The performance of ideospiritual scission

What this document is for

This document describes a banishing performance ritual that is used to isolate and banish undesirable ideospirits. As the name implies, ideospiritual scission involves selectively dividing the performer's self in some desired way with the intent of banishing one of their parts. Ideospirits are first incepted as follows:

1. The ideospirit is first de-channelled into a diffuse, omnipresent network of related representations
2. The agent is unwittingly immersed in the network where they absorb it through osmosis
3. Finally, over time, the agent unconsciously coalesces with the ideospirit until they are one

Roughly, this banishing ritual involves:

1. Identifying the ideospirit
2. Materially realizing it in the form of an artifact
3. Embodying the ideospirit into the artifact
4. Destroying it

Who this document is for

While this ritual is practiced regularly by adept performers, it's relatively easy and safe to perform, given enough time, and given that you take care to perform the first step well. Comfort in reaching a gnostic state is required, although strategies are presented.

Performance

1. Identification

The first step in this ritual is to identify the ideospirit. For the purposes of illustration, we'll consider an agent who suffers from alcoholism. Here, we may initially identify the ideospirit in question as many things, as there are many things that could lead someone to alcohol addiction: generational trauma, capitalism, colonialism, or possibly all of them combined. Indeed, the causal chain always leads to Everything, but attempting to banish Everything would be absurd. The strategy is to disrupt the causal chain somewhere between Everything and your immediate behaviour.

How high you choose to go on this causal chain will influence the difficulty of the ritual. Similarly, the higher you go, the more dangerous performing this ritual will be. If you were to, say, attempt to banish Capital in its entirety, assuming you were successful, you would subsequently have a considerably more difficult time interacting with most of society. Conversely, if you shoot too low on the causal chain, then higher order ideospirits will have a much easier time re-incepting the banished will. Successfully performing the identification stage involves finding a healthy balance between these two extremes for you personally, based on your own needs. You may re-apply the ritual as needed.

In our example, the agent might identify the ideospirit as "the drive to drink alcohol after work" if they're a beginner. While this doesn't address the underlying problem (i.e. alcohol addiction), it could be a step in the right direction. On the other hand, a more advanced performance may identify the ideospirit as "the drive to drink alcohol" itself. Banishing even higher order ideospirits would likely entail making sweeping life changes and are beyond the scope of this document.

2. Materialization

Following identification, performers attempt to materialize the selected ideospirit visually. This takes the form of an artifact that borrows a variety of elements related to the ideospirit, whether visual, auditory, textural or otherwise. In our previous example, the agent may craft an artifact using a bottle, the box in which it came in or a label. If they choose a glass bottle, they may choose to incorporate the sound it makes when struck into the ritual.

Pictorial representations are common and useful in conjunction with other elements, although their usefulness can be limited in isolation. Typically, pictorial representations are created by concisely expressing the problem in a single sentence, and transforming it in such a way as to be unrecognizable. For example:

1. Choose a sentence that describes the ideospirit's behaviour. Performers usually construct a sentence in the form of an "I will" statement, where the "I" represents the ideospirit, e.g. "I will drink alcohol after work"
2. Select one character from each word longer than one character at random, e.g. "w, n, l, e, k"
3. Clear your mind, until you find yourself able to see past the conceptual nature of each individual letter
4. Deconstruct the characters into visual components. Combine like components
5. Allow yourself to be guided by unconscious impulses to arrange the components into a single shape
6. Embellish the representation as desired, so long as the embellishments are sufficiently abstract as to not transform the underlying ideospirit

This process works to create an abstract representation of the ideospirit because it's guided by unconscious processes and, as we've assumed, your unconscious faculties are directly informed by the ideospirit in question.

Ultimately, your artifact should be complex enough to encapsulate the ideospirit in full, while being simple enough to be held in your mind for the duration of the ritual. Again, how you achieve this balance depends on how skilfully you can perform the following steps, and your mileage will vary accordingly.

3. Embodiment

Performers understand that while the identified ideospirit leads them in ways they see as undesirable, it is still under the immediate influence of their self. As such, they can manipulate this immediate influence to separate it from their self and relocate it into their artifact (called "embodiment").

To embody the ideospirit into your artifact, you first must prepare your environment as required. You will want to separate yourself from distractions; this could be a private room or a space in the woods a short distance away from a path, for example. Give yourself at least an arms length of space in any direction. Signal to your mind that you're shielded from unexpected intrusions by manifesting a barrier between yourself and your environment; it will help to physically "draw" this barrier in space with your arms or your talisman if you have one. The goal here isn't to dissociate yourself from your environment, but rather to put yourself physically into a space where you feel safe.

Next, you need to enter a gnostic state. Strive to empty your mind as much as possible. Performers traditionally advise the use of a short burst of some intense activity (typically anaerobic exercise in the context of rituals performed in isolation, like ideospiritual scission, although traditions vary) followed by prolonged meditation.

Once you've reached a gnostic state, you should start to concentrate on the identified ideospirit. Hold your artifact to your chest with both hands. Feel its presence, and notice its edges. Gradually, allow the diffuse ideospirit to condensate and solidify into something wholly conceptual. Recognizing there is no firm boundary between yourself and your artifact, draw on this separation you've manifested between yourself and the ideospirit to gradually push it towards the artifact.

Once you're confident the ideospirit is concentrated within the artifact, slowly and gently move the artifact from your chest to the ground. Once the artifact is on the ground, gently remove your hands. At this stage, you should open your eyes if you haven't already. You should now start to feel a newfound otherness as you continue to concentrate on the artifact—this is a strong sign that you've initiated the process of scission. You may notice that you feel a bit lighter, having initiated this ritual. Make this otherness the object of your meditation as you continue to concentrate for about 10 minutes.

Finally, allow your barrier to drop. Put the artifact away, in your bag or your pocket.

You should carry the artifact with you for at least a week. Remind yourself that the ideospirit has no jurisdiction over your body while it's embodied in the artifact. When you feel its presence, take a moment to consciously separate that feeling from yourself, and redirect it onto the artifact. It will help to physically squeeze the artifact to firmly establish this power imbalance. This will allow you to remove any residual willpower the ideospirit wields over your mind that may not have been removed during your initial meditation.

4. Destruction

After at least a week has past and you feel the ideospirit has been sufficiently othered onto the artifact, you should destroy the artifact.

This step should hurt—certainly, it should hurt spiritually, and performers often report that it hurts physically as well. Indeed, to this step, the ideospirit hasn't stopped being a part of you in a meaningful sense; it has only been physically separated from you. Now, you are able to leverage this separation to remove the ideospirit from the world by destroying your artifact.

Traditionally, performers will physically destroy their artifact by tearing it apart or shattering it as required and disposing of its remains. If it's made of organic material, you should consider composting it, so that its remains may be returned to the land. You may also choose to burn it if it's flammable and safe to do so.

Following destroying the artifact, you should feel freed from the grips of the ideospirit. Enjoy this feeling, but you should also take precautions against its return. This is a temporary victory, and leading a life without the targeted ideospirit will demand continued discipline. Specifically, you should spend the next few weeks avoiding opportunities for it to be re-incepted for the best results, and otherwise strive to create a psychological environment that won't give it the space it demands. Avoid imagery that may be related to the ideospirit for the best results.