Magic. In case you didn't figure it out:

[wolven7]

Tool - [Forty Six & 2]--- I think that magical practice is, necessarily, a psychological discipline. This is why I've been re-reading Jung, and thinking about Campbell and Freud, and Crowley.

Sin - [The Day I Killed Myself]--- There is something in the practice of magic that demands the understanding of the self, or the demise of the practitioner, and the understanding of that demise, if the practitioner is to continue. The continual phoenix, crucible, Ouroburos process of refinement and transmutation. It's what we do, to survive, if not evolve.

That's all I've got, for now. Back later.

Comments

[unknownbinaries.livejournal.com]

Mm. I don't like seeing it as a psychological discipline. Implies that it is in the mind, too much, and with the 'only' pejorative.

But that is a huge part of it, at the same time, and part of why I stick with it even through all of the shit that's been threatening to break that down on me. It's a worthwhile endeavour if only for the self-understanding that goes with it. Because once you get past that, then you can apply that to, and get to know, things around you.

[lupusfeuer.livejournal.com]

I feel that supposition is based on a certain (and I think most effective) school of magical thought.

There are those who think that magic is the literal imposition of personal will upon the world by the force of will itself and that the forefronting of the ego, and thus the antithesis of self understanding, is what makes the magical world go round, that the creation of magic is the forcing of the universe to conform to one's self, not transmuting one's one spiritual corpus to transmute the ether of what is greater.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

I don't see those as different things.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Precisely. It all cycles back around.