black magik in christianity
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magik is to cause changes in conformity to my will.
some people think that will refers to the "ego" will and not to the divine will.
there is a pastor in california (wiley drake) that is practicing an interesting form of black magick that seems to be in alignment with the bible. it is called imprecatory prayer. with it, you pray to cause death to others, to cause misery and ill and all sorts of evil.
this pastor had a radio interview to encourage people to practice this prayer so that president obama dies.
littlegreenfootballs.com/article/33885_Wiley_Drakes_Imprecatory_Prayer
here is the definition of this type of prayer...
www.bible.ca/ef/expository-psalm-35.htm
there is something that can be similar in thelema. in the book of the law...
"I will give you a war-engine." Ch III v.7
"With it ye shall smite the peoples; and none shall stand before you". Ch III v.8
"These slay, naming your enemies; & they shall fall before you". Ch III v.26
...so on and so forth.
in thelema it's ok to eliminate your enemies, you may be forced to kill if necessary if someone opposes your true will. but i think the real difference between that pastor and a true thelemite is the understanding of true will as a form of the divine. the pastor is acting on the basis of separation and fear. he is a coward as far as i can see. and in no way in alignment with the divine.
a thelemite forced to kill would do it as the very very very last resource with the understanding that every man and every woman is a star, and this would bring heavy karma upon hirself. -
When you pray, seldom is the result that what you pray from comes to pass. That is not really what prayer does, Rather when you pray, you inflame yourself with desire, you fill your mind with the ideas related to your intent, you speak word to yourself and concentrate on images that represent what your focus on, and perform ritual symbolic acts that mirror your intention.
Now this will not "magically" cause the desired event to happen, but it will have an effect on oneself. If you inflame yourself with prayers of this violent nature, this Death to a perceived political enemy, you will ignite anger and resentment in yourself. You will encourage hateful feelings, and maybe drive yourself into a violent frenzy where you will act out and do something you regret. Or worse incite a riot with passioned hate speeches.
But worse than the harm you do to others and the world, is the harm you do to yourself, basically creating inner turbulence, that divides the self against some part of the world, which is really a division against oneself.
Rather the Thelemic way to conquer Evil, say the "evil" of Obama is to cut off all conservative media influence, and learn to love liberal democratic point of view, get swept up in the obama mania, get burnt out on Obama, then learn to allow the obama phenomena to instruct you dispassionately and learn to accept it as part of the world, part of your own life, a necessary part.
Then you have defeated the Evil of Obama, without praying for anyone to die or be hurt.
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Well said, Froclown. You know, I don't hate Obama, but I am unimpressed with him. He's a politician, all right. It's startling to hear of people who follow a man/god who says "love your enemies", to urge people to pray for the death of a political figure.
Life is strange.
In L.V.X.,
chrys333 -
@bryan said
"are Prayer and Magick the same thing, or not? Or might prayer be more of a meditation or yoga, essentially? Or is it kind of a mixture of the two?"
Oh, all of the above, depending.
Prayer, as most commonly practiced by the majority, is a particular technique of magick. That's probably the simplest answer.
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this is from Augoeides ananael.blogspot.com
I love his Thelemic perspective.. He speaks in action.. not in bullshit theory.
Christian Black Magick
It never ceases to amaze me when I come across conservative Christians doing magick, especially what most would consider black magick. I'm not talking about Christian esotericists like Rufus Opus - the Hermetic Christian tradition has a long history of working with magical powers and according the Hermetic philosophy doing so is an essential component of spiritual development. No, I'm talking about Biblical literalists who completely accept and promulgate the Old Testament prohibitions on performing magick but nonetheless do so themselves. They call it "imprecatory prayer," a semantic shift that makes what they do no less magical and thus no less a violation of the Biblical laws that they claim to uphold.The latest of these dark sorcerers is Wiley Drake, a Southern Baptist minister who served as second vice president of the Southern Baptist convention from 2006 to 2007 and ran for Vice President in 2008 on the American Independent Party ticket. At the beginning of June Drake claimed to have cast the spell (that is, "made imprecatory prayer") that took the life of Dr. George Tiller, who was murdered on May 31st by an anti-abortion extremist (and let me be clear, I don't believe that everyone who is opposed to abortion is an extremist - but it should be obvious that anyone who would assassinate a doctor is).
Drake, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, Calif., called Tiller "a brutal, murdering monster" and said he is "grateful to God" that the physician is no longer around. "There may be a lot who would say, 'Oh that is mean. You shouldn't be that way,'" Drake said. "Well, no, it's an answer to prayer." Drake said he prayed nearly 10 years for the salvation of Tiller, medical director of the Women's Health Care Services clinic and an outspoken advocate for abortion rights. About a year ago, Drake said, he switched to what he called "imprecatory prayer." "I said to the Lord, 'Lord I pray back to you the Psalms, where it says that they are to become widowers and their children are to become orphans and so forth.' And we began calling for those imprecatory prayers, because he had obviously turned his back on God again and again and again," Drake said.Normally conservative Christians don't have a lot of magical aptitude simply because the best practical magicians usually don't fit very well into non-mystical spiritual systems*, but this guy now claims to have a track record and might be genuinely dangerous. To be fair the jury is still out since Drake made this claim after the fact - it's not uncommon for terrorist groups to take credit for operations that they had nothing to do with and this could be something similar. Still, because of the risks that he took every day Tiller was a prime target for a curse.
Death spells usually don't cause the target to just wither up and die, but rather they mobilize other people and events around the target to act in a way that leads to his or her death. I have no idea what percentage of the anti-abortion protesters that surrounded Tiller's clinic might be unstable enough to be influenced in that direction but I think it's safe to say that the killer was, whether or not Drake's spells had any effect on his psychology. Somebody who's willing to kill without the influence of a spell will certainly be willing to do so with magick spurring him or her along.
Emboldened by his success, Drake has a new project - using his magical powers to assassinate the President. In an interview with Alan Colmes, Drake made his intentions clear.
Asked if there are others for whom Drake is praying "imprecatory prayer," Drake hesitated before answering that there are several. "The usurper that is in the White House is one, B. Hussein Obama," he said. Later in the interview, Colmes returned to Drake's answer to make sure he heard him right. "Are you praying for his death?" Colmes asked. "Yes," Drake replied. "So you're praying for the death of the president of the United States?" "Yes."Peter Carroll once observed that politicians are substantially more difficult than regular people to kill by magick. He added that he believed this to be because everyone who supports them directs positive attention their way and this provides some degree of magical protection. As an Obama supporter and also as an advocate of the Rule of Law I hope that this is the case, but maybe this threat means I should send some additional magical protection the President's way. If I can't cast circles around somebody like Drake there's something seriously wrong with my magical practices.
The remarkable thing is that if their philosophy is at all consistent conservative Christians should be condemning this guy, but so far I haven't come across any statements to that effect from any of the organizations that normally have harsh words for magical practitioners. Does this mean that if I call what I do "prayer" it suddenly becomes mysteriously okay?
UPDATE: I've edited my comment about "magical people" not fitting well into "rigid" spiritual systems. Apparently my use of the former gave the impression that I was talking about people who do magick exactly the way I do or counter-culture people or something like that, when what I was specifically trying to refer to was individuals with high magical aptitude. Now it reads "the best practical magicians" which is clearer. I've changed the latter in response to Jason Miller, who rightly pointed out that spiritual systems like Vajrayana are "rigid" in terms of strictness of practice and also mentioned that he knew a Sufi Muslim who was quite culturally conservative but also a practicing magician.
After thinking it over I agree with Jason that "rigidity" of culture or practice is not the crucial variable. As I see it, the difference between Sufism and Vajrayana on the one hand and literalist Christianity on the other is that the former two systems incorporate mysticism while the latter one does not. Generally speaking, it's mystical practices that attract people who are talented magicians to religious systems. As a result, while I agree that there are plenty of literalist Christians out there who might try to do magick very few of them are any good. Believe it or not, I know this firsthand - when I was in high school I spent almost a year as a member of one of those churches, and let me tell you, there wasn't a competent magician or mystic in the place despite the church having several thousand members.
UPDATE II (*): Apparently that pesky sentence fragment preceding the asterisk is still giving the wrong impression. There certainly are schools of Christianity that I consider "mystical" and there are also talented Christian magicians. Here is what I meant when I wrote it, and also when I revised it:
People with the most magical talent tend to be drawn to spiritual systems in which they can practice magick or mysticism and avoid systems that tell them their abilities are evil. I think that this creates a statistical tendency in favor of systems that embrace those abilities.
You're welcome to agree or disagree, but that is what I meant and that is all I meant. The only person I meant to "belittle" by it was this particular idiot who wants to cast a death spell on our President.
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I wonder what would happen if someone took out a private prosecution of this idiot for attempted murder? The fact that the preferred method (prayer) isn't the same thing as a gun because it wouldn't work couldn't be used as a defense because the pastor obviously thinks it does work!
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More like attempt to conspire with a person or persons not legally recognized to exist, for purpose of political assassination.
Rather the same as if I were to send out post cards asking the Illuminati to Kill some one for me. This would probably be illegal on some grounds, as a hate speech or an enticement to have some one Kill and claim to be working for the Illuminati.
When the Abortion Doctor was killed, I bet the man who killed him claimed to be doing Gods work, the minister admits to having asked God to kill the man. Thus by both admissions, they conspired with a third party to commit a murder. (How do we know the killer did not hear the ministers prayers and took in fulfill them himself), Charlie Manson was convicted for making passing remarks, that his over eager followers decided to surprise him by making his murder wishes come true.
Those who pray for the death of others it would seem are more likely to lead to violent behavior in others, than say the violent films that the same Christians want to censor. Maybe we should put a parental warning and a rating system on Prayers.