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Christian Worldview/ Magick

19:34 / 24.01.03

I was raised to be a literalist Christian and have since taken a step back and given the whole thing a good hard look. According to Christianity any practice of magick is not only wrong but actually incredibly dangerous. I realize that many of you who practice magick are so far from the worldview of good and evil that its difficult to even think that way anymore. I'm trying to phrase this as respectfully as possible. Have any of you, in your practice, run across intelligences, manifestations of deities, that you would characterize as malign and completely antithetical to human existence? I'm not talking about evil I'm talking about intelligence in the service of total entropy, the Hitlers of the astral plane. In the literal Christian worldview it is generally assumed that the only way to get power through magic is to bargain with theses intelligences. I realize that this is very far from Wicca, any elemental magic or chaos magic, Qabbalah or any of the more benign practices. I'm thinking of more along the lines of summoning deities, traditionally or otherwise, and any Voudoun practice which involves becoming a horse for a Loa. Just a question. You don't have to answer if youdon't want to.

19:40 / 24.01.03

I have always found that any 'malignant daemon' (or similar) that I have come across has been a creation of my own subconcious - A projection of a personal issue within myself that I need to deal with.

For example, I was at one time plagued by entities that were constantly criticising me - which I soon discovered was my own subconcious trying a little home made ego humiliation on me.

One thing I have learnt. My daemons are my best friends. They are, as you would say, evil, but often you have to be cruel to be kind, and there is nothing they can do to me that will not make me stronger.

19:48 / 24.01.03

Do they ever give you information that you couldn't possibly know? as opposed to knowing something subconciously. Otherwise I would be inclined to agree with you. I'm trying to use Philip K. Dicks logic when approaching this.

19:51 / 24.01.03

Very often, things that you know subconciously are things that you could never possibly know. The ego is not very good at listening to the subconcious. Sometimes the subconcious has to shout, and producing daemons is one of the ways that the subconcious can do this. Its a way for the subconcious to say to the ego: Stop running away and deal with this!

20:10 / 24.01.03

Thank You. From my viewpoint (or old viewpoint) your daemons wouldn't be seen as"demons". And your experience is definitely a long way from "possession". When I said something you couldn't possibly know I meant something you could literally not know, like speaking a dead language or describing historical events as if you had been there. From what I've heard these are rather unlikely occurences anyway. And you could probably typify both experiences as examples of the collective unconscious or race memory. Nothings ever as spectacularly obvious as it is in the books.

This is sort of related, a lot of religions require at least partial belief in there tenents. In magick it seems like every experience you have could be seen in a completely academic light. Do any of you literally believe that you're experiences are reality? Many people seem to be in to magick as a sort of self help thing, trying to attain some sort of enlightenment. Of course you could say the same thing of most religions. Comments?

20:28 / 24.01.03

Each one of us believes what we personally believe. Each one of us is doing what we personally want to do and for our own personal reasons. For us, there are no rules, except the rules that we as individuals make for ourselves, and when they become out of date, we don't break them, we forget them, as if we never made them in the first place, and move on. Any other way of living would be like having a ball and chain tied to your ankle. Of course, thats just my opinion, and not everyone would agree with me.

20:31 / 24.01.03

One of the things about magick is that as a relgion it is more to do with growth of the self than servitude to another being. It is as science, the gaining of power over the world through knowlege of its fundamental rules. If your religion is such that only your diety should have this ability and men should only be simple creatures subservient to it and its priests (who hold the real power, in most cases), then that is a fine enogh world view. However, it is not for everyone. Some would prefer to come to their own attainment, and seek paths of magick. And yes, its dangerous. Just as scientific experiment can lead to horrors such as the A-bomb, so to can magick lead to the possibility of great harm to self and others. It is playing with fire, on many metaphorical levels.

As for bargening with dieties, that is just one way to go about it. It is by far not the only way. One can practice magick and never have dealings with spirits of any sort and still get on well enough. However, chances are, in learning the ways of spirit, you will meet them in some form at some time. This doesn't mean you'll have to strike deals, but it might mean you'll need to preform a banishing. I know in some literal christian movement, all signs of Occult Power are the manifestations and lies of demonic powers attached to the "mage". You'll understand if I consider this a load of hog wash, or at the least a terribly limited view of things.

By the way, you may find it interesting that many who practice voodoo and similar traditions consider the experience of possession one of divine transcendence, one that brings the "horse" closer to God for their experience with spirit. It is much as some charasmatic christian movements consider possession by the Holy Spirit, where one speaks in tongues and thrashes about on the floor. It often looks the same, as well.

A lot of mysticism in Christianity is valid mysticism from other traditions, just relabeled to fit into the christian worldview. We all try for the same goal, in the end, though we call it by different names and kill each other over the semantics.

20:38 / 24.01.03

I don't see any difference between the relationship that I have with The Goddess and the relationship that a Christian has with God, except of course for technical details such as gender of deity, location (I see the Goddess as being below, rather than above, but this is not the save as the Christian Heaven above, Hell bellow, for me, having the Goddess below is about union with my roots and grounding with reality), etc.