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Weaving Fate

Weaving Fate

Last updated on: August 11, 2021 at 8:05 pm by John Beckett

Weaving Fate 2021-08-11T20:05:33-06:00 John Beckett

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Weaving Fate: Hypersigils, Changing the Past, & Telling True Lies

by Aidan Wachter
Red Temple Press – August 2020
186 pages
Paperback: $22.33, Kindle: $17.49

This post is not a typical book review.

If you just want my take on Weaving Fate, here it is: this is easily the best book I’ve found on how to do big magical workings that will make significant and tangible changes in your life. As with Aidan’s first book Six Ways, Weaving Fate puts far more emphasis on practice than on theory. But there’s enough theory that you can understand how the magic works.

“All practical magic grows from a single root: the intention to create change.”

Aidan Wachter teaches three powerful magical techniques in this book. The first is the Black Book, which is a form of a hypersigil. I’ve used hypersigils since before I knew what they were – they’ve been critical in getting me to where I am in my life today. The second is the Corridor. I learned a variation on it early in my magical career – I’ve used it on occasion with some success. The third is the Fever Stone, a healing technique that was mostly new to me.

I’m not going to describe the techniques – I couldn’t do them justice. Just go read the book – you’ll be glad you did.

I wrote enough posts in advance to keep my normal blogging schedule even though I was on vacation last week. This post appears two days after Time to Go Deep, but it was written two weeks later. I ended that post by saying “I’m still not sure how I’m going to do this.”

And then I put Weaving Fate in my pack to read on the trip. I didn’t get very far into it before I knew this was exactly the book I needed at this time. I don’t like the phrase “everything happens for a reason” but sometimes the Gods give us what we need when we need it.

And sometimes our own magic works better than we realize.

The power of hypersigils

Aidan says:

A hypersigil seeks to produce an overwhelming body of evidence to the senses that things are or can be very, very different from what the mind tells us they are or should be. In time, as we build the hypersigil, we tend to see reflections of our written narrative manifest in our life.

Hypersigils are an advanced form of visualization. We see something as real in the world of spirit, and if we do it skillfully, over time it becomes real in the ordinary world.

I first heard of hypersigils in regards to author and chaos magician Grant Morrison. When he was writing The Invisibles, he had his main character (King Mob, who was based on himself) captured and tortured by the enemy. Coincidentally – in every sense of the word – Morrison began having health issues and a run of general bad luck. So he started writing good things for King Mob, and good things started happening in his own life.

Hypersigils use the power of story and the power of the written word to amplify the power of visualization. The results can be amazing.

My own hypersigils

I intuitively used a rudimentary form of hypersigils to enable myself to go away to college. When I was stuck in my job from hell, I used the same technique to find a much better job, in the exact location I wanted.

I currently have two long-term hypersigils going. I cannot discuss them publicly (that whole “keep silence” thing), but I can say that one has been extremely successful and the other is on track to do the same.

Like Grant Morrison, I’ve learned that hypersigils can bring what we don’t want as easily as they can bring what we do want. There’s an entry in my private journal from the George W. Bush era that says “if you don’t stop building houses in Canada, you’ll find yourself drinking Molson and freezing your ass off.”

I didn’t really want to move to Canada, so I stopped the visualizations. I didn’t want the process that brought me from Indiana to Georgia and from Georgia to Texas to take me to Ontario… or more likely, to Alberta.

Building the wrong hypersigil

For the last six months or so I’ve been building one of my informal, visualization-based hypersigils. Again, I cannot discuss the specifics publicly. But I can say that it deals with rather unpleasant matters.

Now, I’m not afraid to throw a curse when it’s necessary, but this particular hypersigil is for an event that is extremely improbable. I simply do not have enough contagion or enough power to manifest it in this world – certainly not without more formal and targeted workings.

But the energy that I’ve been shaping has to go somewhere. And while much of it simply goes out into the ether and dissipates, a portion sticks around. Around me. If it isn’t generating the anger and hate I’m feeling, it’s certainly exacerbating it.

So I need to stop building this particular hypersigil.

And I need to start building another one.

I need to see the future so I can create the future

In the last post, I complained that “once again They’ve given me a direction but not a destination.”

In part that’s because there are some things I need to do because they’re the right thing to do. Deeper devotions. More frequent journeying. Bigger magic. I enjoy doing these things and I get a lot out of them, but I haven’t been doing them because I haven’t been in the right frame of mind. And I haven’t been in the right frame of mind because I haven’t been doing the deeper work.

While there is value in keeping going even when you don’t feel like it, sometimes you need a destination – even if it’s vague or an interim destination.

This is where the Corridor technique comes into play.

I’ve used a similar technique to go back into the past, but you can also use it to go into the future. I need to see where I am in about 15 years.

To the extent that I like that situation, I need to begin working – mundanely and magically – to ensure that I get there.

To the extent I don’t like it, I need to figure out where I’d rather be instead, and then begin working – mundanely and magically – to ensure that I get to the revised destination.

Once I decide on the future I want, I can begin creating the hypersigils to make it a reality.

The timing of Weaving Fate

Weaving Fate was published last August. Having found Six Ways incredibly helpful, I knew I wanted to read it. But for some reason, I didn’t buy it until November. And then it sat on my “to be read” pile until I got ready to go on vacation.

At its core, much of magic is probability enhancement. Much of probability enhancement is creating favorable timing. We often think of favorable timing in astrological terms, and there’s something to be said for that. But favorable timing is also about being in the right place at the right time, and about having what you need when you need it.

I can draw a straight line from my disappointment at setting my sights too low at the May Full Moon, to my June Full Moon challenge, to the discussion of spiritual plateaus in July, to recognizing the need to go deep, to picking up Weaving Fate, and to finally understanding what I need to do next.

If you’re wondering what to do next, I strongly recommend reading Weaving Fate and learning the Black Book, the Corridor, and the Fever Stone. And then put them into practice.

I’ll give Aidan Wachter the last word:

“This is the Work of the Weavers. We join them at the loom and take charge of knotting or untangling our Fates.”

For those who care about such things – and in case it isn’t obvious enough from the blog post – I bought my copy of Weaving Fate. I’ve never met Aidan Wachter – though I hope to do so before too terribly long. In any case, my only obligation in a review is to you, the reader. If I didn’t think it was worth your time and money, I’d say so. My honest opinion of Weaving Fate is that it’s an excellent guide to big magic.

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August 10, 2021

Time to Go Deep

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August 13, 2021 Spiritual Practice in Difficult Times

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