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wolven7I may expound on this later but I have the idea that magic is, at base, the idea that symbolic and relational associations can be made to affect so-called concrete or observable/objective realities.
Starting from that single premise as your framing structure, look at the world around you, and really think about what it is that you do, day to day.
Time to go get my brakes fixed. Back soon.
[Edit: So, let's look at it this way: The act of interfacing the more "subjective" symbolic systems of represenation and understanding with the agreed-upon "objective" concept of reality is an engagement of what I like to think of as active intersubjectivity. What I mean is, when we seek to express the more independent representational models of our own symbolic content, with those of others whose interiority we tend to assume is in some way similar to ours, we must, perforce, come to an agreement of meaning in re: data and informational frameworks, and we tend to come by these in a combination of happenstance and intention.
What I mean to say is, we have to try to understand each other, before we can communicate with each other. This is the base fact of human conception, language, and communication. We make the assumption that another mind is like ours and, for the most part, we're right, right? But there are symbols and associations in my mind which are not in your mind, which must be translated to your symbols and your associations, for you to understand.
The act of Analogy is the seeking of basic units of comparison such that we can build a database on which to stake all future translational exchange.
The idea behind magic is the idea that I can have this translational exchange with the brute forces of the "Natural World," as they're generally concevied, via a direct linkage to and appropriation of those forces. The fact is, we already construct symbolic and conceptual intermediary systems to allow us to approach and access the world we inhabit. (KMFDM - [Fait Accompli]). Physics, mathematics, lingusitics, and psychology are not found systems; we create them based on observation and best guesses and we use them as best we can to control the randomness of the world around us, and this is perfectly fine. The problem comes when we start to think that these best guesses are anything other than that, and that our success at this endeavour is anything other than a little abilty to correlate patterns combined with a lot of luck.
Tori Amos - [Caught a Lite Sneeze]--- Magic is the belief that we can do this via different intermediaries or, in some cases, sans any intermediaries at all. It is the desire to take the internal symbolic architecture that we've created and accumulated over the years of our being alive and cognizant and to apply it directly to the mechanisms of the more widely-agreed-upon universe.
Lunachicks - [Passenger (Iggy Pop Cover)]--- My beliefs, my will, my desires, can be framed in such a way, through such a technology as to speak or communicate them directly to the symbol systems of others (Minds), the mechanisms of the universe (actions/natural occurences), or the behaviour of groups (social perceptions/interactions). (Electric Hellfire Club - [Invocation/ Age of Fire]). Now it's true that this is not as easily done as simply communicating and/or working toward these desires via more accepted means and mechanisms, but it is also true that, when it does work, it is more completely in line with the desires and the mode of our thoughts, often to a surprising degree.
It is necessarily true that Coincidences are those events which Coincide, but it's not enough for them to simply occur together. Instead, for us to note a coincidence, one or more things must coincide in a way that seems somehow meaningful, when framed together. (Soul Coughing - [Rolling]). When these things are approached as "more than mere coincidence," either via their intensity/poignancy, or by their repetition within a short period of time, we might label them "synchronicity," and say that they are "acausally but meaningfully connected."
Where was the thread of this going... Oh right. With the proper environment, the proper symbolic framing of space, and the proper conception of will, deisre, associative communication, and action, one can bring thought into action.
And that's magic.
Feel free to disagree. There are a few of you lurking, out there, from whom I'd especially like to hear.
Yes. I'm talking to You. (7.27pm)]
Starting from that single premise as your framing structure, look at the world around you, and really think about what it is that you do, day to day.
Time to go get my brakes fixed. Back soon.
[Edit: So, let's look at it this way: The act of interfacing the more "subjective" symbolic systems of represenation and understanding with the agreed-upon "objective" concept of reality is an engagement of what I like to think of as active intersubjectivity. What I mean is, when we seek to express the more independent representational models of our own symbolic content, with those of others whose interiority we tend to assume is in some way similar to ours, we must, perforce, come to an agreement of meaning in re: data and informational frameworks, and we tend to come by these in a combination of happenstance and intention.
What I mean to say is, we have to try to understand each other, before we can communicate with each other. This is the base fact of human conception, language, and communication. We make the assumption that another mind is like ours and, for the most part, we're right, right? But there are symbols and associations in my mind which are not in your mind, which must be translated to your symbols and your associations, for you to understand.
The act of Analogy is the seeking of basic units of comparison such that we can build a database on which to stake all future translational exchange.
The idea behind magic is the idea that I can have this translational exchange with the brute forces of the "Natural World," as they're generally concevied, via a direct linkage to and appropriation of those forces. The fact is, we already construct symbolic and conceptual intermediary systems to allow us to approach and access the world we inhabit. (KMFDM - [Fait Accompli]). Physics, mathematics, lingusitics, and psychology are not found systems; we create them based on observation and best guesses and we use them as best we can to control the randomness of the world around us, and this is perfectly fine. The problem comes when we start to think that these best guesses are anything other than that, and that our success at this endeavour is anything other than a little abilty to correlate patterns combined with a lot of luck.
Tori Amos - [Caught a Lite Sneeze]--- Magic is the belief that we can do this via different intermediaries or, in some cases, sans any intermediaries at all. It is the desire to take the internal symbolic architecture that we've created and accumulated over the years of our being alive and cognizant and to apply it directly to the mechanisms of the more widely-agreed-upon universe.
Lunachicks - [Passenger (Iggy Pop Cover)]--- My beliefs, my will, my desires, can be framed in such a way, through such a technology as to speak or communicate them directly to the symbol systems of others (Minds), the mechanisms of the universe (actions/natural occurences), or the behaviour of groups (social perceptions/interactions). (Electric Hellfire Club - [Invocation/ Age of Fire]). Now it's true that this is not as easily done as simply communicating and/or working toward these desires via more accepted means and mechanisms, but it is also true that, when it does work, it is more completely in line with the desires and the mode of our thoughts, often to a surprising degree.
It is necessarily true that Coincidences are those events which Coincide, but it's not enough for them to simply occur together. Instead, for us to note a coincidence, one or more things must coincide in a way that seems somehow meaningful, when framed together. (Soul Coughing - [Rolling]). When these things are approached as "more than mere coincidence," either via their intensity/poignancy, or by their repetition within a short period of time, we might label them "synchronicity," and say that they are "acausally but meaningfully connected."
Where was the thread of this going... Oh right. With the proper environment, the proper symbolic framing of space, and the proper conception of will, deisre, associative communication, and action, one can bring thought into action.
And that's magic.
Feel free to disagree. There are a few of you lurking, out there, from whom I'd especially like to hear.
Yes. I'm talking to You. (7.27pm)]
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Indeed
Date: 2011-01-25 06:58 pm (UTC)Re: Indeed
Date: 2011-01-25 07:41 pm (UTC)But I think we have more options at our disposal than merely making ourselves into day-to-day Shivas.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-25 09:32 pm (UTC)Watch me drunkenly asess the problem with H+:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgpvsSMlD0Y
no subject
Date: 2011-01-25 10:16 pm (UTC)Regardless, this will be the first time I've seen your moving face and heard your voice, together. A Momentous Day.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-25 10:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-25 10:51 pm (UTC)But hey, let's go for a stream of consciousness and see what happens.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-26 04:32 am (UTC)more way i succeed in waking up..
no subject
Date: 2011-01-26 05:30 am (UTC)Really looking forward to getting into it.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-26 03:46 pm (UTC)Heinlein's comments on what a human should be apply here.
We're all born naked, and with awareness comes the desire to clothe ourselves. This doesn't mean we're clothed, simply that we think we are. Magic is the acceptance of the nakedness, the aloneness of us and the implications of that.
The human urge to systematise and order means that the chaos of the Out-world is auto-magically shaped, and captured - rendered into something intelligible, even if it is simply rendered as screaming-shit-yer-pants-Otherness.
Of course, the fun bit is that everything is born of sensory perception. All is Mind. Your Mind. Re-ordering your perception means that your metaphors change - the interlinking connexions have shifted.
If magic is communication, then what are the metaphors employed by the Out-world, the world which though external to you, is still *you*. Where does the sense of D as identity meet Mercurius, meet the mediator, meet say, Hermes?
Where's the crossroads in you?
Exploring the metaphorical signpost there propels us beyond the conscious mind, slips past the contouring and could propel us from say, Midgard, or Malkuth, into a myriad of other worlds.
How would you learn the language of birds, the tongue of angels? The secret name of the wind, or speak with the voice of the thunder? Accepting that you are the centre of your world, the axis-mundi, means accepting that all others are also the centre of their worlds.
And, somewhat horrifically, that you will never know them completely or accurately, just as you have said.
I find meditating on the Dagaz rune helps with this whole headfuck. It makes sense really - if you are the axis mundi, you're Yggdrasil. You're the bloody worldtree. Except your concious self needs sacrificing to the larger Self, imbuing with the vastness off the mediator - the communicator, the speaker of magic words.
You get the picture. In your back brain. Tree rooted in meaningless chaos, gaining nourishment from it. Of course, all of these are my metaphors, but given your name, well, the semiotics are there, yes?
Follow them. They will express themselves naturally.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-27 05:34 am (UTC)Where's the crossroads in you?
I always appreciate the koan-like nature of your questions. I find that they aren't to be ready-answered so much as considered and mentally masticated.
My base answer is "Everywhere."
And that is the basis for my next answer...
no subject
Date: 2011-01-26 10:27 pm (UTC)1. "But there are symbols and associations in my mind which are not in your mind, which must be translated to your symbols and your associations, for you to understand."
The model of mind that this sentence implies is oddly cartesian, except in the place of pure internal thought you have the notion of a personal, private symbolic organization - a language, if you will. I would refer you to Wittgenstein's critique of private language theory in the Philosophical Investigations for further consideration/I can talk to you about it tomorrow. In short, I don't think that if there is a symbol which is in my mind but not in your mind, that it can be communicated (or thought) at all.
2.
I am on board with approaching the division of the natural world into systems for our science as made rather than found, of course, but when you write:
"Magic is the belief that we can do this via different intermediaries or, in some cases, sans any intermediaries at all. It is the desire to take the internal symbolic architecture that we've created and accumulated over the years of our being alive and cognizant and to apply it directly to the mechanisms of the more widely-agreed-upon universe."
I am unclear first of all what you mean by "different intermediaries," and the notion that we could do this without intermediaries at all makes no sense to me. In the case of scientific systems the theories and the language used to render phenomena in the natural world understandable to human beings is fundamentally made by and for humans. They emerge out of a cultural context and a history and are tested is by their predictive power (though this is, as we know, not an unproblematic). If you could expound upon this I would find that illuminating.
3. What does it mean to say something is acausally but meaningfully linked? As human beings we may ascribe significance to certain unlinked events (to use a blase example I might make a joke about organ harvesting and happen to note that a television program I watch later that night is on that very subject), but this tells me one of two things. Either 1., by virtue of my attentiveness I was likely to latch onto organ harvesting because it is unusual or disturbing rather than, say, other aspects of the television program or other conversations I had that day, in which case that tells me something not about the coincidence but about the likelihood that I am going to ascribe significance to one thing rather than another. This has no inroad into the event itself; the event, such as it was, emerged purely out of the contingent happenstance of my valuation system and my psychology. Or 2., there has been some sort of movement in the culture, whether new research or a popular novel I am unaware of, which is the higher distal cause of the coincidence (perhaps I heard something about organ harvesting on NPR and had forgotten about it). In which case they /are/ distantly but causally related to one another (springing from the same informational source(s)).
Just some thoughts.
R
no subject
Date: 2011-01-27 06:46 am (UTC)I can tell you that my memory of a particular summer evening feels kind of like how dark purple or dark-beige, almost orange wood grain looks in a particular light, and that radical analogy gives us a place to start. Because you don't have that evening, in your mind, and there has to be something, there, to convey more than simple data about the day, so that you can get a sense of what it Felt Like, of what it Meant to me, before we can truly begin to have a conversation about (in this case) how we approach death.
2) By "intermediaries," here, I'm talking about the level of removes we are from our base perceptions/experiences of the world to our "upper-level" concepts and explanatory systems. So what I mean to say when I say "no intermediaries" is no externalised language, no conceptually framed action. Now, in a sense, this isn't precisely possible/true, once we attain language, but what we can do is approach the brute will and desire of a thing, and seek to impose it on the world.
Hm. Oddly enough, in this case, the more general and inclusive we could be, in a magical system-- meaning the more concepts and associations we have for, say, snow-- the easier it would be to impose our will on the shape of the world. This would be because our will, being so vast, nuanced, and connotative, fits into All of the conceptual/symbolic association receptors for that thing, in the world around us. Interesting magical theory, bit, there. Thank you.
So, by "Different Intermediaries" I mean only those sets of conceptual framing which
3) By "acausally but meaningfully linked" Jung tended to mean that the things themselves don't link one to another. Your joke about organ harvesting did not cause that episode to be on TV, though it did make you more likely to encounter it. In that sense, I think that Jung would accept your second premise, but he might (and I Definitely would) widen that set of top-level causes to include non-physical/observable events. But, barring the "Heard It And Forgot About It" possibility, the distal cause does not apply to the direct experience you have of: Joke-->Median Elapsed Time-->Television Show.
And, even allowing for the case of HIAFAI, depending on the timeframe in which you heard about it, or what, precisely the content of the NPR article happened to be, that wouldn't account for the show coming up later that same night, which is the kind of timeframe usually required to mark a two-part event as synchronicity rather than coincidence. If, instead, the article mentioned that the episode would be on, later that day, that reduces the meaningfulness of the coincidence, using "meaningful" here to mean "Shocking," or "Attention Arresting."
The thing about a synchronicity event is that it's supposed to grab your attention in a shocking manner, by placing in close context/contact A) something you find meaningful and B) the object of that meaning.
See above-linked diagram.