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Now who’s the big fat dork?
Man, word sure travels fast on the internet, especially when you do something stupid and decide to call somebody you don’t know a “big fat dork” strictly for rhetorical purposes, not because you actually know them. Maybe I should change the title of my website from Occult Investigator to “Tim Boucher: Big Fat Dork”. It would seem equally appropriate for where I’m at right now with all of this stuff.
In any event, here’s an inventory of things I’m trying to let go of right now. You’ll have to notify me of my successes and failures, or whether these are even worthwhile things to let go of:
- Trying to be right all the time
- Making judgements about other people’s spiritual development
- Keeping tabs on some kind of vague idea of spiritual “progress” or advancement
Here are the things I’m not willing to let go of:
- Trying to figure out what really is right (it may not be me)
- Sparking debates with strong language, heartfelt statements & tough questions
- Enjoying what’s going on now around me and taking full advantage of it
Maybe all the people with the angry comments have some other suggestions. They would probably add to the first list: “Talking about things I don’t know about.” I have to disagree though. If I don’t say what I think and find out other people think it’s wrong, how would I ever know? How much more have I learned from people criticizing my criticism than I would have if I had remained silent? Sure it probably ruffled some feathers, but I at least got something out of it. Hopefully somebody else somewhere actually did too.
Here’s another thing I learned, and this is probably going to fire some of you up again: occultists don’t like to be criticized just the same as Christians or other spiritual people don’t. Even beyond the (admittedly unnecessary) personal attacks, I seem to have been more roundly firebombed for asking questions and making critical statements about ideas. I can see the merit in defending a person, but I have a hard time understanding this rabid devotion to an idea above everything else. My failure was not to realize there was a real person with feelings on the other end of my examination. My failure was not the examination itself. There should be no sacred cows among blasphemers.
Anyway, Big Fat Dork signing off. Let the angry comments commence!
July 4th, 2005 at 8:35 pm
I can see the merit in defending a person, but I have a hard time understanding this rabid devotion to an idea above everything else.
—————
Well, I get annoyed when people draw some distinction between prerational and transrational thinking or say that magic is just NLP but what good does that annoyance do me? I also employ reductionist analyses of things I have not personally experienced in an attempt to wrap my mind around them - there’s only so much cognitive dissonance anyone can handle
OTOH I can also try to describe chocolate to someone who’s never tasted it but why on earth would they take my word for it?
It’s like that atheist parable about “kissing hanks ass”
There’s no reason to believe something until you see it, even then continuing to ask questions strikes me as the most healthy and human response really
BTW, Tim have you ever read “The Guru Papers: Masks of AUthoritarian Power“?
You strike me as someone who would like that book.
In some situations it is not helpful to question, for example as Wiliam James points out in the Uses of Optimism, it ain’t helpful to sit there and doubt you can jump from one cliff to the next
But speaking of ideologies what does it hurt to ask? Either there is an answer or their isn’t
RE: magic and rituals though I do think there are some things that do just seem to bizarre and unbelevable until you experience them yourself though
CHeck out Jason Black’s books (Falcon Press) Urban Voodoo & Pacts w. the Devil, very good first person narratives accurately describing how certain things work and what it is like
Now, I have just landed squarely on both sides of the fence
keep up the good work
The fanatical devotion to certain ideas may come from a lot of things. Coming from a recently published author its easy to undertsand I think. Nobody wants to feel that their life’s work is being ridiculed. Not saying you were but trying to get inside the other persons head.
WHen I get hate mail I never cared if it was from born agains but gnostics who thought I was misled or artists who thought my artwork was amateurish really REALLY upset me.
July 4th, 2005 at 8:39 pm
dont pull any punches bro.
fuck the bullshit. your style is why i read the blog…..
christianity = occult
my favorite dude right now, Terence Mckenna said something like, he has no “beliefs”.. except freedom… because when you “believe” something, you automatically rule out the opposite.. including that you might be wrong!
one
human?
July 4th, 2005 at 8:45 pm
Thanks guys! You’re the greatest! Hehe.
July 4th, 2005 at 8:45 pm
1. Trying to figure out what really is right (it may not be me)
2. Sparking debates with strong language, heartfelt statements & tough questions
3. Enjoying what’s going on now around me and taking full advantage of it
———
right now yer being a trickster i think its like a solvent for ideas
all these peopel are so engaged in following this wild merry go round of ideas and processing them at a furious pace
good things come from stirring the pot
so fuck’em if hey cant take a joke etc
floor the pedal!
July 4th, 2005 at 8:46 pm
imo religion and the ‘occult’ are about 90% bullshit.
asking questions sorts the wheat from the chaff.
July 4th, 2005 at 9:13 pm
Also, all this stuff about trying to trick or bypass your rational mind - how good of an idea is it to get into the practice of fooling yourself?
——
Well here’s a question in the spirit of a previous post - is your “rational mind” your real self?
If reason is a “whore” then maybe its your rational mind that’s doin’ the foolin’
I was talking about this with my shrink the other day, and i wonder (apropos nothin in particular) who’s to say that if the gnostics hadn’t won the battle of history and become the “True Christianity” TM back in 380 AD there wouldn’t be a gnostic pope with gnostic indulgences and gnostic crusades and gnostic child molestation etc.
And maybe the catholics would have been the ones driven underground, and killed en masse in the south of france etc
and the bib,e would have been discovered in 1945 in upper egypt instead of the NH scriptures and would beocme the object of scholarly controversy instead of the Gnostic Gospels
July 4th, 2005 at 9:20 pm
Yeah, and Philip K. Dick would have outlined a sci-fi doctrine of “Secret Catholicism”… I mean, in a sense it’s really rather arbitrary, isn’t it?
July 4th, 2005 at 9:43 pm
my favorite pkd is ‘the man in the high castle’ - its the one where the nazis really won the war.
July 4th, 2005 at 9:50 pm
reminds me of a couple favorite quotes:
“Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.”
(Andre Gide)
“The last taboo of mankind, avoiding forbidden and dangerous thoughts, must be removed. There are no illegitimate thoughts.”
(Theodor Reik, The Need to Be Loved, pub. 1963)
“Opinions that are well rooted should grow and change like a healthy tree.”
(Irving Batcheller)
“Imagine a vine that grows at one end and decays at the other. The end that grows is heresy, the end that rots is orthodox. The dead are orthodox, and your cemetary is the most perfect type of a well regulated church. No thought, no progress, no heresy there. Slowly and silently, side by side, the satisfied members peacefully decay. There is only this difference - the dead do not persecute.”
(Robert Ingersoll, Heretics and Heresy)
July 4th, 2005 at 9:58 pm
Those are fantastic quotes!
July 4th, 2005 at 10:00 pm
glkad you like’em one more
“The snake that cannot shed its skin perishes. So do the spirits who are prevented from changing their opinions; They cease to be spirit.”
(Friedrich Nietzsche, The Dawn - Aphorism 573)
July 5th, 2005 at 12:22 am
Sorry to interrupt,
but I just wanted to say that I don’t think the big fat dork remark was too far out of line. The fact is, magic attracts a lot of big fat dorks (or more specifically, nerds). They practice it because they think it doesn’t require much heart; you just follow the instructions. Nerds value the mind over the heart. They value accuracy over truth, knowledge over wisdom, and authority over power. If you have accurate knowledge of an authorized magical incantation or process, not much else is required. Sure you’re supposed to have willpower, but that just means a solemn tone of voice and a serious face, right? This pop culture magic sounds like magic crawling right up its own ass.
Anyway, this Ellwood guy’s first order of business was to bash you for a spelling mistake, (an inaccuracy) which is telling. It’s also telling that your reaction contained a statement of your goals, which included the decidedly anti-nerd/pro-heart concept of “letting go of trying to be right all the time.” Keep up the good work, and don’t worry about stepping on anybody’s toes!
July 5th, 2005 at 12:25 am
Thanks czyx, I appreciate all those thoughts and insights. I like where you’re going about mind/heart too. I’ll try to elaborate on that at some point.
July 5th, 2005 at 3:41 am
Yeah, this is all well and good, but let’s face it, when you write about magick, and you yourself admit to never having tried it, you come off sounding like a guy who’s only ever watched and read pornography, but who’s never had sex, and yet, he’s ranting on and on about it, trying to make heads or tails of it, at the same time not wanting to get into the practical side of it all because it’s too “sticky” or something.
w00t, as they say.
July 5th, 2005 at 4:02 am
Yeah, this is all well and good, but let’s face it, when you write about magick, and you yourself admit to never having tried it, you come off sounding like a guy who’s only ever watched and read pornography, but who’s never had sex, and yet, he’s ranting on and on about it, trying to make heads or tails of it, at the same time not wanting to get into the practical side of it all because it’s too “sticky” or something.
i call bullshit.
wtf IS magick????
quite frankly, you come off as inept rather than adept. all this low level ritual gimmick crap is fucking ridiculous.
magic is thinking and then manifesting. just the fact that youve been drawn to this blog & felt compeled to post, proves Tim’s proficiancy IMO.
god forbid one would decide to not pigeonhole themselves into some absurd pseudo druidic dogma…. or worse…
that you think Tim shouldnt write about magick says to me you have very little knowledge of what magic truly is..
one
human?
July 5th, 2005 at 4:06 am
Thanks human, you got my back! I’m bringing you up to the Big Leagues!
July 5th, 2005 at 7:47 am
What do you think of the idea that NLP is an ASPECT of magic? I think the idea that it’s JUST magic is probably inaccurate, but I think the psychological model of magic is fairly valid.
I’ve always thought that the various models of magic [see a good summary here: http://www.paganlibrary.com/reference/models_of_magic.php ]work best when mixed and matched.
But then I’ve been heavily influenced by Wilson’s ideas of never sticking with one model of reality.
As for the whole controversy/insult stuff, and I haven’t read it all/caught up, imho “big fat dork” may have been a little premature, but I haven’t read the book and don’t know.
I remember years ago reading Wilson use Kirk and Spock as examples for occult/8 circuit models, and Morrison’s written a bit about using superhero’s as magical archetypes and entities, and it seems to work for him. So the idea of using pop culture in magic doesn’t strike me as sad or absurd.
At the same time, magic, like lot’s of subcultures draws a lot of sad folks who are just wanking off [and not in the “charge the sigil” kinda way].
But I read this blog journal to get Tim’s take on stuff, right or wrong or undecided. That’s the point of a blog, yes? His stuff makes me think and is always interesting.
So, please, keep up the great work.
July 5th, 2005 at 1:13 pm
nlp is magic? yes…….magic is just nlp? yes. both terms are models of something else. tim is searching for that something else. a holy grail. maps are useful when you don`t know the territory. we must remember that they are low definition analogs. they are not the reality that they are designed to describe. when we get overbought in believing our map is the most accurate then we become the catholic church………