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The first thing that comes to mind for me with this subject is the idea of the community vs. the individual, with religion having a communal and social role, while traditionally, magic seems to have been more about an individuals personal realisations and “quest”. Obviously this distinction doesn’t hold, if we look at a subject like Shamanism which defines itself through a community function - but then again, shamanic ideas have only been kicking about the Western magical scene since the late 80’s – I think traditionally that model holds, the “Dr Faustus”/personal quest for knowledge idea. A friend of mine has criticised this model quite extensively as basically being very narcissistic and self obsessed, and I think he’s got a point. We define ourselves by our relationships to a community to a degree so why shouldn’t our spirituality be part of this? Doesn’t “true will” equate with finding a place in the world, or is it solely personal realisations that matter? I think the personal quest = self thing is very Western. Perhaps it has it’s origins in Christianity somewhere, with it’s pushing of other paths underground, the persecution of witches and so on, I don’t know. Maybe the introduction of the shamic ideal is interesting because it comes from places without that social/historical baggage.
Personally, I have met some of the Xtian hating black clad legions of doom and gloom and I think most of them are twats, they strike me as still going through a moody adolescent phase with regard to magick. Their opposition to religion is simply the knee jerk reaction they have to any perceived orthodoxy – it always surprised me how people who profess to be paradigm hopping Chaos magicians can have this narrow minded hatred of Christianity etc. “Go where thou fearest most” (a mangled AO Spare quote). While I think that there’s a lot in Christianity to criticise – both in terms of aspects of it’s historical influence and say, the Right Wing in the USA today, it obviously isn’t one homogenous evil mass – on one level, it’s a lot of different people articulating different things through a shared language and set of symbols, and these maybe the same experiences I’m having, only the language I’m using is different. I’d hope I could find ground to share between my-whatever-it-is and the experiences and feelings of Christian and religious people. This seems to be the way forward to me, to emphasis and build bridges with what I see as the positive aspects of religious thought, rather than perpetuating divisions by dismissing all of it.
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