NO GODS BUT MY OWN 04
The Youth Triune
AGE CASCADE
I feel as though I’m being stalked by a day.Â
It’s a particular day, one that’s coming up very quickly. I had hoped to avoid it but it comes for almost everyone. That day is my fortieth birthday and it’s eight days away as I write this.
There was a hope that I’d be able to avoid the usual trappings of this landmark of middle-age. The looking back, the taking stock, the pure and unadulterated NOSTALGIA that comes with aging, but alas, that hope was dashed on the rocks and this day has been haunting my thoughts for the better part of the last month.Â
I honestly feel no different today than I did six months ago but somehow that number crawls under my skin and digs in like a tick. It feels wrong, like a quantum typo that just needs to be fixed. I tell myself, over and over, that this is just another number, just another year that’s gone by but it continues to nag at me.
All of this thought about aging inevitably brings me back to the concepts and ideas at the start of my more serious magical path almost fifteen years ago, way back when I became a hermit and read every book on magic, quantum physics and philosophy I could get my hands on. My first furtive step into the esoteric was a deep dive into the subject of time and I always get pulled back to it during times of change or stress.
Time is such a huge thing so I'm not going to pretend to be anything more than an armchair quantum theorist. I’m a time ENTHUSIAST. I have no more experience with this than I do with pearl diving or synchronized swimming so I can only speak as a fan and spectator. My ideas of the inner workings of time should be taken with the most epic grain of salt.
I’ve never been a fan of the concept of linear time, that all things happen along a path that always exists beyond the experience of the moment like little landmarks through space. It seems like an epic waste of matter and energy to have a constant residue of the past.Â
This is why time travel as a reality instead of a fictional device bothers me. Don’t get me wrong, I love time travel stories. Back to the Future, Days of Future Past, Avengers: Endgame. I dig all of that stuff.Â
The idea of time travel being a real possibility?
HATE IT.
I’ve always viewed time as existing more like a constantly shifting gelatinous membrane, almost like one of those kinetic desk toys where a thin layer of multicolored sand is trapped between two panes of glass. It’s living in a state of constant mutation instead of one of forward momentum. It’s a chaotic sea and not a stable path.
Think of a single frame of a film strip. Now imagine that the frame moves within itself instead of shifting to the next frame. The frame that once was is now gone and has been replaced by the next one and every one that follows. The old frame still exists in a fashion but it is irrevocably altered. It’s matter and energy has been transformed into the present.Â
Time travel doesn’t work because there’s no time other than the present. All other time has either been devoured by the present or has yet to manifest from the current configuration of matter and energy.Â
The past can only exist in it’s fossil form: memory.
The problem with memory is that humans are terrible recording devices. Our minds change the past constantly and can’t be depended upon to accurately represent the moment we have shifted away from. Memory is like it’s own constantly shifting membrane, turning our perception of the present into a violent kaleidoscope of moments and emotion. It’s like trying to reconstruct a wave down to the molecular level.Â
Even the best of us have trouble discerning the value of events without having our judgment manipulated by past experience or clouded by nostalgia. Things like trauma, hurt, love, and bliss work like infections of the membrane, forcing us to continue dealing with the ramifications and inhibiting the continued mutation of our sense of reality. These things sit like tumors, unmoving and leaving an indelible impression until dealt with or removed entirely.Â
Aidan Wachter hits on the idea of journaling and recontextualizing the past to better manifest what we want in the present and I can’t think of better strategies for taking advantage of the flaws of memory. It’s a moldable, changeable thing. It brings magic right back where it belongs: time.
Time is where I believe magic resides. It’s the territory we try mapping when we use astrology or tarot. When we perform a spell or recite a chant we are planting seeds in the present that we hope will take root and blossom into change in our future. We make small waves in hopes of creating a cascade later. Magic only seems to be able to exist in the future and it’s how we try to exert our will over the mutations that become tomorrow.Â
This would make nostalgia the antonym to magic. Nostalgia at its core is the exertion of will to usurp the present with the past. It’s a toxic but nearly inevitable urge that cripples our ability to further mutate into the future we might thrive in.Â
This is what I’m trying hard to avoid right now, that crippling nostalgia in the face of my upcoming birthday. It’s a difficult task on a good day but in the light of such a day it becomes nearly impossible. Even this article is firmly rooted in deep, deep nostalgia.
I romanticize a time I had fifteen years ago, back when I started down the path that brought me here. I think fondly of the two years I spent reading a few books a week and filling notebooks like a madman with fire in his skull. It was the solitude I had always asked for and I relished in it.
The thing that nostalgia makes me forget is this: I was fucking DEPRESSED and LONELY. I would have entire days lost to staring at the wall, sunk in a circuit of longing and self loathing.Â
That right there is the poison of nostalgia. It edits out the lulls and just keeps in the key frames even though the lulls were where the magic was happening.
I look at my life at forty and all I see is exactly the life I always wanted. I have a family of my own, I live far away from the hometown that tried and failed to destroy my soul, I've met a menagerie of interesting people, and I make the art I want to make without compromise. This is what I was trying to manifest all those years ago and even nostalgia can't obscure that.
The reality is that my past no longer exists in a tangible way and I don't want to keep excavating the fossils of memory at the expense of looking up at the future.Â
So here we go.
Face front into the flow.
Mutate.
Change.
May the fossils and the fertilizer of forty blossom into the flowers of tomorrow.
Make the nudge.
Create the cascade.
The Youth Triune
The Visage of New
The Youth Triune has three heads, each embodying one aspect of those fresh to this plane:Â
Innocence
Emptiness
Light
They embody all that is new and untouched by the malignancy of experience and age. They are the blank slate. Those looking to get in touch with a simpler time or get a brief respite from the adult world can call upon the touch of The Youth Triune.
An offering to the Youth Triune should include foods kids enjoy such as chicken nuggets, fruit snacks, and juice boxes. Toys should also decorate the place of offering. Light, uplifting music can also be played.
When calling upon The Youth Triune a single aspect of the three should be chosen, otherwise your petition may get lost in their muddled congress.
For INNOCENCE, place a picture of yourself as a youth, before the weight of life took hold, in a mason jar and place it at the center of your altar.
For EMPTINESS leave an empty mason jar at the center of the altar. This will symbolize the blank slate of the young mind and heart.
For LIGHT place a small tea light in a mason jar and place it at the center of the altar. This is the flame of unfettered potential.
Once the altar is ready you can call upon The Youth Triune by chanting the three aspects, putting emphasis on the one you wish to focus upon:
Innocence
Emptiness
Light
Chant until you’ve brought yourself to a trance state.
To banish a lullaby can be played, preferably one that is slow and instrumental.
SKETCHBOOK
For as much as I hate time travel as a concept I absolutely love Hugh Everett's Many-Worlds Interpretation. The endless possibilities of branching realities comforted me more than anything when I was my most down and distraught.Â
So in that vein, I'm putting a comic I did about that about a year ago instead of sketchbook excerpts. It’s called The Everett Interpretation.
News and Updates
It’s been busy here at NGBMO headquarters!
The new version of The Impossible Game should be hitting the stands within days of this issue of the newsletter hitting your inbox.
I’ve finished up the cover to Anthony Tyler’s upcoming book and have started working on a couple spot illustrations for it’s innards. Release date for this one is TBA.
I did a bit of work on the forthcoming We, the Hallowed audio sigil. I designed the PDF booklet insert, did a couple illustrations for it, and even provided some audio. That should be landing late August.
Lastly, I’ve started work on an omnibus volume of most of my work as Outlet Press, focusing on my comics and art books. It will include eleven of my titles, excerpts from scrapped or out of print releases, and a hundred pages of sketches. I’m probably about twenty percent done at this point.
That’s all for this installment of NGBMO.
Thanks for reading and subscribing. Until next time,
EJM