Saturday, June 12, 2010

How to make a Psionic Wand from a Toy Sonic Screwdriver

Ok, I need to decompress from a long 24 hours of stress with something slightly silly. I also promised two people I would post something on it today, and since it's not midnight yet, I still have a chance to do that.

In the last post I mentioned that I have converted two toy replicas of Dr Who's Sonic Screwdriver into Magical Impliments. Psionic Screwdrivers if you will. I got the idea for this from a lecture by Uncle Chuckie (Charmes Cosimano) that I attended at Crucible a couple years ago. Jack revealed that he was doing something similar, and Jhonn was also interested in similar activities. I will be discussing the work I did on the most recent model. The other is similar.

Of course the mere intention to use the implement in magic can make it a magical implement, so I suppose that is the real start. Some would even stop there, but that would be really lazy magic, and not really much fun, so lets start with the batteries.

Both models (the 10th and 11th doctors) have three batteries in them. Before installing them I separated them and charged each one as representing one of the three principals: Salt, Sulphur, and Mercury. I make a small (very small) talisman for each, soaked it in holy oil, and wrapped it around the battery so that the connectors are not interfered with. This is the juice of the tool : the melding of opposites to yield the transcendent result.

Next, if you are not building something to your specs, you need to make an interpretation of what is already there. The tips of both toys have a central shaft with light surrounded by four prongs. This is quite reminiscent of the Tibetan Dorje or Vajra. Each of the outer prongs represents one of the four elements and the central post represents Space. I used an elemental ritual to consecrate each post similarly. If the batteries are where the heart of the alchemy takes root, the tip is where it manifests. Plus, unlike a doje, it lights up and makes a series of cool noises.

Further down the toy, past the black portion, is a white portion that has eight facets. I decided to paint a sigil on each of these to represent the type of magic associated with the eight planets (I include Uranus for purely illiminative work). To the paint I added some herbs and an appropriate condition oil. Now, when I grab the Wand, I can press my lower fingers into the appropriate sigils for the work I am doing.

Lastly I coated the inside of all the housing that I could access with a liquid "fluid condenser" to tie all the parts together. I than held a consecration of the whole tool.

So there ya go. When not in use it rests next to my "Hoodoo Super Soaker" that I made a few years back to deliver some Bend Over powder onto a doorstep that was alarmed. Eventually, I want to make both a Psionic wand from scratch, and a Steampunk style Hyronimous machine. Its all just finding the time for such crazy endeavors.

5 comments:

Jason Berg said...

Thank you for posting this, Jason. You're awesome as usual.

petoskystone said...

so cool! hope the er visit was more drama than serious..

Unknown said...

I've been using a toy of Nine's sonic screwdriver as a wand for a couple of years now to excellent effect. There is enough weight of belief behind the series that it takes very little attunement and very little modification (in my experience) for a practitioner to make it workable. I've not tried it with reiki or pure chaos yet but with aspects of structure and information it can't be beat. As one might expect it really shines when it comes to consecrating technomagickal devices.

Jason Miller, said...

There is no weight of belief behind the series.

There might be weight of attention, but I certainly hope that significant people do not believe in the doctor as reality.

Alex Greene said...

@Jason Miller: No more than people believe in Jesus Christ being real, or Robin Hood, Charlie Brown or Captain Kirk.

If you go into a working doubting its veracity or usefulness, picking away at its foundations, your working will be set to self-destruct from the outset.