Haeresis left a really good comment on the Pop Culture Magick post:
The ‘pop’ crowd gets under my skin because they remind me of the ppl who look at picasso paintings and say, ‘that’s just scribble, I can do that.’ Even a natural gift for it won’t give you the benefit of experience and dedicated practice.
She’s referring here to the pop magic movement which in a lot of ways flouts traditional techniques, and just goes straight for the gusto. Having gone to art school (well, for a year anyway) I am extremely familiar with this argument in that format. I’ve heard it many many times applied to art and used to rail against it rather heavily. Now, I’m able to see both sides of the equation though, having gained a little perspective on it all. “Getting results” artistically takes an incredible amount of patience and preparation. You can just try to skip all that stuff and shoot right for the target, but it’s going to show in your work. It’s going to lack a certain depth or heart or authenticity or something. Except for the rare natural who really can explode all the parameters and just grab the brass ring. I’m not saying, of course, that you have to follow a traditional path artistically either. But you do have to put the work and the heart in to get anywhere. Even so-called “outsider” artists work really hard. It may be in a style or medium that they invented, but rest assured that their obsessive-compulsiveness has been harnessed to it’s fullest extent in their work.
In a lot of ways, I identify with the “outsider” movement but in relation to spirituality. It gets me into a lot of trouble with purists who think that for you to be anything, you’ve gotta follow the rules and immerse yourself in one tradition, etc etc. But I’ve always been drawn to those things which split the borders and can’t be perfectly categorized as being either “this or that”. This seems to be cause for a lot of confusion, of which the comments MadGhoul recently made are a good example:
Boucher fancies himself an “occult investigator”, but as Taylor points out, for an investigator he doesn’t seem to care too much for practicing the exercises often associate with occult material.
To Boucher’s defense, maybe the term occult investigator is little misconstrued. It is possible that Boucher is simply a paranormal investigator with a passing interest in occult topics such as demonology and magick. Quite simply, an occult investigator will dig out a copy of some ancient (or not so ancient grimoire) and insist on experiencing the wonders within.
Everybody seems to want you to fit narrowly into one category, something that can be easily identified and defined. And this is exactly what I’ve never liked. The “definition police” don’t have any power over me. Why does an occult investigator have to do anything besides investigate the occult? Don’t I do that? I use the word “occult” because it’s totally open-ended, as is the word “investigate”. There is no set way it’s supposed to be - even though everybody likes to think their way is the best.
Anyway, whether your technique is traditional or inventive, there’s no substitute for hard work, and there’s no substitute for putting your whole heart and self into what you do - because that’s a thousand times harder than anything else.
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32 Comments
please stop dwelling on those folks, comrade. They make numerous posts about yummy recipes and playing Xbox on their blogs. They are in no position to quibble over what “occult” means or does not. This is about treading on on the toes of their self-invented identities, that they associate with “magick” to give a sense of the cosmic or spiritual to possibly very mundane lives. The K is added so it doesn’t confuse anyone with their old Magic: The Gathering phase. With the K added, they’re now serious. They don’t need those $4.99 booster packs anymore. They can invoke powerful unseen, unknowable forces by spelling unconventionally and filling journals with revelations from dreams inspired by hours of World of Warcraft. They have the Magick words…. space-time, semiotics, neurotransmitters, alchemy, hermetic… or should that be hermetick?
You’re riffing off them quite well, but this is playing with fire. It’s the underbelly troll-world, where only character assassination and accumulating petty vendettas are power. Back away. Some of these damaged individuals are just a flipside of the loons who will go to a crusade over the face of Jesus on a piece of toast, ego invested in tokens, whether images, ideas or just simple words.
The “definition police†don’t have any power over me.
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LOL!
You’re right badger. This is me backing away. But in the process, I do find their thoughts to be useful on some level.
One other point before I drop this. These folks keep crying foul because I investigate magic/k without practicing it. But does anybody expect a crime scene investigator to actually commit crimes? It seems their task is to get inside the mind of people and figure out how to solve problems based on that.
does anybody expect a crime scene investigator to actually commit crimes?
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takes one to know one as they say
besides you are practicing magic
what is this site?
A vortex to shake & stir other people’s realities and try to get the answers to some of your questions
Are you an occult investigator?
Am I a Reverend?
What’s the diff?
One big principle of the occult - “fake it till ya make it”
Ya made it, I think, even if your only goal was to manifest this site, it appears to working well for you!
“Everybody’s a mad scientist, and life is their lab. We’re all trying to experiment to find a way to live, to solve problems, to fend off madness and chaos”
(David Cronenberg)
But investigation implies doing more than just observing. Using your example of the criminal investigator, s/he will try and get into the mind of the criminal, to get a sense of motive, where s/he might strike next etc. And to recreate the experience iun his/her mind, to become the criminal, even if it’s only mentally. And you haven’t really done that. You approached this issue from an outside perspective, but if you want to make some of the claims you’re trying to, you need to actually practice magic. It’s not enough just to make observations. You’re unwillingness to do the exercises, to have the experiences leaves you on the shallow end of the pool.
So yes, the more established people in the occult scene, myself included, don’t really find your claims to be valid, without having gone through experiences to back them up. You’ve as much admitted elsewhere that you have little experience with ritual magic, so again don’t be surprised at the reactiosn you’re getting. To draw from discourse theory, you’re not in the discourse, so while you can critique the discourse of magical practice, you really aren’t an occult investigator, because you’re not in the occult discourse. An investigator does more than just ask questions and post observations. S/he has experiences, practices that will be used to help in the investigation and establish data that can be used to back up the claim and warrant it. you haven’t done that and until you actually do the exercises, until you actually take up a practice of magic and discipline yourself within that discourse you will always get reactions like this. And faking it until ya make it only takes you so far, when you don’t actually attempt to really understand the practices you’re critiquing. that understanding only comes through experience, through actually trying the various approaches of magic…in the end Tom I am inclined to think that far from me playing pretend it is actually you who is doing so.
And don’t get me wrong I’m pretty resistant to the definition police myself, but my point is that you haven’t engaged the material. While your review of my work is valid, not necessarily truthful, but valid because it’s your opinion, what does make it invalid is your failure to follow through on the exercises. Sure you read the book, but that doesn’t mean you understood it, beyond an intellectual framework (an even then there’s no guarantee on that) Franz Bardon, in Intiation into Hermetics, wrote the following
“Magic is the most difficult knowledge on Earth, which must not only be mastered in theory, but above all in practice. It is easier by far and much more possible to gain intellectual knowledge than to become a true magician”
Practice is the path to becoming a magician, to investigating the occult, unless Tim, what you’re really doing is investigating it as an intellectual, at which point it’s fair to say you’re a paranormal investigator. There’s a difference between investigating the occult and investigating the paranormal (which the occult can fall into). And though you may not like that other people are categorizing and defining you, remember you did the same with my book and even me. That’s the risk we all take. I’ve been defined as a chaos magician, even though that’s only one approach I draw in my practices. I don’t define myself as such, but other people do. Whether any of us like it or not, by engaing and interactign with other people, we are subjected to the definitions of others. And you’re choice of the title of occult investigator will be just as scrutinized, just as critiqued, as you did with my writing. It’s the game we play when we choose to write.
i think that tim has a perfect right to stay a safe distance from a field that insists that investigation becomes initiation. police detectives are pulled from duty when that happens.
taylor, i appreciate your emotional investment in your field. i see what tim does, in some ways, as a sort of slide show of things that humans do, from an occult standpoint. he doesn`t do nlp yet he is curious and makes comments about it. as a practitioner i`m not going to be offended by his remarks and suggest he shut up until he`s been to a trainer`s seminar.
we all have a right to our opinions(if indeed we do have rights) and we should respect that others will have thiers too. even if you feel you`ve been harshly criticised. so what?
Yawn…!
Taylor, if I put together a list of exercises for you to think and act like me, and you don’t actually WANT to think and act like me, you’re not going to do them, and I’m not going to criticize you for it.
Your continuing resistance to even just my work in general is more than enough to prove that. Neither of us is as open-minded as the other would seem to like.
I’m not asking you to think and act like me. I’m asking you to engage the material, something you’re not willing to do, and imho that damages your credibility in making your claims. You’ve read, but not done the exercises. You haven’t engaged the material and sad to say that’s just as valid a critique on your review is on my writing. The road goes both ways my friend.
That’s completely fair. Point taken. Got any others?
Alistair, I’m not suggesting he shuts up. He’s entitled to his opinion, but I will question the validity of it. I will ask the hard questions, something he believes in doing as well. In that we are similar and we are both entitled to our opinions…maybe in the end we’ll merely agree to disagree, but asking him to defend his claim is not unwarranted her. Nor is he unwarranted in making his claims.
Taylor, I actually really like that you’ve stuck around to ask me questions. They are THE questions I’ve been wrestling with. Do I want to practice ritual magick is obviously one of them. You’ve given me much to think about, and all criticisms aside, I do appreciate it sincerely.
nope…I’ve said my piece for the nonce.
I’m happy to stick around. I feel an author who’s going to put writing out should try and address the criticisms and answer the hard questions. I have respect for your enquiries and am glad that I can help in my own way, with the questions you have.
Also, in case you haven’t noticed, the whole thing that brought me to this was a line of inquiry about just how far you can really trust intellectual inquiry. When do you just have to put down words and shut the hell up? Whether or not ritual magick is the answer I’m going to go with, that has been the underlying question to the whole thing. It really just strikes me as a paradox that this is what ritual magickians seem to be about on the one hand, but on the other are still as enmeshed in word and intellect as anyone.
It’s like that Charles Manson quote I had where he said he didn’t believe in words, and then the interviewer said, “Then why do you use so many of them?”
Words are just another tool, but hard to escape all the same…a language virus…the question is can we manipulate it as it manipulates us…
Gnosis means knowledge which can mean intellectual knowledge but also acquaintance in the sense of personally knowing something by experience, for example a mystical experience (of which it sounds like you’ve had a few) or EVe knew the taste of the fruit, and Adam knew Eve (yum yum - or even yab yum).
That’s what make gnosticism different from orthodoxy, the knowledge isn’t second hand or heresay - the authors of these scriptures were learned and intellectual people, but they were also writing about things they had personally seen or experienced.
I reached the same point (I think! maybe not) you are wondering about here with enemies.com back in 2000 or so, I had had enough intellectual exploration and speculation for a while and I wanted to know. I mean really know, experience certain things, not just by putting my intellect through its paces but also by experimenting in the real world and letting the world teach me. Get out of the labyrinths of my mind for a bit.
My intellect was exhausted and frustrated and I felt like I had hit a wall and gotten trapped in language and if you ever reach that point yourself you will know too, I guess.
I was strongly influenced in this by the idea of antinomianism, the notion that since we live in the Kali Yuga where life is ever more nasty, brutish and short, people who want to become enlightened need to seek out the path of action, breaking personal taboos, using the pleasures and pains of life as rocket fuel to travel through the the spiritual world.
Of course, its not all that dramatic really and I have no way of knowing if we’re in the kali yuga or not (I’m not even Hindu) but the concept really spoke to me.
You can be a story-teller and a trickster and a radical questioner and a writer and ALSO have real-world esoteric adventures and magical experiences, and amazing dreams and fantastically erotic tales of glory… you just need to be balanced and keep your sense of self somewhere there in the middle.
In my humble opinion. It doesn’t have to be either or. As a very wise man once told me maybe you can even let the colors glass panels overlap.
Get over it, Ellwood. While I know as much as anyone the difference between experience and theory, one does not have to “try out” every ridiculous new self-promoting crock of shit that’s spewed out by former roleplayers. You’ve sepnt, what, three days exhorting Tim to “try the exercises,” yet you have been completely unable to articultae WHY, or even offer any experiences of your own, or demonstrate anny depth of knowledge of the subject whatsoever. One doesn’t have to experience crap to call bullshit.
Actually I have articulated why quite well. Even tim agreed I had a good point on that, so perhaps it’s you who should get over yourself. As for experiences of my own, read the book and read about them if you want to know of my experiences, but don’t get pissy with me because I’m asking someone to try out some experiences. As for demonstration of knowledge of the subject, I’ve written two books, numerous article,s with naother book on the way. Pray tell how would you demonstrate your knowledge of the subject? Have you even read any of my writing? If not, don’t be so quick to judge. But you’re right one doesn’t have to experience crap to call crap bullshit, and in this case your angry reply to me tells me exactly where the smell is coming from.
No, I don’t think you have. You’ve thrown a few tantrums and made a few unsupported statements, but you haven’t demonstrated anything here beyond your own ego.
You can brag about writing books til the cows come home, it doesn’t impress me. There are a million and a half execrable works on magic out there, and more coming along every day. When you start making a living at it, I might take your bragging seriously. My knowledge of the subject, as it were, is simple enough to discern.
No, hold on a second. What I meant was that I’m trying to decide whether or not to try ritual magick. I didn’t mean I was going to try the exercises in your book. They still don’t appeal to me.
To agree with Haeresis here, it’s true. Every person who’s told me WHY I should try ritual magick has essentially given me the reason: SHUT UP AND JUST TRY IT! Or if you’re curious then why not try it? Neither of these especially works for me from where I’m at. So I’ll have to say that you have not indeed articulated why I ought to try your exercises, other than just to gain the first-hand experience. What happens if once I try your exercises, my opinion of them is exactly the same - or worse?
Haeresis you’ll have to explain how I’ve made a few unsupported statements and also explain how i’ve thrown tantrums
Good question Tim…The answer is once you try my exercises you may indeed feel the same…you might feel worse about it, but you’ll have at least tried them out and gotten some experience as to whether I’m just talkign shit out of my ass or whether I actually have a method that can be worked with and used by you to do magic. The why of it is that in getting experience in doing something you have a more informed position on which to discuss magic, as well as furthering your investigations. You have a better idea of what is actually involved in doing magic as well as whether the act of magic is effective or not for you…and also a further forum to question why an act of magic was or was not effective…
Maybe I should have asked that question from the get-go then. But it still seems like an elaborated version of: “Try it, maybe you’ll like it.” But I don’t know, maybe that really is the case. Maybe there’s no better way to put it into words.
Also, to clarify, I never once suggested you were talking shit out of your ass, so to speak - although maybe others did. Obviously I don’t have a frame of reference for that, which I’ve freely admitted all along. I said that I felt like you were crafting an intellectual/spiritual justification for the things you love. This is something I’ve struggled with a lot in the past. And I’d rather just love the things I love. And the reason that was a sticking issue for me is because so many magickians talk about overcoming intellect, but from the outside looking in, it’s extremely hard to see.
have you ever thought that perhaps “magic” is a spell?
a spell cast to keep you blind to the real Magic, that is everything?
that we are all ALREADY practicing magicians? and that the greatest exercise in magic is waking up in the morning (lol, or the afternoon
) ??
that perhaps some truly talented malevolent wizard has you thinking that you need to “do magic”…. meanwhile we deny the magic that permeates every aspect of our existance???
one
human?
^^ not directed at you Tim… just in general…..
I know it wasn’t aimed at me human. And that’s basically a really good and simple summation of part of my argument against it. It’s not that I don’t think it works or that I think it’s evil. But what if it’s just unnecessary? What if it’s just a distraction? I mean, I’m distracted enough in my life already, you know?
In the end, Tim it comes down to just going out and experiencing. To overcome intellect is to go out and get some experiences, which doesn’t mean intellect won’t still have a role. Unfortunately justification is needed. Haerisis illustrates this point with the comment she mentions about how the pop crwod gets under skin. Justfiying why you choose to do something you love is important, if only to show other people that they can take the mundane and turn it into something magical. I’ve all too often had people try to discourage and tell me what magic isn’t, as if they somehow knew what it wasn’t, which is why I chose to justify my approaches to doing pop culture magick But my questions are: who determines what magic is and why? And why can’t people take something which is pop culture and apply it to an older approach to magic, such as hermetics?
I’ll tell you why I do magic and I can’t and won’t speak for anyone else on this: I do it because for me it’s a spiritual journey and exploration of life, without end and it’s one that allows me to draw on a variety of approaches, some traditional forms of magic and some that aren’t. It’s a challenge to grow, to learn, and for me a challenge to experiment, to take some unsual perspectives and approaches and try them out, even if end up not working (I still learn something even when something doesn’t work). Each person’s reason to do magic, to go and have experiences in it is different. so you’re right all I can say is go out and experience it…You mentioend the definition police…so think of it in this way: Magic and the act of doign it isn’t something that can be quantified in words easily. Sometiems to really know something is to just do I, not because someone else says to (which has happened here, I’ll admit), but because you want to…and if you don’t want to, that’s fine, but I critiqued you as I did, in part to see how you would react to the challenge of doing the exercises or just doing ritual magic, period. In anycase, I think I’ve said all I want to at this point. You’ve made some good points as well and given me some food for thought and I thank you for that.
Magick (or magic, whichever you prefer) is a highly subjective truth. As such (and stepping outside the bounds of esoteric philosophy and into existentialism), a subjective truth (as opposed to the objective truth of “the sky is blue”) is something that is learned through experience only. Jesus’ parables, Lao-Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, Socrates’ dialects, zen koans; all persist in being ways that the reader or listener is forced to confront themselves and experience the truth of the statement. Being highly subjective, magick is open to a world of interpretation and application; but free interpretation still doesn’t exclude experience.
The problem with this whole magickal dialectic is that it was spurned from an inappropriate “book review.” Not to tread on already stampeded ground (especially since Mr. Boucher formally apologized), but the criticism at hand is that a book, which was intended to be used in both theoretical and practical terms, was looked down upon without the reviewer ever following what the writer intended the reader to follow.
The question then could be: would it be valid to criticism a chef on his cookbook recipes without ever actually making any of the recipes?
I may not like lima beans, so you may hear me criticize their taste, but you won’t hear me criticize the chef that uses them in his recipes without me ever trying the dish.
Come on people, I called him a dork! It’s not the end of the world. Let’s all just move on with our lives already, shall we?