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Current Thinking - What's a magical current

19:13 / 11.12.03

So I've kinda been wondering this since reading KAOS 14 (J. Biroco's limited print and free PDF magazine): What is a magic current and what is it good for? My limited understanding is that a Current is a etheric waveform through space/time which moves or influences actions within the Universe. It may be one everlasting wave which changes characteristics over time and influences successive generations of magicians, or something that breaks down over time and leaves the seeds of the next Current lying around to be picked up by the next egotistical motherf***er who thinks "Wonder what I can grow with these?"

Or none of those. What's your take?

Apologies for my typing. The DayQuil is kicking in faster than I thought it would. Must lie down.

21:26 / 11.12.03

My general feeling is that it's a reflection of the most prevalent or dominant magickal thoughtform(s). Thelema is an example of a philosophy/ontology that seems to be ascending in influence - individualism, social relativism, maturity of the child, as well as it's prediction of increased warfare. It's not that the current is Thelema, but Thelema is in line with and influencing the prevailing current. In a sense I think the current is the gestalt of the age.

The question of what the prevailing current actually is, however, is a matter of much debate and ultimately clouds the issue, IMHO. Thelemites generally accept that it's Thelema-Agape-Love, those following Achad claim it's Maat, while the KAOS folks believe it's Babalon. I prefer to see each of these as powerful archetypes within a greater current (which I personally regard as the Aeon of Horus, though not in an anthropomorphic, God-in-the-sky type of way).

Suffice it to say that each age can be marked by dominant memes which hugely influence world consciousness. Relativity and quantum mechanics, Freud & Jung, the spectre of atomic war, television and hypermedia, psychedelics and stimulants, the rise of islam, ecological awareness, information technologies like the WWW - these are the real gods of the new age.

08:57 / 12.12.03

12:00 / 12.12.03

aurum23 - Thelemites generally accept that it's Thelema-Agape-Love, those following Achad claim it's Maat, while the KAOS folks believe it's Babalon. I prefer to see each of these as powerful archetypes within a greater current (which I personally regard as the Aeon of Horus, though not in an anthropomorphic, God-in-the-sky type of way).

So it would be reasonable to posit that it's possible to attach any individually preferred symbol set to the percieved current/zeitgeist...up to a point. The flow of the Universe will assist you, so long as you assist the Universe in flowing. Is that about it?

Boy in a Suitcase

14:03 / 14.12.03

Know ye now that we are in the throes of the XTREME current

XEPER-THELEMA-RAMA

XTREME is the word of PANDAEMONAEON

Behold thee three-headed god of the new Illuminati: Vin Diesel, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold crucified and triumphant on a landfill of styrofoam, blank CD spindles and endless recombinations of plastic crap built with stolen oil...

Now that's what I call XXXAOS

(Have YOU accepted Vin Diesel as YOUR personal savior??)

Unconditional Love

00:08 / 23.12.03

i see currents as spirtual vehicles which come along at different times to create change and evolutionary patterns within consciousness and action, i dont think there is one predominant one but many that compete for energy from humans the greater number of humans that fuel the currents transmission the more likely that current will have a greater effect on change.

as dynamic processes and vehicles eventually they become redundant in the present, things have simply changed too much for there use, occasionally they become useful again and ascend back into consciousness, people still cling to useless currents gathering all the trappings around themselves because its a time they felt energised or secure, but after a currents time has passed it is little more than a shell, it sometimes seems to me there are alot of empty shells around and alot less currents.

i think consciousness the environment including all its phenomena,all has a spirit to impart about the current currents and what waves they will be making in the future. its a case of listening inside to the noises you make and what sounds are beneath that and swimming deeper into the currents and seeing where they take you, drowning is always a risk, buy a submarine.

currents that can adapt and change and become inclusive of other currents are more likely to survive and propagate than those that remain exclusive, hmm perhaps they are like competeing spiritual entities striving for survival in the planetary collective consciousness using all at there disposal to increase there likely hood of survival and to thwart the attempts of others to survive,
or perhaps currents have an evolutionary food chain a spiritual equilibrium with prey and preyed upon that maintains its balance.

its really very hard to tell.

trouser the trouserian

05:04 / 23.12.03

What is a magic current and what is it good for?

Since every two-bit magical order seems to have their own 'current' it seems to me that one of this concept's major uses is 'mutual self-aggrandisement' - "ooh we've got our own current, ooh we're so cutting edge, ooh we're really where it's at."

It's just more occult bollocks basically.

08:47 / 23.12.03

I kind of think of the 156 current as Joel B's "fuck off" to Thelema. He's criticised Thelema in the past for being a load of stuck-in-the-mud Crowley deifying history worshippers, seems to me like his alternative current is at least in part an attempt to give the 93 current a bit of a hammering. Not to set up an alternative but just to throw something in the mix that challenges all the old occult mothballs.

Tryphena Absent

10:20 / 23.12.03

What is a magic current and what is it good for?

I can't help but think that the second question is far more important than the first. What is a magic current good for and rather importantly where's the evidence for such a current in the first place?

This type of magic always seems so internal and this particularly emphasises the lack of attention to everything else that's going on? If you're going to suggest something like this in the first place than how is it linked to the notion of a social consciousness, the themes taking hold of the political and artistic worlds? How does it influence people, by popping up and energetically elbowing those who encounter it? How far is it in fact not a current at all?

11:40 / 23.12.03

magical curremt: the current "magic-chic" applied by the universe

.. created by us..tapped by us..

Unconditional Love

00:28 / 24.12.03

what is it good for,

well its good for directing group will within a mythological structure to create change either with said myths or to try and effect the totality of exsistence or just say an area of pop culture.

look at the artistic effect of thelema on certain parts of the occult community and within literature music and the arts, then ask what do these effect and so on and so forth also that numerical figure wether it be 23 156 0r 93 carries within it a large amount of information for those that study or belong to it, acting as a mnemonic for a said mythology and all the associations that number brings. similar in some respects to a tarot card or a rune, these are more practical external reasons.

internally i would argue that those that experience a certain kind of current would say it carries an energy with it of a certain quality.
for example i would argue that there is a serpent current a serpentine energy that is part of all life some would call it draconian, i feel drawn to belief systems that idolise or utilise this serpentine energy, this is from certain experiences i have had with energies that manifest as serpents, especially at times of great change in my life. the serpent in my inner life carries alot of associations both to people groups experiences thoughts dreams and many other things to me it is a part of the energy that drives me and gives me life, any current that is living provides a life force a dead current is nothing but an empty shell.

its very hard to explain.

13:52 / 24.12.03

I dunno, I've always found it all hideously boring. I can't personally see the appeal of this area of magic. You spend half your magical career initiating the current of 4635 and the other half patting yourself on the back for it. But at the end of the day, I think all that happens is the 0.00001% of the population that are interested in such things might go "oh...that's pretty interesting".

If you wanted to I'm sure you could selectively interpret world events of the last 100 years to support the tenets of any made-up-on-the-spot 'magical current', in the same way as you can effectively convince yourself that the number 23 (or 12, or 44, or 86, etc..)is of genuine mystic significance. I think it's a form of self-hypnosis and not much more than that. I wouldn't rule out the possibility that this self-hypnosis could be used in some interesting ways, but in practice it always seems to function as another occult comfort zone. Something to make people think that they have really important magical work to do, the full effects of which won't fully be seen for at least another 50 years, but it's causing quite a commotion on the astral. I've always had the quite controversial opinion that magic should be about, y'know, doing magic. Maybe I'm off the mark with that. It just strikes me that these people who put so much time, effort and energy into setting up and publicising their own magical current would be better off just ditching the occultism and getting jobs in marketing if that's what they're really into.

14:38 / 24.12.03

I don't really know too much about the "formal" Currents of Grand High Ceremonial Magick, but I have found the concept/image of the "current" to be very useful at certain points of my life.

I vaguely conceptualize a magickal current as a more-or-less transient dynamic organizing principle for magickal energy - a kind of momentum that magickal workings can take on in a certain direction. Magickians touched by this current will find that their magickal efficacy increases as they align themselves with it and navigate the flow; alternatively, they could fight it or just let themselves get swept away by it. A magickal current (as I see it) is characterized by an intense wash of focused synchronicity and *pushes* in the "proper" direction. Also, every time I feel as though I have caught a current, other people in my life have felt the same thing and have been able to corraborate independently (often we're all well into it before we communicate directly).

As an example, I refered to my magickal activities this past Autumn as being part of the Halloween current, or the Autumnal current (more generally). Once I had the first ideas that pointed me in that direction, it was like dipping my toes in a raging flood and getting swept in. Fortunately, I can swim like the Gill-Man in this particular current, so no worries. But there was very definitely a strong strong sense of momentum far above and beyond my own initiative.

I should also stress that in this conception, the current is localized, either in space or time - no Global Apocalyptic Aeon currents, just ways that individual magickians (or loose groups thereof) can "go with the flow" for a while.

Call the magickal current a kind of super-meme-meets-egregore, perhaps?

And, Gypsy Lantern: viewed in this (admittedly pretty restrained by High Magick standards) way, the current is definitely all about doing magick. Rather than trying to align the whole world to some High Master Current, or other lofty goal, it's about "knowing which way the wind blows" in your, I don't know, etheric locality and adapting your practice accordingly to catch the "winds" just right so they fly further than you could just throw them yourself.

At least that's how I see/feel it. I know it's not the Classical (or Modernist) view of the current, but it works for me.

~L

21:10 / 26.12.03

Lepidopteran -"...it's about "knowing which way the wind blows" in your, I don't know, etheric locality and adapting your practice accordingly to catch the "winds" just right so they fly further than you could just throw them yourself."

Well said.

Hey BiAS: Emphatically no, but Vin Diesel has accepted ME as his personal shaver...

...off to lick my finger and hold it aloft...