6 Reader Responses

1. human? Says:
   July 6th, 2005 at 9:47 pm

   i also do think that you can study the microcosm to understand the macrocosm…

   but once you think your microcosm is anything more than a reflection, youve lost sight of the big picture.

   writing PHP code WILL give you insight into ritual magick.

   Tim’s artwork IS your incantations manifest!

   one
   human?

2. laura jane Says:
   July 6th, 2005 at 9:51 pm

   maybe it depends on how you’re engaging. i mean i think magick can be as much of a trap as any other religion or system of thought/belief/control/whatever… and i bet some people probably do get caught up in the “fancy stuff” so to speak.. it seems like it always comes back to the same issue — maintaining a keen awareness of the system within which you’re operating, so that the system doesn’t eat you.. to some extent i think that awareness equates with the whole “detachment” idea.

3. jp Says:
   July 6th, 2005 at 10:37 pm

   well no practice is a distraction; the individual doing the practice is the distraction. it’s like when you hear a bell ringing while you’re trying to do something; is that a distraction? or is it the part of you that’s experiencing the ringing that’s distracting you? and, what’s really ringing the bell?

   you get what you put into it. magick doesn’t do it for me, personally, although i’ve tried it and have a die-hard devotion to the theoretical qabbalah. but, like i mentioned in my post on magick, i got turned off of ritual magick and turned onto zen when i realized that magick was about building and exploring layers, whereas zen was about totally burning them down, stripping them away and finding the glorious, limitless and blissful emptiness underneath it all. of course, ritual magick leads to the same thing for some people who don’t, at the moment, happen to be me.

4. Rev max Says:
   July 6th, 2005 at 11:34 pm

   it always comes back to the same issue — maintaining a keen awareness of the system within which you’re operating, so that the system doesn’t eat you

   i got very confused about this a number of years ago and wrote to Peter Carroll the author of those Chaos magic books (he’s also a theoretical physics professor at Stanford or something)

   he wrote back and said “remember belief systems are tools”

   The idea being that for a spell to work you have to believe that the entities being summoned are whatever or real

   so the belief itself is a tool (or fuel)

   There are many branches of mysticism with supposely incredible powers eg., the Tantriks buddhists and hindus (Aghora: at the left hand of God blew my mind as a 24 year old and is still one of my fave books)

   the Sufis, Voudonists, etc.

   I always found the sufi view really interesting, that you should be able to simultaneously believe 9 contradictory things at once and let you mind not be disturbed by it

   WHich may be some help with a way to understand magic

   The Tantrik Saint Ramakrishna had a similar idea, he was bored of hinduism so he converte dto Christianity, went all teh way through that system until he fell into a deep rapture and communed with god, then he converted to Islam and pursued it all the way to its mystical end too

   He concluded that the religion itself does not matter so much as the devotees purity of heart and dedication

   I think (me, Max) that magic is really analogous with art. You’re creating things because its fun and interesting for you, you grow from it and learn things.

   It can bring you closer to the goal or distract you from it depending on your POV. Same with Sex. Same with work. Same with drugs. They’re all double-edged swords. They can liberate or enslave you depending on whether or not you stay balanced. IMHO.

   Some artists (19th century french guy, can’t remember the name) said that his goal as an artist was to be a self-fertilizing hermaphodite (not unlike the Barbelite account of the Mary’s vision of Jesus on the mountaintop producing a woman from his own side and then making love to her)

   There is a lot of psychological truth to this, to be an artist or a magician you have to be receptive (female) enough to receive or absorb energy and inspiration and then strong-willed and disciplined enough (male) to manifest it, execute it, shape either the astral light (or the canvas) and bring your vision into reality.

5. Rev max Says:
   July 6th, 2005 at 11:48 pm

   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???

   Well, from an only slightly different POV the universe around us is all energy, and all spirits, and is in constant, magic motion being destroyed and created anew every single second in the miracle of a bretha and moment.

   So praticing magic or whatever is just feeling like “OK, I wanna play too!”

   But I do see your point, the idea that magic is something to be mystified with authority and made to seem inaccessible and not quite real has its own glamor that is not very helpful - it makes it inaccessible.

   WHat is magic anyway? For me: reading signs, interpreting visions, creating things, helping people. We all do that stuff on a daily basis anyway. But magic is a way of engaging and working with reality directly through archetypes and symbols so like art it has (or can have) i think a very playful quality to it too.

   I mean, maybe this is just more just along the lines of getting trapped in language that some people have tried to speak of. But I think it’s a totally fair and reasonable idea: what if magick is really just a distraction? Looked at from the Gnostic story-system, you might say: what if it comes from the Demiurge?

   I used to agonize constantly about this. I don’t know why, I jst stopped. I decided it wasn’t helpful.

   EVen i it didn’t work I feel like magic still makes life interesting and fun and mysterious - just like religion or mythology or art or whatever.

6. Occult Investigator Says:
   July 7th, 2005 at 12:18 am

   Yeah I’m bagging what you’re raking Max.