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"Stupid" magick, religion and spirituality questions

  
  

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This Sunday
07:52 / 02.05.07
Obviously.

So obvious, it's five by five?
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
08:12 / 02.05.07
"five by five" – Geburah multiplied by Geburah. There is nothing louder and clearer in the Universe than the clash of swords and roar of battle that emanates from this Sphere. Applied to Buffy, we can see that Faith's usage of the phrase denotes her martial aspect multiplied by itself, turned in upon itself, unbalanced and out of control - as per the character's story arc.
 
 
Gendudehashadenough
08:18 / 02.05.07
Certain ideas about sanctuary and it's religious uses by the culture that constructs its temple/place or worship are intriguing me as of late. Several traditions speak to this regular fact as usually a believer of one reason or another must be protected or in some way put up for a time. Sanctuary has several different meanings depending on the time period, tradition, and use the particular building holds for the seekers of asylum.

For example, there has been much discussion recentely over the use of Mosques as political ralleying points, centers for socio-religious debate and solidarity among Muslims who feel slighted (either at home or in foreign lands)and find it necessary to organize within a space that confers a certain element of composure and safety. Everyone has heard the story of Quazzi Moto (even if the name is mispelled) and all that.

How did this idea evolve? South Asian culture seems to have some sort of grasp upon the body as a manifestation of a construct that contains sanctuary, thus negating the need for a building in which it is housed. Did this evolve from political necessity as a way to ensure a sacred space that simply cannot be gotten at except by the grossest and most indefatigable of fallacies? Yet, there are other portions of the same geography that absolutely hold true to the example state earlier. Do people have an inherent need to stave of political persecution by hiding themselves away in an area that cultrually or institutionally provides them with comfort? Does the fact that modern diplomatic emabassies have the same sort of agreement with sovereign nations have anything to do seeking spiritual amnesty from political forces?

Bodily sovereignty provides a pleasant map for these questions, methinks, but how, if at all can body-as-temple conceptions be compared to the current political dimensions that are slowly ripping religious alliegences apart at the seams? What if someone walked into your church who you knew to be irreligious (indifference towards religion or lack of practice thereof) just get away from the juris they know awaits them? How do you feel about the organization of political movements that go against the faith, esotericism, doctrines, or beliefs of the architectural houses under whose auspices they are begun?

I was going to make this it's own thread, however, i realize it's a very poorly thought out, rambling and by some measurments inane and stupid. And that's why it goes here.Yik. And furthermore: ugh.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
08:42 / 02.05.07
Gypsy: you should do a book like that. A Buffy Qu/C/Kab(b)al(l)a(h).
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
08:45 / 02.05.07
Yes, and then possibly hang myself in disgust.
 
 
This Sunday
08:46 / 02.05.07
It'd outsell Silver Whatserface, certainly. And I can't believe Whedon's Claremontitis didn't extend to doing at least one plug-the-characters-in cabala moment somewhere in all those seasons of Buffy.

And it's a fine example of functional chaos magick, for that matter.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
08:53 / 02.05.07
Nah, it'd be great! Like that business management text based on The Sopranos! And it'd sell loads, which is really the only criteria for measuring the relevance of any book, I feel.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
09:02 / 02.05.07
And it's a fine example of functional chaos magick, for that matter.

Hence the urgent need for a portable gallows and some willing freinds if I ever wrote such a thing.
 
 
This Sunday
09:09 / 02.05.07
But you'd cash the checks and divide it between formerly-known-as-Mordant, now-Talks, and me, right?

Or take a little and at least try to buy of your conscience. People would show up to presentations and tell you how much the book changed their entire life. And made episode X make complete sense in conjunction witht the rest of the series and the interlocking nature of the lower qlipottted flowers of Chesed and Tifaret, aka Angel and Spike in Season Y of spinoff Z.

Actually, and probably because I've been awake way too long and slightly chemicalized, but I actually sort of thought you were serious for a minute there, Gypsy. And it scared me.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
09:12 / 02.05.07
Aww c'mon. Think of the tie-ins! You could have your own line of red wrist floss and bottled water.
 
 
Quantum
09:16 / 02.05.07
What if someone walked into your church who you knew to be irreligious (indifference towards religion or lack of practice thereof) just get away from the juris they know awaits them?

Well, there's a long history of that. Look at this sanctuary knocker on the door of Durham cathedral;



See the dent in his head? That's from a frustrated sheriff firing an arrow at a dude hanging off the ring claiming immunity from arrest. Temples also granted asylum in classical Egypt, Greece and Rome, we have a cultural tradition of protecting people irrespective of their legal or religious status (if they can make it to the holy ground of course).

Five by Five means "Loud and Clear". It's not specifically a Buffy-ism except that Faith liked saying it.

...and she got it from Aliens. The pilot (Ferro) says it as they approach the surface to sound super military, We're in the pipe, five by five. Thus we trace the golden chain of secret knowledge back from Whedon to Cameron to Ace Garp from 200AD, 'In the Pipe' of course a metaphor for our passage through the predestined plan laid down by John Wagner and Alan Grant and the other members of the secret order Ordo Thargus.
 
 
grant
12:54 / 02.05.07
I'm now wondering about the origins of radio codes.

10-20 is cop-code for "location."

Any esotericism there? And who came up with "ten-twenty" as a code word anyway?
 
 
grant
13:11 / 02.05.07
Five by five was originally military (1930s/40s), and some number codes go back to telegraphy in the mid-1800s. It came from something called the Vail code alphabet which passed through continental Europe before becoming modern Morse code.

I wouldn't be surprised if someone in there was familiar with some kind of formal numerology.

The Vail code was apparently the product of something like divine inspiration:
Alfred's brain was at this time working at high pressure, and evolving new ideas every day. He saw in these new characters the elements of an alphabetical code by which language could be telegraphically transmitted in actual words and sentences, and he instantly set himself at work to construct such a code. His general plan was to employ the simplest and shortest combinations to represent the most frequently recurring letters of the English alphabet, and the remainder for the more infrequent ones. For instance, he found upon investigation that the letter e occurs much more frequently than any other letter, and accordingly he assigned to it the shortest symbol, a single dot(.). On the other hand, j, which occurs infrequently, is expressed by dash-dot-dash-dot (-.-.) After going through a computation, in order to ascertain the relative frequency of the occurrence of different letters in the English alphabet, Alfred was seized with sudden inspiration, and visited the office of the Morristown local newspaper, where be found the whole problem worked out for him in the type cases of the compositor.


The compositor, of course, is the person immediately over the printer's devils (printing apprentices). Thus, a master of imps.
 
 
grant
13:27 / 02.05.07
The electronic telegraph, in turn, descended from the optical telegraph of the late 1700s. It was one of these devices that gave its name to San Francisco's Telegraph Hill. Check the sub-link for "Chappe code," and check out Claude Chappe's early 5-bit binary device, the "panel semaphore."
 
 
EmberLeo
03:42 / 03.05.07
Well, I return late with merely Radio Ten Codes.

--Ember--
 
 
Mako is a hungry fish
07:56 / 03.05.07
Cool... now can we shed some insight into The Glasgow coma scale as it relates to Sesame Street?
 
 
Unconditional Love
13:48 / 03.05.07
Its obvious that relates to the count - 6 obeys commands.
 
 
Mako is a hungry fish
16:44 / 04.05.07
Gypsy: you should do a book like that. A Buffy Qu/C/Kab(b)al(l)a(h).



Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy: Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
16:54 / 04.05.07
You see that face people pull when they're watching the football and someone catches one in the nads? That is the face I just pulled.
 
 
Princess
18:38 / 04.05.07
You're smiling?
 
 
misterdomino.org
01:29 / 05.05.07
Apologies if anything like this was discussed previously in the thread...saw the bit about magical immunity and attacks but this is a bit more general. I suspect that a few important events in my past were set into motion by someone using ritual magic and sigls. A brief summary: a fellow with great influence in the wider social circle I am in has always seemed to have curious luck related to his success in the fine arts: he was given a generous scholarship to a very reputable art school to get his Master’s degree, and now has gotten himself a show at a very reputable gallery space. I know this is largely a matter of opinion, but his art is just not that impressive, and success in this field is something that people spend their entire lives attempting. He is also a notorious creep, always trying to get into the pants of women artists. Last summer he set his sights on my girlfriend at the time, and even though she was disgusted by even his presence, she ended up abandoning our two year relationship for a fling with him. She still has no explanation for her actions at this time, but she has told me that she knows he had every intention to come between us. Onto the evidence: he works in performance art that appears to be largely ritualistic, and uses symbols which I can only assume to be sigils. In one image documenting a performance, he sits in a circle of junk and trinkets, screaming into a microphone as if to induce exhibitory gnosis, with a sigil on a piece of paper laying next to him.
So, I guess my question would be: “a magus is getting everything he wants while leaving myself and countless others with our feelings hurt, what should I do?”
 
 
This Sunday
01:47 / 05.05.07
Fuck'em. Or, like Lenny Bruce would have it, unfuck'em!

If your particular angle of magick is one where you feel capable/comfortable trying to protect or limit others, then do so. Personally, I find myself really unwilling to do that to people, as I prize people's self-awareness and will over anything else, even if it isn't necessarily real and is just a pretense. Most of my friends and much of my own family disagree with this on a spiritual/magickal level, and would recommend you set up barriers, work some vengeance, and/or operate on your friends, loved ones, and former bed-sharing types to keep them safe. Short of pushing them out of the way of an oncoming car, I'm not so big on that style of practice. A good sense of perspective and a healthy dose of unfuck'em has served me well enough over the years.

As for the success? Good for him. Let him enjoy that. Money's good for people. I'd be more worried about mine than his. Success, that is.

But, of course, warn people. Pushing them out of the way when there's an oncoming train or a bullet whistling by is one thing, but if there's time, warn, build up the warnings, and so forth.
 
 
Princess
06:55 / 05.05.07
I'm uncomfortable using magic against someone just because they are very succesful and appear to be using magic. If he is capable of magic-ing success then that rocks and more power to him.

Your girlfriend cheating is really all on her though, isn't it? If he's got the skills to cancel out free-will then I'm very impressed and I'd say you can't come out good in that conflict. But really, I don't think that's the case. If he's good enough to make himself irresistible, then to my mind he is actually irresistible. You can't attack people just because they are very good at what they do. And you espescially can't attack them when you aren't even sure that they are doing anything.

Of course, you might be a super l33t black magician with no scruples whatsoever. But I think the only ethical things you could do involve magic on you and yours. (Magic on "yours" being a whole other ethical minefield). ANy magic used against the artist/magician/romeo, espescially magic of a limiting nature, can only be construed as an attack really. ANd you can't attack people on vague proof like "he looks like a ritualist in some photos", (which is pretty common in a lot of performance art. Lookup Artaud et al) and "he's more succesful than most".
 
 
This Sunday
07:21 / 05.05.07
What I want to know is if you and your girlfriend stitched things up and got back together. You're still communicating, clearly, so whatever happened with this guy happened and presumably since she can't explain it and realizes he was doing it to be a dick... that's magick, there, the recognition of past mistakes and moving on.

The story mirrors one of my not so shining moments, perhaps, from my artschool days. Puts that extra bit of sting into it.

But seriously, work on/with the friendlies and unfuck the rest.
 
 
This Sunday
07:49 / 05.05.07
In response to the churchgrounds protection racket stuff a bit above, I think you'd be hard pressed to find any culture that didn't establish some sort of no-killing zone or similar form of sanctuary. From Catholics to Buddhists that seems to be a popular get outta jail free card, for however long it lasts.

I'd imagine it stems from (a) a sense of holiness to a place, so that people should be expected to step up and act better, and/or (b) religious groups and people who make religion their general income/business are typically caretakers, so they're expected to be less judgemental when it comes to desperate people begging protection.

The legality when it melds in with a separation of Church and State, becomes a tangled matter and to my thinking, perhaps the clearest proof that there's no such thing as that espoused separation.

Not that it always, or even traditionally works. Religion can be a poor protector, as a number of nuns found out when Cromwell made his rounds, the door pictured above, and then there's that thing Burroughs warned about. "If you're doing business with a religious son of a bitch, get it in writing. His word isn't worth shit. Not with the good Lord standing behind you helping him fuck you on the deal."

Sometimes hiding under a religious mantle works out, sometimes not. Robin Hood, yes, but Dick Turpin got sold out by the vicar.
 
 
Saturn's nod
08:19 / 05.05.07
Julia Cameron makes the point that the artists out there making money aren't necessarily the most talented, they're the ones who are more confident and determined about getting their stuff out there.

I've encountered people from time to time who seemed to power themselves by preying on vulnerable people, and the intuitive impression I had from one in particular I'm thinking of is that there was a kind of 'open cast mine' in magical space all around him: stuff fell in cos his whole sphere of infulence was at a lower level than everything else around! Sometimes I have distrusted and suppressed my intuitive dislike of such people. It's my impression they don't necessarily understand themselves as exploiters, hence they don't always telegraph that approach clearly in their body language and I've only much later realized by the effects on myself and other people how much I disliked that person's spiritual fruit.

The people I respect though, create goodness and passion and kindness and courage and fertile soil and communities and collaboration and channels of communication and acts of healing and justice-making, and I get a totally different intuitive sense of them than from that predator-kind, however apparently successful one might be.

Seems to me in writing this I just dipped into the edge of 'alien lizard' territory, though. They them/we us, and all that: the flavour of othering is a bad sign, isn't it, and I can hear an echo from the 'people I don't like are being under the influence of interdimensional parasites!' brand of insanity we were all treated to recently courtesy of 'Ultraculture'. Will retreat and rethink about more effective ways to describe behaviour I find upsetting.
 
 
Mako is a hungry fish
09:15 / 05.05.07
Charisma is a great tool to have as a magician, but it's not the sole domain of the magus; sounds to me more like your rival has more of a cult of charisma about him (i.e as coke cola does due to a century of hard core advertising) which contributes greatly to his success, perhaps moreso than his talent, as opposed to his sigils.

Even if he were using magic and you were be able to enact forces to rattle it (though the greater his charisma, the more it'll take to rattle it) you probably won't be able to effect what makes him think he's special, such as the proof that his artistic and seductive abilities work, as does his magic if he's using it. Of course if you had the talents to mind fuck him, you might be able to convince him that his success was purely due to external factors that no longer favour him, though if you had this talent you'd also have the ability to not need to be jealous of this person in the first place.

A great deal of magic, both in terms of personal development and combat, is psychosomatic; it might not actually do anything, though it has the placebo effect of making us think it does something, so we create or sabotage ourselves. Take for instance the evil eye - if someone thinks it's upon them and fears it, they can become paranoid and jittery and their life turns to hell purely because of this; the evil eye isn't what attracts evil to them, but rather it's the way they let down their natural defenses and put out an energy that makes them a target.

Sympathetic magic... gotta love it.
 
 
Quantum
11:18 / 05.05.07

Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy: Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale
Better Together
Buy this book with What Would Buffy Do: The Vampire Slayer as Spiritual Guide by Jana Riess today!

I feel dirty. And I know the face Mordant means, a kind of 'Oooooh...' with round mouth, wincy eyes.
 
 
Mako is a hungry fish
16:38 / 05.05.07
*shudders*

I was actually thinking about defending the book I made reference to, as whilst I haven't read it I have read "The Simpsons and Philosophy" and know that it's not "The philosophy of the Simpsons" but rather an application of philosophy to the Simpson, such as describing Homer in terms of Aristotelian ethics; the Buffy one is probably the same, but now that I've judged the Buffy spirit guide book by its cover, I just don't have the heart.
 
 
Quantum
16:51 / 05.05.07
It's hardly The Tao of Pooh, is it.
 
 
Mako is a hungry fish
23:46 / 05.05.07
I should imagine that if one found the Tao through the workings of Pooh bear... damn, got the theme music stuck in my head... then one could find it through the workings of Buffy.

It's actually got me wondering as to the function behind the form of things now (not that I wasn't previously) that GL has found some meaning to "five by five" that's pretty impressive no matter its source - I'm wondering if the source is actually higher up and having a bit of a laugh whilst pointing out what should be obvious, or internal and there is no meaning, no connection.

Is there an Artificial God? by Douglas Adams

This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in - an interesting hole I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise.
 
 
Bear
00:00 / 06.05.07
I was a big Buffy fan and I have to admit that I have the Buffy book and it's not all bad (I've not read all of it I have to add) but I see nothing wrong with this sort of thing, especially as a starting point, I imagine a lot of younger people picked it up. I've just grabbed it from the shelf and think I might give it a proper read so SCREW YOU GUYS.

Skimming through the contents now it contains this sort of thing :

Feminism and The Ethics of Violence - Why Buffy Kicks Ass
"My God it's Like a Greek Tragedy: - Willow Rosenberg and Human Irrationality
Justifying the Means - Punishment in the Buffyverse.
High School is Hell - Metaphor made literal in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

So um yeah.
 
 
Mako is a hungry fish
00:43 / 06.05.07
Hehehe... good for you, thanks for bringing a smile to my face.

It reminds me of a debate I had with a guy who claimed that Psy-Trance was the only decent music out there, and that popular music was crap because everyone else either couldn't appreciate it or just wasn't aware of it; what gave the debate an added spin was his mild autism and computer geekiness, which led me to think he may not have had the complete grasp on humanity that he thought he did.

The Hermetic View of Religion by Franz Bardon

A true adept will see in each relative religion, regardless of the historical era in which it may have existed, fragments of some basic ideas that had their origin in the universal religion and which point to universal law. Therefore, the adept appreciates each religion equally, without paying any attention to whether it is a religion of the past or whether it still exists today or whether it will exist in the future, because he is aware of the fact that each religious system has followers whose maturity suits that of the religion.
 
 
Unconditional Love
08:47 / 06.05.07
Can magick be secular ? Can spirituality be secular ?

So for example could neo shamanism be considered a secular magickal/spiritual practice?
 
 
This Sunday
09:17 / 06.05.07
I hate doing this western/eastern hemisphere thing, but I always kinda feel it's an eastern hemisphere trope to divine things up that way. There's a reason there weren't a whole lot of religious wars in the Americas, back in the day. Or making spirituality/theophanic material separate or differently-real from the really-real.

Killing your neighbor for land or alliances gone wrong, right, every nation on the planet's guilty on those counts. But killing your neighbor under the auspices that her gods have too many eyes or the origin of the fish is differently told? When it's not an auspice but the actual motivation, that's even scarier.

There's a reason we lost the war(s) and there's all these euro-derived names over everything I can see from this apartment.

Unless you mean in a laic sense. In which, forget the above, and let me totally agree it's not only possible but necessary to some sense. Not everyone is up to being a leader, a shepherd or a scholar, and not everyone wants to be.

A lot of the research and dedication end seems to stem from wanting to cheat death or damnation, and it's times like that I'm unabashedly thankful I was raised in a culture that doesn't buy fullstop death and never did the eternal damnation scare. Instead, a nice (and I find very helpful saying), that you have to straighten people out and get your vengeance while they're alive and around because you probably won't get your chance after they're dead. And 'God told me to' or 'the Devil made me' is never an excuse.

From that angle, it's all secular practice/life. It's just that we build up support groups to defend or condemn based solely on being a club member. But that's like the rest of the football team or co-workers jumping into a fight to keep their ally from getting smashed by the boots of them dirt nasty other-types. Universal clique-defense, or as someone had it, a friend is someone who comes to your defense when you're wrong, because anyone worth their salt will come to your defense when you're right.
 
  

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