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Deva
Aren't correspondences between names, sounds, appearances, etc, important on a magickal level?
This notion has its roots really in the Doctrine of Signatures originally applied to plant medicine and made 'trendy' by people like Paracelsus or Cornelius Agrippa during the Renaissance. Interestingly enough, the concept of 'magical correspondences' got a big boost in the 19th century, when the Victorians were busy categorising and mapping their world and describing sexual 'perversions' in minute detail. Purely in the interests of 'science', natch. For a long time, the Correspondences were thought to have an 'essential' quality. Here's Dion Fortune:
That little-understood and much-maligned art has for its philosophical basis the System of Correspondences represented by symbols. The correspondences between the soul of man and the universe are not arbitrary, but arise out of developmental identities. Certain aspects of consciousness were developed in response to certain phases of evolution, and therefore embody the same principles; consequently they react to the same influences.
and
It may be thought that the association of the symbolic beasts with the gods and goddesses in the old myths is entirely arbitrary and the fruit of the poetic imagination, which, like the wind, bloweth where it listeth. To this the occultist answers that the poetic imagination is not an arbitrary thing and refers the sceptic to the works of Dr Jung of Zurich, the famous psychiatrist...
(The Mystical Qabalah)
The Doctrine of Correspondences didn't really start to get challenged until the late 1970s when Chaos Magic came along and said "don't follow correspondences blindly, create your own chains of association."
As you say, Naming is quite an important idea in modern magic - often expressed as the notion that once you have the correct name of something, then you have the power to control it. As Agrippa puts it:
Moreover that in diverse sacred words and names of God, there is great and Divine power, which worketh miracles, Zoroastes [Zoroaster], Orpheus, Iamblicus, Synesius. Alchindus, and all the famous Philosophers testifie; and Artephius both a Magician and Philosopher, hath written a peculiar book concerning the vertue of words and Characters.
and
but let us not think, that by naming Jesus prophanely [profanely], as the name of a certain man, we can do miracles by vertue of it: but we must invocate it in the holy Spirit, with a pure mind and a fervent spirit, that we may obtain those things which are promised us in him; especially knowledge going before, without which there is no hearing of us, according to that of the Prophet, I will hear him because he hath known my name; Hence at this time no favour can be drawn from the heavens, unless the authority, favor and consent of the name Jesu intervene;
Now the reason I'm bringing up the historical stuff is that both Agrippa & Fortune cast their arguments within a dominantly religious framework (i.e. it's ultimately about God) - although Fortune also considers the Doctrine of Correspondences to have a Rational and Scientific basis. One might posit, from a postmodern perspective, that both are totalising discourses (50p in the swearbox!) and I'd say that these discourses have only begun to be seriously challenged fairly recently - in the last thirty years or so.
So, moving to your question:
does the magickal system of relation between name and thing (sign and referent) not have to be considered in relation to the idea that 'male' and 'female' are just conventional names for arbitrary sets?
IMO, yes. But I'd say, from my experience, for many occultists, it's just too foreign an idea. |
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