Step into the Light
9 April 2018 09:00![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
haptalaonI'm re-reading Self Initiation into the Golden Dawn Tradition by Chic & Sabdra Tabatha Cicero, and increasingly I think the key to the occult project is replacing all instances of the word "Light" with "Knowledge", or "Gnosis" if you feel fancy, and all instances of "Darkness" with "Ignorance". I think that's implicit in most ceremonial material, but most of what I've read has also leaned hard on The Light as literally manifesting itself as more-or-less the God of the Christians, omnipresent and celestial and summoned by Biblical iconography.
My current direction is, I guess, a "Luciferian" ceremonial tradition - focusing on the Lightbringer's aspects of knowledge, freedom, discovery and so on. That means some of the Biblical imagery isn't totally off base, and it's working with figures and concepts already in my mental map.
(I visited Friend S at the weekend, and they scoffed "...you don't want bright light deities but you are also a Luciferian?". Well, it's different. But point taken: and maybe this was the genesis of the idea.)
----
I've been doing a bunch of work trying to "re-draw" the Tree of Life, and basically invent a new one with my concepts. I've still not got something working, although I'm fairly pleased with what I do have. Just inventing my own magical systems and adapting old ones has been the most liberating and satisfying evolution in my practice to date, and I'm delighted by it. Maybe like the parable of the pots, where the students who were to be graded on how many pots they made also created better pots than the students who were to be judged on the outcome of a single pot. I don't know if my new systems are up to much cop, but I think actively experimenting and consulting my books and researching and tossing ideas around is "using" magic in a way that keeps it vivid and at the forefront of my mind.
----
One of the big problems with bigotry is you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. Example: it's a problem if you write no characters of colour; it's a problem if you DO write them as a white author and don't also get it on point. It's a problem if you don't desire trans bodies on the basis that they are trans, but it's also a problem if you specificially desire and fetishise trans bodies for their transness. The more you dig, the more you find the problem isn't exactly your actions, but the whole soceital context which makes some things unavoidably fraught however you interact with them. You can't minimise or avoid problems, society won't let you.
Anyway, been thinking a lot about the Jewish influences in occultism. As I said, I think it's basically Christians (from the 15th century to the present day) who want to "do magic" without being a heretic, and discovered Jewish Mysticism as close-enough cosmologically, yet still feeling exotic, edgy, a walk on the wild side, even a bit "evil". I've seen a bit of modern discourse about how participating in these traditions is appropriative, and I think that's correct - but the appropriation happened centuries ago, and these are legit & powerful traditions. I don't want the only answer to be "...therefore we must stop participating in them". At what point does ceremonial magic become its own context and culture? As well as the Walmart shamanism appropriation problem, you also get a weirdly anti-Semitic strand of thse traditions. And then finally, I've been experimenting with ways of removing the Abrahamic context from ceremonial trads - which in practice means, removing the Christian elements, removing the Jewish elements. You know, I also don't feel great about "Let's use the tree of life but remove all the Judaism", because that's also shitty. A different kind of shitty.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Julia Serano writes about concepts like passing/not passing, and model minority/evil stereotype as double binds marginalised people must obey, but I think similar forces exist for non-marginalised people when engaging with issues. A double bind where, there's no option to step out of your culture and history and have an unproblematic relationship with a thing. In this case, the double bind is - participate in traditions which have appropriated Jewish culture, often in shallow and skeezy ways, or remove the Jewishness entirely from a Jewish tradition.
You can't win. I'm going to keep being thoughtful about it and turning the options over - I think that's the only way you can engage with these political double binds, just being constantly open to them, constantly exploring and questioning and willing to adapt what you're doing as you go. But I wish there was a simple answer. I don't want to hurt anyone, deliberately or by acts of ommission. I just want to draw weird shapes on my floor, faff about in robes and summon shit.
My current direction is, I guess, a "Luciferian" ceremonial tradition - focusing on the Lightbringer's aspects of knowledge, freedom, discovery and so on. That means some of the Biblical imagery isn't totally off base, and it's working with figures and concepts already in my mental map.
(I visited Friend S at the weekend, and they scoffed "...you don't want bright light deities but you are also a Luciferian?". Well, it's different. But point taken: and maybe this was the genesis of the idea.)
----
I've been doing a bunch of work trying to "re-draw" the Tree of Life, and basically invent a new one with my concepts. I've still not got something working, although I'm fairly pleased with what I do have. Just inventing my own magical systems and adapting old ones has been the most liberating and satisfying evolution in my practice to date, and I'm delighted by it. Maybe like the parable of the pots, where the students who were to be graded on how many pots they made also created better pots than the students who were to be judged on the outcome of a single pot. I don't know if my new systems are up to much cop, but I think actively experimenting and consulting my books and researching and tossing ideas around is "using" magic in a way that keeps it vivid and at the forefront of my mind.
----
One of the big problems with bigotry is you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. Example: it's a problem if you write no characters of colour; it's a problem if you DO write them as a white author and don't also get it on point. It's a problem if you don't desire trans bodies on the basis that they are trans, but it's also a problem if you specificially desire and fetishise trans bodies for their transness. The more you dig, the more you find the problem isn't exactly your actions, but the whole soceital context which makes some things unavoidably fraught however you interact with them. You can't minimise or avoid problems, society won't let you.
Anyway, been thinking a lot about the Jewish influences in occultism. As I said, I think it's basically Christians (from the 15th century to the present day) who want to "do magic" without being a heretic, and discovered Jewish Mysticism as close-enough cosmologically, yet still feeling exotic, edgy, a walk on the wild side, even a bit "evil". I've seen a bit of modern discourse about how participating in these traditions is appropriative, and I think that's correct - but the appropriation happened centuries ago, and these are legit & powerful traditions. I don't want the only answer to be "...therefore we must stop participating in them". At what point does ceremonial magic become its own context and culture? As well as the Walmart shamanism appropriation problem, you also get a weirdly anti-Semitic strand of thse traditions. And then finally, I've been experimenting with ways of removing the Abrahamic context from ceremonial trads - which in practice means, removing the Christian elements, removing the Jewish elements. You know, I also don't feel great about "Let's use the tree of life but remove all the Judaism", because that's also shitty. A different kind of shitty.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Julia Serano writes about concepts like passing/not passing, and model minority/evil stereotype as double binds marginalised people must obey, but I think similar forces exist for non-marginalised people when engaging with issues. A double bind where, there's no option to step out of your culture and history and have an unproblematic relationship with a thing. In this case, the double bind is - participate in traditions which have appropriated Jewish culture, often in shallow and skeezy ways, or remove the Jewishness entirely from a Jewish tradition.
You can't win. I'm going to keep being thoughtful about it and turning the options over - I think that's the only way you can engage with these political double binds, just being constantly open to them, constantly exploring and questioning and willing to adapt what you're doing as you go. But I wish there was a simple answer. I don't want to hurt anyone, deliberately or by acts of ommission. I just want to draw weird shapes on my floor, faff about in robes and summon shit.
no subject
Date: 9 April 2018 17:15 (UTC)What an ...
Illuminating
concept.
:)
no subject
Date: 19 April 2018 10:32 (UTC)no subject
Date: 10 April 2018 22:58 (UTC)no subject
Date: 19 April 2018 10:36 (UTC)A quick tldr is:
1. It looks like the old tree, so the two systems are interchangeable
2. The three Supernals are Solar, Lunar and Stellar energy currents - all of which have a particular meaning in the tradition I'm using.
3. It emphasises the elements, planets, and alchemical process - each Sephirah is associated primarily with one of those.
4. Like all my work, it de-emphasises gender as much as possible, so there isn't a "masculine"/"feminine" split on the tree any more.
I've done some Middle-Pillar style exercices with it and it seems to work quite powerfully. The original qaballistic cross/middle pillar feel to me a bit like sticking your fingers in the electric. This is more subtle, but very grounding.