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"Stupid" magick, religion and spirituality questions

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E. Coli from the Milky Way

18:33 / 30.10.06

Ok, i know these stories, and the fact that agression is resolved without violence, and certainly is very reduced in that contexts, it doesn't mean that is inexistent.

Anyway:
Bonobo society is, however, not only female-centered but also appears to be female-dominated. Bonobo specialists, while long suspecting such a reality, have been reluctant to make the controversial claim. But in 1992, at the 14th Congress of the International Primatological Society in Strasbourg, investigators of both captive and wild bonobos presented data that left little doubt about the issue.

Subjugate to the woman. Best strategy. :-D

E. Coli from the Milky Way

18:39 / 30.10.06

And Quantum. i don't consider myself to me mysogin. Actually my workmates appreciate. Yeah, I don't drive them crazy, that's true too, but they appreciate me. And it's reciproque.

I'm only trying to integrate conflict in all this. And conflict exists.

E. Coli from the Milky Way

18:49 / 30.10.06

Bonobos are a male-philopatric society, in which males stay in their "natal" groups and women travel to different groups when they are about 7 years old (de Waal 1997). Although the males are bonded through kinship, they do not like to associate with each other. For example, bonobo have been known to kick another male out of a tree when a female comes along, whereas in other chimps, males usually kick the females out (Gibbons 1992). There is a male dominance hierarchy within these natal groups. This dominance hierarchy is determined through competition for females (aggressive chases) and is usually settled with sexual contact (penis rubbing) (de Waal 2001). Male dominance rank is positively correlated with mating success since the females tend to mate with the males that are higher on the dominance hierarchy (Dixson 1998). The male dominance hierarchy is loose and probably developed in order for the females to determine which individual has the best genes.

That's real feminism -- SIZE MATTERS !! hahhaha

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

19:16 / 30.10.06

Is there any chance, however remote and difficult, that we could - collectively - agree to keep this thread for the discussion of "stupid" spirituality questions, rather than just "stupid"?

That would be peachy.

19:47 / 30.10.06

I have a question.

I am having a difficult time finding information on Cotyotto for a Barbelith Homework project in Creation.

I have found brief descriptions and this:

Cotytto, a Thracian goddess worshipped in particularly licentious rites, appears in Milton's Comus:

Goddesse of Nocturnal sport
Dark vaild Cotytto, t' whom the secret flame
Of mid-night Torches burns; mysterious Dame
That ne're art call'd, but when the Dragon woom
Of Stygian darknes spets her thickest gloom,
And makes one blot of all the ayr. [ll. 129-36; text transcribed by Judith Bass at U. of Oregon site]

...but not much else. Anyone have any ideas where I can get more information on this Goddess, Cotytto?

While we are on the subject of homework. How about a "Barbelith Magical Homework" thread? Good idea?

19:49 / 30.10.06

Okay, I had two questions.

20:47 / 30.10.06

How about a "Barbelith Magical Homework" thread? Good idea?

Start one. Sounds like fun. I reserve the right not to do anything really stupid though

Less searchable M0rd4nt

20:59 / 30.10.06

That's real feminism -- SIZE MATTERS !! hahhaha

It's not. It's really, really not. It bears as much resemblance to "real feminism" as a drawing of a plastic kazoo does to the London Symphony Orchestra.

DHE, you know a while ago we had that little talk about this thin you do where you write posts full of badly-thought-out ideas presented with minimal processing and backed up with a couple of shaky links?

You're doing that thing again. Please stop.

ONLY NICE THINGS

22:07 / 30.10.06

Cottyto is more often called Kotys, a version of the Thracian name Cotys. There's very little out there on her, that I know of. Brief mention in Strabo, which identifies her worship with Dionysian ritual, brief definition in Hesychius, references in Horace and Juvenal I can try to dig up. That's about it. Seems to be a mother-goddess, with an orgiastic cult (but then, which Thracian imports didn't involve booze and bellowing?). It sounds to me like she's getting a bad rep.

00:46 / 31.10.06

I feel guilty for rotting, but this;

Subjugate to the woman. Best strategy. :-D

followed by this;

And Quantum. i don't consider myself to me mysogin. Actually my workmates appreciate. Yeah, I don't drive them crazy, that's true too, but they appreciate me. And it's reciproque.

gets my back up and sets off my warning klaxons.

I'm only trying to integrate conflict in all this. And conflict exists.

You're fucking right conflict exists and is occurring right now, I am conflicting with you, not because we are competing for female monkeys or bonobos and throwing them from the tree but because you are talking shit and I object strenuously to it. You are not the first to consider the behaviour of monkeys, nor the first to embrace Mr or Mrs Wilson's philosophy wholeheartedly without considering the horrible misogyny it's influenced by. Here in the Temple we ask for at least the willingness to read what others have written before (or even while) spouting nonsensical bullshit, and your flavour of bullshit is neither new nor entertaining.
Please read what people have pointed you at. Please. You're throwing yourself headlong into trouble. Imagine you're a monkey that has climbed the wrong tree and grasped the wrong end of the wrong stick, and some monkeys around you are baring their teeth and whooping- WHOOP WHOOP, these are danger signs.

Danger. WHOOP WHOOP. Beware. We are not monkeys.

Anyway, apologies for rot to everyone else, any further conversation will be in Policy.

11:42 / 31.10.06

What does "a magical act" mean? Subsidiary question - what does "magic" mean (to you)? Does it have to do with intention?

e.g. A heart, wreathed in flame wrote: I can see turning the daily drinking of a glass of OJ into a magical act., here in the First thing in the Morning thread

(Links to stuff I've not read in the past pages of this thread would be fine.)

13:16 / 31.10.06

Haus, thank you for the references. The Strabo source is good, but still vague. Another stupid question though: What is Strabos? Is it the publishers of this type of reference material that are particularly reliable? If so, is this just an excerpt, and can I find more in the complete text?

Thanks again.

17:21 / 31.10.06

Hello. I'm a new poster here, and have just begun thinking about "magic" as a way to help feel more in-control of who I am. Are they any good resources anyone could give me on different ways of using magic to help guide me towards a better spiritual understanding.

I use magic mostly as a way to help alter my mind for my writing. I don't think it's very good (I am only 18 after all), but want to mature and even if each day is a tiny step forward, it's enough.

Can anybody help me?

17:35 / 31.10.06

What does "a magical act" mean? Subsidiary question - what does "magic" mean (to you)? Does it have to do with intention?

Well, that's always tricky, because part of me wants to use words for communication, and therefore maintains multiple defitions to accommodate how others seem to use it.

However, taking the example given:

For me to drink a glass of OJ with mindfulness, paying close attention to how it tastes, how I feel, how much I like them, my place in the Universe, whatever... That's making it spiritual.

For me to drink a glass of OJ with the intent that this glass of OJ help me be good enough, smart enough, and gosh-darnit likeable, healthier, whatever... That's making it magical.

The question in my mind is... what if I'm drinking the OJ as a trance cue to invite down Oshun? Is that magical? Spiritual? Woo-woo?

--Ember--

My Mom Thinks I'm Cool

18:45 / 31.10.06

Are they any good resources anyone could give me on different ways of using magic to help guide me towards a better spiritual understanding.

a) this thread
b) this forum

more specifically I'm sure there have been several threads on this or similar topics as new people come along from time to time, wondering where to start. I'm sure one of the old hands can point you more successfully to them.

for Getting To Know Yourself the Magical Way (tm) - hmm, where to start? A lot of people will recommend a good background in Divination to "ground yourself" - that'd be experimenting with tarot/i-ching/astrology/other, pick one that sounds fun.

personally I'm shit at divination and have been for a while now, so I'd be more into some kind of trance-like mental journey to sort of discover yourself. find your power animal/spirit guide, journey around in your subconcious and see who talks to you, psychoanalyze your own dreams, write some stream-of-thought dialog with yourself, something like that. I'm sure there's a zillion different ways to start. fun ways to get into a trance might be the music with the same name, dancing yourself silly, autohypnosis, long repetitious rituals, and of course the ever-popular chemical methods.

as for specifically help with your writing - maybe look up some kind of deity related to words/writing/libraries (athena comes to mind?), do some research, and if someone resonates with you make a little shrine, try making contact. or if you don't want to jump right in to the big god stuff, try just invoking spirits of writers you admire or some such. the kiddie pool end of the spectrum is probably basic chaos magic theory, write yourself up a sigil of some kind...to be honest I don't know much about CM and several people here will probably advise you to stay clear of it, but whatever you're into, you know.

seriously, try just browsing the entirety of this thread for helpful ideas and previous references/answers to similar questions to yours, there's all kinds of stuff in here. the barbelith temple is a great reference (though it can be hard to search) and so is wikipedia for explaining details if you don't know what a reference to magic type X is.

have fun, good luck, and feel welcome to keep asking.

22:06 / 31.10.06

Awesome.

My first question would be a way to find out how to contact to my animal guide. Something about the question truly jumped out at me as something to research.

I do suppose that I'm a bit too new to jump into the big trance/meditation stuff, given my low patience, but are there any basic forms of spiritual meditation to try out to better inform myself?

The temple is very hard to navigate, but I agree it's one of the best sites I've found on such information. Thanks a ton.

Unconditional Love

22:55 / 31.10.06

If your intrested in gaining initial allIes then gaining entrance to the lower world, michael harners way of the shaman isnt bad, if i remember correctly, he guides you at a slow pace to coming into contact with power animals etc etc, some people find it easier to learn this skill from another shaman, depends how best you learn really, try to figure out what kind of learner you are, looking at past experience and go with a method that fits, all the spirituality i have learnt, i have made better by interacting with others, sitting at home with books and self experimentation is a safe way to start, but sooner rather than later its good to go mingle with other spiritual types.

03:35 / 01.11.06

I feel like I'm in the wrong place if lots of self-meditation is the case as I live in downtown Boston. Even if I wanted to be alone and in nature, I couldn't.

I found a very basic guide to find an Animal Spirit guide. I went out twice to try it and found nothing. I used herbs to try to assist me, although I don't know if that helps any. In coming years, I want to live out somewhere I can see myself a bit more clearly.

The Ghost of Tom Winter

04:28 / 01.11.06

Meditation can occur anywhere you want. Sitting in the park reciting a mantra or whatever you wish, or watching the things pass, the ducks walking or the pigeons feeding.
The neat thing is, that you're already in nature and can really use that to your advantage. There has been a lot written on "urban-shamanism." I completely just blanked out on all the books, I'm sure others can direct you to some useful ones.
But finding an animal guide isn't exactly an easy process. Well it might be, but it does take work and if you truly seek a guide, the guide will want you to learn as well.
It may take a few tries before you can get any form of anything at all. Don't get discouraged, keep trying. If you do seek more "natural" atmospheres taking a camping trip to the mountains with a buddy or by yourself can be an enlightening experience.
Yikes. My thoughts are too sporadic. I should stop before I confuse you or myself even more.
I know for myself, I started off with the shamanism thing and just sat for awhile listening to some drumming and just visualizing a certain landscape, and then when I was comfortable with that I'd begin moving within it. Then I'd find things, I'd see a cave, I'd go down in it. Etc. etc.
After years of trying, I haven't found anything I can call a "spirit guide" but I haven't really devoted enough time to it either. There have been clues though. And those can be helpful. Oh god I'm shutting up now.
I’m sure someone else will expand or even contradict what I just said.

ONLY NICE THINGS

09:02 / 01.11.06

Electrix - Strabo is a who rather than a what - it's the Roman form of στραβων. Writer, orginally from Asia Minor, who wrote two monumental works - Historia and Geographia - the idea being, I suppose, to cover everything that happened and how to get to it. First century BC. As for accuracy - well. Huh. He tends to go out of his way to prove points, and to work backwards from conculsions looking for proofs. But, to be honest, in many cases he's all we've got, and his accounts of local religious practices like this... well, as far as we know they're accurate, is pretty much all one can say, I think.

Unconditional Love

10:57 / 01.11.06

Alot of it depends on how you consruct the under and upper worlds in yourself, if you think of them as portions of your own body, and then try to work with your own associations about upper and lower in your own body, you have a very workable landscape at your hands, yourself, its perfectly natural, no matter how sculpted and is full of all sorts of entrance and exit points into the upper and lower worlds.

The idea of chakras can be used in a similar way to represent internal worlds that can be worked with through the bodys physicalitiy, you have all the nature you need in your own body, its a great place to begin and then extend that out into the environment around you. Its a symbolic metaphor that cuts away the difference between skyscraper and mountain or monolith, obviously they feel very different and create very different environments, but its man made nature from the nature of man, nothing is really that alien or seperate. Urban landscapes could be said to reflect our relationships to ourselves.

Unconditional Love

11:03 / 01.11.06

Has anybody worked with black cumin seed Black cumin ?

13:55 / 01.11.06

Mr Austin:

I feel like I'm in the wrong place if lots of self-meditation is the case as I live in downtown Boston. Even if I wanted to be alone and in nature, I couldn't.

I found a very basic guide to find an Animal Spirit guide. I went out twice to try it and found nothing. I used herbs to try to assist me, although I don't know if that helps any. In coming years, I want to live out somewhere I can see myself a bit more clearly.

You really should go introduce yourself to the Commons and the rest of the Emerald Necklace

I lived in bosto for 7 years and had a great relationship with the various pockets of nature in the City. Specificly the Arnold Arboretum is a place of intense magic and many groups use it for ritual.

14:10 / 01.11.06

Has anybody worked with black cumin seed Black cumin ?

Yeah a little; I know it as love-in-the-mist or nigella, if I'm thinking of the right plant. Very friendly, has been easy to grow for me and lovely to have around.

15:22 / 01.11.06

Tannhauser, thank you for taking the time to explain that and for your opinion of that source. I was in that ballpark and I had suspected that interpretations may be quite loose. This does pose a problem for me.

Now, I am going to get that Magical Homework thread up for more larnin'.

Cheers!

15:50 / 01.11.06

xk:

You really should go introduce yourself to the Commons and the rest of the Emerald Necklace

I lived in bosto for 7 years and had a great relationship with the various pockets of nature in the City. Specificly the Arnold Arboretum is a place of intense magic and many groups use it for ritual.

That sounds absolutely amazing. Who should I introduce myself to?

15:54 / 01.11.06

I think xk meant introduce yourself to the common itself.

16:34 / 01.11.06

Ah. Very interesting indeed. I was just wondering since someone said to introduce myself to others. I figured it was literal. I still have a long way to go.

16:37 / 01.11.06

a way to find out how to contact to my animal guide

I found The Lucid Dreamer by M. Godwin extremely helpful, it has a nice technique to contact a guide cribbed from shamanic techniques. $2.99 from Amazon.

In a nutshell, you visualise a white blank space and wait for your guide to turn up, then befriend it. It's said that the more fearsome the creature the more powerful an ally it will be, and it is often surprising. It worked for me, and it helps with the lucid dreaming too of course.

16:55 / 01.11.06

yup I meant the actual park. You confusion is understandable as we all have such fun screen names.

The river front is also a very powerful place. One of the easiest ways to start building a relationship with nature in the city is to just start noticing it. The trees in their grate-pens along the sidewalk, the ivy on the brownstones, and the weeds in the cracks bravely pushing up from the sewers. The pocket gardens can be quite magical and nothing beats a midnight tour by moonlight of the Fens in back bay. Though keep your wits about you as other humans frequent the place and often can be not so nice.

The Fens are absolutely unbeatable for sheer beauty after an ice storm.

17:29 / 01.11.06

Oh I'll agree. Oftentimes I go out to the Boston Gardens (I've been twice today!) and usually become very harmonious with the environment there. Usually I run into harmless stoners or other family types during the day, but in the wee hours of the morning there are definately sketchy types who have tried to harm me in the past.

I will look into all of these and continuously report back. I appreciate all of the help you guys have given me. My last question is: are drugs at all necessary for this?

17:33 / 01.11.06

No.

17:42 / 01.11.06

often the use of drugs confuses things too much to be helpful. There are very very few reasons why an altered state would be required and even then there are multiple ways of achieving those states.

the body's ability to produce a wide range of brain chemistry/activity has been a greater area of productive study than artificially induced.

besides it makes it too easy to dismiss results as the product of drugs than the outcome of the magical/spiritual practice.

That said, drugs do have a place for some people in their practice but IME they revere the substances as plant/chemical guides. The relationship is often quite elaborate and in no way resembles the common street use for recreation.

18:24 / 01.11.06

That actually sounds a bit more similar to what I experience with marijuana. I am not someone who subscribes to high times and always goes out to smoke blunts blah blah blah stoner culture crap. I use it regularly because I feel it helps manage depression and allows me to think slightly more clearly. While communication is definately impaired through this method, I find that my personal level of comfort and access to my spirituality is more fulfilled.

I don't really plan on stopping, but it's interesting to see the varying levels of acceptance on drug use. I merely wasn't sure if there was a general consensus (why would there be?) or not.

18:29 / 01.11.06

the varying levels of acceptance on drug use.

I think there's a general consensus that drug use is someone's choice (quite a popular choice as it goes), but too many people mistake drug experiences for magic. There's an intolerance for people taking shrooms in the woods and claiming their visuals prove they are ipsissimusseses with special powerz.

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