What is meant by "magick" ?
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@Jim Eshelman said
"High Magic is aspirational. Its practical goals are personal evolution and phenomenology from drawing on transfer-humanmanes.
Low magician draws on energies on the same plane, just rearranging the priorities. It's robbing Peter to payaul.
Low magick is about change. High magick is about transformation."
So, would that mean that casting spells for things such as money and love would be low magick?
Or would that depend on the energies used? -
Most such spells are low magick because they call on forces that rearrange resources in the same plane.
Btw, "low" isn't a pejorative here, anymore than "low temperature" is.
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Too much to answer here on a portable device. The main point, though, is that the two are unrelated. Low magick has no more relationship to black magick than lo mein noodles have in common with black cherries.
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I totally agree that real world solutions should be brought to real world problems - first! But sometimes our resources seem insufficient for a solution. That's the place for magick.
I'm not sure exactly what kind of causation answer you want. I'm tempted to answer: "Uh, it's magick" You aren’t going to find either a rational explanation or concrete causation chain; or, if you do, it breaks the spell. But the basic theory is that you are aligning your consciousness with the Atziluthic level of the particular frequency corresponding to the intended result. That is, you are making yourself a willing channel for that particular divine expression that already wills your result.
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@Dara said
"Jim - coming back to yesterdays question (unless you're still using a portable device?) - how would you distinguish between low and black magick?"
Actually, that's the part that I thought I answered really thoroughly: There is no more relationship between low magick and black magick than there is between lo mein noodles and black cherries.
Take it back to their base definitions: Their definitions are so independent of each other than they form a 2 x 2 grid of Low vs. High Magick and Black vs. (I guess) Unblack Magick (LOL, let's call it Rainbow Magick - I don't want to get stuck in a White vs. Black vs. gradiants nomenclature for discussion). It's not the partially overlap of a Venn diagram. It's a 2 x 2 grid just as much as, say, Warm vs. Cold foods plotted against Japanese vs. Argentinian cuisine.
The distinction of High vs. Low Magick is the distinction of transformation vs. change: That is, of relying on Something from outside the framework in which the targetted phenomena exist vs. rearranging the pieces within a given framework. The distinction of Black Magick is that it is violative of another's True Will. You can have High Black Magick, Low Black Magick, High Rainbow Magick, and Low Rainbow Magick.
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@Dara said
"High black magick? I can't get my head around that concept, Jim."
I think, then, that it's a matter of definition. Of something like "good vs. bad" getting into the High vs. Low distinction.
One can, for example, invoke Elohim Gibbor and Kamael to mobilize forces outside of the normal human condition to repattern things such that another person comes to serious harm. You don't need a low-level sympathetic curse (in the usual usage of those words), you can actually do what religions might call "Get God to destroy our enemies" without any real consideration of any such issues as right/wrong. Now, doing so has massive repercussions - moving one of earth's tectonic plates to create a tsunami to wipe out your main business rival's yacht is real overkill and would destabilize the tectonic stability of much of the earth - and its equivalent in consciousness has equal repercussions. (I'm not getting into the other circumstances of when this would work or not, how to go about it, etc. That's not the point, nor anything I'm eager to put in print.)
My only point is that which flood gate you open is a separate question from whether you are fucking over somebodyin doing it.
"Don't you have to violate your own TW first in order to violate someone elses?"
Absolutely. But there's nothing to stop someone whose inherent nature is X from invoking (and making oneself a temporary channel for) deities of nature Y (= Not-X). Of course one screws oneself in the process - and of course if you do this to attack someone who knows that he or she is doing and is stable in his or her will, it will be easy for then to apply some magical aikido to your disadvantage - but none of that that changes the fact that one's method was to make oneself the channel of Atziluthic forces of a particular variety.
"Therefore - I can't see how there can be such a thing as High black magick."
Then, as I said, it's a matter of definition. With the definition I've given, there is nothing to exclude "violating your own True Will" from High Magick.
"And also - in the case of Low Magick - isn't that really a violation of your own TW, and so even if you don't violate another's TW it's still black magick by that definition?"
No. See above. (Again: a difference in definition?) One example of low magick (rearranging the pieces already existing) would be resolving financial issues by getting someone to pay money they owed you (and, more broadly setting in motion a chain reaction of all sorts of people domino-like paying off people they owed). This sets more money in circulation, reduces debt, and has large numbers of people both experiencing debt-relief and having the appearance of income while stabilizing the overall sense of prosperity. Still - it's change, not transformation, because it just moves the pieces already on the table.
"I can't help but see low magick as bad juju - not to touch except to learn a lesson on the way and then move on past. But maybe I'm being incredibly judgemental and white lighter like here? If there's a legitimate way of looking at it that is different from the bb perspective then I'd be interested to hearing you expound upon the doctrine."
I'm not particularly drawn to it - except in those areas that don't look like magick to most people. But I'm happy to use its principles constantly, especially to set things in motion and restabilize. (Stuff that likes more like Jedi tricks or Bene Gesserit witchery.)
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I just loooovvvveee shiny girls.
But I have no interest in boys that sparkle.
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Please do not think me rude to state this, but this conversation reminds me of the earlier one the girls, and a few of us guys had about black/white witches, priestesses, and 93 current women.
"Real-world" problems remind me of the lower illusion. Where witches must find a lock of someone's hair, a piece of their clothing, or something as simple as an herb etc.. to cause change in conformity with their Wills.
The illusion I refer to is of lust, jobs, money, basically anything that is directly connected with working with lust of result.. staring at the clock at five fifty five instead of sitting there, meditating, knowing you are in the right place for who you are and where you are.
An example: a witch ingests hensbane after collecting an article of a man's clothing, and drive him away from his lover."Lower Magick" reminds me of when one has begun to see past the lower illusion of such a blind purpose as lust. "Passion" would be a better word to use here. This is where a human or a witch would realize that all they are doing is feeding their wants so blindly, and steps up to their higher purpose a bit. An example: changing shapes of clouds while sky-gazing.
"Higher Magick" is where a witch would realize everything they've done until that point has been a lower illusory message from their HGA to balance themselves, and let change occur with their will on it's own. Bowling a strike comes to mind.
This is where the 93 current's message is realized in the proper language, and one is ready to just let go of their ego and balance themselves.Is this making sense to anyone?
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That's about what I mean, Kasper.
Dara, the Black Brothers are definitely not "shiny happy people", though they do make shitty salesmen.
Who would buy a pass into a black hole that leads to god-knows-where in oblivion? Roller coasters stopped scaring and making me excited after my first cannabis experience at fifteen. Very strange indeed.
Can't there be "Purple Brothers"?
or Tie-Dye Brothers?
Oh wait, I'm one of those. I must have a cup of yerba to awaken myself at this hour.
Frankie
93
93/93 -
The miracle you are asking of, dear Kasper, is called "scrying". All things are accessible through the Aethyr, the Astral, all in connection with the Akashic records of creation.
There is a reason I never played the lottery, especially after my awakening. -- I don't want to go to the "bad-place" for misuse of magic. Who knows how long I'd remain there after the great quickening? No, no thank you. I'll stick to extracting alkaloids from plants and selling them to the community. I can't have our local law enforcement officers not be at their best on the job, ya know.
At least not the ones that wish for something more -- the ones that will just take a kid's bag instead of hauling him downtown.It's amazing what seemingly passive paper money can do.
Man, I make a lot of stuff up, don't I?
But in reality, I do believe that she is referring to her ability to scry successfully.
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@Dara said
"I don't know why - but black brothers have this whole 'shiny' aura deal - makes them come off like second hand car salesmen or something.
I always think of them as the 'shiny shiny' people.
"it takes one (advanced Adept) to judge one, so it's hard to tell with certainty about someone being a Black Brother...
with that in mind, and from my limited personal perspective, I have to say that there was one person whom I closely got to know and who - to say at least - had a strong tendency toward becoming Black Brother; and there really was this 'shiny aura' that the person projected.
but it's a different kind of 'shiny' than that of the Sun - there was something insidious, slimy in it. -
I am reading Women of the Golden Dawn by Mary K. Greer, and copied this paragraph:
" Kenneth Mackenzie, who possibly originated the Golden Dawn cipher manuscripts, defined magic as “a psychological branch of science, dealing with the sympathetic effects of stones, drugs, herbs, and living substances upon the imaginative and reflective faculties.” While some writers have regarded magic as psychotherapeutic work (Francis King and Israel Regardie, for example), others have characterized it as the discovery of the unity within all duality, the truth behind all illusions. W.B. Yeats sought the knowledge of what he called “the single energetic Mind” and its pole, “the single Memory of nature,” both of which he believed could be evoked by symbols. But I like Florence Farr’s definition of magic best: “Magic is unlimiting experience.” That is, magic consists of removing the limitations from what we think are the earthly and spiritual laws that bind us or compel us. We can be anything because we are All. "
And I found a bunch of other definitions here:
www.spiralnature.com/magick/what-is-magick.htmlAll this was helpful to me. Helped me round out my understanding, somehow.
