Emotions and Magick
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I was wondering about the correlation between emotions and Magick. To be more precise, is Magick an emotional process and are emotions required in order for Magick to work?
To be sincere, this issue started whirling in my head quite recently, when I encountered a friend who is really instested in starting his journey, but has been suffering from some form of post-traumatic disorder; he claims that due to his disorder he cannot experience any emotions for about a decade and medical treatment couldn't resolvle his issue
So, if one cannot get absorbed into his/her emotions, nor get in any kind of ecstatic condition, could this be an unbreakable barrier for this individual?
In L.V.X.,
T.O.H.P.A. -
The pathological character of his emotions is likely to be more of a barrier than the seeming absence of them.
But this also depends on what you mean by magick. My answer would be somewhat different if we were talking about generating phenomena or if we were talkikng about personal (spiritual) evolution.
In either case, though, the benefit comes from having full access to one's emotions. What one does with them is a bit different in each case.
Realize, though, that "full access" to one's emotions isn't all that common among people generally regarded as mature, healthy adults. There is a learning process, even a healing process, for many. Your friend shouldn't let this get in his way. Instead, it should be one of the things true about him that dictates exactly what HIS way is.
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Thank you Mr. Eshelman. That was clarifying and I find your last paragraph very insightful for my friend's case; I Hope he will find it also.
Regarding Magick, I was referring to a path spiritual development. I understand the effects of Magick and the alteration of perception as having an emotional infrastructure, influencing also the subconscious mind. Unfortunately this is just my subjective way of understanding it. Since existence is pure joy and the sorrows are but shadows, I conceive the expression of shadows in such a rigid way (as my friend's disorder) as an obstacle which seperates one from his/her true self and the expression thereof.
@Dar said
"I would be happy and possibly more enlightened if this thread and it's participants laxed lyrical on the topics raised here.
"Uhm, what's "laxed lyrical"? I'm sorry but English isn't my first language
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"I would be happy and possibly more enlightened if this thread and it's participants laxed lyrical on the topics raised here."
Do you want us to lax lyrical
Or did you mean for us to wax?
Poems can be satirical
If we know how to relaxEmotions are like a kettle
Set on the range's coil
Electric flames will heat the metal
And the water starts to boilAnd when you make a cuppa tea
But are really doing something else
The kettle screams like a tantrum-throwing, psychotic banshee
While you're in the other room and you have to run into the room in panic mode and stub your toe on that chest, and pretty soon you're howling too!So, use your kettle frequently
But don't let it caterwaul
If we're going to have a cuppa tea
We need hot water after all -
I tend to put more stock in sensations, which are not the same things as emotions!
If you use emotions to track what is important to people around you, and to yourself, they are useful; if you think an emotion is proof of something more, you are fooling yourself—strong emotion proves nothing.
Sensations on the other hand are not emotions, but they are experiences! They can be anything from that weird shiver that runs up the spine, to the experience of stepping in a pile of warm horse shit in your socks.
You don't even need a physical stimulus to have a sensation. You can imagine that cold shower, or the spider in your hair, and the sensation is there in some measure.
Rule of thumb: sensations will produce emotions.
For this reason it is better to focus on having sensations and let emotions take care of themselves.
Emotions prove nothing! At best they are indications of those things in your life that have personal value—this is not a small thing, it's just not what most people are willing to accept about the limits of their feelings to explain the world to themselves.
EDIT, just clarified a thought, I hope...
Love and Will
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I'm noooooo poet!!! But, let's try this:
Haiku!My apologies to Av, Dar, and Veronica...our resident Poets.
Emotions are Fun
They separate from Silence
Love and Not are OneWe feel the divide
We love what we do not have
Wanting to collideTogether is where
we will always want to be
Needing Two to share.
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I don't like haikus
I wanna talk 'bout Magick
haikus piss me off
But seriously, although a ritual is based on sensation, the aren't the final results of it more coherent in emotional terms?
My biggest trouble with specific and long rituals is that:
- I can't easily reproduce the same consciousness and emotional effect with a precise ritual.
- I can't keep this effect for too long. I guess that's why we must "Enflame ourselves in prayer", in order to make the results of a Magickal operation permanent.
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@TOHPA said
"But seriously, although a ritual is based on sensation, the aren't the final results of it more coherent in emotional terms?"
Ritual is more than sensation. Final results? In the context of ritual, you are going to skew your "results" based on the projection of those "results".
"For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect."
@TOHPA said
"My biggest trouble with specific and long rituals is that:
- I can't easily reproduce the same consciousness and emotional effect with a precise ritual.
- I can't keep this effect for too long. I guess that's why we must "Enflame ourselves in prayer", in order to make the results of a Magical operation permanent."
These seem to be projections that can skew the "results" of any ritual.
Empty the Cup! Results will follow.
Expectations (intellectual constructs) will inhibit this. The best way to to rid oneself of the intellectual projections of ritual is repetition...as the Work is cumulative. "Enflaming ourselves in prayer" helps us bypass our intellectual projections, amongst other things...
EDIT: I think I sounded like I was avoiding the question, so I wanted to add...
In ritual, the "results" are not just coherent in emotional terms...they are coherent in MANY terms. This includes many "planes"...not just emotional ones (i.e. the intellectual plane, the creative plane, etc.).
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@TOHPA said
"Although I agree with what you said, I wouldn't consider these as projections, but mostly as patterns I have observed. That's why I stated previously that this is just a subjective point of view."
In this context, I meant "projections" in the way that they are like "expectations". Patterns that I have observed usually contributes to my expectations, based on my subjective pattern apprehension.
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Yes, I have.
I think you might be referrring to the following passage:
"Tree there is a flow down and up the positive and
negative aspects of our own subjective levels of consciousness, whereby the spirit
inspires mind, and mind directs the emotions, and the emotions form the etheric double,
and the etheric double inoulds the physical vehicle, which is the "earth" of the circuit."And this makes it more perplexed for the case of my friend I mentioned.
But I think Jim's reply was very helpful.