Energy Shopping

[Rikoshi]

I've been toying around with subverting corporate imagery and marketing to fuel my own magic.

Basic theory, is there is a lot of energy poured into marketing, branding, logos, establishing a firm power over consumers to spend their money on a product for the purported properties it contains. In essence, advertising is all about putting a certain glamour on something, giving it a feel, an aura, a charisma and personality that will seduce people into buying it. With all of this energy, why not just grab some from a product you see, rather than actually buying it? Firing off logos like sigils to reap the rewards that corporations so desperately wish to reap from the consumer?

I'm curious if anyone else has played around with this concept, or done magick like this, and have any stories to share?

Most recently, I fired off some corporate imagery from a business magazine in combination with a sigil of my own design to see if I can cause some cash flow to head my friend's way- he certainly needs it.

I also put this experiment/inquiry up at my blog. http://magicklaboratory.blogspot.com/

[Venefica]

I am a psychic vampire and I have been crowd feeding from malls now and then. I have never tried to use the Energy of a brand name before, but it is a brilliant idea as allot of Energy is stored there. But I think you should be careful to then choose a brand who is symbolically similar to your goal as I imagine the energy in them to be rather directed towards a specific goal. However would not the same work with a commercial on TV? Grabbing Energy from the brand name from that?

[Rikoshi]

Grabbing energy from commercials certainly could yield energy, but might entail a more spontaneous casting, which doesn't work well for everyone- not to mention waiting.

For example, you want to lose weight, so you start to suck energy from all the fitness commercials- good idea. However, it may take a while to see one depending on what channel you're watching.

Obviously, grabbing energy from appropriate sources is part of the trick. Trying weight loss by draining Burger King commercials could be a bad idea, unless the idea is to supplement actually eating Burger King with draining commercials.

Jingle's might even work out as good chants for manifesting traits from a given product- I'm now imagining women gathered around a mirror chanting Easy, Breezy, Beautiful, Cover Girl for a glamour spell.

[Venefica]

Yes I guess you are right about the commercials, it would be more spontaneous, though off course you could tape them and run them during your working, and most commercials sooner or later find their way onto youtube so you could always run it when you need the Energy.

[the Kite]

After all, do we not do something very similar when we put on suitable music or video during ritual and draw on it to go-go the mojo?

[Venefica]

I think the point is to make all that trying to influence you to buy something, all the power of that commercial machine work for us instead of just being a pain. But yes using music works to. I love to use music to enhance my magic.

[petrus4]

I'm curious if anyone else has played around with this concept, or done magick like this, and have any stories to share?

I haven't done corporate logos as such, but I gave my second servitor Google as a feeding base, and in conjunction with her pre-existing base, she seemed to become insanely charged as a result. She's a very large presence when I summon her now.

I also hooked Fotamecus up to 4chan.org for a while, because I got sick of him pestering me to smash clocks for him every time I wanted to work with him. I'm not always near a junk shop in order to buy clocks, and even when I am, that can get expensive.

I later removed that as a feeding base, however, and tied him to the zero point energy field instead. He does whatever I want now with no questions asked, because that gives him as much energy as he wants. I don't use him all that often, and I don't get truly insane results when I do, but I get the feeling that that is probably limited by my beliefs/expectations, (I'm a theist, but still a fairly hard skeptic) rather than his abilities. I suspect that he could probably almost give me genuine time travel, if I'd just loosen up a bit. I will probably smash another clock for him at some point, just because I genuinely do like him a lot, and he is very useful, but I'm not in the right place to buy them very often.

As far as corporate logos are concerned, my experience with websites says it will work. The other fringe benefit of using logos as a power source, is that not only do you get all that free juice for your own projects, but it could potentially starve the corporation's resident egregore as well, and thus kill the corp itself as a result. Someone said that they noticed 4chan was degenerating at the same time as I had Fotamecus using it as a feeding base, which is why I disconnected him from it. I don't like 4chan much, but I hadn't actually been intending to do the site harm, so that bothered my conscience a little. I also don't think having Kamiki plugged into Google really hurts Google's egregore much, either. Kamiki isn't very active these days, and she also has another fairly massive feeding base to fall back on if she needs it, as well.

Just be careful that if you're going to use them, there is nothing within your servitors that a pissed off corp egregore could use to track you down. You really don't want Nike's egregore invading your bedroom on a dark night, believe me; that thing is almost as big as Cthulu, with an only marginally less unpleasant personality.

[Rikoshi]

Hmmm. I never thought of the corporate entities becoming intelligent- but then I've seen the kind of things corporations do and figure it unlikely.

I now feel like trying to play around with a few more corporate spirits to see what I can do.

[Venefica]

I think that everything which get allot of time and effort get a Spirit, meaning that I think all companies and brands have a Spirit, a soul of the company and the product if you will. Created by the effort of those who run the company and the minds of the customers.

[petrus4]

Hmmm. I never thought of the corporate entities becoming intelligent- but then I've seen the kind of things corporations do and figure it unlikely.

Something I had happen earlier today while sitting on the train platform in the city and drinking a bottle of Coke. I decided to focus on the Coca Cola egregore, and try to establish contact.

Initial mental image was of a usual 600 ml Coke bottle, like the one I was drinking from, but with some fat, Coke coloured, stereotypical African-American lips that slowly protruded out from one side of it.

"Hi." The "i" was quite long and drawn out. The voice was again, African American, with stereotypical "funky," overtones. Not quite as deep as James Earl Jones, though; made me think more of Lawrence Fishburne, but the accent was more broad. The manner was very, "cool," and laid back.

Although I didn't verbalise it as such, my next thought was surprise at its' degree of sentience.

"I'm quite used to talking. Believe me, people talk to me all the time."

I raised the bottle to my mouth again. "You know, I've been trying to quit you recently."

"I know. It's like they say, though. Will is free. You can give me up any time you want to. But we both know you don't really want to, don't we?"

"One other thing I did want to say, though, is that it is true that you *have* brought me a lot of pleasure. Thank you for that."

(I've been an avid Coke drinker all my life, peaking at up to 4 litres per 24 hours for most of my teens)

Although the visual remained indistinct, in response to this, the earlier Coke bottle shape shifted into something vaguely humanoid, (my first thought was the proverbial Golem, although still Coke coloured) and I felt a thick, heavy arm settle across my shoulders. Although I could tell the gesture was meant in a way to be affectionate, there was something about it which I also found vaguely threatening and disturbing, as well.

"That's what I'm here for."

[Venefica]

Very interesting. I get jealous, I seldom have so vivid visions, I more get feelings and ideas popping up in my head when I communicate with Spirits and Energies. I get visions sometimes, but not very often. I am always impressed with pepole who get experiences like what you describe often.

[Pyarun]

Im not a vampire of any kind myself but i have drained and digested all kinds of energies throughout the years for one reason or another so i have some idea of their "tastes" and effects. That being said i wouldnt dare feed off of any corporate label, it would be the equivalent of drinking from a sewer.

[pandora]

I'm new to Chaos Magick, but have been practicing magic in a sort of uninformed way for a few years now. I heard about useing advertiseing logos and such for magic yesterday and was totally excited, because yes! there's lot's of free energy in that

So I've been experiment with this, and sorry this is kind of fluffy but...

Yesterday, I was painting my nails and trying to juggle the no mind state, the visuals and intent, sending... didn't work so well, but today I redid my nails and they they came out awesome, like they were done in a salon. I channeled Maybeline (maybe she's born with it.. maybe it's maybeline)and Barbie.

This morning while doing my hair, I got the no mind...etc better, channeled the Beauty Goddesses above and my hair came out really good and I need to say that I have issues with my hair cause it never comes out good.

Today at work I channeled Raid. There's this co-worker that annoys me (we spend our lives annoying each other) and after she pissed me off I used my anger as fuel got into the no mind visualized spraying Raid as a keep away device. I even got the smell and taste of that stuff that's how good in the zone I was. I didn't see co worker the rest of the day but it's the next few days that will tell.

This is an awesome idea. Of course I'm going to see what else I can use and try to do more useful stuff but it's great for everday magic.

[Kath]

the metaverse is infinitely large and contains infinite energy.
"distance" is not a limitation for thought, mind, energy, spirit.
so, quite literally, infinite energy is at your fingertips, always.
so then the equation falls to your capacity to channel energy, as the new lowest common denominator.

that said, I love creativity in magick, sucking the energy out of corporate egregores, through the very interfaces which they try to influence you? I like it.
cool thread

[Caotteppeg]

It seems to me that there are at least two energies in the creation of corporate branded advertising...

- There's the "pay attention to me" energy that's all around you when you walk through a store or see an ad, trying to pull you to it, and
- There's the creative, goal-focused energy that went into creating the brand/logo/advertisement in the first place.

To hijack some of this energy for your own purpose, it seems to me that your work would end up being quite similar, especially if sigils are involved, to the second type listed above. How, though, to access that energy, now that the task of creating the brand/logo has been completed, and only "pay attention to me" energy remains?

I'm delighted by this idea, though