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Postmodern Magick
All sounds very late 90’s to me. For my money, the ‘cutting edge’ may be the emergence of international web communities such as barbelith which have their own subsection (or ghetto  ) of working magicians providing occult and divinatory services to the wider community. Like a 21st Century global permutation of the local shaman providing magick for his village. A move towards a more ‘pastoral’ concept of magick (to vaguely paraphrase from Grant Morrison’s cultural predictions) but losing none of the modernity and innovation of chaos magick and its various contemporaries. You could possibly see the Wiccan acceptance of chaos magick tenets, outlined above, as a symptom of this potential trend.
I think we may see an increased emphasis on working magicians doing stuff for other people and fulfilling this shamanic role that’s been absent from western culture for centuries in any overt form. The massive re-surgence of interest in ‘alternative therapy’ over the last 10 years could be interpreted as something vaguely magick-shaped rising up to fill the gap left by community sorcery. There was an article in one of the tabloids recently on the popularity of dubious sorcerors and Doc’s providing spells and divination to career women in the City – which is yet another example that people seem to have this suppressed ancestral memory of visiting the local shaman when in need.
It sort of ties with one of the common criticisms that you often see raised against chaos magick – that it can appear too individualistic and self serving, “lets do another sigil for that payrise or new lover, or maybe a servitor for finding a parking space”. When you think about it, it’s fairly obvious how these criticisms can be turned around into something positive. If you’re doing stuff for other people on a regular basis, the hours spent on self-development and workings on your own behalf cease to be ‘selfish’ or ‘inward looking’ – you’re fulfilling a function, and these practices will help you to do so more effectively.
In ‘neo-pagan’ circles you often come across the paradox of big groups of magicians hanging out together all proclaiming themselves as shamen, but with no discernable community to administer to because everyone in their social circle is also a magician. Again, I can see a move away from this phenomena through the emergence of international web communities along the lines of Barbelith, where the active magicians make up a small section of the wider social community. Occasionally members of this community will pay a visit to the ghetto cos they need to see the witchdoctor – which strikes me as a lovely virtual permutation of an old formula.
I also find it very interesting that members of the magick forum have already started to discover inherent flaws and problems in the commonly used methods for providing magick to other people via the internet (see the various arguments and personality clashes in the ‘histories’ thread). I think the next stage of this process may be for us to start to feel our way round these problems and develop new formats and infrastructures for providing magickal services to the barbelith community. Perhaps working on a more individual basis – for instance, magicians who want to take on clients could flag themselves up as being ‘active’ - meaning they’re willing to be contacted discretely by PM by other members of barbelith who need assistance. There are obviously a host of potential problems with this model also, but such things can always be ironed out and experimented with as long as it’s approached in a spirit of discovery and creativity.
I think the last 10 years have been dominated by the development of the internet and its impact on magick. In terms of experimentation with on-line rituals conducted in cyberspace; the vast amount of previously hard to come by information now available instantly at the touch of a button; and the enormous impact of magicians all over the world now being able to openly communicate and compare notes in a text based format. I think the last 10 years have all been about adjusting to that, exploring the edges of it, finding out how it works.
Myself, I’d like to see less cultural emphasis now on who can best exemplify the ideal of thee-cyber-tantrik-post-modern-techno-tekno-majickian, or who can come up with the next big thing in magick, or who can write the next generation of Phil Hine/Pete Carroll style textbooks. And more emphasis on individual magicians practically using their skills and abilities at a grassroots level within the world they inhabit to make peoples lives better. |
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