A Struggle for Magick
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93,
The Great Work comes in many forms throughout many cultures. Its not as 'reviled' as you think but rather mostly unknown or bent to commercial purposes. Is fighitng a political battle really worth it? Does it help with the internal struggle?
IAO131
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I think I'm an activist in some respects. I've protested twice in my life (about China and what they're doing to the Tibetans). When I see something as noble and pure as the Great Work scoffed at, or called Satanism by the ignorant, or other things of this nature, my instinct makes me want to attempt to do something about it, hence my little rant. "The easy thing, and the right thing are hardly ever the same." In an interview, Christopher Hyatt said that if given 150 years of isolation with a group of people, he would have them all enlightened. (that's a paraphrase), moved on to the next step in the evolutionary ladder. If you think about it, there doesn't seem to have been a continous and harmonious movement to bring the Great Work to people ever. Yes the concept has been around at least as long, but one solid group, working in harmony, passing on to their next generation. I don't know, it doesn't seem right to me that so much of the World's population is still Cathlic for instance, or that the Pope still has so much power, believing and practicing the things they do. It's all Maya
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@Frater Pramudita said
"I think I'm an activist in some respects. I've protested twice in my life (about China and what they're doing to the Tibetans). When I see something as noble and pure as the Great Work scoffed at, or called Satanism by the ignorant, or other things of this nature, my instinct makes me want to attempt to do something about it, hence my little rant. "The easy thing, and the right thing are hardly ever the same." In an interview, Christopher Hyatt said that if given 150 years of isolation with a group of people, he would have them all enlightened. (that's a paraphrase), moved on to the next step in the evolutionary ladder."
I honestly think that would be a step backwards. Its called 'spiritual bypassing.' If you cant cope with the norma world but are fine in 'isolation' or whatever, is that really an achievement? Is that really a 'step in evolution'? Learning to meditate in the city is much more useful than in some cave - if a person from a cave came to a city they would be utterly helpeless.
"If you think about it, there doesn't seem to have been a continous and harmonious movement to bring the Great Work to people ever. Yes the concept has been around at least as long, but one solid group, working in harmony, passing on to their next generation. I don't know, it doesn't seem right to me that so much of the World's population is still Cathlic for instance, or that the Pope still has so much power, believing and practicing the things they do. It's all Maya"
Your concern about it is equally Maya.
IAO131
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@Frater Pramudita said
"I've been thinking quite a bit lately about alot of things, but one of them is how, on many levels, it bothers me that something as True as magick, as "Real" as this, and as worthwhile as the Great Work should be so underground, be so revilved still in so many ways with stereotypes. So in a moment of brainstorming, I came about some ideas where people could work to change the Occult being Taboo.
You fight the tools of the Lie the bureaucratic functions of government and business, the institutional methods of education. These are nothing more than brainwashing dens, to make sure that the sleepers live happy little contented lives. Lives without knowing the truth, lives without their birthright of the Supernal Realms. By breaking down the idea that a "good life" is easy and deserved, the Sleepers will fight back as well, pushing their minds free of the Lie and towards spiritual awakening.
You fight the agents of the Lie. The Conservatives, the Catholics, those who have cast their lot in with Humanities greatest enemies. They are the jailers of this prison. They have manipulated and pushed on the Fallen World making these bureaucracies that subvert rather than uplift. They will always be there to put another roadblock in place of the mankind's rise to greatness. Our job is to destroy the roadblocks.
So in the end, the War against the the Jailers is not a shooting war. Or rather, not a shooting war against those God-Kings of Christianity that rule through Maya that have supplanted the true gods of the Universe, Mankind itself. There are no magic spells or artifacts to fight them with. There are no armies or assassins that can defeat them. No, the only way to defeat them is to undo all that they have done to this world.
However the truth of the matter is there. You don't fight these people in any sort of literal way. They are Gods in Malkuth for all intents and purposes and really more the stuff of setting fluff and plot device. The point of the struggle is to reconnect our realm with the Supernal.
My idea is that all of Human Civilization has been being manipulated in order to make sure that mankind will not Awaken in droves, that they will stay meek sheep and thus never challenge the Paradigm. So battling the Agents and Methods of the Lie include targeting the parts of institutions that treat those with creativity, belief in supernatural/faith like the enemy and to avoid bureaucracy that bogs down all things."
What I jokingly think of to myself as the "goth effect" (the fact that you'd be more likely to find goth types into Magick - I'm using this as a synecdoche for what you're talking about, it's not a slur on goths
) is an aspect of the transgressive "evil" appearance that mysticism and magick have had in Western culture. The transgressive appearance is an artefact of how all versions of these pursuits that didn't toe the party line dogma of literalist Christianity were ostracized, blackballed, hounded, and murdered for the past 2,000 years.In other cultures where there wasn't this propaganda drive, e.g. Asian cultures, these pursuits still have a *slightly *odd air about them, (they're not considered wholly normal), but they're not considered "evil". e.g. naga babas, daoist priests, etc., are generally considered to be odd but they're still a part of the mainstream culture.
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Finally, someone with an inkling of understanding. Not everyone may have had the luxury of growing up or living in a liberal urban area where free thought and expression are accepted and in some cases encouraged. Some people grow up in ultra conservative or conservative area's, rural areas, or just places where things like "magic" or the "occult" are all equated to the Devil. There are people that grew up in small towns where they are shunned, put into counselling even, or worse for believing in something that isn't "normal." I've lived in places of all of the above and have travelled and experienced these things, have known people that were given free reign to practice or believe whatever they wanted. But I've also have known people forced to go to Catholic schools, forced to take medication because of being pagen. So I don't see how anyone can be so naive as to think that there isn't a problem.
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@Frater Pramudita said
"Finally, someone with an inkling of understanding."
Saying that to someone who actaully agrees with you after a few posts makes you just look liek a self-reinforcing, pseudo-close-minded fool. No offense.
gurugeorge: The many facets of Hinduism arent really looked upon as 'weird.' Im not sure where you get this - do you have experience from traveling in the East?
IAO131
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I was thinking about posting a rebuttal to your remarks, but you just seem to be one of those people on this board that likes to be spiteful, to say hurtful things, to contradict just for the sake of argument. I'm not down for getting drawn into a conversation stemming from another one of your personal snide comments. I guess I just happen to be your latest target. So be it. If you don't care about the subject of the thread though, could you bash me somewhere else?
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@Frater Pramudita said
"I was thinking about posting a rebuttal to your remarks, but you just seem to be one of those people on this board that likes to be spiteful, to say hurtful things, to contradict just for the sake of argument. "
Im sure you would think that but you are simply wrong. It is a sign of weakness to say 'thank you' only to people who agree with you and compliment you. I say this out of a desire to see strength, not to see you wimper.
By the way, you are contradicting yourself insofar as this is a rebuttal itself.
Further, I was talking about the thread but you chose to ignore it because it disagreed with your viewpoint - case in point. Perhaps if Magick had a few proponents who were willing to combat differing viewpoints, it would win some more deserved attention.
"I'm not down for getting drawn into a conversation stemming from another one of your personal snide comments. I guess I just happen to be your latest target. So be it. If you don't care about the subject of the thread though, could you bash me somewhere else?"
If you wish to view yourself as a 'target' that is your problem - I just say what I mean and I dont really care if you feel hurt or not: the intention was just to be clear and honest. If you want to self-perpetuate your ignorance, feel free to compliment those who reinforce your views and feel hurt by those who challenge them; that is really not my choice to make for you, it is your own. If you want an Eastern metaphor since it seems you like that kind of thinking, one must be above both blame AND praise - otherwise you're not traveling the Middle Path, and you'll become more and more un-equilibrated.
Cheers & 93,
IAO131 -
@Frater Pramudita said
"Finally, someone with an inkling of understanding. Not everyone may have had the luxury of growing up or living in a liberal urban area where free thought and expression are accepted and in some cases encouraged. Some people grow up in ultra conservative or conservative area's, rural areas, or just places where things like "magic" or the "occult" are all equated to the Devil."
Many of us have taken that - and other reasons - as sufficient justification to move. Get out! (If you can't get out yet, then be patient for a few years, and then get out.)
The most useful line in The Book of the Law for dealing with other people is: "deem not of change." Change yourself, change your conditions, but don't live your life from any expectation that someone else ever will change. That's up to them! It's up to you to occupy the universe suitable to you.
PS - I grew up outside of a town of less than 5,000 in northern Indiana. I know very well what you're talking about. I just didn't keep myself there.
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@Aum418 said
"gurugeorge: The many facets of Hinduism arent really looked upon as 'weird.' Im not sure where you get this - do you have experience from traveling in the East?
IAO131"
A little bit in India. I didn't say the "many facets" of Hinduism, I thought more specifically of the "magickal" (aka in common Indian terms "tantric") or mystical side of things. Most Hinduism is as mawkish and kitsch as Roman Catholicism, and many of the "gurus" Hindus conventionally revere are as common and gross as televangelists in the US; but what I mean is that the "hardcore" guys and girls are still considered part of the mainstream, although just on the fringe. Put it this way: a middle class Hindu might think that (e.g.) a naga baba is a bit of an odd fellow, but he will still give conventional, traditional respect.
Not so in the West: those "hardcore" mystics and magicians who weren't prepared to toe the party line *had *to go underground - if they popped their heads above the parapet they were lopped off.
It's a horrible irony for the West that these pursuits, which as I say are not so ostracized in the East, are actually at the heart of religion in general. It has meant that the West, in a strange sense, has had no real religion for a long time, and that its atheism is merely a coming-out-of-the-closet of what was already for most of 2,000 years a cynical, atheistic, materialist underground feeling. It may be that that, more than anything, has driven our stereotypical Western neuroses.
Again, to clarify, what I mean is, if you're presented with hokum that has no real religious power, and if you know of nothing else as a religious alternative (which was the position of most in the West for a long time), then the natural intelligent reaction is just to say fuck it and go with the materialism that is natural to a talking and thinking social animal. Nevertheless, art was a kind of outlet for genuine spirituality in the West for a long time, and it did a good job as a sort of "holding pattern". (It's really as if some craftsmen were dragooned into being the de facto *genuine *priesthood. Hmm, craftsmen
)Some ramblings connected with the thread subject:
I've had an odd conviction growing recently that Crowley was a feint and that the real action was a concerted effort by the Hidden Masters to re-inject genuine religion by importation from Asia: as an example, and part of the overall phenomenon I'm talking about, the rise of nondual forms of mysticism to being the acme of Western mysticism nowadays could in fact be seen as the whole point of the 20th century (in terms of religion), in the long view, and Crowley, following Blavatsky, was a lieutanant charged with "drawing the fire" of the Old Aeon powers and principalities, so the non-dual Asians could do an "end run" around them. Of course one could still hold this theory and also hold AC's instantiation of religion as being the best we've got.
I am encouraged in this possibly rather outré theory by consideration of the Blavatsky chapters in Joscelyn Godwin's The Theosophical Enlightenment (which I think if the scholarship is sound, is an amazing book) - in those chapters he does seem to sort of accept the theory that there was a move, by some nameable (although difficult to pin down) people, mostly Asian masters, to reintroduce true religion to the West, with the help of Western Hermeticists (of whom Blavatsky and AC were perhaps the two most notable).
This sketch of the true undercurrents of religion from the 19th to the 20th centuries kind of makes sense, and nothing seems to contradict it - of course that doesn't mean it's true. But it's a neat idea to think about.
Also worth thinking about is the phenomenon of Osho. I've heard it said that the Rajneeshis were the first to introduce a taste of MDMA to the mass underground drug market in Europe in the early 80s, from whence it percolated to the club scene in the mid- to late-80s, and took off.
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I like to add a further dimension to this discussion. First off, you may debate Frater Pramudita all you want, but let us first acknowledge that the condition he describes does exist. And it does. I am from a town 5,000, not far from Indiana, lived some great years in NYC and LA and I am back here now. The conditions that Frater Pramudita describes still exist. Now, to go into argumentative mode, as AUM418 usually shifts first, we can note that it has always been this way and probably always will, and the only thing you can really do is change yourself. That is initiation complete. There is no need to argue that either. Getting out, as Jim mentioned, is a first step and is amazing initially, however, even in NY and LA there are people who still deem the occult weird, Satanic, and the abode of the freakish. And this from "liberal", open-minded people! Also, with increased numbers comes the attraction of people who don't look at the occult with a sneer, but when you begin to meet many of these practitioners, they are just as uneducated in the great work as those who know it not. The more people there are, the more you get the bad apples so to speak. In the end, you must still deal with yourself. Your problems follow you, etc. While LA and other great cities have the temples you won't find out here, dealing with people is still dealing with people.
This brings up Frater Pramudita's other concern, activism. As an activist myself, I see merit there. Where I currently reside, there are those among us who still believe Iraq attacked the U.S. on 9/11. How do you deal with it? You can try to change them, but only by educating. Real change is on them. However, in light of Crowley's own true will being to bring the Book of The Law to all, I don't think it's just sitting in our hotel rooms or apartments in a big city and developing our spiritualism. That's the beginning, but if say, the Frater wanted to push the issue further, and educate about Magick as a form of activism, why not? Activism seemed to work for well for Ghandi.
I am not writing of conversion or spreading the word of the Law in a religious sense, those who want to practice the work must come to the work on their own accord. But I am writing about correcting the wrongs about what is said of Thelema as activism.
Whether or not it is "worth" it is up to individual. For me, whenever the chance presents itself, even if I know a person will still not see the great work as we do, they certainly can't fully stand on their old ground again.
And that is the beginning of change.
(OTOH if the people's lack of perception bothers you more than the little change you might ignite, i.e., if it is the stronger of passion in you, then I would MOVE as Jim suggested. Some people prefer to be in the Wasteland rather than the Green Meadow.)
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Very good points and thank you for your insights. I am a person that in my life have been stricken with a form of wanderlust. I'm 29 years old, and since I turned 18, have lived in Milwaukee, WI, Houston, TX, St.Paul,MN, Boulder, CO (where I was fortunate enough to have studied at the Naropa Institute), and Ottawa, Ontario. During that time though, I have also lived in very very small towns. In high school for instance, my graduating class was 22 kids, the town had a population of 450.
Where I have landed as it where, is a decent sized city, with about 100,000 thousand people, a little less...but there isn't much for spirituality around here, other than your Christian denominations. Don't get me wrong, we have our resident Pagen store with a Pagen group that meets and practices, and spread all throughout, I can "feel" that there are people into the occult, perhaps even Thelema. But, wanting to teach as I am inclined, drawn to do, I sought out a forum to do so in, and the closest I could could was a UU Fellowship (not congregation). After meeting there for awhile, I was asked to start a Covenant on the Qabalah. I have seen teenagers pulled out of our meeting groups by their parents, and had to deal with the Board talking about disallowing our group because of the Theurgy that we talk about, or the relations to the Occult that are in the Qabalah. Believe me, it's not because of adult material, or anything like that, but this is a conservative city, and even in the UU, which is supposed to be open to all religions I and the others running this group have taken flak from people that simply associate magick with the devil. Part of me does want to make a big deal out of it. Ok, I do understand what Jim said, and with my job, my family, and now my Probationer work, I don't have time to fight the good fight, but if no one does, than who will?
If Crowley would have devoted himself wholly to his own spiritual attainment, and never published Liber ABA, or Book 4, or the Book of Law for that matter (obviously the list goes on), how would that have affected the current state of the Occult today? I'm sorry, but I believe his activism jumped our mindset forward almost 100 years.