(no subject)

[haptalaon]

Not to be a downer, but do you think results-magic disciplines are dominated by white men of a certain social status because - by some remarkable coincidence - they are people for whom "through my will, I achieve my goals!" and "the only limitation is my own mind" hold material weight...

Like idk, I don't want to dunk on the validity of magic; but there's the question of discernment, the ability to tell between actual magic vs you ego doing a thing and uh. You know, if you're a white man of a certain social status with a job working for like bloody Facebook or something, do you think that's kinda self-reinforcing beliefs about how much of your agency is magically created?

So much of these magical styles are actively hostile to marginalised people - for reasons as long as my arm - but to tie them together, you can tell things about which people these systems were designed to work for, & like maybe marginalised magic has to have a very different character to like, make even a basic amount of intuitive sense.

Comments

[nyyki]

First off, thank you for adding me.

I find it's pretty much impossible to split the spiritual from the cultural for anything created in the past and without direct access to the ones who created it. And there's a problem for the practitioner in determining what's essential to the practice and what's window dressing, or RAW puts it, what are the Game Rules. And as someone who has no choice right now but to work solitary (I'm not just immune-compromised, I'm full on immune-suppressed and my system is too old to run Zoom or other meeting software) and as a pretty high metric extrovert this requires some deep analysis and discrimination skills. I would like nothing more today than to get with several other folks and pour some pomegranate juice into a beer (might make it palatable for once) and drink in honor of the Neturu on this day of disinebriation of the goddess, which one of the most common three you prefer for the myth. (Sekhmet, Hathor, or Tefnut) So I'm having to live with a personal practice instead of a group one, and as someone who remembers low to no drama functional working closed groups this can be a frustrating thing. Oh, and let's add in the little detail that I'm going to have to compromise -- it'll have to be pomegranate syrup, because the actual juice, like grapefruit juice, does ugly things to medications, including anti-rejectin meds.

I'm getting it from the other end from what you describe, as I live in a close-in suburban neighborhood in a major city in what is soon to be the third largest metropolitan area in the United States, so there's a lot of activity and vibrancy in the area. (and yet every attempt in the area at a neo-pagan community center has failed due to either lack of leadership or lack of participants) Yet the isolation still occurs here amongst the teeming as it does where you hail from. Seems to me to be something in the ground rules instead of the culture has something to do with it, though that might not be all the story. Is it ever?