So I’m in Chapters the other day (a place I v. rarely visit) because I recently decided it was time to get a credit card and I have been enjoying the magic/k of this little pocket-sized plastic rectangle ever since. I’m looking mainly in the “Cultural Studies” and “Philosophy” sections—I ended up getting Michael Moore’s latest book Stupid White Men as a gift for my partner and bought a little book called Zeno and the tortoise, which is a summary and introduction to several main ideas of “important” philosophers (“Nietzsche’s Hammer,” “Popper’s Dolls,” “Bacon’s Chicken’s,” are the names of a couple of the chapters)—but I also happened to glance through the “New Age,” “Spirituality,” “UFO/Strange Phenomena” sections.
Back when I first began to seriously read, study, and investigate magic/k, aside from the odd “specialty” shop (which wasn’t located in my humble home town, but only in larger “urban centers”), there was really not a v. large popular selection of books to be had at most bookstores. This was in about 1991. Back then (when I used to dog sled fifty miles to a one room school with a wood burning furnace…), any bookstore that actually carried any of this “New Age” phooey would typically have about two shelves tucked in somewhere near the children’s section of the store that held a scant few books about the Occult, &/v Witchcraft &/v, UFOs, &/v etc.. And even then, the pickings of worthwhile books were slim. Mostly hours spent combing used bookstores, esp. when visiting relatively close “urban centers” (for me, Calgary, Edmonton, and Victoria).
And there wasn’t any sprawling Internet to spread information without hesitation, without supervision, without qualification; that is, there was no easily accessible unadulterated flow of magic/kal material. I mean, we couldn’t merely have access to the likes of TOPY’s publications, et. al., at the push of a button. No, it was a time when either we had to be “hip” and “kewl” enough (in someone’s eyes)—i.e., in the scene—or join the team (say, by jerking off, cutting one’s self, and spitting once every month for 23 months)—but both ways required that we actually had to put some sincerity into our pursuits by actually writing letters to, &/v meeting with an actual person or group of people; that is, we actually had to put work into the way we relate to people and the world (of course, here is one of the great things about this forum—we can relate to one and other, if we choose, through a text (and seemingly more lately) image based medium. But nowadays it seems that the importance of this relational aspect of magic/k is fading fast—we can merely jerk off to our own signs and insignias, and damn the horse & shoot the god damn messenger these days, ‘cause “I is All” is chanted with all the precision and impartiality of well oiled machinery: works wherever you can crank it off, right?
But, to return to the bookstore and make a not so neat segue, we’ll simply call those last two paragraphs a bit of a “tangenital” line, and now back to that moment in time when I was in Chapters and there were (and still are, I would presume) several different sections representing the world of the weird, the wonderful, and the “paranormal” (a catchall term for which I’ve little use as nothing that can possibly manifest anywhere is anything beyond “normal” given that it must occur in “reality” as the absence of any “reality” is VOID; i.e., there is nothing “para” about it). After I take a quick and mostly disdainful glance at what passes for books on “magic,” on the clearly marked official shelves for such books, I take a look at the shelves dedicated to Wicca and suddenly I feel the urge to vomit much like the little girl does in The Exorcist.
There before me is a book (whose title was so ghastly I can only relate a paraphrase of its name in order not to wake The Beast that slumbers, held at bay, on my watch): The Complete Book of Shadows for the Modern Teenage Witch.
Fuck.
This is sickness my friends (and my enemies, acquaintances, and people not yet met). I mean, this is rather like writing a book called “The Complete Book of Surgery for Teens.” No one in their right mind would give any child the actual tools and guidance to perform surgery from hir own home! Certainly, one in several thousand (give or take—mostly give I’d imagine: likely more like one in a million!) would successfully operate on their younger siblings or school crushes/enemies/etc. and grow up to be a talented, gifted, and sought after surgeon, but most would simply do much harm to their “patients” and likely do themselves quite a bit of psychological trauma at the same time.
So, why the fuck did anyone decide to write, publish, or stock, this kind of garbage? It’s not merely watered down, flakey-bakey, pap for the masses, but its also giving, in this instance, hormonally charged, unbalanced, and largely hesitant in issues of self-identity humans access to something they’ve no Goddamn right to. It is one thing for children to put on costumes, use props and such while imaging being a surgeon, but it is quite another to give them what for all accounts is instruction in surgery while at the same time telling them to go ahead and try it out for real.
Here is one of the main causes of this sickness: it is a lack of actual respect, understanding, and seriousness for magic/k. We take, say, being a doctor seriously—we train for many years under strict scrutiny and experienced hand; however, we (and here I use “we” not to mean me personally & perhaps not even you personally either) don’t seem to take this same stance towards things magic/k, occult, or otherwise “paranormal.” Like it’s all a big fuckin’ joke. If I need a laugh that comes from the soul, that comes from the deep dark pits of my core, then all I need to do is spend fifteen minutes of my time looking at the vast pile of shit that stocks these once sparse shelves of my local bookstore. If I didn’t laugh in the epitome of dark humour, I would simply have to fall to my knees and weep.
Anyway, I for one am simply disgusted at the misappropriation of things “magic/k” by the mass culture and the resultant plethora of shit products for ever climbing numbers of morons and fuckbakes to consume, to swallow, to eat whole and unprepared—a poison for the collective unconscious, a sad spiral to Self suicide, a projection of the human short comings en masse. I’m fucking tired of the rise of the mythology and magic in popular television, movies, et. al.. It is mostly by and large the phantasms and illusions of a sad, sick, and immature race—greedy, self-absorbed, and generally the creators and maintainers of sufferings of all sorts. Magic as the quick fix. Magic as the Hollywood ending. Magic for the masses (and here I will not accept any sad excuse for a plea to defend these people; i.e., I will not apologize for my use of this pathetic generalizing term as there is nothing other than such a generic phrase to describe the generic situation that we have here—bland homogenized gruel for the slaves in stocks and bonds). It is misuse and abuse of magic/k: it is a reflection of our own stupidity, immaturity, and lack of understanding that is present to us in this new interest in the New Age, this rising tide of sucker-punches for the serious, of sad shit sacks of sugar for stupid stock, flock, and cloaked in herd security mammals.
But what the fuck, right? I mean, I don’t have to buy this crap, and I can tell others not to buy it either. I can exercise my discretion and hope that others can come to do the same. I can see a brighter tomorrow so long as we can make it through the long dark night of our collective soul.
Make a candle from your flesh.
Burn bright.
Amen. |
