Sever Tether Revelator ∴ Haunt Manual

Death to Nostalgiamancy ∴ Listening Post Alpha ∴ The Prospectre Ritual

Revelator Rosz art by Eric J. Millar

This chapter will expand upon (and in some cases, deconstruct) an introductory essay I submitted to the debut issue of the Scavenged Rituals zine that accompanied an excerpt of the next Haunt Manual Dim Session, The Prospectre Ritual. It is a (mostly) concise mock-up of the previous workings and personifies these Haunt Manual musings (somewhat) succinctly. As we haunt closer to the end of the first volume of this living grimoire, I felt it apropos to share my ever-evolving revelations illustrated in the zine:

“My recent Hauntomancy workings could be described as musickal rituals that commune with the hauntological Spectre-of-Self. These “Dims” (termed from my magickally minded meditative practice to Dim the Tzim-Tzum, or dimming the corporeal and conceivable) are rituals composed and performed in my aptly titled Dimming Room. This room is a consecrated space full of pragmatic and magickal talismans, or Self-Spectre Sceptres that aid in the creation, application and documentation of each working’s specific conjurations. Audiomancy has become my primary tool in communicating and experimenting with magickal means; music and sound being a language easily casted and experimented with, thus hauntological workings would easily be triggered and traversed through the annals of musical sparked memory.

The workings have been divided into three categories, with varying schema, according to the year, aspect, or prospect of the self-spectre I wish to commune with as Spectre, Aspectre or Prospectre workings, respectively.

In the Spectre ritual, the intended ghost I communed with was my personage of my magickal birth year of 2017. 2017 set me on my current path, and was filled with brilliant bounties both spiritually and emotionally. It was my hypothesis that during a recent oppressive time I could utilize my audiomancy workings to evoke (quite literally) my 2017 self into the current timeline… However, the session would prove to ignite the whims and wonders of that year into the present, and although the 2017 personage was barked forward, I found myself literally thrust back to the quadrants, working environment and life for an impromptu month-long visit in the ruins of that year in Portland, Oregon thereafter. Unintended but wholly necessary…
(Listen to the Spectre Ritual as an album HERE)

The Aspectre ritual schema was generally the same, yet emphatically improved with focus and a new intended conjuration. Because of the unintended life-jousts caused by the Spectre working, I decided to conjure an aspect-of-self that I had long yearned to regain. Though it would be an aspect most cherished in my youth, it was not one tied to a specific chronomancy (or time magick). I yearned for the nights spent free from adult woes and tribulations, nights of extreme creative abandon and experimentation and nights spent in a long liminal mire as I had done in my later teen years. These were the years that truly birthed my audiomantic experimentation, and I had missed the freedom to experiment and generate new methods within the arts as I had then… I was awarded a pathway back to that aspect I sought, creating something completely out of the oeuvre of my long storied musical output as Dakota Slim and birthed a new heteronym, a term meaning an artistic, talismanic personae popularized by Fernando Pessoa, of Ectogasm, a cheeky lof-fi experimental project that calls back my many heteronyms I experimented with in my youth...”¹
(Listen to the Aspectre Ritual as an album HERE)

That surmises these Haunt Manual workings thus far. Although I will be using the bones of this Scavenged Ritual essay to illustrate my thoughts around the genesis of the Prospectre Ritual, I will also be deft-in-snide concerning the essay’s half-baked conclusions! But I digress…

Last month’s chapter largely discussed the confluence of C.W. Chanter’s Nostalgia Loop and my grievances with the haunting oeuvre of nostalgia itself. I had only hinted at the shadowy organization that plays a large part in my Hauntomancy workings moving forward: Enter Listening Post Alpha…

Prospectre Ritual 7 min Excerpt for Scavenged Rituals Zine

Nostalgiamancy Sentimancy Hauntomancy
∴ Listening Post Alpha & The Prospect of the Self-Spectre

Perhaps it would be to shelve the past and generate the new. Wasn’t that what the Aspectre working was intended to do? Yes, however, this new ghost to conjure is one I haven’t encapsulated. It was time to speak with the other, and what better way to commune with spectres outside of myself through my audiomancy than The Spirit Box? And who better to spark such a fascinating new magickal path than the agents of Listening Post Alpha?
Haunt Manual, Ch. 6

Listening Post Alpha is a sub-tract of Temple Of Babalon Choronzon’s most prolific magicians generating a positively fascinating lore into the collective’s works with rituals, or sessions, of a threefold schema: An Agent of Listening Post Alpha will perform a communication session with a Spirit Box (or as I refer to it, a Ghostbox)², document/script said session, and then use Crowley’s mysterious ALW Cipher³ to further break open the communications. This simple schema has revelatory findings, discovering the tethers and webs underlying an Agent’s personal lore whilst sharing and evolving the fantastic ponders between them.⁴

Since interviewing Bobby Hale, the EAR-APPARENT and co-special agent along with Leah Fariss of Listening Post Alpha, I have ensconced myself in daily dialogues that continue to inspire and enhance my own resonances within my magickal and artistic practices.⁵ I am forever indebted to the crew, along with Groucho Trout and Steve Rae, for opening their doors to my wide-eyed wonder.

I had always planned to do something audiomantic with a ghostbox. I have had general sessions in the past that have always perked my sound-art interests. Whether it was using it as an instrument itself, or combining it’s transmission-shifting into syncopated triggers - the want to explore had been there for years. But it was through my continued dialogue with LPA Agents that the impetus to purchase one and “go nuts” was genuinely encouraged. So I did.

But the confluence of the LPA, the Nostalgia Loop and my Hauntomancy Dim Sessions bred another inspo-punch of a revelatory a-ha! And it came in the form of my continued tussles with my ideas of magick, and that of the Other, as a whole - a general understanding that is ever evolving, and seems to change day-to-day.

In my essay for Scavenged Rituals, even though it was aimed to be a relatively short introduction to the Audiomancy ritual excerpt that was released with it - I still (somewhat regrettably) managed to stuff my contradictory ideas of what the Other was to me in a mad-dash:

[The Prospectre Working] was partly inspired by Bobby Hale of Temple of Babalon Choronzon’s Listening Post Alpha sessions, sessions aimed at communing with magickal entities and ultraterrestrials. My base conclusion of this phenomena is simple, that the pareidolia, or innate human pattern making, that wires our brains so acutely can be consecrated as the other - why pareidolia isn’t as enamored in preternatural study is beyond me, for I feel that it is a gateway to the subconscious, if not semi-actually interacting with ultraterrestrial phenomena. This base conclusion leads me to believe that communing with this pareidolia may lead to a fortified will and thus conforming micro-decisions to bend to an intention, not unlike chaote protocols. But what if, using these hauntomantic audiomancy workings, I can birth these synapses within the spires and patterns of music and commune thusly with the ghostbox as if I was scrying and syncopating the subconscious? Or what if I could conjure a future ghost, a yet-born-self, and ignite a pathway to a desired beingness? As you can see, I have not quite concluded one way or the other, and to say one hypothesis is more preternatural than the other misses the point entirely. I believe the base conclusion and my hypotheses can share the same Venn diagram swimmingly.
The Prospectre Ritual from Scavenged Rituals Issue 01

Regrettably written in a rush to not be absolutist about my ideas concerning the other or the ultraterrestrial - arguing with myself out loud on paper in pseudo-scientific dribble-drabble - but I think some sentiments remain. I do think pareidolia is preternatural if utilized in such a way, and I still am not (and may never be) certain whether or not I am conversing with “ultraterrestrials” during spiritbox sessions, though they fit the mold quite well in their allowance of outside-the-self communion. However, I will tell you this… after more work within the LPA and the decoding of the following Dim Session (and initiatory sessions that proceeded it) - I am absolutely leaning to more of a preternatural understanding of communion, more-so than my subconscious spouts within pareidolia… and especially if my intention was to consort the SpiritBox in the Prospectre Session as if I was consorting with a future-ghost-of-self…

I have often thought the ritual bleed between the Spectre and Aspectre workings were transitory. If the Spectre was a ghost of self in the past, the Aspectre a ghost of the present charged by the past, then the natural evolution would be to commune with a prospect of self - a thirdscene (∴) of self that unbinds the prior while divining the future. Naturally, and forever cheesily, I have dubbed this the Prospectre. Beautifully contradictory, forever imprisoned by past-pattern whilst also unchained and unburdened by the confines of memory. A deliverance of self, a forgiven-ening… “To arrive, is to be delivered…”

From a self-spectre conjured from a certain year, to a long-lost aspect-of-self rebirthed, the triumvirate working would experiment with the communion of a future-ghost, one that would attempt to cross the tzim-tzum into the neither/neither of a timeless dramatis personae, and speak through the dimmed tether into a prospect of self yet-determined. As with most magickal means, this seems to be a cornerstone of manifestation, to futurecast. But can I actually evoke a ghost not yet born?

Ghostbox Glossolalia Gematria
∴ Undead Tape-Loops & The Ghosts That Bind

As this Dim Session of the haunt manual workings is my nascent attempt at exploring the future-spectre-of-self, I threw a lot on the ritual to document and decipher my findings later. My liminal rite, not unlike the ritual bath, meditation and intention of the others, came with a unique attempt at bridging the ritual bleed of the last two by meditating in my dimming room the night before the ritual. In the dark dimming hum, I recorded whatever questions came to me onto cassette tape. Unfortunately, only a handful transpired on cassette, some of which you can hear in the beginning of the ritual itself. This was to not only document a head-space prior to the working, but to actually play the questions whilst performing the ghostbox session in an attempt to have a past-self commune with a prospect-of-self while the present-self performs the audiomancy.

The audiomancy pulpit had to be designed with call-backs to the prior two, this time incorporating all that came before while adding brand new instrumentation and talismans not yet utilized. A new drum set became my physical anchor through the static bleed, and my baritone guitar became my vessel through, however, I focused more on vocals, uncomfortable scales and glossolalia as a means to bark forward things never before attempted. The glossolalia and ghostbox has allowed me to decipher a sort of alien dialect spoken from whim and gut. ⁶

I managed to remember to record the rest of the dim session on cassette after my opening ritual questions on cassette, allowing magnetic tones and hiss to document the room. Since I had wore headphones to hear the ghostbox and live vocal/drum manipulation, the sparse dark around my somatic actions was captured.

The deciphering method for this session is threefold: The ghostbox, the glossolalia and the room tape are to be deciphered and concluded. This 7 minute excerpt is all three mixed in a linear fashion as they had occurred, along with my multi-tracking of the session for documentation purposes.

It excites me to know that listeners will find their own pareidolia charged and sparked when listening. Was I communicating with my future-self? With something preternatural? With my subconscious? Is there a difference? I am not sure as of yet.
The Prospectre Ritual Essay from Scavenged Rituals

I believe, now, it was an amalgamation of what could be considered a Holy Guardian Angel and a temporal ghost-of-self outside of time. A supra-spectre perhaps. But what transdimensional travels birthed this Supra-Spectre? Perhaps it was a heteronym allowed to live and beat within in the imaginarium all along...

I’ve decided the heteronym of my future-ghost is an exhumed magickal one - one that lay dormant since Mitch Horowitz helped me see the benefit of discussing such mad subjects with my given name, however, this ritual has opened my eyes to the full invocation of my magickal heteronym, that of Revelator Rosz (Or Revel Rosz).⁷ This is part and parcel to the Haunt Manual’s entire ouevre: having dipped into past selves, fogotten aspects of selves and now a divinatory idea of a future self it makes sense that this dormant ghost would bark back into the fold. Ready to begin anew as he had in 2017, but needing the graveyard waltz back to why and how.

This is evidenced in the videomancy cut-up edit (a process which ensnares and charges the ritual with every frame) I constructed for the Prospectre Ritual.

The video documentation of the ritual used on-camera projections, experimental lighting and a milieu of instruments new to the liminalstream Dim Session format; unfortunately, the footage is simply too dark to see what’s happening musickally. However, it gifted more revelations once I decided to conjure some cut-up videomancy utilizing an array of psychedelic and hypnagogic personal and collaborator footage (skull animations by Logan Ford) so that the HQ audio mix of this ritual is tethered appropriately.

No audio was edited out of the entire ritual – everything you hear was as it was – with some ghostly tape schisms of cassette recordings of this ritual mixed in.

The true videomantic parallel lies in the unearthed footage I found of me deconstructing and burning my altar 5 years ago – right after exalting the name REVEL ROSZ and the bounties of 2017.⁸ I don’t burn antiques often, just the ones that have so much of my psychical detritus imprinted on them that were already broken to begin with. And this ancient, broken organ could not come with me wherever I was going, nor could I sell or gift it after so much of my magickal praxis was spent kneeling before it. So mixed in synchronistically in a patch-work cut-up is footage of the altar’s candle-lit magick, and its cinder asunder in the fires of rebirth.

How fitting, then, that I found my oft-thought-lost footage of my altar burning 5 years ago, in 2017, where this living grimoire chose to begin with the Spectre ritual, and now it is finally released via the Prospectre...

NEXT CHAPTER: The Prospectre’s Gematria
∴ Ultraterrestrial, Future Ghost or Holy Guardian Angel?

The hauntological connotations to my audiomantic Dim Sessions get stranger as transmissions the ALW Cipher’s gematria and my experiments with the Listening Post Alpha method birth a communion hitherto unseen… and ghosts run amok!

PATRONS are already privy to the coming magickal works and Dim Sessions!

PATREON.COM/PRAGMAGICK

I want to give a big thanks to Eric J. Millar for his invaluable partnership in weathering the proud tides of human error. And of course, all the amazing patrons that have stayed with me as I swayed these past couple of months. Thank you Temple of Babalon Choronzon (Bobby, Leah & Groucho), Saroth The Mage, Sam Shadow, JJ Reine De Blanc, Jenny Rocky, Alex Leadbetter, Caltrop Creative, Brittany Brown, Bibi, CW Chanter, Jonicide, Jilly Beans, Corrie Anne, Spooky, Derek Hunter, Dr. Vanessa Sinclair, Carl Abrahammson, Tony Davis, Vanessa Kindell, Arnemancy and you, dear ghost, for your ongoing support.

ALL LINKS: http://www.pragmagick.com
PATREON: http://www.patreon.com/pragmagick
PAYPAL: http://www.paypal.me/keatsross
WE THE HALLOWED: https://wethehallowed.org

1. “The literary concept of the heteronym refers to one or more imaginary character(s) created by a writer to write in different styles. Heteronyms differ from pen names (or pseudonyms, from the Greek words for "false" and "name") in that the latter are just false names, while the former are characters that have their own supposed physiques, biographies, and writing styles.^{” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heteronym_(literature)}

2. “The SB7T Spirit Box is a compact tool that is ideal for attempting communication with paranormal entities. It uses radio frequency sweeps to generate white noise which, theories suggest, give some entities the energy they need to be heard. When this occurs, you may hear voices or sounds coming through the static. These anomalies may be generated by spirit entities in an attempt to communicate.” https://www.ghoststop.com/spirit-box-sb7/

3. “The order & value of the letters in the ALW Cipher are derived from the grid superimposed on one of the pages of manuscript of Liber AL (Aleister Crowley) on which this verse appears (sheet 16 of Chapter III).” https://www.liquisearch.com/english_qabalah/alw_cipher

4. Their first journal, produced via Amazon, is a collection of the core mages’ unique communications and decipherings that utilizes this schema. You can purchase it here:
https://www.amazon.com/Listening-Post-Alpha-Journal-Year/dp/B0BJYD35LM

5. Thirdscene (∴) is referring to the third mind of “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)” via HAUNT MANUAL

6. “glossolalia, also called speaking in tongues, (from Greek glōssa, “tongue,” and lalia, “talking”), utterances approximating words and speech, usually produced during states of intense religious experience.” https://www.britannica.com/topic/glossolalia

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8. Read about the ritual here: https://wethehallowed.org/audiomancy-the-night-thief/