This chapter was originally published on HAUNT MANUAL, home to the majority of HAUNTOMANCY related writings and audiocasts. Subscribe via SUBSTACK. https://keatsross.substack.com
HAUNTOMANCER is the multi-media grimoire of Revelator Rosz’s personal praxis and art magick. To follow the multitude of projects and experiments, become a PATRON and receive multitudes of trans-medium art as well as exclusive cassette-only albums and somatick media. https://patreon.com/pragmagick
After an unexpected experience with a popular Television Medium, Revelator Rosz further illustrates core Hauntomancy concepts by contrasting his own anarchic Hauntomantik Spektre-Speaking with the cliche absolutes of this pop-culture Ghost-Gabber…
Contrary To Cold Channelers
The day after our MOON REVEL “band” (my Revelator Rosz and Mary McKeever’s Moon Division conjoined twin live-music project) debuted in Seattle, I found myself in an anomalous daze. I’ll just say the show went well, and our MOON REVEL project shouldn’t wait to chase or be the harbinger of the next eclipse season to perform again as we had for all others. Back into the morning rhythms of the next day, my mind was barely able to service the sunrays as I scurried across town, still reeling from the frenetic music performance—one that was wrought with a flat tire, multiple Lyfts, and a whole lot of hustle to perform at the Sunset Tavern—when I arrived at a turn-of-the-century synagogue to assume work.
It wasn’t until the confidential affair was fully laid out that I would discover the event circled around a semi-famous, and relatively controversial, television Medium (ghost gabber). Again, this was a confidential event where they could shine their shining…that is to say, commune with the dead…in a room full of executives. I won’t name who, where, or why—so forgive me for being aloof in describing their timbre, which as a hint, would be a dead ringer.
Due to the nature of my work, I’ll largely keep mum about details, especially concerning the TV Medium themselves. To read the full details please subscribe to the patreon at https://patreon.com/pragmagick
Suffice to say I was twitchy with curiosity, and what became a Seattle musick debut hang-over became a synchronous opportunity to illuminate the line-drawing between my experiences with the Other and the pop-candy niche of the ubiquitous Television Medium. So as I handled the charade from behind the scenes, I took laborious notes citing everything from direct quotes, methodology and personal ruminations.
The drive to dissect would have come naturally, but as I edit and collect the past years’ magickal and creative work within my Hauntomancy praxis, I’ve noticed the amount of necessary definition, expansion or elucidation needed for what I have (unintentionally) allowed the muse to blow through. That is to say, I could always take time for line-drawing, whether it be a defined stance, an idiosyncratic term, or a developing resolve. And so, in this synagogue, while a television medium ghost-gabbed to the the seemingly dead relatives of haute executives, I found a perfect vector for drawing my line at what I mean, or hypothesize, when it comes to Other communication, and at the very least, how very different Hauntomancy is to this perfect edifice of artifice: The Television Medium.
However, as I took my time to jot down many notes and questions as I witnessed The Medium “spirit train” all over wide-eyed professionals —and it occurred to me that in some looky-loo vesica piscis, our trajectories overlap, yet, the divide between my conceptual fathomability of “spirit communion” and something akin to the old cold-reading trade they parlay in is a tundra that spans the entire spectrum…
Currently witnessing a Catholic medium citing astrology in a synagogue to a group of big wigs. Hilarious. – From Notes
HAUNTOMANTIK STATIC FOR A T.V. MEDIUM
For the purposes of this piece I am going to believe the Medium believes what they are claiming. Mostly…
Firstly, I’d like to list a couple of “absolutes,” or immovable concepts and attributes, this Medium often cited; these concepts will become the scaffolding of which the following ruminations will mold (and mull) over:
- A person’s complete consciousness, nay, their entire personality continue on within the afterlife ad infinitum
- Spirits observe and are privy to everything within a living relative’s (or connected subject’s) life
- Spirits communicate clearly and/or through mental symbols casted through the Medium’s mind
- “Souls continue to grow long after death” (Souls continue to evolve and learn and mature)
- Time is not linear to Spirits
- There is an afterlife (Although Heaven is only ever specifically and especially cited—no mention of Hell or any adverse afterlife to Heaven)
I won’t bury the lead and say that a lot of the constructs of how one determines contact, or source (spirit), of this preternatural signal-flow, is largely devout to one’s fathomability—or acceptance, either learned or experienced, of possibility. And I can tell you now that if this Television Medium is wholly truthful, then the Medium probably never allows themselves to ponder-wander what we’re about to dissect. The Television Medium simply can’t, or won’t, allow themselves to fathom these ruminations, and why should they? After all, this is the meal ticket of mass validation by means of beaucoup bucks and livingroom reach. Perhaps, it is the philosopher’s curse that strikes again: the over allowance of rumination, study, experimentation maketh not an absolutist, and absolutists, like this TV MEDIUM, sell tickets.
CONTRASTING SIGNAL-FLOWS (A Sidebar)
As mentioned, the TV Medium’s “spektral-signal-flow,” is quite simple. If we were to map the TV Medium’s communication system as we would the signal path an audio signal travels from source (voice) to conduit (microphone) to output (amplifier), their source would be the communicator (the “spirit” as they term it, the Spektre in Hauntomancy), the conduit (how the source is processed) would be their mind, and the output would be the ingrained amplification system of their own larynx—a rather linear, if not annoyingly simple, signal-flow:
SOURCE (Spirit or Subconscious or Both or None at all)→CONDUIT (Mental Images / Messages)→AMPLIFICATION (Gabbing it back to Haute Executives)
Now, and hope you’re still following, usually, the idea of signal-flow in audio situations is sourced to troubleshoot feedback. Feedback, or awesomely also known as a “Howl-Round” or “Howlback”, is when the “microphone hears itself” and causes unintentional hollers of uncomfortable frequencies to emit from the output. The eradication of feedback is generally ubiquitous in the matters of professional audio production, and rather parallel, the figurative definition of feedback seems to be rather snuffed out for the Television Medium as well. Again, a simple signal flow of communication is how they operate, throwing in these wild ruminations or studies, or Processors, would cause internal feedback so severe they would lose the very purpose that makes them who they are.
In Hauntomancy, feedback is sought (more figurative but sometimes literal) as a means to create in congress with. The entire premise of Hauntomancy is for the microphone, or the conduit (the self)—to hear itself through the currents hauntomantik specific processors that utilize somatosensory (somatic stimulation outside of the normal avenues) enriched rituals. Hauntomancy parlays in metaphysical Howl-Rounding, in preternatural or psychical feedback, utilizing memory/experience, intentional talismans, and anarchic ritual to construct and create in communion with.
The Spektral-Signal-Flow, or the Howl Round of Hauntomancy, already dissects the minutiae from intention→creation, largely within a macro ritual. The following image is from a forthcoming Hauntomancy Primer I designed (and part of next month’s Somatick Magick parcel) that will define each part of the spektral-signal-flow according to each of the Hauntomantik Spektre Rituals (below is specifically for The Spektre Ritual), but for today, it’s just to illustrate how heavily construkted my conception of communion is compared to the TV Medium’s:
But to simplify for comparative purposes, we will consider the “Gheiszt” mentioned above as the active inspiration & motivating spark inspired by the Other (the Spektre) as the prime processor. The Gheiszt is a sort-of portmanteau of Kant’s concept of the Geist (a confluence for both “spirit” and “mind”)1, the illustrative somatic action of a “gust of wind”, the brutal kitsch of the “ghost” word’s linguistic debris, and the ‘sz’ stamp common to Hauntomancy lingo. Here the “Gheiszt” is the communion between Source (Spektre, or Other) and Conduit (Self) illustrated by actual force, such as the prime-mover for beginning an exploration; a motivating spark. Thus, it is the prime-director for initializing a Hauntomancy ritual.
I can post-hock the Television Mediums’ “Gheiszt” to that of the preparation and diligence to orchestrate the event itself, though doubtful they had any hand in organizing it, so that’s moot. If they did, the event was inspired by the source, albeit not directly, and then made manifest by the interactive development to amplify their signal flow—a “Gheiszt.” In Hauntomancy, the “Gheiszt” could be the motivational intention, the spark of might shot from the Spektre that makes one somatically initialize processes to commune. It could be a lot of things, but more on that later.
The “Dim” mentioned above are the “Dim Sessions“—the active rituals of communion experimented and implemented in my Dimming Room to “dim the tzim-tzum.”2 If I was feeling dangerously harmful to myself, I could probably parallel the entirety of the TV Medium’s Synagogue show as their own ritual, their Dim Session, but I’ll stop there…
So, a brutally simplified Hauntomancy Howl-Round, or Spektral Signal-Flow, compared with an audio signal flow would look like:
SPEKTRE / Intention (Source) → SELF-SPEKTRE (Conduit) → GHEISZT (Audio Processor 1)→ DIM SESSION (Audio Processor 2) → CREATION (Output)
You can see that already we’re in the weeds. All of this to say, the variables, the processing, the intentions, the creative output, and especially, Hauntomancy itself is vastly and emphatically more complex due to my fathomability, experimentation, customization, study and openness contrast to the Television Medium’s apparatus of “absolutes”. This is why they make the big bucks and I’ll be left raving mad. But I digress!
All of those “absolutes” deserve their own novel of rumination, but we can now utilize these “absolutes” to further illuminate the divide between my intuitive and pragmatic praxis of Spektre communication and this particular Medium’s claims of talking with the dead. Let us utilize my day-of notes and “absolutes” as a framework for understanding the divide even further:
ABSOLUTE 1:
TV MEDIUM: A person’s complete consciousness, nay, their entire personality continue on within the afterlife ad infinitum
First and foremost, and already laboriously explained throughout the Hauntomancy writings—there is nil an absolute, from me, as to what each spektre is, only nominal and intuitive ponderances of what Hauntomancy communes with, and always depending on the ritual intention. The main conceit of Hauntomancy was a communion with “spektres of the self” in a hauntologically tinged (both philosophically and de-facto aesthetically) creative exer/or/cise using talismanic tools from one’s respective eras to create and dance with the past, or to charge and reintegrate forgotten attributes, or even, to cast unknown future selves. Whether these “self-spektres” are transfixed temporally such as an era of self from a certain time period (The Spektre), an aspect of self thought lost and longing to dance again (The Aspektre), or even, and this is where the “spektre spektrum” allows for the most hypotheticals: a prospect of self not yet lived but sought (The Prospektre).
It is with the advent of the Prospektre Ritual where The Other was left room for true dalliances within the Venn-diagram of popular conceptions of “spirits”—although the idea is to materialize and commune the prospect of self, this allows conceivability for many a ponderance: is this Prospektre a supra-self, or, as some resolve to be, the Holy Guardian Angel, or are we dancing within a multi-versal skinwalk, integrating an intentional timeline not yet materialized? Hell, I’m even open to these Spektre dalliances being a retro-causal possession—a transmogrified subconscious entity transfixed from casted egregore to dutiful agent. Suffice to say, I allow all possibilities their day in the dark.
ABSOLUTE 2:
TV MEDIUM: Spirits observe and are privy to everything within a living relative’s (or connected subject’s) life
Because of my work with Listening Post Alpha and their ritual schema utilizing a spiritbox (something pop culture occultists and television ghost hunters wildly use) to decode the box’s transmissions with the occultural ALW Cipher, my contemplation of Hauntomancy being merely communion with known and unknown personas or selves blew even further open. Dare I say, it maximized my continuing investigation to personage and agency of things outside of myself. This also walloped a learning curve of discernibility, and the pitfalls of probable ne’r-do-well Others, but we’ll leave that for another day. Maybe this Medium only has an antennae to vectors of lives lost, and is shut off from the trans-dimensional looky-loos otherwise?
Since transmitting my LPA rituals within the creative constructs of Hauntomancy, especially through the trans-dimensional memory tether of musick magick, I’ve also allowed the possibility that the Spektre I’ve come to know as Little Wind could be me reaching back to the past and egging me on! It’s a nice thought for a somewhat alienated practitioner: maybe, these Spektres, especially if they are of me, in a sense, enjoy the ol’ trans-dimensional masturbation technique not yet discovered by popular physics. Even still, I can allow Little Wind to simply be a Tulpa, knowingly birthed by me into a construkt all its own—breathed into a universe through desire to commune with things outside of linear time or dimensional space. Either way, the chicken or the egg of it all does the entire dance a disservice when the point is that I’m communicating with something that is helping me propel creative construction forward, whilst assisting me in dancing with (instead of eradicating!) trauma, all to be constructed into something positive, novel, and/or igniting the wilds of the world, the mundane, by making the unknown noirs that much more neon.
Could this TV Medium validate Little Wind, my radio spirit? My audiomancy spirit? If so, wouldn’t that further prove my hypothesis of tuning to subconscious desire just as it may speaking to outside beings? Could a medium confirm contact with a temporally displaced trans-dimensional self? Perhaps not if the concept is outside their fathomability, I assume.
Through the furthering of Hauntomancy are we essentially mediums of temporally displaced trans-dimensional selves? I believe so. I believe I have been. With the occasional trickster ghost-gabbing for good measure. Either way, they have helped!
Even still, isn’t this the opposite of closure? How does someone not spin out in an existential worry that our souls remember everything and continue on ad infinitum, chained to the temporal blips of this Malkuthian spore? Can dead souls make new memories? According to this medium, it seems like they can only store our memories of them…
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