Occult Machines

              The creation and implementation of occult machines is a potent method of overcoming challenges in addition to making one’s magical life somewhat easier. Like their more mundane counterparts, occult machines serve to allow the sorcerer to accomplish feats and complete tasks with more consistency, speed, and economy of energy. Again, in a fashion similar to their mundane counterparts, by design occult machines empower the sorcerer to create very complex magical workings by performing multiple functions in simultaneously. While the machine performs a multitude of simple magical functions the sorcerer is free to focus full attention upon working with even more powerful and complex magicks, thus the machine allows the sorcerer to perform magical acts that are otherwise in most cases too difficult, complex, or taxing.
              The fundamental difference between a mundane machine and an occult machine is that the occult machine is powered by magick, and its primary functions are magical processes. There is a distinction between tools and machines, in both the mundane and occult worlds. A person using a crowbar to lever open a locked door is considered to be using a tool. In the same way a magus using a wand to aid in the casting of a spell is also considered to be using a tool. Though a person using a satellite imaging system to explore our planet’s surface is considered to be the using of a machine. Similarly, a person using a remote viewing helmet that has been outfitted with sigils, a loadstone monocle, and other augmentations to explore our planet’s surface would be considered to be using an occult machine.
              An occult machine, by its nature, is a device that is fueled by subtle energies in order to produce a specified result. In many ways occult machines are closely associated with other mundane devices in that they produce similar results to their counterparts, it is their input/output methods that make them decidedly occult. Take the afore mentioned satellite imaging system and the remote viewing helmet. They both allow the user to see visual representations of their intended targets. The satellite tech is fueled by electricity, while the remote viewing helmet is fueled by magical energy. Because the helmet’s function is to focus magical energy towards remote viewing, the energy gains that resonance as it passes from the helmet to the wearer. Also the various occult augmentations like the sigils and loadstone monocle, perform basic magical tasks like scrying, empowerment, and auric scanning, the sorcerer is better able to concentrate on the much more difficult task of tightening the focus and resolution of the remote viewing images and impressions. Granted, there are enough differences that to compare these two machines to closely would become a pointless exercise. Though, to illustrate the point, they will be said to be similar. It should also be noted that there are a great many magical and mundane machines that have no counterpart or likeness amongst the other group of machines. So while the remote viewing helmet is similar to the satellite system, the Eloigning Clock, which will be discussed at length momentarily, has no known functional counterpart amongst mundane machines.
              It has been stressed in other texts that personal relevance is of paramount importance in the practicing of magick. Occult machines, due to their technological nature, are to some degree one of the few exceptions to that guideline. The entire function of an occult machine is that it will work regardless of who is using it at the time. Naturally there are several factors involved in using an occult machine. One must have some idea what the machine’s function is, have the magical capacity and knowledge to activate the machine and control its use, and be able to perceive its process and results. Again using the remote viewing helmet as an example, if one sorcerer was to create the helmet it would of course have been created as a machine very personally relevant for its creator, and would carry with it the creator’s personal style and taste. Though all another sorcerer would have to do to use the helmet for their own purposes would be to perceive its primary purpose, which would be remote viewing. Then find out how to activate the machine, which would likely be empowering a sigil or some other such symbolic ‘lock & key’ mechanism. Then the user would have to have the ability to focus and infuse the machine with magical energy, and then the sorcerer would be free to use the machine for its intended purpose. The only alteration the interloper would possibly need to make is to change any elements of the machine that would make it more personally relevant to themselves, though generally a machine is a machine.  In that all cars work off of the same principle, so if one recognizes a machine as a car, despite some design differences, all cars are designed and function the same way. So it is with magical machines. What follows are two further examples of the author’s own occult machines, the Witchengine and the Eloigning Clock, to serve as examples for the creation of future occult machines.
              The Witchengine is a multi-purpose occult machine that acts at once like a portable generator of magical energy and a resonance filter. The physical component of the Witchengine is a simple cube. Several exist in wood, some of stone, and others of etched metal. Close associates of the author possess spherical witchengines, and in the spirit of tactical magick, one has recently been constructed with the ever-useful ouija board. There are several sigils that have been etched, burned, or painted onto the engine. These sigils act as input/output ports. One draws in ambient magical energy, then once the energy is gathered another sigil strips the magical resonance of the energy. The resonance of the energy cannot be removed without separating out some of the energy itself, so the portion of the energy that contains the resonance of the location in which the engine is being used is vented out of the engine and back into the environment by an exhaust port sigil. The remaining energy is funneled through one of two sigils depending upon what the engine is being used for. If the desired function is to act as a portable battery the engine stores the energy in a silo sigil, where it is held until the user required an extra magical charge. If the desired function is to channel additional power directly into the user, yet another sigil exists to pour the energy straight into the user. There is a sixth sigil that acts as a lock, preventing others from using the machine casually, and must be overcome before the engine can be used, this is the reason that the cube is such a convenient physical vessel for such a machine. This machine was created for the express purpose of allowing the user to draw upon the ambient energy of the environment without picking up the resonance of the location from which the energy was taken. The only resonance to travel into the user along with the energy is that of the witchengine itself, which is for the most part an extension of the individual user. So a sorcerer using a witchengine in a place of negativity could draw energy from the environment without being permeated by the negative resonance of the place. It is a way to use magical tech to overcome the natural order of reality.
              The Eloigning Clock is a gateway and the key to that gateway. Its physical component is actually a painting, though one with a complex background. The Clock exists not only on the physical plane but also in the subtle realms beyond. Though in this world simply a painting, its cadaver is an ever-moving spherical body of concave silver plates that oscillate around a centerpiece of smoky quartz, which has been polished and shaped into a sphere. Crescent shaped pendulums swing in opposite directions from two opposite ends of the sphere, attached by tight and thin wires to the core of the sphere. The user connects with the Clock’s subtle body through focusing upon the painting. Once a connection has been established with the subtle body of the Eloigning Clock, the painting of course being the artist’s physical representation of that subtle body, the user can interface with the Clock. The machine is capable of functioning as a device for scrying into the subtle realms as well as acting as a waypoint for the user undertaking next level travel into the subtle realms of the multiverse.