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I am absolutely howling at an explanation in my current reading that the phoenix represents the hawk and heron of the Egyptians, the Eagle and cygnet of the Greeks and the peacock of the Hindus, and also the river Nile; like Ken that's just...thats just birds, Ken. All of them.
(no subject)
22 July 2021 18:09Not 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.
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.
(no subject)
21 August 2019 15:25Part of the problem with trying to develop a "Golden Dawn but for Pagans" is that they are...conceptually incompatible.
Things like: I like the Tree of Life. I like the idea that all things can be mapped onto a clear diagram, a representation of the physical and energetic world there on paper which can be traversed from points to highways. And that as an initiate, I can travel step by step up the tree, learning and empowering myself once concept at a time.
There have been earlier attempts to put Paganism onto the Tree of Life; I recently read a very good one from Ross Nichols of OBOD which sort of redesigned it. And yet, almost by definition...the energies of the land and the Landweird and the ancestors and the spirits in the earth and storm are not capable of being mapped. That's why we love them.
And while my Solar/Lunar/Stellar distinction is working for me, it keeps resisting all attempts to turn it into a Tree of initiatory stages.
Similarly, Ceremonial stuff is underpinned by a certainty - the pure white light - which you reach up to. This is vaguely but persistently identified with the Abrahamic God, and again, seems very difficult to replace with anything else. Who else but He represents goodness, purity, strength, holiness, otherworldliness, and has given His followers a promise? Who is both in some ways a person but in others an energy field? No Pagan concept can be slotted into that conceptual space. We do have thigns that cleanse, or that are good, or that are interested in our welfare. We don't, however, have that white light of godhead.
You can try and put, like, Odin up there - because he's the top - or Spirit, or all sorts of Pagan concepts. It will have an effect, but it won't have *the* effect. Because again, an important part of the Pagan is a lack of certainty.
A lack of certainty manifests in different paths in different ways. It could be Powers who are characteruistically fickle, unreliable or capricious. It could be the force of Fate or Wyrd, disrupting man's affairs. It could be the sense in any religion that sometimes magic and prayer does not work, because it is subject to a higher will or doom. Many of our traditions are hazy about the afterlife, and what you need to do to get there; or have a relavitist approach to morality, so there is no energy which represents both the Lord and all that is good. We are of the land; and the land is unpredictable, made of tides. It rises and falls. It is not eternal.
I think the idea of making "ceremonial paganism" is like trying to serve stake with a chainsaw, or knit with spaghetti - two things which fundamentally can't come together without ruining the essential qualities of each. You can knit with spaghetti, of course - but it'll make for a bad jumper and a bad meal, and you'd best just do one or the other.
At the same time, the challenge is still quite satisfying for me. Because only in attempting to do so I come to understandings like this.
Things like: I like the Tree of Life. I like the idea that all things can be mapped onto a clear diagram, a representation of the physical and energetic world there on paper which can be traversed from points to highways. And that as an initiate, I can travel step by step up the tree, learning and empowering myself once concept at a time.
There have been earlier attempts to put Paganism onto the Tree of Life; I recently read a very good one from Ross Nichols of OBOD which sort of redesigned it. And yet, almost by definition...the energies of the land and the Landweird and the ancestors and the spirits in the earth and storm are not capable of being mapped. That's why we love them.
And while my Solar/Lunar/Stellar distinction is working for me, it keeps resisting all attempts to turn it into a Tree of initiatory stages.
Similarly, Ceremonial stuff is underpinned by a certainty - the pure white light - which you reach up to. This is vaguely but persistently identified with the Abrahamic God, and again, seems very difficult to replace with anything else. Who else but He represents goodness, purity, strength, holiness, otherworldliness, and has given His followers a promise? Who is both in some ways a person but in others an energy field? No Pagan concept can be slotted into that conceptual space. We do have thigns that cleanse, or that are good, or that are interested in our welfare. We don't, however, have that white light of godhead.
You can try and put, like, Odin up there - because he's the top - or Spirit, or all sorts of Pagan concepts. It will have an effect, but it won't have *the* effect. Because again, an important part of the Pagan is a lack of certainty.
A lack of certainty manifests in different paths in different ways. It could be Powers who are characteruistically fickle, unreliable or capricious. It could be the force of Fate or Wyrd, disrupting man's affairs. It could be the sense in any religion that sometimes magic and prayer does not work, because it is subject to a higher will or doom. Many of our traditions are hazy about the afterlife, and what you need to do to get there; or have a relavitist approach to morality, so there is no energy which represents both the Lord and all that is good. We are of the land; and the land is unpredictable, made of tides. It rises and falls. It is not eternal.
I think the idea of making "ceremonial paganism" is like trying to serve stake with a chainsaw, or knit with spaghetti - two things which fundamentally can't come together without ruining the essential qualities of each. You can knit with spaghetti, of course - but it'll make for a bad jumper and a bad meal, and you'd best just do one or the other.
At the same time, the challenge is still quite satisfying for me. Because only in attempting to do so I come to understandings like this.
Step into the Light
9 April 2018 09:00I'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.
When I studied film, the best course I ever attended was on American outsider art cinema. Not films with stories you might see in the cinema: weird art-installations made by people who owned a camera, like Stan Brakhage, Andy Warhol and Sadie Benning. I saw all sorts that term - like a birth in close up, porn, and autopsies (I think the lecturers were just trying to encourage us to do the reading ahead of the class...)
Kenneth Anger worked in the 60s, and more-or-less invented the modern music video. He combined homoerotic imagery with bubbly pop and automobile fetishism, as well as occasional first-year-art-student stuff like "what if Jesus was actually a biker and also a Nazi". When film academics/critics write about Kenneth Anger, they describe him as "using occult imagery" - which is maddening, because Kenneth Anger was *literally a magician*, and Lucifer Rising is devotional cinema: a ritual, disguised as film.
Some things cannot be explained: they must be felt. That's true of most magic, isn't it? What do I like about Lucifer Rising? I feel like the act of watching it is, in some way, an act of magic. I make time for it several times a year - often at times which feel solar. When the eclipse happened, I listened to Lucifer Rising. I've used its imagery for meditations and artworks, and used it as a sermon of-sorts to reflect on in ritual.
Anger's imagery is bold and strange. It lodges in your memory: rich colours, striking symbols. Like magic, it communicates straight with the subconscious - there's a plot there of sorts, to me a very moving one, but the most important thing is the experience of watching, how those colours and sounds affect you. The music is especially haunting and strange, a key part of the film's mood (Ensure you watch it with the original soundtrack, by Beausoleil - as there are several versions of the film online with new music. A cool creative act to be sure, but the original music is so much a part of it. I almost dropped £80 on a vinyl copy last month. The fact I even considered that might be sensible is a testiment to this film's eerie soundscape)
This film single-handedly got me into Thelema and ceremonial traditions, which I had previously regarded as rather silly. Still do. But by god, it works - you know? It works.
In Short...
You can watch Lucifer Rising on youtube: here (30 mins)
To own: All Anger's films are collected on a DVD called the Magic Lantern Cycle. This can be fairly challenging to track down cheaply, although if you support Amazon, they currently have a couple for a very reasonable $16.
Viewing notes:
If you've never tried art cinema before, switch off the lights and put the screen on full - and just watch. If you like, put yourself into a meditative and responsive state.
CN: Lucifer Rising contains occasional non-sexual nudity, some blood, and a fair amount of imagery your easily-frightened conservative neighbour would describe as satanic/demonic.
Cautionary note: When I typed that Lucifer Rising is a ritual, and watching it a magical act - I meant it metaphorically. But now I've said it, I think this is very likely to be correct. I think the intent of the film is almost certainly as an enchanted artifact, which is cast as it is unspooled. Magical audiences, concerned about participating in rituals blindly, may wish to take shielding steps or similar, or avoid the work.
That makes it sound more serious than it actually is - my top recommendation is to light candles, cast a circle and immerse yourself in it. I don't think you can appreciate any work of art if you are actively trying to shield yourself from it. And I think that would be a tragic way to approach something which - as I've said - is one of the most beautiful and moving things I've ever seen.
But consent is a thing and all, so if you're not sure, here's a spoilery precis of the film's content, so you can judge how you feel about possibly "participating" in it. I'd urge you very strongly not to read it.
( Lucifer Rising spoilers ) 
Further Viewing:
Kenneth Anger's films are all on youtube - ensure you choose ones with the original soundtrack. His most famous is Scorpio Rising (CN: Nazi imagery), and it's funny because the homoerotic shots of bikers feature real bikers who didn't realise Anger's queer intent in shooting them.
I like Kustom Kar Kommandos, which pulls a similar trick with boys who love to polish their cars. Fireworks is also a fave, about homoerotic fantasies. His other occult film, Invocation of my Demon Brother, can be seen here (11 mins). People also describe Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome as an occult work - I'm looking forward to revisiting it in this light.
Newly interested in art cinema? The most iconic ones to start with are:
Kenneth Anger worked in the 60s, and more-or-less invented the modern music video. He combined homoerotic imagery with bubbly pop and automobile fetishism, as well as occasional first-year-art-student stuff like "what if Jesus was actually a biker and also a Nazi". When film academics/critics write about Kenneth Anger, they describe him as "using occult imagery" - which is maddening, because Kenneth Anger was *literally a magician*, and Lucifer Rising is devotional cinema: a ritual, disguised as film.
Some things cannot be explained: they must be felt. That's true of most magic, isn't it? What do I like about Lucifer Rising? I feel like the act of watching it is, in some way, an act of magic. I make time for it several times a year - often at times which feel solar. When the eclipse happened, I listened to Lucifer Rising. I've used its imagery for meditations and artworks, and used it as a sermon of-sorts to reflect on in ritual.
Anger's imagery is bold and strange. It lodges in your memory: rich colours, striking symbols. Like magic, it communicates straight with the subconscious - there's a plot there of sorts, to me a very moving one, but the most important thing is the experience of watching, how those colours and sounds affect you. The music is especially haunting and strange, a key part of the film's mood (Ensure you watch it with the original soundtrack, by Beausoleil - as there are several versions of the film online with new music. A cool creative act to be sure, but the original music is so much a part of it. I almost dropped £80 on a vinyl copy last month. The fact I even considered that might be sensible is a testiment to this film's eerie soundscape)
This film single-handedly got me into Thelema and ceremonial traditions, which I had previously regarded as rather silly. Still do. But by god, it works - you know? It works.
In Short...
Haunting occult imagery and incredible soundtrack combine in an intense cinematic ritual
You can watch Lucifer Rising on youtube: here (30 mins)
To own: All Anger's films are collected on a DVD called the Magic Lantern Cycle. This can be fairly challenging to track down cheaply, although if you support Amazon, they currently have a couple for a very reasonable $16.
Viewing notes:
If you've never tried art cinema before, switch off the lights and put the screen on full - and just watch. If you like, put yourself into a meditative and responsive state.
CN: Lucifer Rising contains occasional non-sexual nudity, some blood, and a fair amount of imagery your easily-frightened conservative neighbour would describe as satanic/demonic.
Cautionary note: When I typed that Lucifer Rising is a ritual, and watching it a magical act - I meant it metaphorically. But now I've said it, I think this is very likely to be correct. I think the intent of the film is almost certainly as an enchanted artifact, which is cast as it is unspooled. Magical audiences, concerned about participating in rituals blindly, may wish to take shielding steps or similar, or avoid the work.
That makes it sound more serious than it actually is - my top recommendation is to light candles, cast a circle and immerse yourself in it. I don't think you can appreciate any work of art if you are actively trying to shield yourself from it. And I think that would be a tragic way to approach something which - as I've said - is one of the most beautiful and moving things I've ever seen.
But consent is a thing and all, so if you're not sure, here's a spoilery precis of the film's content, so you can judge how you feel about possibly "participating" in it. I'd urge you very strongly not to read it.
( Lucifer Rising spoilers )
Further Viewing:
Kenneth Anger's films are all on youtube - ensure you choose ones with the original soundtrack. His most famous is Scorpio Rising (CN: Nazi imagery), and it's funny because the homoerotic shots of bikers feature real bikers who didn't realise Anger's queer intent in shooting them.
I like Kustom Kar Kommandos, which pulls a similar trick with boys who love to polish their cars. Fireworks is also a fave, about homoerotic fantasies. His other occult film, Invocation of my Demon Brother, can be seen here (11 mins). People also describe Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome as an occult work - I'm looking forward to revisiting it in this light.
Newly interested in art cinema? The most iconic ones to start with are:
- Meshes of the Afternoon - Maya Deren
- Un Chien Andalou - Luis Buinel (CN: some surprise intense violence & rotting animals)
- Window Water Baby Moving - Stan Brakhage (CN: childbirth)
Liking the aesthetic of ceremonial/occultist traditions - Egyptiana, quasi-demonic-imagery, planetary and talismanic work, shoving Hebrew letters everywhere, rigorous practice routines, Kenneth Anger, chanting, LBRP, Babylonian deities, just-enough-Satanism-to-scare-the-neighbours, ass-clenching pedantry
but
all of them rely on a core cosmological views I don't share, and find utterly anathema.
For example, anything based on the Tree of Life invokes an essentially Christian sense of the divine - an almighty white light above the head, a sense of celestial divinity, a higher sphere purer-than-mortals that we aspire to become one with. That doesn't fit into my religion at all. My religion is earth-centric, grubby, physical, rooted, and strange.
I love the aesthetic and experience of performing the LBRP, but in terms of what that ritual is - it's basically like chucking bleach all over my garden and harrowing the earth so that nothing can survive there with angelic forces. It's totally at odds with everything else I do, totally at odds with the most important and holistic parts of what I believe and know to be true.
It's definitely A Problem - if only for me.
The structure and the rigour, and the pedantry, and the silliness of ceremonial traditions really works for my brain. And oh, the power! Like, it really works for me. But I can't reconcile it with my religious convictions. Like, I've got no business conjuring angels in my living room one day, and expecting the spirits of my heart and soul to take me seriously the next.
I've done some experiments with trying to replicate what I like about Ceremonial stuff but in a tradcraft context, and they didn't work well. Just swapping out the angels and replacing them with Arthurian imagery should work, right? I'm frankly pretty annoyed, and also curious - as a chaote, I definitely think one can combine stuff on the fly like this and make it work, but I've not struck upon how yet. Even though it should work on paper. Perhaps it's the totality of the system, and the fact i believe in it - ceremonial magic is, of all traditions, the least encouraging of individual improv.
V befuddling.
but
all of them rely on a core cosmological views I don't share, and find utterly anathema.
For example, anything based on the Tree of Life invokes an essentially Christian sense of the divine - an almighty white light above the head, a sense of celestial divinity, a higher sphere purer-than-mortals that we aspire to become one with. That doesn't fit into my religion at all. My religion is earth-centric, grubby, physical, rooted, and strange.
I love the aesthetic and experience of performing the LBRP, but in terms of what that ritual is - it's basically like chucking bleach all over my garden and harrowing the earth so that nothing can survive there with angelic forces. It's totally at odds with everything else I do, totally at odds with the most important and holistic parts of what I believe and know to be true.
It's definitely A Problem - if only for me.
The structure and the rigour, and the pedantry, and the silliness of ceremonial traditions really works for my brain. And oh, the power! Like, it really works for me. But I can't reconcile it with my religious convictions. Like, I've got no business conjuring angels in my living room one day, and expecting the spirits of my heart and soul to take me seriously the next.
I've done some experiments with trying to replicate what I like about Ceremonial stuff but in a tradcraft context, and they didn't work well. Just swapping out the angels and replacing them with Arthurian imagery should work, right? I'm frankly pretty annoyed, and also curious - as a chaote, I definitely think one can combine stuff on the fly like this and make it work, but I've not struck upon how yet. Even though it should work on paper. Perhaps it's the totality of the system, and the fact i believe in it - ceremonial magic is, of all traditions, the least encouraging of individual improv.
V befuddling.
