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Post by Sindder Streg on Mar 1, 2016 20:07:52 GMT
Well I wouldn't think it would hurt to call more "normal" practices magickal and magickal practices normal. But I specifically was referring to altars, angels, and the death posture!. But surely many other of these practices are taught in the magickal/occult traditions. But magick specifically could mean different things. Affirmations could be magick. Rituals are definitely magick (even if they aren't dressed up with skulls and shit or Harry Potter stuff- which is how magick is portrayed publicly). Meditation/mindfulness is certainly in the magickal tradition. So, magick is the tradition, and magick is a specific act, and to make it more confusing, magick is a description of change and/or how things happen (which I'll talk more about in a minute). Tradition/action/change = magick. In general I'd say yes we're talking about the same thing. Specifically, well we'd just have to be more specific.  When I think to myself, "I'd like to do some magick", meditation does not come to mind - doing a ritual to get a specific outcome does. But in a wider sense of the tradition of magick doing meditation is magick. But then so is exercise, affirmations, yoga, etc. Your whole life is magick (if you're a magickian). It's more about style. We may be doing the same stuff, with different clothes on. Going deeper, intent is magick. I'd like to brush my teeth, magick. I'll make toast, magick. This isn't to say the person is perfectly aware of their desire or perfectly capable of achieving said desire. People do magick all the time. Magickian's just harness this "power" for whatever they want. So, a while ago you said you had a problem with magick in the sense that I can just "wish" for something and get it. In one sense you do that everyday all day long. In another sense, if it is something bigger you have to really really take a step back and examine your goal, as would anyone with a goal to reach. I think really you were referring to synchronicities. And, brazenly enough, yes you can basically wish for anything you want - but - there has to be a way for that to come about. There is a very slim chance you can jizz out of your eyeballs and I wouldn't exactly want to do magick to make that happen. You CAN have sex with Carmen Electra, but it'd probably be in a dream and there are better ways to make that happen other than just wishing for it, ie learning to lucid dream. You can talk to the God of your choosing, but how will they communicate, will you understand it? You can get a demon to do stuff for you but will you like the way they do it? The short story is: magick works. You absolutely CAN craft synchronicities. It can be difficult and complicated but that's why it's called the Craft. |
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Post by Admin on Mar 2, 2016 1:41:31 GMT
I tend to think that there is at least a modicum of a certain type of truth in any belief. That being said the two components of Magick - as you describe it - that are just flat out incompatible with me would be 1) the name: it is too provocative and it takes too much effort to defend it for it to be the same thing after the defense is made; and 2) the tradition: it immediately becomes another religion (no matter how much one tries to avoid it) or at least another type of worldview loaded with all the preconceived notions, blind support and unquestioned theoretical support (a support that resembles deductive reasoning insofar as the specifics (spiritual or psychological practices) are arrived at by the full acknowledgement and belief in a general law or set of laws (the Magick tradition) that is present in all religion and faiths of other means. Faith isn't bad, of course, but the faith that I have is the one I have; not to mention "Gods"... even if they are supposedly just manifestations of the same Unity... I've never found much use for any other "Gods" (hold your "what about 'CHRIST'?" comments, if you please; I HAVE found essential use for that) And, despite the fact that I can [lovingly] see the similarities between many traditions - an exercise that I am gaining more and more pleasure from following through with - managing the intertwining of my experiences with my subscribed faith (faith I am trying to model after a plant rather than a picture frame) is an endless task. Further, even though I fully admit the contradiction from my previous claim of Magick being too deductive for me to be compatible with it, one must live in a house long enough for it to become his home. In other words, I feel married to Christianity. I can take things from other camps of belief - I have taken LOADS from studying Buddhism the little bit that I have and I feel good about being able to take things from elsewhere - so when I see similarities or overlaps between [what might be called] contemplative-neuroscience and Magick... I'll still call it contemplative-neuroscience (a term I have never heard until I just typed it and I like it!).
To carry over from the other thread, I have read some of the guy that you linked, and I like him; I would say that his explanation of conceptual/non-conceptual knowledge may differ from my view of conceptual/[auto]noetic knowledge. Namely, he seems to separate them simply by putting thoughts in the conceptual pile and all other perceptions (images, senses, somatosensory experiences, etc.) into the non-conceptual pile. I would add the caveat that thoughts may be experienced non-conceptually, but that ANALYTICAL thought-processes are conceptual. Having thoughts - maybe not running and narrating or labelling thoughts - may in fact be experienced autonoetically. Maybe that is a critical difference between 'non-conceptual' and autonoetic (as opposed to noetic): autonoetic knowledge may necessarily include thoughts of a certain kind... We are, however, fooling ourselves a little in this conversation. In the way the mind works, we mustn't consider any parts independently of the entirety of the mind (or even of "reality"?); that means that "thoughts", "emotions", "images", "experiences", "non-experiences", "intuitions", "biological processes", "drives", "moods", "states", etc. etc. etc. must all be considered as integrated and interdependent entities. Interlocking fingers of many, many hands. That's just within one of us... Then start thinking about interdependencies of many "others" and maybe even the interdependencies of "All that Is"... Makes it exciting and humbling.
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Post by Sindder Streg on Mar 2, 2016 16:56:23 GMT
What's great about it is it is another religion! I've got some great notes on this. Here's an except, from Duncan Barford which is one of my favorite things I've ever heard about magick - I was giddy when he described magick/occultism as a form of religion: I had my suspicions and reasons for thinking it was but I had never heard the things I was practicing explicitly described as such. I mean Voodoo duh, but little ol' me piecing together stuff from books and websites and getting results! I'm a part of something bigger than myself. I figured it at least had religious implications but didn't think to call it outright a religion. I took notes from a speech he gave a couple years back. I'd love to go over some of the other stuff with you. I think it would make a lot more sense. In fact I'll upload them somehow so you can preview them before the weekend.
Gods - isn't everything a manifestation of the same Unity? You haven't found uses for other Gods, yet! Plenty of people the world over have no use for Christ but do of Kali, Ganesh, Thor, etc etc. I have no issues with this. To each his/her own.
I get what you're saying about the name of "Magick" not being compatible with the contents of the tradition. I'll have to research when it first became called Magick. It's called other things too. Western Mystery Tradition is the most prestigious sounding. I prefer Occult, although that comes with another load of BS -lodges and hierarchies and masked initiation rituals- but I like occult because it means hidden. To most people even the benefits of practicing 5 minutes of meditation is hidden from view, let alone consciously influencing ones own mind, spirit work, divination, etc. The fact that you can do these things is the most interesting thing to me. If you ask a religious person about Voodoo they'll decry it not because it's bunk but because it works! The atheist will call it bunk as well as everything else that Richard Dawkins hasn't jizzed on. They won't see atheism is another belief system. Everything has it's +'s and -'s.
Here's why it's appropriate to call it Magick. If you've had a spell or ritual actually work for you... then holy shit it definitely is magick! This I suppose can only be confirmed by experience. It's definitely a feeling of magick, in any sense of the word. So yes, I think Magick fits as a title just fine. One that I'm proud to uphold... semi-secretly for now.
The way you take things from Buddhism, neuro stuff and put it into Christianity, is what I can't help but to do with my occult views. Everything I learn goes into that viewpoint. Even viewing that it's a viewpoint is occulty to me!
I hope this is okay with our friendship? I'm also learning my beliefs as I go, so some of this is new to me as I think and type about it, so it's not fully formed simply because I haven't thought about it before. But I hope we still cool.
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Post by Admin on Mar 2, 2016 18:05:43 GMT
Just a minute to reply, so I wanted to make sure I say, of course nothing about friendship has changed.
To be candid, I feel a certain responsibility to accept people where they are spiritually even though I have my views about what is and what ain't.
I do not think all roads lead to the same place, but I also don't have it all figured; so, like I said before, I tend to see all beliefs as containing at least a sense of some kind of truth - even if that truth is about the process of believing itself.
Cards on the table: Magick and certain other occultist views do not interest me in terms of spirituality. Some practices and exercises (that I feel comfortable with after they are explained neurologically or psychologically) I can assimilate and go right on living my [apparently often somewhat mystically or alternatively informed] Christian life. I am figuring things out about my faith as we talk as well. I'm glad you have called certain things "mystical", because i'm giving the term and some historical "Christian mystics" another look. I have always been interested in a certain type of non-orthodox Christianity (Weather's Christian Agnosticism; Chesterton's... whatever-it-is-Catholicism; among a few other writers), so thinking of "mysticism" in a different light - one including my previous convictions and scientific interests - has been an thought-provoking activity.
That being said, I don't see reality like you do. If I did, I'd be lying to myself and everyone else. I do, however, trust that you are giving me what you really think; I trust that it has meant something special to you; and I trust that if I reacted to something you feel/say/believe in an aversive way, I wouldn't be upholding my responsibility as a Christian to being a brother to others - no matter what they believe. I will be honest though...
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Post by Sindder Streg on Mar 2, 2016 18:11:33 GMT
I think the second part of your previous response might answer some questions I had on the other thread. I don't think he necessarily separates thought from the other senses. But I don't think this is worth getting worked up over. It more important how we communicate and I think we are basically on the same page.
On the newer post:
Fair enough. I think we've been very upfront with each other and I'm glad we have differences and respect them. It seems we've always found a way to communicate. I do however think we are really onto something with our mindfulness definitions and experiences. We should take some time to do a group meditation this weekend and call out our thoughts/experiences out loud. Something like that anyway could be an interesting exercise.
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