Interview with Mr. Andrieh Vitimus

What are your hobbies?

You mean writing and doing occult things isn’t a hobby? Honestly, I love watching Anime, listening to Industrial and Metal music, spending time with my daughter and wife, and hiking. I do like writing fiction, but alas haven’t finished any to release. Of course, psychedelic use when appropriate.

Why did you learn magic?

When I started, I really had a classical shamanic sickness. Things were bad, and I did not want to admit magic was real. Shadows kept moving around me. I thought I was going insane. Other people actually started commenting to me; they got freaked out by moving shadows that shouldn’t exist where they were. Being a good little scientist and realizing I hadn’t told these people my visions, I threw out the null hypothesis that it was only in my head, and got to work doing magic as a means of spiritual self-defence.
The truth is, whenever I practice magic as a discipline, my life does get better. When I try to put it back on the shelf, my life gets worse. The real alchemy for me, personally, was learning to love it, which is not really the route many magicians take.

What was the first magic you learned?

My family was weird. I was naturally a full-on skeptic. Everyone else was not. They were into Wicca, Christian magic, some Ukrainian magics, demonology and other stuff. Before I got into serious magic, my family told me to talk to someone to distract a demon, even though I didn’t really believe it, and it was actually helpful to be skeptical while they performed an exorcism. People do act a little weird in those situations, and it’s really easy to make fun of “evil entities” to rile them up when you are not afraid. Eventually, I really had to get down a type of exorcism on my own. I learned the hard way to remove hostile spirits towards me from my presence and purify them, somewhat aggressively. Why? See question 1. Granted, the methods I used were chaotic. Think a sword of light, close to a lightsaber, refined with a 1000 meditations from my early understanding of what chaos magic books were trying to say and general understanding of what the classical ideas of “heavenly light” condensed into an astral blade might feel and look like. Eventually, the magic will work.

Have you practiced witchcraft?

I love witchcraft and folk magic of all sorts. I love researching it, the aesthetics and the feeling. Nothing like sitting down at the altar with an oil lamp, some smoky high-quality incense, my obsidian blade, and a fantastic mirror. It is fun, even if you are just doing some sigil magic on a candle. Then go out to the forest and do that kind of stuff, and it’s so much fun from an aesthetic and vibe setting.

Can you share a successful story of your sigil magic?

As a funny story, I have successfully used magic to win the lottery. I was enchanted to win the lottery early on in my magical career. I won. Well, I won 2 dollars because I didn’t specify the amount. You live, and you learn, right?

What magic ideas are current in your world, and what is the ratio of Thelema, Golden Dawn, and Wicca?

I often lean into Taoism (Wilderness Taoism), Daemonology, and Vodou. Still, I have a pretty robust paradigm wheel with several operating paradigms, like Transmogrificated Fae Magic, as well as others that are entirely self-created and unpublished. I’d say I use Hermetic-like tools (Bardon) and Golden Dawn stuff about 30% of the time. The Deamonology route I use is definitely not Golden Dawn-derived.

What magical tools do you use most often?

My finger and my iPhone with headphones. The iPhone makes a great place to hold sigils, and with the headphones, I can do magic anywhere. Need to do an evocation, iPhone is a scrying mirror. Need to cast a sigil, draw it on the iPhone, and delete when done. Need music, apps do that. Yes, my iPhone has a name and is blessed, too.

Are there limits to learning magic through self-study?

This question touches on a controversial topic. I am personally far more conflicted than most chaos magicians from the West. At one point, I would rather have worked with mentors. In the West, the relationship to a mentor, in my experience, starts from a corrupted place. I have had multiple mentors, very few, I think, worked out outside of my direct family. I try to be a better teacher as a result, but again, the relationship is corrupted, and in the West generally, the student will find the new trinket or shiny idea. If you can work with an experienced and honest mentor who does magic well, do it. You will learn much faster and more powerfully, and you will probably have a lot of fun. The problem is that the honest world. In the West, the relationship tends to break down in the crucible of hypercapitalism, where both sides are so heavily commodified that the trust and compassion needed for a real mentorship are absent. To me, there are no limits to learning magic through self-study; there are self-imposed limits of perspective, and the process takes more discipline when learning on your own. On the flip side, when learning on your own, there are more opportunities to create something new beyond the iteration that traditional training produces.
If we take self-study to include books and prior writings, I generally do not believe there are limits to learning magic through self-study, provided the magician acts in disciplined fashion that includes honest self-assessments and opportunities for growth. Essentially, illumination work is critical. If you count “spirits” in that self-study category, it becomes easier to see how you could do this with self-study. Not cause spirits are real, but because the process involves something perceived as the other.

Will the legalization of psychedelic drugs affect Chaos Magic in the future?

I am hoping that in the Chaos Magic for Dummies guide, Wiley leaves my 8 colours of chaos substances in as a sign of the cultural shift on psychedelics. On the whole, psychedelics seem to give an initial pathway for people to more easily accept magic or at least break out of their own heads. I think the legalization makes the pathway more available and safer. Ultimately, this should lead to more people doing magic, but I don’t think it will look like a tsunami, but definitely a rising tide for chaos magic.

Is making children recite The Book of the Law child abuse, or is it a good thing?

Making anyone do anything runs counter to the ideas in The Book of Law, so the question raises a core contradiction: instilling Thelemic values in a child through authoritative methods clearly goes against its tenets. I have a daughter. When she’s old enough to read, I think I would teach the metaparadigm framework that religions are not absolute truths, combined with a fair dose of critical thinking about prophetic language, while interpreting art in a spiritual context. Then, if she wants to read my copy of The Book of the Law, which I should have burned, but she can read it. I think that’s more consistent with the content of The Book of the Law.

What do you think of untrained beginners using sigils to control lucid dreaming or astral projection?

I think this is a little problematic, not for dogmatic reasons, but for practical magical reasons. Generally, astral magic and lucid dreaming are some of the most uncontrolled techniques. In my view, the spirit world isn’t totally benign, so for astral projection, it’s just a good idea to have basic psychic shielding down. Lucid dreaming is less problematic, but the process usually still requires some skill-building and habit-forming before doing the sigil to lucid dream. Sigils, in this case, are a good addition, but not needful the first tool I’d reach for. It just comes down to the most effective results-generating process. However, I can imagine someone doing an astral projection or lucid dreaming sigil and really freaking themselves out. At that point, they either get into magic or go hardcore, orthodox, conservative to block it out.

Peter Carroll says VR and AI destroy imagination, and money should be spent on real-world experience. What do you think?

First, I am all for spending money on real-world experiences, but increasingly, some of those are difficult to access. Effectively, we are starting to reference a class (aka money class) issue. VR and AI don’t have to destroy imagination, but they both highlight the flaw in derivative magic and art that we often consume. If the art is so commoditized that AI can make a fiction based on the formula, what does that say about the art? Same with magical materials like books. If the AI can produce materials that effectively get results, what does that say about the creative process producing those materials? People will probably still find a need to create, but the creation process will continue to have increasingly limited commercial potential as AI and VR suck the air out of commerce. That is a problem for encouraging and creating more art. This commercialization problem represents, to me, a wholesale failure of imagination, fairness, and foresight on the part of the West, as seen in every derivative Netflix show. AI and VR are just more symptoms of a greater disease.
VR and AI do not represent the same problem. I think AI generally is a direct threat to occult aut. Still, fromfrom a purely chaos magic point of view, AI-produced materials are as valid as anything else, if the materials work. Our practice of those things is real, but like most paradigmatic materials, the knowledge is fake. And then it still works. You really can’t take your practice away from you, nor can you take the experience it has on you from you.
VR is a little more troublesome in the current incarnation, and magic inside a VR construct will look and feel very different. I think magic within a VR construct will look more like glitches, since the world in those systems feels more constrained than the real world, bound by actual logic. I cannot imagine that, even with full-dive systems, the VR-constructed world will have the same underlying uncertainty, and that means glitchcraft.

Peter Carroll says The Book of Pleasure is not a must-read, but recommends your books to the Japanese. Do the Japanese need to read it?

Does anyone need anything beyond the basic foundations? I would hope people in Japan would read Hands-On Chaos Magic and the soon-to-be-published Chaos Magic for Dummies for those basic foundations. I like writing seemingly beginner books that teach you the secrets I have found in magic, and then hide them right there in the open without complex, obfuscating language as a militant Feynman proponent. The Book of Pleasure is a wonderfully artistic and beautiful book, written by an artist who conceals much of its value. That book is as much about being present for the artistry as the magic, and in some ways, the magic isn’t as clear as a result. Are the many occult books that are more art, or that use surrealist narratives to describe magic, absolute must-reads? Probably not, but they are much more popular because people love the mystery of figuring something out.

Discordianism: Peter Carroll says long-term worship of Eris is dangerous and that Japanese Discordianism is wrong. What do you think?

Discordianism is a religion based on the absurd, meant to parody religion itself. Japan already has a long history of “crazy wisdom” through Buddhism, kitsume, and koans, which serve similar purposes. However, Western Discordism adds the element of insubordination. To me, the problem is with practical results-based magic. If Eris is the only one worshiped, she is the punchline, and the worship itself is the joke. We all know that results-based magic requires some desire and drive, but the full internalization of the joke becomes the joke. The absurd becomes the pursuit because extracting meaning from the world is a joke. To me, this is dangerous in the same way becoming a Christian is dangerous. For the Christian, why do magic, god will take care of. For the worshipper of the absurd, why do magic, it’s all absurd. That said, I love Eris, and sometimes you need to break out of the seriousness to see creative possibilities. It’s just staying out of the seriousness all the time, which means you never actualize some of the creative possibilities to the greatest potential.

Could you please give some advice to Japanese magicians?

My understanding of Japanese culture is such that you probably do not need the core rebellion for the same reason, which is a reaction to Christian domination. Japanese culture feels richer with diverse, often competing symbols that people are comfortable mixing. You got that.
Instead, hone in on the engineering. You already have a word for it, Shu-ha-ri. Learn the form, break the form, transcend the form. Isn’t this really the core foundations of paradigm shifting? The fundamental problem is that you could probably claim the authority much earlier in the process, challenge the underlying social framework more quickly, and then move to creation.

Have you ever been to Japan, or would you like to visit? Also, do you have a favourite Japanese food?

I would absolutely love to visit Japan. I have a list of places to visit, including the Ise Grand Shrine, Mount Ōmine, Akiba, the Gojira theme park, and attending a few rituals with friends. My favourite foods are Omurice and Okonomiyaki.

 Directory of Modern Magicians　＞　Andrieh Vitimus