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*bump*
This seems an appropriate thread to post this, rather than starting a brand new one. I'm in several classes this semester that have opened up to magic or magic-related discussion. Here is a brief email I sent to the Performance Art professor, discussing ritual:
"“Ritual” and “magic” are heavily weighted words. In the occult traditions magic is “the art and science of causing change to occur in conformity with will.” (The Aleister Crowley long definition) Ritual, per this definition, is the action (usually a repetitive set of actions) taken to focus will and cause change.
This applies to everything from Catholic Mass (where the will is to change wine and wafer into Blood and Body) to Crowley’s “ritual magick” (all number of outcomes) to the brushing, dressing and eating we do before heading to work. It’s a good definition.
In my understanding, though, we must expand the definition of magic – and thus ritual. Magic is a participation in reality primarily using metaphor. What this in turns means is that there are many ways of participating in reality – and we engage many of them every day. We move through physical reality; we think in imagination space; we create definitions – temporary meanings – as we encounter others. And these are just a few, basic examples. “Magic” means more subtle levels of interaction, both WITHIN and BEYOND these levels.
This is usually done through metaphor. We create a piece of art to bring an idea into physical being. This is a translation of the idea, the creation of a metaphor for something that does not exist physically. Then, in turn, depending on how it comes out physically, the metaphor changes…and so does the idea.
Translation works through ritual. A ritual action is one that ‘contains’ the process of change. In a spiritual context, as with the above Catholic Mass, the ritual is performed in order to change the wine and wafer. But does this LITERALLY happen? Not even the most ardent Catholic sees the MATERIAL in front of them transform itself. The METAPHOR, what the material MEANS, changes. The wine no longer means “wine,” it means “Blood of Christ.” The Catholic then experiences the Blood, not the wine.
Ritual is the process of changing meaning. I originally brought it up in relation to “being in the moment.” A ritual process is one that brings you out of the mental chitter-chatter into the Present, into what you are actually processing (seeing, hearing, thinking, etc) right then and there."
I kept it 'secular' for the sake of the class discussion and that secularity forces the discussion into new territory. The involvement of metaphor in magic, even so far as the nature of magic itself, is intrisic to the discussion of fictionspace/imagination space and the interaction with various figures or entities therein.
I don't see metaphor as something deceitful or in some way illusory; rather, as I hope the above indicated, metaphor is a component of reality itself, reality being a multilayered and flexible structure. Metaphor is the process of translation between two layers, and in being such becomes another layer itself.
Deleuze, Guattari (sp?), and emergence theory are making the meme-rounds right about now and they've had a big effect on this train of thought. To embrace the metaphorical-magical dimension is to embrace change - what D/G termed "Becoming" - because you are literally placing yourself in the spacetime dimension of the translation process.
(Making sense?)
A metaphor is not static. Hermes, who is a vital part of my life at the moment, is a "metaphor" - and I say that with no condescention, deprecation, or disrespect. He is an entity, as alive and present as I am or you are. But he is also a translation of something much broader than my perspective on him. |
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