Notes of a presentation at the Colours of Chaos seminars, London 2008
Also, I wish to give an example of using the chaos magic concept of the Colours of Magic with a method simple enough that anyone who can follow the instructions on a packet of toothpicks can perform this magical exercise and install a powerful and useful illumination into themselves.
You can repeat the exercise as often as you wish. As Tony Robbins says, repetition is the mother of skill.
1) Contemplating Colours of Wealth.
You could conceivably consider all eight Colours of Magic with regard to wealth, but for me that gets a bit far-fetched. Four will do for our purposes.
The Blue Power. What most people think of as wealth consciousness; expansive, Jovial, generous, using words like ‘plenty’ and ‘abundance.’ The awareness that we have enough to go around. Buckminster Fuller once calculated that if we shared the world’s wealth equally, every man woman and child on the planet would be a millionaire (dollars). He also calculated that all the world’s metal needs could probably come as salvage from existing landfill, saving some natural resources. Here we make the point that we don’t have to rip each other off or destroy our environment in order to enjoy wealth.
The Blue Power invites us to live wealth as a present state, not as a goal. If you have good health (and access to health care), a roof over your head, food and clothing and a sufficient source of income to maintain these, you can consider yourself wealthy already. By all means set your sights higher, but recognise from whence you start.
The Blue Power condones sharing one’s plenty, in accordance with the oft-noted propensity for wealth to like moving around. Avoid, though, the mistake of spending like a rich person. Spending does not in itself invoke wealth, as many consumer debtors have found.
The Orange Power. This refers to the genius of the salesperson, the trader, the negotiator, the planner and marketer. It acts privately as the one who strives to turn an idea into wealth, and socially as the one who plans the campaigns, makes the connections and does the deals. Many people with good money-making ideas have failed because, it seems to me, they disdained to dirty their hands with such business. But as Robert Kiyosaki (Rich Dad) said, his books say on the cover ‘bestselling author,’ not ‘best-writing author.’ We share our ideas, our passions, our drive, and by persuasion draw others in and when they turn up, we charge them, as Stuart Wilde used to say.
The Red Power. Yes, the Warrior. Before humans learned the skills of industrial-scale warfare, the warrior had other stuff to do, namely, providing for the tribe through hunting. Our Upper Paleolithic ancestor Warrior would have to know the trackways of prey, organise the hunting expedition, repair, sharpen and practice with his weapons, hunt, seek, wait and at the right moment act decisively and where necessary in concert with his fellows. The prey brought down, they would have to strip the carcass(es) of meat and usable parts; bone and antler, skin, sinew, teeth even. In fact, pretty much all of it, dismantled and made available to the family, the tribe.
It seems pretty businesslike. The Spartans referred to the grisly battlefield work as ‘harvesting men.’ To this day soldiers speak of ‘having a job to do.’ And because they risk their lives to do it, they remind each other that Proper Prior Preparation and Practice Prevents Piss-Poor Performance. No macho spear-waving required. Just get on with the job, carefully in planning, boldly in execution. Welcome to the Red Power.
The Black Power. Death, huh? Well yes. Where Blue tends to simply enjoy wealth, Orange tends to focus on mobile wealth – goods and services – and Red concerns itself with survival, Black reminds us of wealth which lasts. Not your personal ability to spend a fortune, but the legacy you leave behind to your descendants, your society, your planet, as your ancestors left theirs to you.
As tomorrow’s ancestors, we have this opportunity to express our gratitude to those who made so much possible for us and to share it with those yet to be. Consider this a form of immortality. Or we can simply exploit the lot until it all runs out. The Black Power, as Death our Mentor, reminds us of the consequences of the latter course. With the former course, we learn to plan for the long term, to conserve resources (we used to use the word ‘husband’ for this). Oh, and to understand that it all passes away eventually and not to panic about it because new things will arise in its place.
2) The Exercise
Stand and banish.
Hold out one hand, palm up. On it visualise the Blue Power, thinking of what we have been contemplating, seeing colours (if you see a colour other than blue, good, as long as it suggests Blue Power wealth to you) and shape, any sounds and sensations as they arise. Intensify them according to your skill.
While allowing your visualised Blue Power to remain on the first hand, transfer your attention to your other hand.
Hold out the other hand, palm up. On it visualise the Orange Power, as you did for the first hand and the Blue Power.
Bring the two hands together only as fast as you can combine and merge the two visualisations that rest on them, allowing them to become one new thing greater than the sum of the original two. After all, they both imply awareness and organisation.
Allow that new, greater representation to rest on one hand, and turn your attention to the other hand.
Hold out that other hand, palm up, and on it visualise the Red Power, as you did the first two.
Bring the two hands together and merge the visualisations as you did previously. Notice and enjoy the new, greater, more complex representation you’ve created, and allow it to rest on one hand. Turn your attention to the other hand.
Hold out that other hand, palm up, and on it visualise the Black Power, as you did the others.
Bring the two hands together and merge the visualisations as before. Notice the sheer energy and resourcefulness of the resulting representation, as the four Powers combine, communicate and adjust perfectly to produce this new thing.
Draw this into your heart, only as fast as you can feel it merging with you; skin, muscles, bones, sinews, organs, blood, nerves – every part of you right down to the components of your cells, suffusing you with this combined Wealth consciousness and the attitudes and decisions that it creates for your well-being. Enjoy.
Imagine your future, seeing how this new Wealth consciousness will manifest in your life in the days, weeks, months, years to come. You can see into your future. Express your faith in it.
Ground yourself. Clap your hands, breathe deeply, go and eat, anything.
Go and do the first thing that your chosen future requires. Start today
N.B. In this example I chose to use a servitor: you need not.
My then partner and I had just had our car totalled by thieves and needed a new one to get the kids to school. We had no money.
Purpose: to invoke the Blue power, then evoke my general-purpose servitor and empower it to acquire for us a new car asap.
Altar set up in chosen space, with suitable incense and prepared sigil for new car, in blue on white paper, and pentacle of servitor prominent. Wine in chalice. Listening to: ocean sounds, played very loud. Partly to camouflage sounds of ritual, partly as aid to trance.
Banishing. Imagining the oceanic sounds as tides washing through the entire house, washing out unwanted influences and surging in with joy and healing and abundance. Joining hands and going to all four quarters and using the formula “This is OUR house and what we say, goes.” Imagining the power of this formula pushing outwards beyond the confines of the house in each direction. This constituted a good rehearsal for the expansive consciousness of the Blue power.
I evoked the servitor by gazing on the pentacle, addressing it by name, and giving the pentacle the ‘Master’s Touch’ which activates the servitor, while my partner imagined her way to her ’place’ in which her magic happens. We let the ocean sounds wash through us, continuing to fill us with a sense of ebb and flow, easy-come-easy-go, while gazing upon the sigil and instructing the servitor to use this energy.
Eventually we burned the sigil as a twist of paper with incense in it and drank a toast to the servitor.
Banishing.
Postscript: within 24 hours someone we didn’t know offered us a car. Within 48 hours we’d had several offers for cars and felt spoiled for choice. We took a car in good condition: £100 only. Somebody else gave us the money for it.
