This week at the behest of Saint Shut-the-Fuck-up Friday, we will be reading Patterns of Transformation by Ida C. Benedetto.
It exists here as a website: https://patternsoftransformation.com
Their Holiness, in their infinite assiduity, has also created a printable version.
They have these comments to offer upon the text:
Magical Bastards has read a few different texts at this point that offer schemas and vocabulary to describe various aspects of magical practices. Patterns of Transformation is in a similar vein, but the taxonomies Benedetto articulates are ostensibly for secular ritual design. Your mileage may vary on whether this results in a watered-down schema or whether it provides a convenient tabula rasa on which to stamp your own serial numbers, godforms, ritual tools, etc.
My own work as a Humanist Celebrant has shown me that it can be difficult to convince a grab-bag of atheists, agnostics, and skeptics to fully give themselves over to an experience without at some point needing to go into extensive detail about the Entrails of Logistics that (may) result in the Sausage of Transcendence. Benedetto’s model has provided a pretty solid framework for those conversations over the past five or six years of my practice, and increasingly—while I am not yet certain whether I mean this cynically or earnestly—feels like a great way to persuade atheists into doing magic with intent if not comprehension (where “comprehension” means we both would describe what they’re doing as the M-word.)
