Various Topics

Today's post is dedicated to a few random thoughts and catching up on some questions that I haven't answered yet.

Random Thought #1 -- Hedonism

A friend posted on Facebook that she thought hedonists were lucky because they were not concerned with spiritual issues and experienced all this 'pleasure'. I can empathize with  her point as at one time I agreed with her.  I no longer agree.

To me, both approaches to life are the result of a particular bias towards pleasure. Those that view pleasure has unhealthy spiritually have not yet learned that the Logos is just as present in the body as anywhere else. Pleasure comes from the Logos itself. It is as if these people value pain over pleasure. In reality, these things are equal. Each has its uses. Furthermore, these folks are often adopting a puritanical Christian viewpoint, whether they be Christian or not, and worse yet, do not understand the theology and practices of those whom view the ascetic life of value.

The hedonist is not anti-spiritual by definition, though he or she could be by personality. The trap of the hedonist is the idea that their self-worth is enhanced by the number of sexual conquests; whom he or she can drink under the table; when he has better toys; or a nice house etc. Furthermore, many that live this life-style simply can not say no to their pleasure of choice. This is little more than the act of a slave.

Those that can sleep with whom they will, making wise choices of partner(s), drink when they will, making wise choices of time, place, location and amount, and other like hedonistic acts are simply living life through its pleasures and pains. I see no harm in that. Denying oneself sex or a drink or whatever one's pleasure out of a sense of guilt or biased judgment may be as harmful as indulging for one is denying a part of oneself.

Random Thought 2 - Of the Gods

John Michael Greer makes the point in "A World Full of Gods"  that an omnipresent one-god philosophy breaks down when acts of injustice occur and "God" is no where to be found and does not correct the situation. However, polytheism expresses this situation just fine when it says the Goddess Justice was simply not there at the time.  That is a very simplistic redaction of his argument. Those into intellectual studies should read this book to enhance or augment their intellectual understanding of polytheist philosophy.

The philosophies are incomplete in assuming the other reality does not co-exist at the same time. I've experienced gods. Those that are immanent can and do manipulate the reality of their followers be it for good or ill as they have plans that do not necessarily take our own desires into account. The more transcendent gods can be present but not in a way that alters reality in a concrete way that we can perceive. If this can occur, then an omni-present god could behave the same way.

Question 1: How Did I Get My HGA

My practice has been primarily through a Golden Dawn lodge. After doing quite a bit of personal alchemy there, I used Crowely's Bornless Ritual daily for a couple of weeks. That brought about contact. I must be clear that I have had contact, I know his name,  his sigil, his history. However, there is a difference between that and full continual presence this I do not have yet in a way that I can perceive. That is why I will say things like "he is hiding something," or "he seemed distant" or other such things. When full contact occurs it is like being with a immanent god form. Someday, I will have fully actualized the relationship, not yet.

Question 2: Poke Runyon Technique

I have tried to explain this various times in this space but I still get questions about what I mean. Poke Runyon has a book and DVD out explaining his technique. It is worth a read for the moderately experienced practitioner as well as the book buyer that reads but does little magick. In these works he outlines a system with its own practices and tools etc. I do not criticize his system as I have never participated in it nor have I ever met Poke. I do find his idea to be interesting. Warning the LBRPs done on the video are a bit questionable and even a bit silly looking.

He has popularized, to the chagrin of some, that goetic 'demons' are to be evoked through a mirror that is gazed into by the practitioner until the point that the practitioner's face morphs into that of the spirit. Some find this idea to be dangerous. Poke does not as he ascribes to the theory that demons are merely a part of the subconscious. I do not agree with him on this issue. However, I do not feel the practice is as dangerous as some would have you believe assuming your are experienced enough at your Work.

Since I do not practice his system, when I say that I am borrowing his technique, I am inscribing a sigil on a mirror (which is not what he would do), gazing at my reflection in the mirror, until I trance out. I have only received the barest glimpse of a spirit this way. Though, I did see a perfect white pentagram once. I do enter a trance state pretty fast doing things that way.

Perhaps I should say that I perform a bastardized form of his practice. Oh, wait, I'm a mage, I can't say bastardized, I should say 'redacted'.

Does Practical Magick Work?

There is a discussion in one of the blogs comment section where someone is arguing that practical magick doesn't work or if it does it doesn't work as often as magicians suppose. He further goes on to say that the path of practical magick leds to delusion.

To take up the last part first, all paths of magick led to delusion if the would be mage lacks the necessary skepticism to judge the claims of his own ego, imperfect communications with spirits, wishful thinking and the like.

I think he also made the point that such magick is selfish. He's right. So what? Anything we want that we don't need is selfish. For instance, I want to watch a baseball game on TV rather than work in a soup kitchen helping humanity. That is selfish and maybe even lazy. However, if I become lonely and bored to the point of depression and use practical magick to gain more friends or even a girlfriend is that selfish or merely understanding what I need and using my hard earned skills to obtain that? I leave you to decide.

Theurgy is selfish too. When I seek the divine, or as my friend says, "to glow in the dark", I am seeking to have my own wants and needs fulfilled. It is unlikely my activity will feed the hungry or aid some starving soul. However, the after affects of theurgy do help the world. When I make myself a better person or have a stonger connection to higher aspects of my soul, I have a tendency to do less damage to my fellow humans. By not causing that damage, I am making their lives better.

As for it practical magick working, of course it does. However, magick rarely works for those that don't feel like it should or that doing so makes them feel diminished. The very soul, which is the source of all magick, recoils.

When I was learning thought-form magick, also called artificial elementals, I would send thought forms with specific job: Show me what I need to learn about situation X; What is the true nature of my conflict with "Y"; "Show me what I need to explore about..." I trusted my soul to imbue the force with my deep needs and reflect them back to me. This always occurred. However, it is so subjective, that any skeptic could say that I just picked up a random conversation or assigned meaning to something that simply didn't exist. I cannot argue with these folks except at an instinctual level which is pointless as their monkey mind can not accept the thoughts of my own.

Practically speaking, magick is harder for me to push aside. For instance, just to make sure that I wasn't deluding myself with my theurgic thought forms, I did something 'practical'. Practically worthless really but it was fun and showed me the magick was working as intended. I noticed that I was the only baseball fan at work. I've never had a conversation at work regarding baseball or if I had they were so rare as to not be memorable.   I did a thought form that was charged with, "let someone instigate a conversation about baseball at work," or something like that.

Within a day or two, someone was directed to move into my building. I walked by his office and said hello and he said mentioned the San Francisco Giant memorabilia up on his wall. For those who are not in the US that is a professional baseball team. I am a fan of their rivals, the Los Angeles Dodgers. We had a brief chat on baseball and I went on my way knowing the magick worked. Two hours later he was packing his stuff up. He'd been told to move to the wrong building and was moving out. That is far too much of a coincidence. That magick had effect on the real world. Such "coincidences" happen too often to be coincidences. Practical magick does work.

That said, those that use it too regularly simply get trapped in cycles. Getting $50 whenever you need it to pay they rent, simply keeps you unambitious. You always get by but it gives one an excuse not to further one's life by schooling or making the effort to find better employment.

A magical career without a long term theurgic purpose is pointless. Well, perhaps not, as the theurgic effect will likely happen over time anyway unless you fight it. However, a magickal career without thaumaturgy, removes a hard earned tool from the tool box of life. I don't see why such assets should be utterly abandonned. Though, I do think they should be used judiciously and with aquired wisdom.

Attitude Change?

When I presented at Pantheacon this year, I made a few of those self-printing business cards. Across the top it said something a bit cheesy like Magician - Seeker - Tarot Reader. I had to put something there as there was too much white space when left blank.

The word seeker bothered me. I have self-described that way for a long time. Spiritual Seeker. It doesn't feel right anymore. I have found quite a few things on my journey, wonderful things. One can not seek what has been found. I am not saying that I've found everything or even a large portion of whatever it was I was seeking. I am not a spiritual guru, the next messiah or even that much of a guide. "Seeker" no longer fits though. I count that as a mark of progress.

There isn't much to replace that with. Maybe next time "Doer of Strange Things" will be up at the top of that card.

I am also thinking of putting my real name and picture in this space maybe someday that will happen.

Layout Changes

I've made a few changes to the layout. I don't think this will effect those that subscribe in a reader. If it does and makes things a pain in the neck, please let me know. For those that view via a web page, please let me know what you think. If I get enough comments to change it, I will do so. This space is as much for you as for me.

I have having some issues with subscribe features and feeds. I am working on them. 

Expect some posts soon. I'm getting that writing feeling again. 

Dearth of Posts

Regular readers may have noticed a dearth of posts of late. I have been pushing into some new areas and found myself to have had to deal with massive allergies, back issues, distractions, personal issues and the like. In short, that either means it is going well or the universe will smack me upside the head as hard to tell me I'm going in the wrong direction. Who knows?

I am doing some work but really not up to keeping up the chronicle of late.  I am sure that will change soon. It always does.

Magick has become work of late. It was getting easy there for a while but now I have to work to get motivated and the like. I am looking forward to baseball season this year. I need something pointlessly mundane in my life right now and it will be that.

Unanswered Questions

There have been several questions in the comments section that  I haven't reached yet. I've been off work and on meds for most of the last week due to my back going south on me. I figure the least it could do was wait to go south until the Dodgers are playing and we could go together. Unfortunately, my back had other ideas.

So, I will get to them and a few other things as I get to feeling better. Today was my first really good day but I'm still not 100%.

Stupidity

Let's start with stupidity. black mirror and scrying through the mirror. The techique is Poke Runyon's in that you're supposed to see the entity in the mirror through you're own distorted face. My vision has never been that good. I did get a perfect pentagram once and some maybes in the mirror.

I then developed a plan to have all the sigils I needed on paper and hole punching the junction points. This would allow me to mark the junction points on the mirror quite easily. From there, all I had to do was connect the dots.

I made a few of them before I realized I was making sigils of their names using the rose cross. Problem? I was doing planetary spirits whose sigils are derived from Kameas! This is equivalent to mispelling an entities name. This is a serious error for a magician. Serious fricken error. Fortunately, I didn't call up anything using this flawed method.