Red in Tooth and Claw.

[wolven7]

A Perfect Circle - [Thinking of You]--- I'm almost tired of fighting. Almost. I fight to teach people things, I fight to learn things, I fight to remember things that no one else remembers, and I fight to remember properly what everyone wants me to forget.

I fight to not be [unduly] arrogant, I fight to have my way, I fight to destroy that which would hinder me, and I fight to embrace it.

Now I fight to study what I want to study. I'm bloody and sore.

People think Thelema is about a life without limitations. People think that's what Magic[k/gfaohsre3qasfe] is about, as a whole. (Hutt - [Hole in My Soul]). Magic is programming. Hacking. Magic is knowledge of systems and limitations and Redefining them, because that's what we do. We place limits on ourselves, so that we may grow past them. There will always be more limitations, if only embodied by the need to grow past limitations, or the ability to sit and be limited.

Crowley, Freud, Jung. (Mirrormask - [A New Life]). They were all obviously (to me) working toward/with the same understanding, of symbols as imposing the limits whereby we live our lives. The differences being that Freud thought we were controlled By them, Crowley thought we could completely control them, and Jung thought they were there to be subjugated, there to serve the conscious mind.

Carmina Burana - [Tanz]--- And I think they were all half right. But that doesn't change the fact that they were staring the same zeitgeist right in the face. It's like when three people hit on the same theory, in three parts of the world, in the same year, having never talked to each other. The time is just right, and the information collects in the right way.

Moxy Früvous - [Horseshoes]--- And bam. Psychology of religion in theory and practice.

But I have to fight for it. Because it makes perfect sense, in here. So much sense it's scary clear. But when i go to talk about it... The words jumble. The understanding muddles, from my brain to anyone else's. So I fight for it, with myself, to make the words come, because I'm not ready to ask nicely.

Bobgoblin - [Safe]--- Now I'm going to go finish watching "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" and then clean up a bit.

Ta.

Comments

[sol-et-luna.livejournal.com]

People think Thelema is about a life without limitations. People think that's what Magic[k/gfaohsre3qasfe] is about, as a whole. (Hutt - [Hole in My Soul]). Magic is programming. Hacking. Magic is knowledge of systems and limitations and Redefining them, because that's what we do. We place limits on ourselves, so that we may grow past them. There will always be more limitations, if only embodied by the need to grow past limitations, or the ability to sit and be limited.

Of course there are limitations (duh). You need discipline in order to define and sharpen your will so that you can accomplish your Will.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Precisely. As you know I'm not big into ritual work, or the Order, but there are some things that are just obvious, as you become more involved in philosophy, religious studies, psychology and magic (shamanic, hermetic, chaos, techno, whatever).

One of those things is that we place limitations on Ourselves. be that by way of the world or our actions, it's an effort to sharpen our Selves and Will.

I figured you'd understand. :)

[sol-et-luna.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah. Apollonian and Dionysian, all over it like white on rice, or something.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Heheh. Thanks, again.

[unknownbinaries.livejournal.com]

Limits aren't always barriers. They can simply be delineations. Without these, everything would bleed into everything else.

[sol-et-luna.livejournal.com]

Giving Form to Force is the job of the Pillar of Severity. It serves as a necessary function on the Tree of Life. To be one with the Middle Pillar recognizes the importance of both.

[raoin.livejournal.com]

ok. maybe my own ignorance, or problems following everything you say thereof, will help you learn how to get your thoughts clearly from one person to the next...

the thing, and mind you i often skip these long passages because they hurt my brainmeats, i keep seeming to miss is how freud and jung are talking about magic... which i could go with as interpretational, i just havent read enough, or something. but then you say they all saw the same zeitgeist and thus was born "psychology of religion in theory and practice", not "a lineated system of religious magic"... is it that magic is talked about in the psychology of religion, and in that case it is theory and not practice, or that you interpret them as incorportating magic into the psychology of religion... in which case i find myself wondering what the fuck magic has to do with anything you were just talking about other than perhaps as a reasonable justification for why all three men suddenly had similar ideas at the same time, loops and whorls and all that go{o}d stuff.

what would really suck here is if you totally didnt understand at all what i just asked.

and i guess in some ways i'm being a hard ass here, since i could just go with the flow and assume you're going to explain this all in simple language with simple defiintions at some point, but i dont want to wait for the layman's book, and you ought to take my kind of people under consideration. half the time when i dont speak in class its because i've heard everything everyone said, and i understood what got said, but not why or how any of what was said had anything to do with what i thought we were talking about.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Modern magical practice is what it is because of the works of Aleister Crowley, JG Frazer, and Carl Jung.

Frazer first defined sympathetic magic as an attempt to control the nture of cause and effect, in the universe.

Jung dealt in symbollism, archetypes, and mythforms as the basic building blocks of the human consciousness.

Crowley incorporated (or some say merely saw how they were already incorporated) all of these things, and built the Thelemic tradition.

Simply, I interpret modern magical practice as having recognised something in the psychology of religion, and incorporating that into itself, overtly, for the purposes of furthering magical practice, as a whole.

The Joke That Explains the Connection (http://wolven.livejournal.com/1016871.html).

[not-hothead-yet.livejournal.com]

Uh, Hello? Isreal Regardie?

Madame Blavatsky?

Anthroposophy?


Crowley was by NO means "Teh man o' magick" alone.

[not-hothead-yet.livejournal.com]

and you really need to get into Wilhelm Reich and Dewey

[unknownbinaries.livejournal.com]

(I could be wrong here, but....)

Magick, at it's simplest terms, *is* psychology. Understanding of the Self, and of how we see out of our own skulls, leading to understanding of everything else around you, and the interconnectedness. Psychology unbound, maybe? This, branching into Jung's theory of Synchronicity, are why Crowley and Jung can be connected.

Freud...I have never been able to study enough of to understand why. Can't stand most of his theories, and how he applied his own problems to everyone else.

[not-hothead-yet.livejournal.com]

ditch Freud altogether and latch onto Lacan and Reich

[unknownbinaries.livejournal.com]

It's like when three people hit on the same theory, in three parts of the world, in the same year, having never talked to each other. The time is just right, and the information collects in the right way.

Like...Synchronicity, maybe? You should really bring that when you leave. It's short, and relatively easier to read than most of that kind of thing.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

It's the nature of it, as Jung saw it, yeah. Ideaspace, superflow, synchronicity, etc.

A place where we can see all of the factors, and read where they (we) lead and follow.