specialists seek to mirror the conscious and unconscious concerns of their targets in order to change their perception of reality. Just as a car dealer sizes up his walk-in clientele, researchers working for governments, public-relations firms, and corporations expend a great deal of effort sizing up their constituencies on a regular basis. Once they understand our belief system and, more important, where the irrationality and emotional triggers lie in those beliefs, they can work to move us in a different direction. 'Closing the sale' in these cases might mean gaining public support for a war, changing an industry's reputation as a polluter, or simply restoring voter's trust in a president who has lied to them."
(Coercion, p. 151)


Because they are reliant on these tools to discern our beliefs, there is at least one way you can actively influence the influencers. Ben Mack explains:

"'If you are asked a market research question, it is best to answer in such a way that if everybody answered the way you do, the world would be a better place.'
"I think we should vote like this too. I see research as a way of tallying social agreement. I don't think we should vote in politics for what suits us best. I think we should vote for what we think will make the world a better place. I think this value needs to be taught in school in order to make democracy work."
(Twisp, p. 183)

"Advertising is best when it catches somebody's attention as opposed to ramming a meme down somebody's mind" (Twisp, p. 185)


Since we cannot stop this, we shouldn't fear it. Otherwise it becomes another point of leverage for further manipulation. Instead we need to understand that it is going on and seek to turn it to our advantage.

"Everyone is wearing a fiction suit."
(Brain Sinews, John Harrigan)


I have only my own experience upon which to formulate my worldview. When I was born I was brought into a world built up out of expectations and traditions dictated by religious and cultural mores. My obsession with occult and esoteric studies comes as a direct result of my upbringing as an adoptee. Knowing this does little to disuade me from persuing my interests, but instead acts as a grounding from which a certain perspective is achieved. Each of us is complicit in hir own experience, and though most accept this complicity I sought to define its borders. It has been my experience that mapping out an abstraction is something begun by way of intention, but is accomplished through mental distractions. Hopefully I'll be able to impart some information that will help others appreciate their own capabilities.

The worldview I was raised within demanded more from me than I was willing to accept, and over time I learned this was not the only available reality tunnel through which to experience reality.

"I recognized the psychiatrist and the minister as keepers of the establishment's perceived truths -- one representing mental health, the other moral certitude. They were accomplices in keeping the adoptee aborted from the consciousness of his clan. They saw him not as the returned lost baby but as the returned dead, who seek vengeance."
(The Journey of the Adopted Self, 1994, Betty Jean Lifton)


I am an adoptee. This label came in place of my original birth certificate, and along with it in its place I received a legal fiction: a birth certificate doctored up a few months after I was born. This certificate is a lie accepted as truth in the eyes of the law. Deep meditation on this topic has served to uproot elements deeply repressed in my own unconscious, as well as strengthen my own internal imaginal landscape.

"Natural children, who have parents, siblings, and other blood-related relatives, are grounded in a reality from which they can spin their images. But adoptees do not feel grounded or connected by any such reality. Much of their imagery is not centered on the adoptive family in which they live as if they belong, but rather in fantasy and imagination. They have a sense that their very perceptions are decieving them. They have lost the abiliity to distinguish between what is real and what is supposed to be real."
(The Journey of the Adopted Self)


I expect an arguement could be made at my expense that these very essays are proof that my ability to distinguish between real and supposedly real has been damaged in some way. Using magical consciousness to combat mass communications and the attendant agenda may at first appear to be quixotic, but I wouldn't bother writing this if I hadn't already had some success.

So to continue, I first had to evaluate my preconceptions and repressed emotions. As much as possible, I had to remove myself from social expectations and prejudices regarding the mask of 'adoptee.'

"... being separated from their birthmothers and handed over to strangers in the adoption process is the only trauma where the victims are expected by the whole of society to be grateful..."
(The Primal Wound, 1993, Nancy Verrier)


I didn't know if I was grateful. I couldn't simply allow myself to be grateful without understanding the situation surrounding my birth, especially after multiple viewings of the film 'The Truman Show.' I had to awaken the trauma buried in my unconscious mind and release it instead of allowing it to continue manifesting. As Lifton puts it in her book, "The adoptee's goal is to illuminate the dark unconscious of the self and make it whole." While I agree with Betty Jean Lifton's statement, I firmly believe that should be everyone's goal, not just that of the adoptee. Adoptees may even have a head-start on the rest of you, in that they have something of a roadmap for this kind of work.

"Adoptees must weave a new self-narrative out of the fragments of what was, what might have been, and what is. This means they must integrate thair two selves: the regressed baby who was abandoned and the adult the baby has become.
"They must make the artificial self real, and allow the forbidden self to come out of hiding. They must integrate what is authentic in these two selves, and balance the power between them. It is during this period that the adoptee feels most vulnerable, because neither self is in charge...

"They must accept that they cannot be fully the birth parent's child any more than they could be fully the adoptive parents' child. They must claim their own child, become their own person, and belong to themselves."
(The Journey of the Adopted Self)


In essence, I had to assemble as much narrative out of my own experience, what information I could garner on the experiences surrounding my birth, and come to terms with that which I may very well never know. Out of this, I wove a narrative through which I gave birth to myself. I can't provide details of the day-to-day transformations in consciousness, nor the various outbursts of madness and self-destruction such a process entails. I had to peel away the layers of my persona and uncover the truth hidden within, and the operation shook me to the very core. Nor is this process complete. I have been engaged in this work for a long while now, and even this article is a step further along the path.

"The personality, a mask of convenience, becomes stuck to the face. Eye becomes clouded by 'I.' The human spirit becomes a trivial mess of petty identifications. The most cherished principles are the greatest lies. 'I think therefore I am.' But what is 'I?' The more you think, the more the I closes. Thinking, 'I am asleep'; my I is blinded. The intellect is a sword, and its use is to prevent identification with any particular phenomenon encountered. The most powerful minds cling to the fewest fixed principles. The only clear view is from atop a mountain of your dead selves."
(Liber Null, 1987, Peter J. Carroll, p. 48)


To return to comics briefly, the aforementioned series by Ellis and Sprouse, Ocean, presented a brilliant metaphor for posession of an individual by a persona in their examination of the futuristic Doors Corporation. Individuals are reprogrammed to conform to corporate interests, sacrificing their autonomy to the greater manifestation of the corporation itself. Instead of wearing the unifrom, the employee becomes the uniform.

"I am not prepared to lay down any hard and fast line of demarcation between possession and paranoia. Possession can be formulated as identity of the ego-personality with a complex.

"A common instance of this is identity with the persona, which is the individual's system of adaption to, or the manner he assumes in dealing with, the world. Every calling or profession, for example, has its own characteristic persona... One could say, with a little exaggeration, that the persona is that which in reality one is not, but which oneself as well as others think one is."
(Four Archetypes, 1959, Carl G. Jung)

A more benevolent form of this is implicit in the idea of evocation, retooled as the expression 'fiction suit,' introduced by Grant Morrison in his The Invisibles series.

"Some people prefer to use 'fiction suit' to indicate something deeper than a mere 'persona' or 'mask' - more like a conduit for a different internal character to come to life, a 'suit' worn by a specific personality, which may or may not jibe with the 'wearer's' meatspace (or 'real') persona. This outlook can be useful for those involved with certain magickal or psychological experiments, or for those who just need very badly to cut loose for a while."
(Fiction Suits, 2004, Barbelith Egregore)


Fiction suits begin as an abstraction, and are fleshed out through conscious decisions. Experiencing events from within such an abstraction helps one evaluate a variety of reality tunnels. The experience can range froma simple expirament in daydreaming to a full alteration of even the most basic and involuntary manerisms. Complete emersion in a different personality may complicate long-standing relationships, because the bulk of human interaction is built up from masks speaking to masks. Changing your mask for a different one changes the types of interactions you will have. Even more, you will not be able to predict the full expression of any given fiction suit. It is only through experience that you can understand how the experience itself will manifest.

"A primordial image is determined as to its content only when it has become conscious and is therefore filled out with the material of conscious experience."

(Four Archetypes)


Mucking about with fiction suits is more or less a practice run for the great work on the plate of any serious magician. Look at this quote found in Ray Kurzweil's latest work: "The most important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become," Charles Dubois. This becoming is illustrated most profoundly in the tarot card The Hanged Man, and its attendant themes of sacrificing the self to the self to achieve a state of cosmic self-awareness.

"... sacrifice, in the final analysis, is a wrong idea...
"Redemption is a bad word; it implies debt. For every star possesses boundless wealth; the only proper way to deal with the ignorant is to bring them to the knowledge of thier starry heritage."
(ATU XII, The Book of Thoth, 1944, Aleistar Crowley)


Becoming aware of your true nature is essential. As Peter Carroll says, a person can't be said to have a personality until they own the keys to their own personality. We are bound on all sides by influences coercing and binding us to a cultural reality. Generating original ideas is only possible once we know who we are within this context. Sadly, it doesn't happen in a brilliant flash. For most of us, it doesn't even happen in a short nine day ritual as in the myth of Odin.

"The operation of obtaining the knowledge and conversation is usually a lengthy one." As Peter j. Carroll says. Those familiar with the Sacred Magic of Abramelin know just how extreme this process can become. He goes on:

"The magician is attempting a progressive metamorphosis, a complete overhaul of his entire existence. Yet he has to seek the blueprint for his reborn self as he goes along... In beginning the great work of obtaining the knowledge and conversation, the magician vows, 'to interpret every manifestation of existence as a direct message from the infinite Chaos to himself personally.'

"To do this is to enter the magical world view in its totality. He takes complete responsibility for his present incarnation and must consider every experience, thing, or piece of information which assails him from any source, as a reflection of the way he is conducting his existence."
(Liber Null, p. 49)


Taken at face value, this may seem to be an advertisers wet dream. The reality is that this kind of acceptance from the stage of the true self turns all of mass media into a profound spectacle, a theater which provides the magician with the tools for transcendance. We are marketed to on the strength of our personas. Once we realize we can remove these masks, suddenly the entire game shifts. Even better, it's now our move.