Magick!

[Room with a view]

one thing i've noticed is that bad shit happens to people that fuck me around spiritually. once had someone want to do a reading for me. i reluctantly agreed and she supposedly called up my ancestors to stand behind me and said i could ask of them what i would.

i said nah theres nothing i need to know from them but thanked them for living as they did so i could. couple weeks later this woman lost the plot, ended up naked in someones garden, spent 6 weeks in a psych ward learning how to speak again.

polynesian mysticism is not to be fucked with lightly.

 

[woops]

Demonic laughter

A vicar has warned his congregation of an increase in "satanic activity" after he found a severed sheep's head mounted on a pole outside a church in his Gloucestershire parish.

The Rev Nick Bromfield warned that "dark forces" were on the rise in the area and revealed a series of mutilated animal carcasses had been found...

He said..."I've been told there are people operating in a darker place and I've seen signs of satanic activity in the forest."

The vicar suggested that the geographical position of the forest close to the border between England and Wales could be a factor. "It's difficult to quantify but there is something about borders that attracts occult activity and the seclusion is also very attractive. They are allowing in forces that can do great damage."

But I think it's something that clergy in many rural parishes have experienced. But my message to the people is 'don't mess', because you risk being duped or unleashing forces you cannot control."

And the punchline...

Naturally it wasn't very pleasant and I burned it.

 

[vimothy]

Talking of zombie priests:

 

[Martin Dust]

Care to explain ?

Long, begging, sad and silly are just a few words I'd use to describe 99.99% of the letters but it did show me how lost some people are and how they'll cling to anything - sounds a bit cruel but I've never been one for wallowing in it, whatever it may be

 

[massrock]

From the psychedelic films thread but I'll continue it here. The Mysteries of the Organism film is fun but very silly, and hardly informative about WR's ideas.

I have read a lot of Reich’s stuff and I think it's absolutley fucking amazing, once you get what he's saying and how he's thinking. Incredible mind. One has to get past hostility to the idea of orgone energy though and start thinking in these terms which is where a lot of people will blanche.

Reich is hugely important, he got so much. I think also it's fair to say he did become delusional due to the appalling way he was treated. To me that doesn't discredit him in any way, it shows he really cared and was hurt.

Many years ago I was lucky enough to pick up a few of his books in a second hand shop for a couple of quid. The articulation of the mind / body equivalence, the absolute fundamental importance of breath and orgasm, understanding human functioning in bio-energetic terms, the retention (and possibility of release) of trauma and tension in muscle memory - these things and the emotional plague that results when they are not understood are crucial.

He got sick of trying to help the human race in the end, Listen Little Man, that's one angry screed - he doesn't hold back. Someone has excerpted a bit here. Been a while since I read it. http://www.listenlittleman.com/

Interested in the people that have followed up on his work and tried to apply it - aside from those of us who work quietly in anonymity. I picked up 'The Inward Revolution' by Deborah Benstead and Storm Constantine. Like so many of these things it looks like a cheap New Age self-help thing but it's actually pretty good, practical ideas for meditations and breathing exercises. Yes I've read Hyatt's stuff as well...

Also these more recently -

http://www.theemotionalplague.com/

Not read it but the excerpts lead me to think its contents might be somewhat controversial with some. Not necessarily a bad thing, this is what Reich had to struggle with throughout his work.

Also this, which seems to touch on numerous Dissensian themes.

http://www.second-congress-matriarchal-studies.com/DeMeo.html

 

[DannyL]

Massrock - just seen this post. Am busy so just this is just a quick reminder to self to reply at length. I've got that Saharasia book but haven't read it - seemed too grandiose to me, but I will get round to it. A friend of mine has stayed with him (De Meo) and talks about him very favorably. He's certainly one of the few people out there doing new and interesting work in the Reichian field.

The articulation of the mind / body equivalence, the absolute fundamental importance of breath and orgasm, understanding human functioning in bio-energetic terms, the retention (and possibility of release) of trauma and tension in muscle memory - these things and the emotional plague that results when they are not understood are crucial.

Spot on.

 

[DannyL]

BTW am currently reading John Holt's "How Children Learn" - every word of it shows that sensitivity to the living, moving, learning organism that you see in Reich's work. This is why I love his stuff - when you see the connections, it's everywhere.

 

[mistersloane]

BTW am currently reading John Holt's "How Children Learn" - every word of it shows that sensitivity to the living, moving, learning organism that you see in Reich's work. This is why I love his stuff - when you see the connections, it's everywhere.

I love, love John Holt's work - How Children Learn and How Children Fail should be compulsory reading for every parent, or anyone thinking about it. I like the way he went slightly mad as well by the end of the second book and in Escape From Childhood, in the way that alot of the 70s liberation people did - he kinda took things to their logical conclusions and the absolute logic and the absolute impossibility of a healthy society seemed to just, well, unhinge a whole bunch of people.

 

[catalog]

some interesting bits and bobs in this thread

 

[constant escape]

A bit from Grady Louis McMurty's thesis "The Millennial Glow: Myth and Magic in the Marxist Ethics".

"By magic I do not mean legerdemain. Magic is the control of things and events by a direct act of will on the part of the magician."

He was a Marxist follower of Crowley. He even became the head of Ordo Templi Orientis when Crowley died. I haven't read past the first couple pages of this paper, but such a sober interpretation of magic is intriguing.

Also, is there a thread about the mainline of the global historical esoteric tradition? Could be a cool study space for those interested.

 

[DannyL]

That reads a bit like a reworking of Crowley's definition of magick: The Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will

Capital W 'cos "True Will" was a central concept for him.

 

[constant escape]

Thats interesting, I hadn't heard that before. Could you elaborate on True Will? I get that Thelema, root-wise, means will (I believe).

The way that is phrased implies that one can conform/calibrate their will to whatever is happening, which, if sustained for a long enough duration, might grant insight into the trajectory, no?

Another one of his followers, Austin Osman Spare, had a cool way of explaining "magic".

In Two Tracts on Cartomancy: “Courage is the criterion of belief. To back one horse and fancy another means willing one thing and believing another. Magic (faith) is simply a means of unifying Desire and Belief.”

 

[DannyL]

I guess you could define it as life purpose. Crowley felt what was passed to him was a new dispensation in a religious sense,(superseding Christianity) which centred the individual and his or her path through life. There's a quote someone I can't quite remember properly which states that every individual has a trajectory like the orbit of a planet or a star and if s/he follows it, there will be no conflict or clashing. He received this dispensation when he channeled The Book of the Law in 1904 in Cairo. It's a short text, 3 chapters in verse, worth reading if you've not done so.

Spare wasn't really a follower of Crowley's - he thought he was a bit of a dick. There's an amazing chapter in Spare's Book of Pleasure where he slags off contemporary occultists and a lot of this was aimed at Crowley, including the winning phrase "unemployed dandies of the brothels". Spare says somewhere "magick is just one's ability to attract without asking".

Spare's work is a lot more cryptic and concealed than Crowley's and he avoided the big orders and voluminous teaching. They're kind of the yin and yang of English occultism.

 

[Murphy]

" I define magic as the art of causing changes to take place in consciousness in accordance with will..."


Dion Fortune - 'The Rationale of Magic', London Forum Volume 60, September 1934, pages 175 - 181

Spinoza and Schopenhauer got to will and desire centuries before Crowley. I admit to be intrigued by these realms after seeing this outfit from a late Neolithic, early Bronze Age shaman in Wiltshire.

Bronze Age shamanism?

This week, I’ll be moving forward into the Bronze Age, which dates to around 4000 years ago in Britain. Specifically, I’ll be exploring the possible shaman’s grave at Upton Lovel…

guerillaarchaeology.com

Same with this Iron Age burial from Essex, this person's 'kit' had everything

Druid of Colchester - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

There's loads to say about aeons, Picatrix, Corpus Hermeticum, how the hell you unpick Egyptian, Semitic, Greek and Roman conflations of ritual and belief, nevermind the remnants of what the Romans failed to eradicate in Britain. Reading a thing on Max Ernst, the magician who sought the myths of his times, highly recommended and it's this relationship with art that i tend to gravitate to rather than Golden Dawn inspired whatever

Max Ernst and Alchemy : A Magician in Search of Myth (S…

Surrealist artist Max Ernst defined collage as the "alc…

www.goodreads.com

Nadia Choucha's book is alright too

Surrealism and the Occult: Shamanism, Magic, Alchemy, a…

An art historian shows how many surrealists and their p…

www.goodreads.com

Summary - the theory is usually worth tucking into, but the O9A are out there lurking with their sinister paths and dark gods, so i'm not ready to go to war with them just yet.

 

[DannyL]

I like that Nadia Choucha book a lot.

I think the idea of magicians and Will (big old serious capital W) seems a bit antithetical to the surrealist playfulness. I think I'd prefer the latter? I can kinda see some overlap here with Crowley pupil Kenneth Grant. His books are very heavy on the art, he quotes Dali at length. Seems to be a bit of a surrealist crossing over into occultism at times.

 

[DannyL]

Up late with insomnia. The Bronze age shaman article is fascinating.

 

[Murphy]

Picturing a fusion of John Balance and Basil Fawlty. You might enjoy this text. Dense but fun

Inside the Neolithic Mind: Consciousness, Cosmos, and t…

What do the headless figures found in the famous painti…

www.goodreads.com

What utterly fascinates me is the the clear link between disability and ritual life in the archaeological record. Britain has a stack of burials of women with disfigurements and birth defects, buried with material culture indicative of seers and ritualist world-views in the Iron Age. If you look at a text like Táin Bó Cúailnge across the Irish Sea, rulers had to be unblemished. Fedelm wears a speckled coat and has spiralling eyes when she’s consulted about Connaught’s fate. The Morrigan are another feminine aspect.

Lot of crossover with the Ritual thread. The Topographia Hibernica has one of the more juicy (though undoubtedly biased) descriptions of belief, order, chaos and sacral leaders (the central hub in the 8 wheeled calendar)

“There is in the northern and farther part of Ulster, namely in Kenelcunil [Tyrconnell], a certain people which is accustomed to consecrate its king with a rite altogether outlandish and abominable. When the whole people of that land has been gathered together in one place, a white mare is brought forward into the middle of the assembly. He who is to be inaugurated, not as a chief, but as a beast, not as a king, but as an outlaw, embraces the animal before all, professing himself to be a beast also. The mare is then killed immediately, cut up in pieces, and boiled in water. A bath is prepared for the man afterwards in the same water. He sits in the bath surrounded by all his people, and all, he and they, eat of the meat of the mare which is brought to them. He quaffs and drinks of the broth in which he is bathed, not in any cup, or using his hand, but just dipping his mouth into it round about him. When this unrighteous rite has been carried out, his kingship and dominion has been conferred”.

Gezza getting snooty again on music and art - “their perfection of their art seems to lie in their concealing it, as if “it were the better for being hidden. An art revealed brings shame.” Hence it happens that the very things that afford unspeakable delight to the minds of those who have a fine perception and can penetrate carefully to secrets of the art, bore, rather than delight, those who have no such perception – who look without seeing, and hear without being able to understand. When the audience is unsympathetic they succeed only in causing boredom with what appears to be but confused and disordered noise …”.

Bards, ovates, druids, all ritualistic.

 

[DannyL]

Is there much interest here in what's known as the colloquially as the "grimoire revival"? I thought of it in relation to seeing Crowley and Grant mentioned. When I was first doing a lot of reading (and even some practice!) of magickal material Crowley and Grant were seen as the big guns, top of the tree (pun intended). Since then the focus of a lot of practitioners has shifted, travelling back a few centuries into the medieval and early modern world of the grimories. Grimoires can be probably best thought of as catalogues of spirits with instructions for their evocation, albeit often partial and fragmentary. I think this shift in focus has happened partly because of an opening up of the academy, with the internet making research materials easier to access and share. (I certainly experienced the urge to switch into reading academic material are a few years of reading magical literature).

Another factor would be the rise of small, independent presses. I assume there's been some change in access to publishing technology that's made these enterprises viable but we've seen lots of lovely looking "tailsmanic" books enter the market. Scarlet Imprint deserve an honorable mention here.

That seems the "cutting edge" these days. It's gone alongside the rediscovery and popularisation of older techniques like geomancy.

I'm not that well read in the field due to not being as obsessed as I was in my 20s, and that first flush of enthusiasm but it's an interesting area to dig into.

 

[constant escape]

Spare wasn't really a follower of Crowley's - he thought he was a bit of a dick. There's an amazing chapter in Spare's Book of Pleasure where he slags off contemporary occultists and a lot of this was aimed at Crowley, including the winning phrase "unemployed dandies of the brothels". Spare says somewhere "magick is just one's ability to attract without asking".

Interesting - I was a bit presumptuous, not having looked into their history. This arguably gives Grant a greater independence, in my mind.

Regarding grimoire revival: I hadn't truly looked into grimoires before, but I like your description of them. Do you think the accessibility of this material may have increased its practitioners, but decreased its rigor? Seeing as much o what was esoteric was rendered exoteric (Open-Source Order of the Golden Dawn). Or do you think there are more people who treat it seriously? I get the sense that 99% of such praxis is reducible to ineffectual larping, but my cynicism could be blinding me to genuine aspects of it.

 

[DannyL]

There's a lot one could say about Grant, but you can't deny he was hugely creative. He was a real synthieser - he predates chaos magic in that way for me, bringing together this huge, exciting range of influences. Though he can be very tedious to read (not that I've tried for a long time).

Re. grimoires, I like the writing of Julio Cesar Ody, who published a short but amazing book via Scarlet Imprint. He makes it clear how hardcore and difficult this work is. I couldn't begin to attempt it with my life set up as it is, and don't know if I'd want to. He'd very much agree with your criticism I think. On the other hand, you have people creatively borrowing from grimoires, using specific techniques, prayers, talisman etc. and mixing them with other stuff. I don't feel well enough informed to judge whether this is "correct", though it falls short of the procedures detailed in Julio's book. I do know a few people I rate as being creative and completely sincere and authentic working in this way. Al Cummins would be one, also recently published by SI (he's co-authored a book with Phil Legard of Hawthonn).