The alchemy of the linguistic stim.

I once read a piece by Grant Morrison on Chaos Magick and creating a sigil. Morrison is a modern-day shaman, a psychonautic genius who channels profound truths into the two-dimensional universe of the graphic novel. I read his piece as part of a compendium by a group called Disinformation. This goes back at least 20 years. But ever since I read The Invisibles, I have seen Morrison as a bit of a bellwether. If you haven’t watched the Netflix series Happy! based on his graphic novel of the same name, I strongly recommend it. It’s quite tapped-in… eerily so.

Morrison’s vibration resonates at a time when so many other messages are infiltrating my consciousness, combining, forming patterns and shapes. Magickal alchemy of influences—Carl Jung, Alan Watts, Ram Dass, Bill Hicks, Krishnamurti, Suzuki—blend into an ecosystem poised for a perfect storm of upper-level disturbance in the psyche softening to lifelong neurodivergence.

When overwhelmed, I stim. Sometimes physically, sometimes verbally, often linguistically. The more I cast aside the masks worn from time and overuse—never really fitting, causing distress and discomfort—the more I lean into the sensory stimulation afforded by a constantly churning mind. Language becomes an incantation. A spell. A sigil.

I’m learning to understand the language of my body. The communication that predates language. When the body wants my immediate attention, a hole opens in my chest—a void. And this emptiness, foreboding as the eye of a hurricane, portends a calm before the vacuum sucks in raging tidal waves of adrenalin and cortisol and I breathlessly cling to the hull of a cracked submarine. A black hole with intense gravitation imploding me into a deep nothing.

It is my thorax bracing for fight-or-flight that never shows its face. And my face to meet the face that I will meet, my Prufrockian facade fumbles and fawns into the abysmal infinity of fear.

So I riff. I stim:

Thorax My thorax My thore ax My Thore ass… My sore ass… The sore asss Thesaurus My words my words my words My weapon, my tool my words My thorax My Thor’s Ax My Stroh Ax My Strohax

STROHAX

And from a linguistic stim, a sigil, a totem, a talisman is forged. Thor has Mjolnir. If I had a hammer… I probably would hit myself in the head with it. So I do some modern mythologizing and look at Thor’s hero’s journey—not the ancient Nordic tales but the modern retelling, reappropriation through the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).

The stories may change, but the archetypes remain. In the MCU, Hela, Thor’s corrupt sister, destroys Mjolnir. It reminds me of when Roy Hobbs shatters Wonderboy. But Eitri helps him carve his own Savoy Special. In the forges of Nidavellir, from the life-force of a dying star, Stormbreaker is born. No longer a hammer, a double-edged battle-ax, something old something new something smelted something true. And the handle… a selfless gift from a cherished friend. We are Groot.

These last few weeks, I’ve weathered a few storms. My body, sensing the atmospheric depression, knew a storm was coming, and it started to break down. Sinus infection, crown on tooth breaks, panic attacks and meltdowns ensue… the self a gravity well, a regenerating star… a black whole.

Words are spells. That’s why we spell. We invoke, we create, hexagrams, curses, I swear to god, hand on heart, swear to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth…

The pen is mightier than the sword. I forged my own Stormbreaker. I cut the cord with the pristine blade of the Strohax. Thor’s Ax 2.0_{hMyGodOfThunderandRockandRoll.}…

Now that Thanos is headless, what next?

Morrison once stated that The Invisibles is a hypersigil to change global consciousness. As a young Bono Vox once sang, channeling the living grace of Mohandas K. Gandhi, “I can’t change the world, but I can change the world in me. Rejoice.”