Upon my return to Seattle, my dreams became visceral haunted fictions. Most notably, the ∴ symbol began to make appearances. Proof-positive of a wonderfully charged egregore:
“Last night I dreamt I had a patch on my arm with the symbol and the words "dissolve, echo, resonate" were written on it. It struck me how appropriate those words are concerning the tenets of WtH and the idea of "haunting on" - and it occurred to me that I'd like to involve some words about WtH and the tenets in this next [Haunt Manual] chapter:
DISOLVER ∴ ECO ∴ RESONAR
Crude sketch from dream journal
Haunt Manual has not only been a multimedia grimoire and a journalistic treatise about my own praxis but also, perhaps, a backdoor to re-imagining and expanding upon the tenets of WtH!
October 11th, 2022
Designed by Eric J. Millar
DISOLVER ∴ ECO ∴ RESONAR
The Hauntomantic code to travel the ThreeSeen of meditation, praxis and creation;
The dissolution of the self (the meditative dissolve), the echo of the self (amplified magickal workings) & the resonance of the self (the creation of art)
With the working of my Sine Wave Serpent tethers to my Portland ghost circa 2017 coming to a fitting end by a triumphant return to a happy home and new career trajectory, it was only fitting that a new working was to be done. One to unbind 2017, though not completely, but to make room for the new creative paradigm I was awarded.
In Sine Wave Serpents’ second division, I discussed and illustrated the schema for the Hauntomantic audiomancy praxis to commune with 2017. Charged and haunted instruments were utilized to open the ThirdScene of Portland 2017, and the musickal magicks allowed me to traverse there somatically, albeit in linear time as opposed to literal time-travel. Like all workings, one is never to be performed without the companion of another (sort of) resolve, a logical therefore (∴), a new thoroughfare to tether the first to help birth a third working.
I assume my Hauntomantic audiomancy praxis, the Dim Sessions, will continue indefinitely, as the allowance of a ThirdScene always births a new cycle. So it was intended to close the circle (for lack of a better term) and charge a new one.
This audiomancy session needed a whole new cache of haunted talismen, ones that charged a new destination while transcending the last, so no main talismen (talismans?) from the last session were to be used. We are finding the ThirdScene between new and old, however, so a new past-self was to be commune’d utilizing instruments that are radiated in the practice-specific intention and that were not used as main talismen in the last Dim Session.
The Hauntomantic Sceptre ∴ The Vajra & The Bell
The Haunted Artifacts, or talismans, utilized would have to move beyond the confines of the Dakota Slim project, as the past Dim Session was haunted by Dakota Slim via synapsed musical movements or unintended spurts of melody. This one had to shed him to find him. I needed to muster the courage to go outside the comfortable Slim confines in order to bridge a pathway to a new ThirdScene. I needed to select a few vajras of intent.
A Vajra (translated to ‘thunderbolt’) was quickly hinted by the Ma’ii-Being in the last Division’s Zozobra scene. A vajra (or Tibetan Dorje) are Dharmic “legendary and ritual weapons, symbolizing the properties of a diamond (indestructibility) and a thunderbolt (irresistible force).” It is often accompanied with a Bell, which according to the Khan Academy, “ The sound of the bell calls to mind the empty nature of all things. That is, according to the Buddha, nothing whatsoever can exist independently, all phenomena are empty of true or inherent existence.”
I’d like to consider my Audiomantic Artifacts, Musick Gris-Gris, as Sceptres (A communion of Spectre and Scepter) as both Vajra and Bell; as most of these are musickal talismen marry the shades of both.
The bell is also a musical instrument. Its sound, together with other sacred instruments such as the hand-drum (damaru), are played in rituals as musical offerings to the Buddhas and other gods. Khan Academy
Of course, my bastardization of the term makes it interchangeable for my many Sceptres, etc. These Vajra/Bells are conduits to the ThreeSeen in my Dim Sessions. My main Spectre Scepter for the Dim Sessions has predominantly been ‘Ectogasm,’ the baritone electric guitar and main tool to the other. However, I am amassed around the Dimming Room with a myriad of vajras, bells and Sceptres that also include totems that ground the DIMS such as a ribbon from my family’s old ribbon business, a hat, a ring, boots, bow & arrows, etc. These are items that give anchor as I tear open the (∴) to grip needed footing when trans-dimensionally wayfaring.
“Ectogasm The Revelator” Vajra (Not Used In This DIM)
Ectogasm still haunts, as we will see that the Dim Session in this chapter re-inspired an uncasted ghost project. A project that would score unrealized film ideas or animations using audiomancy without the confines of song, structure or heavy thought. I had reserved the bandcamp page years ago but it has a Dakota Slim song as placeholder, funny I would find myself shedding Dakota Slim to re-emerge the Ectogasm project.
Naming the project after my most trusted vajra, as well as the ghost-gas needed to traverse the ThreeSeen in Zozobra, allows the word itself to become a Sceptre. That is to say, words themselves are thunderbolts and bells, haunted instruments to help cast the ThreeSeen and Dim The Tzim-Tzum.1
In Zozobra, Dakota Slim begins his journey through the Bardos with three vajras: his hat (“to block intrusion”), his bandanna (“to purify contagion”) and his childhood slingshot (“to touch the afar”). He acquires, conjures and utilizes more throughout each disparate and anarchic Bardo escapade, but these three remain constant.
The Vajra-riddled Sceptres needed to conduct the new Audiomancy ritual had to contain the ThirdMind of past and future conjurations into an artistic static-gnosis. These haunted thunderbolts needed to rip open a new ThreeSeen while wrapping the last ThirdScene. I need to get back on the highway. That said, the main Sceptres had to be radically different for this working.
Haunt On with Haunt ∴ Manual!
Huffing The Ectogasm ∴ The Hauntomantic Praxis
In the previous chapter, Sine Wave Serpents, I detailed the haunted artifacts’ deep tethers to the audiomantic working to conjure the ghost of a self in a certain year of self. This time, the working needs to conjure a past-ghost, sure, but one that was outside a specific time. An inspirational hauntological shade of a specific nous outside of the ramshackle casualties and hard-burned growth and regret. This pharmakon of a ghost needs to be the antidote of the conjurations before, and a benevolent poison to infect and inspire the new trajectory.2
As all of my workings begin, I meditated in an anarchic way. Meditation/Praxis/ Creation, the Hauntomantic ThreeSeen (∴) usually begins with a form of dissolution, a disbandment of the tendrils of now. This time, back home from such a heavy absence, I was utterly overwhelmed with the possibilities to begin anew in a small fortress of vajras-barking an howling to be used. It’s hard to shake years bouncing around the planet with nothing to my name, and now I have a too many damn things. Don’t think that’s a humble brag, most of them are malformed or broken, monetarily worthless, and meaningful to only me. For the first time I am collecting instead of shedding.
I travel with many haunted artifacts, abracadabra-bric-a-brac let’s say, and while in that empty house in Portland, the small travel altar I had set in that attic space revolved around my bone-colored cast-idol of Santisima Muerte. Any time I travel she sits with me, but at home she returns to the candelabra of my preternatural radio antennae, the altar that consumes the eastward wall of the Dimming Room. Eastward because because this wall is my Mizrah, or prayerwall.3
Yes, I know, rogue Catholic saints, Jewish prayer correspondence and a plethora of heretical ephemera make for a very confused practioner, however, this is part and parcel to my upbringing in the barrios of the Southwestern US, my divorced ping-ponging between an observant Jewish family and my Catholic family, and all the other nick-nack-patty-whack that maketh this writer a patchwork practitioner.
The Writer’s Dimming Room Altar
You conjure the synapses that charged the habit, that nurtured the aspect; you conjure the source, but the source, in this case, isn’t time, it’s space.
The bounties arraigned me motionless, arrested in possibility, in the middle of the Dimming Circle. I knew I couldn’t wield what was used in the last working so soon, especially after such a magnanimous result. Ectogasm the Sceptre was still buzzing and emanating quicksilver bolts, so it needed to (literally and figuratively) ground in the new one. So I chose a cassette from a pool next to my vintage cassette PA, a Califone from the 70s, one of the many I cycle for audiomantic sessions and have reused and recorded for years. I pressed play and crouched in front of the altar.
An echoing tape resonance begins to fill the silent Dimming Room, and my mind begins to name the ghosts that still need sorting: lost artistic memories and conjurations with unfinished and unrealized barks and hisses. As I started to drift through the Narrows of my memory, the tape player barked an intrusive screech of warring tones! It jolted me but I knew to remain constant. Immediately the Narrows were full of my young self getting annoyed at 4 track cassette recorders.
I had a flash of, “Not again!” tethered across many years when using 2 track tapes in 4 track machines. The 4 track-specific tape records 4 tracks one way, and if you were to play a 2 track tape on 4 track machine you get 2 tracks forward and 2 from the opposite side of the tape playing in reverse simultaneously. I would often find myself with lacks of 4 track specific tapes and would record on 2 tracks and forget to clear a side.
The Califone began spurting out a past tape-erase mistake at the end of it’s spool from the reverse direction. Behind closed eyes it was dawning on me that my 2 track mind was trying to remind myself to simmer while the sub-thoughts raced backwards. And that finding at least a third track to make sense of the two would be the thoroughfare through.
This cassette has housed so many sonic-markings over the years that its ribbon is haunted. This shall be the first Vajra chosen. A thunderbolt to a presence that binds all of my tinkerin’ and static-saunters into experimentation.
The flashes of the mind-ribbon tethering all the times I have found myself entranced with the wonder wandering through creative focus. An aspect of self I have had since I was young. The aspect of self that allows me to be deep in the throes creative abandon. It is not a specific age, it is a ribbon through time, connecting a space of mind and creation!
Ah, it is not a certain self to conjure that was entombed in a past year, it is a construct of self, a practice, a custom, a fixation that is timeless, constant and specific. I shall commune with my traditional habit to get lost and stranger with wide-eyed abandon. So how do I spelunk into the source of my happy abandonment in bright-eyed wonder? How do I consort with the ghost of an aspect of self? AnAspookt of self? An Aspectre of self.
…a blunder-buss of inquisitive and creative, sober but punch-drunk on investigation and experimentation!
I shall conjure the synapses that charged the habit, that nurtured this timeless aspect; I shall conjure the source, but the source, in this case, isn’t time, it’s space.
My desert-lonerism as a kid birthed bounties of experiments utilizing sound. An audio-evolution through musick and magick that would last well into the dark nights as my family slept. Left to my abandon, I would dream and create path-workings that linger still and be wholly satisfied playing and conversing with the poltergeists that haunted my childhood home. I was in a benevolent fugue state - rhythmic with myself and locked in lofty ambitions of building something, anything, that would resemble a beautiful work that would make the unseen undeniably open their world.
My VHS mind figured they would be impressed, and take me way from the hum-drum beige desolation of traumatic family-isms, and dark… I loved being uninterrupted in a blunder-buss of inquisitive and creative, sober but punch-drunk on investigation and experimentation!
One ribbon that ties back to the beginning of the Aspectre’s haunt would be a simple Casio keyboard. A cheap 80’s Casio keyboard at that, of the ilk like the ones I used to bend and break during these nighttime experiments. Casios have remained constant throughout my life, a perfect tether and sinew to the Aspectre. Hell, there may-be a Bardo full of all the broken, circuit-bent, lost and decayed Casios in my life. So I dug up a discarded Casio keyboard and decided that this will be the Sceptre that all others revolve around.
It was hard letting go of Ectogasm (The Sceptre), or any guitar in general, as these vajras have literally become so instrumental in my communion with Audiomancy. However, to truly charge the Aspectre, I needed to invoke the wonder of throwing myself into this experimental rhythm, free from the confines of play-ability or prior knowledge, as this Aspectre connotes the unflinching joy of human error!
I can fake piano playing, but it’s certainly the last instrument in a standard set-up I would jump on, especially at a performance. So revolving the ritual around the tethered new (the unknown, the lack of comfort) & the old (the joy of experimenting, the Casio itself) by creating a new audiomantic work is wonderfully transposed as a succinct Hauntomantic Practice.
The Casio and Cassette were my ribbons to the Spectre of self-history, but to conjure a ThirdScene of the Aspectre, other Sceptres would need to represent the Prospectre - the future haunt. Each Hauntomantic working elects the ThirdScene through the ThreeSeen of the Haunted-Self.
In Sine-Wave Serpents I elected to conjure a vector of time in the past, the Spectre of me in the year 2017, whereas this working elects to invoke an aspect of self outside of time, the Aspectre connotes the tethered past and future for a stable present. The next working will concern the exploration of a future haunt, the Prospectre, a vector of a probable self.
The ThreeSeen of The Haunted-Self: Spectre (Certaintly) ∴ Aspectre (Therefore) ∴ Prospectre (Probably)
A Spectre with an Aspectre Projected on The Writer
This Aspectre never left, however, it became truncated and seldom, only allowed in spits and spurts navigating through the harrows of late-onset brain-disfluencies, brittle bones, guilt-riddled addiction, and the absolute worse: the amount of shits given about a receding hairline. No, I’m riddle-rabbled with all dem-damn-demons, I wanna conjure my bright-eyed-bushy-tailed world-solver kid knack to remember to never sever the tether to creative abandon.
This is the ghost I wish to tether to the (k)now. The creatively-reckless and academically-feckless child that cared nothing about result and only about process. This ghost would be an amalgam of self instead of a self attributed to a certain year. The Sine Wave Serpents of my 2017 haunt-scursion taught me to be far more prepared for the tundras of detritus that come with a broad destination. I wish to move forward where I am and not back to where I was as a kid. No.
The trauma and tumbles still reverberate heavily from those years and, honestly, I don’t think I have the gullet for more heavy-lifting after Portland. So instead of a time, I will conjure a space. I will conjure the synapses created and made in those long nights in my bedroom, safe and sound, ecstatically working on the things I find most beautiful. I wish to resonate with my childlike wonder regarding art and creation, only. I wish to invoke the birth of my DIMS that can be traced to when I was around 9 years old.
The ‘Wounded Automaton’ is the Spectre, the past self, and in congress with the Aspectre and Prospectre, a ThreeSeen will open and I will ferry it.
I envision the Aspectre as The Sacred Feminine. The nurturing and familial resolve of these late-night rambles that have soothed and shielded me from night terrors. But also the awkward distillation of a lonely self, seldom communicated to the outside world. It was a tool not only confided in, but genuinely missed. It is time to revel and reveal the Aspectre through the Casio artifact.
The Aspectre must commune with the Prospectre prism, the thirdscene of the ritual make-up and one that is the sinew to the future Resonance. I decided to merry the Casio’s Feminine warmth with the cold, ramshackle punches of a Korg VolcaBeat Drum Machine. This relatively new tool was only used in the very first Dim Session that charged this entire Haunt Manual project and scored the introduction, Neither Either Or. I had planned to manipulate and live program rather than using any old custom presets while exploding it’s confines with a Delay pedal. This is me punching through the ThreeSeen to find an avenue through the Narrows. The beats are beacons.
To wash and merge the improvised session, I will be manipulating a simple Loop pedal, to live loop the Aspectre as a means to commune with all of my movements. This is me communing with my emotional center, binding washes of brilliant Dim-harmony and banishing intrusive terrors. Thus, this was to be the Common Chord, a lunar common chord.
And the last I’ll mention, the last vajra to be charged, my Califone cassette player and its wounded cassette rotaries and servos. This is the Chiron, the wounded automaton, the bastion of false starts and jittery prospects. It will play a forgotten song, disjointed and largely forgotten, in an attempt to commune directly with the Aspectre. This wounded warrior reminds me that not all creative abandon is rewarded with communion, and that a cache of forgotten works still bark to be known. The ‘Wounded Automaton’ is the Spectre, the past self, and in congress with the Aspectre and Prospectre, a ThreeSeen will open and I will ferry it.
ASPECTRE DIM SESSION ‘SCEPTRES’ Delay ∴ The Sinew Amp ∴ The Star Loop Pedal ∴ The Lunar Common Chord Casio Keyboard ∴ The Sacred Feminine (Aspectre) Drum Machine ∴ The Sacred Masculine (Prospectre) Altar ∴ The Deific Audience/ Magickal Microphone Cassette Manipulation ∴ The Chiron, The Wounded Automaton (Spectre) Haunt ∴ The Seancer, Invocator
Lastly, I created a new ritual mask. In the last Dim Session, I wore a mask created in 2017, a repurposed Court Of Owls mask made as a my visage throughout my wide-magickal birth. This one deserves its own as well. And right before the Session I had the inspo-punch to create the Medjed-inspired Ma’ii-Being mask as illustrated by Eric Millar and I. A mask that sees the ThreeSeen (∴), a mask that represents my newfound work with Zozobra and through We The Hallowed, the mask that visually represents the coming Prospectre. So I cut up an old shirt, drew a large ThreeSeen dot (∴) on the forehead and went to work.
Resonance & The Probable Prospectre ∴ The ThirdScene of Hauntomancy
It was my intent to consort the agitated parts of self in the Spectre version of the Dim Session (Sine Wave Serpents) because I knew that with bounties of inspiration 2017 rewarded me, it also provided a tundra of torment. But I was brave, or bullheaded, enough to sacrifice the comfort for a ThirdScene of new.
This go-around, I aim to conjure the profundities of my creative aspects. My dalliances in numerous works. An aspect of self that is only allowed when the machinations of life are courteous to your mental and physical health. It is my thought that conjuring the Aspectre of warm, creative abandon will also help to strengthen issues outside the Dimming Room as to not interfere with my workings.
The Aspectre conjuration of good habits, habits that started far before the mental disfluencies and societal thunderclaps bruised me. This ghost is a space, a space of mind, a space of hearth and home. It is my hypothesis that this will largely be a positive 2023, having shed a lot of the specters rattled my home, now coming into it with a firm dedication to build and transcend utilizing an aspect of myself that creates, not destroys (well, maybe destroys instruments and entire pieces of art, but you catch my meaning.)
As 2023 looms (my Magickal Year, as 223 is my numeric unicode for art and magick) I am looking forward to finishing the draft of Zozobra that has haunted me for over a decade, creating new audiomantic works free from Dakota Slim (I’m killing him after all via Zozobra) under the Ectogasm moniker, and formulating the Haunt Manual as a collected print and audio work. It has occurred to me that each chapter thus far is representing the ThreeSeen sequence itself as Sine Wave Serpents as the Spectre Working and this chapter is the Aspectre Working, which means that the next working is one for conjuring a future-self, one free from the ghosts of the past, the Prospectre Working.
CommonConjugations of the ThreeSeen (∴) Neither∴ Either ∴ Or Birth∴ Breath ∴ Decay Dissolve ∴ Echo ∴ Resonate Spectre ∴ Aspectre ∴ Prospectre Meditation ∴ Praxis ∴ Creation Somatic ∴ Emotional ∴ Psychical Inspiration ∴ Working ∴ Conjuration Memory∴ Persona ∴ Transcendence
I am weary of whom I term Coincidence Conductors, conspiratorial-minded carnival-barkers of righteous indignation that sees all “links and connections.” However, I may becoming a positive parcel of that, a bright sliver of that. A Tether Tugger maybe? I am interested in the neuro-science of these HauntomanticWorkings as I feel an absolute change in how I am perceiving myself, let alone this shared reality. Tugging all these tethers to commune with a past self, to commune with greater aspects of self have genuinely spooked me about how atoms handshake and jig. I ain’t gonna wax scientific so I spare you the pseudo-intellectual pish-posh. I’ll just say that this deep foray into consorting memory, persona and evolution has bellowed a thunderous transformation within me, and I pray it never keeps churning.
The ProspectreWorking seems far from me now, I’m still getting comfortable juggling all the aspects of self to remain present. Though, in my deepest thoughts, I catch slivers, slivers of a hallowed man, slivers of a saintly self. My coyote heart still cackles at the idea of being sanctified, but we all are, we are all perfect anarchic selves, we are all hallowed, ghostly abstractions of individuation trapped in decaying sweaters, burping wondrous things into this hysterical, shared ThirdScene.
The Aspectre Working unlocked the Prospectres of mummified works. Showering me in new avenues to commune with Zozobra and the Ectogasm music projects. Zozobra has now become a priority again, discovering a new sinew that will help finalize the manuscript.
I have decided that the improvised Aspectre Working would be the first album from the Ectogasm name. After some mixing and slight editing, I may even want to commune more by adding elements on top of that working. The possibilities are endless, and the all exist within that Aspectre of midnight toils and tussles; creating and imagining and endless swarm of artistic concepts and big fish to catch.
As far as the resonance of the working transposed into the corporeal, I feel that the Haunt Manual workings as a whole, and especially the AspectreWorking, has bestowed a robust sense of encouragement considering my faculties in life. To keep charging this stasis, there are things outside of creativity and career that deserve communion. Finally being allowed to not suffer under the weight of stress about such things has allowed me an avenue to help foster and progress health. From mental, dietary, exercise, and relationship health, I feel I have the mental space to tend and tithe.
We shall see! The beauty of this resonance is that it transforms and eventually dissolves into a new ThreeSeen of praxis. It is too early to note the results of conjuring the creative-tinkerer Aspectre of myself, but I can already say that my excitement for bull-headed artgasms, free from care about how they may be received, has been a wondrous improvement.
The fact that I have been able to stream wholly improvised audiomantic magickal workings, with no form or function to the viewer, and rife with discordant slips and shakes has been a praxis unto itself on emanating the Aspectre.
Recently, I had Bobby Hale of the Temple of Babalon Choronzon on the Pragmagick LiminalStream to discuss his work and transmit a Spirit-Box communion. Bobby channeled transmissions through a myriad of cutups, tarot, dice and interacting with myself and viewers of the livestream.4 I have long wanted to include spirit-box’s into the audiomantic sessions to commune with a visceral and auditory way whilst in a DIM. And Bobby has shown me a world of wondrous wayfaring through the actual deciphering of these transmissions.
The synchronous ribbons between the shared, yet, anarchic praxis has created a sort of Prospectre, a future communion, with intended plans and experiments. I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but I will say that working within a prism of channeling by utilizing such tools like the Spirit-Box within my audiomantic works might, just hear me out, reveal the ability to commune with a Prospectre, an unrealized self, a maybe-self! Whether talking directly with ultraterrestrials or creating works that commune with one another to reveal a Prospectre, I am excited to experiment and tinker. This just might be the oeuvre of the next chapter’s Prospectre Working. It just might be.
Towards the end of my Sine Wave Serpent trajectory, and my end as a professional Tracker and Bushcraft Educator while in Portland, I discovered the decaying carcass of my coyotekin. Through my investigation of its detritus, I was able to determine that it had been shot by a local farmer with a .22 bullet and winced into the Oregon wild as its blood and breath drained.
It finally gave in to the Bardos smack-dab in the middle of a hidden trail. It is as if it was forever trapped on a thoroughfare on this plane of existence while it did its own bardo-ripping through the Narrows. I felt an ominous metaphor in its tragic demise the trapped stasis of its bone and fur.
An Oregon Omen: The Crooked Ma’ii Ruins
This Ma’ii was me in my time in Portland: wounded and left to saunter in a transient state with the relic of my body laid bare on a trail to somewhere. After I had made the movements to leave this somewhat reverse-trajectory I was on, I returned to view its remains. But the remains had gone. Just an imprint and tufts of fur scattered about. I like to think it did its work hearing through the Bardos, and its ghost was decimated into a billion atoms that feed and seed the wilds.
I like to think my ghosts still can’t figure out how to grip doorknobs.
As one ThreeSeen shutters, its ThirdScene tethers another:
“A Mizrah plaque is often an artistic, ornate piece, being written in calligraphy and featuring a panorama of Jerusalem.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mizrah
