A long as shit response about Magic.

[wolven7]

Under the cutBelow is a response to this: 'Of Camels And Straws'. It is very long, and it is about Magic.

I don't feel the need to explain myself to you. But I do often feel the want. I may alter this for my Bluebird submissions, if sammaelhain is okay with that.

Read This, or don't.

[What makes you so fucking special?

It's that I'm just so God Damned Pretty.

Let's talk about the Vendor, there. What they initially seemed to be doing was to ignore the collective experience and reportage of hundreds if not thousands of years of practitioners, for a view which held no more nuance and depth than "Oooh Lookit the Pretty Drawings From This Other Book, They Must Be ANGELS!" When the history and work with this tradition has clearly shown them to in no way necessarily have the best interest of the individual as their motivating force.

Upon further contact and conversation, it was shown that this person had experiences with this system that differed from the standard, that brought about a different set of understandings than usually reported by people working with this set. I can't speak for anyone else, but my main issue, here, is that this kind of thing should be mentioned at the Outset of a page making "Angels" out of what most people in the field know as "demons." It gives us a base line of experience to work from, and from there I can say, "Well, that's not my experience with them, but if that's the lens that works for you, if that's the way the work gets done, more power to you."

The thing that I keep trying to say here, is that, in my view, reality is a matrix of inputs of beliefs: recursive, self-referential, reflexive and subjective. The ways of expressing these beliefs are more or less useful, in that they get more or less work done, on a number of levels. Either the personal worldview, the guiding principles of a group or community, or the rules by which we operate and try to manipulate the world around us, as a species. As we take certain conceptual tools for granted, like gravity, or mathematics, or the love of God for us, personally, we no longer question the fact that even if these are Things That Exist, they only have meaning and value because we put words to them, names to them, and input them into any number of fundamental systems as variables for figuring out and operating within the world around us.

Scientific methods give us wonderful understandings of the world, and of the facts That things are. They give us data points and allow us an understanding of how things interact. They are not truth. They are not even, themselves, fact. They are a system we have invented to describe something that we likely cannot ever fully understand and comprehend. Why not? Because Data is, literally, meaningless.

Without interpretation, without someone taking the time to imprint a Pattern on this chaos, to correlate Point to Point, it never becomes a duck, or a giraffe with a hat on. It always stays dots. And those dots aren't even dots, because the name "dot" references "a point in space" and the words "a," "point," "in," and "space" all reference yet more things. They are constructed definitions, with no truth or meaning, prior to our learning about them, prior to learning what they mean.

I can make a system a system where the first two of something I have is called "two." The second two is called "plak." I take two and add plak, the first time, I get five. They're words. They're names and descriptions of things, as complicated or simple as we choose to make them. They have as many input variables of causality as we choose to acknowledge.

Words and ideas come together, form plans, form systems and make things we can use to get through, day to day, to make cars, and life, and bottled water. If I can change what a thing means, what it does, in the worldview of 3 billion people, then I can functionally change what that thing IS. That's magic. If I can conceive of the world the right way, so that my ideas and patterns of understanding are transmitted instantaneously from one point to another (a phenomenon we know is possible; all we need to know is how to Do it), then I can make actions happen at a distance. That is magic. If I can understand how rain and the universe work on a level of symbol and meaning as well as particles and atoms, to the point where I understand exactly that (and maybe how) every single movement of my body, word from my mouth, intention, utterance, thought, and gesture affects the physical constituents of the universe, and the mental frameworks of every conscious being, ever, then i can influence what they think, what they believe to be true, what they know. And that is magic.

My magic is approaching these things with self-consciousness, with awareness that one understanding may not work, may not gel, but that there IS a common understanding of things, and that's not always a Bad place to start, even if you're only looking to burn it down and make bricks out of the mud and ashes.

The occult vendor is right. They're angels. They're happy sprites of love and peace, and kittens, wanting nothing but the best for her, and everyone she's ever known. Including me. But I'm right. They're dangerous, dark things that come from the worst parts of the meanings we imprint on the universe, the shadows creation casts, and will destroy you, as soon as look at you. Even her. The lens we use to view, to direct, to reflect the data we take in defines the thing that the world sees, from now on, about that thing. From now on, whenever I think about the Goetia, I will think about that woman, and her experiences, and her beliefs, and i will think about this conversation.

I think that you're right, that religion doesn't discriminate between sources, more often than not, and I can't speak for any tradition, and I'm not doing this because I feel that I need you to understand and agree with me, in order to get along with my work and my life. I honestly think that you and I will always disagree about this. "What makes me so fucking special" is that I'm completely okay with this. I think that, on the timeline of a universe-- with which I am not yet on par-- paradox is the true and natural state of things. You and I are simply local effects of that law.

Things Are, and we try to name them, arrange them, list them, to give them form, and then to give that form a use and a meaning. The meanings and uses that we derive may contradict, and even cause schisms, on a local level, but they are meanings that have weight, for those who use them. Even if that meaning is only "it's all randomness." But even that "randomness" is a name, a categorization, heavy-laden with even more implicit meaning. We cannot escape it. We are pattern-seeking, pattern-creating collections of symbols, concepts, reflection and chemicals.

We have to analyse ourselves, our beliefs, our methods and sets of conceptual lenses we find to be the most useful, and beneficial to us, in our lives (whatever that means). My preferences and patterns say that Hitler was wrong, as did the those of the winners of the second world war. Why? I don't rightly know. Disgust? Fear? Righteousness? All of these are concepts that can be unpacked, down until the box is empty. The fact remains that I feel these things, I've investigated them, I've put myself on the other side, as much as I could, with war, and poverty, and hatred, and a people dying, because the world didn't care, a people who needed strength and a leader, and along came a man named Adolph, who saw that the problems of his people could be traced to One Source... But I disagree. Strongly. I think he was Wrong. What does that mean?

His worldview was so antithetical to sense to something that gets things done in a way that I understand and can see as beneficial, that I think it needed to be removed. In another sense, he was right. It was the method and means by which the world needed to function to achieve his aims... But we have our preferences, we have our beliefs and our spheres of knowledge, and we have to take a stand, somewhere. We have to have a perspective from which we view things, or nothing gets done. We have to have a vantage on which to stand. Fundamentally, with constant reflection, constant assessment from the world around us and other points of view, I believe that place has to be In Ourselves.

I hope that... did Something for you.]

And Now I'm going to bed.

Comments

[sammhain.livejournal.com]

More than Ok.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Okay, I should have the applicable edits for you, in the next few days.

[sammhain.livejournal.com]

looking forward to it

[sadistic-apollo.livejournal.com]

What's weird is that I think Einstein said the same thing that you just did, except with numbers.

For what it's worth, I think yer right and that her possible misidentification of her power sources alignments is one of the reasons I have a disapprove of modern magic use (outside of way advanced sciences), of course, it's all subjective.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

What's weird is that I think Einstein said the same thing that you just did, except with numbers.

Hah! That's perfect on a number of levels.

[sadistic-apollo.livejournal.com]

funny how that works out, isn't it.

[raidingparty.livejournal.com]

I especially liked the phrase "unpacking until the box is empty".

[ryan-valentine.livejournal.com]

For the record .. in the grand history of necromancy, the vast majority of the demons and devils of the western tradition ARE actually angels, and they ARE traditionally described as beings of light.

For the record .. for the statements "I'm right. They're dangerous, dark things that come from the worst parts of the meanings we imprint on the universe, the shadows creation casts, and will destroy you, as soon as look at you.", to be correct you should take out the "we's" and the "you's" and replace them with "me's" and "I's". The subjective truth of both positions only stands as far as your willingness to be entirely self-referential.

Creation is a shadow, according to your model here, it casts nothing and is empty of any meaning beyond that which you have given it. You describe the mechanic by which YOU demonize those aspects of creation which frighten or confuse you. According to your model, death/destruction is as illusory as objective truth, and insofar as that is true of it, the books author is actually describing these daemon in a manner more in keeping with your wold-view than the one you have expressed here yourself.

Here end my day of inappropriate internet-comments.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

But the "we's" and "you's" are the ones who help the Me's and I's do the work of creating the world. There isn't a vacuum, just an infinite swirling, combining and recombining totally full and empty void of absolute existence.

Everything and nothing, all at once, and never.

[ryan-valentine.livejournal.com]

Then your we and you applies equally to your opponents perspective, in this case your not actually both right, your both horribly wrong. If its we's and you's, then you are discussing an objective reality, and describing it wrong, cuz you tried. Follow? Its the Dialectic. The opposing positions cannot be absolved into the unity of an objective (or paradoxical,) union unless they remain subjective.

There is also no 'Other' in your world view, unless you have placed them there or invested meaning in them, its still subjective.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Intersubjectivity means it everything leans on and creates everything else, while creating and negating itself.

[ryan-valentine.livejournal.com]

Not exactly ... you still can't describe a subjective 'object' (in the philosophical sense that all things are objects,) with objective references.

I am not disagreeing with your perspective on the nature of the universe, I am saying that you castrate your argument with bad semiotics. The paradox your attempting to describe in that paragraph escapes you because you treat one perspective as subjective (They're angels. They're happy sprites of love and peace, and kittens, wanting nothing but the best for her, and everyone she's ever known...) but your own as objective (They're dangerous, dark things that come from the worst parts of the meanings we imprint on the universe, the shadows creation casts, and will destroy you,).

Thats not a paradox and is easily construed as arrogance. I try to point out in my first comment, that you in fact don't have a history of shared belief behind you ... the perspective you have on the demons of the western tradition is only a few hundred years old and flies in the face of the much longer history of our Arte, and the daemons respective histories. I point this out because it places the onus on you to confirm the validity of your subjective perspective, not that of your 'Other'. It still revolves around the individual as its axis, you are that axis. Not me. I don't agree with your perspective on the devils of the western tradition, I don't think they represent those things at all ("the worst parts of the meanings we imprint on the universe, the shadows creation casts, and will destroy you, as soon as look at you ..."), you believe that. You obviously have your reasons for believing that (reasons probably not unlike those I once had for a similar opinion,) but those reasons remain yours.

If you describe your perspective in the subjective sense, then you describe inter-subjectivity (which is generally just refered to as Relativity, and should be understood as something separate from Objectivity .. like Einstein explained.) If you describe yourself in an objective sense then you are wrong. According to any dialectic that is wrong, Hegels, the Jains, the Buddhists .. all models of belief which share as a basis your perspective on the nature of the universe and comprise their Dialectics to mirror that model (which I assume is what you are attempting to do here.)

So .. you know, I thought I would point that out.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

No, I'm treating BOTH as equally subjective, equally objective. Mine is right. Hers is right. Mine is wrong, to her. Hers is wrong, to me. And all the possible permutations of those components.

[ryan-valentine.livejournal.com]

Not according to every mystical-philosophical-rational dialectic known to the history of mankind.

But I will leave this alone now cuz I seem to be making you angry.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

My placement of My position: Subject. What I do? I do. What she does? She does. What We Make? Subjective, instantiated as Object, that we then use to make more subjects.

Everything I've said boils down to that, right there. Every subject comes together to make something that we treat as an object, even if it's really just a view to more subject. But the more subject we pour into it, the more we find it, the more solid and real it seems.

The subject/object duality is false and the only truth. The philosophical art of dialectic is empty without opposition. I am saying that reality is nothing but opposition, even to the idea of opposition and its own reality. You, I think, are misunderstanding me.

[ryan-valentine.livejournal.com]

No .. I get it. I just think your describing in a way that leads the reader away from that conclusion. Anyhoo, enjoy your evening!

[wolven.livejournal.com]

And I think it leads them directly to it. Cheers.

[sammhain.livejournal.com]

" Its the Dialectic. "

You win the internet.

[sammhain.livejournal.com]

also traditionally even the "good" angels are prone to fucking up humanity's shit.

[sammhain.livejournal.com]

"What they initially seemed to be doing was to ignore the collective experience and reportage of hundreds if not thousands of years of practitioners"

You mean like chaos magic theory? Or to an extent Crowley, or to an even greater extent Spare?

"When the history and work with this tradition has clearly shown them to in no way necessarily have the best interest of the individual as their motivating force."

Traditionally Angels don't have that either.

"I can make a system a system where the first two of something I have is called "two." The second two is called "plak." I take two and add plak, the first time, I get five. They're words."

Linguistics is a bit more complicated than that, just sayin'

"Words and ideas come together, form plans, form systems and make things we can use to get through, day to day, to make cars, and life, and bottled water."

Are you familiar with the notion tha language is a virus? If yes, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts.

"paradox is the true and natural state of things."

One of my favorite quotes:

"The world of science lives fairly comfortably with paradox. We know that light is a wave, and also that light is a particle. The discoveries made in the infinitely small world of particle physics indicate randomness and chance, and I do not find it any more difficult to live with the paradox of a universe of randomness and chance and a universe of pattern and purpose than I do with light as a wave and light as a particle. Living with contradiction is nothing new to the human being." - Madeleine L'Engle

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Again, the point is what is said At The Outset. Crowley's Work, the construction of Chaos Magick, the shit Jesus did? All of that said, up front, "So here's this thing, right? But I'm going to do THIS to it. See how that's better?"

Angels as generally/traditionally used? Tools of the majority-benevolent Higher Power™, either "Out There" or "In Ourselves." Or both. What they do for or to us may not, at first, Seem to benefit us but it is, more than not, for our own good.

Now, I think that's a bullshit story we all tell ourselves to deal with getting fucked over, or having to fuck someone over, but that's neither here nor there, for the moment.

Linguistics is a LOT more complicated than that, but my point is that I can make a ridiculously complicated language with interlocking, constantly changing variables, and use that to describe things we deal with, every day, in a way that would be internally consistent, but would make no direct, logical sense to those trying to learn from outside of it.

I think that language can act as a virus, but that it more often acts, itself, as a vector of transmission for other conceptual "diseases."

And That is why we love Madeleine L'Engle.

[sammhain.livejournal.com]

"Again, the point is what is said At The Outset. Crowley's Work, the construction of Chaos Magick, the shit Jesus did? All of that said, up front, "So here's this thing, right? But I'm going to do THIS to it. See how that's better?""

I'd argue the only reason you see that, is because the places you see it are instructional texts that at a point were a signifigant departure. The vendor, I don't think is attempting to teach anything, and certainly isn't a radical departure from very common place things like substituting pagan god names in judaic ritual.

I also just think that when people invoking superheroes becomes relatively acceptable in occult circles it's time to stop pretending the histories of older texts are anything other than stories we should feel free to rewrite.

"Angels as generally/traditionally used? Tools of the majority-benevolent Higher Power™, either "Out There" or "In Ourselves." Or both. What they do for or to us may not, at first, Seem to benefit us but it is, more than not, for our own good."

Are you familiar with angels in scipture? I am they are tool of vengeance more often than not they are looking out for god's plan not the best interest of a given individual. As an example I'm guessing it wasn't particularly benneficial for Lot's wife to be turned into a pilliar of salt. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorah, the slaying of Egypt's first born these were not corrective measures they were acts of revenge.

Some theology talk about guardian Angels, but in total Angels as bebevolent forces toward humanity is not supported by mythology.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

They were put as messengers. Sometimes that message was "You Fucked Up," and there was fire. Maybe not in the best interest of everyone, but Lot came out of it, okay, as did Moses, and the Israelites. Those were delivered messages by angels, or were told how to not be harmed as work was done BY those angels which benefited them.

Again, standard community interpretation, otherwise expressed as Tough Love/Message Service.

It hasn't been until recently that people have seen angels as "All Good And Light," and I would argue the shift in that view is because there has been a shift in how people understand what is "good." In the past, it was good to do the will of God. Angels did the will of God and so they were good. They punished those who did not do the will of God, and so that was good, too.

Now, most people tend to think of good as "What Is Good FOR You." If angels are to be Good, now, they must do what is good For People. Consequently, they tend to re-evaluate the reported operations of angels, in the past, through their current rubric of understanding, through which they come to the conclusion that all that ass kicking? Must have been for our own good.

As I said, not the interpretation with which I necessarily agree, but it is the prevalent one, in the modern mind, more often than not.

[sammhain.livejournal.com]

"They were put as messengers"

For the most part messengers in the same sense that mob enforcers are messengers. They weren't god's postal service.

"but Lot came out of it"

If you consider having your wife and home turned to pillars of salt "ok" I guess. Sodom and Gomorah was not a messege to lot it was a punishment on those cities, and scripture is crystal clear that it is punishment and retribution.

"as did Moses"

God denied Moses entry into the promised land, I'm not sure how "Ok" that is either.

"and the Israelites"

Enslavement and persecution by Rome, the destruction of their temple, and later the Holocaust..again hardly a case for they did ok.

"I would argue the shift in that view is because there has been a shift in how people understand what is "good." In the past"

I think it has more to do with marketing to be honest. The core message of christianity that god rewards the faithful and punishes the wicked has been unchanged. Cutsety angels are a product of maketers, and new age trends (though you could argue that painting them as babies may have played a part)

"Now, most people tend to think of good as "What Is Good FOR You." "

This is my point. In your post you specifically mwention the best interest of the individual..now you're changing the focus. This is kind of what Ryan was discussing as well. In a sense what you mean shines through, but your word choice isn't especially precise.

"they tend to re-evaluate the reported operations of angels, in the past, through their current rubric of understanding, through which they come to the conclusion that all that ass kicking? Must have been for our own good."

Most people are unfamiliar with he biblical angels, if you want proof ask someone to describe a seraph. Descriptions exist in the bible and they're more often than not monsterous.

"As I said, not the interpretation with which I necessarily agree, but it is the prevalent one, in the modern mind, more often than not.
"

It's the pop culture undestanding perhaps, but not the theological understanding, moreove you'll note I specifically adressed the traditional role not modern interpretations.

Smilarly then, what reason is there to find fault in this vendor making a modern interprtation that flies in the face of tradition?

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Again, i say that it's the fact of the statement at the outset. If you're presenting a thing as different than the original conceptions, and You Know Why, and Know that other people are going to give you shit for it, and catching that shit Isn't your primary goal-- as it seemed not to be hers, but could arguably have been Crowley's, Jesus', and Chaos Magician's-- then you say something, upfront.

It gives us a place to start from, if nothing else.